Quote from: mercistheman on February 19, 2016, 12:28:18 AM

Interesting... I added my name to the class action suit.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3034977/butterfly-labs-cant-afford-the-39m-fine-to-settle-charges-it-duped-bitcoin-hopefuls.html

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Butterfly was swamped with orders and fielded a ton of complaints from people waiting to receive their hardware, but it continued taking new orders. In late 2013, it took a single downpayment of $1 million for machines.

Hashtrade send BFL the $1M via BTC downpayment to a newly created bitcoin wallet address. The funds were then moved to another address. Then moved again to the infamous 1QAHVyRzkmD4j1pU5W89htZ3c6D6E7iWDs bitcoin wallet address eventually taken over by the FTC, later to be returned to BFL. It was that address that BitPay, HashTrade and BFL showed the world proof that the transaction was legit, alluding to the address belonging to HashTrade. BitPay remitted $1M USD to BFL's bank account.

The other problem with that $1M worth of BTC is that what was processed was not even HashTrades bitcoins, but of those earlier mined by BFL, with BitPay acting as an exchange and not as a third-party payment processor, the latter of which they're only licensed to do. You, I nor anybody else can send $10 USD worth of bitcoins to BitPay and have them send you said amount to your bank account. Yet, BFL did such to the tune of over $10M USD over the course of over a year, stopping the practice hours before the FTC locked the place down.

Saying that the FTC fucked up is an understatement.