I know youre poking to get reactions
Not really. I'm just amused by some of the stories i'm hearing. For example, why would anyone want to pay $4000 for an FPGA board containing an export controlled FPGA that might, allegedly, implement some algo written by somebody which might ROI sometime, in the perfect world, when Intel is going to flood the market with cheap ultrascale+ class FPGAs real soon now ?
Hope and greed spring eternal.
The export control is no worse than the export control for a lot of other multi-purpose hardware. There's an ITAR code for your CPU, I'm sure even GPUs have one. A license per country you wish to ship to (Canada excluded). It's really not a big deal at all, and, doing production outside the USA with a non-usa corporation you can ship to wherever you want (according to whatever laws are applicable to the entity in the territory that it's registered, operating, and shipping from).
As far as I've seen, the only person who's really publicly announced or mentioned performance has been whitefire990. I was more than happy keeping the whole operation a secret and continue mining in secret. If you don't want to buy one. DONT.