Bitcoin entreprenuer Jeff Garzik has started Bloq, a code-for-hire service to develop features for blockchain software and provide access to blockchain support, according to Bloomberg.The company charges $3,000 to $5,000 per month.PriceWaterhouseCoopers has agreed to sell the service to its customers.“That opens up a lot of doors for us early in the company’s lifetime,” Garzik said.“Companies know who to call at 3 a.m.if the blockchain is melting down.” Garzik modeled Bloq on Red Hat Inc., which helped businesses develop and deploy Linux and other open-source software.From working at Red Hat, which grew to $11 billion, Garzik said his code is in every Android phone and most data centers.Since leaving Red Hat, he has contributed to bitcoin’s promotional and technical benefits.He sits on the board of Coin Center and the advocacy boards of Netki Inc.and Bitfury Group Ltd.He has also attempted to launch satellites to support bitcoin transactions in space.With Bloq, Garzik competes against other startups in attracting programmers knowledgeable about blockchain, the online, decentralized ledger that logs bitcoin transactions and other data.

He said there are fewer than 200 people who know the blockchain very well.and International Business Machines Corp.have partnered on blockchain technology. and Digital Asset Holdings are developing new applications connected to the blockchain.R3, a consortium of financial institutions including Wells Fargo & Co.and Barclays plc, is seeking ways to use the blockchain for money transfers and other applications.Bloq will help clients deploy technologies for organizations like R3, Garzik said.A big opportunity exists for companies building customized blockchains that are based on open-source code to meet business challenges, said Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities.Bloq currently has three solutions for customers, according to its website.Also read: Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik wants to put full bitcoin nodes in space Bloq already has five customers including KnMiner AB, Circle Internet Financial Ltd.and itBit Trust Company LLC.It expects Foxconn Technology Group, which assembles iPhones and other electronics, to become a client.

Bloq has raised under $250,000 from co-founder Matt Roszak’s Tally Capital, Garzik said.The board of advisors includes Nick Szabo, Andrew Filipowski and Gavin Andresen, all bitcoin experts.Images from Facebook/Jeff Garzik and Bloq.HashFast, an embattled Bitcoin mining startup, announced on Thursday that it has fired half of its employees as a way to save money.“In order to improve our cash flow, as well as focus on ASICs, we made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by eliminating marketing and customer service roles, as well as some engineering functions,” Amy Abascal, the company’s director of marketing, wrote in a blog post.bitcoin file sharing“The total reduction was 50 percent of the current staff.bitcoin fixed return miningThis was a fiscally responsible way for us to slow our burn rate, get customers hashing, and continue developing amazing technology.” On Tuesday, Ars the San Francisco startup and chronicled the numerous arbitration cases and lawsuits that the company has pending against it.glyph bitcoin app

Many customers have accused the firm of outright fraud, and some are upset that when the company failed to fulfill its orders, it would not refund the amount in bitcoins as it had previously promised.Abascal also penned a second post on Thursday, entitled: “On Why We’re Not Scammers.” “I think it’s time to publicly address the notion that HashFast scammed our customers.Let me tell you that nobody is lying on the beach sipping Mai Tais with your money,” she wrote.matrox g200 bitcoin mining“While that would make for a great Wolf of Wall Street type feature film, it’s simply not the reality.” In a short interview with Ars by phone, Abascal explained that the company had reached a turning point.g2play bitcoin“You get to a point where you [find] what you’re doing isn’t working and figure out what you should be doing,” she said.iforex bitcoin

“Every lawsuit that we have costs money to pay lawyers and prevents us from running the business the way we want to run it.” The company appears to be in crisis mode: Amy Abascal and Joe Russell, a senior account manager, both apologized to Ars for not responding adequately to our repeated attempts to contact the company.They invited Ars back to the HashFast offices on Friday morning, an offer that was readily accepted.In her blog posts, Abascal also noted that the company has hired Monica Hushen, who is now acting as a “consulting chief financial officer.” Hushen’s LinkedIn profile states that she was previously the senior director of global operations finance at Palm, and before that she was a nine-year veteran of Apple.One concern that many HashFast customers have—particularly those that are pursuing litigation and arbitration against the firm—is that the company’s collapse may be imminent.Abascal dismissed the notion.“Hashfast is solvent—I just went over the numbers with our CFO,” she said.

“The definition of solvency involves as much assets as it does cash, and we have enough assets.” She explained that those assets are primarily inventory of its “Golden Nonce” mining chips.The new plan doesn’t comfort lawyers representing clients who have accused the company of fraud.“This makes me think they are headed into a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing to get breathing room to make their new plan work,” Ray Gallo, an attorney leading three arbitration cases against HashFast, wrote to Ars in an e-mail.“It makes sense to make these changes first, then file for bankruptcy protection against all the old refund claims, then get DIP (Debtor in Possession) financing (nobody would loan them money otherwise), since there are so many creditors now who would grab any capital that came in.” “From my perspective, I hope that this is a viable business because my clients will get their bitcoins back, ultimately.If it's not, and if it's going down the tubes, then obviously there are creditors that will go unpaid, and that will include my clients,” he added in a telephone call.

The company’s business model appears to have suddenly changed.Rather than selling directly to consumers as it had been as recently as this week, HashFast is now “refocusing” on direct chip sales.The firm is only selling its Golden Nonce chip, but does not list a price, nor an online order option.The site touts this model’s “Low power consumption and up to 750 GH/s.” HashFast is no longer taking pre-orders on its “Yoli Evo (Batch 3)” mining board, which was available earlier this week.That board was advertised as having a “maximum Bitcoin Mining Performance” of 800 gigahashes per second (GH/s)—the minimum order of five sold for $8,888.“We want to become the Intel of the ASIC world—our restructuring is a testament to that,” Russell said.Customers who want to buy the chips will then have to build their own boards or work with other board makers in order to get a working Bitcoin miner. forum: “Orders are taken in BTC, in the unlikely event we get to refunds they will be given in BTC.” The company further said it would ship its “Baby Jet” 400 gigahash per second (GH/s) ASIC Bitcoin miner by October 2013—which was then delayed until January 2014.

By late April 2014, Barber, along with the company’s CEO Eduardo deCastro, issued an “apology to our customers.” Getting a refund back in bitcoin is not trivial: should these customers (and others) receive their refunds as promised, they would stand to make a profit of more than 400 percent.In August 2013, one bitcoin was trading for around $100—today it’s about $440.The plaintiff in one of the cases, Morici v. HashFast et al, bought two Baby Jet miners, paying more than $11,500 (paid in bitcoins) in August 2013.Like the other litigants and claimants, he waited and waited and never received his order.Morici’s lawsuit also alleges fraud and breach of contract.“Knowing what I know now, with respect to their facts, and that they never intended to make their originally stated delivery date, I would not have made the order,” Pete Morici told Ars.Despite Barber’s unequivocal statement, HashFast representatives are now qualifying those remarks.“What I don’t think we ever promised is that we would refund in the same amount of bitcoins after conversion,” Abascal said.

“You can also understand that in order to operate a business that we have to turn [those bitcoins] into dollars—so that’s the currency that we’re having to work with.I would love the world to work differently but it doesn’t.When people paid in Bitcoin we converted straight to [US dollars], you can check the blockchain.We wouldn’t have been able to stay alive if we were paying back in the same amount of Bitcoin.” When Ars pointed out Barber’s clear-cut statement, Abascal countered: “The reality is that what the CTO said, is that he didn’t say that there wouldn’t be a conversion.” When Ars asked if the company’s policy had changed since that August 2013 statement, Abascal said she wasn’t sure.“I wasn’t here then,” she stated, saying that she only joined the company a month ago.“I only became aware of that post a couple of days ago.” Abascal referred Ars to Joe Russell, the senior account manager.He explained that while the company did accept payment in bitcoins, the products were denominated in dollars.