I visited BFL, any questions ?

[Fefox]

nope I saw the individual blocks, rig itself wasn't ready yet, but it be built from those singles so .

You saw the current "individual blocks" aka 832 MH/s singles 80+ Watt, not the next generation ones?

If BFL is using their "own chip" not something off the self, whey do they need to sand off the top? That's just BS in my opinion. They are using a programmable device just like everybody else. It would be quite strange if they would have finances to make their own chips then end up with an 80 Watt device but don't have money to manufacture a couple of mini rigs without taking the customers money 3 months in advance. And how would "their own chip" be programmable with a new bitstream? Unless they are now in the business of competing with Xilinx and Altera and they make their own FPGA devices.

Did they really tell you that these are their own chips or did you mean to say something else?

There is just so much wrong with BFL's stories it makes my eyes roll. That's what I meant with "secrecy" in my original questions. Instead of asking why all the secrecy I could also be asking why all the BS.

seems like a lot of work to sand off all the tops, maybe they are lapping them to get that extra performance.... 

I hope I see my products soon, the wife is asking daily now "when are we getting that new computer stuff" lol

[1713541308]

1713541308

[antirack]

You don't have to answer it if you don't want to, but I'd be interested to know how many rigs/mini-rigs you ordered.

not much half a dozen or so

This is another point I don't understand.

If you invest $100,000 or so you clearly have to think about risks and exit strategies.

BTC coming to a grinding halt and you can use your $100k devices as paper weights. Same if mining with FPGA's becomes unprofitable. Or if for some reason you need your money back.

With $100k invested in off the shelf FPGA devices (instead of "BFL's own chip") you could salvage the chips and recover a substantial amount of your $100k investment in the very worst case. If Bitcoin would still be going, the resale value of a an FPGA cluster would virtually be the same or higher as a BFL unit.

It just doesn't compute with me why on earth somebody would take that kind of risk and give his money to BFL of all.

Maybe just because I am working in the electronics industry for a company in Hong Kong (not related to Bitcoin or mining) and I know how this kind of stuff works and goes wrong all the time. That's probably also why I can see that lots of info coming from BFL is BS. I am certainly not somebody that knows everything and all of it, and I am no engineer/developer. But I have a certain perspective that a simple end user might not have. I've been handling developing and manufacturing projects for over a decade, on a small scale not Foxxconn/Apple size, but still significant.

Give me your $100k (and some more) and I'll build you a mining rig with lower risk and one that can truly be used for something else than Bitcoin mining and with higher after market value. I may even find another person or two to put down the same amount of money. And if something goes wrong with Bitcoin, I promise to salvage the FPGA devices for you to get your investment back. And after all, Chinese New Year is over, so I will probably do it much faster than BFL (<- I am just kidding).

[MrTeal]

BFL making their own custom chips seems hard to believe. Their performance per dollar is much better than existing FPGA solutions, but their performance per watt is worse than current FPGA implementations. That's the opposite of what you'd expect from a custom ASIC, at least in the small quantities that BFL would be producing.

[Inspector 2211]

BFL making their own custom chips seems hard to believe. Their performance per dollar is much better than existing FPGA solutions, but their performance per watt is worse than current FPGA implementations. That's the opposite of what you'd expect from a custom ASIC, at least in the small quantities that BFL would be producing.

Maybe it's some sort of custom FPGA that happens to have fast adders, originally intended for supercomputing applications, and now re-purposed for mining. Remember that BFL and their Single already existed before they stumbled onto mining (and had to redesign the power supply just like Stefan of ZTEX). Being a custom FPGA, it did not wind up as energy-efficient as the products of Xilinx and Altera.

[needbmw]

BFL making their own custom chips seems hard to believe. Their performance per dollar is much better than existing FPGA solutions, but their performance per watt is worse than current FPGA implementations. That's the opposite of what you'd expect from a custom ASIC, at least in the small quantities that BFL would be producing.

They can use MPW MOSIS to produce small qty of chips.
http://www.mosis.com/products/fab-schedule

[fizzisist]

Remember that BFL and their Single already existed before they stumbled onto mining

Citation needed.

[norulezapply]

That was really a good idea. I thought about that myself but I don't have time to travel right now.

Here are a couple of questions:

What is their place of business (address) and what are their real names?

- You can ask them that, their identities or address is not secret , I just visited them

Why all the secrecy about who they are and where they are?

- what secrecy ?

Which FPGA chip are they using?

- They use their own chip, not any chip from the shelves

Why do they keep telling 6-8 weeks while they must clearly know they can't pull it off by now? It's been 6 months they have been claiming 6-8 weeks.

- I cannot answer this question, hell I am not sure if it is a question either.

Did you meet the main engineer with the funny accent or just Sonny?

- I met sonny and talked with the engineer

Are they really building them there one by one in their office?

- No comment on that but they are building them allright

What's with all the fake information about making medical devices?

- ?? I am buying the rigs for bitcoin I dont care about medical imaging or otherwise, that information can be real or fake I don't care

I suppose the "the lady" in the picture is an employee of their assembling/prototyping house, not their own employee. Do they actually have any employees?

- Yes they do

Why did their company incorporator/registered agent deny any connection with these guys and resign in January?

- I have no idea

Why are they coming up with products that only exist in their imagination (Rig Box, Mini Rig Box) and take payments for it? Only to find out later that what they thought was possible does already fail with the basics (powering 2500 Watt, cooling 2500 Watt, etc).

- Implementing a real life product and planning it on paper is two very different things, timeframe is very narrow here , they are trying to complete a 2 year design job in 6 months , I think they are doing just fine

What are they doing different than others to come up with nearly twice the hashing power per chip?

- I dont care , what they are doing to do it, but it does the job

Where do I go if I send them my $15k and they disappear overnight?

- I've already sent them way more than 15k they are still there

As you can see, my confidence is very low right now. But if anybody convinces me otherwise, sending money to BFL is back on the table.

- It is in my advantage if you do not buy rigboxes , I'll get more profit

Now one question for you personally:

What makes you think that you will be better off with a couple of Mini Rigs than your own FPGA cluster? Surely it must be possible to build your own FPGA cluster in the same time frame for the same amount of money. Did you speak to the other FPGA board vendors?

- Yes I did, I can actually build a FPGA cluster on my own, spending the same time and money, I cannot have a better result for the same amount of money so I'm going with them

No offense but for someone who's visited them, you don't appear to know much. All of your answers are very generic.

I have doubts that this other engineer even exists personally.
From what I've heard/seen BFL could just consist of Sonny and his mother.
Maybe that's why they take forever to reply to emails or fulfil orders?

[bulanula]

Probably the most shady thing about BFL is the long lead time.

I still think they are using this to mine on the units so they get half of the unit already paid before they ship them out to the customer.

How many units did you see they were "testing"

[rjk]

Remember that BFL and their Single already existed before they stumbled onto mining

Citation needed.

Although I don't have a link to anything specific, it was a member of chugalug that pointed them our way, when they had an early prototype. I'm sure they have both regretted taking him up, and also embraced the business opportunity, since there was and continues to be so much bullshit and flak from bitcoiners, but also so many orders. The Bitcoiner is an enigma, really. 2 parts asshole to 1 part greedy consumer, for most.

[darkice]

No offense but for someone who's visited them, you don't appear to know much. All of your answers are very generic.

I have doubts that this other engineer even exists personally.
From what I've heard/seen BFL could just consist of Sonny and his mother.
Maybe that's why they take forever to reply to emails or fulfil orders?

That engineer exists i can vouch for that, I'm a computer scientist, I manifacture electronics in taiwan, china, Turkey since 1994, I know the deal, they are not a scam, It's not two guys and a table, they have a nice operation setup scaling up nicely, I'm not under NDA but since I respect them and I know how this type of business works, I'll act like I'm under NDA and cannot disclose any details, I'll try to answer any questions that does not breach that line otherwise , I'll be giving general answers, sorry.

[darkice]

You don't have to answer it if you don't want to, but I'd be interested to know how many rigs/mini-rigs you ordered.

not much half a dozen or so

This is another point I don't understand.

If you invest $100,000 or so you clearly have to think about risks and exit strategies.

BTC coming to a grinding halt and you can use your $100k devices as paper weights. Same if mining with FPGA's becomes unprofitable. Or if for some reason you need your money back.

With $100k invested in off the shelf FPGA devices (instead of "BFL's own chip") you could salvage the chips and recover a substantial amount of your $100k investment in the very worst case. If Bitcoin would still be going, the resale value of a an FPGA cluster would virtually be the same or higher as a BFL unit.

It just doesn't compute with me why on earth somebody would take that kind of risk and give his money to BFL of all.

Maybe just because I am working in the electronics industry for a company in Hong Kong (not related to Bitcoin or mining) and I know how this kind of stuff works and goes wrong all the time. That's probably also why I can see that lots of info coming from BFL is BS. I am certainly not somebody that knows everything and all of it, and I am no engineer/developer. But I have a certain perspective that a simple end user might not have. I've been handling developing and manufacturing projects for over a decade, on a small scale not Foxxconn/Apple size, but still significant.

Give me your $100k (and some more) and I'll build you a mining rig with lower risk and one that can truly be used for something else than Bitcoin mining and with higher after market value. I may even find another person or two to put down the same amount of money. And if something goes wrong with Bitcoin, I promise to salvage the FPGA devices for you to get your investment back. And after all, Chinese New Year is over, so I will probably do it much faster than BFL (<- I am just kidding).

I believe someone declaring that they just spent abour 100k into bitcoin and it's future, and trust that It will have that value in the future actually helps this community, thats the reason I opened this topic, It's my way of telling everybody, I just risked 100k$ , I risked it for bitcoin and I trust bitcoin enough that I believe I'll get my money back and have profit.

If you think on that line what I do is good for Bitcoin, I'm publicly declaring that I trust it enough to risk my money, alot of it.

Bitcoin does not have any intrinsic value other that our trust in it, so In bitcoin, I trust , we should declare our trust in it, and act accordingly, I'm taking that risk because my my gut tells me BTC will be far more valuable in the future .

and actually telling you guys I'm getting them is not in my best interest because this is also like a competition, and you always have the advantage when competition doesn't know what you are doing, but I believe declaring this publicly will benefit me more in the future by inreasing trust in bitcoin so I'm doing it anyway.

[SgtSpike]

You don't have to answer it if you don't want to, but I'd be interested to know how many rigs/mini-rigs you ordered.

not much half a dozen or so

This is another point I don't understand.

If you invest $100,000 or so you clearly have to think about risks and exit strategies.

BTC coming to a grinding halt and you can use your $100k devices as paper weights. Same if mining with FPGA's becomes unprofitable. Or if for some reason you need your money back.

With $100k invested in off the shelf FPGA devices (instead of "BFL's own chip") you could salvage the chips and recover a substantial amount of your $100k investment in the very worst case. If Bitcoin would still be going, the resale value of a an FPGA cluster would virtually be the same or higher as a BFL unit.

It just doesn't compute with me why on earth somebody would take that kind of risk and give his money to BFL of all.

Maybe just because I am working in the electronics industry for a company in Hong Kong (not related to Bitcoin or mining) and I know how this kind of stuff works and goes wrong all the time. That's probably also why I can see that lots of info coming from BFL is BS. I am certainly not somebody that knows everything and all of it, and I am no engineer/developer. But I have a certain perspective that a simple end user might not have. I've been handling developing and manufacturing projects for over a decade, on a small scale not Foxxconn/Apple size, but still significant.

Give me your $100k (and some more) and I'll build you a mining rig with lower risk and one that can truly be used for something else than Bitcoin mining and with higher after market value. I may even find another person or two to put down the same amount of money. And if something goes wrong with Bitcoin, I promise to salvage the FPGA devices for you to get your investment back. And after all, Chinese New Year is over, so I will probably do it much faster than BFL (<- I am just kidding).

I believe someone declaring that they just spent abour 100k into bitcoin and it's future, and trust that It will have that value in the future actually helps this community, thats the reason I opened this topic, It's my way of telling everybody, I just risked 100k$ , I risked it for bitcoin and I trust bitcoin enough that I believe I'll get my money back and have profit.

If you think on that line what I do is good for Bitcoin, I'm publicly declaring that I trust it enough to risk my money, alot of it.

Bitcoin does not have any intrinsic value other that our trust in it, so In bitcoin, I trust , we should declare our trust in it, and act accordingly, I'm taking that risk because my my gut tells me BTC will be far more valuable in the future .

and actually telling you guys I'm getting them is not in my best interest because this is also like a competition, and you always have the advantage when competition doesn't know what you are doing, but I believe declaring this publicly will benefit me more in the future by inreasing trust in bitcoin so I'm doing it anyway.

Well, in this case it IS in your best interest to tell people that you're ordering a bunch of rigs, because that might further discourage other people from adding hashing power to the network, securing more profits for yourself in the future. 

[ice_chill]

Why moan about someone else's money ? if he wants to invest then it is his choice.

[darkice]

Why moan about someone else's money ? if he wants to invest then it is his choice.

Agreed.

One thing however, the title of the thread should be changed to "I just spent 100k$ on BFL, any questions?",
because most of the answers to antirack's questions didn't answer anything at all (quotes "I have no idea", "I cannot answer this question", "I don't care", "no comment" or evasion by a counter question) and made me wonder what the purpose of the OP posting really was.

And stating

I believe someone declaring that they just spent abour 100k into bitcoin and it's future, and trust that It will have that value in the future actually helps this community

is not very convincing either.

ok dont invest in bitcoin then, problem solved , I am not selling anything, I dont care what you do with your money, I am not trying to prove anything , what else do you want ?  free cookies ?

[Inaba]

I can confirm that there is in fact more people working on the BFL stuff than just Sonny and the Ninja Lady.  I've spoken to and worked with one of the engineers... how do you think EasyMiner is being made, out of thin air? 

[nedbert9]

I can confirm that there is in fact more people working on the BFL stuff than just Sonny and the Ninja Lady.  I've spoken to and worked with one of the engineers... how do you think EasyMiner is being made, out of thin air? 

No, we just assumed you and 'Sonny' are one in the same.

[darkice]

Why moan about someone else's money ? if he wants to invest then it is his choice.

Agreed.

One thing however, the title of the thread should be changed to "I just spent 100k$ on BFL, any questions?",
because most of the answers to antirack's questions didn't answer anything at all (quotes "I have no idea", "I cannot answer this question", "I don't care", "no comment" or evasion by a counter question) and made me wonder what the purpose of the OP posting really was.

And stating

I believe someone declaring that they just spent abour 100k into bitcoin and it's future, and trust that It will have that value in the future actually helps this community

is not very convincing either.

what else do you want ?  free cookies ?

Nope, no free cookies, I'm not a cookie type person.

What about a few more questions answered about the mini-rig:

1) So as I take from your previous answers you did not see a mini-rig or a real-life prototype of it, is that correct?

Yes

2) The boards you saw, where those really mini-rig modules or just the usual BFL Single modules (those are not the same)?

I know, I saw the latest BFL single , But I was aware of the fact.

3) Did they show you one of these boards running at the spec'd 1.4GH/s?

No, But the reason was clear enough.

4) Did they show you the "assembly line" where they build and test the devices (mini-rigs or BFL Singles)?

Yes

5) What else did you observe during your visit that instilled the necessary confidence to you to make your mini-rig investment with them?

Their general attitude, honest answers to my questions, I saw investment they made and I decided they are definitely not running away with my money, their current investment is way more than the money I'm paying so it's illogical for them to make that much investment just to scam me, Its like buying a ferrari to get 10k credit from a bank .
 
Thank you for your answers and your patience with me!

np  

[bulanula]

I can confirm that there is in fact more people working on the BFL stuff than just Sonny and the Ninja Lady.  I've spoken to and worked with one of the engineers... how do you think EasyMiner is being made, out of thin air? 

No, we just assumed you and 'Sonny' are one in the same.

I know this is going into conspiracy tinfoil territory but I would not surprise me if gigasvps and Inaba were actually employed by BFL since they seem to be doing a lot of their PR work on these forums ...

I don't have any evidence, however ...

[rjk]

I don't have any evidence, however ...

Yeah, because it isn't true...

[antirack]

I'm sure they have both regretted taking him up, and also embraced the business opportunity, since there was and continues to be so much bullshit and flak from bitcoiners, but also so many orders. The Bitcoiner is an enigma, really. 2 parts asshole to 1 part greedy consumer, for most.

Ztex, ngazhang and FPGAmining don't have to take 'bullshit and flak' from bitcoiners (except the one dude who decided to buy Icarus when ngzhang already stopped making them, and he decided to bash Chinese for the size of their dong, just because he was too late for the party lol). I am not Chinese by the way

The problem doesn't lie with bitcoiners, it lies with BFL.