► ► ►HashFast Endorsement

[Ytterbium]

reading a hashrate graph is similar to reading a stock chart

yes almost, with only one small difference. bitcoin is jumping up and down, but hashrate is still going up (just check both charts for last 3 months). and because KNC (most likely) and Avalon will deliver their devices/chips BEFORE HashFast send their miners (there will be huge hashrate raise), is imho much better to buy BTC (if you believe it) instead of preorder.(

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

You're going to have to do much better job of selling them if you expect that to happen.  Even with all your optimistic projections, people who bought that stuff will still have a chance to make most of their ROI in September and October, if they ship on time.

You also have Cointerra out there as well.

[1714666472]

1714666472

[1714666472]

1714666472

[cypherdoc]

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

Here's a more reasonable proposition - you're probably high on something (is it the pay they promised you?) - KNC/Bitfury would not let that happen...

so we begin to see the problems with taking cc's in such an industry. 

with a cc, a chargeback could not be prevented.

[ampu]

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

Here's a more reasonable proposition - you're probably high on something (is it the pay they promised you?) - KNC/Bitfury would not let that happen...

so we begin to see the problems with taking cc's in such an industry. 

with a cc, a chargeback could not be prevented.

Satisfied customer = no chargeback.

[cypherdoc]

reading a hashrate graph is similar to reading a stock chart

yes almost, with only one small difference. bitcoin is jumping up and down, but hashrate is still going up (just check both charts for last 3 months). and because KNC (most likely) and Avalon will deliver their devices/chips BEFORE HashFast send their miners (there will be huge hashrate raise), is imho much better to buy BTC (if you believe it) instead of preorder.(

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

You're going to have to do much better job of selling them if you expect that to happen.  Even with all your optimistic projections, people who bought that stuff will still have a chance to make most of their ROI in September and October, if they ship on time.

You also have Cointerra out there as well.

i'll be totally honest here.  i cx'd my Jupiter orders the day before i went to their office.  before i'd even met them. 

[cypherdoc]

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

Here's a more reasonable proposition - you're probably high on something (is it the pay they promised you?) - KNC/Bitfury would not let that happen...

so we begin to see the problems with taking cc's in such an industry. 

with a cc, a chargeback could not be prevented.

Satisfied customer = no chargeback.

what i'm saying is that ppl could react like me.  when i read what HashFast was doing and the resumes of the ppl involved and where they were doing it, i cx'd my cc orders at KNC.   i'm not here to bash KNC.  they could be great.  all i'm saying is that if enough ppl react like i did, there could be financial issues created as a result.  same thing could happen to HashFast if someone else comes along.

[Xialla]

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

[Loredo]

Ugh, this is so wrong. The most likely path of a hashrate graph is that it will trace a sigmoid function.

Thank you; you saved me the need to reply.  All I'll add is that, while the curve you show here is the cumulative normal probability function, which gives the shape normatively well, there are existential reasons why the network hash might well follow a Gompertz function.  

Specifically, that curve is used to model cellular growth in confined circumstances where total available nutrients are bounded.  Wiki has some decent overview.  

[DeathAndTaxes]

If they are so sure of themselves then send me unit and I will pay in BTC when it is hashing. 

Why would ANYONE do that.  If someone has a unit which is currently hashing why not just keep using it themselves rather than sell it to you?  I am not saying you should buy one but thinking that someone will produce a unit, which is operational, and profitable and then turn it off just so they can send it to you and collect some BTC after the fact?  Would you?

[cypherdoc]

If they are so sure of themselves then send me unit and I will pay in BTC when it is hashing.  

who's being ridiculous?

[Ytterbium]

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

Here's a more reasonable proposition - you're probably high on something (is it the pay they promised you?) - KNC/Bitfury would not let that happen...

so we begin to see the problems with taking cc's in such an industry.  

with a cc, a chargeback could not be prevented.

I understand your point - you don't want to risk chargebacks because people might do a chargeback simply because they no longer think the investment is viable..  And you consider a pre-order to be like an investment. That's how I look at it, there is a risk and you have to weigh the odds and decide if the reweard outweighs the risk of failure.

But here's the thing: If you're not willing to allow returns on pre-orders between now and when you ship because you're worried that investors might think your chips aren't actually be good investments when you actually ship them, and do a chargeback, then isn't it obvious that investors should, in fact, be worried their chips aren't actually good investments when you do ship them?

That's the problem here - the difficulty could potentially go up so quickly that by the time your products ship, they'll no longer have much value.

I wrote a post upthread about this, but you may have missed it.  The problem is, without knowing how many chips are going to come online and what the hashrate will be when you ship, there's no way to evaluate the investment.

If you look at BFL, for example - when they were the only people with ASICs, they didn't bother to ship their products at all.  This kept the hashrate really low, making their products look really attractive.  It's only when other companies started shipping products that they started shipping as well.

But, they took orders for products that they knew would never ROI simply because of all the other orders they took!.  That's why I stayed away from them at the time.

The risk here isn't that you won't ship, it's that your chips won't make ROI, both because of the competitors (KnC, Cointerra, Laboin, BTCGarden, etc, etc, etc) but also because of the total number of chips that you sell!

If you're going to treat pre-order customers as investors then you need to put out enough information for people to make a serious economic analysis.

[Vagnavs]

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

Here's a more reasonable proposition - you're probably high on something (is it the pay they promised you?) - KNC/Bitfury would not let that happen...

so we begin to see the problems with taking cc's in such an industry.  

with a cc, a chargeback could not be prevented.

Satisfied customer = no chargeback.

what i'm saying is that ppl could react like me.  when i read what HashFast was doing and the resumes of the ppl involved and where they were doing it, i cx'd my cc orders at KNC.   i'm not here to bash KNC.  they could be great.  all i'm saying is that if enough ppl react like i did, there could be financial issues created as a result.  same thing could happen to HashFast if someone else comes along.

if the customer is satisfied. Why would they file a charge back? Perhaps that is sign that the company isn't confident in the product. Besides that, look at Avalon and the chip sales.

[cypherdoc]

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

Here's a more reasonable proposition - you're probably high on something (is it the pay they promised you?) - KNC/Bitfury would not let that happen...

so we begin to see the problems with taking cc's in such an industry.  

with a cc, a chargeback could not be prevented.

I understand your point - you don't want to risk chargebacks because people might do a chargeback simply because they no longer think the investment is viable..  And you consider a pre-order to be like an investment. That's how I look at it, there is a risk and you have to weigh the odds and decide if the reweard outweighs the risk of failure.

But here's the thing: If you're not willing to allow returns on pre-orders between now and when you ship because you're worried that investors might think your chips aren't actually be good investments when you actually ship them, and do a chargeback, then isn't it obvious that investors should, in fact, be worried their chips aren't actually good investments when you do ship them?

That's the problem here - the difficulty could potentially go up so quickly that by the time your products ship, they'll no longer have much value.

I wrote a post upthread about this, but you may have missed it.  The problem is, without knowing how many chips are going to come online and what the hashrate will be when you ship, there's no way to evaluate the investment.

If you look at BFL, for example - when they were the only people with ASICs, they didn't bother to ship their products at all.  This kept the hashrate really low, making their products look really attractive.  It's only when other companies started shipping products that they started shipping as well.

But, they took orders for products that they knew would never ROI simply because of all the other orders they took!.  That's why I stayed away from them at the time.

The risk here isn't that you won't ship, it's that your chips won't make ROI, both because of the competitors (KnC, Cointerra, Laboin, BTCGarden, etc, etc, etc) but also because of the total number of chips that you sell!

If you're going to treat pre-order customers as investors then you need to put out enough information for people to make a serious economic analysis.

there is more info coming from the company that should allay your fears.

[DeathAndTaxes]

The most likely path of a hashrate graph is that it will trace a sigmoid function.



It will start accelerating, then start to slow down when people stop increasing their hashrate as it becomes less profitable.  There is no way that hashrate will ever go down unless the price of bitcoin also colapses, so that mining ceases to even cover electricity costs. (Of course it'll be superimposed on another, slower growth caused by More's law as transistor density increases, but we can ignore that for now)

Right now, the difficulty will have to go up something like 100x before it starts to get close to power costs. At those rates a 400Gh/s device will only make a few dollars a day.

It is important to consider that not all units (either delivered or proposed) have similar electrical efficiency.  In a curve like indicated above one is in a better position if their personal "hash efficiency" (chip efficiency, PSU efficiency, and individual electrical rates combined to produce operating cost per hash) is superior to the "average Joe".  As difficulty climbs, gross revenue per unit of hashing power will decline and thus net revenue will get squeezed.  The marginal miner (higher electrical cost in USD per hash) will be crushed first.  Those miners will go negative ROI% and once they are sure that price/difficulty isn't going to improve (give up home) eventually idle their rigs.  That means it is possible for hashrate to decline independent of price.  Of course any decline will be short lived as miners contemplate higher ROI% on new units and place orders.  Unless shipping time is 1 day though there will be a lag (we have seen it in the GPU era even with supplies essentially unconstrained) and those higher efficiency units will be able to power through.

Still there are always risks involved, the odds are nobody is going to make a fortune mining anymore.  I would be happy to just generate some coins at a small margin and reduce the needs to deal with awful exchanges.

[Ytterbium]

All I'll add is that, while the curve you show here is the cumulative normal probability function, which gives the shape normatively well, there are existential reasons why the network hash might well follow a Gompertz function.  

Specifically, that curve is used to model cellular growth in confined circumstances where total available nutrients are bounded. Wiki has some decent overview.

 That was just the best example image from the wikipedia article.  The "true" shape will be hard to predict, and of course you get different curves for different technologies superimposed on each-other (CPU, GPU and now ASICs, as well as FPGAs in the mix)

I do think the growth phase will be very sharp, though.

[Vagnavs]

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

Here's a more reasonable proposition - you're probably high on something (is it the pay they promised you?) - KNC/Bitfury would not let that happen...

so we begin to see the problems with taking cc's in such an industry.  

with a cc, a chargeback could not be prevented.

I understand your point - you don't want to risk chargebacks because people might do a chargeback simply because they no longer think the investment is viable..  And you consider a pre-order to be like an investment. That's how I look at it, there is a risk and you have to weigh the odds and decide if the reweard outweighs the risk of failure.

But here's the thing: If you're not willing to allow returns on pre-orders between now and when you ship because you're worried that investors might think your chips aren't actually be good investments when you actually ship them, and do a chargeback, then isn't it obvious that investors should, in fact, be worried their chips aren't actually good investments when you do ship them?

That's the problem here - the difficulty could potentially go up so quickly that by the time your products ship, they'll no longer have much value.

I wrote a post upthread about this, but you may have missed it.  The problem is, without knowing how many chips are going to come online and what the hashrate will be when you ship, there's no way to evaluate the investment.

If you look at BFL, for example - when they were the only people with ASICs, they didn't bother to ship their products at all.  This kept the hashrate really low, making their products look really attractive.  It's only when other companies started shipping products that they started shipping as well.

But, they took orders for products that they knew would never ROI simply because of all the other orders they took!.  That's why I stayed away from them at the time.

The risk here isn't that you won't ship, it's that your chips won't make ROI, both because of the competitors (KnC, Cointerra, Laboin, BTCGarden, etc, etc, etc) but also because of the total number of chips that you sell!

If you're going to treat pre-order customers as investors then you need to put out enough information for people to make a serious economic analysis.

there is more info coming from the company that should allay your fears.

today is the sale, where is that information? Screw this coming soon nonsense

[reactor]

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

I almost fell out of my chair when I saw that.  Well played.  

Seriously, though, why on earth would people move en masse to unproven hardware when just about any vendor in the "pre-order" market has an equal chance of never delivering or delivering slightly too late, meaning their customers have no chance at ROI in this small arms race we have going.  These are bold statements without any real proof to back them up.  The numbers just don't tell a compelling tale.  

Honestly, the price of the unit is within what we are willing to spend on hardware, however we're better off just buying BTC at this point and doing some creative trading on Gox.  Better chance of seeing our cash returned at the end of the day.

[cypherdoc]

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

Here's a more reasonable proposition - you're probably high on something (is it the pay they promised you?) - KNC/Bitfury would not let that happen...

so we begin to see the problems with taking cc's in such an industry. 

with a cc, a chargeback could not be prevented.

Satisfied customer = no chargeback.

what i'm saying is that ppl could react like me.  when i read what HashFast was doing and the resumes of the ppl involved and where they were doing it, i cx'd my cc orders at KNC.   i'm not here to bash KNC.  they could be great.  all i'm saying is that if enough ppl react like i did, there could be financial issues created as a result.  same thing could happen to HashFast if someone else comes along.

if the customer is satisfied. Why would they file a charge back? Perhaps that is sign that the company isn't confident in the product. Besides that, look at Avalon and the chip sales. Since they get up at or worse (depending on the outcome).

i'm really talking about asking for a refund just before you take delivery of a machine.  KNC has guaranteed this, which IMO, is a huge risk if ppl perceive their is a better product out there.  yes, HashFast is asking you to take a risk in receiving a machine you might not want but that's the risk here.  at least if they are late, you're guaranteed a refund so all in all that's a reasonable risk given the time frame at which they expect to deliver in late October.

[Loredo]

I understand your point - you don't want to risk chargebacks because people might do a chargeback simply because they no longer think the investment is viable..  And you consider a pre-order to be like an investment. That's how I look at it, there is a risk and you have to weigh the odds and decide if the reweard outweighs the risk of failure.

Does everyone agree that the payoff profile of a pre-order is the same as a bond?  

If so, then it's a simple extension to make the cancellation a put option that the vendor grants to the bondholder (customer).

So, what you're probably saying is that you don't want to grant a free option to the customer, and who can blame you?  But it's not game theoretic; you could price that option:  pre-order, locked in, vs pre-order, with cancelation option.  

Maybe you don't want to do that.  Maybe you don't have to.  

[SirWizz]

Still there are always risks involved.  The odds are nobody is going to make a fortune mining anymore.  I would be happy to just generate some coins at a small margin and reduce the needs to deal with awful exchanges.

I think you just about summed it up. Honestly I don't think that you can realistically expect to make much of a return assuming that the price of Bitcoin stays at the same $100 level. The only people that will get a great ROI are the ones selling the miners.

[crumbs]

I am pleased to announce that I have been selected as a paid sponsor for HashFast Technologies LLC. [snip!]

I'm not at all pleased to announce that i have no frickin idea what a "paid sponsor" is.  Are you trying to boil my brain?
Since the day i was torn from my mother's breast, i've been duped into believing that sponsors are the ones who do the paying. 
Now, in these, my sunset years... You tell me it's the other way around?