Sonny Vleisides' finally sticking it up his investors' asses!

[snowcrashed]

It's illegal to melt Pennies, so their value is stuck at "face" period. End of story.

Didn't read through the entire thread so this may have been commented on, but this is 100% wrong.  It is illegal to alter a coin in an attempt to commit a fraud, like altering a nickel to try and pass it off as a quarter or cutting chunks out of 100 coins to make a new one.  Melting a coin down for it's raw materials is committing no fraud so the Title you are referring to does not apply.  People have been melting down silver quarters/dollars and copper pennies for as long as it's been profitable, no legal action has come of it.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

It's illegal to melt Pennies, so their value is stuck at "face" period. End of story.

Didn't read through the entire thread so this may have been commented on, but this is 100% wrong.  It is illegal to alter a coin in an attempt to commit a fraud, like altering a nickel to try and pass it off as a quarter or cutting chunks out of 100 coins to make a new one.  Melting a coin down for it's raw materials is committing no fraud so the Title you are referring to does not apply.  People have been melting down silver quarters/dollars and copper pennies for as long as it's been profitable, no legal action has come of it.

That is correct! That is why it's profitable to pay double for a penny off eBay, melt the cents, and combine the copper with other scrap. The only concerns that the local scrapper has is if the copper is of the proper quality and that it wasn't stolen.

Too bad there's a massive paper trail leading to the the purchaser of tons of pennies, yet would have no inventory to show an investigator, let alone a sales slip if sold for profit but not disclosed on any tax forms.

Apologies for the aside. If further comment is warranted, please start a new thread quoting these two posts.

[k9quaint]

It's illegal to melt Pennies, so their value is stuck at "face" period. End of story.

Didn't read through the entire thread so this may have been commented on, but this is 100% wrong.  It is illegal to alter a coin in an attempt to commit a fraud, like altering a nickel to try and pass it off as a quarter or cutting chunks out of 100 coins to make a new one.  Melting a coin down for it's raw materials is committing no fraud so the Title you are referring to does not apply.  People have been melting down silver quarters/dollars and copper pennies for as long as it's been profitable, no legal action has come of it.

http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/?action=press_release&ID=771
New regulations in 2006 (finalized in 2007) were enacted to limit coin melting.

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2007/04/16/E7-7088/prohibition-on-the-exportation-melting-or-treatment-of-5-cent-and-one-cent-coins

[Loredo]

It's illegal to melt Pennies, so their value is stuck at "face" period. End of story.

Didn't read through the entire thread so this may have been commented on, but this is 100% wrong.  It is illegal to alter a coin in an attempt to commit a fraud, like altering a nickel to try and pass it off as a quarter or cutting chunks out of 100 coins to make a new one.  Melting a coin down for it's raw materials is committing no fraud so the Title you are referring to does not apply.  People have been melting down silver quarters/dollars and copper pennies for as long as it's been profitable, no legal action has come of it.

http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/?action=press_release&ID=771
New regulations in 2006 (finalized in 2007) were enacted to limit coin melting.

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2007/04/16/E7-7088/prohibition-on-the-exportation-melting-or-treatment-of-5-cent-and-one-cent-coins

You are correct in this.  Note that it does apply to US silver coins, which have been actively melted for more than 30 years.

Melting pennies brings to mind the old Seinfeld episode where Kramer and the postman (name?) undertake a pop bottle return-value arbitrage by setting out to take a postal truck full of bottles to Michigan from New York.

[snowcrashed]

It's illegal to melt Pennies, so their value is stuck at "face" period. End of story.

Didn't read through the entire thread so this may have been commented on, but this is 100% wrong.  It is illegal to alter a coin in an attempt to commit a fraud, like altering a nickel to try and pass it off as a quarter or cutting chunks out of 100 coins to make a new one.  Melting a coin down for it's raw materials is committing no fraud so the Title you are referring to does not apply.  People have been melting down silver quarters/dollars and copper pennies for as long as it's been profitable, no legal action has come of it.

http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/?action=press_release&ID=771
New regulations in 2006 (finalized in 2007) were enacted to limit coin melting.

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2007/04/16/E7-7088/prohibition-on-the-exportation-melting-or-treatment-of-5-cent-and-one-cent-coins

Okay that one is new to me, but it's addressing a fairly specific problem.  I was referring to http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/331, which is older and more general.  I know of many pawn/coin/collector shops which actively buy silver quarters/dollars and copper pennies for the purpose of melting them for the metal.

[firefop]

Okay that one is new to me, but it's addressing a fairly specific problem.  I was referring to http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/331, which is older and more general.  I know of many pawn/coin/collector shops which actively buy silver quarters/dollars and copper pennies for the purpose of melting them for the metal.

common practice for jewelers. If you can find a reputable legit jeweler, and have foreign coin to sell - they'll usually pay a little more for it because it's not illegal to melt them.

[k9quaint]

It's illegal to melt Pennies, so their value is stuck at "face" period. End of story.

Didn't read through the entire thread so this may have been commented on, but this is 100% wrong.  It is illegal to alter a coin in an attempt to commit a fraud, like altering a nickel to try and pass it off as a quarter or cutting chunks out of 100 coins to make a new one.  Melting a coin down for it's raw materials is committing no fraud so the Title you are referring to does not apply.  People have been melting down silver quarters/dollars and copper pennies for as long as it's been profitable, no legal action has come of it.

http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/?action=press_release&ID=771
New regulations in 2006 (finalized in 2007) were enacted to limit coin melting.

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2007/04/16/E7-7088/prohibition-on-the-exportation-melting-or-treatment-of-5-cent-and-one-cent-coins

Okay that one is new to me, but it's addressing a fairly specific problem.  I was referring to http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/331, which is older and more general.  I know of many pawn/coin/collector shops which actively buy silver quarters/dollars and copper pennies for the purpose of melting them for the metal.

Yeah. The Treasury/Mint issued new regulations to prevent melting pennies and nickels when commodity prices spiked. The US Code you refer to deals with counterfeit mainly.

common practice for jewelers. If you can find a reputable legit jeweler, and have foreign coin to sell - they'll usually pay a little more for it because it's not illegal to melt them.

Some foreign coins are not covered by the treasury/mint regulations.

[Gator-hex]

From the outside, it's hard to tell if BFL is just a poorly managed company run by some marketing "visionaries" getting caught up in a get rich quick scheme, or simply just maximizing their own ROI before the Kansas State Attorney General gets involved.  With the recent hard-line stance on refund refusal and the shipping slowing to a trickle, the latter might make sense - they would take the liquid assets out of the company after a initial shipping push (securing more pre-orders and upgrade funds) while not continuing to tie liquidity up on actual material orders like chips and PCB's.  That's if they were planning on "taking the money and run" approach, which I'm sure BFL is not, because they seem like nice, honest folks.

RICO?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act

Read through it carefully and see if it applies in any way?

When the U.S. Attorney decides to indict someone under RICO, he or she has the option of seeking a pre-trial restraining order or injunction to temporarily seize a defendant's assets and prevent the transfer of potentially forfeitable property, as well as require the defendant to put up a performance bond. This provision was placed in the law because the owners of Mafia-related shell corporations often absconded with the assets. An injunction and/or performance bond ensures that there is something to seize in the event of a guilty verdict.
In many cases, the threat of a RICO indictment can force defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges, in part because the seizure of assets would make it difficult to pay a defense attorney. Despite its harsh provisions, a RICO-related charge is considered easy to prove in court, as it focuses on patterns of behavior as opposed to criminal acts.[4]

What the banks did fixing LIBOR rates is RICO but this is small time it seems more like a mail fraud or an arbitrage scam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_fraud ..... http://fraudaid.com/Dictionary-of-Financial-Scam-Terms/arbitrage.htm
I often wonder if Sonny V. is dragging this out until his parole for the last mail fraud expires?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110805.0
I hope my suspicions are wrong and they deliver to all without running out of cash/going bust, but there have been so many broken promises over so many months.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

From the outside, it's hard to tell if BFL is just a poorly managed company run by some marketing "visionaries" getting caught up in a get rich quick scheme, or simply just maximizing their own ROI before the Kansas State Attorney General gets involved.  With the recent hard-line stance on refund refusal and the shipping slowing to a trickle, the latter might make sense - they would take the liquid assets out of the company after a initial shipping push (securing more pre-orders and upgrade funds) while not continuing to tie liquidity up on actual material orders like chips and PCB's.  That's if they were planning on "taking the money and run" approach, which I'm sure BFL is not, because they seem like nice, honest folks.

RICO?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act

Read through it carefully and see if it applies in any way?

When the U.S. Attorney decides to indict someone under RICO, he or she has the option of seeking a pre-trial restraining order or injunction to temporarily seize a defendant's assets and prevent the transfer of potentially forfeitable property, as well as require the defendant to put up a performance bond. This provision was placed in the law because the owners of Mafia-related shell corporations often absconded with the assets. An injunction and/or performance bond ensures that there is something to seize in the event of a guilty verdict.
In many cases, the threat of a RICO indictment can force defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges, in part because the seizure of assets would make it difficult to pay a defense attorney. Despite its harsh provisions, a RICO-related charge is considered easy to prove in court, as it focuses on patterns of behavior as opposed to criminal acts.[4]

What the banks did fixing LIBOR rates is RICO but this is small time it seems more like a mail fraud or an arbitrage scam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_fraud ..... http://fraudaid.com/Dictionary-of-Financial-Scam-Terms/arbitrage.htm
I often wonder if Sonny V. is dragging this out until his parole for the last mail fraud expires?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110805.0
I hope my suspicions are wrong and they deliver to all without running out of cash/going bust, but there have been so many broken promises over so many months.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the timing of the expected delivery of them 100K chips coincide with Sonny being off probation?

[Flashman]

I hope my suspicions are wrong and they deliver to all without running out of cash/going bust, but there have been so many broken promises over so many months.

I'm probably wasting my time with this crowd, but IMO, there has been sound technical reasons for the delays, everything scopes out to anyone with any experience of hardware development. Yes they may have been over optimistic about some things. So are hundreds of other tech companies, AMD is running what, 9 months late with the HD8000 or Volcanic Islands GPU series? It's way too fucking easy to play Captain Hindsight. The Shuttle got tile damage from ice falling off the cryogenic propellant tanks? Well they should have checked them better before launch then... see, now I'm a NASA Rocket Scientist. If you think you can do better, shut up and do it.

However if these technical problems were any further over the heads of the some of the rabid, frothing assclowns on here, they'd probably hit the International Space Station. There is however a large cadre of tech and IT industry professional BFL customers, who DO get it, and are not going to be swayed by the continual irrational hatred and shit stirring. These people tend to hate politics, so they are somewhat silent, but are beginning to harbor great resentment to those who appear to be into the BFL hate bandwagon in a political way, i.e. create problem out of thin air, appear to offer solution, all to create an aura of self importance and aggrandizement.

Yes they also harbor some disappointment and frustration at the delays, but they also strongly believe that BFL is doing some cool shit as best they can. Anyone that appears to be trying to stop them doing cool shit is rapidly becoming an enemy combatant. I use that term purposely, implying as it does in the modern world that any and all means of taking said enemy combatant out of the fight for good will be considered.

I put this as a statement of what I consider to be probable. If you piss off a bunch of skilled IT and tech industry pros with decent incomes, you're going to have a bad time. It will not make you a hero, it will make you an example.


Some of you should stop and think now, you've obviously been strung along by the hate campaigners and thought there were valid reasons. Now BFL is shipping, despite everyone who gets one being named a shill by those who you trusted, there's just too many "shills" now, look around. Think! These people obviously have different motivations than the protection of the community. This is now damaging to the community, the word scam has been cheapened, made useless, they have cried wolf, when the wolves descend, nobody will be taken seriously. Cedartech, Dragon ASIC et al, these are scams. You have been used for an agenda, it's now quite clear that that agenda is focused on actually preventing BFL delivering. That's not what they wanted you to believe before was it? They wanted you to believe they were putting pressure on BFL TO deliver, to make sure nobody was ripped off. You have been scammed by them. Make an objective analysis of some of their statements. These are just not the statements of reasonable people that are on the side of the BFL customer.

In view of this now becoming obvious, I would advise anyone who has been misled by these people to report the value of their BFL order as a negative "could have lost" in the trust system.

regards,

Flash

[jspielberg]

I think one of the issues aggravating BFL's awkward position during this whole saga is Josh as the "official?" mouthpiece and his delivery of obstacle information as progress.  Maybe he is just the messenger... and we all have a tendency to shoot the messenger.

I think it seems very unlikely that the obstacles presented early (i.e. late 2012 time frame) could have been based on information which had, as Colbert would say, much "truthiness".  More information with less truth makes for a complicated read.  And the saga, at least to me, seems very complicated.

Since they aren't processing refunds... I think the discussion of trust in BFL's future is moot.

[Bicknellski]

I hope my suspicions are wrong and they deliver to all without running out of cash/going bust, but there have been so many broken promises over so many months.

I'm probably wasting my time with this crowd, but IMO, there has been sound technical reasons for the delays, everything scopes out to anyone with any experience of hardware development. Yes they may have been over optimistic about some things. So are hundreds of other tech companies, AMD is running what, 9 months late with the HD8000 or Volcanic Islands GPU series? It's way too fucking easy to play Captain Hindsight. The Shuttle got tile damage from ice falling off the cryogenic propellant tanks? Well they should have checked them better before launch then... see, now I'm a NASA Rocket Scientist. If you think you can do better, shut up and do it.

However if these technical problems were any further over the heads of the some of the rabid, frothing assclowns on here, they'd probably hit the International Space Station. There is however a large cadre of tech and IT industry professional BFL customers, who DO get it, and are not going to be swayed by the continual irrational hatred and shit stirring. These people tend to hate politics, so they are somewhat silent, but are beginning to harbor great resentment to those who appear to be into the BFL hate bandwagon in a political way, i.e. create problem out of thin air, appear to offer solution, all to create an aura of self importance and aggrandizement.

Yes they also harbor some disappointment and frustration at the delays, but they also strongly believe that BFL is doing some cool shit as best they can. Anyone that appears to be trying to stop them doing cool shit is rapidly becoming an enemy combatant. I use that term purposely, implying as it does in the modern world that any and all means of taking said enemy combatant out of the fight for good will be considered.

I put this as a statement of what I consider to be probable. If you piss off a bunch of skilled IT and tech industry pros with decent incomes, you're going to have a bad time. It will not make you a hero, it will make you an example.


Some of you should stop and think now, you've obviously been strung along by the hate campaigners and thought there were valid reasons. Now BFL is shipping, despite everyone who gets one being named a shill by those who you trusted, there's just too many "shills" now, look around. Think! These people obviously have different motivations than the protection of the community. This is now damaging to the community, the word scam has been cheapened, made useless, they have cried wolf, when the wolves descend, nobody will be taken seriously. Cedartech, Dragon ASIC et al, these are scams. You have been used for an agenda, it's now quite clear that that agenda is focused on actually preventing BFL delivering. That's not what they wanted you to believe before was it? They wanted you to believe they were putting pressure on BFL TO deliver, to make sure nobody was ripped off. You have been scammed by them. Make an objective analysis of some of their statements. These are just not the statements of reasonable people that are on the side of the BFL customer.

In view of this now becoming obvious, I would advise anyone who has been misled by these people to report the value of their BFL order as a negative "could have lost" in the trust system.

regards,

Flash

Let me summarize your post.

Why the ice not the O-rings?

The cadre doesn't always get it right. BFL is simply unethical in it's business practices there is little about the tech at this point that matters.

Engineer Who Opposed Challenger Launch Offers Personal Look at Tragedy

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/researchernews/rn_Colloquium1012.html

Quote from: lucasjkr on Today at 00:56:31
For what it's worth, I ordered my Jalapeno back in September last year. Kept on going to their site to check its status and kept toying with the idea of paying for express shipping. Thankfully, I didn't. You see, my Jalap shipped last Friday and arrived at my office on Monday in a nice little USPS box. That's just Kansas to Florida, but still... it got here on day 3, and two of those days were weekend days.

My advice to anyone, don't bother ponying up for Express Shipping; you'll pay a fortune, and what, you MIGHT get it a day earlier?

Really?? 1 buisness day ?? My 30GH unit shipped last friday & got here in Fla same as yours,on the following monday......................So they DID screw me on shipping............................I'll NEVER learn 

Original shipping charge $34,Express shipping extra $95= $ 129.Never again BFL......................NEVER AGAIN!!!!! 

[Phinnaeus Gage]

<In the voice of BFL>

Dear BitcoinTalk,

Please move this vile to off-topic otherwise we will be forced to cease advertising on your lovely forum.

Sincerely,

Jody Drake

jd/scv

[Red_Wolf_2]

<In the voice of BFL>

Dear BitcoinTalk,

Please move this vile to off-topic otherwise we will be forced to cease advertising on your lovely forum.

Sincerely,

Jody Drake

jd/scv

Thought it had to do with the page or two of discussion regarding melting pennies?

[scambutterflylabs]

"Bitcoin to Precious Metals direct"

quote BFL_Josh 07-11-2013, 09:05 PM :

"I placed a couple small orders with both Amagi and Coinabul on the same day, several weeks ago. Amagi's stuff arrived today... Coinabul is nowhere to be seen."

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/3807-bitcoin-precious-metals-direct.html#post47009