People become sceptical when you promise something, take a lot of money, then recursively bump deadlines. It speaks of either incompetence or plain dishonesty. Add to that dropping (or, more accurately, mildly clock-bumping and massively increasing the price of) one of the most popular devices.
There's also this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110805.0
I've ordered from them, not asked for not want a refund.
I don't see their updates as lies, I figure they're taking a voyage into the unknown and sharing their expectations. I work with a few optimists, and like BFL they're often wrong with their expectation.
Do I wish I had my rig already? Of course I do. Do I wish I'd have gone the Avalon route? Perhaps. But I am where I am now, BFL are getting closer, the mining hasn't become a disaster yet.
For sure BFL could have handled this all a lot better, but part of the blame surely rests on our shoulders for taking an update and assuming it is gospel, over and over. If we take the updates in a more rounded sense you would take the "what has happened" part as truth, and the "what will happen" as pure speculation.
I do realise those in it for 9 months who were originally expecting a 3 month wait must be bored of the false starts, I can't help there, the first speculation was the date.
Nice to have sensible people around.Originally Posted by phil4
As for the accusation in that bitcointalk thread, It was discussed 1000s times, when they were starting accepting funding, erm...preorders.
Nobody tells you to order from them. If you did then you can exit through a refund. or better yet, sell your place in line for profit ;-)
yes you are pathetic , defending a company that hasn't shown a working product a year after taking money - it stinks of a scam. and now yet more ` oh its late` in the thread you linked.
change from QFN to FGPGA? that shows complete lack on knowledge on what they want to acheieve.
they have also stated they could only get 4 cores working at 350mhz , below target of 16 cores at 500mhz+ - and no product anywhere to show for it.
no , you carry on defending them - the company has already been reported to trading standards.
I can't help people are just far too forgiving about it though, and would accept any and all announcements without budging. But good luck getting a refund if something big were to happen and everyone suddenly wanted one, they probably aren't even capable of refunding everyone, and would claim bankruptcy. Not suggesting it would get that bad, but it is a concern considering how untrustworthy the company seems to be.
Would everyone be so forgiving if they'd paid Intel/AMD/Nvidia for the next processor, only for it to be constantly delayed? Why are people so forgiving towards BFL in particular? Is it because it's some miraculous device which will make everyone a thousand dollars per day? In which case they're simply misunderstanding the limited release mechanism of bitcoins, and the automatically increasing complexity when ASICs gain market share. I won't get into the fine debate about when this will happen or how much profit can be made in the timeframe, although being a first batch customer and living next to the factory would likely give you a nice head-start.
Also, if/when ASICs become widespread enough, upgrades would likely be necessary at some point to stay profitable. I'd be critical of BFL of trying to tie customers into an upgrade scheme, but we'll wait until they manage one device first.
Why am I forgiving? Here's a few reasons:
I didn't preorder a finished or nearly finished product. I preordered what in essence is a "putting a man on mars" type venture.
This isn't even like using kick starter to fund a game where the team behind it already have a huge back catalog.
BFL are doing something further very first time in their experiences, so I have taken every update about what they expect next with a huge pinch of salt.
I don't treat them as lies, because I never took them as promises in the first place.
As I said I work with optimists, and know how to cope with what could be taken as promises but are merely optimistic expectations.
If I put all that in context I have no reason to be hard on BFL, I took a gamble on someone's wild adventure, and soon enough I'll either be proved right or wrong.
I also find the anger at BFLs price rise quite odd.
As someone in the queue I find it quite reassuring. In my mind it tells me that BFL believe they'll be able to get twice the money out of people going forward... Which also suggests my preorder will therefore be worth something for a while longer, ie twice as profitable as originally thought.
Now remember what I said earlier. The statement above is -pure speculation- I might be wildly wrong, but hopefully shows something positive that may come of it.
Of course if I hadn't preordered it would be a tad annoying, but then as a mention in my previous thread the earlier preorders took a big gamble.... Why should those who are less risk adverse get the same breaks?
Or they underestimated costs and are struggling to cope so need to up the cost of a popular device to stay afloat...
You can read any number of conclusions into it, positive or negative depending on whether you want reassurance or are very sceptical.
And it's hardly 'man on Mars' is it?
Oh I agree you can read it lots of ways.
And as for man on mars? Perhaps not quite as servre, but I'd suggest very hard for someone like me (I can't speak for anyone else), to build an ASIC for this from scratch.... And I'm someone who does have some experience of programming an FPGA. So for me alone, pretty much as hard as NASA with all their experts an budget.
Also the use of this example was more to show that it's hard to predict because its not been done before, rather than something that's very hard.
I'm quite prepared to believe people hate BFL, and think they are lying scoundrels. But until this is proven or demonstrated I give them the be fit of the doubt, and go with a more "they were naive and too optimistic" view.
Last edited by phil4; 08-04-2013 at 11:38 AM.
I mined with the bitclockers pool, and sadly the admins just stole everyone's bitcoins, so I'm trying to time a withdrawal the next time they find a block
Rather than that, why not mine with someone else, like slush's pool?
That is very sad to hear :S (especially that I wanted to buy them)I mined with the bitclockers pool, and sadly the admins just stole everyone's bitcoins, so I'm trying to time a withdrawal the next time they find a block
Anyway, it's very important to have your funds (BTC or other currencies) transferred to you as soon as possible from third parties (most of the pools support automatic payouts).
I don't understand people bitching about BFL, especially that most of them didn't even order. Is life so dull that you need to be angry with a company which you are not even a customer of?
Because I don't have anything I can mine with.
Haha yeah, and they were from a couple of years ago when bitcoins were worth a dollar or two each, so I just left them and forgot about them basically until last month, my own fault I know, but doesn't stop it being annoying
Hitting £120...
Oh I see. Sorry to hear.
Yeah, when I saw they were worth so much I thought I might buy a couple of AMD gpus (since with the money I'd probably be looking at getting a new gpu anyways) and maybe start mining a bit again.
But I don't want to commit money out of the blue towards it, since who knows, in a month it could crash :/
I tried to set up an account last week, but I've been stymied by the ongoing wrangles between the bitcoin exchanges and the UK banks - I'm finding it nigh on impossible to find anywhere to actually buy the bitcoins from.
Now it's gone from about £80 a coin to nearly £120 in about 4 days... :/
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