Let's see: since the last post in a R1-4 thread.

- Zero updates to our "Customer Support Ticket" sent in early January demanding a full BTC and USD refund for R1-4 via a paralegal, where appropriate.
- Litigation against HF was filed in Texas.
- We're meeting w/ the attorneys to go over this litigation this week.
- The January bill came in and it was ugly.
- Claims of damages seem to make sense as we all have had lost opportunity costs due to their deceptive advertising and outright fraudulent behavior (FTC regs. state that if product is delayed you *must* give the customer the opportunity for a full refund.) No promises on this but I'm firm that if damages are awarded that all would share in this (minus atty. fees) based on their percentage of ownership of that round's miners.
- Also, I can confirm that one of the D&L attorneys received an inquiry from a community rep re: legal precedents in cases like this.

That's about it...oh and a passive aggressive email from HF a little while back finally confirming payment on one of the R1-2B upgrades paid months ago with a bolded msg. at the bottom saying something to the effect of: "ALL SALES FINALS. NO REFUNDS."

I, for one, would've never gotten involved with HF GBs without the Full BTC refunds promised publicly by both Simon Barber and Cara, after supposedly checking with the bosses.

Let's see: since the last post in a R1-4 thread.

- Zero updates to our "Customer Support Ticket" sent in early January demanding a full BTC and USD refund for R1-4 via a paralegal, where appropriate.
- Litigation against HF was filed in Texas.
- We're meeting w/ the attorneys to go over this litigation this week.
- The January bill came in and it was ugly.
- Claims of damages seem to make sense as we all have had lost opportunity costs due to their deceptive advertising and outright fraudulent behavior (FTC regs. state that if product is delayed you *must* give the customer the opportunity for a full refund.) No promises on this but I'm firm that if damages are awarded that all would share in this (minus atty. fees) based on their percentage of ownership of that round's miners.
- Also, I can confirm that one of the D&L attorneys received an inquiry from a community rep re: legal precedents in cases like this.

That's about it...oh and a passive aggressive email from HF a little while back finally confirming payment on one of the R1-2B upgrades paid months ago with a bolded msg. at the bottom saying something to the effect of: "ALL SALES FINALS. NO REFUNDS."

Let's see: since the last post in a R1-4 thread.

- Zero updates to our "Customer Support Ticket" sent in early January demanding a full BTC and USD refund for R1-4 via a paralegal, where appropriate.
- Litigation against HF was filed in Texas.
- We're meeting w/ the attorneys to go over this litigation this week.
- The January bill came in and it was ugly.
- Claims of damages seem to make sense as we all have had lost opportunity costs due to their deceptive advertising and outright fraudulent behavior (FTC regs. state that if product is delayed you *must* give the customer the opportunity for a full refund.) No promises on this but I'm firm that if damages are awarded that all would share in this (minus atty. fees) based on their percentage of ownership of that round's miners.
- Also, I can confirm that one of the D&L attorneys received an inquiry from a community rep re: legal precedents in cases like this.

That's about it...oh and a passive aggressive email from HF a little while back finally confirming payment on one of the R1-2B upgrades paid months ago with a bolded msg. at the bottom saying something to the effect of: "ALL SALES FINALS. NO REFUNDS."

The latest from Giorgio in the Chip thread in the CH forum is that the December units are shipping next week (with extra promised hashrate for the delay).

I have yet to receive a shipping update but our various orders have been "complete" for a while FWIW.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=291141.msg5035177#msg5035177

Hmm, I want to know why our co-op put in over $20K worth of Bitmine orders in Oct./Nov. well before AMT was their official reseller...

...and we still haven't gotten our Bitmine rigs or updates except for a Jan. 30th update...promising January delivery.  

Nah, we're all in this for the long haul, and we really are simply miners like you guys/gals. We would've been long gone by now if we were the type to cut and run. We're firm believers in karma too, FWIW, and ill gotten gains wouldn't sit well with me.

Then again...John K, and several other co-op members know where I live/work, and I vetted these guys so I know where *they* live...ergo: there's accountability when dealing with someone I've vetted (now up to 14 miner hosts and/or GB Coordinators vetted; I vet my own competition or fellow co-op collaborators if they want my free GB subforum vetting services).

There's 6 vetted GB Coordinators within the co-op itself and 4 vetted miner host facilities in the US so far (bobsag3's is the largest vetted miner host facility, Thyatis has the 2nd largest), although some GBCs are inactive on the forum at the moment or working on other ventures in this new crypto economy.

- Refunds aren't fun but they're a necessary part of commerce when things don't work out. If you choose the refund route: Please be patient as this was a very successful GB Round.

BA has disappointed us by being late (I'm sure they're not exactly thrilled either), but they're ok in my book if they honor their refund policy. I think that the only thing that's a constant in this industry is that making the latest and greatest ASICs - on schedule - is HARD.

Word back from bobsag3/borito4 (I want to know if there's a bomber5 or speedracer5 in his acct. stable too):

We don't know when that extra 25% will come online, but that's part of the reason why bobsag3 is taking a 2nd trip to meet up with BA (this time to the UK) to discuss our paid co-op order and minersource.net's orders and what can be done to speed up our orders.

We should have more clarity on this once he's had a chance to fly out to meet with BA next week Monday or Tuesday.

borito4 is actually bobsag3 on an old 2011 account that's somehow labeled a scammer, when it shouldn't be.  

bobsag3 has handled a couple thousand BTC and tons of miners on behalf of the co-op and the mining community without major issue so far. Team DZ is among the fastest mining teams in the world (esp. for an Intl. public co-op) on the biggest mining pool at the moment, under bobsag3's direction:

https://www.btcguild.com/index.php?page=rankings&section=teams

I don't know all the details with the 2011 account, but if that's an unwarranted scammer tag, which is what it appears to be: I've seen this before with a new GBC whom I vetted who had negative trust before he even started posting heavily. Told him to msg. mods for help (didn't even have any neg. trust ratings from what I could see). Poor guy gave up on this cruel forum world before he could even get started...

It's a mix but its mostly Antminers.

Much less problematic than the prototype board issues and the rPis blowing up.

Basically: if a mfg. puts out a good value that's reliable - we throw them a ton of BTC on the behalf of miners.

R2 was paid in USD, R2B the upgrade module was paid in BTC.


We're not lawyers nor judges. We don't know that. Since you wanted more info, but we've tried to keep a lid on things so as not to tip HF:

We're opening a case in Texas instead of CA arbitration. Since they didn't meet their T&C and haven't responded to our Paralegal, legal counsel doesn't think we have to play by their rules. Texas is probably the most business friendly state in the country when it comes to laws, but it doesn't help you if you're a patent troll or some supplier that didn't meet the terms of their TOS.


I fought the good fight for those that paid in USD/PP. At the end of all this, it may be a USD refund, it may be a BTC refund, but we fought on the behalf of all miners that trusted these companies. IANAL but there is hope in a full BTC refund as the Coinlab judgment with Alydian showed.

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/11/07/judge-orders-coinlab-to-pay-up-in-bitcoin/

The growth we had has meant that we have to cover our asses. We've already seen what happens when we guaranteed hashrate in R9-12 for that experimental prototype Black Arrow Bitfury Bullet Run and for some reason, some people took that as an assumption that we guarantee hashrate for *all* ASIC miners, even though we all know these miners are all prototypes and not polished products.

We don't guarantee hashrate unless it's a specific mining contract with implicit SLAs. I don't personally agree with the refund policies in place for R1-4, but the democracy set up and sharing of work, means I have to abide by decisions I may not necessarily agree with.



Fair enough. As pointed out, we didn't want to tip off HF as to our legal strategy until now.

I've been working for mostly free for the co-op for over a year to get you guys these deals and I apologize for being slow to answer PMs or every forum thread, but life happens whether we want it to or not. I mean, look at John K., he left everyone in a lurch and he straight up had people's BTC just sitting in his wallet for months. The point is: we have lives outside of these forums, and life does still happens in meatspace.

I'm feeling a little better now, but I was messed up and trying to deal with workcomp hearing prep in the middle of dealing with old injuries flaring up and the HF legal prep. I'll be catching up to PMs later today.


Well, we're business partners. I'm not his boss and have never treated him like an employee. I can't speak for his occasional grumpiness but I do know that he works from the miner facility mostly on a smartphone, so the answers tend to be short and sound curt. He could either be accessible most of the day/night or give long answers only at night.

Personally: I think he needs a vacation where he's not answering the same questions over and over, and to maybe delegate more of the answering of those kinds of questions.




I'm only human. I'm not a deity. I'm trying to fix this mess *and* work for the will of the majority. I admit it takes a toll on me too to have to be in the middle of all this. I wish these miners had been mining for months. I want people to get along. I want customers to be happy. It's a role I created but I admit it does get uncomfortable to have to be a mediator sometimes.

To wit, for R1-4:

- I *still* have 1.14 ASICminer shares that John K. is *still* holding as collateral for what were supposed to be R1 miner payouts. They were worth $500 at the time I sent them to him as a "Surety Bond" for payouts. I don't even want to *think* about all the dividends I've lost out on since then, but it's a nice fraction of a BTC.

- I spent $525 mostly out of my own pockets for what was supposed to be the R1 UPS via philipma1957 because I didn't account for UPS costs in the AT COST Group Buy shares; which as at cost, were an innovation at that time in August.

- Along with Thomas and -R- paid hundreds so far for legal counsel on the HF impasse and failure to deliver on explicit promises.

- Would've pocketed a mere 0.25% Management Fee for R1-4 as my share of management fees.

I'm a highly paid IT engineer and you guys have been getting my services for half a year in my free time almost for free (actually for free for the reasons listed above); the management fees I made in 6 months are less than the donations I've made on behalf of these Rounds). I spent a ton of effort working with the attorneys to get the details straight.

I'm not sure what more you'd have me to as I'm in the most Red out of anyone for the reasons above. I put a lot of money down to be able to deliver you guys these at-cost deals, and I continue to put money down, along with the rest of the leaders, to try to get legal recourse to get full BTC refunds which is what the majority wanted overwhelmingly.

There isn't/wasn't a better GB setup/value on the forums available at that time and everything would've been peachy if they had just simply delivered on time or even a little late. HashFast tricked us, but what pisses me off even more is how they've turned miners against other miners.

Please welcome DZMC veteran Thyatis as our 4th vetted Miner Hosting facility in the US!

Thyatis has 6 co-op Jupiters headed his way and has experience setting up datacenters.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=419140.msg4805476#msg4805476

Congrats Thyatis!

This is to confirm that Thyatis is a vetted Miner Host and Bitrated Arbitrator with DyslexicZombei's Miners Cooperative (DZMC).


We are the world's largest public Bitcoin Miners Cooperative and we are currently the 8th fastest team at BTCGuild, the largest mining pool in the world, at the moment.

Thyatis has an enviable Miner Hosting Setup with:

- 120V or 220V power
- Triple network redundancy
- APC UPS units capable of 8 hours of backup time for 6 Jupiters
- Gas generators for longer outages
- Dedicated air conditioning for the miners

Thyatis has his ID and social media profile on record with me. He can also do Escrow-alternative services via Bitrated Arbitration using multisig transactions.

R15/16 Update: As mentioned earlier in this thread, these Jupiters have been finicky (and still continue to be problematic).

I apologize for the inconvenience but Miner Hosting LLC has decided to ship these Jupiters to another vetted miner hosting facility in the US. They will be hosted at a DZMC vetted miner facility, with our 4th vetted miner host at a top notch hosting facility.

At the end of the month: DZMC veteran member thyatis will be taking over the hosting for these Jupiters in Florida. He has prior experience with a variety of different miners.

His setup includes:

- 120V or 220V power
- Triple network redundancy
- APC UPS units capable of 8 hours of backup time for 6 Jupiters
- Gas generators for longer outages
- Dedicated air conditioning for the miners

To compensate DZMC members for downtime during shipping and setup, on hand miners from other mfgs. will be substituted as equivalent hashrate until the Jupiters are up and running again in Florida. BTC earned from this be sent to thyatis, who will be handling payouts after some training, as part of the 1st thru 15th payout.

Please refer questions for miner in Florida. to DZMC vetted Miner Host: thyatis.

Thanks.

EDIT: Thomas will still be handling miner payouts.

Also: re: BTC for lost hashrate...

I'm not sure where anyone got the idea where we guaranteed hashrate.

We sold/sell chunks of fractional ownership of industrial class rigs that are frankly ALL experimental pieces of equipment. People may have gotten the mistaken assumption because BTC was offered up for problems in our 1 of a kind R9-12 offering of prototype Black Arrow Bitfury boards. That was a unique situation in that we were too optimistic about their performance and *volunteered* guaranteed hashrate for those experimental GB rounds.

As someone who's spent 11 years in the R&D world, please believe me when I say there isn't a TRL 9 equivalent miner on the market except for 1st gen offerings.

Expecting any of these miners to work 100% of the time is just not realistic at this point in time. They rush them out the door barely working and hope to patch things in software and hope people figure things out on their own without manuals or even company tech support.

If people want guaranteed hashrates: well, that's what mining contracts are for, and they're priced at a premium in order to keep to the agreed upon minimum guaranteed SLA.

R5/6 Update: As mentioned in the R15/16 threads, these Jupiters have been finicky.

I apologize for the inconvenience but Miner Hosting LLC has decided to ship these Jupiters to another vetted miner hosting facility in the US. They will be hosted at a DZMC vetted miner facility, with our 4th vetted miner host at a top notch hosting facility.

At the end of the month: DZMC veteran member thyatis will be taking over the hosting for these Jupiters in Florida. He has prior experience with a variety of different miners.

His setup includes:

- 120V or 220V power
- Triple network redundancy
- APC UPS units capable of 8 hours of backup time for 6 Jupiters
- Gas generators for longer outages
- Dedicated air conditioning for the miners

To compensate DZMC members for downtime during shipping and setup, on hand miners from other mfgs. will be substituted as equivalent hashrate until the Jupiters are up and running again in Florida. BTC earned from this be sent to thyatis, who will be handling payouts after some training, as part of the 1st thru 15th payout.

Please refer questions for miner in Florida. to DZMC vetted Miner Host: thyatis.

Thanks.

EDIT: Thomas will still be handling miner payouts.

Woah, hey now, we're all angry but that's still doesn't mean that we should throw fraud accusations of trusted forum members around without proof. Thomas has handled well over 1000BTC for the co-op so far, without a single instance of fraud or theft, to the best of my knowledge. No co-op member, and we're talking about hundreds of them by now, has ever accused him of taking their USD or BTC and not getting BTC payouts for miners that were delivered or on hand.

And I would never take the money and run, because I like living in Hawaii, and would lose my IT security job and live behind bars if I did that.

Rob is one of our business attorneys. You are more than welcome to contact them to confirm that Cypher Enterprises has retained their services with regards to this matter. I'm the CTO and a co-founder of Cypher Enterprises. We had to assign it this way to fit this in with the business we had just about finished setting up and it saved the co-op time/money because we already had them on retainer and we had already done a lengthy search for highly competent legal assistance.

What I'm sensing here is frustration and anger. You feel screwed by HF and now you feel screwed by my co-op.

I feel your pain. Hell, I'm in pain. Haven't been here much because I've been dealing with serious recent health issues from old work injuries and an old employer's new insurance company's sudden decision to deny my work comp even though its been going on for 15 years and nothing changed except for their desire to pinch pennies by withholding necessary medical help. Now I have to prep a case against my former employer just to get back the workcomp they're legally supposed to provide, if its work related. I don't normally bitch and moan about my permanent injuries, but you guys deserve to know where I've been, with everything going on.

Anyway: getting back to USD refunds.

This co-op has gotten so big, that I obviously can't run it by myself. I'm in business with bobsag3, -Redacted-, and thomas_s. because things had worked out well (albeit with bumps along the way). Miner Hosting LLC, is now a sister sub-company in Cypher Enterprises which is the umbrella company we founded, and we run the entire company like a democracy. R2-4 was slated to be hosted at the co-op primary facility (of which there are now 4 different vetted US miner hosting sites from members contacting me for this).

I voted for full BTC refunds FWIW. But it was decided that this would set a bad precedent and would leave us on the hook for the USD/BTC differential for any future and current GBs. The businesses we set up would be easily taken advantage of by those hoping to just park their USD in BTC for a Pre-order GB for a few weeks, speculating on BTC's rise. Anyone could say: "R1-4 got BTC refunds for USD, what about us? What makes them so special?" Besides the extra time/labor involved: We would have to keep a good sized chunk of BTC from somewhere on tap because of this, instead of invested elsewhere.

- Also, please keep it civil. I founded the co-op so we could cooperate together and, hopefully, all make dough together. Thomas can get a bit snippy, but he does have to deal with tons of the same questions for things that are usually included in the description, and his business integrity has never come into question.

Of note: the BJs that are out now are a sad, sad shell of what they could've been if they had shipped in late Oct. and early Nov. as they advertised so prominently. That letter was sent when there were 2 confirmed units in the wild that weren't even fully working, with no indication that they finally nailed something that they could ship in volume.

They're essentially defective and nearly worthless in comparison to "what could've been." None of the BJs or Sierras will likely ever return full BTC let alone USD ROI in a year, unless 4x MPP was shipped with it, and I agree with gmaxwell, that they therefore sold us a defective product.

Update: no word from HF WRT full refunds or shipping.

BTW: Background info on Paypal payments related to this. This was done as a favor to forum members, and actually cost us money per transaction because I didn't mark up the PP shares quite enough. PP also caused us co-op leaders a ton of grief: my ebay acct. is still in Limited status because they didn't like me doing an Amex chargeback on my PP BFL Jally orders that were past 45 days (this acct. is still limited because I can't be bothered by fix what they changed) and one of the other leaders *still* has $26K tied up for several more months because a co-op member did an illegal chargeback on their PP shares (they got exactly what was paid for and still got a chargeback and miner payouts. grrr). We're still bitter about all this and have refused to add PP to any of our ecommerce sites because of this and their previous anti-BTC and anti-miner stance.

WRT to refund type: Sorry, but it's a very common thing that in commerce, during a refund, you're supposed to get out what you put in: whether its seashells, roman coins, gold, or BTC, which is what we've been fighting for against HF.

==

As for the legal side: we have a plan in the works that doesn't involve CA arbitration. Our experienced trial lawyers have high confidence in the tack we're taking.

Update: R24 *will* be hashing Thursday as the miners are in hand and undergoing testing.

We will be prorating GB share payouts based on when you bought your share(s). Here's some examples of how this works for a 15 day payout period:

- If you buy your R24 share(s) before Thursday, you will receive a full payout for R24.

- For co-op members who buy shares on Thursday, the first day of mining ops, they will have their mining start on Day 2, and you would receive a prorated payout of 14/15ths of a full share payout.

- If you bought your R24 share(s) on the 5th day of mining ops, then Mining would start for you on Day 6, and you would receive two-thirds (2/3) of a normal sized payout after the end of that 15th day.

- if you bought your R24 share(s) on the 14th day of mining ops, then Mining would start for you on Day 15, and you would receive one-fifteenth (1/15) a normal sized payout after the end of that 15th day.

- Day 15 purchases receive no payouts until the next payout period.

==

Side note: Team DZ is now the #8 Team on BTC Guild and earlier today we surpassed the hashrate of the Dutch and Canadian teams!  Mahalo, everyone!

https://www.btcguild.com/index.php?page=rankings&section=teams

==

Also: the DZ Miners Cooperative will have co-op leaders at our Cypher Enterprises Booth at BTC Miami this weekend. I can't make it but 3 co-op leaders will be there.

Congratulations to those that bought shares in our #1 Offering last month: Bitcoin for Oil and Gas Working Interest!

Oil was hit and payouts are expected to be $5K a share a month! Who knows how long these wells will last, but they'll be producing payouts for many years if all goes well.

Not too bad for a $31.5K per share investment! [Tip: You can look at the middle of the info packets for graphs of typical production curves]

==

Let's hope that the #2 Offering, in North Guitar, TX, also has the same luck.

Also: congratulations to those that bought shares in this Bitcoin for Oil and Gas Working Interest!

Oil was hit and payouts are expected to be $5K a share a month! Who knows how long these wells will last, but they'll be producing payouts for many years if all goes well.

Not too bad for a $31.5K per share investment! [Tip: You can look at the middle of the info packets for graphs of typical production curves]