False.

I quoted the refund policy from the OP and the refund policy from the web site (both of which are still there!). Refunds are available up until unit ships at 1.5% restock fee. They aren't even offering full refunds, they are offering a 1.5% restock fee, which could well add up to a lot of money (certainly a whole lot more than transaction costs on BTC payments).

What you quoted is from post #2. I have no idea when that was added, and it isn't referenced in the OP (i.e. nowhere does it say "see post #2 for the terms of this offer").  One can not be expected to read the entire thread before buying in, when the offer is made in post #1 and there is link right there to buy (and the link leads to a site with the very same refund policy).

Any "real-world" business, which in any case this is, that made these commitments in these places and then refused to honor them would be sued (and would lose) and could also be prosecuted for fraud (if the authorities felt in was a big enough deal to pursue). Attempting to rely on a different policy posted in another place that people buying in may well not have seen would and should fail.

Furthermore, the "refund until shipping" was a standing policy of DZMC (which is why it appears in the boilerplate part of the OP), which was cheerfully honored on R14 (and I trust rated them favorably for it). Nowhere was it ever clearly stated to those buying in that this standing policy was being changed.

You are on the wrong side of this one. Many people look to be in the process of being scammed (though I too hope it doesn't turn out that way) and you keep trying to defend the scammers on the basis of a series of several different but all bogus arguments that don't hold up. I have no idea what your agenda is, but you should really just stop.

This community runs on reputation and trust first, legalities may come into it, but we will see. I personally don't have enough at stake here to pursue legal action on my own. I would consider joining with larger stake holders, however.

Trust and reputation are exactly why you are 100% wrong about there being no point in "complaining" further. This will be discussed and kept in the forefront as long as the issue is outstanding, which is as it should be.

No its not.


Let's look at your three day averages:

30th: 3
31st: 3
1st: 5

That is not exactly massive variance.

If you come up with a longer sequence of days where there are zero-share days the same thing will happen. There will be some small jumps and dips but nothing crazy. You won't have a week of no shares for example.  

If you have 150 GH and that averages 6 shares/day then your three day average will not really move around very much.

Very nice improvement.

Except that you then added it again to your new reply. The cat is out of the bag, really. We can probably count on inertia and stubborn or ignorant people to keep doing what they're doing for quite a while though though.

Speaking of cats...MEOW!

Pretty much that. Keep in mind though, just because they are using coinbase or bitpay doesn't mean they necessarily have to sell. That is an option in the APIs. Overstock's CEO for example, recently said they won't necessarily be selling all their coins and will be looking at using them to pay employees and suppliers.

Up until now these companies have been selling up front. If that changes and they start holding or building up a supply chain of vendors (and employees) who receive Bitcoin then the whole thing becomes more useful and more people will want it.

One issue (good or bad depending on how you look at it) with the Overstock and Tiger Direct is they get the companies into the headlines but since they don't offer the customer any incentive for using Bitcoin, usage will remain quite low. With credit cards many get points, frequent flier miles, cash rebate, etc. For the customer in these cases using Bitcoin is a loss. These companies need to share some of the payment-processing savings with the customer, not try to keep it all. (A counterexample is Gyft, which gives a 3% rebate for bitcoins -- that is probably too high, but a good deal for buyers.)


You have no way to know how rare that is or isn't. There are certainly people with moderately large to very large holdings from anywhere from six months to five years go who don't need to refill their wallet just because they spend a little. There are also people who need to buy every bitcoin they use. But as I explained earlier this latter group doesn't benefit from paying with BTC at Overstock or Tiger Direct; they are better off using a credit card.

I'm pretty sure is getting it right.

The luck statistic I've been asking for is not just display fluff. It lets people judge whether the observed earnings they are seeing are higher or lower than normal due to luck. That is important, especially for a small pool.

There is certainly variance but also MEOW has been one of the most profitable coins for the past several days. If middlecoin is mining (we aren't) it that could explain a discrepancy in profitability.

Raw hash rate does not make a switching pool more profitable in fact can make it less profitable because you burn your own opportunities.  This pool does have a function of not switching all the hash rate to low diff coins, which helps a bit, but it is going to happen.  Raw has rate does reduce variance though.

As things stand one or two days is probably not a long enough time to get a realistic measurement of output on this pool.

I'm going to chime in here because I've thought about these issues a lot.

First I'll say that I agree with almost everything on this thread, especially the comments about money coming in from China, and then getting blocked. Kudos to everyone here for having a pretty good grasp of what's going on. Much better than I remember the Economics subforum (It's been a lot while since I browsed it.)

The thing is, BTC doesn't go up because you can use it on Tiger Direct or Overstock or anywhere else. It only goes up because more people want to buy it than sell it. It is also true that in the short term these deals create downward pressure, not upward, because they provide another method and another reason to sell (exchanging for other goods is the same as selling). Long term these deals can help if there are enough of them to create a large economy where people buy, hold, and spend all in BTC. But that takes more than a few of these deals.  A lot more.

There is actually a direct and fairly simple relationship between the net amount of money coming in and the price. You can work it out yourself if you set up an equilibrium equation.

BTW, did anyone notice the news about BTC China reopening for deposits? If that holds it could be big.

Nobody needs to "build a coin up" that is exactly the point. You have essentially defined a pump-and-dump scheme right there.

But it doesn't need to be banned. People just need to stop falling for it. When there is no demand the game is up.

That may be your view.

Perhaps they shouldn't have offered refunds prior to shipping (in which case I would not have bought in).  I guess that would be your advice to them given your perspective above, and perhaps it would be good advice (though they seem to have an agenda of growing their business, and certainly offering a good refund policy, and even honoring it as they did on R14 probably helps to grow a business, so who knows).

But that is water under the bridge. They did offer it, I relied on it when deciding to buy in, and now I expect them to honor it.

Don't forget the shares are active for a while (more than a day I think) so even if you get no shares or fewer shares you may still have old shares that pay out.

Your point is valid though.

It does stand to reason that smaller miners with a few GH or even less -- say USB miners of various types -- of which there are probably a large number, may be dropping off as the difficulty rises. I've argued in the past they really shouldn't worry about it and should just accept a few dollars per day in variance, but that doesn't mean they will actually do what I say. Many have probably switched over to PPS or other pools.

I don't really know what can or should be done about that. The current design of p2pool doesn't really lend itself to supporting arbitrarily small miners in the way people seem to want (or even at all if one considers the cost of running a full bitcoin node).

Look I don't know what goes on behind the scenes. Is there any actual transparency here? They charge fees which on the surface seem totally reasonable (and I have said so when others have complained) but without auditing their books I have no idea what their costs really are. I also have no knowledge of what their dealings with Black Arrow might be in this regard. They seem to be rather closely involved, or at least they wanted to portray it that way when selling the deal.

I know that when you make an offer with a refund policy you better stand by that.  If you won't or can't, well...I guess we'll see what happens. It's really that simple. No need to complicate things here.

Let's see, maybe R13 where the same policy was in place (without the restocking fee even), the miners weren't delivered on time, and we got refunds?


No, I did not take a risk associated with pre-ordering because I was told that I was able to get a refund up until shipment. I hate pre-orders and have always hated pre-orders.  In fact in three years of mining I have only done one pre-order (BFL) which also had a refund policy (I paid in fiat and had the option for a refund in fiat), though I elected to stick with it and eventually got the miner (which I sold at a profit).


It is neither.

There are plenty of risks associated with mining that have nothing to do with pre-ordering.

You can buy miners out of stock (as I have done) and you can order miners with a refund policy (as I have also done) and you are still risking losing money.  For example, the miners may break down or just be flaky, difficulty may go up faster than expected, bitcoin prices may crash, you may have pool trouble, network trouble, power outages, etc. Those are risks associated with mining.  

The risks associated with pre-ordering without a refund policy (which was not the case here) are separate from that, and not at all inherent in mining.  If you want to do that, go right ahead.  I don't and I didn't.

Bringing up MEOW again because its profitability seems to be holding up. I think its worth adding even with manual trading. Just penalize its profitability in the switcher by 20% or something to offset the trading risk and we'll still end up mining it sometimes.  The difficulty is low too so we'll get regular blocks, unlike DOGE.

Are you adjusting your profit calculation for some estimate of orphan rate (observed or calculated) that differs across coins? Some of these coins are very prone to that just on the basis of fast block rates so the direct calculation of how hard it is to solve a block based on the difficulty target will overestimate true earnings.

I got a nice payout as well. Good job.

You can spin how you like. My guess is that the content was copied over from the old site to the new site. I know for a fact that I relied on the quoted refund terms, certainly from the OP and most likely from the web site as well, when I ordered my shares.

Maybe with this only-two-month delay and the compensation plan not everyone will want a refund. It is entirely possible that many will want to stick it it out with you, and things will work out. If so I wish you the best.

I however, relied on a refund policy for my shares (a small number BTW -- fewer than phil) and I expect the refund policy to be honored until and unless you claim you guys are flat broke (in which case we can discuss liquidating assets to meet your obligations). Anything less than that is fraud, plain and simple.  Goes with the territory I suppose, but I hoped you guys were better than that.

Sorry to be crude, but that's bullshit. I am and always have been very suspicious of preorders and I bought into this deal in large part on the basis of: a) assurances from DZ representatives that they were in close contact with BA and this preorder, unlike most of the rest, would not be the usual scam shipment delay, and b) the stated refund policy in the OP that I quoted, which gave me protection from the usual preorder scam.

I've been very patient with all the problems on the other rounds and I have been a strong supporter of DZ, recommending it these forums several times. No, the string R16 does not appear at all in the OP, in fact it mentions R17 several times, and if you guys aren't going to honor your stated refund policy then you are scammers in my view. End of discussion.

Please reconsider, or I will be trust rating you as scammers and I will also be as vocal in explaining how you are scammers as I was in recommending you.

EDIT: Just so you know, I have saved an image of the OP in case you should get the dumb idea that taking it down or editing it after the fact is a good way to solve the problem.

EDIT 2: Gee, let's look on YOUR web site (still linked from OP), where I ordered these lousy shares, and see what that says. What do you know? It says the same thing:

"Refunds: Refunds are discouraged because of the chaos caused in Group Buys, but if necessary, you will be refunded before the miner ships, at a 1.5% restock fee. After the miner ships, no refunds are available."

https://www.dzminercoop.com/products/r17-black-arrow-prospero-x-3-limited-quantities

(I've saved an image of that one too.)