thanking me into putting mega hours
As I wrote very early on in this thread - these guys are 3rd level contacts with me on LinkedIn (connected through some people I trust immensely). They're also Swedish/based in Sweden, which is a whole different ball park when it comes to being able to hide your identity compared to a few other backwater countries (like the US) - it's simply extremely difficult. All the information posted (names, addresses, VAT number, company registration) etc check out.
I don't see anything being done yet to warrant the level of distrust displayed here. When they start accepting money I might go through my friends-of-friends and verify that what they're doing is legit. While I'm only a short train ride away from Stockholm myself I know ten other Bitcoin entusiasts (having been so for years) that live there and I'm sure they'd all jump at the opportunity to view a pre-production unit or two.
Do I believe they're a scam? No idea - it would just be unwise to run one out of Sweden.
Do I believe they're making their own ASICs? No, knowing the Swedish non-existent fab market I'd say they're sourced.
[blabla hero member long post history blabla]
Seriously though, why can't they just prove who they are and actually are working on something? Every phone has a camera in it. Simply take some pictures or do something to put a stop to the skepticism. Why can't they just do that once? If I were presenting a new product and it was around complete distrust and skepticism the first thing I would want to do is prove what I'm doing to everyone's satisfaction. Pictures, video, test rigs, business documents, an ASIC chip, pretty much anything that would take a very small amount of time and energy to do. If they could just do that, they would have people eating out of their hands and could charge whatever they want for their rigs. Having them priced so low makes them stand out even more of being scammers.