SgtSpike, you are usually pretty rational and I respect your opinion quite a bit, but are you really advocating that I release details about our lease information?  I'm sorry, but that is just utterly ridiculous.  There are no discrepancies in the statements made by BFL.  The only discrepancy here is the validity of the "detective" work that's been done.  I've posted pictures of the equipment in the past on the BFL forums, but just because some idiot on the internet reads a questionable website and then makes up bizarre scenarios to fit some twisted, tortured logic does not constitute a situation where I need to explain the inner workings of BFL.  I probably should have just let PG and PR drone on about tinfoil hat crap, but I figured I'd interject real quick to let everyone know that everything they've posted is ludicrous.

Stop and consider for a moment... people are seriously asking for our lease information.  Seriously.  I am almost speechless.  Call up any other hardware vendor in the world and ask them for a copy of their lease, see what they tell you.

By all means, people are welcome to believe it if they want it honestly makes no difference.  BFL has been more open than any other ASIC vendor with regards to our technology and our procedures, but as usual we don't get any credit because dumbasses want anal probes and access to proprietary, competitive information.  It's those self same individuals that have pushed us back from releasing more information, because any time we do, it's picked apart and if everything doesn't turn out EXACTLY like we were hoping it would, we get a bad rap.  So it's better to say nothing and let people wonder.  That's what the unreasonable demands for information have brought us to.  This is just another example of it.

So PG and PR, by all means, continue your tinfoil hat speculation.

If you hadn't earned anything through the side but worked for it day in and out I wouldn't want to bet on your integrity of not touching funds either to earn at least some interest for part of the user funds. So, please member of this "community" - don't pretend like any of you guys who possibly stealing electricity or misusing your company's resources that it would never have crossed your minds to earn interest or short btc. You are all experienced traders and prudent little angels, I'm sure. At the time, shorting wasn't outrageous but something anyone did who halfway followed Btc prices.

heifer is classed as charity sponsers/advertisers/campaign managers.. not charity ground troops doing the hard work for the needy.

You have a default rate of almost 23% which would be devastating to most businesses.  The amount of repayments not made as a proportion of the total amount loaned may show an even worse reality if people are defaulting early in their loan cycle (as I suspect is the case).

I am absolutely stunned that you would launch without a concrete plan for recovering funds given that you're facilitating high risk loans and should have assumed a significant default rate at the outset.

Except for the most part you can't send for free.  Nor is it really instant -- most transactions must confirm with six confirmations before payment is recognized.

This was a post yesterday on Reddit:
 - http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/157sy8/describe_bitcoin_in_50_words_or_less

Meni had a pretty good one:
 "Bitcoin is the world's first decentralized digital currency. It empowers people everywhere with autonomy over their finances and the ability to transact freely and easily."

But then go to a convenience store and tell that to the person standing behind you in line.  Then ask that person to tell you what Bitcoin is.

I doubt those same words will be returned.

Let's say instead that the person in front of you buys a lottery ticket.  You could explain to that person that bitcoin is a way to buy a lottery tickets where the return is 41% higher than the one they just bought (BitLotto payouts are 99% of wagers, state-run lotteries like MegaMillions are in the 70% range).

Or perhaps at the line at a pharmacy describe how bitcoins can be used to buy generic medications sometimes at half the price or less because they are bought online from a seller who ships from a country where the generics are produced.

Or when you see a sign at a store that says "cash only", describe how bitcoins work like cash and by accepting bitcoins the store can attract customers who have bitcoins to spend yet the store won't have to suffer payment card network costs.

So yes it is difficult to describe bitcoin in a sentence or two that conveys a message that really describes it well and is relevant.

There is a promise: 'For every $120 raised through the Bitcoin mining, they’ll be able to send a goat to one family.'

That implies that the coast to delivery a goat is $120.

Now evidence shows that the delivery of a goat is almost the half of the value promised. This indicates that there are hidden costs which were not disclosed for the general public. This hidden costs are above any reasonable threshold expected from a charity organization. For each goat obtained for delivery, the charity organization is keeping an extra goat for themselves.

This is attempt of fraud because the hidden costs were not disclosed. The people which will donate is being tricked to believe that $120 is the price to delivery a goat.

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fraud?q=fraud


This is a attempt of wrongful deception which Heifer (or Coinlab) intended to result in financial gain for themselves.


This is a joke, right?

The people which receive the goats do not need a special lessons to receive a goat or to care for goats. People which receive the goats already know what to do, how to do and why to do with a goat. It is part of their cultural formation. What they lack is the goat, not the skills to look after the goats.

Wow... I personally understand that as a scam. This was not disclosed so far in the Coinlab internet page:

And that's just one client.  Basically, everyone on the network who has an operation fabulous ad banner, their ads arn't displaying, and their pages arn't loading.  It's a DISASTER when their pages don't load, and if they remove the ad boxes, we like, lose clients over this.  Refunding me partial of my hosting fees is not nearly what the effect of damages caused by the lapse in service. 

And this isn't the first time.  Why on earth are servers getting turned off?  Last time it was 8 hours downtime because James literally turned our server off as if we didn't pay and we did.  Then wasn't responding to tickets.  If you are too busy at work to respond to tickets, then why are you going and turning servers off?

And the incident in Amsterdam, where the datacenter owner was found to be not trustworthy and we had to do an emergency switch to the switzerland DC?  And then the other incident in switzerland where the DC owner was holding your payment hostage?  And we are still in switzerland?  And the other incidents in cali, like if that's a brand new server in a brand new DC, and the bills are paid, why are servers going dark.  WTF I'm so glad there are more people involved over there, I wish I had a vmdk file of the entire server on a regular basis so if something goes wrong I can do something about it. 

I would suggest trying to regenerate the code from your own sight. Open up a paint program, make a new file. Zoom really big, click the squares black where you see black.

The human eye can do far better at reading bar codes than any scanner, the human brain just doesn't understand the meaning. Use your eyes to read what you can into a new file and then scan it with the scanner.

QR can tolerate between 7-25% error rate so it is ok if you can't read some of the squares. Read what you can and guess on the rest. Just don't mess up the grid or skip rows or columns, it can't correct that.

Disclosure: I can read quite a few bar code symbologies by sight because I am geeky like that, but QR is not one of them, mostly due to complexity added by the XOR "masking" stage.  Still though, I can read many low quality things that scanners can't scan, so I can attest to the fact that scanners have poor sight.

It's probably the double gbit links that are pricey. In some locations 100mbit dedicated can run you up 1k per month.

I just wish that the forum would "hide" quotes from ignored users so I don't have to see/read their crap every time someone else responds to something they said.

- REDACTED IGNORED USER -

when 1800 coins are currently pending (and 620 or so are mine anyway), thats roughly around 20000 euro....  This is not such a huge sum (in comparison to what is with bitconia etc. lost) and i might be willing to invest under certain conditions.

I will send you a PM

Assuming exchange rate remains steady and hashpower is not vastly oversold in a short period of time.

The example vendor, BFL, could drop retail price by 62% and still net (not including staff) over 1 million USD in a two month period.

The bitcoin ASIC business is grossly profitable at all points in their output curve for the next year and a half.  At the expense of miners and the bitcoin mining subsidy.


It's a 'pump and dump' like strategy.  Pump out, drop the price, pump out for many iterations.

There are also the problems that (a) no property was involved; (b) as bitcoins cannot be possessed, nothing was stolen; and (c) we only have one individual's word (revised multiple times) that the transaction was mistaken in the first place. Nothing has been proven.

My recommendation? Return the 4.xxx BTC, less a 4.xxx BTC storage and handling fee. The trouble they've put you through by erroneously sending you those couple of bitcoins, and the unwarranted damage to your reputation, must be worth at least that much.

To be quite honest, I'm not sure if all this talk about giving goats / mining for goats is serious, or if it is satire.. WTF?!