Re: butterflylabs.com - any comment about your ASIC progress?
There are no competitors, there were some FPGA alternatives but no-one could match BFL in performance/price. So I doubt anyone will match it with ASIC.
Well meet these guys : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.0
They delivered more Proof than BFL and are on schedule. If they start selling then there will be competition.
They have never delivered a product and just talk so far, look at Enterpoint, their product info and pictures looked great, people bought the board only to realize it does not work as they hoped, now a wopping 6 months later there are finally some Bitstream that are actually capable of delivering the expected performance (did I mentioned they also had some hardware errors and mistakes when they designed it) but this is FPGA, ASIC is even more complicated.
Atleast BFL has a track record of delivering something that works out of the box.
The only clever thing about BFL is their marketing and using refurbished second hand FPGAs. If they design their ASICs as skilled as they did their FPGA design (power consumption off by 300%) there will be a good chance to become an epic fail. It needs only skilled engineers to produce a mining ASIC, no BFL-only magic needed
Quote
Also anyone buying shares from these mining companies are taking away the whole point of Bitcoin "Decentralized currency for the people by the people"
Well, the same goes for big mining pools, BFL-based mining companies, the use of ASIC technology in general. But since the community voted for ASICs it is good to avoid a BFL monopol for mining devices and the price per k/M/G/T-Hash/s will drop.Too bad for those who backed the wrong horse.