Butterflylabs Huge SCAM

[Bitmunitions]

Personally I believe Butterflylabs.com will deliver its first few rounds of rigs without any issue at all other than the fact that they greatly underestimated the work involved with manufacturing such chips. It is a bit unsettling that they did 100% cost pre-orders without any real promotion other than an earlier shipment than those that waited.

With that said, I still invested $2500 with the company and will not be requesting a refund unless we get well into 2014 without any real developments. As far as I can tell, they have been refunding customers that request it rather effectively.

[TR4L]

Look up the meaning of ponzi scheme. No really look it up. You need to actually read it and understand it. Then pick your date. I can't make it any more clear.

If they have a working product and are able to deliver all of said product to the consumers who have ordered it while maintaining a profit, then by definition they are not a ponzi scheme. I strongly suggest you look up what a ponzi scheme is before attacking me.

If they cannot deliver by some date we choose, then we have the right to request a refund in mass. If BFL cannot refund our money and have no product, then yes they are a ponzi scheme. Then I and my lawyers will call for a both an investigation by the government and also a class action lawsuit. The management will return to prison and we will address the ASIC issue in a more transparent and open way.

Are you sure you read it correctly? Actually its worse than a ponzi scheme it gives no returns on investments.

I don't like insulting people, but you are an exception.  You're an idiot:  First of all, it says right on your pic that a ponzi scheme "Pays returns to its investors with from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investor." PAYS INVESTORS. You even highlighted and underlined it like the *retard* you are.  When the hell did BFL give ANY money to ANYONE that hasn't specifically requested a return?  NOWHERE do they have ANY kind of claim of the nature.   They offered a product and took money for it.  Although it took them a while to start shipping, THEY ARE SHIPPING.... PRODUCTS!!! NOT MONEY!!! IDIOT!!!  Not only did you succeed in making yourself look like a stupid asshole, but you also succeeded in pissing me off (among others, I'm sure) by posting a retarded thought that your stupid brain dropped onto a keyboard like the shit from an ass drops into a toilet.  

*rant over*

Hey if you want to follow it to the tee. They take new investors money to keep operations going for more than 1 year. Have you run a business for a year with zero income? Have they created any products and shipped out to pay bills, employees, taxes, electricity, supplies?

NO

They took and used pre-order money to supplement their operation FOR A YEAR!!!! and when someone asks for their money back they get more pre-orders letting them off the hook for the older pre-orders and that tends to dry up capital. So now they raise the prices to compensate for the lack of fund.

Now they could be at the end of their R&D and about to ship products now or soon in the future but why was I told in October many times that my pre-order was estimated for delivery in the last weeks of Dec 2012 and they purchased a new location and were expecting benches for assembling the units in Feb 2013? Is that a lie? or a stretching of the truth?

So the ponzi scheme here is the perpetual lying of estimated ship dates. To look at their website and watch the dates of estimate shipping being changed from March to April and soon it will be changed to May. This has been going since October and from what I hear before that.

So its not a investment ponzi scheme, its a pre-order scheduled ponzi scheme all the same a lie and a fraud.

I would say check the forums but as BFL is a great advertising payer (more money from products they have not sold) they have been removed from here.

as you put it rant over

First of all, thank you for being civil even after I was rude, that tells me something about your character.  Second of all, I apologize for insulting your character (on the forum for all to see).  Third of all, you're wrong about BFL.  The funny thing is no matter what happens you will hate them. Whether they ship or not, you will either hate them because they shipped late and you backed out, or because they kept putting off the ship dates instead of being straight forward and saying it will be months before shipment.  The thing is this: BFL shipped the FPGA's and they WILL ship ASICs and even if the difficulty went up 10 times, it will still produce ~$1500 worth of bitcoins with the 60Gh/s unit and ~$126 with the 5Gh/s units.  The truth is this, these things use a lot less wattage than any mining system out there so power costs will drop significantly;  GPU's will turn to another currency because of the difficulty to reward to power cost ratios (freeing up a lot of hashing power for ASICs, which are currently at only 30% of the BTC mining community, or so I've heard);   Considering all this,  Even if it doubles again,  these numbers will half but still pay itself off in a few months (even for the late comers); remember that with the difficulty increase, costs will likely also increase, making these number (most likely) lower than what they probably will be.

I get the idea that you either hate BFL because you had a really bad encounter, or you have your own unit on order and want to make everyone get a refund so you move up inline.   

Don't know what else to tell you so I'm leaving it at this.

[charleshoskinson]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=187600.0

[xandriel]

If it was all a scam, wouldn't BFL have continued to sell FPGA miners?

[Vitek72rus]

I keep thinking to order or not?

[cyberstef]

Is it a scam or not? I'm interested to buy from them. thanks.

[oriolpont]

the problem with these is that you can never be sure

[knedle]

Is it a scam or not? I'm interested to buy from them. thanks.

Right now it's better to go to custom hardware forum and buy some home made asics there. Of course they will be slower per buck compared to BFL, but you will actually get them, and even if someone, sooner or later will get the BFL ASIC he will get it later than you will get yours = you will be hashing and making money, while they will be waiting for theirs.

[JessicaMILFson]

Not a scam, just really incompetent

[hstlmn]

I thought about ordering one of these my main issue is the wait time.


Has anyone taken into account the amount Bitcoins are and how much more you could have made when these went on sale. This company if they have this in Bitcoin that you paid for has made a mint off of you.

Lets say you paid for bit coin around Jan before the huge spike.

Then is was around $10USD a Bitcoin - so with that logic lets break down the products they are offering. Then how much you would have if you just sat on BTC and sold them today. These will be estimates and according to the markets avg.

5gh Miner Jan 10th order would have cost you 27.4BTC - at current markets that would = $3973 not $274

25gh Miner Jan 10th order would have cost you 124.9BTC -  at current markets that would = $18110 not $1249

50gh Miner Jan 10th order would have cost you 249.9 -  at current markets that would = $36234 not $2499


This is the main thing that bothers me. Not grant it, you could still get the product and make all that money back but they are sitting on a huge amount of money and have made way more off you. No one seems to mention or see this and it leaves me baffled


* side note, that current rate I used was today $145, if they had sells when it spiked to $200 or higher that would be much much more.


I do not think they are a scam, I just think doing a preorder of this nature is stupid.

[rsbriggs]

I just received an email from them that said they would start shipping in late September or early October.  Haven't they been stringing people out now like this since April of 2012? 

[hopelessinvestor]

This was a good read.

[HjerterEss]

I can`t help but wonder if Butterfly Labs used the money from all the preorders to build ASICs/FPGAs, and use them to mine for a while before shipping them out slowly...
They are sitting on a gold mine with miners, why should they not get money while its there for them to take?

[hstlmn]

I just received an email from them that said they would start shipping in late September or early October.  Haven't they been stringing people out now like this since April of 2012? 

Wait so you are talking waiting another 6 months. This company needs to be outed. They are only making money off you there should be no reason it takes this long to get a pre order product.

[white854]

I just received an email from them that said they would start shipping in late September or early October.  Haven't they been stringing people out now like this since April of 2012? 

Wait so you are talking waiting another 6 months. This company needs to be outed. They are only making money off you there should be no reason it takes this long to get a pre order product.

Wow, so far what i have been getting from people is that there is no point in even thinking of trying to get a BL product... Unless someone can correct my thinking on that....

[hstlmn]

I just received an email from them that said they would start shipping in late September or early October.  Haven't they been stringing people out now like this since April of 2012? 

Wait so you are talking waiting another 6 months. This company needs to be outed. They are only making money off you there should be no reason it takes this long to get a pre order product.

Wow, so far what i have been getting from people is that there is no point in even thinking of trying to get a BL product... Unless someone can correct my thinking on that....

Your thinking is right. You are only losing money. Once you get this thing. $2500 in BTC you paid back in November could very well be worth $50-100K I doubt you will be able to mine that and make your money back.

[hstlmn]

I would also like to add, if you buy now, you are in the back of the orders so you are most likely not going to see yours until sometime in 2013. Let me break that down really quick with some basic assumptions.


$2500 in btc now = 17.24 @$145

If the price goes up to $500 that would be $8620 if $1000 = $17240

Those prices are very real.

[white854]

I would also like to add, if you buy now, you are in the back of the orders so you are most likely not going to see yours until sometime in 2013. Let me break that down really quick with some basic assumptions.


$2500 in btc now = 17.24 @$145

If the price goes up to $500 that would be $8620 if $1000 = $17240

Those prices are very real.

You are not paying in BTC when buying from BL if i am correct. You are only paying the flat fee even for the Jalapeno at 250... but still even if you are only getting 1 of those and are not getting it for how long that is still 250 that you are out until you finally get it in 2014 sometime by the time the backorders are done. Still a waste of time especially because you know if they have pushed it back for this long then its going to get pushed back again.

[FrenchFriesKetchup]

Yesterday two trolls in the BTC-e trollbox replied they received a shipping code for their bfl box.

So maybe BFL got it now.

But its the trollbox... The name is no coincidence

[Serjster]

Wow! So much negativity here.... BFL should have their backorders fulfilled by August 2013. Reputable people have received and are mining with their Jalapenos: https://twitter.com/BFL_News Why be so negative when in reality you don't know anything? You must be one of the jealous ones that missed the price of the unit before it nearly doubled...