Court Order: Butterfly Labs Bitcoins To Be Sold

MrBingoBoingo writes In a new development in the case against Butterfly Labs, the court overseeing the case has ordered bitcoins held by Butterfly Labs to be turned over to the court-appointed temporary receiver. The order also gives the receiver authorization to convert the bitcoins "to cash on a systematic and reasoned basis." The justification for this measure is at least to ostensibly create reserves with which refunds for Butterfly Labs' customers may be paid.

Comments

So ... WTF is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since TFA and TFS don't actually use any big-boy words to tell us who the hell Butterly Labs are ... what the hell are they and why the hell should I care?

Re:So ... WTF is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

A note to the incompetent and lazy "editors" ... this is part of your job.

Except, editors at Slashdot seem to be allowed to be lazy and incompetent.

Re:So ... WTF is it?

[aardvarkjoe]

To be fair, editors have to take guesses at what is going to be common knowledge in the readership vs things that need to be explicitly stated. It is not always an easy thing to get right, and always erring on the side of explaining is its own problem.

It's too bad that nobody has invented a method where a link to a full explanation could be included within the summary itself. Maybe when people start using this new-fangled "world wide web" thing, we'll be able to do cool things like that.

Re:Nice

[stevez67]

Recognizing the value of an asset (e.g. stocks, bonds, paintings, sculptures and etc.) doesn't confer legitimacy as a currency.

Re:That was a near miss

[Ralph Wiggam]

You're joking, right?

Re:Hardware Ponzi Scheme

[ultranova]

A Ponzi scheme is when you use money from later investors to pay earlier ones to create an illusion of a profitable business where none exists. For a hardware vendor to pull a Ponzi scheme on their customers would require them to conduct some weird "send us a computer, we'll send you two later" stunt. Not delivering paid-for hardware is a simply fraud, not a Ponzi scheme.

Seriously, stop calling every shady business practice a Ponzi scheme.

Re:Hardware Ponzi Scheme

[ShaunC]

It sounds like you lucked out. From everything I've read, the business plan is indeed a pyramid of sorts,

1. Announce upcoming mining rig that beats everything on the market
2. Begin taking pre-orders
3. Use pre-order money to actually source the dream hardware you promoted in step 1
4. Hardware arrives, use it yourself for several weeks to mine your own BTC while it's still profitable
5. During this time, apologize to everyone who has placed orders and ensure them that delivery will be made soon
6. Once your new top-of-the-line rigs are a few weeks out of date, order a new round of even better hardware
7. Ship your rigs to your customers
8. Repeat ad infinitum

That you actually managed to get some rigs that were still worth using is pretty nice. I guess they hadn't yet figured out how the mining hardware pyramid is supposed to work. The fact that people are still falling for this ploy after it's played out several times over in very public fashion is rather depressing, though.