I thought Jody's "you'll get your units by June" post sounded a bit testy.  No matter how overwhelmed customer service is right now, she's the General Manager and her comments should be calm and reassuring.  The order management software, the updated shipping options, the shipping cartons all should have been in place already because they were supposed to start shipping this week. 

What kind of clusterfuck would it have been if the assembled units had arrived at BFL this week and the order management software and updated shipping options weren't online and no-one had been told to send back their FPGAs?  While they may be dependent on outside contractors for the technical stuff, there's no excuse for their internal administrative stuff not being ready to go.

Nice plane.

He said "...to be back here in Aus again on the 23rd." which suggests he'll be back in Australia on 23 February.

2355 Australian time on Saturday 23rd (which would just barely count as arriving back here on Saturday) is 0655 Kansas City time on Saturday 23rd - but that's the time he'd be arriving back in Australia, not the time he'd be leaving the US.  The flight is at least 18 hours and could be more depending on what route he's taking, so he'd have to depart Kansas City by 1300 Friday Kansas City time - so set it to that.

That's wrong.  In order to arrive back here on 23 February Australian time, he'd have to leave the US either late Friday night or early Saturday morning our time at the latest (it's a really long flight).  If he was to leave the US midnight Friday our time, that's less than 54 hours away - unless the bumping facility pulls it's finger out, he's not even going to see any chips get tested.

The liquidator estimated that the combined value of BTC and USD in the Bitcoinica MtGox account/s was $500,000 based on the information with which he'd been provided and he was waiting for MtGox to confirm that - but that estimate was based on BTC being worth USD 11.

There was $85,181 in Bitcoinica's bank accounts and there should be no impediment to the liquidator obtaining control over those funds.

According to the first report, the value of Bitcoin claims was roughly five times that of USD claims.  At today's rates, the 65,057 BTC claimed are now worth almost $2 million, compared to the $765,000 they were worth in November.

One potentially problematic issue is that although 40,000 BTC were stolen in the MtGox intrusion, only 20,000 BTC were returned.  Although more USD was returned than was stolen ($60,000 more), movements in Bitcoin price since then mean those missing Bitcoins now have a value of ~USD 600,000.

Obviously, it matters a lot whether the majority of remaining Bitcoinica funds held on MtGox are held as BTC or USD - and that information is currently unavailable.

As pointed out by MPOE-PR, MtGox could actually refuse to acknowledge the authority of the NZ liquidator and choose instead to acknowledge the authority of the California court if the Cartmell plaintiffs prevail and seek domestication in Japan of the California court's order (which you can almost guarantee will happen if MtGox still holds Bitcoinica's funds when the California action is decided).

Tom's claim of "thousands" of refunds still to be processed is dubious (it may have been thousands including the CC refunds which were already processed by Dave).

Dave's post of 27 January is probably more accurate.


In Dave's final post on Tom's forum on 2 February, he said that about 40 people hadn't responded to requests for a Bitcoin payment address.

It's Wednesday afternoon here in Australia now.  If kano's going to be back here in Australia on Saturday 23rd, then he hasn't got much time left in the US - the journey back takes the best part of a day.

Wouldn't parity with the price per ounce of pot be more relevant? 

By now, BFL should have a very good idea of how many of each type of unit they're going to assemble from batch 1.  I suspect they know damned well that however they choose to allocate those first 6,000 chips is going to be controversial and that they'll hold off letting customers know how many of each unit will be shipping in Batch 1 until the last possible moment.

From what little Josh has said in the last few days, they're going to test with some unpackaged chips once the bumping is done.

They should have stuck with the original plan of Josh baby-sitting the chips once they left the fab - at least then BFL might have some clue what's going on. As it stands, Josh doesn't even know what's going on at the bumping facility because he can't get in touch with his contact.  

kano's silence is also deafening.  He's over in the US to report to the community on BFL's progress and hasn't posted anything since he got there.

Jody's putting the shipping date for BFL orders made now at May-June.  This means that when BFL ships, those people who want to use their discount vouchers in order to be "compensated" for the original delay are going to have to wait at least 2-3 months for delivery of their additional units.  They can't wait until BFL has caught up with production to order as the vouchers expire within 60 days.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody/85-perennial-question-when-will-my-order-ship.html

Hope kano can change his return flight then because it doesn't sound like there's going to be much to see in Kansas City this week.

You do realise that anyone can read your post history, don't you?  I check post histories all the time if someone posts something which sounds sketchy or batshit insane just to get an idea of whether it's a one-off or whether it's consistent behaviour.  Some people stick mostly to couple of forums, so even if they've been here a while I mightn't run across them until they post in a forum I frequent.

Someone apply for the Communications Director - North America job at BFL so customers can get timely, accurate updates.

http://butterflylabs.com/jobs/

Didn't Josh say they ran simulations?

Josh has become very skilled at delaying updates which are due at the end of the week until after the weekend and those which are due at the beginning of the week until the end of the week.

He was "hoping to find out" on Saturday whether the bumping facility was actually processing BFL's order or just preparing the equipment in order to process it. 

Even if he announced today that the chips have left the bumping facility for the packaging facility, it's pretty obvious that BFL is not going to ship this week.  The question is how long Josh believes he can put off announcing another delay before BFL customers lose their shit.

Is there even going to be anything to show kano apart from boxes and fans before his return flight?

The way things are shaping up, there's likely to be at least one more difficulty jump before BFL customers start receiving their orders.

They are being tested, albeit only for a day plus a short burn-in before shipping.


Remember that the next 6,000 chips don't have all the layers completed yet.  Those chips are their back up plan if this first batch fail (and yes, there would be a further delay).

An update on what's going on at the bumping facility is way overdue.

Perhaps more interestingly, he would have had to provide evidence of income to secure the finance.