Basically interest free loans, lost opportunity, and the potential for an outright scam.

Any company that takes pre-order money for a product that simply does not exist yet is putting all the risk on buyer.

1)  Best case scenario for an early pre-order customer that one of them delivers and they receive a working ASIC device that has a decent ROI
2)  middle of the road case scenario, customers decided not to wait any longer or manufacture decides to pull the plug on the project and refunds 100% of orders
3) worst case scenario company goes under or is a scam and no devices delivered and no refunds given.

no lets look at the same scenario for the manufacture
1)  deliver working product - Yay everyone is happy!
2) damn we just couldnt do but hey no harm no foul we refunded everyone 100% right (oh but btw we did use that money for many months for what ever the hell we wanted and gave no consideration for it).
3)while this is certainly the worst case for them at the end of the day they declare bankrupcy and walk away lol..

Id say the customer is risking far more the the company and this is not normal for pre ordering products.


This isnt how pre-ordering products work this is more like investing sugar coated by calling them pre-orders.  the only one that is even remotely acceptable is AsicMiner as at least they are calling it an investment giving the appropiate risk reward scenario and are up front about it...