I can see the point(s) you are trying to make but in essence bASIC is a failed business. It failed due to various reasons and it's up to Tom to explain on how things derailed this far. The rest is all speculation.

For a failed business, it's possible that he could have walked away from it and filed bankruptcy but he did state he is trying to refund as many customers as possible.

All credit card charged have been refunded, large customers got their wire transfer back and slowly he is refunding BTC payments, even until yesterday.

For a scammer, he sure is trying to restore some of his karma. He knows people will not forget what went wrong, but at least he is not just running away, he is trying to set right some of the damage.

Of course some people are going to be SOL, many people have lost value because of the exchange rate (in $US vs EUR or $US vs BTC), some people will probably never get their BTC refund, unless he can keep mining for another few years.

(Easy for me to say, I got about half my investment back...)