Topic: [ANN] Spondoolies-Tech - carrier grade, data center ready mining rigs - page 20. (Read 1260290 times)

It's not that bad business practice to sell miners for less than they could feasibly earn. That would guarantee you a lot of market demand which means quick sales which gets your investment cost (plus profit) back pretty quickly. You lower the requirements for breakeven ROI, which can bring a lot of folks back to the game who would otherwise be cut out, which again increases your sales in addition to helping network distribution.
And compared to self-mining on machines instead of selling (or selling slowly due to high prices), it offsets the entire risk to the buyer, returns your investment instantly instead of drawing it out over the next year, and then you don't have the additional headache of establishing and maintaining your own mega farm.
That's how I'd do it.

The problem with miner sales hasn't so much been that people are charged too much. The real problems happen when people are charged about the right amount, and then when the gear arrives six months too late and the diff has doubled. Or when it doesn't arrive at all. If folks felt ripped off by the upfront price of gear they wouldn't buy it. The problem is when what was purchased isn't delivered at all or is delivered so late (or, as noted in this thread, delivered far out of promised spec) it ends up having less (or zero) worth compared to sales promises. "You can't cheat an honest person" makes no sense. You can; it's called "deception".

I bought ASICs and made good money on them too (AntMiner S1). Even at the time I knew the game that was being played and assessed my risk accordingly, which included getting out of the game at the right time. Not on topic for this thread though, except that last phrase.

Also on topic from the point of view of an observer reading these claims (including mine) about having done well buying magic money machines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-card_Monte#Drawing_a_player_in

Yes that happened, in addition to thinking someone was going to sell them a magic money machine for less than the amount of money said machine would magically create. "You can't cheat an honest person".

A very few people ordered miners thinking they would break even or lose money because they wanted to mine altruistically to support the network. Those are indeed potential innocent victims. A tiny number, though.

Its not easy to trade an illiquid penny stock on something like OTC as no ones going to give you a short position so once the stale order book gets eaten through it doesn't matter what the price is because you can't trade. The volumes even in the last few days are quite low, in the order of $200,000 over the last 5 days from their market cap of $20M odd. Unfortunately BTCS has quite a few creditors are vendors who received payment in stock so this is going to hurt many a business.

Yah! I was so stupid for buying those knc machines back in 2013. #fail

Some people did, yeah. The rest, however, got "ripped off" on ASICs because they thought the people selling would actually deliver something near promised spec sometime near promised deadline. Or, you know, at all.

Did not think about it but with message coming out Sunday about stopping operations wonder if anyone made money going against BTCS stock Monday at opening- http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=BTCS+Interactive#{%22range%22:%225d%22,%22allowChartStacking%22:true}

And this thread sure is interesting to watch to say the least.

"You can't cheat an honest person"

People got "ripped off" on ASICs because they thought someone was going to sell them a magic money machine for less than the amount of money said machine would magically create. #fail

TBH I haven't bothered to check where you fit in all of this. I'm just guessing it's bad.

Yes, there is risk connected to the likelihood of things working out as planned with pre-orders. But what we saw with BFL, Hashfast, Cointerra, Avalon and eventually even KnC was that they made promises they knew they couldn't keep. That's an extra spice that changed the game quite a bit. Hence the strong words hurled in their direction by their customers/victims.

How rude!   

Pre-ordering ASICs is risky for a large number of reasons.

In Spondoolies' case they blamed TSCM for the chips failing to meet speed and efficiency specs, in a perfect example of cascading counterparty risk.

Fascinating!

You're actually trying to rationalize it! Maybe there is a beaten down soul in that black heart of yours after all.

Pre-ordering ASICs is thought of as risky because lying so-and-so's like yourself made it risky.

To use that as some kind of a defense now is .... imaginative.

Have you used that line with your buddy Gmaxwell? Wasn't he scammed by Didn't he gamble with Hashfast?

I didn't state either way whether the compensation was fair or not, and instead took it as an assumption as its a separate topic.

That's a big, controversial assumption.

The SP3X compensation may have accounted for the lower hashrate, but Spondoolies also missed by a wide margin their GH/W power spec.

Regardless, I can't agree with your choice to use the word "victims."

Bitcoin is very risky (it could suddenly break or become obsolete).

Mining with ASICs is an order of magnitude riskier than just hodling BTC (because price/difficulty).

Pre-ordering ASICs is the riskiest of all (because of all the above plus counterpary/firm risk).  It's not for widows, orphans, or the faint of heart.

If you lose a game at a casino or a wager with a bookie, you are not a "victim" and the casino/bookie is not a fucking "scammer."

Spare us the ex post facto infantilization of compulsive gamblers (who either possess extremely high risk tolerance or have no business pre-ordering ASICs).

Thx for giving us your take on this. These things tend to get dug up again in Bitcoin-land so it doesn't hurt to have some pointers when people are going to necro this in the future.

I am unsure if it would be best to describe my position with Spondoolies as "hired", otherwise I would have "worked" with most of the hardware industry by now.

• Spondoolies provided an SP10, SP30, SP20 and SP35 for evaluation.
• Spondoolies had me sign an NDA in order to discuss very specific business matters.
• While I often provided "consulting" - especially around releases - I was never remunerated for these services.
• Spondoolies also provided access to their affiliate scheme.

That was the limit of our relationship. It just so happens that they decided not to pay me under their own affiliate scheme agreement, hence our relationship will continue for quite some time via lawyers.


My opinion: Directly or indirectly, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly, RoadStress was utilised to discredit or shout over anyone who disagreed with Spondoolies. He was paid for his affiliate sales and so is happy but shouted down others who weren't. I really don't see much difference between RoadStress and ICEBREAKER Cypherdoc other than RoadStress is promoting a product that didn't immediately damage consumers, assuming the SP3X compensation they gave was sufficient. There are victims in both scenarios unfortunately.

Edit: I meant Cypherdoc.

I like your signatures.

Saved for posterity:

From RoadStress:

"iCEBREAKER is a troll! He and cypherdoc helped HashFast scam 50 Million $ from its customers !
H/w Hosting Directory & Reputation - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/hw-hosting-directory-reputation-622998"

From iCEBREAKER:

"Spondoolies...'merged' and took the money and ran....
For Roadstress The Cheerleader Shill, this bankruptcy is "a fun ride."  For BTCS investors and shareholders, it is devastating.
ROADSTRESS is a troll.  He helped Spondoolies scam 100 MILLION $ from BTCS and group buyers."

---

Makes me think SP-Tech and Hashfast may have been a bit amateurish in their choice of business partners.

SP-Tech did hire Dogie though. Too bad they didn't pay him.

But I guess it was cheaper to pay RoadStress to attack him (I can't remember Cypher attacking people for money. Oh well, he did work for the same people as iCEBREAKER, that should carry some punishment I guess.).

What a tangled web we weave.

Making a competitive chip is a multi-million-dollar undertaking right now, so buying a chip from an existing manufacturer is a better way to start. Except that the existing manufacturers aren't selling, or claim they'll be selling but are sorely dragging their feet.

Why isn't there a company that makes a single chip or single board miner that costs less than $100, performs better than 1TH and has no fans or noise?  Its unfortunate they didn't stick around, but I would have bought another spondoolies product if there had have been something that made sense for the enthusiast/regular consumer.  I'm not sure why another company doesn't go after this market?  A $100 price point would attract a lot more hobby miners.  A lottery type device that is directed at a pool for that purpose would be very attractive to the non technical type.  I contemplated doing the same thing with a bitmain u3, but it appears like it is completely unreliable. 

You really missed me right?

Please show me my endorsement thread which is equivalent with cypherdoc's endorsement thread (which can be found at https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/hashfast-endorsement-270363) otherwise you are talking out of your ass and not backing up your statements as you always like to do.

RoadStress, you endorsed Spondoolies with "no chip developing technical skills and with no tech start-up business skills."