Thanks and Welcome aboard!

They forgot to mention: "All your base are belong to us."  

Did they also neglect to mention that their facility was guarded by a moat with sharks armed with lazors on their headz?

Hope you don't mind - Like any good shopkeeper with a product that hasn't moved: I've changed the site price to $18K BTC Buy it Now price on our site for one of the R5/R6 miners.

==

Also, I'm sorry master of digits, but I didn't see your Dec. 9 msg. and I apologize that one of the other co-op leaders didn't cover this. No excuse, but there's about 50+ threads I've started or been a major part of, I have about 90 pages of PMs, and we get hundreds of site support tickets because BTC mining interest has taken off. It's no excuse, but honestly, shit happens. I've also been super busy meeting investors and company founders, on top of my day job to get you guys these deals.

An important note: we didn't need a unanimous decision but a majority decision, which we did get. When we did have a majority vote I listed this on the auctions forum, our site, and authorized philipma1957 (and any other co-op member with high ebay ratings) to list this on ebay *if* they could set it up in such a way that we don't get screwed by PayPal.

Democracy can move slowly sometimes but I'll tell you about the difficult balancing act that I, personally, have to walk as one of the co-op leader/founders. Even I can't move quickly in some things, when it comes to dealing with other people's BTC or hardware.

In a democracy, not everyone is going to be happy all of the time. We *really*, *really* needed to make sure that we wouldn't get screwed over by a PayPal chargeback, which is the avenue which would've yielded the highest price...at the highest risk.

How would you feel if ebay/PayPal seized $26K of *your* funds for half a year because some person did an illegal chargeback on their PayPal shares that they purchased from -R-? He was doing this at no extra fee (sometimes even eating some of the Tx costs, without even charging any fees for his below cost GB shares, and that's how he gets re-paid. Lovely  

One person ruined this payment method for everyone else and pissed off all of the co-op leaders to not want to do future business with ebay. I say it was an illegal chargeback because the scammer got *exactly* what was promised, it was delivered at below cost, made a profit off this, and anonymously is *still* receiving payouts! Yes, that still sticks in our collective craw, and this most accessible escrow/sales method is something we're not fond of with their high fees.

If there was an ebay chargeback, guess who would be footing the bill? It wouldn't be the co-op members that have already been paid out, that's for sure...

==

As for true escrow: we'd love to team up with escrow pros. True escrow with licensing and bonding requirements is an expensive proposition.

Just like Black Arrow, he too is absolutely swamped at the moment. He's getting ready for our move to our second facility, a 6300 sq. foot warehouse, on top of the usual running of the miners, Miner Hosting LLC, and Minersource.net. He is under a bit of time pressure because the move date is getting close, so please go easy on him if you can.

I can pass something on if you'd like for him to get to when he has time. Please keep in mind, we're a really small team right now but there are 6 paid employees enroute to facility #2 that will be able to handle order processing, question handling, and simple babysitting of BTC/ALT miners. Just recently, I was several days behind on PMs myself, thanks to everything going on with GBs, site tickets, investor meetings, planning other cryptoventures and the business formation itself, and...life (esp. during the holiday season), so I know what he's going through.

The community of miners that have formed to pool BTC funds with the DZ MC and Miner Hosting LLC essentially willed these jobs into existence via bobsag3.

Just like at Black arrow, everything is being done manually at this time as far as final processing of orders. If you didn't get your order seen to yet, whether it's Thomas, bobsag3, or myself, it's usually because we're behind. As Bitcoin mining has become more expensive, and interest in BTC mining itself has exploded, sometimes ASIC mfgs and resellers get behind.

Not sure if this is related to payments: but if your payment(s) for an order appear to have made it through the blockchain then there shouldn't be any problem on our end.

==

Some good news though: bobsag3 hasn't been idle, he's also paid for designing and developing *good* Free Open Source Software (FOSS) for Remote Monitoring of miners regardless of the type of miner, built to his specs.

This software is in Alpha and he is releasing this *free* to the community when this is ready.  

That's interesting and thank you both for your feedback on that. As someone that's not colorblind I wouldn't have thought about the many ways that this can make life more confusing.

Product and site designers would do well to keep in mind that some of their customers may be color blind when designing and releasing products to the market. I'm interested to see how newer BB-type forum software handles this.

The red-green colorblind should click the "Trust" button, since they won't have the same visual indicator. I'll update the OP with this.

Thanks for catching that amer. It's actually CLOSED.

Mistakes can happen when running simultaneous GBs, with multiple GBCs, and doing 21 Rounds (most of them with sub-rounds) of community fundraising for rigs in 5 months. That's my fault for not closing this round properly.

We were waiting to hear back from someone that essentially bought the last 2 modules (this was before we had a added 25% GB Round share ownership cap to our Group Buys after R15-16 sold out so quickly due to a few buyers).

The best guide as to whether something is in stock or not is to check our website and see if the Round (or product or contract, wow, we've grown!) is shown as in stock.

Cheers!

Sorry, we only offer Group Buy shares in Industrial Class rigs at the moment. We happen to have 3 GBs open right now, including Bitmain and Black Arrow (an exclusive deal, one of several that we've engineered). We even completed what we believe to be the world's first Bitcoin for Oil & Gas deal which ended recently - but will re-open shortly at a different Texas location.

In the past: I have pushed for offering some sort of public BTC shares in our larger offerings among company founders but I'm the one that seems to be the most bullish about that. I think an offering of something like this based in Germany at a place such as Cryptostocks could be beneficial (which wasn't even my idea originally), but to be honest we're in the fortunate position of not lacking for start-up or operational funds at the moment <knocks on forehead instead of wood>.

- Now that our legal counsel is fully in place with our retainer paid, and now that we've officially filed for our Umbrella company: We now have BTC arbitrage services available via a pro contract for access to the proven expertise and services of a veteran forex trader who has taken quite a liking to the world of Bitcoin.

It's OT but semi-related. Also: this is another way to diversify in the high risk world of Crypto investing and mining. If you were serious, you can contact us about our BTC arbitrage services called Arbit Rage at:

rage.arbit@gmail.com

for further questions about this new service we're launching. I absolutely cannot give you investing advice but you're welcome to ask questions directed to this email above with regards to our new BTC arbitrage services contracts. Cheers!

Oh, also: to all the people I've sent trust to, sorry if my BTC estimates for how much you sent us are waaay off. I don't even do order tracking nowadays (or even fund handling; although I do have access to it) in the neat division of labor we've set up in our co-op.

And to my fellow co-op members, sorry if I haven't sent you a trust rating, there's no intentional slight on my part. We have something like 450-500 members/customers so far but if you've publicly bought a share or a 100 (like several Full and Hero members have), I'll do my best to get you added to my trust feedback list before Jan. 15.

If you'd like me to send you Trust as a DZ MC member (or as someone I helped out for free, such as newbie questions or being vetted as a GBC or Miner Host), please send me a PM and either a ref. to the round you were in and/or the order # if it was done through our co-op site.  

Since it's the season of giving in my home country of the US, I thought I'd take a moment to write up a quick guide to the most common questions I've come across as a GB Coordinator, or GBC, when it comes to the somewhat insular and cryptic niche that is this forum's Group Buys sub-forum.

Some quick tips can help save everyone here some time, which is our most precious commodity, and provide us a common base of understanding for both newbies and vets. I also wanted to point out to newbies how the trust system can provide a vetting method for forum members.


Trust System

This is your forum's method of (hopefully) sorting the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, when it comes to who you might trust to handle BTC deals for you. The scoring system itself is a bit of a mystery to me (something about weighted scores based on rep/activity) but generally:

GREEN = GOOD
RED = THE OPPOSITE OF GOOD

The Red-Green colorblind (and heck, anyone doing Due Diligence) should click the "Trust" button, since they won't have the same visual indicator via colors. (Tip o' the hat to philipma1957)

YMMV and all that, but this is your chance to see how well they've handled other people's BTC from the people involved themselves.

- The first number represents their trust level.
- The second number(s) is/are broken up into 2 sections. The first section is negative feedback / the second section is positive feedback. The numbers represent the strength of the of the votes either positive or negative.

Forum veterans will sway voting strength and Trust levels much, much more than newbies.

The decision to send someone trust isn't to be taken lightly or flippantly. Some people send negative trust to people that particularly irritate them for whatever reason, which is why you sometimes see trust ratings with 0 BTC involved.

Also: don't forget to use it,   so that this community can actually benefit from this pretty well done feedback system and tool (except perhaps for the colorblindness aspect). If a GBC, GBO, or Miner Host has treated you fairly or unfairly, then please let the world know!

When perusing reviews, also note *who* is sending feedback. A fun tactic by scammers is to sometimes send negative trust to the very people that they've scammed!  


Group Buy Terminology

Blockchain = The Blockchain is a permanent, decentralized and encrypted ledger which holds a record of all previous transactions in that particular cryptocoin, such as Bitcoin or BTC.

Hashrate: Hashrate is a measure of a Bitcoin or Altcoin miners ability to attempt bruteforce cryptographic code breaking of a section of the encrypted Bitcoin Blockchain to hopefully "dig up" some Bitcoin for the lucky miner or miner(s) involved in the find.

KH/s = KiloHash (KH) per second or 1000 Hash attempts per second.
MH/s = MegaHash (MH) per second. This is equivalent to 1,000 KiloHashes per second.
GH/s = GigaHash (GH) per second. This is equivalent to 1,000 MegaHash per second.
TH/s = TeraHash (TH )per second. This is 1,000 GH/s per second, and as of Dec. 20, 2013, is the realm of Industrial Class rigs (of which none have shipped so far from any manufacturer, or mfg.)

GB = Group Buy
GBC = Group Buy Coordinator. This is the person (or persons) who are handling fund collection, ordering, ordering and shipping details, miner ops, troubleshooting, and payouts. Some of these roles may be shared or delegated/contracted to others in GBs run by co-ops.
GBO = Group Buy Organizer (another term for a Coordinator)

Group Buy Shares or "Shares": Are these Shares, like stocks? At this time, no these are *not* considered the same as honest to goodness SEC filed shares trading on a big exchange. Instead, what you're buying into is fractional ownership of Industrial Class miners or GB "shares".

One purchases a share in a GB which should have the terms spelled out somewhere in the GB listing. An example would be 1 share = 40 GH/s for x amount of BTC or fiat depending on how it's listed.

This ownership is usually into perpetuity, or until y'all hopefully decide to sell it together somewhere before it's completely useless as far as hashrate.  

Miner Host: The person or persons that are hosting the Industrial Class Miner rig. Hopefully, they have ample power set up as we're well past the era of homes being able to power miners to TH class rigs, without electrical system upgrades. Hopefully they also have insurance or business insurance, cheap electricity, UPS unit(s), AC and fans, experience with miners, and a history of professionally hosting rigs.

Payment Terms

Most GBCs and GBOs are only set up to take BTC. Some do this by choice, some due to the cost/complexity of dealing with CC companies and <shudder> PayPal.

Payouts

Most GBs pay out twice a month. For example, in our co-op: we've settled on the 1st and 15th for BTC GBs and the 7th and 22nd for LTC GBs.

Unless one purchases a mining contract, there is a hosting and management fee that is usually deducted from the miner payouts before they're sent.

Also: you can run estimates all you want with profitability calculators but to be brutally honest it's all "voodoo" in that no one can accurately predict the future all of the time, and calculators are only as good as the data, assumptions, and the algorithms upon which they're based. I would also add that the further out one projects, say: 3 months+, the murkier the estimates become. This is just my opinion and is definitely *not* investing advice.

===

Hope this helps! If you're a GBC or GBO: Please let me know if there's any questions that just always seem to come up from customers that you think should be added here. I didn't want to get *too* technical as we don't really need to go into all the various coins and encryption algorithms in this primer.

Mahalo!

We used to use PayPal when the DZ Miners Co-op was just starting up.

We banned them from our co-op after they took steps that are/were detrimental to BTC miners including seizing $26K of one of the DZ MC leaders PP funds for 6 months after someone did an illegal chargeback to that account. Great: so PayPal lets the scammer get away with a scam (karma won't let it go though you POS whoever you are), freezes the account, and won't release funds for 6 months just in case there's any more (illegal) chargebacks.

I say it's illegal because the buyer got exactly what was paid for, but still was a dick, and ebay sided with the scammer.

My own ebay acct I share w/ the wife has been limited for weeks because 1) I don't care about ebay anymore and 2) I did a chargeback w/ Amex for 2 BFL Jallys that were outside the 45 day PP refund window. Guess they didn't like me doing an end around on something they couldn't help me with anyway.

Screw you ebay and PayPal and your usurious fees. Soooo glad Bitcoin is eating your lunch.

Some co-op members still ask for PP to buy GB shares, but as the founder of this co-op, WRT to Paypal? Never, ever again.

Don't mind me. I'm a network engineer that's designed multiple LANs for a number of Research Labs (even a MAN), but I'm an engineer cramming for a Security+ cert. Besides dealing w/ the DoD acronym overload I normally have to deal with, I'm busy cramming info - mostly useless info - for a cert exam. SSH, SSL...close enough!  

Thanks for the catch: that should be SSL for Secure Socket Layer (the "s" in https) and not SSH (hooray for Putty).

Thanks for the kind words about the team, gents!

We're just a bunch of nerds and miners like you guys. We try our best to treat our co-op members like we would our own meatspace friends and families.

After reading this:


Who are we?

Axon Labs is a spin-off company born inside a Research & Development Corporation. After months of work, our research team came up with the technology we now use for Synapse Terra miners. As the original company that gave birth to this technology is a research and development hub, we created Axon labs. Dedicated to offer Synapse signature products specifically to the virtual currency mining market.


A bright future

With an incredible interest shown in our products, Axon Labs has set its main goals to develop and manufacture a diversity of high performance products suited for the future of markets. Bitcoin miners are only the beginning of a long and exciting journey!


I feel like family to them! Please put me down for eleventy of them.

I'm just kidding.

- No https AKA Secure sheLL Sockel Layer, which means that this mfg. sent IDs and vetting info to a SSL registrar (tip o' the hat to a kind stranger, Kaega, for pointing out my logic/acronym fail)
- No info, no LinkedIn profile links on company founders

Caveat Emptor!

Nope. And they're gone...last O&G half share sold to a veteran forum member.  

==

There *may* be future O&G deals available, as this is my partner's specialty (the partner being Jonathan Kohn of Balanced Energy LLC in Texas).

Therefore the world's first Bitcoin for Oil and Gas deal is officially complete!

That may be considered a historical milestone someday?

=========================================================================================================================================

[12/19 WARNING: the DZ MC has it's first imitator. A user going by the name "asso" was caught by DZ MC members red handed copying our co-op's R17x - except cutting the price and hashrate in half. WARNING: this user "asso" is *not* associated with the DZ MC nor Black Arrow, and built a poorly made 15 minute copy of our co-op site (he even admitted that's how much time he spent on it).

[Special credit to DZ MC veteran Miramyn who was the first to alert us about this impostor]  

Oh, we're also up to 91.8+ TH/s of nominal hashrate as ordered and PAID. I was reading this thread earlier today: on Oct. 9, we were at about 70 members and 8.2 TH/s of PAID hashrate. I guess success has bred copycats!

====

Image Credit:   Original Image  



                                      _.====.._
                                    ,:._             ~-_
                                        `\              ~- _
                                           |   _    __.       `.
                                         ,/   /  \    /           ~ - _
                   ..__..-..__...-       /__/  /__                `_ ~~--..__...----... DZ's Miner Cooperative, Round 21x ..."The little Co-op that could"...


An At-Cost/Low-Cost Democratic Miner Co-operative with low cost fees for world class, vetted miner hosting/management services:only $275 per month per miner rig for R21x!

~120 400 members: 1 Scientist, 7 admitted IT Pros, 3 Network Engineers, 3 Electrical Engineers, 2 Finance Employee, 6 GB Coordinators, multiple vetted host sites.*

*Note: A listing above does not necessarily indicate that this person runs or contributes to the running of the co-operative, but many of the pros listed have made their services available to the co-operative. Also, there could be more than 7 IT Pros, but some geeks are meek.  Cheesy


========================================================================================================================================

This Co-operative is led by a John K. vetted Network Engineer based in Hawaii, DyslexicZombei or DZ, who gets to design prototype IT hardware and lab/field networks in support of cutting edge research projects, and has been in the line of work of T&E and R&D for nearly 10 years, with 50-60 Hawaii/US Aerospace/IT/R&D/Civ. Engineering Endorsements on LinkedIn. The other remote administrators are jungle_dave who is a former Electrical Engineer and Network Engineer and -Redacted- a UNIX guru and veteran miner. Our local/remote admin is bobsag3, who is also an IT veteran. There are 5 leaders in the DZ MC, with thomas_s and I doing the actual running of the Cooperative.

Mining Equipment will be operated by vetted IT pros or a vetted IT college student, with backup host sites available. Payouts are on the 1st and 15th of the month minus a $150 host fee and a 0.5% management fee, the lowest prices around.

Once sales begin, Refunds are available up until unit ships at 1.5% restock fee. We vote on all buying, shipping, and resale decisions as well as vote on the month to attempt equipment resales after 5-7 months of operations.

Vetted GB Coordinators are encouraged to team up to increase buying power and close out Group Buys quicker. All suggestions are welcome to help improve our Co-operative.

- Approx. total value of GBEC / GBC ASIC/LTC Hardware pre-order sales or pre-sales of shares on this forum by DZ MC since Aug. 15: $650K (before BTC price adjustments)
- Approx. value of DZ ebay ASIC sales (including 10 ebay shares for 3 GBs, worth $1.4K) since Aug.1 : $3.9K

- Several new GBCs and Bitcoin Miner Hosts vetted for free, and several scams pointed out on two BTC related forums.
- Number of FundRaising Rounds completed (many with sub-rounds): 19
- Number of HashFast miners: 2 Baby Jets with paid upgrades, 2 Sierras, 4TH/s+ Total
- Number of KnC miners: 6 Jupiters, 3.6TH/s. 2 Neptunes, 6TH/s.
- Number of Bitmine miners: 2 Rigs, 2 Rounds so far, 3.4 - 5 TH/s
- Number of Black Arrow miners: 80 boards, 3.3 - 4TH /s, 35+ Black Arrow x-3 Prosperos at 2TH/s each
- Total Ordered HashRate: 91.8 TH/s+ Total
- Online Auto reservation system tailored for Group Buys thanks to vetted GBC thomas_s!
- Dual network connections, Server grade UPS units, TWO DZ MC gas generators, and a DZ MC Air Conditioner just for our miners, which will allow us to provide a perfect home to explore Overclocking for DZ MC ASIC miner rigs.
- A VP of his own small oil company in Texas joined us, and is helping us plan and execute future projects. He is now a DZ MC GB Coordinator - working offline deals - and the CEO of the new umbrella Corporation for the DZ MC sub-company and other cryptoventures!



Last order paid: 2nd round of payments for Rounds 17x, Black Arrow Bullet Run (R17x is still available)

Hate to be a Debbie Downer or Negative Nancy but one could say that a scammer could publicly *state* that Batch 1 is no longer available just to trick people into thinking they're legit (since enough someones obviously supposedly trusted them to buy out Batch 1).

That is *not* a good enough reason to throw your BTC irretrievably to a new mfg. without a track record.

The CH forum may be a cruel mistress but it's a (mostly) fair, feisty, and thorough mistress.

Hey Bakal,
 
Our miners are always insured on shipment and have business insurance during operations.

bobsag3 just visited them last week or so, and met the entire team in Hong Kong and took pics of their facility and the FPGA simulating the Minion ASIC. It's somewhere in this thread.   Everything appears to be on track so far with Black Arrow.

I'm also told that there will be native driver support for Prosperos prior to launch, thanks to a major veteran software programmer in the BTC world who writes well known hardware drivers for ASICs and has been given access to the hardware. I am not at liberty to say which programmer this is at this time, but I believe that if the co-op knew who the programmer was they would be very, very pleased.

Suffice to say: veteran miners all know how important good driver support is in cutting edge miners.

Wow, that's impressive!Thanks Philip! It's also about the hashrate of an original KnC Jupiter.

Therefore, I dub thee a member of the new DZ MC Jupiters Club.

Surprisingly, there's several members that meets this criteria; there's less than 10 but more than 5.

Hi lordzav,

This is both fractional ownership of Industrial Class rigs *and* professionally insured hosting services with both a 24/7 miner support team and 5 IT experts from the DZ MC, installing, operating, and troubleshooting ASIC miners. Our facilities are designed only for ASIC rigs, and unlike other server colocation facilities: our only focus is bringing miners sweet, sweet Bitcoin (or Litecoin if you're in R20).

The hosting fees are split amongst the Round's GB share owners with payouts on the 1st and 15th of the month.

Thanks Epicurean for the high praise!

We're just a bunch of like minded nerds mostly staring at screens, cussing out underperforming miners, and collectively laughing at some of the absurdities in the world of Bitcoin mining (like that asso guy trying to scam people by straight up copying R17 and our site to try to fool people). There's 9 of us on the team so far (soon to be 15 with hired help so that we'll have redundant 24/7 IT support), with 6 company founders for our crypto umbrella corporation.

If we do set the bar: it's because I'm a network engineer that loves redundancy and that we've always operated this co-op in an open, collaborative and transparent manner. Also, not to be overlooked is all of the co-op members input which have led to improvements and new offerings: like R21 with Antminer, by request from R15-16 and other co-op members.

It *may* take us a while to get to all PMs and support tickets - it's just thomas and I working on those, at the moment - but we really do try to listen and learn from our co-op members.

If you were serious though: please let us know. We're moving into facility #2 shortly (since y'all broke facility #1's max capacity) but we're already planning for facility #3, since R17x and other clients already may be close to maxing out facility #2 (6300 square feet) in February/early March.