Claimed they were confiscated in customs,
Source?
Professor, I sense you are having difficulty coming to grips with the reality that that man is an unprincipled slug who deserves no further business, nor even any further recognition as a contributing member of the bitcoin community.
After all, it's not like the case of BFL, where one can at least
argue that there are no innocent victims; the customers were greedy followers of an illusion of free money and learned the lesson of that.
The failure on the part of Avalon destroyed many in the open source community who expended time and treasure in the belief that the chips would be delivered.
For example, the Klonkike developer,
BKKcoins, has completely disappeared. While one might hope that he got a great job out of the effort and left bitcoin behind, I fear that that is not the true outcome.
He asked a specific question and didn't look for a lecture. Whatever someone does with their money is their business, not yours.
The confiscation idea might stem from the chips "being held at customs" and them (Avalon) receiving "real life threats". Therefore, the "confiscation" is more of a theory than backed by supporting evidence. The only thing we know is that 1) Yifu stated chips were held at customs 2) Yifu stated team members were receiving real life threats. Anything else beyond that is a theory (One can even argue that #1 and #2 are lies - it's basically a mess as their answers to the community answer nothing).
I'm absolutely not defending Avalon. I'm just reiterating what was stated. Anything beyond that is a theory that may/may not be true. Also, I'm leaning towards not doing business with Avalon in the future.