Dear BitSyncom,
I organized one of the first group-buys for Avalon ASICs with a total of 80k chips during the second half of April. I already received the first two orders, and while they arrived later than agreed, I understand the difficulties you faced with delivery and am happy to have enabled some DIY projects to produce boards with an expected break-even potential.
With the further delays and the recent development in the mining market, we already passed the point where your chips will ever see a ROI. While the accelerated development of next-gen ASICs and the resulting increase in difficulty is every miners' risk issue, the delay is not. Decision to order the chips was based on your ToS giving a 9-10 weeks delivery time, and with the remaining orders being late for at least 8 weeks you for sure are aware that the chips lost their chance to make back their investment.
As you can imagine, all users desperately waiting for their chips are becoming more and more impatient. I personally have ~200 very sad and upset people in my group-buy and I feel very desperate and helpless not being able to do anything about it.
Yifu, it is only some months ago where you have been one of the most respected and honored person in Bitcoinland. I strongly believe that all this mess is a result of issues out of your control. Nevertheless with power comes responsibility, and now it is on you to take responsibility for the masses of folks out there who put serious amount of coins into your chips. If you really care about Bitcoin and its community, you can't just stand there and watch how disappointed users leave the scene.
As group-buy organizer and large-scale buyer I would like to suggest you several options to compensate chip-buyers for the late delivery:
a) refund: no chips, full refund
b) compensation in BTC: deliver chips, compensate XX% of the initial price
c) compensation in chips: deliver chips, add YY% more chips as compensation
d) compensation by upgrades: no chips, convert orders to next-gen chip orders
Would you be willing and capable to consider those suggestions? If so, I'd be glad to negotiate between my group-buyers and you to reach some agreement acceptable for both sides. Also, I would include other group-buy organizers to come to a generic agreement. For the sake of Bitcoin, please come back to me and let's bring this, that poisoned the community already enough, to an end.
Best Regards
zefir
I'm glad the group buyer leaders are more understanding.
a) I am very open to this, this is what I suggest.
b) I am not a fan of this, on a principle level I rather do a full refund. plus, I rather sell the chips once we have them in hand at a discount, instead of letting people wait.( which is about the same as doing a partial refund in my opinion.)
c) this will not be good, as you know the chips isn't going to get here any faster, and ordering more would run into more delays ( this is the worst option, do not offer.)
d) while in theory this option sounds the best for us right? we keep the money, tout our gen2/3/4 chips and etc etc, but reality is we want to stay away from all pre-orders in the future. as you can imagine, all the problems, rumors and just about everything is caused by the fact we took pre-orders, and we will no longer be doing this.
you are welcome to post this in your thread.