The point of this is absolutely about the power, not about the rate. The rate is really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. If these were half the price with half the potential hashrate at 20w, it would still be a good product, simply because the W:MH ratio would be so low.
Yes, there are some people that are mining with "free" electricity, but the majority of miners pay in some fashion for electricity. Being able to achieve the same hashrate at 1/5th or better the power consumption is a major selling point and puts your "magic number" much, much lower than mining with GPUs.
You can effectively discount the minuscule portion of miners that have free electricity, as their aggregate hashrate is likely within any margin of error of the global hashrate estimate.
Topic: 1GH/s, 20w, $500 — Butterflylabs, is it a scam? - page 8. (Read 123107 times)
The main reason to buy stuff like BFL is trying to sell is because of the low electric usage. That is the main selling point.
Which is irrelevant if you live in an apartment. Also in my case my apartment gets cold in the winter so my rig doubles as an electric heater.
That works great for the <10Gh people. But what about the 20, 50 or even 100Gh? That is not going to happen on free elc with GPU.. Atleast not on any scale that would impact global hash..
The main reason to buy stuff like BFL is trying to sell is because of the low electric usage. That is the main selling point.
how many free power miners ?
The main reason to buy stuff like BFL is trying to sell is because of the low electric usage. That is the main selling point.
Which is irrelevant if you live in an apartment. Also in my case my apartment gets cold in the winter so my rig doubles as an electric heater.
If this is legit, I would imagine it would greatly change the mining game. If it really does cost $600 for 1ghash than this will essentially force GPU mining out of the game would it not? I would probably continue to run my GPU miners since I already spent the money on them, but any additional capacity would be done with the BFL products.
What effect do you think these products would have on difficulty? Do you think it would raise difficutly because the majority of miners would add capacity with these new toys, or would they just replace the GPU mining that is already occuring?
Will the simplified technology promote the casual miners who seemed to have left with the price colapse back in? Would this in turn raise the dollar value.
If this technology IS real, I think it would open the door for a lot of questions going forward.
What effect do you think these products would have on difficulty? Do you think it would raise difficutly because the majority of miners would add capacity with these new toys, or would they just replace the GPU mining that is already occuring?
Will the simplified technology promote the casual miners who seemed to have left with the price colapse back in? Would this in turn raise the dollar value.
If this technology IS real, I think it would open the door for a lot of questions going forward.
You are making the assumption that people only buy GPUs solely for mining. I bought my GPU for gaming with mining in the back of my mind. Still at $200 for roughly 400Mhash I still beat it in cost per Mhash. GPU mining will never die as long as there are gamers.
I agree! That's what's so perplexing about it all. They've gone to so much trouble, but couldn't get little things like the business name right.
Or they have several businesses (engineering and sales & marketing) with their own name, or they cant agree on the public name. Its really the kind of thing you see when a bunch of engineers start their own company and they havent hired anyone with commercial and marketing experience (or given him the authority to make those decisions). Believe it or not, Ive seen it before with a startup.
Then when asked about corporate registration in this thread they should have indicated WHERE Butterfly Labs Inc is actually incorporated. Calling yourself "butterfly labs" is one thing calling yourself "Butterfly Labs Inc." without an legal entity incorporated in that name (or fictitious business licenses akak DBA license) is unlawful.
Before I have said what they are doing is illegal however, who would you deal with? Clearly this is not a police matter.
I have been saying for a long time there needs to be a corporate police force. One that polices corporations and one that we can file complaints to and will actually be investigated by. Alas I am not sure such an organization exists and if they do they are so underfunded (on purpose) I am sure that they do not exist. Corporate criminals are the worst kind.
If this is legit, I would imagine it would greatly change the mining game. If it really does cost $600 for 1ghash than this will essentially force GPU mining out of the game would it not? I would probably continue to run my GPU miners since I already spent the money on them, but any additional capacity would be done with the BFL products.
What effect do you think these products would have on difficulty? Do you think it would raise difficutly because the majority of miners would add capacity with these new toys, or would they just replace the GPU mining that is already occuring?
Will the simplified technology promote the casual miners who seemed to have left with the price colapse back in? Would this in turn raise the dollar value.
If this technology IS real, I think it would open the door for a lot of questions going forward.
What effect do you think these products would have on difficulty? Do you think it would raise difficutly because the majority of miners would add capacity with these new toys, or would they just replace the GPU mining that is already occuring?
Will the simplified technology promote the casual miners who seemed to have left with the price colapse back in? Would this in turn raise the dollar value.
If this technology IS real, I think it would open the door for a lot of questions going forward.
I agree! That's what's so perplexing about it all. They've gone to so much trouble, but couldn't get little things like the business name right.
Or they have several businesses (engineering and sales & marketing) with their own name, or they cant agree on the public name. Its really the kind of thing you see when a bunch of engineers start their own company and they havent hired anyone with commercial and marketing experience (or given him the authority to make those decisions). Believe it or not, Ive seen it before with a startup.
Then when asked about corporate registration in this thread they should have indicated WHERE Butterfly Labs Inc is actually incorporated. Calling yourself "butterfly labs" is one thing calling yourself "Butterfly Labs Inc." without an legal entity incorporated in that name (or fictitious business licenses akak DBA license) is unlawful.
I really hope this is legit!
I agree! That's what's so perplexing about it all. They've gone to so much trouble, but couldn't get little things like the business name right.
Or they have several businesses (engineering and sales & marketing) with their own name, or they cant agree on the public name. Its really the kind of thing you see when a bunch of engineers start their own company and they havent hired anyone with commercial and marketing experience (or given him the authority to make those decisions). Believe it or not, Ive seen it before with a startup.
k, effort and lost opportunity against the potential profits from a scam like this; Id say its incredibly stupid. If you want to scam bitcoiners I can think of a 100 easier, safer and more lucrative ways.
I agree! That's what's so perplexing about it all. They've gone to so much trouble, but couldn't get little things like the business name right.
I'm not jumping all the way to either side of the fence yet, but there are a lot of things that don't make sense to all of this. I have the feeling that most people in this thread feel the same way. All we can do is wait and see.
Yeah all of a sudden its a BitForce product? Are they BitForce Labs or Butterfly Labs. Im confused.
k, effort and lost opportunity against the potential profits from a scam like this; Id say its incredibly stupid. If you want to scam bitcoiners I can think of a 100 easier, safer and more lucrative ways.
I agree! That's what's so perplexing about it all. They've gone to so much trouble, but couldn't get little things like the business name right.
I'm not jumping all the way to either side of the fence yet, but there are a lot of things that don't make sense to all of this. I have the feeling that most people in this thread feel the same way. All we can do is wait and see.
You hit the nail on the head here. It's impossible to prove right now that it's a scam, just like it's impossible to prove that there isn't a god. The best we can do is speculate, and all we have to go on are these strange and inconsistent details, which DeathAndTaxes nicely summarized.
Fair enough, but in order to make a judgment you have to wheigh those questions (which IMO are really lightweight) against the evidence that points in the other direction. To name a few, the fact those people clearly have some related technical skills, have already spent a serious amount of money on this, dont seem to hide their identities from Inaba, so far apparently have no problems refunding canceled orders etc.
When I put the risk, effort and lost opportunity against the potential profits from a scam like this; Id say its incredibly stupid. If you want to scam bitcoiners I can think of a 100 easier, safer and more lucrative ways.
My point is merely that its not proof of a scam, its just one of several unanswered questions.
You hit the nail on the head here. It's impossible to prove right now that it's a scam, just like it's impossible to prove that there isn't a god. The best we can do is speculate, and all we have to go on are these strange and inconsistent details, which DeathAndTaxes nicely summarized.
This may not seem like a big deal to you, but it certainly is. Putting "© 2011 Butterfly Labs Inc." on the website when there is no company called Butterfly Labs Inc. is very sloppy on their part. How can they enforce that copyright if they are actually BF Labs Inc.? Furthermore, who should a customer file a lawsuit against? That's the whole point of a registered business name, and they seem to miss it completely or are doing it intentionally.
The people behind BFL seem dispersed over the US, France, and perhaps even other countries; they claim to have engineers fluent in French, Italian, Spanish and even Farsi. It seems like sales is done from the US, but its entirely possible there is a "butterfly labs" registered elsewhere. If I were to guess, Id say the engineering is done elsewhere, and "BF labs" is only created to handle the commercialization from the US. Quite possibly Butterfly labs exists in one of those other countries.
Thats not to say I disagree with you they should put the contact info of the legal entity you are dealing with on the website, I do find that a serious oversight, but that they may go by different names is not that weird.
BTW, it seems they registered other names too:
http://digicomlabs.com
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The website clearly says: "Butterfly Labs has more than a decade of experience in FPGA & ASIC stand alone system design." To me, that's very different than saying that some people that work at this company have worked on this type of stuff for a while.
As a hypothetical assume a couple of french engineers have worked on these things for 10+ years under the name "jean marechal SPRL". Some bloke in the US wants to market their product for bitcoin and comes up with a fancier name, registers the website and does all the marketing specifically for bitcoin. Does that make the above statement incorrect? Maybe, but its not that different from AMD claiming to have 10+ years experience designing GPUs. Technically its not AMD, but ATi, but thats really semantics.
That said, its still possible Butterfly Labs as such has existed for that long somewhere in Europe, but I guess only BFL can explain that. My point is merely that its not proof of a scam, its just one of several unanswered questions.
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* 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.
Since you can pay with a bank transfer, Im sure you'll get the correct name and address, though I agree they should put that on their site.
This may not seem like a big deal to you, but it certainly is. Putting "© 2011 Butterfly Labs Inc." on the website when there is no company called Butterfly Labs Inc. is very sloppy on their part. How can they enforce that copyright if they are actually BF Labs Inc.? Furthermore, who should a customer file a lawsuit against? That's the whole point of a registered business name, and they seem to miss it completely or are doing it intentionally.
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* Company claims to have decade of experience but has no prior products and didn't exist 6 months ago.
Obviously the people in that company have experience and the company is a startup (/spin off). We said the same thing when we spun out a cmos image sensor chip company, since the team had many years of experience, just not under that company name.
The website clearly says: "Butterfly Labs has more than a decade of experience in FPGA & ASIC stand alone system design." To me, that's very different than saying that some people that work at this company have worked on this type of stuff for a while.
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* 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 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.
Not knowing the technical details of their yet to ship product is not evidence of a scam.
You're right, a lack of details doesn't mean it's a scam. The point is that the details we do have don't add up.
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* 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.
+-10% running variance.
Could you elaborate on what you mean? I think you miss his point: quoting 3 significant figures implies that level of confidence in the measurement. If they had simply said 1 GH/s and 50 GH/s, it would mean a very different thing.
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* 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.
Yeah, there has been a small delay, I think you mentioned that already a few times.
I believe that you misunderstand his point again: yes, there's been a small delay, but why didn't they delay accepting pre-orders then?
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 is offering pre-orders before product is ready (which isn't necessary as they would have had to already acquire the sASICS)
We are going in circles here. I see nothing weird about selling their first batch of test chips for a discount for all the reasons already mentioned.
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* 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).
IIRC the preorder actually had a 4-8 week delivery schedule. They have not missed that yet. Even if they do, a tiny delay (if that) is evidence of a scam now? Better tell AMD, nVidia, intel, microsoft, etc.
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* 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.
So anything with a 6 week shipping date is suspicious to you? Better tell my Audi dealer as I ordered my car 3 months ago and Im still waiting.
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* 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.
And less protection to the seller. I had to give my Audi dealer a certified bank check. Scammers!
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* 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.
Since you can pay with a bank transfer, Im sure you'll get the correct name and address, though I agree they should put that on their site.
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* Company claims to have decade of experience but has no prior products and didn't exist 6 months ago.
Obviously the people in that company have experience and the company is a startup (/spin off). We said the same thing when we spun out a cmos image sensor chip company, since the team had many years of experience, just not under that company name.
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* Company planned a public demo 2 weeks ago but was unable to have product working in time.
Big deal. Particularly since that demo was not even officially announced.
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* 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 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.
Not knowing the technical details of their yet to ship product is not evidence of a scam.
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* Company now plans a public demo in which no hard numbers can be provided.
Inaba is allowed to say whether or not the board generally meats the performance claims; considering they admit issues with the software, I think thats entirely reasonable. When is the last time AMD or Intel allowed publishing benchmarks of preproduction hardware? If for whatever reason there still is 10-20% lower performance than promised, it doesnt exactly prove a scam or does it.
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* 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.
+-10% running variance.
Quote
* 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.
Yeah, there has been a small delay, I think you mentioned that already a few times.
I'd like to simply make notice to any of our customers that if you're uncomfortable with your pre-order purchase, you're welcome to cancel your pre-order slot and get a full refund with no questions asked.
If anyone cancels their pre-order slot, will it become available again for purchase at the lower price?I'd like to simply make notice to any of our customers that if you're uncomfortable with your pre-order purchase, you're welcome to cancel your pre-order slot and get a full refund with no questions asked.
If anyone cancels their pre-order slot, will it become available again for purchase at the lower price?I'd like to simply make notice to any of our customers that if you're uncomfortable with your pre-order purchase, you're welcome to cancel your pre-order slot and get a full refund with no questions asked.
If anyone cancels their pre-order slot, will it become available again for purchase at the lower price?Jump to: