Sadly...no. They suck at this whole customer service thing. Never a response to my support ticket either, but Yifu did respond directly to my forum post saying that if we have a valid walletbit confirmation that we're good to go, so I stopped hounding them for order confirmation, though it doesn't really make the waiting much more fun. Still we're well positioned IMO with an early Avalon batch 2 order on the way & plenty of funds available for a batch 3 order. The thought of having all our funds tied up at BFL right now at the back of an endless queue of orders kind of gives me the creeps.

No, I don't believe all the batch 1 units are shipped. The batch 2 shipping delay sounded fairly brief, but time will tell. Yeah it is risky to bet on batch 3 because receipt is a long way out, but I have to weigh that risk against expected network growth rate scenarios. Certainly I wouldn't bet heavily on a batch 3 order, but Avalon is to date the only company to ship any ASIC mining gear to any end users. BFL is...well BFL and ASICMiner's roll out has been slower than anticipated which improves batch 3 order profitability.

Whether we ultimately place a batch 3 order or no we will have significant reserves available for if/when BFL ever ships or a new player brings gear to market. Eventually the gap between placing an order for ASIC mining hardware and receiving it will narrow considerably, and when that time comes the network hashrate will grow very rapidly.

We've benefited thus far(at least on paper) by not committing our resources to lengthy order queues with fixed exchange rates, it's an advantage I've no intention of squandering. We are however, still a BTC mining operation and as such must grow with the network.

Thanks for the input fellas.

I don't recommend this given the outrageously high price and the unpredictability of profitability depending on BFL ASICMINER's deployment.

I'm not sure how much Avalon/BFL will add to the network, but ASICMINER claims to deploy 50 TH in April. Given that bASIC-MINING doesn't have any units to trade in, they'd be in the back of the queue and who knows when they'll actually receive a batch 3 unit.

Don't forget about batch 3.

I agree that BFL ASICMINER (and others) may change the game significantly. But then surely it is better to have more mining assets rather than more BTC sitting in cash doing nothing. If ASIC farms come online in the next few months then profitability will suffer regardless.

Price of Avalon batch #3 seems appropriate to me. BTC-wise it is in the middle of batch #1 and batch #2 as I understand. I don't bother with the USD comparison - surely the only way in which USD are relevant are in the operational cost of electricity.

I'd be tempted to hedge your bet and order some Avalon batch 3 and also order some BFL NOW.

Much as I dislike the way BFL operates, if you're going to order from them you need to do it BEFORE they start clearing their back-log.  If they start shipping and getting production running them I'd expect them to also hike their prices up - to somewhere a bit below Avalon.  That would raise them extra revenue and also act as a sort of reward for those who pre-ordered - by removing the current situation where those who wait until they're shipping to order have done massively better than those who paid in BTC at a much worse rate.

Noone else looks like being close to market with ASICs for sale yet - so no reason for BFL to continue selling at a massive discount to Avalon once they've proven they can ship.  The price war won't start until either ASICMINER starts to sell (not likely for a long while yet) or one of the other dubious-looking claimed manufacturers turns out to actually be real.

With BTC looking (to me) a bit shaky at its current value (it may go higher but it may fall back) this is probably not a bad time to be spending it.

It's a shame that all 3 ASIC manufacturers turned out to be a bit dodgy.  Does anyone believe the delay between Avalon shipping batches 1 and 2 is to give time off to workers?  Or does everyone else believe, like me, that it's to allow batch 3 orders to be made raising the funds to finish paying to get batch 2 made (in the same way no batch 1 shipped in any quantity until after batch 2 had been paid for).

EDIT: To be clear, when I say all 3 ASIC manufacturers being a bit dodgy I mean the companies who took pre-orders to sell ASICs.  I do NOT mean ASICMINER.

I wouldn't trust any BLF estimate until something ship.  How many estimates have passed already?