Quote from: Viceroy on August 24, 2013, 02:50:21 PM

I was reading a thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=266945.0 about getting a refund from BFL.

It led to this post: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/showwiki.php?title=FAQ:Get+Rich+Quick+Not+so+fast

Quote

FAQ:Get Rich Quick! Not so fast...
Edited 7 Apr 13 to update network hash-rate, difficulty and BTC/USD exchange rate

Will these ASICs make me rich?

If you have done some calculations and have come up with numbers indicating you will be making over 9000% profit your first month, there's a good chance you may be missing something or don't understand how Bitcoins work. After reading this quick FAQ, you should do some more research on Bitcoins, how they started, how they are created and what ASIC's will mean for Bitcoin miners.

Bitcoins are "minted" at a predetermined rate which is roughly one block every 10 minutes. Just because you might now have a 4500MH/s Jalapeno does not mean you'll be making $1500+ per day/week/month. You may now be mining at 60GH/s or higher, but the network hashrate (the amount of mining across the entire Bitcoin network) may now be up in the hundreds of terahashes per second (until now, you've probably been mining in megahashes). In order to moderate the network hashrate to maintain the predetermined minting rate of one block every 10 minutes, there is a variable called difficulty. When the network hashrate goes up, the difficulty adjusts to keep the mining speed at that predetermined rate (similarly, if a whole lot of miners suddenly stopped mining resulting in the network hashrate dropping, the difficulty would drop accordingly). Difficulty adjusts every 2016 blocks.

What does this mean in relation to ASICs and Mining right now?

These are the important figures right now (7 Apr 13):
Network Hashrate: 61.409TH/s
Difficulty: 7,672,999.92
Block Reward: 25 BTC
BTC/USD Rate: 144.0001 (let's round that down to an even USD140)

Using those figures, and assuming you had your own BFL SC, you could expect approximately 119BTC (USD$16,746) per month. BUT ... the network hash-rate will be much higher once ASICs hit the mining scene so taking that into consideration, we should factor in a jump of difficulty to cater for the increased hash-rate of 1000% (10x) in the short term. Current price (MTGox) for BTC is USD$144.0001. So, using that information, and for estimation purposes a conservative flat rate of USD140 per BTC, a safe assumption to make when working out your mining returns is USD287 per month per GH/s (@ 7 Apr 13)

Income per month for the BFL ASICs (using the above) with no overclocking and ZERO power costs in USD is would therefore be around the following:
Jalapeno - $1,255/mth
"Little" Single - $8,373/mth
Single - $16,746/mth
Minirig - $418,651/mth

Bear in mind these are laboratory examples (i.e. in a perfect and controlled world) and your returns may not necessarily be this high. Actually, it's almost guaranteed you will never see these sorts of figures as there will be a whole heap of ASIC's hit the market which will dramatically affect hash-rate and difficulty. These values will definitely fluctuate daily as the market value of BTC fluctuates and hash-rates/difficulty changes. If you want to run your own calculations check out many of the BTC calculators online ranging from simple to complex. Here's an example to start you off: http://bitcoinx.com/profit/

So what does the difficulty mean to me?

There's no real way to predict what difficulty will be a week, month or year after ASIC's hit the network. This table should therefore give you an indication of what you could possibly expect in a perfect world in both BTC and USD if you were mining at difficulty rates of current, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 & 50 times the current rate (7,672,999.92) per 24hr. You certainly shouldn't expect the current (x1) rates to be achieved unless you're lucky enough to get hold of your ASIC in first 24/48hrs of being available (so make the most of it if you do).

This table does not include power consumption or payback of any investment made to purchase your device(s). You should also be able to figure out other BTC currency exchange rate for yourselves. The formula used for these figures is:
Code:
(H x B / D) x (60 x 60 x 24 x 65535 x 10^6 / 2^48)
where H = your hash rate in Mhash/s, B = block reward in BTC & D is the current (or expected) difficulty. The BTC figures have been rounded DOWN to 8 decimal places and the USD rounded DOWN to 2 decimal places.

Following this they include a chart that shows the pay out of their miners.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/showwiki.php?title=FAQ:Get+Rich+Quick+Not+so+fast

What kind of exposure are they creating with a post like this? Is this post, written by employee "Josh", not a specific promise that their hardware can produce a certain amount of "money"?

It seems to me that if people follow this post from the company ?president? and they accept the companies provably false promise of delivery dates (combined with the companies policy to refuse all refunds)....

I'm not a lawyer but doesn't a post like the one above expose the company to a class action lawsuit? What I mean to say is that I would think a post like this could end up costing the company a tremendous amount of money. Am I wrong?

So has anyone sued BFL yet?