Yeah it's just their word and it's up to you if anyone wants to trust what they say.
We send them $100 > they use some of it to fund boards/chips/salary. Let's just say $30 is left.
Let's just say the chips did not turn out to be functional or even working. Jan 1st 2014 comes and they got nothing to show.
People start wanting refunds. Now how are they going to do a full refund only when they have $30 in their pockets?
Do you guys not realize this is how EVERY ASIC development has been so far? Someone has to foot the bill. BFL did it, Avalon did it, ASICMINER did it, Bitfury did it, ... every other company is trying to do it, (except for maybe labcoin and one or two others- which are not accepting pre-orders minus labcoin.)
Yes, and how
well has it worked out for customers of BFL? not to mention later Avalon customers? I think (Although I'm not sure) that Bitfury had sample chips available before they took orders.
And I also don't remember ASICminer taking pre-orders. They did an IPO, like ActiveMining, Labcoin and BTCGarden are doing now.
What would BFL/Avalon/ASICMINER/Bitfury have done if they failed? They would be screwed in the same way, only having pennies to the dollar left over. The key is assembling or partnering with an experienced team that can get it done.
Exactly, except they're claiming they'll refund people's money if they fail, and they need to explain how they'll be able to afford to do that if they do.
I don't see what the big deal is. They have an experienced team with expertise to make a product, and we have money to fund their project- without it the project may never get off the ground. In making a pre-order, you are investing in the company you made that pre-order with. Whether they rise to the occasion or fail is unknown as it's in the future. It's up to you whether you want to take that risk. If not, then move on, why do you have to congest the thread for people that might actually be interested.
The big deal is:
1) they're keeping all the relevant information to themselves.
We don't know how many chips they're planning to produce and sell. The more they sell, the less profit there is for customers. Avalon published the number of units they would sell in each batch. BFL gave no indication at all, not how many units they'd ship or where you would even be in the queue.
Who got a better deal in the end, Avalon B1/B2 customers, or BFL customers?2) We don't know how well they'll do at actually manufacturing these devices. Avalon was only a little late with it's first batch, a couple months late with it's second, and it's third batch is 3 months late. Users may never see an ROI. HashFast is pushing most of that risk onto their customers, by refusing to take credit cards
and giving themselves an extra 2.25 months that they can be late before they hit the date that they're even supposed to
promise to pay customers back.
4) What about other difficulty increases from other competitors? That's a risk as well.
HashFast is pushing all their risk onto their customers. And yet, if they succeed in raising enough money to go into production, they'll be able to ship their first orders and then immediately start cranking out unlimited numbers of chips that they can either self-mine with or sell at far lower costs in order to reap the vast majority of the profits.
It's all about balance. Balancing risk and profit between the ASIC makers and the customers. If they were to lower the price, it would mean reducing the risk for customers while keeping the reward mostly constant. Or, they could accept credit card and reduce risk that way. Or they could take partial payment up front and require the rest when they're ready to ship.
So the basic problem is that in this case it seems like the risk/reward balance is tilted in the direction of the manufacture, making it a bad deal.
Especially with KnC's announcement that devices for November delivery will cost less then $5k. That would be a much better deal.
