Quote from: hstlmn on April 25, 2013, 10:15:38 PM

I thought about ordering one of these my main issue is the wait time.

Has anyone taken into account the amount Bitcoins are and how much more you could have made when these went on sale. This company if they have this in Bitcoin that you paid for has made a mint off of you.

Lets say you paid for bit coin around Jan before the huge spike.

Then is was around $10USD a Bitcoin - so with that logic lets break down the products they are offering. Then how much you would have if you just sat on BTC and sold them today. These will be estimates and according to the markets avg.

5gh Miner Jan 10th order would have cost you 27.4BTC - at current markets that would = $3973 not $274

25gh Miner Jan 10th order would have cost you 124.9BTC - at current markets that would = $18110 not $1249

50gh Miner Jan 10th order would have cost you 249.9 - at current markets that would = $36234 not $2499

This is the main thing that bothers me. Not grant it, you could still get the product and make all that money back but they are sitting on a huge amount of money and have made way more off you. No one seems to mention or see this and it leaves me baffled

* side note, that current rate I used was today $145, if they had sells when it spiked to $200 or higher that would be much much more.

I do not think they are a scam, I just think doing a preorder of this nature is stupid.

^^ This!

Well hello everyone, I have a lot of things on my mind that I would like to share in this thread (related of course), but let me begin by introducing myself. Because of the anonymous nature of the Bitcoin community (exciting Cheesy

) it is only cool if we use pseudonyms. I am Erik.

This being my first post, I wont be talking too much I promise.

I got caught in by the Bitcoin frenzy a few days ago and by now I have done hours of extensive research on the subject. I must say I am quite excited by the whole idea, beginning with the potential of Bitcoin as a currency of the future and its anonymity, all the way to the possibility of actually capitalizing on its (currently) volatile and risky nature.

(now on the subject)

Butterfly Labs (aside from GPU mining tools) were the first dedicated bitcoin mining tools I encountered in my research. They gave me the impression of a well made product, about to make everything else useless (due to its impact on the global hashrate). I spent hours of calculating ROI if I were to buy their 50 GHS/s ASIC. I was seriously conflicted if it would be a good investment, given the fact that people have "already" started using them and they have already caused the huge increase in difficulty since around Jan 2013.

No doubt it would be profitable if I had one right now! However, I later realized that not only I can't have one until August (financial reasons), but no one will because they havent even filled their pre-orders!! After a bit of research I was introduced more into the problem. This confused me a little and made me consider a few questions. Why haven't they shipped anything yet? Why have they been delaying it for soo long? What caused the almost exponential increase in difficulty since January? In fact, what really caused the mini-bubble the beginning of April?

I would just like to point out that I don't exactly have an opinion on BFL, and I am actually forming one as we speak. I liked the idea of having one of those and I would definitely choose BFL, but these new findings have made me skeptical.

A lot of people here have their own theories and one thing which really caught my eye is "BFL running their own ASICs". I am sure that this would hardly make sense if they were a reputed company which they supposedly are: selling their FPGA miners, promptly doing their refunds, etc. However, I find a strange coincidence here.

One could argue that the rapid increase in the hashing was caused by factors such as: increased interest due to more public attention, people investing more in newer mining hardware, etc. I believe that such a rapid increase was caused by something major. In addition to this, the BTC price significantly went up during this period, which is slightly contradictory. It is my understanding that increase in mining essentially acts like the Fed. Increasing the money supply should prevent hyperdeflation.

After reading that BFT accepted BTC for the pre-order of their ASICs, I realized that they might be behind the bubble. Just picture what a company with resources like them could do. They had the means to mine extensively, partially financed by this community (speaking of the payments done with CC, PayPal, wire-transfer). They already held extensive amounts of BTC (assuming that a large number of people also paid in BTC), in addition to probably investing themselves.

What if.. BFT (and Co) started buying BTC at such a huge rate, that they managed to move the markets significantly? This probably would have been enough to lure in less experienced investors who believed in making money off the volatility. What if they (BFT and Co) actually started a major sell off right at the time the price was about to plateau? This would have been more than enough to actually cause a panic sale, that would essentially crash the BTC (like it did).

I know it sounds a little bit crazy. I know it may even lack sense, mind you I am quite new to all of this.

However this would have left BFT and Co, assuming that they previously sat on a ton of BTCs, sitting on a HUGE pile of USD. A ponzi scheme would be like a silly joke compared to this.

What do you guys think?