I encourage people who don't know what they are doing to buy as many of these chips as possible. I will buy them from you at pennies on the dollar later.
Whats wrong with somebody wanting to act like a distributor?
It works for Coca-Cola and it works for Digikey/Avnet/Arrow?
Both of those organizations know exactly what to do to utilize their product, and they offer support.
This isn't some heathkit project you solder together in your garage.
I can't remember anymore whether I ever had a heathkit or not. I wanted one and I had other kits. I did read the entire Scientific American book of projects for boys. My opinion is that many of those projects would be challenging today for graduate students.
I wonder how many people both know what bitcoin is, and also know what heathkit was.
While many of your comments are on point in general in any bitcoin forum, please do go back and re-read my original post. I thought I was pretty droll, very under-promised, issued proper cautions about the difficulty, and gave the exit strategy as well as the buy in strategy. I did not promise easy money, nor did I promise a marketing view of engineering or science. It may appear rushed: I thought I was racing the clock, and the "out of stock" status seems to agree with this thinking.
I do value constructive criticism and I spend considerable time evaluating it for any instruction that I may gain from it. However, I find that I assimilate the criticism better when I see some connection to my own actions.
Well, in this case you are the apparent adult inviting children to come play on the highway.
What exactly will you do with one chip? Avalon modules have 80 chips in them. How will you manage risk of yield loss? Who will you contract to build them?
How long will it take to go from order to hashing hardware? What will alternative cost at that future date? How many ASIC programs will be shipping in that time frame?
They are not my children, so go ahead, let them play in the highway just as rush hour starts.
Ok. This one has some meat on it. I will think on this. I am internalizing it as: make stronger disclaimers and stronger customer qualification.
But be warned: I think Americans hate elitism, and your comments could be confused with elitism. While I am fiercely proud of my education, credentials, and expertise, and often think I am the smartest guy in the room, I think it is a mistake to adopt the posture that only I can evaluate the risks, and only I can produce a quality design.
There is a WWII story that the Germans, in their elitist thinking, trained gunners, and drivers, and other specialists. The Americans, well, were all over the map. An American sniper could shoot a German driver, and the vehicle was dead, and the passengers sitting ducks. Shoot an American driver, and the passengers decided who would be medic, who would be driver, and with our glorious randomness, they bugged the hell out of there while treating the driver. "We voted, Let's Roll" is a uniquely American viewpoint.
I don't think that 1 chip is a good engineering purchase. Someone who manages to purchase one for $10 and who puts it into clearcast and wears it for a nerd-bracelet or uses it for an executive paperweight is cool. I'm certainly willing to pay $10 just to hold it in my hand and posses it.
My auction price is constructed so that I have 9 replacement chips for each one purchased at the minimum commit level. This allows me to give courtesy replacement chips, although
of course this is not promised in the offer language.
My first thoughts to build them are Olimex in Bulgaria. They do really high quality work, they do some design, they do PCB production and assembly, they make some consumer products, and I am an established customer. From Avalon's first notice to sold out was too fast to discuss anything with them, however.
I am not promising working hashing hardware. I did leave that door open in the offer just in case I am overcome with optimism and bad judgement, but my target audience is one of the groups that think they want to buy a partial wafer and do something innovative. It is up to them to use sound business judgement, and to only make promises that they can reasonably fulfill.
I have been influenced by reading Kickstarter projects all summer. I would probably detail out a device that is solar powered, that has onboard WiFi in a mesh architecture, that is totally self contained, and you open it up, set it in the sun, and earn some income and pay for internet access and a door to the world. I lean toward those Loser Liberal ideals of letting a village in Africa, or South Texas, buy one and raise their level of education and prosperity. The ROI is so fast, that the funders here could buy them, receive the mining income until 200% return, then the village could receive the remaining benefits. What better way to insure peace than to help others? It would take weeks to put this together as a KickStarter project statement, it is too much to do in the hour or two after a for sale announcement.
I think everyone is aware that BFL is in the room. The quiet guys who want to sell chips to 2 or 3 OEMs are also in the room. With as much guns, gold, and conspiracy thinking as I see in the forums, surely everyone finds it plausible that "they" are out there designing their own ASICS to dilute all of us "true heroes." However, set against all of this, Avalon has set attainable goals, met those goals, and invested in additional capability. Predicting future hash rates, bitcoin prices, or anything else is just to stare at the base of the waterfall and try to predict where the next drop will travel.
Again, I have not used any marketing hype. I do not think I am enticing anyone to get involved at this level. In fact, my actual language says "
The chips are probably useless in a home/hobbyist environment." and
An Avalon chip project will be significantly more advanced and difficult in many different dimensions than the project that I did back then and even
Others attempting ASIC based projects have missed deadlines.
Perhaps you would read an invitation to a board of directors, if I had the free time to write one. Won't happen this week, for sure.
