Only credit card companies might save their ass (consumer)...
BFL doesn't take credit cards.
Topic: Butterfly Labs Announces Bulk Chip Sales - page 4. (Read 15856 times)
BFL doesn't take credit cards.
It will be interesting to see if how the chip sales by BFL go.
Other than pre-order folks who want the chips instead of their original orders (a bird in hard vs. two...), potential chip buyers won't be the unwashed masses, but those who are technical and have done a lot of research and will have full knowledge of BFL's history.
If the chips sales are a success, then it will be clear that they have been able to preserve their name and brand.
If the chip sales are a failure, then I think BFL has cooked their own goose with the entry into the ASIC market (and the future won't be looking to bright).
Other than pre-order folks who want the chips instead of their original orders (a bird in hard vs. two...), potential chip buyers won't be the unwashed masses, but those who are technical and have done a lot of research and will have full knowledge of BFL's history.
If the chips sales are a success, then it will be clear that they have been able to preserve their name and brand.
If the chip sales are a failure, then I think BFL has cooked their own goose with the entry into the ASIC market (and the future won't be looking to bright).
I disagree there are plenty of stupid people...with money!
They aren't all confined to this forum!!
There will be potential technical chip buyers who have done their research, and there will be those that haven't and are using either their own funds, or someone else's (who also have undertaken minimal/no research)
NEVER underestimate stupidity, BFL are banking on that!
They have to, they have no other choice, without detailed chip analysis publicly available what informed decision can anyone make?? It's a total shot in the dark with a company that now has a very poor record of delivering anything they've made people pay for upfront.
Only credit card companies might save their ass (consumer)...
Oboy. 
It will be interesting to see if how the chip sales by BFL go.
Other than pre-order folks who want the chips instead of their original orders (a bird in hard vs. two...), potential chip buyers won't be the unwashed masses, but those who are technical and have done a lot of research and will have full knowledge of BFL's history.
If the chips sales are a success, then it will be clear that they have been able to preserve their name and brand.
If the chip sales are a failure, then I think BFL has cooked their own goose with the entry into the ASIC market (and the future won't be looking to bright).
Other than pre-order folks who want the chips instead of their original orders (a bird in hard vs. two...), potential chip buyers won't be the unwashed masses, but those who are technical and have done a lot of research and will have full knowledge of BFL's history.
If the chips sales are a success, then it will be clear that they have been able to preserve their name and brand.
If the chip sales are a failure, then I think BFL has cooked their own goose with the entry into the ASIC market (and the future won't be looking to bright).
Quote
If people are willing to pay outrageous prices, the producer is a fool to NOT offer outrageous prices while he has a defacto monopoly. When somebody credible comes to market at lower prices, ASICMiner products will lower theirs to something more reasonable. Right now they are mining fools as much as bitcoins. And if you have ever studied the history of gold rushes, mining fools is often initially much more profitable. Friedcat isn't screwing anyone. He's just allowing fools to screw themselves. And he IS delivering the product.
He isnt screwing anyone, of course.
I think that in the longterm, if he sells thousands of these, he might create thousands of haters, who didnt break even and then rant on Bitcoin. If he is into it selling long term, he might make more money not pissing customers off that later say "Ah, i wont buy new, i wont break even anyway."
Hard decision. Short term i agree with you.
Still it's not sharing the love, or the wealth to be *potentially made. It's centralising profits to themselves and leaving their *customers with a product that may...or may not give some reward one day in the future. I see no difference there between ASICminer and putting my money in a modern bank with a piss poor interest, other than I'm putting myself out to change funds to bitcoin and acquire a device which I'm then responsible to ensure remains working, whilst they profit!
To me that's an utterly selfish and stupid reason to sell at such a price. You didn't see graphics card manufacturers decide to raise prices because consumers discovered away to turn their products into additional fundraising devices did you?
You would have if there was only one or two options available. Early graphics cards were ridiculously expensive for what they did when they DIDN'T have any other purpose. (I mean way back, early 80's. A 16 color graphics adapter frequently cost more than the IBM PC you were putting it in). But as soon as Hercules got competition, the prices became reasonable very quickly.
True and we don't know what ASiCminer and BitSyncom's quality control is like? They may be throwing away chips that don't make the grade, not selling them!!
To be honest here, I don't think ASICminer/BitSyncom have issues with variance in chip quality, not to the extent BFL do. To me that smacks of how unfinished BFL are on this project, and how poor their engineering design actually is!!
I think their chips are going to have many problems that will only become apparent if their chips ever make it in volume in the wild!
Also, FWIW; The ASICminer blades are priced by the free market nitwits, the USB dongle is price gauging plain and simple!
Their ASICs are in some parameters far more superior to for example Avalon. They just took too big piece of the pie.
I really look forward to see how this few million dollar experiment goes.
As an observer? With whose millions?!
Also, FWIW; The ASICminer blades are priced by the free market nitwits, the USB dongle is price gauging plain and simple!
What sort of gauge are we using?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Nice!
Bah! *gouging...gits!
Also, FWIW; The ASICminer blades are priced by the free market nitwits, the USB dongle is price gauging plain and simple!
What sort of gauge are we using?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Nice!
Also, FWIW; The ASICminer blades are priced by the free market nitwits, the USB dongle is price gauging plain and simple!
What sort of gauge are we using?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Also, FWIW; The ASICminer blades are priced by the free market nitwits, the USB dongle is price gauging plain and simple!
What sort of gauge are we using?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Quote
If people are willing to pay outrageous prices, the producer is a fool to NOT offer outrageous prices while he has a defacto monopoly. When somebody credible comes to market at lower prices, ASICMiner products will lower theirs to something more reasonable. Right now they are mining fools as much as bitcoins. And if you have ever studied the history of gold rushes, mining fools is often initially much more profitable. Friedcat isn't screwing anyone. He's just allowing fools to screw themselves. And he IS delivering the product.
He isnt screwing anyone, of course.
I think that in the longterm, if he sells thousands of these, he might create thousands of haters, who didnt break even and then rant on Bitcoin. If he is into it selling long term, he might make more money not pissing customers off that later say "Ah, i wont buy new, i wont break even anyway."
Hard decision. Short term i agree with you.
Still it's not sharing the love, or the wealth to be *potentially made. It's centralising profits to themselves and leaving their *customers with a product that may...or may not give some reward one day in the future. I see no difference there between ASICminer and putting my money in a modern bank with a piss poor interest, other than I'm putting myself out to change funds to bitcoin and acquire a device which I'm then responsible to ensure remains working, whilst they profit!
To me that's an utterly selfish and stupid reason to sell at such a price. You didn't see graphics card manufacturers decide to raise prices because consumers discovered away to turn their products into additional fundraising devices did you?
You would have if there was only one or two options available. Early graphics cards were ridiculously expensive for what they did when they DIDN'T have any other purpose. (I mean way back, early 80's. A 16 color graphics adapter frequently cost more than the IBM PC you were putting it in). But as soon as Hercules got competition, the prices became reasonable very quickly.
True and we don't know what ASiCminer and BitSyncom's quality control is like? They may be throwing away chips that don't make the grade, not selling them!!
To be honest here, I don't think ASICminer/BitSyncom have issues with variance in chip quality, not to the extent BFL do. To me that smacks of how unfinished BFL are on this project, and how poor their engineering design actually is!!
I think their chips are going to have many problems that will only become apparent if their chips ever make it in volume in the wild!
Also, FWIW; The ASICminer blades are priced by the free market nitwits, the USB dongle is price gauging plain and simple!
Their ASICs are in some parameters far more superior to for example Avalon. They just took too big piece of the pie.
I really look forward to see how this few million dollar experiment goes.
Quote from: BFL_Josh
We have enough chips on order to satisfy all preorders. Any orders we make now to satisfy bulk chip sales would come after the chips arrive for the pre-orders.
Does anyone know how many pre-orders they have?
Hi. This might help you. http://bfl.ptz.ro/ It's a list of some people that received Jalapenos so far (and more unlucky ones still waiting to give you the whole disastrous picture - considering most people did not register in that form, this is HUGE ...). ....................
They (butterflies) sort of managed to scam people even if they deliver product at the (far away) end. Very creative.
Read more in PuertoLibre's signature above if curious how that is even possible.
They (butterflies) sort of managed to scam people even if they deliver product at the (far away) end. Very creative.
Read more in PuertoLibre's signature above if curious how that is even possible.
........... But as soon as Hercules got competition, the prices became reasonable very quickly.
The prices are always determined by market and costumers. The only problem I have is BFL's full-charged-preorder-but-no-delivery policy.
I agree. I was speaking more of ASICMiner and Avalon. BFL is a wildcard. They are advertising what I'm talking about, but they have screwed the pooch so badly that I have extreme doubts that they can ever recover. Which is really too bad, because if the could deliver they would cause the other vendors to adjust. Not to mention they appear to have a really cool product.
Ah well. We'll see what happens. If they can actually get seriously to market before August, it'll change the game. If they can't, the game will still change. They just won't be leading the change. If they even survive.
Quote
If people are willing to pay outrageous prices, the producer is a fool to NOT offer outrageous prices while he has a defacto monopoly. When somebody credible comes to market at lower prices, ASICMiner products will lower theirs to something more reasonable. Right now they are mining fools as much as bitcoins. And if you have ever studied the history of gold rushes, mining fools is often initially much more profitable. Friedcat isn't screwing anyone. He's just allowing fools to screw themselves. And he IS delivering the product.
He isnt screwing anyone, of course.
I think that in the longterm, if he sells thousands of these, he might create thousands of haters, who didnt break even and then rant on Bitcoin. If he is into it selling long term, he might make more money not pissing customers off that later say "Ah, i wont buy new, i wont break even anyway."
Hard decision. Short term i agree with you.
Still it's not sharing the love, or the wealth to be *potentially made. It's centralising profits to themselves and leaving their *customers with a product that may...or may not give some reward one day in the future. I see no difference there between ASICminer and putting my money in a modern bank with a piss poor interest, other than I'm putting myself out to change funds to bitcoin and acquire a device which I'm then responsible to ensure remains working, whilst they profit!
To me that's an utterly selfish and stupid reason to sell at such a price. You didn't see graphics card manufacturers decide to raise prices because consumers discovered away to turn their products into additional fundraising devices did you?
You would have if there was only one or two options available. Early graphics cards were ridiculously expensive for what they did when they DIDN'T have any other purpose. (I mean way back, early 80's. A 16 color graphics adapter frequently cost more than the IBM PC you were putting it in). But as soon as Hercules got competition, the prices became reasonable very quickly.
True and we don't know what ASiCminer and BitSyncom's quality control is like? They may be throwing away chips that don't make the grade, not selling them!!
To be honest here, I don't think ASICminer/BitSyncom have issues with variance in chip quality, not to the extent BFL do. To me that smacks of how unfinished BFL are on this project, and how poor their engineering design actually is!!
I think their chips are going to have many problems that will only become apparent if their chips ever make it in volume in the wild!
Also, FWIW; The ASICminer blades are priced by the free market nitwits, the USB dongle is price gauging plain and simple!
Quote from: BFL_Josh
We have enough chips on order to satisfy all preorders. Any orders we make now to satisfy bulk chip sales would come after the chips arrive for the pre-orders.
Does anyone know how many pre-orders they have?
Hi. This might help you. http://bfl.ptz.ro/ It's a list of some people that received Jalapenos so far (and more unlucky ones still waiting to give you the whole disastrous picture - considering most people did not register in that form, this is HUGE ...). ....................
They (butterflies) sort of managed to scam people even if they deliver product at the (far away) end. Very creative.
Read more in PuertoLibre's signature above if curious how that is even possible.
They (butterflies) sort of managed to scam people even if they deliver product at the (far away) end. Very creative.
Read more in PuertoLibre's signature above if curious how that is even possible.
........... But as soon as Hercules got competition, the prices became reasonable very quickly.
The prices are always determined by market and costumers. That's OK. The only problem I have is BFL's full-charged-preorder-but-no-delivery policy.
Quote
If people are willing to pay outrageous prices, the producer is a fool to NOT offer outrageous prices while he has a defacto monopoly. When somebody credible comes to market at lower prices, ASICMiner products will lower theirs to something more reasonable. Right now they are mining fools as much as bitcoins. And if you have ever studied the history of gold rushes, mining fools is often initially much more profitable. Friedcat isn't screwing anyone. He's just allowing fools to screw themselves. And he IS delivering the product.
He isnt screwing anyone, of course.
I think that in the longterm, if he sells thousands of these, he might create thousands of haters, who didnt break even and then rant on Bitcoin. If he is into it selling long term, he might make more money not pissing customers off that later say "Ah, i wont buy new, i wont break even anyway."
Hard decision. Short term i agree with you.
Still it's not sharing the love, or the wealth to be *potentially made. It's centralising profits to themselves and leaving their *customers with a product that may...or may not give some reward one day in the future. I see no difference there between ASICminer and putting my money in a modern bank with a piss poor interest, other than I'm putting myself out to change funds to bitcoin and acquire a device which I'm then responsible to ensure remains working, whilst they profit!
To me that's an utterly selfish and stupid reason to sell at such a price. You didn't see graphics card manufacturers decide to raise prices because consumers discovered away to turn their products into additional fundraising devices did you?
You would have if there was only one or two options available. Early graphics cards were ridiculously expensive for what they did when they DIDN'T have any other purpose. (I mean way back, early 80's. A 16 color graphics adapter frequently cost more than the IBM PC you were putting it in). But as soon as Hercules got competition, the prices became reasonable very quickly.
Quote
If people are willing to pay outrageous prices, the producer is a fool to NOT offer outrageous prices while he has a defacto monopoly. When somebody credible comes to market at lower prices, ASICMiner products will lower theirs to something more reasonable. Right now they are mining fools as much as bitcoins. And if you have ever studied the history of gold rushes, mining fools is often initially much more profitable. Friedcat isn't screwing anyone. He's just allowing fools to screw themselves. And he IS delivering the product.
He isnt screwing anyone, of course.
I think that in the longterm, if he sells thousands of these, he might create thousands of haters, who didnt break even and then rant on Bitcoin. If he is into it selling long term, he might make more money not pissing customers off that later say "Ah, i wont buy new, i wont break even anyway."
Hard decision. Short term i agree with you.
I really don't think he will, because he's been quite up front about it. And, given that half of the profits go back to Bitfountain, He is probably using it for R&D for smaller more badass chips. When he has serious competition, I suspect he'll be able to play the undercutting game and gain bonus points because of his reputation. Plus, his initial model was more about the profits to the shareholders than dissemination to the general public. Gen 2 chips, as I understand it, should have immensely more hashing power and be cheaper to produce (excluding the cost of the mask), so he could be positioning himself long and short rather well.
BFL isn't likely to deliver. Despite having had a civil argument with Inaba (which surprised the hell out of me) I've just seen too much hype without enough substantiation. Sure, they have developed the machines. I just don't think they have what it takes to actually take them to serious production in time to be relevant. I could be wrong, of course, but I will be very surprised if they hit the market before at least one competitor hits with better chips, cheaper. We already know there is a lot of interest in this, and there are rich men interested in it. Despite the scams out there, the odds are very good that some VC group is working quietly and has been for some time. They could easily come out of left field and change the whole game. As Yifu said, if his group could do it in four months, then a well funded group could EASILY do it.
I have seen production figures suggesting that the chips themselves will cost in the neighbourhood of .50 to 2.00 USD each to produce after initial cost, so there is a lot of margin for undercutting the market when someone is ready.
It's a hell of a game. I'm late to the party, but I'm enjoying the ride
Quote from: BFL_Josh
We have enough chips on order to satisfy all preorders. Any orders we make now to satisfy bulk chip sales would come after the chips arrive for the pre-orders.
Does anyone know how many pre-orders they have?
Quote
If people are willing to pay outrageous prices, the producer is a fool to NOT offer outrageous prices while he has a defacto monopoly. When somebody credible comes to market at lower prices, ASICMiner products will lower theirs to something more reasonable. Right now they are mining fools as much as bitcoins. And if you have ever studied the history of gold rushes, mining fools is often initially much more profitable. Friedcat isn't screwing anyone. He's just allowing fools to screw themselves. And he IS delivering the product.
He isnt screwing anyone, of course.
I think that in the longterm, if he sells thousands of these, he might create thousands of haters, who didnt break even and then rant on Bitcoin. If he is into it selling long term, he might make more money not pissing customers off that later say "Ah, i wont buy new, i wont break even anyway."
Hard decision. Short term i agree with you.
Still it's not sharing the love, or the wealth to be *potentially made. It's centralising profits to themselves and leaving their *customers with a product that may...or may not give some reward one day in the future. I see no difference there between ASICminer and putting my money in a modern bank with a piss poor interest, other than I'm putting myself out to change funds to bitcoin and acquire a device which I'm then responsible to ensure remains working, whilst they profit!
To me that's an utterly selfish and stupid reason to sell at such a price. You didn't see graphics card manufacturers decide to raise prices because consumers discovered away to turn their products into additional fundraising devices did you?
Quote
If people are willing to pay outrageous prices, the producer is a fool to NOT offer outrageous prices while he has a defacto monopoly. When somebody credible comes to market at lower prices, ASICMiner products will lower theirs to something more reasonable. Right now they are mining fools as much as bitcoins. And if you have ever studied the history of gold rushes, mining fools is often initially much more profitable. Friedcat isn't screwing anyone. He's just allowing fools to screw themselves. And he IS delivering the product.
He isnt screwing anyone, of course.
I think that in the longterm, if he sells thousands of these, he might create thousands of haters, who didnt break even and then rant on Bitcoin. If he is into it selling long term, he might make more money not pissing customers off that later say "Ah, i wont buy new, i wont break even anyway."
Hard decision. Short term i agree with you.
Does anyone else think the chips are priced ridiculously?
I talked to someone at an ASIC company lately who argued that it would be a cinch to build 65 or 28nm chips, their sims showed about 8-10gh/s per chip. He offered that if they ever got to development, the first batch would cost me $50 per chip since the development costs are so high. Should they produce a second batch, he'd give to me for $30. Estimated margin with development costs on a 100k batch was by the way 300-400%.
What you see there is a fucked up margin of unbelievable 1000%, since one of these chips is bound to cost around 10$ including production if there was one 100.000 batch produced and built.
I dont care about how late they are or how mean to their customers, I already got a refund for that. But now selling your chips with a 1000% margin? Are you serious BFL?
I talked to someone at an ASIC company lately who argued that it would be a cinch to build 65 or 28nm chips, their sims showed about 8-10gh/s per chip. He offered that if they ever got to development, the first batch would cost me $50 per chip since the development costs are so high. Should they produce a second batch, he'd give to me for $30. Estimated margin with development costs on a 100k batch was by the way 300-400%.
What you see there is a fucked up margin of unbelievable 1000%, since one of these chips is bound to cost around 10$ including production if there was one 100.000 batch produced and built.
I dont care about how late they are or how mean to their customers, I already got a refund for that. But now selling your chips with a 1000% margin? Are you serious BFL?
As serious as Avalon are with their margin, or ASICminer with their ludicrous mark-up!!!
Avalon's markup is around 300-400%.
That is completely ok.
ASICminer: Im not sure, but it is beyond a lot. He stated that adding 1th/s is at the cost of $10k right now. 1th/s means that is about 100 block eruptor blades. Build costs around $10 per Gigahash. (3 chips, I would guess) Lets assume around 20-30 additional dollars for assembly.
--> Block Eruptor Blade building costs, not factoring development, around... $130-140 Dollars. Sales price 50BTC or 2BTC for small chips. Ok, ASICminer beats BFL, it is okay
Demands are just too high because people are willing to spend anything on a short supply of ASICs right now
Which is incredibly stupid. You need to at least do your calcs. The Block Eruptor USB Miners are fun, small and cool devices. They are several times overpriced though. I would guess that they SHOULD cost 1BTC. That includes shipping, manufacturing, chips and a 400% premium. That is a fair price and a good margin to win at business. 800% is fucking your customers, 5000% is hardly even thinkable...
While from a personal perspective, I agree, from a business one I don't. The USB is a novelty item, really. But you don't see any gathering dust, do you?
If people are willing to pay outrageous prices, the producer is a fool to NOT offer outrageous prices while he has a defacto monopoly. When somebody credible comes to market at lower prices, ASICMiner products will lower theirs to something more reasonable. Right now they are mining fools as much as bitcoins. And if you have ever studied the history of gold rushes, mining fools is often initially much more profitable. Friedcat isn't screwing anyone. He's just allowing fools to screw themselves. And he IS delivering the product.
Me, I'm waiting till he has some competition. I still might buy his devices, when the price comes down. Or I might go with the competition. These things are going to have a short lifespan unless somebody figures out a way to repurpose an application SPECIFIC integrated circuit. ASIC mining will be immensely profitable for a minute, fairly profitable for a little while, and a note in history a bit after that.
Does anyone else think the chips are priced ridiculously?
I talked to someone at an ASIC company lately who argued that it would be a cinch to build 65 or 28nm chips, their sims showed about 8-10gh/s per chip. He offered that if they ever got to development, the first batch would cost me $50 per chip since the development costs are so high. Should they produce a second batch, he'd give to me for $30. Estimated margin with development costs on a 100k batch was by the way 300-400%.
What you see there is a fucked up margin of unbelievable 1000%, since one of these chips is bound to cost around 10$ including production if there was one 100.000 batch produced and built.
I dont care about how late they are or how mean to their customers, I already got a refund for that. But now selling your chips with a 1000% margin? Are you serious BFL?
I talked to someone at an ASIC company lately who argued that it would be a cinch to build 65 or 28nm chips, their sims showed about 8-10gh/s per chip. He offered that if they ever got to development, the first batch would cost me $50 per chip since the development costs are so high. Should they produce a second batch, he'd give to me for $30. Estimated margin with development costs on a 100k batch was by the way 300-400%.
What you see there is a fucked up margin of unbelievable 1000%, since one of these chips is bound to cost around 10$ including production if there was one 100.000 batch produced and built.
I dont care about how late they are or how mean to their customers, I already got a refund for that. But now selling your chips with a 1000% margin? Are you serious BFL?
As serious as Avalon are with their margin, or ASICminer with their ludicrous mark-up!!!
Avalon's markup is around 300-400%.
That is completely ok.
ASICminer: Im not sure, but it is beyond a lot. He stated that adding 1th/s is at the cost of $10k right now. 1th/s means that is about 100 block eruptor blades. Build costs around $10 per Gigahash. (3 chips, I would guess) Lets assume around 20-30 additional dollars for assembly.
--> Block Eruptor Blade building costs, not factoring development, around... $130-140 Dollars. Sales price 50BTC or 2BTC for small chips. Ok, ASICminer beats BFL, it is okay
Demands are just too high because people are willing to spend anything on a short supply of ASICs right now
Which is incredibly stupid. You need to at least do your calcs. The Block Eruptor USB Miners are fun, small and cool devices. They are several times overpriced though. I would guess that they SHOULD cost 1BTC. That includes shipping, manufacturing, chips and a 400% premium. That is a fair price and a good margin to win at business. 800% is fucking your customers, 5000% is hardly even thinkable...
Jump to: