Is Avalon mining with customer hardware? Answer is here.

[Bitcoinorama]

But surely you don't burn in 798 coins?! That's almost US $1million!!

Aren't you off by a factor of 10 in your valuation of BTC?

798 * 101= USD 80k

Yes that's why I deleted it promptly, but apparently you'd gotten there first! Damn you for being quicker than my mental arithmetic in the morning!!

[rudrigorc2]

I remember I think at the conference they said the units are dusty because they don't have a clean room where they are doing the burn in. I don't know why users should be so upset at the idea of them doing a burn-in on the real network. They need to be sure the machines work, and it's not like if they had used testnet they would have been able to complete the testing any sooner.

I guess you could be pissed that the difficulty has gone up because of this, so I guess you could make an argument that Avalon "stole" your early ASIC adopter advantage. However I'm not surprised.

ASIC 2.0 anyone?

If they stole something , that thing was stolen from everybody out there if we agree that they now enjoy a vast economic advantage to produce next gen chips, leaving, not only the asic 1.0 early adopters but any other competitor, in the dust.

Why we have not seen more open, auditable, crowdfunded projects to build the bitcoin asic that truly benefit the masses ? I dont know.

But ASIC 2.0 should be like that, and since Avalon dont plan a batch4,  maybe we could finish the next gen first and rent their SMT, who knows, who knows?!  I think the improvements will be huge next time they advertise something.

[KS]

I stand corrected. Would you have a pic?

Nope, but I am sure wizkid057 or Luke-Jr can pull those stats if they wanted to.  Also, you can sort of get a feel for the dates and how much they were mining based on how everyone was talking about "RLW" in the Eligius pool thread I linked to above.

Don't have a pic per se, but I blockchained it.

https://blockchain.info/charts/received-per-day?address=1AYdAw8CcrQ2wx55LTbFHRn5bxgNZhaRLW

Revenue is quite irregular and May is not the biggest earner. If indeed Avalon is mining, I'd say they're getting ready to ship (as Yifu hinted, if I'm not wrong). I would think they'll do a batch shipment.

[jspielberg]

"RLW" was noticed in the Eligius pool thread a few weeks ago as having brought in 3.5 Th/s for a few days.  Then they (Avalon) left, and came back a couple days later.  There were several pages of discussion speculating who it was.  I guess we know for sure now.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=23768.msg2276814#msg2276814  

Here is another thread discussing the 3.5TH/s enigma on eligius a few weeks back.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=214010.msg2280383#msg2280383

Avalon farm of 50+ units seemed unlikely... but not impossible.  Looks like confirmation.

I guess the good news is that the mining difficulty won't go up much when those units ship to their new owners 

[KS]

"RLW" was noticed in the Eligius pool thread a few weeks ago as having brought in 3.5 Th/s for a few days.  Then they (Avalon) left, and came back a couple days later.  There were several pages of discussion speculating who it was.  I guess we know for sure now.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=23768.msg2276814#msg2276814  

Here is another thread discussing the 3.5TH/s enigma on eligius a few weeks back.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=214010.msg2280383#msg2280383

Avalon farm of 50+ units seemed unlikely... but not impossible.  Looks like confirmation.

I guess the good news is that the mining difficulty won't go up much when those units ship to their new owners 

It's not a farm, the payouts would be much higher. Testing is still possible.

[jspielberg]

"RLW" was noticed in the Eligius pool thread a few weeks ago as having brought in 3.5 Th/s for a few days.  Then they (Avalon) left, and came back a couple days later.  There were several pages of discussion speculating who it was.  I guess we know for sure now.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=23768.msg2276814#msg2276814  

Here is another thread discussing the 3.5TH/s enigma on eligius a few weeks back.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=214010.msg2280383#msg2280383

Avalon farm of 50+ units seemed unlikely... but not impossible.  Looks like confirmation.

I guess the good news is that the mining difficulty won't go up much when those units ship to their new owners 

It's not a farm, the payouts would be much higher. Testing is still possible.

Agreed.  They are in the business of manufacturing genies.  It is hard to complain if you still get at least 1 wish.

I think everyone is totally cool with Bitsyncom testing against mainnet.  It is just that it sets up a conflict of interest/temptation to extend the "testing/burn-in" time rather than shipping completed units. 

The 3.5TH/s spike a does imply that a week before the end of May their were 50+ B2 units being tested.

[phoenikx]

Can somebody please wake up Bitsyncom again? I really would like to hear his comforting explanation.

[KS]

"RLW" was noticed in the Eligius pool thread a few weeks ago as having brought in 3.5 Th/s for a few days.  Then they (Avalon) left, and came back a couple days later.  There were several pages of discussion speculating who it was.  I guess we know for sure now.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=23768.msg2276814#msg2276814  

Here is another thread discussing the 3.5TH/s enigma on eligius a few weeks back.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=214010.msg2280383#msg2280383

Avalon farm of 50+ units seemed unlikely... but not impossible.  Looks like confirmation.

I guess the good news is that the mining difficulty won't go up much when those units ship to their new owners 

It's not a farm, the payouts would be much higher. Testing is still possible.

Agreed.  They are in the business of manufacturing genies.  It is hard to complain if you still get at least 1 wish.

I think everyone is totally cool with Bitsyncom testing against mainnet.  It is just that it sets up a conflict of interest/temptation to extend the "testing/burn-in" time rather than shipping completed units. 

The 3.5TH/s spike a does imply that a week before the end of May their were 50+ B2 units being tested.

I can't say I'm not wondering what's taking so long to ship those babies...

[chsados]

not suprised at all.every company will test their machines.maybe one week,maybe few month,who know

They should be using a testnet or sending the coins to the purchasers bitcoin address.

[coinedBit]

it's the most obvious thing to do once you have access to the hardware, see:

There are a lot of people who think the number of coins mined daily has absolutely no effect on price.
There are a lot of people who think the number of coins mined daily has a LOT of effect on price i.e. overstating its effect.

It is generally understood that mining as many coins as quickly is good for the persons/pools mining, right ?
It is also generally understood that mining difficulty will increase once too many coins are generated too quickly.

Consequently, mining is more profitable as long as you have a certain edge, so that you can mine profitably without overly affecting difficulty.
Increasing mining difficulty will make even ASIC hardware less profitable fairly quickly, especially once it is widely shipped and deployed.

Thus, it is no surprise that ASIC vendors are having a hard time delivering their products: economically, it simply makes more sense to mine NOW rather than 3 months from now. There's basically time decay at work: powerful ASIC hardware will suffer serious theta-decay once it is widely used.

Difficulty is already increasing at ~30% currently, so things will become even more dramatic during the next months, which is why it makes sense to run ASICs now, rather than sell them.

Just imagine for a second that you were providing GPU/FPGA miners in early 2010: Would you have sold it, or would you have used it for yourself ?
Obviously purchasing hardware (especially custom stuff) is expensive, but fortunately there's the concept of "pre-orders" a modern form of "crowd-funding", where customers are willing to pay for hardware that they will only get their hands on after significant time-decay.

[jimmy3dita]

Interesting.

Dear Bitsyncom, I'm a good miner myself, I know how to run hardware and I'm good in spotting hardware related problems. I already own some "Lancelots" based FPGAs and I know how to Jtag your hardware.

I propose myself as hardware tester, for free. No wages, no insurance, anything.
I'll be happy with just the coins I mine while doing "tests"

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Jimmy3dita

[Loredo]

The root of all these problems -where and if they exist- is a hundred dollar bitcoin.  When BTC were ten bucks, then the decision to sell spades to the miners was no-brainer; the "mine" only produced $36,000 a day total.  But now the mine produces over a third of a million dollars a day.

If one has a room full of the tools to grab a big chunk of that bounty for a few days, well... The kids have been waiting so long already, whats another week or two to them?

[Wayne_Chang]

The root of all these problems -where and if they exist- is a hundred dollar bitcoin.  When BTC were ten bucks, then the decision to sell spades to the miners was no-brainer; the "mine" only produced $36,000 a day total.  But now the mine produces over a third of a million dollars a day.

If one has a room full of the tools to grab a big chunk of that bounty for a few days, well... The kids have been waiting so long already, whats another week or two to them?

Yes, what you are talking about is reality. But as a company selling products, it is really suitable?

[af_newbie]

The root of all these problems -where and if they exist- is a hundred dollar bitcoin.  When BTC were ten bucks, then the decision to sell spades to the miners was no-brainer; the "mine" only produced $36,000 a day total.  But now the mine produces over a third of a million dollars a day.

If one has a room full of the tools to grab a big chunk of that bounty for a few days, well... The kids have been waiting so long already, whats another week or two to them?

Yes, what you are talking about is reality. But as a company selling products, it is really suitable?

If they wanted to test,  they would have used the test network.  If they are on live, real network, they are mining for profit.  Nothing wrong with that. 

I bet Gen 2.0 ASICs will not be released to the public.  2.0 ASICs will be used to mine privately.  They already have the resources to do it.  Maybe they will sell shares, if they get bored or BTC price drops back to $10.

[coinedBit]

we would all be doing the same thing if we could: get customers to crowd-fund our fancy hardware by selling pre-order to them, and then use the hardware at a time when difficulty isn't yet prohibitively high, so that you get paid twice for your efforts ... if they're being really smart, they'd even talk fellow competitors into joining their cartell in order not to blow up each other.

[Loredo]

The root of all these problems -where and if they exist- is a hundred dollar bitcoin.  When BTC were ten bucks, then the decision to sell spades to the miners was no-brainer; the "mine" only produced $36,000 a day total.  But now the mine produces over a third of a million dollars a day.

If one has a room full of the tools to grab a big chunk of that bounty for a few days, well... The kids have been waiting so long already, whats another week or two to them?

Yes, what you are talking about is reality. But as a company selling products, it is really suitable?

Of course, it's not.  It is not ethical.  In tech ventures, there is something called The Producers syndrome.  It is named for the famous Broadway play (which, if you have never seen, I recommend you watch the funny video).  The plot involves men who take money to produce plays which they know will never be able to be successful.  

Then they accidentally make one that works, and they have to figure out how to deal with that success (and can't).

To some degree, I fear, the hundred dollar bitcoin is, to the existing hardware manufacturers, the play that was greatly successful when it wasn't supposed to be.

[coinedBit]

nice analogy

[papaminer]

oh well...

go ask for a scammer tag...

[Loredo]

if they're being really smart, they'd even talk fellow competitors into joining their cartell in order not to blow up each other.

Likely, the big miners/chip design owners will not have to do anything overt, like an OPEC style cartel.  Game theory dictates an equilibrium will occur among a handful of huge players and many smaller ones.

[seleme]

I'd be shocked if someone actually thought they don't mine with your Avalons tbh..