It says you can email, fax or post it.  If you're going to email it, print the form and sign it and then send them a scanned copy.

Latest BFL update is giving 11 December as the earliest shipping date and even that's not confirmed.

The amounts that you're owed will eventually appear in the reports, too.  

So you're not willing to offer any evidence whatsoever that the watch is authentic.  You haven't even seen any proof yourself that it's authentic.  You want people to accept the word of your friend.  Hell, you're not even offering to take it to a local Rolex dealer and get them to give you something confirming its authenticity.  Does your friend not have a camera which can be used to take better photos of both the inside and the outside of the watch case to assist in selling this item?  Hell, you haven't even told us the serial number.

Get over yourself dank.  People are asking very reasonable questions given that you want over $1000 for the watch and you're throwing a tantrum like a petulant toddler.

The onus is on you and your friend to prove that the watch is authentic, not on potential buyers to prove that it's fake (which they obviously can't do pre-purchase because they can't take it along to a Rolex dealer until after they buy it).  Stop being such a tiresome wanker.

By the way.  From your awful photo it looks like that might be a vintage Rolex which means that service history is going to be important to potential buyers.  Your friend should be able to remember where and when he last had it serviced.  It also looks from the picture like it has some wear and tear so watch buffs are likely to take the cost of having it restored to excellent condition into account.

Josh just posted an update on the BFL forums.  It's gonna be another couple of weeks if all goes well.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/437-asic-update-26-november-2012-a.html#post6239

I'm kind of horrified that Josh only just found out about the reason for the delay.  A flaw in the chip is something BFL should have been informed of as soon as the problem was detected.

Fun as it might be flinging shit around, either at BFL or their competitors, it's not solving the problem.  If BFL doesn't have a good enough business relationship with the fab house to get reliable information about what the fuck is going on and when the fuck the chips are going to be shipped, then they need to find someone who does and get that person to act as their intermediary.  There are other Bitcoin businesses operating from Asia who may have suggestions about reliable agents.

Note that the cut-off date for the filing of claims is 20 January 2013.  Don't forget to file them before that date.

Didn't BFL say at the time that they'd originally intended to release a post-delivery firmware update which would have taken the specs to 60 GH/s?

Everyone's pretty much assumed since then that all ASIC providers would have the capacity to offer firmware updates which would deliver higher specs.  The question was really whether they'd do it pre or post-delivery and how much they'd try to keep in reserve.

If you want to screw your competitors you want them to start delivery while you still have time to make hardware modifications which increase your maximum specs beyond theirs, not just do something they can match with a firmware tweak.  Hell, if you want to be really nasty, you don't even announce how much better your specs really are until you start shipping.

Does your friend have the receipt showing that it was bought from a Rolex dealer?  It's not a difficult question.  No-one's going to take your friend's word that it's real.

The most interesting thing in that is Ator - a NZ company of which Tihan and Chris Heaslip are directors - being named as a creditor along with Wendon.  The report doesn't note whether either Wendon or Ator are exerting a secured or preferential interest (Tihan has previously stated that Wendon would waive it's right to be treated as a secured creditor).

It will be good to see some actual numbers in the second report.

Everyone who hasn't yet filed a claim please note that the cut-off date for doing so has been set at 20 January 2013.


They've stated both previously and in the report itself that they are seeking legal advice regarding whether they can pay creditors in both dollars and Bitcoins.  If they can, then depending on the exact holding at MtGox they're going to have to buy BTC with $ or sell BTC for USD to ensure that unsecured creditors all receive the same proportion of what they're owed regardless of whether they're paid in BTC or USD.

If they didn't actually do this at the outset, then there's a real problem.  That said, "professional agents" are an interesting phenomenon to deal with and if they're not actually keeping you informed and updated then you're probably not getting what you're paying for from them, either.  That Josh doesn't know exactly what the hold up is suggests that they might be using an agent (who is apparently not doing their job properly), but that's no guarantee that he's going to get accurate information about what's actually going on and when the production run will actually be completed and shipped.

Even if their fab's backed up, it should still be able to tell them with a reasonable degree of accuracy when their bullet run will happen and when the chips will be shipped to BFL.  How the hell does BFL know that the fab house has even started work on their run yet if they can't get accurate dates from them?  I seriously would be threatening to come over to Asia and watch the production run at this point because I'd no longer have any confidence that they were actually expediting my order.

Flying to Asia and knocking on someone's door might not be a bad idea at this point.  You've basically implied that even if they give you a date you can't trust it to be accurate - which says something about your suppliers in and of itself.  I realise that some of the figures regarding the value of BFL pre-orders are probably widely over-stating the reality, but I'd also be willing to bet that the value of this particular contract is significant.  It's not just your reputation and future business which is on the line - your supplier's reputation is on the line too and you can leverage that shit.  

"We'll send you the chips when we get around to it and we can't tell you when that will be" is not an acceptable response and you know that.  I hope to hell you have penalty clauses in your contract because for all your bravado you must realise that this is hurting BFL and that "they won't give us a date" isn't going to fly with your users.  This is a bullet run, FFS.  Some ass needs to be kicked and I can't think of anyone more qualified than you to do it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  It's easy to act with integrity when everything is going well.  The people you want to do business with are those who have the capacity to act with fairness and integrity when everything goes wrong.

Josh, you just posted over on your own forums that the chips are "still on the other side of the ocean" and that you're "working on getting an exact day".  Why the hell are you getting into pissing matches here instead of moving heaven and earth to get that information and relay it to your users?

He shouldn't have deleted his old posts.  I actually remember him starting a thread trying to get "liquidity loans".  I'm trying to remember whether the loan request was phrased as it being a loan to usagi or a loan to one of his ventures (in which case that venture would be responsible for paying back the loan).  I vaguely remember him getting pissy because he wasn't getting much in the way of responses.

It is completely dodgy but it's what happens when you have these toy companies where there is no restraint on the founder/CEO/whatever acting entirely out of self interest because you can't oust someone from control of a company which doesn't actually exist.  "Shareholders" have no power in these toy companies.  It's something people need to remember for the future.

I'm not going to address the gambling itself - I'm sure you've heard it all before. 

You need to start looking at ways of dealing with the stuff which is causing you to want to escape - until you deal with that shit, you're likely to just replace one form of escapism with another even if you stop gambling.  Maybe the most productive thing you can do right now is start looking for resources to help you start dealing with the negative things which you're trying to avoid thinking about.

It would be nice if MtGox would make a public statement about the extent to which they're going to co-operate with the liquidator and if they will do so free of charge.  They implied back when the whole Zhou/Chinese relic collector story blew up that they wouldn't release any Bitcoinica funds to anyone except a liquidator/receiver but I'm not sure whether they've made any comments since then or ever mentioned the extent to which they will make their own information available to the liquidator if it's needed to verify user claims.

I didn't mean to imply in any way that usagi's actions are legitimate - I'm sure he'll now spend 20 pages telling us why they are - just that people have little recourse against him unless they're prepared to send good money after bad and try to enforce a contract which is likely legally flawed in the first place.

To my knowledge, there aren't any actual companies involved in this at all - usagi has essentially been operating all these schemes as a sole trader.

My apologies.  Not enough sleep.