BFL RIP OFF... price up 90%, 50GH/s for 2499$.

[repentance]

WTFFFFFF

they HAVEN'T EVEN SHIPPED ANYTHING YET AND THEY ALREADY UPPPED THE PRICE AND LOWER THE HASH?

WTF IS THIS!!!!!!!

Free market in action.

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[ralree]

Yeah who cares?  They could set the price at $10,000 each if they wanted like Avalon did.  That doesn't make it a rip off - don't buy it if you think it is.  No one is forcing you to buy ASICs.

[opentoe]

Yes, however, their ASIC are made.  Their entry cost are made.  So, from now on, producing more ASIC is dirt cheap.  I just don't like the fact that they upgrade prices without notice.  A simple "You get discount if you pre-order" would have been the least.

I do have pre-order 1 SC, but I'm starting to wonder if there's some bad faith at BFL.  I will get the guaranteed 60GH/s, although from their latest tweets, they seem to have big power problem.  So they will probably ship me (and other who pre-ordered) 2 boards at 30GH/s.  So let's see if people find a way to overclock.  Will all 8 cores be populated at lower speed, or full speed on 4 chips populated.  Well, time (hopefully) will tell.

They've changed specs on all their vaporware, increased prices big time and yet still have NOTHING. Are they expecting a whole slew of pre-orders with this new line up? Are they running out of money or something. For a company that actually doesn't sell anything is doing quite well I guess. Only in the BTC industry can you sustain a 10+ employee company and actually not have a product or service to sell. I would almost think they are slinging heroin or crack out the back door or something.

[Inspector 2211]

Yeah who cares?  They could set the price at $10,000 each if they wanted like Avalon did.  That doesn't make it a rip off - don't buy it if you think it is.  No one is forcing you to buy ASICs.

This.

[hardpick]

My guess is that they're desperate to prevent paid orders from being cancelled to stave off bankruptcy. Telling people that "all orders are final" is cute drama, but illegal in the US for a pre-order product.

I believe that is what they mean Yifu.

However according to creativx, what they are now doing is an illegal manouvre? Im unsure on the legality of this statement as I live outside the states.

http://business.ftc.gov/documents/alt051-selling-internet-prompt-delivery-rules

BFL is a US company. They cannot enact that policy and comply with FTC/SEC regs. I believe they're just posturing to stave off insolvency.

Sorry, I agree with much of what you say but you have gone too far.   BFL "cannot" do that because it against the law?
Seriously?   Sonny stole money from retirees selling them fake lottery tickets.
Josh/Inaba CONSTANTLY was illegally soliciting investors and using his own name (that is an SEC securities solicitation violation).   Josh has been hosting a co-loc of bit coin miners for non USA residents that do not pay USA income tax and would each have to form a business to be legal (that is money laundering).   Josh tells people that they can "leave their rigs in MO/KS" and save the tax of their country but DOES not charge them state sales/use tax (that is fraud).   He does this all over public forms and does not care about the law.  Why would he care about the rule you linked?
  Nasser works for a broker dealer that has rule against ANY employees engaging in an outside business without submitting a form for compliance to approve (which they NEVER approve especially if it has ANYTHING to do with f/x, commodities, debt or securities.
And you think so "law" is going to stop these guys?  They have broken so many laws constantly for the last 12 months.   They do not care about any laws because they KNOW the suckers that live in their parents' basements that they have stolen this money from them WILL DO NOTHING.

I cannot believe that true -- they have the money in the bank- so bank account should be just fine-- ie everyone prepaid  ---anyone wanting to get there money back will need to pay more for a minning rig ---so someone will buy the order to jump the que --- delays are great if you have a minning rig

[KGambler]

IMO, the 2nd scenario is far more likley.  I don't see how anyone who has read BFL's recent progress reports can believe that they now have it all figured out.  I realize that this has all been said before and that none of this is new, but I figured I would lay it out anyway because some people still seem to be confused and are assuming this is automatically good news.  

I was thinking the same thing - but then what about this: They did it silently. If I was really in dire straights for money, I'd announce "Last week to buy it at the low price before we raise it to the new price" to get people's money. Raising it silently doesn't do anything besides reduce the number of orders you get, which is the opposite of what a cash strapped company would want.

The silent move makes me feel like they are fine with money and are just trying to find the spot on the demand curve where they can maximize profit. Thoughts?

I don't really know.  It could be because changing the site IMPLIES that they have their shit together without actually having to verbally commit to claiming as much.

Also, by suddenly changing the site it locks the old customers into thinking "well in the end I got a real bargain, I can't back out now".

What do you think about them listing the Mini Rig as "out of stock"?  I can't think of any legitimate reason for them to do that.

[repentance]

What do you think about them listing the Mini Rig as "out of stock"?  I can't think of any legitimate reason for them to do that.

They don't want to accept any more mini-rig orders at this stage because shipping multiple other units to make up the 1500 GH is too expensive.

When these issues first arose, they said that they'd ship multiple units to meet promised hash rates on existing orders no matter what it cost them.  They were clearly hoping they'd only have to do that for Batch 1 orders and that they'd have resolved the issues by the time the next 6 wafers rolled out of the fab.  Now it's pretty obvious that these issues aren't going to be quickly resolved, they don't want to have to commit to shipping multiple singles (almost certainly more expensive to BFL than working mini-rig would have been) to achieve the 1500 GH on future mini-rig orders so they need to pull the product until they can resolve the issues.

[zedicus]

this cant be the same bfl.. say it isnt soo.. lol

omg, the last fleece before the run to mexico

[KGambler]

What do you think about them listing the Mini Rig as "out of stock"?  I can't think of any legitimate reason for them to do that.

They don't want to accept any more mini-rig orders at this stage because shipping multiple other units to make up the 1500 GH is too expensive.

When these issues first arose, they said that they'd ship multiple units to meet promised hash rates on existing orders no matter what it cost them.  They were clearly hoping they'd only have to do that for Batch 1 orders and that they'd have resolved the issues by the time the next 6 wafers rolled out of the fab.  Now it's pretty obvious that these issues aren't going to be quickly resolved, they don't want to have to commit to shipping multiple singles (almost certainly more expensive to BFL than working mini-rig would have been) to achieve the 1500 GH on future mini-rig orders so they need to pull the product until they can resolve the issues.

Yes, I agree with that reasoning. 

But what I meant was, what legitimate reason could they have for continuing to show the product on the site and to list it as "out of stock"?  As you point out, the product does not even exist.

[minternj]

Laziness most likely. Or optimism they might fix their power issues and sell it in the future.

[repentance]

But what I meant was, what legitimate reason could they have for continuing to show the product on the site and to list it as "out of stock"?  As you point out, the product does not even exist.

I would guess that they're still hoping to resolve the issues and offer the product.  Having the most powerful Bitcoin mining rig in your product line but out of stock makes you look superior to your competitors who only offer products similar to your low end units.  It's a marketing thing.

I'm kind of surprised that they haven't dropped the jalapeno and that they're still offering the little single.  The jalapeno's going to be pretty much a stillborn product very soon and the BFL wait list shows very few people as having ordered the little single (although that may become their new entry level product with the price rise).

One of the greatest ironies here is that BFL increased their specs to compete with bASIC and bASIC never delivered.  If they'd stuck with their original specs, they could probably have delivered months ago and had plenty of happy customers mining away at 40 GH and waiting to order a gen 2 product which did 50 GH (and happy to pay the new price because they could trade in their gen 1 units).

[nathanrees19]

Yeah who cares?  They could set the price at $10,000 each if they wanted like Avalon did.  That doesn't make it a rip off - don't buy it if you think it is.  No one is forcing you to buy ASICs.

This.

I will also This this.

[marra]

Still no confirmation of working bfl ASIC device!

[demzie]

Still no confirmation of working bfl ASIC device!

hehehehe

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Still no confirmation of working bfl ASIC device!

The bet didn't stipulate how long the shipped item had to run, so they let Luke's rig burn itself out since it was under warrantee.

This just in: Luke is upgrading his Single to a ? to be diversified.

[BKM]

Do the math - BFL in all likelihood has massive non operational currency gains. The actual ratios of BTC vs fiat purchases and whether they converted anything from Fiat into BTC is speculation.... they would have to have seriously fucked up to not have experienced major gains.

Disclosure: I have orders pending with BFL

I cannot believe that I actually have to quote myself here....

Furthermore, it is abundantly clear that this forum, and perhaps the community as a whole has a very narrow technical and personal indignation focus.

Are there ANY business people in this forum? DO YOU REALLY UNDERSTAND THE FINANCIAL AND ACCOUNTING IMPLICATIONS of what I have pointed out here?

If what I have said is true, it simply needs to be confirmed by BFL to completely eradicate the massive pile of tolling energy directed at them. Hey, don't get me wrong here - BFL has every appearance of being an operational and PR nightmare. BUT from a balance sheet perspective they could be sitting very pretty on a BTC arbitrage basis. Yes, the community has forfeited their BTC vs USD gain by 'investing' in a BFL preorder - but what is the correlation to a 'real world' rate of return on invested capital. Anyone here remember the "tech bubble"? It is impossible to divorce the flow of capital from the metrics of comparative returns and the underlying fundamentals associated with them. If you think crypto currencies are immune from the effects you are sorely mistaken and your lunch is being served to others, now.

Like it or not you have few choices. If you are a seasoned stock picker you might realize a 20% cash on cash return - if you rely on investment counsel you *should* be happy with 6 - 8%. If you buy and operate a business the ROIC is 35 - 43% on a risk adjusted basis. Am I speaking English here? If this sounds like a foreign language YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR DEPTH. GO BACK TO WOW or whatever gaming chat room or newsfeed you heard about crypto currency in.

WAKE UP BTC community. Big money and interests are taking a very hard look at BTC and crypto currency in general right now. It won't take many billionaires to dominate this market in a hurry. Stop pissing in the pool we all have to swim in.

[sunblaster]

For what it's worth that unit in BFL recent pics is still going, although with some big dips, and quite a few rejected shares, four days and 4.84BTC, about 3 BTC behind @ 25Gh/s

http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/1CdcYVP4T4hjHwt353pEnGHrigeDLvuvZL

My educated guess this is one of the first working per-production units, once they got 3 full days @ 25GH/s confirmed, pricing and power were adjusted accordingly on their web-site. Before April 1 there were no functional prototypes, hence a baseline for a SC was 30GH/s all this time up till today.

What was the wafer yield again? If I were to guess current 32000+ orders will take anywhere from 6 to 12 months to fill, maybe next year anyone who buys anything now will get something, that is if they start shipping and won't fold the business, pun intended.

Art

[BR0KK]

Do the math - BFL in all likelihood has massive non operational currency gains. The actual ratios of BTC vs fiat purchases and whether they converted anything from Fiat into BTC is speculation.... they would have to have seriously fucked up to not have experienced major gains.

Disclosure: I have orders pending with BFL

I cannot believe that I actually have to quote myself here....

Furthermore, it is abundantly clear that this forum, and perhaps the community as a whole has a very narrow technical and personal indignation focus.

Are there ANY business people in this forum? DO YOU REALLY UNDERSTAND THE FINANCIAL AND ACCOUNTING IMPLICATIONS of what I have pointed out here?

If what I have said is true, it simply needs to be confirmed by BFL to completely eradicate the massive pile of tolling energy directed at them. Hey, don't get me wrong here - BFL has every appearance of being an operational and PR nightmare. BUT from a balance sheet perspective they could be sitting very pretty on a BTC arbitrage basis. Yes, the community has forfeited their BTC vs USD gain by 'investing' in a BFL preorder - but what is the correlation to a 'real world' rate of return on invested capital. Anyone here remember the "tech bubble"? It is impossible to divorce the flow of capital from the metrics of comparative returns and the underlying fundamentals associated with them. If you think crypto currencies are immune from the effects you are sorely mistaken and your lunch is being served to others, now.

Like it or not you have few choices. If you are a seasoned stock picker you might realize a 20% cash on cash return - if you rely on investment counsel you *should* be happy with 6 - 8%. If you buy and operate a business the ROIC is 35 - 43% on a risk adjusted basis. Am I speaking English here? If this sounds like a foreign language YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR DEPTH. GO BACK TO WOW or whatever gaming chat room or newsfeed you heard about crypto currency in.

WAKE UP BTC community. Big money and interests are taking a very hard look at BTC and crypto currency in general right now. It won't take many billionaires to dominate this market in a hurry. Stop pissing in the pool we all have to swim in.

Did they ever take BTC directly?

Are you implying that they now speculating  with the preorder money to raise more funds?

[nathanrees19]

Still no confirmation of working bfl ASIC device!

1 satoshi says that people will still be posting this even after all the pre orders have been shipped.

[nathanrees19]

some big dips, and quite a few rejected shares

That's more likely to be a mining software problem than an ASIC problem.