Butterfly Labs says bulk chip sales to start soon

Butterfly Labs has announced it will begin selling bulk ASIC chips for bitcoin mining starting this month.

While some Bitcoiners on Butterfly Labs' forum welcomed the news, many others are expressing skepticism or frustration in light of the Kansas-based company's lengthy delays in fulfilling orders for ASIC mining devices.

Butterfly Labs announced late last month that it was starting to ship its ASIC products, which were originally announced in June of 2012.

Following Butterfly Labs' latest announcement about bulk sales of chips, a number of commenters have taken to reddit and the Bitcoin Forum to voice their concerns.

"They better f...ing ship all of the preorders first,"

wrote redditor a1088245se.

"Maybe I should have seen this coming,"

noted redditor _nightengale_. "So they've not yet shipped 1% of products they started accepting payment for 11 months ago, and now they're going to try to flood the market with chips, maybe even before they finish their backlog, who knows?"

Complaints about Butterfly Labs' fulfillment difficulties continue to flow, prompting this response on the company's online forum today:

"We are waiting on parts is why production is so slow," wrote Butterfly Labs' Josh Zerlan. "As soon as we have all the parts we need, we will be building them. Right now, we have all the parts we need for 5 GH/s miners and we build those as the parts are available. This week should hopefully see tons of parts, hopefully enough to overwhelm the assembly crew. Right now we have more crew than parts ..."

According to its latest announcement, Butterfly Labs will deliver chip orders within about 100 days. It adds that chips must be ordered in minimum lots of 100, with a down payment of 50 percent and the remainder due upon delivery.

The company further noted, "We will allow you to convert current orders with us into chip orders if you would rather design your own."