Applying Hanlon's razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity") to the Hashfast meltdown, lately I've been wondering if their ridiculous recent announcement of wanting to become the Intel of bitcoin mining might not have been the belated revelation of management's plan all along.  That they would sell boxes long enough to get a foothold, and then transform themselves, as silly as it sounds today, into a chipmaking firm, on the basis of the performance of their chip.

This might explain the lack of attention paid to the "substrate", and the order of thousands more chips than they seem to have immediately needed.  (I know there are economies of scale on the chips, but there are on other things too.)  They were, from the beginning, in the box business only temporarily, since Simon thought he had the chip thing figured out. The sometimes irrational emphasis on "high quality" long lasting components, etc, was related to the branding effort in the long term.

In order to implement their plan, they got money from where they could, which turned out to be the waterboarding porn crowd, who inserted Johnny Scrotum as their man on the scene to watch over the investment (since, through insertions prior, he could be relied upon in, err, insertions). But I digress....

In return for their money, the pron crowd demanded immediate compensation in the form of a lot of bitcoins from the initial orders.  Eddie and Simon might not have been able to resist a little pillaging either.  But, Eddie figured, as long as they could nail the chips and have enough money to start shipping boxes, they'd be okay, since the equipment would be good, and he'd then quickly have the means to transform Hashfast into boutique mining chip maker, par excellence.  But when things started unravelling in late 2013, the obligation to the pron crowd tied Eddie's hands, making a change of plan impossible, because he was locked into paying the pronsters back a percentage of X initial units (or X bitcoins).  And they probably didn't care much if Hashfast failed, they were just earning a nice percentage on preorders.

Focused on the chip and paying the pron guys, as Amy said, Hashfast "never really recovered" from that failed first board.  Once the pron people had been paid, there wasn't much money left (and Scrotum could leave, his job done). Eddie and Simon got left holding a lot of chips AND the obligation to deliver to customers, and not much capital. Fixing the board heavily strained their limited finances, after paying off torture porn mob. They got stuck.  

Unwilling to give up on the plan, however, in early 2014, Eddie was paralyzed.  Filling the orders wasn't the priority.  A path to chipmaker status was.  So they tried to drip the orders out enough to hold the wolves (customers) at bay, while still searching for that deal to transform themselves into "Intel", which obviously required holding a lot of chips in hand, since there was no money to make more.  Even worse, the lawsuits were causing their remaining nestegg to hemorrhage, requiring the attempt to drum up sales of the "Yoli". But Eddie still chose to avoid reconciliation with an angry mob of customers, holding out hope of reeling in the big deal.

The rising sentiment against them, and competition, scared away any serious partner to manufacture and retail the boxes, and eroded the terms that Eddie could secure from those still willing to take a chance, and so the drain circling slowly accelerated...

Which leads to the present situation.

Just a theory.

Check.

I could probably join that shit storm too, in minor way.  But the truth is that I mined a couple weeks and then resold their late hardware for a profit, so...

Of course I put that "profit" into a Hashfast order.  Good thinking, eh?

"Douchbag mode" was written into Hashfast's articles of incorporation. 

I don't think there was ever much serious intent to serve their customers, unless it happened by accident after the douchebag management and douchebag investors took "their" share.

That was the intent from the start, at least that's what I suspect would come out in the course of a bankruptcy.

Sure, they "could" to this, or they "could" do that.  Making amends with the customers has always been among Hashfast's options.  Have they ever done it?  No.  Will they do it now?  No, not even if they were able.  Would they have done it if the bankruptcy petition was never filed?  Absolutely not.

Nice image!  

My suspicion about the troller, based on a couple things he has said (e.g. knowing about the intricacies of Hashfast's situation) is that he's one of a number of people that have been watching carefully as Hashfast circles the drain, with the hope of swooping in and making some sort of sweetheart deal.  The BK petition has somehow foiled his plan, exactly how it's hard to know.  He seems to fear Ch 11 in particular.  Or maybe, especially given the kind of unsavoury company that Eddie keeps, he already has a sweetheart relationship that is being cut off.

But as far as I can see, if Hashfast manages to prove its solvency to the tune of $350k right now (e.g. if Simon finds an angel), they will still be susceptible to similar, perhaps even larger, filings going forward.  So if this one fails, just wait a little while and file another.  They don't seem to be in a position to actually pay their debts. This smallish filing only represents a small proportion of the debt, as Johnny Scrotum's new linkedin page attests, and additional creditors could certainly be found.

The bk petition is not the gallo suit.  I didn't join any suit except the bk petition.  I can only speak with certainty for myself, but I seriously doubt that anyone in the gallo litigation also joined the bk petition.  I sat out the other, earlier, 'mass' litigation because it seemed to me to be more likely to enrich attorneys than HF customers.  It was also going to take years.  I have better things to do than wait that long for some crappy quasi-closure.

As for your legal strategery and self-confidence in it, well, I'll let others be the judge (pun intended).  I guess you consider yourself smarter than all the lawyers that HF's customers consulted, because you seem to think that you know something about litigation that they don't.  Odds don't really seem to be on your side on that one.

"I'm getting it all back" isn't on the table and really never has been.  If your earnestly think it was, well, then, I have this Unicornhasher over here that I'll let you have for a mere 100BTC.  PM me, please.  I'll give you up to 4x extra unicorns if this one doesn't poop enough.

Anyway, again speaking for myself, the bk petition is about trying to find the truth.  

Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and respond earnestly.  

Impatience certainly is not what motivated me. I waited until well after what they owed me had become a money-losing proposition before joining the petition.  That waiting period was also many months after Hashfast's alleged 'drop dead' delivery date.  It was not impatience.  If it was impatience, it would have been in November, 2013.

Rage?  No.  Some anger, yes, but I'm past any rage.  I can't dial back the network hashrate.  Hashfast can't either.  So, after the anger mostly subsides, I mainly want the truth and whatever consequences its revelation brings to Hashfast.  I very much want to know whether it was incompetence, graft, some combination of the two, or something else entirely that caused this company to let its customers down so badly.  I don't see any route other than the courts for this information to come to light, specifically, a filing with the potential to result in Hashfast's inner workings being opened up - without costing a fortune and enriching attorneys at customers' further loss.

Fear?  What on earth is there to be afraid of?  Hashfast's cash debt to me isn't large, and losing it isn't going to make any huge difference in my life, if that's the result of this.  In fact, there's almost certainly more to be afraid of by allowing yourself to be named in the suit than there is in hiding behind anonymous handles (cough).

If you are earnest, then I think you may have a limited ability to recognize differences between your own perceived self-interest and that of others in similar, but not the same, positions.  I also think that you massively overestimate Hashfast's intent to make amends with its customers.  Hashfast is the one that "lost" your money, not those of us that have taken action against this abomination of a company.

Ah, okay.  My guess is that he's looking for an angel.  I wonder how much (%) of the company(ies) they would sell for an immediate infusion of $350,000.  I think that's what is on Simon's mind.  (Or looking for a new job.  Maybe both... keep his options open!)

Amsterdam?  Or is that industry slang for some sort of meeting or other location?  

If he's in Amsterdam, is he running?  I say that quasi-seriously, for fear that some financial assets have been offshored.

Ding! to Solarion's observation that if you push people to the point that they have nothing to lose by suing, well, that's how I made my decision.  I'm very interested in the truth too, and I see a possible bankruptcy process as being our best shot at getting it.

I meant new management as in court-appointed management.

If in the face of the Chapter 7 "forced" filing they are firing, as other people noted, the only person trying to make a difference, and she says the company "couldn't stay afloat", I'm assuming that means a Ch. 11 bankruptcy filing from HF is coming soon, although I suppose Eddie's perfidy has no known bounds.  

Like, maybe, he'll say all those bitcoins burned up in the fire?  :p

Wow.  I thought it might kill them, but still kind of shocking that it apparently did, since they held out against being decent to their customers for so long. Their wall of BS and generalized assholery seemed to be so impenetrable.  

Here's to hoping new management gets in there fast to salvage what can be salvaged (although I assume it's a chapter 11 filing in the works) and, maybe most importantly, that in this process the truth comes out - be it malice, incompetence, or some combination thereof.

PS:  Can't wait for Inaba to comment...  BFL ought to be shitting bricks now.

Excuse me, but I don't think the bankruptcy petition screws anyone, except hopefully the assholes in charge at Hashfast, who have already screwed us.

You've thrown thousands of dollars at Hashfast, and now you would accept payment in the form of $100 chips, to which your must further add $749 each in components and assembly, plus power supplies, cooling, shipping, etc.... in order to mine on network that's so big now that that all your calculations about profitability have been thrown out the window several times?

Unless you are a huge customer with huge price leverage on the boards, taking the chips sounds like throwing good money after bad to me.

Nope, the truth and a check for our shares of what little is left is probably best.  And who knows what new information the truth may reveal.

The fundamental mistake that was made was Eddie's arrogance in late 2013, when the company should have come forward with honesty to negotiate with its customers.  Instead, all the way through April 2014, they acted like little pricks.  And even if you believe the recent coming to Jesus, untucked shirt and burn victim routine, it's just too little, too late.

I don't think anybody is going to get exactly what they want out of this, unfortunately.  I think they blew through a ton of money and may have squirrelled some away. Hopefully the latter will be found.

At this point, I'm most interested in the truth. 

Or that would contrive it to be so.

Privately, or publicly?

I dunno, but they sure are trying to cultivate a humble image.  

Somebody give Simon a haircut, for god's sake, he's about to start looking like a dirt-eater from Alabama. Were it not for that glass he's holding. A lot of my work colleagues are Cambridge types, and there's no hope for them, but I'll be damned if it doesn't seem like if Simon went to enough Drive by Truckers shows that he'd learn how to fit in with Bubba.

And Eddie, with his shirt untucked!  My heavens.  Contrived?  No way!  Just a working stiff, that Eddie, with a gold-plated bidness education?  Untucking his button-down, wow, that says desperation like nothing else.

Should have engaged their customers in late 2013 with the truth, humility, and a earnest desire for a mutually-agreed plan.  I was here screaming for it.  They had no interest.  And, to be honest, those that wanted BTC refunds didn't have much interest either.  It was people like me, USD customers in the middle, who were looking hardest for a fair path.  They were too arrogant to realize their predicament.

That should be a stand alone sticky thread right under caveat emptor.

Hate to the call the guy out if he's just being inattentive, but the node at soun.se (stratum+tcp://176.10.212.237:9555/) owes me > 30 MON plus some VTC.

There have been no payments for a while now. No valid operator contact info is listed at node's web pages.

If he doesn't attend to business and make pending payouts soon, I'd recommend the node be removed from those indicated on the first post in this thread.

And if anybody knows this guy, please let me know how to contact him.

I don't hold it against you, but you guys after BTC refunds have all of Cyrus' attention.

Sure hope he asked them about the MPP too.  Lots of silence on that.

Also, wonder who got canned.  Joe the Engineer?  The "other" Amy? 

I wanna follow specifically on this one too:

On the HF website, Amy writes that "I think our former policy on keeping quiet, definitely fueled those flames."  

Excuse me, but Hashfast did not keep quiet.  It sent paid proxies, trolls and "Hashfast_CL" onto this forum, and it insulted its customers and pretty much all of humanity.  It showed off the single demo box in Austin. In doing so, it tried to poke fun at Cointerra, another imperfect company but one that kicked your ass from one side of the field to another. Talk about misplaced arrogance!   Texas 10 - California 0. You did nothing more than prove Hashfast's unworthiness.

And you definitely did not keep quiet with potential customers.  You replied multiple times within hours to their e-mails, while ignoring those of your existing customers with unfilled orders.

No, Hashfast did not keep quiet.  What it did was to ignore all the important questions and concerns of its customers, and still tout its bullshit, like the Austin show and Hashfast_CL.  And with people who make torture and waterboarding porn in charge!  

Where your management belongs is jail.  I don't believe they have wanted to do the right thing.