Topic: 1GH/s, 20w, $700 (was $500) — Butterflylabs, is it for real? (Part 2) - page 77. (Read 146909 times)

Valid points but the delays are not very promising. Looking forward to the next demo.

And furthermore, meeting a known community member in person is far and away more credible than anything that anyone can send in a message or on IRC or in a forum or in an email. FWIW.

To be fair— and I should apologize to the BFL folks.  Beyond having a website which was linked from ~nowhere, they didn't appear to be promoting this anywhere before I made this post.

I'd heard about it (with links to their site) a couple times on IRC, and I just dismissed it as "far too little info to believe".  Eventually I heard from Luke-JR that he had bought one, and I was concerned that people were paying without more discussion.

I now feel a little guilty thrusting BFL into the limelight before they were ready— all this debate could have been skipped if the product was already shipping by the time we heard about it.   At the same time there were things in the past where I thought "this looks really suspect" and stayed away but other people got screwed because they didn't catch the fishy smell themselves, and I ultimately regretted not saying more.

In any case,  I'd recommend against adding too much weight to the fact that their announcements were premature— as that could have been partially my fault.  Big promises and delays may be symptomatic of fraud, but they're also quite symptomatic of new companies.  You don't want to be the insane asylum shrink who just starts diagnosing everyone who sees a butterfly on a blot card as crazy simply because most of his crazy patients also see a butterfly on the card.

Of course, there are severe costs if someone where to misidentify a scam as legit— people get ripped off— but there are also costs if they identify something legit as a scam: They hurt their credibility, they damage the reputation of the bitcoin community, they discourage new businesses, and they insult someone offering a valuable product/service. So care and consideration is required, regardless of how sure you are.

Assuming everything is legit:  You also should be aware of the tensions any business faces when serving our community— As a businessperson, you may want to be open with what you are doing, but being open takes a lot of time you don't have especially answering detailed technicality questions for the careful scrutiny of our expert pedants, and at the same time you don't want your competition (which includes some of the people participating in this thread) to learn enough to gain a competitive advantage.

I've cringed at some of the detailed questions here— not so much because they're unfair, but because they lead to more questions and more questions... and when you've gone deep down the rat-hole it can be hard and time consuming to avoid appearing evasive while protecting your company interests and avoiding saying something which is a little factually wrong (afterall, on any given bit of technical detail one of us probably knows more than any randomly selected BFL person).

I'm very much looking forward to news about testing, and as well about shipping products which will be the real proof. Until then caveat emptor, of course.

All of this strangely resembles how one of my family members recently got scammed. Promise of something awesome at low price with set delivery date. That progressed to delivery delays for minor reasons, then longer delays for progressively more ridiculous reasons. I couldn't convince them it was a scam because all I had was evidence that it was possibly a scam. The ones with their money invested obviously didn't want to hear it. And there was much arguing back and forth with nobody convincing anyone else.

This is not to imply that I think BFL is scamming anyone. If this product comes anywhere near their claims it will be leaps and bounds better than anything else currently available, and I will line up to get one.

However, I think that arguing over whether or not it is a scam is unproductive. Either it is a scam or it's not. Either they deliver a product that works as described, and are successful because of it, or they don't and it was a scam (or design proved impossible etc).

Arguing one way or the other won't affect the outcome, but I'm more than happy to watch other people go back and forth, because it's interesting and I have nothing better to do 

At least I know it wasn't just me that has seen that as a HUGE gaping hole since the beginning of this controversy.

  Sounds awesome. Thanks again for your time in updating us.

  Cheers

I am going to provide some test data to them from the pool for them to validate against.  We had a major crisis over the weekend that I'm still cleaning up the mess at work on, so I've not been able to get the proper data to them... though I doubt that's holding them up much at the moment.  I hope to get to it tomorrow.

Dont bother, we all know its a lie.

Just hope they indeed ship a product. Brave ones are welcome to be guinea pigs.

Really looking forward to some new testing. When is that going to be around ? Any estimate ETA ? Before Christmas ? Thanks !

An entire project line? With no other products available? From a company that at one point stated they've been in business for several years now.

I think that is a stretch of truth. BFL, would you mind commenting on my posts?

 Ponder that it is quite possible they are engaged in business activities that they do not want to make direct associations between that side of their work and bitcoin. I know it sounds crazy but....

I think it is more of a proof of concept, to show the "big customers" what's possible.

I understand that, but a whole line? How much time, money, and such would be invested into that. Not only that, but it seems to be the only type of product on the products page. Compare to:
Friend says, "boy Trucks are cool!"
Small business says, "I've never heard of this 'truck' but I'm going to gear my business only to this 'truck'!"

Here, I highlighted the relevant bits for you.

  Any updates on how the troubleshooting is going?  Looking forward to some more testing.


   Cheers

If you (BFL) weren't a bunch of bitcoiners, why did you create a product line, specifically for mining, with no other projects listed? That in itself is fishy. If I didn't like or know about computers, would I start a computer store?

Someone who releases a Lean Startup style Minimum Viable Product (MVP), may be indistinguishable from a scammer.  There is a risk that BFL may not deliver products as promised.  The difference between them and a scammer is that we would hope they offer refunds instead of disappearing with customer funds.  They have said as much here ... I hope we can trust them ...

Sorry..   thought it was a rhetorical question.  I don't think there's anything remarkable about building a website prior to expected product release.  The response on the other hand was sort of like stepping on a bear trap and caught us completely off guard.  We're not bitcoiners...   well, we weren't bitcoiners anyway.  One of our team had a friend in the bitcoin community who seemed pretty interested in our BitForce platform development and we've been pulled forward by that conversation ever since.

BFL, can you address this post please? Thanks.