bfl a scam?

[Frizz23]

[mezzomix]

Do you have documentation that your refund has been refused?

No. No answer to my mail, only silence!

[willphase]

they aren't a scam, they just appear to have totally underestimated the amount of time/skill/effort it takes to create an ASIC from scratch, and their timescales have been overly ambitious the whole time.  I don't think there is any malice in what they are doing though, just bad luck and hitting a number of issues they didn't forsee.

Hopefully there should be a video later tonight of the ASIC hashing for real.

Will

[Frizz23]

I don't think there is any malice in what they are doing though, ...

Promise in September (2012) to ship in October (2012) when they had literally nothing (no ASICS, no prototype, not even a functional design), stringing people along month after month and make fun of the competition (that managed to deliver their products months ago) - you don't see and "malice" in this?

[maqifrnswa]

I don't think there is any malice in what they are doing though, ...

Promise in September (2012) to ship in October (2012) when they had literally nothing (no ASICS, no prototype, not even a functional design), stringing people along month after month and make fun of the competition (that managed to deliver their products months ago) - you don't see and "malice" in this?

Hanlon's razor:

    Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

[Frizz23]

Hanlon's razor:

    Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

OK.

[PuertoLibre]

If you haven't pulled your money by now, it is probably already too late....

[PulsedMedia]

They promised me a product, a worst case delivery date, a refund rule and took my BTC. They missed the product spec, the date and did not pay the requested refund - it is a scam!

In addition they promised to pay 1000 BTC as charity donation if they miss the power goals. They admitted to miss the power goals but there is no sign of a 1000BTC payment as charity donation - it is a scam!

Plenty of people have received refunds.

The product is not yet finished - There are issues putting the power demand way over spec, which in turn means they have to crank down the current prototypes.
That's all it is right now -> A prototype.
One individual seemingly also has one of those prototypes, Luke Jr which has been well respected community member for quite some time now.

If you are making a pottery bowl, half way there it looks more like a vase, did you fail to make a bowl or aren't simply finished yet?

[Detritus]

One individual seemingly also has one of those prototypes, Luke Jr which has been well respected community member for quite some time now.

Rspected by who?  

[PulsedMedia]

One individual seemingly also has one of those prototypes, Luke Jr which has been well respected community member for quite some time now.

Rspected by who?  

You have been long enough lurking you should by now know who Luke Jr is ...

[nathanrees19]

One individual seemingly also has one of those prototypes, Luke Jr which has been well respected community member for quite some time now.

Rspected by who?  

Well...he has family, right?

[Detritus]

One individual seemingly also has one of those prototypes, Luke Jr which has been well respected community member for quite some time now.

Rspected by who?  

You have been long enough lurking you should by now know who Luke Jr is ...

I didn't say I didn't know who he was, I said I didn't respect him.

[mobodick]

if anyone has any proof/evidence either way on whether or not bfl is a scam, id be interested since im thinking of ordering

They continue taking money for 3rd batches while they haven't delivered the first batch yet.
They claimed several shiping dates already but they still havent got a working product.
People invested in them last year because they promised to deliver last year. We are now past the first quarter of the next year and still no product. Meanwhile the difficulty has tripled since the time they originally claimed they would deliver.
So their advertising is pretty much a scam and their ASIC products, alstho still unreleased, are now worth a lot less than they were 6 months ago when they were supposed to be delivered.

[mobodick]

They promised me a product, a worst case delivery date, a refund rule and took my BTC. They missed the product spec, the date and did not pay the requested refund - it is a scam!

In addition they promised to pay 1000 BTC as charity donation if they miss the power goals. They admitted to miss the power goals but there is no sign of a 1000BTC payment as charity donation - it is a scam!

Plenty of people have received refunds.

The product is not yet finished - There are issues putting the power demand way over spec, which in turn means they have to crank down the current prototypes.
That's all it is right now -> A prototype.
One individual seemingly also has one of those prototypes, Luke Jr which has been well respected community member for quite some time now.

If you are making a pottery bowl, half way there it looks more like a vase, did you fail to make a bowl or aren't simply finished yet?

In case of BFL, they first bake the clay, then find out it's a vase and not a bowl, and that they are basically back to making the bowl again.

[StringTheory]

For the sake of network security I'm hoping it is not a scam, but what you really need to be considering is your place in line when these units start to ship.  Your order will most likely be in the tens of thousands, and I am predicting many hardware revamps and upgrades before all orders are filled which will likely cause a delay of some degree.  The low hanging fruit has been picked, and if you are looking for a quick way to earn BTC and exchange them for fiat, there is much you need to consider.

[JordanL]

It really depends upon your definition of a scam.

If I offer you a trip to the moon for $30k that would be an incredible bargain.

If I take 1 million $30k deposits and spend the money trying to build a moon rocket with 4 seats on it, is it a scam?  

If I promise that trips will start next week, every week for a year, is it a scam? 

If I advertise on google that you can buy your trip to the moon for 30k and overlook telling you that there are 250,000 trips ahead of you is it a scam?

This exactly.

[thebaron]

Pre-ordering a product that doesn't exist comes with an inherent risk of you never getting anything. You are nothing more than another name for an investor of a business that might fail.

[xan_The_Dragon]

The Bitcoin community is so tolerant of being ripped off, that if BFL delivers a Pet Rock with a SHA-256 base64 encoded stenciled on it, then BFL would not be considered a scam. The rock draws no electricity, and generates exactly 1 hash. Thus it could be argued that its Mh/J is infinite (or undefined). The ROI is sketchy tho...

lmao 1 hash

[Evan]

if anyone has any proof/evidence either way on whether or not bfl is a scam, id be interested since im thinking of ordering

They continue taking money for 3rd batches while they haven't delivered the first batch yet.
They claimed several shiping dates already but they still havent got a working product.
People invested in them last year because they promised to deliver last year. We are now past the first quarter of the next year and still no product. Meanwhile the difficulty has tripled since the time they originally claimed they would deliver.
So their advertising is pretty much a scam and their ASIC products, alstho still unreleased, are now worth a lot less than they were 6 months ago when they were supposed to be delivered.

There's a difference between fraud and breach of contract. Sometimes a breach of contract is fraud, but not all breaches of contract are fraud.

Common law fraud in this sort of case is divided into two categories: (1) entering into contracts without any intent to perform the contracts obligations in the future, (2) making misrepresentations about present or past facts.

We're likely only worried about (1).

So, the question is whether this apparently shitty business was taking orders without any intention to fulfill them. If so, that's fraud.

But (2) could arise. For instance, if they lied and told you your order was on its way when it wasn't in order to keep you from cancelling the order, challenging the order with PayPal, or to induce you to buy even more stuff, that would also be fraud.

There are also different varieties of statutory fraud (I'll ignore the federal mail fraud statutes and things like that). Most states have a consumer fraud statute that is easier to use than common law fraud. Generally under statutory consumer fraud statutes, you need to show that the seller made a misrepresentation or omission in the sale or advertising of goods and that you were harmed by misrepresentation or omission. Unlike in a common law fraud case, you generally don't have to prove whether you reasonably relied on the misrepresentation or omission.

I just don't know enough about the situation to know whether fraud has occurred, but the comments suggest that it's almost certainly breach of contract.

[nathanrees19]

It's either an intentional scam or will end up being one because of the delusion/incompetence of the people running it.

There's no such thing as an unintentional scam. The concept is absurd.

What you're thinking of is a fuckup.