Official BITMINE CoinCraft series 28nm ASIC miners thread

[Airwhale]

Hi group, we are considering purchasing CoinCraft hardware, but after reading these posts i'm really in doubt, see here http://www.clickon.ch/blog/bitmine-ch-coincraft-miners/. The miners look good, as i understand people get decent support if something goes wrong, the refunding is however a difficult endeavour. The question is - can we trust Bitmine.ch as our business partner, or better look somewhere else? Your thoughts are welcome.

The miners are overpriced (at least from what they are offering the public) and have high/bad power consumption.  If you are ordering in bulk,  you can probably get better deals from other hardware venders who have less obsolete equipment. Aside from that,  the company is cash poor and can't realistically give refunds if something does go wrong.  Plus they are ethically questionable.

I'd look somewhere else.  S3s from Bitmain use 3/4ths to 1/2 the wattage per ghash and cost about 90 cents per ghash.  If they are offering you less than 75 or so cents per ghash with A1s(including power supply),  it might be worth using Bitmine's older equipment.  Make sure you cover your back in dealing with them,  though.  Try to hold money in escrow and use lawyers to write contracts.

[elvizzzzzzz]

A summary of my latest discussion with a lawyer:

1. To prepare and launch action via the Swiss courts will cost 1000-1200 Euro.
Their courts do not provide for class action, hence even if a workaround is
found (see below) it will not scale well. My Bitmine order is simply too small to
make legal action profitable.

2. One way around this is to buy up refunds from Bitmine's (ex-) customers.
Before you get too excited about this, from my reading of the threads,
at best the expected payback is of the order of fifty percent of the refund.
Deducting for risks, costs and investment, if I were to go down that route,
well, ten cents on the dollar for your order seems about the market value.

Just my opinion, and my interpretation of some advice. I'd be happy to hear
differently, and this is not an offer to buy your order, just by the way. 

[Airwhale]

A summary of my latest discussion with a lawyer:

1. To prepare and launch action via the Swiss courts will cost 1000-1200 Euro.
Their courts do not provide for class action, hence even if a workaround is
found (see below) it will not scale well. My Bitmine order is simply too small to
make legal action profitable.

2. One way around this is to buy up refunds from Bitmine's (ex-) customers.
Before you get too excited about this, from my reading of the threads,
at best the expected payback is of the order of fifty percent of the refund.
Deducting for risks, costs and investment, if I were to go down that route,
well, ten cents on the dollar for your order seems about the market value.

Just my opinion, and my interpretation of some advice. I'd be happy to hear
differently, and this is not an offer to buy your order, just by the way. 

Another, potentially easier way around this is to create a legal entity specifically for creditors.  Each person would hold *shares* in the entity equal to their order value.  Then that one entity could sue bitmine.

good luck everyone.

[nikauforest]

Has anyone received a refund recently ? via bitcoin or wire transfer ?

I would like to hear if Bitmine is actively trying to refund customers money.
I received a letter acknowledging my refund request on June 6th , 2014 for order #4036

They owe me approximately 6 BTC

[Collider]

Has anyone received a refund recently ? via bitcoin or wire transfer ?

I would like to hear if Bitmine is actively trying to refund customers money.
I received a letter acknowledging my refund request on June 6th , 2014 for order #4036

They owe me approximately 6 BTC

I think they have stated thet they will pe processing remaining refunds after they have their Iceland datacenter equipped with units.

These units are available for cloudhashing and the unsold rest will likely remain in the posession of bitmine, where they will be able to generate some income.

I think they have offered to also let you use your owed funds including the 10% penalty towards a cloudhashing contract.

Mid August seems to be the target for availability of cloudhashing.

[nikauforest]

Has anyone received a refund recently ? via bitcoin or wire transfer ?

I would like to hear if Bitmine is actively trying to refund customers money.
I received a letter acknowledging my refund request on June 6th , 2014 for order #4036

They owe me approximately 6 BTC

I think they have stated thet they will pe processing remaining refunds after they have their Iceland datacenter equipped with units.

These units are available for cloudhashing and the unsold rest will likely remain in the posession of bitmine, where they will be able to generate some income.

I think they have offered to also let you use your owed funds including the 10% penalty towards a cloudhashing contract.

Mid August seems to be the target for availability of cloudhashing.

cheers, thank you for the information

[jseppeli]

Has anyone received a refund recently ? via bitcoin or wire transfer ?

I would like to hear if Bitmine is actively trying to refund customers money.
I received a letter acknowledging my refund request on June 6th , 2014 for order #4036

They owe me approximately 6 BTC

I think they have stated thet they will pe processing remaining refunds after they have their Iceland datacenter equipped with units.

These units are available for cloudhashing and the unsold rest will likely remain in the posession of bitmine, where they will be able to generate some income.

I think they have offered to also let you use your owed funds including the 10% penalty towards a cloudhashing contract.

Mid August seems to be the target for availability of cloudhashing.

cheers, thank you for the information

I was promised refund by mid September the 30th of June and this is the latest info received 30th of July

Dear Mr. XXXXX,

all refunds date given are holding their schedule, as the datacentre is still on schedule and the BTC value keeps being over 500$ I have no sign or reports that the refund dates given should not hold.

Best regards,

Bitmine AG, Bitmine.ch

[RoboRob67]

is there a way to tweak the individual modules to run at a similar spread.  I have in some of the boxes modules which run 10% less than the fasted module?

Is there something on the modules to adjust?

[Finnminer]

Is there any info available about the data center? Or at least some proof that it even exists? I'm thinking of trading my refund for hashing contracts, but Bitmine's past actions don't exactly inspire confidence..

[AdamT]

I was promised refund by mid September the 30th of June and this is the latest info received 30th of July

Dear Mr. XXXXX,

all refunds date given are holding their schedule, as the datacentre is still on schedule and the BTC value keeps being over 500$ I have no sign or reports that the refund dates given should not hold.

Best regards,

Bitmine AG, Bitmine.ch

Lol there is no refund "schedule" it's all just made up. Sept will of course come and go with no one getting refunds (I've been waiting since APRIL). Then they will spout off some new nonsensical future date that will come and pass as well. Liars period. No one's getting refunds, they stole all the money and did god knows what with it. Probably strippers & hookers.

[RealMalatesta]

Is there any info available about the data center? Or at least some proof that it even exists? I'm thinking of trading my refund for hashing contracts, but Bitmine's past actions don't exactly inspire confidence..

I can confirm that it exists. I have nothing to do with Bitmine, but by coincidence, I stumbled upon the information.

[Finnminer]

Is there any info available about the data center? Or at least some proof that it even exists? I'm thinking of trading my refund for hashing contracts, but Bitmine's past actions don't exactly inspire confidence..

I can confirm that it exists. I have nothing to do with Bitmine, but by coincidence, I stumbled upon the information.

Could you elaborate a bit? You know that IceMine exists, or that there's actual Bitmine hardware there? Where did you come across this info? TIA.

[Kenda]

meanwhile....

http://www.tio.ch/News/Ticino/803819/Volevo-creare-bitcoin-da-mesi-aspetto-i-miei-7-000-franchi/

[bidoh]

Hi, what does that say in English please? I dont read italian

Googl translation of above italian article. In very bad English but you can get the gist.

LUGANO - Franco *, a young man from Ticino, is immediately fascinated by the bitcoin. The virtual currency is all over the papers and the value goes up to the eye. With a friend decided it was time to invest: he needs a 'miner', a special computer that produces the currency. "We relied on Bitmine AG Camorino. Whether it is a Ticino - Franco tells us - and because there seemed formed by serious people." The miner costs about 7,000 francs, the two boys pay them in advance. "When is the last date on which we would have to get the car, we discovered that the company was late with the production. Few weeks we were not scared, we would never have thought to get to the point to where we are today: it's been a year by the order and we have not received neither the processor nor the money back. " The anger of Franco grew up in the months: "The thing that angers me is the poor customer service, rather than say they do not expect."

Four hundred thousand dollars - What Franco is far from an isolated case. There is now a website for those who have asked for a refund and have not received bitminerefund.com, which shows a total creepy, over 400 thousand dollars of refunds due. The CEO of Bitmine AG, Giorgio Massarotto, explains that the data is not updated: "Customers when they receive the money does not go to delete the message." There is confident, however, how much is the overdraft; more than half of the repayments, however, would have been made. In addition, the miner is a market particore: "Many companies do not even offer the option of refund, if the delivery is delayed the customer waits. We wanted to do differently in order to offer a better service, in the end what has backfired we will. "

The hope is cloud - "The company is not likely to fail - Massarotto comfort - the new project in Iceland cloudmining allow the recovery of all arrears and the continuation of the sale of hosting solutions." In fact, Bitmine changed strategy: Do not sell more cars because "for private customers is a market virtually disappeared." Customers purchase only the computing capacity required for the production of bitcoin. The miner, which are managed directly by the company, you will find in Reykjavik. "By coordinating large batches is much easier to deal with than trying to customize configurations for each customer."

[Helium7878]

Thanks for this list.  I'd argue with Bitmine: "Refund Issues? Some 5/10"

Bitmine has only made some token refunds to give people false hope.  The majority appear to not have received refunds:

http://www.bitminerefund.com

I know people after me in the queue have been refunded.  They are picking select users to refund as a stall tactic.  They've told many users on this forum they will be refunded "in 2 weeks", and we haven't been.  I've been told that 2 or three times now.  My refund was due May 5th. Many clients fall into the same category as this.

This falls into the category of:
"1/10   = Yes - refunds significantly delayed or not being processed at all. Includes stall tactics."

Dogie's hardware manufacturer's guide lists Bitmine as having "some" refund issues.  He is tracking a lot so it's hard for him to cover all bases.  If you think this should be brought down to

"1/10 Refunds significantly delayed or not being processed at all. Includes stall tactics."

Let them know how you feel on his thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=456691.0

[Collider]

They are allowing all sorts of compensation aka additional hashpower and transfer of the amount they owe you to cloudhashing (it includes the 10% penalty).

They have stated before that they will process remaining refunds after their Icelan datacenter is online.

[Helium7878]

They are allowing all sorts of compensation aka additional hashpower and transfer of the amount they owe you to cloudhashing (it includes the 10% penalty).

They have stated before that they will process remaining refunds after their Icelan datacenter is online.

Hashpower is not a refund.  It's worth a fraction of what it would have been in January/February when it was promised, even if they double it.  Many of us were promised refunds in May.  They have used stall tactics... do you disagree?

[glendower]

I originally placed an order last November for a February delivery.

After cancelling the order, and finally being given the offer of an October refund, compensated hashing, or hosted hashing, I decided to negotiate on the amount of hashing I'd receive in compensation.

I'm happy to say that within 10 days of concluding those negotiations, my Coincraft Desk units have arrived from Bitmine.ch, and are now up and working (after a little bit of maintenance caused by one of the Pi controller boards coming loose).

Its doubtful that I'll ever manage to quite breakeven now (unless the exchange rate goes silly), but the risk of waiting to see whether I'd see any sign of the refund was too great.

I've learnt my lesson though... next time I'll hire an engineer to do the ASIC design and build the units myself!

I'm just glad to be able to draw my particular case to a close.

Hope the rest of you in limbo manage to sort things out one way or another.

[Helium7878]

Another glowing review!

[crocko]

I originally placed an order last November for a February delivery.

After cancelling the order, and finally being given the offer of an October refund, compensated hashing, or hosted hashing, I decided to negotiate on the amount of hashing I'd receive in compensation.

I'm happy to say that within 10 days of concluding those negotiations, my Coincraft Desk units have arrived from Bitmine.ch, and are now up and working (after a little bit of maintenance caused by one of the Pi controller boards coming loose).

Its doubtful that I'll ever manage to quite breakeven now (unless the exchange rate goes silly), but the risk of waiting to see whether I'd see any sign of the refund was too great.

I've learnt my lesson though... next time I'll hire an engineer to do the ASIC design and build the units myself!

I'm just glad to be able to draw my particular case to a close.

Hope the rest of you in limbo manage to sort things out one way or another.

LOL !

I bet you can't afford to do this !