|
Something strange is still going on.
Ozcoin.net reports that the pool's hash rate has fallen to ~1,400GHash/s from 4,000-7,000GHash/s before all this started.
My own mining on ozcoin.net has stayed the same for the past several days, so I would expect that my credit per round would increase while the rate of blocks found would decrease, and even out.
However my round credit is less than half what it was before. Am I missing something obvious, or is there something wrong happening here. I'm now mining with less than half credit per round and significantly slower blocks found than 2 days ago.
Thks
|
|
|
|
some miners lost the latest mined coins. some transactions will be reversed. that's it.
BTC is now quite centralized. A small team with guns can hijack the whole network by forcing mining pool operators to co-operate with them.
And who will force the miners to stay in the highjacked pools? Plus even in that senario what could the highjacker do? They can't tranfer coins they don't control the wallet to. All they could do is not confirm transactions and slow the network down, people's coins would still be safe. After miners moved to new pools, the network rate would bounce back up. |
|
|
|
|
Whatever Tom,
If bASIC was not a scam, then what happened to the pre-paid money you received?
Where did the money go?
Why do you need to mine in order to pay people back?
You said the pre-paid money was not for development, if that is the case then you should have it in hand and ready to refund.
Why the delay?
Why the lack of transparency?
You said development was well along and almost ready to ship, but then it turned out you had:
- Zero schematics
- Zero ASIC layout work done
- Zero wafers/chips
- Zero PCB boards
- Zero etc, etc, etc
Everything you said before was simply not true, so what do you expect people to think
|
|
|
|
The bumping facility, which we have no direct contact with, did not complete the NRE on the timeline we had spoke to the packaging facility about. As I've written in previous posts, we are dealing with such an accelerated time scale that all of these facilities simply aren't used to dealing with.
Translation, we have no idea how a fab process works. You think BFL has the scale to ask real facilities to implement an "accelerated time scale they are not used to dealing with"? It is obvious BFL was never going to get an "accelerated time scale" from manufacturing facilities, to expect anything else is crazy. This is clearly a delay tactic. Either BFL was aware of the real timeline the whole time and lied, or BFL is trying to cover for other mistakes, or BFL is a scam. |
|
|
|
Still really hoping you guys release a product rather than mine in-house under a bond structure. Or do both. There are plenty of us that would rather throw our money at you than debate over which manufacturer is more likely to deliver to our door in the next year.
Couldn't have said it better. Am much more interesting in participating on this project (however Yohan decides, either as a customer or something else), than with the other options. |
|
|
|
No doubt, pretty much everything about this situation makes no sense. It doesn't make any more sense as a scam than it does as a legitimate project. Tom could have made off with way more money by just accepting BTC instead of taking most orders through wire and CC. He could have brought in more by providing proper updates even if fake than by posting drunken rants. He didn't do any of that. Why open yourself to all the possible legal trouble by doing CC orders at all if you're just planning on stealing BTC? He'd having to be both brilliant running a long con on the success of his FPGA business, and completely incompetent as a scammer.
It actually does make sense if you think in terms of Tom being an inherently unstable person who melts down and becomes irrational under stress. You're not going to get rational behaviour from someone who has gone into meltdown - they're not being driven by logic any more. There seems to be at least some evidence of Tom acting irrationally in the past, and it's not all that unusual for people with mental health issues (substance related or not) to be perfectly competent until something causes them to start disconnecting from reality. That's not an excuse - the appropriate thing to do when you realise you're starting to melt down is to hand stuff off to someone else before you totally fuck everything up. Given the bitterness in some of Tom's posts, I'm not sure it was as much about the money as it was about the kudos. The big question is how much of this project was real and how much of it was delusional on Tom's part - how far did it actually progress, if at all, before collapsing. Being mentally unstable is a perfectly rational explanation for the complete bizarro world of bASIC. But I still get stuck on the fact that no matter how delusional you are, ASIC fab processes are rock solid. You provide them a GDS layout and then it is very clear what stage your wafers are in and when they will be finished, assembled and packaged. No matter how mentally unstable you are, there has to be some physical result from this bASIC project if it was not a scam. Even if the ASICs didn't work, you would at least have a layout to show and junk die. Unless Tom was so delusional that he was having imaginary discussions with imaginary production plants that were really just his dog, then this was a scam. As for why the refunds, another explanation is he lost his nerve and/or saw that maybe people could legally find him through the CC charge backs. |
|
|
|
Really??? This is news to me. I've had a partial payment open with then, and have received ZERO replies to my Avalon support ticket nor emails. Seriously guys you have like 100-200 people to respond to, 1 day should be plenty to handle this.
All partially paid orders from 2012-02-02 have a deadline of 2013-02-13 17:00 EST to complete payment. All orders which have not been paid in full will be refunded to the sending address unless otherwise instructed. Payment instructions can be obtained and return addresses can be given to WalletBit support at http://support.walletbit.com. Please contact WalletBit support immediately. Just wanted to say WalletBit's support has been very helpful and responsive so far and I have had a positive experience with WalletBit. My comment was directed towards Avalon not Walletbit. So far Avalon has not responded to multiple tickets on their site nor emails. I was merely pointed out that for Avalon to make the statements they did in their letter, while not responding to most people, was both absurd and concerning. We have ultimately decided not to refund the 0.05-bitcoin partial orders that have resulted from a series of errors,
Avalon's letter also states they will not refund incomplete orders, which is in direct conflict with the statements made by at the start of this thread (and were due to Avalon's technical issues not the customer's). Again it is not professional for them to make these statements and why I've decided to back out. |
|
|
|
And for the record, "sub-nm ASIC" is not a technical term, it is the most laymen friendly term used in the semiconductor industry. [...] sub-nm is anything below 100 nanometers.
SubnanometerEnglishAdjectivesubnanometer 1. Having dimensions, or a resolution of less than a nanometer The word this kid wanted was Sub-micrometer (µm) Congrats you got me, my kid was up all night and I was working on 2 hours of sleep and said sub-nanometer instead of sub-micron in a message board post that I quickly typed out. My explaination that a few working ASIC parts does not mean everything is OK is still valid. Sorry for trying to help people understand that in case it might save them some money. |
|
|
|
Point 2 is wrong, some early BTC refunds were paid out. You can see them going from this address on the 11th of January. Fair enough, but I still think my point is valid. Only a few BTC refunds were processed, while most/all of the CC refunds were processed. Why the discrepancy? Also the BTC refunds went out when Tom was still saying the project was on and taking orders. Again I think it is fair to suspect this was to create the illusion of ligitimacy. And yes the SEC would not be involved, I just meant anything involving a consumer affairs type complaint. FWIW, I don't think Tom set out to scam people with BTCFPGA. He most likely was running it as a semi-legitimate business hoping to make a good profit on it. I understand the desire to feel this way, and I did too for awhile. But reconcile Tom's repeated promises that: - Samples existed - The ASICs are in hand, just waiting for board work - We are about to ship in two days, everything is a go - I promise to provide updates tomorrow With the level of work actually done - No samples - No ASICS - Zero board work - No updates - Childish hand drawings after TSHTF It is impossible to reconcile the amount of work done, with Tom's statements through out the process, he was simply lying the whole time. |
|
|
|
We have ultimately decided not to refund the 0.05-bitcoin partial orders that have resulted from a series of errors, and allowed customers to complete their transactions out of good faith as many used third party services where refunds were not possible.
Really??? This is news to me. I've had a partial payment open with then, and have received ZERO replies to my Avalon support ticket nor emails. Seriously guys you have like 100-200 people to respond to, 1 day should be plenty to handle this. We would like to take this time to warn you not to use Bitcoin addresses that you do not own, including but not limited to the following: InstaWallet, exchanges such as MtGox and others.
The nature of Bitcoin makes it separate from human interference and devoid of an centralized architecture. If the order database has been incomplete or compromised, then a fail-safe could be utilized to refund every transaction to their original input address. By using third party systems such as the ones listed above however, you give up the control of your own coins, and you then run the risk of your refunds returning to their input addresses. This defeats the purpose of Bitcoin. You will also not be able to prove original ownership of these coins. Our terms of sale will be updated to reflect this before batch two re-opens for the remainder 300+ units.
The arrogence coupled with the outright misunderstanding of bitcoin here is absolutely astounding. Bitcoin absolutely does NOT have the concept of a "from" address. It is perfectly valid to pay a merchant using a transfer from InstaWallet, etc. To say otherwise is absured. Relying on from addresses for your mechant website is a problem on the merchant's side, not on the customers side. I'm begining to believe Avalon does not have the competency to develop a working ASIC with good enough yields, if this is their childish attitude and they can't follow-up with a mere 100 customers... |
|
|
|
Having done lots of sub-nm ASIC designs,
You should just license your Zeta-Reticulian technology to us Earthlings. We would be really grateful and give you in exchange almost anything you'll ask and build temples to commemorate your revelation.  I've had a revelation and I'm willing to share it with you: It takes only a pi rotation to advance from u to n  You can spare the temples, you earthlings mortals Geez, no need to be snarky, I was only trying to explain why 2 working units does not necessarily mean you can assume everything is fine. And for the record, "sub-nm ASIC" is not a technical term, it is the most laymen friendly term used in the semiconductor industry. Just go to TSMC, Intel or anyone else's websites, the first thing they discuss is the node they are using (90nm, 45nm, 23nm, etc). sub-nm is anything below 100 nanometers. BFL is claiming they used a 65nm process, Avalon stated a 110nm process. |
|
|
|
He should obviously get the tag for the missing refunds.
What makes no sense to me is why he actually issued a bunch of refunds... that is not part of the scammer MO. At that point it really seemed as if he had tried and failed, and was attempting to make good. Why set up the half-assed "can-electric" site to scrape out a few possible late sales? He could have just sent a few less refunds.
Very bizarre.
Having been an early customer and believer in bASIC, then bailing earlier than most and receiving a CC refund with no issues, here are my thoughts. I now believe bASIC was simply a scam from the beginning. There is no way to reconcile the statements made in the beginning, with the reality of the actual progress and work done (essentially nothing). There are 2 customer groups: 1) CC customers - These are people he always planned to refund. As far as I know all/most CC customers have been refunded 2) BTC customers - These are the people he decided to scam. As far as I know ZERO/few BTC customers have been refunded Logically this makes sense. CC customers go through banks, and the money has all sorts of legal protections and tracking, Tom could never scam CC money. Instead the CC customers and their refunds provided LEGITIMACY to the operation and provided some cover, which enabled more customers to trust bASIC and send their BTC. Now the situation is all the people who spent real money in the eyes of the government have been refunded, so there is no crime. Only customers who spent BTC have a claim, and good luck with a lawsuit over BTC payments. If the government does anything it will only be to investigate you for using bitcoin. That's the key part of Bitcoin's value proposition, Bitcoin's are outside of government control. Once you send the BTC, they are gone and you can never get them back. As a receiver, once you receive them, they can never be taken from you. This was actually why I was willing to use bASIC in the first place, I had confidence my CC bank would refund me if it was a scam. I understood that was not the case with BTC. I now have a small partial payment with Avalon, but have decided not to send the remaining BTC until I have more confidence, once the BTC are sent they are gone... |
|
|
|
Still if they can build one it seems to be they should be able to make as many as they want as the real costs for ASIC are development, not manufacturing. Manufacturing is just logistics and china has that crap down, there's hundreds of companies there they could farm it out to if they wanted.
The only other option is they faked the ASIC and its a bulky front end to a Fpga farm somewhere on the net.
Many things can go wrong in a way that yes it is possible to produce a few ASICs that work, but due to glitches, localized power issues, localized heat issues, etc, the vast majority of chips fail and yields are so poor you have to just start over. Hardware design debugging is infinitely more complex / frustrating than software debugging. With software you have a debugger and can step through the state, with hardware you have timing analysis tools, power tools, etc, etc, which all say the chip should work, but for some reason only 1% seem to function and the rest perform abnormally. If Avalon's shipments are slow, then they have a yield problem probably related to the design, and that is an issue. If the yield is bad enough then even $2,000 for a unit may not be profitable. Having done lots of sub-nm ASIC designs, I can say a bitcoin ASIC is tricky because it is a highly compute dense design which stresses the on-chip power rails, causing propagation issues on the clock network and all sorts of other issues if you are not very careful and conservative in the design's timings... |
|
|
|
|
Has anyone who made one of those incomplete payments (the ones that were 0.1~0.2 BTC) to WalletBit Pay received either a refund or response? I emailed both Avalon and WalletBit and have not heard back from either.
|
|
|
|
Dear FPGA Mining customers,
Unfortunately, demand for FPGA miners has been too low in recent months to justify continuing to produce new X6500s. For the foreseeable future, FPGA Mining will be suspending operations. It's sad to step away from such an exciting and interesting project, but the time has come.
Thank you all for your interest and support! We'll still be involved in the Bitcoin world and hopefully find a new project to participate in soon!
Best regards,
fizzisist, fpgaminer, TheSeven, li_gangyi
FPGA Mining LLC
Thanks for the x6500 guys, it's a great little FPGA board. |
|
|
|
It is pretty unfair if they do this. People had no control over if they were provided the correct amount or incorrect amount to pay. People who paid the incorrect amounts did so simply to hold the order. Avalon should fix that, not cancel the orders, everyone will be willing to pay the correct amount when requested. |
|
|
|
All orders for incorrect amounts will be fully refunded.
WalletBit will return these funds to the Bitcoin addresses they were sent from. These units will be restored to the sales queue. At a time of Avalon's choosing they will re-open sales for these remaining units. All orders processed at the correct exchange rate will still be honored.
This doesn't make sense though. The people who paid the incorrect amounts did so to submit the order, as that was their only option. Why not keep the orders and simply send a new payment request for each order, this is very easy to do and honors the transaction. It was out of people's control on who recieved a correct payment page, and who received and incorrect payment page. |
|
|
|
there is no such thing as a placeholder order, there was only a mistake, which will have to get fixed.
Exactly. Senseless, if might be helpful if you change the description to something like "paid, but with different amount due to website errors". I think that is a more accurate description of the situation. |
|
|
|
|
The product page now says the miner is sold out. That's it, I'm off. Good luck to you.
|
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
