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KNC has won the class action in Swedish Courts. The courts have ruled that anyone who bought a KNC product of any type is automatically a 'business'.

Thus not protected by Swedish consumer protection laws nor by the very tough EU consumer protection laws.

So says Coindesk.

here is the link.

http://www.coindesk.com/swedish-court-rules-against-kncminer-mining-hardware-customers/ (http://www.coindesk.com/swedish-court-rules-against-kncminer-mining-hardware-customers/)


Man 1.5k usd  non refundable per KNC product to your own class action law firm and now responsible for the 90k usd to  KNC gets from you losing the class action.

Man ..KNC ..they sure got this 'Evil ASIC Empire' thing down pat :(

Edit: Some hope 😄 This does NOT seem to be the larger 100 person class action on review

Sadly after hearing about the other similar cases I really expected this was the direction this would take.  Their questionable business practices and warranty practices are pretty slimy, but hard to get recourse for this kind of thing.  Works out great for Knc, they got the seed money they needed to build a business, and exploit the market to get what they wanted...  Ethics doesn't seem like a strong suite for them.

All you can do is hope that there are enough people that remember and are able to tell people to stay away when the next BTC pump happens and Knc decides to drop another miner on the market.  I think we all expect that if the next gold rush of the pump happens that "mining hardware" companies will come out of the woodwork, and at least with this company we know up front if you buy something from them your pretty much on your own no matter what happens.  

I feel bad for everyone who is in the class action suite.  This is really messed up.

Yeah, this is shit and fwiw KNC will be remembered for it (albeit amongst a group of neckbeards who don't matter a f*ck).

IANAL, but I'd have though that "hobby miners" would have normal consumer rights under the
 "an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside that individual's trade, business, craft or profession"
proviso.
Obviously not, according to the Swedes.

So you can circumvent consumer protection laws by convincing the court that all your customers are by definition businesses for no other reason than that they are your customers. I'd say they got their money's worth out of that lawyer.

Does that mean there are no business protection laws? You can rip off other businesses as much as you want without fear of consequences? Or would that have to be a different lawsuit which they'd clearly lose but now nobody can afford to sue them under business protection laws because all the money's already spent on the logical course of action for consumers seeking protection under the law?

On review this does not seem to be the large 100 folk class action, thou not looking good

To me it seems the key point is that the plaintiffs directly 'make income' from the miners vs crafters or hobbyists using a machine or tool to make something and then keep it or give away at no cost to friends,family, etc. That makes the buyers a business vs a consumer. The fact that a miner generally runs 24x7x365 doing what it does (generating income) clinches it.

Now if the suit(s) had been based on simple failure to fulfill the terms of a sales contract or other Breach of Contract I think the Courts wold have looked at it differently.

And a  new case for a gpu coin has been made.

I can see the end of asic mining with this type of decision.


Just think a pc with all parts having a 1 or more year warranty vs an asic miner where a 90 day warranty at best.

this is looking better it uses 350 watts pretty quiet and under warranty for a year or more depends on what part.

https://i.imgur.com/EoFKOlL.jpg

Didn't expected this! FU Sam Cole!

can they appeal in Sweden or is it worth it.!!!!!

The papers say yes but that the risk is too high of just incurring more costs and getting no where. They're considering appealing the awarding of costs though.

Yep,I get 5 year warranties on my mobo's & HDD's,3 years on vid cards   ;)

And ANYONE at ANYTIME can get this stuff almost ANYWHERE...ASICs not so much,if they want to sell at all & not self mine & raise the diff  ::)

Wow KnC got away with it...BFL got away with it,etc..........  >:(

Assumed or perhaps misunderstood theyd paid off the entire swedish judiciary over a year ago.

wasnt it the case that the Class action ppl found it almost impossible to find a lawyer?

either way, im not surprised.

greedy cunts usually get their own way.

i wouldnt be surprised to see shitcunt sam cole knighted or the swedish equivalent thereof.



oh, monsieur - with your blatant fraud earned millions, you are really spoiling us!

Makes me happy I never bought anything from KNC.

 Doesn't affect my future plans though, as I never planned to buy any of their "breaks too often, CRAP design" junk anyway.

some salt

http://swedishstartupspace.com/2016/05/27/knc-miner-declares-bankruptcy-chinese-competition-too-tough/

KNC, Spondoolies....small to medium size fabricators/miners going broke, anyone see a pattern here?
Who would be next in that category I wonder?
No, surely not....

Well, we've all been waiting for KNC to give up the ghost. Wasn't there talk about their hosting losing money over a year ago, and what have they really accomplished since then?

Who is left? Bitmain and Bitfury. None of them will fall. Anyone else?(except 21 Inc ofc)

BW has a new chip out now as well.

21 Inc doesnt count. You cant mine for profit with them.

So, 4 manufacturers left?
Bitmain, BW, Bitfury and Canaan Creative

The despicable thing here is Bitcoiners who gamble on ASICs, hoping (or 100% Certain) they will profit in terms of Stateless Internet Money, but then run mewling like starving kittens back under the skirt of the Nanny State when they lose their wagers.

It's pure hypocrisy to praise ASIC manufacturers when they have favorable business conditions, then stab in the back and call them "human garbage" when the price/difficulty/competition stop cooperating.

Your standard of "fair weather friendship" is disgusting.  Most, if not all, ASIC manufactures sell to the public not because dealing with degenerate/litigious gamblers is fun, but because they want to help decentralize hashing power.

Every time you armchair anarchists run sobbing to your lawyers' offices because the mean old ASIC company tricked you, it's another reason for the next company to eschew retail for exclusively industrial/self mining.

But in a discussion about KNC, the "despicable" title does kinda apply - did they not take in several millions of dollars in preorders for promised equipment, deliver some very late and some not at all, some of it incredibly shoddy, some of it a severe fire hazard, and all while blowing most of the money on a massive self-mine farm? I think it's fair to stop being friends with someone like that. There's a difference between losing a gamble because market conditions went south on the company, and losing a gamble because the company are deliberate bastards.

Running to a lawyer because the company tricked you is not an excuse for the company to not sell to others. It should be an excuse for the company to NOT TRICK YOU. Being sued for ripping someone off should be a punishment for ripping someone off. The folks being called "human garbage" are the ones doing the stabbing, not the ones being stabbed.

Swedish bussines is all about making fast money. hustling poeple.


Swedish Culture is to make Bad Bussines On the Side of the law.


Swedish know their bussinnes and "secrests" of the law to how wash their hands.

Abusive low payments for emigrants.

Abusive non TAX payers.

That is the Swede Bussines Man. all of them welcome to sweden.

Swedish knows this is truth. thats why they will laugh at this.





It wont matter to appeal in sweden, Swedish court dont care about digital valuta, but they do care if you piss the streets.

i cant for the life of me understand the knc apologists.

is it just trolling for lulz, a mental malfunction or part & parcel of NDAs?

heh...the Titans came out..and KNC could not get them to work on other crypto coins at least not well that first month..nor did the equip work well those that got it the 1st month either    so you could not mine any other crypto scrypt coin (except LTC) and they also could not work on multipools (betarigs was p/o'd it could
not return titans) ....and as a result they got caught going back in time on their web pages and instead of making a scrypt miner as their original www pages stated they
tried to change it to it only originally being able to mine LTC....heh leaving the original dates the same...sigh.....I mean they forgot about wayback machine or what lol :)

I'd bet there are about 20 different scammer like stories about KNC actions on product/firmware/delivery/investment/cloud mining and the rest....I can think of 5 off hand now...w/o a lot of effort.

So yeah they don't get it...the folk acting like we the consumers were the problem not the cmopany......sure they made a product and we bought it..but they played the consumer and the investors shabbily imho ..thus why folk are p/o'd still at knc imho...was not an even playing field from the get go..they always had an 'agenda' from day one imho..

That's all very true and perfectly reasonable.

But many buyers didn't need KNC to "trick" them, as their gambling compulsion already tricked them into thinking hyper-risky ASICs were a sure thing (and not a long shot hail mary put it all on black act of desperation).

KNC didn't force anyone to pre-order.  Everyone had the option of keeping their BTC safe in a cold wallet.  But some of us wanted MOAR and got burned by the leveraged exposure.

That's where the consumer/business distinction is important.  KNC customers are dishonest to pretend they are boring retail consumers getting ripped off for a bookshelf they ordered from IKEA.

There was always a "risky business" caveat emptor context to all of this.  Bitcoin.  Mining.  Pre-orders.  It's nothing remotely like a standard commodity, and the endless cries of ZOMG SCAM start to ring hollow after being applied to Every. Single. Bankrupt. ASIC. Company. Ever.

It's hard to lose money.  It's even hard to admit losing more than you can afford on a foolish blue sky investment.  That's still no reason to start calling people you trusted enough to pre-order from (having presumably performed requisite due diligence) "human garbage."

The next post after your own is (*deep eye roll*) blaming SWEDEN, SWEDISH CULTURE, and SWEDISH PEOPLE in general for KNC.

WTF?  Since when is the fate of a single high tech start-up a referendum on an entire country and its population?

Should we just indulge that kind of mindless bigotry (as when we saw people blaming America and Americans for Hashfast/Cointerra's bankruptcies) or call it out for being rank stupidity?

If Sweden and Swedes are so EVIL why the fuck did people order from them in the first place?

Would it redeem Sweden and Swedes if KNC had been a success?   :D

I understand people naturally avoid cognitive dissonance and that often means shifting blame/responsibility away from themselves, but this endless cycle of Trust -> PreOrder -> Disappointment -> Buttrage needs to be dealt with in an adult way.  Letting the Special Snowflakes keep moaning about their unfulfilled hyperactive sense of massive entitlement has not been productive.

 Innosilicon - which might just put the remaining Titans out to pasture in a few months, but I'm guessing the A4's will take more like a year to get deployed enough to render the remaining operational Titans unprofitable (for most).



 There are rip-offs in every country, just happens that for Bitcoin one of the bigger ones was based out of Sweden. It's like saying all Yugoslavians were ripoffs and pathetic as manufacturers just because the Yugo was a piece of junk....

 (Hint - there HAVE been worse and junkier cars than the Yugo - look up the Crosley for an example).

Well innosilicon could put Titans out to pasture if they bulk sale chips to others or large enough data hall I'd imagine..but that may take quite a bit...when I started nov 8th 2014 the 1st titan the network was 1169gh for ltc anyway

As I look now the difficulty is (at this moment) for LTC 1488

So since Nov 8th 2014 till now 5/28/2016..that is an increase in 21.44% in the network...that is almost 19 months....and that is ALL the stuff running in China and Titans etc
so NOT too worried....in that with 3 titans i'm clearing 1000 usd a month after electric (or was at the 4.50 ltc price) with 14c kwh electric (kinda high imho)

IF we are JUST talking the A4 Dominator and not mass sales of chips and just competition with an innsilicon data mining farm with the new chips my odds get better  :)

So IF you can make ROI on an A4 Innsilicon at 400mh and 1150 watts (as they state) at say the 'probable' price I'm hearing of 4K per unit..then one 350mh Titan at 1250 watts that has ROI'd (ie cost me nothing in comparison with the A4) I will do just dandy..

(IF not ...back up...or I'll bump off the A4 ...its going with me..punk.......I go ...they go) ..heh ...but you get my drift...so 2 different questions

Innsilicon goes nuts on bulk chip sales and mass unit sales ..and its own big data hall..yeah my Titan would go under the difficulty wave a 'bit' sooner say a couple months before the A4 does....but not to too much sooner under that scenario imho.

anything less then full out or anything that kinda is in the ball park for an A4 for ROI and lifetime ..probably will be pretty close to the Titans end of life under the innsilicon plan for how much production

we will see.....most likely reason the Titans will die is 'old age' most likely reason the A4's would die quick imho would be the 1) 90 day warranty and 2) no asic mnfg has had decent firmware by the time a 90 day warranty would lapse......and of course the 4k up front

so hell .its a fair fight imho.....(thou the A4 and the Titan are both 'screwed' if it is balls to the wall successful bulk chip sales to large miners who want scrypt....which is possible with the current price rises etc)

We will be the first to know (current Titan owners and future A4 dominator owners..but again may NOT be joined at the hip but pretty much walking the same path together imho)

Icebreaker - you're in the wrong conversation. If we were talking about people suing a company who failed to deliver because of outside factors (or accidental incompetence), what you say might make sense. But since the lawsuit here is that the company failed to deliver because they intentionally refused goods and services to customers which had already paid for them - willfully kept money to themselves that should have gone to customers, and willfully kept machinery that should have gone to customers - there's really no way to defend that as simply "gambling" on the customer's part and therefore the business is not in the wrong.

Are preorders a foolish gamble? Yes. HOWEVER, however, they have become a foolish gamble not because companies of the occasional case where a business fails to deliver due outside factors driving them to it out of necessity, but because of all those companies who abused their customers by redirecting preorder money into their own pockets, refused refunds, self-mined on customer gear and intentionally delivered it late (if ever) - or the ones which were cons from the get-go, had no intentions of ever making hardware and wanted to take your money and disappear.

So if you want to defend a business forced into bankruptcy by bad market conditions, which had a reputation for respecting its customers, making good on its promises and communicating honestly when things weren't going right, go for it. But if you want to defend a business who for the last two years has made its profits by actively and unapologetically stealing from its customers, well... you're on your own.

One man's "foolish gamble" is another man's calculated risk.   :D

Either way, consumer protection laws are not intended to refund losses resulting thereof. 

Unless you have solid proof (raging butthurt and "Hivemind Confirmation Intensifies" don't count), those crimes you assert are just rumors and defamation, not legally actionable.  We've seen at least two instances where ASIC firms went bankrupt because of "outside factors" only to have some people refuse to accept any explanation other than scamming and/or incompetence.

Demanding foolish pre-order gamblers acknowledge and accept responsibility for their own role in failing to grasp the concepts of caveat emptor and DYODD is not defending anyone.

Nor is stating the simple fact (already related by the Court) that if you INVEST in an ASIC pre-order you are doing (risky) business, not making a routine retail gadget purchase, and it is dishonest to pretend otherwise when it all predictably ends in tears.

Bitcoin is a "foolish gamble."  An ASIC pre-order is a higher order "foolish gamble" on top of that one.

And you expect a Court to wave a magic wand and make it all better when those "foolish gambles" inevitably go awry?  The phrase "you can't con an honest John" applies here.

But I'm not defending KNC so much as debunking the self-pity party and its ridiculous, excessive leaps in logic.

No comment on the hypocritical sour grapes syndrome of blaming a venue ONLY AFTER it fails to confirm one's "human garbage" prejudgements?

No comment on the melodramatic post painting KNC as microcosm of all that is wrong with Sweden and Swedes?  Is that poster also in the "wrong conversation?"   ;)

IIRC when ordering a Titan, the customer was required to accept the T&C. The T&C basically said that the customer agrees to be treated as a business.

Good riddance KNC but I am not surprised at the outcome of the legal action.

I don't know why people keep talking about an "Innosilicon data hall" or "farm" - there is ZERO evidence I have seen that they mine with the gear themselves, other than during testing.

 I suspect some of their DEALERS do so (and I am 100% certain that Zoomhash does - they've mentioned THEIR farm and hosting center), but that's not INNOSILICON doing so.


 Bulk sale of chips would be nothing new for them, reference the A1 and the LKetc "Dragon" designs.....



 As far as companies like KNC failing to deliver units on time - it's called "breach of contract" when they SPECIFY a delivery date and fail to meet it by months or in some cases YEARS - and IS in fact legally actionable as such.
 I do agree that such actions are probably not covered by most "consumer protection" laws nor are meant to be, but that doesn't mean the pre-buyers and buyers have ZERO legal grounds to sue and recover damages. Buyers are pretty much limited to recovery of any money they spent on such pre-orders and purchases that never got filled, and arguably have grounds for partial refunds for excessively late filling of orders.
 "Lost income" and other such recovery causes over the actual money PAID usually requires ACTIVE INTENT to defraud on the part of the seller, which is a much higher legal bar to clear.

Yeah I have been told in the past Innsilicon has NOT had any big data halls...and that may be the case again ...just pump out A4 units and bulk sales of equip and chips etc.

So I stand corrected......

BUT times have changed.......I mean they would be the ONLY game in town....so it would be quite tempting imho for them to start a data hall now imho...they may not but

this is dang well almost 100% what other asic manufacturers would do imho. Likely folk are correct in that they don't need to being a chip mnfg of other types of 14nm chips etc.


So if we get a good price bump from the fact that NEW scrypt equip is being made.....thus the scrypt protocol is not dead and end of life with current high end knc titans
well the price bump alone on LTC could wipe out any difficulty increase and it could be a wash....
.ie 8 buck LTC with high difficulty could make the same coin vs elec costs


"IF ASIC SCRYPT MACHINES AGAIN!!!! BEING PRODUCED BY THE MASSES ARE PERCEIVED AS A VERY VERY GOOD SIGN..THIS COULD BE QUITE THE BOON FOR ALL POW SCRYPT COINS  FOR PRICE RISE OF LTC AND OTHER SCRYPT COINS IMHO"

No more Titans are the LAST POW scrypt ASIC scrypt miners for LTC and other scrypt coins..would maybe (could) put new life into all scrypt coins ....by the consumers of crypto (er maybe...could be 'wishful thinking on my part)


my Titans do now with difficulty where it is and 4 buck LTC did....QUITE well with LTC...and an  A4 Dominator purchaser imho should HOPE that is the case because at say 8 buck LTC you'd have 8 months plus maybe to ROI etc..before everyone and their brother would be trying to crank out scrypt/chips miners again.at say these 8 buck LTC prices etc.....but you would have that window of time say to ROI with your A4 ....all depends on how the price shakes out vs the difficulty rise...again could be a wash and everything could be 'golden' for the A4's to ROI even at say a 4k price and hell the KNC Titans would just plug along till they blew up from old age :( heh :) IF the price rise of say LTC and scrypt coins was to go up enough to compensate for the difficulty rise of the new machines (A4's) and or bulk purchase/chip sales....again being the only game in town for new stuff...this could get 'interesting'
 
Crypto always the drama of WTF is going on :)


anyway my hope 2 Satoshi's on all this others can chime in as well....and again the above is assuming a 4k price on A4 Dominators to be clear

What alt coin is KNC behind?  Did the Evan's Gate cult leader brainwash you with that conspiracy theory?   :D

Where am I "facing fraud charges?"  Oh that's right, nowhere.   :D

We understand you are just making stuff up, because you are so butthurt about Dash's Instamine being exposed.   :-*

*CRICKETS*

*CHIRP*

Hashfast's accusers had two chances in two different courts to show evidence of wrongdoing.  Nothing happened.

Case against Barber and DeCastro?  Dismissed at request of initiating party.

Case against cypherdoc?  Terminated.

Is that you, Bitter Little Timmy?   :D

Don't have a dog in this fight but, do keep in mind that Innosilicon is first and foremost an ASIC design company. Not just a mining ASIC maker. Their main business goes far beyond coin miners and that is why no mining farms. http://www.innosilicon.com/html/about/about-us/

Hmm did they delicate in the same state the company is registrated? Then its simply senseless get rules on them. They are simply paying taxes.
This is like somebody wants already a company like twitter fallen down or something