Topic: HashFast Miner Protection Program Discussion (Read 11009 times)

HashFast's Golden Nonce GN ASIC successfully taped-out yesterday, Wednesday the 28th, and has been released for 28nm fabrication to a well-known, leading-edge foundry.  More details will follow in next week's joint press release.

-John

Dear John --

Yesterday, when you told me about VERY BIG NEWS TODAY, i promised myself not to pee until i heard from you, so's not to jinx it.
My pants are wet and cold, i feel foolish.  WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!

VERY BIG NEWS COMING TODAY!

Also, We have released more inventory for first batch due to a number of wire transfers that failed to come through, to complete the sale of the first batch of Baby Jets.

I have posted details about new order chain rules, and the release of inventory here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3029016

-John

You have to admit though, it is a pretty fair plan.
I was hesitant for so long because I thought the MPP would only be in USD, but it being priced in btc makes all the difference.

Judging by the chip render on the HasFast site, the chip will be an Intel CPU with matte marble texture added & heat spreader pried off.  Hope this helps.

Cypherdoc, since you're being paid to say this, why not ask John to return the compliment?  Something along the lines of "Why, that's very nice of you to say so, cypherdoc, your kindness is on par with your honesty!"  That way, you can keep the exchange going & people will not notice that the only thing new in HashFast's announcement is limiting miner protection to just the first batch.
If you found my reply helpful, please donate to the BTC address conspicuously absent from my sig. 

Thanks!

Details are going to have to wait until after tapeout. (Engineering is busy right now) 
However, we want to encourage others to design rigs for our chips and we are excited about what this community will do with them!

-John

As a Group Buy Coordinator of 1 co-op owned HashFast BabyJet, I am pleased with the terms and conditions of your MPP. I like the transparency and level of detail.

It should serve as a model for future ASIC rig pre-orders IMO. Anything you can add about the Motherboard specs/availability and institutional pricing for said Mommy boards? [IT Birds N Bees - "See son: "Baby computers are made when a Daddy board and a Mommy board fall in love and..."]

Could be an entrepreneurial opportunity there for someone.  

That is incredibly generous.

Glad you're limiting it to just batch 1.

Hi Everyone,

We have unveiled details of our Miner Protection Program here:  hashfast.com/miner-protection-program/

-John

That's interesting. I'm not an electrical engineer, but I've actually been trying to figure out things like gate delay for various technologies and node sizes but haven't been able to find much except for formulas involving transistor load capacitance - which would be fine if I could find that information easily.  Is there anywhere you can look this stuff up?  I did find the beta and Vtn figures for CMP's BiCMOS process here, but I still don't know how to calculate the load capacitance. 

I can can come up with digital logic circuits (I designed a working CPU core in a class once. That was fun) , but I don't know much about the analog stuff underneath - we did everything with FPGAs.

I've actually been working on a low gate-depth iterative hasher circuit design - I'm curious to know how fast I could clock it for a given circuit depth.

So what? Bitcoin miner is an LSI circuit. Thus far people used VLSI design methodologies simply because the existing IC layout toolchains couldn't cope with thousands of copies of identical circuit and either failed to converge or converged very slowly. So they simply unrolled the rounds of SHA-2.

On the other hand alternative semiconductors offer radically lower leakage, radically lower parasitics and radically faster clocks, e.g. 250 GHz. Also it so happens that the characteristic impedance of a metal trace (as a transmission line) better matches both input and output impedances of the transistors. So instead of fighting with reflections and noise in the interconnect the circuit is using the supplied power to do an usefull work: toggle the gate/flip-flop.

If you know how do a simple experiment: simulate a paralled 32-bit adder with all the attendant carry-look-ahead logic. Then simulate a simple serial bit-wise adder at a clock speed 32 times faster. Then compare the total energy used by those two. The technology node doesn't matter so long as it is the same in both cases.

That's true, but you can't necessarily get 28nm chips with those materials.  I remember hearing that GaAs's can be made at around 180nm.

By the way, does anyone know what the wafer costs are for standard silicon chips at various resolutions? I would think the cost to the fab would be about the same, but there's probably a lot more demand for 28nm wafers.

If 28nm wafers are more then 4x as expensive as 55nm wafers, then 55nm chips would actually be cheaper to produce, per feature. (ignoring higher speeds)

I wouldn't be that pesimistic. There is a lot of possible avenues for improvement in a dedicated hashing circuit on the back-end analog side of the design.

When Intel design their "digital logic gate" they make certain assumptions about the probability of the circuit making a transient fault. I don't want to spend time digging numbers, they published some of that in a HotChips presentation about Itanium RAS (reliability, availability, serviceability). A CPU of the complexity of the Itanium is rated somewhere around 10^-20 for the probability of undetected machine check fault.

On the other hand the experience of the FPGA & ASIC miners is that the optimum hardware error rate for miner is in the order of 10^-2, that is single percentage points. And the complexity of even a fully-unrolled double SHA-256 hasher is nearly nothing compared to a modern 32/64-bit CPU.

So there is an ample room to use the curcuit design methodologies that are less digital and more analog. I don't think that any of the current vendors of the Bitcoin mining ASICs has any experience designing this type of circuits. Bitfury did a little bit of exploration in this direction by checking how low he can go with the supply voltage, but he had used pretty much standard push-pull static CMOS logic gates. There are many other ways of implementing logic gates than static push-pull (a.k.a. bang-bang). Edit: There are many other semiconductor materials suitable for the manufacture of integrated circuits: GaAs, SiGe, etc. There are many other IC design companies that are not very well known, but specialize in other areas of circuit design than the well-known CPU/GPU/DRAM/Flash in silicon e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitesse_Semiconductor .

Wait.  I'm not arguing about the chip being delivered.  I'm pointing out that the chip is being designed by a team of unknowns, and use of 28nm fab means only that they settled on 28nm -- they could have chosen to work with 65, 110, transistors or vacuum tubes.  Their chip doesn't begin to describe the limitations of 28nm fab process -- unless you've done some heavy research & concluded that 500GH/s is, indeed, the lightspeed limit.  Is it?


Absolutely.  I'm glad you're beginning to come around to my way of thinking.  Can't blame me for arguing in the alternative when it's so darn inviting though, can you?

Please stick to one claim at a time.  You claimed the chip would be obsolete due to superior tech.  Obviously it doesn't matter how superior future tech is if no chips are ever delivered.   So HF delivers a chip but the chips are worthless because some as of yet superior tech renders it obsolete in the near future.  Claiming superior (>10GH/W) tech is right around the corner is an extraordinary claim regardless of who's is making the chips.  The same "obsolete" argument would apply to every ASIC in production right now regardless of who is making it.

Will HF deliver a chip?  Well that is an entirely different argument.  It seems kinda stupid to be debating the merits of the miner protection plan if you believe no chip will be delivered at all.  Right?

Let's slow down a bit.  HashFast is the one making extraordinary claims -- a team of unknowns bringing an unusual 28nm ASIC to market in record time.  With no previous ASIC experience.  Nothing but the founder's love of bitcoin for credibility.  And you want *me* to substantiate my claims?

Edit:  I'm still trying to wrap my head around what you just wrote...  A guy on the interwebz promises to make a 400GH/s 28nm ASIC, and you're fine with that, but *I* have to prove that it might be obsolete in seven months?!  (and yes, that's seven from now -- start counting from the refund date: Jan 1st, 2014)

Well I think the burden of proof would be on the one making the outlanding claims.  Can you beat 1GH/W by a factor of 10x?  Can anyone?  No other competitor has, no other competitor even indicates that is possible.  There is nothing to indicate that a 1,000% increase in performance is possible at 28nm.  If it isn't then these chips would be "obsolete" anytime soon.  This is not to say that the price of new hardware won't continue to decline, they will .  Still given the financial rewards for designing a superior chip the fact that nobody (not just HF but all competitors) has done so would mean claiming the chip will be "obsolete" requires a little more than a empty statement.

You're tossing around 28nm as some sort of hallmark of quality, a standard by which a chip is measured.  That's ridiculous.  My cat can cut & paste some cores & have them implemented in 28nm process.  Or a team of experienced engineers could go through multiple iterations of design/prototype/redesign to come up with a slightly better chip using the same 28nm tech.  Do you suppose a good design house could beat my cat by a factor of 10?  My cat don't think so, but i worry.  He's ordered himself a dev board & picked up the lingo.  He's pretty good at getting what he wants, so we'll see.

How would a 28nm chip be "old tech" in 90 days?  See anyone releasing a chip magnitudes higher efficiency?  The price of this chip (and all other ASIC) chips is almost guaranteed to decline but that doesn't make it obsolete.  

Nobody is going to be releasing a board 10x better.  Future (as of yet not even developed) ASICs may improve efficiency (MH/W) some but most of the low hanging fruit is gone.  You aren't getting 10x better boards even going to 14nm full custom ASICs made by Intel on a scale of millions of boards a year.  Better boards?  Sure.  10x better boards?  Hardly.   

As for the price of new ASIC chips will they be lower sure but I don't see them going to 10% (that would be <$1 per GH/s) any time in the near future.  Still even if they did the chips would still have some value.  Whatever you think the value of 1 GH/s of chips will be in January ($2 per GH/s?  $5 per GH/s?) that is what the "bonus" chips will be worth.  How much is that going to be?  I don't know, it depends on how aggressive pricing gets, it obviously isn't going to be $15 per GH/s but it also isn't going to be $0 per GH/s.  

@AsicPessimist -

I think your complaint that you get so much free stuff that you couldn't possibly use all of it is going to be a tough sell.   
What is next?  "The chip is too fast" or "Too power efficient"?

Crumbs though has a slight point. 
If the chip is considered "old tech" in 90 days after delivery and the secondary market doesn't develop, do we know that HashFast has our back and will turn our chips into useful hasher?

Can we PLEASE get an official estimate for a bare-bones "assembly fee" for the chips, i.e. anything that we can't get off the shelf... no case, no psu, no liquid cooling (if it is a standard off the shelf model)?

We aren't talking about refunds we are talking about fraud and the highlighted statement would indicate you have no understand of "how it works".

What is this, backyard sophistry 101?  Of course no one would complain about paying 20% less, but there's no talk about paying 20% less.  
HashFast didn't cut their prices by 20% -- only promised to send you more chips once you didn't break even.  Chips that will most likely be obsolete, and certainly not worth the additional $$$ on parts & assembly turning them into functional miners.  Who would tool up to build computers around Intel 386s?  Who would buy these 386s?


Sure.  Though getting a bunch of chips is hardly "miner protection."  Sort-a like getting another GPU chip if your racy new AMD graphics card becomes obsolete when Nvidia releases a 10x better board at 1/10th the price.  Enjoy the chip.  

Thank-you for pointing out the bleedin' obv. I do know how refunds work.

This.  It isn't a slam dunk.  You can always lose money but if someone was buying a 400 GH/s rig from bitfury and bitfury announced that at no additional cost if you didn't break even in 90 days they would give you 256 chips that you could
a) have bitfury assemble at an additional cost
b) have a third party assemble at an additional cost
c) simply sell the excess chips to reduce your purchase price

would anyone say "no I would rather pay full price with no option of additional chips if/when I don't break even"?

Now ultimately what matters is what is the value of the extra chips?  Obviously if when you get them if the chips are only worth 1% of your purchase price it doesn't really matter but lets say they are worth 20%.  One way of looking at it, it is like the purchase price was 20% lower.  Buy rig for $5,600 worse case scenario gets chips worth $1,120.  Sell them and it is the same as if you originally bought the rig for $4,480.  Would anyone really complain about paying 20% less that what they originally planned to?

Maybe (in this hypothetical scenario) even with the 20% back (by selling the chips or using them for reduced cost miners) you still lose.  Ok well you would lose more without them.

Couldn't you just sell the additional capacity.  Either sell the chips or have them assembled into rigs and sell the excess rigs. I mean really is that the worst possible scenario.

You buy x GH/s you don't break even in 90 days so you are now given 4x GH/s.  You have the chips assembled and then sell the excess capacity thus reducing your loss or improving your gain.  Not saying the buyer protection is a slam dunk but the idea that the stumbling block is you might run out of power ... well that probably is a problem most people wouldn't mind.

Obviously the chips will have "some" value in the future.  How much requires a little guesstimating but the HF is going for ~$15 per GH/s for Oct/Nov delivery.  So 90 days from that you haven't broken even and you are given 4x as much hashing power (chips only).  Lets say difficulty in Jan is 4x, and thus the value of hardware in USD per GH/s is 1/4th. Lets also assume the chips represent 50% of the total miner cost.  You essentially have chips that are worth to somebody 50% of your purchase price.  It doesn't really matter if you use them, sell them, having HF build them into rigs, or find a third party to build them into rigs.  Note the math above is just one scenario.  Difficulty could (unlikely but could) increase by a factor of 20x between Oct and January at which point the chips would be worth much less (maybe 10% of purchase price).

On what planet does that occur?  You get a chargeback and you lose $35 PLUS THE VALUE OF THE CHARGE.

i.e. sell an $8,000 rig, get a chargeback, the processor is going to deduct $8,035.

no, no, all real good points.  i would say the following.

as you said, there is always going to be secondary market for chips so at minimum they could be sold for profit.  second, some of us miners, like me, are nutso and will gladly install another outlet to handle the extra demand.  i installed a separate 240V breaker box with a dedicated line over at my office just for my avalons.  but i admit, i'm not necessarily like everyone else.  finally, there are always data centers.

the overarching way i look at this is that the price of BTC is going up.  way up.  i want to diversify and get a hold of as many BTC as fast as i can before that happens.  i've bought my share on the open market and now i'm ready to mine for more by getting in on the ground floor of a new era in asic mining.  i think the HR graph is going to level off sometime soon and that there is going to be a shakeout in the # of companies.  my plan is to help HF be one of the winners in that scenario.  if i can maneuver myself into a small but significant part of the asic market and make money mining i will.  if not, i'll do it anyways to help the network. 

Well, if you read their specs, this *isn't* meant to be used in any other environment *but* a commercial environment. These aren't designed to have you run 8-10 of them in your house or garage (not without significant electrical upgrades at the panel).

Ideally, these devices are meant to be set up in a colocation facility with 100% uptime, filtered/regulated power, and AC for best results.

4X hash power is great - but there is a hidden problem with it.

Most casual miners won't be willing to make the sacrifices to have the electrical capacity to handle the additional chips.  Take your own purchases for example.  You say you ordered 8 Baby-jets.  If each Baby-jet optimistically consumes 250W for a 1 chip solution, then you are currently at 2KW, best case scenario.

Lets say hash rate is insane and you get the full 3 additional chips per baby-jet.  You are looking at 8KWs. You are going to need to have four 20A lines to safely consume 8KW of mining.  I believe most houses have 100A circuit to the main in their electrical panel.  You now have 20A capacity for the rest of your house.  Good thing you didn't buy 10 Baby-Jets or you wouldn't have anything else electrical you would want to run.

And these are the optimistic numbers at 250W.  Web page says +-20% from 350W.

The most logical step would be to sell the additional capacity off that you can't use, but since HF hasn't committed to providing hashpower in a usable form, selling the exrta may prove difficulty.

Feel free to poke holes in this line of thinking.

Maybe I should have been called "AsicPessimist" or something 

don't forget the max of 4x.

those are good questions, the answers of which i don't have.  if i were you, i wouldn't hesitate to pin them down on this.  i'm with you in the sense i have 8 Babyjets on order.

I get the general idea, but after running the implementation of it in my own mind there are too questions.

Is ROI based on USD exchange rate? Or are we talking about returning the BTC that was paid. It seems to me they are betting on a very stable BTC/USD exchange rate.

If it is based on ROI to USD, what if BTC prices drop to 10$, do they still guarantee ROI in 90 days? Or is ROI based on returning the original BTC paid. If its based on BTC, what if USD/BTC ratewent to $1000, will they still guarantee we ROI on original BTC paid?

.

i just went back and reviewed Eduardo's post about the MPP.  i actually think he didn't word it quite as clearly as he could have.

the 4x number that he wrote actually represents 4x the original hashing power as a maximum which they will give to you for free to bring you back to a complete payoff of your equipment if you haven't done so by 3 mo after delivery.

in other words, if you purchased 500GH originally, then a maximum of 2000GH in the form of chips will be offered to you. there are 2 steps, a 2x and a 4x level.  they claim the ROI is determinable by the growth of the network HR, your original HR power, and assuming 24/7 mining beginning on the date of delivery and immediate deployment.

remember, i am not part of the company and am in no way in control of what they ultimately do.  this is however, exactly how i've seen it written and represents my understanding of how the program works.

Has there been anymore detail on how this plan would be implemented? How are you tracking ROI for each user? Or would this be done at some high level way? If so please publish formula or criteria used.

you really have a problem.  MinorMan's thread about you says it all.

could't agree more with that.
This is the only industry I know of that you pay up front for something that may or may not be delivered.
That said I am in a few KnC group buys, almost bought BFL equipment, Thank god I didn't. It would be great if a real company made a real product with real backing from actual capital then brought it to market !!

So why aren't you?! It's also about accountability.

except that BFL took paypal and cc so they aren't really like Avalon. 

imo, it is more the ppl behind the company and their integrity.

Btc is a one way ticket but with credit cards and paypal is a return ticket if anything happens. Look at Butterfly and Avalon they were so highly spoken and trusted in the beginning but turn out otherwise.

Couldn't agreed more 

Actually there is, but I don't want to ruin your fun.


The fact you think KnC developed this "method" that "There are several companies copying" isn't bringing any strength to your arguments.

I cordially request that you return to wasting the precious hours of your day defending your crowned head: KNC, instead of white-knighting the 'community' at every turn.

Bitcoinorama has valid points, like him or not.

I have a suggestion for this MPP. How about having John K. or BTCrow escrow a percentage of pre-order monies for this plan?

I'm sure that having a 3rd party escrow service vet that HF put their money (or BTC) where there mouth is, then that would allay a lot of hostility and suspicion, and would most likely result in increased sales.

I know I'd be more apt to either join a Group Buy or even try to set up a pre-escrowed Group Buy of my own, if I saw these types of guarantees were actually followed through with actions. Money talks, etc., etc..

profitable miners are happy miners are repeat customers.

So +1 to HF for rolling out a protection plan.

Of course some improvements can be made and jspielberg already mentioned two important ones:

1 - units are paid for in BTC, so ROI should be calculated in BTC
2 - miners should have a reasonable way to put additional chips to work in short order.

Of course, there is no way of telling if FH will still be in business 90 days after initial delivery. I certainly would hope so, but 90 days is a long time in Bitcoinland.

Also, the topic of additional chips and open sourcing design makes me wonder if we can not move towards an industry standard socket for bitcoin mining ASICs? Just like you could plug an AMD, Intel, or VIA chip in the same motherboard socket in the past (e.g. Socket 370) but you get the point. That would be a big boon for miners as it would provide a decent upgrade path without having to replace the PCB & chassis every 6 months.

If exponential growth continues at it's current rate I project a monthly increase in difficulty of 144%
1.356^2.911

And that is with about 100Th bring switch off prior to the difficulty jump and turned back on immediately post.

Maybe hashfast could send out the extra chips after 11 or 22 days. It won't take 90 days to see what kind of ROI will be made.

done

Cypher -

Please relay to the principals at HF (not sure how often they are on the boards) that the miner community is cool to the current miner protection plan as described.

If they really want this to be a selling point, they need to ensure  a couple of items:
1) that the extra hashing power would be made available in an immediately usable form (i.e. a  mining module.. .or stripped down system with chip/chiller... e.g. a caseless, PSU-less Baby-jet that the owner could procure reasonably with off the shelf parts for a nominal price).
2) clarity on ROI should be clear that purchase price is the BTC cost and not some USD equivalent.  Miners buy miners to make BTC.  Speculators buy BTC for USD for exchange rate bubbles.  You are selling miners not exchange rate machines.

We recognize that this program is currently unique and no other manufacturer offers anything similar. If these items were addressed I think more people would be willing to roll the dice with HF.

you're right.  ultimately all these things need to be stated or written by the company itself to be binding.  you all should press them on this.  i know i am.  

i am trying to be helpful.  seriously.

Well I think this is a positive development, whether you or I choose to believe the promises is another question, but the equivalent policy would be bitfury saying they'll send you 256 bare chips if you don't achieve a ROI on your ($8000) full kit after 90 days. Any ASIC from now, even if delivered on time (Aug or Sept) may not achieve a ROI. This announcement is a good thing for miners and hopefully other vendors match it.

Of course if HF would match the returns policy of KnC or Megabigpower that would also be welcome news.

Dude, this is not the thread for bragging about you going solo.  I'm glad you quit your pimp, though.  Power to the shota!

Guys like you will make BTC a Ripple cheaper clone lol
Peace too man I will use cryptos though

Precisely which is why this 'Consumer Protection and Card Payment' thread is now officially a 'sticky';

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2924367

Do your own research. Apply due diligence. DO NOT use BTC as a pre-order payment method. Stay safe!

Peace!

Kudos to BF!

Cypherdoc - I appreciate the position you are in, but right now the miner protection plan of providing raw chips is not very compelling.  If an official HF executive staff member could commit to a non-fuzzy plan of providing turn-key useful hashing hardware if their products fail to be statistically cashflow positive after 90 days,

I think that would truly raise the bar for asic manufacturers... and should be a compelling selling point for the company.  If they want to be a successful chip company, they probably need to prove that they can be a successful hardware company first... otherwise it starts to feel a bit like Bitsyncom rather than Bitfury.  Personally I feel Bitfury is the better model for them to shoot for.

my .0002 btc

It is lost battles, the war is not over 

Oh, and I have been scammed and lost serious amounts of coins here since my first days in this. Never whined and gone back in tears to my ex PIMPs calling for protection. Cryptos always paid me bigger profits than losses, as far as a pimp does not steal me. That's how it is played here and always will, sorry...Only A-males can survive this - let's find out who is and who is not!

Right and the coin purchasers of BFL, Avalon, bASIC, Cedartec, etc. are having a great time right now, aren't they?

Man I understand what you say, point is I want PayPal, Banks et al dead! I use coins...

Eh? Why would my card issuing bank freeze my account for anything KnC does?! My card issuing bank me covers me, not KnC's acquiring bank.

Dude I believe in cryptocurrencies and offering payment methods free from mass intermediary fees and government oversight.

However financial institutions and credit cards have their place when pre-payment is requested due to the considerable consumer protection they offer as a secure payment means.

Bitcoin cannot compete on that level yet, and scammy companies, as well as companies that mean well but like to bet big with their customers money take advantage of this.

Betting big with customers money is one thing, it's an entirely different thing if the option of protecting your customers funds exists, but you willingly choose to avoid the responsibility associated with the claims you as a company are making.

There is absolutely no reason for a US company in this day and age not to be vetted by a known and respected Issuing Bank and Payment Processor and offer such protection, when it is available to them, unless they know full well they are likely to be unable to fulfil on their promises.

I want to see genuine companies offer the consumer protection that is available to them and make this pre-order mess fair for us buyers. Hashfast are choosing not to. It's totally their choice, and they know it.

Cointerra, and x-crowd also have to be this benchmark that's been set by KnC.

So Bitcoinorama it seems you don't mind using fiat inrastructures to buy a machine that actually prints a grey area asset...Good luck if something goes wrong with your banks freezing KnC accounts. This from a btc24 with fiat frozen in a damn third world country.

People should be aware at this point that you are a politicaly correct statist...I bet you won't be around if we ever hit single digits!

EDIT: You do realize that your advice can mean no ROI or even losses if the IRS taxes the coins mined. As if it was not difficult already...

good news .mark!

I do know how these things work, it depends on the agreement you negotiate with the intermediaries. Chargebacks are minimal in the scheme of things. We are talking about taking individual payments worth thousands of dollars that total the millions. A few $35 chargebacks here and there are negligible.

In any case this 'buyer protection' outlined here, very much the same as X-crowds 'escrow' is to secure and lock in funds. There's no protection anything will arrive on time, or be delivered. None.

They just want to prevent you from making informed choices once competitors bring products to market. There is absolutely no reason not to give you the option of a no quibble refund at anytime, as opposed to January by the earliest *if* they are confident they can deliver. Fact.

They are evidently not confident they can deliver on time, or they would offer no-quibble refunds and credit card payment through a known payment processor, like their 'official sponsor' stated he had illegally engaged and taken advantage of with KnC when he decided to make fraudulent card purchases, and earning them an unnecessary chargeback;

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2895937

sorry, i dont do pre-orders no more 

ok, i just got some more specifics from Simon.

they definitely plan to open source hardware specs near the time coincident with the shipment of units.  their idea is to encourage the manufacture of inexpensive clones into which their raw chips will be inserted. 

they also have an admittedly fuzzy plan to sell the inhouse chassis at a discounted cost precisely to enable this program to be successful altho ultimately they want to become a chip manufacturer. 

all from the horse's mouth.

i think jspielberg has this pegged right.  either you want to help push the BTC economy forward by buying with BTC or you can choose to stay within the fiat world if you want to maintain maximum protection.  Bitcoin, by it's nature, has been designed to be a "push" like payment system, not a "pull" like system in fiat.  yes, that ultimately means you have to trust the companies involved.  which means you have to do due diligence like go and visit these guys.  do some digging on their resumes.  analyze the ppl who have put their trust in them as proxies for your own trust level, etc, etc.

what gives me hope is that none of the major companies like BFL, Avalon, Asicminer have just taken money and run.  all have delivered product with highly varying degrees of promptness.  clearly which has affected returns.  but none have been an outright scam by my definition.  i truly don't think HF will be either.  it's just a matter of if you think they can deliver on time. 

the two big safety valves you have imo are the full refund date and now the MPP.  of course, if they do a BK you'll probably never see these guarantees materialize.  but as i pointed out, they do have several funding options prior to that scenario.

Judging by the amount of scams, and reputedly safe bets such as BFL and Avalon and the enormous amount of funding raised through pre-orders that is very poor and inconsiderate advice. The name 'senseless' seems apt here. Both BFL and Bitsyncom/Avalon are sitting on tens of millions of dollars worth of pre-order funding, each!

Chargebacks, approx $35 amount to a minor percentage and a is a risk to the merchant that pales in comparioson to that of the vast sums asked from the consumer.

Credit card fraud is assumed by the payment processor, not the merchant.

Summary of consumer protection link, by a respected third party Bitcointalk forum member, Prof Mac;

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2925006

There are so many problems with this...
It's unreasonable to assume that your losses will not be compounded by the "free chip."
First, the time frame:  We're talking ~4 months past getting your original miner (90 days + shipping + assembly + shipping).
The cost/availability/readiness of support hardware may exceed the cost of comparable miners offered by the competition at that date. (boards, cases, cooling (make that water cooling, ~300W chip) etc.)
If you didn't make ROI in 3 month of what promises to be an *amazing* difficulty rise, it's unlikely that doubling your hashpower after the fact will significantly change the picture.

Of course, all of the above is predicated on HashFast being 100% true to their word.  Anything from production delays, failure to meet specs, financial snafus, or outright lies make all of this irrelevant.  Banking on promises of ASIC manufacturers is proving to be pretty foolish.

I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

No the above was very much in topic as this 'deal' is a means to sway your judgement without thinking clearly.

They offer No refund until January. None.

They have your funds, if they f**k up, they promise to return monies, but have no third party to guarantee it.

You are basically acting on their word they can deliver on time.

They have offered no compelling evidence to believe this, and there is nothing backing you up if they can't, or don't succeed.

There are several companies copying the KnC method of bringing a device to market straight from receipt of chips as a prototype.

None of these competing companies have met the strict requirements of a third party totally independent Issuing Bank and Payment processor.

None of these competing companies have the backing of Paypal, except Butterfly Labs, of which this is starting to become a very welcome avenue for disgruntled BFL customers.

None of these competing companies are assuming the risk involved with a credit card payment processor and promising the buyer protection from these independent third party bodies.

None of these competing companies are offering any real buyer protection (and BFL are trying their damnedest to change their terms and wriggle out of the responsibility).

No.

Off topic already!
That was fast.
We already have a discussion for that topic.

I think HF is for the crazies of us who are into the Bitcoin experiment and want to see it through with a whole Bitcoin based economy.  Avalon was for the same group of crazies and we are still in the process of getting burned.

As cat-bert would say "Building on that success!"
We are seeing some of the drawbacks to the "irreversible" nature of BTC.
Slow/nonexistent refunding from Avalon.
Slow/nonexistent deliveries from everyone.  
Incredibly short shelf life for any of the purchasable products.

I would say that if you are entering the BTC without any existing BTC and only have fiat, please use your head and use a credit card following Bitcoinarama's sound advice in his link.

For those of us with some existing BTC reserves who want push the BTC economy forward... at much personal financial risk... please continue with the OP topic discussion...
i.e. are the raw chips much of a protection when their are large unknowns with turning them into viable hashers?

Thanks

I beg to differ, it is not exciting at all. It just means you need to spend even more money in order to recoup your losses . Not much different than when you are at the casino and down on your luck and you keep spending more hoping for that win/jackpot that will allow you to get your money back at least.

I think we all know how the story ends most of the time.

If they are not offering payment by credit card, sorry to tell you there is; no payment protection, whatever way it's worded.

Fact is they haven't gone to the lengths of being adjudicated by a third party issuing bank or payment processor and they haven't met the stringent requirements in which such a third party will offer consumer protection.

None.

Slick marketing, no substance;

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/secured-payments-consumer-protection-and-buyer-recourse-272891

You need third party payment protection or you stand to be out of pocket should delays, or failure occur.

Any company can take your money, promise you the world and fold up shop providing authorities what ever limited proof is required that they tried their best and walk.

Fact.

The Protection Program is buried in a couple of threads so I am bringing it out into the light for full discussion:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2922794


I would like to start the discussion on the details section.
First I would like to thank HF for offering this program as I don't think any of the other vendors have anything similar.  However, the details section is a bit brief, and it seems like they are providing raw chips.  This doesn't seem like much help.  At this point, asics are very custom development, and not plug and play.

How are you guys reading the "The extra capacity will be chips only, to be used with a HashFast or third party chassis"?  It kind of feels like raw chips to me.

An analogy:
I kind of see this as the similar to buying a Nuclear Power Station (bare with me).... which is admittedly a niche market (like bitcoin miners).  The vendor (GE?) says... if your power station doesn't provide the power you need, in 90 days we will give you enough Uranium to build 3 new power stations for free!  Which is a great deal, the Uranium is the most difficult component to acquire, but building a power station is not easy for most and there is limited capacity in the environment for qualified builders.

If the vendor had stated "We will upgrade your existing power station", or "We will provide additional power stations (if your current stations are at capacity) for a nominal fee", I think this would be a much more powerful statement, and more compelling as a customer.

Feel free to discuss... HashFast feel free to join in the discussion with any clarifications or misunderstandings.  
It is interesting and exciting how the mining vendor space is shaping.  Just like the difficulty curve