Have you ordered a KnCMiner Titan or Neptune?
Are you fed up with them and are interested in legal action and possibly a class action?

I'm trying to judge whether a class action suit would be a possible. Can you please state what you had ordered and why you would sue them?

Do you know a good lawyer or are a resident in Sweden? It would be helpful to have a contact there.

For example, I ordered a KnCMiner Titan. I am a consumer and would like to get a refund, because their products are unsafe (fire hazard, no CE marking), they have made false representations (Q2/Q3 delivery, 800Watt), and because they act in direct conflict with their customers (Batch 1 vs Batch 2).

My other thread collects information on replies from authorities and lawyers. Please contribute if you can!

Not quite. I think they can guarantee a "performance" that will disappoint. KnC is good at that. And at scamming people.

Their T&C are actually extremely hostile towards customers and I can't help but wonder if that is legal (smells like business misconduct and fraud). As they just got some funding, time for customers to get their money back, right?

I hope they go out of business soon. Maybe time to herd a flock of polar bears towards their mining center and keep them circling? Muhahaha!

Ghostrider, you are clearly crossing a line here.
Defamation has a certain criminal aspect to it. Unless you have evidence to back up your statements you should stop, right here and now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation

That's what I meant saying that Alpha Technology is run by naive youngsters. I was very surprised by their "shares" offer. Working in finance I know that anything related to "investment" is very highly regulated, particularly if you offer it to laymen. You need proper legal advise to do this. They are very foolish if they didn't get legal advise, as they may end up in prison. I don't think they deserve that (yet), as they genuinely tried to get the product out at the beginning.

I wonder if the best turn out is if Alpha Technology goes bankrupt. I think my CC may have to refund me based on section 75 and/or chargeback protection, although the payment went through paypal. There's some controversy, though:

http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/section-75-of-the-consumer-credit-act

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/section75-protect-your-purchases

That's 5 MegaHeadache/s of fun for you...

Yes you did, just as I did. I ordered 5 MH/s or MegaHeadaches/s for a small Viper. But they increased that over time.

Thanks a lot retro72, very much appreciated and the information you have sent to me will come in handy.

Regarding other Q's on here:

• Wayback machine http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://alpha-t.net/terms-order/ is your friend when looking up old/previous T&C or website statements.
• T&C's cannot be changed retroactively without both parties explicitly consenting to it.
• Their T&C as of 9.2.2014 stated “UK customers pay added VAT (on final payment)”. We are not business, that's absolutely clear.
  Offtopic, even KnC may have difficulties to defend their claim that all customers are businesses in court, as many have paid VAT and no proof was asked for.
• If you dig through your email updates from Alpha you'll find loads of broken promises. In fact, it clearly shows that the people in charge are very young and immature when it comes to running a business. Shame on me for not noticing earlier.

No, it was an assumption from my side. Might be worth a try, but other people on here said it didn't work.
So far I have only drafted a letter to Alpha Technology and set them a deadline.

It's my intended route as well. Do you want company on your journey?

What are the experiences of other people? Paypal apparently refuses to refund, so should I try the CC chargeback right away? Or small claims court? I always wanted to know how that works! Yuipee!

Also, retro72 posted a summary of what went wrong and some links to legal advice/bits, but I can't find the link right now. Can anyone post the link to it? This thread is getting a bit unwieldy!

Question: what is speaking against paying by credit card and relying on Section 75 for protection?

1) They don't deliver in a reasonable timeframe (>2-3 months?). I could ask the CC company to refund me.
2) They go bust. Same as 1).
3) They deliver.
3a) I'm happy with the miner and keep it.
3b) Based on DSR I send the miner back within 7 days and ask for a refund. The CC company should be liable if the refund does not happen.

What am I missing?

Edit - maybe I'm on to something here?

Mathematically spoken, softened for Troll-sized brains:

• GER = (total amount of BTC deposited) / (maximum number of STD). The BTC stored are exactly sufficient to pay GER for every STD currently existing or mined in the future.
• GER is monotonously increasing because the exchange sells STD for a price much larger than GER. (I believe that there are some subtleties regarding the multi-pool and hope the dev took care of them!)

Now, let's take your post apart. You realize that you contradict yourself. But you don't care because you Troll.

Your first and wrong statement "And it's true there won't be enough btc to buy back at ger all std" is a direct contradiction to your proof and second paragraph. All miners, IPO and later investors get GER for their STD in your example. So everybody gets the promised GER rate for their STD.

Obviously someone has gotten back less BTC than they had originally paid and effectively net a loss. The GER is a lower bound for the price, not a guarantee that you cannot lose. You'd have to be incredibly stupid to think otherwise.

There will be enough BTC to buy back all STD at GER. He does not need a constant flow of new investments. I might explain it in the next post. It's really quite simple.
=>
Oh ghibly oh ghibly. Trolling at its best. We've been there and discussed it - and you admitted that you didn't understand the math, that you were wrong. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=522874.msg5940664#msg5940664


It all works out for Standardcoin because its exchange pays back LESS BTC than what it got in the first place.
=>
Yep, we've been there as well. Of course, gibly doesn't need math. Because ghibly can't do math, because his arguments are so flawed that he could proof anything. And logic is the foundation of math. Another field where ghibly doesn't shine.


This is the only bit of your post that makes sense and I agree with

ghibly, do you turn to stone at sunrise? Because you do tick all the other boxes of a troll.

I was very objective and very clear in my arguments and posts before. The person dragging it onto emotional levels is you. And from now on I'll feed the troll, hoping he'll choke on it or die from obesity. Is Treviglio a known Mountain Troll habitat in Italy?

You are stupid. Plain stupid. You are lacking IQ. You have no clue how the math behind this coin works. Like the last post where you stated there's not enough BTC to payout every one. You even change your posts when you find out you were wrong. Your previous posts proof that:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=522874.msg5941406#msg5941406

You are a liar. I don't know how many times you promised to "leave", but it probably exceed the number range you are comfortable with.

You hide behind "hero" members and believe in "authority by #posts". For all I know, Tomatocage could be a 21-year old college dropout spending too much time on this forum. I'd rather trust my own judgement, given my age and academic track record.

Finally, you distract from the real reasons why one might not want to invest in this coin. I've listed reasons and I've even made predictions on the future value of the coin. So far all my predictions were accurate.

Very good description of ghastly ghibly. He must get some sick sense of pleasure "dominating" people on this forum with his stinky trust he got somehow. His life outside this forum must suck or be non-existent.

He also serves as a perfect warning sign not to trust people because they have 350 posts - posts devoid of relevant information and incredibly repetitive.

It's annoying that he did not (and probably still does not) understand the system, but still feels entitled to comment repetitively... worse than a bad politician.

1. Can you be more specific about the VC funding received so far? How much money has been invested by VC's?
My fear/impression is that the VC's got their shares much cheaper than IPO investors. To my understanding, developing a chip up to the mask is not that expensive and surely does not cost $4 Mio (that would be >20-40 man years in salary!!!). There are many ASIC companies that develop a working prototype up to the mask using only 30% of the pre-order money (e.g. Alpha-tech).

2. What salary was/is paid to the founders and head of development? Surely they should be working for a low salary given their high profit share (30%)?
I see the risk that AlcheMiner ends up not profitable, not only because of market risk and extreme competition, but also because certain key figures earn a very high fixed salary. Who would control/prevent this?

3. How do you expect to compete time-wise? When did you start with the ASIC verification etc.? KnC passed the RTL stage, Fibonacci is also starting tape out later this quarter.

Why do you bother posting like a plague if only so few people are affected? If they are affected at all?

Hmm so you started making assumptions that are not or only loosely based on the Devs initial post - and you blame the author for that? Odd.

First, the Dev does NOT profit no matter what. He can only "profit" if he is dishonest. Simply handing over BTC to the dev for some purpose (guaranteeing the minimum price) does NOT make this a scam. Only if the dev takes the money and runs away with it. Using that argument you should call every BTC exchange and even normal banks a "scam" - as they could in theory walk away with your money.

Second, if you had read the definition of "Ponzi" carefully you would know that Standardcoin is NOT a prime example for a Ponzi. STD does not pay a return stream from new investor funds. Furthermore, it is pretty transparent what happens behind the scenes. If at all STD is similar to a pyramid scheme or to an economic bubble, as defined in Wikipedia:

Obviously, some people call BTC a Ponzi - if you are one of them feel free to call STD a Ponzi as well.

I'm curious: did any of the scammed investors report this to the police or similar?

My feeling is that a lot of people think "because this is the internet - and because it is about cryptos - there are no laws". But that's clearly wrong.

If there has been fraud, and more importantly if there is a way to trace the fraudster (e.g. google-email + IP address, website registration, other patterns of usage) then it should be possible to hand this over to a prosecutor. I'm not sure if they'd be interested to do sth about it as the amount defrauded is "only" 30k$. Maybe if you collected material and information about the fraud yourself and presented it on a silver tablet.

Fraud is illegal in most countries, so it would not even help to "hide" in another country if the evidence is clear.

The added benefit of going after such people would be that it sends a clear signal and maybe prevents further scams.

I estimate the total network hashrate as 1.000.000MH/s in Q3 - or better 1000GH/s or 1TH/s. The KnC Titans alone will add about 625GH/s if KnC sells the whole batch (2500 Titans at 250MH/s). At this point the difficulty would go up at least 3x.

Regarding minor altcoins: they don't matter. They don't add much hashrate and much mining profit (in absolute $). The litecoin network is between 150-200GH/s right now, so makes up 50-70% of the total you calculated.

Regarding your last point: afaik bitcoin doesn't have KGW as well and doesn't suffer from it. I'd expect litecoin difficulty to go up massively and GPU miners leaking so smaller coins as well as Vertcoin etc. But Titan's cannot switch en masse to smaller coins, as these do not have the marketcap to absorb and pay for a few Titans.

Now, isn't that interesting. You finally realize that you were wrong.

Small side remark: investor 2 did not necessarily instantly lose 20 BTC. I would expect that there is a secondary market for STD's (at cryptsy etc) and the price there will be >GER. he did not lose 20 BTC unless the secondary market immediately drops to the GER.
But yes, I've been saying since my first post that the GER (or lower bound) only guarantees a fraction of the price STD's are bought for (unless they happen to be traded at GER on the secondary market). And that the GER becomes ineffective as the price rises and the STD reserve is being depleted.

I'd suggest you stop dragging discussions onto an emotional and insulting personal level if you cannot convince with intelligence and facts. That is unworthy of a 34 year old.

Take a breather, look at the facts and be objective. There's no shame admitting that you didn't understand the system in detail first - that's the way we learn! And if you cared to read my posts you'd see enough instances where I criticize this coin.

Yes, no need for formulas, you probably don't understand them.
It's obvious you did not read through the mechanics at all, and you don't even care how it works. You could criticize obviously flawed/dangerous aspects, e.g. the centralized nature. Instead you go on rambling about sth. you don't understand.

Again, you CANNOT buy STD's at the GER - that's only possible on the secondary market if at all.

Your apples example would look more like that:
buy apples at 1$, 2$, ..., 10$ and then sell for 1.5$. Are you going to make a profit?

Think about this: a similar effect happens when you buy stocks. By buying stocks you push up the price. By your argument if you buy a lot, push up the price a lot and then sell you automatically make a profit. Believe me, this is not the case. I work in this field.

That is closer to the true nature of the system, although you don't buy at GER, neither at oldGER nor at newGER. You buy at 2*newGER up to 10*newGER.

Your argument about bagholders actually holds for every crypto-currency. The last BTC buyer holds the bag. (if the dev is trustworthy and no hacks happen) this bag in theory has some value in terms of BTC for STD's, but that value can also be pretty small.