US court closes company for supplying dated bitcoin computers

The American court has closed the Butterfly Labs company for failing to deliver or delivering systems to mine bitcoins too late. At the time of delivery, the computers were only usable for heating the room, according to the FTC.

Butterfly Labs offered bitcoin miners based on asics for amounts ranging from $149 to $29,899 depending on computing power. Since September 2013, more than 20,000 customers have complained that they had not received the BitForce computers they had already paid for, the FTC reports. In August 2013, Butterfly announced a new system for amounts ranging from $2499 to $4680, but that has only been delivered sporadically a year later.

The systems that Butterfly Labs did provide were shipped to customers with so much delay that they were virtually useless, according to the FTC. Thanks to advancing computer technology and the increasing difficulty of solving blocks, the computers were never able to generate the amount of bitcoins the company promised, which in effect only cost customers.

Federal court has shut down the Missouri company by order of the FTC. A company spokesman said he was disappointed with the decision to Cnet. According to him, $33 million worth of products was delivered and ButterFly paid out $17 million to customers who canceled their order.