Topic: Butterflylabs Huge SCAM - page 141. (Read 415652 times)

guys everyone needs to calm down a bit

I mean, it's not like BFL had a wildly successful and profitable FPGA business before launching the ASICs or anything.  If they had, they might be able to use their profits from the FPGA era to build the ASIC era, but since they never had a profitable FPGA business this couldn't have happened, right?  <-- This is sarcasm for the mentally impaired that might be reading this.

Oh wait, yes BFL did do all that... Oh shit...  Mooc Tals actually is a moron.  <--- This is not sarcasm, this is a simple statement of fact through the use of sarcasm.


You do realize BFL is a privately held company and is under no compulsion to answer any questions, right?  A lot of people don't understand the difference between a publicly traded company and a privately held company, I suspect you probably do, but many people don't, so I just wanted to be sure that everyone else understands that BFL is privately held.

When I worked in the oil and gas business, we would sometimes have wells that took years to develop. No income on the well and lots of investor money in the project. Then you have the prospect of a dry hole. High risk. High returns.


You cannot definitively know that. Price increases corresponded with the massive value increase of bitcoins. It's logical to assume a price increase especially considering relatively weak competition.


They could have run into issues with the near impossible wattage benchmark and delayed the product because of weak competition.


I will agree with you that it was a very poor business decision to move these dates without a great degree of transparency why. They should have opened their lab to a media source.


In these kickstarter days, I really don't distinguish between the two other than saying that we have more protection as consumers than investors.


That doesn't give this forum the right to promote fraud. We as a community must actively seek it out and punish those responsible. Bitcointalk cannot turn a blind eye to this for much longer. But we need to be patience and see what and when BFL delivers. They have a lot of questions to answer even if they deliver.

i see how you guys are calling this a scam as they are taking soo long to ship out but  less than 48 hours ago they did say they have started shipping out and not to mention they have shipped out fpga units before so i highly doubt they are a scam.

You have my signature.

Hey if you want to follow it to the tee. They take new investors money to keep operations going for more than 1 year. Have you run a business for a year with zero income? Have they created any products and shipped out to pay bills, employees, taxes, electricity, supplies?

NO

They took and used pre-order money to supplement their operation FOR A YEAR!!!! and when someone asks for their money back they get more pre-orders letting them off the hook for the older pre-orders and that tends to dry up capital. So now they raise the prices to compensate for the lack of fund.

Now they could be at the end of their R&D and about to ship products now or soon in the future but why was I told in October many times that my pre-order was estimated for delivery in the last weeks of Dec 2012 and they purchased a new location and were expecting benches for assembling the units in Feb 2013? Is that a lie? or a stretching of the truth?

So the ponzi scheme here is the perpetual lying of estimated ship dates. To look at their website and watch the dates of estimate shipping being changed from March to April and soon it will be changed to May. This has been going since October and from what I hear before that.

So its not a investment ponzi scheme, its a pre-order scheduled ponzi scheme all the same a lie and a fraud.

I would say check the forums but as BFL is a great advertising payer (more money from products they have not sold) they have been removed from here.

as you put it rant over

If they do, then I will still report them and also mount a campaign for a class action lawsuit. I will also petition for all BFL ads on bitcointalk to be removed.

You're hilarious.  I'm exactly the same way (waiting for 60 though).

They won't tell you anything. They will send your money back and just take other peoples money and drag this to October. Watch

I don't like insulting people, but you are an exception.  You're an idiot:  First of all, it says right on your pic that a ponzi scheme "Pays returns to its investors with from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investor." PAYS INVESTORS. You even highlighted and underlined it like the *retard* you are.  When the hell did BFL give ANY money to ANYONE that hasn't specifically requested a return?  NOWHERE do they have ANY kind of claim of the nature.   They offered a product and took money for it.  Although it took them a while to start shipping, THEY ARE SHIPPING.... PRODUCTS!!! NOT MONEY!!! IDIOT!!!  Not only did you succeed in making yourself look like a stupid asshole, but you also succeeded in pissing me off (among others, I'm sure) by posting a retarded thought that your stupid brain dropped onto a keyboard like the shit from an ass drops into a toilet.  

*rant over*

I ordered one. When it is connected to Slush's pool and I see 5 G/hashs of sweetness, then I will be happy. Until then:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbcctWbC8Q0

So, it's not a huge breakthrough but it's still better than a lot of you people thought.  BFL started shipping yesterday and even though it was one unit yesterday and three today, the point is: THEY STARTED SHIPPING!  So for all you people saying this is a ponzi scheme (which is a retarded thought because they didn't promise ANY kind of return, just a product, which they started to ship) or a scam, here you go: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody/136-shipping-update.html

I hope you enjoy the lost BTC because of your skepticism (especially those that got a refund, thanks for moving me up in line). 

We are and we aren't. From a legal sense we are not, but the purpose of this product is to generate revenue. Therefore, the only reason we are purchasing it is because we have made a decision our net ROI will be positive. If we were fed knowingly misleading information about the product, then this would be equivalent to a company telling its shareholders something untrue to maintain share price (convince us our ROI will still be positive).

We actually have more protection as consumers in that we can legally request a refund and involve paypal in this process. That said, I have become increasing more interested with how BFL has handled our money. And I am starting to see a very valid concern. If I do not receive a ship date for my BFL asic by the end of april, then I will email and post here a list of questions for BFL management to answer. Depending upon their answers, I will request a refund and contact the necessary parties within the government.

bfl is out

they have sent a few units out to buyers now...

it's only a matter of how long everyone else has to wait!

These schemes can go on for years like Madoff and that was legal until it went bust. You don't think that them raising prices is not a red flag? By everyone pre ordering is perpetuating this.

Well I'm hearing Oct now as a new ship date. I don't care if any of you get your miner it will always be too late.

Except we aren't investors in their company (or in financial assets managed by their company) and we receive no dividends/interest/return and were promised none. We are customers who pre-ordered products that haven't been delivered yet.

Again you are not in a position to determine the profitability of the ASICs. We could estimate a point at which profitability is probabilistically unlikely and then say they have committed fraud unless they refund the difference after shipping. But if they:

A) Deliver a real product as promised to the vast majority who pre-ordered
B) The product performs as the community expected or decided to agree upon revision (as indicated by their lack of cancellations of the preorder)
C) The company is capable of funding future operations based solely upon profits and debt explicitly solicited for operational capital.

Then no they are not a ponzi scheme. If BFL delays for another window without a partial refund, then you are correct that investors will likely not be able to recover their capital. In this case, they have committed fraud.

I will agree that they are poorly managed and have made bold promises that in hindsight were impossible to deliver. However, they have admitted to the revised numbers and the community who preordered has continued to maintain their orders. If BFL had continued to assert both the wattage and performance numbers and could not refund the money if requested, then yes they are a ponzi scheme.

Are you sure you read it correctly? Actually its worse than a ponzi scheme it gives no returns on investments.

Already refunded 1 jalapeno  and go for avalon