Topic: I think BFL deserves a bit more benefit of the doubt - page 3. (Read 4578 times)

Awesome, you read the Wikipedia entry for ASIC and can probably make an AND gate. You are disqualified from judging BFL on it's engineering merits. Experts can judge them, maybe amateurs with lots of experience can judge them, people with a bit of general knowledge cannot. So.

True, but I made no such claim so why are you making this point? I said that BFL is the best marketed ASIC and Avalon has almost no marketing. I presented the reasons why this is so, which you did not refute.

No, you are back there. We are well past it.

Lying to investors is the unforgivable sin. If they had a product but could not fulfill demand, that would be more understandable.

BFL is still holding investors money. They lied to investors about their prospects (which is illegal and should land them in jail). If they go bankrupt, a lot of people will lose all of their money. BFL presented an investment with low risk and high reward which is exactly the opposite of the truth. It has turned out to be high risk no reward (up to this point).

Unless, you are first to market (high risk) then you can make a killing (high reward). Mining can absolutely be a short term venture, but that would classify it more as speculation than true investment in Bitcoin. You could buy hardware, mine with it, then sell it before it becomes obsolete and reinvest your proceeds into the next generation. "ASICs" are not the end of the line as you claim, any more than CPUs were the end in 1980. The efficiency and scalability of mining ASICs will continue to evolve as long as Bitcoin continues to grow.

You are presuming an ASIC and PCB designed and assembled by amateurs can run 24/7 at 100% output for 12 months. Another assumption made by someone with little to no experience in the relevant engineering disciplines. Also, Bitcoin might not be around in 12 months.

Tell that to the people who were deciding between ordering from Avalon and BFL, read a post like your original, and decided on BFL. They had the right idea (invest in ASICs) but were fooled by charlatans and lost out on a tremendous opportunity. Of course they are angry.

Faith in humanity restored. I tip my hat to you, good sir.

While the OP is failing to see the ongoing fraud that is BFL objectively, I'm not willing to write off humanity because of this. When I was choosing an ASIC mining hardware vaporware vendor last September/early October, I did significant research into BFL's history. What I found caused me to not only order from their competitor(BTCFPGA), but to actively campaign against BFL and their deceitful marketing practices. For the latter I was routinely labelled a troll, idiot, etc, but over time more and more have come to see BFL as they truly are.

Ordering from BTCFPGA/BitcoinASIC was only better than ordering from BFL in that the BS product delay announcements(lies) were less refined and marginally more truthful. Announcing a 3 month delay(BTCFPGA) rather than several 2 week delays(BFL) caused a tidal wave of refunds that bankrupted BTCFPGA. Management of BTCFPGA was simply less "slick" than BFL management, which allowed me to get out much sooner, which has allowed me to get on board with Avalon.

OP, please note that like BFL, BTCFPGA also sold FPGA mining hardware, yet their ASIC mining products never existed. Only team Avalon has thus far delivered both FPGA and ASIC mining products. 

Exactly. All OP needed to do was read the full BFL history and look up 'fraud' on Wikipedia. Humanity is screwed.

Well, not necessarily alone, but everybody (except trolls and newcomers) is tired of this subject. The time for cool headed discussions is long gone.
Now both parties are sitting in their trenches and occasionally throwing chunks of shit to the other side.

I can appreciate what your saying. It would most certainly be possible to change my opinion and don't mean to be hard headed, but I feel like I have a valid point and am waiting for just 1 person to agree with me.  I guess I'm all alone.

In your analogy you give the UPS example of delivering your package a day later vs being triple the time frame due to false advertising.   However, if in that case, if UPS offered every customer a refund who was not happy with the service of having to wait so long to get the package in exchange for not delivering the package and returning it to its point of origin, would this still be considered willful deceit since they therefore didn't profit by the false advertising?

Also a few other things that come to mind regarding the lifestyle changers you mentioned,
 
1) Aren't those customers who don't ask for refunds validating that they believe BFL will deliver and actually choose to live with the delay?
2) Couldn't the case be made that its a risky proposition to make lifestyle changing decisions based on a get rich quick scheme that is marketed specifically as a pre-order? (my other point was that mining is a long term venture and that short term gains are not as important people think)

Now things that would change my mind would be something of the order of,

1) not having the option to get a refund if requested upon going over the stated time frame
2) not having an option to get a refund if the agreed to quality was not delivered
3) the company folding up shop and disappearing with the money before product was delivered.
4) not having the option to get a refund if they are not being responsive to customer inquires in a timely manner

Thats about all I can think of.  

So far, I cant honestly say that to my knowledge, any of those criteria have been met.  Therefore the worst I can say about them in good conscience is that they have over promised people in the past.  While I think this is not a good business practice, and is ultimately self defeating, I see no better option for fulfilling my desire to have a mining machine based on ASIC technology in the immediate future.  

Either one of two things will happen, because they cant honestly delay shipping those things much longer before having a mass exodus.  1) The will start shipping and I'll have been correct.  or 2) They will disappear with everyone's money and I'll have been 100% wrong.  

Considering this is their 2nd round of mining machines, i simply find it highly unlikely they would be scammers.  If so, this is the longest most elaborate scam since Enron.  

looks good. 

a) If your saying I have no clue about engineering or electronics, that would be an incorrect assumption.  My earlier statement said that I had not heard of Butterflylabs, not that I had not heard of asics.  I'm not claiming to be an expert, however, I do understand the process generally speaking, have some general knowledge in logic circuits, and programming.  I also understand the process of designing and manufacturing circuit boards from a high level perspective.  I understand that asics are basically the end of the road when it comes to mining and that no better technology currently exists to preform the calculations in a better,faster,cheaper way then an asic. 

b) It is a fallacy to claim that just because someone put a bit of time on their marketing that their product doesn't exist.

So we are back to my original statement, was this over promised? Yes, it is clear that either by under-experienced mis-judgement, in the actual complexities and overall timeline, of producing and putting together such a complex product from the ground up (the more likely scenario in my mind) or by willful misinformation(hard to believe), this product was promised and not delivered according to the timeframe that was understood by all parties who were very early "investors" as you would like to call them.  Yes, I get it.  That will be enough to piss anyone off to the point of OP claiming they will "burn in hell" for the wrongs they have inflicted on society. 

And the point I have been trying to make is that, while yes, this is not good business practice to over promise, it doesn't merit the level of negativity that I'm reading a lot of the haters spewing out.  Thus far, no one has lost any actual money, other then forgone profits of being first to market.  However, I still maintain that if your buying a mining rig solely for the purpose of getting that one or two month advantage over everyone else, then you need to re-evaluate your strategy, as mining isn't a short term venture.  It is a long term game. 

I have done the math, and even if the difficulty goes up to over 300M which i think is unlikely, and the btc price crashes to under $50, you will still be able to make 100% money back in less then 12 months. 

So I say, being first to market really doesn't matter as much as most people think it does.  Yes, you will not make $5,000 / day, become the next bitcoin millionare and retire at 35 but that is honestly pure delusion that anyone would think that that kind of a return should be expected in the first place. 

BFL tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSu5Yyc1bEM

So, observation A: the OP has little to no clue about engineering or electronics, yet is trying to make a decision based on his expertise in these areas. Doomed to fail. Avalon is the working version, so by definition it is better designed than BFL.

observation B: Avalon didn't spend any money marketing because their product sells itself. BFL has no product and they are selling investments in BFL, so their brochures have to be very shiny to pull in the dough. Pictures of products that do not exist, promises of riches, and sowing the fear that people will miss out if the don't invest now.

Looks like BFL snared another investor.

...or there's these options:

3) BF Labs goes bankrupt and you lose your investment.
4) BF Labs is shut down by the regime, as they're plainly in violation of FTC, SEC, & FCC regulations. Vleisides goes BACK to jail and you lose your investment.  


When you say "all" accounts you mean Josh's account? Please take a deep breath of your smelling salts. Nothing this man says turns out to be true, just search. 


You're probably right. After all difficulty has only gone up 250% while block rewards have only been cut by 50% since BFL's original "honest abe" shipping date. I'm sure profitability is RIGHT around the corner. Particularly as BFL has recently cut hashrates, increased power consumption, and doubled prices. That's good for mining profitability right?

Yea, after the big crash I kinda took a break from btc.   I am still holding all the coins I mined back with my GPUs.  However, I run add blocking software, and honestly had never seen a BFL add and only found out about it after checking the mining rig hardware comparison chart to see what the new video cards would do . I was out before the fpga's were released so I missed that whole upgrade cycle.  Yea paying 208 btc for a single sucks balls.  I just paid cash for the rig.  I'm holding my coins long term as I don't need the money any time soon. 

My options thus far are

1) get nothing and put my money on something else
2) wait this out and get what I paid for.  

So in one hand I have everyone who probably has pre-orders telling everyone else to cancel and the other hand I have what seems to be from all accounts a mostly finished product that is close to shipping.  

Yea, I believe that things have been over promised, However, I'm not sure if everyone is really this mad about it, or just trying to convince everyone else to cancel so they can get their rig first.  It honestly seems like everyone is over reacting a bit to me. 

Then you don't understand the full scope of how deep their lies go. In mid Oct 2012, they were saying "Honest abe, we're shipping in October. We're world leaders in microprocessor design!" Now it's mid Apr 2013 and nothing has changed. Oct shipping was a lie. Nov shipping was a lie. Dec shipping was a lie. Jan shipping was a lie. Feb shipping was a lie. Mar shipping was a lie. Apr shipping is their latest lie.

First you write:

... and then you write:

So ... why don't you just stop your whining and get a refund yourself? 

BFL ads and site design prey upon the uninformed. It's doing precisely what it's designed to do. While they(BFL) have spent the last year designing pretty boxes of fans for their non-existent products their competition has been designing, testing, and shipping working ASICs.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bfl-timeline-illustrated-171723

If you haven't ordered from BFL, DON'T. Instead do your own DD.

If you have ordered from BFL, request a refund. Whatever shipping date they've given you is a lie.

You joined in 2011.  I'm not sure how you could have missed their promises of being the first to deliver ASIC unless you took a long hiatus from BTC.  If they didn't make this promise I would have used fiat to pay for my Single.  Instead I tossed 208BTC into a dark hole.  What's the point of asking for a refund when I would get what, maybe 10 BTC back at the current rate (or 6 BTC at the time of your original posting).  I'm pretty sure my first day order will make 6BTC, but will never make 208BTC before melting.

Hrm interesting.  I had only just first heard about them about 4 or 5 months ago.   I lurked on the forums and what not for a few months and did my research.  Avalon's offer is way more expensive and seems to be less well designed.  ASICMiner, I really don't know much about them.  I know you can buy mining shares on their system, and I spend an hour or two trying to figure out how it works but I really couldn't.  The BFL solution looks the cleanest, and most high end.  If they were selling on being first to market thats news to me.  I had not seen anything that promised that anywhere.  Maybe I'm just late in the game.