Topic: HashFast announces specs for new ASIC: 400GH/s - page 576. (Read 880461 times)

nb4bfl_jab

This is getting stranger and stranger.  Has anyone actually contacted these people IRL to verify a set of accounts weren't compromised or something to lend credibility to the offering?  However, asking for $500k seems like a self defeating scam, as no one with that kind of money to throw around would likely do so without some serious investigation into the process.  So why would you try to run a scam like that?

It's a bitcoin Inception scam.  Yeah!

They need to detail a LOT more, irrespective of how Simon checks out, anyone handing over that much money in one lump sum right now would be a few waves short of a shipwreck.

For example; you are a distributor, or assembler based in Silicon Valley, California (within the same state as Hashfast); like Terrahash, you even pair with someone with a proven chip technology, like Bitsyncom's Avalon chips, produced in major semiconductor foundaries like TSMC (the same foundry as Hashfast intend to use), enter the figures it all seems to work out on paper, yet you are acutely aware of timescale.

You, as a distributor/assembler raise funds yourself from individuals who have recourse through your payment processors, i.e. your customers, as you wouldn't front such significant funds yourself on such a niche product with no assurance your personal funds would recover such a large sum if invested directly.

You design, order and purchase the parts you need and invest significant time, whilst all the time other chip offerings and alternative conpetiors appear on the market simultaneously.

Deadlines are missed, and that's one thing for a design company producing the chips to irritate individual consumers directly, admittedly inconveniencing them and delaying their ROI, but it's a completely different ball game if someone else's entire business plan, and ability to conduct future business endeavours depends on those chips in hand within a reasonable timeframe.

This example is very real. Terrahash's latest deadline for it's customers is mid-August before all hell breaks loose and there are mass refunds. Even if the chips are delivered in the next week or two, they are now screwed.

Any such big spenders would be crazy to emulate such practice with so many unknowns. This is very irresponsible, and very real. I had a lot of faith in Terrahash, and it's not their fault they are about to fold. Avalon has screwed them. Sure it's upsetting to see Batch #3 buyers possible miss ROI, but that's nothing compared to the time, effort and passion thrown into a business dependant on your side of the bargain.

I'm still scratching my head as to how and why such large amounts of funds are appearing to legitimately be requested in 36 hours. This cannot be a genuine request for blind funding...

Btw, the background image on their page is this: http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/images/_3000/IDI_018.jpg, a photo of a Google data center that was photo-shopped (the left and right sides are mirrored exactly) from this gallery

Asking for $500,000 up front, without giving any details about either how the chips work or even how many you'll get is kind of insane. I mean, I know a lot of companies that take big orders for things don't list prices - only phone numbers to call (which is annoying), but they usually have people to answer the phones, not just leave a voicemail.

It seems very strange that you would be able to handle $500k orders in escrow without being able to afford to hire a receptionist or even pay for legit clip art for your website.

I think the absence of quality with Grid-whomever is poor proof that they are legitimate.

It is hard to take 5K BTC, blind no content, pre-order seriously. 
Right now I just put it in the same bucket as Inaba's outbursts.

They are most likely legit, but they don't have a lot to share right now, so first comes the noise... we will get substance at some later date I guess.

I'm not saying this is relevant here, because we just don't know unless we're accredited to follow down the path they've offered.  BUT...

There's a company in Atlanta named Coca Cola.  They make syrup made under heavily defended IP.  They don't put it in cans.  They leave that to a company named Coca Cola Enterprises, which has affiliates in most large cities of the world, which buy the syrup, add water, put it in cans, and move those cans to markets and vending machines.

Could just be this guy is CCE (which might not even have a nice website, by the way), and they're looking for affiliates who have the means and opportunity to put these chips out in little bags.

Again, I dunno... 

I didn't initially feel Hashfast were out to scam, but this latest development of a new member locking a thread, and requesting massive funding on a forum, well in excess of what most members of this forum can afford, without any details of what your funding gives you in relation to equipment and price point, in such an extremely finite window of around 36 hours, much less time than any legitimate group buy could feasibly be arranged in, albeit with a phone number makes me believe funding is already sorted, and this is just a marketing ploy.

It makes no other sense, unless they are truly requesting funding based on impulse, which is nuts...

For buzzword-loaded marketing, see HERE.
Please understand that scammers are lazy too.  Why bother with long cons if you can snag a few suckers with a minimum of effort?  Again, nobody's after half-mill investors here; the targets are people like you, see my post before the evil kitty.

like KNC for instance?

I would say a good quality website is only needed to be ready if/when they have something ready for retail.
So far I personally have an agnostic opinion of them, but having a full fledged website does not factor in.

Just think about it, if their intention was to really scam people, they would put all their time and effort in making a buzzword loaded marketing scam.

If you expect anyone to take you seriously, yes.
If you have $$$ to toss at a web developer, for sure.
If you just want to scam a couple of marks with no common sense, and don't even have the money to pay for hosting, NO.

Edit:  Business plan?
1.  Announce a 28nm chip
2.  Don't ask Ask for pre-order money
3  ? ? ?
4.  PROFIT!!!

Right... because spending days (or weeks) on web design/dev instead of working on business plan or hardware or distribution channels makes more sense....

as i said

these are serious joke

lol

If you reflect on it, it makes sense.  They're not offering retail here.  They're trying to form their distribution channel.  Mr. Bateman is on the team and his bona fides were established earlier this morning.  

This might well be a middle-ground course between direct pre-order and VC.  

The former is hated by the community if there is no counterparty credibility; someone with credibility within the community, maybe with escrow capacity, would solve a lot of that dissonance.

Access to the latter suffers from the fact it's bitcoin-oriented and not a retail tech widget or web service.  Finding deep pockets among those who believe in bitcoin solves a lot of that dissonance.  

http://www.gridfinity.com/forums (and here's what the 404 page for gridfinity.com, multimillion dollar company, tells us ):
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Thanks for the link, killer  Next time, put a bit more effort into it.

Daniel, with all due respect, you appear to have escaped 'newbie jail' on your first post, which is against forum rules, and have the temerity to post an offering in two locked threads requesting vast sums of cash without detailing; who you are, what your experience is, what you are selling, and at what price point...oh and you want millions of dollars within 48 hours?!!

Also, Gridfinity.com is just a landing page for an email list...

Greetings everyone,

Anyone interested in locking in low pricing on HashFast ASICs, see this thread.

Best regards,

Daniel Bateman
Managing Director
Gridfinity LLC
Mobile: (415) 480-4921
Skype: daniel.inform
https://launchrock-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/logo-files/8YJKCH9A_1374616051227.png?_=2
Massively Parallel.
(monetizing SHA-2)
http://gridfinity.com

Sweet, so they're gonna go secret squirrel and we can watch some of the 1% burn in the train wreck, which now sounds that much more spectacular.

They might just be signaling that they're looking for someone who would form, e.g., the relationship that Dave has with bitfuy.  They don't disclose the price, because that would be negotiated between that individual and them; this way, his markup remains hidden.  

That would explain the trip, and the form of the announcement.  The only thing is, there seems to be a new entity in the middle who would be handling that role.

It would be a way of avoiding retail pre-order, though, and the trip to SJC is part of the due diligence and cutting the deal.

If that's the model, though, they should have announced it as: we're looking for one or more individuals in the bitcoin community to become distributors.  Minimum inventory commitment would be at the 500K level.  Call.

Yeah, and of course they would be willing to give you that information, along with anything else - under an NDA. If they only want a handful of super-rich customers, there's no need for them to make the specs public, they can keep that stuff under wraps until the products are ready to buy retail, if that ever happens.

Unlike BFL they don't have to worry about building and shipping thousands and thousands of 'boxes with fans' and legions of angry customers - they'll only need to keep a handful of them happy. And, because they are shipping chips, instead of boxes or even PCBs, they aren't going to have much risk at all - the only risk is that the first run of chips might not work, and they can work that into their contract as well (i.e. if the first run doesn't work you get 2x as many chips from the second run)

And all of the terms can be under NDA, so none of their customers will be whining on forums about how unfair one decision or another is (i.e when KnC offered to allow people to upgrade orders people got upset because it meant bigger orders could come in at a shorter queue depth then them)

This is the problem with companies not wanting to do pre-orders: If they pay all the expenses of chip design themselves, then they don't need you, they can keep the chips for themselves. Or in this case they may be selling chips to a few selected companies allowing, in order to keep their customer service issues to a minimum, and allow companies that have more experience to handle those issues along with PCB construction and case design. But in turn, if those companies pre-pay then they don't have any reason to sell to you at a reasonable price either.