A mac is a terrible, inefficient choice for mining of any kind. A purpose built PC can do it much better and allows for future expansion with more GPUs, or as a host system for future ASIC devices, diverting GPU power to Litecoin later on as GPU mining for Bitcoin is just about to get snuffed out by immensely superior hardware.

Done 

As noted I know some of these are already confirmed pretty much, I am still organizing the information. I want to include soon company profiles and reasons why or why not it is fraudulent.

Every entry will be reviewed fairly and backed up with facts. Avalon and BFL both have shipped real products and that is confirmed, though I would like this report to be complete before I greenlight them in full to avoid any mistakes that could lead someone to believe a company is real and then get ripped off. It should not be easy to be greenlit.

A formal review thread has been created

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=176262.0

There will be many more soon as mining turns into a serious business, divided between hardware vendors, mining service providers, and raw diggers.

To begin, I am not trying to personally attack you or discredit your company, and wish to remain objective.

However, I am not the one who needs to provide the burden of proof.

Your operation looks like a scam because:

1. Priced units available to buy with ZERO evidence they exist in any form, in development or otherwise. This is the big one. You have stated yourself they are not in production at any level, and you are just now sourcing hardware. Why should anyone trust you to deliver? How many pre-orders do you have so far? Did you already have startup capital (let's be real, ASIC is expensive to design and produce en mass), or is it a bootstrap operation based on pre-orders? Do you at least have a picture of a working GPU rig? Anything at all? All we have currently are a few websites and a vague promise backed on nothing but your word.  If you show me something concrete I'm more than happy to leave you alone.

2. Sketchy home-based office. Not an issue on it's own per se for reasons you have stated, but still peculiar for a hardware company. Do you intend to have them produced entirely by outside companies and drop shipped later on? Or get a commercial space later on? Understandably you have no need for a commercial office in the design/sourcing stage.

3. Units depicted look like 'Shopped images of Butterfly Labs machines. This is not a "mockup", its a direct rip off of their design if that is the direction the finished units are going. Even if that is true and you are indeed producing these, it is bull on it's own to steal someone else's work, and an infringement of intellectual property rights. So yes you ARE RIPPING THEM OFF. Considered a "popular look" by whom? Avalons look nothing like BFL gear. Plus I don't think real miners really give a damn about how it looks as long as it functions.

I have no problem with the fact that ASIC must be produced by specialists and sourced out, they all do.

4. A 3rd site called GXMINING.com that looks very similar to the others, I cannot ignore it. It is also a UK registration, uses very similar images, colors, and layout, etc. Can you explain this? Either this is also yours, or someone else is ripping you off which I find hard to believe.


Again it isn't up to me to prove you and your enterprise is real and serious, if it is then I do wish you the best, I really do. However there are too many oddities to overlook, and too many scam sites out there that only hurt the Bitcoin community.

I am conducting a tribunal to find out the truth about these companies before people give scammers their money and are discouraged from further participation in Bitcoin. Every Bitcoin hardware producer is under my eye, so please do not take any of this personally.

I've added GPURigs to the list, and presented a chance to refute on the other thread.

I think all of these pages above are the same thing unless there is evidence presented otherwise in the form of pictures, prototypes, something other than a blog post saying and some Easybake websites saying  "We're not a scam I promise!" Not good enough. The fact they all have ripped off Photoshopped BFL gear says volumes.

At the moment, mining hardware vendors are guilty until proven innocent with direct evidence that the hardware and the company is real.

I look forward to "BFL Presents: Hard Mining" 

Another day, another ill informed post....come on guys please do some basic research before posting this stuff, most of the answers are out there in plain english already as to what Bitcoin is and is not.



This is a built in feature, not a problem. It allows for appreciation in value over time as they are lost forever. They have already been lost simply because in the past Bitcoin was an experiment, and they were careless with their wallets as Bitcoins wernt really worth anything. They are now though, lost coins will be less of a problem as now losing your Wallet could cost you $1000s instead of nothing now. People are being much more careful.


Impossible. Even if it was, if it was unprofitable to save, no one would.


Absolutely. Moving Bitcoin out of "its the new gold!" phase and into mainstream exchange for goods and servies is key to Bitcoin's proliferation. Bitcoin is an oddity because it right now both acts like a commodity and cash.


Impossible. We cannot choose what the media and economists/speculators say or do. Even if we did, that is fascism. Bitcoin is the anti-control.


Way to early to speculate on the mining trade 100+ years from now. When the last coin is minted in 2140, miners will collect the transaction fees because the network still needs to process transactions. So, Eliminating fees gives miners no reason to continue after the last BTC is found. Fees will likely need an adjustment later on, but who knows when.



Bitcoin is designed on purpose to be deflationary This is an example where basic research would have indicated this. Inflation is curbed by mining model, no matter how much power goes online the rate of new coins entering the system remains the same and only goes down from there to zero sometime in 2140. Unlike our fiats today no one can just "print" more bitcoins and make the rest less valuable. There are only 21 Million, ever. Because Bitcoin has the ability to move it's decimal place around the value of a coin can be indefinitely adjusted to  reflect how much wealth it represents as each remaining Bitcoin becomes more valuable, because there will only be less and less of them.

Bitcoin is entirely self regulating in a way Fiat could never hope to do.

Yup.

Bitcoin is fluctuating hard because:

Injections of fresh fiat are rolling in, Cyprus was the first major exodus of a banking system to BTC, and will not be the last I think.

Speculation

Positive/negative media spin

Lack of diversified exchanges allows hackers/outside influence to manipulate the current exchange rate.


The Bitcoin protocol and idea is sound, it is everything around it that is pushing the market around. It will never truly stabilize until it is much larger probably and won't be so succeptible to shocks. Though through it all, it has proven Bitcoin is a resilient financial beast.

The problem is the mindset is based on what people know, which is fiat. It is all we have ever had until now. Bitcoin makes no sense to them, and goes against everything they know about economy as Bitcoin does not function like a fiat at all aside the medium of exchange part.

I find this as I try to explain Bitcoin to people I know. The concept is apparently so strange they have trouble digesting it and are hard pressed to not think its some kind of scam. We just have to keep trying to educate them on the truth instead of media fodder.

Let the flapping heads flap, and we just need to keep doing what we're doing.

With anything new there will always be uninformed naysayers, haters, etc. I don't pay attention to what they say because I don't give a shit. In doing, we will prove them wrong. By succeeding, they are defeated. Spend more energy pushing the fold instead of pushing their lies and propaganda.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt, however, your company:

Has blatantly ripped off images on both sites (and GXMINING.COM, which seems linked to you also) of Butterfly Labs devices

Has not shown a shred of proof of anything you claim, can you provide a photo or evidence of a prototype? Anything?

Can you provide an explanation for both of these issues?

If not I don't think you will be leaving "It's an obvious scam" world anytime soon.  You are correct in many new companies being labeled a scam, and that is because most of them are. It is very hard to tell at the moment who is real and who is not. I am not targeting your company directly or on purpose, only presenting evidence found so far that makes it seem like it is. If you are legit then I am happy to remove you from my other thread as a scam site: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=176262.msg1835276#msg1835276, but you must provide proof of such or words are just that.

True, a home address as a business address is not uncommon, however for a hardware manufacturer it is.

The code is freely available to see, check it yourself for any reporting engines. Every transaction can be viewed in real time. The entire network can be seen transparently. I cannot deny that "stack hunt" exists or existed. Plus this information itself comes from a random comment on some forum somewhere, it can hardly be taken as hard evidence that Bitcoin is some kind of Government op. Aside all that, why would a totalitarian style government introduce a system that give them less control and not more.

If they wanted a universal currency, it would be under their direct control. Bitcoin goes against every system like that.

A petition is useless at this point, if they want to undermine Bitcoin they will, or will try if it screws with their own agendas. If Bitcoin comes under harsh regulated laws, we will then know what their stance is. If it does, we then know they actually fear Bitcoin as a direct threat to their financial powerbase.

I agree, the exchange issue is the biggest at the moment. We must break it apart, in the action that is we need more exchanges or implementing a p2p system for it.

But let's think long term, which I think most fail to do, once this issue is solved it will be fine. The vulnerability is in support systems, not the protocol itself. We are still at the very beginning, once Bitcoin entered the public eye we got a true stress test against the network. And it failed. These are only hobbyists that are now needing to grow to meet the demand. Bitcoin is rapidly becoming serious business. If MTGox fails so be it, there will be others to replace it and do it better then.

At this stage it is only a good thing to discover where Bitcoin has a problem so we can fix it together. This problem today is exchange abuse, which is rooted at MTGox as it was one of the progenitors and as such the most popular one.

Mining is going pro at this point, soon even 5 Ghash will be a drop in the bucket against others with larger more powerful miners and severely increased difficulty. If you intend to get into BTC mining at this point, now you need an investment fund and a working business plan to compete. I find that exciting myself.

But if that isn't your cup o tea, you could look into mining one of the altcoins like Litecoin which is gaining prominence as crypto-currencie's # 2. This is still in a hobbyist stage much like where Bitcoin was a couple years ago.

Though bubbles are still not a fault of the Bitcoin protocols, but a victim of outside influence from completely unstable fiat currencies, initial speculator greed, etc. Bitcoin is tied to the real world just as much as any other currency, and I think the wildest ride is yet to come.


Bitcoin acts like gold, but unlike gold it can also be spent as a currency. It is only like a gold commodity because it is new, and frankly the only fire market in years after a couple decades of horrible stock problems. As adoption increases over time it will be viewed as a currency and not a commodity. At the moment it has the luxury of both.

As BTC mining is going pro, these are our own secrets now 

In the end that is where the means came from. I guess we can thank ourselves and our parents? 

BFL has actually shipped products in the past, so I don't think so with then. BFL's problems stem from hyping too much and delivering too little, and being too disconnected with their clients (I am one of them too). But I think they will ship eventually. I give them the benefit of the doubt because they are now producing expensive custom hardware, and it just takes time to develop a new product like that.

I'm here to call out blatant scams, like those I posted above

It does seem to be an uphill battle