Powerful actors exist in many industries who want to mitigate the progress of competitors, but that doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to new market entrants who skirt longstanding international business norms that are designed: (1) to help provide consumer protection and safety, and (2) to help ensure fair dealing in the line of commerce among market participants. [....] [Halong Mining] operates totally anonymously. Even if Halong were well-intentioned, if they made an innocent mistake and released a product that burned down your house or mining operation --- or emitted fumes that caused serious health problems or birth defects, shouldn't Halong be held accountable if it acted negligently or improperly? [....] What if Halong's miners end up having connectors with extremely high failure rates due to negligence during the manufacturing process or a flawed design? And since Halong is totally anonymous, we'd have no way to hold it accountable if Halong choose not to assume responsibility for them. Would you find that acceptable?
I understand your concern about health concerns and liability, however, if there were widespread issues in this industry with regards to safety, there would be much more stringent policies in place than your pharmaceutical company example. We are talking about silicon here. There is a degree of common sense people are responsible for, which would be far more likely to cause health risks. For example, you don't sleep in the hot isle at your facility. You don't pop 10x the recommended dosage. Had these units pulled more electricity per PCI connector similar to the KNC offerings, I would absolutely be concerned. However, that is not the case. Their hardware specs fall in line with general industry standards for the T1, and they've exceeded other specifications and delivery projections on other offerings.
With all due respect, I was not asking you how risky you believe it is to operate a DragonMint. Silicon is not the only material inside of the DragonMint and its PSU. Other risk factors exist, such as extremely high voltage. Yet the central question from my previous post remains, which you did not answer.
Should it be possible in a court of law to hold Halong Mining accountable, if someone has a valid claim against it? Should Halong be held accountable if it negligently released a defective product that posed an unacceptable risk of danger? Of course it should. Every business should be held to account if it acts with negligence or if someone has a
valid claim against it. I am not saying that Halong Mining has done any of these things (although the Innosilicon board looks staggeringly similar to that of the DM, see
https://i.imgur.com/RgI9Eoy.jpg), but I have a real problem with the public's not having the information needed to sue and recover from someone
if valid claims arise. Do you share this concern? If you do, then please realize that to hold a business operator accountable, we have to know, at a minimum, where we can deliver a copy of the lawsuit. That is why businesses are required to have a registered agent who can receive service of process from a court.
Using extremely high voltage is not an activity anyone should take lightly, even if you consider silicon safe. Even low wattage smartphones have been known to burn dangerously due to defective components. The DragonMint operates at 1500 watts, has no FCC certification that I have been able to verify (despite Halong's claim that it exists), and it is the first ever product from a new hardware manufacturer with no track record that insists on operating with total anonymity and impunity.
The mining industry is still young enough and its hardware rare enough that regulators still don't fully understand them. Governments are just starting to wrap their minds around the need for economic regulation of cryptocurrencies. The G20 leaders announced last month that cryptocurrency is on their radar. South Korea weeks ago banned anonymous cryptocurrency accounts. Regulation on the hardware side is just starting to happen too. The U.S. FCC in February sent a cease and desist letter to a home miner in Brooklyn, New York due to a Bitmain Antminer that the FCC believed disrupted a cell phone network. The disruption was so serious that T-Mobile, a U.S. corporation, spent thousands of dollars investigating the source of the interference and finally triangulated the interference to one man's Brooklyn apartment.
If someone in New York or anywhere else can't place a phone call to emergency medical services, for example, because a Bitmain miner is disrupting their cell phone signal, can't we all agree that is an example of a legitimate safety concern? If we learn that Bitmain miners disrupt mobile phone communications to a dangerous degree, and if that disruption is due to a design defect or gross negligence by Bitmain, can't we all agree that Bitmain should assume responsibility for its actions? If, hypothetically, Bitmain were to try to skirt responsibility, can't we all agree that a court of proper jurisdiction should force Bitmain to assume responsibility? The same should happen to Halong Mining (or any other entity) if for some reason Halong is ever found to have acted with negligence or some other valid claim against it exists.
Hypothetically, if Bernie had engaged in theft of intellectual property from an ASIC hardware manufacturer, so long as you received your hardware from him and your Bitcoin account is growing, you're good with that? Don't you think Bernie's ASIC manufacturing company should be held to account? [....] My purpose is conclusively illustrating that Halong Mining is engaging in highly questionable business practices, and prospective buyers should proceed with caution and realize that they have no reasonable recourse to hold this "company" accountable should the need arise. [....]
I support collaboration and unity with any field, as long as it improves the consumer experience and performance. If a manufacturer was using a variation of Asicboost, there's nothing wrong with other manufacturers getting on that train. It's inevitable, especially with the high level of efficiency gains. In a competitive market, manufacturers often use advancements in the field to their own benefit. I'm going to guess if certain big players got wind at exactly what Halong was doing, they would have tried to disrupt them as much as they could. This includes supply chain, legal, and all sort of covert approaches, as I'm sure some have already tried. Look at the fake sites popping up that are using falsely using reputable people's accounts with capital i's in hopes to scam and do phishing. I for one understand the level of privacy Halong had, especially before the ASICBoost defensive patent announcement.
As for accountability on that end, there's some contacts listed below with the patent announcement.
https://www.asicboost.com/single-post/2018/03/01/offering-announcement-blockchain-defensive-patent-license/Collaboration, unity, improved consumer experience, improved performance.... These goals are wonderful. I share them with you. But please realize that "improved consumer experience" requires the possibility that a manufacturer can be held accountable for
valid legal claims against it. It doesn't matter who the business is. You don't get to operate with impunity in business under any circumstances.
As for the contact at the URL you provided, the contact information shown on that page is for Little Dragon Technology LLC --
and notes nothing about Halong Mining. I found no evidence that an association exists between these two entities other than Halong Mining says it is a licensor of the patent purportedly owned by Little Dragon Technology. Halong wrote on its blog, "After Little Dragon Technology LLC acquired the patent from the original inventors, we negotiated a license to use AsicBoost in our miners on the understanding that AsicBoost would be opened up to everyone to use, under some form of defensive patent license, in the hopes it can help protect decentralization of Bitcoin mining. " (See:
https://halongmining.com/blog/.)
I checked the Statement of Information on file with the California Secretary of State for the entity Little Dragon Technology LLC, and the filing does not note any association between Little Dragon Technology LLC and Halong Mining. To that extent, I am inclined to believe that Little Dragon Technology LLC is simply a shell company with no legal connection to Halong Mining, and that Halong Mining is using the AsicBoost license just as anyone else is authorized to do. The key point is that one cannot successfully sue Little Dragon Technology LLC for valid legal claims against Halong Mining.
