Close. If they just ghosted the client it would have been bad for that client (a managed group buy, from what I remember), but word would have spread quickly an

Close. If they just ghosted the client it would have been bad for that client (a managed group buy, from what I remember), but word would have spread quickly and the most they'd have had to show for it was a single revision zero ASIC for hashing SHA256 - no big deal in the grand scheme of things. Instead they churned out as many as they possibly could, only partially fulfilling orders in drips and drabs - and with a quality that made one wonder how low they were in the binning hierarchy. For some strange reason the fulfillment rate would drastically improve during periods of heightened uncertainty in bitcoin's exchange rate... Anyway, by stringing designers along like that they maintained access to later optimizations in design revisions. It was really weird to watch these early events unfold, because it provided the kind of satisfaction that accompanies the reinforcement of prior held positions - but tempered with the knowledge that you'd eventually be forced to take a bite from same shitsandwich.