Topic: 1GH/s, 20w, $700 (was $500) — Butterflylabs, is it for real? (Part 2) - page 57. (Read 146909 times)

Yeah, It's the same thing as being a Farmer, You can eat your own food, And live untill natural death
Or, Do that exact same thing, And sell some of your crop and seeds, Gaining you extra income, Causing you to live in wealth untill natural death

Of course. Selling pitchforks to the miners is always more profitable than mining the gold yourself, if I may be so bold as to use one of [Tycho]'s expressions.

now i'm no expert by any means but it kind of seems like one of those "buy my how to get rich strategy" deals. i mean if invented a box that could do 50g/hash i'd just turn it on and keep my mouth shut. but i guess theres more profit in selling it to ppl who could afford it?

Actually, they dropped it from 54 and some decimal down to the current 50 or so.

Also, it certainly is possible that the quoted price is for the base unit with one hashing module, and you pay extra for additional pluggable modules. I don't know if this is the case, but it is possible.

I didn't know the rig box had it as low as 900W.  so 2500 makes sense..... interesting stuff....  I have probably 24k in gpus, now your telling me I could have waited till now, and done it all with one rig??  we will see,  this bitcoin business is no free lunch.  converting electricity into bitcoins is no easy feat, on any platform.  It takes alot of money, electricity, and hard work.  If you can buy something like that big box, turn it on and it gets 50G........WOW is all I can say..


I eagerly wait for the 'release'

Actually they did up the watt usage of the rig box, BUT LEFT THE HARSH RATE ALONE lol!

The rig box specs was 50GHs, 900W. Now its 50GHs with 2500w which is roughly 32 singles x 80 watt.

Earlier, when being asked how they got 50GHs from a 32 singles, they said the rig box would be using different (more efficient) chips, yet they based the power usage of the single for this "Guaranteed performance figure" LOL what a joke

I am no expert, but judging from the change they had to make for the single (from 20w to 80w possibly60w)  they have not updated the big rig yet from 2500watts to   6000 ?  7500?

It is issues like this that still make me think there is something extremely dodgy about this BFL folks. Kind of hard to think they can scam $25k at once though so maybe there is an explanation.

My apologies. 

Yeah. I am pretty sure they will be responsible for doubling the performance in the rig box. It's all in the USB hub, holmes.

USB UARTs are ASICs right?

I was referring to the 'proprietary implementation of ASIC and FPGA technology' that BFL is currently wowing us with...except there is no ASIC.

So it is indeed them that have been unloading the BTC on Gox to fund this crap ASIC ? No wonder.

No stated ghash, no stated wattage, no stated price, no pre-order (that I know of, yet).
However, also no website or announcement either.
Just wait a few months, keep your money to yourself, and watch the magic unfold.
Lots of things are possible when you have plenty of money.

There are a lot of people willing to pay out of pocket to effect changes they see as positive for society. These people aren't interested in running hot noisy boxes in their apartments, but a cool low power draw and silent little box is something they're willing to fire up and forget - if it has a chance of upsetting a (bad) status quo.

No ROI, at least monetarily, involved.

Sorry Epoch,

You are using logic. Not spoken here.

Don't tell me: another 1.05GHash/s, 20W, $499 preorder miracle box? Seems we're coming full circle.

Realistically, further FPGA/ASIC development is inevitable as long as bitcoin mining remains profitable. We can look forward to another 12 months of 50BTC/block reward, but after that the reward is cut in half: 25BTC/block. Few expect the BTC->USD exchange rate to be affected by this much, which will leave a lot of the existing GPU crowd in unprofitable territory if BTC prices are in the $2-$4 range by then. FPGA and ASIC miners are the only real option, but whether they are viable depends on their ROI.

Few will be willing to jump on the FPGA/ASIC train if the ROI isn't attractive. The resale opportunities for an FPGA/ASIC miner are extremely limited since they are very much a niche product; whereas GPUs can be resold at attractive prices without issues.

BFL's 'product' (a loose term, granted, until they actually ship) has a current break-even time of 10 months. Similar to a 5870 or other efficient GPU. What could you resell the BFL box for after 10 months, with no warranty? Half price? I can buy 2 5870s for $400 today and be confident that I can resell them for 10% less ($360) in 10 months.

Even if a newer FPGA or ASIC design achieves 1/10th the power draw of the BFL product at similar hashrates and cost, it doesn't have much advantage from an ROI perspective: the payback for such a device (even assuming 0 power draw) would be ~9 months compared to BFL's ~10 months. BFL's product will be available (theoretically) in month. Any other vaporware FPGA/ASIC product won't see the light of day for another 6 months, if at all, which doesn't give a lot of mining time in our shrinking 50BTC/block window.

The key part there is the "ETA 6 months". The problem with BFL's original claims wasn't that 1GHs at 20W is impossible, but that it made no sense for a company to suddenly appear selling boxes that achieved it because it requires ASICs with long lead times and huge up-front costs. If you're going to be producing this kind of ASIC, it makes sense to announce it up-front in order to discourage anyone else from trying to manufacture them too and cutting into your profit margins.

Just a rumor that will probably never become true.