Topic: HashFast announces specs for new ASIC: 400GH/s - page 476. (Read 880816 times)

This was just a social visit I had a support ticket for since August. I simply didn't have time to visit before. The plan was to see the office, do a meet & greet with the team and have some coffee with Cara to cover some of the forum questions.


Correct.

+ 1

Nothing has changed no product

You may be right, i'm sure there are ways to make money by losing money (think The Producers & the endless possible petty financial crime).
I don't see this as a particularly clever option, though.  It seems much simper to start a shell named "TLA, inc." & order 11076.27b rtng gateway demultipexers than send direct bank wires to a company named HashFast for Baby Jets.
The later would probably raise a few more eyebrows come audit time.
But you're right, it's possible.

Really? You must have had really low expectations then, because unless I missed something or you were asked not to disclose it, judging by your report alone you were told absolutely nothing and were shown absolutely nothing. Well other than that they are human beings, but I dont think anyone doubted that

Thank you, Ninjarobot, for an adult post.  Pleased to hear of their earnest concern and apparent intent to address the issues arising with the MPP for 1st batch customers due to the shipping delays.  In general, things sound pretty positive, although I hope they don't spend too much money on office bling before they get product shipping and happy customers.

Hashfast any official update for batch 1 users,  you promised shipping at least oct 30? You should at least have the MMP kick in on this date due to that you said all of batch 1 users should all be shipped. As a customer im very disappointed that you sold us all on the idea that shipping was going to be delivered.

Provide full refund because your not going to ship mid nov

MMP kicks in on oct 30 delivery date

I personally want a full refund because hashfast does not care about thier customers

man, I should really stop to read this thread, because every HF-news post is depressing me more.


It wasn't necessary, because all of a sudden everbody realised with relief that there isn't anything to disclose? Beyond the colour and style of the wallpaper maybe.

In my world, I make the supplier sign a NDA, not the supplier me. Because I have knowledge which mustn't be disclosed, not the supplier.

Why would Ciarra make HF, their principal, sign a NDA? Because they have a very special and arcane way to drill in screws? Bullshit everywhere.

Any company that consistently screws their customers will not be a company very long (unless you are a monopoly or BFL apparently).

While I agree that HF is a company and companies will try to maximize their profits I think reality is more nuanced than that. There needs to be a balance. They need to provide value. They need to build a customer base. They need to build a reputation. But thanks for your constructive feedback.

what if someone is spending someone else's money?? What if some kook in a halfass college blows 10% of their budget on 'math servers'?

what I have been beating around the bush is that the stakes are raised from the once cottage industry of bitcoin and now you got every walk of life bending rules to get a miner...  do you think no one at all will claim their miners as business expenditures come tax time?

The intent of a business is to make more money then expenses as much as possible.  If you think any business has some sort of different charity intent then I got a bridge to sell you.  It might even hash or some thing like that.  There is no solution to their desire to make more money.  They advertised MPP to collect more sales.  It had zero to do with wanting customers to succeed because any ASIC seller wants to sell their ASIC for the maximum amount possible.  Your visit reminds me of in-person accounts of visits to Enron.  Lots of fluff.

When will people get it through their heads that it does not matter whether you pay for your mines in BTC, dollars, yen, or whatever!!!??? MONEY IS MONEY! Especially money like US dollars and btc which is freely convertible.

The fact is you would have had more money if you had bought btc instead. It doesn't mean you made a poor investment. It was obviously better than letting your money sit as dollars. But it was not as good as investing in bitcoins directly. And miners must always compare their returns with that option. It never makes sense to mine if it will be cheaper to buy bitcoins directly.

So, I had a chance to visit the HF office in SF today where I met Amy, John and a couple of other folks including an ASIC engineer.

HF recently moved from their San Jose office (with Uniquify) to SF. Currently they are working at a co-working space called NextSpace near Potrero Hill. But this is only temporary as they will be moving to a dedicated HF office near Market St. & Bush St. I asked about the size of the company and If I understand correctly there are now ~14 HF employees covering everything from ASIC design (Mainly done in Australia) to Marketing, Sales and Support.

After a quick tour of the area we moved to the conference room where I chatted with John, and were later joined by the ASIC engineer (not Simon), Amy and another friendly lady whose name I forgot (sorry). Cara had warned me ahead of time that I would have to sign an NDA before even getting into the office, but luckily that was not necessary.

I had collected a number of questions the days before, mainly around how to deal with MPP. HF is acutely aware of the issues a delay is causing and they were certainly interested in exploring what can be done with MPP to help customers succeed as that is the original intent of the program in the first place. I suggested approaches such as starting the timer on Nov 1st and/or accelerating the release of new MPP modules to compensate for delays. etc. They have to operate under an number of constraints so there is no clear solution they could share with me at this point but I'm confident they will work something out.

Another topic was the possibility of refunds and John was pretty specific that if refunds do happen they will be full refunds in the currency the order was paid in (BTC in BTC, USD in USD). Please note that I have not requested a refund and have no plans to do so at this point.

John was also asking if miners might be interested in cloud hosting provided by HF (at industrial energy rates). As a residential miner that will probably end up with at least 5 modules after MPP and pushing the limits of my fuses at home I would probably make use of this if the terms are good. I don't think they have a concrete plan yet but if there is enough interest this is something they will likely pursue in the future.

Another thing we discussed is hardware, however since they are in a temporary co-working space at the moment with most of the engineering & manufacturing done off site (Australia for ASIC design, TSMC for the semiconductors, Ciara for the cases, etc.) they did not have physical hardware on site. John mentioned they are not allowed to take pictures in the factory, but it should be possible to get some pictures of the PCB. So I expect they will have something to show soon. Amy also had some older video of running FPGA simulations (from June) that she could probably share here if there is interest. (it was just a 7s video of a running FPGA board, so not very representative of the current stage of development imho)

As to the duration of the delays, I was unable to get concrete shipping dates. However, Amy did mention they did make significant progress on the substrate issue in the last 48 hours. But I don't have specifics.

Overall this visit exceeded my expectations. I was planning to stop by for only 20 minutes or so and chat with Cara, but I ended up talking with the entire crew for about an hour. My impression is that HF has a capable & professional team, and they do listen to their customers. Amy is also a frequent visitor at the Sillicon Valley Bitcoin Meetup every Tuesday at the plug and play tech center in Sunnyvale so that is another good opportunity to chat with HF if you live in the area.

Note: As I mentioned earlier, I did not sign an NDA but I also want to avoid spreading misinformation due to possible misinterpretation on my side. So HF if you are reading this and find anything to be incorrect, please let me know I'd be happy to fix it.

Very well put. I, for example, bought BFL hardware. I spent $22,500 on singles (Thanks to AMEX), ended up with 410BTC (and rising) sold 200ish @ $130 avg, so $26,000 return. Factor in interest on my card, I've got my card paid off, and about $1,000 in my bank account. That's a positive ROI.

Of course if I bought BTC with my $22k, I'd be sitting pretty, but the bottom line is I had a positive ROI (With 210+ BTC in unrealized gains). That being said, I paid in $USD, my ROI is based on $USD. Had I paid BFL in BTC, I may very well feel different.

Another way of looking at is, I bought a 1st gen iPhone, sold it on craigslist, made $200. But since I didn't buy AAPL @ $123 that day, I'm facing a negative ROI.

Since we're talking Hashfast here, payment choice is bitcoin or bank wire only.  Spending more bitcoin to mine less later is stupid.  Buying miners because you can't buy BTC ... with the money you have in your bank is ... also stupid.

You missed this news, then:

http://www.coindesk.com/bitpay-processes-1-million-bitcoin-order-butterfly-labs/

And that's just the deposit.

I truly hope HashFast executes better than BFL, but I'm done with the pre-order game. Show me a working product, convince me that that your shipping dates can be believed, and I will show you my money. Because, otherwise, these 'pre-orders' are nothing more than a leap of faith.

I personally have not seen any examples of pre-orders with negative BTC ROI selling well. Usually it goes negative AFTER the pre-sale because of unexpected delays and difficulty increases. What pre-orders are selling well despite negative BTC ROI? Maybe I haven't been paying attention...

As much as I would hate to say it but hashfast will probably end up being simialr to BFL. I say similar meaning they will end up shipping late, pissing off there customers, they will end up annouccing a new generation of asics like bfl to piss people off even more, then very few will buy it, they end up in bankruptcy.

BFL is right now in the very few people buying stage. Id expect them to be gone/worthless by june 2014.

but you are living in a vacuum of your own making..  you are surrounded by new entrants playing a different game

the 'ROI's are not based the same for everyone... since many people have creative ways to buy miners that they cant really do the same on buying BTC, then the cost basis drops which means they can mine less BTC and still make ROI

I know this is hard for the old skool stackers to understand and swallow, but just look around..  there must be a reason that pre-orders still sell well even though the BTC in / BTC out never adds up anymore right?

Not really disagreeing with you, just pointing out how things have changed

/reality

Sorry but nope. When I invest in a miner I only think in terms of BTC and care little about the exchange rate. I ask myself "will this miner generate more BTC than I could buy directly for the same cost?" and that is it. I do not factor in the future exchange rate as I do not play the market and sell/buy a predetermined % of my holdings when BTC hits certain price points as I am in it for the long haul. When I buy a miner I am in essence "cashing out" and taking a gamble with the hope that I end up with more BTC down the road. Any USD profits are considered separate from my investments in mining.

When I pre-ordered a 60GH/s BFL miner in Feb it was because I calculated that it was extremely likely that it would generate more BTC than I could have purchased directly at that time for it's cost even when factoring in delays and unexpected difficulty increases. What I did not factor in was that BFL was giving extremely misleading if not fraudulent shipping time frames and was basically overselling their pre-orders WAY WAY WAY beyond their capacity causing delays beyond anything I would have ever imagined.

So the point many people are trying to make is not that they would have made more USD by buying BTC directly instead of a BFL miner but that they would have more BTC plain and simple. The exchange rate doesn't matter and your point is moot.

/school

To be clear, Ciara doesn't owe me a press release.  All I'm saying is that after Hashfast's bumbling marketing bobble-head being caught in multiple lies, I have no reason to believe this is any different.