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Question: When will Butterfly Labs (BFL) run out of money?
Within 6 months from now (October 2013) - 71 (40.8%)
Within a year from now (May 2014) - 21 (12.1%)
Dont't worry, they will be fine - 82 (47.1%)
Total Voters: 174

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Author Topic: When will Butterfly Labs (BFL) run out of money?  (Read 12313 times)
Frizz23 (OP)
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April 21, 2013, 11:18:59 AM
 #1

I would like to discuss the probability of Butterfly Labs running out of money.

This would have serious implications:
- no more refunds
- no ASIC products
- no support for FGPA products

I don't know when their Venture Capital partners put an end to it (they surely won't wait forever to see a return on invest), so this discussion will be solely about pre order money.

While watching Butterfly Labs Company Video I was thinking: What are those employes actually doing? Besides looking busy on the soldering stations for the video and moving (empty?) boxes around with forklifters ...

6 months have passed since BFLs estimated ASIC shipping date (October 2012) and they have not shipped as single ASIC product to one of their customers. What did BFL workers do all day long in the last 6 month?
Labor costs must be a huge cash burner for BFL.

Yesterday BFL has finally managed to ship something that's supposed to be a Jalapeno to a technical reviewer: BFL Jalapeno Unboxing and Demo. Although it's not passively cooled any more and needs way more than the 5 Watt it was originally designed for.

It seems BFL simply took a Single SC casing, heatsink and fan for this Jalapeno2.0 thingy. While watching this video I noticed how incredibly loud the fan was. It seems to be running at maximum speed. Which means it's barely able to handle the 30 Watt of this device.

A few calculations: 5.5GHs at 30 Watt means:
- Jalapeno: 5.5GH/s at 30 Watt
- Little Single SC: 30GH/s at 163 Watt
- Single SC: 60GH/s at 327 Watt
- Mini Rig SC: 1500GH/s at 8181 Watt (!!!)

If the fan/heatsink is barely able to handle 30 Watt, how is it supposed to handle 163 or 327 Watt? No way in hell can it do that!

Which means, besides the Mini Rig Casings, BFL can also throw away all their Single and Little Single casings, PCBs, fans and heatsinks. Or maybe reuse a few of them for the "new" Jalapeno2.0.

Which means: More (of our pre order) money down the drain ...

My best guess is that BFL starts shipping what they have: Jalapenos. And only Jalapenos. Which will leave lots of angry Single, Little Single and Mini Rig customers behind.

I highly doubt they can manage to ship 400 units a day (Josh brought that number up) - I fear it will be more like 40 per day. Or 4 ;-)

Summarized:
- lots of angry Single, Little Single and Mini Rig customers want a refund: negative cashflow
- existing Jalapeno customers get their products: negative cashflow (because BFL already has the pre order money, but has to pay labor costs)
- a few new Jalapeno customers: positive cashflow

But will that be enough for BFL to survive?
What do you think?

Disclaimer: All this is of course speculation, based on the little facts that are available from BFL.

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April 21, 2013, 11:23:53 AM
 #2

When will you run out of BFL threads?
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April 21, 2013, 01:32:26 PM
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I think that depends on the price of Bitcoin. I'm pretty sure they leveraged their way into the rally to remain profitable, but now that's over it might go down pretty quick.

To be honest I am surprised they even got that far as producing two of their low end products. Might have been assembled with a skillet and toaster oven technique... At this rate.. oh well.  Roll Eyes
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April 21, 2013, 01:34:13 PM
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When will you run out of BFL threads?
You never have enough threads when doing calculations that can be computed massively parallel!
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April 21, 2013, 01:36:48 PM
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The answer is simple. As long people are putting more and more money into BFL venture they will no run out of money anytime soon. As long people want a refund 100% of the customers the had run out of money a LONG time ago  Wink

Please help the Led Boy aka Bicknellski to make us a nice Christmas led tree and pay WASP membership fee here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=643999.msg7191563#msg7191563
And remember Bicknellski is not collecting money from community;D
rograz
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April 21, 2013, 02:34:06 PM
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Considering they have a working chip and the amount of orders they have been bringing in before they even had a working product, they would have no problem finding additional VC funding at this point. A start up project being literally sold out before you even have a prototype is almost unheard of.

Had the chip on the other hand been a bust and needed a complete redesign then this discussion would have been a lot more interesting. The only thing atm that could be a bit worrisome is the actual cost of making each pre-order unit, this is more about how fast they can make back the initial RnD costs though.
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April 21, 2013, 02:37:19 PM
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they'll be fine. the recent demo unit hype will ensure plenty of preorders.

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

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April 21, 2013, 02:40:20 PM
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they'll be fine. the recent demo unit hype will ensure plenty of preorders.
Prerecords of what? YouTube Videos channel or line in the queue for next year eventually?
But as i already told they will probably will not run out of money in that case

Please help the Led Boy aka Bicknellski to make us a nice Christmas led tree and pay WASP membership fee here:
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April 21, 2013, 03:20:18 PM
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Right around the time people realise this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=181982.0
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April 21, 2013, 03:49:10 PM
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To be honest I am surprised they even got that far as producing two of their low end products. Might have been assembled with a skillet and toaster oven technique... At this rate.. oh well.  Roll Eyes

Pics of FPGA Single assembly last year:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=90333.0


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April 21, 2013, 05:04:52 PM
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I think bfl is done too, they made their own grave.  (see my sig)
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April 21, 2013, 05:30:33 PM
 #12

I'm sure there's an obsolete pallet of Nexus 7s collecting dust in their warehouse, for those won't be used for anything since the $29,995.00 minirig won't be produced, although she, cleverly dubbed the Marilyn Monroe model, was snowcased at CES.

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April 21, 2013, 05:35:58 PM
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"What are those employes actually doing?"

exactly my conclusion.  nice sexy office with lots of people doing nothing.  all the work is done overseas.  all they need is a shipping manifest and a third party... boy their investors are going to be pissed.
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April 21, 2013, 08:38:27 PM
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The difficulty is going to jump higher than anyone really imagined this summer (or before), if they can't even get their bigger units near the specs (or shipping date) of avalon batch 3 (which might struggle to make a profit) they are completely toast (like their passive cooling prototypes).

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April 21, 2013, 08:48:25 PM
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It's going to 1 billion.  Plug that into the calculator and see what spits out....
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April 21, 2013, 09:03:29 PM
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they'll be fine. the recent demo unit hype will ensure plenty of preorders.

There is also the fact that lots of people wont take the risk or pre-ordering and delays. They will wait until the product is flowing out the doors nicely with reasonable time from order placement to shipping eg. a couple of weeks, before forking out for the products. Then you have a second wave of buyers if they are happy with the product, will want to order another one.

So in a nutshell, the faster they can complete the pre-orders and get then out the door, the more orders they will get from careful buyers and repeat business.

With that in mind it would pay for BFL to outsource volume production.

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April 21, 2013, 09:05:08 PM
 #17

It's going to 1 billion.  Plug that into the calculator and see what spits out....

I really hope that isn't this year. Have you got a citation or calculation for this?

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April 21, 2013, 09:30:58 PM
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Same sources you are seeing... just a guess based upon pattern of Avalon ASIC chip sales per my posts in Org's analysis thread.  It's your question he answered... where do YOU think we're headed?
John Self
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April 21, 2013, 10:08:08 PM
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Same sources you are seeing... just a guess based upon pattern of Avalon ASIC chip sales per my posts in Org's analysis thread.  It's your question he answered... where do YOU think we're headed?

Gosh, I just read it, wow. I think it is tough to say where we are headed.

Organofcorti mentioned that he thinks the hashrate will go too high for people to make returns (I visualise it like the recent speculation bubble), and I agree that it looks like this will happen (possibly before next year) at the moment. If bitcoin falls back below 100, I don't like to think about some reckless people getting their children repossessed by debt collectors along with their Avalons- but this might screw miners, and buying would probably halt until hashing power gets cheaper. If the USD/BTC exchange rate rises from now, people might still be buying loads of ASICs in November, and I think this is certain to carry us past 1 bil difficulty by early 2014. The interesting thing about this is, even if mining is barely worth the electricity late this year- people will still keep their units online, because they can't be easily sold for other purposes, just to make back a little bit of their investment. These people will effectively have donated funds to the security of the network.

In short: I think we'll get close(ish) to 1bil by new year if btc stays the same, we might hit it before new year if BTC rockets, and we'll probably hit it eventually, but the difficulty is going sky high no-matter what happens to BTC this year.

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April 21, 2013, 11:15:54 PM
 #20

SELL ALL YOUR BELONGINGS!!!!

BUY BFL MINERS!!!!

BitCoin is NOT a pyramid - it's a pagoda.
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