Compliance is a big unknown right now.  It also depends on what you believe is required for compliance and no two people have the same opinion.  It doesn't help that FinCEN guidance is about as clear as mud (and contradicts prior guidance).  It also doesn't help that in the US you also have fifty states.  It also doesn't help that regulators generally are not innovators and Bitcoin is something radically new which doesn't fit neatly into an existing box.

Still lets take a look at what you could mean by complaint.

As for registered with FinCEN?  All
AFAIK all US exchanges (market and direct) have registered, even the shutdown bitfloor was register.

As for compliant with BSA procedures? Unknown
 MSB are required to (and this is the brief non-legal version):
* verify customer identification (KYC).
* screen customers against OFAC, SDN and other "bad lists".
* develop, implement, and audit an anti-money laundering program (AML).
* keep records of transactions.
* report cash tx over $10K (cash in this case meaning physical money), supicious transactions (SAR), funds transfers of Americans to foreign banks.
* prevent/block if possible tx which violate AML procedures, involve terrorism/drugs/illegal activity (if known).
* work with other financial institutions to aid overall KYC/AML system (MSB are considered a "financial institution" as are banks).
Really the only thing an outsider can know for sure if an entity verify customers because they can see what the entity requires of them.  Honestly the rest is all internal and you really have no idea if they are compliant or not.  You will know they aren't when the feds take legal/law enforcement action.

As for registered as a money transmitter in all states?  None
There is some uncertainty as to if bitcoin exchanges meet MT definition at the state level and if they do for which states.  For example in most states a fiat currency exchanger (sells USD for EUR) is not a money transmitter, neither is a gold dealer, commodity dealer, broker dealer (equities), FOREX dealer, etc.   To make it more complicated every states has different language.  As an example more than one state specifically uses the wording "currency of the United States or foreign government" which by definition would exclude Bitcoin.  Even if a MT license is required in all other states it likely isn't in a state with language like that (disclaimer this is not legal advice just my personal opinion).   Some states are more open ended language, and some states use such vague language that essentially any financial transaction could be consider money transmission.  Even when the law is clear it doesn't always mean the states will follow it.  In VA & CA they have taken action (notices only) contrary to their own regulation. The "state issue" is going to be a big one and likely will take years to resolve.  However if you are believe a MT license is required in all states for an exchange to be compliant the answer is simple.  There are no Bitcoin exchanges anywhere in the world with a MT license in all fifty states.   

Note these requriements would apply for any foreign exchange accepting tx from US residents too.  IIRC no foreign exchange has even registered with FinCEN so the answer to the above questions would be none, none and one.

Your coins should never be "stuck".  The protocol doesn't require that.  This is a bug in the client.  Exactly how/why it believed you had no UXTO to spend I don't know but you should have been able to spend every single coin down to the last satoshi.

Important:  the subsequent tx won't CONFIRM until the first tx (drink) is CONFIRMED.  So since the first tx is small if you didn't include a fee it may be a while and even if you included a fee in subsequent tx they can't be confirmed until the first one is.  So if your buyers complained.  Dude these coins you sent me have been unconfirmed for two hours that would be a different issue however any bitcoin tx (unless it breaks min mandatory fee rules) should be sent immediately and be seen (unconfirmed) by the recipient within seconds at most.  This applies to any client on any OS anywhere in the world.   


This is impossible however it isn't necessary for the real solution.  You simply want to be able to spend all yours coins whenever you want.  That is possible however change is ALWAYS the amount of the input minus the output.

As someone indicated up thread in the real world you open your wallet and inside is a single $50 bill.  You want to buy a beer for $5.  You can't tear off a corner of the bill to pay.  Well you could but the bartender might decide you had one too many.  The only possible way to pay for the beer is to pay $50, the bartender will put $5 in the till and return $45 to you.

Bitcoin works the same way.  If you receive 60 BTC as single tx you have a 60 BTC "bill" you can't tear off a corner of it.  It doesn't matter if you intend to spend 1 satoshi or 20 BTC or 60 BTC the only possible way to "spend" it is in a 60 BTC transaction.

So change will always be the difference.  However this is an xy problem. http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem

You don't really want to have the change smaller you just want to be able to spend all your coins when and how you want.  Luckily that problem can be solved and would appear (based on your description and assuming you didn't have one too many) to be a client side bug.

They don't need to be in one "packet".  As long as a node can validate the tx and any unconfirmed parents they will be relayed.  Technically it is likely the peer already knows about the unconfirmed parent but sending both just avoids the tx being dropped.

So for unconfirmed tx there is no issue (at the protocol level but based on OP report if accurate there is some issue with the client) in unconfirmed chains.   The main unresolved problem is that the algorithm in bitcoind used by miners to select tx for a block ignores child-pays-parent.

This means usually a tx with a high fee which has a unconfirmed parent w/ low/no fee ends up being delays.   It may take a considerable amount of time before a miner includes the low priority parent into a block and until they do so the high fee child is ignored.

Still all that has to do with first confirmation time.  The issue described by the OP is that down chain tx are "not seen" (meaning not even unconfirmed) by the receiver and reported by the client as unsent.  Unless the OP is mistake or my reading is incorrect that is a client side bug and not a restriction of the protocol.


What should have happened (even assumming empty wallet no other UXTO)

None of the tx would be included in a block until the first one was and since child pays parent is ignored by miners it may be a while but as far as unconfirmed tx there should be no issue.

I doubt it.  Most of the ads coming from companies selling ASICs and for that target market there is no better advertising space in the entire world.  The window of profitability is rather small (as value of units are going to decline proportional to global hashrate) so it makes little sense to pull ads.

Theymos could say for ASIC companies then min bid is 20 BTC and he likely would still sell out of ad space.  Under normal conditions you probably are right though.

Isn't there a simpler explanation?  Say KNC can finish final assembly, testing and shipping of 200 units/cores per day (where Jupiter = 4 units).  They won't ever stop just ship out 200 units a day starting from order 1 until the last order.  So 200 units on shipping day 1, 200 units on shipping day 2 (400 total), .... 200 units on shipping day 10 (2000 total).   Now for the sake of argument lets say they had 1,200 units ordered on day 1 and 800 units on day.  If they started shipping on Sept 20th then it would take them 6 days to ship out all the units ordered on day 1 and 4 more days to ship out the units ordered on day 2.  That takes you to the end of September and orders from day 3 onward ship out (200 at a time) starting on Oct 1.  If you ordered on day 1 (in this hypothetical excercise) your order wouldn't necessarily ship on Sept 20th it would ship on a day between 20th and 26th depending on where you were in line.

The numbers are just illustrative and obviously no company is going to be able to ship exactly x units a day everyday.

I guess it all depends on how "good" existing designs are.  Taking HF just because they provided die size, hashrate and power info.


Reported power consumption (at the chip) is 400 GH / 250 W = 1.6 GH/W.

So HF claims their silicon is good for 1.23 GH/mm^2 and 1.6 GH/W @ 28nm.  
While they are impressive compared to 65nm tech it remains to be seen how "good" those are compared to what is possible for 28nm tech.  Are they very good, or barely adequate in the grand scheme of things?   

If the run some simulations on an improved die and it shows to only be marginally better (say 1.4 GH/mm2  and 1.8 GH/W) then I agree the chip probably won't be made before moving to a smaller process. On the other if they came up with say >2.0 GH/mm^2 and >3 GH/W) it may make sense to produce a second 28nm chip.   I just wonder how much improvement is possible,  I guess once we get a couple of vendors with real 28nm silicon we should have a better idea.

Parts don't bring in more money.

Has not been answered officially.  There has been no reported delay but no more info on shipping timelines.

Doh you got me.  I knew Lineage power was owned by GE, but I found a datasheet for the same part without any Lineage branding.  Not sure why GE has datasheets for the same thing on multiple sites but they made me look stupid.

Serious question.  It would seem by the description ("0.45Vdc to 2.0Vdc") that they went with the MDT040A0X instead of the MVT04A0X.  Any ideas why?  It doesn't really matter I am just curious.

@Gomeler  Agreed on both points.  Design matters and we won't be moving past 28nm for a while.  

As for design there is something horribly broke in BFL design and I can't see them doing a significant redesign at this point.  Bitfury and BFL aren't the only two with vastly different efficiencies at the same scale.  Granted both of these are vaporware at this point but I find it interesting that Hashfast is reporting ~0.6W/GH (at the chip) and KNC is reporting ~2.2W/GH (at this chip) and both of them are on a 28nm process.  We will see when it gets to real silicon but if that holds it is interesting.

As for next gen.  My guess is we won't be seeing anything smaller than 28n for a long time. 20nm is expensive and there is also a troubling trend which Nvidia highlighted a while back in that the cost per transistor isn't going down much even when processes become mature so the smart money may be on optimization.    I do think there will be incremental improvements on the same process (the "tock" in Intel tick tock strategy).  I wonder how efficient 28nm chips can get (GH/mm2 and GH/J).  When the low hanging fruit is gone it comes down to who can build the better company.  All that boring stuff like finding solid suppliers, optimizing pricing so you can reduce incremental cost through larger runs, building an OEM network.  I think eventually most of the ASIC companies will just produce chips and leave the rest to partners.  I also think there will be less companies operating in 2014 either through failures or consolidation.

Not sure what the relevance of a part made by lineage?  Didn't KNC state the power supply used in from GE Critical Power?

No.  Of all the risks this isn't one.  Total annual bitcoin revenue is a rounding error for a company like Samsung or Intel.  In theory (and I am not saying it is likely) some years or decades from now when Bitcoin is many magnitudes larger it might attract the interest of a major semiconductor company however by then the Bitcoin ASIC companies who have survived will have years of experience.  A big player would simply buy the company outright to hit the ground running. 

Don't worry no lawyer would take a case like this on contingency anyways.  Lawyers generally work on contingency (name for when they take a cut of any damages received) when the case is cut and dry or routine.  Dumbass drunk driving smashes into you and your lawyer will sue the shit out of his insurance company.  Really it is just a matter of how big of a check the insurance company is going to write.

Any lawsuit which is complex, and this would be complex, the lawyer wants some guaranteed cold hard cash (or bits) up front.  You open a retainer account deposit tens of thousands of dollars into it and the lawyers staff will bill against that (drafted demand letter $125, conducted research $85, conference call with lead plantiffs $205, etc).  Monthly (and yes you would be lucky to get into a courtroom in months) the secretary will send you a balance statement and ask you to replenish the retainer. If/when it runs out of money the law firm stops working.  You keep paying and paying and paying until you either give up or get a verdict.

They also make the mistake of assuming that addresses are linked to identity.  The balance of some of MtGox's cold storage address(es) are large but they represent the wealth of who knows how many individuals. 

That is an option however it eliminates the selling point of using a PCIe interface and a standard GPU form factor.  Unless you plan on having multiple cards in a closed rackmount case you gain more flexibility just using USB or plain ole serial interface (bitfury).  You can arrange them however you want and are constrained by slot spacing or thermal limits of a single chassis. The reason to use PCIe would be to rack up a bunch of them but given the cooler design (not suited for no 0 slots between cards) and the high power consumption that isn't possible. 

So you get all the complexity, cost, and risk for nothing.   The only advantage in theory does not exist in reality.

cscape reported getting 40GH/s @ 35W is there any demonstration of it being pushed higher?

That is clocked lower than the production board.  The demo is running @ 1.2 GH/s per chip and the stock boards (H-board) are running at 1.56 GH/s.  c-scape reported specs on a third party board (with more powerful DC power supply) running at 2.5 GH/s per chip.

Demo:    1.20 GH/s @ 0.84W = 0.70 W/GH
H-Board: 1.56 GH/s @ 1.48W = 0.95 W/GH *
S-HASH: 2.50 GH/s @ 2.18W = 0.87 W/GH

* Not demoed publicly.  Power seems out of line with the other two boards.  It may be the reported wattage (380W on 400 GH/s) is conservative or is measured at the wall and includes AC PSU inefficiency. Unsure.

Some more specs (temp, wattage, efficiency) of the demo board running at various clock speeds:
https://bitcentury.io/blog/initial-testing-of-bitfury-asic

On edit: fixed math error.  division can be hard. Thanks Keefe.

Glad to hear it.  At this time the only restricted locations are some states "in the land of the free".

Cool stuff huh.  Makes me miss the days I worked in a datacenter.  Always fun getting delivery of the awesomely expensive servers.

If BFL was serious about datacenter ready they would have designed the card to operate in that manner but they didn't. Datacenter servers (not just that monster in the video but even smaller 2 or 4 card GPGPU servers) don't have any fans on the CPUs and GPUs (or anything else).  Everything is cooled using the "case" fans pushing air in the front across all the components and out the back.



No fan, inside the shroud the heatsink runs the length of the card.  The server is responsible for pushing air through the card.  Notice the two versions and the "airflow ->" marks.  This is because there are two different versions of the heatsink.  It has more largers spaces between fins on the intake side and denser fins on the exhaust side.  This helps to evenly cool the card.  Still even NVidia isn't crazy enough to try and cram multiple 350W cards into a chassis.  The Tesla uses ~200W.



If BFL offered a 200W, passively cooled hashing card, and showed some mock ups of the non functional but physical card handling the thermal load in a densely loaded server well that would be different.  As it stands now it is just laughable.  Take the option to connect by USB. GPU pull some of their power from the PCIe backplane.  That is why despite the PCIe limiting the 8pin connector to 150W it is possible to power a 325W 7990.  Two 8 pin connectors (150W ea) plus 75W from motherboard.  Well in "USB mode" the hashing card won't be able to pull power from the motherboard.  So is BFL going to require three 8 pin connectors or just have the two connectors 17% over spec?



BTW back in 2011 when I was running out of space for GPUs I was looking into a similar rack with 8 dual width slot.  Very cool stuff but they are insanely expensive.  It was cheaper to build twice as many 4 GPU rigs instead.  Actually I think it was cheaper to build four 4 GPU rigs than one monster 8 GPU rackmount.  They may be cheaper now but I doubt it.

What 28nm ASIC?