Sorry, is Bitfury offering ready-made units or are they gathering pre-orders and asking for upfront payment for units delivered in the future? How is Bitfury's business model so superior's to Avalon? They already collected money and AFAIK they didn't deliver a single unit so far. Bitfury has a past history of successful FPGA development, as Avalon's ngzhang has. Pretty similar situation in my book, but please illustrate me how it's so different.
And BTW, 20k may seem a very big investment for you, but I remind you that only one BFL mini-rig was more expensive than that... And that many users in these forums are gambling more $ on KnC, for a much smaller $/potential profit ratio.
Bitfury offers ~2100 $ = ~21
BTC / 120 GH/s unit - no delay yet, no evidence of mining with customers units
Avalon offers B#3 ~10000 $ = ~100
BTC / 85 GH/s unit - delayed already, heavily overpriced due to calculated 1 month break even according to bitsyncom promises, possible delivery of chips prior to batch #3 customers, building new facility instead of building customers units.
Batch #1 was indeed a gamble since there was no proven ASIC technology to work with bitcoin mining, and only 2 of 4 companies did menage to deliver on time(Avalon, ASICminer). Now times are quite different.
OH I didn't knew that bitcoin economy is designed to get rich people more rich? I assume that if you can afford sending 20K to some dudes in china you have quite a backup. My flawed thinking about bitcoin ecconomy sorry for that. batch #1 customers are hashing the shit out of it, while batch #3 customers were fooled to borrow money to Avalon team with no intrest rates
How much easier should it be to deliver something if you charge 10x times more than you need to deliver working unit and actually profit?
I assume that you have 10x more money to spend to deliver single working unit, that would be true if our money would have been spend on producing our units rather than new unnecessary facility. If something fails you got ten times more money than you need so you can forward that money to other place to speed up things, or again I am missing sth?
Bitfury offers 120GH/s units for $2100? Avalon offered +68GH/s unit for $1200 when the difficulty was 6 times lower, so it was cheaper.
There's no evidence of Bitfury mining with customers units? Give me a break, they haven't got any ASIC unit yet,
you could say exactly the same thing about Avalon a few months ago - until they had the first units there was no evidence of them mining with customers units... And still, I don't see that overwhelming evidence anywhere.
Only difference between Avalon in late 2012 (when they took the first preorders) and Bitfury now is that Bitfury has some sample chips, while Avalon had nothing... But, this is an argument that works in two ways, for ex.: why is Bitfury asking for upfront money if they already had enough to develop the chips, which is by far the most expensive part of the development?
I have the impression you were not around when Avalon batch #1 were on sale, the potential profit in taking that gamble was HUGE (you could potentially lose $1 against winning $30), the risk on Bitfury is similar (ok, maybe slightly lower, but not much) but the fact is the potential profits are much smaller. And, FYI, Avalon was a big
WIN for everyone that had the balls to take that gamble. Kudos to them for that.
Again: I don't know if you were around, but Avalon increased the price of their Batch #3 because their batch #1 costed $1,200 and were sold on ebay for +$30,000.... I don't know if you run a business, but there is no way a company sells a product for a price that allows resellers to make a x30 instant profit on their work.
NO WAY. Following that "ebay situation", Batch #3 was priced in terms of expected ROI... Avalon screwed up the timings and thus with ROI projections, and now they acknowledge this mistake and offer a full refund to anyone asking for it. Seriously, what else do you want? Batch #3 price was fair if they were delivered when difficulty was 10 to 15 million, that was the plan, now the difficulty is above that point because they screwed up and they offer you a full refund... OK, take that refund and move on, you accepted "no refund policy" and they backtracked that policy, fair deal in my book.
I'm an Avalon customer with batch #3 on the way and I would have loved for them to deliver in early May, or to offer a partial refund to customers while still delivering the units... But that's wishful thinking, they are in now way obliged to do that, take your refund and invest on Bitfury if they are so much superior to Avalon in your opinion.
EDIT: and BTW, I *may* consider doing what I said in my last sentence, not because I believe Bitfury is more "honest" than Avalon, just because a batch #3 refund will allow me to buy more GH/s for my BTC. As simple as that, no need to whine.