Which brings me to the topic of reselling Drillbit equipment.

A member of our group recently put up an auction for Drillbit Boards. I have asked them to take it down and they have graciously agreed.

The main issue here right now is that we have not yet ourselves completed our orders for this group buy. We are almost there but not quite yet. There is still an auction running for the final 32 Drillbit Boards, and beyond that, there will be further orders for Drillbit Thumbs and potentially some extra raw chips available. Until we have finalized everything on our end, i am requesting that people please don't put up any sales or auctions of our stuff. I will announce when we are locked in with all our orders.

What happens then is an interesting conundrum. I must say i have found the general trend of people buying pre-orders for stuff and then selling them on at a profit having never even received them an odd and kind of unpleasant one. It happened so intensely with BFL pre-orders being sold for up to 10 times the original prices, and a fair bit with Avalon stuff too. Personally i find it a weird vibe. That said, it is a free market, and if you buy something, then in theory it is yours to sell, or is it? Granted, if you have the thing in your hand, then of course, go sell it, do whatever you like with it, it's yours, but if what you have bought is a future promise of getting a device that hasn't even been built yet, then i believe it becomes a bit of a grey area. I'm not saying i really have an answer to this, just putting it out there.

I think one of the biggest issues i have with this kind of thing is that this equipment is built for mining bitcoin, it is built for bitcoin enthusiasts who want to own it, have it and use it to do what it is made for, it is not built for middle-people to buy, never actually hold and use, and sell on for a profit. Perhaps that's all a bit naive and idealistic, but that's how i see it, that's why i'm doing it, to help people be a part of the bitcoin network (which i truly believe in), not just tangentially profit from it. But hey, one of the major draw cards of being a bitcoin miner is that you can make money from it, so i realize there's a bit of a contradiction there. I guess the difference is how you make the money.

So many of us have been burnt by the overall ponzi-schemeness of the whole thing that it would make me really sad to see the Drillbit stuff go down the same road.

But... we are a community here, and we have all chucked in to make this happen so i'd like to put it to everyone and see what people think about resale policies. As i see it there are two main ways it could go: (all of this of course being before the units are delivered, once you've got them, you can do what you like)

1. No resales whatsoever. If you want a refund, write to us and you will get it. We will resell it. (note, there will be a point of no return when we actually have to spend the money and will no longer be able to refund it, i will announce when this is happening)
2. Total free for all. Everyone can buy, sell and auction their preorders as they choose.

What do you guys reckon? Interested to see what your thoughts are.

Barntech