The images on the Aliexpress page look like A2 images. The description says the A4 prototype won't be available until July. So what is pictured is not one of the prototypes. This is a "pre-order" for still unbuilt equipment. Also from what I have read Innosilicon does not do preorders. So this person selling either must have a standing order and commitment for a bulk order or he/she is taking wild liberties on the price and number he will have available to sell.
Thanks for the link. It at least has a bunch of us all talking and thinking about doing really stupid stuff like a bulk preorder... Yes, we are that crazy! I personally am going to wait until something firms up and then figure out where in the world I would put more miners or get more electricity to run them! ROFL
What I think has happened is that based on the ever decreasing chip density per device and efficiency of the cards, one of the early adopter partners has pulled out of the deal (remember they were seeking 5 x $1.5M partners), so what we're being offered is their slice of the initial first batch.
I've been playing around with the numbers and would imagine there would have been 3000 of the 400Mh/s machines being built at something like $2500 each for the early partners, bringing the total to $7.5M (600ea). That was my worst case scenario and given the 400 MH/s specs would have had 114 Chips per machine, there could be up to 4167 of the lower effeiciency 280 MH/s miners if all the chips are good. Interestingly the price stays about the same at around $6.50 per MHs or $22.75 per A4 chip.
So I think this is why we're not seeing fully built prototypes yet, we were never supposed to be getting them this early, and based on the numbers above there would be 600 machines available for every partner who has pulled out.
Based on average pool mining returns at 0.000085 btc/mhs/day, these are still looking very good.
Mind you, there could be up to 1.3 Th/s about to be dropped into a 4.5 Th/s global scrypt network.
They don't do per orders if they needed investors to me that's a per order of sorts it was publicly made , no per order's to me is selling them when they are ready and not asking for any kind of money other then though private investors. like bitmain does and even Avalon does now, the Avalon 7 is coming when no idea but it is, they posted soft ware support and a image for the miner on there FTP on the 17 of this month .
I thought I saw Innosilicon talking per orders when the A2 came out on there main site but so far i have yet to see them run any farm because , I'm guessing, they don't need to because they make more stuff like memory and other PC stuff , not just miners, bitmain only makes miners . I might be wrong or misunderstand how Innosilicon does it other wise . either way i can't afford one if i could i would give it some thought, im sure i would need that cash back sooner then 200 days or how ever long ROI would take or i would have to be willing to waste 1800 on a group buy, i wouldn't try to resell it either, unless i could double the price so i could buy another one i love mining to much to give it up or to pass one of these by, by reselling it.