NEW info. Everyone is lying about ther ASIC project

[bitfair]

(...)  We are also working very hard on getting the ASICs out the door on time.  We are really beefing up our production capacity and moving everything we can in house.  We've purchased a pick and place machine, an oven, stenciler and other equipment to manufacture all the boards in house.  This means we can produce as many boards as we need without being at the mercy of board manufacturers and their timing/runs. (...)

Seems to me like the focus of BFL at this moment is on increasing production scale, rather than getting the product out the door as early as possible. Makes me think some of the other operations might already be mining with their first crude mad-dash batch of ASICs by the time BFL delivers...

Interesting race!

[king_pin]

...We just shipped orders from the first of August, so we are getting caught up there....

This is the most interesting part of Josh's replay.
So we should expect in the next 10 days or so, people to start receiving them, posting results, pictures etc.

So why don't you finally post 1 picture of a Jalapeno or another ASIC?
If you are already shipping them it shouldn't be a problem!

[bitfair]

...We just shipped orders from the first of August, so we are getting caught up there....

This is the most interesting part of Josh's replay.
So we should expect in the next 10 days or so, people to start receiving them, posting results, pictures etc.

So why don't you finally post 1 picture of a Jalapeno or another ASIC?
If you are already shipping them it shouldn't be a problem!

I understood it as he was talking about orders for their other products which are already out (FPGA), and not the ASICs. I would expect everyone to make much more noise if they were shipping ASICs earlier than expected (Oct/Nov). BFL would at least make a song and a dance about it, full of "I-told-you-so"s.

[RyanRed]

I donno. Im a new miner, but I feel a small $150 test investment is trivial compared to the way Bitcoin seems to be going. Ill start small with one. Feel it out, and reinvest more into it if the Jalapeno works out.

Butterfly labs customer services seems "ok". I've asked questions via their website submission, and got a response back within 24 hours. But I also got a response back to the same question twice from two different people. Both answers matched though hahha, so that's good

[BFL_Josh]

Yes, I'm sorry if I confused anyone, but we are only shipping the FPGA products at the moment.  The comment above was with regards to the FPGA Singles - our helper monkeys (They are on subcontracted out from EMC) are busily creating more singles as we speak for shipping either later this week or early next week. 

We also have more than 300 boards on their way after that to satisfy current and future orders prior to the ASICs.  It will sure be nice when we have the pick and place ready to go and we don't have rely on a third party to place the components on our boards.

[RHA]

Josh, don't convince him. Let them stay with GPU mining. There is cheap electricity in Bulgaria. 

[Inaba]

This is a picture of one of the helper monkeys that work behind the scenes at EMC to send all those text and email messages.  People always wonder what they look like.

[poon-TANG]

I sure hope BFL can/will deliver.

[uniquark]

the customer service is so bad.

[king_pin]

Josh, don't convince him. Let them stay with GPU mining. There is cheap electricity in Bulgaria. 

Actually it is the cheapest in the EU, but they are planing to rise it by 15% the end of the year
Maybe than I will preorder a ASIC. I say preorder because I doubt they will ship them by then

[HDSolar]

This is a picture of one of the helper monkeys that work behind the scenes at EMC to send all those text and email messages.  People always wonder what they look like.

I knew it.  Now how do I order one of those 

[king_pin]

This is a picture of one of the helper monkeys that work behind the scenes at EMC to send all those text and email messages.  People always wonder what they look like.

That would be my face if I see a BFL Asic before Christmas

[judas3000]

 (other form the Lack of Pictures of Stuff like packaging, cases, assembly lines or anything that is involved in the process of making this thing ... oh wait there is picture of a wafer that is shown on at least 6 other websites
https://www.google.com/search?q=semiconductor+wafer&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSYxphCxCo1NgEGgAMCxCwjKcIGjwKOggBEhTMBskG9gXeA_1QF8gXrA6EDlwPHAxogmY5_1V4e1Z TfidXWnqqj2p5uXwVkKOJhV2FiKyK-VR9cMCxCOrv4IGgoKCAgBEgQvH-IjDA&ei=--xRUJBNid_hBKedgcgO&ved=0CCgQwg4&biw=1440&bih=657

What bugs me the most is the "buy-back" thing.

It just does not make sense and there is no explanation to why. How can a company afford that? When you sell something for 599$ and then later buy back the same thing for the same price which nobody wants to buy any more because there is also the other thing (jalapeno) that's way faster and way cheaper than the original ... you are not going to sell it again.

It sounds a lot like the "establishing trust" in a Ponzi scheme. let's take the numbers to see which magnitude we have here
with the old system (599$/832MHashes) i would get less than 1.4 MHashes per Dollar
with the new system (1299$/40GHashes) i would get more than 20.7 MHashes per Dollar
that's an increase of 1478%
with the upgrade (699$/39168MHases) i'd even get 56 MHashes per Dollar
that's an increase of 4002%

man, even the newest ponzi scheme https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108832.40 has only a 100% interest

oh wait, let's see what a mining calculator says to this

http://bitcoinx.com/profit/index.php
Hardware break even: 8 days
Net profit first time frame: 3687.60 USD

the upgrade will generate 165$ a day extra

btw, jalapeno

Hardware break even: 11 days
Net profit first time frame: 287.44 USD


i will have a lot of fun watching this thing!

[SgtSpike]

judas, it's not wrong to be paranoid.  Certainly, those of us who are trusting a company with our money months before we'll actually see the units we are buying are taking a greater risk than those who wait to order until BFL has a proven track record of selling ASIC's.  But the reward is also much greater.  Break even time will quickly rise to 6-8 months, and only the initial purchasers will see that large initial return on investment.

That said, I'll give you two explanations to your two issues...

1) They offer the buy-back to help build trust, and they are still making money when people trade in.  It is speculated that the ASIC chips will only cost around $10 or so each.  If someone trades their $600 unit in for a $1300 unit (and you can't trade in more units than you buy), then they're still paying $700.  Assuming the variable cost of production is $100 or so for the other components and assembly, BFL is still making $590 on a traded-in machine (which they also stated would be resold for other purposes in the future).  If they DIDN'T offer the trade in, those who already have BFL products would likely feel jaded from their recent purchases becoming obsolete so quickly, and would turn to a different company to order from in the future.  So, BFL is doing the trade in both to make money (to help recover the cost of their capital investment in ASIC technology), and to maintain a good relationship with their previous customers.

2) It's an increase in performance of 4002%, so it must be a ponzi scheme!  Erm, no, not so much.  There is no "interest rate" here, it's a performance increase.  Technological breakthroughs sometimes allow increases in performance of 4002%, and that's the case here.  An FPGA is a device that can do many things, but inefficient at doing any single thing.  An ASIC is purpose-built for a single task, and thus can have much higher performance and efficiency than a programmable array.

[mj72]

It does look at a little concerning. lack of pics, detailed specs etc when the release date is so fast approaching. On the other side though is the fact that BFL is already established. 170$ risk isn't a big risk for a lot of miners though. Just a newb interpretation.

[FlipPro]

They have deplorable customer service. It's the main reason why I may go with a totally different ASIC provider.

[Inaba]

 

They have deplorable customer service. It's the main reason why I may go with a totally different ASIC provider.

Yeah, good luck with that.  

Let us know how that worked out come January.

[f6wgycbedb]

If they release an ASIC product first, it doesn't matter what that product is - if network hash rates increase by 5 or 10 times (potentially 40 times) then GPU mining becomes pointless. And you'll then be stuck with no way to earn. My advise is this, if you haven't jumped on the BFL bandwagon yet - do it now, order an fpga single and pre-order the upgrade for it. If another company produces an ASIC product, you should buy from them as well. The more developers making this hardware would be the best thing for growth of bitcoin longterm.

Just to check, if we had to speculate, that there's a possibility that network hash rate could go from 20TH/s right now to 40x = 800TH/s?  When do you believe this would be hit?

[dooferorg]

Indeed, the bottom line is we are working to improve customer service and our shipping times. 

I was very happy with the fast response I got from BFL customer support about my SC pre-order. BFL gets my vote, for what it's worth

[dooferorg]

btw, jalapeno

Hardware break even: 11 days
Net profit first time frame: 287.44 USD


i will have a lot of fun watching this thing!

Ya.. I wish. LOL. Just remember the difficulty is GOING TO SKYROCKET. THat means if it's up by 10x then our little doodads (I ordered a Jalepeno for poo and giggles) will only make 28.74 USD in that timeframe for the same amount of hashing work done.