[Archive] BFL trolling museum

[P4man]

haha, maybe retarded was too strong a word, maybe not. ;p  The part I bolded would keep me from making any sort of disruptive financial decission on a new investment there. Hopefully I am not alone and will be watch that factor very, very closely..

As will everyone else. But thats were the paradox here lies; if enough people "watch it closely" and dont invest, you might think that the ones that do buy them, should actually break even. But I dont think they will, because if too many people wait and see, BFL will just be enticed to lower their prices until they sell enough and the problem will remain exactly the same.

Its really quite an interesting economic case, but no matter how you slice it, in the end I cant see anyone other than a monopolistic vendor of the ASIC profiting significantly. Should a competitor appear around the same time, I can well imagine everyone ending up with a loss, including the asic vendors.

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[DILLIGAF]

Wrong. The difficulty changes every 2016 blocks, not 2 weeks.

Yeah...talk about disruptive technology...lol  Most of the 21 million bitcoins would be mined in no time compared to the original estimates...

the difficulty changes every 2 weeks. So unless we could online this massive amount of hash power in that timeline, difficulty will quickly increase to keep the block generation as close to 144 per day as possible.

you know what I meant.....

They are completely different. If the difficulty change is time-based, we could theoretically mine 21 million bitcoins instantly. But this is not true

As was seen at this time last year when the massive amounts of hashing power was being added the diff can/will increase 4x in 3 days not 2 weeks and will continue to do so as long as the hashing power continues to be added just like it did then for weeks in a row even after the bubble burst as they continued to pile on.

[gyverlb]

They simply send old waiting cusomers your old single

That's my theory, yes.

[BR0KK]

Awesome plan for bfl

[Definit]

it's either Go all in now, or gtfo!!!!!!!!

[MrTeal]

I'm making a couple assumptions here, but I don't imagine I'm far off. First, the MiniRig will use an array of singles PCBs, similar to the current setup. I would guess that the future SC MiniRigs will go in the same cases as the current MiniRigs, which probably cost BFL well over $100 in the small quantities they buy. I'm going to estimate power draw for 1TH at 500W-1kW or so, so there's going to be a pretty beefy power supply, as well as each of the 25 single boards carrying a 12V to Vcc power supply. Add on assembly and test costs, and I don't think a small outfit could reasonably get Minirigs out the door for less than $1000 with any kind of profit.

Well, considering their minirig SC will sell for $30K, some of those assumptions make sense. But once difficulty has gone up enough to require prices per GH to go down by >10x or 50x, it will make equal sense to redesign for cost efficiency and not have 25 daughter boards with their own power circuitry etc.

Anyway, this discussion is missing the big picture. Even if you are right and prices would bottom out above $1000 per TH, thats still, what,  500x lower than today? And therefore, difficulty would be ~500x higher. Good luck estimating the ramp on that and earning back the investment of your minirig sc.

I think they priced it competitively enough that some of those fears should be assuaged, but there's still a huge amount of risk involved especially given BFL's penchant for missing deadlines and long lead times. I don't think it's really possible to estimate the effect on the network these will have. You're probably just as well to bet the money on whether Pirate will default or not. If they do collect the preorders to add 100TH to the network and ship out after the block split, you might have a 4 month ROI on your $30k with $10BTC and a profitability decline of 0.5/year. That seems pretty reasonable. If they ship 200TH worth of hardware in 6 months and then another 600TH in the year after it and if BTC stays at $10 it would take a year to pay off your investment, not counting having your money in limbo 6 months waiting on hardware. If they ship 400TH, you'll never see your money back.

Pull out your crystal ball and channel Miss Cleo, it will be about as effective as trying to estimate profitability in the next year.

A redesign of the board might save some on the costs, but justifying a new ASIC will depend on BTC price in the future. BFL might be able to tweak some extra performance out of their current design, but a large jump forward in power would likely require a redesign on a smaller process and the new mask set to go along with it. The first mask set is justifiable because it is such a huge leap forward over existing designs. Spending another $1M in a year or two to increase performance by a much smaller margin will be a much harder decision though, I would think price would have to go much higher for that to be worthwhile. How soon after this hits the street do you think we'll see a refresh?

[MrTeal]

The trade-in offer seemed odd to me from the beginning because I don't see how it makes economical sense for BFL. They can resell the FPGA, but they will take a huge loss on this : the margin on the FPGA units will be eaten by the work needed to remove the FPGA from the units before selling them at the same price (or lower) than the price they acquired them in the first place.
So a $ for $ trade-in is a net loss for them which they'll take quite some time to absorb.

I am going to guess they won't take a huge loss on it, simply because they probably got such a good deal on the FPGAs in the first place. In fact, if I were BFL I would take the existing MiniRigs that are returned, remove the old singles units, swap in the new SC ones, and return it. Remove the heatsinks/FPGAs/other valuable components, resell the used FPGAs at a minimal loss.

Even if they take a loss of a couple thousand bucks on each flip, that's a pretty cheap unsecured 6 month loan.

[arklan]

well, shite.

[P4man]

Pull out your crystal ball and channel Miss Cleo, it will be about as effective as trying to estimate profitability in the next year.

QFT

How soon after this hits the street do you think we'll see a refresh?

Dare I say, never? Well, never say never, but not for a very, very long time IMO.  I foresee a mid term future where the mining market is completely saturated and asic miners will struggle to operate profitably (and most will long have given up on earning back their investment). Under those circumstances, its almost impossible to warrant the multi million dollar investment needed for a new maskset unless you could achieve another "quantum leap" in power efficiency and production cost. Or bitcoin rises in value spectacularly.  

[Dargo]

They simply send old waiting cusomers your old single

That's my theory, yes.

If that is their plan, I don't see how it's going to make customers very happy. How excited are old waiting customers going to be to finally get those singles they ordered when they know BFL is currently taking orders for the new ASIC units? I personally wouldn't be very happy since I'd be thinking I need to trade my singles in as soon as I get them. I suppose if I could get on a waiting list for ASIC and use my singles in the meantime with a quick turn around time on the trade-in, that would be OK. But we have very little detail on how this trade-in plan will work. It seems doubtful that trade-ins are going to get first priority since they aren't giving BFL new income. At best, I would think BFL might devote a percentage of the ASIC supply line to trade-ins and the rest to new orders. I think the trade-in policy is simply a way to prevent orders for existing units from drying up, and it remains to be seen how good the deal will be for customers ordering or waiting for existing units now and trading them in later. It's great that BFL is offering the trade-in deal, but the deal could be significantly better or worse depending on details that haven't been explained. 

[Dalkore]

BFL is online right now but has not come here and commented at all?   They really need someone to handle their PR.   We truly need to clarifications on this and soon.  Honestly is it lack of respect for all these miners investing their time and money trying to make the network work to come in and drop a BOMBSHELL like this and not be ready to field questions and concerns.   Put yourself in our shoes, this is what we are rewarded with for supporting your product?   Please come on here and start addressing these concerns so we can get some clarity.  



Major Questions from me:

- First shipment date estimate (2012, 2013, 2014?  Which Quarter)

- Why push the difficulty bar so high so quickly?

- Who is the VC that invested in it?  
           Is the VC affiliated with any government agency (I am serious)?

- Are you going to purposely limit supply?


Sincerely,
Dalkore

[bulanula]

I am going to have a good laugh at all the little sheep that are going to be throwing their money at "Nasser G" and "Nick W" at "??address??" when BFL either disappears and/or goes bankrupt with all the sheep's money.

Hate to say it, but damn : ME TOO dude !

I am here for the entertainment, drama and the mining.

Hopefully BFL will go belly up and won't kill the latter just the fool's pockets. 

[Gladamas]

Shoot, this will completely destroy FPGA and GPU builds if this gets out on a quick (<6 month) time scale.

[SgtSpike]

This thread is hilarious.

[arklan]

This thread is hilarious.

truer words rarely spoken...

[wogaut]

Shoot, this will completely destroy FPGA and GPU builds if this gets out on a quick (<6 month) time scale.

Which reminds me, what is the time frame until we see them getting shipped?

[lolwut]

what will 1th/s earn with currently difficulty?

per day, week, month?

[abeaulieu]

Shoot, this will completely destroy FPGA and GPU builds if this gets out on a quick (<6 month) time scale.

Which reminds me, what is the time frame until we see them getting shipped?

4-6 weeks

[EskimoBob]

Here is a depressing calculation for you all
Lets say that difficulty keeps creeping up at 10% pace. After 6 months, we are looking at diff somewhere around 6613326 and new shiny USB powered coffee warmer arrives. 200 USD and 3.5 GH/s + 40 USD for S&H or what ever.

If diff keeps going up at the same rate per month, this is what happens:
(BTC @ 6 USD)

Code:

Month 	BTC 	USD 	Difficulty
1	14.74	88.44	8002124.46
2	11.69	70.14	10650827.6563
3	9.15	54.9	12887501.4641
4	7.26	43.56	17153264.4487
5	5.68	34.08	20755449.9829
6	4.51	27.06	27625503.9272
7	3.53	21.18	33426859.752
8	2.8	16.8	44491150.3299
9	2.19	13.14	53834291.8991
10	1.74	10.44	71653442.5178
11	1.36	8.16	86700665.4465
12	1.08	6.48	115398585.709
 
Total 	65.74   394.44 USD 

If diff moves up faster, when you start mining with ASIC, lets say 20% per month on average, numbers start to look even more depressing:

Code:

Month 	BTC 	USD 	Difficulty
1	13.53	81.18	9523189.44
2	8.24	49.44	16456071.3523
3	5.04	30.24	28436091.2968
4	3.07	18.42	40947971.4674
5	1.84	11.04	70758094.6957
6	1.13	6.78	122269987.634
7	0.69	4.14	211282538.632
8	0.42	2.52	304246855.63
9	0.25	1.5	525738566.528
10	0.15	0.9	908476242.961
11	0.09	0.54	1569846947.84
12	0.06	0.36	2260579604.88

Total 	34.51   	207.06   	

Do not forget to subtract your cost of power.

I used http://striketeam.ath.cx/btccalc/btccalc.php for the numbers

[Dargo]

I am going to have a good laugh at all the little sheep that are going to be throwing their money at "Nasser G" and "Nick W" at "??address??" when BFL either disappears and/or goes bankrupt with all the sheep's money.

Hate to say it, but damn : ME TOO dude !

I am here for the entertainment, drama and the mining.

Hopefully BFL will go belly up and won't kill the latter just the fool's pockets. 

Maybe you will get that laugh, but keep in mind that the "little sheep" who threw their $ at BFL for the first singles have been mining on them for 6 months and could easily sell them for more than they paid.