I'd post it here I didn't delete it... let me check. ---- Nope I guess I found it so foul I didn't bother to reply to the offer.It was basically reward to keep the thread at the top and disseminate information they fed I believe. I am pretty sure that a fair number of people were contacted there is evidence of that clearly in the thread after they offered it of people pumping / bumping the thread up. I had been in discussions with HF for chips for our project but given the hard sell as well money they wanted upfront it just wasn't going to take that risk with HF or anyone. Most of these chip vendors are playing the funding game with chip orders. That is too risky given what has happened to me with the Avalon chips. I am never getting into that situation again unless I am working with people who have chips in hand or designing an asic ground up with our group. Found it: Quote from: HashFast on October 13, 2013, 00:59:01 Dear Bicknellski, This past summer, HashFast created a huge splash in the Bitcoin community after the announcement of its Golden Nonce chip. The Golden Nonce—a 28nm ASIC chip that performs 400 Ghash/s at nominal speed while consuming notably less than 1.0 W/GH—is projected to change the future of Bitcoin mining. Your thoughts, comments, and questions have acknowledged just how far HashFast has pushed the envelope in the Bitcoin market. Your interest in HashFast's products, as well as your expertise in Bitcoin mining hardware, makes you the perfect candidate to join HashFast’s BitcoinTalk support team. As a member of the HashFast support team, your overall role will be to facilitate healthy debate and insight within the two HashFast threads in order to make sure that those threads remain at the top of the Custom Hardware message board. Sustaining a flow of supporting posts will encourage interest in the HashFast company and our products, which will lead to increased traffic on the HashFast website, and ultimately drive up purchases of HashFast equipment. In order to achieve this goal, the HashFast support team member will be responsible for posting at least 1 – 2 supporting posts in each thread every day, or how ever many posts are deemed necessary to maintain a top position in the message board. Because we want to focus on the positive aspects of being a part of the Bitcoin community, verbal attacks by other forum members should only be met with immediate, persistent, reasoned, knowledgeable, and mature responses. Therefore, posts will be monitored to make sure that the language reflects the genuine nature and main objective of being a part of HashFast’s support team. In exchange for your services, HashFast will keep the support team reasonably updated on engineering information, and any other valuable details, that can be used to enlighten forum participants. Compensation will be $15/hr for 10 hours per week – paid in silicon. If you are interested in the position as a HashFast support team member, please contact us team@hashfast.com. Hope to hear from you soon. Cheers, HashFast Forum Liaison My reply: Interesting... we are keen to discuss getting sample chips to work on our boards if that is possible. The Wasp Project Cooperative together is more interested in some sort of arrangement. At the time I was really focused on getting chips but thankfully that didn't pan out given the state of their project. I emailed them in attempts to get chips and nothing more. Thanks for sharing.This is really important since cypherdoc made a lot of (paid) statements in support of the HF team and payments/refunds that turned out to be false but were apparently encouraged by HF as it benefited sales. HF had the opportunity to debunk these false statements but chose not to. In other words, customers were being purposefully mislead from the get go. Here are some of those statements: from what i understand, your BTC's are going to be guaranteed as well
Yes - what cypherdoc says is true - we endorse this.
they want only those committed to leaving their BTC with HashFast until the end of the year. if they fail to deliver, they have said they will give full refunds in BTC. once you see details of their Miner Protection Plan and refund details all your fears will melt away.
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I know the feeling. The problem is that our funds are in the hands of people that don't care. In fact their interests are largely aligned against ours: - The liquidator is happy to have an excuse because the longer the liquidation takes the more fees they can rake in.
- MtGox appears to have had liquidity issues when the DHS seized their US accounts so locking up the Bitcoinica funds boost their reserves.
- Tihan does not care since he waived his rights as a secured creditor and if he touches anything he might lose his limited liability.
- The Bitcoinica Consultancy guys don't care because they never signed the paperwork for the General Partnership.
- Zhou does not care because he got away cleanly.
So this is going to take a while. Let's hope nothing bad happens like MtGox becoming insolvent. I suspect the liquidator will run out of USD reserves to pay their fees soon and that will be the starting signal to collect more from the unsecured creditors to prepare for legal action. Legal action just means lawyers will get their piece of the pie. |
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Except... there was no "Two more weeks" updates. That is a meme that has no basis in fact... go on, try to find evidence. You can't. I said "Umm, two weeks?" once in response to FCC certification. That's it. That's where it came from. So, as usual, you are just repeating the same old tired lies, trying to make yourself feel better about your inability to decipher reality from your own mental fiction. Sad. Again you attempt to confuse the issue by nitpicking the details. That meme represents all of the many "almost there!" updates you made. I agree with Tehfiend here. I was a day 1 BFL customer. The '2 weeks' comes from the biweekly status updates that Josh used to provide. Each time something came up that postponed shipping. Hence '2 more weeks'. BFL was supposed to ship in Nov 2012, but ended up shipping (at least my 1st day LS order) in July 2013. That is a lot of bi-weekly 'almost there' updates. Here are a few if you are interested. With gems such as: Week of January 26th
* Final chips roll off the line
* Grab suitcase, a BMW or a Peugeot and make a break for the airport, Ronin style (You can see Tom about 6 minutes, 20 seconds into the video)
Week of February 10th
* We implement the 1/3 shipping plan en mass
* We descend upon the Post Office, DHL, UPS and FedEx like a horde of angry locust Well... At least Josh was providing updates. Some of the updates did contain useful info. All HF is giving us is the silent treatment sprinkled with release forms and forced USD refunds. |
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EDIT: How do we contact Wendon and ask them what the hell is actually going on with all of this?
You could try contacting Tihan Seale. From the 2nd report: ATOR limited, a company associated with Wendon, holds a General Security Agreement ('GSA') over all present and after acquired personal property of Bitcoinica LP. Tihan is the director of ATOR: http://businessprofiles.com/details/ator-limited/NZ-2123704/tihan-sealeHis email is listed in Amirs Bitcoinica dump @ http://pastebin.com/Ya6iN8RTtihan[AT]splashlab[DOT]com Note that Tihan pledged to waive his rights as a secured creditor in this liquidation. So all the proceeds (in USD or BTC) should go to the customers. I will get -nothing- for having entered this bloody fray, and you know well what I have risked to do so. I will not see a second of my life back or a single satoshi. But by God the customers will.
The court appointed the principals of PKF Corporate Recovery & Insolvency to administer the liquidation. It will be their job to return funds to customers to the full extend possible. They will require the cooperation of MtGox and Bitcoinica's managing partners to accomplish this.
Also, what happened to the 15.000 BTC recovered after the Mt.Gox hack by Patrick Murck? I assume these were held in a separate non-frozen account that the Liquidator should have access to at this point? When the hacker was ready to return 15,000 BTC, that transaction was delayed for days because the Consultancy would not provide a receiving address.
Thankfully, Mr. Murck stepped in as a licensed attorney to broker their receipt. He was subjected to a lot of hazing and invasion of privacy here for doing so. Without him, the coins might never have been recovered.
Those funds and any additional recovered funds will be placed under control of a receiver. This is a formal legal process that will allow Mt Gox et al to release funds to the receiver for distribution.
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"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal." -Heinlein
BFL (Josh) & HF are rationalizing the situation one way, customers are rationalizing it the other.
However there is no need to rationalize. We have a sales contract with clear terms. All that needs to happen is for both parties to live up to their obligations as stated in the ToS and Order Confirmation. No more, no less.
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I'm so glad Mt Gox is protecting me from my BTC!
Exactly. God only knows what you would have spent it on otherwise... Crack Cocaine, Scooby Snacks, Goat Goodies... Good to know Father Mark is looking out for us. |
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Some ex-bitcoinica staffer should have the password, right?
And even if they forgot it, shouldn't they be able to reset it?
We could offer a reward for retrieving/remembering the password and handing it over to the liquidator.
Patrick Strateman had the password for a long time but was not willing to hand it over to the liquidator until recently. The liquidator should have the password now, but MtGox insists on protecting your privacy. Bless their hearts. |
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Who knows. At the very least they were in batch 1, same as baby jet batch 1. HF should be sending out some stable units to customers at the front of the queue as well to be fair. But, i guess it was easier to send checks to babyjet batch 1 and send units to icedrill. That all we know for now right?
By sending forced USD refunds to Batch 1 customers that paid in BTC they have effectively booted them out of the shipping queue. Even if they don't cash this unsollicited check, if there are units to ship they will clearly not ship to these customers. |
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I can't believe this shit.. what happens when gox goes down?
If Gox goes down we will have an insolvency within an insolvency. We must go deeper. Comparing the glacier speed of the liquidation to the breakneck speed of the BTC ecosystem, I predict more FUBAR in the near future. |
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There is nothing to read. Nothing happened.
MtGox still sitting on BTC funds. PKF taking what is left in USD funds as fees. FUBAR.
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I for one am not going to quit pursuing Hashfast until at the very least they provide me with some meaningful feedback, these one line replies are just a way of avoiding their resonsibility to communicate with its customers and show some transparency. If they acted in good faith and communicated regularly and responded to customers calls and emails rather than hiding behind a call answering service then they may not have such bad publicity. How do they ever expect to recover from this "Hash" of a business (excuse the pun) if they do not communicate! They are making a rod for their own back by acting in this fashion.
Communication? You can add that to the list of broken promises. - Weekly production updates will be sent to the email address attached to each order
I have never in all my life experienced such terrible customer service from any company I have ever dealt with and that's the truth! If this was in the UK I would be straight over to the Citizens Advice Bureau and the Trading Standards office. I don't know if there is an equivelent body in USA, but I know that they exist and are in place for a reason. To protect consumers who purchase in good faith with hard earned cash. I have not used my legal insurance yet but I may have to start looking into what my options are from across the pond if I don't receive some credible feedback and responses to my questions soon.
They likely realized that everything they say will be used against them (since most statements made by them have been proven false). So their lawyer probably recommended to stop talking and hope this storm will blow over and customers will accept their losses. I am really hoping that Hashfast are reading this! I want them to read it, and know that I am not kidding around. £2,500 might not be much to them and I may just be another number to them but it is a lot of money to me and by god I am not going to quit until I get what I am entitled to.
You and me both buddy. I paid the equivalent of $50000 for my single Batch 1 BJ. If I had not ordered I'd still have my 60 BTC. If they had shipped on time I would have been able to mine the majority back by now. It is a bit of a joke really. - HF (Aug 8) - Buy your BJ now! In stock! Shipping Oct 20-30! Payments in BTC only.
- Me - OK. I'll buy a BJ. Here is 60 BTC
- HF - Thanks! You can totally trust us. We want our customers to succeed!
- Me (Oct 30) - Where is my product?
- HF - There is no product. Did we say Oct 20? We meant Dec 31st.
- Me (Jan 1) - Where is my product?
- HF - There is no product. Did we say Dec 31st? We meant Jan 28.
- Me - If there is no product there is no sale. Can I please get my BTC payment back as per the ToS?
- HF - No. But here is a USD check worth 7.2 BTC (or 4.5 BTC after paying taxes)
- Me - ಠ_ಠ ~Dafuq!?
- HF - Have a nice day! Come again!
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I for one will not be cashing the check and am already in talks with an arbitrator.
Can you provide more details on this? I need to look into this as well. According to the ToS we can only use AAA or JAMS. Have you contacted any of these? I'd also like to know more about associated cost & fees. The arbitration shall be administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) or JAMS (or a substitute forum if both are unavailable).
Unless otherwise directed by the arbitrator(s), the parties will bear their own costs and expenses that are reasonable and necessary to participate in such arbitration, including attorneys’ fees. The arbitration will only resolve the dispute. Even if you win, you still need to take steps to enforce it. From Wikipedia: Unlike court judgments, arbitration awards themselves are not directly enforceable. A party seeking to enforce an arbitration award must resort to judicial remedies, called an action to "confirm" an award Also arbitration seems to have a number of downsides: Arbitration may be subject to pressures from powerful law firms representing the stronger and wealthier party
In some arbitration agreements, the parties are required to pay for the arbitrators, which adds an additional layer of legal cost that can be prohibitive, especially in small consumer disputes
In some arbitration agreements and systems, the recovery of attorneys' fees is unavailable, making it difficult or impossible for consumers or employees to get legal representation Never been through an arbitration process before so any advice would be appreciated. |
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This discussion focused around the possibility that the units do not meet the safety standards required for consumer products/use, only commercial... see?
So in the original BabyJet announcement they were pretty clear that the equipment was only intended for use in commercial environments: HashFast’s Golden Nonce (GN) is a 28nm ASIC chip that performs 400 Ghash/s at nominal clock speed and consumes less than 0.65 W/GH. It can be underclocked for greater efficiency and overclocked for greater performance. The chip has on-die thermal controls to allow operation at its absolute maximum performance. This equipment is solely intended for use in commercial environments. Otoh, according to John the Sierra is the Commercial grade product while the BabyJet is the Consumer grade product. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yj-mmnRWYc&t=56sSo as usual with HF, a is b, left is right, BTC is USD, in stock is out of stock, exact dates are anticipated dates, guaranteed dates are intended dates, shipping is not shipping, good news is bad new, October is November, November is December, December is January, 2013 is 2014. you get the drift. |
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I got the same letter and refund check...
Want to know the kicker?
I never filled out a refund request (in any form).
They are FORCING REFUNDS for batch1.
Expect your letter whether you want it or not. We now get to enjoy the forced 90% loss of investment plus the tax hit.
I find it hard to believe that they are forcing refunds on Batch 1 customers to be honest. The letter also states "Enclosed you will find a check for the refund you requested" |
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Just received a USD refund letter + check in response to my original full BTC payment refund request on Nov 10 and Jan 2:  For reference, my refund request is hereI did not fill out their USD refund & release form and did not request this. Getting so tired of these games. |
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Thanks for the advance disclosure Gavin. FYI: Most recent CFR session mentioning Bitcoin on Nov 21st: http://www.cfr.org/global/us-economy-fiscal-policy/p31935 (video here) QUESTION: David Slade, Allen Overy. Could you comment on the significance of our reserve currency status to these issues, and the risk, if any, of our losing that?
REINHART: So a part of the reason there's no pressure on politicians is there's no -- we happen to enjoy the benefits of being the reserve currency historically. The first basic principle of economics applied here is, you can't beat something with nothing, and there's no other alternative obvious reserve currency right now. The euro, perhaps?
HOLTZ-EAKIN: Bitcoin? Bitcoin.
REINHART: Bitcoin, yes.
(LAUGHTER) |
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Thus, Erin is still on the payroll.
Yes, I don't know where the rumor that Erin quit came from. ...I do remember reading somewhere that Samantha (Owusu) left HF, so perhaps that caused the confusion? |
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Seems I spoke too soon, USPS made another attempt (After saying they were returning it!) and it went through, and I also received an email confirmation that they received it.
Same here. Just received a confirmation from Erin that my refund request has been received (both email and paper). +1 for 'doxing' on a separate thread. Did she say anything alarming? Like they wouldn't accept anything but their form? That's what Erin is saying: Thank you for your email. We have very much appreciated your patience. At this time, we are only able to process refunds that accompany the attached form, that you should have received yesterday evening.
Please fill out the attached form, scan, and attach in reply to this email and we will be happy to expedite your refund.
Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Erin
Customer Service Manager
--
HashFast Refunds
refunds@hashfast.comHere is the one I got: Good Afternoon, This email is to let you know that we have received your refund request via email and mail. Sincerely, Erin Customer Service Manager -- HashFast Refunds refunds@hashfast.com |
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Seems I spoke too soon, USPS made another attempt (After saying they were returning it!) and it went through, and I also received an email confirmation that they received it.
Same here. Just received a confirmation from Erin that my refund request has been received (both email and paper). +1 for 'doxing' on a separate thread. |
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