Topic: Is Avalon mining with customer hardware? Answer is here. - page 16. (Read 44419 times)

@Luke-Jr:

Here is the difference;

Throwing away would mean that it would otherwise be wasted. Stealing means that BTC earned by a machine during "burnin" paid for by a customer not given to them is a loss to the customer / a gain by said third party; its called stealing. What part about paying for equipment and having someone else use it / earn profit (real money) don't you understand as stealing?

BTW I should point out that no other company / group / collective of BTC FPGA projects ever burned-in on the main net. Even Ngzhang didn't do that with the Icarus / Lancelot project.

In a business like mining where each past second is more valuable than the future one, I'd say that could be expected that "burnins" would be done against the customers address, especially considering that we are speaking about preorders. I guess the *promise* of profit in ASIC mining its been huge for a limited window, and the companies could get away with it. This is going to change. ROI is going to be very tight for everybody.

Burn in is one thing, mining them to the point where dust can actually collect on the internal components is another.

Thing is, that they mine bitcoins with the hardware of their customers! So they are stealing revenue! The amount of dust inside of the avalon cases indicates that they do ''urnins'' for days and not hours!

What the fuck is this shit?  

Doing burnins on mainnet is not in any sense "stealing".
The burnings have to be done anyway, no point throwing that away.

What he meant was, they didn't steal because they put up with enough bitching from people, and wouldn't want to deal with even more.

What that actually means is, BFL would only steal if there was low risk of being caught.

There is low risk of being caught.

Care to explain me your logic here? Aren't the "political reasons" linked to "business reasons" and therefore to "projected revenue reasons"?

Or you intend to say that BFL is after some kind of greater good?

I don't know why this comes as a surprise to anyone.
For political purposes, it makes sense that BFL decided not to mine mainnet for burnins, but other than that, why would a company want to basically throw away potential revenue?
The pattern here certainly does look like testing/burnin to me, at least - if someone wants to bother, they can plot when people received units against the hashrates seen on Eligius (that data is public, I think).

Besides, didn't someone at Avalon say outright that they were mining on them before shipping?
I seem to recall reading that somewhere...

Governments have a problem with bitcoin, that works to the scammers' advantage short term:  if they were to allege fraud -under US law, it would probably be Civil RICO- then, by definition, they would be accepting the legitimacy of bitcoins as something of value, and -worse- would have to assign some value to them to finish the allegation.

I have no doubt that there has been systematic use of Avalon equipment since the March/April price run-up.  I don't believe it has been done by team Avalon, except to the extent that their poor control over their fulfillment processes is responsible in an overarching, "buck stops at the top" way.

But prior to April, I don't believe it was worth it.  I'm not so sure that BFL has done it, or is so loosely organized that it would go on without knowledge; I don't think that's part of their script.

What you are really saying, probably, is this:  If 30% of the new coins minted were done so using the money of those who pre-purchased asic "dreams," only to have those dreams turn into nightmares of difficulty-induced futility, then a lot of people - maybe a critical mass of early adopters - would abandon the concept and it could die.  

Yeah, that's possible.  But as long as the "scheme" regardless of the ethics of those around it, continues to produce 400 thousand dollars worth of something every day, there for the taking for anybody who has the right piece of electronic gadgetry, there will be those to replace those who drop away, if someone promises them that gadget.

The governments and the Central banks might, ultimately, kill this.  But right now, they haven't figured out how to attack it effectively, and, frankly, it isn't big enough - yet - for them to worry too much about.

Jesus that one is scary...

Does it still work if you update the firmware to OpenWRT/DD-WRT?

I never meant to imply that we would need a registry or licensing for high hashpower users.

right, there's going to be a breakeven point once the BTC/USD ratio adjusts or once diffculty raises even further - which is almost certainly going to result in more hardware being shipped all of a sudden, it simply makes sense  then

To be honest... I think most Avalon purchasers wouldn't care if Bitsyncom test on main net vs. testnet, as long as it doesn't impact the speedy delivery of their completed units.

The only thing I underestimated was the scale of the theft(s) involved. I saw this coming soon after I began mining last October, when the asic pre orders and gpu sell-off, were reaching thier peaks even though deadlines were being missed.

Riddle me this.. BTC person...

What will happen to the legitimacy of Bitcoin if we determine that 30% of the new coins mined, since the asic dream began, could be classified as stolen assets/ property ?

I guesstimate its more like 50% if you were to factor in the BTC used to buy the pre orders.

If I were waiting for one, I would be demanding that ALL pool operators find a way to verify that the asics at thier pool are all legitimately owned.

The exchange rate didn't sky-rocket until after the batch #2 pre-sale concluded.

"It's the lure of easy money..it has a very strong appeal."

/namethat   

What buying power effect?

becasue they don't sell the product. they SOLD the product, and therefore are obliged to deliver without delays. In most countries you will find a law describing the time a company has to deliver a product which they sold and have in stock. Germany has a limit of 30days, after that you can sue the company for your losses, if they are a direct consequence of their unwillingness to deliver (note that natural disasters, strikes etc. don't count).

Because trust of customers, impacting future orders, will bring more incomes than immediate greed?
But you need long-term vision to see things like this... To me, above all, this episode clearly shows that they don't plan on lasting long in the scene. They could as well run away with pre-order money, that would be just even shorter vision than the current one but fully consistent with what we see.

it is a neat scheme, and seriously: why sell a product at a price that is exceeded by its recurring output