Topic: btt - page 97. (Read 407344 times)

It appears as though a batch 1 Avalon order holder located in the US is receiving a package shipped via DHL from Hong Kong tomorrow.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137534.1280

I have been successful at getting our main rig mining LTCs at ltc.kattare.com, currently at 935kh/s. It's been running this way for the past 12hrs or so without issue. As LTC mining and BTC mining are nearly equally profitable I have them split with the remainder of the GPUs BTC mining at bitparking, currently at 903MH/s. The company spreadsheet located here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArTS7AD--9SWdDNfb0lRNElqS1k1eGRoWEw2TGM4NlE#gid=0

Has been updated accordingly. 

Finally I seem to have gotten a real answer from Avalon regarding our order.


https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/avalon-i-got-my-asic-thread-batch-2-146451

...as I have a valid walletbit receipt for this guest transaction I feel a good deal more at ease about our order. Hopefully we will see some movement on batch 2 orders in the near future.

I was unable to get our primary rig shifted to LTC mining prior to travelling, but all GPUs have been crunching BTC over the weekend. There was a problem with the 6870 in that rig coming up sick after starting CGMiner with scrypt enabled. I didn't have sufficient time to work out the issue and didn't want it crashing and restarting over and over, so I set it to BTC mining to be safe. It was happy mining with scrypt on 2.1.0, so perhaps a downgrade from 2.1.5 will get it going. I'll have more time to look into it Monday morning. 

Travelling today so dividend will be paid out early.

Also as BTC difficulty is re targeting today @ nearly 20% higher I am going to switch at least some of our GPUs to LTC mining which should roughly maintain our current dividend level, though I'm still less effective at squeezing hashes out of the GPUs while scrypt mining. Seems I'd better get better at it in a hurry.

This pic of batch 1 Avalon units being prepared for shipping was posted today by BitSyncom:

http://i.imgur.com/KzY4tPF.jpg

Though ours is an early batch 2 order it's still good to see something coming out of Avalon.

Have a great weekend everybody.

Yeah pretty quiet lately, there just isn't a lot to report while we await our transition to ASIC hardware.

I received a walletbit confirmation of sorts of our order via email, though there's no confirmed shipping information so I continue to press Avalon reps for clarification. We are not alone in this, others that ordered on the 2nd and 3rd are in a similar situation, they simply didn't have things running properly when they opened batch 2 orders. Other than ASICMiner slowly coming online we've been fortunate to remain profitable with GPU mining and the huge gains BTC has made vs fiat obviously works in our favor given our BTC reserves.

I've received nothing from BTCFPGA or Tom with regard to our BTC refund. The fact that some have received refunds gives me a glimmer of hope that we'll eventually receive something.

This is what I got from Walletbit on 2/19 via email:

it has gotten quiet, i am just wondering, are there any updates, especially regarding the ASIC order and the refund?

I'm a tryin'. Things move fast in the BTC world and cold weather/tax time is the busiest time of the year for me, so I'm just trying to keep my head above water.

I have been out of the bitcoin world for about 2 months now and I am glad to see that you are still putting so much effort into this

I travel most weekends and generally get settled in with Internet access by Saturday evening in typical nerd fashion, but wasn't able to gain access until Sunday this past weekend. As a result I simply sent everything that had collected at bitparking between Friday's dividend and Sunday evening.
 

What is happening with the recent few day's weird dividends?

That may be something to look into going forward. We'd still have to sell BTCs to raise the USDs, though we're clearly in a better position to do so with BTCs pushing $24. With BFL flying in a couple community figures to tour the operation and apparently receiving some finished chips recently we should have more information to base decisions on very soon. Exciting times indeed if there's going to be fierce competition among vendors.

What about purchasing BFL ASICs with a credit card and chargeback if they don't start shipping?

Still no order confirmation email from Avalon, but our funds were just moved from the walletbit address I paid into along with many other 75BTC payments, so that's encouraging.

http://blockchain.info/address/15Vy5wtdSbThaFByrzFhMc9ZKC69TmcVwp

Walletbit guest payment address was:

17ddqJCwj1cfFb8SxYN9iPK8AHMKvsaUJj

Apparently someone in China received an Avalon and posted pics of the actual chips. The translation is awful...sorry.

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fbbs.btcman.com%2Fforum.php%3Fmod%3Dviewthread%26tid%3D1304

Excellent idea, I will make it so.

Hello again
May I suggest that you put the average hashing power of the company in the spreadsheet? it might give investor a better look at the company.

bASIC-MINING shareholder notification sent. Copied here:

Neither is likely to be shipping much of anything this month with CNY stifling Avalon batch 1 shipments. ASICMiner should be hashing soon so that will be something to contend with, but I think we have more time with our GPUs remaining profitable while we await our shipment from Avalon. There's also the expansion slots in the Avalon to keep in mind and we don't yet know if there will be one or three vacant slots. I have one dedicated 30 amp circuit available that could be used to power an upgraded Avalon, though running a 240v circuit may be an option as well.

This is really a gamble and it will depend on the price of BTC. If it continues it's bull run vs fiat we'll have done well by not sending a large portion of our coins away for a product that will not be hashing for us for two months. I suspect we'll begin to see shorter and shorter wait times between ordering and receipt of shipping ASIC products. If that's the case then we'll lose very little by waiting for batch 3 from Avalon or any signs of life from BFL prior to making a larger purchase and we just may be sitting on a large pile of more valuable BTCs when that time comes.

Edit: Seems Deprived posted similar sentiments while I was replying.

When the ASICs are shipped doesn't matter - it's when they arrive they counts.  Avalons are looking like 2-4 week transit times - so if BFL ship a week later from the US their ASICs will still arrive and be hashing earlier (if receiver is in the US).

The other problem with buying ASICs at the moment is that all waiting time costs money when BTC is generally rising.

If company X buys now with 2 month wait time and company Y buys in 2 months with 2 week wait time later and in the meantime BTC has risen by 50% then even if the USD price paid is the same, company X has to mine back 1/3 of their purchase price in the 2 weeks extra they have ASICs to be in the same position as company Y.

Long lead times only made ANY sense to accept IF you were in the first batch.  The 2nd batch does NOT make bank - by time it arrives all of Avalon batch 1 should be mining, so should the first chunk of ASICMINER and quite possibly so will be the first BFLs.  They'll make a profit - but not a massive "pay it off in a few weeks" type of profit.  Because of that, if you think BTC will rise, one of the key objectives is to minimise the amount of time your funds are denominated in USD without you mining.  That means waiting until lead times drop.  It also has other added advantages:

1.  The price of ASICS may fall - once 2 or more suppliers are proven to be able to deliver, prices can only fall.
2.  You can be sure maufacturers can actually deliver in bulk.
3.  Any major problems will likely have been noticed - for all we know Avalons will only function for a few weeks before developing a fault: we can be pretty confident they haven't had any serious stress testing.

Imagine how bad it would be to get an Avalon, have it break down after a week then you realise it's a return-to-base warranty meaning even if they fix it for free you just lost a month of mining whilst it gos to China and back.

I think it'd be better to buy 2 avalon ASICs, because GPU mining will be unprofitable and they probably will ship before BFL. See if BFL ships, if yes buy some of BFL. Gen 2 probably will not be coming for a while as BFL is already 65nm, just more overclocked ones

We have closer to 400BTC, but I have to reconcile this purchase and new sales of shares. I'll try to get that done yet tonight and get it posted up, still haven't paid today's dividend either, just that kind of a weekend.

The plan is still bulk ASIC purchases. I had begun negotiations with buzzdave to get us a better price in quantity from BTCFPGA, but that's obviously out. It did not seem wise to throw all of our funds at either Avalon or BFL for a gen 1 product at this time. If/when BFL ships difficulty will rise rapidly and either BTC will have to increase in value to compensate or ASICs will have to become cheaper. We get our foot in the ASIC door here, increase our hashrate 31 fold, and wait for the dust to settle a bit.