Bitcoin will be at CES2013 (Official Thread)

[smoothie]

That helps us piece together the events. Thanks.

If I haven't said it before, congrats on becoming a father. I hope all is well on that front.

I've never interacted with Dave from BFL, so I can't speak to how competent he is.

It sounds like Dave relayed the story to Josh and may have missed your intentions for being there.

My suggestion is to let tempers cool a bit and have Josh on your podcast sometime AFTER BFL ships.

It would, of course, be more entertaining to cointinue the drama, but some of us are more interested in facts. Now back to your regularly scheduled trolling.

TYVM about my little girl - she changed my life instantly.  I'm not very emotional in general, and cried for the first 5 days whenever I would see my beautiful wife holding my beautiful daughter and realized how insanely lucky I have gotten in this world and how I should enjoy every second of these special moments.  I basically have been on auto-show any other human I come in contact with my baby pix, and I never understood why ppl did that to me when I didn't care about their baby, but I totally get it now.   Her name is Anna Micon and I call her the annamicon (ah-nah-mah-con) & she is a singularity & she will continue the crypto-activist revolution born from this currency.  All the nerds will follow the hot & smart female crypto-anarchist or crypto-activist whichever she prefers.

BFL Josh Zerlan or anyone else from Butterfly labs is welcome on my podcast any time they wish.  It usually runs Wed. 7pm live, then podcasted later, but i'll make time day or night to have this debate.  No editing of any sort and if BFL is concerned we can do exactly equal time to speak.  Others can record and upload to make sure no edits or funny business.  I highly doubt a company like BFL, which I can poke endless holes through their business by asking the tough questions, would ever agree to this.  Offer on the table for literally any time, day or night, starting now.

Would love to hear this. Deja Vu of MNW.

+1

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[mrb]

So you basically contradict yourself.
>Pirate didn't cause a decrease of Bitcoin's price
>Pirate caused a decrease of Bitcoin's price, but it recovered quickly

Pirate did cause an extremely short-lived (24-48 hours) decrease of the price, yes.

But I was arguing with lucif who used the expression "killing bitcoin price". My point is that I disagree that a short-lived volatility can be described by his words.

[dust]

I don't remember these 4 events causing a decrease of Bitcoin's price.

I remember the day of the event of the red circle: this was pirate placing a handful of very large sell orders (he was announcing them on IRC minutes before doing it). But as the graph shows, the market recovered very quickly after this day.

So you basically contradict yourself.
>Pirate didn't cause a decrease of Bitcoin's price
>Pirate caused a decrease of Bitcoin's price, but it recovered quickly

Pirate caused the increase in BTC price that preceded the decrease he caused (See my post here). His net effect on BTC price is unknown and probably negligible.

[MooC Tals]

http://mineforeman.com/2013/01/14/butterfly-labs-names-a-shipping-date/

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/692-bfl-asic-status.html

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/690-13-jan-2013-asic-update-discussion-thread-3.html#post10314
BFL Josh quoted

"Just so everyone understands why we have not, up until now, provided updates like this, I want to point out that if we had released this type of information in the beginning, it would have given our competitors a substantial boost in figuring out how to design a product that would compete with us. This is something we do not want to happen. We will not pay for others to learn from our experience in this particular venture. They need to pay the piper if they want to ship a competing product. Since Avalon is commited at this point and bASIC is dead, there is now no harm in releasing the information. I suspect Avalon will run into the same heat issues we ran into once they finally turn on a unit and make it go. In fact, it may be much worse since they are on 110nm and have 80+ chips (speculation) to cool. On the other hand, it may simply be because the heat density in our full custom 65nm chip just overwhelms a QFN package cooled by vias and doing the same thing on a place and route 110nm QFN would work ok. We have not tried it, so who's to say. But my point is, we can't release that sort of information while it still will benefit our competition. The same goes for specific timelines - it will give the competition something specific to shoot for. Again, Avalon is now committed and there is nothing they can do to change it with 5 days to go, so the release of that information is acceptable.

Going forward, I will be posting more detailed updates, since that sort of information will not benefit Avalon. They either ship on the 19th or they delay and nothing we reveal can change that.

So expect more frequent, more accurate updates going forward."


BFL NAMES SHIPPING DATE

Honestly I think he had to post this to stop the cancellations. I don't think this changes anything.
discuss

[Red_Evil]

BFL must life from anything ... the new Building cost lots of money or ?
The Employers doesnt works with Love .... ect .. pp

So I think they can get a problem if more People cancel her order and the last one will Lose all .... O.o
I Cancel my 20 Jalapenos ... and its Done ...

[lucif]

Another interview with Josh

Turn on subtitles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4SnUObMd0o

[maqifrnswa]

BFL must life from anything ... the new Building cost lots of money or ?
The Employers doesnt works with Love .... ect .. pp

So I think they can get a problem if more People cancel her order and the last one will Lose all .... O.o
I Cancel my 20 Jalapenos ... and its Done ...

You bought 20 Jalapenos? Even if they were shipping today you should cancel your order, that's a waste of money

20x4.5 GH/s = 90 GH/s for 20x$149 = $2980


For $2598 you could have had 120GH/s if you purchased 2 singles...

[MooC Tals]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaysTVcounI

Another interview?

[cypherdoc]

Another interview with Josh

Turn on subtitles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4SnUObMd0o

lol.  ok, i'm convinced; you need to give up TA and go into comedy.  but change your nick.

just imagine; lucif in the "making ppl happy" business.

[MPOE-PR]

Besides, why would the hack affect the price multiple months later? Some investor waking up in December after a 6-month coma, telling himself, "damn MtGox was hacked in June, I should sell now!" This makes no sense. If anything, the hack should have affected the price in the days (not months) following the re-opening of the market, but it did not.

With a good set of preconceived notions you can proceed deductively to "prove" anything. I happen not to think much of your set, is all.

[SouthernComfort]

Thats a awesome booth, I definitely will be there this year il make sure to stop by!

[greyhawk]

Thats a awesome booth, I definitely will be there this year il make sure to stop by!

Good luck with that.

[Micon]

Judging by the deafening silence in this thread by a once aggressive Josh Zerlan, the BFL group has apparently has moved to full damage control in reaction to Josh's unprofessional interaction with me on the CES floor [in case you have been reading this thread under a rock] --> http://youtu.be/UlWrmIqGs3Y?t=2m36s

Josh recently posted some dates I want to bet BFL will miss:    https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/692-bfl-asic-status.html#post10249

And most interesting to me is this recent post by Josh Zerlan:   https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/690-13-jan-2013-asic-update-discussion-thread-5.html#post10399

"Another delay we've had to endure is the fact that we have effectively tied the ASIC teams payment to the success of the chip. If the chip were to be a failure they don't get paid... so they have incentive to get it right but that has made them very cautious and slow to approve final masks (This is why we can refund all pre-orders we want and why we have the capital to do what we need to do without a failure putting us in bankruptcy). "

Seems like they treated the pre-order money like a round a funding, not quite sure if a product could be produced with the funds received as "pre-orders" - he also seems to slip up here, saying that they have the capital to do what they need - capital raised from the pre-orders.  I wonder how much of that pre-order money is going to pay the salaries of BFL employees. 

I'm now moving on with this part of my investigation in the "scam accusations" section of this forum, as CES 2013 is over:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=136392.0
 

[Inaba]

No Bryan, I'm not trashing Bitpays thread to respond to your ignorance and stupidity.  Unlike you, I pay respect to people who deserve it.  You're just a punk bitch who can't tell his head from his ass.

PS - Still waiting for the "Fuck You Machine" you promised me.

[Micon]

No Bryan, I'm not trashing Bitpays thread to respond to your ignorance and stupidity.  Unlike you, I pay respect to people who deserve it.  You're just a punk bitch who can't tell his head from his ass.

PS - Still waiting for the "Fuck You Machine" you promised me.

1)  your hubris will be your downfall

2)  you "trashed bitpay's thread" a handful of times already, using personal insults and even considering my <3 week old daughter in one of them.  Because your memory is selective and your denial palpable, maybe you need quotes and links:

2a)
[first 'tilt-response' when you accuse me of cussing at you and your employees, yet you did that to me as evident here: http://youtu.be/UlWrmIqGs3Y?t=2m38s ]
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=133487.msg1447190#msg1447190

2b)
[Josh takes offense to anti-semetic joke before he realized my parents were born into this odd categorization of "jewish" while still launching venomous replies] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=133487.msg1447244#msg1447244

2c) [Josh Zerlan says I have BO, the official lowbrow mark of this argument IMO]
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=133487.msg1448058#msg1448058

2d) [deflection & straw-manning from BFL not showing up at CES with ASICs, citing poker and refuting straw-man arguments]
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=133487.msg1448867#msg1448867

3)  just because you have access to a Reddit down-voter doesn't mean this video wont get a run on /bitcoin.  The "Fuck you machine" is not a button or a bomb.  Think of it more like an insurgency you can't fight all aspects of at all times.  Certainly you seem concerned with it enough to monitor this thread, other threads here, youtube, and reddit.

[Micon]

Micon,

For those of you wondering why I told him to buy a clue, he was berating one of my employees and cussing at them, in public, at our booth and making a general scene yesterday, stomping around and yelling "IS IT JUST A FUCKING BOX WITH A FANS?!" over and over. Yes, he was literally stomping around like a child.  I figured that was the end of it, but apparently he decided to show up again today, so I was ready for him.

How did you see this if you were not in the booth? 

how can you say:

Yes, he was literally stomping around like a child.  

and you weren't even there? 

Since your memory is selective and your denial palpable, I will post my full account of day 1 CES again for you:

This is to the best I can remember.  I wasn't recording anything day 1, wasn't planning on anything but sneaking into CES to shake some BTC hands as I always do when BTC companies buy booths in Vegas for conventions.

1)  About "sneaking in" to CES:  I always "sneak in" to all conventions I want to go to here in Vegas.  I wear my WSOP media badge from a few years ago and just walk in like a boss.  Sure I could call whatever bitcoin-facing booth is there and have them give me a badge for the ~30 minutes I'll be there.  As will all conferences, the booth buyers usually need to pay extra for another badge, or at the very least pull a "hey let me use your badge and then I walk out with 2 badges and give one to you"   - I "sneak in" because it is +EV for everyone involved.  Next time, if ever, BFL comes to the conference I will acquire a legitimate badge as it was clear they called security to have me removed. 

2)  About the "stomping and cussing" on day 1 that Josh keeps referring to.  First off, Josh was not there day 1.  Only Dave was in the booth representing BFL.  I imagine Josh was off doing Yoga or other form of meditation & self-reflection.  We will get to that in a second.  Let's start at the beginning:

3)  Whenever a bitcoin booth at any conference comes to Vegas, I go to say hi, shake a hand, say "hey, I'm Micon.  I help Freemoney run SealsWithClubs, the market leading bitcoin online poker site."  And just see who is there and what they want to talk about, trade bitcoin ideas for ~20-30 minutes then be on my way.  I have done this many times and met a bunch of BTC industry leaders.  Erik Voorhees I met this way and he is an amazingly awesome human, and Charlie Shrem I met I think at the same Money2020 conference maybe 6 months ago or so at Aria, and I had Charlie on my donkdown podcast for an awesome interview about the bitinstant operation based in New York.  I was skeptical about parts of bitinstant and bitpay at the start, but when I asked the company directors of those organizations I was met with clear answers and follow up interviews.

4) Ok so I was on the same grind on day 1 CES - just go and meet the boys again, shake some hands, congratulate bitpay on the round of funding, etc.  My daughter was born ~ 2 weeks ago but I made time before picking my parents up at the airport to stop by CES to do this because I feel it is very important, + I'm a huge nerd and CES is nerd porn.  Right after the nerd porn convention they have a real porn convention here but that's not the point of this story.  When I found the Bitpay booth,  I didn't realize they would be sharing a booth with BFL, in fact I was very excited to see BFL equipment on display and I planned on asking some extremely nerdy questions about how the hardware will solve the proof-of-work problem much, much faster than current equipment.  I also wanted to understand the metrics of what ASIC will do to the network hash rate, as I understand mining conceptually but not technically.

5) Dave immediately engaged me when I walked near the BFL equipment.  I congratulated him on selling a large amount of pre-orders.  he said in a smug way "yeah... we've done very well"  To a studied poker professional such as myself, his body language gave me the impression that this man felt by collecting the pre-order monies he has already done well.   If I were in his shoes, the first thing I would have said was "We have a huge responsibility to get these things shipped ASAP.  The community has handed us a large amount of money"   I would feel like the weight of the world was on my shoulders to make good on the massively distributed promise of sending these machines.  Dave felt like a winner, IMO.

6)  I asked very plainly "is this your ASICs" or something to that effect.  This is when it got predatory.  He showed me the box of fans + 1 android tablet and said that is where ASIC chips will eventually go, and the android device will be the output screen to show you how fast it's mining and other stats.  I asked what the cube connected to a second android sitting on top of the fan-box was, and Dave said it's an FPGA miner that BFL used to sell, but it wasn't currently mining and you can't buy it from BFL anymore.  I asked Dave what items were available for purchase right now from BFL that they could ship immediately, he said there were none.  I then asked when they would ship ASICs, he said "in a couple of weeks," and showed me 3 cases that ASIC chips would come inside.

7)  After it was clear I was no longer a friendly and was asking some tough questions, he hit me with a classic scammer line something to the effect of "if you don't believe in BFL, then you don't believe in bitcoin."  This is where the "stomping and profanity" as Josh put it came in.  Please don't take Josh's or My word for it - Ask the bitpay guys about this next part - I give a very intelligent response to Dave, certainly using profanity for emphasis (but not in the personally derogatory way that Josh Zerlan does to me here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlWrmIqGs3Y&feature=youtu.be&t=2m43s ) more like "I believe so much in bitcoin that I wear this fucking button (point to bitcoin button I always wear when leaving the house for any reason) each day, and help run the market leading bitcoin online poker site, dedicating most of my awake time to the betterment of this technology."  Ask the bitpay guys.  I was certainly pissed off, and this guy used a classic scammer line on me and IMO it required a forceful response so Dave understands that I'm a real guy with real BTC credentials, and his line is bullshit and +1's in my head that he and his company are dishonest.

  After my response, emotions briefly settled, and I asked him when filled with ASICs how fast this machine would hash at.  He said something like 1+ T-hashes per second.  I.e. 1000 ghashes/s , would produce in terms of Dave did not know network hashrate.  I told him it wasn't a test, just tell me about how many T-hashes/s the network hash rate was.  Dave said he still didn't know, so I quickly looked it up on my Galaxy Note II by Samsung running Android Jellybean OS by removing the S-pen and quickly speaking into google "total bitcoin network hashrate"   This site came up: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/  and to me it looks like the current total bitcoin network hashrate is around 20-25 Thash/s - which means that if Dave was right, just one of these boxes could have ~ 6% of total current network hashing power.   I was surprised he had never run the math before...

9) so after this, I post the pic I took and illustrated that BFL did not bring anything worthwhile to CES.  I posted on bitcointalk that I'd be back tomorrow to film closely and ask the tough questions.  Obviously we all saw Josh Zerlan's response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlWrmIqGs3Y&feature=youtu.be&t=2m43s


If there is anything that needs clarification please ask.  I am 100% transparent.  I further state that it is possible I have made a small chronological or grammatical error of some sort.  I feel I captured the general feel of the day 1 CES experience as it relates to BFL.

feel free to not answer this, deflect, and strawman as you get destroyed more.  BTW I'm working on a Reddit up-voter so you better be reloading /bitcoin all day today in addition to not doing anything for your customers demanding refunds or chips.

[ElectricMucus]

Here is a serious question for you Inaba:

Why didn't you guys simply bring the PCBs showcased in the advertisement pictures with bitcoin magazine? Why didn't you bring pictures of the design process, like renderings of the chips surface, concepts rendering of the hardware and working samples the existing hardware? For example a _working_ FPGA minirig?

[Micon]

PS - Still waiting for the "Fuck You Machine" you promised me.

Fyi I made this image with my Samsung Galaxy Note II using the "hold down S-pen" feature and have recently expanded its memory with a 32gb ultra micro-SD card

[Frizz23]

Hi Bryan,

Josh deletes posting like this all the time!

Inconvenient questions or people posting facts or sometimes simply posts that prove him wrong. His bloated ego can't take being wrong. Like in this deleted post here:

Another one bites the dust ...

Thou shall not doubt the all-knowing Josh/Inaba, or stop him from spreading rubbish. Or you get deleted. Like this fella here:


A playstation 3?



... and it's gone: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/hardware-discussion/514-playstation-3-a.html#post7665

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I'm thinking the temporary marriage between BitPay and BFL to split the $13K booth rate was arranged last summer or so. Surely not in November or December, for the booth needed to be locked in and artwork for the display had to get underway.

Regardless of whatever sentiment may have arisen after that, it's good business etiquette to honor and maintain the marriage unless, of course, one of the parties is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a nefarious entity (of which the underlined clause isn't the case), then you annul the contract. Otherwise, move forward, as they both did, and hope for a great show, and build further mind share for Bitcoin--as they both did.

Full disclosure: This post was written on my Toshiba Satellite A135-S7404 while sitting on the porcelain throne that may, or may not, need a good cleaning with equal portions of bleach and ammonia. (apologies to Bryan)