Again, can anyone name three BFL engineers?
Nope, since none of us work there. There's a manufacturing company an hour away from me, NSA Industries LLC, that's one of my clients. Can you name two of the engineers that work there? Victims get their money back and crooks go to jail? Where is this again? Can't be the US cuz they had Enron, Solyndra, S&L, LTCM, MF Global, etc...
Those victims weren't made whole, the lawyers did well as I understand it. Keeting got a few consecutive 99 year sentences, but ruined the lives of thousands of seniors. Perhaps we should ask Vleisides' lottery scam victims if they got their money back?
Victims get Corzined and those with slick lawyers/connections rarely see the inside of jail cells, they get slaps on the wrist and told to behave. You go to jail for blue collar crimes in the States, white collar criminals generally walk.
Ah, so there have only been five company scams to have ever gone on in existence, right?  Seems to me you're just remarking on the most notable examples of where not enough evidence was present to put blame on any one person. The problem here is that none of your examples apply in this circumstance. The reality is that there are dozens of scams out there that are stopped and investigated, often with outcomes in favor of the victim(s). The most recent one that comes to mind for me is Finmaestros, LLC. Oh, and as for.. Perhaps we should ask Vleisides' lottery scam victims if they got their money back?
Getting their money back wasn't an option. I'll give you a minute to think about why ( *hint* it has to do with the number of people scammed). On a side note, I'm thoroughly impressed by the sheer quantity of FUD in this thread. So your revised statement is that sometimes victims get some of their money back? ...provided there aren't too many victims. As an aside, I'm thoroughly impressed by the sheer number of BFL investors that defend BFL's FUD. |
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He defrauded ~25.000.000 USD and is not able to be sentenced to pay a fine higher than 100$
? Is the law there that stupid!? Stupid isn't the word. Corrupt and dysfunctional are better descriptions of the US legal system. |
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We all get our money back, and they all go to jail. Jeez, what was so hard about all that... Victims get their money back and crooks go to jail? Where is this again? Can't be the US cuz they had Enron, Solyndra, S&L, LTCM, MF Global, etc... Those victims weren't made whole, the lawyers did well as I understand it. Keeting got a few consecutive 99 year sentences, but ruined the lives of thousands of seniors. Perhaps we should ask Vleisides' lottery scam victims if they got their money back? Victims get Corzined and those with slick lawyers/connections rarely see the inside of jail cells, they get slaps on the wrist and told to behave. You go to jail for blue collar crimes in the States, white collar criminals generally walk. |
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Again, Sonny is NOT just "one of their employees", he was their CEO and is now an officer with the company as is his brother. If their janitor was a crook I wouldn't care much, but a company officer and former CEO? Yeah that's important investor information and should plainly be disclosed PRIOR to accepting funds.
I don't think BFL is accepting investors yet. Agree or not, according to SEC & FTC guidelines pre-order customers are investors and not customers. I should probably thank you for passing that information on, but that was a rather aggressive way to let me know. Not everyone's trying to piss you off, you know. I apologize if I sounded harsh, it was not intended. The "Agree or not" portion was actually placed there because *I* disagree with classifying pre-order customers as investors. I've nothing but respect for your informative and comprehensive posts here. |
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Again, Sonny is NOT just "one of their employees", he was their CEO and is now an officer with the company as is his brother. If their janitor was a crook I wouldn't care much, but a company officer and former CEO? Yeah that's important investor information and should plainly be disclosed PRIOR to accepting funds.
I don't think BFL is accepting investors yet. Agree or not, according to SEC & FTC guidelines pre-order customers are investors and not customers. |
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It's also been handled very very poorly. If BFL had said, prior to opening their pre-order window, look we've got this guy that got into some trouble and we're giving him a second chance because we believe he's changed then that would've been one thing.
They did not do this and instead hid his last name, failed to disclose his past, and then shuffled his job description once he was found out. They've handled this even worse than they have their numerous delay announcements.
Those who are in that situation are usually open about it, but some are not. In either case, you don't publicly advertise that fact! Show me a single commercial company that makes it a point to point out one of their employees as a felon. You're more likely to get sued by the employee then gain more customers thru "transparency". Again, Sonny is NOT just "one of their employees", he was their CEO and is now an officer with the company as is his brother. If their janitor was a crook I wouldn't care much, but a company officer and former CEO? Yeah that's important investor information and should plainly be disclosed PRIOR to accepting funds. |
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It's also been handled very very poorly. If BFL had said, prior to opening their pre-order window, look we've got this guy that got into some trouble and we're giving him a second chance because we believe he's changed then that would've been one thing.
They did not do this and instead hid his last name, failed to disclose his past, and then shuffled his job description once he was found out. They've handled this even worse than they have their numerous delay announcements.
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Sonny is NOT just one of their alleged 25 employees. He was their CEO and he is still an officer with the company by all accounts. The Vleisides name is crap, BFL is entwined with their family, and still BFL is mum on this subject. Where's the town hall meeting, did I miss it?
I don't have a daughter either, but I'll no more trust a convicted sex offender with my 3 teenage sons then I'll trust a convicted thief with my hard earned funds.
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B) I used to work for a convicted sex offender. Did that affect his business practices or his ability to act as a manager? No. Would you trust him with your 13 year old daughter? Why then would you trust a convicted thief with large sums of money? |
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Seems it's doing precisely that.  At right around $14.8/BTC we'd have enough to order (4) bASIC01 units, should they ever become available. |
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Yeah, I'm his numero uno sales guy!  |
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I found that amusing.  We have enough uncommitted funds on hand to order 3.75 more units and someone thinks shorting us is a good idea. I'd certainly think a mining company that put all of their eggs in one basket and has no reserves would be a far better target if the basket was found to have a hole in it, but I'm just a dumb miner.  |
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Correct, the intent is to bulk order ASIC devices to receive favorable pricing.
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Motion to make a small(20BTC or less) GPU hardware purchase. This would include the company's reinvestment fund(.83BTC) + up to 19BTC from the treasury.
With the delay of the company's ASIC mining hardware, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain an attractive APY to attract additional investors without expanding mining hardware. Capacity exists to add one or two additional GPUs without incurring expenses beyond the GPUs themselves. With careful selection it should be possible to increase hashrate and therefore dividends by 30-40% in the short term with a small investment at this time.
As the company's contract specifies funds be used for the bulk purchase of ASIC hardware, I seek shareholder approval for this proposed purchase. Which GPUs? Where will they be purchased? How will they be added to the existing setup? In addition, as an investor, I would like to request that additional details be updated and included in the well-presented google doc, such as more exact hardware setup and current mining status (ie, mining LTC or BTC currently?). What are the operating expenses? (electricity etc. inc AC, if applicable). Pictures of the working setups would be a welcome bonus. Thanks. Thanks for posting, let me see if I can address all of your questions individually. Which GPUs? Where will they be purchased? How will they be added to the existing setup? Unknown at this time. I held the high bid for 2x5870 for a couple days at $165, but someone else was willing to pay more. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=131782.0These would have been added to the company's Gigabyte rig pictured a page or two back and the 6770 would have been displaced and moved to the MSI Diamond rig. I'd also consider a single 7950 as it would be easier to integrate and is more efficient. In addition, as an investor, I would like to request that additional details be updated and included in the well-presented google doc, such as more exact hardware setup and current mining status (ie, mining LTC or BTC currently?). What are the operating expenses? (electricity etc. inc AC, if applicable). Pictures of the working setups would be a welcome bonus. By default the GPUs are mining BTCs at bitparking w/ bitminter as a backup, but on the occasion that LTC difficulty re-targets significantly lower I've moved at least the main rig to ltc.kattare.com and used ozcoin as a backup. I've posted links to this in the thread here, but you're right, a notification area on the public spreadsheet would be more visible. As operating expenses are deducted from dividends on my own shares, I've not focused on them. I've monitored power consumption tendencies of each GPU individually and adjusted their voltages, engine & memory clocks, and cooling accordingly. I do not have a meter connected full time, so I cannot tell you exactly how much power is consumed for entire rigs at any given time. |
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Dave, Today at 04:36:16 PM Tom tells me we've paid out well over $200k in refunds from the bank account and $100k in BTC refunds - and they will continue. Tom has paid me up on my recent invoice as well. He continues to demonstrate that he is committed to working this out and taking care of the customers with the same integrity he shown in the past.
I'm hopeful that we will reach a tentative agreement early in the week, with a more formal deal signed by end of week. More to come... https://www.btcfpga.com/forum/index.php?topic=1041.0My concern is that we'll act prematurely to cancel this order, a deal will be worked out, and bASICs will ship. We'll be out in the cold with funds, but where do we apply the funds so that it increases the value of the company? Back of the bus with BFL? Avalon's 2nd batch after CNY? From as objective a perspective as I can muster I do not see the value in cancelling this order so late in the game. |
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Dave, Today at 02:50:23 PM Not surprisingly I have a lot of new refund mail - please understand that it takes a lot of time to work through them - no response doesn't mean I'm ignoring you. I'm also not going to work a whole lot today, as I have some life things to attend to. For anyone that has submitted a refund request prior to 1/11 - please log into btcfpga.com or bitcoinasic.com, depending on which site you ordered from. Check your order status. If it says "Refunded" it means I submitted your credit card refund request. If it says "Refund Requested" it means I submitted your BTC refund request to Tom. If you sent me mail prior to 1/11, and the status doesn't reflect what you expect, resend the mail. My most reliable email seems to be dave@bitcoinasic.com, but I have also found some requests in my spam folder, due to the origin of the emailer. I'll try to check that frequently. Tom has continued the dialog today, so there still may be progress on a deal in this coming week. I'll update if I have more news today. |
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I've spoken to Tom at length on the phone and swapped emails with Dave, and while I was left with a positive impression of both gentlemen, it's really not about loyalty, at least not primarily. I founded this mining company on that order, so to remove it is not a decision I'm comfortable making unilaterally or in part. The order was 56% paid with BTC(1st) and 44% paid with CC(2nd). At this point a charge back of a portion($470) of it is possible, but the larger BTC portion of the payment($599) would be entirely up to Tom to refund and we really have no recourse if he does not repay it. If the current trajectory of BTCFPGA holds and Tom does not leave the country or go into hiding he's likely going to end up in prison for fraud, an outcome which would not benefit any of us monetarily.
I'll open a motion, abstain, and abide by whatever you guys decide.
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. Yeah I saw it. No, still not considering a refund. I placed the order in October, it is what it is. I'm very disappointed with Tom, and glad I haven't dumped all our company's funds into any of the ASIC vendor's laps so potential losses are relatively small at least. Again I apologize to bASIC-MINING investors, I do not blame any of you for bailing, but I cannot. |
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I believe they'll get things under control, but they're clearly making a whole lot of missteps. At this point I see no value in retracting the order and placing it with another vendor.
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Asset Issuers will be happy to know that we now have #bitcoin-assets assbot integration in place.
Thanks for the assbot feature.
Offtopic: Does anyone else get just a slight smile huge grin on their face every time they read the word: assbot? FTFY  |
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