[Announcement] Avalon ASIC Batch #1 Ships

[nathanrees19]

all orders will go to Avalon

Dude, no. I am not ordering something that uses 400 fucking watts. BFL could blow out their power consumption by 100% and still be a third of that.

[nathanrees19]

Interesting thing: as we can see in profile, BitSyncom is monitoring forum and this thread, but keeping silence... Just impolitely...
BitSyncom, we are not a trolls, we just customers, who need shipping related info...

If he's going to treat us (customers and other interested parties) like trolls regardless, then we ought to act like trolls.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Tick-tock, tick-tock... Can someone create a 2-week tick-down clock? That's how much time is left before the CNY.

The silence from Avalon is most intriguing...

http://mycountdown.org/fullpage.php?group=Holiday&countdown=Chinese%20New%20Year&cp3_Hex=FFB200&cp2_Hex=FF0000&cp1_Hex=FFFFFF&widget_number=3012&fwdt=150&img=3&lab=1

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Patience. CNY creates a bottleneck for customs weeks before, not just during.

Oh wait, I mean, "seems fishy"... They probably [insert wild speculation here]!

Only 300 units? I have a shipment of 300 3" X 12" cypress beams arriving next week, harvested from a barn in Mississippi, cir. 1876. I've already sold 82 beams, leaving only 218 left. Pre-order yours today!

http://menwithpens.ca/scarcity/

The scarcity principle claims that opportunities are more valuable to us when availability is limited.

Given my example above, which of the following is true?

• I made the story up to drive a point home.
• I'll have more than 300 beams, but scarcity marketing sells.
• I'll have ~300 beams, but claim they're selling like hotcakes because scarcity marketing sells.
• I don't know the exact date of when the barn was built, but 1876 makes it sound like a centennial barn.
• The beams are not cypress, but nobody should know the difference.
• I'm getting out of the barn wood business, and this is my last hoorah.

How do we honest know that only 300 units were sold?

[smracer]

How much do you want for 5 Cypress Beams?

[greyhawk]

It's number 3 in your list.

[kano]

Phinnaeus Gage - do you ship to Australia?
EMS to Aus works fast for me from China and USA ...

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Phinnaeus Gage - do you ship to Australia?
EMS to Aus works fast for me from China and USA ...

I am well versed with EMS. I will even be more well versed after reading... http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/doing-business-china/17771-ems-shipping-scam-possibility.html (I know EMS is legit)

[dooferorg]

It occurred to me that the Avalon 'not shipping' thing might be the best way to conduct a scam of people.

While other companies promised early and caused ill-will with moving the shipping date further and further away, Avalon kept people feeling confident by having their deadline further away in the future.

When the time comes, there can well be pictures of items - and maybe items themselves. They can get it to ship, but not necessarily ship to those people that ordered. If you think about it it's Machiavellian in design as a scam. Avalon can claim a 'plausible deniability' that 'some people are out to get them'. They could actually ship some items to people that are in on the scam (and can funnel profits back to Avalon group) so when the hashrate jumps there is their 'proof' they actually shipped.

They may sell the shovels AND be mining the gold and none of us would be any the wiser.

I know, 'tinfoil' and all. Just occurred to me this could be happening.

[ab8989]

This is starting to smell very, very fishy.
So now... what could be up and what seems most likely.
1 ... , 2 ... , 3 ..., 4 ...

You know, in NONE of these cases their current behaviour makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Whether they are really doing anything real with the units or whether it is a scam of any kind it makes no sense to drop all communications, not answering simple customer queries, not provide any information whatsoever.

Posting pictures does not prove anything so that would be a silly reason to post them. However I cannot imagine any people that would not post at least 10 pictures out of just pure pride of getting the first working ASIC over competition that has tormented them badly for months just to show them that they were outdone.

Even in a case of a scam of any kind or whether they have run into a real problem what they are doing is totally silly and counterproductive to their scam or working out their real problems.
I am simply out of any explanations why they behave like that.

The absolutely only one reasonable explanation that I could come up with is that all ASIC vendors from all the companies involved are made out of some kind of sadists that get their enjoyment of being the most rude in millions of ways and watch when the 'customers' squirm in the hook. The kind of people that rip wings off small insects while jacking off. In my mind the ASIC vendors behaviour is 100x worse than pirate and co. doing permanent damage to the general environment of BTC economy when setting standards how vendors are expected to operate and what is accepted by the community at large. This is the new standard. Go place some more preorders people.

[jl2012]

This is starting to smell very, very fishy.
So now... what could be up and what seems most likely.
1 ... , 2 ... , 3 ..., 4 ...

You know, in NONE of these cases their current behaviour makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Whether they are really doing anything real with the units or whether it is a scam of any kind it makes no sense to drop all communications, not answering simple customer queries, not provide any information whatsoever.

Posting pictures does not prove anything so that would be a silly reason to post them. However I cannot imagine any people that would not post at least 10 pictures out of just pure pride of getting the first working ASIC over competition that has tormented them badly for months just to show them that they were outdone.

Even in a case of a scam of any kind or whether they have run into a real problem what they are doing is totally silly and counterproductive to their scam or working out their real problems.
I am simply out of any explanations why they behave like that.

The absolutely only one reasonable explanation that I could come up with is that all ASIC vendors from all the companies involved are made out of some kind of sadists that get their enjoyment of being the most rude in millions of ways and watch when the 'customers' squirm in the hook. The kind of people that rip wings off small insects while jacking off. In my mind the ASIC vendors behaviour is 100x worse than pirate and co. doing permanent damage to the general environment of BTC economy when setting standards how vendors are expected to operate and what is accepted by the community at large. This is the new standard. Go place some more preorders people.

As you said, photos prove nothing. No tracking code is my greatest concern (I did not pre-order)

[Phinnaeus Gage]

...we also arranged to ship a unit to the Bitcoin Foundation...

The only logical person this would go to is Gavin. Perhaps he can shed some light on the subject.

[fcmatt]

This is starting to smell very, very fishy.
So now... what could be up and what seems most likely.
1 ... , 2 ... , 3 ..., 4 ...

You know, in NONE of these cases their current behaviour makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Whether they are really doing anything real with the units or whether it is a scam of any kind it makes no sense to drop all communications, not answering simple customer queries, not provide any information whatsoever.

Posting pictures does not prove anything so that would be a silly reason to post them. However I cannot imagine any people that would not post at least 10 pictures out of just pure pride of getting the first working ASIC over competition that has tormented them badly for months just to show them that they were outdone.

Even in a case of a scam of any kind or whether they have run into a real problem what they are doing is totally silly and counterproductive to their scam or working out their real problems.
I am simply out of any explanations why they behave like that.

The absolutely only one reasonable explanation that I could come up with is that all ASIC vendors from all the companies involved are made out of some kind of sadists that get their enjoyment of being the most rude in millions of ways and watch when the 'customers' squirm in the hook. The kind of people that rip wings off small insects while jacking off. In my mind the ASIC vendors behaviour is 100x worse than pirate and co. doing permanent damage to the general environment of BTC economy when setting standards how vendors are expected to operate and what is accepted by the community at large. This is the new standard. Go place some more preorders people.

As you said, photos prove nothing. No tracking code is my greatest concern (I did not pre-order)

Properly done photos can prove a damn lot. Show the hardware, show the mining software running, show the account at a mining pool, get the mining pool owner to verify it, make a large enough amount of hashing where faking it with gpu would be terribly difficult to do, etc.... What is so hard about it? It would be fun and amazing.

[nathanrees19]

Properly done photos can prove a damn lot. Show the hardware, show the mining software running, show the account at a mining pool, get the mining pool owner to verify it, make a large enough amount of hashing where faking it with gpu would be terribly difficult to do, etc.... What is so hard about it? It would be fun and amazing.

Their excuse would be not mining on the main network, but you could probably get a pool operator to set up a testnet-in-a-box and point a temporary pool-in-a-box at it. They could then verify the hashrate from the photos.

[loshia]

all orders will go to Avalon

Dude, no. I am not ordering something that uses 400 fucking watts. BFL could blow out their power consumption by 100% and still be a third of that.

Really?

Let me point out two major issues here:
1. Announced BFL power consumtion may turn out to be not like advertised
2. While you wait for your BFL product even eith 100W power consumtion (I do not know actualy what is advertised) your roi may become even a years. Menwhile first and second batch of customers will enjoy their products and make some good money asuming that BFL will add some more delay



Shall you stick to BFL then - I doubt. But it is your choice dude

[niko]

https://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2333

China

China is one of the countries with the strongest restrictions on cryptography; a license is required for export, import, or domestic use of any cryptography product. There are several restrictions on export regulations, and China is not participating in the Wassenaar Arrangement.

http://www.cryptolaw.org/cls2.htm#prc

1. Export/ import controls
By State Council Order No. 273, "Commercial Use Password Management Regulations", published on 15 October 1999 and in effect since 7 October 1999, import and export of encryption products requires a license by the State Encryption Management Commission. According to a "clarification letter" sent to US businesses in China in early March 2000, this involves only hardware and software for which encryption and decoding operations are core functions. As a result, products in which cryptography is only built-in (such as mobile phones and browser software) are exempted. Moreover, the letter clarified that the regulations do not entail key escrow.
However, the clarification letter only seems to apply to pre-2000 products. All products since 2000 seem to require a license.

[sounds]

Get ready for good news

[PuertoLibre]

all orders will go to Avalon

Dude, no. I am not ordering something that uses 400 fucking watts. BFL could blow out their power consumption by 100% and still be a third of that.

<Cough> <Cough>

Actually, once you find out what the feature set is, I am pretty sure the first thing that will happen is BFL customers will either:

A) Wish to bail at the very last minute...and BFL will (very likely) refuse customers their refund requests as they are already being assembled.

B) Wish for BFL to implement the same kinds of features...immediately....which won't be doable in the short term. Causing BFL customers to be upset that their money is tied up in a product that most of them won't want.

Which then begs the question: Do you want to spend $1,300 at BFL or $1500 at Avalon once you know what the feature sets are?

Why do you think they are being super secretive about what these features are exactly?

The feature-set is probably where Avalon will upset the remaining market.

(Don't ask me what I mean, I won't say anyway)

[PuertoLibre]

Think about it,

Why would they make you wait for someone else to review the entire feature set? (written by a third party)

What if there was something that a small miner or multi-unit purchaser would appreciate quite a bit?

It is possible that perhaps BFL will cut prices once they know what the features are. Perhaps not. All I do know is that BFL cannot reduce it's prices without pissing off their current pre-order customers. Nor can they give away more units for the same price point.

Hint: Why does Batch 2 cost more than Batch 1?
Because people would still be willing to pay more once they know what it is they are getting.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

https://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2333

China

China is one of the countries with the strongest restrictions on cryptography; a license is required for export, import, or domestic use of any cryptography product. There are several restrictions on export regulations, and China is not participating in the Wassenaar Arrangement.

http://www.cryptolaw.org/cls2.htm#prc

1. Export/ import controls
By State Council Order No. 273, "Commercial Use Password Management Regulations", published on 15 October 1999 and in effect since 7 October 1999, import and export of encryption products requires a license by the State Encryption Management Commission. According to a "clarification letter" sent to US businesses in China in early March 2000, this involves only hardware and software for which encryption and decoding operations are core functions. As a result, products in which cryptography is only built-in (such as mobile phones and browser software) are exempted. Moreover, the letter clarified that the regulations do not entail key escrow.
However, the clarification letter only seems to apply to pre-2000 products. All products since 2000 seem to require a license.

2. Domestic laws and regulations
By State Council Order No. 273, "Commercial Use Password Management Regulations", published on 15 October 1999 and in effect since 7 October 1999, domestic crypto manufacture and use is severely restricted. Officially designated manufacturers must obtain aproval from the State Encryption Management Commission for the type and model (including key length) of their crypto products. Organisations and individuals may not distribute encryption products produced abroad. People may only use encryption products approved by the Commission, and they may not use commercial encryption products developed by themselves or produced abroad. For this use, they must have approval by the Commission. Only foreign diplomatic missions and consulates are exempted from this approval. The deadline for registration of crypto users was 31 January 2000.

According to a "clarification letter" sent to US businesses in China in early March 2000, this involves, however, only specialized hardware and software for which encryption and decoding operations are core functions. As a result, products in which cryptography is only built-in are exempted. Moreover, the letter clarified that the regulations do not entail key escrow.
However, the clarification letter only seems to apply to pre-2000 products. All products since 2000 seem to require a license.

For wireless crypto products, China seems to require use of a Chinese proprietary algorithm, and AES and WEP must be disabled.

And all this wasn't brought up before because...