Topic: [Group Buy] Avalon ASIC Chips (SebastianJu) Batch 6 ordered (Closed) - page 26. (Read 125338 times)

AVALON Scam Accusation thread
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/avalon-scam-accusation-thread-258829

A refund of our chips does not recover what we've paid to assemblers... who have already spent much of our money on parts and start-up expenses

Mind you.. getting *something* back is better than losing the lot... which is quite possibly how this ends... people are talking about roi but personally i'm thinking this could end up a BFL scenario where we never see product - they just ask everyone to "trade up" to the next gen.. which people will and then the cycle repeats itself

Only details about them is translated post from Chinese forum. I don't have an account there and don't know Chinese, whoever wants to see it should be here:
http://bbs.btcman.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=4691&extra=page%3D1&page=1

Interpretation of that from other people: The guy who posted photos [email protected] claims he is original chip designer and member of original Avalon team, he posted pictures as a proof he has those pictures and no one else has them. He wanted to prove it because he said he went off from Avalon team and was looking for investor to develop gen 2. chips and produce them directly with TMSC without Avalon.

"Pictures were shot between 2013-07-09 18:09:55 - 19:09:25 with a Samsung GT-I9008 and Canon EOS 350D, and modified with ACD Systems Digital Imaging from 2013-07-09 22:07:04 - 22:58:16." from http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1hzzmo/impressive_pictures_of_a_huge_avalon_chips_order/

http://imgur.com/a/GR0e3

That means those chips are one month old exactly.

If Yifu defrauded people, we shouldn't be as worried about refunds. If you collect money for a purchase and then sell that purchase to a higher bidder AND defraud the original investors, that is jail. Getting a refund is not the issue here. We need to find out what happened.

anyone know who, when, where etc. exactly has taken this photo and if its not a fake with other content?

My best guess goes in this order:
1.Avalon was paid not to sent chips by ,
2.under threat they sold chips to mafia,
3.chips were sold to asicminer

Were those excuses that Yifu offered?
Looks like they were, for a reason they were not backed up by anything.
I don't say he lied, but if you want people to believe you, back it up by some sort of evidence.
In his "where we stand", still he offered allot for further direction of company and blueprint model for avoiding troubles.
I will be waiting, and I hope he deliver what he announced.

Logging off for now

I think the noise we make with our batches are on a high level since our first batch is 2 weeks late only. But its the bad experience like BFL that made the community hypersensitive to such things. Its a good thing i think. But its too early to fight Yifu with police, sueing and so on. That can follow if he dont deliver and doesnt refund.

What i really want to know from him is what happened to the 135 packets with chips we saw.

I don't believe Yifu will offer refund option, as it is against terms of sales they posted.

http://store.avalon-asics.com/?page_id=9605
6. made to order from TSMC foundry, this also means no refunds.

I also think chips are still fine in terms of ROI, and this delay was something we could expect.
So far I haven't paid assembly to burnin, but will do once chips are at his doorstep.
In my opinion Bitcoin community should support and appreciate effort that burnin and other respectable DIY gurus have made and not think solely on profit and ROI.
At the end how can we expect Bitburner xx with new generation of Avalon or any other company chips if we back up and leave burnin to burn at stake alone!?
To back up from burnin's design might be as good as putting a nail in his assembly business coffin for good.

Burnin stated that he will do refunds in his possibilities, that means he cant pay back money he used for buying parts from.

Regarding refunds... the chips are still fine in my opinion regarding mining income. Even though the difficulty is rising 75% each month... oO
If it comes to the point that Yifu offers refund, im not sure he will, because he could throw away his chips then most probably, its probably the case that some members want to refund and some not. Since we have 5 own batches it might be possible to split it through the batches. Only a thought since refund isnt on topic yet.

Thanks for the post Itod.

I am in batch 6 and will go through with it. I don't want to put Sebastian or Burnin out as they did nothing wrong. The culprit here (unless there were really some Mafia stuff involved) is Yifu and/or Avalon.
The story needs to be put together and the guilty party(ies) identified. Lots of money here, so I'm sure that will happen.

What is the consensus on what happened? (I haven't gone through other threads).

Thanks,
IAS

I thought so, but you can never be sure. If they wave enough promises of gold in front of people's noses many will follow.

Hahaha, unless we were offered the ability to "trade in" our generation 1 chips in return for very heavily discounted generation 2, I would not touch Avalon again with a barge pole!

I believe (my very limited EE experience comes entirely from the experts on this forum ) that there are similarities between the Avalon and Bitfury chips. Burnin mentioned at least once in his thread that he could, and probably would, design a bitfury board when the Avalon stuff is done. I'm sure there are many elements of his current design that might be re-used, but I would be very surprised if a straight swap of Avalon for bitfury chips would be possible.

If you're talking about Avalon's 2nd/3rd gen chips then you have to be fking mad (no offence intended, it's just an expression). We need to vote with our BTC and buy from companies we can trust.

i am not very technical, but does anyone know if Burnin's boards would work with any of the 2nd gen chips? That would be a 3rd option, I might be chatting nonsense here, again, I know little about electronics.

Yes, true, but many people will do this out of respect for burnin as well as for financial reasons I think.

I only have a small stake in this (and in a late batch - #5), but my feeling at the moment would be **not** to vote for a refund. I've now booked and paid for burnin's services and I feel I should go through with this. Also, the bitburners are beautiful and it will be great to have the hardware hashing just for the lulz ! Both SebastianJu and Burnin have lived up to their side of the bargain so far (indeed they have both been heros ) and so it would seem unfair for me to do anything that would cause difficulty for them because of Avalon's shady deals/incompetence/bad luck or whatever the reality is. I made a decision to be part of this group and took the risk and so I'll live with the consequences. Just my feelings and the group(s) may feel otherwise.

Burnin explicitly said he has spent money from his orders on parts and preparing to assembly so refunds are not possible. That is the factor, anyone already paid for assembly will certainly vote no on refund.

I personally would vote for a refund, but only if i knew i could get some of the assembly fees back as well.
I'd feel shitty asking for an assembler to refund all my money, they are innocent bystanders in all of this and have likely spent money on boards, equipment etc.

Moved Sebastian's questions from "Yifu's alive" thread here, so we can peacefully discuss them, especially the last (bolded) one.

Here are some facts:

- Avalon will (maybe) ship 200.000 chips in two weeks, 800.000 more later

- Unhappy Avalon team member photographed bunch of boxes with chips somewhere in Russia a month ago:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2694806
Data embedded in the photos show that they were taken two weeks before their are published.

- Each big cardboard box contains 15.600 chips. There is evidence that 135 boxes are shipped in the same shipping batch:
http://www.track-shipments.com/track-trace.aspx?pref=AWB&awbno=87150508076
It is not clear if all 135 boxes arrived to Russia or only 24 of them. Total number of chips in these 135 boxes is 2.106.000, and since Avalon doesn't have any chips to ship at this moment none of these chips are coming our way.

- Probable impact of all these chips on difficulty is enormous, when finally deployed they may bring difficulty to the orbit:
http://thegenesisblock.com/latest-shipment-of-avalon-asics-could-increase-network-hashrate-by-500/


Nobody can put this mess in the formula and calculate what the real impact on *our* chips will be. If Yifu keeps his promise and delivers some chips in two weeks, those chips will be profitable. Maybe some more chips from other 800.000 promised will also be profitable, best calculations we've read says that all chips delivered in August and assembled in first half of September will be OK, depending ofc if they will be assembled by Burnin or some cheaper assembler, since price difference of that services comes into play now that profitability is reduced.

Also, since obviously all Sebastian batches will not come in the same time, position in witch batch determines whats the best interest of the group buyer.

Going back to Sebastian's original question: If by some miracle Yifu offers the full refund, what will be the vote to accept it or not? Will it be determined by voting within the each group buy? It's hard to give up after all this waiting, but it is also irrational to invest some BTC in the device knowing you'll never get at least the exact same amount of BTC back, not to mention some profit.