Hi guys,

Haven't run off with the money (there still is no money or BTC from our HF refund). I'd never do that. Just super bummed from all the negativity, the trolling, the bickering, manufacturers failing us over and over, and me working 7 days a week for months doing this as a second job for peanuts (actually negative not-so peanuts). I just got so sick of it esp. since I was working for less than free and couldn't take it any more.

This was an experiment in democracy in mining and trying to deal with the inevitable network difficulty rise but I/we've surrendered the pre-order GB market when we used to offer many of the best pre-order deals around because most of these manufacturers can't meet their deadlines. Others can deal with high risk pre-orders but I'm done with pre-orders from ASIC mfgs.

I've been exploring other job options while trying to cram for a particular Microsoft cert for a job I'm trying to get. I've cut back my forum presence but I'm still looking at opportunities in the cryptoeconomy.

WRT case news: these things take time but the Texas court granted a TRO against HF for about 218 BTC so regardless of how the case turns out they've been ordered to hold onto BTC of this amount till the end of the case.

BTW, from the email leak thread going on over email: even people that have asked for USD refunds from HF have had to wait for over a month in some cases.

Hi guys,

Haven't run off with the money (there still is no money or BTC from our HF refund). I'd never do that. Just super bummed from all the negativity, the trolling, the bickering, manufacturers failing us over and over, and me working 7 days a week for months doing this as a second job for peanuts (actually negative not-so peanuts). I just got so sick of it esp. since I was working for less than free and couldn't take it any more.

This was an experiment in democracy in mining and trying to deal with the inevitable network difficulty rise but I/we've surrendered the pre-order GB market when we used to offer many of the best pre-order deals around because most of these manufacturers can't meet their deadlines. Others can deal with high risk pre-orders but I'm done with pre-orders from ASIC mfgs.

I've been exploring other job options while trying to cram for a particular Microsoft cert for a job I'm trying to get. I've cut back my forum presence but I'm still looking at opportunities in the cryptoeconomy.

WRT case news: these things take time but the Texas court granted a TRO against HF for about 218 BTC so regardless of how the case turns out they've been ordered to hold onto BTC of this amount till the end of the case.

BTW, from the email leak thread going on over email: even people that have asked for USD refunds from HF have had to wait for over a month in some cases.

Hi guys,

Haven't run off with the money (there still is no money or BTC from our HF refund). I'd never do that. Just super bummed from all the negativity, the trolling, the bickering, manufacturers failing us over and over, and me working 7 days a week for months doing this as a second job for peanuts (actually negative not-so peanuts). I just got so sick of it esp. since I was working for less than free and couldn't take it any more.

This was an experiment in democracy in mining and trying to deal with the inevitable network difficulty rise but I/we've surrendered the pre-order GB market when we used to offer many of the best pre-order deals around because most of these manufacturers can't meet their deadlines. Others can deal with high risk pre-orders but I'm done with pre-orders from ASIC mfgs.

I've been exploring other job options while trying to cram for a particular Microsoft cert for a job I'm trying to get. I've cut back my forum presence but I'm still looking at opportunities in the cryptoeconomy.

WRT case news: these things take time but the Texas court granted a TRO against HF for about 218 BTC so regardless of how the case turns out they've been ordered to hold onto BTC of this amount till the end of the case.

BTW, from the email leak thread going on over email: even people that have asked for USD refunds from HF have had to wait for over a month in some cases.

No shipping update yet for R18 (or R7/8).

Our Bitmine orders are:

R7/8
#2237, Rig, Mid October, showing as Processing
#2365, upgrades to Rig 1, Late October, showing as Completed

R18
#2298, Rig 2, mid-late November, showing as Processing
#4209, Rig 2 upgrades, early-mid December, showing as Completed

It's possible that they may have bundled the upgrade into the orig. orders (or viceversa), which is why the upgrades have been showing as processing for months.

Screenshot of our orders: http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll87/SurfSkateKauai/BitmineOrders.png
Here was the original #2237 order: http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll87/SurfSkateKauai/DZMCR7BMre-payment.png

(Edit: interesting that our #2237 order shows as a higher amount now; unsure if because #2365 was bundled into it, or if because of BTC's higher value)

No shipping update yet. I do believe we're very close to the automatic refund with 10% added IIRC that was promised by Bitmine for December batches.

Our Bitmine orders are:

R7/8
#2237, Rig, Mid October, showing as Completed
#2365, upgrades to Rig 1, Late October, showing as Processing

R18
#2298, Rig, mid-late November, showing as Processing
#4209, Rig 2 upgrades, early-mid December, showing as Completed

It's possible that they may have bundled the upgrade into the orig. orders (or viceversa), which is why half the orders have been showing as processing for months.

Here's a screenshot of our orders: http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll87/SurfSkateKauai/BitmineOrders.png
Here was the original #2237 order: http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll87/SurfSkateKauai/DZMCR7BMre-payment.png

(Edit: interesting that our #2237 order shows as a higher amount now; unsure if because #2365 was bundled into it, or if because of BTC's higher value)

It should come in via email if you haven't seen it yet.

If a decent buyer and marketplace can be found than I say go for it. Coingig is a good option with built in escrow and their fees aren't anywhere as bad as eBay IMO.

Yes.

So? I'm relatively new to crypto but an oldtimer at IT, which crypto falls under.

Ask lots of folks here: I've been working my ass off for the benefit of others without anything or much in return.

I've vetted for free and helped get started many of my own competitors but I guess that's still scammy behavior if you're a creepy shtalker troll without a life. You like reading thru all my old Reddit posts trying to dig up dirt? What no mention of my WW2 veteran grandpa who fought Nazis or how I tried to give away a great paying tech job to other surfers at a national lab in the middle of a recession?

Why not dig thru my surfermag posts as KauaiDKer while you're at it? Lots of surfers (including a few legends) know me there when I was trying to give away said job. Maybe you could pretend to be a cool surfer dood and infiltrate the tribe to get them to give up personal info.

Hmm, how apropro that I recently came across this article: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/climate_desk/2014/02/internet_troll_personality_study_machiavellianism_narcissism_psychopathy.html

How many boxes do you check off on this "personality quiz" PG?    

Got a bunch of pics from those 4 round on my Pics site in my link. It was about 3.3 GH/s worth of hardware but it was a struggle to keep up that minimum HR.

I tested as a genius as a kid FWIW on the Stanford-Binet scale. I don't put much stock in high IQ correlating to success in life, but I did qualify for Mensa as a kid.

Not much pride about it, more like an observation of one's height or shoe size.

The stalker and tin hat foil supplies are off the charts!      

FYI: Back in ye olde days, no one cared if your 10 year old kid unofficially helped out around the shop.

At that time I said I had 30 years of IT and advanced sales experience. True and True. My father owned a shop on Kauai that was modestly successful for over 10 years and as a kid growing up around the shop, I was selling to and teaching adults some complex stuff which I won't discuss because you're such a uber shtalker without a life, I suppose.

My first computer used was a TRS-80 and my first home PC was a C-64. Yes, I'm what the kids consider "old", and yes I do have 30 some years of IT and sales experience, but thanks for asking. Any other questions about my IT bonafides or sales background?

As for BA: the DZMC has NO ties to Black Arrow except via bobsag3's US reseller relationship which provided us one of our 24 fundraising rounds for Prosperos and 4 rounds of prototype Prosperos (albeit with Bitfury 55nm chips) in Rounds 9-12 which ended up all being eventually replaced by ASICs from other mfgs. because there were some insurmountable problems that kept leading to failed equipment with this limited run, bleeding edge Bullet Run last fall.

FWIW, customer's had been receiving BA prototype hashrate for months in R9-12, and recently went thru a successful buyout and closeout. Also, we're in the process of refunding everyone that wants a refund that bought Prosperos via our Round 17 GB. Many folks have already received their refunds.

Thanks Phil.

Sometimes I think our generation, with available instant worldwide communications, and 800 TV channels, can get a bit impatient when the wheels of business and high tech manufacturing spin slower than they're used to.

We all need to remember that these are ALL high risk investments on the cutting edge of technology, and we really shouldn't be investing money that we can't afford to lose or have tied up for months. [Std. Disclaimer: Not your mom, lawyer, blah blah. Your financial decisions are your own, blah blah]

Thanks, I just wanted to clarify that there's things beyond my control, and this co-op was set up with the best of intentions to help provide rock bottom prices. I haven't seen a single GBC in the co-op try to rip off anyone, so it kinda pisses me off to get blamed for things which I can't influence or change, such as mfg. delivery dates.

In a damn perfect world, these miners would be arriving shortly and we'd all be stoked, but instead we live in the real world, where this shit is hard and miner disappointment about delivery dates is a "normal" thing. Contrast this refund process with HF, who went back against their public word from both Simon Barber and Cara, about full refunds, and it's taking thousands of dollars and months just to get to the point where we can sue them to recover our full BTC (280+ IIRC) that was sent to them.

If you're disappointed about this slow manual refund resolution and process, how do you think us HF buyers feel, who have still been completely ignored by them WRT to full refunds for months even with attorneys?

I mean: jiminy cricket, bobsag3 friggin flew all the way to the UK to discuss the situation with BA (besides his first visit to HK) to check things out on your behalf and to plead our case.  Name me one co-op on this forum that has gone to these lengths for their customers. He couldn't talk too soon because he needed more info and there's some things he can't talk about because of NDAs. This may look easy, but I'm telling you straight, all this in its entirety is: hard.

The result of all this is we're scaling back on pre-orders, big time. We may never offer another pre-order GB here again because ASIC mfgs. just can't be trusted about solid delivery dates. I won't say we'll never have another pre-order GB, but the odds are not likely unless a company like Intel was involved somehow.

We're pretty much burned out on pre-orders. If another team wants to fill the vacuum, they're welcome to it.

Woah, I'm sorry that you've had a bad experience but I've had nothing to do with the failure of Black Arrow to deliver in February (or the refund process I can't control), and everything to do with helping make this GB Round available in the first place.

Please note that I set up the co-op so that like minded miners could team up to get us this type of volume pricing and provide services to fellow miners at rock bottom prices. Remember that there NO better complete deals available in the timeframe when R17 was available. Nada.

I put up a shitton of money and BTC to even set up this co-op in the first place (John K. is still holding 1.14 AM shares of mine that were a security collateral for the first miner payouts when I was a noob, & I'd like to get back one day) and to defend the will of the supermajority by paying out of pocket to pursue a lawsuit vs. HF for Rounds 1-4, without asking for co-op funds for this.

I was the very first GB Coordinator here to ever offer "at-cost" or even "below cost" GB shares, and the first to introduce true team mining to the GB forum, where work tasks are subdivided so that 1 single person doesn't burn out, so I would greatly appreciate the distinction between the DZMC disappointing you, and me, the guy that's been paying to work for the co-op for free for the last 7 months to help give you these rock bottom prices.

I can speak for that, even though I am NOT handling refunds for R17 (so please stop sending me PMs about this, and please be patient with bobsag3 as these refunds are batch processed manually and mistakes can't be reversed (although we have had cool co-op members that sent us back refunds just because they didn't want to be jerks).

If you sent: say, 1 BTC, then you would get back 1 BTC minus the usual 1.5% DZMC GB refund fee (which is half of the rate of many GBs).

Oh really? bobsag3 has been vetted by both John K. of John K. Escrow and myself. I don't know of any seller/reseller on this board that has been vetted by two vetting agents.

If you're referring to the whole Black Arrow delay debacle: tons of Bitcoin equating to tens of thousands of dollars have *already* been refunded in R17 and the refunds still continue. Please provide me any proof you have that bobsag3 shouldn't be trusted, as I would love to see any said proof; my security clearance doesn't allow me to participate in any known fraudulent behavior.

As for the co-op itself, since you're obviously not familiar with our history, we've refunded entire rounds (Rounds 13, 14, and 17 underway) when things didn't work out for whatever reason. We've done something like $100-200K worth of BTC/USD refunds so far. Even the dumbest scammer would've ran by now once all the money was collected, right?  

Here's some people that have already been refunded in R17 and I'm confident the rest that want to be refunded will be refunded within the next week.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=335145.msg5070057#msg5070057
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=335145.msg5070935#msg5070935
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=335145.msg5103665#msg5103665

He's handled something like 2-4K worth of BTC and hardware on behalf of the community so far and I have not a single record of anyone contacting me about him ripping them off. This team is the #6 team on BTC Guild, and the largest known public Bitcoin Miner's Co-op, and AFAIK we didn't get there by ripping people off. The US Govt. has seen fit to provide me a clearance and to protect our secrets. I've spent years helping to validate various BMDS weapons platforms and helping to develop new tech.

Please provide me some proof of malfeasance or fraudulent behavior, or please retract your statement.

Since you seem to be in a headhunting mood for some reason: If you're looking for targets in the ASIC community, then look no further than the 3 manufacturers that are permabanned from the co-op for treating fellow miners like shit.

Hi,

If you're a new seller or re-seller, you're going to face a lot of skepticism and distrust from those worried that you'll just take the collect BTC and run.

One way that new sellers can obviate this distrust and meet it head on is to willingly offer your ID and other info to trusted forum veterans who provide vetting services. This ID is kept on record and released only to relevant authorities if the situation warrants it.

My Qualifications:

- Vetted 14 Group Buy Coordinators and/or Miner Hosts in the last 7 months including GB sellers and Miner Hosts such as thomas_s, bobsag3, Dabs, SolarWindMiningCo, and Thyatis, among others.
- Founded the largest public Bitcoin Miner's Co-op: DyslexicZombei's Miners Co-op and we currently sit at #6 on BTCGuild's Team Hashrate rankings, at the largest mining pool around, ahead of teams from countries like Canada, Germany, and Korea:

https://www.btcguild.com/index.php?page=rankings&section=teams

- Been entrusted with well over 1000BTC of the community's BTC without issues

Requirements:

- You'll need to send a clear pic of an ID, a clear pic of you holding said ID, and a social media profile for me to check out (pref. LinkedIn)
- Contact me if you intend to retire from forum sales so that your info can be safely deleted, if necessary
- Please send a Skype contact invite or a forum PM, subject: Forum Vetting Services

Fee:

- The fee is $10, payable in BTC at the current Coindesk exchange rate.
- I will PGP sign your first sales thread stating that I have on hand what appears to be your legitimate photo ID and supporting information.

Disclaimer:

- I am NOT responsible for someone sending a fake ID and fake social media profile but will do my very best to ferret out such schemes, having had some background in ID verification and years of professional experience in Information Security at various Research Labs.

Congrats MWNinja. I see that you're already in the Top 15 now at BTCGuild with 22TH currently deployed.

Sorry I couldn't help you earlier to help you organize your GBs when you contacted me when you were trying to get into the GB game; I/we were swamped ourselves dealing with expanding beyond mining ops, and a number of issues and moving to a larger facility 6k sq. ft.+...which turned out to have used fuses from 1974!

If you go the pre-order route...just know that you'll be having to not only deal with hardware that may be late or never arrive (grumble grumble) but also software: as in people both on the back end and on the customer support side. On some matters, as a mediator on some things, I've personally lost sleep and felt discomfort over how the minority was affected when votes came up for critical things.

On another note: Over the last 7 months, I've vetted 14 Miner hosts and/or GB Coordinators so far, for free. Some of them you see in threads below such as thomas_s, bobsag3, Dabs, SolarWindMiningCo., Thyatis, and others.

I'm now charging $10 BTC for my Forum Vetting services, for those reading all of these horror stories and who *still* want to do break into doing Group Buys for the community. Please shoot me a PM or contact me via Skype if you'd like to get vetted by a forum veteran with a history of doing this for the GB community.

From all of us: Thanks!

I'm feeling like Bitmain and KnC are the only ones to be trusted to deliver new hardware (even if KnC hardware itself has been problematic for us). That, and maybe AM when their next Gen arrives.

The latest update from Giorgio is the December batch ships next week (with hashrate upgrades for the delay).

I have yet to receive a shipping update on this order.

The latest update from Giorgio is the December batch ships next week (with hashrate upgrades for the delay).

I have yet to receive a shipping update on this order.