Quote from: Minor Miner on May 24, 2014, 06:17:43 AM

So why don't you detail for us where you think all the money went? They seem to only have bought chips, so where did the other 20 Million or so go?

I am not really qualified to do much more than speculate. First off, I'm sure 20 million did not actually come in. Many of the largest deals had staged payments upon delivery. And where is that number coming from anyways? Someone's linkedin profile?

It's not that hard to blow through millions when you are trying to cram a new 28nm chip through rapid production and buy enough silicon to dominate the market. Substantial cash was spent upfront on securing bulk quantities of components for chassis and board production. I'm sure the court filings will very soon be showing exactly the inventory on hand. I know for a fact it is still there and is fairly substantial. Hashfast had to lock in large quantities for long lead-time parts in order to secure the supply chain. That's a high stakes game with the timeframes in question. As a new company it's all cash upfront.

As I understand it, Ciara was also prepaid a bunch of money to gear up for mass production and cover express shipping around the world, and then ended up sitting idle much of the time because the boards were not ready. There were other issues with changing horses in midstream and the usual technical snafus.

Most of the problems come down to biting off more than they could chew, going too fast, and the fact that the first revisions of boards just didn't work right and all the timing and supply chain logistics depended on that. And ultimately the price of hardware has plummeted and the difficulty has skyrocketed in a matter of months.

When they missed the first delivery date they did indeed pay refunds. I'm not sure how much, but they went out. There were also legal settlements and a lot of money spent on lawyers as soon as this happened.

The situation right now sucks. The EVO technology, chips and firmware now work quite well and if cranked out in a no-frills package could be very competitive. But without some drastic action from the courts and creditors and some kind of cash infusion, it does not look good. BFL is probably in just as bad shape. I feel like the USA's ASIC technology just launched and already needs a bailout. The Ants are eating everyone's lunch. I guess that's bitcoin time.