Black Arrow 28nm 100Ghash Bitcoin ASIC from $0.49/GH/s

[alfabitcoin]

I think jimmothy is an example of customers what every asic preorder company desire   no offense

I bought from BFL and made a profit in USD regardless of the ridiculous delays. I don't want people to be mislead and they should know that EVERY asic manufacturer that accepts preorders will miss the deadline. It is not a secret.

Unless you buy from bitmain or asicminer you will not get your asic on time.

What you fudsters forget is that a 2 month delay does not equal a guaranteed loss. It does mean that you will not profit AS much as you would have if you had it earlier but assuming you are already at a loss is simply wrong according to history.

This all ignores the fact that BA may even decide to give out refunds even though they are not obligated in their TOS and they might come up with a better compensation plan for the delays.

I never said anything earlier about anything. Bfl, knc, bitfurry,metabank,avalon all had refunds. Like i said, you defend BA what is a bit unusual with all what is going on, so i concluded you are the perfect preorder buyer who does not question anything.
Afterall, that is only my opinion

[jimmothy]

I think jimmothy is an example of customers what every asic preorder company desire   no offense

I bought from BFL and made a profit in USD regardless of the ridiculous delays. I don't want people to be mislead and they should know that EVERY asic manufacturer that accepts preorders will miss the deadline. It is not a secret.

Unless you buy from bitmain or asicminer you will not get your asic on time.

What you fudsters forget is that a 2 month delay does not equal a guaranteed loss. It does mean that you will not profit AS much as you would have if you had it earlier but assuming you are already at a loss is simply wrong according to history.

This all ignores the fact that BA may even decide to give out refunds even though they are not obligated in their TOS and they might come up with a better compensation plan for the delays.

I never said anything earlier about anything. Bfl, knc, bitfurry,metabank,avalon all had refunds. Like i said, you defend BA what is a bit unusual with all what is going on, so i concluded you are the perfect preorder buyer who does not question anything.

BFL had refunds? Are we talking about the same BFL?

KNC was only a few weeks late, I don't know if bitfury had preorders and I've never heard of metabank.

I assume you have never actually mined bitcoins and are unaware that literally nobody has seen a loss in terms of USD. In terms of btc we all know it is a gamble and it looks like the odds of BA paying off are decreased. Refunds are a possibility although were never guaranteed.

Just because a few butthurt kids, who weren't aware of the rules of the game before playing it, flood the forum with rage doesn't mean these companies who have produced working hardware are scammers.

But again if you want hardware on time, buy an asicminer or antminer device. If you want to take a risk of possibly getting a better deal for the same hashrate then you might want to preorder.

[alfabitcoin]

I think jimmothy is an example of customers what every asic preorder company desire   no offense

I bought from BFL and made a profit in USD regardless of the ridiculous delays. I don't want people to be mislead and they should know that EVERY asic manufacturer that accepts preorders will miss the deadline. It is not a secret.

Unless you buy from bitmain or asicminer you will not get your asic on time.

What you fudsters forget is that a 2 month delay does not equal a guaranteed loss. It does mean that you will not profit AS much as you would have if you had it earlier but assuming you are already at a loss is simply wrong according to history.

This all ignores the fact that BA may even decide to give out refunds even though they are not obligated in their TOS and they might come up with a better compensation plan for the delays.

I never said anything earlier about anything. Bfl, knc, bitfurry,metabank,avalon all had refunds. Like i said, you defend BA what is a bit unusual with all what is going on, so i concluded you are the perfect preorder buyer who does not question anything.

BFL had refunds? Are we talking about the same BFL?

KNC was only a few weeks late, I don't know if bitfury had preorders and I've never heard of metabank.

I assume you have never actually mined bitcoins and are unaware that literally nobody has seen a loss in terms of USD. In terms of btc we all know it is a gamble and it looks like the odds of BA paying off are decreased. Refunds are a possibility although were never guaranteed.

Just because a few butthurt kids, who weren't aware of the rules of the game before playing it, flood the forum with rage doesn't mean these companies who have produced working hardware are scammers.

But again if you want hardware on time, buy an asicminer or antminer device. If you want to take a risk of possibly getting a better deal for the same hashrate then you might want to preorder.

So you assume i never mine bitcoins, why, how in earth you detirmined that? Is it because i said bfl issued refunds. Fyi Bfl did issued many refunds but changed their tos too. Metabank is ruusian asic manufacture based on bitfury chips. So now i can assume you never mined anything in your life!! Are you a kid?      Knc was delayed only two weeks but had refunds.
Once more i never addressed you in anything else then my opinion of perfect preorder custmer what has none of concerns.
If that offends you then that is your problem, but address that opinion only and stop to assume.
Btw BA was online yesterday. Why he can not say anything?
Another advice, if you do not like to read what pg and others have to say, there is a ignore button - use it.

[Lloydie]

Yeah, go the refund if you can.

I can say it's a good feeling getting a refund and then spending the money on hardware that actually exists and has been road-tested by the community. Better to pay a little bit more and have the product 'in hand' as they say rather than wait for, in one well known case, up to and over a year for units to arrive.

I'm far from unsympathetic to the cause of customers duped by manufacturers promises, I was one previously and was fortunate to take action to get a refund and tried to layout a path for others to also get refunded. You can see that my comments on page 12 of this thread were elevated to the OP in an endeavour to assist others:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=295187.0

What has become clear is that after the fiasco involving a number of manufacturers with credit card chargebacks, paypal refunds and similar is that some hardware manufacturers became smarter at defrauding more deliberate in only accepting payment methods which were far more difficult to get refunded.

We all make mistakes and even though I read that I should stay well clear of BFL as they took many, many months to deliver, I was still optimistic enough to believe their repeated claims that 'all products would be shipped by the end of September', when as we know now, this was just another deliberate lie mis-representation of their capabilities.

So far from just chipping in on this thread for the hell of it, I am rather hoping that some new members of this forum (and there are loads of those) actually take the time to think before they spend their money and get the miners they pay for in the time frames they expect to receive them.

This just aint happening here, is it?

 

Well I for one didn't see your warnings. Whether i read it or not, it still doesn't justify you coming in here being all witty and saying I told you so. However, i do thank you for the refund path. However, I can't see that it would help if the money is already gone. If you have proof that this is a scam, please share it. We will make sure Matt Carson knows about it. If he is involved, his reputation and his mugshot will be smeared.

[elasticband]

is there a TLDR around here anywhere?

[jimmothy]

To be clear, I'm crying for the two bitcoiners, one man and one woman (her in Canada, I believe), who've been trying to get a $147K USD refunded since December, and ~$25K USD refunded since the beginning of January, respectively.

As I've already stated, I didn't (formally don't) want to be here, but glad I'm here now to expose these fucks and help others to hopefully obtain their refunds before the proverbial shit hits the fan. Sadly, those that'll be left holding the bag are ones that don't frequent this forum till it's too late.

To be fair, I have to admit that Black Arrow has structured their enterprise(s) quite beautifully, albeit it's still a SCAM!

~TMIBTCITW

Funny how in the hashfast thread you did nothing besides claim that hashfast has a gay sexworking employee and create a ton of panic and now they are shipping devices which meet their advertised specs.


Who the fuck spends 147k on a preorder that clearly states no refunds, on a half developed product which is not guaranteed to ship on the estimated date?

If you didn't understand that there might be delays, you deserve to lose however much you "invested" in this venture.

For everyone else who wants to buy a miner because you (according to history) are almost guaranteed a profit in USD then you might be interested in preordering an asic.

[alfabitcoin]

So better just buy coins now and hold them to have profit in usd. Why to mine or buy miner?
Edit
 I do wonder that myself.
I bought antminer for 4.5 btc begining of december and till now mined almost 4.5 btc. But then btc were at 1100 usd. So ghat was 4950$.
I know ant price will adjust with time e.g. price will be always brake even around 2 months.
So i wonder why just dont sell it for 1.5 btc what would total of 6 btc worth 4800$ at today exchange.
To compare 4.5 what i gave was around 4900$. So where is my profit usd wise? Nowhere.why to risk aditional time to mine, maybe something will brake when i can get now almost 6 btc and keep them hoping in price rise?

[jimmothy]

So better jut buy coins now and hold them to have profit in usd. Why to mine or buy miner?

Because there is an extremely small chance you end up mining more btc than you could buy.

But yea I agree buying btc is a much better investment but that doesn't mean you can't risk a little on mining.

[tokona]

FUN FACT: Literally EVERYONE who preordered an asic from ANY manufacturer that delivered made a profit in USD if they mined for a week or two then resold the hardware.

The only people who think they are getting scammed are the nerds who think that btc mining must result in a positive ROI in btc and think that the hardware manufacturer can be held accountable for that.

This is going a bit off-topic... but it really shouldn't be left unchallenged.

I think you're taking an exceptionally stupid position here.  You have a stack of USD, you could do at least three things:
(0) Sit on your USD and do nothing.
(1) Buy Bitcoin.
(2) But a Bitcoin miner.

If (2) yields less bitcoin than you would have gotten with (1) you are worse off in every way. The miner takes up space, consumes power, has shipping and delivery risks, and is just as worthless as the Bitcoin if Bitcoin loses value, but is far less liquid. You take all the risks of owning Bitcoin, multiplied by illiquidity, plus some hardware specific risks.

There is no scenario in which (2) is better than (1) if (2) yields less Bitcoin, not if bitcoin goes up in value, not if it goes down, not if bitcoin becomes worthless, not on a boat, not with a goat.

Unless you want to consider incompetent people with no self control who can't manage to buy and hold things on their own— in which case I'll gladly offer second signer service for multisig at far less of a loss than ripoff prices from asic hardware vendors and a lot fewer risks.

I can actually think of a few cases where 2 is better than 1 or 0.

If you receive your miner and btc rate stays constant there would be little incentive for people to pour money in to new hardware or at least as quickly as expected. This could mean difficulty is much less than predicted and everyone reaches roi.

alternatively the price of btc could go up and you might only reach 50% roi but if you resell your miner after using it for a month you could probably reach a positive roi or come very close in btc terms (usd would reach positive roi in this case)

Smart!

[smooth]

If you receive your miner and btc rate stays constant there would be little incentive for people to pour money in to new hardware or at least as quickly as expected. This could mean difficulty is much less than predicted and everyone reaches roi.

This is correct. Imagine that BTC crashes back down $1 tomorrow. People who buy miners now will do much better than (in BTC terms) people who just bought BTC and held on to it.

The problem with the pure ROI argument is that it confuses prospective returns with retrospective returns. Just because you bought something and it didn't ROI doesn't mean it was necessarily a bad investment (and likewise if you did ROI, it wasn't necessarily a good investment).

You have to consider the sum of all possible outcomes, not just the one that actually happened (or even the one that you expect to happen).

[ernie-]

This is correct. Imagine that BTC crashes back down $1 tomorrow. People who buy miners now will do much better than (in BTC terms) people who just bought BTC and held on to it.

I don't understand your logic on that statement. If BTC crashes to $1 then the people that bought miners wont be able to cover their power costs and they will most likely switch them off, they will have less BTC than if they had not bough the miner.

[smooth]

This is correct. Imagine that BTC crashes back down $1 tomorrow. People who buy miners now will do much better than (in BTC terms) people who just bought BTC and held on to it.

I don't understand your logic on that statement. If BTC crashes to $1 then the people that bought miners wont be able to cover their power costs and they will most likely switch them off, they will have less BTC than if they had not bough the miner.

Until the difficulty drops...

[TinkerTom]

With all due respect, I have two requests:

• If your post doesn't contain the words Black Arrow, Prospero, Minersource, etc., perhaps it would be better located in another thread.
• If you're only referring to one small part of a conversation, perhaps you don't need to quote the whole fucking thing.

I like to keep up on this thread to see if there's any actual news or information that's on topic and it's hell wading through the vitriol here.

[jimmothy]

I think jimmothy is an example of customers what every asic preorder company desire   no offense

I bought from BFL and made a profit in USD regardless of the ridiculous delays. I don't want people to be mislead and they should know that EVERY asic manufacturer that accepts preorders will miss the deadline. It is not a secret.

Unless you buy from bitmain or asicminer you will not get your asic on time.

What you fudsters forget is that a 2 month delay does not equal a guaranteed loss. It does mean that you will not profit AS much as you would have if you had it earlier but assuming you are already at a loss is simply wrong according to history.

This all ignores the fact that BA may even decide to give out refunds even though they are not obligated in their TOS and they might come up with a better compensation plan for the delays.

Let's say a customer of mine pre-orders barn wood to remodel their home. I give them a date as to when the wood will be shipped to their house. That date passes, whereupon a new date is set by ME, promising two months at the latest as the new deadline. They can not wait that long, thus request their money back plus purchase barn wood elsewhere to complete the remodel. I tell them that due to the ever so changing ToS on my site that there are no refunds and I WILL deliver your barn wood in two months, doing with it as you wish.

Question: Would a judge say that she must accept the barn wood when I get around to delivering it, or would he tell me to remit the refund and stick the vaporware barn wood up my ass?

<strokes beard!>

The thing is BA never guaranteed march delivery. It was an estimate and nothing more. The tos has always said no refunds.

And you keep assuming it is vaporware. Are you aware that bfl jalapenos still sell for more than the 250 I paid for it a year ago? Not exactly vaporware.

[frankenmint]

I take PG at his word because:

A) he has morals

B) he hides these morals through what seems to be searing behavior UNTIL

C) you see that he did this MONTHS after BA had the time to provide further transparency.

I saw that when I questioned their Lancelot Prices on FPGAs which were priced at 450 a peice at the time when block erupters were priced at 300 with current btc price - they said, its still a great deal, that I shouldn't do any dealings with them.

Bottom line - they did what BFL did only they were 10 months late on delivering FPGA hardware.  Don't get things misconstrewed, these are human beings too that screwed up or couldnt meet their deadlines.  That is the way the real world works.  Its a shame that we'll see this year also riddled with hiccups from the likes of BA, HF, and CT.  They will likley deliver, but you can believe that I'm benefiting from them being delayed with my in hand hardware.  I paid a premium for some stuff, but the flip side is that I wasnt trying to be greedy (I've only bought in hand hardware on my 2nd and 3rd go rounds.)  I did give BA an honest consideration and almost pulled the trigger on That or a Cointerra but now that I only got Antminers instead for double that price with less than 1/4 of expected difficulty, I'm feeling satisfied.  

Naysayers have said I screwed up because of BA and CT and HF and the knc neptune (which I think will be the next large bump [I believe the new avalon Gen 2 miners as well as the next asicminer recently announced offerings] those will be the real threats and will push us past the 10B difficulty level)  

[primer10]

Woa ..

the next ASIC manufacturer should just state something like "optimistically to deliver in Feb 2014 with possible chance of delay, +/- 2 months"

[Lloydie]

Woa ..

the next ASIC manufacturer should just state something like "optimistically to deliver in Feb 2014 with possible chance of delay, +/- 2 months"

In fact, exactly what KnC did: delivery Q1/Q2 of 2014.  We are dealing with humans: movable timelines, potential stuff ups, possible scams and pure and simple greed.  

[Biomech]

Woa ..

the next ASIC manufacturer should just state something like "optimistically to deliver in Feb 2014 with possible chance of delay, +/- 2 months"

Nah. They should just drop the preorder bullshit altogether. Bitmain isn't hurting for business. They aren't drawing all the drama, but they are quietly delivering quality equipment. To my knowledge they never did a preorder, and it has been my observation (and hopefully soon my experience) that they deliver in about a week from payment.

I'm grabbing at least one and hopefully a bit more at tax time.

I still want faster machines, and probably will get them, but I don't wanna do the preorder thing. Too many flighty operators.

[BlackArrow Matt]

I can't keep up with this thread. The reading I've been doing has been disappointing. I'd appreciate it if everyone could cut the trolling and flaming and just speak about the issues at hand. Telling each other to F-off looks bad and the off topic conversations causes those with actual questions to get drowned out.

I have no updates at the moment.

[Lloydie]

I can't keep up with this thread. The reading I've been doing has been disappointing. I'd appreciate it if everyone could cut the trolling and flaming and just speak about the issues at hand. Telling each other to F-off looks bad and the off topic conversations causes those with actual questions to get drowned out.

I have no updates at the moment.

Tell us this: which country are you based in? What is your relationship to BA? How come you didn't know the tapeout target was missed? Who made the decision to go ahead with the chip? What was the date of that? Why weren't we told about that decision before it happened?