Topic: 1GH/s, 20w, $500 — Butterflylabs, is it a scam? - page 59. (Read 123109 times)

Hello.

Your discussion thread about our company was brought to our attention and as a result, I was assigned to come and shed some light on what you can expect from our product releases over the next several months.  I believe there may be useful applications for our processors in your market, but there seems to be some confusion about us and what we make.  I hope to clear that up.

Having said that, I've just read your complete thread and I now feel like a bloody lamb being dipped in a pool of sharks...  so please, go easy on me as an outsider.  

Firstly, I would like to point out that we have yet to go public with our BitForce release.  At some point recently, several notables from the bitcoin community found out about our development and approached us about applications for the bitcoin market.  Since then we have been working on bitcoin mining compatibility for our drivers.  The pre-order offer which you are discussing is meant to provide these people early access to our hardware.  Our public announcement will come in roughly two weeks.  Why not now?  Because we're not ready.

Regarding the press release draft someone found, we didn't know about that until it was mentioned here, thanks for that.  It seems one of our staff used an online PR generator several weeks ago in preparation for our announcements.  Apparently it auto published a draft along with a link for penis enlargement.  Excellent.  Luckily, they pulled it down on request.  I sincerely thank you all for this heads up.  It could have been more embarrassing than it was.

Regarding the server enclosure, yes it is indeed a server enclosure that we don't manufacture.  I'm not sure what the controversy is as we haven't falsely claimed to be a server enclosure manufacturer.  (Having said that, we actually do make aluminum enclosures, just small ones.)  The Rig Box product will be a lower volume production so we felt it would be more cost effective to use off the shelf parts.  I believe the site you found the enclosure on is a supplier to OEM's like us.  However, we don't buy ours from them because they're too expensive.  In any case, to clarify further...   we may not even use that enclosure in the end due to spacing considerations.  We simply haven't finalized the engineering.  That is also why there is no across the board pricing, performance or release specifications set in stone on our website for the Rig Box based products.  So, in sum...  please be patient and you can properly bash us when we're finished.

Why do we have a rendering of a PCB on the website?  Mostly because it looks pretty good.  If a picture of a PCB is needed for analysis by engineers in the crowd in order to become comfortable with us, then I invite you to take a look at these photos of our actual October production of Pre-Order units.  Yes, they may be Photoshop images...  and then again maybe they're not.  







Guys, I may not be here every day, but I'll stop by frequently enough to answer your questions.  In sum, I'm glad to meet you all and I trust you will come to appreciate our products over the coming months as we reveal the complete technical details.

Regards,
BFL

they already know about this.

see this: https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/bfl-44366

LMFAO, check this out. They even came here to chat with us.  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15672.msg585463#msg585463

  Should we point them to this thread now or let em sweat it out a bit trying to convince people? ;p



 Edit; NM, they are aware;

I want that animated MLP banner like pinkiepie's that says 'haters/gonna/hate', except with this for my sig.

I can tell you're a good scammer arent you ?
 

  ahhh, someone paid attention in Psy101. ;p

  truth, he speaks it.

Goal is to sell as many as possible contracts in a short time frame for a decent amount of money. Offering a "too good to be true" offer is probably the best way to suck many people in to it. If the price is too high many cannot afford it, if the quality is not far superior than anything out there it's not that interesting.

Many people who fall for scams do have doubts that it's a scam but the anxiety of losing a real good possibility is what makes them buy it anyways.

I would feel bad if it was a better scam.

I mean it shows how out of touch they are.  1GH/s 20w, $500. LOLZ.

Why not just go with 1TH/s, -1W (it generates electricity), $199.99 (plus free S&H if you call in the next 10 minutes).

A slightly more realistic scam (but still awesom if real) would be maybe 500MH/, 25W, $600.  That combined w/ better website some faked youtube video, a sligthly less polished PCB (remember this is homegrown first run), and maybe a plant on this forum could have net a decent number of "sales".

Then agains scammers gonna scam.  Always think they need to make the scam bigger.  Best scam is one that is slightly plausible.

I dont know about you guys, but i feel pretty stupid  not pulling this scam sooner. Now butterfly beats me to it.

I'm sad..... pretty sad.

I have made multiple phone calls to the number provided and no return call what-so-ever. You would think that they would try to entertain a client who is willing to purchase a large qty as well as travel to their facility.

Good catch guys. Couldnt find that one with google image search.

   Aye, I see they even went as far as bluring out the 'Raid 0' on the display on the black one and looks that they tried to modify it all together on the white one. I had posted a reply to the white one asking if you had a photo of the black, but kittie hit the backspace key on me. ;p

  The raid certainly explains the appearance of the swap bays on the inside of the box. i thought it odd looking for any kind of PCB slide in to be capped at the ends like that inside the enclosure. ;p
  

Cheers for the research, m8

edit;crap typing fixed

The reason the black one doesnt look like real plaint:

BUTTERFLY LABS:


Original:

The white box is a 'stock image' used at a number of sites.  There are multiple angles here:

This is the butterfly image:


Here is the box over at OEM Export
http://www.oemexport.com/super-lcm-raid-enclsoure-with-raid-function-swappable-function-four-bays-p-946.html?zenid=34vcahkstrsfitdhi9llsdjca4





I'm sure we could dig up the black one too...

   hehe, I was thinking the same thing. But, the black box, cheap low-sheen black does look like real paint. ;p
  The lcd frame seems normal to me. The parts that stand out, but could just be poor ISO on the camera are the very fine shadows/lines around the buttons where the shadows do not seem inset as much as they should. The depth just isn't there. Same around the actual enclosure frame.  I also note that the enclosure screw at the bottom of the black one is much more noticeable than on the white one. Suggesting either different pics or that the white one is the PS and lost some of its depth in the process.

  LOL, same. But wanted to add some other considerations for those with better PS spotting abilities than I to look at.

Waiting for the Canary's field report

To possibly prove a scam, Ive been looking very hard for a photo that resembles their "rig enclosure". I found only one that comes pretty close.
Here is the butterfly pic:



This is an OWC NAS:



It is very similar, but I have not been able to find a picture of the OWC from the same perspective and everything, so if this is a scam, it would probably mean they had studio photography done on a similar box (like the OWC) and then photoshopped it. Pretty elaborate for a scam. If its a 3D rendering, then its quite an excellent one.

Its hardly bullet proof evidence, but this thing may be legit. Its not like they needed fancy pictures of enclosures to make the scam work. And a more likely explanation for the similarity is that the cases are build by the same company using off the shelve parts and/or designs.


edit: on second thought, I focused on the white box, but the black box does seem more like a poor photoshop job:



Check the white around the LCD...

Hmmm.. okay, Im undecided

Duh. Of course. Fax machine listens in on calls and if it hears that horrible beeping, it receives the fax. At least it worked like that 10 years ago when I still had a fax and a land line

Can a phone and fax number be the same?

The driver links are all not working.   Nice site but maybe a more functional site will be better.