The last year has been a frustrating one for many BFL customers that pre-ordered one of BFL’s Bitforce SC Bitcoin miners. After having recently received my BFL Jalapeno I’ve decided to go ahead and put together a review of the Jalapeno. What follows is a brief history of Butterfly Labs as well as a quick tutorial on setting up the BFL Jalapeno.

Butterfly Labs

Butterfly Labs, abbreviated BFL, is a manufacturer and online retailer of a unique line of Bitcoin mining hardware. Their initial foray into Bitcoin came with a line of FPGAs. FPGAs represented a significant improvement over the use of Graphics Cards in that they reduced power consumption considerably. However, FPGAs did come with a higher price tag making the initial investment a bit steeper.

Then in mid 2012 Butterfly Labs announced that they would be producing a new line of Bitcoin miners using ASIC technology (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). Unlike FPGAs, these miners would be built with the sole purpose of mining Bitcoin and would do so at much higher speeds and lower costs. BFL began taking pre-orders for their line of Bitcoin ASICs in late June of 2012 with a purported shipping timeline of Fall 2012.

However, delays ensued and Butterfly Labs continually pushed the ship date back. The events that followed have led to a bit of a running joke in the Bitcoin community, that BFL will ship in “just two weeks”. Butterfly Labs continually changed their shipping dates, assuring their customers that their ASIC miners would be shipping shortly, even before they had a viable product.

The first customers to pre-order received their BFL ASICs roughly one year after their pre-order date, in June of 2013. In that time several other Bitcoin manufacturers managed to ship their products. Companies such as Avalon ASIC and ASIC Miner beat BFL to the market resulting in a drastic increase in difficulty prior to BFL customers receiving their orders.

Source: cryptojunky.com