Topic: Butterfly labs refusing escrow for $300k order (Read 5347 times)

I agree. BTL should have been asking for monies for R&D and stated at what ever level of investment you MAY receive the appropriate first run rig according to your level of investment.  We all know now why they did this! It's a lot harder to get people to invest in something that doesn't exist yet. In my opinion it's morally wrong and illegal in the US. They better deliver soon before the FTC starts getting complaints.

I've been saying this since last summer where they were stalling on delivering singles and mini rigs.

umm?
 you using YOUR money or other people's money too...
that's quite an investment !

+1  It really IS harder than it looks!

You think the average person has the know-how to develop their own ASIC? Tom was able to put together several Bitcoin ventures, and sell many FPGA units, but fell flat on his face when trying to build an ASIC. I (and I'm sure a lot of others) would much rather just buy a product from someone else and not have to worry about the headaches and risk that goes along with developing your own ASIC.

$300k could cover NRE cost of building your own ASICs, and a significant quantities afterwards/ Remember, you don't need to beat power efficiency of current vendors, you only need to beat their dollar-per-hash/s price, which is not hard at all. This is what ASICMINER did with ~$120k, and are happily mining!
You would need to team up so you cover all the bases of the project, but given BFL track record and obvious incompetence at all levels, your investment would be much less risky then giving it to Josh, Sonny, et al.

Hw much interest has BFL earned on the USD they collected ?

This is a good point. If you paid with BTC and you asked for a refund and they refunded you with USD that would be very odd.  What it you were allergic to USD or hated it?

Sure it could.  An escrow account is better leverage to borrow against than purchase orders or some other statement of intent to buy that is only a contract with no collateral.




Thanks for the info.  I've been reading about Bitpay.  So Bitpay got the BTC.

I can see where people got real confused with differences in payments based on an exchange rate.

You must be correct. My bad.

Yes the trip to Vegas didn't cost much, at least not for the hardware display.   

Who says he doesn't diversify?

THIS ^ makes BFL a PONZI.

Pay off earlier customers with new customer money...rinse repeat. Let's hope BFL didnt blow the bulk of their pre order moniez on stupid stuff.

That is a really stupid way of investing 300k into bitcoin mining.

You should at least diversificate.

I'm sure BFL is happy to let you wait until they fill all current preorders and you don't have to wait 4 months anymore.

I think BFL is using BitPay for their preorders so the bitcoins are converted to USD as soon as someone pays via bitcoin.  That's what started the whole issue with people not understanding that they were being refunded the USD equivalent of what they paid when they paid it, when they got a refund for a bitcoin order.

Escrow will not allow them to refund earlier customers, pay contractors, and stash some away for a rainy day.

Damn. You want to buy 10 of the 1.5TH/s machines?  That's awesome.

Are you going to sell shares in a mining consortium or operate them alone?

I've been thinking of getting a 60GH/s machine and been trying to decide if I should wait for BFL or try and get in on Avalon with the much worse hash/watts ratio.

But if preordering in BTC now is the time to do it since USD to BTC is so high, as long as you trust you will receive delivery or a refund if BFL does not perform.

From what I read elsewhere when people preordered last year the exchange of USD/BTC was 6/1 or about ~217BTC per 60GH/s unit, now that unit is ~40BTC that's about ~5 times fewer BTC per unit.


Regardless BFL doing escrow or not, which apparently they do not, these preorder's for their ASIC's have made them BTC rich and a major player in the market for BTC.  From what I've read here originally USD/BTC was 6/1.  Seems to me if BFL was selling BTC at the time to cover costs that require currency (I know y'all state BTC is currency, I'm pretty sure it's a commodity) then it seems like USD/BTC would have dropped or remained close to $6.

I'm new to the game so I haven't yet spent the time researching all the exchanges and pricing on sell orders but somewhere someone with a plan is bidding up the price of BTC to make their position more valuable in UDS/BTC (Holds true for any currency that can be indexed to USD or traded for BTC).

If you were BFL what would you do with all the BTC you received for preorders?  Sit around and look at a digiwallet? Or get a broker/banker/market maker to drive up USD/BTC?

Sure for the time being BFL and other companies that accept BTC for items priced in USD or another currency are getting fewer BTC, but I think as soon as someone clears their inventory of BTC at the current market then USD/BTC will drop.

I'm new to this game and this is just my 0.00000002 Bitcents

Anyone else notice the ironically placed ad

http://gyazo.com/9e34c577993e6d7741570dd7329a154e.png

Interesting development....

Makes you think, doesnt it ?

Just got off the phone with butterfly labs and they refuse to give a discount or do escrow for 10 mini rigs worth $300k.  There is no way I will prepay that money while praying for 4 months. The guy was also extremely unfriendly.