Wired finds out the new Butterfly Labs Bitcoin miner is utterly useless.

Wired got to be one of the lucky few to actually get a Butterfly Labs miner. Hey, you gotta perpetuate the scam somehow!

Here’s what they had to say:

Wired has taken possession of a 5-Gigahash per second Bitcoin Miner, built by Butterfly Labs, a.k.a. our very own digital money printing press. Or something like that.

We've powered up the miner and can confirm that its little red light turns on, that it burns hot, and that it makes the sound of a toy hair dryer. Whether it will melt or make you rich or not remains to be seen.

Not very impressive. So how can you get your hands on one? Well…

The problem is that Butterfly has had a hard time delivering its systems. A really hard time. And to make matters worse, its customers started paying for these systems on pre-order back in June. Butterfly says it has thousands of orders on the books, but to date, it has only delivered 35 to 40 of them, according to Josh Zerlan, chief operating officer of Butterfly Labs.

Ouch.

Wired finally got the little turd to do something more than flash a light though. Once this baby is up and running, it’s mining like crazy. Just how awesome is this bad boy?

Looks like I'm keeping my day job. Our @ButterflyLabs #bitcoin rig has mined $26.96 (Btc .29) in the past 23 hours. pic.twitter.com/ZKMUbLS1ig
— Robert McMillan (@bobmcmillan) May 3, 2013

That’s like a dollar an hour!

Oh. Not so crazy after all. About $1 an hour if bitcoin stays at $100 or higher AND more of these don’t come online and boost the difficulty. Which they will, because Bitcoin mining is an endless arms race until everyone is dead.

And it only took them almost a year to get to this point!

1. Announce preorders mid 2012, accept preorder money. Delivery promised Oct/Nov 2012.
2. BFL_Josh INABA, NO RELATION insults people for questioning AMAZING specs that blow Avalon out of the water.
3. First shipping date missed, Inaba insults more people. Sometimes he insults the same ones over again; inefficient, I know, but Inaba is just that dedicated to customer service. Of a company he’s not part of. That he claims he’s helping by “drumming up support everytime I come [to BCT to insult you retards].”
4. Revised shipping date missed, at some point in here (Dec ’12-Jan ’13ish) Avalon allows orders for Batch 1, takes peoples money, and ships, all while BFL still complains about how hard making ASICs is.
5. Its now 2013 and BFL is still making excuses, because damn guys, making ASICs is freaking hard! You do it if you’re so special! Nevermind that we run an ASIC company, shit’s hard! Because we suck!
6. Respec happens: Each mining device is underperforming and overdrawing. They increase the number of chips and the size of the machines, move them all up one step in case size and announce the good news to everyone. “Hey y’all, you’re paying more for a machine that does less with more power! Thanks for ordering!” By the way, at this point (March 27th I believe) Avalon ships Batch #2. That’s two sets of ASICs created and shipped while BFL still bumbles with respecs.
7. Somebody points out that, legally, they have to ask for reconfirmation. Right now, they are in the process of confirming all of the pre-orders made before the respec was announced, at which point they will ship individually as orders are confirmed. Problem being, they have probably only made a dozen or two ASICs, at this point, and even if they had many more than that, it will still take months to clear their enormous backlong (according to some random bitcoiners, I didn’t do that math).
8. Somebody points out that the machines aren’t correctly certified. Apparently they are unlisted and don’t have the two certification stickers they need; I don’t know anything about this except that its a deal re: safety and insurance payouts when your miner burns down your house.

Wanna jump on this sweet action? It will only cost you hundreds or thousands of your American Earth Dollars (oh, they don’t take bitcoins) and several months of your time. Buy today!