Bitcoin Forum

I have been trying for nearly 3 weeks to release over $26,000 from MTGox.  Through miriad delays, lies and false promises, I am still unable to withdraw any USD from MTGox.  I believe, though I have not tested, that I may be able to transfer the funds out via Bitcoins, but it would come at a cost of conversion.  Which I have already paid twice in the past three weeks trying to get funds out.

At this point, I am absolutely sick and tired of the lying and BS that comes out of MTGox.  Nothing honest is ever released on their blog, it's always missing important facts or contains outright falsehoods.  Their customer service is a joke (I know, surprise!), and every time I contact them, they take days to get back to me... when they do it does not address the issue, but points to useless blog posts or gives excuses for actions taken or not taken.

After finally getting them to cancel the Dwolla withdrawals they had "pending" for over a week, they canceled just one of them, letting another $10,000 hang in limbo until I contacted them again.  I requested that they do a wire transfer of the funds to my bank and that I would pay the fee on my side, even though they should cover all fees for holding on to my money for a week with no compensation or reasonable explanation.  I got no response to this request, not even a denial.  

I then  converted the USD to bitcoins and sucked up the "fee" MtGox charges for the privilege of keeping my money indefinitely.  After trying to find a suitable way to transfer the BTC out and convert it into fiat, it became clear that the charges to do so would be exorbitant, as all the exchange services are not setup to convert large amounts of BTC to fiat and their fee structure makes it impractical.

So, I went ahead, last night, and sucked up the exchange rate and lost several hundred dollars as well as the "fee" MtGox charges, again, and converted back to USD.  I tried to initiate a wire transfer and lo-and-behold... MtGox no longer offers wire transfers.*  Only Dwolla and OKPay.  So now MTGox is offering a service to replace a wire transfer with Dwolla, which they can't seem to transfer even a nickle to, much less $26000.  So now I have basically no way to transfer money out of MTGox, other than as, possibly, Bitcoins. To add insult to this injury, even "adding" a Dwolla account, which I have been using for months and month, goes into "Validation" status and will not, apparently, come out.  As such, I can't even attempt a Dwolla transfer.  

So now, they basically have had free use of my funds for nearly 3 weeks, with no compensation, besides the lies and delay tactics I've received so far and have eliminated that last possible method for me to get USD out of MTGox.  

It's almost laughable how poorly managed MTGox is, or it would be if it were not for the fact that they are holding millions of dollars of users funds without any recourse.  Unless these concerns are addressed and some reasonable explanation is offered, I will be moving all of my operations to another exchange.  Yes, I realize I am a small fish in a large pond, but I am also suggesting that everyone else do the same.  MTGox can not be trusted with your data, as they have shown through being hacked via methods that were detailed to them long before the hack took place.  They are clearly showing that they can't be trusted with your funds, either, since they will not release funds in any usable manner (with the possible exception of BTC).  

* EDIT - MTGox still offers wire transfers, it's just now called "Withdrawal Wizard"

They are silent because if Bitcoin will crash (what is very likely) they will be fucked, or rather i should say their customers will be. BFL will be biggest failure in bitcoin history.

They are also preparing several dev units and were able to up the performance of Luke-Jr's unit to 34 GH/s.

34? Looks more like 28 GH/s.

http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/1CdcYVP4T4hjHwt353pEnGHrigeDLvuvZL

Did I read the OP correctly? Is it possible to exchange BFL for Mt Gox in the text, whereupon it would read the same?

They are not silent at all - today they released a promotional video on their website.
They are also preparing several dev units and were able to up the performance of Luke-Jr's unit to 34 GH/s.

While I am hear eager to receive what I ordered and prepaid 9 months ago, this is not the time to panic, nor is it a time to bitch and moan. If I want to hear bitching, I listen to my wife. If I want to hear moaning, I listen to "Bella", a trained professional.

In a nutshell: Good things come to those who wait.

Did I read the OP correctly? Is it possible to exchange BFL for Mt Gox in the text, whereupon it would read the same? Here, Josh is espousing the exact beef with Gox as a myriad of others have about BFL, yet he came here and called some of the naysayers cocksuckers.

Madness!

Just quoting a rumor heard in the BFL forum shoutbox. Maybe it was wrong.

They are not silent at all - today they released a promotional video on their website.
They are also preparing several dev units and were able to up the performance of Luke-Jr's unit to 34 GH/s.

While I am hear eager to receive what I ordered and prepaid 9 months ago, this is not the time to panic, nor is it a time to bitch and moan. If I want to hear bitching, I listen to my wife. If I want to hear moaning, I listen to "Bella", a trained professional.

In a nutshell: Good things come to those who wait.

The only working product in this video is the laser engraver..

Just watched the vid... something seems fishy that all of a sudden they have a bunch of workers, when the reddit guy who did an unaccompanied tour didn't report many people actually working.

Guys, guys, guys!  They were obviously off doing a team building exercise!  It takes a lot of coordination to descend upon anything like a swarm of locusts and not get in each others' way.  I hope they release a video of that, by the way.  A swarm of 22 locusts...  Can you imagine it??!?

This is a quote from the youtube video.

As it turns out, they DO have something working:

Anyone know what the warranty was for the FPGA single? I emailed them about mine on Tuesday this week, the power supply died. Haven't received any helpful information at all in the forums either. Plus finding out I can't do an upgrade any more makes it even more of a facepalm for me. I received it on November 2nd 2012 I believe... warranty has to be good still right?  ???

At this point, I am absolutely sick and tired of the lying and BS that comes out of MTGox BFL.

Just quoting a rumor heard in the BFL forum shoutbox. Maybe it was wrong.

Guys, guys, guys!  They were obviously off doing a team building exercise!  It takes a lot of coordination to descend upon anything like a swarm of locusts and not get in each others' way.  I hope they release a video of that, by the way.  A swarm of 22 locusts...  Can you imagine it??!?

Cute, that is the single in the back row: Two mini single connected together with a water block  ;D

http://photo.mystisland.org/bfl_water.jpg

Just watched the vid... something seems fishy that all of a sudden they have a bunch of workers, when the reddit guy who did an unaccompanied tour didn't report many people actually working.


I'm not bitchin, im not moanin. I've refrained from doing that for going on 9 months now. I've got a second month order that I'm waitin to receive. Sure hope the price figures out what it wants to do so that we can resume a somewhat steady mining setup.

Has the ASIC firm got back to you on why they think just the chip is  running about twice as much power as expected, and will power consumption come down for wafers 76+?" We are in process with that. We have a theory as to what's going on and we're trying to confirm that's what happened at the foundry and if so, it bodes very well for us

So BFL just tweeted the "Luke-Jr's Little Single is now running at around 27-30GHash/s". They don't mention anything about power consumption.

My speculation is that they can't fix the power issues without new ASICs from China. They are conspicuously silent about power consumption in their updates apart from relative measures like gaining a small % here from a board redesign, or a small % here from firmware - but I think they actually need entire new chips to be manufactured before they can meet power requirements and they know if they let on to this fact then it's all over.

They will stall and stall with power and firmware and 'developer units' (like Luke Jrs) until they get new chips in like a month. Mass shipping in 2 months if they don't go bankrupt.

At least they finally admitted they don't have a set shipping date. No more next month next month next month next week next month business. That was good comedy while it lasted though!

I agree they have a major power problem -    170 watts at 28 GH is not a good sign for a pcb designed for 60 watts-- but good engineers always come up with a solution

They don't have good engineers. The ASIC is designed and produced by an external company. BFL has no knowledge about ASIC design and manufacturing. They allowed this external company to make the most stupid beginner errors with this ASIC.

There is not so many detail known about the board, but some things stinks here too. Maybe they outsourced the board design as well. Unfortunately the BFL people seems to have no clue what their suppliers are doing. In addition they are really bad in prjoject management.

I think we have to wait for at least one additional wafer run until Custom Silicon Inc. is delivering an ASIC that could be used to build a product.

I mean think about this one tweet (it was like a Q and A type deal)


Just ponder on that for a moment.

1. Evades the question straight away.
2. "That's what's happened at the foundry" - as in "we need the foundry to fix it and give us more chips".
3. classic BFL, "it bodes very well for us" - how in the world does a problem in the manufacture of the chip (or the chip design, it's not clear) bode well?

There is not so many detail known about the board, but some things stinks here too. Maybe they outsourced the board design as well.

I think I read they have at least 85000 asic --- the asic works ok but use more power than expected --- they need to find a easy design solution to the problem --- note these asic use less than 50% power  of avalon (bfl asic will be better in long term - less power ???) --- so design may end up in a much larger case with bigger power supply

I don't know how many ASICs they have, and they seems to work - well kind of - but I don't think those ASICs are working good enough for a product. At those little details in the videos, messages and pictures you can get from them leads me to this conclusion. If you have experience with ASIC design and manufacturing, read between the lines of their success messages. Those messages sounds good, but if you read about their remaining problems and the planed solutions you get another- very different - picture.

And then there is another major point: BFL is not Avalon - if they could really ship the products this month you would read victory messages from Josh in all forums. This silence alone speaks for itself!

The ASIC is designed and produced by an external company. BFL has no knowledge about ASIC design and manufacturing. They allowed this external company to make the most stupid beginner errors with this ASIC.

I'm pretty sure there is no engineering team. The ASIC designer is some guy who works full time at a bank in France and works for BFL nights and weekends (probably like 10 hours part time), and the other parts of the "team" are the contract PCB manufacturers. BFL = sales & marketing hoping like hell they can stumble their way into shipping a product before people pull their pre-orders.

The ASIC designer is some guy who works full time at a bank in France and works for BFL nights and weekends (probably like 10 hours part time), and the other parts of the "team" are the contract PCB manufacturers.

Butterfly Labs Announcement
January 2013
Hello everyone. It's been about a month since our last update and it's high time we had another, since we have lots of information to share this time around....This means our delivery date is expected the week of the 10th of February...

15 March BFL News

    Apparently BFL has now attained the vaunted status of being large enough to attract a DDoS. This morning, starting about 1AM CST, the BFL sites started getting over 1 Gbs of traffic, effectively knocking everything offline....

Anyone know what the warranty was for the FPGA single? I emailed them about mine on Tuesday this week, the power supply died. Haven't received any helpful information at all in the forums either. Plus finding out I can't do an upgrade any more makes it even more of a facepalm for me. I received it on November 2nd 2012 I believe... warranty has to be good still right?  ???

I think I read they have at least 85000 asic --- the asic works ok but use more power than expected --- they need to find a easy design solution to the problem --- note these asic use less than 50% power  of avalon (bfl asic will be better in long term - less power ???) --- so design may end up in a much larger case with bigger power supply

I stopped by the BFL office unannounced on Friday with my video camera to record the details.

It seems they were on break time.. I must say I am disturbed at what I saw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78LAgl90UyM

So what are they going to do with the second set of wafers then considering they ran into rather large issues? Would that be a scrap?

Nope.  Their entire gen 1 first run was supposed to total 75,000 chips.  They split the first batch of 12,000 into 2 and had 6 wafers delivered while the last few layers of the 2nd 6 were held back in case they ran into problems.  The bulk order of 63,000 was supposed to go into production a few weeks after the whole 12 wafers from batch 1 were delivered but there's been no confirmation that order has gone ahead. 

It looks like they're going to use what's already in production to fill early orders and that the bulk order will now be use for a revised design.

if they didn't have these "ship dates" then tom might not have given up and we might've been able to get a good product from him.

We will hear something this week I am predicting, and its likely to even have an effect on BTC price if the news is positive.

We've I've been hearing something 'good' every week since January.

I suspect that we will continue to hear good things in all the following weeks from now.

I don't think we'll see any actual progress apart from more prototyping  :P

We will hear something this week I am predicting, and its likely to even have an effect on BTC price if the news is positive.

The dual waterblock unit is 2 FPGA's sandwiched together,not ASIC's.The one with the black"clamp" thing on it may be an ASIC,can't see from this angle.

God,I hope they ship soon  ::)

silent --> huge unresolvable problems ...

FTFY ;)

We've been hearing good things about this project since last June.

not may?

i thought it was around may when we started hearing good things from them?

I don't think so. I finally received my refund, but the way Tom handled this project I doubt that we would have seen a working miner anytime soon.

For those that don't know, the image is a screen grab from the, Butterfly Labs Company Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSu5Yyc1bEM