The world of Bitcoin and digital currency never ceases to amaze both insiders and casual observers. While there is a lot of bad news and drama going as of late, there are quite positive stories as well. In the case of Butterfly Labs however, the roller coaster of drama continues. As we predicted recently, the future of the company is looking increasingly uncertain
The History of Butterfly Labs
Butterfly Labs started out as a very promising company once they announced pre-orders for their Bitcoin ASIC miners. You have to keep in mind this was back in the days when Bitcoin ASICs were new to the market.
During those days, the BFL ASIC miners were priced at a relatively cheap price, especially when compared to the expected return on investment. The delivery estimate was roughly 9 months, which has become somewhat of a standard for ASIC manufacturers these days. But that is where things started going downhill.
As most of you will be aware by now, Butterfly Labs failed to deliver goods to their customers on time. Some devices were shipped out [seemingly at random] , but overall, over 90% of their customer base never received a miner. As a result, Butterfly Labs became the target of an investigation, which eventually resulted into a full-fledged court case.
Butterfly Labs realized they were in serious trouble and as a “token of goodwill”, announced they would refund all of their customers as soon as possible. In fact, customers could choose between a Bitcoin refund and a wire transfer refund. Failing to pick either in the allotted time frame would result in customers receiving Bitcoin cloud mining from Butterfly Labs, valued at the price they originally paid.
See, this is where the story takes another unexpected twist. Butterfly Labs is now in the cloud mining business, and they are offering contracts which will never get you a return on investment, ever. However, it looks to be an elaborate scheme by BFL in order to collect cash money so that they can start refunding people. Does this look as much of a ponzi scheme to you as it does to me?
Needless to say, the media had a feeding frenzy on BFL’s dodgy tactics and we can only hope no one actually bought one of their cloud mining contracts. Seeing as how that little scheme turned into an utter failure. Butterfly Labs has to come up with a different way of getting money. And it appears they are now selling off some of their assets on Craigslist.
BFL Tablets For Sale on Craigslist
If you visit this link on Craigslist, you will see someone selling over 20 ASUS Nexus 7 Android tablets. While that is not all that significant in its own way, you can clearly see the Butterfly application being installed on these devices by looking closer at the screenshot. Now, I can imagine this is from some lucky customer who received his ASIC miner at some point, but over 20 tablets? Highly doubtful.
Further proof that this is clearly an advertisement by Butterfly Labs can be found in the seller’s address details. The street name, number and city are exactly the same as the address details for the Butterfly Labs headquarters. There is no such thing as coincidence when it comes to Butterfly Labs, as this is all an elaborate plan on their end.
Seeing how the company is selling off part of their assets in the form of these ASUS Nexus 7 Android tablet, it begs the question as to what we can expect next from BFL. And more importantly, whether or not their duped customers will ever see their money back . Butterfly Labs is clearly getting desperate for money at this stage.
Source : http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2wz87f/butterfly_labs_are_liquidating_their_assets_this/