Hey Squall, noticed an error on the front page under my 5467 order. The one with the Jalapeno can be erased since I upgrade it to a Single (which is on there).

I imagine for about a year or maybe two at most. From here on it's really about developing ASICs using smaller and smaller processes, pushing down from 65nm to 32nm, 28nm, 22nm, and so on. It's not the easiest thing to accomplish either (or cheap), so the timeframe may be longer.

Let's focus on getting first gen devices out the door first

You do realize there aren't actually 15k orders..right? Even some community contributors have actually written a couple papers on the subject..

This is where my thoughts are as well. Many people who have a substantial amount currently vested in preorders would more than likely wish to recoup that expense sooner than later. Once their ASICs are paid off, why not just collect a pile of Bitcoins?

Wait..then why do we have to pay for anything?

This ^

Dude, this is pretty fucked....not to mention paying for porn is overrated these days, let alone just random pics / SFW videos...

Hmm, a "contract" you say? I can't say I've ever heard of such a thing. Could explain in excruciating detail what one is and the "clauses" (oops, sorry for the big word) that it can contain? Then, with that knowledge, apply it to the contract you entered into with Coinbase? Only then can we properly assess the situation at hand.

Holy shit this thread is hilarious! It's nice to get a good laugh in every once and a while.


I concur, real businesses don't break contracts (at least not intentionally of course).

Hey, I can't seem to find the Coinbase contract. Can you post it here so we can review the terms together and find where they broke their own rules?

There are a number of sites that can calculate this for you. I use: http://tpbitcalc.appspot.com/


When looking at the bigger picture, Niko is exactly right. The "rush" you're seeing isn't from the general public coming in to purchase equipment, it's from a few hundred of us dedicated miners here in this community.

Oh please let this be so. I'd much rather cut out the middleman when moving funds..go directly to Gox instead of Dwolla first.

It's sort of a mix between all the topic answers so far.

One of the biggest factors (over the past few months anyway) has been both fear and speculation...coming from the whole notion that "if you don't preorder your device now, the difficulty will be too high later and you won't make any money".

During the first preorders for both BFL and Avalon, purchasing an ASIC was more of the "logical next step" for those people willing to continue mining on a large scale. It was only matter of time that custom chips would be designed specifically for the purposes of processing SHA hashes for Bitcoin. It was time for a mass move to faster and vastly more efficient hardware, compared to CPUs/GPUs/FPGAs. The massive increase in speed that thousands of distributed ASICs would bring to the network ultimately help to secure it.. stabilizing Bitcoin a bit.

When more and more people started to preorder and prepare for the transition, we (as a community) began to wonder what the future of the network will look like. How fast will it be? How high will the difficulty be? How many people are purchasing ASIC mining gear? Etc. Asking these questions, and subsequently attempting to seek answers, helped to drive fear into many people who were not necessarily looking to become early adopters...resulting in more ASIC orders.

And then there's the potential profits for those who buy in early. If you're able to get your device earlier than the majority of others, you stand to make quite a bit of coin..more than enough to pay off your initial purchase in a timely manner. One of the first ASIC owners, for example, has been pulling in nearly 60 Bitcoins per week for a month now...vastly more than enough to pay for the $1300 Avalon rig they purchased. Imagine what you could be making at 60GH/s on a 30m difficulty if you bought in now, compared to a 50m difficulty if you buy 2 months from now...that feeling of "oh, I should buy now" is what drives people to "rush" for ASICs. Timing is everything


TL;DR
Why does everyone rush to buy an ASIC?
Overarching theme: Fear / Speculation and the "Get in Now" scenario
1) ASICs are the logical next step for miners.
2) Difficulty growth and total order speculation
3) Potential Profits for early adoption

@velacreations: juicer25 been referenced here via this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=147421.0

He's referring to how notoriously easy it is to scam people via PayPal when dealing with Bitcoins. You can transfer money to another person, have them give you Bitcoins in return, and then reverse the original payment. PayPal won't do a damn thing about it because they have a stringent "No Bitcoin purchases" sort of policy.

In other words, only do the transaction with someone you truly trust.

Good stuff! Just completed the survey.

This has been everyone's argument for every virtual currency..even when Bitcoin when it first started (for some people). However, Bitcoin has grown substantially over the past 4 years...and no other altcoin has anywhere near the same usefulness as Bitcoin thus far.

Ask yourself how Bitcoin gained value (think Silk Road, mass publicity, "amazing never-before-done currency", etc). Do you think altcoins will be able to gain the same ground outside this community?

This is BFL we're talking about, so both

Goodness no, BFL is terrible at making predictions. I usually take their updates with a grain of salt and add 2-3 weeks onto any date they give. Shipping March 9th? Naw, probably April 6th.

And I agree..killing an entire wafer seems a bit silly, but then again what the hell do I know about chip development. With only 5000 chips, they'll probably only be able to fill June/July orders (assuming they get all 5000).

I figured another delay would more than likely be the case. Maybe they'll start shipping by the end of March if "all goes well"?