Butterfly Labs Announces Next Generation ASIC Lineup

http://news.yahoo.com/butterfly-labs-announces-next-generation-asic-lineup-054626776.html

by mrb • 14 years ago

50 61 14 years ago

news.yahoo.com

mkup• 14 years ago

Bitcoin mining coffee warmer is a great idea. But why we don't have bitcoin mining water heater for entire house? :)

stcredzero• 14 years ago

Hot water preheat wouldn't be too hard to do, and would save serious money in colder climates. Maybe someone could work a deal with an apartment complex? (Hot water preheat for rent?)

Strom• 14 years ago

That has been done already http://bitfury.org/bitfury110.html

    using mining equipment to produce hot water and house heating

nivertech• 14 years ago

Those who bought old one, now f$%&^d up. New line of mining HW is order of magnitude cheaper.

elux• 14 years ago

Here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3707.msg53879#msg538...

"The best thing about my water cooling and floor heating is that my wife keeps nagging me to buy a second 5970 to make the floor warmer. Beat this with a air cooled system."

DanBlake• 14 years ago

I looked into bitcoin mining before as a possible hackish investment, but there seemed to be anniversary where they made mining twice as hard. As it stood when I checked it out (few months ago) you would only make a buck or two a day with a top of the line graphics card, counting in cheap electricity but NOT the price of the hardware. I cant imagine what happens if they continue doing that (making it more difficult)

dekz• 14 years ago

You're meant to move to making money from processing transactions than mining for new coins, but that's still far from now.

rmc3• 14 years ago

That assumes BitCoin takes off and becomes popular. Which has not been the case yet.

mrb8• 14 years ago

That's correct. An HD 7970 (about $400) will mine $2.20/day currently. That's $66/month.

But for a starving student who lives in a dorm (doesn't pay directly his electricity), with a gaming video card, $66/month is nothing to sneeze at.

TazeTSchnitzel4• 14 years ago

"They" don't make it more difficult, it's collectively decided by the network based on the rate of production, IIRC.

Retric6• 14 years ago

Nope, there are cliffs where the total number of bit-coins produced per day drop off a cliff. It's a silly idea designed to make early 'investors' lot's of money at the cost of making the entire system be less stable, and worth less money.

shaggyfrog• 14 years ago

How many other companies are out there selling Bitcoin mining picks and shovels?

mrb8• 14 years ago

At least 3 companies:

Enterpoint: http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/cairnsmore/cairnsmore1.html

Ztex: http://www.ztex.de

BTCFPGA: http://btcfpga.com/

Plus a few independent FPGA board developers on the Bitcoin forums:

ICARUS: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51371.0

X6500: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40058.0

Devilboy• 14 years ago

Interesting that this press release carefully avoids mentioning 'bitcoin' at all...

The other thing that caught my eye is that $30k will supposedly get you 1 Terahash/s. Well, the entire bitcoin network hashrate is currently only 12 Terahash/s which means someone only needs to purchase about 12 of these devices to gain a majority share. That's less than half a million dollars' investment.

mike-cardwell3• 14 years ago

So if you bought one of these for $30k and used it for mining you'd get 1/13th of the bitcoins generated? iirc, 50 bitcoins are released every ten minutes? So you'd get mine an average of 550 bitcoins a day. Which are currently worth about $5 each. So it would take about 10 days to recuperate the cost of the server.

[edit] Of course this assumes that nobody else buys one of these servers for bitcoin mining and that using it doesn't cause the value of a bitcoin to drop.

rmc3• 14 years ago

The main problem is that if you own the majority of the hashing power, you can rewrite history. You can make all the bitcoin ever mined owned by you.

dvogel• 14 years ago

If you were mining bitcoins fast enough to overtake the natural growth of the network and selling them to profit from this activity, you would be creating a tremendous amount of downward pressure on the dollar value of a bitcoin, rendering your operation less profitable. Therefore you can't assume the current price of $5.

TillE• 14 years ago

> Which are currently worth about $5 each.

Wow, still? It was about $1 before they received some press coverage.

It seems like only a tiny fraction of mined bitcoins are in circulation.

ippisl• 14 years ago

I think they're using easic.com, which lets you build an ASIC(or something reasonably close to an ASIC in price and performance), with small minimum orders, and low cost design tools.

They start at minimum of 45 chips for 45K$ including the tools, and the price gown down from there.

With the minimum quantities needed in order to justify manufacturing an high end ASIC rising dramatically, this seems like something that would disrupt the ASIC and some of the FPGA business.

jamesu• 14 years ago

I looked at bitcoin a while back when the hype was at its peak. Sadly though by then mining using normal equipment was impractical, so i just ignored it.

Do people actually use bitcoins nowadays, or is it more of a speculative market?

dscrd• 14 years ago

>Do people actually use bitcoins nowadays, or is it more of a speculative market?

For things that you cannot as safely use normal currency, like drugs. Also, Wikileaks recently announced that they will accept donations in bitcoins.

wcoenen• 14 years ago

> *Do people actually use bitcoins nowadays, or is it more of a speculative market?

Yes it is used, see https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

SkyMarshal• 14 years ago

See for yourself:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

Atropos• 14 years ago

Interesting company / "press release". So their CTO is named "Nasser G", their contact is named "Nick W". They have venture capital funding by an unnamed "private equity group". According to their website, they are based in Kansas City, Missouri but if you search the states business register there is no "Butterfly inc." The trademarks “Butterfly Labs” and “BitForce SC” do not exist in the USPTO database either...

Doesn't this seem a bit unusual for a company promising to deliver a $29,899 product?

mrkmcknz2• 14 years ago

http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=141

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53530.0

Doesn't look like the Bitcoin community ever received their first gen of products.

mrb8• 14 years ago

Butterfly Labs is shipping real products. I personally own multiple units of their first gen product, the "Single". Many in the Bitcoin community own them as well: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=70611.msg813386#msg8...

That said, when Butterfly Labs pre-announced their Singles, it is true that many thought it was a scam... until they delivered.

mrb8• 14 years ago

They are registered in Wyoming: https://wyobiz.wy.gov/Business/FilingDetails.aspx?eFNum=1491... More details: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53530.msg650163#msg6...

tokenadult• 14 years ago

Perhaps the greatest contribution the Bitcoin experiment will make to humankind is to teach you and me and our neighbors more about the realities of economics. Many of the ideas about how to mine Bitcoins, store Bitcoins, and trade with Bitcoins as a medium of exchange illustrate both the strengths and weaknesses of any other medium of exchange in a world full of human beings. Seeing the discussion of Bitcoins here on Hacker News reminds me of the last time that the price of gold (in United States dollars) crashed, and the arguments beforehand that such an occurrence was impossible, for instance. "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" is still an important principle of investment.

gwern• 14 years ago

> 1) BitForce SC Jalapeno: a USB powered coffee warmer providing 3.5 GH/s, priced at under $149

/not sure if serious

Butterfly Labs Announces Next Generation ASIC Lineup

Related Stories