People seem to consistently forget that in order to pull off a scam of this magnitude, they'd need to support of all participating members...managers, execs, designers, engineers, etc.
This.
If the engineers
aren't in on it, then they would have done everything they can to produce working ASICs. If they can produce working ASICs, why would they (BFL higher ups) bother with a scam?
If the engineers
are in on it, their professional career is dead, so the scam would need to support them for the rest of their life. I somehow don't think they have enough in pre orders for that.
[...]
Madoff had 400+ professionals working away thinking & doing what they do..stop & think that this can not be applied to BFL because an engineer did some work....yeah
I find it a bit odd that you're comparing a financial company to a technical one. Not to mention out of both these companies, only one of them is selling a product...
Anyway..
Am I one of a handful of people that actually understand long term consequences of such an action by BFL? I keep reading it over and over and over again throughout this thread.."oh BFL is creating an elaborate scam, they haven't created a product and they're just trolling for money".
The problem here is that Butterfly Labs is an established company here in the States...meaning they're abiding by all laws and regulations (presumably of course..given none of us work there we cannot say for 100% certain). The amount of negative press they would receive if they were to scam us would be phenomenal. An investigation (and probably lawsuit) would ensue, and anyone clearly associated with the scam would be tried and sentenced.
We all get our money back, and they all go to jail. Jeez, what was so hard about all that...