Topic: BFL or Avalon (Read 6218 times)

Nyet and Nyet.

Find another option.

uhh did you see that the last post was made nearly 3 months ago? everything in this thread is now irrelevant.

watching

The argument has not changed. If he had not bought BFL, he would still have the option to spend 80 of his 200 BTC to buy an Avalon batch 3 and still be able to recoup that investment.

I never forgot what I was arguing about. You confused the issue with exchange rates. No exchange was needed. The BFL's could be bought with BTC. The Avalon miner could be bought with BTC. They both only produce BTC. Mezzomix had BTC.

Compare apples to apples please. Stop converting the BTC (which can buy both Avalons and BFL units) into other units of exchange at various times to try to make BFL look good.

Compare apples to apples. He spent BTC to gain more BTC and instead gained less. Simple. Straightforward. No exchange rate needed to illustrate that he lost out picking BFL in June 2012.

The batch 3 Avalon unit can still earn back it's 80 BTC and therefore can still be profitable. Maybe BTC are each worth $1 each by then, maybe $100 each, maybe $1000 each, but we don't need to speculate on the future exchange rate. As long as the Avalon can earn more than 80 BTC it can be profitable.

Had he not spent his 200 BTC on BFL he could have gotten a much better deal with Avalon later on because the 200 BTC would be available for an alternative investment. One possible alternative investment could have gotten over twice the hash rate. Simple, Straightforward. No exchange rate needed to illustrate that.

I love how you have resorted to changing the argument.  Find once where I said SPECIFICALLY that him choosing BFL SPECIFICALLY was a good or bad idea.  You can pick anything out of 1 sentence, but it requires you to actually COMPREHEND what you are reading to understand the whole paragraph.  It is not our fault that you just read things without actually thinking or comprehending.

The argument and conversation was specifically based on the fact that he said he would not be able to recoup his 200BTC.  It is not our fault after all of your rambling that you forgot what you were arguing about.  My argument towards him was related to him not being able to get his 200BTC back and the fact that he was comparing spending 200BTC in june (at the time worth 1299) and could have spent 80BTC for Avalon batch #3 in March (worth ~$7500).  Plain and simple.  

We already discussed the fact that you don't care what the price of bitcoin is, you just want bitcoins.  The rest of us want bitcoins because they are worth money.

Mezzomix paid 200 BTC for a device from BFL that cannot earn 200 BTC.
You have agreed that this is not good.

Mezzomix is entitled to complain because the only thing that could have changed his fortune is if BFL delivered the Single before the difficulty went ballistic.
There is no current or future exchange rate into any alternate currency that can make Mezzomix's investment in BFL better than not investing in BFL when he did. Past exchange rates cannot change because they are in the past. So exchange rates are not relevant. We are not measuring just how screwed Mezzomix was by BFL, we are simply saying that he was better off not buying a BFL single back in June 2012. This is simple math. Obviously, the more valuable BTC become in USD, the more USD Mezzomix has lost. But we are not talking about losing USD, we are talking about losing BTC by spending BTC to buy a device to mine BTC.

All hope is not lost however. If difficulty ever stops rising for long enough, then Mezzomix will eventually earn his BTC back.
Maybe all the Avalons stop working due to shoddy manufacturing...

Thank you ThatDGuy

couldn't have said it better myself.

I hope that commentary includes how Mezzomix is better off with less than the 200 BTC he started with.


That does not explain how Mezzomix is better off with less than the 200 BTC he started with.

It does not explain how Mezzomix is better off with less than the 200 BTC he started with.

Still no explanation of how Mezzomix is better off with less than the 200 BTC he started with.



We do not need to discuss opportunity cost to determine that Mezzomix is worse off for buying BFL. If you want to demonstrate that Mezzomix is even worse off because of the lost opportunity cost of using that 200 BTC instead of having BFL hold it for 11 months and counting.

There is no need to consider exchange rate because Mezzomix paid BTC for his order. BFL allows you to pay BTC for orders. Bitcoin leaves Mezzomix's wallet, and BFL gives him a pre-order for equipment that does nothing but generate BTC. You are including other variables because you are desperate to deflect this fact.
You and hexed brought up exchange rate, not Mezzomix and not I.

Neither of you are willing to explain how Mezzomix is better off with less BTC than he started with.
Your tedious convolutions only expose you as blind shills who attack everything that criticizes BFL.

The sole purpose of BFL hardware is to mine BTC. Thank you for agreeing with me and Mezzomix.


More than just several. I wish you would stop including them.


You keep bringing up random statements (duct tape and rockets) that have nothing to do with the original premise which was:

Yes, he chose poorly. He will probably never get his 200 BTC back. Thus his was not a "bullshit statement" as you earlier claimed and have now recanted.

These are also words that you have typed into a computer, but it has nothing to do with Mezzomix and his BFL order.

ahhh yes, as I had mentioned...


..but that is ok, k9quaint will continue to argue a point even though the other SEVERAL factors I included make no sense.  It's like saying..

Mezzomix said he wants to be launched into space duck taped to a homemade rocket!  It is possible so you are wrong!!!  When the actually premises of the idea is true (yes, if you had a nice enough rocket, you could certainly launch yourself into space).. but the truth of the matter is, he will die before he gets there.. since you know.. there are other FACTORS at play there.  But instead of seeing how ridiculous the idea is, you just argue the fact that it is possible to prove a point.  A point that most people would not care about.

If Mezzomix thought that when he ordered the BFL device, that you would be able to mine MORE BTC than what you purchased it for, then in the words of the Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.. "He chose... poorly".

When I ordered in August 2012, I thought "No matter if I get my device now, or later, I'm betting on the price of BTC to go up when the reward halves so I think I will still make a profit."  Now I had done my due diligence and found out that they were notorious for late shipping, over promising and under delivering.. so I personally thought that the shipping would be late.  Of course I didn't think it would be THIS late. Whether or not the price went up because of the reward halving, I am still going to profit.  In fact, my 3 GPU's I have are still mining away making anywhere from $150-$250 a month, and they only equal ~1.35GH/s.  If I can still profit with them, then I'll be just fine with ~40GH/s of devices.

The more you pretend that Mezzomix made money by ordering from BFL, the more people realize that you are just here to deny all anti-BFL positions.
When people read your posts, they will realize that the only people left defending BFL are those that cannot do simple math.

This explains why you're impossible to reason with. You don't consider anything except your present emotions...

If BFL had delivered when they said they would deliver, the investment would have been good. They did not, so the investment was bad.

This discussion has been completely sidetracked on irrelevant statements.
Let us refocus it to what was originally stated by hexed and that I disagreed with:


Hexed is wrong, Mezzomix is right.

My reply was:

We do not need to consider why difficulty rose. We do not need to consider alternative investments like Avalon or ASICMiner shares. We do not need to consider exchange rates. Nobody has yet explained why getting less than 200 BTC back was good for Mezzomix.

Really well-designed scenario that would satisfy the rules of a "good investment" by terms of BTC only which is being suggested above (which I did not create, not support the legitimacy of), while at the same time exemplifying one possible cause and effect relationship of BTC value due to exchange rate.

I agree with your overall assessment - and wish you the best of luck with this:


Using the letters "BFL" historically opens the doors for all kinds of other goodies being injected to clearly-established hypothetical or theoretical scenarios    (Your example may be more of a hypothetical than theoretical, in this case, but that's probably just semantics)

Ok ThatDGuy. 

I think we can see where the disconnect is with these guys.  They are basically saying that the exchange rate has absolutely nothing to do with their investment in BTC.  So yes, I agree that if your sole purpose was to mine BTC and hold on to BTC with no regard to how much they are actually WORTH in USD.. then yes, you will not get back an equal amount of BTC. 

But in an effort to get out of the "only black and white" and into the grey area (which is where most of us miners exist)...

So in their minds, if someone paid ~24BTC today to buy a Single, and they received their miner in September, and let's say the USD price in September (when they receive their Single) of a bitcoin was down to $15 USD.  Lets also say that because of this dramatic price drop that several thousands of people with ASIC and GPU miners left bitcoin mining therefore making the difficulty drop dramatically.  So with the new price and difficulty, let's say it is possible for a person to make 48 BTC in 6 months.  Would you concider it a wise investment?  You originally paid 24 BTC and now within 6 months you have  DOUBLED your BTC!!  So originally you paid 24BTC (at the time worth 2400$) and in September-February you mined 48 BTC (at the time worth $720). But of course since these people don't care about exchange rates, THEY WIN!! right?

..and please don't knit pick about the specifics of this theoretical situation.  This is not to argue what the price/difficulty/ of BTC will be in the future, or to speculate on BFL's shipping schedule.  This is SPECIFICALLY designed to show you the mentality of people like k9quaint and others arguing this point.  The fact is, MOST of us actually care what the exchange rate is on a BTC.  If BTC's exchange rate were to stay the same, I, along with the majority of miners would rather have 20 bitcoins worth 100$ than 200 bitcoins worth 1$.  Obvious there is a small amount of people who don't so there is really no arguing with them.  Either they have an ENTIRELY different way of thinking or they are trolling.  Either way they will not be swayed.

However what I AM saying is that most people (except for the VERY small percentage of people in this thread) care how much return they get back in fiat..  Wells Fargo still doesn't take BTC for my mortgage payment and if it did, it would STILL be based on how much BTC is worth in dollars

I understand that we no longer need to speculate about the past.

I agree that a BFL order for a single at 200 BTC was a bad investment, in hindsight.

In relation to your statement of the following:


I am asserting that your last sentence is marginalizing other factors.  It isn't really as "Simple" as "He gambled on BFL delivering and lost."  Anyone, even today, who is purchasing a mining device that they don't receive instantly in their possession is gambling on a number of variables and (hopefully) considers the potential difficulty increase, the exchange rate, and how the latter most noticeably drives the former.

Your sentence immediately preceding these two confirms this, in a way:


The customer would have been worse off literally buying anything at all with BTC. They were also gambling against the exchange rate, and they lost that too.  Big time, unfortunately.

The delays, while extremely unfortunate in cases like these, do not eliminate other variables despite how much emotional energy the distressed customer might allow them (or convince them) to psychologically.

Right now, 5GH/s will earn 5 BTC per month according to http://dustcoin.com/mining.
June orders for Jalapenos will have paid roughly 22 BTC for a Jalapeno, that can be made back eventually I think since they have been hashing for a while already.
August and September orders for Jalapenos will have paid 15 BTC. If they get their devices today, they will probably make their BTC back and a little extra.

Single and Mini-rig orders from June are doomed unless the difficulty stops rising.

 Apologies if I'm late to the party here, or got the memo a bit late, and I thought it was just coincidence in the past, but it's getting very hard not to draw direct links between the wrenchmonkey account and a certain someone we've all grown to love.

 It's just getting uncanny now :|

 

It's a simple extrapolation of future difficulty increases. No one who has received a BFL unit will mine more BTC than they spent purchasing the unit. They lost.

More baseless sweeping generalizations not even remotely founded in fact... Keep trying though. The more BFL ships, the angrier you idiots get. Why is that?

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.

Agreed

Nice post .. well thought out.

Historically, it appears the contrarian approach was generally correct:

First, BFL announces their project and everyone falls in love with it. Avalon announces later and people were told, "Don't waste your time with avalon. BFL will outproduce them and beat them to market: it will never be worth it." At that point, in hindsight, Avalon was actually the better deal.

As the months tacked on, the advice became, "BFL is such a scam, or at least so incompetent, that batch 2/3 Avalons are the only good investment. Even now when Avalons cost significantly more than batch 1. Everyone with BFL orders should get their refund before the ship sinks." Now in hindsight, it appears that BFL is shipping a couple hundred 5 GH/s miners per week based on http://bfl.ptz.ro/, so if the trend continues and accelerates, it's possible Avalon 3s will sink (Avalon 2s may be ok). Those that kept their BFL preorders, or even made new orders, look likely to come out ahead over avalon batch 3.

Now prices have changed for everyone, BTC/$ has changed, and community based Avalon and BFL chip projects are showing up. At this point, the only question is "Who can ship to me first? If both will arrive at the same time, who has less power?" Since there is no Avalon batch 4 (yet), and the the avalon 3rd party systems are in the pre-prototype stage, the only thing left to do is the calculation of whether the USB ASIC miners (blades for high $/GH) are a better deal than placing a bet on a BFL order.

There was also the, "The sky is falling! 100 TH/s added to the network in August! Don't buy any ASIC miner!" based on the amount of money Avalon's chip sales account raised. That has yet to be seen whether to be true, but based on past warnings - the opposite may be more likely.

Josh = Pure American scum

The biggest disgrace to Bitcoin ever. If there is any single entity thats makes Bitcoin look like online funny money for fools its BFL. Thanks you bitch. Just go away

The master scammer, that created a "charity" to pay his lost 1000 bet to himself.

Great to have him here, laughing about us when we took the wrong decision investing our money into BFL instead of buying a batch 1 Avalon. But it's nice to have Josh here and tell everyone that it's always the wrong decision to make business with BFL.

Thats a mistake.  ASICMINER have got ASICS avaliable at the moment. Delivery near to instant.

Doing something like siting behind a computer insulting the customers that you have failed to deliver to?

What units? Or do you mean empty boxes of fans

he appeared ...   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hetaBX00wtI

Baited.

  look who decided to show up. Don't you have units to ship?

Yeah, it's easy to be "right" when you are basing your entire life process on hindsight.  That's why he's a schmoe sitting behind a computer ineffectually flailing about instead of someone out in the real world, you know... doing something.

Time for you to be Avalon / BFL and to fill in the white spaces... I hope we can do that. As long the chips keep coming.

Looking at the difficulty chart my answer at the current point in time is NONE.

I think there is no point in " OR ".
@ the moment I'm going to do Avalon chips assembly.
Later when/if BFL will provide reference docs I'll probably go for BFL chips assembly service.
Anyway BFL is an year late. Avalon is a few months late.
BFL have some kind of customer service. Avalon have none.
@ the end I would say " BOTH "

Well Bicknellski ist right - the right choice would have been to get a BFL refund and order an Avalon. I have no chance that my Single will ever break even. I paid nearly 200 BTC for one single SC. Delivery will be in 2 weeks (read 2-N months). There is no chance that this machine will ever earn those 200 BTC. Not with the difficulty rising that fast. My choice to not order an Avalon from the first batch was wrong and I was to slow to order a second/third batch Avalon.

With my order at BFL I have now the choice to loose everything (chapter 11 before they are able to develop a single SC product) or only part of my bitcoins (when they manage to build more than a prototype). What a great choice. No chance that I order something from BFL ever again!

 Does this not also mean that all the bucks everyone has dropped on BFL ASIC orders are about to go *poof* as well due to difficulty, if we are to follow your logic ?

Bicknellski's desperation is so delicious, it's like ice cream.  He knows the bucks he dropped on Avalon are about to go *poof* in a puff of difficulty and is pathetically trying to stave off the inevitable.  He's pretty funny to watch, actually.  I mean, even going so far as to necro a 3 month old thread.

Hi teach, whats up?
Doing your usual BFL troll round?
You've missed one.

Avalon.

Just this past week? I guess if you don't mind you may get back that $2666 or whatever it was in 12+months then you are good to go. I'm just guessing it will take one year to get your money back. I hope I'm wrong for you and it takes less.

I can't reconcile the short term, because I'm a long term thinker, and on that basis I can only suggest BFL is the more sustainable choice.

Money where my mouth is, I bought two 60gh/s units in the past week.

https://twitter.com/BFL_News/status/312674043180482561

Probs with BFLs homepage, forum still works, maybe ddos?

Just noticed BFL's term of sale just became "All sales are final" (legal speak for no refunds!)

I want BFL, less power but,..

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/1300-when-bulk-first-75-wafers-will-delivered-bfl.html#post18275

..come on you tested it 2 days ago, give us some news on how it went, please! 

It's quite simple: A shady company like BFL needs a shady COO like Josh/Inaba.

Lying and insulting others is OK for BFL/Josh - as long as it generates sales.

Read:

One to market...

Seems like only one choice.

LOL

The irony of Josh posting stories about rats.

A more accurate analogy would be:

Entropy:  Your bottling looks like shit and there's a dead rat inside the bottle.  I know these things because I've been bottling for years and get paid $1000 a bottle.
Response: That's a rat printed on the label man... it's not a real rat, and it's not inside the bottle... Do you really get paid for bottling things when you can't even tell the difference between a printed rat on a label and a dead rat inside a bottle?

Avalon has already shipped. They have working units in the field at customer's homes right now. BFL is still in the paperwork phase I think and no one will see anything until winter holidays. At least 6 months.

It is more likely to give you a bad hangover.

The correct analogy is probably closer to Johnny Walker Blue Label compared to the basic Jack Daniels.

To put it mildly.


If you're so desperate to get anything up and running, then why not a GPU rig that can be converted to mining altcoins if/when you choose to purchase an ASIC mining gizmo down the road?

Nice... yeah, Josh does seem kind of a dick...  Guess I'll be waiting for batch 3....

On another note, anyone know where to buy some descent FPGA boards at a good price?

I'm desperate to get any kind of mining rig up and running

To the OP:
Buy Avalon if you want an ASIC mining device.
Buy BFL if you want to want an ASIC mining device.

Just because I make wine, doesn't mean I'm an expert on Whiskey.  Especially whiskey that's still in it's bottle

It seems Inaba (= Josh, the official BFL representative) deleted his posting. But it lives on in peoples quotes

Like in this post:


This is how BFL/Josh talks to customers and prospective clients.

Go over the the 'BFL Fucks us Again' thread and read Josh's rant.

That should tell you all you need to know about the professionalism of BFL

BFL is already five months late and there's still no guarantee that they'll ship anything soon or that they'll meet their stated(estimated) specs if and when they do eventually ship. When they do begin shipping their backlog will ensure that an order placed now will not be delivered for many months. Meanwhile Avalon has made it abundantly clear that they're capable of designing and delivering a working product on schedule despite beginning long after BFL had already announced their products.

BFL is also in clear violation of FTC prompt delivery regulations, so the risk that they will be shut down at some point must be weighed with any decision.

http://business.ftc.gov/documents/alt051-selling-internet-prompt-delivery-rules

For BFL, it will ship, but time relies on the order numbers and production capacity. So 4-5 months, I'm not so optimistic.
For Avalon, batch #1 seems successful, I know some guys have got it and start mining happily. I think Avalon will keep going.
The best thing is that more vendors can provide ASIC. 

BFL has batches 2 and 3 of their chips moving down the same process as batch 1, but now they know what timelines to expect. I'm expecting a good 4-5 months after they start shipping before they're all caught up.

You really think Avalon will ship batch 2, open batch 3, and ship batch 3 in the next 5 months?

I'm waiting for the Avalon batch #3 open.
BFL must have lots of orders. I believe it'll be shipped in 2014 if I just order right now.

I would hold off if i were you. Let some units ship and hash to see if there are any serious flaws. It's too late in the game to try to get the early jump. Avalons are already shipping but have limited units, and BFL has an endless order que and nothing has been released yet. Oh how i miss the peaceful GPU days.

Looking at this from a logical standpoint,BFL seems to currently have the edge if they can get their technical stuff going.However,I would caution anyone from buying vaporware.I think the business practice of how the current ASIC offerings are leaving little to be desired.

Avalon has explicitly stated they will not be offering any refunds, whatsoever. BFL has been and still is honoring all refunds. +1 BFL

BFL has not shipped any products yet. Avalon has. +1 Avalon

Avalon uses ~600W. BFL is set to use 1/10th of that. +1 BFL

BFL requires a PC to plug them in and mine. Avalon is standalone. +1 Avalon

I have several orders with BFL, and plan on getting many more.

Competition in the market place

No offence, but why would any sane person order an Avalon by the time BFL has a turn around of one week? We're looking at a power consumption difference of almost 600 watts. You'd basically be throwing away ~430kWh of electricity each month by choosing to run an Avalon instead of a BFL Single SC...

Nobody knows for sure. I would guess BFL. I think they will be able to pump out more devices just due to the size of the devices.

This of course depends on the chips not having problems and actually releasing sometime soon.

I canceled my BFL order and used my refund to buy BTC back when it was in the mid 20's... already doubled my money in a month and a half. Chances are if you used the funds that you would use to invest in ASIC hardware you could double your money by the time they ship.... that is of course if profit is your end goal. If you are just looking to help protect Bitcoin and its future I would buy one from each company. That's my plan down the road when they have a week turn around time on orders.

Look for more competition.I believe there is a mention of other solutions coming out.

It seems these are the only two players in the ASIC market at the moment... That being said, which one do you think will ship new orders first?

I'm considering getting one of these, but not sure which might actually get here in a sane ammount of time.. BFL says new orders will ship in June, but with them missing so many self-imposed dealines already, I'm considering going with avalon...

Comments? Thoughts? Open to all input...

Thanks