Topic: 1GH/s, 20w, $500 — Butterflylabs, is it a scam? - page 10. (Read 123107 times)

They might if they planned to throttle it to 1GH/s and then in six months come out with an improved version that does 1.5GH/s for a higher price.

let's wait and see...

I don't think anyone was going off your post.  Inaba statement from the company that they won't allow hard numbers to be revealed alone is enough to generate talk about reduced performance.  I mean if it was hitting 1.5GH/s I doubt they would want to keep that a secret.

  No one, I made the mistake of trying to explain how something I requested Inaba to try and do when he reported back the results, since he cannot give hard numbers, was mistaken.  Apparently, no one read my explanation and again only hawk eyed in on the numbers in my post. :/

  I most certainly agree that "a fast nickle beats a slow dime", IF there is sufficient inventory to back it up.

  Again, I must apologize to those sensitive to 'capitalism' for not clearifying what I meant by "sound capitalism".  I was simply meaning to state that, in this one particular instance, that the price was not in the good natured spirit of competition in capitalism. And, that at the stated performance and assumed cost to produce of these units and the low volume availabe, the price was well below the market value.  I am not sure how that was taken to support the 'American addage' of cut throat, rip your ass off health care, or anything else for that matter. ;p  

  To those that think there is something inherently wrong with 'markup', you try running a company and see how long you can afford to 'float' it with a 1-5% markup.  Capitalism in itself is what drives the economy, in its ability to earn money. Currupt business practices and monopolistic price gouging are not problems tied to the definition of capitalism but to the people that run those unethical companies.  There is of course a LOT more to capitalism and I am sure there is much more to debate, as has been done in many threads here already. But, if we want to discuss more of the topic, we should create a new thread in economy and bash each others' brains on the keyboards there.

   Cheers,
     Derek

Did i miss something ? Who is talking about lower performance ?

Maybe he means far better than any solid gold video card.  

wait... wat?

"Again"?

At $700 for 800Mhash is still far better $/H ratio than any video card I know of (new of course). Not to mention the power benefits. I'm beginning to think this is too good to be true again.

Great.


First advertise some wonderful prices and performance ( 1 GH/s and $500 ) then shaft us and advertise higher prices and ( GASP ! ) LOWER performance ( $700 and 800 Mhash/s ). How does the last bit exactly work ? Are they the next Intel limiting their chips and the performance ?

A recap (assumming the company is pretending to be using sASICS):
* Company is offering pre-orders before product is ready (which isn't necessary as they would have had to already acquire the sASICS)
* Company claims product will ship in 4-6 weeks but the prototype isn't even working yet 7 weeks later (the 6 weeks from initial claim was on 11/18 so they already missed that).
* Company also puts all shipping estimates for new pre-orders at a continual 6 weeks out which just happens to put every single order (both past and future) outside of Paypal chargeback period.
* Speaking of Paypal.  The company has the assets to acquire a multi-hundred thousand dollar sASIC design and run but can't accept credit cards via their established merchant account and instead relies on Paypal which has much less protection for the consumer.
* Company calls themselves "Butterfly Labs Inc."  but there is no "Butterfly Labs Inc." in the US.  There are 12 BF Labs Inc (and one B.F.L. Inc) in the US but nothing on the website links them to that particular entity and no information available for BF Labs Inc link them to Butterfly Labs.
* Company claims to have decade of experience but has no prior products and didn't exist 6 months ago.
* Company planned a public demo 2 weeks ago but was unable to have product working in time.
* Company has never explained how 32 boards = 50x performance.
* Company claims that product is useful for medical imaging (which would be incompatible w/ sASIC design).
* Company performance claims are not impossible (although improbable) w/ high end sASIC but board voltage and onboard flash loader would indicate high end FPGA not a sASIC. 
* Company now plans a public demo in which no hard numbers can be provided.
* Company "knows" board will produce 1.05 GH (note the 3 significant digits) but actually hasn't mined anything yet.  They also know the rig box will produce exactly 50.45 GH (an uneven multiplier) despite the simpler product not yet working at the claimed speeds.
* Company (in one of the very few announcements) claimed it wouldn't put rig box up for pre-order until singles had been demoed yet it failed to live up to that claim.

You seemed to insinuate their pricing made no sense and that it was evidence of scam. But apparently I misunderstood and you seem to agree with me that particularly in the scenario they use s-asics, that their pricing strategy is likely completely sensible?

If so, good.
I also think you -along with everyone else- agree that the performance and power consumption claims are completely believable if this is an s-asic. I think everyone agrees the pictures and PCB look pretty damn real. BFL people dont seem to meet Inaba wearing a face mask and sunglasses. They dont seem to make any fuzz about canceled orders.

Someone remind me, what evidence was there again of this being a scam?

I still think Inaba's in on it.









JUST KIDDING!

The only thing one could say is Thanks Inaba and others for letting us sell our used card,
Or being mad at the price increase.

Can't believe this turned into a two page economic lesson on gold vs poo prices.

I wish to add, unlike GPUs for gaming, there is no cap on the number of these an individual could want.

I think the 'big box' stores have proven in a so called capitalist economy, selling quantity far outweighs selling at an acceptable market price

I don't disagree with any of that.  Not really sure what you are refuting.

I was responding to this:
"What you mean that old adage of figuring out the cost of production then putting fair markup on it is not good enough anymore, that used to be the definition of sound capitalism "

The nominal amount doesn't matter.  $700, $200, $2000, $25,000.  There is no "old adage" about selling product at a price that is a fair markup on cost of production.  You sell a product at the price the market will bear.

So once again I am not sure what point you are making but it wasn't in response to mine.

First of all, do you have any evidence "the market" would accept $700 before BFL had working products? Judging by this thread, precious few ppl seemed willing to pay even $499 without bullet proof evidence. It seems unlikely they sold out all 100. Besides, even if only as a publicity stunt, it must have been well worth the few $1000 it "cost" them.

As for why "only" $700 now; economics 101 teaches us lower price will increase volume. Particularly if it turns out there is an s-asic  under that heatsink, its not very hard to see why they are undercutting the other FPGA by so much. Because they can, and because they have to to achieve their volume. The window of opportunity isnt going to stay open forever, if they have an open standing order for 1000 or several 1000's of these chips, it tends to have an effect on how much "the market will accept". Keep in mind just 1000 - what you stated was the minimum order for HC s-asics- so 1000 of those singles would represent ca 15% of the entire bitcoin network.  You might find a few fools willing to pay $2000 for it, but you wont find 1000 of them.

Well no there is absolutely no free market in health care costs.  Personally I believe the only viable health care system would be universal coverage.  Yeah I can be a capitalist AND believe that capitalism isn't the answer for everything.  I believe free markets could solve health care "crisis" but most people would be unwilling to accept that solution so rather than beat my head on the wall for ideology I would accept any sane public or private system.    What we have now in the US has absolutely nothing to do w/ free markets of fair pricing.

Still Healthcare isn't FPGA or Gold or dog poop.  Capitalism and free markets do fine in those areas.  Selling your product based on some pre-defined notion of a "fair price" is stupid.  It leaves you under capitalized.  What is a competitor releases a better product?  Would have been nice to collect higher margins on your product before it became obsolete.  What if you face unexpected regulatory or legal costs.  What is warranty claims are higher than expected.

Limiting profits just to limit them is not a free market.  The market will limit what BFL (or any company) can sell the product for.  

Gold is one of the oldest currency on earth and most governments are scared of its purchasing power. If you don't think it's worth its trade price or higher, I take you for the fool.