Well this is certainly a VERY interesting thread...
And this is definitely going to be a long read for you as it was a long write for me.
None the less, I hope you enjoy it!
Right let's get this show on the run...
IS THIS A SCAM?
Hmm, well, let's make a "fictional" scenario here and see where it leads.
First let's say that I have pretty good knowledge of miners and mining software.
Let's also assume that I am already a known member of this community therefor I do not want to risk my identity.
Now, day in and day out I see threads of scam buys that sell leaving the scammer a pretty good catch.
People just don't get it! They keep getting fooled by these scams.
There will always be business in this field.
Good....
Why not take advantage of it.
After all, a fool and his money...
So, if I wanted to pull a relatively quick scam like this leaving me with a cool $100K how would I go about it?
First, I create a new account - taking all the precautions of course (hiding ip, etc).
Then, I would make sure I am "trusted" in the community by exposing a few of the many scams in the forums.
That should get people to trust me and I can use it as a weapon if anyone calls me a scammer.
Meanwhile, I will be working on the "website" and also in order to make this more "established" a very well known and respected member of this society must somehow "confirm" this.
So, I contact nwoolls with a bunch of legitimate questions on how to modify his software, and then in a clever way have him "confirm" the development of these miners.
That get's me set and start selling!
Wow, Great story man.... but fictional like you said.
Well, yeah, I mean let's examine the facts here:
Let's start with the website:
2 guys in their garages (which looks like their laundry room), who are supposedly testing a 1TH miner yet no cables are attached to it......
Let's go a bit deeper....
Let's get to their F.A.Q. section:
Q: Can I visit your facilities?
A: As a rule of thumb, No. But if you bring beer and cheerleaders we might reconsider. We are two old guys in remote Alaska assembling these units out of our garages, there is not a lot to see. Pretty much as soon as we get the bulk components in hand we will be working overtime for 2 weeks to get them all assembled and shipped out.
- Does anything after: As a rule of thumb, No, make sense to you?
Q: Can I call you on the telephone?
A: Your going to start to see the pattern here, We are a very small operation producing a very limited amount of bitcoin mining hardware. We are only 2 guys, and we have a deadline that we have to meet for our customers. If we published a phone number we would have to move our delivery date out to mid-summer 2014 and we would spend all day getting nothing done but dealing with the phones. If you have additional questions, e-mail us at
sales@vxminers.com we will be going through e-mails a little after 5 p.m. every night M-F and replying to as many as we can.
- Or you could have an automatic answering machine. Hows that?
Q: Why are you only making 200 VX-1 Miners?
A: We are actually making 250 VX-1 Bitcoin Miners, but only selling 200. Truth is if we could have manufactured our 50 units at the same price, we wouldn’t be making any units for sale. To get our price point for what we wanted to pay for our 50 TH/s we had to make 250 units. So we made this cheap website to get rid of the other 200 at near cost.
- So you have already invested in manufacturing these machines yet you will only keep 50 and sell the rest just to cover expenses? Seriously now?
Q: What is the VX-2 Bitcoin Miner?
A: We have just re-hired our guy in Vietnam to start work on a PCB for the Black Arrow Minion chip. We want to have 100 TH/s worth of Minion units running ourselves, and once again we will probably have to over produce to get the price right. We don’t expect to have much over run on the units, maybe 150 that we will have for sale. Just keep an eye on the site and we will post more details as we have them
- Oh OK, so you will only build 250 1TH units because you wanted to just keep 50 and don't care about bigger production yet you are working on VX-2
Q: Do you have facebook?
A: No, there are less than 800 people in our town, if i want to know what someone is doing i just go to convenience store and ask the clerk, They always seem to know what everyone is doing. If you were implying a facebook page for VX Miners the answer is still no. We are a VERY small short term operation; we are not spending time on branding and marketing. We are not trying to look like something we are not. We're two guys in garages who had to produce extra machines to sell to get the price on our own units down. If you want all that fancy corporation stuff, please feel free to go place an order with the "flying insect" guys, you might get your miners by 2015 sometime. Who knows when we will get the once that we ordered 5 months ago.
- Short term operation yet planning the VX-2.
Also, I live in a country with population of a little over 1.5mil.
My village alone has a population of 10K and I can GUARANTEE to you that I am the only one mining for BTC, and who knows maybe the only one that knows about them.
So the question here is: Your hometown of 800 made not 1 but 2 genius's that know all this shit?
And you do it from your laundry room? sorry I mean garage.
Q: What kind of tech support / warrantee do you offer?
A: Again, we are a very small operation producing a very, very limited amount of machines. We will offer basic troubleshooting and assistance via e-mail for the miners for a few months after we ship them. These units are not made in china and mass produced, meaning there was a lot of attention to detail and quality put into them. As for a warrantee, the only guarantee we offer is that it will arrive tested and working. If you want a warrantee, we will sell you one for an additional $2,000 per unit. We did not order a lot of extra parts, and did not mark up the price of the units to cover in house repairs, shipping, extra modules, Etc. The cost of building single run replacement modules is very expensive. If you don’t have a little electronics tinkering experience the VX-1 miner probably isn’t the machine for you. Not that we foresee any problems, but we don’t make promises we cannot keep.
- So in short NO WARRANTY!
Q: How do i know this is not a scam?
A: Please go back to whatever forum you crawled out from. There is a reason we did not advertise on your forum. We're too old to deal with snot nosed kids with their "the world is out to get me" mentality. We have 200 units as of now, We have full confidence they will all be sold without having to deal with you.
- OK, this is really starting to remind me of someone defending his thread here..... Hmm, food for thoughts don't you think.
2 Old genius's that live in a town of only 800 and don't care about reputation.
That means they don't need the money, so why the sale?
Now, apart from ALL of the above there is also a few little things I kind of noticed....
First, TheObserver is a Drupal man, and so are the VX guys.... What do you know.......
Also, the vx domain was registered on 25/01 BUT
their earliest news are on the 24/01........
Wait what is this?:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=429956.msg4706201#msg4706201Is this on the 24th of January?
??
WHAT, get the f*** out of here!
FOR REAL?
?
So I hope you found this to be an interesting read
and especially HELPFUL.
If it was helpful to you or even saved you money,
you can always return the favor with a small tip
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