Please forgive me for not noticing the answer to my question if it's in another thread already.  But...

I understand that Gridseed makes the Scrypt ASICs, but do they also fabricate complete boards using these chips?  Why is anybody buying from asiabtc if they could go to Gridseed instead?

I don't follow your logic re: my alleged ignorance of hardware wallets, given my initial statement.  Nevertheless it's irrelevant to my argument because unless the loss rate from using HW <= 0 the total quantity of BTC will still eventually begin a decline.

I'll agree that storing wallets on "virus-infected PCs" is a bad idea.  So don't do that.  But it's hardly something that _everybody_ knows.

"How did this happen? Who's to blame? Certainly there are those who are more responsible than others. And they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty you need only look into a mirror." - V

Yes, it will pass $10,000, but I can't tell you exactly when lest I get droned.  Never forget that BTC are constantly being destroyed as holders of them die, forget passwords, watch as their disk drives die, or whatever.  I cannot quantity this but it's certain to be happening.  As the number of users rises the rate at which coins die, never to be resurrected, will surpass the quantity created via mining.  Therefore the total quantity of BTC will begin to decline.

You are responsible for doing your own homework.  Nobody else is.

One element of fraud that I've seen surprisingly little suggestion of is, that the c/e/r/t/a/i/n/t/y/ the possibility that they were doing extensive mining with customer equipment before finally shipping it.  Although this seems a bit slimy to me, it also seems like a rather slippery thing to pin to them.

I think it would be a ton of fun to use the discovery process to pick apart what's privately known about this story.  What smoking-gun emails are there?  If these guys are pros, then they probably saved their darkest communication for face-to-face or on-their-knees encounters.  But there would be plenty of external email from their vendors that can more clearly establish the circumstances of requests, timing, reason for and actual existence of delays, etc.   It would be easy to demonstrate that various BFL spokesmen were l/y/i/n/g/ /s/a/c/k/s/ /o/f/ /s/h/i/t/ systematically knowingly far from truthful over a long period of time.

It would also be a lot of fun to reconstruct the timeline of "where were the chips?"  When did BFL finally get their hands on which batches?  How were they tested?  How long did that take?  Were they _able_ to do mining at this step?  Then what?  Were these chips _ever_ the bottleneck in production?  Were they innocently sitting in a big pile in a warehouse while other bottlenecks were dealt with?  Continue this into their attachment to the PCBs and then assembly into the final equipment most of the customers eventually received.  If you watch this closely I predict you'd find large quantities of chips available for ill use over a long duration.  Somebody will have a lot of 'splainin' to do about why these chips were sitting the in the warehouse doing nothing while the customers are screaming for fulfillment.

And don't even get me started on the order of shipments.

<sarc>I love the general idea of cloud mining.</sarc>

Let me see now... The customer is supposed to send them some money and then can login and watch some application that purports to be mining on their behalf.  The customer can withdraw their BTC as a matter of prudence, even if many of them will not.  As long as the inflow of new BTC is greater than the redemption, whoever the man behind the curtain is, he doesn't actually need to do any real mining.  Or perhaps he can fudge the numbers and "exaggerate" a bit.

Who is Nimbus?  What is their connection to BFL?  How can they assure anybody of the legitimacy of their mining operation?  How can we trust a business that depends upon timely delivery of BFL vaporware?  IMHO, this has Ponzi written all over it.

I agree that to date they have (mostly) delivered hardware that matches the original order.  But, the hardware is chronically late.  My two orders were both about 10 months late.  10 months of difficulty increase was the difference between gold mine and door stop.  I allege that they used the chips and/or my machines for mining during these months and therein lies part of the scam.  The other part comes from their endless promises about "almost here".  They have a long, long track record of broken promises.  How are the November deliveries of the Monarch working out?  August 2013 tapeout?  Come on!  I can't wait to see the power and cooling morass the Monarchs are going to spawn and the endless delays thereby justified.

Hello fellow n00bs,

I've noticed that BFL only seems to advertise their vaporware products on the n00b section.  There are reasons why and I'd encourage you all to do you homework to form your own opinions about what those reasons may be.  A good place to start would be https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=150803.0

If you click on their advertising and look at their "Monarch" vaporware you can see that it's a fairly simple rendering of somebody's imagination.  Good luck finding a picture or video of an actual working chip, much less a working device, because they may not really exist.  In the experience of many, including me, their customer service is legendarily non-existent and guess why they only accept payment that is non-refundable?  No more credit cards or Paypal for them.  I suppose too many forced refunds?

BFL's clearly discernible pattern is to promise, promise, promise delivery at some vague point in the implied near future, maybe in "two weeks",  and then find one problem after another thus delaying delivery.  Maybe they're just total dipshits and this is difficult work to do and they really _believe_ what they're saying.  Nobody can get inside their minds and know for sure, but a possible alternate explanation is that they're scammers. 

Another theory of their apparent fraud is that they mine with the chips and completed devices for their own benefit and delay delivery to the end-users as long as they possibly can.  By the time you get your little fingers on one of these devices, 99% of the BTC it will ever generate in its lifetime has already been taken.  Enjoy the scraps my friends!

A central premise of a major faction of the cryptocoin community is that cryptocoins are so decentralized that the forces of darkness can never get their chains around it.  But we can already see that premise deteriorating with BTC, specifically, and SHA-256 mining in general. One force keeping these things as "honest" as they are is the myriad of other coins and algorithms waiting to step into the void of the demise of the former.

On the most general level the cryptocoin movement has spread the entire concept of monetary freedom and competition on an enormous scale.  That's the genie that's going to be most difficult to put back in the cage. The fact that this resulting blizzard of coins is difficult for us to understand personally, makes it also difficult for the evil ones as well.

Imagine a system whereby a handful of unaccountable government institutions ran all food production and distribution.  Nobody grows a garden and only food-launderers and terrorists build farms. The managers of this system eat well, but there's an amazing scarcity for everybody else. Why is money any different?  Cryptocoins give us a way out of this pigsty.  We need more farms, and farmers, and people who know how to manage the farming enterprise, not fewer, IMHO.

It is indisputable that a proliferation of coins is occurring.  The ease of entry ensures that many more will spring to life.  The community will grow and adapt and learn how to deal with whatever issues arise. Don't you think it would be better to learn to deal with these issues than to just try to stop the tide?

1. No one asked you to make the coin.
2. Several people have asked you not to.

and therefore....

/s/h/e/'/s/ /a/ /w/i/t/c/h/, You shouldn't be paid?

I'm sorry, but I don't follow the logic here.  Nor am I "demanding" to be paid.  Everybody is free to decide what, if anything, they want to do with this coin.

As far as refraining from making a coin, why?  This whole cryptocoin enterprise is a grand experiment in monetary freedom and competition.  It's hardly run its course and there are already big concentrations of existing power emerging.  Why snip this in the bud now?

I have these skills as well and I'm busy grinding away at the pieces of it.  I do think this effort can go farther and faster with other developers, hence my invitation here.  And I'll admit that I'm not "loaded" and any benefit other developers will get in joining the party will come from the fun, the learning, and the pre-mining.  After further consideration there's nothing wrong with pre-mining.  It's in the open for all to see and judge for themselves.

Ok, so, enough talk.  Time for action.  Here are some skills that I need now:

1. I need somebody who knows Unix admin.  I have a VPS now that's very suitable for getting started.  I want to establish a beginning website, a public forum, and a private forum.  I want to setup a git repository there.  I need this reasonably secure.  Nobody cares to attack this at this time, but no need to leave the front door unlocked.

2. I need a build system.  I need somebody who's willing to figure out how to install QT Creator and other development tools we'll need on a Unix system, and get it working with the git repository.  We also need to figure out how to build and run the testing.

3. I need a mining pool.  There is probably open source code for this.  I need somebody to find this, install it, test it.  Make it work.

4. I need an exchange site solely for the purpose of exchanging BTC and the new mystery coin.  Again, there's probably open source code for this.  Let's figure out how to do this.

5. I need some private debate about some of the technical details of the coin such as the mining algorithm.  I'm leaning towards Scrypt because I don't want a handful of ASIC coin rapers jumping on this too quickly.  How can we keep this coin more accessible to a wider base of smaller miners?

"What is money?" and "how does it work?" are two more deep questions and I'm hardly the guru re: either of them.

I think that "ordinary users" who only want these coins so they can buy things are having a very difficult time understanding this system and keeping it at least as secure as their ordinary bank and credit cards.  I think this provides a serious limit to the utility of cryptocoins for that purpose.

I think that the value of any money comes from the fact that other people want it.  Why do other people want BTC, USD, AU, Pb, booze, women, or whatever?  Who knows. That's a matter of crowd psychology that I can't answer.  But we can observe that this happens.  If everybody decided they no longer wanted any of those things, and they all ran for the door at once, then the value of those things would plummet.

Very few people can properly and deftly deal with multi-currency accounting.  (Which is one of the issues my effort is dealing with.)  This includes most merchants and merchant software.  Although a handful of places accept BTC (% wise) how many take any other 2nd tier coin? (I'm lookin' at you LTC, PPC)  Very few.  I just don't see how the blizzard of other coins is going to work it's way into that ecosystem.

However, if you're holding these coins as an investment, however speculative that may be at this time, it's likely that you'll deal with much larger quantities, and it would therefore make more sense to expend the effort to deal with multi-currency accounting.  That's why, IMHO, the best use of these coins will ultimately prove to be as a store of value.  If so, then there's a very large market that can accommodate many, many coins.

Very funny. Nobody works for free.  Do you?  The balance between individual self-interest and community is a deep question and I don't think this forum is the place to get to the bottom of that issue. The "community" is strengthened as more people are drawn into developmental roles and as new coins are created.  We all stand on the shoulders giants and I pray to St. Satoshi every night before bed.  But there's a fair amount of infrastructure required to launch a new coin and he's not answering my email to help out, hence my search here.

I see your point.  However, I don't think these goals are mutually exclusive.  Nevertheless, the decision to pre-mine has not yet been made.

What other methods would you envision to compensate the developers and early-adopters?

Premine

Fail

?

What's wrong with that?  Don't the developers deserve some piece of the action?

The rulz? Like these rulz?

1.- We want to know the real name and resume of current developers (previous experience, etc.)
30 years of software development experience and 3 years with the crypto coins.  PM me and let's talk. I'm a bit hesitant to just throw my personal details into the public arena at this time, but if I trust you then you'll find all the answers you want.

2.- We want they to talk about his work directly to the community and answer our question
What questions? Ask me questions in public or PM me.

3.- The code must be public
It totally will be.

4.- We want to know the expectations of the developers (1 month / 6 months / 1 year)
Over the next month we'll talk, think and plan.  During the next six months we can get the basic infrastructure of the source code, testing, blockchain, mining pool(s) and other random goodies established.  Next year?  I don't know, that's a long time from now.

5.- The coin must have some code innovations, new ideas or a huge community behind
Got that! PM and let's talk!

6.- What will you do to ensure the commercial viability of your coin? What is the plan of ensuring diffusion? How will you convince businesses to adopt your coin?
The primary value in any of these coins is as a store of value.  Expecting random businesses to accept any of these myriads of coins is a pipe-dream, IMHO.

Hello Folks,

I have a novel idea for a new cryptocoin that I am presently developing.  This is a project that's bigger than I and I thus /s/e/e/k/ /t/h/e/ /f/i/n/e/s/t/ /a/n/d/ /t/h/e/ /b/r/a/v/e/s/t/ / /k/n/i/g/h/t/s/ /i/n/ /t/h/e/ /l/a/n/d/ am looking for other developers who would like to lend a hand in this effort and share in the harvest.

I realize that the world needs another cryptocoin like it needs another politician and that you've probably grown weary of hearing bigger-than-Facebook claims.  Nevertheless, the angles of the cryptocoins are not yet fully exploited and I think I've found a new wrinkle that's worth exploring.  And ideas don't have to become bigger than Facebook in order to be worth the effort.

I intend to engage in pre-mining (maybe 2%-4%) with a select, and ever widening circle of early adopters, until such time as it's ready for prime time.  At worst you'll have a lot of fun working on some fascinating materials, and at best ... well, who knows how far this might go?

I need the ordinary mix of talents such as Unix admin, C++, Qt Creator, somebody who does Windows, etc. If you have any mix of this, please /j/o/i/n/ /m/e/ /i/n/ /m/y/ /c/o/u/r/t/ /a/t/ /C/a/m/e/l/o/t/ PM me and let's start talking.

Thanks!

I'm in a similar boat myself.  Welcome to the Monkey House!