BitCoin - Intellectual Fraud or a Stunning Idea??

[MadeMan]

Quote from achilles28:

After I looked into it, the time for amateur miners has come and gone. The total pool hashrate for bitcoin is approaching a Petahash. That's 1,000,000 times the size of a gigahash (the average amateur rig). There's only two companies that sell ASIC miners (GPUs that can process at gigahash level). One is back-ordered for months (Avalon). The other - Butterfly - has taken millions in preorders (some say 100 million), but haven't delivered a single rig. Their website recently changed today, with the 50 gigahash machine retailing for twice the price it was listed yesterday. Much of the community thinks it's scam. Realistically, without access to key hardware suppliers and real tech savvy to put it all together, this ship has sailed. The hardware retailers have no real incentive to sell to the public anyway. The Avalons are making their money back within a few weeks (at ~1800 purchase price). Why sell the hardware when you can run it yourself at a huge profit?

All those mining pools have access to ASIC chips/supercomputers/big IT guys, and they're not sharing. I was about to buy a couple miners yesterday, but there's absolutely zero supply on the market. It seems like great fun though. Wish I got into it sooner. It's really a game for techies.

well i gues u can still jump on the Litecoin Train ? then ..

 

[achilles28]

I'd like too, but not sure that's possible either. The problem is the mining hardware. Nobody sells it. Butterfly will take orders, but they haven't delivered. They're talking huge production numbers (1500 units a month), but again, not a single delivery. LiteCoin was supposed to be GPU-neutral, favoring CPU power. But the community figured out a way to run the algo on GPU's - thus favoring ASIC chips again. Problem goes back to supply - Avalon (sold out) or Butterfly (no product).

I downloaded all the software yesterday to see what kind of hashrate I could get on my quad core 2.4 Mhz machine - 5.5 Megahash/s. At that rate, at this difficulty, I could mine 3 dollars worth of Litecoin, a month..... lol And the difficulty is only going up.

All about the hardware now...

Try ASICMINER. It's shares in a professional mining consortium that pays dividends in bitcoin. I gotta look into it further. But for the average guy who wants to go long bitcoin revenue, it could be decent.

 

[atticus]

I thought the Avalon stuff was building upon receipt of payment? Yeah, Butterfly is an outright scam.

 

[gmst]

Quote from atticus:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools

https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage/1500gh-bitcoin-miner.html

Thanks.

Wiki link didn't make sense to me. There is a link in the wiki link. Clicking on it took me here that shows some graphs. Again didn't make sense to me what those different lines on the graph represent.

http://eligius.st/~luke-jr/samples/800MH-3/

I wanted to know a simple number: On my 2.4 GHz, core 2 duo 4 GM RAM machine, if I run it non-stop for 30 days 12 hours a day, how much money can I make.

 

[gmst]

Quote from achilles28:


I downloaded all the software yesterday to see what kind of hashrate I could get on my quad core 2.4 Mhz machine - 5.5 Megahash/s. At that rate, at this difficulty, I could mine 3 dollars worth of Litecoin, a month..... lol And the difficulty is only going up.

Useful information. On your machine, how much can you mine BitCoin in a month?

I wonder if with Bitcoin, if you can mine it enough in dollar terms to even pay the electricity cost of running your machine?

 

[atticus]

Quote from achilles28:

I'd like too, but not sure that's possible either. The problem is the mining hardware. Nobody sells it. Butterfly will take orders, but they haven't delivered. They're talking huge production numbers (1500 units a month), but again, not a single delivery. LiteCoin was supposed to be GPU-neutral, favoring CPU power. But the community figured out a way to run the algo on GPU's - thus favoring ASIC chips again. Problem goes back to supply - Avalon (sold out) or Butterfly (no product).

I downloaded all the software yesterday to see what kind of hashrate I could get on my quad core 2.4 Mhz machine - 5.5 Megahash/s. At that rate, at this difficulty, I could mine 3 dollars worth of Litecoin, a month..... lol And the difficulty is only going up.

All about the hardware now...

Try ASICMINER. It's shares in a professional mining consortium that pays dividends in bitcoin. I gotta look into it further. But for the average guy who wants to go long bitcoin revenue, it could be decent.

It's still at a year to cover your investment.

 

[achilles28]

Avalon outlined three batches. All were preordered months in advance. Batch#1 customers (ordered last fall), have begun to receive machines (5-6 months later). Batch#2 is sold out. Still under production? Conflicting reports on Batch#3 (600 units). Heard reports it took place last week and sold out in 30 mins. But on the Avalon site, its says they're opening preorders, at an undetermined time?

Batch#3 machines are now only priced in Bitcoin = ~80 BTC per rig = 10K a machine. Bit of a jump.

This is all small-scale, cottage industry production. Avalon has a facility, but it's very low capacity. I think they preordered to fund development costs with board designer, then bought the actual equipment to make the boards. It's not like Foxconn. One or two dyes, that put out I dunno. Maybe 50 boards a day? Maybe less? So even if you get in on Batch#3 (if there is a Batch#3), don't expect delivery until the end of 2013. Maybe 2014?
http://launch.avalon-asics.com/

 

[Algo_Design_Kid]

Quote from achilles28:

Avalon outlined three batches. All were preordered months in advance. Batch#1 customers (ordered last fall), have begun to receive machines. Batch#2 is sold out. Still under production? Conflicting reports on Batch#3 (600 units). Heard reports it took place last week and sold out in 30 mins. But on the Avalon site, its says they're opening preorders, at an undetermined time?

Batch#3 machines are now only priced in Bitcoin = ~80 BTC per rig = 10K a machine. Bit of a jump.

http://launch.avalon-asics.com/

80 BTC a rig is worth it. If my coins weren't locked up in Mt. Gox I would order that today.

 

[Pekelo]

There are Butterfly pre-orders on Ebay, so the possible scam is switched to the average Ebay seller.

Anyhow here is what the guy says:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Butterfly-L...039?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a7fccd34f

"This device as of this time would generate $832.25 a month!
Bitcoin is currently valued at $86 per BTC. "

So this machine mines almost 10 BTC per month. (probably not true) Well, why would anyone sell it for 1400$ or less if it can earn its price just in 1 month? Maybe the Butterfly Lab guys realized this and that's why there is no delivery.

They are running the machines themselves, assuming they actually exist...

---------------------------

Here is a quote from Reddit, the guy seems to know what he is talking about:

"Butterfly labs is rising prices in response to bitcoin price increase. There is a risk however, and that is that the machine you order will not arrive for a long time. That is a problem. Let's assume it takes 10 months for a BFL machine to arrive so roughly 2014.

It is possible the network will have about 1ph/s of power by the end of the year. So your 25gh/s machine would be able to capture about 0.05btc/day when you get it(factoring in slippage, invalid blocks, pool outages, what have you). So you're looking at a 200-day recovery cost to get your 10btc back.

Let's assume that in the next 12 months (to 2015) the hashrate of the network goes up to 10ph/s. Modelling your profit in those 12 months under these conditions you will only recover 5btc in that year. It will take you a total of 10 years to recover 10btc.

So by halving the hashrate and doubling the price and having eternal delivery rates (if at all) BFL is putting you at considerable risk of never ever seeing the BTCs you paid ever again."

 

[achilles28]

Quote from gmst:



I wanted to know a simple number: On my 2.4 GHz, core 2 duo 4 GM RAM machine, if I run it non-stop for 30 days 12 hours a day, how much money can I make.

Basically, nothing. My machine is very similar. Dell Precision T3400. It calculated ~3 dollars worth of LTC a month. BTC difficulty is much higher. Even low gigahash rates don't earn much anymore (0.5 BTC/month). A machine without GPU's (CPU's crunch the blocks much slower), we're talking low megahash rates. Pennies....