This would make sense and help their case and potentially quell some individuals' fears, but guess what? It's been asked of them by many people, for months now. Why a company would refuse to post some basic type of plan for execution which could be updated regularly, is beyond me. Even if they were a scam, they could make one up.

It really doesn't add up.

Precog, well done friend. In one post you summarize their customer service.

This is why some folks initially waved the scam flag, or the "was legit but turned into a scam" flag, because it's not often people who've run businesses in the past (which they have) are *this* dumb.

This level of dumb is almost theatrical, which pushes it toward the edge of "was planned this way" in many folks' sight. While I don't believe they were a scam at the outset, I find this level of stupidity hard to comprehend without some piece of the puzzle we're not aware of yet.

A few people claimed to have done it, but nothing shows up.

Haha.. soo true. An increase of 5 or 20 means nothing, when its multiplier is null.

You know what's sad though? Alpha has been the greatest FUD generator of all.

They've instilled Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt for the past .... 70 pages / 4 Months

FUD isn't bad when it's founded.. which it is.

Yup, their new T&C definitely point to the likelihood that the systems will be lower spec than they'd hoped--but who knows, maybe they'll be faster.. right?

As was pointed out awhile back, for them to reach the claimed 10-fold increase in speed, they'd need more chips than they likely ordered, and of course supplimentary hardware. It makes sense they're dialing back the expectations, and have been really hush the last few weeks on hashrate. Afterall, throwing more chips at something doesn't help if there's no gear to support them.

* Failed to provide credit card payment methods as promised (lasted 4 days before it was revoked for suspicion reasons)
* Refuses to provide trasnparency, as promised
* Failed their planned shipping date and their "worst case" shipping date
* Still has no physical product, only theories
* Failed first tape-out
* Refuses to provide customer service
* Claims that they are on track for shipping date #3, sometime at the end of September
* Wants folks to buy more miners and pay more money
* Hasn't made progress in accessory hardware design since March/April
* They don't even have a metal case to put the equipment in. Plain sheet metal. They don't have it.


I mean, I could go on, but that's the honest summary right now.

The "order discount" thing could be seen a few different ways, but based on their history and how they've treated people, I would say the most likely is that they chose that phrase on purpose, so they could try and pull the rug out from under folks who want refunds.

The most glaring thing from that stinking update, to me, is that they're saying if you haven't paid in full, you've pretty much forfeited your deposit and your machine will now be resold. This is after they refused to talk to inquiring customers about the stauts of their order, and on ways to pay for their system, and then failed to provide promised methods of payment.

In other words, they outright stole 30% from people.

Next, key in on their interview with coindesk, where they claimed that the deposits were enough to pay for the systems in whole. If this is true, they have fully-paid scrypt mining farm, and may never ship to you folks, and will just make bank off of the equipment until such time it's useless and then sell it at a high cost. This is exactly what BFL did does.

Claiming to be ethical, and then saying this is only an offer for fully-paid invoices... all the while FAILING to provide the PayPal and Credit Card payment methods which were IN ORIGINAL SALES TERMS. And, as we predicted, they are cancelling your unpaid orders. This is, afterall, the only way they can recoup funds and provide enough chips for the fully paid orders.


Another bland lie. My gosh, googling competing technology blows this one out of the water. Not to mention THEY HAVE NO PRODUCT, IT'S ALL THEORY.

These people are hilarious.

Their life would be easier if they just didn't have a forum, or locked it out entirely, until such time as they had anything other than small tweets for updates.

Retro is spot on with the shares situation.

My initial thought on how they'd hoped to accomplish it was simply by telling folks there will be X shares at Y price, which will give you Z hold on the company returns--simply because that's the easiest way to delude people to bite off on another chunk of air.

It is decent, but it uses some source info linked to AT's website which, as we all know, can (and has) been manipulated. I'm really interested in the tidbit in the article where AT claims to have notified everyone July 15th about the inability to ship in July. They were telling folks even up till last week that it was possible. They link to a now-edited section of AT's website.

Overall a great article, which does nothing but summarize what myself and 2 others have said. In fact, some of it is verbatim.

Folks looking into refunds and legal action should pay particular notice to the last few paragraphs where AT claims they don't violate UK law, because they classify the purchases as business purchases. Their *only* support for this, comes through a blogpost which talks about a decision which occured 3-4 months *AFTER* sales opened and initially closed. Ergo, their claim will fall short in court because the purchases were made prior to the opinion piece. They also lack things such as: requiring you provide your business information, and referring to you as a business anywhere.

For folks taking legal action, keep the pressure on. Their story is falling apart day by day.

They also claim that with just 30% of total funding, they had all money required to ship final products. Well, if that's the case, maybe Alpha should just ship based on what's been paid, and not ask for anything else. That might be at least a decent way to treat people after they've been subjected to virtual sodomy.

Just gets better every time I come in here for an update.

Well, Alpha paid for risc-lot chips, and they got what they paid for. Whenever a company opens its doors to everyone to buy in, that's an immediate black flag in my book. Cashflow issues = no-go.

Good to hear some folks have been able to get chargebacks.

I wonder just how high the blood pressure would be for our bulldozer friend if he wasn't banned and could participate in this discussion.

Talk about lunacy, they're definitely showing they have no capability to control matters, and are passing the buck onto "customers". Notice how they blamed the public for their incapable management, and now are shifting the responsibility toward "customers" to control things.

This is gaining momentum to be one of the biggest crapfests yet.

They're refusing to provide customer support, or to respond in any way to the majority of folks who have given them money. They re-opened the possibility of folks losing hashrate, and their terms have yet again changed.

Let's face reality, at the onset their biggest selling term was: We will deliver by July at the latest, or your money back. You can have a full refund up until we ship.

Contrast that with now: You get nothing, maybe not even equipment, and you don't have a voice, nor will we support you.

You want to see how it goes from there?

Lots of scrambling and regrouping, but once the dust settles we know how the story ends.

Customer Support Forums usually provide Customer Support.

Good luck with your legal, and "other" issues, you will be facing shortly.


They showed one once many moons ago, it was that awesome hand-drawn graphic detailing from start to finish what they would do. And they never updated it, isn't that awesome?

With legal inquiries being made, they needed to act fast to not look like the gestapo. I wouldn't trust this carrot just because it's being dangled on a new stick, but that's just me. They'll work to make their side of the story look great.

Suggestion for someone with access: wget the entire forum right now, and start taking screenshots of everything.