[CLOSED] Avalon ASIC chip distribution

[eraziel]

So, who took a loan to buy chips, who invested their savings and who had some fuck-around money that he decided he'd throw at some chips with the possibility to make some money or never see them again...

I consider myself to be of the 3rd type so I'm not losing sleep over this, however next time i have 400-500 eur to spend on random stuff I guess it's not going to be mining equipment preorders

[driksson]

So, if your interested, i have a poll in my footer.. But, mining is dead from now on..  Refund must be the only option.

[iikun]

So, if your interested, i have a poll in my footer.. But, mining is dead from now on..  Refund must be the only option.

As of this moment only 38% of your poll wants a refund. You might want to change your sig so it isn't misleading

[zefir]

Answer me this - how is Burnin fucked?  He received lots of funds for orders he may never fill.
How is Zefir fucked?  He already earned 9.9 % of the cost of every chip for organizing the group buys (+-500 BTC).
A couple of days ago he sold 7000 Avalon chips at a profit to Bitmine. 

The only people fucked are us idiots who participated in the group buys and trusted Avalon  We are now left with garbage
if anything at all.  I really hope that the Asian ASIC cartel will kill Bitcoin.

Before this starts to get personal, I'll tell you how I am f*cked.

From those 8 batches ordered, almost half the chips are mine, i.e. ordered by and paid by me for my mining operation. I am not only the organizer of this group-buy, but also its largest participant. You do not really expect that the profit I made by selling 7k chips to Bitmine covers the loss of the remaining 30k, do you? Needless to say that with that your estimate on how much I earned organizing this is way off.

As for the manufacturers and designers, how can't you see how they are f*cked? Burnin found a company to work on this for months, invested tons of own money for development and paid for PCBs and components upfront to minimize lead times. Everyone bailing out will leave him (and other manufacturers) sitting at a ton of waste and a huge loss.

[BitCsByBit]

Steamboat has posted an update. He organised a group buy for 6 batches .

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192916.msg3033196#msg3033196

Edit: SB also organised an assembly for 3000 K16's

[iikun]

Answer me this - how is Burnin fucked?  He received lots of funds for orders he may never fill.
How is Zefir fucked?  He already earned 9.9 % of the cost of every chip for organizing the group buys (+-500 BTC).
A couple of days ago he sold 7000 Avalon chips at a profit to Bitmine. 

The only people fucked are us idiots who participated in the group buys and trusted Avalon  We are now left with garbage
if anything at all.  I really hope that the Asian ASIC cartel will kill Bitcoin.

Before this starts to get personal, I'll tell you how I am f*cked.

From those 8 batches ordered, almost half the chips are mine, i.e. ordered by and paid by me for my mining operation. I am not only the organizer of this group-buy, but also its largest participant. You do not really expect that the profit I made by selling 7k chips to Bitmine covers the loss of the remaining 30k, do you? Needless to say that with that your estimate on how much I earned organizing this is way off.

As for the manufacturers and designers, how can't you see how they are f*cked? Burnin found a company to work on this for months, invested tons of own money for development and paid for PCBs and components upfront to minimize lead times. Everyone bailing out will leave him (and other manufacturers) sitting at a ton of waste and a huge loss.

This is why I would be in favour of either a partial refund from Bitsyncom or alternatively being delivered a certain amount of extra chips or 2nd gen chips for free. It seems better & certainly more hassle-free for all parties.

[Bicknellski]

Update: Endgame

With ASICMINER today announcing blades for as low as 3.5BTC, it appeared that Avalon chips that do not mine today are not going to break even any more. While those blades went already out of stock after some hours, the new price for mining rig is officially set. Essentially this means that if Avalon does not ship the remaining chips fully within the next two weeks, they become worth less than their shipping costs.

Driven by this event, today I was flooded with refund requests that built up a queue of ~2000 chips. I do not expect any takers for this and it is realistic to assume that there will be no further refunds.


I am sad to admit that I do not believe in a fast and complete delivery of the remaining batches. This stopped to be a game the moment this group-buy alone funneled $500k to Avalon. Although we have only a small set of 'no BS rules', we still have a written commitment to deliver in time as part of the ToS. With so many community members taking a loss directly or indirectly through Avalon failing to meet their schedule, we (together with other customers) need to consider taking serious actions to end this tragedy.

At this stage our options are as follows:

• A. sit and wait
  That was my tactics so far, assuming that civilized and respectful behavior will ensure to get our chips as fast as possible. This in fact might have been the reason why so far our group-buy got more chips than others, at the same time with a delivery of one batch per month our last will arrive mid 2014 - ready for re-direction to the Bitcoin museum
• B. demand full refund
  The majority would be fine with getting their invested coins back and let this chapter pass into oblivion. According to Avolon's ToS, there will be no refunds. But if they really care about Bitcoin and its community and realize how much harm they caused to so many of us, they might consider playing fair and send us the coins back. This implies that you do not want your chips any more.
• C. negotiate for compensation
  While refunding all orders might exceed Avalon's capabilities, they might prefer offering a compensation in form of free chips or free upgrades to next-gen ones. This implies you would like continue dealing with Avalon.
• D. legal action
  Leave the polite arena and sue them into ground; make an example of them and put an end to the pre-order madness in Bitcoinland. This implies you are willing to throw more good money after the bad - for a very limited expectation. Your money would feed some poor lawyers and Avalon if needed will declare bankruptcy (they said they do not control the collected funds any more).

I personally will approach Avalon with options B and C for now and consider combining forces with other group-buy organizers for D if we do not hear back within a reasonable time-frame. If you have a different opinion you'd like to share, please do so either here or via PM.

+ 1 We are working on B and D at this point. Please let know how we can help.

We have 10K group buy only for our COOP but we are keen to see an immediate resolution. We put in a refund request support ticket on August 5th and messaged Yifu a few times before that date to find out what was going on with our developer chips. Drop me an email if you would like to coordinate darin.bicknell@gmail.com

[marto74]

As far  @ least 3 GB in EUROPE were made with escrow from John K , I think you have to coordinate actions with him too.
He have made orders for at least 6 Groups.
My GB delivery is 2 days late for now , so I do not have grounds to take any actions @ the moment

[darkfriend77]

B, C and then D, like Zefir suggested.

+1111 

C is an other dreamer package ... ^^ but who cares ... "Hope is the last (thing) to die."

[weaknesswaran]

I think "B - full refund to cut the losses" is the option i would prefer

C - seems unrealistic

[rebelrat]

Answer me this - how is Burnin fucked?  He received lots of funds for orders he may never fill.
How is Zefir fucked?  He already earned 9.9 % of the cost of every chip for organizing the group buys (+-500 BTC).
A couple of days ago he sold 7000 Avalon chips at a profit to Bitmine. 

The only people fucked are us idiots who participated in the group buys and trusted Avalon  We are now left with garbage
if anything at all.  I really hope that the Asian ASIC cartel will kill Bitcoin.

Before this starts to get personal, I'll tell you how I am f*cked.

From those 8 batches ordered, almost half the chips are mine, i.e. ordered by and paid by me for my mining operation. I am not only the organizer of this group-buy, but also its largest participant. You do not really expect that the profit I made by selling 7k chips to Bitmine covers the loss of the remaining 30k, do you? Needless to say that with that your estimate on how much I earned organizing this is way off.

As for the manufacturers and designers, how can't you see how they are f*cked? Burnin found a company to work on this for months, invested tons of own money for development and paid for PCBs and components upfront to minimize lead times. Everyone bailing out will leave him (and other manufacturers) sitting at a ton of waste and a huge loss.

OK. I see your point.  Nevertheless, I am a little surprised that you went with  option A for as long as you  did,
considering how much of your money was on the line.  My loss is far smaller, but that does not matter.  What
matters is the principle, and there is really no earthly reason whatsoever that anybody should not insist on
option B, otgherwise option D.   Appeasement does not work with  savages, see Chamberlain vs. Hitler.

Option D may mean more money upfront, but  it also means that Bitsyncom's assets (speak mining interests, distributorships
that they have set up in Asia, next gen chips, etc) can be attached after a successful lawsuit, and yes, this may take years.
But to allow YIFU to get away with ripping everybody off and walk away scot-free just does not sit well with me.
This would  make me a total sucker that does not even fight  back - wrong person.

And yes, I do feel for Burnin and everybody else that got caught up in this ASIC mess.  Another  reason to fight the dirty
rat from Brooklyn.

[zefir]

OK. I see your point.  Nevertheless, I am a little surprised that you went with  option A for as long as you  did,
considering how much of your money was on the line.  My loss is far smaller, but that does not matter.  What
matters is the principle, and there is really no earthly reason whatsoever that anybody should not insist on
option B, otgherwise option D.   Appeasement does not work with  savages, see Chamberlain vs. Hitler.

Option D may mean more money upfront, but  it also means that Bitsyncom's assets (speak mining interests, distributorships
that they have set up in Asia, next gen chips, etc) can be attached after a successful lawsuit, and yes, this may take years.
But to allow YIFU to get away with ripping everybody off and walk away scot-free just does not sit well with me.
This would  make me a total sucker that does not even fight  back - wrong person.

And yes, I do feel for Burnin and everybody else that got caught up in this ASIC mess.  Another  reason to fight the dirty
rat from Brooklyn.

Oh, please do not assume I kept silent all the time. No, in fact I bombarded Avalon through any communication channel I am aware of - up to the point where I realized it is a waste of resources writing monologues.

It is just that allowing your emotions take over and start ranting publicly helps noone. The other aspect to consider is: the first batch was only 4 weeks late, the 2nd maybe 7 weeks. Sounds like a lot, but given that no single vendor in Bitcoinland so far kept his schedules (with some customers waiting for over a year ), it was reasonable to just hope for the best. I still hope and noticed there are some fresh movements (refund requests processing), so maybe not everything is lost yet.

[CMMPro]

https://blockchain.info/address/1FGAftzSTztFSB8LMwsrdCKTyqGY6zr3sU


And it gone...the remaining 55,000 btc just went to this address:
https://blockchain.info/address/1JrwWrt3TYUzMYFEBLX5hTo1zFsEY6tWZN

Seems like refund activity is happening in this address though.
Lot's of 100btc tranactions to various addresses.

[marto74]

It looks like funds are used to refund batch 3 orders

[CMMPro]

It looks like funds are used to refund batch 3 orders

At least that is positive.

[marto74]

It looks like funds are used to refund batch 3 orders

At least that is positive.

For batch 3 customers waiting for refund yes it's good news.
For us chip buyers the fact that Avalon is spending chip money for batch3 refunds is not such a good news

[Bitcoinorama]

Answer me this - how is Burnin fucked?  He received lots of funds for orders he may never fill.
How is Zefir fucked?  He already earned 9.9 % of the cost of every chip for organizing the group buys (+-500 BTC).
A couple of days ago he sold 7000 Avalon chips at a profit to Bitmine.  

The only people fucked are us idiots who participated in the group buys and trusted Avalon  We are now left with garbage
if anything at all.  I really hope that the Asian ASIC cartel will kill Bitcoin.

I don't!

What did Bitcoin do to deserve this?

It didn't do anything to you.

Greed is an inherent trait amongst humans with no integrity.

When spotted, such personalities should be avoided at all costs, but greed begetts greed, and the foolish greedy will always forgive the ultra greedy for their voracity for excess once more.

This is a mere test for Bitcoin, and the response and whether such charachter traits are allowed to continue is down to how you choose to react.

Unfortunatley it's more than a mere test for yourselves, so respond accordingly, or stay silent and be walked over, it's your choice to make...

[zefir]

FYI

Dear BitSyncom,

I organized one of the first group-buys for Avalon ASICs with a total of 80k chips during the second half of April. I already received the first two orders, and while they arrived later than agreed, I understand the difficulties you faced with delivery and am happy to have enabled some DIY projects to produce boards with an expected break-even potential.

With the further delays and the recent development in the mining market, we already passed the point where your chips will ever see a ROI. While the accelerated development of next-gen ASICs and the resulting increase in difficulty is every miners' risk issue, the delay is not. Decision to order the chips was based on your ToS giving a 9-10 weeks delivery time, and with the remaining orders being late for at least 8 weeks you for sure are aware that the chips lost their chance to make back their investment.

As you can imagine, all users desperately waiting for their chips are becoming more and more impatient. I personally have ~200 very sad and upset people in my group-buy and I feel very desperate and helpless not being able to do anything about it.

Yifu, it is only some months ago where you have been one of the most respected and honored person in Bitcoinland. I strongly believe that all this mess is a result of issues out of your control. Nevertheless with power comes responsibility, and now it is on you to take responsibility for the masses of folks out there who put serious amount of coins into your chips. If you really care about Bitcoin and its community, you can't just stand there and watch how disappointed users leave the scene.

As group-buy organizer and large-scale buyer I would like to suggest you several options to compensate chip-buyers for the late delivery:
a) refund: no chips, full refund
b) compensation in BTC: deliver chips, compensate XX% of the initial price
c) compensation in chips: deliver chips, add YY% more chips as compensation
d) compensation by upgrades: no chips, convert orders to next-gen chip orders

Would you be willing and capable to consider those suggestions? If so, I'd be glad to negotiate between my group-buyers and you to reach some agreement acceptable for both sides. Also, I would include other group-buy organizers to come to a generic agreement. For the sake of Bitcoin, please come back to me and let's bring this, that poisoned the community already enough, to an end.


Best Regards
zefir

I'm glad the group buyer leaders are more understanding.

a) I am very open to this, this is what I suggest.
b) I am not a fan of this, on a principle level I rather do a full refund. plus, I rather sell the chips once we have them in hand at a discount, instead of letting people wait.( which is about the same as doing a partial refund in my opinion.)
c) this will not be good, as you know the chips isn't going to get here any faster, and ordering more would run into more delays ( this is the worst option, do not offer.)
d) while in theory this option sounds the best for us right? we keep the money, tout our gen2/3/4 chips and etc etc, but reality is we want to stay away from all pre-orders in the future. as you can imagine, all the problems, rumors and just about everything is caused by the fact we took pre-orders, and we will no longer be doing this.

you are welcome to post this in your thread.

[itod]

It looks like funds are used to refund batch 3 orders

At least that is positive.

For batch 3 customers waiting for refund yes it's good news.
For us chip buyers the fact that Avalon is spending chip money for batch3 refunds is not such a good news

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nVk25ZvTkU

[whisper]

All here is depend from DIY guys(burnin, marto etc..). Did they bought parts for all expected chips already?