Butterflylabs Huge SCAM

[jordaninthesky]

BFL_Josh tends to ban people, and have them re-direct here when the try to login.

[1713866972]

1713866972

[1713866972]

1713866972

[darkmule]

There is just too much 'unknowns' with BFL.. The fact that all 'reviewers' that received their units, also have 'pre-order now' links does not give much confidence!

Pretty amazing how cheaply some sell their souls.  I guess those souls weren't worth much to begin with.  Or perhaps they just enjoy sucking Satan's cock.

[tony_357]

RE: I agree but their price is alluring

The price is great - but there is the time value of money - or in this case time value of having an high speed miner before everyone else has one, and the network hash rate goes up.

Their $274 price seems to be a pre-order and says it has a 2 month wait.  Anybody know what the network hash rate will be then?

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

The question is: Is a bird in the hand (mining now, at the current hash rate) worth two in the bush (ie: a possible high speed miner at some time in the future)?

Any ideas out there?

[rojoRocket]

When I first saw Butterfly Labs I thought SCAM! However Wired Magazine has now received the miners (there is an article on it on the Wired website) that they bought and so have a couple of other civilians who were at the top of the list.

If BFL is a scam then they are doing it all wrong... generally you don't ship products to the buyers if you are scamming them. Just saying.

[GuiltySpark343]

The question is: Is a bird in the hand (mining now, at the current hash rate) worth two in the bush (ie: a possible high speed miner at some time in the future)?

Read this thread. Many think bird in hand is better. The full Wired article can be read here:
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/04/butterfly/

But I quote from it: "They’re mad, because other companies — most notably Avalon Asics — have shipped hundreds of their own custom-chip machines. That’s already made the Bitcoin mining game harder than it used to be. One miner said that he was generating more than 15 Bitcoins per day with a 67-Gigahash-per-second Avalon rig he set up in late January. As of this week, his daily production had dropped to 4 Bitcoins"

So at 67 GH/s (!!) he lost 75% of BTC production over 3 months.

[Saint!]

I don't think its a scam but I think they have been seriously overwhelmed by the demand. And rather than halt pre-orders they have just created a massive backlog until they are able to deliver. Whilst holding the funds until the are able to deliver on the product.

[0150r]

If BFL is a scam then they are doing it all wrong... generally you don't ship products to the buyers if you are scamming them. Just saying.

They aren't shipping to the buyers, they are shipping to the press/reviewers! They are sending them to people and getting tons of free publicity and validation. That means more people to buy their product. How many of they shipped? 5? 10? How many more orders did they get from those? I bet a lot.

[Schrankwand]

If BFL is a scam then they are doing it all wrong... generally you don't ship products to the buyers if you are scamming them. Just saying.

They aren't shipping to the buyers, they are shipping to the press/reviewers! They are sending them to people and getting tons of free publicity and validation. That means more people to buy their product. How many of they shipped? 5? 10? How many more orders did they get from those? I bet a lot.

They have already shipped to some of the first preorders.

Basically, what we can conclude, is that they really suck at customer service and business planning. They have shipped other devices before and fucked up royally as well in terms of shipping time, shit happens.

[teriaki]

Basically, what we can conclude, is that they really suck at customer service and business planning.

Basically what we can conclude is that people are just begging to be scammed, and even after pages and pages of this, they beg some more.  This happens everywhere in life, not just the BTC community.  If something looks too good to be true it usually is.

They will never meet their backlog, they will never ship all of the devices they sold, and they will always have people coming back and ordering new units that they will never receive.  It's a darn shame that people have to learn the hard way.

[LiveBitcoinPoker]

Basically, what we can conclude, is that they really suck at customer service and business planning.

Basically what we can conclude is that people are just begging to be scammed, and even after pages and pages of this, they beg some more.  This happens everywhere in life, not just the BTC community.  If something looks too good to be true it usually is.

They will never meet their backlog, they will never ship all of the devices they sold, and they will always have people coming back and ordering new units that they will never receive.  It's a darn shame that people have to learn the hard way.

...or by the the time people actually get their orders those miners will be already obsolete.

[Zumba]

One thing I ask myself..

How can they offer such a huge Speed, and a low power??

How is that possible?

For example: BitForce Mini Rig SC has 1500000 ~ 1,5 TH/s and only 1500W ~ 1,5kW ...  how can that be possible? If one Chip would have 1000MH/s there would be a need of 1500 Chips.. 1 Chip = 1W (Calculated without powersupply)


Are there any Chips that are soo fast?


Greetings
Zumba

[noedaRDH]

Basically, what we can conclude, is that they really suck at customer service and business planning.

Basically what we can conclude is that people are just begging to be scammed, and even after pages and pages of this, they beg some more.  This happens everywhere in life, not just the BTC community.  If something looks too good to be true it usually is.

They will never meet their backlog, they will never ship all of the devices they sold, and they will always have people coming back and ordering new units that they will never receive.  It's a darn shame that people have to learn the hard way.

Yep. The specs vs. pricing ratios were too good to be true. Those who preordered for BFL should have either sold the preorders or went with Avalons (expensive but they actually deliver on most of their orders).

[charleshoskinson]

One thing I ask myself..

How can they offer such a huge Speed, and a low power??

How is that possible?

For example: BitForce Mini Rig SC has 1500000 ~ 1,5 TH/s and only 1500W ~ 1,5kW ...  how can that be possible? If one Chip would have 1000MH/s there would be a need of 1500 Chips.. 1 Chip = 1W (Calculated without powersupply)


Are there any Chips that are soo fast?


Greetings
Zumba

Fast needs a good definition. In ASIC land, we generally don't consider fast to be something like MHz, but instead in terms of how well it does the thing it was designed to do compared to the power consumption and manufacturing yield. From the review unit David got his hands on, he claims the ASIC runs at around 170 MHz and performs about 5 GH/s of work with a double digit TDP.

I suspect they originally intended the ASIC to consume less than 5 watts of power for the 5 GH/s model. Then they could scale it to the 1500 GH/s model around a few kwatts, which is definitely possible to cool. Under their current design, it is not physically possible to scale the 5 GH/s design to the 1500 GH/s minirig. They will have to redesign their ASIC, which will take months more delays for product they have already sold.

[Plight]

If I invest some money into a BFL device and actually get it someday, the mining difficulty will have risen so much that it won't be worth running for anybody other than the very first few who get them, except of course for the 'cool' factor.  Whether they are legit or not, it seems that either way I would lose.

So you're saying shame on BFL if they make enough of these so everyone gets one and you don't get rich because the difficulty went up so fast? It sounds like you would only be happy if you got one and others didn't. BTC is a game of diminishing returns. If you aren't first or you don't go big, it's not going to pay off like you want it to.

Well even I am really worried whether it would be a sound investment buying one of their rigs. Why? Not because "it wont be worth mining" but exactly because of the diminishing returns and the very unstable markets (at this point).

If you look at BFLs range of products, they should all breakeven within 5-9 days of operation, at the current market price of the BTC. Even if you put aside the diminishing returns, the problem is what happens if the market crashes? Is this also calculated risk? What if inflation occurs? As I understand, the level of difficulty which is influenced by the hashing power should be enough to regulate the rate at which BTCs are issued. Is this a full proof system?

Even I am interested in getting a BFL device, but what worries me the most is the future of the BTC. If you look at the markets, they are currently down by more than 25% on the last 24hrs average price.

Say that something like this is going to occur, you would be left with a rather expensive piece of equipment (which at this scale is more like a capital investment, rather than equipment) which I doubt has much other use.

Good question actually, does anyone know any other use for the BFL ASICs?

[Inaba]

The current generation of hardware doesn't really any other uses, unless you have another alt coin or application that does double round SHA256. 

[Sou]

Like many of you i was just thinking about BFL the other day. If it did all turn out to be a big scam they could easily take a run with the money, but i don't believe they would make it that far for that long. When you steal from that many people you're really taking a gamble on who you're taking from. Many of the people in the BTC game right now aren't exactly the most wholesome bunch; drug dealers, malicious software developers, and people that make their livings in the financial underbelly...i would not steal their money. People know who the heads over at BFL are, and that's dangerous. Sure, they could steal a few million but they would have to live the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders.

[Schrankwand]

The current generation of hardware doesn't really any other uses, unless you have another alt coin or application that does double round SHA256. 

Seems your " we are shipping" email crashed the server

[charleshoskinson]

I noticed. I just tried to log in.

[Richy_T]

Even I am interested in getting a BFL device, but what worries me the most is the future of the BTC. If you look at the markets, they are currently down by more than 25% on the last 24hrs average price.

If you are not confident of the future of Bitcoin, you should probably steer clear (of any Asic and possibly of Bitcoin entirely unless you just like gambling).

[zerosomething]

Got my "Butterfly Labs Shipping Update" email earlier today. Their servers have been rather unresponsive for the last few hours. Not so bad at the moment. So if these guys can turn out a Application Specific Integrated Circuit for Bitcoin mining maybe they could turn out an Apache/MySQL chip? They'd probably make more on than than Bitcoin! Are they offering stock options?