If I was a cynic, I'd suspect that MtGox is trying to avoid handing Bitcoinica funds over to the liquidator while the Cartmell et al lawsuit is in progress so that whatever Bitcoinica funds they hold will be available to satisfy any judgement awarded by the California court.

Agath, were you purely a customer or were you also one of the original investors Tom spoke of?

It's not that people don't care about the information, it's about having a way to make the information useful.  

Josh's recent posts have said that the earliest the bumping facility will process BFL's order is 14 February. 


What's not clear is how any slip in the bumping facility schedule will affect the other steps.  Josh said they'd give people at least 7 days notice to ship back their FPGAs, so that should happen in the next couple of days if they're going to meet the 22 February target date.

Chrome Version 24.0.1312.57 m with Win 7.

I have the most problem with errors between about 1900 and 2200 UTC but the forum is often very laggy during the day my time (which is overnight UTC).

Dave should know whether there were any $115,000 wire payments awaiting refund.

I don't disagree with the sentiment.  I just think that if you have a business which is toddling along very nicely and where you're not attracting any undue attention then you need to make a risk/reward assessment before you decide to play vigilante. 

The amount which would be available for return to Tom's customers would likely be very small but the pools would be with-holding those funds from Tom and redistributing them without any legal authority (your employer can't just give your wages to a creditor because they don't like the fact that you haven't paid your bills - they need legal authority in the form of a garnishee order to do it).

You also have the issue of how a pool is meant to validate claims.  Without access to Dave's list of those who are still owed refunds, there is no way to verify that those who claim they are owed refunds by Tom are legitimate.

I have no issue with services black-balling known scammers and refusing to do business with them - it's just problematic to enforce given the large number of services which allow their customers to remain anonymous.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that Tom is effectively "judgement-proof" and has no significant assets beyond whatever is sitting in his BTC wallets - and we really have no idea of how many wallets he has or their addresses.  Unless he has BTC-related accounts which are tied to his real life identity, denying him access to those accounts through civil law means is going to be difficult (law enforcement has far more options in this respect).

I think it's wise to remember that at least one criminal complaint has been filed in respect of Tom's activities and more will likely follow.  The scope of those investigations may well extend to his earnings from mining pools, so it's in the interest of pool operators to maintain "clean hands" at this point.

For the record, I'm not necessarily endorsing it - just explaining it.  Obviously it's a scheme which only benefits those who order additional units from BFL before the vouchers expire, so people have to spend more money with BFL in order to receive any compensation.  It's a simple model from BFL's point of view and one which will stimulate more sales.


No I'm not.  I think ASIC vendors are the only ones who'll benefit from the mining hardware arms race and miners themselves are going to just get locked into a vicious cycle of having to spend more and more money on hardware to retain the same share of the mining pie.  That's one reason I think the fanboy-ism is so ridiculous.  The arrival of ASICs will effectively lock many people out of mining and that has implications for Bitcoin as a whole.

Josh has actually explained BFL's reasoning on doing it this way.  Essentially, it's that the people who ordered in the first two months are being compensated for not having their units before the block reward halved.  He maintains that customers who ordered later will be no more disadvantaged than they would have been had BFL delivered on time (because the block reward would have halved by the time they got their units and difficulty would have increased after the shipping of the first batch of orders anyway).

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/984-%5Bcustomer-appreciation%5D-discount-early-orderers-5.html#post14252

The minute any Bitcoin business starts freezing coins we're back to the whole "taint" argument, and all its implications. Even simply refusing to do business with known scammers only works in an environment where proof of identity is required.

Taking possession of earnings for distribution to someone else is dodgy legal ground (you need some kind of court or statutory authority to do it in the real world) and I doubt any Bitcoin businesses want the potential headaches.

I thought they were only refunding people whose orders never completed - ie, those who sent a "place-holder" payment but who never sent the remainder of the funds required to complete their order.

I'm not surprised.  By law every single wire transfer into or out of Australia must be reported to AUSTRAC, regardless of the amount involved.  I'd be kind of worried right now if I was your friend given that the transaction has obviously set off flags at the receiving end as well.

Apparently Bitcoinpro doesn't realise that his friend is going to have to establish his identity in order to take anyone to court. 

Check post history.

So how does your friend manage to function in Australia given that you require 100 points of ID for bank accounts, driver's licences, dealing with Centrelink, Medicare and the ATO, etc, etc?  If he's over 18 - and MtGox requires that their users be over 18 - then it shouldn't be hard for him to verify his identity.  It is actually pretty suspicious if he can't.

Lawsuits are about money, not principle. He couldn't have picked a worse jurisdiction if it's "about the principle" - awards of punitive damages are uncommon in Australia.  Our legal system is also pretty intolerant of frivolous legal actions.

What court is he filing in and what is his cause of action?  I will laugh at you if you say it's small claims.

Pirate was capable of using capital letters and punctuation.  Interesting to see someone trying to operate a clone through Craigslist, though.

The discounts on future orders for those who ordered in July and August have been announced.


https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/984-%5Bcustomer-appreciation%5D-discount-early-orderers-2.html#post14168

It might be annoying, but it's not particularly unusual for small companies these days to do the majority of their customer support electronically.  Routing phone calls to voicemail means that you can prioritise call-backs and make them at a time when you don't need to focus on other tasks.  Answering routine phone calls from customers is likely not the most effective use of Dave's time when those questions could easily be answered by Josh on the BFL forums or by an email to Jody.

Phone-based customer support is massively expensive, which is one reason it's often out-sourced by larger companies.

Have BFL told people to start sending back their FPGAs yet?  They said they would do this at least 7 days before shipping ASICs so it needs to happen in the next few days if they're planning to ship on 22 February.