BFL, At least A Dishonest Company, Quite Possibly A Scam.
1) False advertising regarding shipping times from day 0 until current - I believe this is done on purpose to build up funds in order to bulk order chips.
2) False advertising regarding Chips - Claims it is their own design, in fact they are reusing 2nd Hand Chips.
3) Accepts numerous pre-orders while being unable to meet delivery dates or production volume (Still stinks of a scam here).
4) Numerous BFL Shills plugging BFL on the forum (I SPENT BILLIONS, LOL YOU WONT EVEN TRUST THEM WITH 1 MILLION LOL).
For my attackers that love to screech, swear and generally just dump walls of crys here is the possible scam models.
1) Inaba is a con artist involved with BFL. He and his cronies put up photos, start threads and pat each others backs for being "HUR DUR SO FUCKING SMART".
- The BFL's are fake or do exist but only a small amount (just enough to get people excited).
- Inaba's pool is the only one that supports BFL (he fakes all the BFL stats), strangely Inaba still uses and buys large amounts of GPUS (I thought BFL was better
and the wait was worth it
).
Seems less likely now, but the singles will not mine stand alone and Inaba & BFL has 0 credibility outside their circle jerk so a defnite statement is not possible.
All this would easily be resolved by involving a credible outside party such as Toms Hardware for a review.
2) BFL does not have enough capital to keep their own shelves stocked.- They build up N orders until they can cover the cost of a bulk 2nd hand FPGA purchase.
- They then ship earliest orders and also cherry pick orders of vocal people in the forum.
- Rinse Repeat.
Seems extremely likely. At least this is not a con, its just extremely dishonest but that seems par for the course with BFL.
3)The single exists, BFL ships 10% - %20 of the earliest orders, stalls while total orders increase then when complaints are to high they ship another.
eg:
Week 1: 100 pending orders, ship 20.
Week 2: 80 old + 300 new pending orders, ship 30.
This is a ponzi scheme, until everyone asks for their unit or the money back the system keeps on working.
4)BFL is a startup company with absolutely terrible, but they are the real deal.
- They eventually get their shit sorted or are run out of business by other more experienced FPGA developers that have experience running a client facing business.
If I missed anything let me know.
From my current position I cannot make a call on BFL to say if they are legit or not. Until they address their own PR issues and start behaving like a professional company I personally see them as risk Im not willing to take.
Im a skeptic, I need more than the words of abusive fanboys to confirm somethings legitimacy.
If I did have the opportunity to visit their factory I would still not be satisfied with the BFL unless they allowed me to plug it into my own PC, using my own internet connection, target a pool of my choice and test.
After all that, knowing that they lied about 2nd hand parts being used and the ongoing false advertising regarding shipping Id still not do business with them due to concerns (package not delivered, warranty issues etc).
Im rooting for option
4) - I dont want to see a large chunk of the bitcoin community scammed yet again (Satoshi's Demon anyone ?) - it damages bitcoins rep and puts off new adopters.
I personally wish BFL would hire a PR person, fix their misleading advertising on the website and update clients on delays and if they feel inclined what the cause of the delays are (please do not say we need more preorders to buy the next batch of chips).
Feel free to give me a rant 2.5 pages long with a single point of "fuck you dumb 10 year old know nothing cunt"
Inaba style if it makes you feel better, but it would be much better if we ditch the console wars mentality and discuss this in a calm fashion if we are to discuss this at all.
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An unfortunate case of database corruption while I've been away for several months.
