Topic: Are BFL Jalapeños worth it? (Read 9444 times)

I would not even dream of buying a Jally right now. Too much risk with BFL and they may not even ever deliver. I would go with a GPU rig atm.

Is jalapeno worth it : NO
you might end up with such a crap device as i have i sure as hell made a huge mistake doing business with bfl
the jalapeno i received looked ok when it started up and showed a 6000 Mh/s initial hash speed
every time i checked i saw bigger hw error numbers and the hashing speed kept going down and still is going down.
after a few hours i had dropped to 4700 Mh on average and today several days later is only makes 4400 Mh

lots of idiots say send it to BFL which most of the time not even respond to emails
they all forget that i live in the netherlands and believe me if they would ever respond normal i would loose another half year or more to get either the same crap back or get a replacement if i would ever get anything back
if i would have lived in the usa i would have sued them the second they did respond the way they did

Second soon the difficulty (about 2 to 3 days) goes up another 2 million at least so the time to get a block will be insane soon as well
So mining on small devices will get you maybe your investment in the device back
But if you want to get some money out of mining you need ASICMINER shares or a huge asic miner which does a big deal more on hash powers then what bfl is selling

We also need to consider that one order may have more than one device. If you have a look at bfl.ptz.ro, you can see that they have 4441 devices spread across about 3000 orders, or almost 1.5 devices per order.

There is some analysis going on over on the BFL forums about the ratio of invoice numbers to orders to cancellation; I think they were estimating about 4 orders for every 10 invoice numbers. Don't have the link but scoot over there to check it out.

If I had to spitball it I'd guess:

60,000 invoice numbers
25,000 paid orders
3,000 cancellations
1.5 devices per order

(25,000 - 3,000) * 1.5 ~= 33,000 devices

I mentioned something about making 50,000 devices over at the BFL forums and Josh responded saying he doubt they even had half that many orders. So they are probably closer to the 15000-25000 range, maybe less.

Unless they can't make enough money per unit to pay cost of goods, salaries, rent, etc. They are getting their chips in low quantities which means they are using what is called a Multi-project wafer (MPW). That means the chips are anywhere from $40 to $80 a piece. They originally planned on putting one chip per Jalapeno, but now they have to put 2 per Jalapeno. The chips are easily the most expensive part of the device.

They have to make 60,000 devices and that will cost them at least $6 million, probably more like $12-18 million just to buy the parts for them.

In 2-3 months the Avalon based Klondike boards arrive and triple the mining difficulty. Can BFL get enough pre-orders in now to make enough product to matter?

This is also the simple reason why they wouldn't be mining on the units right now if they were able to ship at reasonable levels.

People are paying 2 BTC for 300 mh/s USB sticks.  They would certainly pay BFL a lot more than the $275 currently for 5,000+ mh/s.

This isn't a real concern. They start shipping at reasonable levels, they will NOT have cash flow problems. They won't have to even begin to clear the backlog. If they shipped 1000 units in a week, enough people would jump on the bandwagon to cover shipping with ease.

of course the odds of them doing that don't look to hot..

I think the real problem is whether BFL will run out of cash before shipping all the devices owed to customers.  It seems they are using pre-order funds for R&D, therefore they may not have enough funds left to ship to all the customers.

That should be about when the klondikes will start shipping en masse...

If you don't already have a jally...

 ~100 days to pull 25 BTC on your Jalapeño, FWIW (unless my math is wrong, which is quite possible)

Guess I'll have to wait a couple months to see their progress on deliveries and then decide whether to purchase one.

It will be worth more the $250, 50 years from now. Yes.

I posted. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/should-i-sell-my-jalapeno-seems-to-be-working-fine-but-218480

However I'm not defending BFL at all... Rather, I'm frustrated to be trying to decide whether to "profit-monger" by selling a Jalapeno for the exact same price as I paid for it in the first place in June 2012 (25 BTC).

No, because BFL are likely mining themselves until the difficulty gets silly. (And that is just a matter of months now, GPU mining will be obsolete in August)

It's quite likely that by the time BFL ship orders dating from 2012 other ASIC companies will be releasing products based on Avalon's chips and greatly diminishing the profitability of BFL products.  It's getting to the stage now where I think anyone ordering a BFL product today has to ask themselves whether they will get it shipped before 2014.  BFL's track record in shipping products hasn't been great.  Since beginning shipment of products to end customers in early April 2013 this forum has been surprisingly quiet about customers receiving and reviewing the product.  Apart from a few dev units and units for the media, it seems BFL customers have got nothing or are eerily silent.

80 ?? Source plz

They send 30 units April ... and i get a email for send my "Trade in " last tuesday for 8 Jalapenos and nothing happen ...
they talked about 4 Singele this week and perhaps ( always ) perhaps 200 Jalas on Saturday or something if they get the boards back

They said another 80 were delivered... total now is 30 + 80 = 110 out of ?20,000 orders... only took them a year, and took three weeks to get 80 out, after the 30...

I have not read ONE SINGLE post about these "delivered", "running", boxes. And you KNOW as soon as someone got one, and got it working, they would post a "look what I got" thread, defending BFL.

You would not notice 110 5GHs machines online. That is only 550GHs or 0.55THs, which would look like any 6-card 7970 system online. (There are a lot of those added every day. I know, because that is the majority of the new posts online, and those are the only cards constantly "selling out" on every online and local shop in the world.)

Once they release 80 of the 60/50GHs machines, then you will notice a bigger change. Though, I am sure everyone getting one, will attempt solo-mining for a few days, just because they can, and think they may strike it rich... then realize they are only 0.00001% of the whole hash-rate, and jump back into a pool. That will be a total of 4.8THs, or 4.0THs, but that will be like <1THs per major pool.

When they release all the 1.5THs machines... 80 of those (120THs)... that will instantly knock us down by 5-10% across the board, and another 30% of the lower-end will leave, headed to scrypt-based coins. (That is the only thing stopping the new 7970 guys from loosing more... all the <5xxx guys retire to scrypt-coins. Next will be the 6xxx rigs... and the FPGA guys... (BFL just screwed their previous customers, only gave them a year to live with the purchase of the FPGAs, before pushing them out of the bitcoin market. That is what they are going to do to Jalapenos... You won't even get 6-months, before you are squashed by your own sales-men/creators... Now that is the spirit of "honest sales-men".)

The answer is NO... and the 25/30GHs and 50/60GHs are also not worth it... since they are just a bunch of Jalapenos, with price matched speed. The only saving is in wires to connect them. You don't need 10 wires for 10 jalapenos to equal the one wire of the 50/60GHs machines. You would think that they would offer a slightly lower price per hash, but they are milking the market, and trying to ADD more money to the jalapeno orders, selling you firmware for unlocking the faster speed. LOL, that will be the first thing people do, is give the firmware away free... why pay, it already does 7GHs, once you update it. Don't get tricked into paying for that upgrade that was their mistake, and will be unlocked free once the first person gets the firmware and shows you how to flash it with the USB.)

Ahhh...They never said they wouldn't use your paid for equipment once it's manufactured to mine either, so you must have assumed that's where your hardware is going.


Which is it? Near future or doesn't it matter when they arrive?


I think everyone who ordered knows what they were promised. They paid for and ordered a product a year ago and it has not been delivered. The only asshats I see are those still believing BFL will deliver. Shall we see how many more years they can keep this charade up. If you do stick it out for the long haul, by the time BFL delivers you will be mining crickets. Keep drinking that cool-aid brother.

From what I've gathered, simply stay away from BFL. It's not worth the effort or money what so ever.

You don't have to be good at mining to mine, you start it up and leave it. It's not rocket science and you don't need to be a genius to do it. There is a big difference between his shovel analogy and Crypto mining, but you get the point he's making.

Pfft. You say bitcoin makes us go blind. I say greed makes you act stupid.

BFL never pretended they had a working asic product. They straight up told us it was in development and offered us a chance to buy it before it was made. The never said they wouldn't use pre-order money to fund development and most of us who pre-ordered assumed that's where the money was going.

So they didn't deliver on time according to estimates... they also aren't very good on keeping us posted on what exactly is happening on the development front... as long as they get it sorted in the near future I'll take the best offering on the block even a year later than I expected it.

The reason you only see the asshats getting refunds is because they don't really have a clue what they're buying. What BFL is selling isn't just a pretty box. It's the most power efficient miner ever made. As long as BFL delivers power consumption in an acceptable range... that's what we're buying.

It doesn't really matter when they arrive. Sure it sucks for people who went small expecting to 'ride the wave' and just ordered a jally or two. But those of us who actually invested larger amounts of money in pre-orders aren't refunding. Because as soon as my ~600 gh of singles arrive... that's when all the avalon customers will start whining about profitability.  They'll be forced to power down and unplug or lay out massive amounts of money later on to stay profitable... while those of us with BFL products will be sitting here mining, making the expected returns - long after lesser offerings are unplugged due to electric costs.

Nobody with real money in bfl pre-orders will refund partly because it would simply be moronic at this (late) stage of the development process and partly because the worst thing that could happen to bitcoin right now would be BFL folding up due to lack of operating costs, and everyone being stuck with inferior product a la avalon.

depends on what you are good at.

why in the world would i sell a shovel for $1 if it can make me $100 a day? thats the logic to thinking that BFL will ship.

ofcourse if i am honest then yes i would sell the shovels for $1 as promised. but if i lied over and over for the past year, do you really still think i am honest? if you do, well good for you lol

This is what I would believe, how ever I don't think this is the case.  BFL are just not very good at doing ASIC as they were FPGA.
They just did not truly understand how hard it would be to deliver true ASIC's.  They have crap chip designers and PCB designers as we know from there updates.

They must be using a sh*t chip maker for there chips because why else is it taking soooo bloody long to get them?

It would be easier for them and quicker just to use ASIC chips that are for sell NOW to club together there miners'.

I keep seeing this, but I've seen nothing about the network jumping massively, except with ASICMiner, who were out in the open.

Now, I do believe them to be at best a bunch of liars, and at worst the long con, but I don't think it's about mining bitcoins. It's more about selling the promise of shovels. Miners, whether dirt or digital, are always a small minority of the general interested population. More short term money is to be had from SUPPLYING (or fleecing) the miners. The ones who strike it rich don't mind, the rest get stuck. (Full disclosure, I pan gold. Not real good at it, but broke even on my hardware long ago)

This whole thing is a clever scam, think about it for a minute it's common sense. If you own the hardware that gives you a 10x advantage over the competition and make tons of money why would you ever sell them for pennies on the dollar and significantly decrease your profit?

Those are simple circuits that can be mass produced at large quantities once the design is done, what's happening is they needed money to get the initial order in so they hang a carrot in front of everyone then used preorder money to fund their orders and use the resulting hardware to make a lot of money themselves. You are essentially funding their profit center with a 0% interest rate, by comparison you make the US government look smart....  To keep the mobs down, they ship a few 5 GH/s only boxes to appear legit, which is nothing but a drop in the bucket.  

They will never mass ship those higher boxes in any large quantity until a time when the difficulty makes them irrelevant.  If they were selling the 5GH for $2000 and 50 GH for $15000 then i would at least give them the benefit of the doubt they are legit and focused on hardware sells.  The price they are asking is just a clever way to fund their own hardware.

We have so many smart people here, cant believe most dont realize this. I guess btc does make you go blind...

^^^^^ Definition of a scam.

Early pre-orders paid about 25 btc. At today's difficulty, a Jalapeno will take over 120 days to break even, assuming no difficulty increases. But there will be lots of increases, so it's unlikely that an early pre-order will ever break even. So no, Jalapenos are not worth it.

This could actually work! We have a legal chance to say "fuck you sonny!"

BFL's latest piece of marketing genius is to offer Jala customers the opportunity to 'upgrade' from a minimum of 5 GHash to a minimum of 7 GHash for an extra $100. It looks as though they're achieving this by shipping two under clocked chips in the Jala. If you pay the extra $100 you get a firmware upgrade that clocks the chips a bit higher. Remember, these are the chips that can't be clocked to reach full speed because they'll melt if they do.

If you think about it, it's amazing. They've turned an engineering failure into a marketing triumph. They pocket more cash from the queue without doing anything. If they'd honoured their promises they would have shipped most of those units months ago. However, they've correctly realized that they can shake down the people waiting patiently in the queue for a few more dollars. Those customers have psychologically made an emotional commitment to BFL now - sort of like putting up with a marriage that has turned out to be a disappointment because it's too hard to get divorced (and admit that you made a mistake). By spending the extra $100 customers give themselves the chance to renew that commitment to help endure the long wait ahead. Sort of like buying your wife in said unhappy marriage some flowers and champagne - you hope it'll put them in a good mood and maybe they'll stop being so bitchy for a bit.

A company that was focused on making its customers happy (or felt bad about mistakes that had been made in the past) would probably just ship units with 7GHash as partial compensation for the loss customers have suffered putting their faith in them, but as a marketing company BFL are far too smart for that.

Bravo, BFL! Bravo! Marketers everywhere salute you!

You forgetting the fact that these units are already paid for. If BFL were to ship their backlog of orders right now, they will get nothing from them, besides delivering on their promise and making customers happy. They will lose a ton of hashing power that are generating tons of Bitcoins a day for them each valued at $120 per BTC.

Where as if they keep everyone's orders and equipment, then just ship 1 or 2 units a week, and continue mining it will be WAY more profitable for them.

I bet they have already generated enough BTC to refund EVERYONE 10 x what they paid for their "pre-orders".

What stops them keep this charade up for another year or so then shipping the equipment when it's worthless?

I have to say that this is dodgy as fuck, but you have to give it to him, he's an evil genius. A real piece of shit too!

In terms of cost/performance, they rank quite well. So if you could actually get them and they actually worked as advertised, sure they'd be great. Which is why everyone hasn't requested a refund, just in case they ship.

However, it's likely 4-6 months before you get the unit, maybe longer. At that timeframe, it's not worth it. There are better options available right now.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/liquid-synergy-designs-inc-asic-mining-hardware-192916

Buys you some batch #3 ASIC chips. 16 for 5Gh/s or 64 for 19 Gh/s.

You should be able to get those built into a mining rig (through steamboat or someone else) within 10-12 weeks. If you were looking to get into ASIC mining, that's probably what I'd do.

My opinion is if you order now you will likely not recoup your investment if you EVER get your order shipped to you in any meaningful amount of time.

I've been maintaining this spreadsheet with a count of BFL's highest order number; to calculate how many orders they receive per day (not all of these orders may have been paid for, you can create an order then not go through with it). Even though their reputation is poor they're still getting about 350 new orders per day. This has led me to believe they are primarily a marketing company that outsources engineering. That's why they're not very good engineers, certainly not on a par with ASICMiner or Avalon.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlTboxjHIfuGdFd4NEJOcVBqRHRnQkVfVWVCcnBfdVE#gid=1

I now look at everything official coming out of the company as PR spin - they never lie, but they never care not to mislead, either. If you look at everything they say and take it with a grain of salt, a lot of it starts to makes sense.

A case in point. The other day they announced they'd shipped Jalas for orders on 23/6, 24/6 and 25/6. I immediately thought that meant that they'd exhausted the 23/6 and 24/6 orders and had part-filled the 25/6 orders. Then I thought, no, they could fill a handful of orders from each day, and say the same thing, and it would still be true. So which is more likely? Given that they must have several hundred Jala orders from 23/6 and 24/6, it would be more likely that if they had filled all 23/6 and 24/6 orders they'd say so, as that is a significant improvement over what they've done so far. So being the good marketers they are, they effortlessly spun it to give the misleading impression of far more activity than is actually occurring. That's the thing about BFL: A-grade marketers, C-grade engineers.

 You have to give them credit for having mastered the art of issuing a refund. They break new ground in the field of proactive refunds.

 I might recommend you exercise that option until such time as Butterfly Labs has demonstrated an ability to reliably produce these units.

 One thing is absolutely certain, if you have placed an order within the last month, there is a volume of historical data that would lead one to believe they have no ability to deliver their pre-orders to you in a reasonable amount of time.

 Caveat emptor, most assuredly.

I'd cancel your order. They aren't clear it's a "pre-order" presently.

And since there is 60,000 people ahead of you, I'd guessing you will get yours sometime earl 2014 at which point you'll never make your investment back.

I ordered one this month (not knowing that they were pre-order).  I didn't find that out until after I ordered and started reading all the posts about them.  ...

You don't need expensive lawyers just call the FBI and say people have been waiting 9 months for a product and you suspect Sonny is running another mail fraud and could they investigate/audit their accounts to see where the money/goods have gone.


Pre-order/Arbitrage scams often give you your money back in a devalued currency or at a later date (Interest free loan that is used for currency speculation/equipment procurement). Lots of CEOs get done for miss-appropriating company/customer funds for personal gain. They've got no excuse for not refunding people in the same currency they paid in if they are running a bitcoin mining farm/pool.

Just a few months ago it was like $130

How much did they pay then?

The first orders didn't pay $275

 To be fair, it is not apropos to call Butterfly Labs a scam. Shady, evidently in over their heads, and completely disrespectful to their customers; definitely.

You may be right. I was thinking of placing an order for one but I just started to notice how grandiose of a problem this BFL scam is. I would see a lot of complaints about them before but never really looked into it in detail. Now knowing that some purchasers have been waiting for their products since last year really is eye opening. Thanks for all your responses guys. As cool as those things look I probably won't be purchasing one until I see a change in the community's attitude toward BFL.

If they exist, were able to be delivered in less than ...3 months at the latest, and the company was trustworthy, then yes, Jalap's would be worth it.

But I don't think any of this ^^^ is the case.

was the same feeling 4 month ago 

Everyone's* too scared to get a refund because they could ship any day now!

Also, because BFL will give out refunds, it's not definable as a scam. There really is no point in suing because they're willing to refund you what you're due. Seeing the way they're performing a refund might be a good idea.

I don't think it makes sense for them to mine with equipment if they had it.  Certainly not fiscal sense, and they are clearly in the business of making money.

Lots of people are forking over 2BTC a pop right now for USB miners from ASICMINER that do 300 MH/s.  $244 for 300 MH/s.

BFL's lowest offering supposedly ~5000 MH/s for $275.

If BFL had units that they were confident in shipping to customers it would be absolutely in their best interest to ship those units, because the market has already shown that buyers are willing to pay far more for a functional miner that they can get in a reasonable amount of time.

That money going to ASICMINER usb sales is just one example of market share that BFL lost because they aren't shipping already.  The Avalon chips people are buying to put in custom made boards is another.

I'm with everyone else here.. by the time you get the thing, it'll probably be worthless.

no

This makes sense.

I think because they can just say "we still working on the products". If their delivery dates aren't stated in the contract, technically they have not broken the contract. As unethical as it is, according to the law I don't think they have done anything wrong.

This is what I think is happening:
- BFL had an idea to "sell" mining equipment and needed capital.
- Offered pre-orders and made people pay upfront to generate capital.
- They used the capital to buy the chips, manufacture the equipment

Now they are merrily mining as hard and fast as they can with everyone's paid for equipment and getting as much BTC as they can.
When the mining difficulty gets ridiculously high and it's no longer profitable to mine, they will start shipping these "tested" units to everyone who paid for them.
So all you people waiting with pre-orders will eventually get your kit from BFL, but only when it's too late to break even or get a ROI.

If BFL has been such a disappointment why then hasn't anyone already sued them? In the U.S, I mean.

There was a song by Johnny Mathis in the 50's that describes BFL's delivery schedule...

"Twelfth of Never"

If you would get them right now, then yes. But with their trackrecord of delays after delays you'r lucky to get it this year and thats way too late.

not worth it .

Do you also happen to have some intelligent contribution to the topic at hand, some alternative analysis to refute his post?

And the day I take any advice from someone with the user name "ripple" is still not even close.

Visit this website to view the pre-order queue for Butterfly Labs.

http://bfl.ptz.ro/

Consider there may be 60,000 items ordered before yours.

Butterfly labs previously announced the intention to ship 400 units per day, although at present they have sent out less than 100 units in total.

Then consider that with increasing difficulty levels, which are increased each two weeks, that by the time you receive you unit, it may not be profitable and you may not recover the cost of the unit.

Unlike graphics cards, ASICs can not be used for anything else, and so will have little resale value.

With the present sales of ASIC chips in bulk from a competitor, Avalon, in lots of ten thousand to distributors, new miner units could reach retail customers by late July.   If so this extra estimated 84 TH/s, at around $2.8 million in chip value, could have an enormous impact on mining output and difficulty levels thereafter.

If the price of Bitcoins were to average $120, and difficulty was to increase each 2 week period by 18%, then provided you receive before 29th Oct 13 you can break even with a Jalepino.  You will double your money or better if you receive on or before 3rd Sept 13 and lose money if you receive after 5th Nov 13.

People receiving today (22nd May 2013) would be expected to earn about $2,100 profit on a Jalepino.

The above figures assume you pay $274 plus $38 shipping to US, $0.15 per kWh for electricity, pay 3% of proceeds to a mining pool, and run the machine 24/7 until the end of 2014 with no downtime.

You have been warned!

Given BFLs track record of failure, what do you think is the probability that those things run 24/7 for, lets say, a year, or even 6 month?

If you are outside the USA and have to RMA them (time to ship to BFL, time to repair, time to ship back, customs again, ...) you will be truly fucked.

good point!

What about when pool mining? Will those 5 GH/s still be worth it then?

In 20 years from now, yeah. It will have been worth everything.

probably not

Full disclosure I have 2 on order but I ordered on the 7th of September. (lets hope this isn't to late)

The one HD5850 I was running and cashing out some BTC at a good time managed to pay them off already.

With increasing difficulty would purchasing a BFL Jalapeño even be worth it?