[Archive] BFL trolling museum

[enmaku]

BFL *did* say at some point that they'd do trade-ins of singles for ASICs, right? Any details on how exactly that will work?

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[Garr255]

The smartest move would be to buy shares in BFL  

Probably a lot smarter than buying their products. Still, remains to be seen if they are actually the first to hit the market. If they are not, they may have trouble recovering their investment.

Which is why is was a good move for them to sell equity.

[Coinoisseur]

I'm with you on this P4man. Except you said asic in #1 instead of fpga. Until I see some proof of hardware I have to default to thinking this is a way to pick up sales of their FPGA units in order to fund full ASIC development and wafer runs. Notice they bring up venture funding, my best guess is venture funding+spike in sales due to swap plan are how they intend to power through the high upfront cost of getting custom silicon to retail. I also bet they are 6-12 months (not even a rough launch window announced) out and looking to slow down ASIC competitors by grabbing as much of the future market as possible, especially since volume is critical for ASIC profitability.

Taking their announced hashes/W with a bucket of salt. Big numbers a company can always backtrack on are mainly to hurt competitors.

Note, this announcement does make them, AFAIK, the only FPGA miner company to announce a swap plan for exchanging their FPGA units for eventual ASIC units.

This strikes me as very odd. You could make a much higher profit margin. Why on earth would you price these this low?

Its not that odd; in fact it makes perfect sense for two reasons:
1) If they intend to accept preorders long before shipping the hardware, these prices will pretty much guarantee a huge backlog before the first asic miner even starts pushing up difficulty in to the stratosphere and people start realizing that $30K per TH may not be such a good move after all. The price is just low enough for people to realize that gpu and asic mining is dead and enticing those gpu/asic miners to place an order. Remember, per GH silicon cost is very close to zero.

2) it scares potential competitors. My guess is BFL has at most taped out, but not made the maskset yet. Thats why they got VC money and Im assuming thats recent. So you are looking at ~3-6 months before they have silicon, and probably another 3-6 months before they are ready to ship your first coffee warmer. This is a good time to deter potential competitors.

[Garr255]

BFL *did* say at some point that they'd do trade-ins of singles for ASICs, right? Any details on how exactly that will work?

Of course not, but I really hope we get priority over formal orders

[P4man]

I'm with you on this P4man. Except you said asic in #1 instead of fpga.

Corrected .

[eldentyrell]

As I am something of veteran of press releases I will make a few observations that are odd for press releases.

Surely you found nothing suspicious in our press release, then?

  http://news.yahoo.com/leading-sha256-hardware-manufacturer-acquires-venture-capital-funding-081026668.html

[yohan]

As I am something of veteran of press releases I will make a few observations that are odd for press releases.

Surely you found nothing suspicious in our press release, then?

  http://news.yahoo.com/leading-sha256-hardware-manufacturer-acquires-venture-capital-funding-081026668.html

Well I think it might be about as believeable. Oh shit we better run for the hills and hide in caves.

I'm not actually going to worry to much about any of these announcements and we will almost certainly lose a few customers because they believe the bullshit. That won't affect what we are doing. We will continue to supply good products for the market as best we can. If the market happens to die and maybe the Bitcoin is lost well we have 23 years of doing designs for customers and that business hasn't gone away, Quite the contrary.

The FPGA might have a few surprises yet.

Yohan

[Unacceptable]

Just a little food for thought,I x3 the current diff.Still doable with 22 gh:



I'm sure it'll be a bit more like x6 or more,but.......................

What about power consumption??

[dave3]

Note:  We're currently focused on the shipment of our Mini Rig product and won't be able to field questions for a few days but we'll be back with answers to any questions.

BFL, when you're back online, could you give us an idea as to the timing for the new ASIC based products?  When do you expect to be shipping them?

And also, by the time you start shipping these ASIC based products, will you have ramped up production to provide quicker order-to-shipping times, or do you expect it will still be 4-6 / 8-10 weeks?

Thanks.

[Turbor]

They told too many lies in the past. It just sounds too good to be true. Even if they can deliver, I'm not going to trade in my existing hardware. In the meantime, mine what you can !

[Bitcoin Oz]

If you can get an asic chip in a mug warmer what other usb devices could you create that use this? Usb foot warmers ?

[Garr255]

If you can get an asic chip in a mug warmer what other usb devices could you create that use this? Usb foot warmers ?

Eventually they'll be advertising the things as whatever warmers and mining coins in the background

[Bitcoin Oz]

If you can get an asic chip in a mug warmer what other usb devices could you create that use this? Usb foot warmers ?

Eventually they'll be advertising the things as whatever warmers and mining coins in the background

Buying something that warms your lap - $200
Realising your cat does the same thing - priceless 

[bitlane]

BFL *did* say at some point that they'd do trade-ins of singles for ASICs, right? Any details on how exactly that will work?

Of course not, but I really hope we get priority over formal orders

I am sure you will, but not only will you be required to have to pay up front for 10+ week (month?) delivery times, but will have to send your Single in right away as well, so that BFL can use it to mine on for the 10 + weeks that it takes to deliver your ASIC...

[organofcorti]

If you can get an asic chip in a mug warmer what other usb devices could you create that use this? Usb foot warmers ?

Eventually they'll be advertising the things as whatever warmers and mining coins in the background

Buying something that warms your lap - $200
Realising your cat does the same thing - priceless 

I'll buy a 3GHps cat for $200.

[Tachikoma]

If they can really ship this it will have drastic effects on the economy as a whole, I wonder what the bitcoin landscape will look like in a year.

[P4man]

They told too many lies in the past. It just sounds too good to be true.

Not really. Ive said this so often and long before this announcement: people dont and wont fully realize the impact asics will have.

These prices look good NOW, until you do the math with difficulty going up 10x, 100x or more. For the record, difficulty went up 10000x over the past two years, and that was with off the shelve hardware who's price is mostly independent of bitcoin price/difficulty (AMD or xilinx dont adjust prices when difficulty goes up, nor can they charge 10000% gross margins just because miner would pay it). But a dedicated bitcoin asic will be priced almost purely by btc price/difficulty so expect its price to go down by orders of magnitude while price/difficulty goes up by orders of magnitude.

6 months after BFL started shipping their asics, the above prices will look like a terrible investment.

Even if they can deliver, I'm not going to trade in my existing hardware.

You'd be nuts not to. Have you calculated what your singles or mini rigs will earn you once difficulty reaches 10 or 100 million ?

In the meantime, mine what you can !

No arguing that

[kano]

Just a little food for thought,I x3 the current diff.Still doable with 22 gh:

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h148/Bigblock462/Wow2.png

I'm sure it'll be a bit more like x6 or more,but.......................

What about power consumption??

Use mine in my sig.
Though it works based on using a pool, the numbers for "Your Mh/s:" is what matters and you can leave the pool at 1TH as the default.
Entering the numbers below will give you a reasonable answer (at the very bottom) for how much per day/week/month

You need:
 "Your Mh/s:"
 "BTC Price$ you think you can get:"
 "Average Watt reading for your rig(s):"
 "Average Price$ you pay per kWh:"

In case you can't see my sig
http://tradebtc.net/bitcalc.php

[kano]

Now back to some thought on the reality of BTC.

On average 7,200 BTC is generated every day (that wont change ... until it halves)

At $6 that's $43,200 a day.

for 6 months, that's $7.9Mil

Now I don't know what anyone else thinks, but that's not a lot of money ... but that is the total at the current price that EVERYONE will get.
Yet I wonder how much people will be investing in these many different ASIC options ...

Remember 3 things:
1) Your investment now may be overshadowed by hardware in 6 months
2) In 6 months (well actually a bit less) BTC per block will halve
3) The easiest way to kill ASIC is to have to change the double sha256 due to some problem found with it ........

[organofcorti]

Now back to some thought on the reality of BTC.

On average 7,200 BTC is generated every day (that wont change ... until it halves)

At $6 that's $43,200 a day.

for 6 months, that's $7.9Mil

Now I don't know what anyone else thinks, but that's not a lot of money ... but that is the total at the current price that EVERYONE will get.
Yet I wonder how much people will be investing in these many different ASIC options ...

Remember 3 things:
1) Your investment now may be overshadowed by hardware in 6 months
2) In 6 months (well actually a bit less) BTC per block will halve
3) The easiest way to kill ASIC is to have to change the double sha256 due to some problem found with it ........

Is the choice of sha256 likely to change? Is it even possible and still continue with the current blockchain?