Quote from: ElectricMucus on November 28, 2012, 06:24:37 PM

Quote from: mrb on November 28, 2012, 05:54:46 PM

Quote from: TheBible on November 28, 2012, 11:09:02 AM

Quote from: mrb on November 27, 2012, 07:16:32 PM

BFL's legitimacy is dead simple to assert: they managed to be greatly successful and profitable inventing, making, and selling thousands of FPGA Singles. I have many of them in my very own hands.

And if you have a profitable business, the natural human reaction, even for greedy people (the type who may want to defraud), is to simply expand the business, not to do something riskier by defrauding your customers.

Pirate paid out for awhile, too.

The difference being that Pirate was obviously loosing money by loaning it from his customers at 7%/week.
Whereas BFL is obviously making money by selling the FPGA Singles ($430 or $150 profit margin out of the $600 price, as per FPGA cost estimated by ngzhang to be respectively either $50 or $200, plus $50 for the PCB/case).

That estimation was very forthcoming. Everybody said from the beginning that if they were forced to pay even remotely retail prices (which isn't that unlikely considering the quantity is low for the industry)
it would have been a net loss for them.

I'd say it entirely possible that the FPGA Singles were produced at a loss to start the confidence game. Added to that if BFL really were a scam you betcha the ones who came after would be to so ngzangs motives are in question here.

I think it's much more plausible that they acquired repurposed used FPGA chips since the Bitcoin market has shown a remarkable tolerance in the FPGA realm for short warranties.