Bitcoin Forum

https://i.imgur.com/pFMJIWe.png



This proposal is a sizable document, it you'd like a copy in MS Word for easier reading, please email us

Novello Technologies Limited would like to present our project proposal for a family of Bitcoin mining rigs.  We hope you’ll be excited and will want to contribute towards its success and help guarantee the future of Independent Mining. We’re assuming you already know a fair bit about Bitcoin Mining, but if you don’t we’d suggest that you do some research before reading our proposal.
 

Our project is live on Indiegogo, please take a look: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ultra-low-cost-bitcoin-mining-systems--2 (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ultra-low-cost-bitcoin-mining-systems--2)

There's also an article about the project on Cryptocoinsnews.com: http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/novello-technologies-begins-funding-ultra-low-cost-bitcoin-mining-rigs/2014/06/04 (http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/novello-technologies-begins-funding-ultra-low-cost-bitcoin-mining-rigs/2014/06/04)

First things first though – here’s what you really need to know about the project:

The Headlines

-   Systems priced from $59 (128GH/s) to $2799 (8 TH/sec)
-   Systems financial metrics: $0.3 to $0.5/(GH/sec)
-   Power consumption averages 0.30 Joules/Gigahash, at the wall socket.
-   Full custom ASIC chip built in 40nm LP process
-   Inbuilt Raspberry Pi with WiFi except in basic $59 system – it needs a host laptop/PC or NOVA - HH
-   All systems come with fully regulated, high efficiency (> 87%) power supplies with Power Factor correction
-   This is a pre-order project, there are staged payment options
-   Deliveries will start Dec 2014
-   Innovative programs to keep early customers competitive no matter how high difficulty becomes
-   Be first to buy on Indiegogo and get the BEST deals!

The Timescales

The Gantt chart below shows the projects’ critical timescales; with target funding, tape out will take place mid to end August 2014, and prototype devices will be available mid October.

https://i.imgur.com/vmgCpgE.png



We'll make it clear from the start that we want to be a high volume supplier, but want most of that volume to come from our initial customers in the form of repeat purchases. In return, they will get the best possible deals we can offer and unique access to development programs.

About Novello

Let’s tell you a bit about our company. The driving force behind Novello is a group of professional engineers based in the UK with over 120 years combined experience in the design and manufacture of complex, highly reliable electronic systems and devices. We think profitable Bitcoin mining should be accessible to anyone no matter what their budget; by ‘profitable’ we mean a device that will pay back its’ purchase price in less than 3 -4 months, even with a very large rate of growth in network processing power. More accessibility means more users, this will help strengthen the Bitcoin network and promote wider use of Bitcoins.

To save the forum trolls, scam hunters and naysayers a lot of time and effort, here's the company structure at present:

Novello Technologies is a UK registered Limited Company, incorporated in November 2013. Our company registration number is SC464008. We are also registered for VAT,  registration number is UK 186 6980 46. A UK Limited (or Ltd) company is similar in structure to a US Corporation, and is tightly regulated by UK law. Such a company can be formed with only one Director, the person who has overall responsibility for making sure the company complies with statutory regulationsy. In our case, the Director is Olivia Walker who is a marketing professional. My name is John Fowler, I am the company’s Technical Manager and primary contact point for this forum.

Currently Novello is a ‘structure’ ONLY – we rent an office in Glasgow, Scotland, this is our formal business address. We are a genuine start up, so have no factory or design office or indeed working prototypes – you can’t prototype a custom chip - that’s why we are trying to raise funding.  We do have is a SHA256 system design with ultra competitive technical and financial performance; our engineers have completed over 20 custom chip designs during their careers including ones for very high volume consumer electronics projects.

Our systems will be built using a future-proofed modular approach, some have the capability to add more hashing capacity, all can be easily upgraded, preserving much of their value. With our group experience in design, manufacturing, logistics and quality we know we can make truly consumer-grade products with unrivalled performance, cost effectiveness, reliability and after sales support within realistic timescales and budgets.

Thanks for reading this far but you’ve still got a lot of information to read and digest. So get yourself a cup of tea and settle down for what we hope will be an interesting read. There’s a comprehensive set of FAQ’s at the end, including some tough questions vendors usually don’t want to answer!


CONTENTS


1.   Project Summary

1.1   Project Brief
1.2   Our Mission
1.3   Our Bitcoin Technology Development Strategy
1.4    Our System Lineup

2.   Project Financing

2.1   Financial requirements & where the money goes
2.2   How Split Financing works
2.3   Delivery times and Courier charges

3.   The Shape of Things to Come
   
3.1   Growth of Network Hashrate and Difficulty – what will happen?
3.2   The rise of Mining Companies and how to remain competitive
3.3   Power Play
3.4   ROI predictions
3.5   Guaranteed Supply Program (GSP)

4.   Our Hardware Solution

4.1   Overview of Modular Methodology and Retaining Value
4.2   Full Custom vs Gate & Standard Cell
4.3   Small is Beautiful (sometimes)
4.4   Module Mania
4.5   Our Mining Chip
4.6   Heat kills

5.   Pricing

6.   FAQ’s

1.0  Project Summary


1.1 Project  Brief

Our project depends upon development of a Full Custom asic device in 40nm LP process technology which will be used in all our systems. We need to secure funding of at least $4.2 million  to make our project viable, i.e. to complete design, tooling, product engineering and support and to supply customers with their systems. In return we're offering mining rigs with ultra competitive cost and power efficiency.Target funding will enable us to ship all initial system orders by the end of March 2015. If we are substantially oversubscribed, ie over $12 million, we will implement the design in a 28 nm process to give our customers even better efficiency and hashing power. We will also then introduce an additional program to help keep our customers competitive against organised mining companies, especially those who live in regions with high energy costs.


1.2 Our Mission

Mission Statement? Straight messages, no corporate rubbish:

-   To use our expertise to make Bitcoin mining much more accessible to those on a low budget, and to level the playing field against organised  
        mining companies. Diversity is good for Bitcoin, centralisation of power most definitely isn’t, don’t let anyone tell you anything different.

-   To create a core group of customers that will come back to us again and again for their Bitcoin mining requirements and use innovative
        programs to help them achieve their financial goals, no matter what happens to Bitcoin value and network difficulty.      
 
-   To fund independent academic research to enable continuous development of our mining device technology which will keep our customers
        competitive no matter how high difficulty becomes.

-   To develop our company into a successful full service silicon design bureau which will offer small business startups a low cost gateway to
        prototype chips, typically costing less than US$50k in total.

                
1.3 Our Bitcoin Technology Development Strategy

It may surprise some we've chosen 40nm: we'd argue that our full custom design can outperform cell based 28nm designs, but it’s about keeping costs down. The core design uses techniques already in production in other devices and has been comprehensively simulated. Our research has shown that it could be enhanced to go significantly faster at lower levels of power consumption, but first we need to gather some very specific data from actual silicon and our first chip will include the necessary test structures. This data will be used to modify the existing design and build a second faster, lower power device in 40nm (or 28nm). We anticipate that it will be available in production quantities by Q2 2015. After that will come a direct die shrink from 40nm to 28nm, giving a further boost to efficiency by means of yet lower power consumption.

As we mentioned previously, substantial overfunding will allow us to implement the core asic in 28nm – then implement the design changes for a second, lower power device once we have actual data from test circuits.

Modularity is used to give our customers have a cost effective means to add hashing power to their rigs either through addition of hashing modules or replacement of existing ones by newer models.


1.4 Our System Lineup

Our mining systems are targeted towards best possible performance per dollar. We recognise that few can afford to spend thousands of dollars to gain entry to the Bitcoin mining club, so our flagship product isn’t a huge multi terrahash/sec miner (although we’ve got one of those too), it’s a little USB device costing $59 (or $49 if you order quick on Indiegogo) we call the NOVA–S that can be used with its’ supplied AC adapter and a host computer, preferably a laptop, to mine at 128 GigaHash/sec. And it’s very well priced: $0.5 per Gigahash/second!

Sexy, or what?

https://i.imgur.com/LCtxdR2.png
 


Next up is the NOVA - HH which builds on the NOVA –S concept. It isn’t a miner as such, it’s basically a 16 port USB hub which can accommodate up to 16 NOVA-S devices. It’s USB ports are very high power – up to 35 watts each and it includes a built in wifi enabled Raspberry Pi microcomputer which runs the mining software and acts as a bridge to the network, so no host system is needed. It also has it's own 800W power supply. You will need a TV or monitor, keyboard and mouse to set it up initially; it’s an easy starter route for those who can’t afford to spend a lot of money in one go to buy one of the bigger rigs but who can easily add capacity as they earn it!  

Our system rigs offer hashing power from 1TH/sec up to 8 TH/sec and are based on a common enclosure platform with a form factor of 210W x 300L x 175H (4U), 2 can fit side by side in a standard 19” rack tray, 10 trays in a rack. Pricing runs from $0.35 to $0.50 per GH/sec and if you order early you can get them even cheaper! All system rigs are all modular, so it’s very easy to add or change hashing modules whilst keeping your existing infrastructure. All our systems except the NOVA-S have integrated wifi enabled Raspberry Pi microcomputers, so do not need host systems to mine. If you look at our pricing structure and factor in the delivery date as December - March 2014, it is clear that we are offering our customers – especially those willing to commit early – a very considerable performance advantage in terms of how quickly they might achieve profitability on their new rig.


2.0  Project Financing

Now for the difficult bit. We’re a genuine start-up company and so we need external financing to build our company and make our project work. In particular we need to fund the huge NRE and development costs associated with the core asic device; this won’t come as news to anyone in the Bitcoin mining community and we realise that any new company entering the market will be viewed with a lot of suspicion, especially in a pre-order situation. We also recognise that our project is going to attract a huge amount of negative comments on the Bitcoin forums simply because it doesn’t follow the conventional approach, and because some will struggle to understand how we can make something that’s so powerful yet so inexpensive.
 

There’s also a hard core of individuals and companies who really don’t want every wanabee miner with $59 joining their party, making the difficulty higher and reducing their earnings. They will try extremely hard to convince you that pre-orders are ‘bad’ and under no circumstances should you go down this route - despite the fact that most of them made their money from pre-order products! We’d advise you to read, read, then read some more and make up your own mind.


Nowadays pre-order based projects come under a lot of scrutiny largely due to the number of programs that went wrong and kept customers waiting months for the systems they paid for in good faith. That’s all fine and well but the large amounts of money needed to develop new asic products make it all but impossible for individuals to fund. Funding can be sought from Venture Capital (VC) companies, but they expect a very large return on their investment, at least a factor of 2 – 3 times plus their original investment back within a period of 2 – 3 years, but for mining projects most recognise that they’ll get a much faster and higher return by using the rigs to mine, not to sell to the public.

For companies that are VC funded, they need larger profit margins to pay the VC companies back and that means higher rig price. We’re looking to use a slightly different financing model to the normal one, but we'll now explain why we need $4.2 million, and how we’ll raise it.


2.1 Financial Requirements & where the Money goes

$4.2 million is our initial target sales value, in rough terms. We are happy to tell you that our GPM (Gross Profit Margin) on sales averages out at about 38 - 40% , meaning that for every $1000 in sales we receive, we make around $390  gross; this is very much lower than our competitors who have margins of well over 75%. Out of that we have to pay for premises, people and all the usual stuff most companies need,and also the huge NRE costs for the custom mining chip. $4.2 million sales gives us approximately $1.75 million to cover all these costs, so we’re not planning on buying any fancy cars or boats – just 40nm masks, chips and components!

If we exceed our sales target then any extra profit generated will be used to expedite delivery as much as is feasible.

If we’re very substantially overfunded – to over $11 million - the extra profit will be used to implement our design in 28nm and cover the extra costs for the chips; you’re right in thinking that $11m will bring us an extra $2.8m in profit, but then our NRE costs an extra $0.8 million and the extra cost for the 28nm asic chips? Nearly $2m! On the flip side, we’ll save about $200k on component costs, so out net increase on profits would be approximately $700k and we will use it to expedite delivery of the silicon and our customers will get machines with considerably higher performance!

So where does the money go? The chart below shows the breakdown based on target funding of $4.2m:

https://i.imgur.com/zSdDkIv.png

Our campaign on Indiegogo is to raise our core finance, it helps the project get publicity and will hopefully result in more sales; the prices you see on Indiegogo are the regular price, if you buy early you can actually get them even cheaper with the Fortune 500 ‘perks’. Indiegogo offers payment by debit or credit card which we can’t at the moment, but will do in the near future, the full system price is paid up front the time of order.

Web / Forum based pricing offers two different price structures. Why? Well, we know that many prospective buyers will be very risk averse and so will be reluctant to buy from an unknown company with no track record. But then our prices are around half to a third of the nearest competition in $/GH terms; even so, for those who don’t want to go through Indiegogo - they don’t accept Bitcoin or bank transfer payments - we’re offering an alternative, Split Financing.


2.2 How Split Financing works

 If you want to buy outside Indiegogo or pay by Bitcoin/Bank Transfer, you have two choices:

1.   Pay regular price in full, if you’re early enough you can opt to participate in special programs
2.   Pay approximately 10% over the regular price, but pay only 33% of this amount at time of order. The balance will be paid once your system
        has been built and is ready for delivery.

Split Payment allows you to buy the system you want now even if you don’t have the full amount, giving you time to save up the balance. The flip side is that you’ll pay more for the system as you’re taking less of the development burden and you won’t be eligible for our Guaranteed Supply or other special programs. Example: for our 2 TH product it’s $899 up front, buy it on the web/forum and you can pay $899 up front or $999, approximately 10% higher, with only $333 up front and the rest once your system is ready to be delivered. With both options you can pay with Bitcoins or Ban transfer. Note that with our project you don’t need several thousand dollars to get TH performance, just $499 buys you 1TH of hashing power, and you don’t need to buy a separate power supply!


2.3 Delivery Times and Courier Charges

Deliveries of systems will commence end of December 2014. Orders will be shipped on a first in, first out basis. If we sell all our initial capacity it will take us until the end of March 2015 to complete shipment of all orders. Courier delivery will be payable by the customer and won’t be charged until their system is ready to ship. We’ll only use internationally recognised insured couriers such as Fedex or UPS with ‘signed for’ services. Below you see sample rates for various countries. For EU buyers, VAT will be charge at 20% on the final system plus shipping cost unless they can prove they are an EU VAT registered entity.

https://i.imgur.com/6S14MuG.png

We do have a slight problem with the price for shipping the NOVA-S products internationally, particularly to the US & Canada, but we're working on solutions for that and it looks like we will have one for North America - we'll keep you posted on progress.


3.0  The shape of things to come: Difficulty/Network HashRate


The Bitcoin mining landscape has changed considerably in the past year, and continues to evolve. Let’s explore what we think that will mean to miners.


3.1 Growth of Network Hashrate and Difficulty – what will happen?

These are the subjects that all Bitcoin Miners dread – the Network Hashing Rate and Difficulty, we’ll refer to these as the NTR – Network Terrahash Rate and DIF respectively; the two measures essentially track one another. You’ll never see mining rig vendors talking about these – it’s not good for sales and you really don’t want to say anything that might make your potential customers question the viability of their purchase, do you? Well, we’re a bit different; we want to tackle this subject head on to give our potential customers all the facts and figures they need – both good and bad - so they can make truly informed decisions about whether to commit.

Since mining ASICs appeared, the NTR and DIF have risen over 500 fold; it is now growing at over 4000 TH per week and there is an awful lot worse to come. We predict that nearly 85% of future NTR growth will be powered by organised mining companies with large hashing capacities;  4000 TH is the equivalent of adding 8,000 500 GH rigs a week ! This has drastic implications for any current or potential miners – how fast will the DIF rise, and will they ever be able to afford a rig powerful enough to pay for itself let alone achieve ROI?   It’s a question made even more pertinent by the prospect of a technological arms race with mining companies competing with each other to gain share of the NTR – this can only be achieved by ever increasing capacity.

Individual miners will be the losers here – unless they can compete on equal terms, they can never make a profit. So it’s essential to have some idea of where the NTR/DIF might be for the next 18 - 24 months and that’s not an easy task as there are many variables that will affect it, including the Bitcoin/Dollar exchange rate and the pricing/availability of new mining rigs. Because it’s so important, we’ve spent a lot of time and effort building a software model to simulate the market and make estimates of what might happen. But they are estimates, and are obviously not guaranteed!  There is also what we would refer to as braking factors that will slow growth if it’s too rapid and mining becomes uneconomical, but they take time to take effect. So, here’s our estimate showing what we think the NTR might be until the end of 2016:

https://i.imgur.com/pHjhuy0.png


3.2 The rise of Mining Companies and how to remain competitive

Mining companies are a relatively new addition to the Bitcoin ecosystem but make no mistake, they are here to stay. Bitcoin mining has gone from being an obscure digital pastime to a rapidly growing financial instrument, and to large investors presents unrivalled ROI’s compared to conventional investment vehicles; even if the Bitcoin exchange rate dips as low as $250, it’s as close to a ‘dead cert’ as you can get. The financiers behind these companies are quite happy to wait 9 – 12 or even 15 months until their equipment pays for itself, thereafter it’s mostly all profit and they can site their facilities almost anywhere to get their energy much, much cheaper than Joe Public. They can access huge amounts of capital to fund their rig purchases and secure large discounts from the rig suppliers or, better still, make their own. What’s even worse is that some of the mining asic suppliers are actively encouraging them to build more and more capacity while at the same time making nonsensical claims that they want to ‘distribute the hashrate’! And why not? They don’t care about individual miners, just profit.

We care about it too, but care far more about having a loyal customer base and a long term sustainable business.

The mining companies are a very real and present threat to individual miners who can never compete with their resources, and the cards are very much stacked in their favour – up until now. As mining companies continue to pile on the Petahashes, the questions every current or prospective miner wants an answer to are these:

Is there a simple way to calculate if my new rig is going to be profitable or not?

Can I compete against the mining companies?

Well, we think we can answer both. It’s based on how much you should pay for your rig in dollars per Gigahash:

-   on the date it’s delivered
-   an exchange rate of 1 BTC = $500 (yes, we know it's over $600, but let's be a little pessimistc here)
-   power usage of 0.85 /0.55 Joules/GH, or our worst case 0.3 Joules/GH, at the AC socket
-   power cost of US$ 0.1125 per kilowatt hour (US Domestic average according to EIA http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update
        /end_use.cfm#tabs_prices-3)
-   assumes that you want your rig to break even in a six month period after delivery = if it can’t do this, then there’s a very good chance that it
        may never be viable and so the companies deter yet another potential rider on their gravy train. Try it out:


https://i.imgur.com/Uy2vvxQ.png      

  
And here's the same table for BTC = $450:


https://i.imgur.com/dh48J4M.png

You can clearly see the effect of the increasing NTR and energy usage on profitability. If the exchange rate varies you will have to correct these figures by the appropriate ratio, and please remember that the Bitcoin’s value might go down as well as up!

You should also be aware that mining companies can currently build and deploy new capacity in their data centres
For the equivalent of around $1.35 / GH. This will fall to around $1.15 / GH by end 2014.

We are presenting this information not to scare people, but in the interests of full disclosure. Mining Bitcoins is very competitive and we don’t want our customers to imagine what ‘might be’ instead of accepting reality. But, it is possible to get an excellent return from Mining if you have the right tools and the right supplier– and that’s where we come in.


3.3 Power Play

Mining will soon reach a point where the cost of power takes away more than 50% of a miners earnings. If you’re an ‘average’ US customer with a 0.85J/GH rig paying the average rate for your electricity then this will happen when the NTR hits about 320,000. If you manage to get your hands on a 0.55J/GH rig then the 50/50 point is delayed until 540,000 . With a 0.3J/GH rig it’s nearer 1,050,0000! We’ve designed our systems to consume as little power as possible whilst remaining competitive at hashing; the benefit of using full custom design is that you only use what you need – no wasted resources. Below are our estimates for MAXIMUM power consumption for our systems with all devices running at rated speed, measured at the AC wall socket so including all power supply switching losses and auxiliary circuit power:


https://i.imgur.com/bXVL84G.png


You can see these are very competitive figures, despite us using 40nm technology. And they’ll get even better with our generation 2 40nm chip – some 36% less, we estimate.


3.4 Return on Investment (ROI) Predictions

Have you ever seen a mining rig supplier exploring this subject in their sale pitch? No? It's very simple – too much information given to buyers might put them off purchasing, rig manufacturers know that most Bitcoin miners dream of making millions of dollars from their mining activities, and it’s much better to let them hold onto that dream; a dose of reality might stop them buying. Well, we’re engineers and don’t believe in fantasy, just facts.

Fact 1: Bitcoin mining isn’t an investment – it’s a gamble, albeit one with semi predictable odds
 
Fact 2: The days of easy pickings for miners are well and truly over and will never return

Fact 3: Even an 8 TH rig isn’t going to make you a fortune, unless there’s a dramatic rise in BTC value

Fact 4: You can get a very reasonable return from mining – much better than any conventional investment
             vehicle – if you have the right information, right equipment and the right supplier.

Fact 5: If you don’t have a rig that competes with the economics of the mining companies, in the long term
           you will never achieve any kind of return on your rig purchase

So now that we’ve made you thoroughly depressed, let’s look at what you might be able to achieve:

From Jan 2014 to Jan 2015 (365 days), based on our NTR / DIF prediction and 1BTC = $500, we estimate a NOVA-1    1 TH/sec rig, taking into account costs of electricity and mining pool fees could earn you:

 $1322 based on average current US residential power costs (estimated at 12cents per kWh in 2015) or
 $1037 based on corresponding UK figures (estimated at 23 cents per kWh in 2015)


On a purchase price of $499 and shipping/tax charges of $95, then a US rig will provide net earnings of ($1322 - $499 - $95) = $728, or ROI (Return On Investment) of 122% (728/(499+95)) less taxes you may have to pay on your income but you still have the value of the hardware at the end of the year and it will continue to earn money. We don’t have detailed figures up to the end of 2016, but predict the net earnings would be $542 for the US, $247 for the UK,  assuming power costs rise by 5%.

At the other end of the scale, a US based NOVA-8 systems’ 2015 figure is $10,576 deducting initial costs, shipping and taxes gives net earnings of ($10,576- $2799 - $153) = $7,624 or ROI of 258%. For the UK the figures are $8,296 - $2799 - $600, ie $4897 or ROI of 144%. Both figures are again less any payable personal or corporate taxes. Why the large difference? It’s all down mainly to those power costs and UK VAT. Of course this analysis is only looking at payment over a long period of time, mining rewards are paid our regularly if you’re using a pool as most miners are, this then gives you the opportunity to buy more hashing power as you get more funds. In case you missed it, that was a sneaky introduction for our Guaranteed Supply Program or GSP, it’s another part of our product offering which will continue to give our customers a financial advantage once they have started mining with our products


3.5 Guaranteed Supply Program

OK, you’ve got your new mining rig and it’s happily earning its’ keep. You’ve got some Bitcoins (or cash), and would like more hashing power NOW. Trouble is, all the competitive products have waiting lists of months, sound familiar?

We are offering some of our early customers who pay in full (and so bear the most of the development burden), a unique program where we will guarantee them almost immediate delivery on up to an additional 3 times the original hashing power they purchased, PLUS discounted rates on the upgrade hardware! This applies only if they paid in full through Indiegogo or Web/Forums.

There will be a 3 month period after their delivery date where this kicks in, after that they can order up to 3 times their original hashing power as hashing modules or full systems at the rate of one upgrade of 1 x original capacity per month up to one year from their original delivery date at specially discounted prices. Of course, they can order as much hashing power as they like at any time, but delivery will depend on order backlog and available capacity; they would still get a discount but not as much as they would get buying via GSP. This program is available to the first 1000 customers who meet the payment criterion and here’s an example of how the GSP might work in the real world:


The spreadsheet below shows a running mining earnings balance for Jane, who lives in Colorado. She’s one of the first to order a NOVA-1 system and it’s delivered on January 4 2015; as time goes on her rig earns Bitcoins which she converts to cash. When she has enough money, she uses her GSP status and buys 1TH upgrade modules at $249 each – she’s already paid for the electricity to run her rig costing 12 cents per kWh, the US average in 2015. She gets her modules within 10 days of ordering and soon she’s hashing with more power, making more money for the rest of the month.

This process repeats until Jane has used up her GSP credits, by Jan 4 2016 Jane’s now 4 TH rig has generated her net $2,722, and that’s including paying for upgrades and the electricity to run it. That’s not bad for a $499 initial purchase! Over the following 12 months it will make her a further net $2,408, even allowing for energy bills going up by 5%. She’s not getting rich by any stretch of the imagination, but we imagine she’d be more than happy that she signed up early to buy her rig. Now, if Jane lived in California, the UK or other areas with high energy costs, she might be paying twice (or more) the US average electricity costs; this will have a significant effect on her earnings, but what can a miner situated in a high energy cost region do? Well, we may have a solution to that problem for our early customers, but it depends on to what level we get funded as it relies on a lot of investment in infrastructure.


https://i.imgur.com/h11hZ4f.png

Please read the next paragraph very carefully - at least twice!

In the case study shown, Jane manages to significantly increase her TH capacity and earnings because she earns Bitcoins a lot quicker than her competition and can access extra capacity as soon as she’s made enough money to pay for it, AND get  it at unbeatable $/(GH/sec) rates. But she also doesn’t spend any of her earnings except on electricity or more hardware. However, this scenario is based solely on our prediction of Bitcoin value and NTR, and is not guaranteed or warranted in any way. We’d strongly advise prospective customers to do their own research and calculations and solicit opinion from a variety of sources.


4.0  Our Hardware Solution

 So thanks for reading this far, we know we’re throwing a lot of information at you but please bear with us, the next section gives a full description of what goes inside the mining rig, especially the custom chip, and also explains how the modular system works.

4.1 Overview of Modular Methodology and retaining  value

Bitcoin mining is a very dynamic industry by nature, things keep changing and the ever rising difficulty means today’s top line mining rig is soon obsolete. It’s like what happened in the PC industry, except that an old Pentium 4 computer can still do very useful work, an old mining rig just consumes electricity! The PC industry taught us that a modular approach means systems can be upgraded by swapping parts such as DRAM or graphics cards. You can only do this so often, but a lot of the original system value can be preserved, yhat’s why we’ve chosen this route with our miners.

It’s a common misconception that most of the cost of a rig is in the asic chips. Sure, to engineer tool and build an asic takes millions but the actual parts don’t cost much, in our systems they account for about 48% of the overall cost. The rest of the system isn’t dependent on what’s inside the chips; careful design means it can be used and reused the same as a PC chassis. As difficulty increases miners need more power, either in the form of additions to their rig, or usually a new setup. We have structured our design so that it uses easily replaced modules and our overall design aim is to preserve the value of the infrastructure for as long as possible; as examples of this we usel over-rated PSU’s and DC-DC converters that can cope with a wide range of output voltage and current requirements, this helps keep our customers competitive. We’d like to think that other manufacturers might mimic our scheme and produce third party products for our infrastructure.

Now we’ll explore reasons why we can fit so much power into our asic chip:


4.2 Full Custom versus Gate and Standard Cell

To make a silicon chip, there are several routes you can follow. For speed, a gate-based design is like digital Lego, it uses simple pre-designed blocks of transistors that can be joined together to quickly build your system. They have known, tested performance and have been designed to work in most likely applications. Used with EDA (Electronic Design Automation) software it makes the chip designers’ job a lot easier, especially when it comes to simulating performance and functionality, or so the theory goes. On the downside, gate based can be ‘top heavy’ in that they use far more or far bigger transistors in each gate than might be needed, and that means higher power and more silicon real estate. However, the design path is fast, predictable (usually) and rugged and a good solution for most small to medium sized designs.

Standard Cell. It’s broadly similar to gate based design except that larger pre-designed functions are available, such as counters and adders, the designer can use them in a similar ‘lego' fashion to build their circuit, but with less flexible rules. It makes more efficient use of silicon as the functions have been heavily optimised at the transistor level, but again they have to be generic enough to cover a wide range of applications. The design route is usually easier than gate based as very complex functions can be built more easily, although there may be issues with routing and timing. For the same function, standard cells take up much less silicon area than gates. Usually EDA tools can accommodate both gate and cell based designs. Standard cell is very good for large, complex designs.

Finally there’s Full Custom. This is how chip design started, manual designs with individual transistors. It’s still very much alive today. Why? Answer – efficiency; just like a custom kitchen or suit, you get exactly what you want and need, no waste or unused functions. If you have a part in your circuit that drives only 2 loads, why put in one double the size that can drive 8? Or use a register designed for 2 GHz that’s three times the size of one for 600MHz? Designing in only what you need can save many transistors so the design is more efficient. Trouble is, it takes a lot more manual involvement and there are few EDA tools to help, so it costs more. But take heart from the fact that big companies like Intel and AMD have hundreds of engineers doing full custom designs every day!

A SHA256 hashing engine is actually a simple design from an electronics point of view; each individual stage in a 64 stage pipeline is built up from very simple functions, gate and cell based designs aren’t always good at optimising this type of structure. With full custom, you design in only what you need and with experience you know when you can sneak in special compressed functions. Because of the regular nature of SHA256, simulation isn’t as hard as it might seem – concentrate on getting the stages right and the rest will naturally follow. One of our stages contains roughly 2300 logic gate equivalents, close to the theoretical minimum needed so it’s not really complex; for a mining chip full custom makes a huge amount of sense and the end result is that you get a chip that’s area, cost and power efficient - that’s what miners want and need. Iif you don’t believe that a full custom solution can be so efficient we’d strongly advise you to read the following textbooks:

“Closing the Power Gap between ASIC and Custom; Tools and Techniques for Low Power Design” (Springer);
David Chinnery, Kurt Keuzer  ISBN-13: 978-0387257631

“Low Voltage CMOS VLSI Circuits” (Wiley-Blackwell); James B, Kuo, Jea-Hong Lau ISBN-13: 978-0471719793


4.3 Small is beautiful – sometimes

When designing a mining asic, one of the most important questions is how to implement the design, do you have a  large single chip that can do 1TH/sec, or 128 smaller ones at 8GH/sec? Larger chips produce more heat, smaller ones only produce a little but there’s more of them. A larger chip uses a smaller PCB than lots of smaller ones, and there’s fewer connections to the board to go faulty. But a larger chip has a much lower production yield than a much smaller one due the chances of encountering a defect in the silicon wafer used to build it, that means it’s more expensive per GH/sec.

What we’re pointing out here is that there’s a balancing act between functionality and cost. We’ve optimised our solution such that our chip comes in at about 100mm2. This is a manageable size, and still yields well, its’ packaged in a moulded flip chip ball grid array (a bit of a mouthful that so it’s more commonly called MFCBGA) to make the thermal design of our systems efficient. With a single chip rated at 128GH/sec, Terrahash capability can be easily obtained by using 8 - we actually use 4 chips in a module, this is covered in the next section.  


4.4 Module Mania

Now we’ll explore our modules and how they fit into the system. All are easy to access, fit and replace and have been designed for reuse.

There's five main modules:

A Hashing Module (HM) that contains 4 mining chips, a 32 bit microcontroller, USB interface and some support circuitry; very easy to install and/or replace. Self – testing without system controller intervention.

A Micro Hashing Module (MHM) that is essentially a smaller HM with only 1 mining chip, it has the same 32 bit microcontroller, USB interface and support circuits. It’s used in the NOVA – S USB miner.

A Controller Board (CB) that consists of multiple USB hubs, fan control circuitry and auxiliary power regulators. It’s also used in the NOVA-HH USB hub.

A High Current Power Supply (HCPS) – 1 for each HM – that incorporates a 200 amp capable variable voltage regulator used to supply power to the HM chips. HCPS modules take in regulated 12V DC power supplied from an internal PSU – no need to buy a separate power supply. The HCPS  ‘piggybacks’ on top of an HM, a low resistance plug and socket connects them together. The HCPS automatically senses the HM type and adjusts its’ output to suit, meaning it can be used with future HM’s, most likely requiring lower voltage but more current.

HM’s and HCPS’s are both based on a 60 x 96 mm pcb platform.

The NOVA – S USB miner has it’s own HCPS unit, a UPCU – USB Power Control Unit, it’s integrated with a fan controller and is designed to take power via its supplied AC adapter. Note that full performance at 128GH/sec is only available when using the adapter due to the limitation of standard USB ports; using a standard USB 2.0 port without the adapter will limit performance to around 8-10GH/sec, USB 3.0 will allow approximately 20GH/sec.

 A fifth module, a Raspberry Pi microcomputer with Wi-Fi capability is used as a ‘bridge’ between the system and the Bitcoin Network. It also allows system monitoring and configuration when connected to an external TV (or monitor), keyboard and mouse. The Pi runs a modified version of the excellent Minepeon mining software, which is easy to set up and configure.


4.5 Our Mining Chip and Fault Tolerance

Onto the good stuff now! Our ASIC has been designed to satisfy 3 key requirements:

-   High reliability and Fault Tolerance
-   Maximum Hashing performance per $
-   Minimum power consumption

The device is built around an array of 256 dual-SHA256 pipelines (2 x 65 stages in each) which operate as a group. An additional 16 pipelines are also present, but are not mapped into the address space of the main array. Chip performance is 128 Gigahashes/second (GH/s) at rated clock speed of 500Mhz, rated core voltage of 0.85V, die core temperature of 75 degrees Celcius and power consumption of 25 Watts. It is possible to run at a lower core voltage of 0.6 - 0.7V, however until we have working silicon we cannot confirm how fast the device will run at these levels. Please note that power consumption figures in the paragraph above are for the chip only, and do not include power supply and auxiliary circuit losses.

Comprehensive test structures built into the fabric of the device allow for production testing and ‘manufacturability’ analysis. It also enables the HM’s 32 bit microcontroller to carry out automatic full function tests on all pipelines, including the spares, this means that full hashing power is always available as pipelines are constantly ‘rotated’ for testing. Testing takes only takes  a few seconds and allows the controller to identify any that are faulty;  if one is found, it is temporarily disabled and a ‘spare’ mapped into its address space. A failure may be a temporary fault due to a hotspot, but regular testing will identify if the fault is a genuine failure or intermittent. The pipeline can then be permanently disabled and ‘remembered’ by the system controller as faulty, with a spare taking its place. This all takes place without any user intervention, although test results and pipeline swaps are recorded and can be reviewed at any time.

We plan to build the ASIC in a 40nm LP medium Vt process, this is a very stable and reliable process, very cost effective and relatively low power - you’ve already seen that our systems give excellent Watt/GH performance. SHA256 is very power hungry, virtually every transistor in a pipeline switches every clock cycle so the key to performance is reducing the number of transistors that switch and minimising the power consumption of those that do.  To achieve these objectives we have implemented the pipeline stages within the SHA256 engine at full custom level as we discussed earlier, it means we can save a huge number of transistors and control the size and hence power consumption of those that remain. We’re also making extensive use of analogue design techniques to minimise noise and reduce supply voltage – again saving power. Every transistor we save, shrink or optimise saves power, and overall this results in greater power efficiency.

REMEMBER :    Lower Power = Less Heat = Greater Reliability + More Efficiency = More $$$ earned

As a closing point on the design front, some readers might be a bit puzzled as to why we have put a 32 bit microcontroller on each hashing module. The answer is fairly simple – it takes away any high level control from the asic, leaving it as a ‘dumb’ calculator; it can distribute control and testing data to multiple chips and has inbuilt non-volatile memory that allows us to be able to log and remember any faulty pipelines and update firmware. Also, the automatic testing capability means that we can full test modules by themselves as a full unit, this saves a huge amount of production time and removes the need for special test equipment. It all saves costs, plus we’d rather have a programmable state machine off-chip in a microcontroller than embedded in a cast-in-stone asic!


4.6 Heat Kills

It’s all very well having high-tech chips that can mine fast, but they also produce a lot of heat and our mining
rig enclosures aren’t that huge. If the chips can’t get rid of the heat they generate quickly enough, their core temperature rockets and this destroys their transistors, so it’s essential to have good thermal management to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Rig suppliers have usually gone for classic fan/heatsink arrangement or water cooling. We looked at both these and other methods, and decided that for maximum reliability we’d use a fairly conservative route with ducted pin fin heatsinks and high capacity fans. This is a good combination and means we can get rid of sufficient heat to keep the chips well within their operating temperature range. It’s also very reliable – it’s easy for the fan controller to determine if a fan has stuck or fused and so close the system down until it’s fixed. We are using continuous duty fans with fluid or ball bearing with expected lifetimes (called MTBF’s – Mean Time Before Failure) of over 100,000 hours. Also, pin fin technology means the sinks are fairly compact, enabling us to pack a lot of hashing capacity into a compact enclosure.

A blown pin fin heatsink is also used for the NOVA-S USB miner with very small fans mounted on top of the heatsink, blowing down. This gives excellent cooling results, even in a hot room.


5.  PRICING and Payment

Our order procedure is slightly more complex than usual due to the Indiegogo program running in parallel.

If you want to order a system direct from us, please email us the following:

- What it is you you want to order
- Your contact details
- Your shipping address
- How you wish to pay, ie in full or split payment
- What payment method you prefer, ie Bitcoin or bank transfer

We will send you back a confirmation email with payment instructions, and will confirm your order number to you when your payment is received.

If you purchase through this forum, then you may wish to be entered into our prize draw - there are 6 NOVA-8 systems up for grabs - simply put your username onto the form you return to us and you'll be automatically entered! Draw will take place on 9th July, results will be posted in this forum. It's open to Bitcointalk members of any level!


Special Note on Pricing:

The pricing shown below applies to our first production run, order book for this run will close on 8 July 2014, regardless of number of systems sold. The first 1000 customers for each system type (excluding NOVA-S and NOVA-HH) will be eligible for the GSP program and will also qualify for special discounts on future system and upgrade module production run - this includes customers buying through Indiegogo.

Indiegogo ‘Fortune 500’ offers: If you don’t want to go through Indiegogo or want to pay by Bitcoins or Bank Transfer, you can still get access to the F500 offers, simply drop us an email stating so. We have set aside 250 of each system type at F500 (2500 NOVA-S F5000) pricing for this method.



6.  FAQ’s


Q. This all sounds far too good to be true. How can you possibly build systems at this price when others are charging 3 or more times as much for the same hashing power?

A.  We figure that this a question most people will ask. There are 3 separate parts to the answer;

Firstly, we have a lot of experience in the design and manufacture of consumer electronic systems, so we know how to design and build at the lowest possible cost. We’re using well-established methods to source competitive, competent suppliers and subcontractors who will manufacture the component parts of the systems so all we’re doing is final assembly and test.

Secondly, by using full custom 40nm technology we save over $1300k in development costs versus 28nm- that’s $130 a unit for 10k units in engineering charges alone. Device gate density doesn’t count in SHA256 – it’s the number of transistors switching per clock, their power consumption and power dissipation capability of the die that limits performance, so our full custom design approach means our 40nm device can easily outperform a gate or standard cell based 28nm design. Don’t believe us? Read the excellent books we mentioned above.

Lastly, and most importantly, our whole business ethos is built upon maintaining a level playing field for our customers in mining and that means we have to be a volume supplier. Volume means savings in parts cost, (aided by modularity) and lower cost to the customer. It also means we’re content to make a modest margin, not what we think the market will ‘bear’. If we can build and sell an 8TH system for $2799 - including its share of the development and tooling costs – and make a decent profit then so can every other supplier. Ask yourself why their prices are so high.


Q.   Your company has no history of making or delivering mining systems and yet you want people to pay a lot of pre-delivery money for a product that will take over 6 months to be delivered – if it gets delivered at all. Why should I trust you with my money?

A.   We have to make one thing clear to any prospective customer - every company has to start somewhere.  Novello is a start-up and like most start -ups we need to secure external finance to fund development and tooling costs. Each system that we sell contributes a portion of this, with most of the remainder paying for the actual components and labour needed to make the systems. We’ve tried to make our sales/funding proposal as flexible and transparent as possible but ultimately, if you don’t want to pre-order or don’t trust us that’s your choice, but you’ll miss out on a potentially very profitable product and the chance to work with a company that really has its customers interests at heart.

We do appreciate that many people have had unfortunate experiences with rig suppliers who have delivered late or sometimes not at all, and it’s understandable that any new company – especially one offering products so cheaply – will be viewed with extreme suspicion. Having said that, we are being completely honest about what we are doing, even to the extent that we may actually put people off buying a rig because of our predictions about the rise in difficult. We’re also not hiding the fact that we’re going against the trend and using custom 40nm for the reasons outlined elsewhere.

   Everything in our proposal is based on solid engineering design and experience, experience that tells us that from day one that you design in reliability and manufacturability rather leaving it as an afterthought, and have a fully worked out system integration and product engineering plan that doesn’t rely on  plug-it-in-and-hope-that-it-works.


Q.   I already did a pre order and got burnt. Why don’t you just wait until you can supply unit from stock rather than taking pre orders?

A.   As we explained before, we have to finance the development and manufacturing costs. To be blunt, if we could afford to do this then we would make a lot more money simply by using our stock to mine, or auction it for premium prices. Our ‘bargain’ with our customers is that they pay a modest deposit or a discounted full payment in return for a very competitively priced product which will remain so for some time, even allowing for the development cycle. Bitcoin mining rigs are not a normal commercial product – everyone want the fastest system now, so stock holding would be nigh on impossible unless it was older, inefficient technology.

BLUNTLY:  If it’s in stock, it’s obsolete or will be shortly!



Q.   If you sell all your capacity then by your own plan you may have to deliver some 30,000+ systems in a roughly 13 week period from end December 14 to end March 15. Have you a strategy to achieve this – it sounds an awful lot in a very short time?

A.   It’s a very important and pertinent question. Yes, we have planned for this eventuality and as we said earlier we’re used to designing high volume systems and progressing them to manufacture.  3,000 systems a week is not particularly difficult to achieve if you know what you’re doing. The modular approach makes system assembly very straightforward and quick and allows for pre-testing of the actual hashing modules as an integrated unit in stand-alone mode.  We’ll also use subcontractors for a lot of the ‘grunt’ or low level work, and if we got this level of funding – it would be around $21 million – then you can be assured that we’d sacrifice profit for extra staff and resources to ensure that customers get their systems on time.


Q.   You mention Mining Companies a few times – why do you see them as such a problem?

A.   Bitcoin was always meant to be free of any centralised control, that means that everyone can participate, and this should apply to mining also. If you have too much power concentrated in the hands of a few individuals or organisations it can severely disadvantage others. As newer, more expensive technologies come on line, mining will end up being the sole preserve of the wealthy or dedicated companies, especially those who can afford to develop their own ASICs – and some have clearly already done so. Then what happens to ordinary miners? They can never get hold of hardware at the same $/GH figures the mining companies enjoy– unless they come to us.    
               

Q.   You’re a UK company, so why do you want to be paid in US dollars?

A.   Over 90% of our costs are in dollars, so it makes more sense for us to get paid in them.


Q.   Is there a limit as to how many systems I can buy?

A.   Within reason, no. Indiegogo has limits on how much you can contribute in one transaction, please go to http://support.indiegogo.com/hc/en-us/articles/526846-Common-Contribution-Errors and go down the page to the Indiegogo Restictions on Payment Type section for more information on this. Essentially you pay on purchase so if you try to buy 7k$ worth you’ll need that on your card.


Q.   Why don’t you take Paypal as a payment method?

A.   Honestly? It’s all to do with commitment, we don’t want to get into the situation where we have a large number of buyers, or competitors posing as buyers that decide before their 90 days is up that they really don’t want to participate in the project. It can screw things up for everyone else.


Q.   I like the idea of the Guaranteed Supply Program but I don’t understand why you only offer it to the first 1000 customers who pay the full purchase rice up front? Why can’t everyone get it?

A.   It’s all about commitment. We want to keep all of our customers happy and devise schemes that will maximise their ROI and maintain the value of their purchases from us. However, it’s a two way street – those who are willing to help us out in the initial stages of the project by committing more of the purchase price should be rewarded more, that’s only fair. Plus we want to make absolutely sure we are able to fulfil our commitment to make rigs available when the customer needs them.


Q.   Can’t you deliver the systems quicker? The longer delivery takes, the less I make!

A.   That’s not possible. We don’t give over-optimistic, unachievable timescales. But if we get extra funding the profit will be used to expedite delivery as much as we can.


A.   For this project, 40nm is very cost efficient. Our design is very compact and efficient and so can compete with current 28nm (and even 20nm) offerings. We want to keep costs low for our customers and that’s exactly what’s been achieved – unbeatable $/GH values. What’s the gain for our customers if we using a more advanced and costly technology?

However, if we get significantly overfunded to a minimum of $12 million then we’ll use the extra profits to implement our core asic in 28nm chip instead of 40nm (although we’re pretty confident that the rev 2 40nm chip will give just as good financial results). A 28nm design would have twice as many pipelines on the same die size, but run at a lower clock of 400MHz, giving a hashing speed of 200GH/sec, ie a speed increase of 60% meaning that a NOVA-1 miner would run at 1.6 TH/sec at the same power consumption as the 40nm solution!  


Q.   Will you be making other Bitcoin related products in the future?

A.   Definitely. For a start, we plan to introduce the Generation 2 HMs in early 2015 to give our customers an upgrade path which will prolong their competitive advantage. We will be implementing some alternative low power structures in the initial chips, and the results from these will shape the exact design of the next generation chips.


Q.   I like the modular approach and upgrade path, but at this time I’m one of the people you mentioned that has limited funds, so can only afford the basic system. Can I upgrade it before the delivery date, and how much would it cost?

A.   The short answer is a qualified ‘yes’, but please bear in mind that we have to be fair to everyone in the queue. If systems were available you would have to go to the back of the delivery queue, otherwise we would have lots of people ordering the 1 TH system then asking to upgrade it to a 8Th one before delivery, and that’s unfair.


Q.   Will Novello be mining Bitcoins as well as making Rigs?

A.   That’s clear case of Conflict of Interest, so no. Who on earth would want to buy from a company that’s a direct competitor? Worse still, how could any normal company with any ethics expect their customers to accept such behaviour?


Q.   What’s in it for you by offering GSP?  

A.   We want to keep our customers profitable and buying more TH from us and will give them major incentives to do so – they can keep competitive no matter what happens to the NTR and DIF. In GSP we give them hahing capacity when it’s most needed – there’s no catch, just a new way of looking at the supplier/miner partnership.


Q.   Are you going to sell the chips separately?

A.   Yes, we’d like to do this and to encourage the Bitcoin community to experiment with our asic. The chps are able to run at higher clock speeds and we are keen to gather data on how far they can be pushed. First we have to be satisfied that we can supply a device with the same standards of support as a commercial one, this won’t be possible until about January 2015 by which time we hope to have appointed distributors – ideally from within the Bitcoin community – to coordinate sales and support. As for third party system builders, we can’t really see how they could compete against our product pricing as they have to buy chips from us, but that’s not saying that we wouldn’t do it if there is enough interest.  


Q.   How accurate are the power estimates?

A.   We have extensive experience with this technology, and our figures are based on existing structures that are already in production, so our figures are accurate to about +/-10%.


Q.   I like the self-repair function, but I’d rather have the extra pipelines to use for hashing. Is this possible and can the ASIC devices be overclocked?

A.   The short answer to the first part is no. As regards the second part, the chips are capable of running at higher speeds, but then the power dissipation goes up and so the die junction temperature. At this stage we’d rather that customers accept the system specifications as they are; once we complete system integration and testing, it may be that the power consumption is lower than our worst case predictions and so clock speeds can be increased. W

Following this project, too bad December is far far away.   :-\

Looks like a scam.

Well, thanks for your interest. We're in June already, good things come to those that wait!

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I'd point out to you that to get VAT registration in the UK the company, directors and their bank account have to go through some very tight security and identity checks.

Have you actually read all the text and FAQ's? Even if you still think we're not on the level then at least you might enjoy reading the technical content and our comments on how we think mining will develop. If you think we're wrong, then please feel free to share your opinions.

No offense, but having over 120 years combined experience you go to Indiegogo to raise money? Don't you have other means? Why present the project here when you could do it to some VC firms?


Having a VAT registration means nothing. BFL is operating for over 2 years and they scammed A LOT OF PEOPLE and they are still in business. Taking the legal way against a company in the Bitcoin field needs a lot of time and the authorities which aren't familiar with how bitcoin works aren't helping the customers. HashFast failed too and nobody is in jail, AMT failed and nobody is in jail. So your VAT means 0.

Which they most definitely deserve.  Those HashFail and AMT pricks need a nice stint in the big house for the shit they pulled.

Anyways, best of luck Novello.  $4m is a lot of friggin' money.

Yes I read the text. It all looks like bold claims with no evidence.

Here's a few simple questions for you:

Who does your company consist of? You are asking for millions of dollars in funding yet you don't even give us any names? It's nice you have some fancy registration but so did danny brewster.

What experience does your company/employees have? Proof would be nice.

Why does your website look like it was designed by someone who just learned how to use html/mspaint?


Anyone who has been in the bitcoin mining world for more than a few days knows this is simply not true.

Thanks for your comments, and no offense taken. The reason we aren't going down alternative routes is that VC companies aren't too keen on financing asic mining project for the public to make money from them - they want to keep them in house to mine themselves, and that's not our ethos. The amount of money we need to even get to chip prototypes is simply way more than all our combined resources and then some, so this seems like a logic route.

We will never comment on how other companies conducted their business. None of us were BFL customers so have no knowledge of the quality of their service or products, but there is no argument that their products did (eventually) make a lot of people an awful lot of money. That's no excuse for poor service, but it is fact and we like dealing in facts.

I disagree with your opinion that a VAT number means nothing, but you're entitled to it like everyone else. How you enjoyed reading out pitch.

Thanks for your good wishes. It is a lot of money, but unfortunately that's what's needed to get the chips and systems built!

0.3W/GH at system level from a 40nm chip is indeed very nice. What is the power consumption at chip level?

If you'd read the text then you would have clearly seen two names mentioned. You can also see the Indiegogo page and who's leading the project, so I suspect you may ave simply skimmed over it.
.
Now, if you really think that we're going to present detailed CV's to a poster on a forum that hides behind a username, then that's simply not going to happen, If you want an engineering or financial discussion, then we'll gladly have one.

Nice document. Loved to hear more and discuss your plans.

Is this the next big scam company after Black Arrow?

It comes in at about 0.17-0.18 Joules/GH running at spec'd voltage of 0.85V. You can get it down lower, but the internal delays go way up and so the clock speed has to come down. It also gets more difficult to predict timing.

Thanks. Hope you enjoyed reading it, it was a lot longer than originally planned but as they say, the devil is in the detail.

sorry op but this is bulshit. anyone who are making more than few quid a year can jump on vat and registration  is not difficult at all.
As stated before in forum Ltd company these days means nothing.  just limited liability for you. personal I can chase your person to recover lost money but who will care to put more money upfront to chase you in case something will go wrong?

pre order are nonsense from definition . people are tired paying for non existence gear. basically you don't want to go to bank, put your house as security for large loan and make prototype this way.
once prototype will exist comeback here show it's working and ask for btc. This field is full of scams and trust me you will get bold quickly when people will grill you over few inconsistency.

Who's Black Arrow? Only kidding. No, we're not out to scam anyone. Hope you enjoyed reading our proposal though.

You are a "british" company (LTD) and don't know your "british" competitors like Black Arrow LTD?

Interesting post. I don't have a house worth anywhere near $400k let alone $4M, so asking a bank to take it as security isn't an option. If anyone did have the money to make their own asic without outside help, then I sincerely doubt they'd be posting on here looking for sales, they'd be mining away with them. Most of todays miners made their money through pre-orders, so I'd have to disagree with much of what you say. At the end of the day no one forces anyone to pre order anything, it's up to the individual to make the choice.

I was only kidding - but LTD companies come from many jurisdictions apart from the UK. Old colonial habits die hard.

maybe as individual you haven't got 4m to put upfront. but as a team easy you can secure loan. look for bigger investors instead asking small people to hand over you btc for wages, and who knows what else.  one more thing: when newbie start answering by "we not here to scam anyone..." this smells even more fishy.

again I found you mention something g which is wrong. not most if the company's made a sics from pre orders
it was like that when BFL and other scams was there. This days we have bitmain...never asked for btc to build units, spoondolis...again not even penny to show working units. only wannabe asking for pre orders this days
 and one more thing. In btc world once you will have working unit will become obsolete very soon .you will not be different than others. You will mine with gear like crazy and when it will become useless you will flush this on buyers. as I said you not he first one and not he last one who will have difficulty to convince typical miner like me.

good luck though

Pre-Order. I'm out.

Ok, but thanks for your interest anyway. If we do get funded and get our systems built don't be shy in coming to us for your future mining requirements.

You don't really think we are going to trust millions of dollars to a "marketing professional" and "Technical Manager" right?

You don't need to present a detailed CV to give us a name of your HW/FW/SW engineer and what experience they have.

Also your claims sound like BS. I suppose you don't have a shred of evidence to support them?

Thanks for your good wishes. Hopefully we'll be given the opportunity to prove that we can deliver what we say. The only other thing I'd say is that we have designed our systems with obsolecense in mind, that's why they're modular.

Can't be. Jimmothy isn't on board:


Will be watching for now.

Yes we have, but even if we were inclined to hand details of our chip design over to someone that hides behind a username, I sincerely doubt you would understand them, Try reading the books we recommended, then come back and tell us why it's bullshit. if you have technical information to share that says were wrong, then show it. Don't include everybody in 'we' - you might not like what you read but others are free to make up their own minds.

Beat this or go home:

http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/pages/team

Would you really hand over proprietary details even if I had provided a name? Giving out the asic design is not the only way to give us evidence. Words and graphs are meaningless especially from a company with no reputation.

http://cointerra.com/team/

http://www.butterflylabs.com/management/

http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/pages/team

Those are examples of real companies with real employees.  Your website is honestly a joke.

There is no way I can prove your specs are imaginary. But I don't have to. You are the one who has to prove it if you want anyone other than clueless noobs to fund this project.

Btw if your specs are half as good as you claim, you should have no problem selling the design alone for more than $10,000,000 to one of the already existent asic manufacturers.

Battery-operated low-power consumer electronics aren't really relevant to mining hardware which is high-power application that pushes itself to the edge of death: either thermal from overclocking or starvation from undervolting.
Good. Analog and mixed-signal design flow is the way to go. Now please get back with your engineers and post some results of your preliminary simulations. E.g. which version of BSIM did you use? You could post some fragmentary results without disclosing the entire design.

This board has enough people that will understand such posts. And disclosing some technical data (even incomplete) will be the quickest way to distinguish you from all the previous scammers who only had marketroids at the ready and literally nobody to back them up on the technical front.

Not sure I understand what 'fragmentary results' you would like to see?

It would be best for you if you've reviewed the posts from bitfury. It was his first ASIC and he went directly into full custom. See how he dealt with disbelievers. You can just read his English posts although his detractors were mostly posting in Russian and his responses were in Russian too.

Basically, we want to see that there is a real technical depth in your organization. What we don't want to see is another Cointerra, where the "dream team" was really part-timers that quickly disassociated themselves from the CEO and the only technical person left was some German guy on a temporary visa in the USA.

Your post, while quite good overall, essentially looks like a case study done by an MBA student.

Edit: You can also review Spondoolies-Tech posts. The forum account is mostly manned by a their CEO, who isn't afraid to admit that he doesn't understand some technical issues, but is always capable of delegating the Q/A to an appropriate person within his organization.

Edit2: some grammar fixes

Your conecpt looks interesting. It sounds like a competition to Spondoolies-Tech who are clearly leading :D
But i have a question, how do u mean 120 years experience ? Do u sum up the experience from the team ?

Another note to the Limited discussion:
You can buy a Limited within 24 Hours for 200-300€, and you dont need to leave your home.
At the Dark Market you can buy Limited Service where do you get your limited + fake id + fake documents for 1000-2000$.

I dont want to say that your are scamming, but a Limited is not much incredible :D


In conclusion i would suggest to look for a local investor who is able to check the processing.

Regards

While it all sounds interesting, and there is some technical info in there, alot of others have come before with info. The real onus is to provide technical depth to show us that this is the real deal. There are some very knowledgeable people on here who can validate any claims of performance.

Many of us have been burned by pre-orders....telling us you are another pre-order, even if its on indiegogo, needs significant validation to make traction. Inflated performance specs have also caused damage. We need to be sure we truly know what we are getting into and that requires honesty on your part if for some reason your product will not meet those performance targets....also what kind of experience do your engineers have? Spondoolies comes right out and says it....Intel, Motorola and a couple of others.

A champion thoroughbred always has his lineage as a validation of his champion status as that pedigree is what can ultimately (to some degree) determine fitness (in this case success), a parallel to race horses and dogs that applies to business in many cases. What people want to see is your previous track record of success. That will determine whether this venture could also be successful. Having a nice marketing friendly resume is not going to cut it. Solid tracks records of success is what matters. We want to

We need to see alot more than marketing speak and a different way of approaching the community. You want to deal in facts? Great so do we. Technical and non-technical facts. The corporate hunters on here are relentless and will pick apart your every word. Its what they do. Some will never be pleased until you have proven yourself. And that will require alot of effort on your part to make happen. It's frustrating to deal with the forum aspect as it is (for you) but going on cryptocoinsnews does not mean you have legitimacy. BFL has HUGE market mindshare and are still pulling the crap they are pulling. Quite a few other companies have been featured on news sites and well now they are on there for different reasons...

From what I read you have a sound business plan. And you obviously get people's frustrations with pre-orders. But you have ALOT to prove before people open their wallets to you. You will surely also have the paid shills who will attack you as they work for a competitor (which is happening)....but prove yourself past all that, and you will win. Low priced miners are a great thing...but until we see something, its all snake oil. Hopefully you appreciate this perspective.

Is it just me or the link is not online?
Tks.

Nice generic names. So who are you, really? Facebook, LinkedIn, anything? Are you an EVP of Oracle (http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/executives/038283.htm)? Are you a dead heavy metal drummer (http://www.sleazeroxx.com/rip/johnfowler.shtml)? Are you a basketball player (http://www.mineralarea.edu/athletics/MBB-JohnFowler06.htm)?

+1 !!

Hi Novello - please let us know:
1) You state that your miners will be covered by 2y warranty YES/NO?
2) You state that your team have extensive exp. but fail to introduce key people in your team - I do not need CVs, but as all here said, what is your exp. in related fields - at least business & tech fields (any previous successful businesses /or relevant employers) ? Even significantly smaller projects on IGG care to introduce their teams shortly...
3) You go for 4 mil USD IGG campaign & said there, that you expect to need at least 1mil for chip R&D - yet you go for flexible funding option on IGG - which means you will take whatever money raised - what will you do, when you have not raised targeted 4 mil ? Will you close business ? Or do you have some risk management plan for this ? And what about your customers - will you refund them ? Whats the plan here ? Did not see it on your campaign page...
4) Last one - will you offer full refund, if you are not able to start delivery by late December ? Will you commit to this or offer any other compensation ? Again not a word about it in your post or on IGG campaign page. 

Thank you very much in advance for honest reply and good luck with your IGG campaign!

I dig around your post about VAT and Limited company.

Ok, so in UK to become VAT registered company you can call number and tada! DONE
To become Limited company is even less hassle than CIS card for simple simon from construction site.

Please let me know if you asics will look and work like your website? Because even steve wonder would create better site with wordpress and free templates singin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2WzocbSd2w#t=8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2WzocbSd2w#t=8) once all finished.

Come on guys give us real proof this is not a joke.

Thanks for your post and input, it's much appreciated. Contrary to what you say, the forum crowd are actually very easy to deal with, I 've been dealing with blue chip customers for nearly 40 years, and believe me when I say that the forums are child's play by comparison. Yes, we are fully aware who's the 'shills' and fanboys on here, but we are professionals and don't rise to their bait. There's plenty we could say about them, but that's descending to  a level we don't want to visit. We have nothing to hide, but to come on and declare the provenance of our staff - which you can never validate or check, no reputable company will tell you a thing about their employees - seems a totally fruitless exercise. If we had wanted to scam anyone, we could have got 5 random people, photographed them in suits and bunged on some made up cv's  on Linkedin. We didn't because we're from a generation where actions did indeed speak louder than words - especially words spoken when hiding behind an alias. Exactly how successful have the companies been that have trumpeted on about their teams and people?

As for our design, any idiot will realise that we are not going to open our design files for all to see. Any half decent chip designer or competent electronic engineer knows full well that SHA256 is essentially made of three simple digital blocks: flip flops, full adders and 32 bit fast adders. A snippet of information about one or all of them is all you need to know how someone is doing something different, and we're guarding our snippets very carefully. It's funny that no one has yet come to us and said "you can't do this or say you have x performance because........." and there's a good reason for that. It is feasible, it's a question of implementation. Give that away and you lose your business edge. We have told you what our margins are, and broken down how the money will be used. Now that is verifiable, and any competent engineer will confirm it's accuracy. We've actually structured a design rather than saying we have a pretty box, and thought through how to implement it. Do you really believe scammers would go to so much trouble? Most of them have trouble spelling.

The funny thing about our pitch is that it seems that no one has actually read it right through. Our post was originally part of a larger business plan, an so we expect that most of the forum users aren't used to seeing something in this format or so comprehensive. It's about 20x larger than any other initial pitch and tries to address virtually everything about what we want to do, and how we intend to get there. No other 'new' company has ever addressed most of what we have addressed in our plan or stuck their neck out and made predictions. No other company has warned you to check and recheck what you read, or addressed the elephant in the room, namely the companies/people who  are quickly taking over Bitcoin mining.

Ultimately, time will tell if we get our funding or not. if we don't, it will have been a good learning experience. If we do, then we hope to be able to restart the mining scene so it once again becomes open to anybody.

Then come clean. Who the hell are you?

This is what a real company with real people looks like:

http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/pages/team

Well,mining at home will be dead VERY soon.With power costing me .13 cents per kwh,I've already sold my 1 TH in Antminers.

I saw the end coming & sold my miners while I could get a decent amount for them,had I waited another month or so their cash value will have decreased by a significant amount.

Sooo,unless BTC hits $700-$1000+ & STAYS there,I personally don't see it staying at those prices for very long,NO miner is worth it at ANY price.

Even if it does,we already are knocking on the 100PH door & its early June,150 looks easy to hit by Sept & 200 by years end or shortly thereafter,so the diff is going kill any at home mining projects.

I wish you the best of luck & will be watching,but you may as well just make miners for datacenters,they will control network very soon............  :(

Thanks for your very pertinent post, I'm please to answer what i can at present:

1. Yes, warranty is 2 years. If you look at the section about the chip, you'll see that our design spec is for maximum die temperature of
    75C. That should ensure the chips have a long lifetime.

2. Please see our earlier post about this. Our engineers have extensive experience in mil/aero systems design and in industrial control, to    
    name but a few. Problem is, you can never really trust what people say about themselves online, can you? We expect people to look at
    our whole proposal, not just one bit. It's not all about the chips, this is a carefully thought out and structured plan.

3. We have set a target on IGG to show what need to do the job properly. We are trying to source funds from other avenues to supplement
    this, including funds of our own. It won't come as any surprise to anyone that's read our plan that we have worked out several options if
    we don't reach our target. Before we did anything including drawing down the IGG funds - we don't get funds until after the campaign
     ends -  we'd go to our customers with these different plans and ask their approval to proceed. If they say no, then we don't take the
    money, simple as that.

4, We have targeted delivery for the end of December as you say. Naturally as engineers we have built in some padding in our timescales
    to allow for the inevitable problems that will appear. We will keep our contributors and other customer fully informed about what we
    are doing, good and bad, just as we did in our plan, but if there was going to be a substantial delay then we would give customers an
    option to cancel and get their full payments back.

If you would like any further information, please feel free to ask or email us directly.

You want people to give you millions of dollars, yet you want to remain anonymous. You'll never reach your funding level on Indigogo. But good for you, you selected the "Flexible Funding" option, so that you get all the money no matter what. The perfect scam.

Public Service Announcement

This "company" will fail. They do not have the funding, nor the expertise, to make it to a final product. Invest only what money you want to lose. They will never deliver a miner.

Dear me, that's a very pessimistic attitude, If you look at our plan, we predict a network hash rate of 280PH by December...our systems will still be very viable at that time, please look at the section about 'Jane', our typical citizen from Colorado who pays about the same you do for electricity. Look at the prediction we made for her earnings using our Guaranteed Supply Program, it was based on BTC at $500, not $600 or $700. Jane would make over $2200 off her miner plus the upgrades in 2015, even when the network hash rate hits 500+PH by the end of 2015.

So please look at the plan again. Thanks for your good wishes, please keep watching our project, if you would like to be added to our
e-mailing list, drop us a line.

There is nothing anonymous about the company or it's director.

But thanks for answering our question, good to know you've got something to keep you occupied.

Well.lets see....I've been mining since June 2011 & started with $1000 in vid cards & PC parts & made out very well.Well enough to upgrade with my earnings until now....the cost of miners & power consumption is what has turned me to altcoins,those will be hit with diff rises soon too, but with many coins to choose it'll be easier to keep going.Not to mention considerable reduction in power consumption & lower cost of miners.

I read your plan & IF you keep your prices low & IF you deliver,it MAY work.I personally can't chance it.December is a long time to wait for a return,if it works...........

I've been unemployed due to our wonderful bank & wallstreet greed & our gov's failure to get the economy rolling & inflation under control.So my personal earnings are not going to feed the miner makers.

Yes I am a pessimist,you would be too if you were in my shoes.....

30 years of construction & service industry work(HVAC install,service/Electrician/Plumber/Carpentry/Roofer/Painter) that is worthless here in Fla..............

Ohh, that's nice fresh breeze of air. Shitty website and shit loads to read. But only on paper, nothing more nothing less.
Approach is funny.
In this business especially here you will fail. You asking people like me for money, users who have knowledge asking for stuff and you cannot deliver simple answer.
I made myself clear and showed you that what you did wrote about VAT and limited company is bullshit. Yet still no response. You rather keep ignoring answer than face them and show us who is who.

I never see approach like yours: create shitty site with logo made by 5 year old, tell people this is new era of asics, ask for money with nothing more than just idea.

Thanks Silver,

You made my day with wordpress and steve wonder example. Right in the bull-eye!

Just happened to drop in, not shilling for anyone but I'd rather see directly funded or crowdsourced stuff than venture capital. It's a lot less conceptually soul-sucking to have the actual customer give you money to build them stuff, than some jerkoff with money to burn on pet companies. Just throwing that out there.

You're joking right?

You'd rather have naive bitcoin noobs fund this project, taking on massive risk, for very little reward if any at all?

Funding via VC firms is the only way to go because those "rich jerkoffs" have money to burn/risk along with the basic knowledge/common sense to not get scammed.

Let's stop supporting preorders/crowdfunding because it always ends in the "customer" getting screwed.

Then prove it. Prove you have the skills necessary to design and implement an actual miner. Most other teams, with far more experience than you, have tried and failed. What ASICs have you designed that are larger and more power hungry than a bitcoin ASIC? Exactly what part of the design did you do? What PCBs that deliver hundreds of amps have you designed?

next ken slaughter? or labcoin team?
amt?

wall of well crafted text and 0 technical answers.

summer 2013 bullshit preorder times are ended

sorry you are late for the party, now only whales can play this game

crumbs from community are out of your range too

so please delete your fresh account, forget about this forum and start creating roulette guides with refferar links.

you and your dreams/ideas/wasted time means nothing here.

sorry.

tl;dr version:

We need money to fund out company.  We want YOU to take all of the risk, and pay all of the costs.  Meanwhile, WE will retain complete control of the company and earn the lion's share of the profits.

I'm only going to touch on a few things real quick:

"That’s all fine and well but the large amounts of money needed to develop new asic products make it all but impossible for individuals to fund."

This is NOT true.  Virtually every company, in virtually every industry, somehow manages to come up with a working product BEFORE asking the consumer to pay for it.  Imagine if you went to buy a new car and the guy wanted 30k up front and 2 years to design the thing and then build it!  Or if you called a doctor and told him you wanted to become a patient and he asked for the money up front and said he'll get back to you once he gets a few hundred other patients and goes to med school.  Etc Etc.  

Here's the thing.  If you have a viable business model you CAN get the money.  There are many MANY ways you can get funding, in point of fact that is what I do professionally.  Yet you balk at this because these methods will eat into your profits, or force you to cede at least some control of the company.  Well of course they do!  If you want someone else to take on all the risk and pay for your project it is only natural they THEY not YOU will be in charge, and THEY not YOU will get the lion's share of the profits.   Naturally you don't want to do that, you want to have your cake and eat it too.  You want someone else to pay for the business, but keep all the profits for yourself.   Your company doesn't have to be a scam for this to be a shitty deal to the consumer.  I can believe every word you say, and believe you to be 100 percent legit.  And it is STILL a shitty deal for the consumer.

The driving force behind Novello is a group of professional engineers based in the UK with over 120 years combined experience in the design and manufacture of complex, highly reliable electronic systems and devices.

Best team untill now, if the 120 years combined is true.
Any team with that much experience will get a loan from the bank.

Ok we know the director. Please share with us the rest of the team. I'm assuming that the director isn't handling all the stuff. Who is your HW director? Who is your SW director? Who is your marketing/sales guy? Who is your chain-supply guy? And so on. You seem to fail to answer straight simple questions. Even if they are in the documents (which they aren't) it only takes you 1 minute to write a couple of names. You were pointed to 3 other companies who have their team available on their website. You got nothing. So either show us the whole team or this will be just another fail/scamming company.

If you approach a bank for a loan, they measure your creditworthiness on what security you can offer. Your experience is only one of the 'risk' factors they consider, but ultimately they want a means of getting at least some of their money back if you fail. That's the bottom line in the UK, it might be different elsewhere.

A VC company is totally different. They do consider your background and experience and consider it essential if the project is to fly. However, they can place constraints on what you do, and of the 3 that we approached, 2 offered funding but their constraint was that the asic would only be used in-house; no sales to Joe Public, no design bureau to help start ups. No from us.

Well, thanks for the compliment on our proposal. Nice to know that you at least read it, but it would be helpful to get some detailed feedback as to what you think is missing technically?

Sure, I appreciate the feedback. We don' know what will happen to the value of BTC or the network hash rate in December any more than anyone else does, but we think our predictions are pessimistically realistic - if that makes sense.

I'm genuinely sorry to hear about your situation. It's not nice being made redundant, or worse still to be made to FEEL redundant, especially when you have spent the larger part of your life in a skilled job. I've been there and it's not a good place. Hope that you get work again and get back on your feet.

Just as an aside, have you thought about trying to get work in the UK or the Middle East? the UK economy in South East England is on a roll just now, and there's lots of jobs in construction (residential and commercial). I can't see a skilled US citizen having any problems getting a work visa. Try looking on indeed.co.uk or monster.com. Good luck,

Thanks for your post. I can tell you from experience that VC companies most definitely do not have the interests of the end customers at heart.

The ones that we approached were happy to fund us, but not for selling mining equipment to the public, only for in house use. There are quite clearly  lots of them now bankrolling the building of massive hashing farms, and the individual miner is going to be squeezed out of existence unless someone does something about it.

Here's some facts to consider about VC funded programs:

1. The first thing they want is an Exit Strategy, which translates to "how soon do I get my 3 times my investment back?"

2. They don't like anything that involves very long leadtimes unless there's a huge prize at the end

3. They don't like anything that sounds remotely altruistic or that panders to a special group of people - quick profit is everything

4. They will want a company run in a manner that gets then the fastest return, not one that builds a good, sustainable business.


Of course they have their place, and like it or not the world needs them.

They are no friends of Bitcoin miners, I can tell you that,

So how about anything that suggests you're a real company?

The more you avoid the real questions the more you look like a scammer.

Who works for your company?

Why can't you give us any technical details about the chip?

Why can't you point us towards any of your company/employees previous work?

I can see that you have selected flexible funding , which means you will get the cash anyway if you hit Your target or not .  What happens then , if you dont hit Your target. ? Do they get refunded or ?

UPDATE

Well, it's coming to nearly the end of out first day on this forum, and it's been very interesting.

First of all, thank you to everyone that's taken the time to post on our thread. There's been a fair old mixture and it's obvious that there's many different views about our project and how we're going about it. That's perfectly normal and healthy.

Secondly, thank you to the posters that have taken the time to read right through the proposal and come back with sensible, relevant questions.

Lastly, we really appreciate the numerous emails sent to us wishing us good luck with the project and commenting on how the mining community needs something like this (even if it's not our chip) to compete in the future. It's sad to note that some said they wouldn't post on the thread for fear of being harangued by trolls, but that's the way of things.

As regards the comments about our lack of technical information, it's rather puzzling to us. Give any one of our engineers a die size, process step, power dissipation and hashrate of a mining asic and he'll tell you in about two minutes what it might look like inside. Any competent asic engineer could do the same thing. An SHA256 pipeline mostly contains only three building blocks, namely a full adder, flip flops and a 32 bit fast adder. Yes, there are other gate functions but those three dominate the area and power.

There are few different ways to implement the function as the arithmetic algorithm is fixed. We've saved some gates by using a word expander that generates 2 words per stage instead of one, but that's not particularly original. Where we have saved most area is in the implementation of the full adders and to  lesser extent in the stage flip flops. No matter who asks, we are not going to reveal how we have done these implementations or give nay clues to said - that's our IP and what makes our solution different. What we can tell you is that the power distribution looks like this:

Flip flops : 46.2%
Full Adders (in carry save chain):31.3%
A,E and Word generator Adders: 22.5%

We can also tell you that the area of our full adder is 1.74 square microns, the flip flop is  2.02. The rest of the design information is confidential.


No one has as yet commented about some aspects of our proposal, which we find odd, namely:

- The fact that we have designed our chip to be fault tolerant using extra pipelines as 'spares'

- Our Guaranteed Supply Program to support our core customers

- Our metrics for measuring what price should be paid per GH of capacity over time

So it either means that no one has read about them, or has no comment to make. Are they good/bad/informative/deceptive/wrong/right and soon. Instead there's been constant badgering about who we are.

We expect that most of this comes about from the fact that we come from a corporate environment where individuality is not seen as an asset. We have a different way of approaching sale pitches and projects that is probably somewhat alien to the forum members. Giving you a list of names, companies and accomplishments is totally meaningless because you cannot check if they are accurate or made up. Technical details you can check, and when our engineers saw some of the original specs for power dissipation on competitors chips, they knew they were way too optimistic. Who designed them was irrelevant.

So no, we are not going to give you any other details about our staff. At least we're being up front about it instead of pulling in some guys (and gals) off the street, doing a photo shoot and giving you a load of baloney about their background.

For any competent electronic engineer, our fault tolerance approach should be a dead giveaway as to the environment it came from, as should the fact that we've put a 32 bit microcontroller on each hashing module that will constantly test and rotate the pipelines to ensure data coherency, AND allows them to self test before they get bolted into a machine. That type of system approach doesn't come out of thin air, yet draws no comment, nor does our comments about product engineering.

We also thought long and hard about how we could keep our customers competitive long term. Now if we wanted to scam people, that's not the first thing that we would take any time or effort to consider. We've come up with a way to do it that's original - as a far as we can see no other company has ever suggested anything remotely like it - and it doesn't rely on the customer funding a second round of asic development.

So all in all a mixed bag, but interesting. Please keep the relevant questions coming.

I must also apologise to Spondoolies for even suggesting that they might employ someone to 'represent' them on the forums. It was unprofessional, so sorry guys, good luck with your 28nm chip.

If you look a couple of posts back, we've already answered this. Thanks for popping by, though. Did you like our pitch?

Well for many the reason is we don't really care. All most miners care about are the following:
- does the manufacturer deliver ( on time )
- does the miner do what the specs say it does
- is the power to hash to dollar ratio a good one

Reason many dont get motivated about proposals is because these forums are full of scam artists, big talking wannabe manufacturers who may never ever produce a working machine from their 3D rendered dream machines. The most popular method now is, you produce the miner to a working sellable batch one level, send one or two to the various testers on these forums, they do an assessment of those three things, they post about it, and then, well speaking for myself, I will start to care.

That's a perfectly reasonable approach. Trouble is, to get to the stage of being able to produce a sellable product you need a huge amount of money, and the only way to do that is to get funding - a lot of it. If it comes from a single third party, then it usually means that the end customer will pay a lot more as the third party wants their money back, and then some.

If there's no new players to compete against the existing suppliers then you have limited choices, and that's not so good.

Thanks for your feedback.

You're asking for us to be investors, why not give us the benefits of investors in return ?

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your input.

Strictly speaking you're buyers, not investors. We promise you delivery of an item at a future date in return for your payment. I can see why you might think that though, your 'investment' , as it were, is to give you a commercial advantage when your item gets delivered.

As a company we will use virtually all the money we get in orders to fund system development, satisfy those orders and stay afloat while doing so. After that we have to try to solicit more orders to keep the company going and invest in R&D for new products.   

buyer is the one who pays for working unit which is ready to be picked up. what you selling is promises. nothing more.

My problem is this: I have done pre-orders before only to later see that the company used a big part of my payment to invest in their own mining farm, hurting me by increasing the network difficulty and lowering the amount of mBTC that I generate. So I "digged my own grave" by ordering from them and not being part of their profit rewards.

(They also promised they would never mine with their own equipment, yeah right).

Reward my order and payment by keeping me informed about the progress(no BS or lies), sending me a great product when it is ready and make me an investor with the benefits that come with that. That's how I would do a pre-order nowadays in bitcoin land.

UPDATE

Forgot to add in the technical information, the power distribution figures include all relevant clock power. In all it makes up about 14%.

Fair comment, and that's exactly what we would propose to deliver except that after you get you product we give you incentives to make more money in return for further production orders delivered exacty when needed. That's as close to an 'investor' reward as any company will give you. If you look at our proposal and our prediction for 'Jane', you'll see that we have absolutely no need to mine with customers machines, if every early customer took up our GSP program then we would make our margin off discounted machines/modules.

We are the only company that seems to have actually looked to the future after we get funded. Hashing farms are not on our radar, but we can see a tidal wave of the damn things approaching rapidly, so unless one of the existing manufacturers steps up to the plate and drops their prices very significantly, most miners are totally screwed.

I can only offer my sympathies for what happened to you before. Must have led a very bad taste in your mouth.

You have nice introduction.
Our team is specialized in designing 3-rd parity mining boards.
After reading your ASIC specs we are interested in design of a miner board with your chips.
If you are interested , please drop me a PM or mail at  office@technobit.eu

Thanks for reading our proposal Martin. We'll get back to you soon on this.

Having over 120 years of accumulated experience then it means that you can be easily checked about your background. Saying that you won't give any details about your staff is very very weird. I don't see how can you give us a lot of baloney when people could easily check. Maybe LinkedIn or another way.

May I ask you about your Bitcoin background? Like when you found about it, how many bitcoins do you own etc. You seem to know some stuff about this forum, but you don't know much about the past companies and the past fails/scams.

Labcoin even managed to print out some fake PCBs just to convince people to give them money. They stole 7000 BTC. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=263445.0

TerraHash managed to have some third party chips on their PCB board, but they still scammed people and didn't ship anything. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=198489.0

And I can go on. BFL has a over 9 months delay at this moment (or is it more?) and only a few refunds are going to the customers.

HashFast (http://hashfast.com/team/) is in bankruptcy after raising more than 20M and having 40k chips in hands after numerous failed PCB revisions.

BA is currently in a 4 months delay (Feb-June).

So yes the team is important since we had/have a lot of pretty projects at start and nice marketing and nice presentations and LOTS of promises. We need more tangible proof and the team would be a start. We will need even more proof after the team, but the team sounds the most easy/accessible one. If you can't provide that how do you expect to provide on time and on specs cutting edge technology in a very fast moving market?

http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/pages/team  

Some faces with experience sure made pre-ordering at Stech easier for me. Do you not think it would be better to list out your team and their experience?

Remember you came to the forum hat in hand so it is well within the scope to ask before we even consider the proposal who makes up the team? That is a pretty fair question.

I read thru your proposal, and some sections (including 4.5) several times. The "fault tolerant" approach did catch my eye, seeing as I came from a similar design environment.  I tend to read more than shoot my mouth off, so I didn't really think to comment.  Please forgive my fellow bitcoin enthusiasts, but you'll have to agree that any ASIC manufacturer not only has to prove their own mettle, but also overcome the stigma the majority of every ASIC manufacturer that has come before them.  Just take a quick look at the "scam accusations" subforum and you'll understand.

I wish you good luck in your endeavour and will be watching closely.  God knows the bitcoin space needs more honest and on-time delivery of mining hardware.

Thanks for posting that. We quite understand people's skepticism, it's not nice to have your money and/or resources stolen, especially if they are the only resources you have.

 If you come from a similar environment then you'll know that being patient is a very necessary virtue, as is integrity and accuracy. We are very patient, and are more than happy to keep defending our project for as long as necessary. We may not get funded in the end, but as I'm sure you know any project can yield potentially yield future rewards even if it fails.

You're dead right about the 'space' though. A lot of the behaviour inside it certainly doesn't entice outsider to participate, and that impedes it's growth.

Thanks also for your good wishes.

I went trough your description for project. First I would like to say that's interesting. I agree with some of your statements about information shared with miners and potential customers :) which are not so positive and does not fully support straight selling  :-[

Would be very good if you can prove work you did. Show some of the simulation, design of the product etc... . But it this stage when you have no product it will be very hard.

I do not want to comment if this going to happen or not. I would wish rather yes. I will keep eyes here.

I wish you good luck.

In traditional markets such as if we were buying a car or even a computer you would be correct in saying that we are buyers, not investors. However, people who purchase miners are not purchasing hardware so much as they are purchasing an investment. So even with "off the shelf" purchases we are investors who are taking a calculated risk with what we purchase. We aren't buying a miner to be cool (or hot) or because it gives us pleasure to look at or provides any utility to us outside of an investment.

The pre-order scheme takes that investment mindset a step further and asks the customer to take on additional risk beyond their calculated risk. It asks the customer to take risks that can't be calculated as accurately because there is less available information. Strictly speaking, from our perspective, in a pre-order we are not buyers but co-investors. A company who understands that this is the mindset of the small-time bitcoin miner would be a refreshing approach to the market.

Bottom line, you do not have the skill to complete this project. This project will never succeed.

Well put, and exactly in line with our ethos. I'm sure you've read through our proposal but due to it's length it takes a few readings to fully understand how we have approached the project.

Firstly, it's not a one off, and our GSP idea came about because, as we said, we want to build a sustainable business, not get rich quick. That means we carry our first adopters, for want as a better expression , 'with' us and make sure they are the ones we look after and help to maximise their earnings. No other company has ever proposed this.
 
Secondly, we're firmly against centralisation and at the risk of concerted attacks on ourproject we come to it again and again in our proposal and say how we're going to help the 'little guy' compete against the hash farmers. Not everyone welcomes that idea, I can tell you.

No matter how much you would like it to happen, no commercial company is going to basically issue 'shares' to investors, supply them with a rig then on going profits. You can buy a cloud hashing deal, but the less said about those the better.

We are saying: back us to get the project started, we'll give you something that will give you an immediate financial advantage when it's delivered then keep you supplied with discounted hardware to keep that advantage. Maybe not exactly what you would wish for, but unfortunately it's the best we can offer just now.

That's not so say that a future project might not follow your suggestion more closely.

Thanks for taking the time to post this.

Hello,

I am considering funding your project but I would like know what the difference is between the 49' and the 500' options. I went through your website and I would strongly recommend having a more professional website created as it looks..... Well it looks bad is all I can say. I really appreciate the balance your organization is looking to return to the mining market. This is the main reason why I am considering funding you. I feel like you are bringing a business perspective that is not entirely profit driven and I can really get behind something like that.

I think your investors will be people like me so focus on what your strengths are and don't let the naysayers discourage your efforts; though I do think you still fall short as far as passing the smells test. There have been good suggestions made previously about increasing your credibility. Maybe some more specific engineering data that can be verified by forum members. (Wish it would mean something to me, other than independent verification)

Good luck!
-cheers

Don't invest until you have more proof about them or about their skills.

I have a great idea for a new car.  I just need to potential buyers to give me %100 of the financing necessary to develop, test & market it.
WTF?

Why does this still seem OK to people?

STOP asking us to finance your Co.
1) Develop a product
2) Market it...WHEN THE FUCKING THING EXISTS AND IS READY TO SELL
3) profit - get bigger and sell more or go bust

Quite simply, you are incorrect here.  You are, and will remain, a buyer.  If you were an investor, you would be sending money to the company, and would expect return on your investment from the company based on performance.  People who purchase stock in a company are investors.

You are sending money to the company with the intent of receiving a product.  What you then do with that product once you have received it is not relevant to the company.  If it so happens that this product makes you some money, then so be it.  

Your investment is in BTC.  By purchasing a miner, you are making a decision to actively support the BTC network.  That's what mining is: supporting and helping secure the network.  You are rewarded for your efforts with generated coins.

What Novello is stating is the following (and yes, I'm taking their entire plan and compressing it to a couple of sentences): We are going to build mining hardware that will be competitive and allow the "little guy" to remain in the mining game.  We are going to do this by providing great price-to-hash value in the hardware, and by providing relatively inexpensive ways to continuously upgrade your existing hardware.  To achieve our goal of great hardware at a great price, we need capital; and, to receive that capital we are looking to the mining community to believe in us and pre-order our hardware.

Whether or not they succeed with their mission remains to be seen.  They have a long, tough road ahead of them, both to secure funding and to produce the hardware on time and on budget.  As can be seen throughout this post, MANY of the very people they are hoping will pre-order their products are extremely skeptical from being burned so many times in the past by other companies.

Hi, and thanks for you post. The only difference is in the price - it's a reward for contributing early. Apologies for the website, we were not planning initially to put one up at all.

We've given more than enough engineering data for any competent asic / system designer to look at and pass comment on - an awful lot more than any other company has ever given at this stage. Trouble is. on these forums you never know who is really independent let alone competent.

Thanks also for your encouragement. Believe me, we've faced a lot tougher crowds than this in our careers; we're patient and persistent and will defend our project to the end.

Hi Johnny,

Thanks for the post. Mind if we use your 'compressed' words in the future? Couldn't have put it better ourselves.

It's always good advice to be cautious, but first have a look at my 'update' post put on earlier today. Thanks for reminding me. Any comment on our J/GH figure in light of the info?

It's simply fantasy to believe that everyone in bitcoin mining is doing so for altruistic reasons. There may be a few of those people left, but none of those are interested in pre-orders or supporting the arms race in any way. People mine bitcoin for the rewards and no other reason. People will cause 51% dangers because of the perception that rewards are greater by following the crowd.

Your very last sentence negated the whole point you were trying to make by admitting customers were investing.

The one thing I like about this campaign is that I can take a gamble as a hobby miner without risking too much.

I can do my liver a favour and stay in a few weekends and that will of paid for a Nova 1, the alternative is I give the money to the missus and she spends it on flippin online shopping.

Yes the site could be more polished and a bit more clarity on the information, but at the end of the day their delivery date isn't that far away, damn handy since it will be cold and a bit extra heat in the house wont hurt.

If this is a new company sorting VAT can be a bit of a faff on and probably delayed them (I've been there!), so they have obviously decided to go live with what the have and polish the edges along the way.

I really hope they succeed as you have to admit that asic stick does look cool and as a gadget freak I really want one, one of the Nova 1's would do as a nice replacement for my S1 as well.  ;D

I did: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=638729.msg7147207#msg7147207 but you seem to avoid replying to me.



As Majixagi pointed miners don't do it 100% for altruistic purposes. Even if they do miners still need to invest big in mining equipment because technology hasn't leveled off and technology is evolving very very fast. My 110GH rig that I received in August 2013 is good for trash now, but luckily I was able to regain my investment in in and got a Jupiter which allowed me to stay in the mining game. If it didn't then I was out. So miners need their ROI in order to be able to get better equipment which protects the network better.

You're welcome to use my summary if you wish.

I never stated people are mining for altruistic reasons, nor was it implied.  I haven't purchased hardware for the sole reason of supporting the network, I'm also hoping that the rewarded coins I receive for mining will translate into profit.  You're absolutely correct that the majority of people who mine care solely about the rewards they will receive.  They'll just point their miners to whatever pool they feel will provide the greatest reward and that's the end of it.

I will edit my final sentence to state, "... people they are hoping will pre-order their product..." as it better explains the point I was trying to convey.  Thanks for pointing that out.

Hi Roadstress, I was asking about your specific question about the J/GH at the chip. I'm sorry, but I missed your other post but I will respond to it later. We are very well aware of what other companies have done

It's a question but again it comes down to brass tacks. Limkedin profiles mean nothing, and no reputable company willgive out details about former or present employees, or what they worked on. So basically you cant trust anything anyone says online about their background or experience. Measure it from what they present.

We came on the forums, as you say, to see if we can raise extra finance. Indiegogo is our primary funding platform. Whether you contribute to the project or not is a personal decision, as is ours to restrict information about our staff.

What we've pitched contains about 5 times as much as all the past proposals put together with a lot more real data. We appreciate people got royally rooked by other companies, but that does'ntmean to say we will do the same.

Thanks for posting, though. Like your work  with the WASP project.

There is nothing to comment on the J/GH at chip level. If you are aware of what other companies have done then you should also know that Bitmine.ch also advertised 0.35J/GH and they ended up with over 0.7J/GH I think. As I said in my reply we had it all in the last year. Promises, lies, scams.


This is the best that you got? Give me all your money and I will give you a 100TH/s miner in december and I promise that I won't scam you. See? I can raise funds too. We had TONS of lies like this in the last year. This gives 0 confidence!

Boy, do I wholly disagree with that statement.  Here are some pretty reputable companies:

IBM - http://www.ibm.com/ibm/ginni/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/exec/slt.aspx
Ford - http://corporate.ford.com/our-company/governance-hub/board-of-directors-801p

Virtually EVERY reputable company gives out details.  Obviously, it is your choice whether to follow these kinds of examples.

OK, so now we've given you on - die device sizes, power share per device - well, you can work it out from the device specs - so you can evaluate some metrics about what's happening at transistor level.

Please get back to me at your earliest convenience.

Without knowing the team and their capabilities it would be very very hard for anyone to believe you have resources to complete the project you are proposing.

Our work in the Wasp project is open to anyone to come and talk to the EE team should they be interested so people can actually interact with the people doing the design and testing. Maybe you should ask a few choice members of the community like say Dogie, RoadStress, Zefir, or others of note to review your plans and meet with your team. Barring a working prototype I doubt many are going to be interested in funding this. People should avoid investing in anything like this till they can vet you properly particularly checking out who is behind this venture and who the principal players in management are.

These are ones selected by their companies for various reasons, or those on public registers. IBM will not tell you about every individual they employ.

Novello, bick made a good suggestion. You may want to approach some more notable and respected members of the community to start gaining the reputation...if you have a prototype show it off...for all intents and purposes this is vaporware until it isn't. I am not knocking on you here, just stating the reality of how many people see this. Get to some trade shows open up booths show off a bit. And as far as your comment on investors trying to make big mining farms for their investment....that is not entirely true.. Spondoolies was founded with investor capital, and they are enjoying quite a nice successful run. Might not hurt to by at least partially funded by investors just to get something that can be shown.

No, but IBM does provide you with a directory from which you can search for and contact their employees: http://www.ibm.com/contact/employees/us/en/?lnk=fai-edir-usen

I don't think people here are asking you to divulge every employee's information; however, they are asking for key personnel.  You cite over 120 years of combined experience, but offer nothing to back that statement up.  Who is your CEO, and what is his/her background?  Who is your Senior Architect?  Who are your software/hardware lead designers?

Introduce your potential customers to your team.  Provide evidence that you have the knowledge and capabilities to produce the products you've proposed.  Even a profile such as, "Our lead hardware designer has over 15 years of experience in chip design.  He has worked at Motorola and Intel, contributing to the design of ..." would go a very long way to alleviate some of the concerns being expressed.

Then let's look at some mining companies that have actually shipped miners (even if they've had some difficulties).

http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/pages/team
http://cointerra.com/team/
http://hashfast.com/team/
http://butterflylabs.com/management/

You: Nothing but bullshit. Why? Because you don't have what it takes to complete this "project".

Why not delete the non-relevant stuff? Keep just the relevant stuff for which you made your notes. It makes it MUCH easier to read/reply.

No one comments on this because none of it matters.  If you were asking for a loan with fixed payments, we would ask about this because it matters.  If you were asking for investors\shareholders, we would ask about this because it matters.  But your asking for customers for a product that you DO NOT HAVE and are not obligated to ever provide..  We don't care about the specifics of the product because we know that we will never benefit from it.  You are SPECIFICALLY choosing to use the one funding method which leaves your "customers\investors" with absolutely no recourse whatsoever or legal claim whatsoever to whatever profits you make, other than what you voluntarily decide to share at some later date.  You obviously wouldn't do that if you had any intention of ever sharing.  If you were actually interested in sharing any of your profits you wouldn't recoil from creating a legal obligation to share said profits.  So yea, short version is we don't give a shit about your product because none of us will ever profit from it (other than *maybe* a few scraps here and there) despite funding the whole thing and taking on ALL the risk. 

I've finally had time to take slightly deeper dive into this and typing up some questions, so here's what I've got:

1. Is there really enough time to still be considering a 20 or 28nm design with funding still at least a month away from completing? I see your Gantt chart, but it doesn't take into consideration what happens if you only recieve 1/3rd of your funding, for example.

2. There are a lot of questions about who your people are. As you say "structure" only, it is likely you don't have a payroll yet, but have people lined up, so providing their details would expose them and potentially cause problems in their current jobs if your business does not actually start up. Can you confirm this, or do you actually have the people on staff right now? I noticed also that your subcontractor budget was higher than your labor budget. Is that subcontractor direct labor or subcontractor companies doing work for you?

3. You used the bitcointalk version/definition of ROI in 3.1. I'd recommend staying away from this usage even in an example as it doesn't make sense, and wouldn't make sense to someone reading this document without understanding the bitcointalk slang.

4. Is this a typo: "From Jan 2014 to Jan 2015 (365 days)" If you are going to predict the future, shouldn't it be in the future.

5. The guaranteed supply program doesn't favor the small-time miner. It favors the person with free capital to invest now. This is set up in a way that the big can get bigger but the small or latecomer can never take a big leap (3 times the original hashing power is the limit of growth under discount). This sounds like an investment rather than a purchase and goes against your stated ethos.

6. The whole idea of Jane is that from an investment standpoint. Again, you keep treating this like an investment while saying this is just a hardware commodity purchase. Which is it?

7. Fault tolerance at the level described in the document seems like a wasted effort. Aren't most failures due to heat at these sizes catastrophic? I'm not an expert in this area by any stretch of my imagination, but it seems to me that if you wanted redundancy in the design that doing it at the chip level rather than sub-chip level would be preferable.

8. Its been suggested in another thread that I might work for you, so I'd like my paycheck please.

I'm not a fan of this. The market is moving on from preorders (or trying to), and this is a pre of a pre of a preorder. The chances of actually ending up with a mass marketed manufacturer on time are less than 20%.

As been said before, people hate pre orders and you can cry now to bfl and others scam companys.

I can see in the thread people-users who are actually are known(respected) to community and if they saying something like ...this is not the way to go...
I think this means more than thousand words in your first post.

Sorry but idea is not enough. My question is: Can you build prototype based on this idea? If yes how long does it take to do it, and how much it would cost?

What you asking is 4m for just prototype or for production let say batch one?

Please this time answer and dont ignore as this just proves you are here to ask,get and run away...

I do believe if you are so good as you saying you and your team are, build a working prototype shouldn't be a problem.

Correct me if im wrong, but if you will go to bank and ask for a lone let say 100k secured by house etc. this money would be enough to cover build. And once prototype is build you coming back here showing what you got. We sending BTC and you have money to :

a. produce batch 1 and have date of delivery to every customer who invest in to this
b. have money to cover loan and to develop more stuff or to produce batch 3
c. have money for wages, costs and will live happily as hell.

This is exactly how I feel about this.

December is roughly half a year from now.  Most Mining equipment become obsolete in 3 months or less.

Having money tied up for 6 months or more for something that may or may not come to market, isn't a risk customers are willing to absorb anymore.  Too many BFLs, Hashfasts, VMCs, KNC's, Black Arrow's have all of us with shit taste in our mouths.

Hahaha you missed the whole point of going the preorder route.  Sure they could get a loan if their business plan is sound and they have collateral.  They don't want to do that though.  If they take a loan, two things happen.
1.  They have no company assets that they have mentioned, which means their personal assets would have to be used to back the loan.  They believe in their idea, but not enough to risk their own assets!  They would rather get you to risk yours.
2.  There is a legal obligation to make fixed payments.  They don't want to pay you for taking on all the risk.

Thanks brother for your post but i was hoping to get answer from NOVELLO which differs from yours or will be similar if they are really honest about this whole idea.

I knew your answer straight away when was creating my post but again was hoping IDEA company will answer promptly.

Alot of people have made valid points on here on the preorder and investment system. We assume the risk for a product that may never see the light of day. Indiegogo and other crowdfunded projects have a VERY low return rate....you could also go the quirky.com route.....they actually will invest with a percentage of the profits going to them and if it gets the support/success it can make the light of day. I would recommend that and then pitch it here with that instead. Indiegogo just as has been said is a pre-pre-order. Quirky.com on the other hand IF the idea is popular enought THEY will invest with an expectation of the product https://www.quirky.com/how-it-works

I think this road would be better with you prospectus that you posted up. You can solicit the support from the community which only requires them to create a login on quirky and support the idea...no money invested on our part so no worries if it succeeds or fails. Its a good idea, but like people said....you did not put up your own money and this community is leery of pre-orders in a bad way with good reason.

Quirky at least will invest BUT ask for a modest percentage while you reap the overall rewards. I would recommend really looking at this as a potential option.

Exactly  :'(

Here's a calc I did for 250 PH network size(they're guesstamation by December 2014):
Diff                   36647500000.0 (approx.)
Hashrate           1000GH (1TH)
Exchange Rate  $656
                       Coins               Dollars
per Day =   0.01372281 BTC    $9.01
per Week = 0.09605964 BTC    $63.08
per Month =0.41768789 BTC    $274.30

Then minus power.What's the use,it's over for us "at home" guys  :'(  UNLESS we hit & HOLD BTC at $1000.

Uh,even $1000 BTC looks to be short  :(
Diff                   36647500000.0 (approx.)
Hashrate           1000GH (1TH)
Exchange Rate  $1000

                        Coins               Dollars
per Day =    0.01372281 BTC    $13.72
per Week =  0.09605964 BTC    $96.06
per Month = 0.41768789 BTC    $417.69

Looks like @ $2500 BTC it could be a money maker  :D
Diff                   36647500000.0 (approx.)
Hashrate           1000GH (1TH)
Exchange Rate  $2500

                         Coins              Dollars
per Day =    0.01372281 BTC     $34.31
per Week =  0.09605964 BTC    $240.15
per Month = 0.41768789 BTC    $1,044.22


So,@ $350 a TH @ .5 watt per GH=500 watts per TH @ your kwh price,mine is .13 cents per kwh.8TH =4000 watts, I can't run 4000 watts at MY home,MAYBE 2500 watts.Still can't make it work  ::)

does your NTR graph consider the unholly amounts of petahashes ASICMiner chips are going to add to the network in the next 3, 6, 9 months?

I don't know if you're a scam or not, but you're late to the party with 40 nm.

Hello Dogie, thanks for your post and input.

This isn't exactly mass manufacturing, but if you look at our FAQ's we've already said that it's a lot of systems to ship in a small(ish timeframe. It would be true if you has never been involved in such projects before and so didn't know what pitfalls or problems there might, but if you have experience and the correctset of skills, particularly product engineering and a set of known and trusted supplies and subcontractors, there's a very good chance that the whole process can run very smoothly.

We also said that most of the non-custom build would be done before we get the asic'c back, that includes the enclosures, PSU's, the controller boards and the DC-DC converters. Because our systems are modular, all these parts can be assembled and tested without the asic, in particular the Pi and it's ability to connect properly to the network. It can 'practice' mine with no asic just to test things out. The DC-DC converters can be burnt-in with dummy loads, ditto the PSU's.

The actual hashing modules will be built for us by a subcontractor. The on board MC can test functionality with having to be fixed into a system, so this speeds things up a lot. Once we have working modules, they get fixed into the rigs and get a full test with the network.

Hope this addresses your concerns.

Hi Canary, thanks for your post and for raising that point. Yes, we have taken into account that there will be a ton of Asicminer product in circulation. Our prediction is a fairly linear network growth averaging around 30PH a month from July to December, ending up just below 300PH. From what we understand of the chip, that's equivalent to 25 Million of them or about 10,000 wafers worth.

Their higher than expected power useage will have ramifications about how they are deployed, so earlier predictions about them taking over the network probably won't happen. Yet. We've done some calculations on how much a system with their chip would cost, and for the purposes of this exercise we've put them into a 4U rack enclosure, with 4TH power. So each box would draw about 3.5kW, or nearly 4kVA, with 10 in a rack - 40TH -that's a power footprint of 40kVA per rack. We'll ignore cooling for just now.

The raw box build cost in 10k volumes comes out at approximately $1800, or $450/TH. Then the boxmaker/miner has to incur other costs to get the units hosted, installed and powered up. For a rack's worth, that going to come close to $24,000, or $0.6/GH.  If this is a professional, dedicated mining setup then they'll have other admin costs as well, ditto if they've borrowed money, but we'll set both these aside for now.

The point is, to get this level of power up and running solely with Asicminer kit is going to incur costs of about $23,000 x (180000/40) =$104 Million

We have a metric in our proposal regarding how much you should pay per GH of power depending on when you actually get it delivered, based on the US average power bill. These rigs will likely be deployed in Washington state, with power costs after taxes etc of around 4 cents/kWh.
Based on our formula - which includes power costs and assumes a break even period of 6 months -  then what should be paid per Gh is around $1.1 in September, $0.83 in December, $0.62 in March 2015. People building capacity at these levels don't just slap the money down and get hashing the next day, they have to plan well in advance and make a lot of guesses as to what will happen to the Btc price. The figures we've just shown that up until next March they will break even after 6 months, but after that the return might not be so great. Factor in hosting costs or, if you've got you own setup, rent/taxes and the rest then it might look like an awfully big rig to sink so much money into it.

Long answer to your question, sorry, but I'm guessing you want an explanation that gives some qualification? Summary would be that unless the Btc exchange rate stays significantly above $500 for the next few months, investors are going to do their sums and be very wary of how much they build and when.

Hope this helps.

Forgot to add, don't underestimate what you can do with 40nm, especially if it's a full custom design.

Who is?

I'm still waiting for more info on chips.
In order to decide to do design for your chip or not we need:

1. Pinout
2.Chip comms
3. Command guide
4.PCB recommendations by the chip designer/producer
5. Sample chips delivery terms, i.e. pricing , availability etc.
6. Delivery times for bulk and bulk pricing for 100,500,1000,10k chips

Best

Seems Novello ignoring most of questions related to money and funding.

I just pretty sure this is scam and not differs from mendicant in front of the shop-nice story but always same demand.
Thanks to your silly approach, greedy way of making money leaving risk on simple simon shoulders i'm out and really who ever will even have stupid idea of funding this PLEASE READ WHOLE THREAD AGAIN.
There are cheap asics ready to be delivered today not withing another 4 months or so.
Your delivery time frame is a joke. You have idea but not even working ptototype. No chips, only promises. No support from anyone with  more BTC than you have at this moment.And now you loosing this battle thanks to ignorance.

UPDATE - Friday 6 June

Good morning everyone, it's a pretty dull and overcast morning here in Glasgow, but expected to get sunnier and warmer later on. Pity I'm tied to a desk but we all have our crosses to bear.

Yesterday was another interesting day, and again thanks to everyone who's taken the time to post in this thread. Ben Turas made some very interesting points about how project like these might be funded in the future, and it's certainly food for thought. Not saying that I necessarily agree with all he suggests, but if you have an open mind it's surprising what you can learn from others.

I'll now return to some points that have come up during the past few days. We've been asked time and time again for 'details' about our technology and I gave out some extra information yesterday, expecting some kind of feedback.

Silence. Nothing.

This tells me that either those requesting the information didn't see it, or that they don't understand it, so here's a summary of our chip's spec:

40nm medium Vt process (simulated in bulk, so vendor independent)
100mm²  die size
256 dual SHA256 pipelines in main array + 16 spares
FPMBGA packaging with exposed die
Clock speed 500 Mhz at rated Vdd of 0.85V
Power consumption at rated speed/Vdd is 23.5 - 25 watts approximately
0.18 - 0.19 Joules/GH at chip level
Power distribution:      Flip flops : 46.2%
                               Full Adders (in carry save chain):31.3%
                               A,E and Word generator Adders: 22.5%
                               Clock Power approx 14% included in figures
Areas of key elements: Full adder - 1.72 square microns, Flip Flop- 2.02 square microns

That should tell an experienced engineer all that he or she needs to know about the chip.

I have to admit that we have been a little disappointed in the lack of professionalism exhibited by a minority of the posters, but then its easy to say things and use obnoxious language if you're safely tucked behind a computer. Most of the posters are actually pretty polite and courteous and the professional credentials of some shine through. For the others .....  the most strident and hateful ones have clearly never worked in a proper company or had to work with teams of other professionals, so to those people please take this message on board: We're here to stay in this forum and don't respond to taunts or insults. You are rank amateurs compared to customers we've dealt with all our working lives.

I would also reinforce to other readers what we've already said in our proposal:

There’s also a hard core of individuals and companies who really don’t want every wanabee miner with $59 joining their party, making the difficulty higher and reducing their earnings. They will try extremely hard to convince you that pre-orders are ‘bad’ and under no circumstances should you go down this route - despite the fact that most of them made their money from pre-order products! We’d advise you to read, read, then read some more and make up your own mind.

There's even a separate thread started by one poster asking if we're a scam - they've already made accusations about this several times, and you have to question what their motivation is in this instance.

Hint: it's not about protecting innocent buyers from evil scammers like us.

Now I'm pretty certain this person lives in the UK, so I'll give him (or her) this challenge:

One of our team will meet you personally at a time and place of your choosing anywhere in the UK to discuss this project face to face, on the proviso that you bring along your original Passport or Photo Driving License and proof of your address, as will our team member. We will pay your reasonable travel costs to attend this meeting, as we're fairly sure you're unemployed. You can call us directly on our telephone number, 0141 280 0447

But back to business.

One poster remarked that we have 'got' $4k from Indiegogo. That's not true, we have some contributors who want to buy products, but we don't get the money until the campaign ends AND we draw it down, so at this time we have nothing. I've already answered a question put by C2M earlier in regard of what happens if we don't hit our target.

Canary posted a question earlier on about whether we had considered the amount of network power that would be added by the Asicminer chips. I've answer this so please have a read at my reply, whether or not you choose to contribute to our program, it's an explanation that might help you decide what to about your own mining strategy. There's lots of other stuff in our proposal that might also help you, if you have any questions about how we calculated our various metrics, please email us directly.

One of my younger colleagues will be posting later today regarding the situation around our team's identities and some other business. Please watch out for it.

Lastly, keep the posts coming. We like to discuss what we're doing, and will be more than pleased to answer sensible questions. Thanks again for taking the time to look us up.
 
Oh, if anyone does want to talk to us, they can do so by calling +44 141 280 0447 during normal business hours. There's no one in the office today, but leave a message and we'll get back to you. You can also email us at any time: tech@novellotech,com or sales@novellotech.com

Yeah, sorry I didn't get back to you. We are not sure yet if we will be selling chips to third parties, it depends on how the funding program goes. Any information we gave out to you would be under an NDA, and we would only do this once we can give you a complete datasheet.

So it's not going to be in the immediate future, we need to concentrate on other matters just now.

Thanks again for your interest, drop me an email and we'll keep you updated on progress.

Warning:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=358439.20


Technobit.eu will never send anything!

Hi, thanks for your post and questions, here's my reply:

1. No, it's not too late to change from 40nm to 28nm, with most foundry's processes it's a direct physical shrink. Yes, you still have to carry out DRC, simulation and post layout simulation to make sure all is well, but there shouldn't be any major obstacles, perhaps maybe a few weeks leeway to be sure.
The Gantt chart doesn't consider reduced funding, that's true. We have several backup strategies, but before we did anything we would give them to our customers to ask how they want us to proceed. They might well say no, in which case they get their money back.

2. You are quite correct in what you have said, we have no paid staff right now. The subcontractor budget is for the company that will populate the pcb's and the one that will assemble the enclosures, all the design costs are included in the NRE area.

3. Good point. We'll change that.

4. No, it's not a typo. We are going to launch an Indiegogo campaign for a time machine.

5. Disagree with you here, the GSP is designed to help all of our customers grow, we'll also be including the NOVA-S ones into it soon. Our example for 'Jane' is based on her buying a $500 system. I know it's a lot of money to a lot of people, but it is still affordable. She get her system power up by buying more hashing modules through her earnings from the rig, that's not using any more of her own money. I agree that anyone who buys a lot of out big rigs would get bigger, but in the same proportions to Jane. There should, however be a lot more Janes around. It's not really against our ethos, we want ALL our customers to be competitive, and they will be if we get the chance to make this project work. By offering low cost, competitive rigs we can open the doors to more 'small time' miners. 

6. It's a commodity purchase, we take pains to point out that our figures are projections, not fact. Nowadays most people looking at mining are confuse by the numerous calculators available and a lot of misinformation on the forums. All we tried to do with Jane was to put down a reasonable picture of what might happen in a given set of circumstances. Surely more information is better than none?

7. Fault tolerance is something we're used to designing into what might be termed 'mission critical' systems. making money is definitely critical. You're right in saying that heat causes most of the damage, but regularly checking the health of a pipeline means you can be sure it's hashing properly. If not, you might end up missing out on finding a block because one adder got too hot.

8.  We don't get paid at the moment either, so you'll have to join the queue!

Thanks again for your questions.

I know this is going way off topic, but I thought it might be worth putting up.

In many of the threads on this forum, including ours, many posters use what I can only describe as repugnant language, and constantly deliver insults and accusations to those that don't agree with their point of view, and encorage others to do so. This behaviour is not unique to this forum, of course, it happens in many other on line forums, and is in effect bullying by proxy. Many young people have taken their own lives because of it throughout the world, and that's a terrible indictment on the state of our society.

I previously was a volunteer with the UK Samaritans, it's a unique charity set up to provide people in distress a means by which they can talk to someone at any time, night or day and they will listen to them. No judgement and importantly, no advice, it's just someone who will try to help the caller come to terms with their situation. It's all done by phone, and it's free to call them.

In recent years the amount of people calling them about cyber bullying has rocketed, and that's very sad. It's difficult to deal with, particularly amongst young people. Now there are clearly a lot of younger people on this forum, and I'm not suggesting for a moment that any of them are at the stage where they want to commit suicide, but constant bullying by other community members can have a damaging effect on a young mind.

Now I'll publicly say to all the trolls, shills, oafs and wanabee cyber bullies that inhabit this forum that you can send whatever hateful messages, insults and insinuations you can dream up to me or to our company all day long, it's water off a duck's back because we've probably heard it all before and will do again. We're fair game, and we're adults.

But to other forum members I'd ask that you might consider carefully the language you use towards other members in your communication - you have no idea who is on the other end, and think about how you might feel if you were spoken to that way. Remember that as  community we are viewed by outsiders and the way we conduct our communications in our forum does not always give the right impression.

Any intelligent person enjoys a good, open discussion or argument. You can argue your point and put it across in a polite manner, and it will carry a great deal more weight if you do. It will earn you far more respect than threats and putting people down.



 

Long time listener, first time caller.

My view is that the people calling "scam" / "fail" etc, are the ones who shelled out big money for BFL rigs and KNC rigs, that have been nothing but headaches. They paid HUGE pre-order prices, saw KNC and BFL mine with their money and are disgruntled. Now, they are playing the extreme skeptics and naysayers.

This is an opportunity for a start up company, to be funded and prove its product. You KNOW right up front, that you are FUNDING this project (and not Josh's new house bought with BTC or KNC's data center) and you get a product out of your support. All these "pre orders" have been much different than this offer. These guys are transparent and TELLING you the roadmap to their product. How many other scammers can you list that have been this transparent? Please list them with details of their proposals.

I am in no way associated to Novello. I have contributed 500 to the project.

So, if you aren't here to support this idea, please go be cynical somewhere else that has PROVEN being scammers with their lack of delivery on their promised delivery dates and sent out miners full of used and broken parts.

Just because YOU said so, let me contribute as well...zero.
Transparency-asked about team, NO ANSWER
Transparency about project-product: loads of info nothing special
Transparency maybe because they are VAT and LTD registered? I DONT THINK SO

I don't know for sure if they are here to run with BTC or to deliver product.
But after what we have seen in the past and how big registered companys was screwing people over BTC i think a bit of scepticism is nothing wrong.
If you think within let say 5 months they can deliver working product which will meet criteria and will not be useless like jalapeno etc my view on your person is clear.
Dream on. They have nothing in hands, and i can see that they will not get anything here. Indigogo will not succeed neither so....
Problem is that to much to read and newbies will be scared to invest. Enough to read for users with knowledge but they are so experienced that they will not put anything in to that project.
 
I might be wrong and will say Good Luck.
If product will be ready to buy i will check it out myself but for now this boat is long gone.

Thanks for your contribution, we will not let you down. We appreciate your support and comments, but we also recognise other peoples right to be cynical of new companies. We'll try to answer any sensible query or question, and will do so in a professional and courteous manner.

We don't really want to comment on what other companies have or haven't done as we were not one of their customers. Its true that many start ups can get overwhelmed if they get huge amounts of capital to play with, and to be fair to some of those companies they probably had never run a business before and couldn't anticipate the problems they would face in mass production.

Thanks for your post(s), and you're welcome to your opinions. I'm pretty sure we made out clearly in our prospectus exactly what we want to do, and how to go about it. If you don't understand bits of it, please ask and I'll do my best to explain; perhaps you're not used to seeing a proposal put down in this way, that's understandable. It's certainly a different approach to the one page efforts that have gone before.

So please have another read. I'm here to help.

You haven't been on online forums much I take it.
We all went through same epiphany at one point or another.

Probably true. Just felt that it might be worth throwing out there.....

Did you get a chance to look at my reply to your query about AM? We're very interested in getting feedback on the whole network growth scenario

I think you should assume 1400-1600 pt produced by AM.

Again you're probably right, but over what timescale? At roundabout 990PH the electricity cost - even at 4  cents per kWh - is the same as the amount earned (at Btc = $500). If you have any other information relevant to this that you'd like to share with us, we'd be most grateful. Not to use against AM, I hasten to add, they have ever right to exist and make money the same any other asic companies. i did like their new and the concept, it's a real shame that it didn't come in at the planned power specs. Still, they have plenty of time to take another pop at it.

I like the concept of your proposal but you are asking for $4.2 million in funding using the Indiegoo flexible funding option. I will keep my eye on it and see if you can cross the threshold because I am not interested in funding an underfunded project where you get to keep the investment money even if you do not have the required funds to complete development.

Good luck!

All info is public wrt AM, just a lot of pages to read through...
Their chip actually is within spec, however first manufacturing attempts by device makers haven't fully utilized it.  There's one manufacturer that is coming close however... As the others improve their fw, power will drop on AM chip.

Thanks for your post. We chose flexible funding because it will also give our customers a choice...if we had said we want $2m, no one would have believed we could fund chip development AND fulfill orders out of that amount. So we ask for what we need. If it's all or nothing, then we fail and a lot of people will be disappointed. If we use flexible funding, we might secure funds from elsewhere or use a backup plan which we'll present to our customers to see if they want to go ahead. If they say no, then we don't take the money from Indiegogo and it gets refunded to their cards.

It's a perfectly reasonable way to go about things.

But thanks for your good wishes, we really do hope we can get the chance to prove what we can do.

Anyone still not convinced this a scam?

OP has written a short novel worth of vague evasive answers.

Tons and tons of claims and literally not a single peice of evidence.

This "ipo thread" consists entirely of 50% bold unsubstantiated claims, 25% self contradiction, and 25% ignorance regarding bitcoin/mining.

Even if this "team" is capable of designing/producing such an asic, they have demonstrated extreme incompetence on the business/PR side of things.


My final evaluation:

90% chance it's a scam
5% chance it's a real company which fails to deliver anything
4.9% chance this company delivers underperforming/delayed hardware

0.1% they deliver on time/on spec (being optimistic here)

it doesn't matter how you arrange percentages and descriptions of these 3 categories, any combo is fatal.

probably 1 yr.
60 PH are already rolling of the line, per fc.

Has there been one ASIC delivered on time, as promised? I'm not joking. Has there been?

ASICMiner?

And Bitmain as well as Spondoolies-Tech IIRC.

Well, I delivered a challenge to you, bully boy. You seem to have ignored it, Strange that you jump on all our other posts but wait until we go offline to deliver your usual prose. I'd really like to meet you in person to see if you actually have something constructive to say about anything instead of being critical of everything that doesn't suit you.

But I guess you'll come up with some excuse, won't you? It's a shame because you seem so determined to prove us wrong. I'm actually a bit disappointed that you don't still rate us at 100%, it gives me a lot less of a challenge, and I like challenges - I'm a real engineer, after all.

And that's a lot of PH. How does the community feel about that? If it gets deployed quick enough - and I assume Mr. Cat is clever enough to have built that into his plan - then in a month or two your earnings are going to be probably half of what they are now.

No one here has to prove anything.  Last I checked, he wasn't asking you for 4.2 million dollars.  You're asking for 4.2 million dollars with no strings attached, no contract guaranteeing delivery, no nothing, and the only thing you can do to respond to that is attach the people who question it, and make ridiculous claims about our ulterior motives.  At least the bums on the street who ask for free money don't pretend they will eventually pay it back.

ASICMiner, Avalon, BitFury, KnC, Bitmain, Spondoolies, all basically delivered on time on spec for their first round of products. (some were a little late, but much better specs, so it's no real difference)

Sorry I must have missed the "challenge". I'm not going to wade through pages of bullshit to find it so please let me know what it is because I love challenges. It is somewhat hilarious you think I waited until you went offline to deliver my "prose".

I think attempting to steal $4,000,000 from naive investonomers is the very definition of bullying.


This is a great idea. That way I or someone else can verify that human beings actually work for this company. What is your business address?


I had a great laugh from this quote. How stupid do you think we are? Do you really think any of us miners care about these cheap usbs that will ship in a year? (assuming this is not a complete scam and there are plans to create a real product.)


Please look up the definition of "fact". Either you have not been following the bitcoin mining scene for more than a month, or you are simply lying.

What is Godon's full name and what position does he have at Novello Technologies Ltd?

WOW! Simply, WOW!

Also, I'm having difficulty finding Charring Cross, Clasgow, on a map. Should I be looking north or south of the equator?

http://www.companiesintheuk.co.uk/ltd/novello-technologies

I'm late to the party, hence reading this thread one post at a time and I, for one, have yet to read a post where the sentiment is hatred.

Now, excuse me, for I need to read the rest of this post and, BTW, if I'm not satisfied by the end of this thread, I'm going directly to the Scam Section.

A Co-op via DyslexicZombei comes to mind.  ;) (if you know what I'm implying)

I apologize for having to have to post this while you're offline, but I've already spend over an hour on this thread and can clearly see through the ruse.

No, I'm not getting paid from any competition nor do I mine.

Since we all are at lost as to who is behind Novello Technologies Ltd, it's safe to save there is no such company. Since there is no such company, then there shouldn't be some cleverly penned campaign to amass funds via Indiegogo. Since there is, then Novello Technologies is a scam.

FUCKIN' PERIOD!

Bruno Kucinskas
406 W. Center St.
Sandwich, IL  60548

815-508-1668

5 in row?

Really... can't you just edit everything into one post? Why spam the thread?

Please accept my apologies if this somehow fucks with you, but that was not my intent. I spent over two hours, and counting, on these fucks, replying when I reached the post I quoted.

Either, we're on the same page, or we're not, for quite frankly I don't give a FUCK!

You and I both see through this piece of shit company, so don't take the time to post shit about me, for I sure the hell don't do it toward you, nor never have, even once coming to your rescue during Josh's accusations.

For the life of me, I ain't got a clue as to why you have the red-ass toward me, but you do.

That said, later, bud.

~Bruno Kucinskas

Welcome back Phin  ;D Scetchem boy!!!!!  :D

Dear Satoshi/Andresen/Antonopoulos,

Look at the monster you have created

Naku noa

Taipo

The above was gleaned from the OP. Note the bold. Does that describe a customer or an investor?

Doge,
Even though your suspicions are warranted, that last post was very reflective of your obsessive paranoia disorder.

Not to disappoint, so how'd you like the mega-post above?

BTW, I've read this entire thread and all of Novello's posts.

Novello correct me if im wrong: Are you in Regus virtual office place?
Why address pointing building with offices rented for days ,hours not months?

This is just getting more and more funny.

Check this UK limited company which was trying similar method of getting BTC from user of BTCtalk.
They tried to put risk on shoulders of users.

They tried to meet me as well to speak about my posts same as you to other members: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=624924.msg6950041#msg6950041
I think this ship will sink faster than TITANIC.

Is there something specific about companies law in UK? is it easier to perform a scam there?
or is it just one person behind those two companies?

To get LTD,Vat and so on you don't need to do anything special.
Once all this is done , virtual office and nice story.Looks legit as hell because most of there customers think that if they(company) registered as Vat or LTD they cannot perform anything scammy.

Parabim,parabum and scam ready to go.

I am waiting! I think it is providing cheaper price for GHs. I hope it will not be a scam.
Kindly,
       Muhammed Zakhir

This is the same thing which has been said for each of the 20 ASIC launches I've witnessed over the last year. What if your DC-DC efficiency comes back terrible on the first boards? What if your chip power consumption comes in just 20% over? Each of these requires a new PCB revision, new testing, new 'has our power plane melted', new production runs and delays.

I'm not going to be actively following this thread for a while as its more of a security than hardware.

I can create (another) Ltd company in about 20 minutes online for ~$50, and send off the forms for VAT registration in another 30. It doesn't mean much in terms of validity here.

Hence ghash.io registering in the UK...... :D :D :D

It's means nothing tbh.

Nefario comes to mind.

Then, they try to use it as a badge of honor, not realizing they're screaming at the top of their lungs that they're a scam, i.e. "Look at us! Look at us! We's legit! See, we's registered, ergo we's not a scam. Now, yous paid naysayers back the hell off, for there's still money left on the table and we plan to get ours."

Looks like they no want to get into a pissing contest with old, toothless Phinn.

I'm going to be outta pocket the rest of the day, so I might as well play this card now.

You know who else has an entity at the same address as Novello? This guy: http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence/ROK1310/alan-ralsky/partners-in-spam-rayed-esseily-stuart-l.-ralsky

This is the reason why you need to state who it is and what experience your teams has if anyone is going to believe you can pull this off. I have to agree Dogie this is a security not a hardware post.

20 minutes? so looong  ;D, in Estonia the record to get a new company from blank-2-registered is 8minutes :) But VAT takes some human interaction - therefore takes more time :)

Where the hell you get this from?

I was really against this from the beginning as this just  smell from mile away.
But this?

Is it really the same guy behind it or just pure luck to match them two at same details?

http://www.slrconsulting.com/us/locations-map/?l=eu
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/SLR+Consulting+Ltd/@55.867166,-4.273208,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0xccadfb09f37807b9

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/SLR+International+Corporation/@47.796974,-122.206792,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x4bfce0d8f0da8443


http://www.thegeologistsdirectory.com/companydetails.aspx?id=5027

https://opencorporates.com/officers/38052370

https://www.linkedin.com/in/spotz

https://twitter.com/Spotz/status/412191125651587072


http://www.spoke.com/companies/perfectest-corp-3e122f809e597c10033b0a33


http://perfectest.com/

Visit our PCB discussion area: http://perfectest.com/pcbforums/

Novello Technologies is run by none other than this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Ralsky

To further prove that what I speak is the truth, rest assure that Novello will come on this here board and deny it.

I know they/he will.
In meantime just check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DT7bX-B1Mg#t=42 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DT7bX-B1Mg#t=42)
The best way to describe Novello.

I wondered what happened to Novello ever since they popped up in another thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=558311.0) with an announcement of sorts.

As much as I enjoy reading this thread (both the scam accusations and the lengthy descriptions), I did have to go  ::) +  :D at the transparent logical fallacy.

---

Novello: if against all apparent odds things are above board and you get your funding (either crowdfunded or via additional VC/Angel investment), I'll happily list the Nova-S in my StickMiners thread, now that it seems it can run without external power.  (I know - best incentive ever.)  Obviously using the external power port would make more sense if going for maximum hash rates.
( as an aside - all chip manufacturers should put out a reference miner design for their chips, using 1 chip or more (in case of chaining/stringing/whatever you want to call shared resources that can present unique challenges), and I was happy to see AsicMiner do as much for their BE200 )

Some technical questions about power supply:

• Is the Nova-S board designed to handle drawing greater current off of the USB end, or will it max out - and if so, where would it max out? (e.g. is it self-limited to USB 3 spec / is there a PTC fuse / etc.)
• If powered via USB-only, are the fans and fan controller going to work, or is that squarely behind the external power?
• Wouldn't it make sense to ship the Nova-S without the AC adapter and just tell people what they need?  Saves inventory, S&H, messing about with what plug people need (UK vs Europlug vs U.S. vs see wiki and be afraid, be very afraid) and thus ultimately cost, at the low risk (given the audience - well, most of the audience) of complaints about needing to buy a separate adapter / people buying cheap adapters off of aliexpress with output so noisy they can probably pick it up on their teeth fillings and then wonder why the miner keeps dropping.

All the good stuff about the chip (pin count, bga pitch, on-die temp sensor, etc.) seems to be behind NDA, so I'll ask only this about the chip: does it have a (tentative) name?

A last one regarding software: do you expect to A. be working together with the developers of various mining software to cater to those not using the RPi+minepeon combo, or will you B. fork (and preferably not ignore the applicable license(s), as some have done) and/or C. provide a full custom  (webserver-based) solution?

So whats the deal with Novello?

Scam or busy creating miners from thin air?

Since he disappeared after PG's barrage it would seem to be that PG was correct. Again. Thanks PG.

You're welcome, bud, even though they're probably amassing orders elsewhere, not to mention the moneys they'll make here whether or not they reach their goal or not: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ultra-low-cost-bitcoin-mining-systems--2

Good morning everbody,

I apologise for not posting the past few days, but I've had some other issues that needed my attention and regrettably stlll do so I'll be limiting my appearances here. As always, I'm more than happy to answer any technical or other questions, but due to the Signal to Noise ratio on these forums I'd ask that if you have a real question that you would like answered, please pm me or use one of our company email addresses. That way you'll get the reply and you can post it if you wish, just don't want a real question to get lost in the noise.

I want to thank everyone that sent us messages of support, much appreciated. I also want to give a special thank you to Aerobatic who posted in another thread about conversations I had with him over the course of the last few months. It took some balls for him to even suggest that we might be real and it's testament to his character. I asked him last night if he would mind if I reposted it here and he gave his permission, but on reflection this isn't his battle, if you want to read his post you'll find it easily enough.

See my new best friend Mr. Gage has been very busy. I'll come back to him later, but today I'd like to explore one of the subjects we raised in our proposal, namely the growth of network hashing power. A lot of people seem uncertain about how it will affect their mining earnings and how quickly it might grow, especially since the online calculators are confusing. Today I'll outline a simple way to construct your own estimates, it's got nothing to do with our project directly and it's not based on our hardware, but it was used to calculate some of our metrics, hopefully you might find it useful.


So starting with the basics, mining is essentially the same as playing the lottery, if the odds are 14,000,000 to 1  and 14,000,000 people buy tickets with individual numbers then someone will win the jackpot. Real life doesn't work that way of course, because lots of people put in the same number combinations but probability tells us that if the odds of winning are 14m to 1, then your ticket has as much chance as everyone else, and if you keep paying with the same numbers over a very, very  large period of time then eventually you will win. If you buy two tickets (with different numbers) you double your chances of winning. Mining is similar, except the tickets are hashes per second so the more you have, the better your chances in the lottery. Not the best analogy perhaps, but bear with me. Most people mine in Pools, which in this game is sensible as the Pools put everyone's 'tickets' together to better the group's chances of a win, then everyone get a share proportionate to the effort they put in - or effectively the number of 'tickets' they bought.

Calculating a good estimate of your probable earnings at any given network hash rate is actually very simple, and you don't need to know the difficulty to do it - remember that the difficulty is dependent on the network rate, not the other way around. In basic terms, if the network rate is 100,000 TH and you have 1TH of individual hashing power as part of a large pool, then over time your earnings will be 1/100,000 of the daily reward available. Today the network rate is 86,000TH approximately and 1 Btc = $664 (bitcoinwatch.com), so today's block rewards will be approximately 24(hours) x 6(blocks per hour) x 25 (No. of Btc for block solution) x $664, ie $2,390,400. Your 1Th should earn you on average 1/86,000 of that amount - $27.8 less your pool fees and approximation errors, say 4% leaving you $26.68. It's then really easy to throw yourself together a spreadsheet with your predictions and evaluate for yourself what might happen if the network grows at X rate and how it will affect you. The only other factor you have to consider is your power useage, particularly if you live in a region with high energy costs such as the UK. This again is dead easy if you know how much power your miner consumes, if it's 1kW (really should talk about kVA here, but for the purposes of this exercise we'll keep it simple) and you pay 10 cents per kWh (I wish) then it's daily cost is 24 x 1 x $0.1, ie $2.4. take that off your net earnings and you'll have a final $24.28.

If you want to predict over a long time frame it makes sense to predict the network rate at the middle of the month, it will be less at the beginning and more at the end, but since growth from now on will be largely linear it all averages out. We've made some predictions about how we think the network rate will grow and used this to predict how much 1TH will earn over time based on different energy consumptions per Gh calculated. From that we can then see how long it will take to earn enough money to pay for the mining system. We took a nominal time of 6 months but you can do the calculation for any period. We also took into account energy costs as they account for proportionately more of the cost of mining as the network rate increase. At the end of the six months you can see the cumulative net earnings of your TH (or any other figure you want to put it), so to figure out how much you should pay for it in the first place, divide it by 1000 ( or the GH/sec of your chosen system) and you can tell how much you should pay per GH of power under these conditions. You can also play around with the value of Btc to see what might happen.

It is really very, very simple to do, if anyone wants a copy of the spreadsheet to do this, please pm me.

I don't have too much time today, too much plotting and planning for our evil scheme to attend to, but I will get back to the people that asked relevant questions later today or early tomorrow.

But now onto Mr. Gage.

This is a public forum, and so everyone can put in their piece whether I like it or not. I've never attempted to remove anyone's postings that I don't like for one very important reason, I believe in the concept of Free Speech, and much though I despise it's misuse by the UK media and others, I'll defend it until the day I die. It's a non-negotiable prerequisite for a true democracy, take it away and you'll have a very quick descent into George Orwell's worst nightmare. So Mr.Gage, I'm not going to pass any detailed comment on anything you've written but whether I like what you said or not, I'll still defend your right to say it, as long as you don't lie or make stuff up. If you have detailed questions you want to ask that haven't already been answered, please put them on a list and I'll get back to you. Please remember that while you might enjoy posting lots of comments, many other forum members don't necessarily want to wade through pages and pages of views from just one person. The more you say, the less people pay attention and so might miss your message or just skip over your posts altogether. Just a friendly suggestion.

Hello  ;)
As you said
This is a public forum, and so everyone can put in their piece whether I like it or not.
I am watching this thread closely. Keep good work going Novello
By the way what happened with your planned meeting with members of the forum?

Thank you in advance Novello...

Hi Steve,

Just about to leave, but I saw your post and thought it rude not to reply. Sorry it's brief.

1. The NOVA-S internal regulator will take power direct from a USB port, but since the current draw is limited to 0.5A on USB2 and 0.9A on USB3 it will adjust the chip clock speed (and voltage) to suit. this will limit now much it can hash, it won't be anything like full speed, more like 1/15 - 1/10.
The regulator is intelligent, so no polyfuse is needed, it will never put too much stress on the host system unless it detects that the host is our NOVA-HH. It has high current ports that can supply adequate current to tun the miner at full speed.

2. The fan controller will still work under any power source. The regulator 'talks' to the hashing module microcontroller and if the chip's getting too hot then the clock speed will be reduced and the fans allowed to run for a short while until order is restored.

3. The AC adapter. Yes, I appreciate what you say but I think you've answered your own question. if we supply the adapter then the customer gets what we know will work and even though it cost more than simply telling the customer to buy their own, it's a much more reliable solution for both parties. We want to make things as easy and simple as possible for our customers - and ourselves.

We don't have a name for the chip as such, it does have an on chip temperature sensor.

And as regards your last question we would plan to work with one of the existing developers. We've tried to make the systems as flexible as possible, hence the use of the 32 bit micros on every hashing module and the Pi system controller. It should be reasonably easy for a developer to design the necessary interface.

Hope this answers your questions?

Brief is good :)


1. Re: the above - since you mention 'detects' rather than the usual approach of simply trying to draw current until voltage drops below a threshold - Done via negotiation, I presume, unless you're using a passives setup corrected for on the hub specifically.
2. Great!
3. Yeah, I guess I'd fall to the other side of the line there, but fair enough :)

Name: Time to think of one ;)
Temp sensor: excellent
Collab with devs: good :)

Hi novello,

I snipped your reply and only copied your statement directly to Phinnaeus Gage:
I bolded the particular portion of your statement that I think is very relevant.  Here are the accusations made by Phinnaeus Gage:



Since he's accused you of being a convicted fraudster and scam artist, I would think that deserves a response either acknowledging or debunking the statements.

How can he do that if he refuses to reveal his team?

You've fully grasped my implication :)

Multiple times throughout this thread people have asked for some information regarding the Novello team.  While some of those requests were too much, others, like my own, were to get an understanding of key leaders.  I even went as far as to provide examples of many companies and how they give out this information freely.  Others provided examples of multiple ASIC hardware manufacturers (Spondoolies, etc).

Thus far, Novello has evaded providing this information.  Now, they are being outright accused of being run by a convicted fraudster/scam artist.  I'm asking them, yet again, to provide evidence of who they are such that they might prove they are indeed capable of not only running a company, but also producing the hardware they are trying to sell.

Well looks like they keep getting closer and closer to their fund goal:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ultra-low-cost-bitcoin-mining-systems--2


Only $4,194,003 to go!

Wonder which dumdum is going to spring for the Supernova 120 TH/s miner for a cool $30,000?!!   :o

Well you can read our silence on the matter in various ways. It's up to you to make up your own mind, not up to me or indeed Mr. Gage to tell you what to think. Having a domain name registered with the same registrar as many thousand other people does not make you that person. Not in the reality I inhabit at any rate.

You're absolutely correct in that I can read it in multiple ways.  This is exactly my point.  People can and will read your silence in multiple ways.

Your statement about multiple people using the same registrar is valid, and one with which I agree.  To be honest, I'm trying very hard to understand how PG managed to get to his conclusion, but I'm failing.  I'm sure he'll be back in this thread, and hopefully he can explain, for those of us unable to follow his steps, how he made the conclusion he did.

By the way, that doesn't mean I'm going to relent on my requests for you to proudly display the credentials of your leadership :)

Obviously, Novello Technologies Limited (Novello Technologies Ltd) is having difficulties destroying their own brand, thus leaving it up - once again - to their fellow Bitcoiners to lend a hand, of which we've (I) obliged: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=647206.

You want to come here and play via showing your shitty website, a cleverly penned and defended prospectus presented on a forum (of all places), and refuse to name principals, as well as avoiding important concerns, then let's play. As you can clearly see, I'm willing and able to participate.

Game on!

~Bruno Kucinskas

i will watch this with popcorn/nachos and sprite.

This is interesting.

sorry for late reply

this is scam and you are doing tricks to avoid prison (not denying bruno accusations, avoid lying)

plan is clear, get money as much as possible (using rented office/hours payment and fresh ltd)
 spend money on salaries, promotion etc... just pump money out
declare bankrupcy after few documented failed designs
all legit

and now this... shortly is december lol


good job bruno.
i was scammed at block erupter times, 6 btc lost
so i am fighting with all this shit

You're welcome, bud.

Hey, Novello, don't forget to vote so that there'll be at least one NO vote: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=647206

Better yet, offer up some paid campaign to your paid Facebook followers to vote NO, thus really sticking it up my ass. And, tell those guys in the office that have a combined 150 years experience under their belt to vote also. And, your friends and family, and their friends and family, too.

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/novello-technologies-begins-funding-ultra-low-cost-bitcoin-mining-rigs/2014/06/04


The fucker wants to play games, we'll play, for Novello was asked pointblank who Gordon was, and he refused to answer the question, but now we find it elsewhere - Gordon Grainger.

http://news.stv.tv/west-central/107195-jail-for-businessman-who-ran-counterfeiting-operation/

Once again, Gordon Grainger has foiled their elaborate scam..

Thanks to Gordon Boy, Cryptocoins News is now taking a mighty big hit: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=647683

You might want to start showing your cards technically you are clearly losing the PR war. Time to listen to 2112 and show the slide-rules what you really have if you have anything that is. Pretty documents are one thing having some clear "results" that the engineers here can pour over and determine if you have a viable concept or not is what you have to do now. No one on these boards is going to give you a pass. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence was a phrase made popular by Carl Sagan let us see what evidence you can provide.

Good Morning everyone,

Again I'm under some time constraints today so I wont have time to fully explore the implcations of what I started in my post yesterday.

I do see that my new best friend Mr Gage has again been busy, seem he can't quite make us him mind as to who he wants to accuse us of being or doing. He really doesn't seem to grasp the concept of limited company structure - just because you've got a business address in an area doesn't mean to say that any of your directors or employees live there, so to make wild leaps of logic that someone who shares a name with a convicted criminal in that area must be that person are absurd. Can't wait to see his next claim, what will it be? That we started the Second World War, shot JFK or perhaps were solely responsible for the 18th century slave trade?

So the return to the real world, yesterday I showed how to calculate what a mining rig will earn on a daily or monthly basis, and what that means for how much you should pay for it. There seems to be a lot of opinions that very soon it might not be possible for people to mine at home or independently due to the growth in the network hash rate. Certainly 'small time' miner face challenges, but htey're not impossible to overcome.

In earlier posts, Mr. Canary said that Asicminer have 60PH of capacity in the process of being built, and I've no reason to doubt him. Whether that's on their own account or simply guessing it from chip sales he didn't say. it's a fair old lump of capacity, that's for sure but I doubt that it could be deployed in a period of less than two months. Canary also said there is a lot more to come, namely 1500PH in the next year. To fund that amount based on rough calculations we've done about the likely system costs you would need approximately $600,000,000, and thats not including the costs of actually getting the capcity inot a data centre, setting it up and paying for the rental and so on. That's an awful lot of cash. You might argue that they'll be earning tons of Btc from the earlier capacity they put in, but as difficulty goes up earnings go down and so it takes longer and longer to pay for you initial purchase.

And of course Asicminer aren't the only show in town. So let's assume that come September the network grows by 60PH a month, starting at 185PH. The full chart hasn't been shown so it can fit in and be legible, but it assumes continuous growth at 60 PH/month.

https://i.imgur.com/1ECukWK.png


What you can see is that all starts well, a 4TH rig installed in September with a J/Gh rating of 0.7 will earn $6409 in it's first year - fantastic! It will cost $1600 to manufacture, about $350 to ship and install. the Electricity cost has already been accounted for at $0.04/kWh. However, it's share of the maintenance  and operations costs of the data centre will come out at about $80 per month, and someone has to pay for the initial setup and configuration of the data centre, so take another $250 per system out of that. So the total costs per system in the first year are: $1600+12x$80 + $350 + $250 per system, ie $3160. Subtract that from the $6409 and you get $3249. Not bad at all.

However, for machines installed in October the net yearly earnings drop to $2095, and by December to $795. Still a profit, but you can see where this is going, and the network rate is 'only' at 385PH. A machine installed in April 2015 will barely break even. Yes, it will continue to make money in it's second year, but the return on investment is looking decidedly shaky.

Of course, BTC might go up in value. It might also fall, who really knows.

The point to all this is that sometimes people are afraid of the demons others conjure up to scare them. Unless you do a comprehensive analysis of their facts and figures, which for many is difficult because they don't have access to the necessary information, then you get stuck in a situation where fear rules the day.

I'm short of time again today, so tomorrow I'll look at how individual miners might cope with the situation I've described.

Great information.

Got any data to share on your products?

I will wait for an actual product and buy it, if you get there. I've also been looking at ASIC for scrypt and they seem to be in FAIL mode. The pre-order bullshit is too much. I really hope that you do release a product that has the specs that you claim. It will be a miners orgasm. Good luck. Anyway back to lurking.

Good morning everyone,

Sadly, I won't be posting the second part of what I started writing yesterday, thanks to those of you that took the time to read it and for your comments. We had a meeting last night with our MD and she's asked me to post the following:



"Dear all,

After some discussions with my engineers and the other members of the company, I’ve decided to take a few steps in relation to the project, in the first instance, we’ll be contacting each of the individuals who donated to the Indiegogo campaign clarifying our position, how their donations will be refunded once the campaign ends, and our future plans. Our first responsibility is to the people who put money into the campaign albeit it not directly to us,and if you're one of them and haven’t received an email from us by close of business on Friday, please get in touch as soon as possible. We have not taken any other monies for those orders that were placed outside Indiegogo, and we apologise to those that tried to place them for the delays.

The second is to admit that in our excitement over the design of the technology and the models we developed to try and offer some new possibilities to customers, we clearly misjudged the level of disaffection for crowd-funding models, especially in the situation where the professional commitments of the majority of our group complicate the level of disclosure demanded by the community. We don’t disagree on the fact that the demand is partially justified in light of the many people who have lost money and time with previous ventures. A quick summary of the other threads in this forum suggest that those problems are sadly not a thing of the past, and so the current cynicism – while necessarily frustrating from our perspective – is understandable, and probably a good thing for the community as a whole in terms of weeding out unprofessional business practices.

As it is clear that the model is probably not sustainable for a project of this magnitude, our future attempts to bring our products to market will have to be through other means. From our perspective that is regrettable, as our intention was to have our backers interests at heart rather than those of investors, but in light of how things have gone in the last week or so, it’s clear that we’ll need to look at alternative models. There have been a few interesting ideas that have been suggested in this thread and others, and the individuals who have contributed those have our thanks – we’ll consider all those options as we consider the best way to bring our designs to market.

The third step will be to step away from discussing our campaign or designs on the forum, though I will encourage my engineers to occasionally contribute to technical discussions. Some of you who have read the proposal in its entirety, regardless of your opinion about the project itself, have noted that there’s plenty of sensible discussion about the feasibility of mining with the current state of play, and I think it’s to everyone’s benefit that those discussions keep happening. It's probably also worth reflecting on the tone and nature of the prospectus we put forward; funding would have been much easier to achieve with less pessimistic assessments of potential earnings using our equipment, and indeed with fewer warnings about the dangers of investing in any hardware-related project, and those concerned with legitimacy might consider reflecting on that point. 

Many of you have no doubt settled down with the expectation of an angry set of back-and-forth around the accusations made against us, but we’ve seen enough exchanges of this sort to know that discourse of this sort on forums rarely leads to much productive discussion – especially when the overwrought interpretive efforts of some of the community do tend towards the paranoid (and do not appear limited to us, based on some of the suggestions made elsewhere). I will only gesture to the fact that in the space of a day several wildly different interpretations have been offered, threads begun in multiple places on the forums, and the whole thing accompanied by no less a claim than denial would equal guilt. Ponder for a moment exactly how one can proceed against kind of logic and you’ll appreciate our disinterest in engaging in a ‘discussion’ where the outcome has very much already been decided.

As we mentioned above, we’ll be contacting all the individuals who have contributed and inform them of the situation and the timetable for Indiegogo returning their donations to them [crucially, Indiegogo, not us, controls the finances for the campaign]. Rather unfortunately, evidence that our contributors have not been defrauded of a penny will come rather too late for it to be much more than a hollow victory for those who expressed interest or hope in the project. I can only apologise for letting you down. But for those that have phoned or emailed us – and indeed those who have offered reasonable discussion on the forum – we extend our thanks, and hope that whatever projects you do decide to back prove successful for you. If you do have any interest in how our efforts to pursue alternative funding turn out, let us know and we’ll be more than willing to communicate any news if and when we have it.

Olivia Walker
Managing Director
Novello Technologies Limited"

So there you have it. As Olivia said, we will try to keep those interested in our project up to date with what's happening, although from my past experiences with VC's they usually aren't very good at sharing.

Great move.

Let us see what happens next. My guess some sort of Spondoolies like rebirth. Anyone else?

***SHORTENED VERSION***

Dear all,

We got totally busted & lost our bottle.

Dammit.

Or it is your beloved friend Joshua ;D
Just saying

I don't think so. But most people do I bet.

My guess is a couple of dozen "investors" who never get their money back.

Unless that includes some private investors, that's a bit of an overestimate.  The indiegogo project funders count is stuck at 11, with a total of $5,997 pledged.

Definitely not Joshua Zipkin of AMT and Miner Technologies, for this person didn't attend Penn State for seven years to obtain a business degree like Josh Zipkin, son of Harrison Zachariah Zipkin, has.

Did everyone get refunded?

That be my follow up.

It's a shame, regardless of whether peeps thought this was all above board or not, most of what I've read has just  been bitching.

At least this project included something for the hobby miners, not the usual elitist BS. Most asic units out there are just plain overpriced for what they are, especially when import tax's are involved.

There isn't really anything out there for the BTC hobby miner anymore, a single S1 just wont have enough grunt to make it entertaining soon and current range of 1th units apart from being pricey, are just too damn big n noisy for home use.

Hopefully one of the other manufacturers might take heed, but I'm not holding my breath.

Just my 0.2p  :)

I would guess not - a Google CSE entry for https://www.google.com/search?q=novello+technologies popped up a new result that claims to be an e-mail sent from novello, but it's unverified?  http://pastebin.ca/2807363

At-home mining began to fade away at the end of last year, there is now no point whatsoever in building small rigs for home use; difficulty dictates what we can and cannot mine - there will always be business ideas which are good-at-heart but completely clueless-in-reality.

The Novello chip specs were great and if this endeavour had been genuine, the company would have had no problem whatsoever in getting funds to T/O, and also could have brought it all to market in a very short space of time.

Sometimes it's just not meant to be, eh Olivia?

 :-*

Goodbye, Olivia! You were such a doll.

http://www.classic-collection-dolls.co.uk/acatalog/olivia-main-pic.jpg

Thanks TRSteve.

Yeah it's been moving toward DC based rigs for a while, it's a shame as it will end up alienating a lot of the mining community, ah well all good things come to an end.

I don't see it as an end whatsoever, without going into specific services, there are cloud hashing outfits and other community-share mines out there that we can still be a part of and contribute to. Just because it's becoming more and more difficult to host rigs at home, shouldn't mean we should stop mining. I'm of the mind; eggs in lots of baskets makes ample chicken soup.  ;D

Perhaps if Novello swallow their pride and see the bigger picture (if they can achieve that chip spec) it could become a collaborative endeavour, rather than one which puts all the risk on the little guys n gals. I don't see any problem with doing it that way - perhaps greed was the initial motive?

Dear Olivia,

I hope that you are well, thanks for your email.

looking for someone to blame for the fact that you were unable to realise your business venture is amateur, immature and offers only a sense that you feel hard-done-to.

I came to you with a sensible, and good offer; and your prejudice against me is indeed, the only hurdle which you encountered.

Please, as you have advised me, your intent to inform the police onto me; I would be happy to discuss this with any authority you wish to concern in the matter.


without prejudice,

R

Sounds like something interesting is going on behind the scenes here?

Novello didn't collect enough loot in the indiegogo campaign and are blaming people here?
Seems like the started out attempting to defend themselves and then totally fell apart when PG chimed in.
There's still 4 days left to throw your money away on indiegogo for this!
If any of you who are leaking money want a BTC address for donations I'll send you mine.

DANGIT, they were so close!   :'(

Only from $4,194,000 away from their goal...

You guys are A-holes, I was about to get my hands on the Supernova if it weren't for you meanies... :-[

I like the bit where it suggests the USA and Canada are EEC companies.

i like the bit where bicknellski wades in with both feet, rubbing shoulders with the scum & then backflipping out of it just as grossly.....again.

thread rez!   i just wanted to thank long time members that are still around today. i have just finished reading this thread and wanted to commend you guys. and laugh because bicknellski is still shilling for scams in 2016, damn! and roadstress, still also supporting scams back then! thought that was crazy that being last comment here
funny it died so fast, theses guys never did come back, what a supercool LOOKING stick miner 40mm fans, whaaaaa? too deadly!