Pointing out: for those that actually got to the walletbit.com/pay page with wrong price. if u reload (confirm form submit), it should give u the right price now.
Nope, still hanging... |
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The most reasonable would be to cancel this mad race, calmly collect orders (within one day), and if s too much, hold a raffle.
+1000000 How hard is it to just collect all orders over a day, then randomly select if demand is too high. |
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Does anyone know how WalletBit Pay works. umm...It doesn't? It's always the simplest answer that is the most accurate, sigh |
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Does anyone know how WalletBit Pay works.
I sent the small payment as a placeholder, but the page is just hanging. My guess is WalletBit Pay took the payment and is now trying to tell the Avalon site the payment is received, but obviously is hanging since there is no response on the Avalon side.
My hope is the order is at least taken, or at the very least WalletBit Pay will return my 0.15
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Perhaps using a different payment processor every batch isn't the best idea. It would be easier to do a smooth launch with an already used and tested (but you are testing regardless before launch... RIGHT?) payment processor.
They should have just had the whole thing up and ready to go, and then just activated a link to the site. It looked as if they were adding pieces on the fly which is crazy since they know a whole ton of people are hitting refresh and trying to move forward as fast as possible... |
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Let's play.
 Awsome, you rock  |
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Why did I wake my hungover ass up at 8:30 again?
Some of us on the west coast got up at 5:30am |
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*Hopes we're not delayed _again_*
This is merely a way for Avalon to only sell to "loyal" customers, i.e. those willing to ignore their children for days while staring at an unchanging screen hitting F5 over and over.... |
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So... you decided not to take on any investors? Or you've already got deals in place done privately?? Or you are going to sell the Goliaths to individual investors??
I am still interested in being a possible investor/customer, just wondering what yalls plans are as of now.
Same here, this was interesting to me and I was interested to ways to participate, but it sounds Yohan feels they are good to go on their own. (which of course is completely within his rights) |
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Bitcoin bug = changes to hashing algorithm or the like. Things beyond their control is how I interpreted.
OK, that can make sense and is reasonable for an ASIC company to take. If BitCoin changes the algorithm, the boxes are done. But the statement refers to the time between when a customer orders and the batch is fulfilled, which is just 2-3 months. Considering the fact that there are zero chances of the algorithm changing this year, why bother to make the statement at all? The statement also refers to a bitcoin bug, the core developers still make updates to fix security issues, but my understanding is none of these changes have effected or will effect the core hashing algorithm. This is why the same FPGA bitstreams have worked for so long... I just want to be sure the statement refers to changes outside of Avalon's control (completely reasonable), and not to development bugs on their end (worrying statement). |
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OK, can someone explain this to me? Why Batch Orders?
Utilizing a short time frame, batch based, and built-to-order sales method allows to manage finances properly and reduce risk for all parties.
For example, Avalon will not be responsible if a Bitcoin bug is introduced rendering it useless between the period of time which a batch of Avlaon units are build.
One way to read this is Avalon is saying if they make some technical update/changes to a batch, and that update causes problems and none of the units work correctly, that Avalon stays that is the risk of the customers of that batch and the customers will take the hit. So if batch #1 and #2 work, and they make a modification that introduces a bug into batch #3, the batch #3 customer of SOL. If Avalon has a working ASIC part there are ZERO reasons to make mask or wafer level changes for a while and they should be running the exact same ASIC design for several batches at the very least. So why would Avalon add this disclaimer? Or am I just reading this wrong. |
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I did find some of Jeff's notes a bit disconcerting though.
If that box works for 1 month with periodic restarts and then fries itself into a ball of molten plastic, Jeff will still have seen a very nice ROI that is hard to find anywhere else. He made almost 15BTC in less than a day, it's probably paid for itself already by now... |
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I wonder how many people who don't regularly follow this forum or the btcfpga forum, have no idea about what's happening, and therefore have not asked for a refund. You know, the people who trusted the bASIC team and believed their money was in good hands? The people who would never imagine that tom might have "left town".
Law of the jungle and they are just sol? @Sitrow or any of the other bASIC team members: Will all the customers be contacted w/ the advice from the forums that they should ask for a chargeback or is it up to everyone to discover this for themselves and hope there's money left for their own refund?
If you "pre-order" (i.e. invest) in a very early stage project such as bASIC, then you really should check their status on the boards every day. Investing in such a risky venture and then spending no time monitoring the situation and assuming all will work out fine is a ridiculously stupid thing to do. After investing over $5K myself, I monitored these boards daily for information on the status of the project and bailed much earlier than most. The way I view it is that extra time I invested was to monitor and protect that $5K investment. Those who checked out are SOL but it is partially their fault for not protecting their own funds... |
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My god am I happy I bailed a month ago and got my refund back.
Tom keeps stating in his posts "I'm a good honest guy, everyone knows me from 3 years in the bitcoin community", but how he can possibly expect anyone to believe in him after this mess is beyond me. That post was just more of this zero information and I'll update you tomorrow BS.
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Agreed, the lack of updates is disturbing.
It's why I got out, even though I was an early bASIC customer and had a mid-sized order early in the order count. It's completely understandable for there to be delays, but the thing that scared me were the limited explanations thrown up for the significant delivery date miss, which didn't make any sense. A last minute "Board development" delay 2 weeks before shipping shouldn't have that much of an impact. The ASIC package should still be ready and you only need to redo the PCB board. Most importantly demos or proof of products should be possible. (Fabs work like clockwork and don't miss dates, so the packaged die should already have been completed.) Many others asked many reasonable questions, and there was complete silence. That's when I bailed. I wish Tom and others invested in bASIC luck, but I got the sense that Tom doesn't really understand ASIC development and so couldn't answer people's questions and was simply outsourcing the whole project, that is a problem. Outsourcing is fine, but you have to understand the development cycle and how to manage it. I and many others received our money back fine, that tells me bASIC is not a pirate scam and on the up and up. Will be happy to re-invest, but at this point require real proof of product to do so. |
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Short answer is we are not asking for money yet. We are merely asking whether there would be interest in either a share or loan relationship. We know some people won't like these sorts of arrangements and we want to understand to some level how many people do or don't like these mechanisms.
If we do decide to go ahead with this sort of offer then at that time we will announce performance numbers we expect for a given amount of money.
....
As to skillbase at Enterpoint it's way wider than just PCBs and FPGAs. FPGAs are our main specialism nowadays but we do many other things. After all we were designing electronics well before FPGAs reached the designer masses and we can deal with almost any electronics technology that might be needed in a design.
Fair enough on both points. I look forward to the results when you are ready to discuss them. My interest would be in a share based relationship, provided the performance numbers worked out. Not interested in loan relationships. |
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I know many people want to know the fine detail but that's knowledge that we don't want to give away as said previously.
Yohan, not stating anything is completely your preoperative, but I don't know why you're asking for my money then.  At the very least I would want to understand a few metrics in order to evaluate how this compares to what I think Avalon will bring. a) Ghash/s per $ of capital cost b) Ghash/s per Watt c) Ghash/s per Total opex cost (server space, electricity cost, etc) The technology question is irrelevant I could call it ASIC but that actually doesn't mean anything really. In true meaning a CPU is an ASIC so is actually a FPGA both raw and loaded. I could equally well use a long description which is more accurate but that would confuse all other than the very technically orientated in this forum.
The definition of CPU, FPGA and ASIC relates to how the computation is performed. Not the fact that they are silicon chips. Sorry, calling a CPU an ASIC is a pet peeve of mine, so please excuse the clarification. - A CPU performs computation as a series of instructions, very inefficient - A FPGA performs computation in logical LUTs, better than CPU but still inefficient - An ASIC performs computation directly on transistors, most efficient We have moved on technology wise from what we did on Cairnsmore1 and we have learned many things doing that project and from running our own mining rigs based on CM1 boards. Generally CM1 was our way to learn about Bitcoin and what works and what doesn't. CM1 was very deliberately limited in the technology that we deployed and that was to meet timescales and do what we promised.
Designing PCB boards that house FPGA chips supplied from Xilinx/Altera is a completely different skill set than designing and fabricating an ASIC where you have to be first time right or all investment is lost. bASIC and BFL are learning this. Just because Cairnsmore1 was a success, does not mean the next engineering project will be. Again it comes down to how can I evaluate if you are capable of building this project, if I don't know what the project is doing? One last thing that confuses me. You say that we will be able to measure the effect in the network hash rate prior to funding. But that would mean the project is already complete and working, which begs the question, "why do you need my money to fund something that is already completed???" |
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If Enterpoint has capital-outlay-free access to the most recent FPGAs (28nm) then I think they will be quite competitive with ASIC in 110-90-65nm range; based purely on the electricity rates.
As someone who used to be in both the ASIC and FPGA fields, and have done many many designs between the 180nm and 45nm nodes, my bet is a full custom ASIC at 110nm will be significantly more power efficient than a 28nm FPGA. The majority of the FPGA's electricity burn is related to routing logic, a full custom ASIC is much more routing efficient and will use significantly less electricity, even at 110nm. The general run of thumb is an FPGA is 10x slower, 10x higher area (die cost), and 10x higher electricity. Yohan needs some sort of custom chip if this project will have any legs now that I fully believe Avalon will prove legit. |
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Before we ask for money you will be able to see the inital small system results in the network hash rate. It will be big enough to be noticed.
This is interesting point, if done outside of market hours where high-frequency trading goes on. In that case Enterpoint may just use an idle time on the FPGA trading machines. There would be no capital outlay for them whatsover, only the electricity cost. Taking advantage of un-utilized FPGA time would have been great for 2012. However once Avalon sells batch #4 at end of 2013 and the network hash rate is 10x-50x where it is today, even free FPGAs will not break even. Just as free CPUs did not break even after GPUs became mainstream. As per my note above, the type of semicon chip being used is by far the #1 consideration IMHO. Knowing this, and the source of the chips, is required to make a real analysis of long-term potential of the project. |
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Yohan,
I think Cairnsmore1 was a great product for the FPGA era and respect your ability with boards, etc.
At the end of the day you have some type of semiconductor chip to perform SHA2 hashing. This chip is either a standard FPGA, structured ASIC, eASIC, cell based ASIC, full custom ASIC, or something else.
What type of chip is by far the #1 consideration factor in determining the likely success and longevity of a project. I don't see how people could possibly evaluate the project's potential without this information.
For example: Do you have a wafer piggy back ASIC run available to produce 50 custom ASIC chips at 65nm, but not enough to sell? If so, yes I would be very interested in this project. Are you putting together boards with 100 FPGAs on them and making massive FPGA arrays? If so, no I am not interested.
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