

First Bitcoin ASIC, Delivered to Core Bitcoin Developer - mrb
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140099.0

======
mrb
Picture of the inside: [http://garzikrants.blogspot.com/2013/01/avalon-
modular-room-...](http://garzikrants.blogspot.com/2013/01/avalon-modular-room-
to-expand.html?m=1)

I hope this will put a stop to most of the non-believers constantly trolling
on bitcointalk.org

~~~
gibybo
I prefer the term skeptic, and I think it's quite reasonable to be skeptical
of a $1300 device capable of generating $210/day with still no proof. I think
the skeptics will be much calmer once he plugs it in and verifies that it does
what it says it does.

EDIT: Now confirmed on Jeff's blog:
[http://garzikrants.blogspot.com/2013/01/avalon-its-
alive.htm...](http://garzikrants.blogspot.com/2013/01/avalon-its-alive.html)

~~~
micampe
_> capable of generating $210/day_

and for a limited amount of time. Bitcoins are a finite resource, once they
are all mined, this hardware will be pretty much useless, as far as I
understand.

~~~
bdcs
No, not worthless because of transaction fees.

Miner reward = Transaction fees + block reward Currently the the former
accounts for only 1%. This will likely change in the future (a decade or so).
See here <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_Commons>

------
c16
What are the specs for someone who doesn't really follow the whole BitCoin
thing?

~~~
mrb
66 GHash/sec. Or about the same as a cluster of 110 AMD Radeon HD 7970 cards!

Right now, 66 GHash/sec generates about $210/day (11 bitcoins/day).

~~~
ericb
If you have a machine that generates $210 a day, why would you sell it for
$1,300? Wondering why they wouldn't plug them all in and not start selling any
until they've dropped the value of bitcoin below their profit margin...?

~~~
mrb
Very simple: they did NOT have the funds to develop these ASICs by themselves.
They HAD to pre-sell them via pre-orders to bootstrap their business.

Avalon is literally the work of 2 chinese guys (ngzhang and yifu). They are
not a big company with lots of money.

~~~
dbaupp
If they had enough to build one, they could bootstrap themselves up from that.
(It takes about 6 days for an ASIC to generate enough money to make a new
one.)

~~~
wmf
You can't build one ASIC; you have to order a batch of thousands and you have
to pay over $100K for the masks weeks before you receive the chips.

~~~
pifflesnort
$100K is nothing for the kinds of profit numbers I'm seeing here.

~~~
mrb
Firstly, their true NRE costs are closer to $200-300k IMHO.

Secondly, $200-300k is not "nothing". I bet they tried to raise investor
money, but didn't find any. $210/day/unit is a lot, but Bitcoin still remains
relatively a risky investment.

~~~
pifflesnort
If these things can print money, then they're worth $200-300k.

If they can't, then they're not worth $1.k/ea.

~~~
wmf
The problem is that they can print money _if they are released before their
competition_ , but we don't know when the competition will ship. (In
retrospect we can see that Avalon batch 1 shipped before BFL, but there was no
way to know that ahead of time and batch 2 is still unknown.) So I can
understand why outside investors would refuse to touch it and why the Avalon
developers might have decided to reduce their risk.

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DanBC
I hope someone somewhere is documenting all the Bitcoin farming hardware.

The future people would probably like a nice list of things that people are
trying. Bitcoin mining (and to a lesser extent Folding@home) are entry level
clustering for hobbyists.

~~~
alwaysinshade
>I hope someone somewhere is documenting all the Bitcoin farming hardware.

>The future people would probably like a nice list of things that people are
trying.

I can imagine future "coin" collectors gathering the ancient application-
specific hardware that was used to mine bitcoins. "And here we have a 2013-era
bitcoin ASIC...quite quaint really. I'd imagine she might be worth
around...600 pounds?"

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kirian
Reports of it going live:

[http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2013/01/the-first-bitcoin-
as...](http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2013/01/the-first-bitcoin-asics-are-
hashing-away.html)

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Someguyy
66 GH/s... damn...

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ragmondo
but ... does it blend ?

