Firstly, their true NRE costs are closer to $200-300k IMHO.
Secondly, $200-300k is not "nothing". I bet they tried to raise investor money, but didn't find any. $210/day/unit is a lot, but Bitcoin still remains relatively a risky investment.
The problem is that they can print money if they are released before their competition, but we don't know when the competition will ship. (In retrospect we can see that Avalon batch 1 shipped before BFL, but there was no way to know that ahead of time and batch 2 is still unknown.) So I can understand why outside investors would refuse to touch it and why the Avalon developers might have decided to reduce their risk.
Comments
Firstly, their true NRE costs are closer to $200-300k IMHO.
Secondly, $200-300k is not "nothing". I bet they tried to raise investor money, but didn't find any. $210/day/unit is a lot, but Bitcoin still remains relatively a risky investment.
If these things can print money, then they're worth $200-300k.
If they can't, then they're not worth $1.k/ea.
The problem is that they can print money if they are released before their competition, but we don't know when the competition will ship. (In retrospect we can see that Avalon batch 1 shipped before BFL, but there was no way to know that ahead of time and batch 2 is still unknown.) So I can understand why outside investors would refuse to touch it and why the Avalon developers might have decided to reduce their risk.