one question for bitcoinrama
are you on their payroll?
Nope. I just spent ages weighing up the odds on who to place my bets with.
Originally like most I considered BFL. The issue was the competitive advantage and the volume of pre-orders they had at that point, plus growing distrust and no proven prototype (at that point). Actually now to be fair as well as I would only have been interested in the 60gh/s machines (x4).
I had the option of purchasing the Avalon batch 3's. Literally email pinged the moment they released them and I had the chance of being in the 300. I turned down the opportunity as the price wasn't known until that point and it was multiples of before. Plus as we know BFL were *just about* to ship...
I looked around at other offers specifically asicrigs.com, not that I took them seriously, but they were in the UK so I would have paid on pick up in person (I had them agree to this)...but knew too well it was a scam. I had some great fun busting Cedartec and a couple of others, so by the time KnC were claiming to be serious I was in full anti-scam mode. Thing is they started checking out, ORSoC was the biggy...since then I've performed a tonne of research, as of course have others here, in a variety of confidence. I chose to stay optimistic, and have studied product design (BSc) and engineering design (MSc), so I appreciate the itterative process involved in bringing a product to fruition. I had quite a bit of emailing back and fourth and Sam always responded quickly and knowledgabley. Unlike the aforementioned scams it wasn't BS either, he clearly and confidently gave me straight answers and no curve balls.
The Avalon bulk chips were announced and whilst that seems great the issue I have here is the logistics in DIYers splitting and sending respective chip orders to various unknown intermediaries and prioritising their preferred associates. I couldn't confidently see myself with a working ASIC miner (even if the DIY route does work without snags) in an appropriate time and there's too many potential weak links in the chain for my comfort. Actually Terrahash look good, but they're state-side which means crazy import duties for me (UK). I don't think a lot of Butterfly Labs UK buyers have really thought this through properly, the UK's import duty for outside the EU changed last year, there is now an additional stealth levy of 9% on the total cost once the 20% VAT is added for purchases above £130!! Which basically means every mining device from the US.
By this point in any case we all now knew 60-70 gh/s wouldn't have long term use, but would be great for right now. Fact was for me at least it wasn't about to happen right now, and even though Avalon had proven themselves to have working kit, the price upgrade put me off and made me question their intentions. In some ways I'm lucky I had doubts, as they wouldn't have arrived as promised by now anyway!
The KnC route fit my budget, and they are based close by in Europe so I can check them out. Which obviously I am about to for that money! In addition they started throwing the FPGA idea around so I started pressing the Litecoin FPGA idea off the back of reading a Blockburner's thread. I've spoken to him a fair bit and it seemed like a wayy better ROI, but Bitcoin is the dominant cryptocurrency. In any case KnC have promised to revisit that idea, so I'm happy there.
Question is would I like to be on their Payroll? Sure why not, I find this cryptocurrency mining development really interesting. With respect to how I've approached this thread, I've just been helpful to those that are cool and share research and ideas, a little less polite sometimes to those that are too lazy to research and most importantly take responsibility to research themselves, and shot down the trolling shite as it's turned up with no useful purpose. I hope I have been helpful, but trust me it's been for my gain as much as anyone else's!
I probably bullied Daggeto and JohnyJ into attending the openday and asking questions bit too much though, haha!
In any case my confidence, positivity, optimism whatever is nothing to base your decision on, always do our own research. This may as well become a signature now, but the above probably needs a disclaimer in any case!
Edit: another factor i forgot to include was the almost doubling of price and reduction in power BFL revised at the beg of April. I had waited after reading the forums for a while (both BFL and here as a non-member) to see a prototype from them before ordering. I saw the Jalepeno for all of a handful of days before the price increase, but didn't purchase then because I hadn't seen proof of a real multi-chip configuration aside Avalon. Jalepeno evidence does not equal Single SC evidence and how right I was. I still had some itchy feet, the price increase solidified it. For me the KnC choice boils down to this; verifiable background (LinkedIN), video, communications, credit card payment, ORSoC reputation and proximity close enough for me to physically meet and check out those responsible personally, additionally verified by other independent third parties as well (Daggeteo, JohnyJ, 600Watt, et al.).
