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Topic: 1GH/s, 20w, $500 — Butterflylabs, is it a scam? - page 29. (Read 123107 times)

legendary
Activity: 980
Merit: 1008
^ And Bets of Bitcoin will decide supremely when this "proof" became official?
And, I presume, will be able to retroactively cancel bets after this point in time?
full member
Activity: 184
Merit: 100
Wait, I'm confused. If it turns out to not be a scam and they prove it next week, the "disagree" bets will be winners and they will be paid, right?

Yes, exactly. Only the bets that are put on after the "proof" will be canceled.
hero member
Activity: 720
Merit: 525
Bet on this topic at our site has just reached 110 BTC. It is a great deal, especially if you think that units will ship this year.

But its a stupid formulated bet. What happens if they ship next week? Everyone could still bet for weeks to come while the outcome would already be certain. The only ones that can win are the ones voting its a scam.

If that happens (as it happened before for some other statements) we stop betting, cancel and refund the bets after a certain date when the conclusion is reached. Using our best judgement is part of our referee job even if everything is not perfectly stated in the submitted statement.

Wait, I'm confused. If it turns out to not be a scam and they prove it next week, the "disagree" bets will be winners and they will be paid, right?
sr. member
Activity: 349
Merit: 250
Bet on this topic at our site has just reached 110 BTC. It is a great deal, especially if you think that units will ship this year.

But its a stupid formulated bet. What happens if they ship next week? Everyone could still bet for weeks to come while the outcome would already be certain. The only ones that can win are the ones voting its a scam.

If that happens (as it happened before for some other statements) we stop betting, cancel and refund the bets after a certain date when the conclusion is reached. Using our best judgement is part of our referee job even if everything is not perfectly stated in the submitted statement.
Nice, good to see betsofbitco.in is keeping an eye on this.
full member
Activity: 184
Merit: 100
Bet on this topic at our site has just reached 110 BTC. It is a great deal, especially if you think that units will ship this year.

But its a stupid formulated bet. What happens if they ship next week? Everyone could still bet for weeks to come while the outcome would already be certain. The only ones that can win are the ones voting its a scam.

If that happens (as it happened before for some other statements) we stop betting, cancel and refund the bets after a certain date when the conclusion is reached. Using our best judgement is part of our referee job even if everything is not perfectly stated in the submitted statement.
sr. member
Activity: 349
Merit: 250
Bet on this topic at our site has just reached 110 BTC. It is a great deal, especially if you think that units will ship this year.

But its a stupid formulated bet. What happens if they ship next week? Everyone could still bet for weeks to come while the outcome would already be certain. The only ones that can win are the ones voting its a scam.
I hope the time-weighting will correct for the poorly formulated bet.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 500
Bet on this topic at our site has just reached 110 BTC. It is a great deal, especially if you think that units will ship this year.

But its a stupid formulated bet. What happens if they ship next week? Everyone could still bet for weeks to come while the outcome would already be certain. The only ones that can win are the ones voting its a scam.
full member
Activity: 184
Merit: 100
Bet on this topic at our site has just reached 110 BTC. It is a great deal, especially if you think that units will ship this year.
newbie
Activity: 38
Merit: 0
HAI GUISE I GOT 1 AND IT WORKZ LOL!!!111!!!!1!


But seriously, sub'd to thread because I'm interested to know what kind of hardware they've used.
legendary
Activity: 1666
Merit: 1057
Marketing manager - GO MP
---- sockpuppet witness stage after this post ----
sr. member
Activity: 349
Merit: 250
We plan on demonstrating our BitForce Single product before accepting pre-orders for our Rig Box system on the 25th of this month.  The date will be published here once it's fixed.

BitForce Single PCB's are used in the Rig Box platform.  However, the Rig Box also employs parts unique to itself.  Why would we go to the trouble for such a small market?  We didn't.  Our product design is influenced by other factors beyond hash mining.
I think you are in the right place for the announcement.
legendary
Activity: 1022
Merit: 1000
BitMinter
6 days to go... tick, tock, tock  Lips sealed
sr. member
Activity: 349
Merit: 250
I only got 5 because I paid in BTC and want to wait until after this public demonstration next week before i Order my next 50!!!!


(If you did not get it, this is a joke....)
Okay, all is right with the world.
sr. member
Activity: 349
Merit: 250
The reason why BFL can do this is because they bought chips on the cheap due to a lost contract with Libya... Wow... This is so far the most reasonable explanation on how they can do what they are doing at this price!

If this where true, their would clearly be a limit on how many they could produce. Better order now!!!

I have already ordered like 10. Hope you don't beat me. You know there are only 100 available. Pre order NOW !!!
I thought you were in the obvious scam group! Shocked
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 500
The reason why BFL can do this is because they bought chips on the cheap due to a lost contract with Libya... Wow... This is so far the most reasonable explanation on how they can do what they are doing at this price!

If this where true, their would clearly be a limit on how many they could produce. Better order now!!!

I have already ordered like 10. Hope you don't beat me. You know there are only 100 available. Pre order NOW !!!
legendary
Activity: 2128
Merit: 1073
I did some quick research and VPN accelerators tend to have high cost relative to their performance.  Certainly nothing that would be inline with the MH/$ claims made by the scammers.
I'm fully with you that when sold on the open market they command premium prices.

But BFL seems to be a loft operation (and I don't know how loft in Kansas City compares to a garage in Silicon Valley, I presume they are about the same.) They may have gotten some engineering samples, some partially defective chips. They may have bought out from the bankruptcy assets of some networking equipment vendor who just lost their contract with the government of Egypt or Libya. Who knows? Speculation in this thread is a free fun.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
OK, I'm officially registering a second bet with myself.

The BF Labs device uses a full-custom ASIC chip originally designed as a IPSec VPN accelerator.

The intellectual property of BFL consists of finding how to internally modify the behavior of the chip
to change the IP protocol 51 (AH - Authentication Header) HMAC-SHA-256 to a simple two nested SHA-256 hashes.

Somebody please quote my message.

Thanks,
That's an interesting idea.  Now if that's not what they're doing, you've just given away a good idea.

I don't think any VPN accelerator has sufficient throughput to achieve the kind performance necessary given their cost.  It is an interesting re-use method of looking for more efficient hashing though.  I did some quick research and VPN accelerators tend to have high cost relative to their performance.  Certainly nothing that would be inline with the MH/$ claims made by the scammers.
full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 102
Bitcoin!
OK, I'm officially registering a second bet with myself.

The BF Labs device uses a full-custom ASIC chip originally designed as a IPSec VPN accelerator.

The intellectual property of BFL consists of finding how to internally modify the behavior of the chip
to change the IP protocol 51 (AH - Authentication Header) HMAC-SHA-256 to a simple two nested SHA-256 hashes.

Somebody please quote my message.

Thanks,
That's an interesting idea.  Now if that's not what they're doing, you've just given away a good idea.
legendary
Activity: 2128
Merit: 1073
Would VPN accelerators be designed for that kind of throughput? Got a link to a  datasheeet for a similar chip like that?
IPSec VPN accelerators are designed with 3 5 objectives:
1) max PPS - packets per second, each packet requiring HMAC-hash which computes 2*hash for short byte-strings.
2) max flows - each packet flow uses different keys, chip minimizes required key reloading
3) max BPS - bytes per second, this is the least important objective, total throughput is the easiest to achieve and normally least important because it very rarely becomes a true limit of the whole design. This is where VPN accelerators differ from other designs: unlike pretty much everything else they do a lot of short-string hashes not a few long-string hashes.
4) min latency - do not require batching of packets for efficient work and no additional waits after each packet
5) testability - being able to do self-test while still operating, not only upon reboot.

I'm not aware of anyone selling individual VPN acceleration chips. Those things are usually sold as systems, and will typically require an NDA to get internal details. But the overall feel of those designs is that they provide lots of leeway to the driver-writers and digital designers: most of the combinations of control signals and registers are "reserved; do no use", "for internal test only" and so forth.

I'm actually not at all in the business, I got interested because of an effort to understand some historical project that went bankrupt.
staff
Activity: 4242
Merit: 8672
Would VPN accelerators be designed for that kind of throughput? Got a link to a  datasheeet for a similar chip like that?

No, people have pointed this out _many times before_, including in this thread, I'm sure.

1MH/s ~= 1 GBit/sec of SHA256 hashing.  There is no commercial application for a mining-speed SHA256 engine.

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