On October 28th the FTC released a statement opposing the defendants of the Butterfly Labs case (Darla Drake, Nasser Ghoseiri and Sonny Vleisides) intent to pay for their attorney fees with frozen funds. If you remember fondly, Butterfly Labs stole that cash from consumers, so the FTC is saying they shouldn’t be allowed to use said stolen funds to support/defend themselves. Note that this is just them opposing it, since they aren’t actually ruling on anything. That’s the courts job.

Meanwhile, the Western Missouri District Court just published a new 2 page order saying Butterfly Labs needs to stop acting like a huge asshole or else they’re going to be called into court for a separate case to talk about their behavior.

So whats been going on? According to the report:

Disclosure: This was between pages 1 and 2, so that line is where the page split. The quote is continuous, just like your mom.

Basically, BFL is being a child, and everyone else is being the adult telling them not to throw their spaghetti at the waitress, then call her fat. There are no specifics, but we’d like to assume its the same “YOU DON’T KNOW THE TRUTH” stuff, only against “THE MAN”, but without anyone around to point out to them how stupid that tactic is.

Between not being able to pay for their attorneys with stolen funds and possibly having 2 cases against them in the same court, Butterfly Labs is completely fucked.

Butterfly Labs is currently being operated by a court approved Temporary Receiver (TR). That means that whoever the court places in that role manages the company until the court makes a decision to return control back to the original owners, or something else (in this case, die slowly yet hilariously, like a man falling into an open sewer and suffocating on jenkem fumes). In this case the TR is Eric Johnson of the firm Spencer Fane and, looking at his bio, is absolutely qualified to do so. The court, if it finds Butterfly Labs innocent (since this is all just a big misunderstanding after all) will give Butterfly Labs back control and resume operations. Presumably then, the orders will be shipped and everyone will be happy until their miners become obsolete in 2 days.

Except that’s not going to happen because Butterfly Labs is clearly guilty. And with the Temporary Receiver and Court being harassed by these idiots, how do you really think this is going to go down? Well, until it goes the way we hope it does, the company cannot do refunds, take calls, or really do much of anything. This affects 20,000 people waiting for orders that will probably not be fulfilled, and with this distraction refunds will be delayed.

And again, to be clear, some of the tasks of a Temporary Receiver is to run the company so that it can make money to get itself out of the hole. This includes closing entire sections of a business because it costs too much money or finding assets. The FTC is alleging Butterfly Labs stole up to $50 Million in consumer funds and that could mean there might not be enough for refunds.

So the receiver and the court are working on a limited time frame here to do their respective jobs, and Butterfly Labs is harassing them, plus the FTC’s lawyers, and potentially stalling this case out so they can take a court ordered “sit in the corner”-type punishment.

So if you do not get your refund, or if its severely delayed, blame Butterfly Labs for acting like gigantic assholes, turning their company into a legal clusterfuck of both existing (but run by a court) and not existing (its probably going to die in court). If Bitcoin is the honey badger, and the honey badger has no fear of anything, maybe its time for Bitcoin to learn some fucking manners and not attack everything simply because it’s “The Currency of the Future”.