Topic: Butterflylabs Huge SCAM - page 171. (Read 415663 times)

I said it was a scam as well, but forum moderator "psy" saw it fit to delete my post.  Seems to go in line with this forums policy to protect and promote scans.

Funny how the whole libertarian freedom thing goes out the window once you go against the moderator's personal veiws.

N = NP ?  Na...

It is a long con. The con is on the Nth product generation. All products up to generation N-1 will be valid products that will be delivered to customers. On the Nth generation they will take your pre-order money and run.

The question is, what is N? 

Will N happen during my lifetime?

Does N = 2?

Does that mean they are going to extend their long con to infinity with all the effort they put into their company?

I just clicked the media link in their menu bar and it's a Google search for butterfly labs (no quotes): https://www.google.com/search?q=butterfly+labs

Successful shipments may occur in order to get those who are holding off to release their cash. Of course, this is getting into somewhat Machiavellian territory but consider that even Madoff was paying out at first.

Again, I'm not saying that this *is* a scam, I really don't know. Just if you're going in, go in with your eyes open.

Personally, to me, the big red flag is this Sonny chap. If I was buying, I'd want to know when he came on board and what he's bringing to the table. If it's something that seems true good to be true (cheap fab etc), well, you know the rest.

This is what I did with my BFL singles and now I happily own several... for some it is better to be safe and a little late, for others they'll happily make the risks to get maximum reward.  I am only going to "trade-in" part of my BFLs until things are fully proven to take the middle ground risk/reward ratio

even if i will be a month or so late to the ASIC party, i will be waiting for posts of successful shipments before ordering from any of the manufactures. 

Remember BitDayTrade/BDT? "Yes, he had some concerning issues in the past, but everyone deserves a second opportunity, what he proposes is so awesome"... bitcoins down the drain.

I agree.  Given the insane scam to honest business ratio in the bitcoin world just that fact alone makes me not even consider doing business with them.

He may be right, but he may also be heavily invested in ASIC purchases and trying to dissuade others from also joining in on ASIC fun. You know, so he gets a bigger slice of the pie

You're asking about the BFL ASIC chips? I imagine they have hired the relevant talent by now.

Before they made Bitcoin related devices, didn't BFL do ASICs for other stuff? They might have already had the talent on hand.

Who engineered these complicated pieces of hardware? Doesn't this require industrial facilities with extremely specialized equipment and people with extremely precise expertise?

I would have to agree with this sentiment... *if* the shit goes sour, the employees will be just as shocked as the victims.

I worked for a small telemarketing company when I was a young man... back when the world was in black & white and dinosaurs roamed the earth. One day when we showed up for work, the doors were chained shut by the feds and the owners were long gone. I mean, they ran off with the money OVERNIGHT. No-one was more shocked than the regional manager who gave all 20 of us $50 out of his own bank account so that people could eat while we waited for the unemployment checks to start.

We sold a real product that really existed. It wasn't worth $299 but it was real. We worked in a real office, there was nice furniture and we paid taxes and had health benefits. Just your normal phone room. Shit we had people who took care of the plants. No one had any clue they were part of an elaborate scam.

 This was the vitamin craze of the mid 80s. What we didn't know is about 6 months earlier they just stopped shipping orders and pocketed all the money. The customers got their first week's supply of vitamins cause we shipped that out of our office ourselves but they never got the rest of the year supply they paid for or the "special bonus item" they were promised which was a cheap boom-box.

 they had offices in vegas, providence RI, and atlanta GA. The feds chained all the doors at all the locations the same morning and they were not able to catch 1 single person who pulled a runner with the cash.

   When tax time came, the government wanted their tax money. The scammers had kept the tax money they had deducted from our paychecks and pocketed that too. The government didn't care that we had been scammed, we still had to pay double taxes that year.

+1. I'm not sure that this is a scam but if it is, I suspect that the devs/other employees at BFL will be among the victims.

Its a scam, run some good history on the company then boom - hit a fake product and people latch onto it and run, they pay, they tell their friends and they pay too.

Then the CEO does the runners, or BFL gets hacked...

Just wait for it

Timing is good as such for BFL to make more sales. If they release them now, before the block reward dropsm they won't hit the whole market. There are still people outthere with enough graphic cards to render data for a 1h movie in 12 seconds ..  Half of the reward will push any dedicated miner to retire their GPUs when the ASICs are shipping  .. eventually. Also, longer waiting helps BFL to get more money for promises (i.e. preorders). Why hurry?

I may not be very knowledgeable on this subject from a Bitcoin economy standpoint.

However, consider this view: Reward for bitcoin mining about to be halved. Need for new machinery to have a stronger hashrate to increase you reward comes at the same time. Introduction of new machinery makes older machinery relatively obsolete. New machinery costs a significant amount more forcing prior miners to purchase new machinery to attempt to keep up or to move on to a different bitcoin product.

The timing is just intriguing to me regardless of intentions.

I agree.  They nwill start shipping before the end of the year!  Then we'll see how many pre orders there were and how many compalints from those that didnt buy in and are priced out of mining when the difficulty goes up by 10x!

I can prove that BFL has shipped product in the past.

The thing is --- the type of technology they're developing isn't cutting edge... its old. Nobody bringing 'state-of-the-art' tech to the table. Not as it relates to computer science as a whole. We've got 23nm silicon being grown now... BFL is making what... 90 or 120?

The point is, it's not like they're trying to compete with Intel or AMD for the "fastest" chip ever made. They're bringing tried and true tech to a market that's never had an asic before. It's a first step.

I'm betting that we'll see all pre-orders shipped before the end of 2012 - and the skeptics will be wishing they'd taken the risk.