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Topic: When will Butterfly Labs (BFL) run out of money? - page 2. (Read 12358 times)

hero member
Activity: 1162
Merit: 500
I'd say, given the recent media frenzy that they started, and the "all sales are final" agreements the pre order customers had to accept, they run out of money even before October.
hero member
Activity: 490
Merit: 500
Considering they have a working chip and the amount of orders they have been bringing in before they even had a working product, they would have no problem finding additional VC funding at this point. A start up project being literally sold out before you even have a prototype is almost unheard of.

Had the chip on the other hand been a bust and needed a complete redesign then this discussion would have been a lot more interesting. The only thing atm that could be a bit worrisome is the actual cost of making each pre-order unit, this is more about how fast they can make back the initial RnD costs though.

Uhhhhh... Is this not what happened? They have 5000 chips that are not at power spec, and have to wait to get more from the foundry. I'm pretty sure they're switching from 65n to 110..

Avalon is 110nm

BFL was always been working on 65nm

This is the second time they've produced the ASICs, they already rejected the first batch because the ran too hot and then had them repackaged.
The old ASIC had a plastic package, the new one has a copper package to improve thermal conductivity.

We're now waiting for the second edition of the motherboard, the original one didn't have strong enough power regulators, to handle the chips unexpected power requirements. The old motherboard are still going to be used to produce the first batch of Bitforce 5's though.

It is worrying how hard they are advertising for new customers, the doubling of prices, the high order number 60k, and how few Bitforce 5's shipped from 6 wafers.

It looks like a company that needs more cash.
member
Activity: 98
Merit: 10
Considering they have a working chip and the amount of orders they have been bringing in before they even had a working product, they would have no problem finding additional VC funding at this point. A start up project being literally sold out before you even have a prototype is almost unheard of.

Had the chip on the other hand been a bust and needed a complete redesign then this discussion would have been a lot more interesting. The only thing atm that could be a bit worrisome is the actual cost of making each pre-order unit, this is more about how fast they can make back the initial RnD costs though.

Uhhhhh... Is this not what happened? They have 5000 chips that are not at power spec, and have to wait to get more from the foundry. I'm pretty sure they're switching from 65n to 110..
hero member
Activity: 873
Merit: 1007
The new boards are at least 1 week out according to Josh, so maybe they'll show up some time in June.




















I mean June 2013.  June 2014 is the redesigned case.
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 250
Definitely not the redesigned boards then.
newbie
Activity: 34
Merit: 0
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 250
Jalapeno, Minirig, singles etc are all built on the same board. I can`t help but think that they are running a ponzi scheme where they can only buy new chips when they recieve money. Or use the chips they own to rather mine themselves to cash in big bucks while just pushing out small batches of Jalapenos to keep most cards to themselves. After all, they are sitting on a gold mine...

The PCB


1 ASIC chip, 4.5GH/s = Jalapeno


Now a complete board with 4 ASIC chips that will soon be a 30 GH/s Bitcoin Miner (BitForce Little Single SC)


And finally we see a fully populated board with 8 ASIC chips that will be used both in the 60 GH/s Bitcoin Miner (BitForce Single SC) and the 1,500 GH/s Bitcoin Miner (BitForce Mini Rig SC).


Those aren't the redesigned boards are they?
newbie
Activity: 34
Merit: 0
Jalapeno, Minirig, singles etc are all built on the same board. I can`t help but think that they are running a ponzi scheme where they can only buy new chips when they recieve money. Or use the chips they own to rather mine themselves to cash in big bucks while just pushing out small batches of Jalapenos to keep most cards to themselves. After all, they are sitting on a gold mine...

The PCB
http://mineforeman.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Bare1.png

1 ASIC chip, 4.5GH/s = Jalapeno
http://mineforeman.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Jalapeno1.png

Now a complete board with 4 ASIC chips that will soon be a 30 GH/s Bitcoin Miner (BitForce Little Single SC)
http://mineforeman.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/LittleSingle1.png

And finally we see a fully populated board with 8 ASIC chips that will be used both in the 60 GH/s Bitcoin Miner (BitForce Single SC) and the 1,500 GH/s Bitcoin Miner (BitForce Mini Rig SC).
http://mineforeman.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Minirig1.png
hero member
Activity: 1162
Merit: 500
Which means, besides the Mini Rig Casings, BFL can also throw away all their Single and Little Single casings, PCBs, fans and heatsinks. Or maybe reuse a few of them for the "new" Jalapeno2.0.

Which means: More (of our pre order) money down the drain ...


Seems like Josh just confirmed my conjecture:

Quote
BFL_Josh - "While I appreciate the sentiment and I would gladly act on it if I could, the simple fact of the matter is we can not ship anything but Jalapenos this week and next week. We simply do not have the boards and cases to ship anything but a Jalapeno. We aren't intentionally holding back Little Singles, Singles and Minirigs. The Jalapeno 5 GH/s miner is the only thing we have both the boards, chips and cases for at this time. We had to push all units up one level, so the mining device formerly known as the Jalapeno is now in the Little Single/Single case and the little Single/Single are moving to a larger home. The minirig is moving to a smaller home and will have less hashrate per unit, which also necessitates a case redesign and will use the new Single/Little Single boards as well, hence we have none at the moment.

The new Single case should be in tomorrow and the boards sometime next week, hopefully".
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/2003-petition-get-butterfly-labs-attention.html#post26648
sr. member
Activity: 434
Merit: 250
they'll be fine. the recent demo unit hype will ensure plenty of preorders.
Prerecords of what? YouTube Videos channel or line in the queue for next year eventually?
But as i already told they will probably will not run out of money in that case


see:
Great video, made me purchase 2 x 5GHs ;-)

A Zork avatar LOL
legendary
Activity: 2058
Merit: 1431
they'll be fine. the recent demo unit hype will ensure plenty of preorders.
Prerecords of what? YouTube Videos channel or line in the queue for next year eventually?
But as i already told they will probably will not run out of money in that case


see:
Great video, made me purchase 2 x 5GHs ;-)
full member
Activity: 224
Merit: 100
One bitcoin to rule them all!
SELL ALL YOUR BELONGINGS!!!!

BUY BFL MINERS!!!!
member
Activity: 98
Merit: 10
Same sources you are seeing... just a guess based upon pattern of Avalon ASIC chip sales per my posts in Org's analysis thread.  It's your question he answered... where do YOU think we're headed?

Gosh, I just read it, wow. I think it is tough to say where we are headed.

Organofcorti mentioned that he thinks the hashrate will go too high for people to make returns (I visualise it like the recent speculation bubble), and I agree that it looks like this will happen (possibly before next year) at the moment. If bitcoin falls back below 100, I don't like to think about some reckless people getting their children repossessed by debt collectors along with their Avalons- but this might screw miners, and buying would probably halt until hashing power gets cheaper. If the USD/BTC exchange rate rises from now, people might still be buying loads of ASICs in November, and I think this is certain to carry us past 1 bil difficulty by early 2014. The interesting thing about this is, even if mining is barely worth the electricity late this year- people will still keep their units online, because they can't be easily sold for other purposes, just to make back a little bit of their investment. These people will effectively have donated funds to the security of the network.

In short: I think we'll get close(ish) to 1bil by new year if btc stays the same, we might hit it before new year if BTC rockets, and we'll probably hit it eventually, but the difficulty is going sky high no-matter what happens to BTC this year.
hero member
Activity: 924
Merit: 501
Same sources you are seeing... just a guess based upon pattern of Avalon ASIC chip sales per my posts in Org's analysis thread.  It's your question he answered... where do YOU think we're headed?
member
Activity: 98
Merit: 10
It's going to 1 billion.  Plug that into the calculator and see what spits out....

I really hope that isn't this year. Have you got a citation or calculation for this?
erk
hero member
Activity: 826
Merit: 500
they'll be fine. the recent demo unit hype will ensure plenty of preorders.

There is also the fact that lots of people wont take the risk or pre-ordering and delays. They will wait until the product is flowing out the doors nicely with reasonable time from order placement to shipping eg. a couple of weeks, before forking out for the products. Then you have a second wave of buyers if they are happy with the product, will want to order another one.

So in a nutshell, the faster they can complete the pre-orders and get then out the door, the more orders they will get from careful buyers and repeat business.

With that in mind it would pay for BFL to outsource volume production.

hero member
Activity: 924
Merit: 501
It's going to 1 billion.  Plug that into the calculator and see what spits out....
member
Activity: 98
Merit: 10
The difficulty is going to jump higher than anyone really imagined this summer (or before), if they can't even get their bigger units near the specs (or shipping date) of avalon batch 3 (which might struggle to make a profit) they are completely toast (like their passive cooling prototypes).
hero member
Activity: 924
Merit: 501
"What are those employes actually doing?"

exactly my conclusion.  nice sexy office with lots of people doing nothing.  all the work is done overseas.  all they need is a shipping manifest and a third party... boy their investors are going to be pissed.
legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
I'm sure there's an obsolete pallet of Nexus 7s collecting dust in their warehouse, for those won't be used for anything since the $29,995.00 minirig won't be produced, although she, cleverly dubbed the Marilyn Monroe model, was snowcased at CES.

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