Butterfly Labs Forced "On Hold For Refund" for all my Single SC orders

[wrenchmonkey]

So the question is, if you had 100 5 gh/s units ready to sell for $247.00 each right now, and selling them would get you a huge chunk of the market share coming up, why would you be mining with them to generate ~$2,700 a day in Bitcoin?

500 GH/s will get your roughly 0.6% of the bitcoin network. The Bitcoin network is dominated by Avalon and ASICMiner. Their devices together could easily account for over 50% of the hash rate now that Avalon is shipping batch 2.

Also, BFL had to include twice as many chips as planned in order to get their advertised hash rate. If they are doing small batches of chips (100 or so) on an MPW prototype run, their chips are quite expensive ($50-100) and that would eat their margins (thus explaining their price hike on Jalapenos). If they are only making $50 per device, then $2700 a day looks good. Especially if they are in a cash crunch.

Personally, I don't think BFL has enough units working to make that much.

All the more reason that the implication that BFL is sitting on their hands--or a working farm of ASIC mining hardware--is absurd. They're caught up in the middle of an arms race, and if they don't ship soon, they are going to lose big. I can assure you that they know this better than anybody else. The last thing they want or need is to delay shipping to the point that people no longer need or want their product.

They are failing to hit targets, repeatedly. Nobody denies this. Understandably, people are frustrated. But being a business owner myself, I can assure you that it's always the most frustrating/stressful for the person who is under the gun to deliver.

Again, nobody is saying that BFL is perfect, or that it's not frustrating to not receive your product. Nobody's saying that BFL and their representatives haven't made mistakes, or dropped the ball in customer-relations.

The question at hand is whether it's reasonable to assume that a customer can go about actively seeking to trash a company (regardless how justified he may feel), and not expect that company to sever business relations with him. The answer is that you can't. This isn't the moral dilemma some people are making it out to be.

[Xian01]

 If wrenchmonkey is calm, rational, and fact-filled, then I'm the Queen of England.

 And yet another person to add to my ignore list.

 The BFL reality-distortion bubble is strong today.

Nah, you're not even close to being objective.
wrenchmonkey's posts have been calm, rational, logical and fact-filled.
He has systematically bitch-slapped the trolls on pretty much every exchange.
Your last sentence makes it clear you shouldn't be taken seriously anyway, poo-flinger.  It's just another baseless jab, an attempt to provoke rather than debate.

[PuertoLibre]

So who is the bigger douche here ?

You are.  Hands down.  Not even close.

 Noted. Hey, I'll be the first to admit I can be an asshole, but I'm working on getting better.

 Everyone has a breaking point, and I obviously hit mine with respect to this transaction.

And it takes a big person to admit that.

However, your admission seems hollow when it's prefaced by several pages of persecution complex, and attempts at using bureaucratic agencies to exact your vengeance.  

In light of all this, do you think he shouldn't have? What do you think he should have done. Provide an alternative.

The one way to bring down a shill is simply to ask them what the alternative is. When they provide a laughable answer like "bend over"...then you know they are deluded.

[wrenchmonkey]

If wrenchmonkey is calm, rational, and fact-filled, then I'm the Queen of England.

 Any yet another person to add to my ignore list.

 The BFL reality-distortion bubble is strong today.

Nah, you're not even close to being objective.
wrenchmonkey's posts have been calm, rational, logical and fact-filled.
He has systematically bitch-slapped the trolls on pretty much every exchange.
Your last sentence makes it clear you shouldn't be taken seriously anyway, poo-flinger.  It's just another baseless jab, an attempt to provoke rather than debate.

You're the Queen of something, that's for sure. 

[PuertoLibre]

Most of the time, however, that I've seen Josh lash out is toward trolls who come out of the gate swinging. Not toward people who can frame their questions and opinions in a respectful manner.

We must be reading different forums. You can simply look at my exchanges with Josh. Two or three times now he's replied to me with something along the lines of "your post is so dumb I don't know where to begin". He takes the time to reply to me to say I'm wrong but for some reason can never find where to begin and explain how I am wrong and never once addresses any of the points I make. I don't use petty insults and I post legitimate points based on facts that I take the time to quote and link sources for but all he can muster is insults in return. My points might be wrong but insulting me isn't going to show me the error of my ways.

That's because your posts ARE dumb, dude. You're an imbecile, in every sense of the word. You're intentionally obtuse. NOTHING will show you the error of your ways. You can't see the distinction between 'being frustrated' and 'being a troll'. Go figure that Josh also thinks you're an idiot. You ARE.

You must be Inaba in disguise....

Anyway, TehFiend to be my replacement. He will one day take over for me. Frizz and Smoothie are still maturing.

They must forge a troll post so strong, that even Sonny comes to defend the companies practice.

(all said in jest)

[alfabitcoin]

Xian, how BFL found out your order details? I mean dude, what do you thinking when writing post in such tone if you knew they know your info and that they could easilly do this?

[PuertoLibre]

Name:   wrenchmonkey
Posts:   283
Position:   Sr. Member
Date Registered:   April 16, 2013, 01:09:04 AM
36 out of last 40 posts are defending BFL.

Here is you in the newbie forum talking about your order with BFL.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=114329.msg1932676#msg1932676

Since you're working on that whole 'self-improvement' thing, this might be a good jumping off point.

 Thanks Josh. At least one of us is trying.

Too bad you're not BFL. You're just some random joe blow on a forum, you're not a professional company, which is what BFL is aspiring to be. There's the difference.

In your world, customers would never complain about BFL and just sit there for another year, am I right?

You caught on very quickly.

I am worried.

(MASTER BFL Shill)

[Henchman24]

If wrenchmonkey is calm, rational, and fact-filled, then I'm the Queen of England.

 Any yet another person to add to my ignore list.

 The BFL reality-distortion bubble is strong today.

Nah, you're not even close to being objective.
wrenchmonkey's posts have been calm, rational, logical and fact-filled.
He has systematically bitch-slapped the trolls on pretty much every exchange.
Your last sentence makes it clear you shouldn't be taken seriously anyway, poo-flinger.  It's just another baseless jab, an attempt to provoke rather than debate.

No worries.  I realized you were a drama queen with a bullhorn quite awhile ago.

Being an asshole has consequences.  *shrug*    I'm sorry you seem impervious to learning that lesson.

Good day to you, sir.  Your persecution complex certainly isn't going to affect my life in any way.

[Syke]

I put my money where my mouth is. The day I saw confirmed customers receive Butterfly products was the day I ordered.

I'm curious, when do you think you'll receive your order?

[ThatDGuy]

So the question is, if you had 100 5 gh/s units ready to sell for $247.00 each right now, and selling them would get you a huge chunk of the market share coming up, why would you be mining with them to generate ~$2,700 a day in Bitcoin?

500 GH/s will get your roughly 0.6% of the bitcoin network. The Bitcoin network is dominated by Avalon and ASICMiner. Their devices together could easily account for over 50% of the hash rate now that Avalon is shipping batch 2.

Also, BFL had to include twice as many chips as planned in order to get their advertised hash rate. If they are doing small batches of chips (100 or so) on an MPW prototype run, their chips are quite expensive ($50-100) and that would eat their margins (thus explaining their price hike on Jalapenos). If they are only making $50 per device, then $2700 a day looks good. Especially if they are in a cash crunch.

Personally, I don't think BFL has enough units working to make that much.

All the more reason that the implication that BFL is sitting on their hands--or a working farm of ASIC mining hardware--is absurd. They're caught up in the middle of an arms race, and if they don't ship soon, they are going to lose big. I can assure you that they know this better than anybody else. The last thing they want or need is to delay shipping to the point that people no longer need or want their product.

They are failing to hit targets, repeatedly. Nobody denies this. Understandably, people are frustrated. But being a business owner myself, I can assure you that it's always the most frustrating/stressful for the person who is under the gun to deliver.

Again, nobody is saying that BFL is perfect, or that it's not frustrating to not receive your product. Nobody's saying that BFL and their representatives haven't made mistakes, or dropped the ball in customer-relations.

The question at hand is whether it's reasonable to assume that a customer can go about actively seeking to trash a company (regardless how justified he may feel), and not expect that company to sever business relations with him. The answer is that you can't. This isn't the moral dilemma some people are making it out to be.

So much this.  Anybody currently interested in making money in the developing ASIC market would also not going to be so shortsighted to think that a little bit of money mined today means anything compared to dominating the sales of ASICs right now.  People are already throwing money at BFL, if they were able to ship at volume today, the amount of money being thrown at them would be absurd:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195052.0

This is one group buy for US/Canada for the USB ASICs.  BTC895 ($110,085) worth were sold. Each one of these at 300 mh/s.  At BTC2 each, and a conversion rate of $123 for a BTC we're looking at 1.22 mh/s per $.

Meanwhile, if BFL was able to ship their units today: 5000 mh/s for $275.  This comes out to about 18.18 mh/s per $.

Nobody in their right mind would be buying from anywhere other than BFL if they could ship right now, and BFL would be out of their minds to -not- ship if they could.

[PuertoLibre]

If wrenchmonkey is calm, rational, and fact-filled, then I'm the Queen of England.

 Any yet another person to add to my ignore list.

 The BFL reality-distortion bubble is strong today.

Nah, you're not even close to being objective.
wrenchmonkey's posts have been calm, rational, logical and fact-filled.
He has systematically bitch-slapped the trolls on pretty much every exchange.
Your last sentence makes it clear you shouldn't be taken seriously anyway, poo-flinger.  It's just another baseless jab, an attempt to provoke rather than debate.

At BFL they use quantum mechanics to make the impossible, possible. At times, there may be side effects.

[wrenchmonkey]

I put my money where my mouth is. The day I saw confirmed customers receive Butterfly products was the day I ordered.

I'm curious, when do you think you'll receive your order?

I don't have any set expectation. I knew going in that ordering later would put me pretty far back in the queue. I'm not one of those people who expects that Bitcoin is a surefire way to make them rich.

It will show up when it shows up. That's how pre-orders (on anything besides video games) usually work. Thanksgiving? Christmas? Who knows? That's part of the excitement of doing a pre-order of a product that almost nobody has.

Which is why I didn't put all my eggs in one basket. I've got Avalon chips on order as well. My guess is that the Avalon chips show up before the BFL. However the Avalon chips consume much more power and have a higher $/hashing power ratio, so they'll take longer to break even, and will not remain as profitable for as long. It's impossible to predict the future of Bitcoin value, hardware improvements, difficulty change, etc. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It's not a 'sure bet'. If you want a sure thing, go greet people at wal-mart for $11/hour, or better yet, buy some stock. Wal-mart's not going away any time soon. Bitcoin could end overnight.

[Cue the people accusing me of being a Wal-Mart shill].

[Henchman24]

Question for the anti-BFL crew:

Why are you guys not dog-piling on Avalon for what would seem to be more likely examples of unethical business practices?

Take for instance this guy's Avalon, which certainly appears to have been run for quite awhile before delivery.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=141154.msg2175901#msg2175901

Why does something as seemingly egregious as this, get a pass?

Yet, all hints and allegations against BFL are automatically assumed to be true.

[Xian01]

make the impossible, possible.

http://zombo.com/ seems like a relevant link to post for some-odd reason.

[wrenchmonkey]

make the impossible, possible.

http://zombo.com/ seems like a relevant link to post for some-odd reason.

I LOLed. Haven't been to "zombocom" for years. I'm surprised it's still up. Don't forget to sign up for the newZletter!

[PuertoLibre]

Question for the anti-BFL crew:

Why are you guys not dog-piling on Avalon for what would seem to be more likely examples of unethical business practices?

Take for instance this guy's Avalon, which certainly appears to have been run for quite awhile before delivery.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=141154.msg2175901#msg2175901

Why does something as seemingly egregious as this, get a pass?

Yet, all hints and allegations against BFL are automatically assumed to be true.

Please do it for us. If you find something wrong, go ahead and sound off. No one is stopping you.

[Xian01]

Xian, how BFL found out your order details? I mean dude, what do you thinking when writing post in such tone if you knew they know your info and that they could easilly do this?

 I made the mistake of thinking they wouldn't stoop to that level. It's non-trivial for BFL to link this username to their customer database. Another mistake of mine for using this moniker.

 It's telling that they decided to punish me for calling their COO out on admitting these forums were not important to their business, along with other vitriolic nonsense. I guess that was another lie as apparently these forums are important enough to cancel disgruntled former customers' order, for expressing their displeasure.

 It's almost like they have something to hide, and I just can't get the image of Josh Zerlan as "The Soup Nazi" out of my mind.

 *shrugs*

[k9quaint]

So the question is, if you had 100 5 gh/s units ready to sell for $247.00 each right now, and selling them would get you a huge chunk of the market share coming up, why would you be mining with them to generate ~$2,700 a day in Bitcoin?

500 GH/s will get your roughly 0.6% of the bitcoin network. The Bitcoin network is dominated by Avalon and ASICMiner. Their devices together could easily account for over 50% of the hash rate now that Avalon is shipping batch 2.

Also, BFL had to include twice as many chips as planned in order to get their advertised hash rate. If they are doing small batches of chips (100 or so) on an MPW prototype run, their chips are quite expensive ($50-100) and that would eat their margins (thus explaining their price hike on Jalapenos). If they are only making $50 per device, then $2700 a day looks good. Especially if they are in a cash crunch.

Personally, I don't think BFL has enough units working to make that much.

All the more reason that the implication that BFL is sitting on their hands--or a working farm of ASIC mining hardware--is absurd. They're caught up in the middle of an arms race, and if they don't ship soon, they are going to lose big. I can assure you that they know this better than anybody else. The last thing they want or need is to delay shipping to the point that people no longer need or want their product.

They are failing to hit targets, repeatedly. Nobody denies this. Understandably, people are frustrated. But being a business owner myself, I can assure you that it's always the most frustrating/stressful for the person who is under the gun to deliver.

Again, nobody is saying that BFL is perfect, or that it's not frustrating to not receive your product. Nobody's saying that BFL and their representatives haven't made mistakes, or dropped the ball in customer-relations.

The question at hand is whether it's reasonable to assume that a customer can go about actively seeking to trash a company (regardless how justified he may feel), and not expect that company to sever business relations with him. The answer is that you can't. This isn't the moral dilemma some people are making it out to be.

So much this.  Anybody currently interested in making money in the developing ASIC market would also not going to be so shortsighted to think that a little bit of money mined today means anything compared to dominating the sales of ASICs right now.  People are already throwing money at BFL, if they were able to ship at volume today, the amount of money being thrown at them would be absurd:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195052.0

This is one group buy for US/Canada for the USB ASICs.  BTC895 ($110,085) worth were sold. Each one of these at 300 mh/s.  At BTC2 each, and a conversion rate of $123 for a BTC we're looking at 1.22 mh/s per $.

Meanwhile, if BFL was able to ship their units today: 5000 mh/s for $275.  This comes out to about 18.18 mh/s per $.

Nobody in their right mind would be buying from anywhere other than BFL if they could ship right now, and BFL would be out of their minds to -not- ship if they could.

Right now, you can make far more money mining than you can shipping product.
According to dustcoin, 500GH/s will get you $2779.88 per day. Assuming that is 100 Jalapenos, that would consist of 200 BFL chips. BFL raised the price of the Jalapeno by $100 after they realized it would have 2 chips instead of 1. They are doing small runs of chips which implies an MPW process at small production runs (a few hundred chips). If correct, then it implies a COGs of $50-100 cost per chip. That would leave roughly 50% margin on their Jalapenos which means roughly $150 of profit per device sold. They will earn that in a week or two by mining. If they "burn in" each unit for a week, they would double their margins.

That is exactly the sort of temptation I would expect that BFL could not resist. They are already way behind in the marketplace to Avalon, and ASICMiner is adding a large amount of hashrate to their operation (their retail product is not competitive). Avalon batch 2 is shipping, and the secondary market for Avalon boards+chips is due to mature by the end of summer. However, there is no indication that BFL has added any significant hash rate so I don't think they are mining to any great degree.

[ThatDGuy]

So the question is, if you had 100 5 gh/s units ready to sell for $247.00 each right now, and selling them would get you a huge chunk of the market share coming up, why would you be mining with them to generate ~$2,700 a day in Bitcoin?

500 GH/s will get your roughly 0.6% of the bitcoin network. The Bitcoin network is dominated by Avalon and ASICMiner. Their devices together could easily account for over 50% of the hash rate now that Avalon is shipping batch 2.

Also, BFL had to include twice as many chips as planned in order to get their advertised hash rate. If they are doing small batches of chips (100 or so) on an MPW prototype run, their chips are quite expensive ($50-100) and that would eat their margins (thus explaining their price hike on Jalapenos). If they are only making $50 per device, then $2700 a day looks good. Especially if they are in a cash crunch.

Personally, I don't think BFL has enough units working to make that much.

All the more reason that the implication that BFL is sitting on their hands--or a working farm of ASIC mining hardware--is absurd. They're caught up in the middle of an arms race, and if they don't ship soon, they are going to lose big. I can assure you that they know this better than anybody else. The last thing they want or need is to delay shipping to the point that people no longer need or want their product.

They are failing to hit targets, repeatedly. Nobody denies this. Understandably, people are frustrated. But being a business owner myself, I can assure you that it's always the most frustrating/stressful for the person who is under the gun to deliver.

Again, nobody is saying that BFL is perfect, or that it's not frustrating to not receive your product. Nobody's saying that BFL and their representatives haven't made mistakes, or dropped the ball in customer-relations.

The question at hand is whether it's reasonable to assume that a customer can go about actively seeking to trash a company (regardless how justified he may feel), and not expect that company to sever business relations with him. The answer is that you can't. This isn't the moral dilemma some people are making it out to be.

So much this.  Anybody currently interested in making money in the developing ASIC market would also not going to be so shortsighted to think that a little bit of money mined today means anything compared to dominating the sales of ASICs right now.  People are already throwing money at BFL, if they were able to ship at volume today, the amount of money being thrown at them would be absurd:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195052.0

This is one group buy for US/Canada for the USB ASICs.  BTC895 ($110,085) worth were sold. Each one of these at 300 mh/s.  At BTC2 each, and a conversion rate of $123 for a BTC we're looking at 1.22 mh/s per $.

Meanwhile, if BFL was able to ship their units today: 5000 mh/s for $275.  This comes out to about 18.18 mh/s per $.

Nobody in their right mind would be buying from anywhere other than BFL if they could ship right now, and BFL would be out of their minds to -not- ship if they could.

Right now, you can make far more money mining than you can shipping product.
According to dustcoin, 500GH/s will get you $2779.88 per day. Assuming that is 100 Jalapenos, that would consist of 200 BFL chips. BFL raised the price of the Jalapeno by $100 after they realized it would have 2 chips instead of 1. They are doing small runs of chips which implies an MPW process at small production runs (a few hundred chips). If correct, then it implies a COGs of $50-100 cost per chip. That would leave roughly 50% margin on their Jalapenos which means roughly $150 of profit per device sold. They will earn that in a week or two by mining. If they "burn in" each unit for a week, they would double their margins.

That is exactly the sort of temptation I would expect that BFL could not resist. They are already way behind in the marketplace to Avalon, and ASICMiner is adding a large amount of hashrate to their operation (their retail product is not competitive). Avalon batch 2 is shipping, and the secondary market for Avalon boards+chips is due to mature by the end of summer. However, there is no indication that BFL has added any significant hash rate so I don't think they are mining to any great degree.

I was speaking hypothetically in the realm of "if BFL was able to ship right now in volume"

This would rely on the assumption of two things: that they could fill their existing orders of $125/$275 quickly, and that every new order placed could be priced at roughly 14-15x the current price - and people would pay it (following that people paid that much per mh/s on the USB miners)

It's very simple to logically believe that IF BFL could ship right now, they would, because they would have a monopoly on ASIC sales given their hash rates... and they could charge a LOT more for each unit. 

The money they could make in BTC a day would be nothing compared to the $ they could be bringing in and then just converting to BTC

[k9quaint]

Question for the anti-BFL crew:

Why are you guys not dog-piling on Avalon for what would seem to be more likely examples of unethical business practices?

Take for instance this guy's Avalon, which certainly appears to have been run for quite awhile before delivery.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=141154.msg2175901#msg2175901

Why does something as seemingly egregious as this, get a pass?

Yet, all hints and allegations against BFL are automatically assumed to be true.

1.) Avalon does not have a history of setting shipping dates in the near future and then missing them by months

2.) Avalon does not have a history of calling people who disagree with them on these boards "trolls", "douches", and "retards".

3.) The guy actually got his Avalon unit

4.) There is only this instance of this sort of thing that I am aware of. That could mean they shipped units that were used for testing. If everyone who got one noticed that it had been run for some time, that would be different.

6.) Avalon's communication with their customers could be a lot better, but their communication is not substituting for their product like BFL's is. Avalon's product works and was well received by the marketplace. There is also a language barrier.

7.) There is not much dust in those pictures. You should see my rig if I run it in my garage with the case lid off. It gets dusty really fast. It is impossible to tell from those pictures for how long the unit has been run. With good filters and a dust free environment, maybe a month? In some converted warehouse in China with poor air quality, maybe a week.

8.) The damage to the unit is way more disturbing, but that is a QA issue and it might be pervasive and it might be an isolated incident. With just 1 complaint of this nature out of 300 units it is hard to tell (the other complaints were shipping damage or loss AFAIK). We will know more with batch 2.