^^ It is really extremely odd that they haven't posted anything to stop/prevent this kind of crazy speculation. Of course they can't just disappear. They are a US company, their identities are known, people have met them etc And if they had simply been planning to run away with people's money, I am sure there would have been better ways to do so - not spend millions of $'s paying TSMC, Uniquify etc for one.
But as it must be clear to everyone by now that they have run into some problems/bottlenecks, why not simply say so? I am sure people would prefer to know than to be kept in the dark. The lack of communication is only making things worse and I don't think people's reactions will be any worse if they knew.
but then again being a us company they can declare bankruptcy....and keep personal assets..ie miners for say another corp that they plan to cloudhost with..that is my theory of on what BFL is doing...get the monarch 1st run cards out for their gh hosting farm (under personal assets diff corp) and then bankrupt the company that makes the stuff (ie imho no one is gonna buy from BFL in the future imho anyway with their record)...it offers scum bags like bfl a way out...also in usa definition of shipped ..the regulators don't care if it takes 1 year as long as they ship something....all efforts to get redress or criminal actions have failed..... bfl a usa company have failed as a result (regulators hey you got your stuff in 9 months they are legit but late go away). this is better business bureau...federal trade commission (which punted it to the local county attorney..which likely is not gonna go against a company making millions for their county and of course small claim court actions which BFL has managed to ignore....or flaunt....not to mention the inability of anyone to get a class action lawsuit (again you got your stuff late it may be go away)....
so yeah not saying that it is true in this case...but it can be done BFL has done it and gotten away with it...will likely get away with their cloud hosting farm with the $$$ they should have spent on production...so no slam against the guys here making stuff...but just pointing out BFL got away with all of the stuff people here fear (as a BFL refugee the lack of info from them is the most daunting aspect of all this imho) so it is possible that it can be done again under current laws and lack of enforcement by usa officials...
If the USA is like other countries they will have to prove that they paid fair price for those miners in order to be protected & keep them. Additionally, courts would likely take a dim view of them being first in line rather than independent customers. I believe that most courts would probably instruct the miners to be redistributed to real customers.
and Re: the class action lawsuit, isn't that more a case of most customers simply being all talk no action? Not that I've purposely looked or anything, but I'm not aware of anyone who seriously tried and failed on that front.