Bitcoin Forum

Have many of the early bulk chip orders been received yet?

Have no clue what the deal is... Figured Avalon would come through on these but am utterly disappointed thus far.

I would like to ask the same question here: Where is fucking chips I ordered at the end of April? 8-10 weeks lead time?

Avalon should pay the loss of the chip customers based on the PPS of the chips. If you read the chip contract carefully, unlike the Avalon batches, there is no disclaimer that they may delay the shipping. This is the first contract Avalon given to their customers with a very clear and specified shipping date. I think a civil law suit is quite doable.

Your not screwed until you are "BFL screwed"®. (13 months league)

Avalon should just die out already, they are a fail piece of shit company. They still haven't delivered some peoples batch 1 orders!!! Why anyone would buy bulk orders of chips from them is amazing. Ohh Avalon shipped 1 whole batch yay!!! If we go by those numbers BFL has shipped a batch also, but they still suck.

Not sure, but in looking around the forum it looks like Zefir's group buy received a batch of chips.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177827.msg2790248#msg2790248

Hesitation can be indicative of procrastination, anxiety, and a fear of progress.

A moment of clarity & decisive action can defeat all of these things.

Yifu has not been seen in over two weeks, activity stopped on his avalon github 21 days ago, and the last activity on the forums here was on July16th.  Also it seems like nobody after Zefir got chips, part of me thinks something happened to Yifu or Avalon.  Whomever knows him personally or is able to contact him should.  I fear something could have happened to the chips, Yifu or Avalon, or he skipped town with our Bitcoin.  This is all a possibility, and with over two weeks being absent with many customers wondering where there batch 3 asics are?  Damn... Its not looking good guys, wish I had some good news to share, but unfortunately we got nothing.

Batch#3 customers is asking the question: Where is fucking machine I ordered at the end of March?

i like your nick.

Zefir received  on July 27 July 23 the batch he ordered April 16.

#9725    April 16, 2013    Chips ordered

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177827.0

Batch 2 for Zefir doesn't appear to have shipped as he'd update that thread (Atleast I believe so) if the chips would have shipped.  Assuming chips ship with same delays, by day, by which they were ordered then Batch 2, even 3, would have shipped by now.  Batch 4 would be a *maybe* soon.

Either way chips are shipping.  They are shipping with artificial delays.  I'm fairly confident had people known orders are of 10,400 chips instead of 10,000 chips then people would have chosen to order 10,400 chips instead of 10,000 to prevent unnecessary repackaging of chips.

As far as I see it noone in their right mind would do future business with Avalon due to artificial delays to promised '9-11 week' lead times.  It's unacceptable.

Yes, he did and not much more after that one :)

I swear,I have NOTHING to do with the delays  >:(

Looks like Avalon has been studying BFL very closely & useing thier stall tactics........for what,I have no idea  ::)   Maybe to keep the diff low so they can mine more BTC or  ??? ??? ???

+1


 >:(

I dont know it the delays are artificial or not, nor do I care.

there is no sign of zefir' second batch of chips, and the #2 batch was ordered only 4 days after batch #1 which was received on july 23th.

avalon please do us a favor and just die. we dont need another company like bfl.

Tomorrow will make 15 weeks since I made ​​my payment.

It's strange how $75k order does not even get you a phone number and personal account manager on Avalon's side, isn't it...

I think what's going on right now is that they have realised that they will be unable to maintain their "leader" position in ASIC development and they are trying to milk the network as much as they can delaying the shipments knowing that they will effectively decrease their network share.

And I for one hope that K&C and bitfury devices start shipping on time so then both Avalon and BFL will never ever get another customer.

It's sad that the best case scenario, is that the delay is to keep difficulty low to facilitate existing mining ops (not necessarily their own).

I did understood why Avalon Batches took so long to ship since they require assembly, but with the chips i don't understand the delays since i think they already have them...Anyway just ship the chips please!

I am sure there is a perfectly good explanation for no traction on:
chips
refunds
trade-ins
bulk b3 orders
problem b1 and b2 orders

We just don't know what that explanation is... my guess is an update will be coming from the horse's mouth in the next day or so.

*lol*

If you fear Yifu isnt alive anymore you should phone him. If your phone stops before ~30 seconds then you know he clicked you away.

I believe yifu sent out the first batch to show how it works and to not get too much complaints.

By shipping only 1 batch there will be MUCH more complaints than if he wouldnt ship any....
Because i didnt think that it is fair to wait Sebastians Batch 1 and watching Zefirs batch got assembled and mining.
Our chips as i calculated must be here on the way to Burnin. (*or atleast in 1 week. * talking about Sebastians batch 1 chips)

Thats unacceptable!

ship my batch 3 avalons before that, please.

Lets change it to->  SHIP EVEN SOMETHING!
 I dont really care will they ship chips or miners first. If they ship miners, then we can get chips faster.  If they will ship chips, you will get miners faster.
I just hate that if you have given a time (10-11 weeks) then it MUST be in that time, if not, then give discount or extra chips or just go back to the school and learn how work must be done.

No incentive for updates since everything is already paid for...

I guess what we should keep in mind is that they've been pretty quiet in between shipping batches historically. Yifu barely posted at all throughout B2 shipping, until the very end when only 10% of the units were still left.

+1

WELL COME ON WORLD LETS FIND YIFU:

Yifu Guo
skype: yifu.guo
CTO http://bitsyn.com
1-(347)-370-9069
"Life is an everlasting self-improvement."


His personal email is : yguo1@gmail.com


I found my info using: http://whois.domaintools.com/yifuguo.com

as well as googling the admin phone number on this page.

Here's the source code for that awesome BTC activity visualization page.  That was cool YIFU!!!!!!   

My Batch #3 machine was delivered this morning and is now hashing at over 80GH in the comms room where I work.

Who knows... if the rate of difficulty rise drops a bit, it might even break even :(

^^^ with above.  I think Yifu is busy building avalon machines and just hasn't gotten around to answering email - you would think that hey would be able to hire a btc friendly receptionist to be able to handle these email inquiries.

It took them about a month and a half to ship batch 2, starting late may and finishing early July, except for the orders that slipped through the cracks. If they keep up the same pace they should be done by the end of august, I guess.

The chips may not ship until october or november, and then you will surely be right.

I believe batch 3 miners should ship on may 5th... thats 3 months due...

I'll just leave this here...

https://i.imgur.com/ePbUtme.png

Very nice :) His last login was on 16 July i think. Let's hope for good news!

What if all the chips were stolen by organized criminals.

Then expect to see them for auction somewhere?

Question?   How would they "milk" the network by not delivering chips that have already been paid for?

If Avalon is mining right now, it would diminish their returns to ship out large sums of ASIC power. BFL is trickling, and ASICminer is overpriced and not making too much of an impact outside of their internal operations. There are a number of decent projects on the horizon such as BitFury, KnC and others -- if Avalon is mining they can maximize their return by postponing shipment of their chips for as long as possible... Correct me if I'm wrong?

Well, Yifu did say during the conference that at one point in the past, they had a choice of making "$3million the next month" by mining or making "a lot less" by building units (perhaps in reference to Batch #1).   So it's entirely possible.

It's unknown how much they're actually able to make on this chip deal with TSMC.  To even get TSMC's attention is tough enough already, not to mention they don't have the clout of Apple/HTC in negotiating prices.  So if they are indeed mining, delaying the deluge of chips could help them maximize current mining operations to build a big enough warchest for Gen 2 design/production.  It's not like KNCMiner or BitFury can immediately take over the market and completely shut Avalon out, so they've got the community by the marbles right now.  Even if they delay an extra X weeks (or more) and then ship, the PR damage will be quite heavy (as each day goes by Yifu's phone will be ringing off the hook), but it might be somewhat recoverable once people receive them. 

They would have to get 1,000BTC per day to make $3mill in a month, are they ASICminer?

 :( , sorry to say.... you guys are fucked!
Anyone who bought Butterfly Labs or Avalon, except for the lucky few, are shit out of luck, and fucked big time!
They RIPPED YOU OFF!

Why do people continue to act like sheep, after they have been sheered?
That is the  situation because people are brainwashed and in a trance.
Mindless controlled zombies, acting like amoebas being prodded and barely moving an inch.
Sorry to say, you have been fucked badly. Wake up! Smell the coffee. There are Billion Dollar Bandits at large.
Who in their right mind, without a professional company and credentials and history in the business, would take in millions of dollars when they have not produced anything, then turn around and invest it and give it back to the people, when they could "DELAY" the delivery until the whole profit was milked to the bone?

Only a real well intentioned person, and how many of them are there out there?
Unfortunately, not many.

They are liars and scumbags and if I purchased from Josh piece of shit extreme at Butterfly of Goofi Fukyu at Avalon, I would personally beat the shit out of them and break their bones.
But fortunately, I was not one of those suckers.
People need to start taking power back and thinking for themselves, instead of being easily led like sheep.
(Perfect example ..... everyone who is stupid enough to buy USB ASIC Miners on ebay for $90-$150. Plenty of dumb people to pluck from)

when I go to http://yifuguo.com/ I get to some Russian tourist agency page...

Depends on how organized they are.  If they had their own EEs they could build the miners themselves and take all the profits.


You can't mine with blank chips in boxes.  In order for them to mine with undelivered chips they'd have to install them, mine for a while, and then remove all the chips from the board and repackage them. Hundreds of thousands of them. Seems pretty unlikely.


I purchased a B2 Avalon and I'm pretty happy with it.  Would have been nice if it came a little sooner, but whatever.

+1 to this thread. I thought I was ordering from the good guys! Not to judge them completely as of this moment, but my "faith" is chipping away faster by the day.

You guys gave Goofi Fucku of Avalon enough money to buy enough chips for himself to take over  51% of the network.
Congratulations dumbasses!  >:(

Did you expect us to all pick up ASIC design manuals?  Go back to your stinky corner, troll. 

Don't kill the messenger. I guess you bought into this scam, huh?

You act as if you have information the bitcoin community does not.  Aside from your assumptions, are you bringing anything else to the conversation?  

edit: I will no longer participate in spamming this thread.  Good night troll. 

Avalon did have NO trail of scams. They shipped already 2 batches of miners successfully. That means it was highly likely that avalon can ship a batch 3 and of course the chips that are proved working in the miners already. There was no sign that problems will occur. So no there is no sign to justify someone was stupid to order.

Batch 3s are arriving btw, which would hardly be the case if they were up to no good.  Note I'm not defending (any lack of) professionalism etc tho

[edit]
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=203745.640

You don't suppose that ASICMiner paid YiFu to delay delivery of the chips until they finished dumping off a million or so of their $17 USB Block erupters for $50, do you?  (Those things cost 88 Yuan in China.)

So did Yifu contact anyone when he logged in yesterday?    ???   There must have been a reason to login, he could have just looked at the forums by not logging in... does 'last active' change just by logging in, or do you actually have to do something like messaging??

No it's triggered by logging in, or using a browser that has cookies keeping your session active the next time you use it to browse. By that matter unless he was PMing individual members, he was probably catching up on the current FUD, banter and genuine concerns. You would see in his last posts if he had placed a message in a thread. Which he hasn't.

That said a soon as he does he knows he'll be bombarded with responses, so he's probably keeping schtum until he has something worth saying, or at least worth receiving positive responses for.

-Delay in ASIC product !
-Wait ! What ?
-First time ever, give us 2 weeks !!

We all know the rule before starting the game...
Now, shacking like BFL customers doesn't help

 

I received my tracking number with the shipment of my order, but I have to make an urgent appeal to BitSyncom.
Please, I want to change the shipping address before they go to collect your package, now is going to stay in China and it is important not to get to the custom office, please BitSyncom see the new shipping address that I have in my account or listen to my PM thanks.

what is your order number?

i wouldnt count on that

call dhl and let them change the adress

For chip order or batch3 avalon? what was your order date

or even worse: by UNorganized criminals  :'(

this.  As long as you can prove old address & show ID I can't see an issue with doing this.

BFL?!?

(Sorry couldn't resist, joke. ;D)

Yifu promised me to clear my ticket before shipping the chips. So you might create a ticket with chip batches chosen. I really hope he holds his promise. I have a similar problem. He changed my shipping address but not the billing address and phone. Which is important.

Nothing, it was not possible to change the shipping address according seems to "security reasons", so I will try to talk with DHL before leaving China.

Name:   BitSyncom
Posts:   326
Activity:   280
Position:   Sr. Member
Date Registered:   October 03, 2012, 09:29:29 AM
Last Active:   Today at 08:22:08 PM

Yes, call DHL and tell them to change the order.  Don't give out your DHL tracking code to anyone, btw :P

Avalon,

Don't BFL us bro!

Sincerely,
Troubled customer

Stack,

You've been BFL'd bro!

Sincerely,
Yifu GAO MAO fucked up name sauce

Maybe because the chips are so high value items ($78K USD), he wants to oversee the shipment personally.

He was at the Inside Bitcoins conference in NYC, so maybe that held up the shipments/updates.

We can always hope.

Not to jump in anyones shit but if you have millions of USD worth of late orders..skip the conference. FFS.

Maybe they have been recruited by the NSA and can't talk. 

Surprised Josh showed up at the conference.  Thought someone might throw a creme pie, tomotoes, or obscenities at him at some point, but he just stood there in his white shirt with a stoic look on his face as if nothing happened.  

Hope these chips will ship soon, otherwise Yifu might get a markedly different reception from the community at the next conference.   

Or an appropriately sized brick

True, folks showed a lot of restraint and patience.

Avalon shipped lots of chips to China, and those one who got the chips are resell the chips at rediculours high price. as the seller claim, he had very close relationship with Ngzhang personally, so he can "handle" some chip and supply it. He also claimed that the chips can only be produced 8k a day as the testing equipment have some problem. What an absurd excuse!

Answer? (more of a guess actually, a thought experiment of supposition)

Let's suppose that Avalon did indeed invest in their new SMT line to speed the assembly of mining devices. Why then, with all that added production capacity would you decide to cease selling units? Perhaps by charging a well-deserved markup on the chips they designed, they are able to order 2 or 3 times as many chips as the customers are paying for. This would allow them to keep a great number of chips and use their fancy new SMT line to manufacture a whole lot of ASIC miners for themselves...

It's all just supposition, but that is one way that they could "milk" the network by delaying delivery... just sayin'

if true, they will fulfill 200 orders in only 250 days. :D and only the ones who ordered in april will profit.

btw zefir's first batch of chips contained chips from two different production weeks.

if they dont deliver by the end of august, they shouldnt bother to ship at all.

I think part of the problem *maybe* *if* Yifu is physically based primarily in New York at such a crucial time as now (he was at the Inside Bitcoin conference the other day), as CEO of Bitsyncom he has no actual oversight over what is really happening, therefore cannot control, nor relay an accurate description of what is happening, which is pretty silly. He should be there, exchanges between employees going back no fourth are lost in meaning and translation. Being hands on and present will speed the process up no end, being physically thousands of miles away can only exasperate delays, especially if there is a leaky ship and money making product is being siphoned off elsewhere without his means to stop such activity. Temptation has to be huge...

who the fuck cares if it is incompetence, production problems, bad weather, strikes in mainland china, pirates...   


lead time 10 weeks - not delivered after 15+ weeks.
 

avalon = bfl

It feels like every time I open my mail I find something like rates go up, mandatory health insurance goes up, new tax levies to pay, bank fees due, retirement funds lose money. And every time I read the news some CEO is being paid out, some politician creating outrageous laws or feeding off some charity fund.

I'm like many of you, I saw promise in bitcoin because I'd become so sick of constantly getting fucking screwed by bank and government
bitcoin created hope to escape.. now here we are, we're completely sick of constantly getting fucking screwed by asic manufacturers

they may as well be our government, as developing and manufacturing an asic is beyond the reach of an individual, it takes more than brains alone, it takes money and connections...

/end of rant #firstworldproblems

BATCH 3 AVALON MINER SHIPMENTS






They're making progress on their massive backlog of orders.  We can only hope we'll be soon as well.

Edit:


They've got orders 51xx through 87xx done.  They're doing stuff. Don't worry.

Making miners and shipping chip are totally unrelated. There is very little effort involved in shipping, pack up chips and send to address. You've been "making" them for 15+ weeks now.
So far it is like this:
BFL = unreliable
Avalon = Good start, but unreliable
ASICminer/Bitfountain = Only ASIC manufacturer that can deliver ON TIME.

Word to wise for new ASIC companies; if you can't make deadlines, don't bother. I'm sure there will be a slew of people jumping on everything that comes out, but I've seen the light.

Yifu Guo Twitter: https://twitter.com/DataTranslator

I'm not sure why... :P

I just assumed B3 would move before the chips because of the order they were purchased in. 

Anyone know how many chips are in an Avalon unit?

[EDIT] Looks like 240 chips

Yes, and way overpriced as well, although I guess the price just dropped recently.

So here are some numbers I was thinking about in my head, things don't add up:

We recently went from 187,281,159 MH/s to 223,746,040 this past difficulty increase.

That is a 36,464,881 MH/s increase.

	ASICminer	Avalon	BFL
MH/s	336	300	4000
36,464,881	108,526	121,550	9,116
Chips @ 33.3%	36,139	40,476	3,036
		240/Unit	1500 Jalas
			300 25GH
			150 50GH
			15 500GH

None of these outcomes seems possible to me. In 11 days between difficulty, I find it hard to believe what I'm hearing from any ASIC camp.

At one third each (I don't think it's a reality) ASICminer would have sold 36,000 block erupters. (Blades are not being made/sold), Avalon would have shipped 169 units, AND BFL would have any combo between 1500 Jalas to 15 Mini-rigs!!

I don't think any of those are close to what is being reported. I know that ASICminer is attempting to keep their network share the same, but that would only account for, in this instance, 20% and MAYBE the rest is erupters. Still, Avalon and BFL are not adding this much to the network based on customer accounts.

So who's making more miners?

Answer:   Someone who said that around 3.5TH/s of batch II would be delivered in silver cases and only the later people will get the new black design and then delivered almost all of batch II in the new black cases (after being BUSTED publicly on sending silver ones that had been mined for months) might have a very good reason to withhold more miners from diluting the market share they are mining with the amazing missing batch II silver miners.   

So are the new Batch #3 miners, magically no longer dusty? Has this been confirmed. As if it has, then they were blatantly mining before.

There has not been a silver dusty miner shipped since vicus called them out on this and showed where they were mining to.    Both batch II and now, batch III black miners arrived without dust.    AND, there magically were not any more silver cased miners shipped after the outing of zhang and yifu as the crooks they are.

I saw a statistic on genesisblock stating that all of avalon b3 miners would require a total of ~133,000 chips

Still can't believe no updates have been mailed out by Avalon.

Chips were given a 9-10 week deadline.  There should have not been any delays with these - especially if they were to have been shipped directly from the factory and just needed to be remailed.  Unfortunately, per Zefir's 1st batch, it looks like Avalon has to manaully remove 400 chips from every order.  REALLY?!?! Absurd.

It's about week 15.  Had chips been given a 9+ week deadline noone from the chip order would be complaining.  When you make a deadline like 9-10 weeks, instead of a 9+ week one, make sure you're able to keep it - especially if you want to keep your customers.  I'm fairly confident that had deadline been 9+ weeks way fewer people would have ordered.

Also, what is this with people who haven't purchased a b3 or a chip batch defending Avalon's incompetence in this thread.

(In this case it isn't BFL with regards to the image)
http://imageshack.us/a/img191/5122/bjph.jpg

Most of the interesting comments are going to come from the people who are now "free" to say what they really think about these two scumbags because the little dick Yifu cannot threaten to withhold our goods and WE are NEVER going to order anything from them again.    I would not even order Finished Units from them because we all saw what they meant by "next week" start shipping in may.   Meant "next week start mining for ourselves suckers".

Concur, it's completely absurd.  Wish that there was someone with contacts at TSMC to check up on this situation. 

Is it not out of their hands?! I thought a former disgruntled Avalon team member that wants to make his own next gen chip with the guy that calls Europeans lazy posted boxes of chips weeks back detailing volumes of chips in each box and the amount of boxes present equal to the chips on order, or am I way off the mark here?

What's unlikely about the Avalon number?  People are reporting getting their batch3s in the thread, one guy who asked for a refund just got a tracking number.   Since there are 600 Units, if they ship in the time it took them to get batch II out it should be about 150 a week.

People are also getting their boxes of chips.  Each 10k chip order is equivalent to about 41 3-module Avalons.

Not sure if it's entirely out of their hands, but you are certainly right about the photos of chips. According to TGB, there were 24 boxes in the photo that arrived for a retailer.  Photos were taken on July 9.  TGB also reports that there's evidence from the tracking label that there might have been a total of 135 boxes shipped on June 25, 2013.  

TGB article
http://thegenesisblock.com/latest-shipment-of-avalon-asics-could-increase-network-hashrate-by-500/

Thread that possibly discusses some Avalon team members  breaking off to work on a 40nm design
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252233.20

Supposed tracking number  for 135 boxes (credit to TGB for the link, wanted to look into the tracking number shown on the photos, but they already did it)
That's 2.1million chips!
http://www.track-shipments.com/track-trace.aspx?pref=AWB&awbno=87150508076

Perhaps they have prioritized the shipping by sending the whales who demanded a "solid" and then lollygagging for a bit before resuming shipping to everyone else.
Hope Yifu is enjoying his vacation in Tahiti / Bora Bora.  >:(

I wonder how much of all of our profits are lost from these delays?  btw someone here on the forums certainly has Yifu's contact info and is able to contact the Avalon team, honestly the quietness is a bit scary imho.  I hope to god we get them yesterday and steamboat updates us and says our miners are on their way to us.  But that's wishful thinking, I will not be buying from Avalon again, asicminer ftw

KING RICHARD III:

Chips! chips! my kingdom for chips!

Eh.. you funny.

Other chips.

Unfortunately your post above is the experience of many of us waiting. CHiPS the other ones.

Awesome old skool stunt show. 8)

http://youtu.be/W58_ohlhWp0

The turning radius of the wagon is about as fast as the Avalon Chip turn around to us waiting.

'rama you just made me laugh out loud. I'm deep into KnC for a Jupiter and I honestly figured my Avalon group buy chips were more of a sure thing than what those Swedes are cooking up. I'm more than a bit disenchanted with ASICs in general, at least I was able to sell my BFL preorder on eBay for a profit (knock on wood -- still waiting for the PayPal funds to clear). Hoping someone will come through -- what are your thoughts on FashHash?

Bitcoinara definitely wins 'Best Post of the Week' award, with this one!

Bravo!

Wrong. Those are fries.  These are chips:

http://hotdogprofits.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/potato-chips.jpg

Nice Ytter... representing N.A.!

Chips
http://www.fdin.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/DSC1010_med1.jpg
Crisps
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTk6Wg_lvnS1oC53rK_7bMdBjymx_82Kc9v5hG5Qf07ODawSn4C

Goofi Fucku     "fucked you".

Sorry guys.  :(

When will Avalon and Goofi Fucku mail the chips out?

When difficulty rises just enough that you will no longer profit.

I cannot believe people fall for this crap.  ::)

YiFuckyou is just another fraude who could not resist the money that was passing by and is taking more then he should.
The Avalon batch is lost. BFL are fuckers. Lets hope KNC will be better.

YiFuckou FUCKYOU . If there was something wrong, an mail explaning it and then dropping of the grid for a few weeks is better then just dropping of. (But i would enjoy if you dropped in front of a big incomming truck)

Tjaptjoy up you'res

if I recall correctly, that guy posted the pictures of finished Avalon IC in boxes, and said that he was leaving avalon team because of some unethical practices, and posted pictures of finished chips as proof. I didnt realize back then that he didnt post those pictures to prove that he is telling the truth (to be part of avalon team), but to prove Yifu's unethical practices.  

I guess he didnt agree with Yifu to hold the chips till the shipment of avalon B3 machines. now he is developing his own 55 nm chip.

not blaming him, cause avalon after this will loose customers.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lamfegONUY1qa5ff2o1_500.gif

The Genesis Block mentioned that the photos in the order may have been just part of a bigger order of chips in the range of 2.1 million chips which shipped on 6/25.  
Even with all of our group buys combined (Zefir/Steamboat/everyone else), that whale of an order probably got Yifu's attention and there may have been
some stipulations to give them time to put together their units before everyone else does.    Didn't realize the community had to order $14million worth of
chips to get some actual customer service and maybe a long overdue update.

After 16 weeks, I dont need any bflsque in two weeks™ update!


I WANT MY CHIPS NOW!

When i think about how normal companies would treat customers that invested hundreds of thousands of dollars... its funny to compare...

Seriously, the minute a company with real business practices, decent customer service, and a shipping product shows up all the current vendors are in trouble.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lamfegONUY1qa5ff2o1_500.gif
(ibminer: had to fix the img post, fits the subject so well :D)

It's time to start considering organizing a class action lawsuit against these dipshits.

 Yeah, it's unfortunate that Yifu turned out to be a pile of shit :(

 Sadly, new money really does change some people for the worse. He's a young kid. Maybe he'll learn some humility and professionalism when he grows up a bit more.

No, no we ship now give 2 week ok ?

Joking aside, all intrested parties should start considering this option.
I am not sure though how it would apply to persons outside the US. I'm guessing that it would not matter but i'm not a lawyer.

Another user from this forum also makes a valid point on this issue (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=264224.msg2831138#msg2831138):

Avalon is US company incorporating in Nevada.  Sending papers to registered agent.

Not sure if he ever had to work for his own money...

Serious question though: even if you won a lawsuit, how exactly would you collect if his assets are in BTC? The fact that BTC can't be seized or frozen or in any other way controlled by the government is a key selling point.

Lawsuits, for the most part, are rarely, if ever, about retrieving all assets.  There's usually an ulterior motive beyond asset retrieval and are the result of a beyond-than-pissed-off customers.

I'd highly doubt if it went as far as a lawsuit the primary objective would be asset retrieval.  Even if all BTC assets were retrieved they are less than 50% of the investment in making anything out of the chips.  This fact, alone, indicates a lawsuit's primary objective would not be asset retrieval.

You all keep using BTC as a payment system you'll keep getting burned.  What kind of a brain deficiency does it take to send multiple 100K of non refundable, non traceable, anonymous crypto currency, and of all places to China and hope it will all be ok. 
ROFL 
BTC is a poor online payment system and especially so for anything delayed because eventually any operation will become if not an outright fraud then a basically a not what you ordered or when you wanted it since there will always come a point where 95% of BTC received is more profitable to fuck around with then the 5% profit margin of any business.

Why are you here then?

Agreed, it's stupid.  The only reason bitcoin has any value is that it can be used as a payment system. Of course, for very small transactions that you don't mind losing out on, it's much better then CCs/Paypal.

Plus, people in the bitcoin mining business are likely to have a lot of bitcoin sitting around, and it's much easier to just use send it directly as opposed to selling it on an exchange, waiting for the cash, and then doing a traditional transaction along with all the fees and costs.

What's needed are 3rd party systems built on top of bitcoin that handle things like refunds.

BitPay?

Asset Retrieval is not entirely out of the question. Namely one if you file a civil suit claiming fraud (criminal) you can go after this guys personal assets and the corporate veil would be made meaningless. From what I understand a criminal act (in this case fraud) would in sense lift any protections an LLC would provide to the members.

/me hits the panic button.

Were screwed.

Hey, you can't really blamed Yifu, because he is not the main suckers who sell you these Asic Chip, those guys who did the group buy who enticed you into buying these shitty asic chips.

Next Time Don't do group buy.

from the speculation thread, published by wall street journal online, maybe make you guys feel better?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323997004578644491403250124.html
not sure how to get full article, i just copied and pasted from the observer thread in speculation

Joe Lewis, a billionaire foreign-exchange trader who teamed up with hedge-fund manager George Soros in 1992 to bet against the Bank of England, is the latest high-profile financier to throw his weight behind the virtual currency called bitcoin.

Mr. Lewis leads the Phoenix Fund, a Zurich-based private-equity fund that on Tuesday plans to invest $200 million in Avalon, a company that makes computer servers aimed at creating bitcoins, according to people familiar with the situation.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency that exists online and isn't backed by any government or central bank. Bitcoins were invented in 2008 by a computer programmer who goes by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, who describes it as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.

Joe Lewis's Phoenix Fund is investing in a bitcoin company.

The Phoenix Fund's investment in Avalon reflects the growing popularity of virtual currencies, which are also coming under scrutiny from regulators. Other bitcoin enthusiasts include Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who are best known for their role in the creation of Facebook Inc. FB +1.50% They have proposed an exchange-traded fund that is tied to bitcoins.

Bitcoins are created through a process called mining, in which computers solve complex mathematical algorithms to earn the bitcoins. The total number of bitcoins that can be mined is limited to 21 million. There are now about 11.5 million bitcoins in circulation, according to Blockchain, a website that monitors bitcoin transactions.

The Phoenix deal will also involve Taiwanese microchip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., 2330.TW +0.50% which is set to supply the state-of-the-art microchips that will power the hardware.

The Phoenix Fund was set up this year to invest in bitcoin mining-hardware companies. It looked at several of Avalon's rivals in the sector, including Butterfly Labs and KnCMiner but decided against investing, according to a person familiar with the private-equity firm's strategy.

Investors in the Phoenix Fund, which includes a small number of individuals who made their fortunes in currency trading, believe that the currency will become more stable and popular if more parties are involved in the mining process, this person said.

Mr. Lewis moved into currency trading in the 1980s and 1990s. In September 1992, Mr. Lewis teamed up with Mr. Soros to bet on sterling crashing out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, an event that was later named "Black Wednesday." Mr. Lewis didn't respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Lewis had big losses investing in U.S. brokerage firm Bear Stearns Cos, in which he began amassing a stake during 2007, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time.

Mr. Lewis is the main investor in an unlisted company called Tavistock Group, which has investments in more than 200 companies across the globe.

Tavistock Group includes ENIC Group, which has a Bahamas-registered subsidiary called ENIC International Ltd., through which Mr. Lewis owns 85% of the shares in U.K. soccer club Tottenham Hotspur.

The Phoenix Fund is independent of Tavistock.

The bitcoin deal was put together by Andrew Laurus, a former government-bonds salesman at Lehman Brothers who is also an investor in the fund. Avalon was set up by Yifu Guo, a pioneer in the bitcoin-mining industry. He was part of the team that developed the first ASIC bitcoin mining hardware. ASIC stands for application-specific integrated circuit, a type of custom-designed microchip. Mr. Guo couldn't be reached for comment.

Separately, Coinflash, a company that planned to set up kiosks for bitcoin enthusiasts to buy the virtual currency, is shutting down before it even opened its doors. "Due to an unforeseen change in our personal circumstances, we've made the difficult decision to suspend Coinflash's services indefinitely," the San Diego-based company said in an email statement.

Coinflash was established earlier this year and had planned to open the bitcoin kiosks in California and New York this summer.

As part of the deal, Avalon will gain access to TSMC microchips based on 20-nanometer processes, which are much faster than other chips. TSMC recently won a contract to supply chips to Apple. The increased processing power should give Avalon an edge in solving the algorithms that control the supply of bitcoins.

Psst... where are the chips?

umm..we sure can blame Yifu!  For the chips which have been delivered Zefir (being the only organizer delivered to so far) has acted exemplary.

I disagree with the racist rants against Yifu but I think it's comical that he is pursuing 2nd gen chip technology when he will have no customers to pawn them to.

However, going by the only invest what you can afford to lose rule, I'm still fine if I only make my money back. I took an acknowledged risk by investing in a non-100% guaranteed product (even tho 10 weeks should be 10 weeks). But once burned twice shy, no more Avalon for me..

Maybe this deal has been taking all of Yifu's time and he has been too busy to ship the chips.
Maybe Mr. Lewis can get Yifu a paid helper.
Sign the deal ship our chips!

Yeah, I think we know the feeling.

The fuu*k this is happening? Wow, apparently Yifu hasn't been idling away opportunity!!

This is either the worst thing that can happen to Bitcoin and centralisation, or it's an act of genius...in any case I hope dodgy finance that contributed to the crash and manipulation of fiat currency is not involved in this deal.

Interesting times. Let's hope for the best...

There has been all sorts of misreported FUD on Avalon this weekend.  Seems to be based around a misreported story about a different "Avalon" but hard to tell if the link above is a continuation of that

This thread debunks the USD200M investment story
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=268081.0

Psst!!! Where are the chips? ???

I had an epiphany regarding bitcoin a while ago when a guy next to me at a bank was trying to get money from his account to pay for a purchase from someone else.  It was a large amount but not crazy.  You should've seen the hassles.  "If we give you this much cash you have to fill out a tax form.  Why yes we can make you a bank check instead but when you come with the seller to the bank we can't cash it for him.  Why the Fuck not?  It's over our cashing limit.  It's my money I just want to pay him."  Bitcoin is a wealth storage and wealth transfer system without the banks or anyone else looking over your shoulder telling you how you should store or transfer it.  It is a system where your account can be in your head for any amount one or one million.  What it isn't good for is sending strangers transfers of huge amounts and hoping for the best.  Why re-invent the wheel?  There already are plenty of systems that handle refunds.  It's called a credit card, or PayPal, or for cases of international commerce in large amounts a Letter of Credit.  Funds are frozen for the seller from the buyer.  Items get checked at the port of entree for correct delivery and the seller gets their money.  BTW creating 3rd parties holding btc in escrow will just get escrows running with the BTC instead of sellers.  No difference.  You got something I want, awesome we'll figure out a way to transact with BTC or otherwise.  Use a little risk acessment, that's what you are supposed to do with real money anyways.  You got something I want maybe in two months.  Call me in two months.  This isn't kickstarter FFS.

Well, if there's a $200 million dollar investment the question is moot, as they can easily settle any lawsuits.

However, the point I was making is that you can't seize bitcoin unless someone hands over their crypto key or agrees to make a transaction.  A judge can order them to do it, and they can simply skip the country and refuse if they want.

People talking about suing bitcoin businesses are missing a key aspect of bitcoin. unlike traditional currency and property you can't just file a lein on their property or garnish their wages/bank accounts.

Also it's unlikely any court will call bitcoin currency and since they won't you don't have "valuable consideration" in any bitcoin for goods contract.  That's why in a lot of purchase contracts there still is a token fiat amount included as consideration just to have it be valid.  That's nothing considering the bigger hurdle of proving that any legal person (living or corporate) can actually "own" a bitcoin address that received the transfers.

What the fuck! Can you explain what i did wrong? Are you seriously claiming i knew what will happen? Thats probably why i invested all my money into those chips too right?
I bought those chips because nothing can go wrong. I only didnt know yifu will hold the chips back.

And i called yifu for days 2-4 times each hour. He wont answer. The same goes for tickets and emails.

But if you know what i can do tell me! Instead you go around and post this accusation in each thread... you probably dont even know that many groupbuy organisators invested much money for creating miners too right? They did this on purpose to lose this money... *facepalm*

I really would prefer you inform yourself before writing such nonsense.

Chill out, he's a KNCMINER shill. Just check his post history (the noob who didn't know anything about BTC who then resold early queue pre-order placement for KNCMINER miners and now is spamming all non KNCMINER threads with "we don't want pre-orders" shit).

Just put him on ignore, you're doing a fine job of looking after your GB.

we can write Joe Lewis an mail with the latest Avalon Chips Order Status.
@Yifu, what is goin on, deliver our paid chips, now. You have earned enough Money for the fucking chips. Why you give use no information ?

No, he/she's also been in the KnC miner thread also ranting about pre-orders...

Really...

Was that before or after his/her attempt to sell a few KNCMINER preorders?

KNC never make ROI same like avalon chips.

Every (avalon, BFL, knc, bitfury) asic power is enough big to kill himself with diff.
That is reason why he not give us numbers how many power is preordered.

That would be after, can only assume those deals went sour, either way clearly not the sharpest tool in the box as whoever they are they cannot grasp the significance if pre-ordering at this stage, or do their own research, so they spout the same line in all the threads continuously. Has been for weeks...

https://mobile.twitter.com/ScottWapnerCNBC/statuses/364370798892421120

blue pill or red pill?

did you misspeak ?  Hard to believe that people who have been on here so long and witnessed countless scam after scam after scam and still you will send non refundable non traceable anon btc for things months away and think nothing might go wrong ?  It's one thing to say the risk was low and justify why you believed so but to say "nothing can go wrong" with sending 100,000s or even 1,000,000s just boggles my mind.  Then you get hero members scolding everyone "make sure you escrow". ROFL

Seb I really, really hope you didn't invest all your money man.

Please tell me that ain't so.

And for anyone else planning to put it all on one horse. Don't. Ever. Ever, ever.

Even if you could buy in hand today, you're still relying on a return in the future. You are in essence paying ahead of time to make a return even further in the future. An uncertain future.

:-[

This is exactly why I was scared of "chip" sales and bought B2/B3 instead.  Sure it was overpriced, but I had ONE point of failure to worry about, not many!  (how many layers of "this could go wrong" do you need to build a working ASIC on the chip sales? too many!)

As others have stated, Avalon runs 3-5months late, chip sales are what 5 weeks delayed now?  You guys still have twice to three times as long to wait   :P

Batch one for Zefir was delivered on July 23rd https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177827.msg2790248#msg2790248 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177827.msg2790248#msg2790248)
They were ordered on April 16th. Yufi's NO Bullsh#t (http://store.avalon-asics.com/?page_id=9605)  terms state 9-10 weeks. 10 weeks would've been June 25th, so they were 3-4 weeks late. MAYBE I am ok with this, IF - the other batches were sent with the same "late-ness". Batch 2, 3 were ordered 4 days later. Batch 4, 8 days; batch 5 12 days. Zefir should have had them July 27th, July 31st and today.
Shipping one batch and then holding the rest for no known reason IS BS. If there are problems why isn't Yifu on here saying something? Silence is the answer man; he is deliberately withholding them or he is using them for other ventures. Either way he made a terrible decision.
Personally if he had never sent the 1st batch, I'd be more interested into what problem there could be. But sending the 1st batch and then ......... ? Extremely low-blow.  :-\ He will reap what he sows though.

Welcome to the world of pre-orders, in any other market nobody would order, but in the ASIC market, common sense makes way for greed, and so far the greedy are usually disappointed. Hopefully that will get better as more players enter the market and we switch from a pre-order to stock on hand model.

Fact is you should all be getting daily updates with lateness. Silence is inexcusable.

IMO, banging down on the group-buy promoters is a little bit shoot-the-messenger.

Remember when the BFL chips first appeared, and one guy tried to hold BFL's feet to the fire with regard to payment and delivery, with cancellation if they were late?  He was getting some traction with BFL, too, because they probably thought the well was poisoned enough that maybe they'd have to go that way.

Then, some other guys offered to do conventional buys, which would save a couple days if everything went on schedule,  accepting the whole pre-order, trust-us-see-ya-in-100-days shuffle, and enough people signed up to get the orders to go.

The first guy disappeared;  BFL didn't have to honor any of those terms, so why should they?

Now when BFL is late on chip delivery, should the poor innocent wronged chip buyers gang up on the guys who organized their group buys?  Maybe, but first they should take a bit of one of their remaining bitcoins and go buy a mirror.

I wrote "nothing can go wrong" compared to other things like miner production. Normally this should be clear... except one wants to find a reason to argue. And Avalon going scammy is not the first thing you think about when investing since nothing more had to be done than ordering more of the same chips in the foundry and ship them to the customer. So no, i did not speak about the potential risk that yifu decides to cut future gains only for a short term win. Would you do this really at his place?
I spoke about the things that have to happen until the chips are here. The chips are proven to work, there were many created before already and so Avalon knows quite good how long it takes to get them. There are no construction problems or similar at avalon. And TSMC is a real pro foundry, they will create when they say they will.

Let me say you this... i once invested in another bitcoin venture and it turned out very well. So well i live from it easily now. All your rants about the stupid people that use bitcoins instead paypal that can be charged back... its fine for me. Use paypal if you wish. But others might see the advantages in bitcoin and they might invest and win. Its not said that every investment will be the super win of course, thats how it goes. But that doesnt mean that i wont fight ok?


Dont worry... :) i wrote i invested all and that means only bitcoins i got as a reward and more bitcoins from a previous investment i spoke above. And i stated it to tell the bitcoin-troll that i have much invested in the chips too. I have enough to live and wont suffer because of that. But i will not give up at this point and watch like Yifu kills the hopes of so many people. I mean its not only the chip buyers, there are so many assemblers and miner developers that invested huge amounts of time and money to make a business out of this. And now Yifu with his stupid waiting politics kills slowly all of this. I really dont want see this happen.

Sir, I cannot agree with you more. 

That's is the real tragedy of this, and the source of my contempt -and that's the kindest word I can draw up- for this slug of a person.

I have to agree in that there were really cool cottage industries being born out of this. That's true decentralisation and economic growth.

I was looking forward to seeing crazy cool custom cases and rigs. Like a fish tank, or a mame arcade mining cabinet, or some other such badassness that kookie talented DIY types pull out of the bag.

The fact is they knew their profit margins were less than that of a bespoke chip company, but they wanted to hack and share the love. These weren't units that would up housed in a hosting facility for the large part, they were going to be situated in people's houses and garages.

Genuinely people had dreams and ambition behind this :'(

Hopefully Bitburner or BKKCoins or one of the other devs will start on a standalone Bitfury chip based board in the near future.  (Or possibly even license c-scapes standalone ethernet version and run with it...)

Yeah well, if Avalon proves to be an unreliable supplier, then I am sure the DIY board devs wont want to keep working with their chips for long. Is it so hard to ship chips? Not like you are waiting for any other parts from suppliers. Perhaps they ran out of cardboard boxes and packing tape?

When are BFL's chips supposed to arrive anyway? I saw some guy advertising a custom BFL board sale, his terms didn't include anything about an expected delivery date.

Terms of purchase:



Delivery:  100 days

Payment:  50% deposit on order and 50% upon delivery

Cancellation:  All sales are final and deposits will not be returned if final payment is not made prior to delivery.

Minimum purchase:  100 chips

Good to see that chip update Yifu!

/s

Well it all depends on the Court's definition of property. "The Guardian of Every Other Right" a good book on private property rights, it's evolution and cases.

I wonder if there's some kind of internal disarray inside Avalon.  Maybe the guy with the key to the chip warehouse left. Maybe someone stole the chips. Maybe someone ran off with the bitcoin and now they don't have any money to pay for people to re-ship their chips.


No. It doesn't matter what the court thinks or doesn't think. Bitcoin can't be taken, by anyone, without the private key. Which the court doesn't have, unless you give it to them.

I'm not trolling or arguing with you but I'm sorry when you send BTC the number one concern should be will you get what you are paying for and if anyone it's hero members who should remind others about that.  If Avalon folds up will you be covering anyones loses since you state you are doing so well?  Probably not, so Avalon took a free ride on the back of your good reputation.  I see plenty of advantages in bitcoin but this deal is not an "investment" it's just buying mining gear much like people were buying video cards before.  I wish everyone luck but I think anyone who is talking about this like it's some sort of "investment" is way off.  Even you say "might win" and winning is for lotteries not investments.  ASICminer USB has been reduced in price by 75% already.  True fiat costs of these ASIC chips is very low and eventually the sales price for them must reach that low point where electricity will be 75%-90% of your bitcoin production costs because as long as electricity isn't higher they will be profitable to make sell and run.  That's a very long road ahead and there will be lots and lots of companies running with the BTC until the market gets there.  Be careful when "investing".

Oui Oui +1

If we use your definition, buying shares of a company is not an investment.

This is the crux of the whole deal. Sure there are some looking to get bitcoin via the chips/miners. But there is a whole lot more involved, as you said. The whole spirit of individual thinking and the different avenues that were being developed are great. Now, what happens to them? Personally I want to encourage everyone that has/had plans for Avalon based miners to keep working to develop your products. Eventually someone with integrity and the balls to use it will step forward.

The most meaningful way to characterize an economic contract is by its payoff profile.  This avoids semantics and issues of securities law and regulation.

If you want to characterize a pre-order in this method, it has the payoff profile of a loan, or of the security type "bond".  If the company performs its contract, you receive an agreed-upon value; no more, and no less.  If the company defaults, you get some recovery value, which in these cases almost certainly would be zero.

So, I think it's perfectly fine to call a pre-order an "investment."  We just have to be careful to not confuse that with equity investments, which are stakes in the company's future.

Please DON'T ship the chips. I want my 3-months-late Avalon batch 2 to actually be worth something!

+1
Although hero users should know more than noobs there is no guarantee that they are investment minded. The only reason I chose which buy to take part in was down to timing and who I could trust as far as getting the BTC to Avalon. I knew I was taking a risk & I accept (but not happy with) any resulting lost profits or loss. Reputation on this forum is a poor substitute for due diligence, although I do believe that at this point group buy organizers should be taking the lead in attempting to get more info from Avalon.

Of course i thought about the possibility that avalon is going scammy, but there was zero sign that this will happen. Scammy is a hard word anyway. I really doubt Yifu is scamming at the moment. He most probably only has a view of justice that leads to chip buyers having to wait for the batch 3 miners to deliver. Its his decision and he has to live with the results, which will be harm to his reputation and the risk that customers will think twice before investing anything. Most wont do anymore.

But at the moment when the chips were sold it looked like a sure thing. Im not sure if you were here at that time but i tell you its the case. And of course i warned the buyers to make a risk analysis before. But im not in the USA where you have to tell everyone that coffee can be hot. If you dont tell you can be sued. Normally everyone who invests should think about this carefully too. But like i said, i warned too even though everyone has to do this on its own.

I think its an investment. If you put money into something and await a profit at the end i take it as an investment. And an investment has the risk involved to lose money too. At the moment Yifu "only" eats up our additional return, hopefully not more and he stops this soon.

Then you have an idea how to do this? Like i wrote several times i tried to call Yifu for days 2-4 times each hour. He wont answer. He is waiting until the voice recorder answers or click you away. When writing tickets or mails he checks the header and... looks away again.

I dont know how i could contact him. If you know a way let me know.

some life in there can we get a visit?

How many millions of dollars is in play?  I wonder how long it'll take for the media to see this story....

Yifu is a complete piece of shit.  The sooner people accept this and start telling him this (especially in person at conferences) the better.   There is ample evidence that he STOLE batch II and mined the machines for his own gain and was going to send the dusty used machines to people until Vicus outed him on this.
He does not answer calls, not because he is too busy, but because he is a piece of shit, sorry excuse for a human being.
It does not take that long to answer the 200 tickets they had, yet they do not give a shit to do it.   People (especially those who have their order and will NEVER order from him again) should start calling a spade, a spade.   
There were corrupt, they stole from the people that trusted them and now it is VERY likely that they are delaying your chip purchases because THEY ARE STILL MINING the silver batch II units that they STOLE and by shipping chips, they will reduce the number of BTC they mine each day.

Did you ever consider that Yifu may not be in charge but just the face of the company?
He lives in NY., how much control could he have over the operations in China?

In media? Never. Does BFL delays got much media coverage?

From his own mouth (keyboard): http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/10vmxa/avalon_asic_ama/


So either he doesn't know what a COO or a CFO does, or he's giving everyone the finger as he trolls through life.

Then how hard is for him to come forward and tell us something? There is simply no excuse for not keeping us updated.

Not sure how your point (which I think is wrong btw) would change ANYTHING that I just wrote.   If Yifu is "just the guy that gets 1/2 the profits" and the evil zhang is controlling him like a puppet, then all my points STAND.   He is a POS that has stolen from people while telling you how "holy" he is.   If he has completely been "used" like you insinuate than why would this "honorable" man not warn all of us that we are being ripped off and he could not control it?   He would still be a useless piece of shit in your above example.

Or maybe he's just decided to retire and live life as a multi-millionaire in China.

 Well, I guess this makes two Bitcoin ASIC companies I'm never doing business with again...

 Very disappointing to see these scenarios play out.

 *mumbles something about money, power and corruption*

True... there are not many scenarios where Yifu comes off as the good guy.

The fact of the matter is... there may be good reasons why they aren't shipping chips, but we don't know them because he is unwilling to give out bad news.  Though no news is even worse when people's imaginations are left to run wild.

Fact is once delays happen you should be given daily updates. Bitsyncom's team are just as responsible for the silence, but Yifu is especially responsible, distance being located in New York is no exception, less so, as it's out of free choice. If he cares he should be in China now, fully hands on, especially as there are delays. He may be young, but he is an adult and he is responsible for this company.

BFL and Avalon's responses, or lack of when things go awry are not common practice in real world business. This is amateur behaviour and Bitsyncom having the luxury if another company before them making all the wrong moves have less of an excuse to be behaving this way.

You need daily updates now, grace period is over, there is now no excuse for silence from Yifu or Zhang, or for that matter anyone involved in the design team, but it's ultimately Yifu and Zhangs responsibility, legally speaking.

Sometimes i believe he has this problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workaholic

If true it would explain why he cant delegate work to others, for example the support. He seems to want to do everything on its own and maybe he doesnt realize at all that he cant handle it.

Yifu Guo is Asian, these people don't like to talk about problems or admit mistakes. It's about "loosing face".

"Losing Face is much more intense than suffering embarrassment or shame. In extreme cases it can be like losing all the senses, or losing one's place in life. Complete loss of Face is like full exile - you become a non-person, even to family and close friends. You can't speak or be spoken to. You can't be heard or seen. You are just not present."

"Losing face is simply a Chinese not knowing how to deal with rejection or criticism. They are raised pampered, especially males, and showered with positive reinforcement for good and bad. They are set up from the very beginning to not know how to deal with losing, as their parents once were. They also were taught to ignore problems or issues if they don't affect them, to avoid trouble and confrontation. So since the entire nation grew up under these conditions for hundreds of years, it became culture. No one questions it as it's the norm. It's not right, but it now is a part of their life, and customs. Simple."

http://www.internationalman.com/78-global-perspectives/490-what-is-face-in-asian-culture-and-why-should-we-care (http://www.internationalman.com/78-global-perspectives/490-what-is-face-in-asian-culture-and-why-should-we-care)

https://raw.github.com/bitcoiner49er/Misc/master/Yifu%20trollol.png

I think this sums it up

So Yifu did an "I so shamed, i think im gon kil myself ni hao"

I'm not sure how true this is but some say in China screwing over non-Chinese is considered a win.  Has anyone tried translating the Chinese boards to see what's going on?

According the TGB, there's one single big whale reseller supposedly ordered $14.75 million worth of chips and maybe even got an exclusive period to mine.  According to tracking data, they got theirs shipped on 6/25, 135 boxes full. Everyone else, especially the community who rallied around him at the beginning, seem to be getting the short end of the stick. 

Do you have a link or any evidence to back up that claim? If it's true, and the $14.75 million order cut in line and delayed all other bulk chip orders, I'd say that is pretty screwed up.

So you say it really could be that this reseller bought a big chunk of chips but wanted it fast so that Yifu gave them our chips and ordered new ones for us? I thought about this but i doubted Yifu would do something so stupid and unethical. But the more time goes by...

I mean its another day over without anything...

someone who have 14.75 mil not that stupid and buy 1.8 mil chips ---> 650 TH because with this power diff go to 140mil and he never take money back :)

Avalon & TSMC would both have pooled orders together, avalon to get a better price for volume and TSMC because it's easier to make large lots, the fact that 1 batch of 10k chips has been delivered show that they HAVE done a run of chips.

So where are they ??????

I cannot find the story on the website.   I call bullshit.    As much as I agree that Yifu is a crook and a little shit, I do not think this story is credible.    FUD.    It is more believable that he is sitting on your chips because it would hurt how many BTC he mines per day with the batch II silvers that he kept from people.

This explanation is the one which makes the most sense.
Which means we won't see shipment of chips until at least the 20 week mark.

Disgusting
Hope their Chinese buyer is worth it for them, because they'll be their only customer in the future.

The big buyer is reselling the chips for a high price i read in the forum. I doubt of course he will have much buyers, but such an amount of TH is much really... He would alone bring in so much hashpower that he cant sell the chips anymore. If true he isnt the smartest businessman then. And/or dont understand bitcoin too much.

Remenber Avalon's payment address?
http://blockchain.info/fr/address/1FGAftzSTztFSB8LMwsrdCKTyqGY6zr3sU?offset=50&filter=0

It's not like we didn't knew that a big player ordered using 17Tfh8SE71MbvQ5vZtXPQA8a4YM8NPv3bf  or 1AyTpzuCCUdgZLTHi4iB5yawuRsHL37q3j ...

Also the order numbers;
14odFwJHi6S1Rpuu9CnqZHy49qjc6F2Zd9 is zefir's batch #2 payment adress.

Notice it is located before 1AyTpzuCCUdgZLTHi4iB5yawuRsHL37q3j  and after 17Tfh8SE71MbvQ5vZtXPQA8a4YM8NPv3bf  (both 15 614 BTC orders so 200 000+200 000=400 000chips=50TH+50TH )

So this increase is probably 17Tfh8SE71MbvQ5vZtXPQA8a4YM8NPv3bf  ... mining with the chips he ordered before zefir batch #2 was ordered...

boy i'm not glad i'm not involved in this mess...units or chips...course if i had the btc i would have been...yay for being poor :(

Anyone knows where yifu hangs out in NY? I live here and can certainly give him a piece of my mind regarding getting those damn chips shipped already. (Not just Batch 1).

Here's a link to the story on TGB.  Near the sub-heading of Lucrative Business:
http://thegenesisblock.com/latest-shipment-of-avalon-asics-could-increase-network-hashrate-by-500/

Tracking to the boxes (source: TGB)
http://www.track-shipments.com/track-trace.aspx?pref=AWB&awbno=87150508076

After BFL showed the way I think most manufacturers realized you have to prime the pump so to speak.  You can't steady release asic because you make more by selling in big chunks since only the manufacturers know how much TH is being released and they price accordingly for maximum profit.  Wouldn't surprise me if they communicate with each other and even if they don't all chips are made in china and info will always leak.  Since end users don't know the totals end users will always overpay.  This won't change for a while until used gear resale markets get larger and end users will have a choice where to buy hash power.  Even with asicminer, notice how their entire run gets sold out and quickly after release or price change difficulty jumps much higher then even the new pricing had suggested.  Loved the feudalism picture.  I'd love to see a similar one for the bitcoin ecosphere.  In the same way that central banks and the people at the top get to touch the freshly printed money first, ASIC manufacturers which are creating hash power inflation, touch it first and get the most benefit out of it then that inflation trickles down to the rest 99%.

The problem is the cost of entry is way to low.  It only takes a few hundred, to a million dollars to get a chip taped out and ready to make. They have to release enough chips to get the hash rate high enough to discourage others from trying to make chips, while ideally keeping it low enough they can still make money.

Gdmt ship our chips!!!

I only know these details: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=157856.msg2594647#msg2594647

Out of interest, is there not another point of contact accessible at Bitsyncom aside Yifu?

Has anyone tried contacting other ex-members of his design team that split?

Surely they must know what the hold up is. I'd try that angle if I was you.

I tried to see if there was anyone at TSMC that could at least confirm a completed order. (Yes I embellished, but as a whole the community did make a substantial investment, so representing it, I am not far off.)

Maybe we should have used tsmc and not Avalon.  This situation is crazy...

Seriously though can anyone tell me why no one else aside Yifu from Bitsyncom can be reached or held accountable?!?

Irrespective of the break-up of Bitsyncom, those that split were present prior to the break-up when pre-orders were taken from this forum and elsewhere. They were still a team when presumably chips were manufactured, and some members were still part of Bitsyncom when those first chips were delivered or they wouldn't have been able to take and post pictures on this forum.

Those formally associated members will know what the deal is, why is nobody contacting them for the truth and Yifu's whereabouts?

I see no point in trying to contact Yifu through the points of contact in this forum, all that effort is in vain, if he's not responding and purposefully ignoring your messages or shipping the chips fairly and as agreed.

I've been on the fence about this, but when you see it for what it is; you made a payment for chips in an agreed future date, whereupon your returns diminish over time. That time has surpassed, and now to be honest has a reasonable amount of time subsequent as a grace period. Any honest and fair person irrespective of the cultural element raised in this thread earlier would give some form of statement to calm people's nerves, a simple update, good or bad. You as customers understand there were risks, most which you were confident were mitigated by purchasing a proven tech, but all the same if the problems were understandable people would have the noses put out of joint, some would be angry, but some would understand it for what it is. Unless those reasons are down to greed or incompetence or selfish unprofessional business practices. You need a statement so you can make informed choices. This is especially the case for people like Burnin' who have invested a lot of time, effort and their own money as well as other peoples. If he had to refund, as some people are now asking him for he could stand to be wiped out since a lot of that money will have been spent on having all the parts and boards manufactured ahead of time as he made sure he wouldn't be responsible for any delays. To think the reason I didn't purchase the group buys was because I though the unknown intermediaries were too risky and be the point of failure!! But for all intents and purposes this looks like people will get really p*ssed soon if this treatment continues. Anyone know what the Chinese forums have to say about this from their perspective?

The only other person I've heard is ngzhang

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=38132

group buyers should file a case in the USA because of fraud.

I believe this would also be relevant if he refuses to acknowledge you;

http://www.interpol.int/Contact-INTERPOL
http://www.interpol.int/Crime-areas/Cybercrime/Cybercrime
http://www.interpol.int/Crime-areas/Financial-crime/Financial-crime

I'm sure they would love to get their feet wet with alternative currency cybercrime. It would set a precedent.

Still I think you need to wait a little longer yet, this is still flakey, but Avalon B#3's are arriving, so there is life at Bitsyncom, even if it's life that refuses to acknowledge it' customers after breaching agreement...

I wonder how this boy roll over all forum here and no care of anything and anyone... Congrats for his courage!  ;D

P.s: he may be have a hard ass too pepared for prison there omg

ship the chips!!   >:(

+100

i do not understand Yifus problem, i think Yifu - Bitsyncom cant deliver the chips, because they have no chips :(

Ok guys, how much longer do we wait to lawyer up and initiate legal proceedings?  The utter lack of communication and even confirmation that our chips will/wont ship and that they missed their deadline by over a month seems like enough to me.  Has anyone got any recommendations on a good lawyer and best route to take?  At this point something NEEDS TO BE DONE, whether it is knocking on doors, calling, mailing letters to Avalon/Bitsyncom, lawyering up, calling the police/fbi/interpol.  This could be the biggest bitcoin thievery in history. 

We need confirmation from Avalon/Bitsyncom immediately, and a timetable agreed upon by all members effected by this to initiate legal proceedings.  I think its about time that we organize and make a plan on how to recover our losses, recover the chips or at least make those pay with either time in jail or by fines and suing those who are accountable for this mess in the event they do not ship. 

Do you think 1 week is sufficient? Or should we wait until September 1st? Or sooner?

I requested a scammer tag for BitSyncom.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269740.msg2885749#msg2885749 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269740.msg2885749#msg2885749)

I chose to invest (probably more than I should have) on the belief that I was investing in a system free from the "big guys". With Yifu's failure and other realizations..I care for bitcoin no more. A neat experiment..ultimately corrupted and soiled the in the same ways all things tied to money always are.

How do you make more USD than mining bitcoins? Rip off the entire (willfully overstated) community with shitty and probably illegal methods. I look forward to a lawsuit against Mr. Yifu Guo. I don't even hope to collect. My money's already gone..or so I must believe.

Thanks Avalon. DIAF.

lol so dramatic jeez

I see this is where he registered the address for Bitsyncom, I thought Yifu lived in Brooklyn, based on the articles I have read about him. I see he/they chose Albany because the cost of that office is probably incredibly cheap.

I understand that this is cutting edge technology, but its reaching a point where millions of $ have been invested in many companies, and so far a handful of products have been released. There is certainly some backroom dealing going on that we dont know about.

I think a lawyer sending Yifu a letter might be a good idea but the police or something could make everything worse. I dont want to see chips blocked for a police investigation or something of that kind. And if Yifu thinks he lost every trust for the future, so that his customers fight him already, he could start to act nefario-like so that at the end one had to beg to get at least the details about the securities.

ya well, sounds like Mr Yifu Guo needs some of this drama brought to his doorstep, im sure he is living comfortably without a care in the world where any of our chips are, we invested millions of dollars into his company, for all we know he took our money and ran, or built his own machines with the chips to mine with them and may claim they got confiscated in customs, got stolen, irrepairably damaged or will decide to have more chips made after difficulty has reached past 200,000,000.

This company has fucked us and the whole bitcoin community over, if we had the mined bitcoins with our own machines already a large percentage of those profits would be spent within the bitcoin economy and make bitcoin even stronger, instead these chips are probably lining someone elses pockets with exchanged bitcoins to USD.  

We all know Avalon has mined from customers equipment in the past and how shady they are.

It takes a lot to get me riled.  I would call this conduct "a lot".  Lol.  I will say no more!   :-X

Does anyone know any more detail about ngzhang (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=38132)? His name or other details? He writes in his profile that he wont read PM's but maybe some other data can be found.

And the other user that posted the boxes with chips... is it really a member of BitSyncom? If so someone knows details?

I believe Yifu is the one mostly for the blame.  From my understanding (through reading these forums - therefore it may be wrong and should be considered a speculation) the group (ngzhang/yifu/etc) broke up due to ethical disagreements.  I think the chip delays are this ethical disagreement.  In what way?  No idea - but that'd be another speculation.

In any case it'd be nice if ngzhang could enlighten the community, or for that matter anyone from former 'Avalon', on what exactly is happening here.

I didnt ask to blame them, i only would like to ask them whats going on. The better when they broke because of ethical disagreements. This should mean we can get infos more likely. I only wonder if thats the case when they keep silence. So it would be good to know details about them so one could try to find contact details then.

+1
This is the payment address for chip orders: https://blockchain.info/address/1FGAftzSTztFSB8LMwsrdCKTyqGY6zr3sU (https://blockchain.info/address/1FGAftzSTztFSB8LMwsrdCKTyqGY6zr3sU)
It currently has a balance of 75,779.8 BTC with no withdrawals.
So doesn't it look like they haven't paid TSMC for chip production?

Yifu doesnt have to pay much for the chipproduction. They earned enough money from the miners before so they dont need to use the money from that address.

He once said he does not control the address.

VICE: This is an obvious question, but why aren’t you mining your own chips?

Yifu: Like I said, the current reality is vastly different from what we originally had planned. We always figured we would be late to the party. Butterfly Labs and bASIC (another ASIC developer that ultimately failed to launch) were supposed to launch in succession. But due to various complications and delays, it didn’t work out that way.

If they had delivered on their promises, they would have shipped months before our first batch. We wanted to start selling chips so people could make their own units, providing a hedge from a single entity becoming too powerful, and then move onto a new project. That was our main goal. We wanted to prevent this potential monopoly. As it turned out, we became the monopoly we tried to prevent.

VICE: You aren’t doing any mining at all?

Yifu: Nope. Fun fact: none of the Avalon team have their own mining units (outside of test units).


http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/engineering-the-bitcoin-gold-rush-an-interview-with-yifu-guo-creator-of-the-first-asic-based-miner#ixzz2bJSc9dJX

Here is just an email address..
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/1383-so-here-avalon-asics-3rd-batch-scenario-fyi.html

You may as well paste it here dude; ngzhang@avalon-asic.com

Ill try the email but if its true they parted its not likely the mail will reach its target. But without trying no chance at all.

So it seems NGzgang, answered this guy.
Maybe some one should try emailing him?

Yifu Guo:
(This looks right, might not be ... https://plus.google.com/115522189507514183090/about ...  a lot of ppl from Brooklyn Polytechnic have him in circles and a "Bitcoin Advocate" ... also Jeff Garzik (https://plus.google.com/105424721218711536033) is a person he's following.  Same with Gavin Anderson ("https://plus.google.com/117494054859918211010") )
http://www.linkedin.com/in/yifuguo
https://github.com/yifuguo
yifu.guo@bitsyn.com
yguo01@gmail.com
http://bitsyn.com
http://www.reddit.com/user/yifuguo

( His work and cell 380-115-6072 and 347-370-9069) from ("https://109.201.133.65/index.php?topic=211593.msg2230878#msg2230878")

(Managing Member - YIFU GUO
Address 1:     2282 E15   Address 2:    
City:     BROOKLYN   State:     NY
Zip Code:     11229   Country:    
Status:     Active   Email:     ) from ("https://nvsos.gov/sosentitysearch/CorpDetails.aspx?lx8nvq=ozwghIfOnmFj64qH4nYDaA%253d%253d")

(Registrant Contact:
  
   Yifu Guo ()
  
   Fax:
   2282 EAST 15th STREET
   FIRST FLOOR
   BROOKLYN, P 11229
   US) from ("http://whois.domaintools.com/yifuguo.com")

(yguo01@gmail.com) from ("https://dominder.com/bitcoinstore.us")

(Yifu Guo
skype: yifu.guo
http://bitsyn.com
1-(347)-370-9069
"Life is an everlasting self-improvement.") from ("https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/babycastles/65zLZJYLsck", "http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.hardware.netbook.arm/2094")

("http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.hardware.netbook.arm/2094" ->  You can scrape that page for contact info of people who interacted with him to contact those if you want.)

http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2013/02/01/10389481/Avalon_Press_Release.pdf ---->  "Brooklyn Native"


ngzhang:
https://github.com/ngzhang

https://github.com/ngzhang/Icarus    (Signed-off-by: ngzhang <ngzhang1983@msn.com>)
("If you want to join this project and make some changes, please e-mail me: ngzhang1983@msn.com")

(CONTACT:

email: ngzhang1983@msn.com
QQ: 17568957) from ("https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110090.0")



xiangfu:
(https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=46727)

https://github.com/xiangfu

xiangfu@openmobilefree.net
http://www.openmobilefree.net

Thankfully, there are other ways to get bitcoins.  You can simply buy them. 

See ya.

Maybe his FB
https://www.facebook.com/yifu.guo.1

Thanks! Might be useful. Ill try my luck.

You have got to be trolling.  Should we buy them with the money that we already spent on avalon chips to mine them?  Or are we all suddenly independently wealthy?  I must have missed the memo, guess I'll be watching my mailbox for that check  ;P

Xiangfu was commenting in this forum as recent as two days ago.

I would also contact the guy who posted this;

http://imgur.com/a/GR0e3

Apparently it originated from here;

http://www.btcman.com/bbs/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=4621&extra=page%3D1&page=4

But I don't read Chinese.

EDIT: Found this though: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252233.msg2682662#msg2682662

Who is Yuchuanzhen? What is his connection to Bitsyncom? ???

The guy who posted pics on btcman.com has this email in his signature

"Business cooperation, please contact gridchip@gmail.com"

Here is the info via Google translate for the "owner" of http://fidelhl.cn.1688.com/

Name: Chan Chuen

Business Email: tobychen@aliyun.com

Maybe he knows about the Avalon chips seeing as he posted the pics?

fidelhl
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=114950

Also, interesting posts:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=256453.msg2731615#msg2731615

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252233.msg2694806#msg2694806

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=230825.msg2426482#msg2426482

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=230109.msg2426067#msg2426067

I registered in that forum now too. I sent emails to ngzhang@avalon-asic.com, info@avalon-asic.com, ngzhang1983@msn.com, xiangfu@openmobilefree.net, gridchip@gmail.com and tobychen@aliyun.com now. They reach, i demanded server answer when they are delivered. Lets see if one of them answers and know more.

Boom! from this thread two days ago; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=264696.msg2868479#msg2868479

Hello everyone...er... Hello every shareholder,

About that "big news" regards to Avalon:  

 From a thread at btcman.com that was posted by a ID called "gridchip" last month, we (incl. all btcman`s members) can sure that Avalon team do have a big discord inside. It was written in chinese and need to register&login to read ,so I d prefer not giving the link here (all chinese shareholders can find it at "比特币挖矿区" board) However, I hardly believe the rest of this news is real.


I believe this is the link;

http://www.btcman.com/bbs/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=4621&extra=page%3D1&page=4

Do we have any Chinese readers?

What does it say?

How about putting up Yifu Wanted posters, like in the days of the wild west all over NY city (or wherever he hangs out).

Smoke him out from where he is hiding  ;D

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bgVaA_ZIbPc/TcRK1Wz2qcI/AAAAAAAAAek/rQCeAAAi3uI/s1600/one-piece-wanted-poster-by-ei819-159006.png

As much as we would like to have what we paid for shipped,  a wanted dead or alive proclamation may be considered a "death threat"  in the USA and could land you in prison.  ;-)

Yeah, I think we want him alive.  But how about it?  Put the posters up in every city.  Might get some media attention.

I didn't create the wanted poster, there's this one without the dead or alive rhetoric;

http://www.gunranchusa.com/wanted-poster.jpg

But it's tacky in comparison. I'm in no way whatsoever suggesting harm the guy, jeez!

saw  this on Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1jwraw/1400000000_in_avalon_chips_missing_and_you/

Oh Yeah I know that, it's in Jest.  But you may be familiar with the slimeball lawyers in the USA that would have a field day. :P

Good luck with this, man.  You're here at the exact point I was when I threw in the towel with Avalon, and, except for the innocent Open Source victims, when I threw in the towel with anyone involved with Avalon.

Why?  Because the pictures of those chips was the biggest of news.  I tried to get some bi-lingual Chinese to tell us what really was being said there (i.e., imposing any cultural inferences over the issue as well) to no avail.  Go back and read the thread.

At that point, I just thought, "Something's going on; there's a million chips here, they don't seem to be clearly titled to Avalon, and nobody is willing or able to say what's up in Shenzen. My gut feeling is Avalon is fucked, I'm not vested in Avalon, so: to Hell with them all."

Maybe you'll get somewhere.  I hope so, for the sake of the Open Source builders.

It depends. They may view it as people just fucking around with the equivalent of "video game money" - no one gets prosecuted when thefts happen in EVE online, because it's a game.  And not only that, a lot of people view it as a way to get around government regulation.  People in the government might take that as an affront and think "Well, you're on your own then".

Also, in order to prosecute as a theft, you'd need to prove that Bitsyncom actually stole something, and didn't just fall behind schedule. That's not a crime, in fact it's actually really common.  It's just that most of the time, delays like this don't completely destroy the value of the product.

There's also the problem that everything happened in China, which would make prosecution quite difficult.

In the future, the best thing to do for a large chip order would be to license a design.   Rather then dealing with Avalon/BFL/whoever the thing to do would be to pay whatever company BTCX and they'd write a letter to their upstream provider authorizing group Y to oder up to X chips direct from the fab.  They'd pay the the design company and the upstream provider separately, and that would remove one point of failure from the whole process - in fact, the most likely source of failure as they'd be a very new startup liable to have all sorts of problems (as we can clearly see from BFL and Avalon)

realistically I think in 5 weeks all these chips could be fabricated and shipped out even with a small skeleton crew, something else is in play, wonder whats going on exactly, hope we get some answers this week or this month...

It's sounds like the crew has mutinied...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny

Not to nitpick, but it would likely benefit all to maintain this distinction:

"Avalon" = product name

"BitSyncom" = company name

Quoting from the Avalon user thread:


So NG Zhang is answering emails. Yifu seems MIA (no activity posts on reddit for a month as well).

Maybe thats where BTCGarden came from.  They seem to know friedcat and avalon people.

I suggest we all shoot them an email

Has anyone contacted the NY State Attorney General to file an Internet Commerce complaint?  If not, why not?

I contacted Phil at thegenesisblock.com, he is looking into this for us as well.

I'll say what's not being said here.

Clearly the Chinese have discovered their new found love for mining and simply put, the Chinese gets it first. Perhaps the reason why anybody is having a hard time with any shipment of miners coming from China except those usb eruptors.

Thing about China is that you know they are running off batches for themselves. That is what they do with NorthFace and Nike and the rest. They just make a few extra for themselves and then sell them to tourists for bargains.

You mean like this?

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/The-Block-Erupter-Blade-Fried-cat-blade-10g-Bitcoin-Miner/1114058606.html
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/The-Block-Erupter-Blade-5G-Bitcoin-Miner-Price-1699-USD-ACCEPT-BTC-16-BTC/1143248803.html

The 5GH/s Blade isnt' even available outside China yet (still too overpriced; if it was this price 2 months ago I would've been interested). I'd have to say that these are cut down or partial AM blade clones as they haven't announced them or listed them on the AM site, and Gen2 chips are supposed to arrive in Oct/Nov.

Thanks for the update, glad that Philip Archer's on this, his article with the details about the 135 boxes to the reseller was very well done.

I get the feeling a shitstorm is brewing. Bitsyncom should've known better. The entire community has been on redline for stress/anger/patience due to BFL, even the slightest bit of misconduct will be met with full force by every means available to us - and failure to communicate for 5 weeks is not slight, it's very serious. We want our chips or we want compensation for those chips - simple.

I think some of this may have to do with controlling the amount of Hashing power on the network. They think they know best how it should progress and so they are going to keep everyone else from mining until they think the time is right to up the hashing power.

No. I'm sick of hearing this excuse. If they were being "responsible" they would've cut-off their ordering at so many #'s of batches. NOT take your money and fail to deliver.

I'm not saying they are being "responsible", I am saying they think they have some control over it and are exercising it either for themselves or the early buyers.

Yeah, It's not just individuals investing in mining rigs. This time it's people's livelihoods at stake, setting up hardware building shops in preparation for chip supplies.

They have to have the chips, they have already made them and sent out product. That means they are either sitting on the chips or lost the funds to pay for the chips or the Chinese won't let them have the chips.

I would like to echo this as well. This is clearly a breach of contract with tangible, calculable damages.

Maybe they lost the key to that big bitcoin stash they have set up for chip orders.  :o

I think so as well, once the time is right (as defined by the whichever entity is controlling them), they will quietly ship out the chips. 

I think it is safe to assume that Yifu is not holding back the chips for the sake of the Avalon batch #3 customers, that batch is almost completed and the risk of law-suits is too great that he will gamble with it. It is highly probable that chips do not exists at this moment otherwise he would have shiped at least some quantity to stop the commotion.

Key questions is: What is the reason that Avalon doesn't have enough chips to ship? We can only try to guess, so these are few assumptions and some data to back each one:

1) Yifu doesn't have enough money to pay TMSC manfacturing the chips.
Data:
- He stated several times he doesn't control BTC address which received the payments. At the moment we assumed that he received cash in exchange for the control of it, but fact that funds are still siting on that address unspent is puzzling.

2) Yifu is not in control of Avalon design and the data needed for fabrication.
Data:
-  Members of the Avalon team had several confirmed disagreements, and even the chip designer carrying the nickname "Gridchip" was allegedly trying to find another partnership instead of Yifu's. It is also unclear how is Gridchip connected to the giant delivery of Avalon chips to Russia, it may be possible that he is in some way involved in that deal apart from the rest of the Avalon team. Could it be possible that delivery caused permanent split, and Gridchip took some data with him which is essential for chip manufacturing?

3) ... (feel free to add your own)

If you are talking gov or army I doubt it.  The amounts are quite insignificant.

There is certainly "life at Avalon."  I was poked by the team, to make sure my batch #3 arrived (it did, even after a shipping address mistake, though manual intervention with DHL was required).

What "contract"?  Under who's jurisdiction?  What was your "valuable consideration" for this "contract" and can you prove you "paid it" and the "entity" you made this "contract" with "received it"?

Try trolling harder,
meanwhile no chips no response

Maybe someone with forum trust and reputation will start a GROUP BUY for the Chinese/USA LAWYERS and form a lawsuit?
I can do it but I live in Europe so no real point for me to do that.

I have seen some options on the tor network that could resolve this issue. :o

It just needs someone to start a group buy, I doubt JohnK would do escrow for such a service thou.  ;)

Thanks for this update. Sounds like we all just need a healthy dose of patience... Scratch that - an INSANE dose of patience! :)

Ok will do.  People are talking about legal action for something where there is not even a somewhat arguable legal basis.  Assuming all the other issues are provable most contracts for large amounts are required to be in writing to be enforceable not to mention this would fall under international trade and unless this person is in china then disregard what I said as I am not versed in the Chinese legal system.

BitSynCom is a USA corporation, incorporated in the state of Nevada.

Are you really that cheap? I was screwed with avalon batch #3 and now I am screwed with chips order.
What is any reason to not take legal steps if there are hard proofs?
We already saw the pics of boxes full of chips, too late for them imo

The NV corporation was set up by one of those many corporate agent lawfirms.  They accept law suit service documents on behalf of Yifu and then forward them to Yifu.  Yifu is required by applicable state and federal law to keep valid contact methods with the appointed legal representative.

To be honest, this is a criminal matter best handled by the NY State AG since that is where Yifu resides according to the filing documents held by the Nevada Corporation Commission. https://nvsos.gov/sosentitysearch/CorpDetails.aspx?lx8nvq=ozwghIfOnmFj64qH4nYDaA%253d%253d&nt7=0 (https://nvsos.gov/sosentitysearch/CorpDetails.aspx?lx8nvq=ozwghIfOnmFj64qH4nYDaA%253d%253d&nt7=0)  Yifu & Co made advertisements on the Internet for a deliverable product, under the auspices of a US registered entity, with promises of delivery within a certain timeframe.  The FTC and standard consumer protection laws, in concert with Yifu's own claims, solidify his obligation to his consumers.

Yifu is going to end up on the wrong side of an interstate fraud investigation, spearheaded by the NYAG, if he doesn't start answering his paying customers.

I don't see that entity on the website.  Possibly that was deliberate.  Is it listed once you do an account or order with them?  You can't lien or attach BTC but does the company have any assets in the US that could be frozen by lis pendens?  Since yufu is in the US the easiest route would be to serve him personally.  He might have been deliberate in publicly stating he doesn't control the BTC sent in but you might be able to depose him under oath to get some answers but the process is very long for that if he fights it.

You should probably read the current render of avalon-asics.com before posting such dribble.  It clearly says copyright Bitsyncom LLC.  Not to mention, the waybackmachine records of the avalon-asics website during those orders.  It's all very clear that Yifu and Avalon were operating as a Nevada-based domestic LLC with its managing member (Yifu) residing in Brooklyn.

Hmmm looks like we got sth in our hand

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/fincen-bitcoin-users-not-regulated-exchanges-are/

bitsyncom might not be an exchange but according to this regulation they are dealing with "real" money, Am I rite?

Question I just want to throw out there. Yifu was spotted at the NY Inside Bitcoin conference a week ago. Just a week, and no one there asked the man straight up for a comment?! C'mon someone who attended must have some idea. Surely someone there has chips from him they were waiting on?

Furthermore, those of us with bitpay or other receipts for non-delivered or non-refunded Avalon products have written proof that currency was delivered to Bitsyncom, LLC.

I stand corrected as http://store.avalon-asics.com/ doesn't have any of that.  It's unlikely the US LLC has any assets which can be counted on for restitution but as a managing partner Yifu would certainly be exposed to US liability which actually makes it easier to get answers.  Anyone who ordered can file a suit and serve him but if he chooses to fight it by the time you get to a depo the chips might be obsolete.  Winning might require enshrining some new concepts regarding BTC as precedents as well.  You can always call SEC since they have charged Trendon Shavers aka pirateat40 recently so they seem to be willing to take this kind of stuff up.

+1

You bring up a good point; recoverability.  If sued, what's the likelihood that the plaintiffs would actually receive restitution?  Quite low.  However, this isn't just a civil matter and it isn't just a matter for the SEC (traditionally they only deal with public companies) but rather one that hits the radar of the NYAG and FTC.  The NYAG has a reputation for being incredibly tough, ever since Spitzer, and the FTC is a nightmare of its own.  In short, Yifu & Co fucked up.  They WILL have to answer in court, should they ever decide to step foot in the United States again.

To those mentioning the international aspect; this might actually draw out prosecution.  My personal take is that Yifu will be summonsed in US court on interstate fraud charges and extradited accordingly.  After all, when multiple countries want to prosecute, US almost always gets first hack at the bad guy.

The other reason why I think the SEC route is a waste of time is because Yifu wasn't directly soliciting funds to start or develop his company.  The SEC cares more the sale of equity than anything else.

There is more than just Yifu involved and behind Bitsyncom and contacts span multiple countries, if they don't start talking to you, you have options;


INTERPOL is the world’s largest international police organization, with 190 member countries including the US and China. Their role is to enable police around the world to work together to make the world a safer place. Their high-tech infrastructure of technical and operational support helps meet the growing challenges of fighting crime in the 21st century.

http://www.interpol.int/Crime-areas/Financial-crime/Fraud

http://www.interpol.int/Contact-INTERPOL

http://www.interpol.int/Member-countries/Asia-South-Pacific/China

http://www.interpol.int/Member-countries/Americas/United-States



"Advance fee fraud is when fraudsters target victims to make advance or upfront payments for goods, services and/or financial gains that do not materialise."

http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud-az-advance-fee-fraud

What to do if you are a victim

If you have lost money

If you believe you are a victim of advance fee fraud, the coalition members strongly encourage you to file a complaint with your local police. If you are in the United States consider filing a complaint with the Federal Beaureau of Investigation's Internet Crime Complaint Center.

http://www.affcoalition.org/victim.html


The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C).

http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx


This final link tells you how to report Internet crime that has occurred in each country including China (scroll down page for content);

http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/reporting.php

I have the feeling that Yifu were shipping the chips to those big guys with BIG orders outside of this forum and due to over demand he cannot meet our orders in here.

So the best way is to get your attorney or lawyer to write him a letter and goes from there.

I agree, surely if all groupbuy leaders sent a legal demand for their chips to be delivered. They HAVE to respond, either by shipping, or explaining themselves and how they plan to resolve the situation. If they fail to respond, than that's as good as admitting to fraud and the authorities can step in.

those guys look like they are actually waiting for it
http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/feedback.htm

not to mention that I am surprised by the friendly design of Interpol website
http://www.interpol.int/Contact-INTERPOL

I hope it will be done, they will be charged and it will be a good lesson and example for others to finally end all that pre-order rage and missed delivery times

Good point, but I think if people on this forums had the will and balls to do it they would have already done it to BFL

I think things are different now. Being scorn TWICE will set people off, everyone has come to expect this shit from BFL, but another manufacturer trying to pull the same stunt... no way.

Also most BFL customers have very small investments, most chip buyers have very large investments...

Interesting . . . likelihood of restitution would be low. What I think is more interesting is that with normal fraud/laundering/whatever you want to call it the paper trail (with regard to money) always ends somewhere. With bitcoins the defendant is in a even worse situation since it almost looks as if they took steps to conceal their crime, a judge in my opinion would come down very hard on someone if they were sued.

The value involved in individual Avalon chips is far higher then with BFL, and the Avalon terms had a definite delivery date, 10-15 weeks - as opposed to "2 months or more" with BFL.

Wouldn't surprise me to see some lawsuits filed.

Precisely. If people have not organized and sued BFL yet, since they are still working on singles from July and August 2012, a year late, do you REALLY think anybody is going to shell out the money to get a lawyer on retainer for a chip shipment that's maybe a month late? maybe two?? Get real.

And even if somebody did, by the time they got an initial hearing would be 6 months from now, if you're lucky. What you gonna say to the judge if the chips ship in 1-3 months? You'd look like a FOOL, and then you'd be required to prove that you had REAL damages.

Judge: Explain how the defendant has caused you monetary loss, Mr. Plaintiff.

Plaintiff: Well, your honor, the rise in difficulty has made it harder to mine bitcoin, and the plaintiff has not shipped the chips in a timely manner.

Judge: What is bitcoin and how has the defendant caused you monetary damages?

At that point, you will have about 3 minutes to explain bitcoin, the rise in difficulty, how bitcoin are valuable in real currency, and why a judge with 600+ cases on his docket should award you monetary compensation.

Good luck with that.

What about this!
https://www.courthousenews.com/2013/08/06/Bitcoin.pdf
Check this quote out "Therefore, Bitcoin is a currency or form of money, and investors wishing to invest in BTCST provided an investment of money."   :o  One precedent down.  Wonder how they'll figure out definable legal ownership of addresses.  This certainly puts a very high burden on any US operator handling bitcoins.  This ruling might imply through common enterprise liability that the group buy organizers might be liable when calling these buys "investments" and since people relied on them for their expertise well I think it's time to stop calling anything "investments" at least if you are in the good ol USA.

You're agreeing with the quote, yet you're one of the spineless people he's talking about. who are too scared to even try to take action.

...That's right, no court has ever taken up a complex financial, or technical concept before. It's utterly pointless. They couldn't even get OJ right.

/sarcasm

Pirateat40 got charged, there is no real reason to make sth similar happen again.
Courts and anti fraud organizations seem to be aware of Bitcoin.
For court it is quite regular case: some guys invented something, showed working units and even delivered some of them, took shitload of preorders for next batches and runaway with money. This is quite regular case except payment was done in bitcoins.
We should set a new standard in Bitcoin mining industry, and make aware each hardware manufacture that this is no kinder garden no more.

And about those who are mummbling sth about not suing BFL:
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
The time has come.
And lol since it wasn't hard to collect few millions of bucks to order hardware from them it shouldn't be hard to collect few thousands to start things getting more serious.

P.S. Please don't forget that 95% it is confirmed that thay had those chips but decided to push them somewhere else
http://thegenesisblock.com/latest-shipment-of-avalon-asics-could-increase-network-hashrate-by-500/

Reply on Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1jwraw/1400000000_in_avalon_chips_missing_and_you/cbj830w):

Haha, probably not the bitcointalk Inaba, naturally, but damn, quite the parody :P

LMAO
You know, he's so low, that it's becoming harder and harder to tell anymore lol :D

Well I got a Jally and a 25gh/s miner coming, probably before these chips ship, I bought DIY asic chips BECAUSE of BFL being fuckups, but its ironic that BFL may be right about beating Avalon

So the pictures of the boxes are dated July 9th.  That means its been almost 4 weeks since the chips showed up.  Are they testing them first before shipping?  Or are they just re-addressing the boxes and shipping them to customers?

If they are trying to test 2.1 million ASIC chips with a small crew then I can understand the delay... What I can't understand is why the BTC is still in the account and hasn't been used to hire additional people.  My best guess is that they've been paid and aren't in any hurry to get the chips out now.

I guess the best way to know is ask ourselves if the contract is for 10,000 working&tested chips or 10,000 chips direct from the fab.  

Another possibility is they are still building Batch 3 machines and won't send out the raw chips until all Batch 3 machines have been delivered?

Yeah, but Pirateat40 was doing a fairly specific scam, a Ponzi scheme.  In order to see Bitsyncom charged with a crime they'd have to be breaking a specific law. If Bitsyncom took money and didn't even order chips from the fab, then you'd have a clear case of fraud.

On the other hand if they have chips and are just not shipping them in a timely manner for some reason I doubt you'd see criminal charges.

On the other hand, if the agreement on their website counted as a "contract" then you could sue them for breach of contract, and maybe get a judgement for the purchase price back. But good luck collecting.

Damn, so they gave these guys 375,000 chips???

...Wait, 135 boxes?!?!?!? They shipped these guys 2 million chips!

That's incredibly unethical unless they ordered the whole run first, but then who is there to check on them. But why this company? Why do it? Why piss off everyone else with chip orders by delaying everyone else's chips into a 2nd production run? Which is apparently what's happened.

Maybe this company told Yifu they'd buy 2 million chips if they got first shipment? Backroom deal.

Backroom deal, where Bitsyncom took a bribe in order to give priority shipping to these guys? Low, very low.

At least these are relatively crap technology compared to what's coming online. If Avalon had been selling KNC  or Bitfury chips, the industry would be virtually ruined.

Btw, $14.7 million in Avalon chips, that's worth like ~1.47% of the value of all bitcoin.

The webstore for chip sales said the chips would be working/tested.

Yifu saying they estimated how much money they are loosing while travelling and not using the miner during the conference - from 1:20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD237oF7cCo

I guess that clashes with his statement that they don't mine!!!

Also, Yifu talking about pre-orders and meeting the deadlines from - from 4:10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtVx26LlNXA

Interesting.  Presumably some % is defective. Since the chips are connected serially, one bad chip could mess up a whole board, so testing is probably pretty critical.

On the other hand I'm sure purchasers would probably prefer getting untested chips at this rate.

That said, 2.1 million chips would be 720Th/s.  More then twice the entire current hash rate. Enough to boost the difficulty of the network to 100.

So obviously most of these chips are not in production at this point.


They changed their policy after B2, it was in their email newsletter.

I think the overall lesson here is leave long term investing to investors and buying to stuff shipping in days not months especially with BTC.  If there's profit to be made developing a product money will be found for it's development.  The grand thread through this entire forum if reading it far back in time is "if only I would've just hanged on to that BTC I'd be way ahead"  I don't think that will change going forward.

Not really true for Avalon B1/B2, if people actually got their units.  Definitely true of BFL orders before BTC went up to $100, though.

looks like our persistence is about to pay off:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269950.0

What kind of post is that?

Seriously, you can't take 30 fucking seconds to elaborate on the situation...at least if there were a death somewhere in Bitsyncom it'd be some reflection of an excuse.

Impending news of news, great.

Obviously he or other members of Bitsyncom must have taken some of the discontent seriously here, same as when he was woken in the middle of the night before.

In either case something worked and it looks like you'll have an answer tomorrow, hopefully good news...

it took a relentless and constant update of this thread (plus the interpol stuff) to get his attention.  well done, it will be an interesting day to say the least.

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2013/08/08/14000000-in-avalon-chips-missing/

Pointless article, Yufi posted on the forum here a few hours ago.

Yifu, please allow me to change shipping address of my batch of 10,000 chips.

That way, I can sell it to someone else without the need for escrow, as you or the website can confirm the change of shipping address.

Who wants to buy 10k chips? Ordered and paid last week of June. About 6 ~ 7 weeks ago. Fine, so they'll be late, but you still get them earlier than if you buy today.

I think TerraHash was looking to buy..

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269950.0

3) Someone bid a good amount of money to get chips fast because he didnt want to wait. Yifu gave him our chips and now waits for more chips to be created to ship them to us.


I asked US-Members in my groupbuy if they know befriend lawyers that could maybe write a reminder to yifu. It looks like one ore more does have such connections but maybe its best now to wait what yifu claims in some hours first.


Register yourself for the newsletter, then you will see the LLC address.


The chips are tested in the foundry already. Avalon isnt testing the chips. Maybe in their own miners but thats not our topic. Burnin is so sure that all chips work that he will replace broken ones out of his pocket.

Tempted to go with 3 but it's really all just speculation.  An interesting point, though, that is somewhat flimsily backed by the following piechart:

http://blockchain.info/pools

The "Unknown" is awfully big at around 19% of the network hashrate.  It comes out to be about ~70 terahash/s.

The "Unknown" can be anyone but I've only started noticing it within the last month - but that could be for other reasons.

Unknown are all solominers mining without a pool and cant be identified. Its not a single person.

There is, as far as i remember to read, a reseller that got many avalon chips and sells them now higher in form of miners. I wonder if he ordered his chips before us.

I hope yifu has a really good explaination. But i think he cant. There is no good reason for no communication. And he has experience how long chip production needs. I wonder what he will claim.

I did not get an answer from any of the emails i sent questions too, by the way.

Which is exactly why I wrote it's flimsy and mere speculation.  I have no idea how the piecharts are generated but there appears to be a "Unknown" and an "Other Unknown".  But yes, all speculation.

Darn :(.

Its "other known"... ;)

I have my suspicions that this is the case as well.  The article in TheGenesisBlock about the reseller in HK receiving many, many boxes of chips on June 25 seems to fit time-wise, though it's all speculation at this point.

The bullshit "announcement" was posted, btw

Sounds like Kano wants to be partying like a rock star more than he is actually concerned with the millions of dollars the community is invested here guys got no clue. As for Yifu the delays will cause Avalon to be knocked down to BFL status. Do not trust them again. Do not buy from them again. Simple solution.

INTERPOL is the world’s largest international police organization, with 190 member countries including the US and China. Their role is to enable police around the world to work together to make the world a safer place. Their high-tech infrastructure of technical and operational support helps meet the growing challenges of fighting crime in the 21st century.

http://www.interpol.int/Crime-areas/Financial-crime/Fraud

http://www.interpol.int/Contact-INTERPOL

http://www.interpol.int/Member-countries/Asia-South-Pacific/China

http://www.interpol.int/Member-countries/Americas/United-States



"Advance fee fraud is when fraudsters target victims to make advance or upfront payments for goods, services and/or financial gains that do not materialise."

http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud-az-advance-fee-fraud

What to do if you are a victim

If you have lost money

If you believe you are a victim of advance fee fraud, the coalition members strongly encourage you to file a complaint with your local police. If you are in the United States consider filing a complaint with the Federal Beaureau of Investigation's Internet Crime Complaint Center.

http://www.affcoalition.org/victim.html


The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C).

http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx


This final link tells you how to report Internet crime that has occurred in each country including China (scroll down page for content);

http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/reporting.php

http://j.mp/15eGw9M

http://ia800904.us.archive.org/35/items/gov.uscourts.txed.146063/gov.uscourts.txed.146063.23.0.pdf

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269950.msg2898049#msg2898049

Interpol only looks at cases that are refered by member countries, as far as I know.

Both the US and China are member countries.

Strange that the majority of discourse has moved to the Incoming Avalon News (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269950.0) thread, while our situation has not changed.  
That separate thread serves as a way to fragment the community's discussion and subsequently delay any punitive action.  The title of this thread is still 100% relevant.

The text posted @ avalon-asics.com (http://avalon-asics.com) seems intended to temporarily placate customers & 'buy more time'.
I imagine many buyers are hoping their order will be included in tentative shipments made "end of next week".  Considering BitSyncom's prior behavior, that outcome is highly unlikely.  Furthermore, there is no reason this new estimated shipping date should be trusted anymore than previous "9-10 weeks" statements.

To the best of my knowledge (please correct me if I'm mistaken):

• No new chip shipments have been made
• No orders have been refunded

BitSyncom needs our help.  They require motivation.

Thanks go to Bitcoinorama & others who have posted some legal avenues through which we can provide this motivation.  
I have begun exploring these options among others.  I encourage group buy organizers and participants to do the same.

I agree Lazer Horse. We got fed some BS. It looks like he literally picked a few of the stories posted about in the thread and put those down as explanations. He has to have more precise information than what he gave.

+1

We need to know why TerraHash and others haven't united to approach Avalon regarding compensation. They agreed to have the chips within a certain time-frame from ordering, i.e., 9-10 weeks. If they did not deliver the chips by then they have not met the requirement and need to compensate for that. If their product was not time-sensitive, it would not be an issue. Avalon needs to compensate relative to the BTC loss.

I would hope group buy organizers are already communicating in private to some extent.  Unfortunately, I imagine their attempts to communicate with Bitsyncom would be just as fruitless as anyone else's.

They can fix that by having a lawyer do their communications in order to get a face-to-face conversation regarding some damage compensation. Bitsyncom can afford to knock a bit off the price of the chips relative to the lost time - that shouldn't be a huge deal. They don't have to have a lawsuit, they just need to force him into talks, get him to stop playing the stupid "I'm not here right now" game. Settle on an agreement.

Indeed. 

Sad that one needs to go to such lengths in order to properly communicate.  A few status updates and inbox filters could have done a lot to help avoid this situation.

Professionalism earns respect - and for good reason.

Goofi Fucku FUCKED YOU ALL!

I told ya so!  :o

I Would like to see a discount / refund of some % of the paid price of the chips. Or double the chips you bought to compensate the loss in value.
The chips are now a lot less of value !

Easiest would be to double the chips bougt, so group buyers can double to there customers and so on down the piramide.

Double the chips infact would compensate the loss

And probably their cheapest option. Though realistically a company would send an extra 10-20% or something like that.. not double lol :P
But it's already been shown that they don't give a shit about PR

That is a good compensation.

I seriously doubt that any compensation will happen.
Despite the fact that 5 weeks ago we were looking at a 30 day roi and now it's prolli not even possible  :(

Then you need to purchase double the amount of PCB's and there is shortage on some of the parts.

EDIT: Spelling

I'm not satisfied with doubled chips. Yifu should also send a cheerleader to each group buy organizer, and a bottle of whiskey to each buyer.

True, but the chips are the expensive part. Double the chips and i accept that i will have more pcb costs etc.

Information. Where are the chips right now? When are they going to arrive in our group buy leaders hands?
Refund anyone who asks.
Boycott Avalon until they do.
Start legal action now.

That be what we actually need.

And then what, wait double the time for your delivery as he orders more?! Get your money back and buy Bitfury if you want chips.

Bicknellski, have you tried to directly contact the other group buy leaders and places like TerraHash to organize something? I keep trying to get TerraHash to respond regarding what they are doing to get the ball rolling and I hear absolutely nothing.

Need to get members of group buys as well to push this as well. Yes, pushing this behind the scenes as well but again group buy leaders need feedback before they can make decisions. Terrahash obviously is going forward with his build so I am not sure whether he wants to go for a refund at this time. Members in that buy should be discussing that with him.

In the least, ALL the group buy leaders need to force Yifus hand and have a face-to-face with him, even if that means getting a lawyer to contact him. Noone needs to necessarily follow through with an entire drawn-out lawsuit but just to let him know people are serious. He is playing some sort of game where he doesn't think is required to communicate with anyone except when he decides to swoop down from Mt. Olympus. Then we can get real answers and work on some sort of damage compensation whether it e refunds, or adjusted chip prices, etc.

TerraHash is about as good with communication as Yifu - if they don't feel like responding, they won't.

Will yifu be on this list as well?

http://www.interpol.int/Wanted-Persons?lastname=guo&Forenames=&IPSGT_ICPO_Countries=&free=&current_age_mini=0&current_age_maxi=100&IPSGT_Sex=&IPSGT_Eyes_Color=&IPSGT_Hair=&IPSGT_Interpol_Office=&wanted_search=

Well I am sure terrahash is busy unlike me and our coop pulling the plug on our build and given the lack of info from YIFU and Avalon we are not going to risk moving forward. I agree totally we need to have Yifu or someone in Avalon immediately inform all group buy leaders about what is really going on with our chips minimally. Personally I have been trying for about 2 weeks plus to get more information and nothing has happened and I even gave a grace period of almost 3 weeks before starting anything as I was waiting for some sort of sign from Avalon and holding out hope that we could get production going if chips were to arrive. Given the lack of proper information it is important to start legal proceedings, make reports to relevant authorities about their breach of contract which many have already done.

I suspect that many leaders of the Group Buys are really just trying to take stock of the situation and are hoping for a miracle on Friday but to be honest we should be working harder right now to pressure Avalon on refunds and getting information. KevinM posted a thread to drum up support for action and I have yet to see that many leaders jump in yet. I will start contact people this week and try to do more about getting us organized but again a large part of the pressure can come directly in the form of members of group buys directly discussing their needs to group buy leaders and joining the boycott on Avalon until we are all compensated and we are provided with proper information. It is time to rattle Avalon's cage with everything we have.

Groupbuyers aren't actually customers. Only the groupbuy leaders are, so only they can actually take legal action and demand an audience.
However, we can all still continue to spread our story and warn the bitocin community not to do business with them anymore.
(And I obviously mean, beyond these forums... other forums, news articles, blogs, word of mouth.. any means at your disposal)
And we can still also ask authorities to investigate their recent activities

Link to thread please?

Agreed. But we need everyone to bang that drum. Our group buy, that I lead, is complete agreement for a refund so it is easier for us to keep pushing for this I hope other group leaders will respond or they can contact me direct my email is available.

Kev's thread is... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=270726.0

Since i was mentioned a couple of times... our groupbuy is parted regarding refund. Half would take one, the other not. This might change with time. At the moment the chips still would ROI and a compensation should be given but if the chips are too delayed and he dont want to refund we have to sue him of course.
Im not happy with the situation naturally too. I mean its near that we lost 50% of the income we would have gotten. And thats not funny at all.

You could always leak to the Wall Street Journal that there is a kid called Yifu galavanting around Europe with an ex-Lehman's bankster and $20 million of other people's money, directly manipulating the supply of a now legitimate US recognised currency and dishonestly abusing people's funds for hardware to the point it's worthless.

I'm sure there's at least one reporter that would appreciate the chance to prove her investigative journalism ability exists and would jump at the chance of being able to set the record straight on a conniving bankster...

There's Harriet Agnew and Robin Sidel at the The Wall Street Journal.

Harriet Agnew - Harriet is actually based at eFinacial News - London - harriet.agnew@dowjones.com

This is why the e financial news article was similar but had some more details than the Wall Street Journal Article. No doubt his was very embarrassing for her and she needs the opprtunity to undo the damage.

Robin.sidel@wsj.com I believe he was the editor or WSJ staff reporter covering this.


If all else fails Teri Buhl (yes that IS actually her name!) is excellent and a friend of Max Keiser, she has already tried to piece this mess together, with some accuracy and some confusion;

http://www.teribuhl.com/2013/08/06/the-mess-the-wsj-made-famed-trader-joe-lewis-not-investing-in-bitcoins/

Make sure you have evidence in a presentable format for them to help them write a worthwhile article this time!!

Was there are poll? Haven't seen one.

BTW, your group buys 5 and 6 are still under 10 weeks old, so they are not breach of contract. Yet.

On the poll i made, around a combined 55% wants a refund and/or take them to court. the remaining are trusting in compensation somehow. (10% says they dont care, i do believe them to be trolls not buying into any group buys)..

Ya SebJu it is a tough situation with so many different ways it could go. I think we need to all strategize this and have a skype meeting or something so that some of us who can will push for refunds while other buy leaders can push for compensation but we can all agree Avalon will not be getting any more BTC from us collectively. Let the boycott start right now.

Giving reports about the facts is a pretty good idea and I think that we can definitely use that as part of our arsenal to get Yifu and Avalon to answer our demands immediately. I think sending that reporter that information right now is a good idea and not to wait for things to shake out days or weeks from now. The longer we wait the less likely Avalon will feel they need to answer our questions and respond to our refund tickets. We can't let people run roughshod over the community and we need to take affirmative action against anyone like this. If we do this successfully we will force companies to really take notice we won't be funding those that basically fail to deliver a product on time as promised and then ignore us when we rightfully demand information. That is the whole problem here the lack of proper information. Any company wishing to do business here in future better damn well be up front and provide relevant information.

Ya they are in breach. Where are the developer chips promised in 4 weeks? Where are our chips we ordered right now? When can we reasonably expect all chips ordered to be shipped realistically given the current delays? Do you really think those in June and July orders should have any confidence that Yifu will ship on time given the present state of shipping being 5+ weeks behind?

Please no one should have to wait for information on their chip orders. WHERE ARE OUR CHIPS RIGHT NOW? That has to be answered. If it isn't then we all want refunds I bet. Who believes that there are chips in customs? Which customs? Which country? Seriously the lack of information provided to the group buy leaders is appalling and given that we should not give Avalon the benefit of the doubt.

I'm sure she would like to get her own back and redeem her name from the person responsible for throwing mud in her eye, and both using and compromising her career, her contacts and her integrity to manipulate her into this mess!

No poll, i only asked it. But i can put the question in again in a couple days. A normal poll wouldnt be good because not only members can take part.

Essentially it gets down to this: Some people believe that legal action may slow things down and even get negative impact if it forces Y(es)I('ve)F(*****)Y(ou)™ to court, instead of letting him to slowly ship chip batches in the future. They see legal action as a revenge, and not as a smart business move at this moment. This is false reasoning IMHO, Yifu has an USA based company and his basic interest is not to be brought to court in the USA, or get permanent arrest order if he tries to step into the USA. Court conviction may permanently damage his future, so if anything can bring him to make some kind of personal or financial sacrifice to deliver what his company is obliged - it's serious legal action. It will not make anything slower. Proper donation for legal support should be organized, let's say everybody should donate 1% of the worth of his chips. 1% of 10 mil. US$ is 100.000 US$, and it should be enough for some serious law firm for considerable time. If anyone who already donated gets his chips during the slow process of legal action, his donation will anyhow go to good cause, helping those who didn't get the chips get their legal satisfaction.

If you guys what your cash back, you have someone who is p*ssed right now with Avalon is on your side. Robin Sidel the journalist at the WSJ made a fool of by the ex-Lehman's broker, is after blood;




--
The Wall Street Journal
TECHNOLOGY
Updated August 11, 2013, 10:11 p.m. ET

Regulator Examines Bitcoin Practices
New York Issues Subpoenas to Firms Tied to Bitcoin.
By ROBIN SIDEL

New York's top banking regulator has issued subpoenas to roughly two dozen companies associated with bitcoin as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into the business practices of the fledgling virtual-currency industry, according to people familiar with the matter.

The subpoenas, from the New York Department of Financial Services, seek information on a range of topics, including antimoney-laundering programs, consumer-protection measures and investment strategies, according to the people..

Subpoenas were sent to firms backed by high-profile Bitcoin investors such as Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.

The department, led by Benjamin Lawsky, also plans on Monday to issue a memo expressing concern that virtual-currency companies aren't complying with the state's money-transmission laws. As a result, the state is considering setting new guidelines that are specifically aimed at virtual currencies.

"We believe that—for a number of reasons—putting in place appropriate regulatory safeguards for virtual currencies will be beneficial to the long-term strength of the virtual-currency industry," wrote Mr. Lawsky in a draft of the memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Companies that received subpoenas include some of the best-known names in the nascent industry, including Coinbase Inc., BitInstant and Coinsetter.

Executives from Coinbase and BitInstant couldn't be reached for comment on Sunday. Jaron Lukasiewicz, chief executive of Coinsetter, said in an email that the information request is "an opportunity for companies in our space to open up a much needed dialogue with regulators."

He added, "They'll quickly find that most companies are working to legitimize Bitcoin and want to build bridges that help regulators understand and support these financial innovations."

The state agency also sent subpoenas to companies backed by high-profile Bitcoin investors, including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who are best known for battling Mark Zuckerberg over ownership of Facebook Inc. FB -0.10% Mr. Andreessen and the Winklevoss brothers couldn't be reached for comment on Sunday.

Bitcoin, the best-known of a crop of virtual currencies, are created in a computer process called "mining." They also can be traded on a number of exchanges or swapped privately among users. Most bitcoin are traded on a Tokyo-based exchange called Mt. Gox, where one bitcoin was valued Friday at roughly $102.

A subpoena is a legal demand for information and doesn't signal wrongdoing by the recipient. The New York banking department sent the subpoenas late last week, according to the people familiar with the matter.

The subpoenas come amid heightened scrutiny from state and federal regulators into the world of virtual currencies. Because virtual currencies aren't backed by a central government like traditional ones are, regulators are worried they can be used for illegal activity or can violate laws involving money transmission.

Federal regulators earlier this year issued guidelines placing virtual-currency exchanges under the same comprehensive antimoney-laundering requirements as traditional money-transmission businesses such as Western Union Co.

Although a growing number of bitcoin exchanges have registered their businesses with the U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, they have moved more slowly at the state level. In part, that is because the process of getting a license in each of the 48 states that require them is complicated and lengthy. In addition, states also typically require companies to put up a bond that could run as much as several million dollars.

New York has been one of a handful of states aggressively examining the industry. Mr. Lawsky has assembled a team to assess the issue and already sent a warning letter to BitInstant, a New York company that allows customers to buy and sell bitcoins.

"If virtual currencies remain a virtual Wild West for narcotraffickers and other criminals, that would not only threaten our country's national security, but also the very existence of the virtual currency industry as a legitimate business enterprise," according to the memo.

The round of subpoenas also are aimed at gleaning information about how the companies are dealing with individual investors who may be attracted to the novelty of virtual currencies, but may not be sophisticated enough to understand the risk associated with them.

Write to  Robin Sidel at robin.sidel@wsj.com

Wrong.

They are customers. The person organizing the group buy is just a trader which facilitates the deal between the buyers and the seller. However, the person organizing the group buy have certain obligations to both sides. This obligations is defined in an agreement with the buyers, the trader and the seller.

Apart from my own group buy, I guess all group buys in this forum did not prepared and discussed an agreement with all parties involved. So now that the shit had hit the fan, there is no defined agreement to bring up to a court of law and explain who is responsible for what.

So basically, shit or get off the pot.  If you think you have been wronged and ignored to the point of suffering damages, sue yifu.  If not, don't.  

Whining on here serves no purpose.

It serves no purpose because 90% of the chip buyers nor the group buy leaders have any intention to say a word to Yifu. All that needs to be done is for the group buy leaders to hire a lawyer to get in contact with Yifu to arrange a face-to-face. We don't need to go through the process of a lawsuit. The problem is that Yifu thinks he is just allowed to ignore everyone.

How much money do we need to bring this fat ass to the court? Though I am less rich than him (we all know how much money this guy has scammed from our community), but I think the law will bring judge to this guy. If a reliable community member can lead such a law suit, I will donate 50BTC 100BTC.

With such a simple and easy thing, he will delay. This could only be intentional.

Back in May, I have heard rumors that Avalon team is planning ship the chips late to give Avalon Batch 3 some profit. Now, the rumor became the truth. They intended to cover one mistake by another mistake.

I would repeat that in a few other threads esp. the Terrahash one if you want to gain any momentum and/or attention.

Also contact Bicknellski and a few of the group buy guys whose businesses are at stake...

In fact, base on current whole net hash power, batch#3 customers are already dead. No matter when the chip will be shipped. The only difference is how much these customers will lost.

Feel free to do that, I'm just a small group buyer with no intentions to execute anything further myself, but would love to see what others think about it.

Well it's possible now, 2/3 down, ouch;

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/n-y-regulator-subpoenas-firms-over-bitcoin-crime-risks.html

In addition to BitInstant, Dwolla and Coinsetter, the regulator sent subpoenas to the following service providers: BitPay, Coinabul, Coinbase Inc., CoinLab, eCoin Cashier, Payward, Inc., TrustCash Holdings Inc. and ZipZap, the person said.

Butterfly Labs, a technology company, also received a subpoena, according to the person familiar with the matter.


http://abovethelaw.com/uploads/2012/02/You-Got-Served-youve-been-service-of-process.gif

The funny thing is... what exactly do these politicians think they can regulate about Bitcoin? All they can really do is make it illegal and then people will just use their bitcoin elsewhere. I don't think they really get it. Any attempt at regulating Bitcoin and you are placing a huge burden on US economic growth.

Ok, surely we all recognize how ludicrous this statement is? The impact of regulating Bitcoin would be completely inconsequential to the dollar economy.

My chips are up for auction for anyone that still wants to take the gamble: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=272407.0

Hey guys, chips are in the mail!   :-X

What do you mean chips are in the mail? Please clarify

Sorry, it was a joke, kinda like "check's in the mail".  Maybe I'm old...

Edit: Too soon?

No jokes about that in here !

BFL
Two Weeks^TM

BitSyncom
Customs^TM

Wait.........I thought BFL had "Customs™Chips"  ??? ??? ??? WTF  ??? ??? ???

 :D   :D   :D   :D   :D   :D   :D   :D   :D   :D   :D  :D

Edit.

There could be some movement:

And this
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190731.msg2922817#msg2922817

@Yifu,    please check into the forum daily so we know ur still alive!!
As there is probably not a continent in the world where people aren't looking out for you !
Am glad am not you !  ;)

Hey guys just found this Topic on CCN , I just read the whole thing , its been very entertaining thank you all .

sorry if that sounds rude , i was bored , and there isn't much dirt on the other threads these days,

so looks like you all got done hey?

some highlights were where people said:

"last time i give my business to...."

isn't it interesting how when humans become involved , we perpetuate the similar systems that we are supposedly are against , ha ha in this way we can learn more about human behavior we have to respect the monetary scam that is fiat systems , as you probably would have done it if you had of thought of it   .

I personally have orders with KnC i don't expect anyone that orders now to ever get an ROI if they actually pay for energy in any form. the trajectory we have is over 200 million unless there is a reassessment. 

i guess I'm a student of historic human behavior and you people are not ?, here is the general rule post Cold War:

Don't trust or invest in the USA, (especially anywhere near California) the Nation is in decline and social pressure drives a socioeconomic system towards the "self", not dissimilar to the decline of the Soviet system, plus you have an advanced political /intel network related to your investment .

Don't Trust or invest in any part of Asia , (sorry there is no racism here),  but there is a race factor , do you think the Chinese conveniently forgot the Tea or Opium wars or the many aspects of history?

You simple "Westerners" just because you get the flash course of "history" in school about some pyramids and some trenches do you think that is what is taught to other cultures?

the only viable options you actually ever had was :

1. Build it yourself.

2. Invest in Europe.

3. Invest carefully in the Russian Federation.

those of you that actually got a product , you got that more likely for press reasons , off in the distance you can hear laughter ...

you won't get to "not give business" because this won't likely happen again ha ha.

Hi Yifu,


I still not recieved 5 Avalon Units from Avalon batch 2
paid 75 btc for each

i have no information about delivery, about track number or even a response from you !


I created a lot of tickets ( last one #1410)
and write a letter to your e-mail


Can you help with that ?
Can i hope for refund ?



Best regards
Alexey

Any news on the nams?

Vox

Nothing yet, think we've all been eFooled by Yifu.

So his new name must be E-foo

Updated from the website:  http://www.avalon-asics.com

sam
september ^TM

disclaimer:
i have ordered a bfl miner, asked for refund, no answer yet
i have ordered avalon batch 3, sold it
i have ordered avalon chips, sold part of em, would like to sell em all
i have ordered jupiters. sam, i am counting on you...

This is interesting or just some shit HTML lie?  Could it be our chips are shipping... seems like 150k is a large amount with the added amounts talked about going out... We shall see... like how it says "things can still go wrong" =D

pretty silent in here....

if they ship 40-50k/day there should be a few more people receiving shipping notifications...

So far just Zefir?  ::)

Yep, no tracking numbers for the others.

He didnt mention how many days... the sentence remains true when it only was one day...

Seriously! What's this BFL-Speed bullshit? I hope an army of lawyers are knocking down your doors right now! This is NOT OK! Cough up the chips or the cash!

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view/303278/tiger-woods-awkward-stare-o.gif


Even Tiger is distraught.