How was HF supposed to both A) keep the BTC in cold storage, and B) pay for the chips/boards/machines to be produced? That doesn't make sense! Those are mutually exclusive actions.
Those are absolutely not mutually exclusive.
Why did hashfast need to cash out all their btc when production costs were less than 10% of what they charged for preorders?
By that logic they didn't "need" any Pre-orders at all.