Topic: BFL or Avalon - page 2. (Read 6217 times)

We do not need to speculate now about what the rise in the exchange rate over the last 3 months did to the difficulty over the last 3 months. We know what it did to the difficulty. There is no more speculation about difficulty or exchange rates involved. We can now determine (baring a freeze in difficulty) that a BFL order for a Single for 200 BTC was a bad investment.

I edited my post, but nobody picked up the edit so I will repost it here:

I trust avalon a bit more as they have a product.

QFT.

Anything else is just self delision to try to soothe the pain of failure.

Exactly! Every single BFL customer is a loser.

Ahah, so then you recognize that there are winners and losers in the speculation game... 

So you don't believe that the exchange rate and it's drastic increase since then has in any way contributed to the spike in mining difficulty?

Name those factors?
It is not the exchange rate. The customer traded BTC for a device that creates BTC.
The only way that can make sense is if the device will ultimately produce more BTC than the customer gave up for it.

Now if he could sell that order (or device upon shipment) for 201 BTC, then he would be slightly better off than having done nothing and merely keeping his 200 BTC.

Not entirely true. At this customer's time of purchase, had someone bought ASICMIner shares or Avalon batch 1 or 2, they would be better off than if they kept their BTC.

You are correct that he gambled and lost, but he gambled on far more factors than just BFL delivering.  This is what Hexed has been attempting to point out, as far as I can tell.

By that same argument, nobody should have bought ANYTHING with Bitcoin, as the value of their goods against bitcoin has only dropped.

Maybe I was not clear, let me try again. When he bought, there was speculation involved as to whether BFL would deliver a product in time to earn the investment back. Now there is no speculation involved on that account. BFL did not deliver him a product in time to make his 200 BTC back.

No, I am not saying "never buy miners". I am saying that one customer gave up 200 BTC for a miner that will (probably) not earn him back that 200 BTC.
That customer will be worse off having ordered that miner. He gambled on BFL delivering and lost. Simple.

Absolutely wrong.  When people purchased BFL or Avalon, there was no guarantee that they would be receiving a product or when.  It was PURE speculation and a gamble as well.  People decided to take this gamble and base their purchases on speculation.  Speculation that the price would not drop, speculation that they would receive a product, and speculation that that product would be hashing the amount advertised.

Basically you are saying "never buy miners" because so far, none of them are shipping the same day.

Thus, the nature of speculation...

Why do you keep bringing dollars into the equation? The customer had 200 BTC, he gave 200BTC to BFL to get a mining device, now he will get less than 200BTC from the mining device. This is just math. Very simple math.

Since you love exchange rates, lets look at the following examples:
If BTC drops to $1, he will be worse off.
if BTC drops to $50, he will be worse off.
If BTC stays the same, he will be worse off.
If BTC rises to $500, he will be worse off.

In fact, there is no future exchange rate in which the customer will do better having ordered from BFL than if he had not ordered from BFL and kept his BTC.

This is a ridiculous argument too.  I paid in BTC for one order, but I also paid in paypal for another with fiat.  That money could have just as easily been converted to bitcoin.  Butterfly labs has always had the DOLLAR AMOUNT of their products.  They have never just had a BTC price.  The reason for that is their devices are purchased in dollar amount.  

And there is a risk at ANY point.. this is bitcoin.  Hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20.  As many people have said including myself, what if bitcoins went down to 3$ a bitcoin after he purchased this miner for 200BTC?  He would have went to the BFL webpage to see that they were offering the same product for 400 BITCOINS!!  But in the grand scheme of things it would have still said $1299 USD.

..and when BTC crashed to 3$.. was it REALLY economic for ALL people to buy instead of mine?  What was the difficulty then?  What was the electricity costs of the person mining?  What if it crashed even further to $1.50?  

Way to many factors to be so black and white.  Using hindsight is never a good thing to anyone Captain Obvious

This is such a lame bullshit statement and what I call "cherry picking" your circumstances.  No matter what the outcome, you will ALWAYS be right because you are the type of customer that has to complain..

First off, lets set some clear facts. 

In June 2012 BTC was in the neighborhood of 5-6.5$ per bitcoin.  You paid 200BTC for your product. 

When Avalon batch 3 came out for preorder, (March) bitcoins were anywhere between 35$ and 90$ (I could be "slightly" off on this so no nitpicking).

So would you rather have paid 200BTC @ 6$ a bitcoin?  Or would you rather have paid 80BTC @ 35$ a bitcoin?  Let's also turn the whole equation around.  Lets say a month after you purchased your BFL device, bitcoins dropped to 1$ a coin and stayed there.  If bitcoins were worth 1$, do you think Avalon would have sold a miner at 80BTC still?  Would they even have sold a miner at all?  If bitcoins were 1$ each, I can guarantee you people would not have made mining devices and if they did, no one would have purchased them for thousands of dollars unless the difficulty was so low that they made 200BTC PER DAY.

So with all of this said.. YOU would not be here today complaining about the 200BTC you never made back.  YOU would be complaining that it will take forever to make back the 1200-1300$ it cost for you to buy the BFL device.

People like you, and there are plenty in this forum, like to mold their argument based on whatever makes them win instead of using common sense.

If you receive a 60GH/s device in the next month.. next 2 months.. next 6 months.. will you make your 200BTC? no..  That would be ridiculously greedy of you to moan about not making $20,000 back on your $1200 investment.  But will you make your $1200 back?  Yes.  Will you make more than your $1200 back.. ABSOLUTELY.  Unless bitcoin takes a nosedive to 5$ again, you will most CERTAINLY see a return on your investment in fiat. 

I guess the appropriate answer would be.. would you rather have 200 bitcoins worth 6$ a piece that you originally invested, or would you rather have 58 (the amount you can mine in a month currently with 60GH/s) worth 100$ a piece?

Lets also see how much in fiat we are talking about from June 2012 (When you ordered) to October 2012 (when they said they would ship, and the prices at that time) to a month from now (estimating doubled difficulty as conservative number, and 100$ bitcoins).  From the bitcoin calculator:


June 2012:


Difficulty Factor :  1,500,000
Hash Rate (mega-hashes / second) : 60,000
Exchange Rate ($/฿):  6.00
 


 Coins Dollars
per Day ฿20.12 $120.70
per Week ฿140.81 $844.88
per Month ฿611.53 $3,669.21




October 2012: (Butterfly labs supposed shipping date)

Difficulty Factor :  3,000,000
Hash Rate (mega-hashes / second): 60,000 
Exchange Rate ($/฿): 12.50
 


               Coins Dollars
per Day ฿10.06 $125.73
per Week ฿70.41 $880.09
per Month ฿305.77 $3,822.09



July 2013: (Doubling the difficulty which is most likely not going to be this high in only 1 month)


Difficulty Factor :  30,000,000
Hash Rate (mega-hashes / second) : 60,000
Exchange Rate ($/฿) :  100.00
 


 Coins Dollars
per Day ฿1.01 $100.58
per Week ฿7.04 $704.07
per Month ฿30.58 $3,057.67


Now that is at DOUBLE the difficulty next month.  The next difficulty raise is estimated to be 17 million from 15.  This happens every 2 weeks so the possibility of it getting to 30 million by even late July is still pretty slim unless a MASSIVE amount of miners hit the market this month.

I'd be happy with a 2 week ROI. And I know what people are going to say in response is, and here are my answers:

"BUT THIS IS ALL SPECULATION"
So is everything else in this thread.  You can't complain about someone speculating if your argument is also pure speculation

"BUT I WANT MY BTC BACK!!"
This is just like the people demanding refunds in BTC.  Ridiculous.  If bitcoin crashed to 1$ a bitcoin, would you be ok with making 200BTC then?  Only 200$ worth of your original 1299 spent?  Is that what you consider a return on your investment? 

"BUT BFL WON'T SHIP BY JULY, THEY NEVER WILL"
Still speculation.  I'm willing to bet that a June 2012 order will most likely be seeing their shipment by next month.  Now someone who ordered in June 2013?  That is a whole other ballgame.

But he paid in BTC. So he lost BTC, regardless of what it was converted to later.
Buying BFL is really an investment in the future of Bitcoin, and the obvious comparison investment is buying Bitcoin itself.
When BTC crashed to $3, it briefly made economic sense to buy BTC instead of mine them.
That is the risk in holding a future contract, the prices could change and make it hard on you.

Nope, their pricing was a certain amount of dollars, and there is in fact still a pretty good chance to get that amount of dollars back. It was your own choice to sell BTC for USD when BTC was low.

No! I paid nealry 200 BTC for a Single SC in June 2012. There is almost no chance to get this money back so in the end BFL was a bad investment. The Avalon batch 3 was sold for 80 BTC (?) and nearly the same hashrate. Avalon already delivered this kind of miners while BFL is still in the prototype state with the singles. It's quite realistiv that an Avalon batch 3 will reach break-even. For the BFL single I see no chance. Unfortunately I ordered a single (and a bASIC) and not an Avalon so bitcoin mining is history for me before it even started.