If it was a case of disagreement with a shop, then yes it would be a civil matter. However in this situation the shop has a disagreement will all of its customers and that changes things. Because of the potential size of this and the way it appears to have been structured, there is a much larger set of legal remedies available and potentially criminal too.
The criminal element would be, if it can be proven Boyko knowingly setup a ponzi scheme with the deliberate intention of defrauding the people that invested in it.
That is a common element of the law in many countries, I cannot see it being markedly different in Canada.
Other than that, it appears to be a case of a business, a company failure and as such normal receivership and liquidation under company law would apply.
There are likely to be legal remedies and charges that could be laid against Boyko under Canadian Company Law which could see Boyko being banned as a director and fined and if the offending is deemed severe enough there may potentially be more significant punishments.
This is all pie in the sky at the moment ... Yes, something has gone terribly wrong inside PB mining and we the customers are bearing the brunt of it with the possibility looming of total failure and complete loss. But there is a way to go before we get to that stage.
People can yell and scream as much as they want, but there is a set legal process and procedure that will need to be followed and adhered too to bring the company and it's directors to justice. Baying for blood and making threats is not going to help matters or speed them up.
It appears several approaches to authorities in Canada have been made. Those must now be left to investigate and decide on what actions are appropriate. As much as it sucks, all we can do is wait and see what happens.
I'm in the USA, so this MAY not apply, but corporate structure is very similar between the two countries. Basically, as you said, it comes down to two things.
First, if he was running a ponzi, then it is definitely a criminal matter. Proving that will be interesting.
Second, he was actually purchasing and reselling hash power and something went badly wrong in his supply chain. That's a civil matter, and not criminally actionable unless it can be proven that the failure was intentional. In that case, he has options. One, the one he's claiming. Try to rebuild through other avenues and compensate the existing customers accordingly. Two, bankruptcy, in which case said customers can make a claim and hope that they get a piece in the settlement. Simple bankruptcy due to business failure will not bar him from trying again or doing a different business, but it will affect his credit, or that of the corporation depending on how it's structured.
I hate agreeing with Puppet, because he's abrasive, but he's been right too many times for me to ignore it. If he's right, then we all got caught in a ponzi. I didn't think so at first, because the rate and timing of them adding new hash was consistent with them buying equipment from Bitmain and ASICminer. The delivery times and amount of hashpower corresponded. Later, it seemed more hash, faster, but there were a lot more hardware options then. I also was under the impression from private correspondence with pbmining that they were reselling only a portion of the hashpower they purchased, so that they always had a slush fund against power costs and to make a bit more profit off of their own mining operations. That would have been a sustainable model even given the no fee contract. It's the way I would do it if I had the capital to get it started.
At this point, I guess we wait and see. Not much else to be done, except those who have not broken even might have legal avenues to pursue. I liked the guys in private correspondence, they were always cordial and the reasons for their secrecy seemed legit to me. They had said that when they were just resellers of ASIC equipment that people had
broken into their facilities and made personal threats, and they were not equipped to deal with that. Given the level of crazy on these forums and in this industry, I found that reasonable. But they've gotten very large, and I think this no longer applies, and said so many times. With the sheer amount of business they've done, they could afford very good private security were that still the case. Something stinks like rotten fish.
EDIT: I have apparently remembered incorrectly, in looking through previous correspondence I cannot find anything about a break-in. PBmining asked me to document this conversation just a few minutes ago, and I can't find it. I did find one about being harassed and threatened, so I'm leaving that as is. I either remembered wrong or deleted a PM, but I rarely delete PM's so we're going with old age on this one.
