Now that we know when they would have been shipped roughly, the appropriate price for a batch-3 four-unit should've been roughly 40-45 bitcoin, not 99 (for a 30-day to ROI). Which would've been ~$3200 back when these sold with the price of btc at ~$80.
I bet if that had been the price, few would be asking for a refund right now. Alternately, if Bitsyncom had offered 59 btc refunds back to that price level that would've been perhaps better than giving full refunds.
But again, I laud Bitsyncom for doing the honorable thing and offering full refunds in BTC. Once again they make BFL look bad by comparison, and I'd be happy to shake Guo's hand any day. Whereas, I doubt Inaba can show his face anywhere bitcoin-related without watching his back
So we can get full refund? I'm getting tired of waiting too! I think I'll take the refund.
Yes, you can in fact get a full refund delivered to the address of your choice. They gave the link for refunds in a recent email. You have until the 14th (tomorrow) to ask, as they say they'll stop accepting refunds when they begin shipping on Monday. Which is also slant confirmation that shipping begins on the 15th.
The numbers just don't make sense to me anymore. 2 months ago would've been okay, but today it's real thin. And that's not even counting the diff increase that batch-3 will result in, which won't be insignificant.
From looking at the numbers, if you had the machine today and diff increases at only its historical average, it's ~4.4 months to break even in terms of BTC.
Knc might ship in as little as two months! And I personally think they will ship, and that will be a far higher diff increase than we've seen so far this year from anyone except AsicMiner. AM will increase their hashing to match Knc's output and just about everyone else will be left in the dust. Avalons will still be net profitable to mine per day, they're still efficient enough, but they won't have had enough lead time to achieve ROI and if Knc ships, they may never achieve ROI. Which is a damn shame. No one's fault, just how the dice rolled.
Both Avalon and Knc are going to be working on 2nd gen ASIC devices, that's where I'll be looking next. Something in the high single or multiple terrahash range for about 50+ btc. Something like a fully custom ASIC such as Bitfury has produced which is the most efficient chip out there now on a hash/watt basis, but in a large die size like KNC produced, and with the modern process size, sub-28nm.
There's something quite beautiful about a free-market drive for ultra-efficient processing
And this is only the beginning. If a random company were building payment processing, I doubt they'd build full-on ASICs to take care of it. I'll bet Visa just has giant server farms all over based on stock equipment.
I suppose it won't be long before ASIC-chasers like us exhaust modern tech and begin pushing into exotics. I don't think anyone has more incentive to use ultra-efficient designs than bitcoin miners. How long until we see designs using carbon transistors and the like, stuff that is still in labs today. Gonna be exciting to watch