Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

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Alkorin

Chancellor Alkorin

Part-Time Sith
<Granularity Engineer>
6,051
6,036
Not bothering with the lawyer. I called MasterCard and they will dispute the charge for me as soon as I get a response from BFL, which will most likely be "no refunds, sorry".

Plenty of people will get fucked by BFL. I just want to make sure I'm not one of them. The rest are on their own, especially given that I'm Canadian and the FTC won't care what I have to say.
 
T

Tea_sl

shitlord
1,019
0
Yeah, I wouldn't pay a lawyer. I meant if you were lucky enough to have a lawyer friend. But if you paid with something that allows chargebacks then you're golden.
 
Arative

Arative

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
3,050
4,739
I guess I got lucky with bfl and getting those jalape?o's. Still chugging away. You may look at block erupters, .6 btc for 333m/hash. Can get them quite easily
 
Tripamang

Tripamang

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
5,376
32,657
My 60Gh/s single from BFL still isn't here yet and it doesn't look like I'm going to get it anytime soon. I hedged my bet and bought a megabitfury Mboard and a single HBoard. It's expandable to 16 boards for a total hashing power of 400Gh/s+. The way BFL is going I'm going to see my megabitfury board and maybe even the expansions long before I see the Single SC :/
 
Alkorin

Chancellor Alkorin

Part-Time Sith
<Granularity Engineer>
6,051
6,036
BFL never replied to my email. MasterCard refunded me and is disputing the payment now. BFL essentially has a small number of days to prove that they've shipped the product to me and I've received it or they'll have to give it up.

I can't help but think they knew exactly what was going to happen here and they're riding this scam as long as they can.
 
Arative

Arative

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
3,050
4,739
Alkorin_sl said:
BFL never replied to my email. MasterCard refunded me and is disputing the payment now. BFL essentially has a small number of days to prove that they've shipped the product to me and I've received it or they'll have to give it up.

I can't help but think they knew exactly what was going to happen here and they're riding this scam as long as they can.
Click to expand...
It could be they knew they were scamming people but they are shipping products. I think they are rather incompetent and didn't take into account Chinese companies flooding the market with asics.
 
Alkorin

Chancellor Alkorin

Part-Time Sith
<Granularity Engineer>
6,051
6,036
Yeah, I don't doubt that they're shipping. The problem that I have with the whole thing is their production rate vs. the amount of money they took in. When they saw that orders were coming in by the thousands, the sensible thing to do would have been to ramp up production (like, say, the Pebble Watch guys did). But, no, they continue to make barely enough chips per day to ship a tiny number of orders, even with all the money in their pockets? Sounds scam-like to me, and the situation is probably one of these two:

1. They are making many more chips than they're divulging, and they're using those chips to mine for themselves while only releasing a small number per day, or,

2. They have pocketed everyone's cash and they are simply being greedy by refusing to increase production (which would clearly involve extra cost to themselves).

Either way, hopefully, I'll have nothing to do with them anymore.
 
Arative

Arative

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
3,050
4,739
I could see them mining themselves. I won't order from them again and I feel lucky I got what I did order from them
 
Tripamang

Tripamang

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
5,376
32,657
As far as my understanding goes they have all the chips and boards, it's just final assembly at this point that's taking so long. It kind of pisses me off that they're shipping December orders of Jalapenos but they're still on the first couple days for singles. Why they're not taking all those people assembling Jalapenos and putting them on Singles blows my mind considering how far they are behind in shipping those units.
 
Alkorin

Chancellor Alkorin

Part-Time Sith
<Granularity Engineer>
6,051
6,036
They should be processing orders by order number and/or time of payment received, period. To do anything else smacks of incompetence. But hey, we already knew that.

Got a note from Paypal that they've received the chargeback from MasterCard today, and it noted that no further action was required from me and that I could cancel the chargeback if I actually received the equipment. So, looks like I'm home free.
 
Tripamang

Tripamang

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
5,376
32,657
In all honesty I should have seen this coming considering the complexity of their supply chain. Chips fabbed in europe, packaged in California, motherboard parts/power supplies sourced in China, motherboards assembled in Chicago I think? and the final assembly taking place at a new facility in Kansas.. theres no way that could have been pulled off by an amateur team in a timely fashion. If they had just taken the design to a Chinese company they'd probably would have been shipping last year. Fully assembling the units in China just makes sense.
 
Alkorin

Chancellor Alkorin

Part-Time Sith
<Granularity Engineer>
6,051
6,036
Yeah. Again, though, that just smacks of greed. They probably didn't want to pay some Chinese company to assemble because they figured they could do it cheaper (but more slowly) domestically. Oh well. What can you do?
 
Jysin

Jysin

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
6,457
4,345
Arative_sl said:
http://www.butterflylabs.com/monarch/

Dont worry you can per order now! 600 gh/s for $4680.

The nerve of those guys.
Click to expand...
So, I just started reading up on this Bitcoin stuff today and stumbled across this thread. I had started googling around and ran across the BFL website. I was actually considering that Monarch card (or two) but then I got to these last few pages of the thread.

http://dustcoin.com/miningEstimates ~$700 per day per card at today's rates.

I am guessing I should avoid this BFL company like the plague now though? =/
 
Arative

Arative

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
3,050
4,739
Jysin_sl said:
So, I just started reading up on this Bitcoin stuff today and stumbled across this thread. I had started googling around and ran across the BFL website. I was actually considering that Monarch card (or two) but then I got to these last few pages of the thread.

http://dustcoin.com/miningEstimates ~$700 per day per card at today's rates.

I am guessing I should avoid this BFL company like the plague now though? =/
Click to expand...
I would avoid them now. I won't order anything from them unless it is in stock and ready to ship. I ordered my 3 Jalapeno's from them August of 2012, they were saying we're shipping in November. I got mine at the end of June, 2013. Lots of people still haven't gotten product from them that they ordered over a year ago. They will let you change your existing pre-order to the Monarch for a 10% fee though!

Sure you can make $700 a day if you had in your hands right now but if they are looking for December shipping time, you won't be making that with the increases in difficulty. If you have $5k to drop, you'd probably be better off buying bitcoins on an exchange and holding them at this point.

If you want to hobby mine, you can get some USB block erupters that do 333 M/hs for .50 BTC but its doubtful you'd see any ROI on those.
 
Jysin

Jysin

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
6,457
4,345
Yes, after thinking of this whole BFL scenario I cant help but think they are running the ultimate scam.

1) Charge money up front for Pre-Order Vaporware
2) Use said funds to create the tech
3) Run that tech in-house farming bitcoins for the company as long as possible
4) Difficulty increases / better hardware is needed
5) Announce new Pre-Order Vaporware 2.0
6) After months of in-house farming, ship old tech to customers
7) Repeat
8) Swim in profit
 
Arative

Arative

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
3,050
4,739
Jysin_sl said:
Yes, after thinking of this whole BFL scenario I cant help but think they are running the ultimate scam.

1) Charge money up front for Pre-Order Vaporware
2) Use said funds to create the tech
3) Run that tech in-house farming bitcoins for the company as long as possible
4) Difficulty increases / better hardware is needed
5) Announce new Pre-Order Vaporware 2.0
6) After months of in-house farming, ship old tech to customers
7) Repeat
8) Swim in profit
Click to expand...
It certainly seems that's what they are doing. I'd feel differently if they had shipped all their pre-orders before announcing this new and improved asic device.
Though to be fair, in the past 6 weeks I've made $2k from the jalapeno's
 
T

TXjohnny

<Bronze Donator>
111
44
From what I've read, you would be hard pressed to get into bitcoin mining at this point and hope to see a profit anytime soon. You would be better off using the money to buy bitcoins off of coinbase, etc. You might be able to still find a mining profit with one of the other cryptocurrencies.
 
Alkorin

Chancellor Alkorin

Part-Time Sith
<Granularity Engineer>
6,051
6,036
The folks that got their BFL shipments "in time" will make some money. People like me, who ordered later, don't stand a chance of making anything, because of their abhorrent shipping schedule.

I got a reply from BFL today reminding me that all sales are final and that I wouldn't receive a refund. Too bad for them that PayPal has already processed the chargeback, right? I can only hope that they aren't actually told that I charged back on that particular order and they ship my stuff anyway. Even if it's way late, I'll stand to make a bit of cash if I don't actually have to pay for the parts. Hehe.
 
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