Bitcoin Forum

Here is the bitcoin address that Avalon has been using to put all their BTC into when people have paid for a 10K Avalon chip order

https://blockchain.info/address/1FGAftzSTztFSB8LMwsrdCKTyqGY6zr3sU (https://blockchain.info/address/1FGAftzSTztFSB8LMwsrdCKTyqGY6zr3sU)

Now considering that up to this point it has had...
Total Received   72,654.2 BTC   
Final Balance   72,654.2 BTC
Which means that they have spend ZERO customer funds on production. They've been taking orders for just over 2 months now.

What does this mean? are we all about to get ripped off pirateat40 style or do these guys just not care about money?

If it was me I would at least NEED some of the US$7,500,000 to pay for business expenses

what are your thoughts?

Chips are cheap, batch 3 was expensive.
I think that this is pretty much all.

It's not you, it's a business that apparently has money from previous sales or a business loan.

My view- If I had both USD and BTC and needed to spend money right now, I'd certainly use the USD if I thought that BTC would go up in value.  They clearly believe that BTC will go up, and will only spend it if they have to.

Massive chip profit margin and plenty of $$ from batch 3 available. Obviously Avalon owners prefer to hang onto BTC over $$

At San Jose, YiFu made the off-the-cuff remark that not all BTC transactions happened on exchanges.  I took that to mean that they might engage in "forward" transactions for large numbers of BTC.  If they could find a hedge fund (off-US-shore, i.e., Chinese or Japanese) that was willing to speculate on BTC appreciation in fiat terms, they could get their funds, and hold the BTC where they were visible as collateral.  

How did they pay for chips? Simple. mine with your avalons.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=236348.0

That defeats the point of the OP... Being that they still seem to have most of our BTC. He is wondering how they afforded to make the chips/machines without cashi g put their BTC

It doesn't really.. if they really did excessive mining with pre-ordered Avalons they could finance chip production with coins from that part of their business easily.

Holy shit!  That is just disgusting.

That explains how they're able to afford to pay for 1,000,000 ordered customer chips.

EDIT: mind you, the blockchain address in the quote above hasn't had any money taken out of it either. so my original question still stands

o.0

This forum has like the most conspiracy theories of all the forums I'm a member of.  Entertaining to an extent.

yes, because communication from manufacturers is mostly one of the worst, that I ever seen on web. Guys here invest lots of hard earned dollars to them, this of course leading for conspiracy about everything..

If this was a case it would mean they are making massive profit margin on each chip. Personally I believe large profit margins are unethical, but in this case another competitor could have made a better price, and nobody did. So it's all fair game.

Thats just one address... For the other pool that was configured we don't see the transactions.

Uh, except that over there they're talking about 700 BTC.  They've sold around a million chips, which, if they're selling for around 8 bucks, are likey costing them no more than $2.  

That's a completely separate shenanigans accusation going on over there.

Seems like it's Bash Avalon week.  Just as well, since BFL is in the Good Guy camp right now and Asic miner just sits there and cranks it out, occasionally offering hardware to anyone who wants stuff to sell on eBay to collectors in a few years.

lol. BFL will never be in the good guy camp on this board. Not sure what you are talking about 700 chips.. You dont know  how much they pay for them or how many other pools were "tested on". So yes its all specualtion, except for the proof they are mining. So far theres proof there was 2 pools configured in the guys avalon he was shipped. Thats all, and to me thats a smoking gun plain and simple they made money off customers avalons.

I'm sorry.  See my edit.  I'm hungry, it's past my lunchtime.  But gotta say, this is an interesting forum.  Guys here, overall, are really smart. 

That said, I reiterate:  lunch time.

Yeah, somebody mined that guy's hardware.  And some pretty dirty hardware was shipped.  Shit was going down in China, no question.

But remember a couple things here:  First YiFu is really smart.  At San Jose, he was able to do a lot of damage to BFL with a smile on his face, and even got a couple shots in at the mysterious and God-like Asic miner principals. 

So he keeps up with stuff, and the benefit/cost ratio of getting busted in something this small just seems low to me.   I think what has been seen so far is equally explainable by the boxes being hi-jacked temporarily by someone in the fulfillment chain.  Remember, there were instances of pretty serious damage to some of the units reported; I doubt Avalon has a real tight leash on their fulfillment chains in China, and there's liekly a lot of room for shenanigans.

That said, this is bitcoins, after all, and the downside of being outside jurisdictional regulations is, well, being outside jurisdictional regulation.

Yifu said joking 'who says we're still in control of that address' ...
My guess, like stated in another thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=227103.msg2417870#msg2417870) is they sold the address to a big investor (Zuckerberg?) and made a deal for payments to that address...

This is exactly a bitcoin entrepreneur should do, only sale in bitcoin and promote pure bitcoin based business model, never cash to USD. They can use bitcoin as collateral to get large amount of fiat loans, even in today's exchange price, their loan is more than secure since the price has rised much since they received the batch 3 payment

Maybe, its all very movie plotline-ish. Who gets to play Yifu in the upcoming movie? Ben Kingsly?

Well, that certainly doesn't need to be the only address where they received mined coins.  ;D

I think they had equal amount of income in bitcoin when their batch 3 were sold in March