🦋 In 2012, the first ASIC Bitcoin miner was the most wanted machine in crypto. More than 20,000 people paid Butterfly Labs in full, upfront, for one. Today you can buy a Bitcoin miner with a published batch date. Back then, customers just waited.
Bitcoin mining still ran on graphics cards, and whoever shipped the first ASICs would lead the network. Butterfly Labs, a small Missouri company, announced its BitForce miners and took prepayment. Ship dates slipped from October 2012 to January, April and July 2013. In September 2014 the Federal Trade Commission obtained an emergency court order and shut the company down. Testimony showed customers' prepaid Bitcoin miners had been run for the company first, and by the time many units arrived, network difficulty had passed them by.
In this video, you'll see:
🏃 Why being first matters so much in Bitcoin mining
💸 How the pre-order model turned against customers
⚖️ What the FTC found, and what customers got back
🚨 Why today's cloud mining scams still follow the same playbook
Mining Tales, Episode 4: the pre-order that went wrong.
🛡️ How to protect yourself: never prepay a company that has not shipped a single unit. Check the batch date, the ship window and the people behind the company before you buy, and that includes us. At OneMiners you buy a specific Bitcoin miner with a published batch date, then ship it home or host it in one of our facilities under a 7-year hardware warranty.
The lesson still holds: never prepay a company that has not shipped a single unit.
👉 Start mining smarter with OneMiners:
• Explore our global hosting locations
• Browse the latest ASIC miners
• Learn more about OneMiners
📚 Mining Tales at a Glance
• Episode 4: Butterfly Labs and the first ASIC pre-orders (2012–2014)
• Next, Episode 5: Stefan Thomas, 7,000 Bitcoin on a USB stick, and two password guesses left
• Shop Bitcoin miners with published batch dates
• See where hosted miners run
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Disclaimer: Performance, profitability, and mining results vary depending on cryptocurrency prices, network difficulty, electricity costs, and market conditions. Nothing here is financial advice. Historical events are summarized from public FTC filings, court records and news reports; allegations are described as allegations.
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