Hashfast Head To Auction

San Francisco hardware manufacturers, Hashfast were forced to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in June.

The company claimed to be the maker of the fastest bitcoin mining hardware in the world. It promised to ship the Yoli Evo, with up to 800 GH/s per board, but failed to fulfil their promises, leaving some customers without the items they had paid for.

The petition against Hashfast existed in May, and the company was told to file for bankruptcy by the courts. The writing had been on the wall for some time. It had already cut its workforce in half, and the CEO Eduardo de Castro had resigned after claiming the employees were “as poor as church mice”.

The initial Chapter 11 bankruptcy was aimed at getting Hashfast to restructure itself to get rids of its debts. This would keep the company trading by shedding as much cost burden as possible. It’s a more positive form of bankruptcy than Chapter 7, which is a complete shutdown and liquidation.

The company posted a large list of equipment “for immediate sale” on its blog in July. This was followed in November by a full liquidation of assets and a number of damaging claims against the company, including fraud and failure to respond to emails. According to court records, the company owes $40 million to creditors all over the world, and currently has about 5 bitcoin to its name. It was also selling mining chips after the bankruptcy, which should not have happened.

Hashfast also hit problems with a $6 million Liquidbits deal. It failed to supply all of the hardware, so the purchaser pulled out, but Hashfast could not process a refund. Liquidbits was key in filing against it, claiming that slow progress caused the liquidation to be less fruitful than it should have been.

Other hardware suppliers may eventually follow a similar fate. CoinTerra has been failing to deliver equipment on time, according to its customers, and has been sued. The Federal Trade Commission is taking Butterfly Labs to court. The two companies are thought to jointly owe $1.2 million to their customers.

Next week, all Hashfast’s equipment will be up for auction at the Four Embercadero Center, 17^th Floor, in San Francisco. The auction starts at 10am Pacific on December 4. If you want to make a bid, you’ll need to get certified by December 2.