I'll try to get this exact data tomorrow. What exactly would I be asking for? KW/h?

This auction will end in:
Timer removed. End time: 2013-04-08+11:00:00

Avalons all-out, first batch botched, seeking security?

There seems to be an influx of newbies trying to "group-buy" an Avalon (something I personally think will not end well for many just as most mining investments never did due to infighting, theft, etc). The point of these group-buys is that they allow multiple individuals to share in the cost and rewards, but entrust a complete stranger (and in these cases, a newbie with no reputation at all). The downside is that there are no guarantees that the individual will not just run out on them.

If you're actually interested in paying money now (BTC) to get shared profits in an Avalon miner for the future, I have a proposition that can help you achieve your goals while helping me build a trustworthy reputation here again after 2 years of trolling (and serious business endeavors).

A single Avalon ASIC, 85Gh/s (4 modules) will be sent from China to Korea in May (Batch 3). It has already been purchased free and clear, with funds that are mine and not loaned from others. I am auctioning off up to 50% of the profits of this device in the form of shares. To clarify, there will be 100 shares, 50 shares of which will be owned by me, the rest are to be auctioned here.

Please read these two pages of information carefully before making a decision so that you are well informed before placing your bid.

Please understand that with these new ASIC rollouts, GPUs will be less and less profitable, and as far as I am aware, there are no other serious competitors to Avalon at this time in terms of performance and delivery. I may be biased since I am an Avalon owner, but I feel that if you don't have an Avalon, you'll be the only one left out.

For those familiar with the forum's advertising space auctions, this auction will be very familiar to you.


Hosting of the ASIC will of course be provided by me, and electricity costs will be deducted before profits are paid. Profits will be paid out on a weekly basis. This is not a business, there are no "voting shares" or any nonsense like that. Just profit sharing based on the percentage you purchased.

Please click the link in my signature to decide on your own if I am trustworthy enough to do business with, and as always, never put more money into bitcoin that you can't afford to lose. I feel that even at a potential loss for myself, this will be an important step in restoring a trustworthy reputation on this forum and allowing people to see that I am seriously committed to changing my odd behavior of the past.

Thank you for reading and let the bidding begin at 0.5BTC x 50 shares!

Note: Moderators please quote this for later evidence against tampering.

That's cool! We need more musicians here on the forums. Next time you put something up let me know, I'd love to have a listen.

Why would anyone go to a meeting with a complete stranger carrying bitcoins or anything else without first having sufficient proof of actually holding the item for sale in question?

That's good! Sorry for the OT, but do you happen to play an instrument yourself?

Okay, sure. But that doesn't answer my question. Kickstarter and Indiegogo are great for projects like this. These forums are just a good place to get doxxed for asking for money. The forums are full of libertarians who will only support you if you are selling GPU-fan-dried-strawberries as a form of protest against the man. (Just kidding)

Everytime this happens, people say the same things: "You better watch out! Pain is coming!" and "It's not gonna be hard to track him down!". Really? REALLY? What justice was served to Tom Williams? Bitcoinica? Alberto Armandi? Trendon Shavers?

Please stop enabling scammers by not spending the necessary energy, time and funds on pursuing justice against them.
Please stop enabling scammers by *only* posting about what happened on a forum instead of actually calling the police, visiting them in person, suing, etc.

A follow-up question: why aren't you taking photos of the place, making an introduction video, and using Kickstarter or Indiegogo? Why ask the bitcoin community, a place rampant with scammers making new accounts all the time to making grandiose claims of abilities only to end up running off with the irreversible transactions entrusted to them?

It's refreshing to see people who want to keep things alive and dive into the various complex responsibilities of managing a studio, the property and the various difficulties of sustaining an income, but I would have to kindly decline on the grounds that music as we know it *is* dead. The current trend for the future of music is leaning towards home production (think Owl City), not necessarily places run by some dude who had a dream. Just the same, if you have the business side figured out, share that part first. Anyone wanting to invest will most likely only care about the likelihood of seeing a return on said investment. If you're just doing this because you want to, I suspect no one will be willing to foot the bill for such a misadventure.

There was a user on these forums who once asked for a $500,000 loan to purchase and restore an old movie theater. He was met with very logical and thought-out responses that all led to the conclusion that it'd be a money pit. Unless there is something unique and special about this place, I would assume the same to be true for you.

Don't be discouraged by this! Not every opportunity needs to be acted on. Keep looking out for more opportunities. If you find the right one, you won't even need to ask for help, people will be asking you.

Forgive me for intruding, but has OP bothered to prove he has an ASIC to anyone before they started fawning over it? This is a ripe time for ASIC resell/presell scams.

It could be fake, but even fake rumors can start wars.

Well, when your major exchange site suddenly locks up whenever the price is moving down and previous bids/asks disappear (without anyone being able to prove who they even came from), it calls into question the validity of our pricing logic in the first place. I don't blame them for calling it a pump-n-dump. Where is the transparency or decentralization when it comes to pricing? Let's get some username hashes connected to the bids/asks at least so that we know it's not MtGox themselves propping up the price in order to make a fortune and control the market.

If buying bitcoins didn't make their spot price increase, would you guys still be telling everyone about bitcoin?

greyhawk, not sure if you solved this yet, but in looking through the security settings you can just restrict login to a set of IPs. If yours is static, add it and I suppose problem will be solved.

This might be a dumb question, but is such a cooling mechanism necessary for an ASIC? I was under the impression being an ASIC it would somehow be cooler than a GPU. If it is necessary, does that mean current ASIC holders are losing hashing rate, or that their current rigs will be more prone to breaking down? Why wouldn't this kind of thing be standard in the Avalons at shipping time if it were required? (Purely asking for education purposes only, I would love to see such things made if they are in fact helpful.)

Are you getting messages because of a 2-factor login requirement, or does it just message you everytime someone gives the wrong password?

Or, they'll find out that they were right when Bitcoin 2.0 (different system/blockchain) comes out and everyone here is left holding a bunch of worthless tokens.

A certain level of skepticism is healthy, even if you're an obvious bitcoin fanboy as you appear to be. Making claims that "they'll be sorry!" and "it's only gonna go up uP UP!" make you look like an MLM "salesperson" (read: shill). Do not discount people's genuine concerns with their livelihood being destroyed by an anonymous internet experiment as just being "non-believers". As with any religious movements or cults, being blindly supportive is even worse than being ignorantly against; the ignorant can always learn.

I'm sorry I never responded to this, and I agree that you are not CoinExchanger or Maria. Thanks for providing the info (even though it was over a year ago). I hope your chess site is doing well!

Well to that point, anywhere *but* the exchanges will allow you to do just that, whether it be in-person trading (localbitcoins), on IRC, or anywhere for that matter. Volume of transactions doesn't currently automatically increase or decrease the price. As it is, the major exchanges such as MtGox are the ones responsible for that (something that should not be taken lightly to a supposed decentralized currency). Only using major exchanges will cause the price to go up or down drastically.

A perfect example of this is when Tony of BitPay was dumping BFL's $200,000 or so in bitcoins back when the price was barely $8 a coin. He did it over the course of a week or two, and mostly on IRC/Skype.

I'm pretty sure that's not what you were asking though, you were most likely referring to natural adoption causing a spike in spot price. I do not deny this at all, and even mentioned exactly that in my previous post. It is inevitable that we will get bubbles like this due to patterns of adoption, each time a major company or service starts accepting them (like if Amazon or Ebay suddenly accepted them for example). After that though, if it's intended to be used as a legitimate currency, there really is no sense in the price skyrocketing continuously and we do have direct control of that. We are the ones who decide at what price to sell and buy at. Frankly speaking, I consider anyone buying right now at $100 to be a little on the "cool-aid" side of bitcoin, and taking a great risk. If they can afford it though, who cares.

Later on when people are buying and selling bitcoins and not just buying, it would make sense that the spot price would stabalize again, something necessary for a legitimate currency. This would enable people the freedom to spend their money on services and products regularly, instead of hoarding them, expecting to make a fortune (gambling), which effectively makes the currency useless for anything but speculation.

Wasn't referring to the act of *pegging* it to something, I was referring to the natural fluctuation of price in the current market in the range of $20 up or down in a single day (making it impossible to use as a legitimate currency).

This is absolutely a well known and documented trait in human beings in general. We fear what we don't understand and assume that it will hurt us (just look at the recent arguments regarding gun legislation). I will never argue that a large part of the claims against bitcoin are unfounded and uneducated, the same kind the telephone, electricity, mobile phones, computers, the internet, even automobiles all experienced in their infancy.

To discount them *all* as being baseless just because you don't agree with them however is asinine. Many of the arguments come from legitimate fears. Some of the arguments I've seen, I still can't help but agree with and will forever remain on the fence about until such a time as Bitcoin itself proves me otherwise.

Case in point, when someone sincerely asks "How could a legitimate currency increase in value 20% in a single day? That's ridiculous! It must be a ponzi scam..", the correct response is "Yes, it is ridiculous. It will be ridiculous for quite some time as it's a new project that has yet to settle down. Please don't use bitcoin with any amount of money you can't afford to use, and hang in for the long ride. It's still very much an experiment and everyone is eager to find out how things will go! As for being a ponzi, I haven't seen any proof supporting that, but I continue to keep aware of the arguments and only participate in the areas I'm comfortable with, never doing more than I can't afford to lose."

Instead, we have the psycho-religious bitcoiners outright lying to themselves and everyone else, "Nonsense! It's good for everyone! Bitcoin will save the world! SHUT UP GIVE US YOUR MONEY! BITCOIN WILL BE THE ONLY CURRENCY EVENTUALLY AND CRUSH EVERY GOVERNMENT.", basically making everyone who holds bitcoin look like a pump-and-dump, tinfoil hat wearing, ponzi scheme shill. It's embarrassing to those of us who just love the technological aspect and want to help participate in the experiment. People have quit PETA and GreenPeace for exactly this reason; they went into it thinking they would do some good, and found that the people in charge were raving lunatics with their own agendas and nonsensical remedies. I for one would never join PETA, even if I believed animals had souls, because PETA is nuts. I have joined up in Bitcoin though and even co-founded the Bitcoin Magazine, but only because I believed it needed more *balanced* arguments, not more one-sided cheerleading and preaching (I'm actually seriously saddened when I think about the future of that magazine becoming just a circle-jerk fanzine).

But I digress, when it comes to arguing with others about Bitcoin,  you know what they say, "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.". Don't argue with them, agree with their good points, accept the fact that Bitcoin isn't exactly the shining image of a perfect currency, and maybe they'd try it out on their own accord once they realized you're not an unstable psycophants or trying to convince them to buy like some pusher in an alley.

^^^ Having the price go up 4000% makes it look like a pump and dump, a bubble, a ponzi scheme, and anything other than a legitimate currency, and only feeds the bubble arguments. As much as "investors" (gamblers) want bitcoin's price to skyrocket, stagnation would be best for it if it's intended use is a currency. Obviously we've got a lot of skyrocketing to do until everyone used it, but it's neither possible nor a good idea to have it increasing non-stop.


There's nothing wrong with those points individually, but I agree that if those points are all coming from the same person, they are likely trolling to get a rise out of you. Again, individually, those are all potentially good points and may or may not be correct at any given time.