A pre-order 'golden ticket' sold for over 5 btc in the auction forum.  Pretty incredible!  Also very lame IMHO... The scalpers are making more profits than anyone ordering ASICs recently.

edit : post above posted while I was writing this. I can't fathom why anyone would pay over 5 btc.  It's a free market...go for it...but from my eyes this seems like an insane amount of money to pay on the chance to make a risky gamble.

I think the idea behind this is correct, and something like this is a good idea.  That being said, 2 points:

1) I think this decision should be up to the BFL pre-order folks  (which doesn't include me).

2) If what OP said goes down and BFL gets shutdown or whatever, I think, IMHO that it would be a far from guaranteed thing that folks would get their pre-order money back. If anything shutting down the company like this would basically make your preorder money a lost cause. It's one thing to get a financial judicial judgement against a company, but it's quite another thing to get money out of a more-than-bankrupt company. (As far as I know -- not a legal expert, but that's my impression...)

That is really sweet .  36 W  !  Nice..

Nah I'd say this is different.

For BFL pre-orders , folks had to lay down a significant amount of money to pre-order. Totally okay with that; folks can sell or keep their pre-orders as they liked.

This on the other hand is folks not intending to pay for an item. Instead of the products that were intended to be available for sale to folks who would buy them, these 'preorders' were secured only for profiteering... OP is not contributing anything, I highly doubt they had the funds available for the 4 'preorders' , and making a quick buck was the idea for the get-go.

Not saying this shouldn't happen or that people should not be able to buy this...but IMHO it's a jerk move, just like concert ticket scalpers who make themselves middlemen by keeping products out of legitimate customer's hands.

If anyone is to blame though I think it's more the KNC system they used...

So this I guess this is the new equivalent of ticket scalping for the BTC world.

I'm confident quantum computers will come and they will, of course, be light-years beyond amazing for code-cracking and Bitcoin mining. But having said that, we are still a very long, long way from anything approaching a quantum comp that you can pick up from a local hardware store. It may not even be economically feasible to do this in ... what 40 years?

I haven't been keepin' up with my tech news reading as much these days, but a working reliable early expensive quantum-based computer available even for researchers to order and purchase is at least 10 years away, I'd imagine. So basically so far in the future of BTC that its not worth considering (due to the rate of change). Early working and reliable q. comp's will solely be the property of the NSA and other similar power entities' code-breaking organizations for the first stretch.

Since ASICS are by their nature specialized circuits for mining, they are the end-all for silicon-based, traditional computing Bitcoin mining. Of course we will see Moore's law progression in efficiency for ASICS as tech develops, but I can't see any disruptive change coming anytime reasonable soon that will be anything like the shift from CPUs to GPUs, and now GPUs to ASICS.  If anyone else has any ideas on any potential disruptive tech that could do bring this kind of change besides quantum computing, please share, I'd love to hear about it.

I would not necessarily say ASICS are overpriced right now.

ASICS are near-impossible to come by. They are very risky to order. They have tremendous reward potential.  That's why the price is what it is.

Going to be a completely different ball game in even 1 / 2 months  (will Klondike work okay? Bitfury legit? Knc legit? Bfl ship more than .5% of their pre-orders ?)  So many unknowns right now.

+1  . Ya don't really see how it can be see any other way either. As far as for miners anyways.

If you had nothing to do with mining and had a strong focus on generating quick fiat with your BTC investments, even then, mining difficulty should still play as a strong consideration in your plans beyond anything longer than a week or so.

We are the middle of exponential shift right now, the like of which, I think, could only feasibly happen once more in the next 10-20 years for mining. It's an interesting time, to be sure.  

I'm still at a bit of loss at how you could have a GPU farm and not really consider difficulty as a major factor in any decisions related to this.

Still really bitter about selling my shares at 1.3 ....

But that didn't stop me from buyin' back in at 2.45 the other week . Man ASICMiner is just on a tear right now !   Dividend me up

^^^ that does seem pretty reasonable to me.

These cards are the best thing going Imho. Mine pumped out 640 hashes with little to no work whereas my Sapphires are rarely able to go over 600 with a lot of tweaking.

Been intending to flash the roms' of the sapphires but haven't got around to it...

Hmmm...wonder if this one will rise from the ashes...

Too much risk for me.  If kncminer and bitfury were the only options available I'd just stick to gpu's. I think I have 'new asic fatigue' and will just sit out, at least until the Klondikes, which look the most promising to me... but hey, the reward potential is there for those bolder than me.

I'm not going to even entertain the notion of trying to track down some guy who scammed me, in Russia... though I'd hope it be something like the movie Red Heat if I did.

I think creativex is doing a grand job. Nice work. I think the right calls are being made. And good voting, everyone else... .

Whew what a risky venture. I trust the Swede75 and even think KNC is legit, but that all said, still quite the risk. Perhaps at least waiting until the open -day is over tomorrow may be wise.

Good luck to all involved (I say with no sarcasm, do mean it, could work out quite well...)

Judging from BFL's record of inaccurate statements, I think anyone dealing with them should take a 'believe it when I see it' approach when considering the company. I mean it's all well and good for a Jalapeno to ship, but if you look at the bigger picture, they still haven't shipped .5% of a product that people already paid for almost a year ago.

I'm happy for anyone who finally got their units. But I think it's a bit premature to see the sub 50 units (I guess) as a big success that should alleviate any fears or encourage more pre-orders.

For every one jalapeno that has been shipped there are what, 5,000 units not shipped? At least a 1000 customers who haven't received a product for every one that has.  That's a complete guess, don't care enough to get the exact numbers, but it has to be somewhere around there.

^^^ wow thanks man. That was a really impressive contribution to this discussion. You seem really mature; are you 16?

I don't understand why or how things should be focused directly towards gay folks.  I'm certainly not against that idea or anything. But it just seems to that this kind of thing does more to discriminate against sexualities than it does to promote or appeal to some.

Why can't un-gender, un-sex preference-dependent projects that promotes Bitcoin also serve the gay community? Like unless we are talking about specifically gay projects, like making a BTC-taking 'GRindr' app or whatever, I don't see much point in this approach.

Any good BTC project that improves the Bitcoin ecosystem should naturally appeal to both straight and gay folks, why bother seperating them into two distinct communities?

short-version:  I'm pro-Bitcoin-asexual

2 cents from the peanut gallery:  the bubble of about 2 months ago now completed it's cycle. It came and left. What we have now is Bitcoin returning to it's performance before the bubble happened, with a return to the stability as well. Bitcoin should be about 120 - 130 right now if you follow the trend line that has being going on for over a year.

Bubble grew, then blew up, things are back to BTC normal.

Also, I recommend a 6 pack of beer