Updating my scores and editing my OP based on new info:

KnC Jupiters (over 10 miners): 100% hardware issue rate (as in: we've been seeing problems with every miner received)
Bitmain (we have dozens of these miners) : 2% hardware issue rate

YMMV: but that's what we're seeing in the DZ Miners Cooperative.

So my top 3 ASIC mfgs at this time are:

#3 KnC
#2 Black Arrow
#1 Bitmain

Bumpity bump.

This is active, live hashrate if anyone wants in on Round 22.

Ha! Ya gotta love English blokes and that accent. 

Cheerio!

I also mentioned this in the R17 thread, but just an FYI: Thomas is still getting his PC set up at Facility #2, so he's not quite ready to get to PMs and share transfers.

Thanks.

P.S. Good to see that this is getting some use. Cheers everyone!

Sounds like Know Your Customer / Anti Money Laundering laws (KYC/ AML).

Governments don't like it when people try to hide assets, income, etc..

BTW, Thomas is still getting his PC set up at the new facility, so he's also backlogged on PMs if you're trying to reach him.

Also: we'll never knowingly contribute to any 51% attacks. We're here for the long run. That doesn't do *any* of us miners any good except for those that want to watch the world burn.

If BTCGuild got too big, we'd be out of there too, for the good of the network.

For those that contacted me, thank you for your interest and I wish you well in the completion of your BTC transaction.

I'd also like to announce that user thyatis, a veteran DZ MC member, has passed my free vetting process which I offer as part of my Group Buy Escrow Coordination (GBEC) services.

Congrats thyatis!

https://www.bitrated.com/u/Thyatis

He is the 2nd agent to finish the registration process, and is now a vetted DZ Arbitration Agent in this agency.

===

2 more agent registrations are pending; these agents have already passed the vetting process.

I disagree. One's opinions on a company can't help but color one's review of a mfg.. These opinions aren't formed in a vacuum but come from our accumulated knowledge of a manufacturers actions, plans, and public behavior.

For example: my opinion is that AMT and BFL offer awful customer service. This very well plays into my own decision making process when community fund raising hundreds of BTC on the behalf of trusting miners that join our co-op.

No offense but trying to discount or to not include our opinions on an ASIC mfg. review thread sounds protective of one or more of these mfgs.

Edit: HashFast is at the bottom, because that's my opinion of them changing TOS for Batch 1 and 2. Partial BTC refunds from them aren't going to cut it.

Excellent idea Puppet. You win 2 internets for one day.  

I'll only give feedback with mfgs. I've personally dealt with. I have a unique perspective as someone that deals with manufacturers directly, is hardware neutral and represents both buyers and sellers. These are my own opinions and don't necessarily reflect the opinions of the rest of the co-op leaders I work with. Our Team hashrate on BTC Guild currently outranks Poland and the Russian Federation teams and we only have about 20% of our ordered miners online, FWIW.  
==


AMT: I've gone out of my way to try to help them as an American mfg. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=304605.msg3322382#msg3322382

I told them over 2 months ago that their CSR rep on this forum was *not* cut out for CSR among this mix of battle hardened and complete noob miners: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=304605.msg3457819#msg3457819

They resell Technobit Bitfury miners in Lian cases. The tech support that I saw for the two known miners in the wild seemed to have arisen from the community and not the company.


Avalon: Once he came out of "mafia" hiding, I once naively offered to help Yifu out of his hole via patient and dogged Customer Service for him. He ignored me. As someone that went on to found the largest BTC Miners Co-op in the English speaking world: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=335145.msg4370190#msg4370190

suffice to say: I could've turned his customer issues around 180 degrees if he would have let me. I *saw* him blithely ignore people begging him to either ship them their machines or refund their BTC for months. Avalon is permabanned from the DZ MC.


BFL: Late, late hardware and mean, vitriolic customer service. BFL is permabanned from the DZ MC


Bitfury: Missed out on the August batch which sold out in hours. Just as well, was delayed like most others. This chip is amazing and its from a 1st time chip designer! Dave in the US provides top notch customer service too. It is a bit overpriced though IMO.


Bitmain: Thumbs up guys! I rank this my #3 #1 ASIC mfg. at this time. They basically came out of left field and took everyone by surprise. EDIT: bobsag3, mentions he's seeing only a 2% hardware issue rate with our dozens of Bitmain miners as opposed to 100% hardware issue rates with KnC; reviews adjusted accordingly.


Bitmine: You seem like a nice guy Giorgio but you guys are late man. We've got two full Rigs awaiting delivery. They're supposed to add hashrate based on how late they are (up to a point, before a refund is triggered). If they can deliver soon with extra hashrate, they'll move up to the #2 spot on my ASIC mfg. list.


Black Arrow: These guys are awesome. Our Round 17 is the Exclusive Group Buy for X-3 Prosperos (paused at the moment). We also did an exclusive Bullet Run of Prospero Bitfury prototypes about 4 months before the February launch in Rounds 9-12 thanks to my business relationship with Miner Hosting LLC and Minersource.net, owned by bobsag3, one of the DZ MC co-op leaders. They are my #2 ASIC mfg. at this time. They still appear to be on track for a late February launch, and being based in Hong Kong does help in cutting down production and shipping times for mfgs. themselves.


Cointerra: I've entertained partnerships to do GBs for Cointerra but somehow our co-op didn't end up doing any Cointerra Group Buys in 22 Rounds of ASIC rig fundraising. They're late too, but I'm wishing them well. Almost did a big deal hosting for this mfg. with a 3rd party that contacted me (we went on to form a company together instead).


KnC: I know they've had problems setting up their first facility. We've experience some of the same growing pains recently with facility #2 a 6000+ square foot facility our co-op has set up just for crypto miners and manned by crypto miners. They were a little late with their delivery but it was a matter of weeks instead of months (or even 1 year+). They are my #1 #3 ASIC mfg. at this time. EDIT: bobsag3, head of our mining ops and owner of Miner Hosting LLC, mentioned that we've seen a 100% problem rate with every one of our Jupiters (over 10).


Hashfast: Besides lying to us as to how bad the production issues were and violating our privacy via a recent email link, they tried to basically trick their Batch 1 customers out of trying to get a full BTC refund by giving Batch 1 full USD refunds and making them sign a waiver that protects them from further legal retribution from you, the buyer.

Look at it from our POV: if you gave someone a bar of gold 3 months ago for a shipment and they didn't deliver for whatever reason, would you be happy with 1/10th of that gold bar being given back to you? This refund issue is faaaar from being over. They promised us FULL refunds, else we wouldn't have bothered doing fundraising for about 280 BTC worth of HashFast miners.

Hashfast is permabanned from the DZ MC.

On behalf of the entire team (which is steadily growing):

Thank you everyone!

We wouldn't be nowhere near this successful if we didn't have your support and your input that helps improve things for all of us.

An update: Thomas is on travel. He's headed to facility #2, in fact, as we talked about in one of the rounds (I forget which one, there's a lot of Rounds   ).

The payment processor is still down. We're actually switching some things over to a different payment processor and cart software. So: sorry, orders will be down for a little while longer. There's *still* major site redesign work to be undertaken shortly as well.

BTW and FWIW: the odds are good that one or more X-3s will still be bought by the DZ MC before shipping.

==

Fun fact I found out last night: On BTCGuild at least: Team DZ has more active hashrate than Poland and the Russian Federation.  

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

I wasn't even aware of this until recently and none of the co-op leaders pointed this out to me, because they're not big on tooting their horns. Even funnier: Most of our ordered hashrate hasn't even arrived yet if you subtract the running total in my sig from what you see here, and we are already competing with entire nations and the ASIC mfgs. themselves when it comes to providing mining hashrate for the Bitcoin network.

Just to update you guys: we're seeking a refund on this.

They *still* haven't sent a tracking number for R2 which is the 64th paid miner rig IIRC, and the earlier of our two co-op HashFast Baby Jet orders.

- When its finally sent out by HF: Refunds for R2 will be in USD as R2 was paid by the original buyer we bought it from HF via a USD wire transfer.

- For R2B: we're fighting for a full BTC refund, as I believe we paid BTC for that, since it came later for this Batch 1 upgrade. I can't go into details too much, but I am fighting tooth and nail to get y'all this BTC full refund if its at all possible.

Like I said: fighting this tooth and nail.

I am actually collating every frickin thing related to this and it's actually depressing me a bit because HF has failed so badly, and stressing me out a bit because certain people need certain thorough details before we proceed. Trying to keep the chronological details in order across multiple email accounts and wallets hasn't been fun. My prepwork related to this will be done tonight, 100%.

As usual: working my okole (ass) off for you guys.  

R2 may not have the luxury of fighting for a full BTC refund because we bought this out from someone that wired their money instead of sending BTC, but for R1, you better believe I'm fighting the good fight for you and me. We'll do the best we can for R2 but we may be stuck with a USD refund for R2. You can pass that on to R2, if you want. Busy as you know what at the moment.

Thomas isn't the greatest at knowing where stuff like this supposed to go on the forums,   but at least it lets our GB members also see what's being worked on, and other innovations from the co-op leaders.

These coins and the biz we started all came about because we met up on the GB forum, so it is tangentially GB related: as it shows what can happen when GB forum members meet up and team up.

FWIW: these coins are *not* pre-loaded with coins, all we're shipping you is a QR code of one of your public keys for a wallet address on a coin. We never see your private keys while handling your wallet address etching.

You can use these coins for payments to you: such as someone paying you in BTC for something such as an item sold or service rendered.

If it somehow happens to get lost, you're still ok, as your private key is still secure.

==

Coins like this can also make great talking points for discussing BTC and cryptocurrencies with others; as long as you explain that this isn't how BTC usually arrives when you buy it from localbitcoins or Coinbase, for example.  

Edit: there's 1 Christmas coin available, if you'd like. Please send a PM to Thomas if you're interested in that one.

Please see our new services at: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=396816.0

The dirty little secret of BTC escrow is...there is no BTC escrow! Everyone offering BTC escrow does not appear to be licensed or bonded for true escrow.

This new service offers the same functionality without all the licensing and bonding, just by taking advantage of built-in Blockchain tools!

==

Here's my profile at Bitrated, for those that are interested and want to go straight to Bitrated:

https://www.bitrated.com/u/DyslexicZombei

https://www.bitrated.com/u/DyslexicZombei


Other reasons to choose us to arbitrate any transactions you may be involved with for deals over 0.5 BTC.

We handle BTC funds all the time but with this BTC Escrow Alternative that is a front end for built in Blockchain functionality, the Arbitrator never handles any funds and, in fact, is only necessary if a dispute arises.

Terms of deal

- Fee is 1.5% of estimated size of transaction
- Minimum transaction size is 0.5 BTC
- Participants *must* include two (2) email addresses for communications redundancy
- Non-contact and non-activity for the terms of the deal, with regards to questions regarding transaction details will weigh in final decisions and by default the active participant wins
- Length and amount of deal must be agreed upon prior to deal (ex. 1 BTC upon delivery of item, release of payment within 48 hours of delivery (inspection period, 1 week post-delivery dispute period)
- Arbitration period (if needed): 3-7 days (length of arbitration must be agreed to by both parties)
- 2 email addresses must be submitted by both parties.

Details:
- Arbitrator is not needed to release funds in normal transactions
- Aritrator never has access to the Bitcoins involved themselves and cannot assist you in retreiving BTC if a user loses private key information.
- Arbitrator is not responsible for guaranteeing the performance of items involved in said Arbitrated Bitcoin transactions.
- Arbitrator *can* reverse your payment to a buyer, as long as sufficient proof is given that fraud has occured (2 of 3 signatures in the transaction must occur for this); in this way, the BTC sent for an item *can* be sent back to the buyer upon proof of fraud.

==

In order to serve you better, and so that these services are *not* reliant on only one person, I've built a small pool of trusted BTC Arbitration Agents who will be able to assist you in arbitration. That means if I am unable to assist you because I'm heading on vacation or I'm too busy, I can network you with a trusted and vetted forum member with a high trust rating and a track record of taking good care of customers. Their IDs and social media profile(s) are on record with me, as a hostage to their good behavior.


Vetted and Trusted DZ AAs (Arbitration Agents)

thomas_s
-Redacted-

Pending
thyatis

==

Other wallets Thomas & I own:

https://blockchain.info/address/1KtbkYZskc5tJ6FC3FuHCqRGMqgwVhxNb6

https://blockchain.info/address/148XTAJwjLCyUifimiPfPagzYuCoWikDAA

https://blockchain.info/address/15jfiAbMzUSkUM8UCZuDmu1n3gX3mYsaFW

https://blockchain.info/address/1Jvhu8ZfS4q6ZC2RN39Ztf6tAF1o8oCPBx

https://www.bitrated.com/u/DyslexicZombei

There are two problems related to Bitcoin commerce for larger transactions:

1) Using traditional methods there are *no chargeback or dispute* systems in place for normal Bitcoin transactions.
2) While escrow is recommended: Traditional BTC "Escrow" services are not true licensed and bonded Escrow services with
business insurance.

An interesting thing about Bitcoin Escrow (and an open secret not usually talked about like the Emperor's New Clothes)...is that there appears to be *no true* licensed and bonded Escrow services for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency transactions. Since John K. has been incognito - the same person who vetted me - I've decided to approach this market vacuum in the same way that I approached the Group Buys forum: with openness and by sharing the work.

Solution: One method of dealing with the high costs of setting up Escrow Service licensing and bonding...is just to not use it at all, but instead utilize built-in features of the BTC protocol to let you insert a neutral, trusted 3rd party who can serve the similar purposes to escrow...but without the high barriers to entry required by true Escrow licensing and bonding.

It's one of the underutilized beauties of the BTC protocol itself that will likely need to take off if Bitcoin is going to ever be taken seriously by mainstream, neutral users. Using this method, one can make use of an arbitrator to release funds back to a buyer, if fraud has occurred.

Advantages of this method include:

- The ability to reverse a transaction (which you'd want for an expensive transaction) upon valid proof being presented
- The Arbitrator is not required to release funds in the course of a normal transaction
- The Arbitrator *never* has control of the funds, and cannot steal them from the two other transaction participants.
- The private keys involved are never seen on the server side as far as implementation of this API

You can read more about it here: https://www.bitrated.com/

==


Since August, I've provided the world's first Group Buy Escrow Coordination Services for the Group Buys Forum, where I've
helped facilitate seven figures worth of BTC deals, including about 100TH/s of PAID ASIC miners (for comparison's sake
the Elgius Pool is about 110TH/s total) and have coordinated the escrowed buyouts of miners such as this:

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll87/SurfSkateKauai/HashFastDZGroupBuyBuyoutofHashFastOrder616at-cost.png
http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll87/SurfSkateKauai/a8295a7b-3c53-4bb6-98ab-f74a3276e00e.jpg

Without any major complaints about fund handling: We've handled well over 1000 BTC in the course of being a community focal point for gathering funds for Bitcoin ASIC miners. Here are some examples of wallets that my co-leader thomas_s and I have used in the course of gathering and sending these funds to manufacturers.

262 BTC - https://blockchain.info/address/1C5R7t1XdVPxUBFUnBWJnRPx7ZMZBgnv7L
600+BTC - https://blockchain.info/address/14YUzGrVPBdCAf6VpJuLVDVciVyzfZJiSu

We can send a signed message from any of these wallets, if necessary. With a model of openness, transparency, representative democracy, and listening to our co-op members, we've built what appears to be the world's largest and most diverse bitcoin miners cooperative.

In addition: Here's our endorsements and trust ratings:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=280412.msg2997877#msg2997877
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=140437
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=138415

There were some serious setup issues with the Comcast connection. This 500Mbps connection is still not setup. The backup connection may be having an issue.

R9-12 is up at the moment, so hopefully it's a reporting issue instead of something more serious with the network or the miners. I know bobsag3 is also sick, besides dealing with a move in a snowstorm. I reached out to him to alert him.

Also: from what I understand, anyone that was hashing with the DZ MC and lost hashrate will be compensated for 50% hosting for this month due to downtime from the move.

Can't say how yet, but we're fighting this free proctology exam (AKA changed refund terms) tooth and nail.

Gals/Guys: There was an additional 2 day hold up to the move to the new facility. We've been moving fast, but there was some contractor work for the building to deal before it would be ready for us. R21 is absolutely, definitely going to up tomorrow and will be the first miners that come up when Miner Hosting LLC.

We're moving into Facility #2 *right now* and the team should be on-site in the morning/midday tomorrow.

To compensate you for the additional 48 hour delay, everyone that purchased in R21 will now get 75% off the first month's hosting, as bobsag3's Miner Hosting LLC's compensation for the additional delay in start time.

Thank you for your patience. The great news is that besides having a bigger, better facility, we will have 24/7 miner hosting support from professional support staff of miners and IT experts that care about your miners.

We set up facility #2 with a 500Mbps primary link and a 25Mbps wireless link for redundancy. Because: Lost packets = lost shares = lost BTC.

Guys/Gals: bobsag3 had to take the miners down for 12-18 hours. It could be as many as 24-28 hours, but should be in the lower range.

I'm sorry, I'm apologizing now on behalf of the team. We were planning for an early Jan. move but plans became accelerated and we're moving to the bigger/better location right now.

We'll have word of some compensation worked out with Miner Hosting LLC once they're back online. On the bright side...we're going to have much more capacity and pro employees that are miners and/or IT experts manning the new facility.