Quote from: wndrbr3d on January 31, 2013, 02:11:30 PM

SO, although I'm still a skeptic, the Avalon folks pulled through and delivered a test unit like they said, so kudos to them!

BFL currently has their estimates of shipping their first wave of products to customers February 18th. Avalon is currently (or at lest one) shipping their product to customers and delivering 65Ghash/sec per unit. They SAY they're shipping 12 per day, meaning that let's say they continue to ship between now and the 18th, that'd be 14 THash/sec added to the network before the first BFL box even leaves their facility. That would represent a 50% growth in network speed and (I'm guessing) a 50% increase in difficulty, which (I assume) would mean a 50% drop in income for BFL customers who were counting on a quick ROI assuming they'd be first to market.

Avalon has previously stated that they wouldn't be shipping during CNY so unless something has changed, not everyone from Batch 1 will receive their units in February. It's just not possible to guess how much Avalon power will hit the network before BFL delivers their first units. Avalon has now delayed Batch 2 orders - which were due for delivery in early March - so it's quite possible that BFL will deliver a significant amount of units before Avalon delivers batch 2 - although less BFL units are going to be delivered in their first batch than originally expected.

The number of Avalons in the wild before BFL delivers their first units will have some impact on profitability for all miners, but so will BFL's first batch of deliveries. BFL's first round of deliveries may well have a greater impact on the profitability for all later customers than Avalon's will. Let's face it - every delivered ASIC essentially increases the ROI period for all ASICs which are subsequently delivered. High Bitcoin prices or reduced hardware prices may be able to mitigate that somewhat and keep the ROI period at an acceptable period.