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

I like popcorn with butter and salt.

 

Give it a rest, Josh.  Do you always have to go into attack mode?

Hindsight is always 20/20.  My hindsight says BFL was not the best choice, but it was not the worst either, but only because they delivered something, eventually....

Far better than if they had ever "invested" with your scams that STILL haven't produced a single thing.  How's the Hive & Wasp going, that you promised to ship in December?  It's what... middle of January and nary a wisp of Wasp. 

Gotta love BFL investers posting about how great the company they financed is going. So glad i went with kncminer.

How is that benefit of the doubt going for you now?

Hey I'm just calling it like I see it.  I wrote them 9 seperate emails and in each one, my question was answered fully within 24 hours.  Some times on weekends. 

Biggest understatement of the Bitcoin mining world.


Supposedly, they hire 20+ people.  Lease a new office.  2 weeks to respond to customer inquiries.  Sitting on their thumbs at work.  Not truly knowing what their doing - hence the poor outcomes.


Bashing people on the forums.  Complete BS PR from October '12 until Feb '13.  Now, only slightly more informative than before.  None of their timelines on product development and heat testing match (Oct - Nov) up.


It's beyond belief, but we would have all been better off going with nzhang or friedcat.  They knew how to get the job done without excessive amounts of PR spin.


And now we wait again.  Wait for BFL to fix their marketing centerpiece - power efficiency. 

What BFL may have may cooking may become completely irrelevant if major ASIC competitors take their operating profits and income (you know, that stuff BFL customers wish they had) and invest it into lower process chips.  By the time BFL is shipping their December orders from last year Avalon or ASICMiner may be shipping something that does twice the hash or uses less power (BFL's original selling point).

BFL's "recent progress" raises some questions that are hard for me to square.

I think it is clear they have something.  At least one asic prototype running (albeit not near spec)... not really sure if any kind engineering black magic at BFL is needed to keep that board alive or not.

My biggest issue has to do with their apparent lack of perspective.

Those of us who are GPU miners (which I think is the bulk of miners out there), are used to having a lot of ugly slapped on our rigs.  It is all about function... form is irrelevant. Having the case open with a giant room fan blowing in there would be rule more than the exception I would think.

Lets assume the problem is solely about the additional power draw and therefore the problem is with power/cooling... I would guess that a good number of their customers would be happy to receive whatever they have now without any kind of case and insufficient cooling and mine at 25Gh/s next week (and the customer deals with finding an adequate cooling solution) rather than maybe in 3 months and have the sleekest ipod of miners.  

I cancelled my BFL order about a month back, so I don't have a horse in their race.  But my guess is... if this were an option, people would take it.  If it isn't an option... then how did they produce the current "working" machine?  If the prototype was not something they are prepared to produce in numbers at this phase in their development... then yeah... they are in big trouble.  If BTC drops down to a point where people who pre-ordered with BTC would feel okay with the original purchase price gap and issue a return... then I think they are in trouble as well.

So... I am having trouble understanding their current situation.  Do they have a prototype that is working but flawed which they could release... or don't they... in which case... what are we looking at on eligius/eclipsemc or where ever lukerjr is mining with his "shipped" board?

Without accusing you of anything, your posts here could easily be interpreted as you pumping them up; this exhibits shill behavior.
the fact is that BFL NEVER gets back to anyone in a timely manner. so your premise is 100% wrong.

props?

Nice story! Never knew atom was designed as a phone cpu.
But even then, intel is meaningless in the phone/tablet market. They never were able to catch up.
I seriously hope for everyone involved that BFL won't screw up their market like intel has been doing the past decade.



Modular would be cool.
In fact, i don't understand why they try to make such good looking products while the shelf life is pretty short.
I'd rather buy something more, eeh, russian ( ) in design that can come to market faster.

Thermal design is a bit hard to do if your ic's use more power than anticipated. It screws up everything about what you thought will happen inside the box.
BFL had designed their board and cases before even having a prototype.
Now that the chips are out of spec they need to redesign the rest of the system to accomodate.
I'm not sure, but i'm getting the idea that their yields are pretty broad, quality wise. Which would suggest that they either have to divide the batches in quality stacks or they have to make sure every assembled box is cool enough to handle the worst cases.
I think it depends on the spread of the yield.

But there is something fishy going on whatever it is. I have the feeling they are not telling the whole truth about the situation.
Two weeks ago they were saying that they will probably ship the product last week. Now they say they are waiting for the revised boards to be shipped to them which means they are a week late from their last prognosis and still dont have the boards.
My guess is they're finding new problems but time will tell.

I guess that's just the difference in perception between us. Having been involved in a myriad of products from the initial design all they way to finished product... I can tell you from personal experience that having chips come out drawing more power or generating more heat than expected isn't the end of the production cycle. Sure it can change the game. But you don't just junk the entire design and do something else.

Once upon a time intel was developing Silverthorne - it was designed to an x86 processor for cellphones. They were trying to compete with motorola and mitsubishi. The tech worked, but needed more power and generated way more heat than expected. This tech didn't just dry up and go away... The changed the sales model, rebranded it under centrino as "Atom" and pushed it for handheld devices like tables and netbooks. This lead directly to the explosion of tablets as a consumer product. I don't believe there's a single cell phone that has an atom in it... but there are micro computers (in use as terminals and budget pcs) and hundreds types of tablets and 'netbooks' (micro laptops) that use them.

BFL is on the right track - redesign the board to supply the power needed while keeping temps stable, change the sales specs and ship the coffee warmer to consume the old tech board that would have been singles. Personally I think the very best move they could make would be devolping something where the top of it was a massive heatsink. and making it modular, to be plugged into the rack assembly they would sell. I'm thinking 4u rack that takes 3 mini-single modules. maybe just 4 chips per device.

I think the biggest hurdle for them is giving up the tiny size they had from FPGA days, get over it, go a bit bigger so you can cool the thing effectively... etc. Give me a metal packaged chip (or 4) that on a board that has AM3 holes for mounting a cpu heatsink and fan on top of it... that would make me very happy. Design the entire thing with a stacked heatsink that has a pair of 120mm fans on each side... design them so they could be assembled into a wall via interlocks on the sides, top and bottom of the case... one side air intake and other side of the wall being the exhaust... have the thing blow through.

er hmmmmmm

I placed an other number 23 000 about and 30 000


for 12 x  60gh/sec thingamiaggiemabobs


I don't feel like it was my smartest moment ever, maybe time to ask for a refund

Notice that this is not surprising exactly because they have been saying these kind of things since october.

Also, please read the latest BFL propaganda again.
They want to stress that the chips are absolutely fine, except that they use up more power than was designed. But that's still ok, according to BFL.
But it's not. If the ICs use up a lot more power than designed for than there is something bad with the chips as well.
You have to look for those details because if there is one thing that i've learned about the way BFL operates then its that this little "the chips are fine" will turn into "We'll have to redo most of the ICs" in a couple of weeks.
The problems with the board were also fixable 'with a little tuning' and they would have delivered their product a couple of weeks ago.
Now the story has progressed over a couple of communications from 'Just some minor power problems with the board, will be done in a few days' to 'we need new boards and have no real shipping date at the moment'.

Your post trailed off there. Can you complete your last sentence? 2 months or less from what? Shipping orders placed in June of 2012? If those orders ship in June of 2013 would you expect an order placed today(April 16 2013) to be shipped this year? Please be verbose, I really am trying to understand the motivation to order at this point, particularly given the 500% increase in power consumption which makes the shipping date an absolutely vital factor in calculating profitability.

1) So the update said pretty much what I was expecting.  The software is almost done, we have changed the power profile and had to change the board design to accommodate which is almost done, we are shipping out the dev units, and doing all the little 100's of details that make for a properly engineered and tested product.    No surprise here.  In fact, encouraging as it gives insight into exactly where everything stands. 

I think we are 2 months or less at this point.   

When chips use more power than designed things are very far from 'fine'..
I hope everyone understands that...

Since most people payed in BTC, asking for a refund now means they lose a lot of money.
Not only did their product not get delivered they get to deal with the risk of a weaker dollar.
Meanwhile BFL doesn't realy take a loss at all. They sponsored their carnival with the customers investors money and there are people who still want their boxes so actually if BFL delivers at all they would do so without taking any real risks.
So since all the risk is in the hands of the customers investors, canceling means a financial setback for most of the investors. Waiting for BFL to deliver is the lesser of the losses since there is still a small chance that the BFL boxes will do 100% ROI in reasonable time.

BFL has effectively arrested their customers investors to prevent them from running away while BFL tries figuring out in what ways they fucked up their product.

How is "We will deliver in october, LOL, sorry, november, LOLZ, actually not in december, STFU you are a IDIOTS we deliver in february,oops, march, eeh, april, nah, end of may, probably mid june july-ishy" in any way professional or honest?

They have been perpetually lying in their prognoses and only once did they notify their customers investors that they won't ship on the preset date.
They had Josh come in here, completely ignoring actual important questions  just to engage in several pissing contest with both the competition and trolls.

You are seriously deluded when it comes to the actual situation BFL customers are really in.
BFL has a lot more history than the couple of months you know them for.

Absolutely brutal.

They're still working out firmware issues and rebuilding their PCBs while Avalon batch 2 customers have just been notified to send in their FPGA trade-ins. BFL will not beat Avalon batch 2 for mass shipping and it's entirely possible Avalon batch 3 will ship before BFL ships much of anything. This is another 600+ Avalon units(40+Th), ASICMiner is accelerating it's hash rate deployment on the 22nd of April and gearing up for direct sales of hardware. The worst news of all is that BFL's power consumption looks like it will be around 500% higher than originally estimated(simulated). This means they'll not have the huge lifespan earnings advantage they were originally projected to have.

The most common product ordered by a country mile is the single SC and there's no guidance on when that will ship...six months after it's first shipping date. Orders placed today, may or may not be delivered in 2013, but it's pretty clear they won't be worth much when received by investors.

Take your lumps and get out, these guys do not know what they're doing.

15 April 2013 Update

Well that and based on the accounts of the manufacturing equipment they've got... they should be able to produce hundreds of units a day once they have a production model nailed down.

I believe the game has changed however... specifically - with the old power/hash numbers I figured that the jalapeno was going to be the dog of the line... and now it looks like that might the best seller, and people make end up purchasing hundreds of them rather than dealing with the larger models. That could be really good for bfl and extremely annoying for farm owners. But probably good for bitcoin in general.

At least we have some sensible people as well.

I agree with this.  

I get the feeling a few people overextended them selves a bit on this.  A very logical reaction ensues.  Feelings of intense stress and severe buyers remorse.  

Guys, relax, everything is going to be OK.  Things are never as bad or as good as what they seem.  The universe is not fucked.  Its just a matter of perspective.  I know, you cant wait to get your magical money printing machine from the future, that prints money....but its a bit of a complex process to make magical money printing machines from the future.  In the mean time, maybe get out side, walk your dog, de-stress, breathe.  

Either way, its going to work it self out soon.  

Lets be a little fair here, Avalon shipped 300 units in 3 months, second batch starting shipping today (im correct?), lets say, if the total numbers of Avalons is 900 by end of May and we consider 1/4 of what BFL claims on production rate, BFL will mach the number of Avalon units in a week and half if they start shipping in June....


Avalon shipped 300 units in 3 months, you cant order because they are always sold out, they are expensive, what are you guys expecting the people to do? Even if you order a 4th batch Avalon, you probably dont going to get it in a long time too.


Thats why people order BFL units and pray.

As for who win and who losse, like in any bussiness, there are winners and lossers, who preorder a Avalon 1st batch won, who preordered BFL lose, thats the end of story, you just cant start complaining because you taked your chances with BFL and lose, its getting tiredsome of hearing people compaining of BFL, nobody forced you to preorder BFL, ask a refund and do something else, if not its because you know you dont have other choice.

And there is not always refund choices when a bussiness goes wrong people.

We already know that the product isn't going to perform as advertised, but lack of competition means that people will forgive that.  Nobody else is mass producing ASICs at this point.  BFL may have to lift their game when other players enter the ASIC market but until that happens they have a virtual monopoly on ASIC sales.

As with everything else Bitcoin, it's not a great idea to spend more on ASICs than you're willing to lose. 

I guess i'm just not that worried about the actual timeline as long as the product preforms as advertised.  

1) I originally put $1500 in to two 5970's back when the difficulty was under 500k.
2) I managed to mine enough coins back then to basically pay for my new rig.

From my perspective, the risk is about $1500 - $3000 range. I would be stupid not to take it. Even if they don't deliver, I'm only out $3000 of actual money at this point.  Painful, but not life ending.

If you've only been dealing with them for three months then you ordered in January.  At this point, no-one has any idea when people who ordered BFL ASICs this year might receive them.  The chips they have in stock right now won't fill very many orders at all and there's been no mention of what is happening with the bulk order of 63,000 chips (from which the majority of existing pre-orders would have been filled).

So yes, they might be able to deliver some sub-spec units to June/July orders soon but there's no indication at this time when the revised design will be completed and when those who ordered after July can expect to receive their units.  It's not even clear whether the second 6 wafers have been completed or whether BFL is just going to use the wafers they have on hand to fill whatever they can with lower specs and everyone else will have to wait for the redesign.

Thank you!  I was starting to feel like Liam Neeson in The Grey. 

BFL could have just as easily said "Sorry we only accept cash"  Then you would have had to cash it out in order to send it to them.  It is doubtful that their suppliers or employees are willing to accept 100% bitcoin, so they were basically doing you a favor and saving a small amount of hassle from having to cash the btc out your self, then wire them the money at the bank.  I know that process took me several days.  So, I believe that actually, you really cant make the case the you should receive the same about of BTC back that you sent.  Currently it is the convention of everyone to price things in Dollars/EURO etc and then do the conversion to BTC for the purpose of the sale.  Undoubtedly they cashed the BTC out at the time it was sent and converted it to dollars.  Logically, they really can only be expected to give dollars or the then current BTC in refunds. 

Who knows, maybe you will get lucky and the price will crash back to $3 each.  Then you can get your coins back at a more favorable rate. 

Because it damages the bitcoin community, leads to less orders for the legitimate mining companies and less miners online, more bad press and more people turned off making a contribution to bitcoin. Even if they deliver eventually, people like you have suffered a tremendous opportunity cost- you could have bought a mining rig or real ASIC and made a contribution to the community and filled your wallets, if you aren't angry you either have a Buddhist temperament- which is admirable- or you aren't thinking clearly about the cost to you- which is probable.

Difficult as it may be for you to understand, some such people do things outside their immediate self interest for moral reasons. I am immensely grateful to these "angry" people with "dull" lives, because if it wasn't for their extensive forum posts I would have ordered some of this vapourware when I first got interested in bitcoin a month ago- I had even begun the order process. Now, thanks to them- I have shares in an avalon with a fellow forum member new to bitcoin, it is shipping out soon and I am proud to have invested in a fantastic monetary concept.

Can you not at the very least see a conspicuous absence of bias from those that do have an order(s) with BFL? If you placed an order with BFL in June of 2012 and were assured of 1Gh/1watt and an October 2012 shipping date then you should be angry with BFL. You may or may not have chosen to place an order with Avalon Q4 2012 based on BFL's bogus projections. Those that placed orders with BFL in June of 2012 may have had their resources tied up on products that were consistently just around the corner...according to BFL. Because of this deceitful tactic some of those investors would have been much further ahead by cancelling their BFL orders long ago, but this is hindsight and wasn't clear then, precisely because of BFL's tactic of constantly portraying their SC product line as being "in the final stages of development".

The argument that requesting a refund solves everything is a non-starter. Orders placed and paid in BTC were converted to fiat at that time. Some of these orders were placed when the exchange rate was $6. An order placed in June of 2012 for a single sc would have been 216ish BTC, while a refund of that same order processed this very second would return 13.4BTC. That's a pretty unappealing proposition, and when you add to that the total lack of competition in the marketplace and BFL's vaporware price increase, most will simply choose to keep their place in line for it's perceived "value".

I'm with the OP.

I've been waiting since 09/12... I could have asked my money back, but decided to wait this out.

I cannot understand people who are angry with BFL without even having an order with them.

Is your life so dull that you get upset about things like this? ;-)

The choice is easy:

If you ordered but uncomfortable with the long wait - then ask for a refund.

0/10 Either the troll force is strong with you, or you've got some sort of cognitive impairment. BFL Josh has been a shit-talking fool since day one. Even, no, especially before Avalon shipped, he was consistently trolling these forums and elsewhere. Professional, no. Not in the least. Not even back when there was a chance they could succeed.

BFL got in over their head, which might have been forgivable except for the following:

• they doubled-down and used their pre-order money to buy ads to get more pre-order money with which they hoped to try and dig themselves out.
• They allowed their troll to roam these parts and... troll, to no useful end.

You do realize that they(BFL) claimed to be experts in exactly this field correct? Further that their COO has on occasions too numerous to count attempted to portray BFL's competitors as amateurs and themeselves(BFL) as the real pros in this field. This is fact, and can be easily verified by anybody by simply searching BFL's faq and/or Inaba/BFL_Josh's posts. Given this fact how do you reconcile your two above quoted statements?


If BFL does begin shipping a product any day now, it will not be the product ordered, or the product people ordered going all the way back to June of 2012, it will be a vastly inferior product, with many times the power consumption footprint.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

OP, I think you've got it pretty much right on... the company is legit, but completely inexperienced in actually delivering this type of product.

When I ordered my fpgas from BFL I was told it would be 2 months to have them delivered... they arrived 3 weeks early. When I placed my pre-orders for upgrades... I was told "expect a shipping date before march 2013"

From my perspective, I can call them anytime I want and have someone speak to me. I could if I wanted to request and get a refund... and from my perspective they're 14 days behind on shipping. Sure I was excited when they mentioned a ship day in october... but my plans were all done based on what the sales rep told me at the time of the order. So yes, I'm slightly annoyed that avalon shipped first, but I'm honestly expecting BFL to start delivering product any day now.

Even if the company is struggling on the tech side of things, the fact that they've adjusted numbers on hash rate, price and power consumption indicates to me that they're in the process of solving these issues. Expect a product soon. Anyone who says that "BFL Lied" is basing that off a misguided sense of entitlement rather than facts. Things happen when bringing a product to market, I sure some things could have been explained in a more timely manner... but so far they've had good enough reasons for the delays. Switching the packaging for example is a multi month delay at least, usually around 6 months in my experience.

I believe they'll get it sorted and a product shipped soon.

So sick of this

Done. 

Meh, delays though, too long.
They better ship soon 

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.

Everyone should be requesting refunds, because the risk that BFL will go out of business or be shut down grows with each day they fail to ship products that were 100% paid for months ago.


The promise of being first to market is PRECISELY what BFL sold...honest abe. The fact that they've failed so spectacularly while lying about nearly everything at every turn while Avalon and ASICMiner have succeeded in designing, building, and delivering ASIC mining hashes in less time should be a wake up call for BFL investors, but you need smelling salts to rouse many out of their slumber.

This is what happens when ppl open their mouths in the conditions of:

1.  Low information
2.  Lack of critical thinking

The value of the phrase "keeping people honest" is lost in today's society.  Most people will believe anything and not make the effort to inform themselves.


Fin

I have been dealing with them for about 3 months now. They have always returned every email I have sent them in a timely manner.  I was going to be in the area (this ended up not working out) and asked If I could tour the facility and see the build process.  They told me sure no problem but they expected to be extremely busy trying to get everything lined up so it might be better if I give them two weeks..  They also told me they want to be a long term mining partner and warned me not to buy a mining rig if I was hoping to just make fast profits.  They said realistically it would be about a year ROI to get the money back. 

So far, the company has been professional, honest, had a good attitude about it.

Now for the people who are going to jump in about how they have not delivered in 7 months, I have to say.

I have been doing some homework on what it takes to design an asic, get it produced, and turned into a finalized product.  Hint* not easy. 

Now I can believe that maybe these guys are kinda learning as they go.  And they are using everyone else money to do it.  I grant that.  But the same could be said for almost any new business.  I started a company 8 years ago out of my garage, just poof made it up one day.  And Yes I had the basics down in the beginning but honestly we were not that good at what we were doing for a few years. 

Also, Successful Business veterans quickly learn that its very easy mistake to make which is to not properly set a customers expectations.  I can see that BFL is obviously guilty of this.  It is clearly documented that they have said multiple times when something was going to happen and it didn't due to unforeseen complexities in the process. 

But lets be honest for a moment.  From what I can see, if they are a scammer company they are doing a very bad job about it. 

1) Have a public office where anyone can visit any time they want
2) This is their 2nd round of hardware (fpga's to asics?)
3) They are putting alot of money into R&D into software, and hardware design in support of the community with relatively low returns.  Probably working insane hours to do it. 
4) giving refunds to unhappy customers
5) offering lifetime warranty on all their products.

I say give them a break, If you don't believe in them, don't fucking buy anything from them.  But to openly accuse them of fraud, cheating, lying, and all the other shit I have been reading seems to be unwarranted to me.  I ordered a minirig from them and I want it to work correctly for at least a few years.  I want it to be well built and if that takes a little bit longer to make it awesome, then so be it.
I don't want some piece of shit they just slapped together so I can have the 2 week advantage over everyone else.  I would rather it take a few extra weeks if that means they are going to do it right. 

Another point is, we need companies like BFL who are willing to invest in the infrastructure if bitcoin is to survive long term.  Yea they have some faults, hopefully they will learn their lesson and start doing what every good business man does.  Under promise and over deliver.  Right now they have been over promising for a while and I think that is why so much negativity is going their way at the moment. 

I know I'm probably in the minority given the tone on these forums but I just wanted to throw out my two btc.