My Beef with BFL (Constructive Criticism Only)

[Dalkore]

Off topic: I like how this thread went to shit after, like, 4 posts. Though I suppose that's to be expected..

On topic:
I have no doubt that they're working on developing some "top tier" tech (compared to everything else coming / already out). My biggest qualms come from the blatant dispersion of misinformation and lack of solid evidence.

After everything that we've seen so far and the difficulties BFL has run into, there's no way they would have actually shipped in 2012..and my guess is that they very well knew that. Essentially they create intricate company timelines as to how everything will proceed, but consistently fail to take Murphy's Law into account during it all.

Their general incompetence was pretty clear when they put Josh in charge of PR. If you're representing a company and trying to create positive public relations, there's absolutely no reason to go about trolling. A PR person should be able to let insults roll off, like "water on a duck's back". Simple as that.

Thank you for your comments Korbman.   Also, I went through and pruned some of the off-topic comments.  I will keep on it.

[coastermonger]

It's a tough scenario to envision.  Just 4 months ago BFL looked like a dominant player in the ASIC industry, Avalon too had customer service problems in that there was no proof/pic/video of a working unit.  People looking to invest may have been drawn to BFL because they were doing the most advertising, had the most polished website, and actually had a track record with selling FPGA units.

[creativex]

Off topic: I like how this thread went to shit after, like, 4 posts. Though I suppose that's to be expected..

On topic:
I have no doubt that they're working on developing some "top tier" tech (compared to everything else coming / already out). My biggest qualms come from the blatant dispersion of misinformation and lack of solid evidence.

After everything that we've seen so far and the difficulties BFL has run into, there's no way they would have actually shipped in 2012..and my guess is that they very well knew that. Essentially they create intricate company timelines as to how everything will proceed, but consistently fail to take Murphy's Law into account during it all.

Their general incompetence was pretty clear when they put Josh in charge of PR. If you're representing a company and trying to create positive public relations, there's absolutely no reason to go about trolling. A PR person should be able to let insults roll off, like "water on a duck's back". Simple as that.

I don't think the thread went to shit exactly, that won't happen until Josh shows up. There's a whole lot of anger being directed at BFL and justifiably so, they've caused damage that extends to those that didn't even order from them IMO. I believe we have to get past this notion that their delays are caused by incompetence. While I've said the same thing myself in the past, in hindsight, I think it's pretty clear that they just want everyone to believe they're incompetent. Seriously, there's no way Josh could have believed there was any chance whatsoever that BFL would be able to ship a finished ASIC product before 12/31/2012 when he routinely implied as much in early and mid December. He's done the same thing over and over. There's simply no way. Josh is many things, but he's not dumb. When did they set up their new facility again?

At this point I'd like someone to explain to me like I'm five how there's any chance at all that BFL didn't deliberately dismantle the FPGA market and cause a whole lot of people to lose mining revenue by making what in hindsight were awful decisions based on misinformation supplied by BFL to support their blatantly premature ASIC announcement. I believe they had a very limited supply of FPGA chips and when their source dried up they concocted this elaborate scheme to damage their competitors and gain the upper hand in the future ASIC mining market. They very plainly had next to nothing done in fall of 2012, yet they consistently pretended as though they could be ready to ship at any time. This isn't tomfoolery, or shenanigans, it's fraud. They've cost people a lot of money with their market manipulation games.

You're obviously bright Korbman, and I know you have BFL orders, can you explain to me where I'm wrong here?

...also as to Josh specifically and his PR job, I think he's done an absolutely masterful job of isolating and attacking any and all outspoken outliers here. If someone asks tough questions about BFL, particularly about their financial solvency, Inaba nearly always shows up and begins with the verbal assault. Shortly there after the thread is moved to the "troll museum" or newbies begin to attack Josh's target like a string of over protective groupies. Think about his comments about how a few posters here allegedly increase BFL sales by asking tough questions about BFL. That stuff is brilliant because it sticks with people and plants a seed of doubt in their minds.  

Sorry Dalkore, it isn't my intent to thread crap. This response may be better suited for the scam accusation sub.

[Entropy-uc]

Off topic: I like how this thread went to shit after, like, 4 posts. Though I suppose that's to be expected..

On topic:
I have no doubt that they're working on developing some "top tier" tech (compared to everything else coming / already out). My biggest qualms come from the blatant dispersion of misinformation and lack of solid evidence.

After everything that we've seen so far and the difficulties BFL has run into, there's no way they would have actually shipped in 2012..and my guess is that they very well knew that. Essentially they create intricate company timelines as to how everything will proceed, but consistently fail to take Murphy's Law into account during it all.

Their general incompetence was pretty clear when they put Josh in charge of PR. If you're representing a company and trying to create positive public relations, there's absolutely no reason to go about trolling. A PR person should be able to let insults roll off, like "water on a duck's back". Simple as that.

I don't think the thread went to shit exactly, that won't happen until Josh shows up. There's a whole lot of anger being directed at BFL and justifiably so, they've caused damage that extends to those that didn't even order from them IMO. I believe we have to get past this notion that their delays are caused by incompetence. While I've said the same thing myself in the past, in hindsight, I think it's pretty clear that they just want everyone to believe they're incompetent. Seriously, there's no way Josh could have believed there was any chance whatsoever that BFL would be able to ship a finished ASIC product before 12/31/2012 when he routinely implied as much in early and mid December. He's done the same thing over and over. There's simply no way. Josh is many things, but he's not dumb. When did they set up their new facility again?

At this point I'd like someone to explain to me like I'm five how there's any chance at all that BFL didn't deliberately dismantle the FPGA market and cause a whole lot of people to lose mining revenue by making what in hindsight were awful decisions based on misinformation supplied by BFL to support their blatantly premature ASIC announcement. I believe they had a very limited supply of FPGA chips and when their source dried up they concocted this elaborate scheme to damage their competitors and gain the upper hand in the future ASIC mining market. They very plainly had next to nothing done in fall of 2012, yet they consistently pretended as though they could be ready to ship at any time. This isn't tomfoolery, or shenanigans, it's fraud. They've cost people a lot of money with their market manipulation games.

You're obviously bright Korbman, and I know you have BFL orders, can you explain to me where I'm wrong here?

...also as to Josh specifically and his PR job, I think he's done an absolutely masterful job of isolating and attacking any and all outspoken outliers here. If someone asks tough questions about BFL, particularly about their financial solvency, Inaba nearly always shows up and begins with the verbal assault. Shortly there after the thread is moved to the "troll museum" or newbies begin to attack Josh's target like a string of over protective groupies. Think about his comments about how a few posters here allegedly increase BFL sales by asking tough questions about BFL. That stuff is brilliant because it sticks with people and plants a seed of doubt in their minds.  

Sorry Dalkore, it isn't my intent to thread crap. This response may be better suited for the scam accusation sub.

I don't think it's thread crapping at all.

There is more to the decision to announce something they couldn't deliver than running out of FPGAs.  BFL was clearly using order money for working capital.  When Enterpoint stepped in and offered boards with payment on delivery, BFL's plan of using 3 months of order queued money to run operations was disrupted.  BFL in turn created their "FPGAs are obsolete, except for ours which you can trade in meme".  This both crippled their FPGA competitors, and refilled their treasury with Scrooge McDuck sized piles of other people money.  Which they have probably spent by now.

Speaking of thread crapping...  My ad about BFL has been submitted.  It links to this thread.  Sorry Dalkore, you are going to have a lot of moderating to do here.

[Mushroomized]

Coming from a family of Electrical and Computer engineers pre ordering an asic from a company that has already provided FPGAs and has a decent track record seemed like a decent idea. I split a pre order on a jalapeno with my friend (poor college kids). While I do think that BFL with eventually deliver, I think they moved their delivery expectations as a form of advertisement and cut out any time for error on manufacturing. So far it seems as almost every single thing that could go wrong has, almost buying them time. If I could go back I'm not sure if I would still order from BFL, however I wouldn't have set my hopes so high.

Out of all the mistakes and troubles they had along the way hiring Josh as their PR was probably the worst idea. Even on their own forums he still is unprofessional.

[Dalkore]

I think the thread is really knawing at the real issue.

Regardless of what clever responses that we may get from BFL.  The major issues do not change and I would like and official response to them.  It looks quite clear they had limited supply of their "best in class" FPGA chips, if I am wrong then they are they still shipping those quickly being that they are still profitable?   

It  does look like their pre-announcement about ASIC was mainly to be a shot across the bow of any potential ASIC competitors.  If it wasn't purposely done for that effect, we would of seen FPGA shipment time improve over the last 8 months while people waited.  They may think this is business and it is none of our business, but that effected many peoples plans including my own and in the end, they could of kept selling FPGA, developed ASIC and announced in Nov/Dec and not made people do many things that they might not of done like making funds available to order a product that was not going to come out for 8 months+ when it was slated for 4.   

I personally shut down my GPU farm prematurely because I trusted this product would come out near that time and it down make me obsolete and I didn't want to sell when their was a glut of GPU gear out their.  It was my fault but in hindsight, if it I knew they would be this late, I would of still been running, even at $15-20 per BTC.

I feel it just shows a lack of respect for others in the mining community that don't have much choice if they want to mine.  In the environment, you should use a light touch, not the iron gauntlet.


Thoughts?

[Korbman]

I don't think the thread went to shit exactly, that won't happen until Josh shows up.

Ha, I suppose I was exaggerating a bit before. I totally agree with you on this one.

There's a whole lot of anger being directed at BFL and justifiably so, they've caused damage that extends to those that didn't even order from them IMO. I believe we have to get past this notion that their delays are caused by incompetence. While I've said the same thing myself in the past, in hindsight, I think it's pretty clear that they just want everyone to believe they're incompetent. Seriously, there's no way Josh could have believed there was any chance whatsoever that BFL would be able to ship a finished ASIC product before 12/31/2012 when he routinely implied as much in early and mid December. He's done the same thing over and over. There's simply no way. Josh is many things, but he's not dumb. When did they set up their new facility again?

That's an interesting way of looking at it (on the incompetence part). It could surely be that they're only playing dumb, but I'm not sure what the purpose of it is...giving themselves more time overall, sure..but I'm not sure what else. People can say it's to pull in more and more money, but the vast majority of orders (that we've been informed of) so far have all been in the early months (June-September). After that, reported pre-orders have been slowly dwindling..which is understandable given bucket after bucket of bad news has been dumped on our heads.

And I agree that they couldn't have shipped before the end of 2012, even if they stuck with their original chip design.

At this point I'd like someone to explain to me like I'm five how there's any chance at all that BFL didn't deliberately dismantle the FPGA market and cause a whole lot of people to lose mining revenue by making what in hindsight were awful decisions based on misinformation supplied by BFL to support their blatantly premature ASIC announcement. I believe they had a very limited supply of FPGA chips and when their source dried up they concocted this elaborate scheme to damage their competitors and gain the upper hand in the future ASIC mining market. They very plainly had next to nothing done in fall of 2012, yet they consistently pretended as though they could be ready to ship at any time. This isn't tomfoolery, or shenanigans, it's fraud. They've cost people a lot of money with their market manipulation games.

Unfortunately I wasn't as involved in Bitcoin during the dawn / spread of FPGAs, so I don't have much of an opinion on that side of things. But what I can say is that premature offerings are a great way to build up a customer list (and massive piles of cash), especially since BFL was the first (IIRC) to offer a reasonably priced ASIC device for "pre-order". And as long as they keep pretending they know what they're doing, they can keep playing the "incompetent" card (or at least trying to) in order to fend off fraud accusations when shit hits the fan.

You're obviously bright Korbman, and I know you have BFL orders, can you explain to me where I'm wrong here?

D'aw thanks Creative, and you're quite intelligent yourself

As for my orders, the early orders were primarily driven by the notion that BFL was going to ship first..which it did seem that way at the beginning. The later, more substantial orders, were the result of a mix between timing (it was either get into BFL now, or attempt Avalon Batch #2), power efficiency (ordering 8 Avalons would rape my power bill), and space considerations. Not to mention the gamble between which would ship first (at the time).

In short, you're not wrong (yet )

...also as to Josh specifically and his PR job, I think he's done an absolutely masterful job of isolating and attacking any and all outspoken outliers here. If someone asks tough questions about BFL, particularly about their financial solvency, Inaba nearly always shows up and begins with the verbal assault. Shortly there after the thread is moved to the "troll museum" or newbies begin to attack Josh's target like a string of over protective groupies. Think about his comments about how a few posters here allegedly increase BFL sales by asking tough questions about BFL. That stuff is brilliant because it sticks with people and plants a seed of doubt in their minds.  

I partially agree here. He mostly responds to trolls with more troll-ish behavior and ignores people with valid questions or concerns. But you're right, it quickly derails the thread into a heap of garbage..usually to the point that there's just pages of "User Ignored" (as someone called it, an "Ignore Party") haha.

[Bogart]

Just 4 months ago BFL looked like a dominant player in the ASIC industry, Avalon too had customer service problems in that there was no proof/pic/video of a working unit.  People looking to invest may have been drawn to BFL because they were doing the most advertising, had the most polished website, and actually had a track record with selling FPGA units.

Not quite on-topic, but Avalon/ngzhang had a track record of selling FPGA units too.

[Dalkore]

Unfortunately I wasn't as involved in Bitcoin during the dawn / spread of FPGAs, so I don't have much of an opinion on that side of things. But what I can say is that premature offerings are a great way to build up a customer list (and massive piles of cash), especially since BFL was the first (IIRC) to offer a reasonably priced ASIC device for "pre-order". And as long as they keep pretending they know what they're doing, they can keep playing the "incompetent" card (or at least trying to) in order to fend off fraud accusations when shit hits the fan.

Korbman - First off, well thought out and reasoned reply.  I quoted the above statement from you just to ask the question.

Great for who?  You already know the answer but in the end, that is the rub.  We all support a business decision that was first and foremost a pure benefit to BFL partially at the expense of ourselves. 

The reason I say this is if they would of only taken a deposit that was payable when they were close to shipping, we would of had our coins to invest with.  The reason we did it past profit potential is because of how much the ASIC announcement changed the mining market over night, basically either support BFL or get out of mining.  So if you use modern ethics (college level) to see if their decision was ethical, it fails with you expand it past them being a business and fails of the Ethics of Care which looks at the overall affect the the action.   They did not care about enough about how much power they weld and instead used it to beat the GPU & FPGA innovation into the ground.   

This is my major criticism that I will not be satisfied until they publicly address this from principle ownership (president, ceo or chairman) addressed to the whole community.

[Nancarrow]

Side note: You wanna cheer for Avalon, because they're so fair and not taking any mining hardware for themselves? Well why would they have to mine when they could sell you a $1500 unit for $6600 (88BTC). A $1500 unit should cost 20BTC, so where are those extra 68BTC going?

It's called profit.  It's what people do when they sell stuff.  If you don't like it, don't buy it - free market at work.

Ugh, I keep seeing this pseudolibertarian bullshit. Look, it is not a free market. It is a monopoly. The two concepts are opposites.

Monopoly: it's my way or the highway.
Free market: people can buy similar products elsewhere.

Monopolies are generally bad, though that need not necessarily mean the monopolist is bad. As in this case, Avalon is the monopoly because they got their shit together and bASIC and (so far) BFL haven't, not because of any anticompetitive practices from Avalon (ironically, BFL tried the anticompetitive shit).

[Korbman]

We all support a business decision that was first and foremost a pure benefit to BFL partially at the expense of ourselves. 

The reason I say this is if they would of only taken a deposit that was payable when they were close to shipping, we would of had our coins to invest with. [...]

 

I wish this was the case. It could have saved me a bunch of headaches instead of tying up my money for 7+ months, not to mention given many initial customers peace of mind. This, of course, raises the question of "why didn't this happen?", and my initial guess is that they did need initial funds to cover some of the costs to develop ASIC chips (..existing profit from FPGAs probably wasn't nearly enough).

[...] fails of the Ethics of Care which looks at the overall affect of the action. They did not care about enough about how much power they weld and instead used it to beat the GPU & FPGA innovation into the ground.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I remember a thing or two from my Business Ethics classes

[Minor Miner]

Everyone is in this for money of some sort.   We all want it to spread and work but greed is also driving miners, not altruism.    So, I do not know why you hate BFL so much.   I LOVE THEM.   They take (and continue to take) tens of millions of dollars from suckers and people who are too blind from greed, to put one plus one together.   What you say Inaba or Josh or whatever you wish to call yourself?   Would you invest 20 Million dollars in a company run by a person that is a CONVICTED FELON and cannot leave the state of MO and seconded by a mouthpiece with a third rate education that JUST "by coincidence" goes by the same name (and lives in the same state) as a sorry assed loser that was stealing from directTV?   Come on, explain this to me.   You think Sequoia or Benchmark would finance losers like that?

Well, you all did.   And I am laughing my ass off at you all.   Thanks for keeping the difficulty low for me and all the people with half a brain that can use google to do a background search on people before giving them the equivalent of "venture capital".

There is a saying "pigs feed, but hogs get slaughtered".   you all have financed some pigs that have now become hogs by continuing to take more and more money.   what are you going to do about it?   Nothing?   I thought so.   you got what you deserved.  you all bought a lottery ticket from the dude on the corner......    ironic isn't it?

[GernMiester]

Out of all the mistakes and troubles they had along the way hiring Josh as their PR was probably the worst idea. Even on their own forums he still is unprofessional.

That sums up my beef.

[Syke]

It looks quite clear they had limited supply of their "best in class" FPGA chips, if I am wrong then they are they still shipping those quickly being that they are still profitable?

They stopped selling FPGAs 6 months months ago. They're living off investor (aka pre-orders) funds, which must be drying up since they've switched to "all sales are final" policy.

[Dalkore]

We all support a business decision that was first and foremost a pure benefit to BFL partially at the expense of ourselves.  

The reason I say this is if they would of only taken a deposit that was payable when they were close to shipping, we would of had our coins to invest with. [...]

 

I wish this was the case. It could have saved me a bunch of headaches instead of tying up my money for 7+ months, not to mention given many initial customers peace of mind. This, of course, raises the question of "why didn't this happen?", and my initial guess is that they did need initial funds to cover some of the costs to develop ASIC chips (..existing profit from FPGAs probably wasn't nearly enough).

[...] fails of the Ethics of Care which looks at the overall affect of the action. They did not care about enough about how much power they weld and instead used it to beat the GPU & FPGA innovation into the ground.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I remember a thing or two from my Business Ethics classes

1.  On your first point.  Yes, this is likely correct.  They needed more money for development, but then we can't forget this supposed "venture capitalist".  Til this date, we still have no information about this person, company or transaction so we should just assume, PRE-ORDER CUSTOMERS are the venture capitalist unknowingly.   Regardless of being their offering being real or not, people should remember these tactics and make BFL hold their business practices to a higher standard.

2.  Thank you, the Ethics of Care arguments fits this discussion so well.  They took advantage by disadvantaging MINERS (Made additional investments in GPU, FPGA and ASIC inherently very RISKY) and CUSTOMERS (by taking all the coins).


Just to expand the venture capital statement, this was used in my opinion to make people feel like "they didn't need the money" and the shipment date was so close (June to Oct), it was right around the corner so they could justify giving up their coins to get a "place in line".  

On the other hand, if customers would of been told up front, delivery would be in 2013, they would of gotten order, not as many and this would of allow more FPGA competition to come into the market before ASIC.  THIS SHOULD OF HAPPENED before ASIC.  In the end, people would of still bought ASIC from BFL (best in class) but they would of been able to provide more efficient hashing to the network and  made more investments in getting coins.

Thoughts?

[Entropy-uc]

We all support a business decision that was first and foremost a pure benefit to BFL partially at the expense of ourselves.  

The reason I say this is if they would of only taken a deposit that was payable when they were close to shipping, we would of had our coins to invest with. [...]

 

I wish this was the case. It could have saved me a bunch of headaches instead of tying up my money for 7+ months, not to mention given many initial customers peace of mind. This, of course, raises the question of "why didn't this happen?", and my initial guess is that they did need initial funds to cover some of the costs to develop ASIC chips (..existing profit from FPGAs probably wasn't nearly enough).

[...] fails of the Ethics of Care which looks at the overall affect of the action. They did not care about enough about how much power they weld and instead used it to beat the GPU & FPGA innovation into the ground.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I remember a thing or two from my Business Ethics classes

1.  On your first point.  Yes, this is likely correct.  They needed more money for development, but then we can't forget this supposed "venture capitalist".  Til this date, we still have no information about this person, company or transaction so we should just assume, PRE-ORDER CUSTOMERS are the venture capitalist unknowingly.   Regardless of being their offering being real or not, people should remember these tactics and make BFL hold their business practices to a higher standard.

2.  Thank you, the Ethics of Care arguments fits this discussion so well.  They took advantage by disadvantaging MINERS (Made additional investments in GPU, FPGA and ASIC inherently very RISKY) and CUSTOMERS (by taking all the coins).


Just to expand the venture capital statement, this was used in my opinion to make people feel like "they didn't need the money" and the shipment date was so close (June to Oct), it was right around the corner so they could justify giving up their coins to get a "place in line".  

On the other hand, if customers would of been told up front, delivery would be in 2013, they would of gotten order, not as many and this would of allow more FPGA competition to come into the market before ASIC.  THIS SHOULD OF HAPPENED before ASIC.  In the end, people would of still bought ASIC from BFL (best in class) but they would of been able to provide more efficient hashing to the network and  made more investments in getting coins.

Thoughts?

Your analysis is on the money.  But I made the same determination last June, and used that knowledge to aggressively build out an FPGA farm.

The bad news for me was that BFL's BS brought real engineers into the fray who are putting ASICs on the network right now.  Otherwise I think the development of ASIC solutions would only be starting with the current exchange rate ramp.

That is the problem with scams.  They often make losers out of everyone, not just the folks naive enough to be sucked in.

[tvbcof]

...
That is the problem with scams.  They often make losers out of everyone, not just the folks naive enough to be sucked in.

Sorry to hear of your pain.  Really!  Avalon beat my 2011 estimate of 2014 by a huge margin.  The bright side (for me) is that I never had any intention of buying any mining gear until ASIC became commodity, and that date should move up accordingly.

[Frankie Delaney]

http://www.instablogsimages.com/images/2007/11/23/lamborghini-reventon-vs-jet-img1_5965.jpg

It ain't over yet...

That's not a fair comparison, because both the lambo and the jet exist. A more apt comparison would be a lambo racing the millennium falcon. Yeah, the Millennium falcon's specs are better on paper, but it's not real.

[tvbcof]

...
That is the problem with scams.  They often make losers out of everyone, not just the folks naive enough to be sucked in.

Sorry to hear of your pain.  Really!  Avalon beat my 2011 estimate of 2014 by a huge margin.  The bright side (for me) is that I never had any intention of buying any mining gear until ASIC became commodity, and that date should move up accordingly.

Thanks.  But it hasn't been much pain.  The exchange rate has moved faster than difficulty, making a decent investment a great one over the last couple months.

But if it wasn't for those meddling kids at Avalon, I would have gotten away with all the loot!!!

Glad to hear, but...

It just occurred to me that as the price goes up, the difference in power usage between GPUs and FPGAs becomes less of a factor.  So, balls-to-the-wall hashing is king again for a while.  But I've never put a lot of thought into any of the aspects of mining.

I would suspect that the flexibility of FPGAs would tend to produce opportunities for different proof-of-work algorithms to be explored for alternate crypto-currency(-like things.)

[philips]

It ain't over yet...

The analogy could become correct, but for the moment being the plane is nowhere in sight. It is rather still in the black project stage.