The three orders which were placed have now all arrived safely. I am now selling the remaining silver half-oz coins. There are 36 of them left (18 oz).

I've decided to give free shipping anywhere in the world!!! Just buy my silver. Thanks!

Hi, just checking in for a clarification -- this didn't happen, did it?

Are you still with BFL?

Germany has been asking politely for their gold back for several years now. Since 2010 I think?

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That's a very bold statement.

If this is true then prove it, and you will have all the proof you need that BFL is a scam.

This is the one thing that was most surprising to me. Can't they show a PCB or a chip or something?

Who is going to take a trip down to the fab tomorrow and take some pictures?

Actually no -- the planck scale is simply the smallest observable scale. The reason has to do once again with black holes and the holographic principle. Say we accelerate a particle (in a particle accelerator) with so much energy that it would smash to bits on the Planck scale. Before that would happen, the energy of the particle would create a very small black hole. This black hole would simply get bigger the more energy you put into it. So in other words, we can never observe anything smaller than the Planck scale, and even "at" the Planck scale is going to be several orders of magnitude over and above what we can do now. But there is a hard limit because of that.

It's a little like death -- no one knows what happens when you die because no one can see the other side and come back.

Oh yes I assure you it does matter what he did with the money. If he blew it on drugs (for example) it would imply he was intending it to be a fraud from the start. OTOH if his mother died (for example) and he needed to sell mining equipment to pay for her funeral that would be understandable.

What I am saying is, I believe I have information one way or the other, but I want to see an outstanding amount before I post it, because the outstanding amount will inform my reasoning. Thank you.

The problem is how the system works. I'm a successful amateur investor and I can explain everything to you. But the stock market? That's expensive. Send me a PM and we'll talk. My fee is 5btc/hr, first hour is free.

Well, that would depend on what he did with all the money, and when. Now wouldn't it. We're talking what, 400 BTC here? What was the outstanding amount, does anyone know?

Amazingrando sold bonds promising 105% PPS, then behind investors backs sold again this contract to a second class of bondholder.

In other words, he sold a car to smitty, then turned around and sold a car to bill. Now smitty is complaining, where's my car, and amazingrando is all like


That really stinks.

Amazingrando lied to the people who bought bonds from them. He told an actual lie in order to sell more bonds. It wasn't a misunderstanding or a mistake or old data or someone trolling. It was amazingrando telling a lie to rip someone off for his own benefit.

I shouldn't need to tell anyone that's the very definition of a fraud.

Now. Is it true? Is that what he really did, or is this another smear campaign? 

No one asked for your input either. We're all just weighing in.

What Monster Trent said has some real weight. We need to get the address of the fab, and have someone go down there and pay a visit.

Don't they have an address in Kansas City Missouri on their webpage?

There are clearly issues with BFL that need to be explained but you are making a big mistake dragging your personal history with Josh at the booth into this. Everyone knows you and Josh have a history and it looks like Josh is just pissed at you because you were trolling his booth the day before and now you want to make him look bad by manufacturing circumstantial evidence.

If you really think BFL are scammers pass this off to someone who can do a real investigation into BFL. I.E. visit the fab, take photos, talk to their accountant, etc. Call that news TV show that investigates frauds or something, get them to go down there with a TV camera and see what's up. BFL has $25 million? Ok, then get some real evidence.

I'm just trying to understand wtf this is about -- is this an issue about BFL fan boys versus people who don't like BFL? Or if BFL is scamming?

It's been said a couple of times that this is not a "court of law" and that legalese or line-by-line responses are sperging. There is another side to that coin. It's not okay to waltz in here and say that someone is a scammer because you don't like them. That's why I asked for a list of facts earlier. In response I got a bunch of facts like "Sonny committed a crime 10 years ago" and "Josh is a big fat jerk". I'm sorry, I should have said, facts related to whether or not BFL is scamming.

Anyway, no one said your facts had to prove anything. Relax bro. It's okay to hate someone. You have a right to hate people and talk shit in a free society.

Thanks to both of you for the clear response, although those facts don't state conclusively that BFL is scamming it may warrant a second look. So I ask, what are we as a community now prepared to do in order to take that second look and determine conclusively whether or not BFL is a scam?

You state "Who cares if people troll his ass. He is a public figure that represents BFL which tarnishes the name Butterfly Labs." That's the point. If people are going to engage in a smear campaign because they don't like someone, that's one thing. But this is about if BFL is a scam. So I ask what should we do now?

Should we hire a private investigator? Should we merely ask BFL for some sort of technical document or photo? Is there some way to determine beyond a reasonable doubt that they are scamming? I know I personally would love to put money down on a PI if that's what it takes.

The most stunning advancement in Physics since Quantum Mechanics is the Holographic Principle.

The Holographic Principle states that no three-dimensional space can contain more information than that which can be expressed on it's boundary. Similar to a hologram. Imagine it thus; when looking out your window, everything you see is filtered through your window. This window is like an imaginary outer boundary to everything in the universe visible from your window. But the Holographic Principle operates like x-ray vision. Every bit of information possible is expressible on the boundary.

My question to you then is, what you think the implications of the Holographic Principle are. To me they are both strange and confusing. I'm particularly interested in gravity and the curvature of space. Since energy itself warps space, it would seem that the energy exists locally to that space. On the other hand, it has interesting implications regarding quantum entanglement which I have only glossed over so far.

Another proposal; the Schwartzchild radius is directly proportional to the amount of information contained in a black hole. This seems obvious at first, since it's proportional to the mass of the black hole. What I am proposing though is that the Schwartzchild radius is in fact physical proof of the Holographic Principle.

I respect what you are trying to do here in that there are in fact outstanding issues with BFL. But can you please tell us what part of this is a real tangible issue and what part of this is you saying Josh would regret what he said to you? I mean, from the video you posted I can tell you don't like the guy and "thats how you roll" -- going after someone with a vengeance -- but it tends to cloud the real issues here. Can you please stop your personal vindictive campaign and come up with some actual evidence? The FCC rule violation is a great start, but this poker-tell stuff is pretty lame. Yes, it may warrant a second look but a second look at what? Are you really going to sit here for the next month babbling about poker tells? I sure hope you're right because your coming down a little hard on a company that has a proven track record of actually delivering. Just based on that alone if I was the one running a scam investigation into BFL I'd stick to the facts and be a little plainer about what I had against the company personally.

Josh is very clear that he does not want to talk to Micon because they have a previous relationship.

If you keep watching the video Micon goes on to tell how he is going to shit talk Josh on the forums.

Micon is essentially shit talking Josh and defaming him because he doesn't like Josh. You will note that the questions he is stating "the community has a right to know" were never actually asked to Josh, they were presented to the forum in a way that made people assume they were an issue.

They were never an issue. Micon is just being a jerk.

That being said there are issues with BFL, I haven't seen a picture of a working ASIC rig anywhere. You would think there would be one. But Micon is doing the community a huge disservice by approaching BFL in this way. Why not just ask some questions through the proper channels? Why the drama? It's not helping.

Thanks. I hope I can get on IRC to update your OTC rating later today.

Another seller also reported the coins arrived at the same time today as well.

So I've sold all my gold now. What am I going to do with all this silver?

This is the simplest and clearest explanation I've seen so far. It also helps us understand what a "free energy" device would really entail. It would entail a source of power that was unlimited in comparison to our lives/the lifespan of the earth. Such as solar power. The sun will die, in billions of years, but we don't have to worry about that now.

I like physics so I'd like to ramble about this a bit.

There is another kind of "free energy" which is not free energy but comes from a self-sustaining exothermic reaction. This means the process tends to be explosive (produces more energy than the process of 'combustion' requires). Burning fossil fuels is (iirc) a chemical reaction of this type, and beyond that we have nuclear power. Such kinds of "free energy" are extremely dangerous. So take a look at any such perpetual energy machine and ask yourself a simple question: is it's source of power dangerously explosive? If not, then it uses an endothermic reaction and is not a free energy device (the machine itself is a load). This is why batteries heat up with no load; the batteries themselves are a load. I call it the battery principle. If it heats up or has any kind of friction or noise or light it's not a perpetual machine. If it's explosive it may be free energy but it's not perpetual either (it's just explosive and therefore can be made self-sustaining given enough fuel).

The holy grail of renewable/unlimited energy would probably be about drawing out some kind of strength from a large deep-ocean of energy like background radiation, cosmic rays, the curvature of space, etc. But it would not be a source of "perpetual energy". The reason is because in the conversion of energy from one form to another (such as, say, combustion) some energy is lost from the process (for example as heat or light or pressure) and this energy cannot be repaired into the original source of energy. That's why even recycling energy back into the original source doesn't ever work, because as soon as you try to use the energy the load you place on the original energy source is converted into heat via friction (or some other thing like light).

This lends itself to a simple trick in evaluating perpetual energy machines. All such machines must do work. For example to power a drive a belt that runs a car. The load placed on this machine must cause it to "work harder" in some regard. This will cause the machine to generate more heat via friction. Identify this source of heat/friction and you will have discovered why the machine is not a perpetual energy device. Like the battery principle, above. The machine itself which converts the energy is itself a load. Even chemical/nuclear reactions are themselves a sort of machine -- the only interesting principle being whether they are endothermic or exothermic.

If you want to do your best to design a free energy machine I think you are going to want to look at gravity (the curvature of space). We enter the realm of deep-end physics here. The problem with gravity is that it pulls mass, and there's no way to make it pull mass less on the way up than on the way down. So any kind of physical machine which relies merely on the force of gravity will never work. You would want to derive some sort of energy from the pressure it exerts on stationary objects. I can't remember where I read so but I think this is actually impossible. I.E. getting energy from a system that is at rest. I'm thinking quartz crystals here but quartz crystals require a change in pressure to generate electricity.

If you're interested in theoretical physics I can recommend "The Black Hole War" by Susskind. It's a pretty cool book that discusses some key points regarding gravity and mass as information. I'd also recommend the Feynman lectures on physics. His explanation of how to determine how many dimensions we live in is a classic and will help you understand gravity (the curvature of space) a lot more. But I doubt we will be designing any kind of perpetual motion device any time soon.