Hi everyone,

Happy April!

We are gearing up for a public launch of the physical bitcoin "cards" (aka "Loaded PURE Series") later this month.

For the last four years, Ballet has been selling "empty" cold storage wallets... And now, buy selling "loaded" physical bitcoins to would-be investors, this is new territory for us!

We obviously are appreciative if the collectors community, especially all of you in this forum. However, for the long term success (and longevity) of Ballet, we cannot merely cater to collectors, and have to tap a broader market. This is the fundamental reason that we are shifting to selling bitcoin in physical form. (We will soon also offer buy-back service, where investors can sell their physical Ballet bitcoins to us, and we will send them the proceeds to their bank accounts.)

Our mission is to enable a greater part of the population to invest and HODL Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency), and that's why we started Ballet over four years ago, and that's why we are now shifting to selling bitcoin directly to consumers and investors, in physical and tangible form.

*** CALL TO ACTION ***

Come join our mission and help us make a successful launch of this new business:
Encourage YOUR OWN friends & family, to buy bitcoin as an investment, and buy it directly from Ballet (rather than using the traditional route of buying on an exchange and withdrawing it after).

Remember, even after you buy from Ballet, you can still directly transfer the bitcoin out of the Ballet cards, and onto whatever hardware/software wallet you prefer. There's absolutely NO OBLIGATION for you to hold your bitcoins in the Ballet cards, even though many people may choose to just leave them on Ballet until when they're ready to sell.

Please help us out! Buy some physical bitcoins yourself, and also refer your friends and family to:
https://bitcoin.ballet.com/


thanks,
Bobby

Hi everyone!

It’s been a long while since I last visited and posted here. We’ve been busy with our business at Ballet, and now we have something fun to share with this amazing community here:



We are happy to announce here that Ballet will soon be launching the sale of physical bitcoins, similar to the loaded Casascius coins of the early days, but this time in a metal, credit card form factor (just like the Ballet cold storage wallets). This new product is called the Loaded PURE Bitcoin, and buyers will receive actual “physical” bitcoin in the mail, held and stored safely in these loaded cards. What Mike Caldwell had to stop with Casascius coins ten years ago, we are now restarting at Ballet!

There are four denominations available, which are 0.1, 0.025, 0.01, and 0.005 BTC.

This new way to buy bitcoin allows you to skip the hassle and risks of using an exchange. (And also there’s no need to request to withdraw the BTC from the exchange after the purchase!) No account creation is needed although there is still a need for KYC for higher value transactions. This Ballet product is a truly safe and convenient way to invest in and accumulate bitcoin, by directly holding it in physical cold storage. Your keys, your bitcoin.

Due to regulatory restrictions, the product is initially only available for sale in 25 states in the United States. (These 25 states are: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. This list is subject to change, and we will continue to work on expanding the coverage area to additional states in the future.)

If you reside in one of the states where this is available, we would greatly appreciate it if you could help us test the product and purchase process, by giving it a try and sharing your feedback on the experience.

After the order is placed, we will send you the PURE Bitcoin card. Once you have received the package, please use the Ballet Crypto app to confirm that you have received the card, and then the bitcoin will be loaded onto the card. (For a few states, the cards will be shipped pre-loaded for compliance reasons, and those shipments will be insured accordingly.)

We accept payment by credit card, debit card, and ACH bank transfer. Payment by wire transfer will also be added soon. We will also consider adding payment by BTC if there’s sufficient interest. Please note: the bitcoin price is locked in at the time of purchase. (Due to the volatile nature of bitcoin prices, refunds and returns are not accepted, but we will offer a buy-back policy for people to sell back their bitcoin purchase if they’re not satisfied with the product.)

To place an order for “Loaded PURE Bitcoin”, please visit:
https://bitcoin.ballet.com

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at:
support@ballet.com

Hope you like this new product, and that you can help us test it! Please share your comments and feedback here in this thread. Long live Bitcoin!

thanks,
Bobby

On a happy note, I'm pleased to announce that the PURE Series is finally being released! They will be released within the next 24 hours (at around 10:00 pm Eastern Time, on Thursday, July 22).

The first product:




This above is the PURE Series Signature Set, and will consist of the 2 cards in the wooden case: the One Bitcoin and the One-Tenth Bitcoin. The cards are not loaded; and then intention is for the customer to load the BTC themselves, in the denomination amount.

The price of this PURE Series Signature Set is USD $499. And there is a limited edition, with 500 sets total worldwide.


And now we also have:



This above is just the PURE Series One-Tenth Bitcoin, and it will ship in our thick acrylic display case. (The same display case as shipped with the Gold-plated Bull Market wallets.)

The price of the PURE Series One-Tenth Bitcoin is USD $99.

---

IMPORTANT NOTE

We have a very limited supply of both products. For this launch, we will be selling these on an invite-only basis. We are giving invite codes to existing owners of PURE Series products who have already purchased via our pre-sale and auction. You will see the invite codes using the Ballet Crypto app. Make sure your PURE Series card is already added to your app by scanning it, and then once you open the card, you'll see an "Invite" button right below your virtual card.

For those of you who have already purchased (via auction or pre-sale) and received the PURE Series Signature Set, you will get a total of 4 invite codes. There will be 2 invite codes assigned to your PURE Series One Bitcoin card, and 2 more invite codes assigned to your One-Tenth Bitcoin card.

For those you who have already purchased (from Miami conference) and received the PURE Series One-Tenth Bitcoin card, you will get a total of 3 invite codes.

You will need a valid and unused invite code for every PURE Series item you purchase on our store:
https://store.balletcrypto.com/   (The items will be listed there by launch time.)

If you have extra invite codes, you're welcome to share them with your family or friends, or share them here for people in the forum to use.

Enjoy!

thanks,
Bobby

My opinion:

I think it's fine when you all have high standards, and want high quality products. That's absolutely fair.
And when a company doesn't deliver the high quality products to your expectations, it's absolutely fine to complain, and demand better. You should always have a choice to not purchase the defective/sub-standard product.

That said, what's NOT fair, is to troll and attack people personally.
If the company doesn't perform, blame the company. (Don't blame an individual; don't blame the messenger who's trying to help communicate issues.)

In that trolling image from 2018, you troll BTCC, and you make it a personal attack by putting my name there.
That's not cool, and that's why I took it personally.

Be mature. If you want an engaging conversation and long term relationship, then pay the respect. No one is asking you to be a yes-man. If you just whine and demand the world, then at best, expect to be treated like a child, or at worst, you'll be ignored.

I've taken time to explain the background of the situation. No one would come to a conclusion that any of the mistakes or mishaps were intentional on our part. It's all about how we handle the aftermath. Yes, I realize that. I think we've done our part to give compelling options. And if not, then please be constructive and give me additional options, without sounding like you demand the world.

And stop complaining that I only want yes-man. That's certainly not true, and I welcome debate and discourse. What I don't like, is whining, personal attacks, and slamming personal reputation.

thanks,
Bobby

Hey teeGUMES. 

Very kind and thoughtful of you for sharing your real thoughts about me and BTCC Mint!
You really did a good job with that photoshop. And wow, I gotta say, I'm saddened and disappointed.

And I'll remember to never invite you to any future private steak dinners I organize.

I'd like to take this opportunity to ask the rest of the collectibles forum:
If all of you indeed also share teeGUMES thoughts, please let me know, and I'll happily no longer service this market, and refrain from marketing any future Ballet products to you all. (Yes, we have some new PURE Series products coming out.)

If on the other hand, some/many of you appreciate both my contributions to this market and my time spent here, then I call on you to refute teeGUMES and the negativity he's trying to inspire.

Trolling online is so easy...  Can you all be constructive instead?
Yes, there is free speech here.

If no one wants to call out the ridiculousness of the these bashing and negative comments, then this might as well be my last post.

thanks,
Bobby

Thank you minerjones for explaining the 4 options.

We realize that these are not perfect solutions, but we just don't have any other choices. Please let me add some more color by giving you some perspective:

There are 2 types of damages:
A) the gilt that peels/falls off, caused by an imperfect manufacturing process.
B) the scratches on the card, caused by the cards falling out from the packaging during shipment.

As mentioned, we were quite surprised and caught off guard by both of these above issues. On behalf of Ballet, I want to personally apologize to all of you about the above 2 issues.

for (A), we've worked closely with our vendor of the pure silver cards, and just could not come up with a suitable and satisfactory solution for the "gold" gilt on the BTC letter. Our solution is to forgo the gilt completely, and just ship a pure silver product. I know it's a compromise, but that's the best we can think of, other than to cancel the product altogether, and not ship anything.

So for existing customers who've already purchased the sets, we can either offer you a full refund or a replacement (option 2 above), remove the gilt at our facility (option 3), or teach you how to do it yourself (option 4). Of course, you're welcome to just keep it as is, and yours will be unique, and there are only 21 sets out there made like that.

For the replacement, unfortunately, the serial numbers cannot be replicated. We have a strict company policy to never replicate serial numbers for the private key stickers. This policy is to ensure the integrity of the manufacturing process and the overall security of our 2-factor key generation process. For these reasons, and also because of manufacturing complexities, we CANNOT and WILL NOT remake wallets to utilize the SAME serial numbers (either with the same OR different private keys & public addresses). This is a company decision, and we are just not willing to cross that bridge.

for (B), this was also unanticipated and we are regretful that this happened, causing scratches on cards for some of you. We have since improved the packaging for shipment, adding a foam layer inside the box, to prevent the same issue of the wallet cards being shaken out of the acrylic box during shipment.

Regardless of the (A) or (B) issue, our best offer is to give you a full refund. You can ask for a replacement, but do know that it will be without the gilt, and that the serial number will no longer be in the range of #01-21.

Just remember: if you ARE NOT satisfied with what you got, then you are welcome to return the product for a full refund. If you ARE satisfied and DO decide to keep it, then please understand that it's your decision to do so. In other words, we are NOT FORCING any of you to keep and accept a dissatisfactory product.

As a company, we try our best to make GREAT products to satisfy everyone. But the reality is that at times, we fall short, and we are regretful of that. We learn from our mistakes, and try to improve in the future. That's the best I can promise you.

And lastly, I founded Ballet to make crypto easy for everyday people. To be clear, we did NOT create Ballet to solely serve the collectables market. Yes, some of our products are special and limited, which some collectors like. Most of our products were made for mass-market adoption. As a company, it's a fine balance, to serve the mass market audience, and also offer some nicer products for collectors.

I know that some of you have expressed that you'll never want to buy any collectibles from Ballet anymore, and you're certainly entitled to your decision. We will continue to release new products, of which some will certainly interest this collectors audience, so I hope you will continue to stay as our loyal customer. (On the other hand, if one day no one cares to buy our collectibles products, then we will simply stop making them.)

For those of you who seem to think that we are putting profit above customer service, it's really not so simple. As a company, we are still loss-making, and not profitable. Our decision above is not for profit reasons, and I've already explained why we will not remake duplicate serial numbers. (So far, we are not even close to making a profit in selling these 21 sets of PURE Bitcoin.)

Now that you have a better understanding of my perspective, I welcome your feedback and would like to hear further constructive suggestions from all of you. Please let me know.

Thank you all for your time and understanding.

cheers,
Bobby

A very tough question indeed...

If you do peel, I highly recommend for you to get a Ballet wallet and use that to sweep the funds.
Our Ballet wallets will help you split out all of the fork coins, and then allow you to properly send them out (exchange, sell, etc) easily.
We even have built-in integration with Changelly and ChangeNow to allow you to quickly exchange your fork coins to another crypto (such as BTC).

Just my 2 cents.  (Yes, I'm biased about Ballet, but I'm sure many other forum members here can attest to the usefulness of using Ballet wallets as an intermediate tool for peeling & sweeping physical bitcoins.) 

So if you do choose to peel your Cas, please give Ballet a try.  You won't be disappointed; and I'll personally give you a money-back guarantee on the Ballet wallet you buy.   

https://store.balletcrypto.com/

The 2 cards are each in its own acrylic container, then placed inside the wooden box (pictured).
The 2 cards are side by side.

Then the wooden box is placed in a black colored outer thin cardboard box.
(This is similar to the premium items from BTCC Mint, back in days.)

Hi all,

This allocation of the "888" subset was mainly intended for the China market, where they prize the "888" numeric sequence, as it means wealth and fortune.

We decided to first offer these 21 serial numbers to the BitcoinTalk collector community. Any that's not bid on will then be sent over for sale locally in China.

Let me know if any of you have further questions on this!

thanks,
Bobby

We just noticed a silly typo in this list:

For these 2015 N-Series Bitcoin Blocks, the year was previously listed as 2016.
Now it's been fixed and corrected back to "2015".

thanks,
Bobby

Hi SatsLife,

Thank you for asking this very important question. I can tell you that for both of these wallets (serial numbers AA009926 and AA012381) were taken from the manufacturing / production process in Las Vegas. In other words, these two wallets were manufactured in the exact same was as the thousands of other Ballet wallets, and went through the exact same process and procedures.

These two wallets were NOT especially made for my hacking contest, nor were they "hardened" for security against hacking.
In fact, what I did was actually made them EASIER to hack, as I fully revealed one of the two critical components for each of the wallets: the BIP38 passphrase, and the encrypted private key.

And to directly answer your question: it wouldn't make sense for me to send you 1 BTC to your Ballet wallet, as that's essentially me giving you the 1 BTC, right?
Or unless you want to return that wallet to me, for my safekeeping, and for me to load some more BTC on it, for a hacking contest?


In any case, the purpose of my hacking contest is to show that:

1) our wallets uses 2-factor private keys, which happen to be made (and generated) in different geographic locations, and that these 2 components don't even come together at all during the manufacturing process.

2) due to the nature of BIP38 encrypted private keys, since the two components were never mixed together, even we, Ballet, have NEVER constructed the private keys for each of the wallets we make and sell.

3) even if someone were able to steal just 1 of the 2 critical components (either the BIP38 passphrase or the encrypted private key), that in of itself is not enough to hack the wallet, as it'll take an inordinate amount of computing power to guess the other part.


Hope that helps!

thanks,
Bobby

Just to clarify on one point: The next halving is some ~4 years away, and though the current Bitcoin Blocks (6.25+ BTC) are not technically limited in production, we CANNOT commit to having them for sale indefinitely.

If the orders keep coming in, then of course we would like to keep selling them for the next ~4 years.
However, these are highly-priced collector pieces, and the demand is limited....  so it's very likely we'll stop production and sales at some time well ahead of the next block halving.

This means that if you have an intention to buy the current 4-star Bitcoin Block, then please don't make the mistake of waiting 1-2 years, expecting to be able to buy one. It may not be available by then.

Just FYI.

thanks,
Bobby

No, we don't have an artificial cap for the 6.25+ BTC Bitcoin Blocks. However, in practice, there is a limit, as these blocks can only be made until the next halving to 3.125+ BTC.

For the last batch before the halving, we sold 24 of the 12.5+ BTC Blocks.  (Those serial numbers were: AA013001 through AA013024.)

Hope that helps!

thanks,
Bobby

(typo edit: "change" => "chance")
In the small chance that there's a misunderstanding about our delivery process for the Bitcoin Block, let me clarify for everyone:

Once you've purchased and paid for the Bitcoin Block, we ship the block to you as empty. (So Australia is no problem at all.)

And then once you confirm for us that you've received the block, then your block gets queued for mining.

thanks,
Bobby

Yes, if you bring your Bitcoin Block back to our facility in Las Vegas, we'll be happy to laser engrave the block details (height & amount) on it for you.  The criteria is that we cannot take responsibility for shipping it once it's loaded, so that's why you'll need to deliver & pickup in Las Vegas.

Hi Stryfe, Sweeteye,

I see that both of you have ordered from Kickstarter, and we've sent out these items to you today.
In your packages, I've included an extra red envelope packaging, for the one you're missing.
This allows you to complete your set of two: 1 fish + 1 rodent.

thanks,
bobby

hi sweeteye,

1) could you please give me your order number from Ballet company store?

2) did you / will you order from Kickstarter for the REAL Pizza wallets?

Once you reply, I'll find a way to get you a replacement "rodent/rat" slip cover.

thanks,
Bobby

For the auction, the lots will each be a set of 2 wallets, with the following serial number configuration:
SET 1 = AA030001 + AA030101
SET 2 = AA030002 + AA030102
 ......
SET 21 = AA030021 + AA030121

Each lot will have a starting bid of 0.01 BTC

Minerjones will launch the auction for us on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 19 (USA Pacific Time).


The Kickstarter campaign has just gone live a few hours ago. Here's the link again:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/balletcrypto/bitcoin-pizza-day-special-edition-wallet-real-pizza/


thanks,
Bobby

Hi Stryfe,

Very sorry about that. It was a mistake on our logistics end, where we didn't correctly ship you the 2 different styles.

Since you've already backed our Kickstarter campaign, we will send you a replacement slipcase cover along with your kickstarter shipment early next week. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, and congratulations (and thank you!) for being the first to back our Kickstarter campaign.

Cheers,
Bobby