Topic: HashFast announces specs for new ASIC: 400GH/s - page 576. (Read 880816 times)

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.

Continental Grain: We're selling corn!  Minimum purchase $1 million dollars. 

Potential Buyer:  Great; I need corn.  How much per bushel?

Continental Grain:  And the first three customers at that level win an all expenses paid trip to Peoria IL to visit their corn and the cows who eat the same corn in the feed lot in the next town over.

Potential Buyer:  So delivery is immediate?  And what's that price per bushel, again?

Continental Grain:  And if you order in the next 10 minutes, you'll also receive this set of steak knives to eat the cow that eats the corn in the next town over.


This. is. fucking. nuts.  I got a bad feelin' about this...

Same... suddenly got a funny feeling about them.  Not sure if it is just the large numbers for purchase, or the "different" sales model than what we are used to. 

For that kind of money, I would think a buyer would want contracts set up with firm deadlines and penalties for missing targets/deadlines... funds to be held by a "real" escrow service etc.  This is real estate pricing, and I would expect all the paper work and legal ramifications to be upto the same.

Asking $500k min. is a facade of exclusivity & credibility, plus a false barrier to entry¹.  If you continue reading to the first footnote, the actual plan is exposed:
"*For those interested in orders below USD $500k, send an SMS (text) message to (415) 480-4921 with the approximate USD amount that you would like to contribute to a group buy. We will get back to you if a credible group buy arrangement materializes."

¹ "Make them beg for it!" -Eric Cartman School of Economics

Asking for US$500,000 with a 2 day window just reeks of dodgyness. Interesting that seemingly reputable people would endorse such offers without them even saying what share you get/ total investment sought etc.
I was very keen right up until I saw that post (which is locked it seems so no one can ask questions)

Sorry, totally off optic, but I cannot help but read that second comic strip and think of our corrupt idiot Mayor; Boris Johnson:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/local-government-network/2013/jul/17/boris-johnson-airport-plans-not-thought-through

I'd assume HashFast will be announcing specs soon... I think they under-estimate the community if they expect people to put down ~5K BTC with no specs... just hype.