10.5k sats \ 5 replies \ @dtonon 24 Oct 2022 \ on: We are Foundation, creators of the Passport hardware wallet. AMA! bitcoin
Just yesterday I came across this article:
https://medium.com/@Fiach_dubh/rekt-crypto-hardware-con-artists-creep-into-bitcoin-8ad713198d3a
Any comment, please?
Sure, that article was published just a few months after we publicly announced Foundation to the world, after I recorded with TFTC podcast.
Seems pretty apparent that a competitor was quite unhappy that we used some of their open source code, and has been coming after us ever since – calling us "cloners" "leeches" "scammers" "con artists" and so on.
Our founding team worked together previously at a company called Obelisk, building ASIC mining hardware, and shipped over $26M of hardware (over 13,000 units). We ultimately quit our jobs and left because (1) we wanted to be founders and build a Bitcoin-centric company and (2) we didn't agree with the management decisions.
I talked about it more in length on the Blue Collar Plebcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo6k0fbcC-o
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I'm going to jump in here and comment as I'm the author of that article.
I originally wrote that piece to warn the Bitcoin community of you and your teams generally shitty behavior at obelisk to your customers.
Your competitors were not aware of that piece until I published it as a PSA. They had no involvement in it's writing or publishing.
Some of the behavior I experienced as an obelisk customer personally from you:
A) promising compensation for delayed miners, crediting it to users accounts, and then NEVER PAYING THEM OUT
B) being personally named for good reason in the subsequent lawsuit, since you yourself promised compensation in the obelisk discord at the time was coming, including honoring of coupons for future products such as hardware wallet devices https://www.classaction.org/news/class-action-filed-over-obelisks-sale-of-sc1-dcr1-cryptocurrency-miners
C) generally stringing your obelisk customers along to get them to not join the lawsuit
D) over promising on delivery times, which were late by months if I recall correctly
Or absolve Ken from obelisk/foundation of
D) over promising on the hashrate of the ASICs your team produced by 1/3rd!
When confronted with these facts on twitter you yourself dmed me in a rage, then blocked me. Your company twitter then blocked me. Then your staff blocked me so I can't respond to their comments saying the article was "debunked."
News flash: calling something debunked doesn't make it debunked. You have to actually provide evidence to the contrary. Which you haven't done. All I've seen you do is hand wave this sordid chapter away as a nuisance to your current enterprise. When it's very very relevant.
I encourage your customers to take a close look at you and your teams history. To verify the information in that article independent of my valid points.
You would rather have me silenced.
I would rather see you recognized for the animal you are.
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Appreciate the info.
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Thanks for the reply.
Yes I read about Obelisk and I'm quite impressed about the story, it is a bit worrying. I don't know if it is true, so I asked a comment. Of course about the critiques, not your revenue ;)
About ColdCard source code usage, the main point for me, so do you confirm that was legit from your point of view?
I'm referring to this part of the article:
On its own, a non-contentious clone (or fork) of the Coldcard would maybe be an interesting project. After all, it’s just “building on each other’s accomplishments”, though I’d hardly call the Obelisk dumpster fire an accomplishment. More like a pattern of duplicitous behavior.
As a result of this borderline IP theft by foundation devices, Coinkite is studying whether to change their software and hardware licensing to a more commercially restrictive alternative, as a defensive measure against this encroachment.
Would you do it again?
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While I wait your reply, if you will reply, I can only comment this your tweet and the following one:
We are grateful for @COLDCARDwallet 's open source firmware, of which we’ve used numerous components to more quickly bring Passport to market. However, we are disappointed that they’ve recently chosen to relicense their firmware as closed source.
The Commons Clause license condition is closed source and incompatible with GPL. The Free Software Foundation @fsf urges rejection of software under this license condition, and the license condition is widely criticized and on the decline. https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:C
Calling yourself "disappointed" after you used someone else work to bootstrap your hardware wallet company is a bit harsh on my opinion.
And directly ask the FSF to jump in is a quite dirty move to discredit ColdCard.
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