BitForce SC - full custom ASIC

[Inaba]

I'm not sure what you mean?  Expansion as far as what?

[1714179500]

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[1714179500]

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[1714179500]

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[1714179500]

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[rjk]

Full custom ASIC is about as big as you can get. Unless you mean adding more employees or something.

[Garr255]

I'm referring to the business, not the product. To me, it would make sense for them to hire and buy more space (assuming that's also a limiting factor).

[Inaba]

They just hired at least 2 new people that I know of, but possibly more, since I don't stop by in the middle of the day (usually in the evenings).  I think once they streamline everything, they will be assessing their options if they aren't already... although my topics of discussion don't usually revolve around HR stuff, so anything I can tell you as far as that goes is more speculation than anything.

[bulanula]

Again, why?  They can't keep up with the orders they have now, why would they need more unhappy customers?  Assuming their ASIC plans come to fruition as planned, they are literally going to be the only game in town.  For better or worse, you can deal with them or you can deal with no one at that point, so again, what's the incentive on their part?

Once again, I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment, but the hard realities of business clash with ideals.

This scares me a little bit.

Mining monopoly ? No thanks !

[notme]

Again, why?  They can't keep up with the orders they have now, why would they need more unhappy customers?  Assuming their ASIC plans come to fruition as planned, they are literally going to be the only game in town.  For better or worse, you can deal with them or you can deal with no one at that point, so again, what's the incentive on their part?

Once again, I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment, but the hard realities of business clash with ideals.

This scares me a little bit.

Mining monopoly ? No thanks !

Mining hardware monopoly.  Much less harmful, and a temporary situation.

[bulanula]

Again, why?  They can't keep up with the orders they have now, why would they need more unhappy customers?  Assuming their ASIC plans come to fruition as planned, they are literally going to be the only game in town.  For better or worse, you can deal with them or you can deal with no one at that point, so again, what's the incentive on their part?

Once again, I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment, but the hard realities of business clash with ideals.

This scares me a little bit.

Mining monopoly ? No thanks !

Mining hardware monopoly.  Much less harmful, and a temporary situation.

I don't like ANY monopoly ... free market fail.

[notme]

Mining hardware monopoly.  Much less harmful, and a temporary situation.

I don't like ANY monopoly ... free market fail.

The first to market always has a temporary monopoly.... unless you pass a law that all new market entrants must share all their information with a competitor before beginning operations this will never change.  And that is definitely not a free market situation.

[1l1l11ll1l]

You guyswon'th ave to worry about delivery times for ASICs, I've already purchased the first 6 Months production, so when they start to arrive at my warehouse, I'll list them as available for sale and immediate shipment, at a meager 500% markup of course.

[P4man]

I am more than happy to give BFL my money because they have proven to me that they can deliver.

In the case of asics, their potential ability to deliver is actually the problem. Unless you know how much they are going to deliver over the time period between ordering and when you think you will have earned back your investment. A 6 month wait for their FPGAs was annoying, but  I think people still dont fully grasp asics have the potential to increase difficulty by an order of magnitude or more and a 6 month wait could prove incredibly expensive.

[Garr255]

The benefits and drawbacks of evolving technology started killing me 15 years before I was born...

[DILLIGAF]

Well what if they needed $1mil to create ASIC wafer ? You can't just get a loan like that easily.

They don't need loans these people here have already shown a willingness to give them hundreds of thousands of dollars and wait months on end to get their machines that are already bought and paid for, they'll just do it again for the ASICs.

I am more than happy to give BFL my money because they have proven to me that they can deliver. I did my due diligence and found them to be upstanding business men who make mistakes.

If anyone here doesn't make mistakes, please let yourself's be known to the rest of us so we can castrate troll you when you do.

Back again are you you bitter little troll well here is a couple for you. Why would you care about giving them other peoples money next to no risk in doing that. Sure you could be on the hook for paying out to your bond holders for equipment you never get but that is what you are doing right now anyways paying bond holders for equipment you don't have in your possession and hashing. http://gigamining.com/mgpumon/ Which at the time of your announcement over two months ago was 45gh/s now down to ~15gh/s as I write this. So just how does that work anyways do the payments come out of the BTC they have already invested with you? As well be nice if they would prove to the rest of the people that have had orders in for months that they could delivery what they have bought and paid for.

[||bit]

Again, why?  They can't keep up with the orders they have now, why would they need more unhappy customers?  Assuming their ASIC plans come to fruition as planned, they are literally going to be the only game in town.  For better or worse, you can deal with them or you can deal with no one at that point, so again, what's the incentive on their part?

Once again, I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment, but the hard realities of business clash with ideals.

This scares me a little bit.

Mining monopoly ? No thanks !

There's a hardcopy ASIC project underway as well. Found in one of the threads in these forums. I'm not sure what the performance/cost difference is to custom ASIC, but I suspect it will beat BFL SIngles and BFL mini-rig in that category. And maybe even be competitive with ASIC (at some point) if they can lower the markup after recouping most of the startup cost, but just speculating on that part.

[Turbor]

Well what if they needed $1mil to create ASIC wafer ? You can't just get a loan like that easily.

They don't need loans these people here have already shown a willingness to give them hundreds of thousands of dollars and wait months on end to get their machines that are already bought and paid for, they'll just do it again for the ASICs.

I am more than happy to give BFL my money because they have proven to me that they can deliver. I did my due diligence and found them to be upstanding business men who make mistakes.

If anyone here doesn't make mistakes, please let yourself's be known to the rest of us so we can castrate troll you when you do.

Back again are you you bitter little troll well here is a couple for you. Why would you care about giving them other peoples money next to no risk in doing that. Sure you could be on the hook for paying out to your bond holders for equipment you never get but that is what you are doing right now anyways paying bond holders for equipment you don't have in your possession and hashing. http://gigamining.com/mgpumon/ Which at the time of your announcement over two months ago was 45gh/s now down to ~15gh/s as I write this. So just how does that work anyways do the payments come out of the BTC they have already invested with you? As well be nice if they would prove to the rest of the people that have had orders in for months that they could delivery what they have bought and paid for.

I think no one cares where his coins come from as long as people get paid.

[abeaulieu]

I am more than happy to give BFL my money because they have proven to me that they can deliver.

In the case of asics, their potential ability to deliver is actually the problem. Unless you know how much they are going to deliver over the time period between ordering and when you think you will have earned back your investment. A 6 month wait for their FPGAs was annoying, but  I think people still dont fully grasp asics have the potential to increase difficulty by an order of magnitude or more and a 6 month wait could prove incredibly expensive.

Your post doesn't really convey a consistent thought. If you're worried about the difficulty increasing an order of magnitude then the wait makes current miners more profitable because the delay in ASIC supply will delay the sharp increase in difficulty. The fact that the first shipments will take a while to ramp up will also make the difficulty increase slower than this ASIC spike that everyone fears.

[P4man]

Your post doesn't really convey a consistent thought.

I think you misunderstand the waiting I mentioned; if everyone has to wait, then that by itself is not a big deal, not too different from waiting for a mini rig today.

The issue is if you have to wait x months while other customers are already getting their asic miners and pushing up difficulty. Then you will have a problem. Particularly if that waiting list is caused by a massive backlog.

But no matter how BFL handles this, with high or low initial per GH prices, long or short waiting lists, unless you get an insight in to BFLs actual and future sales, it will be impossible to calculate a ROI time and if BFL strives for maximum return on its own investment, you will likely not achieve a positive ROI in your lifetime.

[punningclan]

We hear you loud and clear and we promise to stand by our customers through this technology change with an all inclusive trade in policy designed to protect the dollar value of your existing hardware.

I applaud your buy-back policy and hope that it will dampen fears over at GLBSE. I'm betting that pretty much every serious mining company will invest in these to the benefit of all the share holders, but for now the uncertainty is playing havoc with the market prices.
Having been the target of the longest troll fest in this forums history (data unavailable though it felt like it ) you guys deserve all the success in the world!
Thank you for being that company! 

[punningclan]

Well what if they needed $1mil to create ASIC wafer ? You can't just get a loan like that easily.

They get the money from selling FPGA, now the ASIC wafer is funded and created, they can sell it for $5mil, while buying back all the FPGA systems will cost $1mil, $4mil profit

Now to get the $4mil profit, they need to encourage you to buy the ASIC, and what better way than to offer a full price buy back of FPGA ?

A shared die would be much cheaper.

[punningclan]

Looking at the specs as I remember Bitcoin's pluggable cryptographic core is very supportive of a continued FPGA market since even a cheaper shared-die ASIC won't be upgradeable. FPGAs are improving all the time and will always have better resale value. My guess is that BFL realizes this and so will have found the least expensive way they can to roll SC out.

IMHO Bitcoin's inherent policy of diminishing returns is in general always going to put a throttle on crazed difficulty increases and is very supportive of the individual miner. It's no use developing a system to set us free financially just to have big players turn around and abscond with everything ala the current worlds financial position.

Bitcoin seems to have been designed to resist financial oligarchy?

[imsaguy]

Well what if they needed $1mil to create ASIC wafer ? You can't just get a loan like that easily.

They don't need loans these people here have already shown a willingness to give them hundreds of thousands of dollars and wait months on end to get their machines that are already bought and paid for, they'll just do it again for the ASICs.

I am more than happy to give BFL my money because they have proven to me that they can deliver. I did my due diligence and found them to be upstanding business men who make mistakes.

If anyone here doesn't make mistakes, please let yourself's be known to the rest of us so we can castrate troll you when you do.

Back again are you you bitter little troll well here is a couple for you. Why would you care about giving them other peoples money next to no risk in doing that. Sure you could be on the hook for paying out to your bond holders for equipment you never get but that is what you are doing right now anyways paying bond holders for equipment you don't have in your possession and hashing. http://gigamining.com/mgpumon/ Which at the time of your announcement over two months ago was 45gh/s now down to ~15gh/s as I write this. So just how does that work anyways do the payments come out of the BTC they have already invested with you? As well be nice if they would prove to the rest of the people that have had orders in for months that they could delivery what they have bought and paid for.

I think no one cares where his coins come from as long as people get paid.

Not true, just ask pirateat40. (Please don't take this as a shit on giga, only that the source of coins DOES matter)