BFL or Avalon

[Inaba]

Yeah, it's easy to be "right" when you are basing your entire life process on hindsight.  That's why he's a schmoe sitting behind a computer ineffectually flailing about instead of someone out in the real world, you know... doing something.

[Bicknellski]

  look who decided to show up. Don't you have units to ship?

[peetah]

Baited.

[wrenchmonkey]

Baited.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hetaBX00wtI

[bigdude]

he appeared ...   

[yxt]

look who decided to show up. Don't you have units to ship?

What units? Or do you mean empty boxes of fans

[k9quaint]

Yeah, it's easy to be "right" when you are basing your entire life process on hindsight.  That's why he's a schmoe sitting behind a computer ineffectually flailing about instead of someone out in the real world, you know... doing something.

Doing something like siting behind a computer insulting the customers that you have failed to deliver to?

[nexus 6]

It seems these are the only two players in the ASIC market at the moment... That being said, which one do you think will ship new orders first?

I'm considering getting one of these, but not sure which might actually get here in a sane ammount of time.. BFL says new orders will ship in June, but with them missing so many self-imposed dealines already, I'm considering going with avalon...

Comments? Thoughts? Open to all input...

Thanks

Thats a mistake.  ASICMINER have got ASICS avaliable at the moment. Delivery near to instant.

[mezzomix]

look who decided to show up.

The master scammer, that created a "charity" to pay his lost 1000 bet to himself.

Great to have him here, laughing about us when we took the wrong decision investing our money into BFL instead of buying a batch 1 Avalon. But it's nice to have Josh here and tell everyone that it's always the wrong decision to make business with BFL.

[cryptograd]

Josh = Pure American scum

The biggest disgrace to Bitcoin ever. If there is any single entity thats makes Bitcoin look like online funny money for fools its BFL. Thanks you bitch. Just go away

[maqifrnswa]

Historically, it appears the contrarian approach was generally correct:

First, BFL announces their project and everyone falls in love with it. Avalon announces later and people were told, "Don't waste your time with avalon. BFL will outproduce them and beat them to market: it will never be worth it." At that point, in hindsight, Avalon was actually the better deal.

As the months tacked on, the advice became, "BFL is such a scam, or at least so incompetent, that batch 2/3 Avalons are the only good investment. Even now when Avalons cost significantly more than batch 1. Everyone with BFL orders should get their refund before the ship sinks." Now in hindsight, it appears that BFL is shipping a couple hundred 5 GH/s miners per week based on http://bfl.ptz.ro/, so if the trend continues and accelerates, it's possible Avalon 3s will sink (Avalon 2s may be ok). Those that kept their BFL preorders, or even made new orders, look likely to come out ahead over avalon batch 3.

Now prices have changed for everyone, BTC/$ has changed, and community based Avalon and BFL chip projects are showing up. At this point, the only question is "Who can ship to me first? If both will arrive at the same time, who has less power?" Since there is no Avalon batch 4 (yet), and the the avalon 3rd party systems are in the pre-prototype stage, the only thing left to do is the calculation of whether the USB ASIC miners (blades for high $/GH) are a better deal than placing a bet on a BFL order.

There was also the, "The sky is falling! 100 TH/s added to the network in August! Don't buy any ASIC miner!" based on the amount of money Avalon's chip sales account raised. That has yet to be seen whether to be true, but based on past warnings - the opposite may be more likely.

[bigdude]

Historically, it appears the contrarian approach was generally correct:

First, BFL announces their project and everyone falls in love with it. Avalon announces later and people were told, "Don't waste your time with avalon. BFL will outproduce them and beat them to market: it will never be worth it." At that point, in hindsight, Avalon was actually the better deal.

As the months tacked on, the advice became, "BFL is such a scam, or at least so incompetent, that batch 2/3 Avalons are the only good investment. Even now when Avalons cost significantly more than batch 1. Everyone with BFL orders should get their refund before the ship sinks." Now in hindsight, it appears that BFL is shipping a couple hundred 5 GH/s miners per week based on http://bfl.ptz.ro/, so if the trend continues and accelerates, it's possible Avalon 3s will sink (Avalon 2s may be ok). Those that kept their BFL preorders, or even made new orders, look likely to come out ahead over avalon batch 3.

Now prices have changed for everyone, BTC/$ has changed, and community based Avalon and BFL chip projects are showing up. At this point, the only question is "Who can ship to me first? If both will arrive at the same time, who has less power?" Since there is no Avalon batch 4 (yet), and the the avalon 3rd party systems are in the pre-prototype stage, the only thing left to do is the calculation of whether the USB ASIC miners (blades for high $/GH) are a better deal than placing a bet on a BFL order.

There was also the, "The sky is falling! 100 TH/s added to the network in August! Don't buy any ASIC miner!" based on the amount of money Avalon's chip sales account raised. That has yet to be seen whether to be true, but based on past warnings - the opposite may be more likely.

Agreed

Nice post .. well thought out.

[mezzomix]

Those that kept their BFL preorders, or even made new orders, look likely to come out ahead over avalon batch 3.

No! I paid nealry 200 BTC for a Single SC in June 2012. There is almost no chance to get this money back so in the end BFL was a bad investment. The Avalon batch 3 was sold for 80 BTC (?) and nearly the same hashrate. Avalon already delivered this kind of miners while BFL is still in the prototype state with the singles. It's quite realistiv that an Avalon batch 3 will reach break-even. For the BFL single I see no chance. Unfortunately I ordered a single (and a bASIC) and not an Avalon so bitcoin mining is history for me before it even started.

[Bonam]

Those that kept their BFL preorders, or even made new orders, look likely to come out ahead over avalon batch 3.

No! I paid nealry 200 BTC for a Single SC in June 2012. There is almost no chance to get this money back so in the end BFL was a bad investment.

Nope, their pricing was a certain amount of dollars, and there is in fact still a pretty good chance to get that amount of dollars back. It was your own choice to sell BTC for USD when BTC was low.

[k9quaint]

Those that kept their BFL preorders, or even made new orders, look likely to come out ahead over avalon batch 3.

No! I paid nealry 200 BTC for a Single SC in June 2012. There is almost no chance to get this money back so in the end BFL was a bad investment.

Nope, their pricing was a certain amount of dollars, and there is in fact still a pretty good chance to get that amount of dollars back. It was your own choice to sell BTC for USD when BTC was low.

But he paid in BTC. So he lost BTC, regardless of what it was converted to later.
Buying BFL is really an investment in the future of Bitcoin, and the obvious comparison investment is buying Bitcoin itself.
When BTC crashed to $3, it briefly made economic sense to buy BTC instead of mine them.
That is the risk in holding a future contract, the prices could change and make it hard on you.

[hexed]

Those that kept their BFL preorders, or even made new orders, look likely to come out ahead over avalon batch 3.

No! I paid nealry 200 BTC for a Single SC in June 2012. There is almost no chance to get this money back so in the end BFL was a bad investment. The Avalon batch 3 was sold for 80 BTC (?) and nearly the same hashrate. Avalon already delivered this kind of miners while BFL is still in the prototype state with the singles. It's quite realistiv that an Avalon batch 3 will reach break-even. For the BFL single I see no chance. Unfortunately I ordered a single (and a bASIC) and not an Avalon so bitcoin mining is history for me before it even started.

This is such a lame bullshit statement and what I call "cherry picking" your circumstances.  No matter what the outcome, you will ALWAYS be right because you are the type of customer that has to complain..

First off, lets set some clear facts. 

In June 2012 BTC was in the neighborhood of 5-6.5$ per bitcoin.  You paid 200BTC for your product. 

When Avalon batch 3 came out for preorder, (March) bitcoins were anywhere between 35$ and 90$ (I could be "slightly" off on this so no nitpicking).

So would you rather have paid 200BTC @ 6$ a bitcoin?  Or would you rather have paid 80BTC @ 35$ a bitcoin?  Let's also turn the whole equation around.  Lets say a month after you purchased your BFL device, bitcoins dropped to 1$ a coin and stayed there.  If bitcoins were worth 1$, do you think Avalon would have sold a miner at 80BTC still?  Would they even have sold a miner at all?  If bitcoins were 1$ each, I can guarantee you people would not have made mining devices and if they did, no one would have purchased them for thousands of dollars unless the difficulty was so low that they made 200BTC PER DAY.

So with all of this said.. YOU would not be here today complaining about the 200BTC you never made back.  YOU would be complaining that it will take forever to make back the 1200-1300$ it cost for you to buy the BFL device.

People like you, and there are plenty in this forum, like to mold their argument based on whatever makes them win instead of using common sense.

If you receive a 60GH/s device in the next month.. next 2 months.. next 6 months.. will you make your 200BTC? no..  That would be ridiculously greedy of you to moan about not making $20,000 back on your $1200 investment.  But will you make your $1200 back?  Yes.  Will you make more than your $1200 back.. ABSOLUTELY.  Unless bitcoin takes a nosedive to 5$ again, you will most CERTAINLY see a return on your investment in fiat. 

I guess the appropriate answer would be.. would you rather have 200 bitcoins worth 6$ a piece that you originally invested, or would you rather have 58 (the amount you can mine in a month currently with 60GH/s) worth 100$ a piece?

Lets also see how much in fiat we are talking about from June 2012 (When you ordered) to October 2012 (when they said they would ship, and the prices at that time) to a month from now (estimating doubled difficulty as conservative number, and 100$ bitcoins).  From the bitcoin calculator:


June 2012:


Difficulty Factor :  1,500,000
Hash Rate (mega-hashes / second) : 60,000
Exchange Rate ($/฿):  6.00
 


 Coins Dollars
per Day ฿20.12 $120.70
per Week ฿140.81 $844.88
per Month ฿611.53 $3,669.21




October 2012: (Butterfly labs supposed shipping date)

Difficulty Factor :  3,000,000
Hash Rate (mega-hashes / second): 60,000 
Exchange Rate ($/฿): 12.50
 


               Coins Dollars
per Day ฿10.06 $125.73
per Week ฿70.41 $880.09
per Month ฿305.77 $3,822.09



July 2013: (Doubling the difficulty which is most likely not going to be this high in only 1 month)


Difficulty Factor :  30,000,000
Hash Rate (mega-hashes / second) : 60,000
Exchange Rate ($/฿) :  100.00
 


 Coins Dollars
per Day ฿1.01 $100.58
per Week ฿7.04 $704.07
per Month ฿30.58 $3,057.67


Now that is at DOUBLE the difficulty next month.  The next difficulty raise is estimated to be 17 million from 15.  This happens every 2 weeks so the possibility of it getting to 30 million by even late July is still pretty slim unless a MASSIVE amount of miners hit the market this month.

I'd be happy with a 2 week ROI. And I know what people are going to say in response is, and here are my answers:

"BUT THIS IS ALL SPECULATION"
So is everything else in this thread.  You can't complain about someone speculating if your argument is also pure speculation

"BUT I WANT MY BTC BACK!!"
This is just like the people demanding refunds in BTC.  Ridiculous.  If bitcoin crashed to 1$ a bitcoin, would you be ok with making 200BTC then?  Only 200$ worth of your original 1299 spent?  Is that what you consider a return on your investment? 

"BUT BFL WON'T SHIP BY JULY, THEY NEVER WILL"
Still speculation.  I'm willing to bet that a June 2012 order will most likely be seeing their shipment by next month.  Now someone who ordered in June 2013?  That is a whole other ballgame.

[k9quaint]

Those that kept their BFL preorders, or even made new orders, look likely to come out ahead over avalon batch 3.

No! I paid nealry 200 BTC for a Single SC in June 2012. There is almost no chance to get this money back so in the end BFL was a bad investment. The Avalon batch 3 was sold for 80 BTC (?) and nearly the same hashrate. Avalon already delivered this kind of miners while BFL is still in the prototype state with the singles. It's quite realistiv that an Avalon batch 3 will reach break-even. For the BFL single I see no chance. Unfortunately I ordered a single (and a bASIC) and not an Avalon so bitcoin mining is history for me before it even started.

This is such a lame bullshit statement and what I call "cherry picking" your circumstances.  No matter what the outcome, you will ALWAYS be right because you are the type of customer that has to complain..

First off, lets set some clear facts. 

In June 2012 BTC was in the neighborhood of 5-6.5$ per bitcoin.  You paid 200BTC for your product. 

When Avalon batch 3 came out for preorder, (March) bitcoins were anywhere between 35$ and 90$ (I could be "slightly" off on this so no nitpicking).

So would you rather have paid 200BTC @ 6$ a bitcoin?  Or would you rather have paid 80BTC @ 35$ a bitcoin?  Let's also turn the whole equation around.  Lets say a month after you purchased your BFL device, bitcoins dropped to 1$ a coin and stayed there.  If bitcoins were worth 1$, do you think Avalon would have sold a miner at 80BTC still?  Would they even have sold a miner at all?  If bitcoins were 1$ each, I can guarantee you people would not have made mining devices and if they did, no one would have purchased them for thousands of dollars unless the difficulty was so low that they made 200BTC PER DAY.

So with all of this said.. YOU would not be here today complaining about the 200BTC you never made back.  YOU would be complaining that it will take forever to make back the 1200-1300$ it cost for you to buy the BFL device.

People like you, and there are plenty in this forum, like to mold their argument based on whatever makes them win instead of using common sense.

If you receive a 60GH/s device in the next month.. next 2 months.. next 6 months.. will you make your 200BTC? no..  That would be ridiculously greedy of you to moan about not making $20,000 back on your $1200 investment.  But will you make your $1200 back?  Yes.  Will you make more than your $1200 back.. ABSOLUTELY.  Unless bitcoin takes a nosedive to 5$ again, you will most CERTAINLY see a return on your investment in fiat. 

I guess the appropriate answer would be.. would you rather have 200 bitcoins worth 6$ a piece that you originally invested, or would you rather have 58 (the amount you can mine in a month currently with 60GH/s) worth 100$ a piece?

Lets also see how much in fiat we are talking about from June 2012 (When you ordered) to October 2012 (when they said they would ship, and the prices at that time) to a month from now (estimating doubled difficulty as conservative number, and 100$ bitcoins).  From the bitcoin calculator:


June 2012:


Difficulty Factor :  1,500,000
Hash Rate (mega-hashes / second) : 60,000
Exchange Rate ($/฿):  6.00
 


 Coins Dollars
per Day ฿20.12 $120.70
per Week ฿140.81 $844.88
per Month ฿611.53 $3,669.21




October 2012: (Butterfly labs supposed shipping date)

Difficulty Factor :  3,000,000
Hash Rate (mega-hashes / second): 60,000 
Exchange Rate ($/฿): 12.50
 


               Coins Dollars
per Day ฿10.06 $125.73
per Week ฿70.41 $880.09
per Month ฿305.77 $3,822.09



July 2013: (Doubling the difficulty which is most likely not going to be this high in only 1 month)


Difficulty Factor :  30,000,000
Hash Rate (mega-hashes / second) : 60,000
Exchange Rate ($/฿) :  100.00
 


 Coins Dollars
per Day ฿1.01 $100.58
per Week ฿7.04 $704.07
per Month ฿30.58 $3,057.67


Now that is at DOUBLE the difficulty next month.  The next difficulty raise is estimated to be 17 million from 15.  This happens every 2 weeks so the possibility of it getting to 30 million by even late July is still pretty slim unless a MASSIVE amount of miners hit the market this month.

I'd be happy with a 2 week ROI. And I know what people are going to say in response is, and here are my answers:

"BUT THIS IS ALL SPECULATION"
So is everything else in this thread.  You can't complain about someone speculating if your argument is also pure speculation

"BUT I WANT MY BTC BACK!!"
This is just like the people demanding refunds in BTC.  Ridiculous.  If bitcoin crashed to 1$ a bitcoin, would you be ok with making 200BTC then?  Only 200$ worth of your original 1299 spent?  IS that what you consider a return on your investment? 

"BUT BFL WON'T SHIP BY JULY, THEY NEVER WILL"
Still speculation.  I'm willing to bet that a June 2012 order will most likely be seeing his shipment by next month.

There is zero speculation involved. We do not need to consider exchange rates. He paid 200BTC for a product that is supposed to create BTC. In October 2012 (according to your stats), the device would produce 300 BTC per month. Unfortunately, due to delay in shipment, it may not generate 200BTC in it's lifetime.  The only reason for this is the difficulty has risen over the intervening period.

According to you: "If you receive a 60GH/s device in the next month.. next 2 months.. next 6 months.. will you make your 200BTC? no.."
Had the customer done nothing instead of ordering a BFL, he would be better off.

Mining equipment creates BTC, but you can also buy BTC from the market. You should never buy mining equipment for more than you can buy the anticipated BTC you will receive.

[hexed]

Those that kept their BFL preorders, or even made new orders, look likely to come out ahead over avalon batch 3.

No! I paid nealry 200 BTC for a Single SC in June 2012. There is almost no chance to get this money back so in the end BFL was a bad investment.

Nope, their pricing was a certain amount of dollars, and there is in fact still a pretty good chance to get that amount of dollars back. It was your own choice to sell BTC for USD when BTC was low.

But he paid in BTC. So he lost BTC, regardless of what it was converted to later.
Buying BFL is really an investment in the future of Bitcoin, and the obvious comparison investment is buying Bitcoin itself.
When BTC crashed to $3, it briefly made economic sense to buy BTC instead of mine them.
That is the risk in holding a future contract, the prices could change and make it hard on you.

This is a ridiculous argument too.  I paid in BTC for one order, but I also paid in paypal for another with fiat.  That money could have just as easily been converted to bitcoin.  Butterfly labs has always had the DOLLAR AMOUNT of their products.  They have never just had a BTC price.  The reason for that is their devices are purchased in dollar amount.  

And there is a risk at ANY point.. this is bitcoin.  Hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20.  As many people have said including myself, what if bitcoins went down to 3$ a bitcoin after he purchased this miner for 200BTC?  He would have went to the BFL webpage to see that they were offering the same product for 400 BITCOINS!!  But in the grand scheme of things it would have still said $1299 USD.

..and when BTC crashed to 3$.. was it REALLY economic for ALL people to buy instead of mine?  What was the difficulty then?  What was the electricity costs of the person mining?  What if it crashed even further to $1.50?  

Way to many factors to be so black and white.  Using hindsight is never a good thing to anyone Captain Obvious

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/300x300/38643694.jpg

[k9quaint]

Those that kept their BFL preorders, or even made new orders, look likely to come out ahead over avalon batch 3.

No! I paid nealry 200 BTC for a Single SC in June 2012. There is almost no chance to get this money back so in the end BFL was a bad investment.

Nope, their pricing was a certain amount of dollars, and there is in fact still a pretty good chance to get that amount of dollars back. It was your own choice to sell BTC for USD when BTC was low.

But he paid in BTC. So he lost BTC, regardless of what it was converted to later.
Buying BFL is really an investment in the future of Bitcoin, and the obvious comparison investment is buying Bitcoin itself.
When BTC crashed to $3, it briefly made economic sense to buy BTC instead of mine them.
That is the risk in holding a future contract, the prices could change and make it hard on you.

This is a ridiculous argument too.  I paid in BTC for one order, but I also paid in paypal for another with fiat.  That money could have just as easily been converted to bitcoin.  Butterfly labs has always had the DOLLAR AMOUNT of their products.  They have never just had a BTC price.  The reason for that is their devices are purchased in dollar amount.  

And there is a risk at ANY point.. this is bitcoin.  Hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20.  As many people have said including myself, what if bitcoins went down to 3$ a bitcoin after he purchased this miner for 200BTC?  He would have went to the BFL webpage to see that they were offering the same product for 400 BITCOINS!!  But in the grand scheme of things it would have still said $1299 USD.

..and when BTC crashed to 3$.. was it REALLY economic for ALL people to buy instead of mine?  What was the difficulty then?  What was the electricity costs of the person mining?  What if it crashed even further to $1.50?  

Way to many factors to be so black and white.  Using hindsight is never a good thing to anyone Captain Obvious

Why do you keep bringing dollars into the equation? The customer had 200 BTC, he gave 200BTC to BFL to get a mining device, now he will get less than 200BTC from the mining device. This is just math. Very simple math.

Since you love exchange rates, lets look at the following examples:
If BTC drops to $1, he will be worse off.
if BTC drops to $50, he will be worse off.
If BTC stays the same, he will be worse off.
If BTC rises to $500, he will be worse off.

In fact, there is no future exchange rate in which the customer will do better having ordered from BFL than if he had not ordered from BFL and kept his BTC.

[wrenchmonkey]

Those that kept their BFL preorders, or even made new orders, look likely to come out ahead over avalon batch 3.

No! I paid nealry 200 BTC for a Single SC in June 2012. There is almost no chance to get this money back so in the end BFL was a bad investment.

Nope, their pricing was a certain amount of dollars, and there is in fact still a pretty good chance to get that amount of dollars back. It was your own choice to sell BTC for USD when BTC was low.

But he paid in BTC. So he lost BTC, regardless of what it was converted to later.
Buying BFL is really an investment in the future of Bitcoin, and the obvious comparison investment is buying Bitcoin itself.
When BTC crashed to $3, it briefly made economic sense to buy BTC instead of mine them.
That is the risk in holding a future contract, the prices could change and make it hard on you.

This is a ridiculous argument too.  I paid in BTC for one order, but I also paid in paypal for another with fiat.  That money could have just as easily been converted to bitcoin.  Butterfly labs has always had the DOLLAR AMOUNT of their products.  They have never just had a BTC price.  The reason for that is their devices are purchased in dollar amount.  

And there is a risk at ANY point.. this is bitcoin.  Hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20.  As many people have said including myself, what if bitcoins went down to 3$ a bitcoin after he purchased this miner for 200BTC?  He would have went to the BFL webpage to see that they were offering the same product for 400 BITCOINS!!  But in the grand scheme of things it would have still said $1299 USD.

..and when BTC crashed to 3$.. was it REALLY economic for ALL people to buy instead of mine?  What was the difficulty then?  What was the electricity costs of the person mining?  What if it crashed even further to $1.50?  

Way to many factors to be so black and white.  Using hindsight is never a good thing to anyone Captain Obvious

Why do you keep bringing dollars into the equation? The customer had 200 BTC, he gave 200BTC to BFL to get a mining device, now he will get less than 200BTC from the mining device. This is just math. Very simple math.

Since you love exchange rates, lets look at the following examples:
If BTC drops to $1, he will be worse off.
if BTC drops to $50, he will be worse off.
If BTC stays the same, he will be worse off.
If BTC rises to $500, he will be worse off.

In fact, there is no future exchange rate in which the customer will do better having ordered from BFL than if he had not ordered from BFL and kept his BTC.

Thus, the nature of speculation...