Please UNSTICKY this thread!
The way I read him, Bitcoinorama is a paid shill that bashes bitcoin as a payment mechanism every chance he gets, and promotes the use of credit cards and paypal, which are inferior payment mechanisms. The is classic sock-puppet behavior, either he wants to discourage use of bitcoin, discourage re-investment in asic mining equipment, or some other agenda, but this post and all his posts are pure opinion, no facts. And that opinion is negative.
He has polluted many threads except the KNCMiner thread, like Hashfast and avalon threads, with his annoying garbage posts touting the benefits of the decades-old 16 + 7 digit and string plaintext based payment technology that employs tens of thousands of paper pushers to work at all, not to mention the armies of police and investigators to try to hold it all together from rampant fraud and abuse. I'm sick of reading about how great credit cards are on a bitcoin forum. This guy needs to shut up.
All he does is slander our businesses and bitcoin itself - he is unworthy of a sticky.
As to visa and mastercard - did you know that they recently had to pay a $6 billion settlement - that's 6 X the market cap of bitcoin itself - for unconscionable business practices with there merchants over a several year period? Well they did! And the amount of money that ASIC manufacturers would get or could raise from credit card payments is far less than from bitcoin payments. Everyone knows this if they think about it for a few minutes, so please take Bitcoinorama's comments with a huge grain of salt.
B*llocks numbnuts, I'm a total proponent of Bitcoin, but there's a lot more wannabe vendors here that would rather claim to be 'supporting the distribution of the network' by preying on your ignorance and naivety then offer you a welcome and secure deal, and I do not want to see anymore people, some too lazy or stupid to bother to research this crap get burnt. Yes, it's quite UK centric, as that' where I live. As I've stated if you've got something worthwhile to add from another location and I'll add it. And err...where have I left out the facts exactly? I've linked and quoted everything I possibly could to help. When it came to reporting back on a company I offered to ask forum members questions for them, which I did and specifically take the time to painstakingly write out the responses word for word in dialect format, for what reward? My own piece of mind and a few 0.1BTC denominations and 1x0.25BTC denomination bringing the total to just over a 1 BTC, not even the cost of one of the flights. I wrote in that manner so there was no loss in translation through subjectivity.
This thread isn't just about card payment, which is clearly the most secure form of payment for pre-ordering, which is why the travel industry relies on them. Practically everything is a pre-payment there. are you ready to book a future package holiday and pay ahead with BTC yet? This thread is meant to explore various avenues of consumer protection, which may well be very useful to some members in light of recent events. Clearly there are opportunities for forward thinking individuals to provide BTC related solutions to this.
Most of the info is available on consumer sites like MoneySavingExpert.com, but few here have bothered to look into this before purchasing. Inform yourself before giving away your hard earned to unknowns, and get off the high horse KnC trashing BS with me, I'm done with hearing about it. I went and visited them, big deal, I wrote up a report as requested by people here. There were other members of the forum that went. One wrote up an article days earlier. Others could have shared but didn't. Of course I want to see competition, but no ones going through the stringent process of verification with issuing banks and payment processors, which takes a hell of a lot more confirmation than, "hi, I want to make an ASIC, I believe in Bitcoin, here, I have a website, I'm open for pre-orders".
If you bother to read my posting history from the beginning I first tried to convince ASICrigs.com let me visit and check them out. If you bother to read the KnC thread from the beginning, I'm the reason they agreed to take cards as I pressured them to accept a protected payment means. It's from looking into that over weeks I have research to share. I'm proactive and have justifiable trust issues with companies that have come and gone through here. I know how to cover myself against loss of funds which I don't need to lose. The recent Bitsyncom evasiveness and BFL refund debacle had me look into the fraud aspect and who to contact subsequent to being denied refund or breech of agreement to deliver as anticipated.
No third party will cover an outfit not prepared to agree to their terms, yet it's open to all western companies that choose to pursue it and wish to be held accountable for their promises. It's a damn strong step in the right direction in proving you're a legitimate outfit and not some flyby night chancers that want to risk other people's money without the consequences. I would happily welcome other ASIC vendors that permit real consumer protection against reckless behaviour. I've got no beef against Hashfast, or Cointerra, but the former is currently playing roulette with pre-order funds. How will they fulfil refunds on orders should they catastrophically miss targets? With what equity once funds are spent? Whose liability? No third party, that's for sure.
I do not slander Bitcoin, but currently it's not offering people the protection they warrant from pre-orders. Fact.
Bitpay have refunded in some instances out of goodwill, but can't afford to cover all yet. MCard and issuing banks explicitly agree to, and in some countries have no choice but have to. Amazingly some people don't know this and aren't looking for it. MCard aren't about to go bankrupt yet dude.
I think any decentralised currency is healthy, regardless of whether Bitcoin succeeds or fails, crypto is here to stay and Bitcoin has the first mover advantage and most distributed and supported network. Still doesn't mean you should pre-order with it, if you want to be safe and if unknown companies want to be seen as responsible.
And for the record, aside from Cyper above who's clearly happy he confirmed his card issuer will protect him for any payment made in the denominations he wished to purchase in, this guy started a thread having been in the other side when BFL refused to honour a refund;
If I didn't purchase on AMEX through paypal, I would be toast.
AMEX saved the day for me.
Butterfly labs implosion is now imminent as I bet their new orders are way down, so they don't have cash to keep the scam rolling.
Unless by some miracle they were smart enough to hold onto all those bitcoins they got paid and made a fortune in bitcoin speculation.
But I do not think butterfly labs and smart can ever go into the same sentence without the internet breaking.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/butterfly-labs-did-everything-they-could-to-make-getting-a-refund-impossible-272585If ASICminer want to charge in BTC, fine at least they have something tangible to dispatch, and are proven trustworthy w.r.t. mailing items (choice of pricing itself is debatable), same as Bitfury now. A least you're not held in limbo, crossing fingers and toes wishing for a product to exist and hoping your cash is safe for a future delivery.