Topic: here's just how screwed ASIC buyers are - READ THIS if you have a preorder - page 4. (Read 23314 times)

Please do not apply an aggressive tone to my messages, I tend to type like a thesarus by long habit and I also do tend to have strong opinions, like many on this board. I would much rather have a spirited argument followed by a beer (or alternate SR product as appropriate) and resolve an issue than have it fester and cause grief in the long run. This was not intended as a personal attack in any way. I truly am confused with this morbid fascination some seem to have with ASIC manufacturers cheating their customers.

I came into this thread because it said I was screwed. I encountered on page 8 a statement by mpradeep that had previously been debunked, and I tried to put it back to bed. I refuted every reasonable argument for it, as well as several unreasonable ones. I have done so with details where appropriate to allow others to learn something about this complex, crazy world of ours at the same time.

I thought I was refuting the notion that mining for profit of any reasonable size would be undetectable? It more likely than not if someone was trying to do this it would be a huge spike much larger that $100k worth. And you parroted the "but we can't tell" line so you got caught up in the thread too, if you wish to refute it, my hypothesis is that if any ASIC manufacturer "blows up" the difficulty, the information will leak out and/or rampant speculation will lead to a reaction against someone, a case of Business Russian Roulette at best. Your arguments come down to "not knowing == 50% chance", when I'm trying to point out  that it is reality much more like a 0.5-2% chance. You are the one who has accused me of not even considering the possibility when I obviously have given it both a lot of thought and typing. I'm not sure what you thought was a personal attack, but I certainly didn't mean to malign your intelligence or honor, only question your current point in the current context.

Apologies if I have offended, but if you think I've missed your core point, please wait until I address the OP, then we can talk more.

Additional stuff that might be interesting:
For reference, have you guys ever attended a business ethics course or workshop?
(http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0073524565/324445/jon24565_ch05.pdf is a good basic primer for those of you following along at home who have not done so (experts who lol'ed, I did say basic))
So far I've been focused on the Practical Rule for ethical business behavior. "Because they would not want the public to find out, it is unethical." The same result happens if you view this business decision on the part of the ASIC manufacturer from the viewpoint of the Utilitarian, Moral Right, and Justice Rules as well.

Original post from Page 8 by mpradeep (emphasis added):

Scrybe, reading what you just posted, you have absolutely not understood what my point was. You either read it all again or you don't. I do not care anymore. Also the aggressive tone and personal attacks are unnecessary.

There is also a difference between a bait and switch scam, and a real legitimate business.

You are just saying "no, no, no, no" I'm adding more and more evidence to my side of the scale. Make an argument other than whining and I'll give it some real weight, but right now I see nothing you have said that is even slightly convincing.

Deeplink, I respect your opinion, as well as yours Desolator, you both can continue to believe that these guys are scams and can never get caught, but at this point the chances of that are less than that of Mitt Romney getting elected and declaring this the Peoples Republic of America.

There are thousands of eyes watching them, and employees working for them, if there is a breach in this policy, even the suspicion of violating their direct statements to us, and you know the size of fecal hurricane that will hit them. It will not require proof, only suspicion, I've been on this board long enough to see that!

This is business. If you piss off your customers, they fire you. Generally they get a lawyer and sue you if there is real money involved. If you think some of the guys buying multiple mini-rigs will hesitate to take BFL to court if they violate this, then you are nuts. I bet they get sued anyway even if they ship on time.

Go back to my previous post. If BFL mines enough to be worth the effort, it will skew the difficulty by at least 5-10% Anything less and they will make more money selling a dozen more singles. We have examined this issue and long ago passed the "they would be nuts to try, they know that, and they have stated they won't" point.

WTF do you want? Videographic proof of the birth of Jesus Christ? What is your standard of proof, or are you going to continue whining about this forever, no matter how much ASIC is manufactured?

If this is indicative of your risk assessment methodology, I recommend investing in a rock to hide under.

I said that and according to opinions here that is not at all possible, because.   I give up, reality is not welcome here.

There's a difference between claiming to use artificial testing methods and actually doing it.  Like someone said, they can mine on the main network and blame it on others.

FFS: They are all using TestNet In A Box!

Here's BFL's announcement:
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/showthread.php/52-ASIC-Pre-Shipment-Testing-Policy

Here is info about Testnet in a box:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/testnet-in-a-box-4483


WTF? We HAVE looked at it, I'm ignoring anything. We looked, we asked them, we got the answers, and we moved the heck on.

get another freaking topic already.

but for totally different reasons.

The analogy would be a little more accurate if 'landspeeder' were substituted for 'car'.  I've seen no compelling evidence that custom Bitcoin mining ASIC chips currently exist in the real world at this time.  Admittedly though I have not looked very hard since I would not have even a potential interest in obtaining any until they are demonstrated.  I don't even follow the mining forum normally.

There's really no reason to think they'll use the ASICs to mine (for profit) any more than you'd expect your car dealer to take your car on a trip to Mexico before they deliver it to you.

I am not saying that BFL (or any other ASIC manufacturer as we are talking in general here) will mine.

It is speculation at this point and both scenario's are possible. No black and white outcome yet, it's all odds. We can and seem to disagree about how likely both possible scenario's are, but if you do not even want to consider the scenario in which they will mine themselves, I guess no argument can be made.

A good investor however should look at all possible outcomes.

There should be plenty of units in the wild initially if BFL sticks to their 1/3 policy.  The real weak assumptions are just how fast everyone will get their units online and how the difficulty will react accordingly.

I did a similar chart with the 10x increase in difficulty spread to 60 days and the picture is much rosier.

Another assumption is that you are up and running with your singles while the difficulty is still at <30TH/s What make you assume that you get your equipment on day one and not on day 30? (Honest question, perhaps BFL stated that they will ship everything on the same day or something similar, and I missed it).

This is an interesting chart... if this holds true, I stand to only make back 1/3 of my investment (relative to BTC, not USD) in this timeframe.

Well there are no asic out there yet, but they will be shipping them nov/dec  mmm testing them for 4 weeks then ship them to customers they hang them on the net 24/7 and after 6 weeks they blow up then there super customer service will deliver a new one in few days??? yeah right dream on people...

Mining is a function of Quality assurance.........

Since these manufacturers need (hopefully) to test the kit before it is sent out ,and a 1 hour burn in would be totally acceptable.
Personally We used to run 24 hour burn ins to remove 'bath tub failures' on lighting.

Unless they setup dummy  mining servers or utilise dummy back ends, it is feasible that they will 'impact' the generation of bit coins.

Now we could in theory use that 'meta-data' to see when they actually start manufacturing /shipping these rigs.


HC

+1... the people thinking that BFL will try to mine and not get caught are not fully thinking through the situation and consequences.

You have to be joking... If they mine enough to matter, someone will notice. Both the risk of getting caught and the consequences of doing so are more significant than you seem to realize.

Fine, let's game this out:
They are making millions of dollars worth of mining equipment, so to match risking that they would need a hefty profit, at least in the $100k range. So they get a couple MiniRig-SC units assembled, and decide to run them for a couple weeks to make an extra $173k (based on current info, no hardware cost) and then ship them out for an additional $30k each for a total of $233k from 2 rigs. The problem is that the 2 minirigs just generated 3TH/s for 2 weeks, impacting the difficulty by 10%. This means that the (say) 20 minirigs that ship out are only making 90% of what they should have if you had not stolen from your customers. Unless you think that Josh can keep his mouth shut forever, eventually someone would leak, or the 4x size of EMC would show and folks would cry foul. Every customer then joins a class action lawsuit and sues you into oblivion, or you get to live the live of a fugitive with $170k.

If you make the reward bigger, the detectability goes up, and if you lower it to a couple singles it's an inconsequential amount of money. In any case it is not worth the prison time. Why risk millions (and a long term opportunity) for thousands (and a lack of long term options?)

You keep asking for reasons why not and I keep giving them. Maybe you should refocus on the why would they part of the equation more.

When dealing with a guy running a financial trading house from his basement, the risk of vanishing deposits is high, when you have a known brick and mortar business the risk is a lot lower and you generally have more ways to get relief or detect problems.

So trust from their customers and not wanting to violate that trust prevents an ASIC manufacturer from mining for themselves is what you are saying?


Your opinion is that ASIC manufacturing is very profitable long into the future (To me it is just one possible scenario). Combined with the first point you are saying that an ASIC manufacturer does not want to risk its own business and potential future profits by violating trust of its customers.

That is absolutely a valid point. Mine is that corruption is also possible and I find it likely to happen when large additional profits can be made and chances to get caught are almost zero.