It's really hard to imagine a more ADD-afflicted, over-promising, under-delivering company than Butterfly Labs, and they're at it again. After just now managing to ship orders that were put in over a year ago for their ASIC miners (with an original fulfillment timeline of three months) and with plenty of more backlogged orders yet to be shipped, Butterfly Labs announced a couple of days ago that it would start taking orders for bulk chip sales. Now, today, they've started a charity called the Bitcoin Development Fund – oh look a SQUIRREL!
Butterfly Labs announced this morning on their Facebook, the following:
“Today, Butterfly Labs is giving a sneak peak at a new project that aims to promote charties and other projects that benefit the greater bitcoin community. The new site is called Bitcoin Development Fund and is intended to be a gathering place for those who wish to donate to various projects or charities through the use of bitcoin, but may not know where to go to do so or how to properly vet credible charities and projects.
Because we missed our power targets we set forth when we began our ASIC development, we are starting off the fund with a donation of 1000 BTC, which is valued currently over $120,000 USD. The BDF project will allocate funds to worthy charities and project as time goes on. Currently the BDF site is in phase one of the roll out, but more user interaction and participation in the selection of projects and charities to donate to is planned for phase two and three.
If you have a charity or open source project that you believe benefits the greater bitcoin community, please feel free to submit it to submit@bitcoindf.org. It will be reviewed and vetted by BitcoindDF for inclusion into the site.
If you wish to donate to the fund, you can send BTC to: 1ERVh27gZfPSDaaagL9R3W12xpMJ38ZBA7”
So far the fund has accumulated 773.946 BTC, which comes out to roughly $94,428 at the current USD/BTC value. The website – Bitcoindf.org – states that the fund was created to support projects that benefit the greater Bitcoin community. Although Butterfly Labs has stated on their Facebook that their production/development teams are not impacted by the creation of the charity program and that they are two entirely different departments, one Facebook commentator named Stephen Evangelou mirrored just about everybody's initial reactions:
Also, Zsolt Katona who posted,
Don't forget Dan Inglis who, in Lolcat fashion, posted,
Yes, Butterfly Labs, we can has mine now?
Even though it's true that Butterfly Labs' new charity is a separate department, the worrisome thing is how thin they seem to be spreading themselves as a whole. They keep adding new products and new services and new announcements, without even the most basic abilities to fulfill their initial orders. Even though they're doing better with shipment now, the fact still remains that they are shipping for products that were ordered a full year ago with no real gauge as to whether or not recent orders will be delivered anytime soon (will those take another year as well?). Not only that, but they're shipping Jalapenos, not the other ASIC models that people have been waiting on for over a year.
No one doubts that Butterfly Labs has good products (although few have seen them) or that they have good intentions, no more than anyone can doubt the intentions of a wide-eyed little boy who thinks he can build a go-kart out of cinder blocks. The fact is that the company seems to be overreaching, when really they should be putting all of their effort into the one thing that people want – their darn ASIC mines! The more they keep up these announcements while simultaneously making vague excuses mixed with long periods of silence, the more people may lose faith in their abilities.