Topic: Butterflylabs Huge SCAM - page 65. (Read 415652 times)

You make a very good point here, but there are some other thing to be considered:

How many of the people who paid $2600 in BTC for these miners would not have spent it on something else?   

What if you were holding stock instead of BTC and decided to sell it for $30 a share to make a $1300 purchase, would it be fair to blame the company you bought from if the stock then rises to $100 a share?  It's not like BFL held onto all this BTC they were paid, they had to sell it or use it in their purchases.

Technically they were investors as it was known at the time that BFL did not have this technology in hand and would be creating, testing and perfecting it.  Purchasing something that you KNOW is in development is an investment into the company to produce said items.  Look at ASICMiner, originally he set out to build units for sale, but then decided to mine with them instead and pay out dividends.

@Sgtspike I believe you mean June 2012, as they were not offering ASICs in 2011.

I myself didn't order until June of this year, and unlike the majority of people I see whining, I am content to wait as I know they are in production and I will get what I paid for.  I daily laugh at the comment of people crying because 'they are losing out on potential mining profits' all because BFL is a scam.  Since BFL *is* shipping, they aren't a scam.  They may have been too optomistic about what they could produce and when, but they aren't a scam.  If they were truly a scam, no one would have received a single piece of equipment and they would have vanished into the night never to be heard from again.

Let's look into this 'loss of mining profits' a second though.  Let's assume BFL did fulfill they expectations and shipped back in Nov or Dec last year.  Boom, network difficulty skyrockets.  Conservative estimates from just using people who listed their orders are that over 1 PetaHash of speed would have been added to the network from the 1st 6 months orders.  Imagine that the network speed jumped by 50x in December 2012.  GPUs would be worthless for BTC now and altcoins would be flooded with them, causing their difficulty to also rise.  Guess what though?  BTC is < $30.  People anxious to recoup their investments are dumping their coins and prices drop (sound familiar?  BTC dropped from $120 to $60 after the network hash almost doubled in the last 2 months, it has since rebounded to about $90).  The dynamic has shifted though and ASIC mining is the only way to go, only with the network hash where it is, ASIC cost is getting prohibitive.

Now where are we though?  Would Bitcoin have taken off in April if ASICs ruled the market and the average Joe would have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to be competitive?  Would we still have dozens of alt-coins to play with?

None if it matter thou, cause it is all speculation abiout 'what if....'.  There are a lot of people who would not now be in BTC mining if ASICs had come out on schedule cause it would never be worthwhile unless BTC could somehow spike to $1000 or more.

Yes and in a couple of days, yes.

I doubt I'll make my BTC back either.  But I'll still be making a huge profit.

BFL's prices were clearly listed in USD, not BTC.  Therefore, the refund they give will be in equivalent USD value.  If BTC had dropped to $0.25/ea between the time of the order and now, do you think people would be complaining that they received back 20x the original Bitcoins they had paid?  Or, if BFL was doing what you want, and only refunding the original BTC amount, do you think people would be complaining that they received a BTC refund only worth $65 when they paid $1,300 of BTC to begin with?  The fact of the matter is, the only fair way to refund people is by using the original written purchase price, which was denominated in USD, not BTC.

If you think it's criminal, take them to court about it and see if you can find a judge anywhere to agree with you.  I doubt you'll find one.

If you spent 200 BTC on a miner, and still don't have your machine, I highly doubt that you'll be making your BTC back in the next couple years, if ever, in light of the increasing difficulty.  People lost out in terms of opportunity, sure, but BFL is obligated to return what was paid for not delivering as well.

Further more, BFL's choice to refund people who paid BTC in $ instead of BTC was criminal, and anyone associated with the company deserves a scammer tag for that alone.

I don't know what you are on about SgtSpike.

So you're saying you have them already and are profiting?

This is nonsense. What are you blabbering about?


To invest what money? People had BTC (not USD) BEFORE they purchased pre-orders from BFL. And they lost in a biiiig way compared to those that wisely decided to not purchase anything from BFL.

I'm not wrong.  I bought two miners for $2,600 worth of Bitcoins.  I could have instead invested that money in Bitcoins (by not spending it).  I will make way more than $2,600 with these miners, so I will definitely make a profit.  If I had invested in Bitcoins at the time, I could have more profit than I would have made if I had not purchased these miners.

Bitcoin would have made a better investment, but I am still profiting with these miners.

There is functionally ZERO difference between someone who bought a $1,300 miner with BTC and someone who bought a $1,300 miner with USD.  Both had equal opportunity to invest that money in BTC instead of miners.  If the one who bought with BTC had instead kept his money in BTC, he would have around $23,400 today.  If the one who bought with USD had instead invested that $1,300 in BTC, he would have around $23,400 today.

You are still wrong man.  That's assuming that people get their devices and are able to mine back the BTC that they used to pay for it.  At this point, you have a recovery of %0.5 recovery a day, and dropping.  Dropping exponentially.  In 15 more days, it'll probably be closer to  %0.1 and then 15 days after that %0.05.  In 200 days you still will be at something like %45.764742155 recovery, earning %0.000005 BTC a day.  Get it?  The earlier you got in on BFL (paying with BTC), the more screwed you get coming out.  Definitely more so than cash spenders.  Avalon was the way to go.  Actually, anything BTC related that wasn't a scam was the way to go.  Obviously.

I disagree with your point, but understand it.  People who paid with BTC (assuming they get their units before the difficulty goes through the roof) will probably have more BTC afterward.  However, they would have even more BTC had they done something else, such as if they had sold BTC at $250 and then bought it back at even where it is, $90 (actually $94 just checked).

And if, as most people even those who use BTC, they denominated their net worth in some other currency, like USD, they spent BTC on their pre-orders at USD values back when BTC was worth much less, and had they not even made a purchase, but simply sat on their BTC, they'd already have made a huge profit.  So buying a pre-order was a huge mistake.  It was based on the notion that BFL was going to deliver product with vastly greater specs than anyone else was able to deliver.  It was coming any day now.  So stay away from Avalon and anyone else (those who are actually delivering reliably).

That's really where the scam part comes in.

LOL... The only reason they have been proven wrong is because BFL failed to keep their side of the deal. BFL failed to deliver what they've been paid for. Moreover, customers don't take capital risks. Investors do. Are you saying BFL customers are investors?!

Interesting. Would you mind quoting this definition? Simple math shows people that paid their BFL pre-orders one year ago in BTC have lost a lot of capital. What are your calculations?

I'm not sure what your point is.  Again, we're back to hindsight is 20/20, and Bitcoin itself would have been a better investment than miners.  People who pre-ordered mining machines back in June 2011 obviously thought they would be a better investment than Bitcoin itself, took the risk, and have thus been proven wrong.  They will still make a profit, but will not make as great a profit as they would have had they simply saved or invested in Bitcoin itself.

I was refuting the notion that "nobody paid with BTC".  It's an absurd notion.  

Regardless how you measure the bottom line, the promises made versus what was delivered have both heaven and hell between them.  People who paid with BTC lost an immediate opportunity, but I'm sure they won't mind waiting an exponential to infinite amount of time to mine their 200 BTC back, in sight the ever increasing difficulty.  Considering, too, that there is a direct correlation between BTC and $ in this transaction, the fluctuations in trade values have to be included in the calculations as well.

I was simply refuting the point that people who paid in BTC are failing to make a profit.  Purchasers of BFL miners who paid with BTC will still make a profit, at least according to the definition of profit used by every businessperson in the world.  It is inaccurate to say that people who purchased using BTC will not make a profit compared to people who paid with USD.  Both types of purchasers used the same amount of value to buy the miners, both will make a profit, and both could (likely) have had a greater profit had they simply invested directly in BTC instead of buying miners.

This is wrong.  Bitpay allows the merchant to chose the conversion after the fact ($ or BTC, or both).  If the BTC was converted entirely to $ then it was, in fact, by BFL's election; nobody else's.  (aka BFL is entirely liable for this decision)  I know that sounds like lawyer speak, whomever, but what it really means is simply, BFL chose to convert the BTC to $ and thus lose the value on their own.  Everyone who spent BTC for devices, paid BTC for devices.  There isn't any way around it after the fact.  None of your terms, as illegal that they might already be, touches this point.

Lukejrk - Sorry for the misidentification, but you are still an asshat to suggest that because enron existed, people get raped, etc, such is life.  Fix it or gtfo.

BFL was a pioneer in the ASIC community for bitcoin miners. They absorbed a very large portion of the wealth among early adopters and the general bitcoin community. People who believe in bitcoins and invested in this company with the expectation that they would come good on their promises to deliver an Asic machine in Oct 2012.  After many many promises later, fast forward to Jul 2013 and still very few people have had that promise fulfilled and the backorder log is so substantial that at the current shipping rates the company has almost no hope of delivering goods to all customer hands.

This is irreparable damage.  It's called opportunity cost. You take funds from one bucket of people that could have continued to invest in other areas of the community.  Invested in a different manner they could have continued to further benefit the community and general bitcoin population instead of being tied up in a company that has provided almost ZERO real world value comparative to the money invested in them.  Drum up the PR nightmare for fraud and misrepresentation that Butterfly and guys like Josh have created and the pile grows.

There is the possibility it only continues to get worse as well.  We can assume the company delivers all units tomorrow from its backlog and the damage is constricted only to the opportunity cost.  If the alternative ensues, the company continues to fail to deliver and worse files for bankruptcy and ends up fighting litigation for failure to deliver products and refund customers then the stain on the community is egregious.

I came close to jumping in on a BLF rig.

Yes, I agree, they would have been better off to sit on their BTC.  They'd also have been in better shape to use that USD on some penny stock that went up 10,000%.  I mean, we could go on about what-if scenarios, but since no one knows the future, they're kind of pointless.

Sorry, no I'm not luke-jr. I'm lucasjkr. Back in early 90's I could have my screen name on many sites just be "lucas". But lots of other Lucas' started using the internet. So then I had to be LucasK (but apparently there are other people named Lucas with that last initial as well) then LucasJK (but again, lots of people with those initials). But "LucasJKr is rare (if i try to sign up on a site and the user name is taken, it's usually because I already registered there before). So, no relation to luke-jr and I certainly didn't choose my screen name to cause confusion.

I still don't see any irreparable harm that they caused. Sure, they caused a sting and some disappointment, but such is life. The community itself seems to be operating just fine, Asic miner and Avalon are doing their things, and lots of rumors of future devices on the horizon (KNC Miner, for instance). Hardly irreparably harm.

I also don't get the constant complaint of the bitcoin denominated returns. People who paid in BTC rather than dollars in mid 2012 complaining that their 2013 investment won't return as many bitcoins. Nevermind that Bitcoin is worth 10x more today as it was then, and never mind that nobody but nobody knew what the future held.

Sure, bitcoin was at $6 in June and higher ever since. that was hardly pre-ordained - it could have just as easily did what it did from June 2011 to June 2012 (ie, lost another 80% of its value). And if anyone thinks they really did "know", why pay in BTC at all? Why not just have used dollars?

LOL... How is it useless? Investors in gold are doing it all the time! You obliviously have little to no experience in gold investments.

Investment in gold = Investment in shares of gold mining companies = Investment in gold mining equipment. This relation is so obvious that it doesn't require any special arguments.

Investment in BTC is 100% equal to investment in bitcoin ASIC! Price elasticity between the two is zero! If bitcoin price drops to zero the price of your bitcoin ASIC will drop to zero as well becauser a bitcoin ASIC is useless for anything else but mining bitcoins. You'll even have to pay a fee to dump it in electronic garbage depo.

It doesn't really matter if they paid in BTC or in USD for their ASICs one year ago. They are losers both ways. If they purchased BTC with the USD they spent for "pre-orders" they'd be much more profitable than waiting for an ASIC for one year and trying to make a profit now. This difference in profitability is confiscated by BFL to the extend that BFL customers will never see positive bitcoin ROI. I'm envisioning the average BFL customer, of course. BFL crooks have bribed a large group of bitcoin activists including mods on this forum. This is the only reason they still don't have official scammer tag there!