Butterfly Labs
| Industry | Mining |
| Founded | June 2012 |
| Defunct | May 2016 |
| Website | https://butterflylabs.com (archived) |
Butterfly Labs was a Missouri-based company that specialized in producing Bitcoin mining hardware. The company was founded in June 2012 by Nasser Ghoseiri and Sonny Vleisides, and was headquartered in Kansas City.
Butterfly Labs became well-known in the Bitcoin industry for producing some of the first ASIC miners, which were designed specifically for processing Bitcoin transactions. This provided a major efficiency boost compared to mining Bitcoin with traditional computers or graphics processing units (GPUs).
Lawsuit
Butterfly Labs faced a number of delays and controversies over the course of its history. Customers who pre-ordered mining equipment often had to wait months or even years to receive their orders, with some customers never receiving their orders at all. This led to a number of complaints from frustrated customers, and eventually culminated in a lawsuit by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2014.
The FTC alleged that Butterfly Labs had engaged in "unfair and deceptive practices" by taking payment for pre-orders of Bitcoin mining hardware but failing to deliver the products to customers in a timely manner, if at all. The FTC sought to shut down the company and force it to refund its customers, as well as pay a penalty.
In the end, Butterfly Labs reached a settlement with the FTC in May 2016. As part of the settlement, the company was required to pay a $15,000 fine and to refrain from making any misrepresentations about its products in the future. The company's founders were also barred from engaging in any business related to Bitcoin mining or other cryptocurrencies for a period of three years.
Following the FTC settlement, Butterfly Labs effectively ceased operations. The company's website and social media accounts became inactive, and its founders moved on to other ventures.
Despite its controversial history, Butterfly Labs played an important role in the early days of Bitcoin mining. The company's ASIC miners represented a major leap forward in efficiency and helped to drive down the cost of mining Bitcoin. Today, the Bitcoin mining industry is dominated by large-scale mining operations that use even more advanced technology, but Butterfly Labs is remembered as a pioneer in the space.