Just one last question... I know you don't seem to want to talk about $/BTC.. but if 1 BTC = $140 today.. and you sell for 0.08 which is $11 or so..
Lets just say the price of BTC doubles.. you then sell the chips for 0.04.. how would you be able to pay back the 800BTC ?
You could pay back the same amount of USD the person lent you today, but you wouldn't be able to pay back to the BTC value.
Obviously if it drops in price thats no problem.. but I imagine people don't get into trouble when the price drops
I sell the chips for 0.086 still. I bought the chips in BTC. I sell it in BTC. That's the beauty of this thing from Avalon, they only accept BTC as payment. In fact, they have a formula for calculating the price of their working units based on difficulty, hashing power, and predicted ROI. They want you, to make back you investment, in 1 month of using their stand-alone unit, you know, the desktop sized thing that does 60 GH/s.
So you can't compare it to dollars, unlike BFL that accepts payment in dollars. (Avalon did accept dollars as payment for their first batch, but beginning with batch 2 and the chips, they only accept bitcoins.)
If the price of BTC doubles, the chip suddenly is more expensive, relative to the dollar. But it is the same value in bitcoins.
If the price of BTC goes down, the chip can be bought more cheaply, by buying BTC using your dollars.
Again, I'm not taking a loan in any fiat amount. I'm taking a loan in bitcoins. Because what I am buying is only priced in bitcoins. The manufacturer does not give a fiat price at all. (Maybe that could be a problem for them.)
I could attempt to sell a working miner for heaps more, but no one is going to believe that when there are several open source projects going on now. A lot of people have learned their lesson too, buying pre-order units 10 months ago, and today have nothing still.
I don't know about the chips, but it seems everyone is expecting the chips to arrive.
If I wanted to borrow in fiat, I'd go to a fiat based bank. I did. I'm getting a couple million peso business loan, at 1% interest rate per month, payable in 1 year. Revolving. Line of credit. But my business makes clothes that I sell for pesos. I pay my employees in pesos. I'm keeping fiat based business separate from this bitcoin based venture.
Maybe later on I can convince the board of the fiat based business to accept bitcoins as payment, but that's not going to happen any time soon.
All loans, even in BTC, are gambles. You are betting that the other guy will be able to pay you back. I've tried to make my case, otherwise if I could afford it I'd do the jump starting myself.
At least I tried. I know some people are holding much more than 782.1 BTC. Some are looking to find a way to make more coins with what they have. Some just don't care and will simply hold. And there are some who will gamble it on a game of chance.
I've shown that this gamble is much better than the popular gamble where you can bet 500 BTC and win 600 back within 30 seconds. But you can also lose there.
You can lose here as well, but at least you know who you can run after (me), and he has something that could be worth it to someone else (chips.)
Replied via PM, and I'm going to decline respectfully.
I have the BTC on hand and not planning to convert to fiat soon (that kicks the BTC/USD issue Justin said), but a major problem is not covered adequately: What if there's no buyers for the chips? Group buys are popping up furiously, and the potential buyers are going to be limited. With the risks and headache involved, I'm better off setting up a website and start selling chips at high markups, thus eliminating multiple risks.
The 3% is totally undoable without collateral or any secured means of obtaining my principal back. I don't want to be collecting from someone with a M1911 24/7.
Best of luck with your group buy endeavors - by the way why do you want to order the chips before any orders are in?
I want to order the chips, so
1. The lead time for the delivery starts now, not when I've collected the amount. Saves time. Chips get here before others. Everyone is racing to make working miners.
2. The buyers are more likely to order from me (even those outside of our geographical area) knowing I already have the chips. (Note Zefir, who bought outright.)
I think someone did start a website (also in the Custom Hardware forum) but everyone is calling him a scammer, complaining about overpriced chips. Maybe he priced it too high, so he's not getting any. We don't know that for sure because it's a website and not a group buy where every order is public record.
I'm confident there will be enough buyers even if the Group Buys are separated by countries or areas. We will see later on.
The weapon wasn't meant to scare you. It was meant to assure you (and the buyers) that I can and will protect their investment. (self-defense and all that, I like reading about the United States Constitution and their drama about their 2nd amendment.)
Thank you Justin and John for seriously looking at my proposal. At least, it tells me that I'm doing something in these forums right. I'm hoping someone else is going to see this. If not, well, ... I think I'll find out after May 1 (or after the holidays, since that date is a holiday in many parts of the world.)