And then you find out that their secret to making millions is actually just selling a book...about making millions...

That's a pretty fair way to estimate it, and I tried thinking about it that way at one point as well..mainly since the majority of miners are in it for the money more so than the security it brings to the network. I found that, at least for GPUs, price and difficulty seemed to correlate to around an 8-10 month payoff...the point in which the $300 GPU (or any price really) finally pays for itself and you can make a return. So long as a miner was able to eventually turn a profit, they continued to mine.

That's also probably part of the reason we're seeing an increase in difficulty now...since the price is above $20, many smaller miners are able to cover energy costs and profit once more.

EDIT: I can't seem to find my stats on this stuff. I'll have to check again when I'm home from work.

Precisely. The way I've been looking at it, the absolutely minimum for first gen will probably be around 250-300TH/s (tripling BFL's preorder count, adding Avalon's batch #1 and #2, and tossing in ASICMiner as well). It'll only go up from there once people see working devices, as well as Gen 2 speculation.

Haha exactly!

I had a good laugh when I saw this...usually scammers actually try to play out their scam. His was a terrible, terrible attempt.

Yeah, 600w for 66GH/s ..only 33% higher than they advertise on their site.

EDIT: I stand corrected, it looks like they finally changed the specs on their site.

Nice! So if I create a working ASIC for myself and "promise" I'll make more to sell, you'll give me all your money?

Umm...how is this not an exchange?

Welcome to Bitcoin.

Unfortunately, most of the speculations noted above are pretty true to form. Watch yourself out there

Very true.

Oh yeah, where are those other 298 units? I forgot they've shipped 100 units by now...since they're so true to their word and all 

As amazing as Quantum computing is (and will be), I'm wary about implementing it for Bitcoin. It would be thousands (more than likely millions) of times faster than an high spec'd ASIC...so any one device kicked on before another would more than likely take control over the network (>50%).

Definitely. Just took a quick look and they probably haven't updated their certificates yet, which isn't usually too much of a problem if they're attentive to it. Pagoda Box is just a cloud hosting site, so they're probably hosting with them while utilizing their certs.

* puts on tinfoil hat

Or they stole the certs to try and give a false sense of security during checkout.

* takes off tinfoil hat

Easy. Buy replacement parts or buy another Avalon.

It's not like Avalon offers a warranty on their "no refund" devices

Well, I suppose they'd have to ship the others first

It took 10-11 days for the first ASICs to reach Jeff and the Foundation, so there should probably be 50-75 devices reaching their owners this week...assuming Avalon is indeed true to their word and not just jerking us around to increase Batch #2 orders.

You're thinking about coding and layout. What you're not thinking about is the value of a Brand, which is generally what drives the value of a company. One million people could create one million gambling sites, but there will always be the original "SatoshiDice".

The Bitcoin Foundation already released a video of their Avalon hashing away...

[trolling]

After they finish selling out their Batch #2 preorders to fund the finishing of Batch #1

[/trolling]

I've heard exactly the same, so I think you might be right as well. 110 to 55 is just a more expensive process thanks to the shrinkage...just like ASICMiner could probably go from 130nm to BFL's 65nm with a bit more cash.

Oh most definitely  


Meh, why not? As a small company, it's vastly easier to have everyone pay in full right from the start. When the time comes to build, package, and ship, it's nice to know that you have X amount of customers that have already paid, compared to X [fully paid], Y [partially paid], and/or even Z [not paid]. It negates the "Oh wait, did this person pay the rest of their bill before I ship?" type of mentality.

It does seem to have been variation (at least for now). I'm sure others have started up their GPU mining once more (as I did) since it's marginally profitable (again, at least for now). I think it'll be pretty obvious once there are a fair number of ASICs in the wild, and I'm fully expecting to see a stable 30+ TH/s over the next few weeks.

I'm actually quite curious about this as well. It would be very cool if they were able to maintain the current board layout while packing more chips on each module at 55nm..not to mention the power efficiency increase.