Topic: is butterfly labs mining with those ASICs at the moment? - page 14. (Read 37559 times)
It could just very well be all the mini-rigs that have shipped up til now. There are plenty of them in the wild @ 25GH/s.
I asked Josh from BFL at the conference.
He said he was sure BFL isn't causing this sudden network capacity peak by testing there ASICs.
Who or what is causing it he doesnt know he said.
He said he was sure BFL isn't causing this sudden network capacity peak by testing there ASICs.
Who or what is causing it he doesnt know he said.
I expected something quite spectacular from ASICS.
Exactly. Until you notice it on the following chart, this additional hashing could just as easily be coming from existing miners that are picking up the GPUs sold by other miners who are liquidating their GPUS to buy FPGAs (or to place orders for ASICs).
- http://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate?timespan=all&daysAverageString=7&scale=1
The logic make sense, but the network hashrate is less than 100% up compared to july (and price fully 100% up).
I expected something quite spectacular from ASICS.
I expected something quite spectacular from ASICS.
i would do it too.
this is where ethics will come in to play.
IF BFL truly wants BTC to succeed, they will never run enough units to take over 51% of the hashing power at any one point.
Also, they WOULD take the profits from the mining, no doubt. But considering the magnitude of profits, i believe they would donate a sizable chunk to various bitcoin related projects, ( that is IF they want bitcoin to succeed on a larger scale )
they would not run more than a certain limited number of units at a time.
they would not run them any longer than required to ensure that they are working fine and will not malfunction after shipping.
the question here is, how ethical is BFL?
this is where ethics will come in to play.
IF BFL truly wants BTC to succeed, they will never run enough units to take over 51% of the hashing power at any one point.
Also, they WOULD take the profits from the mining, no doubt. But considering the magnitude of profits, i believe they would donate a sizable chunk to various bitcoin related projects, ( that is IF they want bitcoin to succeed on a larger scale )
they would not run more than a certain limited number of units at a time.
they would not run them any longer than required to ensure that they are working fine and will not malfunction after shipping.
the question here is, how ethical is BFL?
I had the same thought yesterday and honestly i would not doubt it. If you need to test the units anyways, why not make some $?
I thought I had read that they would take a bitcoin address (or pool credentials) from customers and use that for mining.
Or...
When bitcoin value goes up, the incentive to mine increases.
Just had a big bitcoin conference, with interest spreading.
But most clearly, if BFL's ASICs are anything remotely to spec, mining with even 500 would be far more noticeable than the current hashpower increase.
When bitcoin value goes up, the incentive to mine increases.
Just had a big bitcoin conference, with interest spreading.
But most clearly, if BFL's ASICs are anything remotely to spec, mining with even 500 would be far more noticeable than the current hashpower increase.
I had the same thought yesterday and honestly i would not doubt it. If you need to test the units anyways, why not make some $?
I've been watching the charts and the increase in total computation speed seems a bit excessive even at current exchange prices. Take a look. They're nuts! It seems to have shot up significantly right around the time that Butterfly Labs would be mass testing some of their 7000+ pre-ordered ASIC chips. Hmmmmm 
They say vague things in their posts on purpose but given their anticipated ship dates, trust me, at this point they're definitely done manufacturing them and are working on testing and packaging them. You don't finish a 1st release device and cross your fingers and hope it runs once it gets to the customer. You run it for 24+ hours to make sure defective ones don't go out
So I do wonder if they're running many, many GH/s worth of them at once to do a bit of a burn-in or mass reliability test. And why crunch dummy data when you can make money mining?
If circumstantial evidence isn't enough, try simple business logic. The price is set at $149 for a 3500MH/s chip. At current prices, they would make $149 after about 10.8 days of mining! So why doesn't Butterfly Labs just run them for 10.8 days instead of selling them? Then they'd have $149 and the chips lol. I mean seriously, read those last 2 sentences again, people. You think they're not mining with them? I can't be the only one that realizes this. From a business perspective, if you had an investment that would pay off 200% in a month and you sell it off instead, you're a crazy person.
So I think a huge portion of them are fully assembled and running right now. The question is, under these circumstances, when would they stop mining? Simple. Keep mining until one of 4 things happens:
1. someone notices the potential ability to do a >50% of total computational power attack as that would cause everyone to jump ship and crash the price like the Hindenberg. By the way, they *potentially* have over 30,000GH/s worth of mining hardware in inventory at the moment and everyone else in the world cumulatively has 21,000.
2. "At current prices, they would make $149 after about 10.8 days of mining" <-- until this is no longer remotely true for any reason
3. someone posts #1 on a bitcoin forum
4. everyone gets super, mega, raging pissed off that the devices are taking too long to ship
So they're either waiting to get closer to the split (see #2 above) or for all their mining to drive the price down slightly in a roundabout way (also #2) or any of the other reasons. All that pre-order money could easily fund the manufacture and hold of a TON of inventory for a month or two so I seriously think that gigantic spike in the charts is primarily them mining. They have slightly over $1 million USD worth of preorders right now by the way. That'd buy the chips, hubs, PCs, internet, electricity, and building for a gigantic mining operation
Of course, they'd never ever admit this. Bitcoin mining is an arms race. First it was CPUs then GPUs then FPGAs now ASICs and each were like 10x faster than the last, forcing everyone to buy them. It's just like guns vs grenades vs nukes. Since mining is competitive and you only get your share of a certain amount of coins, well back to the analogy in that deals tend to go sour when you find out that the arms dealers are also using the weapons TO SHOOT AT YOU BEFORE YOU BOUGHT THEM!!! ROFL.
So this is all kinda scary, bad news but the good news is, if I'm right that means when the Jalapenos and other ASIC models ship out, the total speed will drop for like a week then go back to a similar level to what it is now
They say vague things in their posts on purpose but given their anticipated ship dates, trust me, at this point they're definitely done manufacturing them and are working on testing and packaging them. You don't finish a 1st release device and cross your fingers and hope it runs once it gets to the customer. You run it for 24+ hours to make sure defective ones don't go out
So I do wonder if they're running many, many GH/s worth of them at once to do a bit of a burn-in or mass reliability test. And why crunch dummy data when you can make money mining? If circumstantial evidence isn't enough, try simple business logic. The price is set at $149 for a 3500MH/s chip. At current prices, they would make $149 after about 10.8 days of mining! So why doesn't Butterfly Labs just run them for 10.8 days instead of selling them? Then they'd have $149 and the chips lol. I mean seriously, read those last 2 sentences again, people. You think they're not mining with them? I can't be the only one that realizes this. From a business perspective, if you had an investment that would pay off 200% in a month and you sell it off instead, you're a crazy person.
So I think a huge portion of them are fully assembled and running right now. The question is, under these circumstances, when would they stop mining? Simple. Keep mining until one of 4 things happens:
1. someone notices the potential ability to do a >50% of total computational power attack as that would cause everyone to jump ship and crash the price like the Hindenberg. By the way, they *potentially* have over 30,000GH/s worth of mining hardware in inventory at the moment and everyone else in the world cumulatively has 21,000.
2. "At current prices, they would make $149 after about 10.8 days of mining" <-- until this is no longer remotely true for any reason
3. someone posts #1 on a bitcoin forum
4. everyone gets super, mega, raging pissed off that the devices are taking too long to ship
So they're either waiting to get closer to the split (see #2 above) or for all their mining to drive the price down slightly in a roundabout way (also #2) or any of the other reasons. All that pre-order money could easily fund the manufacture and hold of a TON of inventory for a month or two so I seriously think that gigantic spike in the charts is primarily them mining. They have slightly over $1 million USD worth of preorders right now by the way. That'd buy the chips, hubs, PCs, internet, electricity, and building for a gigantic mining operation
Of course, they'd never ever admit this. Bitcoin mining is an arms race. First it was CPUs then GPUs then FPGAs now ASICs and each were like 10x faster than the last, forcing everyone to buy them. It's just like guns vs grenades vs nukes. Since mining is competitive and you only get your share of a certain amount of coins, well back to the analogy in that deals tend to go sour when you find out that the arms dealers are also using the weapons TO SHOOT AT YOU BEFORE YOU BOUGHT THEM!!! ROFL.
So this is all kinda scary, bad news but the good news is, if I'm right that means when the Jalapenos and other ASIC models ship out, the total speed will drop for like a week then go back to a similar level to what it is now
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