Should I cancel my BFL 4/2/2013 Order?

[Tehfiend]

Only in the Bitcoin world do people have a fit when they don't have a 3 month 100% ROI.  Meanwhile, everywhere else people are falling over themselves to have a 24 months 100% ROI.

Since you obviously have a hard time empathizing with your customers let me try to explain why many of them are "having a fit".

To keep this simple lets ignore all of the people who pre-ordered last year. In your January update, you stated "if you order today, 13 January 2013, you would likely receive your order around the middle of March or possibly sooner if you're ordering a Jalapeno or a Single". If that had not been complete bullshit and a Single had arrived on time, it would have already mined almost 250BTC by now. That's over $30,000 at current exchange rates. Now imagine the people that pre-ordered a mini-rig in June last year...

Instead of participating in the ASIC gold rush like they expected, your customers have had to sit and watch the Avalon's reap the amazing rewards while you treat them like shit instead of being humble and apologetic like a real CEO should be. THIS is why people are upset with you. Of course you already know this and all of these "Only in the Bitcoin world!" posts are only there to distract people from the truth.

I pre-ordered from both BFL and Bitsyncom in Feb and I personally am not upset with delays from both companies because there's still plenty of fat on the pig and I understand that this is uncharted territory. However, I am starting to believe you have purposely mislead people and find your conduct extremely unprofessional which is much more concerning to me than the constantly slipping ship date...

[Inaba]

So much fail in the above post, I don't even know where to start.

I have an idea Tehfiend, if you are so offended, why not ask for a refund?

[RandyFolds]

So much fail in the above post, I don't even know where to start.

I have an idea Tehfiend, if you are so offended, why not ask for a refund?

So much douchebag in the above post, I don't even know where to start.

[Rampion]

So much fail in the above post, I don't even know where to start.

I have an idea Tehfiend, if you are so offended, why not ask for a refund?

Many of us paid in BTC, and you know that a refund would be a slap in our face, so we can only hold to our orders hoping you finally overcome your problems and we can try to mine back what we invested.

But instead of being transparent, you seem to be spreading dubious statements so new users keep throwing fiat at your HUGE preorder backlog... And you seem to enjoy trolling quite a bit, too.

[PuertoLibre]

  It sounds like we need a hostage negotiator with experience in Pre-Orders.

Send in Morgan Freeman with a hat full of WIN. (not FAIL)

[SgtSpike]

Keep in mind that mining profits would go up 10x as well.

ASIC's are not "the goose that laid the golden egg" as some people try to push that view of their effect on mining.

It's a moving target, ultimately profits will come down to the energy cost per coin.

There is nothing stopping BFL or Avalon re-doing their ASIC in TSMC's lower power 20nm fab sometime in the near future, and shifting the mining profit goal post yet again.

Sure, ultimately that'll happen.  But we all know that it takes months for difficulty to follow price.  And the lag time might be even longer with application-specific hardware, since BTC dropping to zero would effectively render ASIC products useless.  With video cards, people could easily recoup most of their investment by reselling their video cards if BTC took a dump, but with ASICs, not so much.  It's a riskier investment, ensuring that break-even will remain a short time period until enough people have faith that BTC is here and stable (hah!) for the long term.

[erk]

To keep this simple lets ignore all of the people who pre-ordered last year. In your January update, you stated "if you order today, 13 January 2013, you would likely receive your order around the middle of March or possibly sooner if you're ordering a Jalapeno or a Single". If that had not been complete bullshit and a Single had arrived on time, it would have already mined almost 250BTC by now. That's over $30,000 at current exchange rates. Now imagine the people that pre-ordered a mini-rig in June last year...

Lets do a reality check, back in January this year, BFL didn't know that their wafers would not meet the projected power figures as they hadn't received them yet. The unexpected higher figures only resulted in them having to totally redesign their entire ASIC product line that they had been working on for many months!

Personally, coming from an electronics background, I would like to know the technical reason why the chips didn't meet the projected power figures, was it a simple calculation mistake or something else?

[Mabsark]

I saw a post on reddit which explained this very simply in the following manner.

Lets take a network hash rate of 1000 TH/s:

1000 Th/s / 5 GH/s = 200,000

Now lets take the current network hash rate of around 75 TH/s and divide that by 200,000:

75 TH/s / 200,000 = 375 MH/s

Mining with a 5 GH/s miner when the network hash is 1000 TH/s is equivalent to mining with 375 MH/s right now. That will get you about 0.02 BTC per day.

Now lets see how this applies to the other rigs:

1000 Th/s / 25 GH/s = 40,000
75 TH/s / 40,000 = 1.875 GH/s
0.09 BTC per day

1000 Th/s / 50 GH/s = 20,000
75 TH/s / 20,000 =  3.75 GH/s
0.19 BTC per day

Even with a network hash rate of 1000 TH/s and BTC priced at $140, it would only take around 100 days to make your money back.

[PuertoLibre]

To keep this simple lets ignore all of the people who pre-ordered last year. In your January update, you stated "if you order today, 13 January 2013, you would likely receive your order around the middle of March or possibly sooner if you're ordering a Jalapeno or a Single". If that had not been complete bullshit and a Single had arrived on time, it would have already mined almost 250BTC by now. That's over $30,000 at current exchange rates. Now imagine the people that pre-ordered a mini-rig in June last year...

Lets do a reality check, back in January this year, BFL didn't know that their wafers would not meet the projected power figures as they hadn't received them yet. The unexpected higher figures only resulted in them having to totally redesign their entire ASIC product line that they had been working on for many months!

Personally, coming from an electronics background, I would like to know the technical reason why the chips didn't meet the projected power figures, was it a simple calculation mistake or something else?

A reality check based on false information.

BFL did know they needed to redo the wafer(s) due to distortions caused by the fabrication process. (back in December/November)

It wasn't until much later that this revealed was revealed to customers. The customers were kept in the dark (mostly) for about 45 days. Then they made mention that the devices they were building came much too close to the maximum heat profile they expected. So they redesigned and had customers wait without them knowing why.

Read up on the past, your reality needs some....reality.

Edit to add: "Clockbuffers", "Hand Routed Paths", "Heat Simulations Small Margins" etc.

Edit 2: In April, they had to do the same thing again. Too much heat in too small a space. They are now revising their board and case due to power issues. This is "probably" why the vast majority of developers and other high profile clients are probably getting prototypes that work well enough to be demo'd.

The stable versions aren't coming out until they have redesigned the re-design. <cough> It may be awhile...

[Transisto]

So you post the image of the hashrate as if it supports your opinion. However, even taking the most conservative number on that chart, 486 TH/s, a BFL single would still earn between .4 and .5 BTC a day.  That's $70 a day, or $2100 per month.  A 1 month 100% ROI at 486 TH network hashrate.  If the network hashrate is anything LESS than 486 TH, your 100% ROI timeframe drops dramatically.

Yes... once again, only in the bitcoin world is a 1 month 100% ROI cause for panic and bitching, heh.

Unless the price of BTC in late July / early August (the date of the 486TH hash rate) is $14. Then it would take considerably longer than 1 month to earn your money back. And the hash rate does not stop growing at 484TH (as your analysis presumed). You are looking at more like 18 months to earn your money back.

Please cite your math for 18 months.  

Fine, lets double the hashrate to 972 TH, that's .25 BTC a day, or $35 USD, or $1050.  Oh no, 2.5 month 100% ROI!  Stop the train!  Holy crap!

All of this assumes you START with a difficulty of 972 TH. The fact that we would be starting with 1/100th of that or thereabouts means your 2.5 months is reduced drastically.

Purchases were made in USD yes, but USD from 9 months ago, When they were worth ~0.1BTC not 0.007BTC.
Everyone who sold BTC to buy a BFL product expected to be able to get more BTC out of it at some point in time.

I don't see it happening anytime soon, if ever (due to power consumption) - That is all.

Excerpt from 100th mine IPO :

If the chips fail to meet the expected performance the manufacturer will provide the mine
with additional boards to achieve the expected hashrate of 100TH/s (or 0.2GH/s per
raised 1USD). If the chips fail to achieve the expected power efficiency the manufacturer
will renegotiate the management deal with the hosting data center and compensate the
100TH-mine project for the losses. If the chips fail completely a substantial delay in
mining will occur. The manufacturer will undertake an effort to reimburse the investors
not only for the invested capital but also for the lost income up to the level of 10 USD per
invested 5 USD

Have you considered a lost mitigation contract resembling this ?

[ordy]

when you are 6 months late and 100% ROI has gone from hours to months during that 'gap' people have a right to bitch........

Hours lol, how much do you think BTC was worth 6mths ago to support you claim?

corrected to reflect days instead of hours.  still a long way away from the ROI it will be when/if regular customers are seeking it from the units that were promised to be delivered in october.

BTC was worth the same then as it is now, 1 BTC = 1 BTC.  meaning if one invested BTC to acquire a device that allows them 'produce' BTC then that is how their ROI would factor.

[erk]

when you are 6 months late and 100% ROI has gone from hours to months during that 'gap' people have a right to bitch........

Hours lol, how much do you think BTC was worth 6mths ago to support you claim?

corrected to reflect days instead of hours.  still a long way away from the ROI it will be when/if regular customers are seeking it from the units that were promised to be delivered in october.

BTC was worth the same then as it is now, 1 BTC = 1 BTC.  meaning if one invested BTC to acquire a device that allows them 'produce' BTC then that is how their ROI would factor.

BFL products are not priced in BTC, your analogy is irrelevant, you might as well have used the price of oil or gold, or even LTC as a comparison.

[Transisto]

...
BFL products are not priced in BTC, your analogy is irrelevant, you might as well have used the price of oil or gold as a comparison.

Yep, they were priced in USD, USD from 9 months ago.

[k9quaint]

when you are 6 months late and 100% ROI has gone from hours to months during that 'gap' people have a right to bitch........

Hours lol, how much do you think BTC was worth 6mths ago to support you claim?

corrected to reflect days instead of hours.  still a long way away from the ROI it will be when/if regular customers are seeking it from the units that were promised to be delivered in october.

BTC was worth the same then as it is now, 1 BTC = 1 BTC.  meaning if one invested BTC to acquire a device that allows them 'produce' BTC then that is how their ROI would factor.

BFL products are not priced in BTC, your analogy is irrelevant, you might as well have used the price of oil or gold, or even LTC as a comparison.

If I spent USD to acquire a device that produced USD and the device was from Europe and was priced in Euros, would you want to limit the discussion on ROI only to Euros? No. That would be nonsense.

[ordy]

when you are 6 months late and 100% ROI has gone from hours to months during that 'gap' people have a right to bitch........

Hours lol, how much do you think BTC was worth 6mths ago to support you claim?

corrected to reflect days instead of hours.  still a long way away from the ROI it will be when/if regular customers are seeking it from the units that were promised to be delivered in october.

BTC was worth the same then as it is now, 1 BTC = 1 BTC.  meaning if one invested BTC to acquire a device that allows them 'produce' BTC then that is how their ROI would factor.

BFL products are not priced in BTC, your analogy is irrelevant, you might as well have used the price of oil or gold, or even LTC as a comparison.

If I spent USD to acquire a device that produced USD and the device was from Europe and was priced in Euros, would you want to limit the discussion on ROI only to Euros? No. That would be nonsense.

wait for it.....

i'm feeling the pathetic argument coming that because BFL doubled their prices in USD for the 'current' versions of the products that early pre-orderers were sages and should be happy about the current state of things.

[Xian01]

if you are so offended, why not ask for a refund?

I've got a better idea. How about you pay the 1000 BTC for the bet you lost over blowing your power usage estimates.

[Mabsark]

if you are so offended, why not ask for a refund?

I've got a better idea. How about you pay the 1000 BTC for the bet you lost over blowing your power usage estimates.

How exactly would that address Tehfiend's concerns. Oh that's right, it wouldn't.

[smoothie]

So much fail in the above post, I don't even know where to start.

I have an idea Tehfiend, if you are so offended, why not ask for a refund?

So given you are not so full of fail, when are you going to pay your personal 1000 BTC bet with user Runeks?

LINK: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=191600.0

[k9quaint]

if you are so offended, why not ask for a refund?

I've got a better idea. How about you pay the 1000 BTC for the bet you lost over blowing your power usage estimates.

How exactly would that address Tehfiend's concerns. Oh that's right, it wouldn't.

It might give him confidence in BFL's commitment to meeting their promises.

[Xian01]

How exactly would that address Tehfiend's concerns. Oh that's right, it wouldn't.

 Easy there cowboy. Your shill is showing.