Do "monumental assholes" go into a different shipping queue than normal BFL customers?

I presume you are talking about Mt Gox now and the first link is not relevant.
First of all, it is the Department of Homeland Security doing the prosecution. These are the same guys who strip search 90 year old ladies in wheelchairs and 2 year old toddlers at airports.
The subsidiary in question (Mutum Sigillum LLC) was a holding company, not a money services business. Mt Gox is registered as an MSB, but the subsidiary was not. The account was created before the FINCen guidelines about virtual currencies.
Mt. Gox did not have to close operations.
Standard Chartered Bank, UBS, and Credit Suisse all ran afoul of US banking laws recently. They have paid over $1 billion in fines and UBS actually had a criminal indictment go forward.

Wrong again.
All you have denials, innuendo, and scare tactics. You haven't linked to a single piece of evidence to support your wild claims. You created the brontosaurus account to post crazy sauce in this thread.

That fact that you exist is actually good evidence that KNC is not a scam. Otherwise, why would shills like you both spreading FUD about them?

Um, the first link is a chart comparing bitcoin to other currencies (not a business).
The other is Mt. Gox. They are having issues, but I would rank them fairly low on the scumbag scale. They have not robbed or defrauded anyone that I know of. They have only had production issues and arguments with the DHS.

Unless you find a company that will take on the Bitcoin risk for you (and actually keep their promise).

http://www.coinish.com/calc/#

300 MH/s, 2 BTC, 3W, 2% pool fee, $0.15 kWh
1.3% increase per day

You will be at minus 1.429 BTC after 12 months of mining. After that, earnings and the residual value of the device will be negligible.

It is possible that they will never make a return (if the hash and exchange rates reach the point that the USB miners burn more electricity than they generate in BTC).
They would be useful for distributing the hash rate and making the network more secure if they were priced lower. As it is, they are only a novelty item.
They could be a benefit to Bitcoin itself, which is why I don't think it is cool that they are priced in such a way as to make them a niche product.

Nothing a few candles, a pentagram, some blood from a freshly slaughtered goat, a gateway to the stygian blackness of a nether realm, and the whisperings of a ancient and evil consciousness that ravens for our blood can't solve. 

I don't wax nostalgic about the 80286.

No. I am afraid we cannot agree to that. It is not cool.

In other news, I should make a USB drive with a bitcoin sticker on it and sell it for 1 BTC.

MLMs require that more people enter the system for all to benefit. Most MLMs make money selling to their sales people instead of end users.
If the MLM does not have a minimum purchase amount to become a re-seller, then it is not "scammy".

Here, the mini-rig is a well defined item in terms of capabilities. Simple maths can give you an estimate of it's earning potential.
If you still choose to pay an exorbitant price to be the owner of a mini-rig, that is not a scam. It is merely a bad decision.

A fraud would require the seller to misrepresent the item in some way. Other than price, power draw, and hashing capability, there is little to describe about the product. If the buyer cannot do the math, that really is not the sellers fault.

I am offering an AMD 7950 for 500 BTC. PM me if interested.

These units were shipped out of order. It may have well been a 50GH/s order

Before anyone bids on it, visit http://www.coinish.com/calc/#

Frankly, at this point I am glad BFL is doing this to their customers because their customers come here and demand the nay-sayers to "take it to PMs" and "stop beating dead horses". 

Nah, I think they will survive. The Bitcoin ecosystem has enough people willing to give them cash. Ecosystems need predators to cull the herd. BFL is useful in this regard.

You can easily extrapolate current trends with variations out 3-4 months (delivery schedules for the major players in the Bitcoin ASIC space).
That is enough to eliminate many ASIC purchases and auctions as likely to be unprofitable.

Back of the envelope incoming!!!
We got to 20 TH/s on GPUs. Roughly speaking, Gigahashes are the new Megahashes.
So I would imagine the stabilization point of the curve looks like 5,000 - 20,000 Terahash, presuming Bitcoin itself does not unravel and most miners upgrade their GPUs to ASICs.
It will take 40 weeks or so at 10% per week to hit that range.

Funny, I link to Paypals refund policy which is exactly in accordance what I have been proposing BFL should do for it's customers who paid in BTC.
All Erk does is show up and say "NUH UH!!".

Telling.

http://www.coinish.com/calc/#

If you could pay $274 for a Jalapeno and receive it at today's difficulty, it would be a good deal.
Unfortunately, there is about 300TH of orders in front of you. So it is impossible to receive a Jalapeno ordered today at today's difficulty.

Try starting the calculation at 60,000,000 difficulty and then see how much you make.
Also, 1.3% per day is a very low estimate for how much the hash rate will grow in the coming months.

I have to agree. There is no fraud involved in offering to sell a mini-rig for a ludicrous price.

At least then BFL would be refunding them in BTC. 

Correct. Any expectation of escrow would have to come from either BFL or a third party.

Also correct.
BFL claimed that they were segregating customer funds from operational funds for the purpose of always being able to supply customers with full refunds. Whenever customers got jittery over BFL burning through their pre-order money, BFL responded with the claim that no-preorder funds had been spent and that they were segregated from operational funds.


Fair enough. My definition of refund is the same as Paypals. I don't like that people who paid via Paypal get a full refund and people who paid with BTC got a "BFL refund". That says to every customer out there "don't use BTC, you can get screwed". I also don't like that people who paid via BTC need to get a Paypal or bank account to get a refund. That is also a terrible precedent to set.

The overclocking opportunities on custom boards are very interesting.
Finally, I have a use for all this liquid helium I have laying around. 

Whether the BFL used Bitpay or some other plugin code to take BTC from customers is not relevant. Merchants who accept gold as payment usually don't hold that gold for 12 months and thus are not subject to exchange rate risk (if they are, they usually hedge that risk in some way). Even if they did hold the gold for 12 months, if they didn't spend the gold then why is there a risk involved in refunding it? If BFL took the BTC from Bitpay and put it in a wallet, why is it so hard for them to give it back? When I ask a bank to hold my money for me, I expect them to give it back to me in the form I gave it to them, not in worthless mortgage backed securities that they converted my USD to.


I think on this point we will have to agree to disagree. BFL declared on these forums and their own that customers can ask for a refund whenever they want one. I feel that if BFL then denied refunds to all those who asked, it would be morally and ethically wrong. It would almost certainly be illegal as well, but that is for courts and lawyers to act on.

People who paid BFL in BTC lost out compared to people who used PayPal. That precedent is bad for BTC as a going concern.
To get a refund you have to supply BFL with a PayPal or Bank account, so why use BTC at all? No recourse, and partial refunds in a currency that might not be yours.

Edit: I missed your edit, could you clarify please?
After BFL offered full refunds to all customers, is it ok for BFL to deny refunds because BitPay gives them the ability to?