Bitcoin Forum

BFLS and BFLS.RIG are now closed permanently.

I am opening a new offering, basically mirroring the BFLS product.  It is for the MiniRigs & SC ASIC offering.

IPO will begin tomorrow:

6058 shares will be allocated and sold per Minirig, initially 2 rigs worth of shares will be allocated, and 6058 shares can be traded in for the physical Minirig hardware. 15% of the shares will be kept for maintenance and operation costs.

Once the details of the ASIC unit orders are publicly available, available shares will double and be put up for sale. At that point, it will require 6058 x 2 = 12116 shares to convert your BFLS.RIG shares into the physical hardware (Mini-Rig or SC).

Dividends on RIG will be paid out the same way BFLS is currently paid, on a weekly basis and the amount will be what the unit(s) generate that week. Obviously, no dividends on RIG will be paid until the hardware is in actual operation.

RIG shares purchased are for a share of the unit, not to help fund the purchase of a unit, since the units have already been paid for. Funds will be reinvested into further ASIC orders, which means the ASIC units will be "pre-purchased" already, and you will be buying into already purchased ASIC units with your BFLS.RIG shares, not funding the purchase of ASIC units. This is an important distinction, since it means you'll start generating revenue much faster than a unit you would be "funding" the purchase of.

Should mining become unprofitable or other circumstances cause the operator to be unable or unwilling to perform his duties, sale of all hardware and equal distribution of funds will commence according to the number of shares held by each individual.  Additionally, should a BFL Single be unavailable for immediate shipping, the operator reserves the right to refuse the 200 BFLS shares until such time as a unit becomes available.

Ticker symbol is BFLS.RIG

What is the IPO share price?
and is there any pre-IPO shares that are released?
//DeaDTerra

What is happening with your other offering?  Are you converting those to ASIC miners and giving shareholders the 20x hashing power benefit?

Yes, the other offering thread has the info, but in a nutshell, the singles will be converted to ASIC and it will require approximately double the number of shares per unit to acquire the hardware (to reflect the 2x cost increase). So you'll effectively be getting a 10x bump in hashing power for free, as long as you are a share holder.

Same thing goes with these FPGA Mini-Rigs... share's available will double and shares required will double if you want to trade it in for an ASIC rig (to reflect the 2x cost as well).

IPO share price is going to be .7 BTC per share, although I am taking some limited orders for pre-IPO at .6 per share at the moment.  Preference for pre-IPO shares will be given to current BFLS share holders if there's more demand than available shares.

Will you be paying dividends on BFLS.RIG?

Yep, as soon as the hardware is delivered.  Same deal as BFLS, whatever is earned by the machines gets paid out as dividends.

Has BFL given a delivery date for yours?

For the FPGA or the ASIC?

FPGA. I don't believe BFL will be shipping ASIC this year, if ever.

I've been told within 30 days, though I am expecting around the 3rd week of July.

hi Inaba,

I have 1 question:

The 6058 shares that are issued.... is that for 1 or for 2 mini-rigs

The way it is posted in the op it looks like it could be for 2 mini-rigs, but on GLBSE it says it is for 1, which would put the price paid at $27K for 1 mini-rig

Thanks for explaining !

Brat

6058 shares is for 1 minirig.  The pricing was priced out at a different exchange rate than you are using, and I am reluctant to change that given the volatility of the market.  I am not at all convinced we will remain where we are now between now and 30 - 60 days. It also doesn't account for pre-IPO sales.

On another note, I will be exchanging BFLS shares for BFLS.RIG shares for anyone that wants to convert on a 1:1 basis.  Some people were a understandably confused on whether or not BFLS would also include Minirigs.  Initially it was intended to, but an overwhelming majority did not want to combine them, so they've been split off.  As such, I will exchange those BFLS shares for RIG shares for a limited time.

1) You mean BFL.rig will be mining and paying dividend around 3rd week of July?

2) When would you expect the ASIC comes out?

Thanks!

That is my hope, but of course I am at the mercy of BFL's delivery schedule.

ASICs are expected in October (see above for delivery :))

Is there any good news now? 30 days almost has gone.

I'm told sometime next week.

That is good news.  Also, do you use 2-factor authentication for GLBSE.  I would hate to see something happen to BFLS like has been happening to other asset creators.

Yep, I sure do... much to my chagrin since it's TOTP and often times out and is a major pain in the ass to use. 

It doesn't like BTCSYN, keep lots of fund under the control of the issuers. I'm not that worry about the safty of the funds. But good security practice is good for everyone.

Any updates on the delivery time?

Nope, but you can be sure I will make a post here as soon as I have more information.

Hardware is in!

On another note, I went to true up the GLBSE account for shares.  I may have to abandon GLBSE all together and figure out some other method of dividend payments, because I simply can't transfer all the shares around that need to be transferred.  It would end up costing nearly 400 BTC to transfer all the shares, including the upcoming ASIC shares.  At the current market rate, it would cost me almost $5000 USD to *transfer* shares.  Selling those shares would cost 2.5x that, or nearly $12,000 USD.  Holy crap!

I have a trouble ticket open for GLBSE, but if they can't help me, I have to figure something else out.  I simply can't afford $5000 going towards fees for a simple transfer, much less $12,000 sale charges.

Ya'll might consider petitioning GLBSE for sane fees (and by sane, I mean fractions of a penny per trade/transfer or a flat rate).  Right now, the fees are absolutely insane with the current value of a BTC.

What is the fee for transferring shares?  It does not make sense that there is a few to transfer shares.  Companies create shares in the financial world all the time. 

Maybe you can give GPG signed contracts.  The holders of those contracts can receive dividends to a specific address.  People can sell those contracts to other people and if the new owners need to change the payment address they can prove to you they own the share and you can change the address.  You can also allow people to trade in their GPG contracts for GLBSE shares for a fee that will cover the GLBSE fees.

It's so hard to find all the info you need on GLBSE, the fact that it takes about a month to load a page doesn't help.  Anyway, it looks like its 20 "BP" to transfer a share.  I need to transfer close to 100,000 shares, before the ASIC stuff.  That comes to about 200 BTC.  ASIC would cost another 200 BTC.

The GPG idea is good, but it sound like an administration hassle.  Ugh.. really need to come up with something or someone needs to open an exchange that is responsive and doesn't charge exorbitant fees.  This is what happens when you have a monopoly.  Imagine the fees if there was only one Bitcoin pool.  Thank goodness for competition.

There is that other exchange Crypto(something), and mpex, I am not sure of their fees though.  mpex probably still has that 20 bitcoin creation fee.

CryptoXange (or whatever) does stock assets?  Never heard of mpex?

mpex
http://polimedia.us/bitcoin/mpex.php

cryptostocks
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89572.0

https://cryptostocks.com/

Oye... mpex is basically unusable by anyone and the fees are, indeed, extortion.  Lol...

Cryptostocks - I will look more into that.

"Oye" was my first impression as well ... mpex is certainly a 'unique' site.

As for cryptostocks, it appears to have gone up a month ago. Volumes and stocks on offer are, expectedly, extremely thin. Some of the comments about it on https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89572.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89572.0) are not exactly confidence-inspiring. But then, everyone needs to start somewhere ... though I'd rather not end up being an unwitting 'site beta tester'.

One would think that Nefario would step in to offer a reasonable solution to your situation. GLBSE's current fee structure is poorly suited for this scenario; on the bright side it presents an opportunity for them to make it more 'friendly' for this type of activity. Let's hope they take it.

it's great to hear the news and looking forward to the dividend :)

About the GLBSE fee:

Inaba, why not try to contact GLBSE and negotiate with them a lower fee rate? for example, no matter how large a single transaction, the total fee will not exceed a certain number, like 25BTC. such kind of fee structure is  very common in the exchange and money wiring business. As the BFL is a very important asset on the GLBSE, And they are intended to attract large asset trading on their exchange, I think they will consider the proposition seriously.

The fee per volume should be logarithmic, so that after a specific volume it "flattens out". Should be very easy to implement, if there's the will for it! :P

I'm guessing that's what the ticket is for. Those fees do seem steep for issuers when transferring huge amounts of shares. Pretty reasonably for small amounts (to prevent "black market" deals, i.e. transfer shares to a person and have them send BTC outside of GLBSE).

Yeah, I am talking to them with regards to the fees and explaining what I am doing and why the 400 BTC would be coming directly out of my pocket.

Great ! Are the rigs operational and is there a place where we can check out the mining stats of the new rigs ?

Yes, we're looking forward to the dividend :)

Inaba, have you set up the gears and start to mining yet?

Yeah, the rigs are mining... I haven't heard back from GLBSE support yet, been 24 hours.  Not sure what's going on there.

Inaba, I think there will be a dividend very soon, because the rigs have been there for 12 days now. If new shares cannot be issued before the negotiation with GLBSE is done, it won't be a problem to pay the existing shares dividend. Last time when the BFLS had the rigs, the first dividend were paid out more quick than this time.

dividend reached. Thanks :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Waiting on another deposit into GLBSE for more dividend payment this round.  Another ~80 BTC to be paid in dividends tonight as soon as it clears.

Now that the share thing is resolved, it should be much easier next week.

Thanks Inaba for the weekly div :)

But I have a question.
For BFLS.RIG you have 2 fpga rigs online =~50ghash and the last 2 weeks you started to pay div to shareholders.

There must be something I didn't understand because 7 days 50gh = max 140 btc and you paid ~880, why ?

I have included a number of other rigs in the BFLS.RIG shares that belong to other people.  There are a number of benefits for this, but one of the driving motivators is the fact that it makes managing payouts on all the rigs much easier.

Right now, there are 14 rigs in the BFLS.RIG shares bucket (two more were added this week, compared to last week), so I will be paying out on 14 rigs this week (and 12 rigs last week).

Thanks, I think I understand :)

Right now you have 90870 shares issued, 6085 per rig, this means you have 15 rigs mining for BFLS.RIG.

So next payment will be (15*25Mhash = 375Mhash * 7 days = ~1000 bitcoins) about 1000 / 90870 = ~ 0,011 btc per share ?

Do you host the rigs in a secured cage in your DC and are the rigs insured ?

I have the rigs split between three different DCs at the moment, and they are all behind a locked, card coded outer door and a locked, biometric inner door.  Insurance varies by DC, but for the most part, yes... depends on what happens.  I don't think acts of war or terrorism are covered at one of the DCs, so just pray Canada doesn't invade.

Dividends will be paid Tues or Wed for last week.  I am still in London for the Bitcoin Conference and will be back home tomorrow.  I should be able to get it paid out tomorrow evening.

I would say enjoy a pint that is what I would do, enjoy some bangers and mash?

Dividend payments should be going out shortly.  We got a bit ripped off this week, since BitLC has not paid me what they owe me, so the dividend payout is roughly 50 BTC short and the BitLC op is not responding to my emails. 

As soon as / if he sends the funds, I will include that in the dividend payouts, until then I would be a bit leery of BitLC and they've been removed from the rotation.

Has BitLC paid the amount owing or at least responded to your email?

Nope, not a peep.

Inaba, you didn't get my PMs (still), didn't get PM from a guy with a (dubious) million dollar offer, so it could be the same with a private answer from this BitLC guy.
I know you are a bit flooded with messages, but it look like some of them never get to you. Maybe PM over some size are filtered out.

I just found out about GLBSE closing so I don't have any info right now.  I will make a post here once I have more information and get everyone taken care of.

Since I invested in BFLS and BFLS.rig, I have never been disappointed by Inaba. Hope that everything will fine this time.

Watching thread for updates.

Ok, so I'm just as in the dark as everyone else with regards to GLBSE, but here is how I am going to handle the BFLS and BFLS.RIG.  Fortunately, since BFLS and BFLS.RIG were never designed as a security, bond or anything of the sort things are fairly easy.  GLBSE was a way for me to handle payments being divided up easily among a number of owners of the BFL hardware - this means I can pretty easily make the transition away from GLBSE.  BFLS and BFLS.RIG has always been a way for us to split the costs of purchasing a single or a minirig, so it's not really a hindrance, as I made no profit on shares traded, etc... and thus have no accounting to worry about as far as that goes.

What  you need to do:

Send me an email with the subject beginning: GLBSE:

In that email include the following:

Your GLBSE user name
Number of shares you hold of both BFLS and BFLS.RIG
BTC Payment address

Obviously, I will need to verify that information with the GLBSE records, assuming they are forthcoming as potentially promised.  Once that information is verified, I will include you in the payout rotations.  I will be withholding payouts temporarily to unverified shares/shareholders until they can be verified.

BFLS and BFLS.RIG will be combined into one payment, and BFLS "shares" will be converted into BFLS.RIG "shares" at a rate of 1.21:1, so for every 1.21 "shares" of BFLS you own, you will get 1 "share" of BFLS.RIG - this is because the monetary value of BFLS.RIG is slightly more than BFLS.  This actually works out well, as I was intending to upgrade the singles to an ASIC minirig anyway, doing away with BFLS all together. 

I will continue with the Sunday night payouts, but they will be sent directly to your wallet going forwards.  I had a substantial chunk of funds in GLBSE for payouts when it went down, so here's to hoping it's recoverable. 

Hi inaba
Thanks for the update which sounds good and will work out well for me. Seems like these assets will be managed more like a mining Co-op.

Once BFLS and BFLS.RIG have been combined in to asset will these still be redeamable for physcial hardware?
Have you worked out the ammount of coupons per phsyical device?

Where will find your email address?

Yep, you're welcome to redeem them for physical hardware at any time.

Sorry, you can email me at: admin@eclipsemc.com

I'm not sure if this analysis is correct (you may have it backwards). Unless I am misunderstanding something, I believe 1 BLFS share is worth more than 1 BFLS.RIG share. Consider:

BFLS (1 Single/200 shares): $600/200 = $3 per BFLS share
BFLS.RIG (1 MiniRig/6058 shares): $15295/6058) = $2.52 per BFLS.RIG share

This indicates that a BFLS share is worth more (about 1.19x) than a BFLS.RIG share.

So, for example, converting 100 shares of BFLS should yield 119 BFLS.RIG shares. This would represent fair hardware value.

Yeah, the numbers were off and I'm reworking them... the other thread had some details... I wish I could merge these two threads.

Once you convert all BFLS to BFLS.RIG it may make sense to lock the BFLS thread with a message for people to come here instead. In the BFLS.RIG OP you could put a link to the old BFLS thread for people to refer to if desired ... there may still be some useful history there.

If you haven't already, you may want to visit GLBSE and put your name in to release the info for the asserts to me. 

If you don't do this, I'm not sure I will be able to verify the number of shares you are holding of BFLS and BFLS.RIG.  I am not recommending you do this, because who knows what they will do with that information, but I've done it and hopefully we'll get some sort of resolution soon.

What about those who cannot remember exact number of shares ? Would "a few" do ? And why do you even need to confirm emails and addresses sent to you by glbse ?

As soon as GLBSE releases the asset info, it won't matter.  I requested the info in case GLBSE doesn't come through.  Supposedly they are suppose to be releasing it.

I will also need the BTC address to send weekly payments to, which I don't think will be included in the GLBSE data.

I have the script mostly done to automate the weekly payments, so it shouldn't be much of a transition once I have the data.  As a side note, I will be selling more stake in the upcoming ASIC hardware, if anyone is interested in a large chunk purchase, I would potentially be interested in that.  However, I don't want to sell a bunch of small chunks, as it's just too much hassle, so minimum order would be at least 100 shares.  I haven't decided how much, if any, I am going to sell on the ASIC rigs yet.

Josh, I know you're busy with everything you do over at the Butterfly Labs company but don't you feel
the need to inform your shareholders of the BFLS & BLFS.RIG company about your actions against GLBSE/Nefario ?

Another month passed and all we know is that you wrote one mail to Nefario.

I do not need to remind you that we bought shares from you and you're responsable.

 >:(

There is nothing I can do until GLBSE gives me the information.  I'm not sure what updates you want: nothing has changes as of yet thus no updates.  If something happens in that sphere, I will be here providing an update.

I would like to know for example what steps you took to get the information you need. Besides asking Nef friendly in an email...

I bought shares from you and you're the one that refuses to pay dividend.

You know the number of shares I bought from you. I have screenshots and glbse csv backup data.

We had contact before IPO and I paid with BTC and $ to your bankaccount, after this you transfered the shares to my account.

 >:(

How would he know that you didn't later sell them?

Because I have complete account GLBSE history of every single transaction to proove this.

"account_history.csv" -> [type,timestamp,btc_amount,asset,quantity,account,address,fee_note]

Josh can check everything.

I have been pursuing other avenues of acquiring the information, but so far they've been fruitless. 

I'm hoping that the data will come through, otherwise I may have to look at what data I have and if it matches up close enough with what I think it should be, just pay people out of that, but I really want to avoid that, because there will inevitably end up people complaining about something.

Server, most BFLS shareholders are in the same boat as you. I sympathize. But you need to realize that ANYONE can create or modify a .csv file to 'prove' anything they want (and I am not suggesting you have done so). I hate to say it, but the fact that you have a .csv file proves nothing about how many shares you currently have, or how many you may or may not have purchased or sold over time.

I purchased BFLS shares directly from Josh; he and I both know how many I purchased. I still have them all. But can I prove that I haven't sold them (or added to them) in the time since then? Not with a .csv file that anyone may have created or modified.

Unless that asset information comes directly from James, it is going to be difficult (but perhaps not impossible; at least in some cases) to prove who has what. A .csv file provided by the 'shareholder' is not proof of anything, I'm afraid.

Understand you want to avoid this also because it involves a lot of work.

But I think it would be wise to come up with decent plan and timetable to avoid problems with your shareholders.

I can see this waiting game is working out fine for you and Nefario, but you play with other peoples money.

What did your lawyer say ?

 >:(

I'm not convinced Josh is trying very hard

Yes, that would surely be welcomed by the shareholders ... It may be difficult to sort out the honest shareholders from false claims: if BFLS has issued 15k shares, and you get 20k shares worth of claims, there is a problem since 5k of those claims are fraudulent.

There may be a way to support (if not outright prove) at least some peoples' holdings: in my case, for example, I have withdrawn the entire weekly dividend payment from BFLS to the same wallet address. Those transactions are in the blockchain. If you take those payments, divide by the dividend/share award from BFLS during that week, you will get the # of shares I owned at that time. In my case, I have always had the same # of shares so that calculation will return the same number week to week ... up until the very last GLBSE payment before closure.

So I think anyone in a similar situation (withdraws full amount weekly to same address; share calculation returns same # each week) can reasonably demonstrate how many shares they owned. Not 'proof', to be sure, but that's the best I can come up with at the moment. What do you think of this idea?

That's a good idea Epoch!  I wonder how many people withdraw their full amount each week?  

Server:  I have actually been working quite a bit on an automated payment program for BFLS shares.  It is, for the most part, ready to go, I just need to get verified share information.  I have run a number of tests on it and it's been working fine through the built in bitcoind sendmany rpc call.  The only thing I need now is verified share data; I put that in the DB backing the program and everyone gets paid properly each week (I will probably increase that from weekly to every couple days actually, since it's all automated).

I have not been idle since GLBSE went down.

Inaba, for those shareholders who can support their claimed holdings through blockchain transactions to your satisfaction, would you consider re-starting dividend payments to them ... or do you think it would be better to wait?

Well, I would like to and I have no problem with it, but my one reservation is that if I start it for some and not for others, its' going to be some tough accounting to get everyone caught up if and when GLBSE does come through with the data or I institute a program without the GLBSE data.  I'm open to suggestions on how to handle that, though.

Ok, hearing some information from you is better than weeks of silence.

But why don't you use a lawyer to push Nefario out of his comfort zone ?

I think: use one week of mining revenue for a lawyer -> sue Nef -> result

Or just use the money to pay Nefario -> get data -> make shareholders happy :P

One week of mining revenue is less than $600 or so, if that.   Nefario is also in another country.  Basically, all the accumulated fund of BFLS right now would go towards paying a lawyer who may or may not be able to get anything done and even then, the money probably wouldn't be enough to actually get something done. 

$600? BFLS.RIG weekly div was over 1000 bitcoins..

And the second option, we pay him ?

Maybe we can set an example that other asset issuers will follow and Nefario will be rewarded for all his hard work.

I know we paid allready for the full glbse experience...but sometimes paying a little extra can make a big difference.

I don't want to take this too far off-topic, but it is Nefario who is not fulfilling his obligations to GLBSE shareholders and issuers. You are suggesting to pay him for something he is obliged to do anyway (morally, if not legally). Pay him to release something that is ours to begin with, that he is holding hostage for unknown reasons? The phrase 'we do not negotiate with terrorists' comes to mind here ...

James has not paid out all BTC owed to GLBSE users, and he has not published the asset list to the issuers. I hesitate to use the word 'criminal', but at the very least he is acting in bad faith.

So my view is that until he meets his outstanding obligations to GLBSE shareholders and issuers, paying out all BTC and publishing the asset list, I'm not inclined to pay him anything. Especially not with BFLS user funds that Inaba is holding for us.

If James comes clean in the next few weeks/months, everything will be fine. If not, the time for waiting will be over. Inaba mentioned that, as a last resort, he may have to look at the data he has on hand and figure out who has what and start payments again. I think it is too early for that step, but it may come to that.

We should continue to wait and see how the Nefario saga continues to unfold.

I still haven't gotten anything from GLBSE as far as assets go, hopefully soon.  I'm ready to get things rolling on this end as soon as I have that data. 

I am going to be converting BFLS shares into BFLS.RIG at 1:1, so everyone will in one payout bucket.  I will eventually be fully automating everything, so payouts will come more frequently than once a week, but in smaller amounts.

Just updating everyone.  As soon as I have the data from GLBSE, I'll let everyone know.

A single payout bucket is welcome but I have a concern about the proposed 1:1 conversion: as commented on earlier in this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1255003#msg1255003 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1255003#msg1255003)), a 1:1 conversion does not appear to represent fair value for BFLS shareholders. Unlike 'regular' mining bonds such as Gigamining, BFLS and BFLS.RIG represent a share of hardware, not hashrate, so:

BFLS (1 Single/200 shares): $600/200 = $3 per BFLS share
BFLS.RIG (1 MiniRig/6058 shares): $15295/6058) = $2.52 per BFLS.RIG share

This indicates that a BFLS share is worth more ($3/$2.52, or 1.19x) than a BFLS.RIG share. Put another way, 5098 BFLS shares ($15295) are worth the same as 6058 BFLS.RIG shares ($15295) which is the value of 1 MiniRig.

So to fairly convert the hardware value of BFLS into BFLS.RIG, 1 BFLS share should be converted to 1.19 BFLS.RIG shares. A 1:1 conversion would mean that BFLS shareholders take a 19% loss. If my analysis is flawed, I'd like to know where it fails.

Well, Inaba would like to be excused from having to do any math on the grounds that it's hard (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=124441.msg1338371#msg1338371).

The mistake here is assuming that a mini-rig is worth $15295.

At the time when the devices were bought, $15295 didn't get you a mini-rig. It got you a mini-rig to be delivered several months in the future. An actual mini-rig in your possession is hence worth much more than $15295.

At the same time $600 would get you a single within a few weeks. So a single is worth more than $600, but not by much.

Before there are ASIC upgrades, the 1:1 hashrate conversion makes sure that holders receive the same payments before and after the merger (as output is proportional to hashrate).

While the upgrade plan does not take this into account, the fact is that buyers of BFLS.RIG had to wait more before getting payments; this should be compensated by an increase in the credited value. The most natural objective measure by which to compare the two is the hashrate.

The only question remaining is how much of the new ASIC devices will a BFLS.RIG share get you.

Right, so one can argue that a better BFLS.RIG->ASIC conversion rate should be used. I don't know how cleanly Inaba's roles as BFLS issuer and BFL COO are separated, but it would make sense if the rate is determined by the ratio of devices he gets from upgrading the totality of BFLS-backing hardware to the number of outstanding BFLS.RIG shares after the merger.

Meni, I've always respected your analytical abilities and contributions to bitcoin (and continue to do so), but I'm not sure that argument applies here. What you describe happened in the past; it is not an accurate description of the current environment.

If I have 200 BFLS today, I can ask Inaba to convert them to a Single. He can do that immediately because he has the hardware. Similarly, I can ask Inaba to convert 6058 shares of BFLS.RIG (assuming I had them) into an actual MiniRig. Again, he can do that immediately with hardware in hand. There is the same amount of waiting involved in either case.

I understand that in the past there was more of a delay with the MiniRigs. But that was built-in to the market-driven bid/ask price of the shares. Today you can no longer order a MiniRig (or Single) from BFL according to their website so we can no longer use this as a comparison, but you can from Inaba if you have enough BFLS or BFLS.RIG shares.

You may recall that there was a BFLS.FUTURES issue created original just for this situation. If actual hardware was not yet in hand, people had to buy FUTURES. Once actual hardware was in hand, the FUTURES shares were converted into BFLS.RIG. But that is not the situation now; both devices are 'in hand' and thus their share value in terms of hardware cost can be directly compared.

One other point to realize is that any 'disadvantage' the early BFLS.RIG adopters had due to longer wait times, exponentially decays with time. In the long run, the difference approaches 0 and we again reach the point of directly comparing # of shares vs. hardware cost. And under that comparison, 1 BFLS share is worth 1.19 BFLS.RIG shares.

I won't belabour this argument; ultimately it is up to Inaba to decide how to convert the shares, and I'm ok with that. In my dealings with him he has always been open minded and fair, so I will respect whatever decision he makes. I just wanted to point out that the current worth of a BFLS share may not be as close to 1:1 as some may believe.

My main point is that due to these events that happened in the past, the current worth of a mini-rig is more than what its ticket price implies. It is still impossible to put down $15295 and get an instant minirig. If there was no ASICs or hardware advances, a minirig would sell in the aftermarket for much more than $15295. Thus you cannot argue that 6058 BFLS.RIG shares are worth only 25.492 times as much as 200 BFLS shares.

My argument is weakened by the existence of the upgrade plan, but I still claim that the most natural objective measure for the worth of such a share, which doesn't leave any party disadvantaged, is in proportion to hashrate.

BFLS.RIG owners will never get back the X BTC that the rig could have mined during the time of delay. Thus the manifestation of this loss and the speculative risks should remain until cashout. Denying them this right is a variation of Hershele's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershele_Ostropoler) "Rolls and Doughnuts" story.

FWIW, I have private arrangements with Inaba which should be unaffected by this, but hold roughly equal value in singles and mini-rigs.

Meni, this is the second time you mention hashrate in this conversation. I let it go the first time, but I think a clarification is in order.

Under the original contract terms of BFLS (which existed long before BFLS.RIG was even proposed), it was made clear that purchasers were buying shares of hardware, not hashrate. 1 share of BFLS represented exactly 1/200th of the cash value of a Single (that is, exactly $3). One could calculate that the hashrate of that share was 832/200 (4.16MHps), but that is irrelevant to the contract terms. The key point of BFLS, and what made it unique at the time, was that the shares could be converted to actual hardware at any time.

If I had enough BFLS shares, I could ask Inaba to convert them to a Single and ship it to me today. And I can get a $600 discount under BFL's upgrade program for an ASIC upgrade today. Which makes a BFLS share worth exactly $3 today ($600/200 = $3).

Similarly if I had enough BFLS.RIG shares, I could ask Inaba to ship convert them to a MiniRig and ship it to me today. And I can get a $15295 discount under BFL's upgrade program for an ASIC upgrade today. Which makes a BFLS.RIG share worth exactly $2.52 today ($15295/6058).

So if those $3 BFLS shares are now to be converted to BFLS.RIG, a BFLS shareholder would expect to get the same $3 worth of hardware for their BFLS share. Unfortunately, we know that 1 BFLS.RIG share is not worth $3; it is only worth $2.52. The Singles are on hand now, as are the MiniRigs. There is no 'delay' associated with a share conversion.

Meni loves math, only when it is in his favor.

I mentioned it completely intentionally.

It did not represent 1/200 of the cash value of a Single. It represented 1/200 of a Single. The two are not the same. If the value of a Single is >$600, the value of a BFLS share is >$3. Likewise, if for some reason the value of a single was now $50 (e.g., no upgrade plan with the advent of ASIC), the worth of a BFLS share would be $0.25.

Right. Now let's assume there were no ASICs, and FPGA BFL devices were sold out or only available with delays. A single would be worth, say, $700. A mini-rig would be worth about $21000. So if 200 BFLS shares can get you a Single, each is worth about $3.5. If 6058 BFLS.RIG shares can get you a mini-rig, each is worth $3.46. If Inaba were to merge the two, he should do it based on their worth, not based on some past ticket price.

Why do I think a mini-rig would be worth about $21000? Because both devices exist to generate hashes. What you can get out of a device is proportional to its hashrate, so what it would go for in the market is proportional to its hashrate - with some slight discount to the rigs, because the coarser granularity makes them less attractive for some customers (on the other hand, they are more power-efficient and much easier to deploy by big players).

And here is the crux, that ASICs are coming, there is an upgrade plan, and FPGA BFL devices are worth anything only inasmuch as they can be traded in. So their worth is whatever they can be traded in for. If these are the original ticket prices, there is a point in saying that this is their worth.

However, by offering trade-in values equal to original ticket price, BFL is unfairly disadvantaging mini-rig purchasers. And I think it would be good for Inaba to correct for this, making sure that BFLS.RIG buyers are not disadvantaged compared to BFLS purchasers. And again, the objective measure of worth (in absence of market data) is proportional to hashrate. One can argue that to make sure nobody receives less than the letter of the contract, Inaba should credit all of the merged shares at $3 per share (so BFLS owners are par and BFLS.RIG owners get a bonus).

You should also keep in mind that the upgrades aren't happening right now. There are still some dividends to be paid until then, which will on average be proportional to hashrate. By crediting BFLS.RIG owners at less than 1:1, they will get less dividends than the contract describes.

So I guess the simplest solution that is fair for everyone is to wait with the merger until the upgrades; credit $3 per BFLS share; credit as much as possible (typically between $2.52 and $3) per BFLS.RIG share.


As said I have no stake in this debate, and I assure you my love for math is unconditional.

Meni your detailed analysis and judgment of things you have no interest in, is very dubious to say the least. How is it going with your friend Armando?

If you do not trust my judgement, take my argument at face value. Ad hominem attacks aren't helpful, and neither is derailing this thread.

I have never referred to Alberto Armandi as a friend, let alone after what he's done to me and others. You can follow publicly available details of the case at the BDT bonds thread.

Actually, I'm fed up with people like you, which think that speaking all the time will cover their past actions. You and Armando stole 10000 BTC, and now you play angel. More then that, you still try to share your "knowledge". Maybe is time for you to step back a bit from the keyboard.

I lost about 2500 BTC and 100 hours of my time (and counting) in the context of the BDT bonds.

Ok. I have considered your suggestion, and rejected it.

Back on topic now.

Talk is cheap. How about proving your statements?

I think I can provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate this to a trusted 3rd party.

So why don't you do it? I think the people in the BDT thread will be very happy to see it. And then you can start a new ASIC mining bond  ;) with Inaba operating them for you.

Nobody asked. It's not a bad idea, I'll think about it.

Great, I will be around.

Regards.

You have no judgement. You fronted an operation that stole thousands of bitcoins. The way it works is that when you put your reputation on the line for someone and they do what bitscammer did then it damages your rep too.

Theres no mathematical formula for it its just the way things are.

Argh, there doesn't seem to be a way to make everyone happy.

I'm thinking maybe I should sell off the singles and payout the final payment on the singles for the sale price and then let people buy back in to RIG as appropriate.  That would fulfill the contract as stated and should satisfy people in a fair (if not ideal) manner.  What are the thoughts on this?

I was the IPO manager. I clarified from the start what was my exact involvement (which was fairly minimal) and that investors are the ones who are responsible for their investment decisions. I did not guarantee it or profess intimate knowledge of the issuer. Trying to make it sound like I am somehow responsible for it does not make it true. I prefer to be productive rather than wallow in the past.

The only reason this was even brought up here is that ciuciu was upset that I called him on his default of "guaranteed, low-risk bonds" (that is, exactly what Alberto did).

People make mistakes. The particular mistake of placing undeserved trust has been extremely common in this community. And making a mostly emotional error has little bearing on my ability to contribute intellectually in my areas of expertise. Yes, the errors I've made should be acknowledged, but not to the level of character assassination that you want to bring it.


This is all off topic for this thread.

An interesting idea, but it might be better to give BFLS shareholders the option of a 'buy-out' or 'conversion to RIG' instead of a forced buy-out of everyone.

The adoption rate of this will depend on the buy-back price for RIG. Depending on your point of view and assumptions, a fair buy back price for RIG would be anywhere ranging from $2.52 ($15295/6058) to $3.00 (the current value of a BFLS share). The closer the RIG buy-back price gets to $3, the fewer shareholders would choose to buy back in.

For those shareholders choosing not to buy back in, you are proposing they simply get a final payout from the liquidated Singles (which should fetch at least $600 apiece, or, in other words, at least $3 per BFLS share). That seems reasonable.

One way to handle this might be to offer shareholders a specific buy-back price for RIG. Those who do not accept simply get a final payout from the liquidated Singles. For those who accept, you simply convert their BFLS shares to RIG based on your offer. For example, if you offer $2.73 per RIG share, the conversion would be $3/$2.73 or 1:1.1 (1 BFLS share worth $3 becomes 1.1 RIG shares worth $2.73 per share).

Speaking as a BFLS shareholder, I would likely accept a 1:1.1 conversion; it represents the middle ground between the 1:1.19 ratio the share worth based on hardware value, and the 1:1 ratio based solely on hashrate. A 1:1.1 conversion would mean that I lose some hardware value, but gain some hashrate. A reasonable compromise.

Other BFLS shareholders may have other thoughts on this.

Im just saying that people are in la-la land if they think it should have zero effect, as you are claiming.
There should be repurcussions for lapses in judgement. Do you really believe youre going to be able to front another IPO ?

If you think so, you havent learnt a lesson.

I didn't say the effect should be zero. But it shouldn't be infinite as some people want.

You should be happy to know that I refused some offers to take an active role in IPO management and similar, in large part due to finding it inappropriate after the BDT case. (No big deal, they weren't very serious anyway.)

But to say that I am forbidden from managing an IPO forever and ever and ever is silly. If after a cooldown period an opportunity will present itself I will consider it. But investors should be extra careful not to take my role for more than what it is, and I will make even more effort to clarify what my role is (and of course usual stuff like much enhanced background checks, etc.)

I agree with an earlier observation of yours that the model of unrecognized people having their IPO managed by other people isn't working, so legitimate opportunities of this kind may not exist at all. But there could related opportunities.

No matter what happens, someone will be unhappy.  :-[


I'm okay with a 1:1 exchange as one share appears to be nearly identical in hashrate between the two. I do see the personal benefit illustrated by taking the unit cost per share as the source of a conversion rate, but for the simplicity of getting this done and behind us I'm content with 1:1.

I'd rather move over to RIG shares than take a buyout, but if the buyout is the only way to make the most people happy I'm okay with that route.

	Price	shares	hashrate		hash per share	price per share	price per hash
single	$599.00	200	832		4.1600	$3.00	$0.71995
minirig	$15,295.00	6058	25200		4.1598	$2.52	$0.60694
				Single:Minirig	1.0001	1.1863	1.1862
minisc	$29,899.00	12116	1500000		123.8032	$2.47	$0.02

It is nice to see other shareholders chiming in.

How about the middle ground proposed earlier: a 1:1.1 conversion; it represents the middle ground between the 1:1.19 ratio based on hardware value, and the 1:1 ratio based solely on hashrate. A 1:1.1 conversion would mean we give up some hardware value, but gain some hashrate. A compromise with some give-and-take from both sides.

Of course, each shareholder needs to make their own decision. Some may accept a 1:1 conversion. Others may not. Optimistically I'd like to see a 1:1.19 conversion because that is what it takes to convert a $3 BFLS share into the equivalent value of RIG. But I think this is an extreme case, and not overly fair (because it gives BFLS shareholders 20% extra hashrate) ... the same way I feel about a 1:1 conversion (which is at the other extreme, and also not particularly fair because it represents a 20% loss in hardware value).

Which is why I consider a 1:1.1 conversion (halfway between 1:1 and 1:1.19) to be a reasonable compromise for everyone. In other words 10 BFLS shares are converted to 11 RIG shares.

Takes these as just ideas, thoughts, and proposals to stimulate further discussion. Ultimately it is up to Inaba to decide how to handle BFLS. I'm pretty sure it will not be difficult to satisfy most (and perhaps all) of the shareholders.

1:1 rate is proper for running Singles with MiniRigs together and having one combined payout.
However, this rate is not good for hardware exchange or upgrading to SC,
because one will get higher final hashrate for Single upgraded to Single SC,
than for 200 BFLS.RIG shares when MiniRig is upgraded to MiniRig SC.

200 BFLS shares is equivalent to old Single = 599/1299 of Single SC = (599/1299)*60 GH/s = 27.66743649 GH/s

200 BFLS.RIG shares is equivalent to 200/6058 of old MiniRig = (200/6058)*(15295/29899) of MiniRig SC = (200/6058)*(15295/29899)*1500 GH/s = 25.33289388 GH/s

27.66... / 25.33... = 1.092... which  is close enough to 1.1 rate proposed by Epoch.
Until ASIC 2. :)

Inaba, do you really have to combine them?

I thought his intent was to ditch the singles entirely and move completely to minirigs and minirig SCs, not single SCs.

Yes, the intent is to do away with singles.  All of the current singles will be going towards upgrading to a minirig.  The singles are just too much to manage in quantity.

The 1:1.1 rate proposed by Epoch seems a fair middle ground, if it's ok with Inaba. :)

So my Single ordered in November 2011 and delivered in April 2012 is worth more than a single ordered in July 2012 and delivered in September 2012, just because I had wait longer to get it.... This means that Inaba has to take into account the delivery time on the singles and then set a different price for every single according to the delivery time it took to get them....

Somehow you can see that your argument is not quite right....

BTW same can be said for anything you pre-order.... my Call of Duty Black Ops II which I pre-ordered is not worth anything more than the ones people can buy directly from the store

I'll start with this because you've just proven my point. You pre-ordered CoDBO2, presumably for a discount. Let's say you paid for it $40, and now that's it out it costs $50. Is it worth $40 because you paid $40 for it? No, it it's worth $50 because that's what it trades for now (assuming friction-free exchangeability). You were willing to shell out $40 in advance in order to get something in the future which will then be worth $50.

This is not the direction of causality, but rather of deduction. It's not that the past delivery time causes the worth to be higher. It's that because of the delay, we deduce that its worth is higher. If people were willing to shell out $600 a month ago to get a single now, it must mean a single now is worth more than $600. Likewise for mini-rigs, and since the delay for them was higher, the implied worth is greater.

With mining devices, the revenue they generate over time must be properly understood when doing valuation calculations. You paid for your single earlier than most, but that doesn't cause it to be worth now more than other singles; you cashed out the benefit of your early investment with the mining output it generated over the time since receiving it. On the same note, if people are willing to pay $600 to get a single within 4 weeks, they'd be willing to pay much more to get a single now and have it generate income over these 4 weeks.

No it doesn't work that way.... pre-ordering something is usually done for the same price... even if you have to wait a long time... I paid exactly the same for my Black Ops II as someone who buys it in the store today.... Same goes for iPads, iPhones etc.... Sometimes you even pay more on pre-order than when it becomes readily available because of the exclusivity to have something first.

You can't deduct a higher value for a pre-ordered product just because you had a delay in delivery time. it doesn't make sense economically....

edit: Good luck Inaba on setting an exchange value that is agreeable for the majority ;)

It worked that way for every game I was interested in. (And usually opted not to pre-order, since the discount didn't justify the risk of buying before trying a demo.) Alternatively, bonus items are often given to preorderers, still making the eventual value of what you receive greater than what you paid.

Exclusivity is a bit more intangible and I don't presume to model the incentive structure of iPad preorderers. But I can certainly model the incentive structure of people who order mining devices. Excluding trade friction, a single available immediately will trade in the secondary market for more than what it costs to order a single to be delivered in a month; the difference will be roughly equal to the profit it can generate in this month.

I think the things that need to be considered is what was the original exchange rate that each party agreed to when purchasing the shares and the ratio should be calculated directly from that, any other factors would be almost purely imaginary in my opinion.

--Enzo

Meni, you're definitely wrong. There is a constant trade back price for a Single ($599) and a MiniRig ($15295) - until March 31th.

Yes. As I said BFL has chosen to trade in these devices at their original ticket price. This has nothing to do with what those devices would trade for in the secondary market if it weren't for these upgrade plans, which is what I was talking about in the last few posts. Nor does it have anything to do with the output generated from them until the upgrade.

I've already addressed all the moving parts here and have suggested a "fair for everyone" solution (keep it separate until the upgrade, upgrade each at the trade-in value).

I agree. That's fair.
Then merging BFLS into BFLS.RIG with neutral exchange ratio - based on ASIC hashrate (to keep the hashrate the same).

Or calculate the above and do it all in one step.

how are we proving owner ship of shares?

edit: I have been away from the forum due to work and I have no contact from anyone relating to GLBSE and my assets

The last BFLS payment was September 30 ... counting today we missed 9 payments. I'd like to see dividend payments resume as well. Nefario has given SOME asset information to SOME issuers around November 19-22 but hasn't released much else (if anything) since. So far we've been waiting for the release of BFLS and BFLS.RIG info but at some point we need to accept that it may not be forthcoming and move forward with other means determining ownership.

How long we wait before moving to 'Plan B' is ultimately up to Inaba, but one way or another we should resolve this situation soon; by now there may be over a thousand BTC waiting to be distributed to shareholders (I'm not sure how many total outstanding BFLS and BFLS.RIG shares there are, but the per-share dividend payment over the 9 missed payment cycles works out to around 0.075-0.08 BTC/share). I'm sure many of us could use that supplementary income right now during the holiday season.

For those asset holders who regularly withdrew their BFLS dividend payments from GLBSE, I suggested one way a 'proof of ownership' could be done: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1328310#msg1328310 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1328310#msg1328310). For some this would be a reasonable option. Not everyone would be in a position to do this, however.

I really had some high hopes that we were at the end of this. 

I have what I *think* is a fairly accurate list of share holders in the database and ready to go.  I haven't gone with that list because there's no way to reverse it if it turns out to be wrong. 

That said, the list I have is about 320 shares MORE than what I believe were issued, so there's a discrepancy somewhere and it's what's been keeping me from going with the list.  Someones numbers aren't right, but I have no idea who's they might be. 

Is this a list compiled from the information Nefario provided you, or has he still not released share holder information for BFLS, BFLS.RIG? 

Also, are there any threads that track which stocks' share holder information has been released?  So we can at least see what progress Nefario has made.

It's a list I've put together from what people have sent me.  Someone just sent me 500 more shares, so the total is about 800 shares more than I had tallied before GLBSE went down... /sigh

You can wait and compare with Nefario's list.
But I don't know if he is still that motivated...

"Nov 25 / 12:00pm - More lists coming out tomorrow (http://blog.glbse.com/)"

If 99% of the claims match the list of Nefario then it's obvious that 1% is trying to scam you.
But knowing this community it's probably 10% or more that is trying to scam.

It seems obvious to me that people not on Nef's list filing a claim have to come up with strong evidence.

I have lost my 2 Factor Authentication of my GLBSE account. Nearly 2 months have passed, Nefario has not have the time to removed the 2FA, so I have not been able to claimed my shares.

And Nefario stated on the GLBSE page that he will return most of the lists before he can deal with the users who cannot login. So it will very be very likely that I'm not on the initial list which (if) will be given.

If Inaba get the list, please reserve those shares which are unclaimed, and don't pay the dividend out. Maybe this will bring some complexity into your script, you have record which shares has been paid how much dividend.

Yes, an unfortunate and unnecessary complication for yourself and the legit shareholders. Are these ~800 bogus shares all from BFLS.RIG, or are some from BFLS as well?

Going back through the list, it may not be as bad as I thought... I forgot I had combined some BFLS and RIG shares into one account for a few people as a test.  I will go back through the list and separate them out again and reconfirm the amounts.

I'm getting pretty close to a solution folks, so there's some good news.  I should hopefully have something workable within a week and I can resume normal business.  I will be relieved to get this behind us and move forward... the new system will be a lot better, too, since it should be all but automatic with payouts several times a week.

Yes, Inaba. My 500 shares claim are combined BFLS and BFLS.rig. As I have seen these two shares the same one, and arbitrage between them frequently before GLBSE shutting down. So I don't really remember how many shares I have for each security.

Good news!  ;D ;D ;D

http://blog.glbse.com/asset-lists

Yep, I have the list... I need to get it correlated and then I will resume  operations.

well, i have shares for bfls and bfls.rig that i have not claimed too.


Edit

Ahah!

Great! Happy times are here again :)

When can we expect more information ?

I hope by this weekend if I get a chance to finish and correlate everything.

Here's my list of share holders.  If you see something off let me know, but this is what I have and without some evidence to the contrary I am reluctant to go against this list.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtKoE07Urp8_dHFpUFVlcDVpeWVGUmUwZFY4WXpHbHc

Please contact me with your full BTC address to confirm your shares and account, so I can correlate my database to this list.  I will mark your column green once you've confirmed your shares.

For BFLS, I will be paying out accumulated dividends as well as the buyout of the hardware.  Because of the controversy in conversion and to make things easier and to fulfill the original contract as stipulated, I am choosing to go this route.  

I will then offer some RIG shares, quantity and price are as yet undetermined.

are you going to contact share holders by their email to confirm their address?

Yes, I'll try to get to that later tonight.

There are 3507 BFLS shares and 3819 BFLS.RIG shares - it's only the part of all shares.

have you sent the email, inaba

Josh,

People were buying the BFLS shares, counting on the conversion to ASIC. There would be no much sense in buying or keeping the shares if there was no conversion promised. One would better put the money into Jalapeno/Single SC order.
The planned conversion to ASIC kept the shares value quite higher than the one calculated from the device USD price.

A several months had passed and we heard about another conversion: to BFLS.RIG.
The proposed rate (1:1) was not quite fair in light of the planned conversion to ASIC, because going to SC MiniRigs it would finally give us ~10% less GH/s (so less dividend values) than going to SC Singles.
We pointed that out and proposed more fair rate. It was 1:1.1 so every 10 BFLS shares would be changed to 11 BFLS.RIG shares. One single share would be changed to one share - the numbers are integer until Inaba starts using real numbers or split the shares tenfold (quite good solution).
But we also wrote we could live with the not-quite-fair 1:1 ratio.

What do we see today?

What does it mean? Do you want to pay 0.2 BTC or 0.7 BTC per share? Will the possibility to buy BFLS.RIG shares be guaranteed? Will the offer be closed or will other people have the possibility to buy the shares before us?
The price is yet undetermined so it may be worse or even way worse to what we would get with 1:1.1 or 1:1 ratio conversion. Are we supposed to take part in a race to buy the new shares?
Sorry Inaba, but it looks for me like the Nefario way of doing things - to make the things easier, you want to make troubles and lost income for the shareholders, finally causing yourself troubles, more work and lost reputation?

Why can't you simply keep to promised conversion to ASIC?
Do split each BFLS.RIG share to 10 new RIG shares and convert each BFLS share into 11 new RIG shares (it can be just 10 RIG shares until the real change of MiniRig/Singles to SC MiniRig, but it is of no importance because of diminishing dividends).

The reason is because of the continued controversy on how to fairly convert/merge the shares.  BFLS holders want 1:1.18, 1:1.1 or 1:1 while the BFLS.RIG holders don't see any of those solutions as fair.  None of the arguments are invalid and they all have merit, which is why it's hard to say "We will go this route and not this one."  None of the arguments are wrong.

When I wrote the "the singles will be converted to ASIC" it was before a lot of developments had happened in the mining community, not least of which the exact extent of the level of effort required to manage singles vs a minirig.  The singles would be upgraded to a minirig no matter what, so all BFLS shares would, by default, becomes RIG shares after the conversion, but you would end up with a much lesser rate than what's being proposed here (You would end up with 30 GH against 1.5 TH per single), as stipulated by the contract.  Some people are dead set against the 1:1 ratio is the problem.

With regards to the share price being "kept higher" than the one calculated from the device USD price, I'm not sure that's relevant here... looking at the list, most people purchased directly from me for the rough equivalent of the purchase price in USD of the hardware.  I know there was some trading going on, but the volume was almost non-existent, as most people held on to the shares.  Regardless of what may have happened on the exchange, the shares were never meant to be a trading stock and for all intents and purposes, I used GLBSE as a glorified excel spreadsheet to handle the distribution of the mined funds in a fast, easy manner.  From the volume, I think most people agreed with that.

I kind of take umbrage to the accusation that this is the "Nefario" way of doing things.  The contract, from day one, has always stipulated that the hardware can be sold (or traded in for 200 shares) and the proceeds would be distributed to the shareholders.  I am trying to find the least disruptive way of handling this within the scope of the contract.  I am NOT just throwing the contract out of the window and doing what I want to do... heck if I was doing that, I'd just say "Sorry, GLBSE is dead and this is too much hassle to deal with, ya'll are stuck." 

With regards to "quantity and price are as yet undetermined" - that is to say I don't know how much of the hardware I want to release to the public and how much I want to keep for myself.  Beyond that, the shares will be offered on a first come, first serve basis to anyone and will likely be offered in lots of 50 or so, since it would be exceptionally time consuming to  handle anything less... none of the share purchase/sale is automated, as I have no intentions or desires to make a full fledged exchange.  I would like to have a set of investors that want to share in the ASIC platform who don't want to invest in the hardware themselves or operate it, I don't want people trading shares back and forth trying to arbitrage or make a profit from the sale...  that was one of the problems I had when I sold shares initially - people wanted to buy in bulk for a discount and then resell them at a profit.  There's nothing wrong with this, it's just not something I want to be a part of. 

HorseRider: No, I haven't. I will get that sent out in the next hour.

Let me say this: I bought BFLS shares back in April with the intention of holding on to them long-term, for the continuous mining dividends. And I would like to continue. ASICs were not even on the table back then. The announcement of ASICs shook things up, but fortunately since BFL offered a full-value trade in program, the value of a BFLS share was guaranteed to be no less than $3 ($600/200). It still is, and will be up to March 1, 2013 (which is when the trade-in program officially ends).

It doesn't matter whether shares represent a Single or Minirig, so I'm not opposed to a conversion. In fact, I prefer it because it maintains the long-term mining dividends I originally invested for. But it is not unreasonable to expect that any conversion would strive to preserve value: in this case, preserving $3/share. We know that BFLS has an intrinsic value of $3.00/share; we know that BFLS.RIG has an intrinsic value of $2.52/share. And herein lies the problem with a 1:1 conversion: value is lost.

Some alternate conversions were tossed around and proposed: 1:1.18 represented true monetary conversion ($3 worth of BFLS because $3 worth of RIG); 1:1 represented true hashrate conversion (the hashrate of 1 BFLS is equal to the hashrate of 1 RIG). We've heard arguments from both extremes and eventually 1:1.1 seemed to emerge as a reasonable compromise between these two.

I am one of the people who maintained that the monetary conversion of 1:1.18 is the 'fair' one because a BFLS share has always represented a share of physical hardware, not a specific hashrate (unlike something like Gigamining, for example). But I also proposed the 'middle ground' value of 1:1.1 as a compromise.

So ... BFLS.RIG shareholders don't see any of these solutions as fair? To this I would ask why do BFLS.RIG shareholders have any say in this at all? Any proposed conversion of BFLS to BFLS.RIG is solely between BFLS holders and Inaba. RIG shareholders didn't issue BFLS shares ... Inaba did. Converting BFLS to RIG has no impact on existing RIG shareholders; their shares will continue to represent exactly 1/6058th of a Minirig, and generate exactly the same hashrate as before. What gives RIG shareholders the right to influence these proposals at all? Or have I missed something?

A forced buyout falls under the original contract terms, so I cannot and will not argue against it. I will say that, personally (and I suspect many others here), I would prefer to a remain a shareholder and have my BFLS shares converted to RIG. I would accept a 1:1.1 conversion. And, again, Inaba must be the sole judge in determining what is fair.

What I don't want to see is RIG shareholders dictating how BFLS is treated; with BFLS shareholders being treated as 'second class citizens'. The reality is that BFLS was around long before RIG. BFLS shareholders were the early adopters, those first excited by Josh's idea of offering shares of mining hardware. Those first believing in it and, for the most part, wanting and hoping to stay long-term. BFLS should not get the 'short end of the stick' here. A 1:1.1 conversion would work. Most would be happy with that. The ones that aren't can accept a buyout.

Ok, email has been sent to all people listed.

The original contract stated:
Mining is still profitable, operator is able to perform his duties, so it is only a matter of his willingness.
I find it quite unfair to close it all just before period of high income after conversion to ASIC.

It is similar to taking people to a journey and, just before changing from train to a plane, ordering them to get out and stop traveling because they are not happy with rates of currency conversion.

I dont understand why RIG shareholders have any say over what BFLS shareholders get as a conversion.

Can you make a decision or do we have to vote over this subject ?

I think everyone is in agreement that the fair conversion lies somewhere between the two extremes of 1:1.19 and 1:1. There have been no comments suggesting otherwise. Clearly the fair conversion rate is within this 20% variance.

FWIW, my suggestion to Inaba, then, is to choose the middle ground of 1:1.1 for those who wish to continue mining, and buyout those who do not. An email could be sent to each BFLS shareholder asking to confirm whether they want their shares converted or bought out. Set a time limit to respond; perhaps a week. Those who do not respond get bought out by default.

In either case, all Singles will be sold and there will be some extra RIG shares available due to people choosing to be bought out. Inaba can either keep these for himself (as he has stated he might want to do), or offer some portion for sale.

I am going to maintain a separate database for the two share types and just work off the current paradigm.  It is going to make things more complicated from a coding perspective but it is what it is and I don't want to end up creating more controversy.  I think once I get all the code in place, though, it will be fine so long as I don't have to maintain it regularly and I shouldn't. 

There's one more non-trivial shareholder that hasn't checked in.  As soon as they check in, I will email everyone and if you want to change your BTC deposit address, that's the time to send me your new address.

After that, I will send out a bulk payment for back dividends and resume normal payment schedules (which will likely be increased to more than once a week).

HMMM so it wasn't BFL that i got payment from yesterday

trying to figure out what these btc are for now... wish there would have been separate addresses per listing on glbse not one for all is going to make this all tough to keep track of

Maybe check here?  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49166.380

I had holdings in a bunch of things and they seem to be the first to have actually paid me back something.

Ok, I see everyone checked in (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtKoE07Urp8_dHFpUFVlcDVpeWVGUmUwZFY4WXpHbHc#gid=0) except a few small accounts.

Can we proceed ? ::)

Ok folks, there's a few hold outs and they are going to be out of luck, since we can't wait forever.  If you want to change your bitcoin address, send me the following:

Email address  Old Address New address

I am going to populate everyone in the database and start payouts either this weekend or next week.

You should probably just pay the people that didn't respond at the btc address that Nefario gave you.

I had some shares of BFL.RIG (about 11 i think) and BFL (the FPGA ones. About 20 to 30 i think) to. What do i need to proof that i own them?

go to claim on GLBSE and ask Nefario to send Inaba a confirm email.

Sadly my 2FA broke ... and GLBSE wont help me recover it. So i don't have access to my Asset list :/

nefario has clearly stated that? then you should work with Nefario first.

No he has not stated that ... He just went totally radio silent....
Had wrote him a mal with that request.
He wanted me to send BTC to my account to prove that it belongs to me (proof adress)
I did so, but since then there were zero communication attempts from him.

2fa is still in place.

But that's unabashed thread here. Not his fault!


My asset list is out there... I know that because I was contacted by ABM yesterday that I can claim my assets on bitfunder...

Yes, about two weeks ago Nefario started to work again and helped users who cannot log in to recover their assets. I was one of them, and I think you're too.

Regular payouts will resume on Sunday for everyone.  I will get the back payment caught up prior to Sunday's payout. 

Once I'm confident the payout is working properly, I will be setting it up to auto pay out every few days based on the accumulated earnings.

For those of you wanting to buy more shares, I will be selling them in blocks of 50 for .5 BTC each, in a limited quantity on a first come first served basis.  If you want to bid more than .5 BTC, then you will take priority over other who have a lower bid.

Epoch - How did you come up with the .075 - .08 BTC/share figure?  My numbers are coming up to approximately .045 per share or so.  When I run the payment processor the numbers add up and the grand total for the past ~11 weeks comes out to about .045 per share.  Did you double something somewhere in your calculations or am I missing something? 

Give me a bit of time to condense my spreadsheet info. I'll post again shortly ...

Thanks Inaba, Epoch. 
Only because everyone will post to ask, when will bidding/selling of the new shares begin and what is the appropriate medium to place our bids?

Best to email me (admin@eclipsemc.com) and you can start now.

With Epochs' help, I found a bug in the payout script.  Approximate pay per share is .086 BTC per share for the past 11 weeks.  Thanks Epoch!

I will be running a few more tests and then I'll send out the bulk payout.  After that, you guys can expect normal payouts thereafter.

Everyone who's sent me address changes have been changed.

I just sent out a test payment to everyone on the list.  If you didn't receive a very small token amount transaction, let me know.

Glad to help! This Sunday will bring that up to 12 weeks and will add another 0.00428275 BTC (roughly) to that ... so we all can expect around 0.09 BTC/share. A nice treat, thanks to Inaba.

Received the test payment of 0.00001646 BTC. 
Thanks! :)

Epoch, would you please still put up the spreadsheet?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ApYaV5Jgx7Z1dFJhTXp1c1hmd3ZBNm55ZGhTeUszWEE&output=html (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ApYaV5Jgx7Z1dFJhTXp1c1hmd3ZBNm55ZGhTeUszWEE&output=html)

These are (conservative) estimates, not actuals. Luck and variance will play a part, and how much (if any) of the hashpower was leased at >100% PPS. I think Inaba's numbers match reasonably well.

I just sent out another test payment.  There was a bug for people with the same wallets and both RIG and BFLS shares (actually it's a "feature" of bitcoind) ... but anyway, it should be working now, and everyone should see token payments to the proper addresses now.

Thanks, I received 2 small payments at the address for BLFS.

Did you pay both BLFS & BLFS.RIG ?

Because I mailed you 2 separate addresses.

[edit]
remailed
[/edit]

Send them to me a again then, I must have missed them.

Back payment for all shares have been sent out.  The few outstanding (totaling less than 100 shares across both BFLS and RIG) shares will be bought out directly.

Going forward, payouts will happen regularly and automatically based on earnings when the total in the account exceeds 100 BTC (so every few days most likely).  This week has been exceptionally crappy in terms of luck (view it on EMCs Block Stats page), so what a good week to start auto payouts on (That's sarcasm if you can't tell).  Payout on Sunday will be manually done, and then automatic going forward after that.

Let me know of any problems.

Thank you, Inaba. I got the payment, it is 0.08643581/share, if we add the previous 2 token payments.

Thanks Inaba, everything correct over here also! ;D

Payments received, I'm happy, thanks. :)

Sunday payment went out and the script appears to be working... so when the balance in the account reaches 100 BTC, it will trigger a payout.  I'm going to manually run it this week every few days to make sure it's doing what it's suppose to, then I will set it to do it on it's own assuming all goes well.

I've received some questions and such about purchasing additional BFLS shares.

To make it somewhat fair, I will just take offers on additional shares.

Just send me your offer for however many shares you want to purchase.  I don't really want to get into a situation where I'm dealing out small quantities of shares though since it incurs quite an overhead in time and effort to get it setup... but I will entertain any offer.

Got the payment, thanks very much Inaba!

Regarding purchasing more shares, whats the ballpark current price per share so we can make fair offers?

Payment just went out... had a little bug in the script that wasn't letting it send and got it fixed.  I'll do one more manual iteration and then I'll automate it.  I'm actually pretty excited about it! :)  It will make things so much easier on me and more predictable for everyone else!

I've got a payment, thanks. It is one transaction with multiple outputs (the proper tool for the payments).
It looks like 0.00101545 BTC per share and my shares count is OK.
I think that the earlier amounts will be complemented soon.

How much was sent out in total? If it was around 100BTC and the payment was 0.001/share, it would mean there are around 100,000 shares outstanding. Is this right? That's the equivalent of about 16 mini rigs.

Output was 105.26389291: http://blockchain.info/tx/c8fc47b8ec6c323a885b6ef2b1846889a80c7b3fb786199f5aa8dc55d37c636a

So, somewhere in the area of 103600.

Second payment has gone out.  Things look good ... I just set it to automatic, so it should check every hour and when the balance goes over 100 BTC, it will trigger a payout.

Yes, there is just under 100,000 shares outstanding.  Keep in mind, most of those minirigs are hosted minirigs, not BFLS rigs.

I have some shares for sale, and the price is 0.498BTC/share. and anyone who bought 50 shares at once will have another 1% discount. The Chinese New Year is a traditional point for clearing the debt and giving Lucky money to children. I am quite in need of cash now.

The sale of the shares should be conduct through the PM system of the forum, and the record of the PM will be held as evidence before all transactions are closed.

To reduce the burden of Inaba, I will first record and public the transaction in this post. I will pay the dividend accordingly in this selling period. And after most of shares are sold out, I will deliver the shareholder list to Inaba, and Inaba can update his script at once.

Just PM me your number of shares to buy, email and bitcoin address. (Which I will give to Inaba.) First come first serve.

Umm yeah, that's not exactly how that works.  I'm not going to being facilitating the buying and selling of shares.  That is far, far too much work and liability.

How do I get rid off those shares then?
Will you buy them back Inaba?

Inaba, is the payout threshold still set to 100BTC? If so, it hasn't triggered (we're above 200BTC).

I haven't heard any feedback about the 100 BTC threshold from other shareholders ... is it too often? Not often enough? I got used to the weekly payments under GLBSE but if a more frequent payment is preferred, that is fine as well.

Hmm... Bitcoind is throwing an error when I try to do the sendmany.  Thanks for pointing it out, I will look into it now and get it fixed.

*EDIT* -  Fixed now, payment just went out.  It should work going forward.

I'm open to a different threshold for payment, I just picked 100 BTC arbitrarily, since that should average around once a day or so... but if people would rather have larger payments more infrequently, I'm fine with that as well.

I'd say leave it as-is at 100BTC; no need to put in more work than necessary. The benefit of frequent payments is that if something breaks, it doesn't take long for someone to notice.

Yeah, the 100 BTC threshold seems a good choice, averaging for daily payments.

With BFL ASICs shipping soon (mid-February as per the current BFL timeline), BFLS equipment should be receiving an ASIC upgrade hopefully not long after. I'd like to clarify what this means for current BFLS and BFLS.RIG shareholders and open some discussion.

My understanding is that ASIC trade-ins for BFLS hardware has already been ordered and paid for. Once the upgrades begin, here are my thoughts on a reasonable way to proceed. By this I mean that share value is preserved throughout the ASIC upgrade process. Consider:

For BFLS (Singles):
- currently 1 Single represents 200 shares and is worth $599. 832Mhps per Single.
- 1 BFLS share is thus worth $3.00 and corresponds to 4.16Mhps.
- a Single SC upgrade costs $699 yielding 60,000 Mhps.
- Inaba would assign 433 shares total for each SC Single: 200 shares (the original $599) would stay with the current owners. The additional 233 shares (the $699 upgrade cost) would be assigned to Inaba.
- each BFLS SC (Single) share would still be worth $3.00 as before ($3 x 433 shares is $1299, the full price of a Single SC); shareholders would not lose (or gain) any value.
- each BFLS SC share would produce 138.4Mhps (60000 / 433 shares).

For BFLS.RIG (MiniRig):
- currently 1 MiniRig represents 6058 shares and is worth $15295. 26400Mhps per MiniRig.
- 1 BFLS.RIG share is thus worth $2.52 and corresponds to 4.4Mhps.
- a MiniRig SC upgrade costs $14604 yielding 1,500,000 Mhps.
- Inaba would assign 11842 total shares for each SC MiniRig: 6058 shares (the original $15295) would stay with the current owners. The additional 5784 shares (the $14604 upgrade cost) would be assigned to Inaba.
- each BFLS.RIG SC share would still be worth $2.52 as before ($2.52 x 11842 shares is $29899, the full price of a MiniRig SC); shareholders would not lose (or gain) any value.
- each BFLS.RIG SC share would produce 126.6Mhps (1500000 / 11842 shares).

Notice that after the ASIC upgrade, a BFLS share will have 1.1x the hashrate of a BFLS.RIG share (right now BFLS.RIG has the advantage in hashrate).

If we still want to combine BFLS and BFLS.RIG shares into one pot after the ASIC upgrade (I think we do, if for no other reason than to simplify the logistics), the above analysis supports a 1:1.1 conversion. That is, 1 BFLS share becomes 1.1 BFLS.RIG shares.

To be fair to BFLS.RIG shareholders, and as suggested by previous commentors, any conversion should wait for the ASIC upgrades to begin so that BFLS.RIG owners can enjoy the higher hashrate/share they currently get.

Inaba, what do you think? I suspect you've already put some thought into this issue and may already have your own plans, but I'm throwing this out here for discussion. Anyone else see this as a reasonable (or unreasonable) approach?

You've summed it up nicely Epoch, thanks. 

At this point, I'm not sure I see a need to specifically combine the shares since the code is in and the share type is separate in the DB it's largely academic.  Although I will likely be upgrading all of the singles to a minirig and paying the difference just for the sake of simplicity in management. If someone were to want to actually trade in shares for a single, it might become an issue which is my only concern at this point.

Inaba, when you get a chance can you check on the status of the payout script?

I'm not sure what exactly triggers a payout once we accumulate 100BTC, but we've been at 109 for 47+ blocks ... since then several Eclipse blocks have been confirmed (beyond 120 confirmation) and paid out; and the pool has found new blocks during that period as well.  There were some anomalies with the stats displayed on the Eclipse website for the past few hours (these seem to have been fixed), which may or may not be related.

I can't think of anything else that the script might be waiting for so perhaps it is stuck. Not a big deal, but I thought I'd bring it up in case people are expecting a payment.

Payout script is disabled at the moment. I will have it running again tonight.  I was diagnosing some latency issues with a couple of the boxes, one of them being the BFLS box.  The latest payout should come tonight once I get a chance to sit down and re-enable it. 

Is there any chance that you got a list of shareholders from nefario?

I can't access glbse (its  gone), i don't have a list (my error i know) but i know that there must be a list out there since i was contacted by many other companies to claim my shares on several platforms!

I didn't here from you?

I sent out several emails, made a Google Doc and made a number of posts in these threads during the claims process over the course of a couple months.  Feel free to read back in this and the BFLS  threads to follow the course of events.  All but a handful of shares were accounted for.

Ok I'll go through the thread and look for it.

It can't be much shares. 10 for RIG and 20 to 30 for BFLS.(or less I don't know for sure). Maybe I do have a log somewhere.... I'll search for it!

I've been meaning to write this when the BFL ASICs started shipping, but it probably doesn't hurt to get the ball rolling on this a bit earlier. I may be opening a can of worms, though; we'll see.

Inaba, I have initial questions about the existing hardware and how it maps to outstanding BFLS and BFLS.RIG shares:

1. are all (or at least a large majority of) BFLS shares backed by Singles?
2. are all (or at least a large majority of) BFLS.RIG shares backed by MiniRigs?

Whether they are or not is not that important right now (unless someone wanted to convert their shares to hardware, I suppose), but it may become important with the conversion to ASIC. Which brings me to another set of questions:

3. can you share some details of your current plan in converting the existing BFLS and RIG hardware to SC ASIC? Specifically (but not limited to):
3a. is it your intention to convert ALL existing FPGA hardware?
3b. have the upgrade orders been placed with BFL yet?
3c. are any of these orders likely to be part of the 'first batch' shipment from BFL?
3d. what is the (best guess) expected rollout schedule once ASIC shipments start and conversion begins?

And regarding BFLS and RIG share conversion:

4. will share conversion happen along the lines I've outlined here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1455088#msg1455088 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1455088#msg1455088)
4a. will BFLS and RIG shares be combined at this point, or still kept separate? Currently the hashrates of a BFLS and RIG share are essentially identical (1.5% advantage to RIG) but after conversion an 'SC BFLS' will have 10% more hashrate than an 'SC RIG' share. This may be an opportunity to combine the two into one pot using a 1:1.1 ratio as discussed earlier.

The reason I ask is that I've been using the blockchain to track BFLS(.RIG) dividend payments in detail since the end of December. This has been straightforward because the hardware is all FPGAs and both BFLS and RIG shares hash at approximately the same rate.

But that will no longer be case once ASICs start replacing them, so I'd like to get a sense of the hardware breakdown to be able to calculate the expected dividend payments. There will be a transition period until all FPGAs are replaced; I'm not too worried about tracking that. I'm more interested in what the final hardware will be and how it will map to 'SC BFLS' and 'SC RIG' shares. Or if the two share types will be combined going forward.

A lot of questions in here, and not the type to be answered easily or quickly; I apologize for that. But I'll thank you in advance for any clarification you can provide.

A bit of both in a fairly even distribution.


Yes, I intend to convert it all into minirigs at some point.


Yes they have.


Some of them are, not all of them.  The number that will be in the "first batch" is kind of up in the air at the moment, given the current disposition of our first batch.  Since we have a limited number of available chips for the first batch, I will not, in good conscience, be taking a large swath of them.


I don't currently have one, and will be doing this based on what's available and trying to serve the customers of BFL fairly.

And regarding BFLS and RIG share conversion:


Shares will remain exactly as they are now.  Any new shares purchased going forward (if any) will be RIG shares.

Does this mean that if a person has 200 BFLS shares today, they would have 200 shares of 'BFLSSC' (or whatever it will be called) when the conversion to ASIC is done?

(For reference I'm using this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1455088#msg1455088 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1455088#msg1455088))

i.e. a 200-share FPGA Single is converted to a 433-share SC Single (200/433 is the $600/$1300 price ratio). That is, the conversion would distribute 200 shares to the current shareholders and 233 shares to Inaba.

That's the current plan, yes.

Sounds good, thanks.

FYI: BFLS payout seems to be stuck.

Crap, you're right.  I'll get that fixed tonight.  I forgot that when i moved the EMC server, I had bitcoind that the payout script talks to talking only to the EMC bitcoind.  I will rectify that tonight and get it started again and point it at more than one Bitcoind this time.

I noticed on the butterflylabs.com forums that you mentioned you had 4 minirigs and 40+ Singles on order. Assuming those are 'upgrade' orders for BFLS, they represent roughly 4x6058 + 40x200 (= 32000) existing BFLS and RIG shares. And since you confirmed that all BFLS upgrade orders have been placed, I also assume that this represents *at least* all of the outstanding BFLS shares (I'd like to be corrected if my assumptions are wrong).

Now, I don't know the total # of existing BFLS and RIG shares, but based on Sunday's payout of 158.8 BTC at a dividend of 0.0016 BTC/share, that works out to roughly 97500 shares being paid ... which is much more than the 32000. So payout is going to non-BFLS shareholders from this common pool as well, which is fine. A common pool for BFLS and non-BFLS is reasonable as long as all hardware is the same (i.e. FPGA minirigs and singles. Or ASIC minirigs and singles).

But ... I'd like to point out that once BFLS ASIC upgrades begin, you may want to remove the 'non-BFLS shareholders' from the common payout pool. My thinking is that if they do not upgrade (at the same time as you) and remain in the payout pool, they will a) get a higher payout due to ASIC hardware they do not own; and b) BFLS shareholders' dividends will be correspondingly (and unfairly) diminished.

(The above is based on the assumption that new shares would be issued based on https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1455088#msg1455088 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1455088#msg1455088)).

Of course, once the non-BFLS shareholders upgrade their own gear to ASIC, they can be brought in to the common BFLS pool once again.

Since the end of December (when regular payments resumed after the GLBSE fiasco) I've been tracking the performance of BFLS.RIG. That is, actual dividends/share vs. expected dividends/share. For those interested in the details, I've put together a basic spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApYaV5Jgx7Z1dFNONFZXdVQ2dEhVWHJub0FXRjVxNkE&usp=sharing (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApYaV5Jgx7Z1dFNONFZXdVQ2dEhVWHJub0FXRjVxNkE&usp=sharing)

To summarize, over the past 4 months it appears that BFLS.RIG is underperforming by about 9%. This is a long period, so random pool variance should be a non-issue. The discrepancy can be caused by a number of things: either my assumptions are incorrect, or there are more shares in existence than there should be. Here's a summary chart:

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

Assumptions:

nominal hashrate of minirig: 24320 Ghps (specced as 25600, but I'm assuming 5% 'overhead')
shares/minirig: 6058

Payouts can be tracked on the public blockchain by filtering for the BFLS.RIG payout address: 1FZkF2T8JmSYFPv9oUJYfqZnaJEtSoJ3Z6

Several of the outputs are obviously minirigs:

1qH6zqtR4pKuZSQHeAFsyhXm5F9KWDemw
1MichaiLHNbRqWbUueLAybqU4yJ74wqyaV
1NoN4hfM5ib7h84iqULf19XcYngxpigZay (2 minirigs here)
1LubzcqSPEcYbVBDghjpuVWuv38XtWUhVc (another 2)
19ReAQrjmRUbg7o2y37ApcXJ56ccooHK2X
113zpYnErj3TocLbt8edH8eMCSwTZ7rc4y

From any one of the above addresses we can directly calculate the actual dividends/share paid by BFLS.RIG and compare them with the expected payout (based on assumed minirig hashrate and network difficulty) during the period of time since the previous payout.

The results are that we are converging to being 9% 'under' expectations. I'm not sure what the reason for this is, or if there is cause for concern; if a minirig averaged only 22000 Ghps then we'd be dead-on ... could that be a more reasonable assumption (I don't have one to compare)? If anyone has experience with a minirig I'd like to hear what kind of average hashrate can be expected.

Lots of the rigs have cards go inactive fairly often.  I reset them when I notice them, but it's fairly difficult to manage so many damned cards.  9% seems a little high, I will have to take a look at the most problem units and see how often and how many cards go down.  Normally I would pull the unit and replace it, but I kept thinking "We are replacing it with ASICs next week, it would be silly to pull it down and have it not mining for a day or two."

We all know how that worked out so far... /sigh 

The good news is, the ASICs are rock @#$@ solid so far and very heat tolerant, so once the units are replaced with ASICs that problem should go away.  I will look further into it to be sure something else isn't amiss though. 

If anyone wants to cash in shares for a physical unit, please do!

Overall, I would say the average for a Minirig is closer to 23 - 23.5 GH/s not 25, on average.  Some overperform, but most are underperforming on average due to cards going flakey.

The payout script may need a kick ...  ;)

Kicked... payments should go out normally.

Something changes? The last payment was initiated earlier than usually.
The first SC device has come or is coming?

Yeah, I split payment to 50 BTC instead of 100 BTC to increase frequency.  Meant to make a post on that but forgot.

As a side note, I'd appreciate everyone who's involved with this clicking on my Trust link and providing feedback with your experience.

My trust link is just under my picture on the left here.

Ok folks... we are at a critical juncture here and I'm looking for input on how to move forward.

I am not able to host all the singles, given the new power requirements.  I would have to split it into separate DC's and even if I were to keep them in the current locations, the increased power cost far exceeds the 10% held back on the units. In short, I simply can't operate this number of singles even at break even on my part.

Obviously, this is an untenable situation for me.  I'm considering invoking the original clause:


I am obviously not willing to operate at a continual loss.  If anyone has suggestions on moving forward, I'm open to them.

Please do not invoke that clause after sooooooo many months of waiting! :(

The only solution I'm seeing at the moment is you withholding more % to account for the increased power costs? I'm ok with that, as you can't operate at a loss.

I'm not sure how that is possible, except to forcibly remove shares from people.  I'd imagine that won't go over so well.

Contracts. Made to be breached.

I have an alternative suggestion to liquidation. As you say, you cannot afford to host a 1:1 upgrade to the SC hardware.

Let's say you are currently hosting 25kW worth of FPGA equipment. You could swap it out for 25kW worth of SC equipment. That way your power costs stay as they are now, but hashrate goes up. Similar to what I proposed earlier in this thread, shares could be converted like this:

Taking BFLS (Singles) as an example:
- currently 1 FPGA Single represents 200 shares and is worth $600 ($3/share).
- a Single SC upgrade cost $700 for a 60Ghps unit (I believe 60Ghps units have been ordered, not 50Ghps, and for the original upgrade cost of $700 not $1900 as it became after the recent price jump).
- 1 FPGA Single uses 80W.
- 1 SC Single uses 300W (a guess for now)
- thus for the same 80W you can host 0.267 SC Singles (or 0.267 x 60ghps, or 16Ghps)
- the cost of 0.267 SC Single Upgrade is 0.267 x $700 or $187. Or 62 BFLS shares (a BFLS share represents $600/200 or $3).
- thus upgrading 1 FPGA Single (80W) to 80W worth of SC equipment would be $187 and gives you 0.267 SC Singles.
- this means Inaba would create/assign 62 new shares to himself for every 200 BFLS shares currently in existence; current BFLS owners would keep whatever amounts they now have.
- tl;dr: after this conversion, 262 shares will represent 1 FPGA Single converted to 0.267 SC Singles (16Ghps, 80W). This is a hashrate of 61Mhps per share.

If we go this route, power requirements stay exactly as they are now but we all gain a hashrate increase from ~3.75Mhps (now) to 61Mhps per share. Hosting costs (i.e. power) remain the same as they are now. With less physical units (1 SC replaces 5 FPGAs), maintaining them should be less work as well.

So, at least for the time being, I would like to think that most of us would prefer to go this route (i.e. convert 80W worth of FPGA to 80W worth of SC) instead of liquidating what we have now. It gives shareholders a 16x hashrate increase, represents no additional cost for datacenter hosting, and less maintenance for the operator. Later, depending on circumstances, we can consider liquidating the SC hardware.

Thoughts?

Hmm, that idea could certainly work.  Let me give that some thought, but off the cuff I like it.

I also agree to what Epoch suggested. This seems like a good solution, indexing share #'s to power consumption (system input), as miners are really just W to H/s converters.

It also allows you the possibility to later trade the singles for more power-efficient hardware, while staying within the same total power envelope (more hardware in this case). :)

I've ran the calculations for both BFLS and RIG, based on an upgrade to SC holding to an identical power envelope.

For BFLS:

FPGA Single   
power: 80 watts
cost:   $600.00   
shares: 200 per Single
cost/share:   $3.00   
      
SC Single      
hashrate: 60000   Mhps nominal
power: 300 watts (a guess for now)
upgrade cost: $700.00   
Amount of SC Singles for same power as FPGA:   0.267   
upgrade cost from 80W FGPA to 80W SC: $186.67   
extra shares created per FPGA Single to SC upgrade:   62 (assigned to Inaba)
hashrate/share after upgrade: 61.0 Mhps

For BFLS.RIG:

FPGA Minirig:
power: 1250 watts (a guess)
cost:   $15295
shares: 6058 per minirig
cost/share:   $2.52   
      
SC Minirig:    (this is the original 1.5Thps unit; I can re-run these for the 500Ghps unit if it makes more sense)   
hashrate: 1500000 Mhps nominal
power: 7500 watts
upgrade cost: $14705 (a guess; does anyone remember the original number?)
Amount of SC minirigs for same power as FPGA:   0.167   
upgrade cost from 1250W FGPA to 1250W SC: $2450.83
extra shares created per FPGA minirig to SC upgrade:   970 (assigned to Inaba)
hashrate/share after upgrade: 35.57 Mhps

It is worth mentioning that, after the upgrade to SC, the hashrate of a BFLS share will significantly exceed that of a BFLS.RIG share (by 71%). If anyone can contribute more accurate numbers let me know and I'll update these.

UPDATE 1: edited for 7500W minirig SC (1.5Thps)

300w estimate on the Singles is a good estimate.  The minirig will be 500 GH/s +/- 10% for about 2500w or so, or 7500w for 1.5 TH/s.

Yes, that makes sense (5W per gigahash/s). I've updated my post using 7500W per 1.5Thps for the minirig SC. Looks like people holding BFLS will be in a much better position than BFLS.RIG holders (61Mhps/share vs 35Mhps/share respectively) ... which is why it remains important to keep the 2 share groups distinct.

(the reason for this large difference is that the FPGA Singles use about double the power per gigahash than the FPGA minirig boards. Thus they can be converted to a lot more SC hardware while keeping within the same power envelope).

Guys, I still think there's something we're missing? Aren't we seeing the problem in reverse?  :P

For example, an FPGA single has ~10.40 MH/s/W, FPGA Mini-Rig ~18.80MH/s/W while a Single SC has ~200.00 MH/s/W. I did the following estimates (http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/) using current diff=15,605,633, $/BTC=100.56 and $/kWh=0.15 and a monthly time frame.

http://i42.tinypic.com/344s5tf.png

The FPGA single has currently a ~10.9% power cost overhead, the FPGA mini-rig ~6% and the SC single will have a ~0.57% power cost overhead.

(Updated above post with FPGA mini-rig values)


For a Single SC (60GH/s@300W) to have a ~10% overhead in power costs, the difficulty has to be around 275 million ($32.87 power cost/month at $0.15/kWh vs. $329.03/month revenue @ $100.56/BTC). Assuming $/BTC goes up, the power costs in $ go down proportionately.

Looks like gigavps has an SC minirig hashing already:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=237710.msg2514804#msg2514804 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=237710.msg2514804#msg2514804)

Any ETA of when BFLS will start getting SC equipment?

I missed the posts from last week, so I can answer only now.

Inaba, you worries unnecessarily. You should simply order/allocate more power for each coming new SC device. 10% of the increased revenue will easily cover the new costs. Vbs has proved it.

Each 200 BFLS shares were entitled to 200/440 of the 60 GH/s after upgrading to Single SC.
At the beginning you intended to replace each one Single to one Single SC (for ease of calculations lets forget for a moment about conversion to Minirigs).
It would give for your disposal additional 240/440 of the power. I think you should keep to that.

The alternative is to use lesser number of Singles SC, eg. half of them - replacing each two old Singles with one Single SC.
Each 400 BFLS shares would be then entitled to 400/440 of the Single SC hashing power, and you would get 40/440 of it.

With Minirigs you should proceed similarly.

The important point is to keep the level of hashing power per share equal to what was promised to be after upgrading. The price of the shares was driven by this expectancy.

RHA makes some good points ...

Following RHA, my proposition to keep power costs at a minimum would be to trade only the "necessary" singles. Inaba told me he has almost 40 fpga singles atm, so that's around 3200W.

If he were to "upgrade" all the 40 fpga singles, those would give 2.4TH (40*60GH), of which,

• 2.4TH * 200/433 = 1.108TH would go to BFLS shareholders
• 2.4TH * 233/433 = 1.292TH would go to Inaba

So "only" 1.108TH is needed to fulfill all BFLS shareholders, which is about 40*200/433= 18.48 asic singles, consuming ~5543W.

Since we need an integer number and there is an overhead to pay for power, 19 asic singles should be enough (consuming a total of 5700W), since those remaining 0.52 (worth 227 shares, around 31455GH) yield at the moment $2629.81/month, while the power costs for all 19 asic singles (5700W) should be around $625/month ($0.15/kWh).


The underlying math is simple,

For BFLS: [#new asic singles]*433 - [#existing fpga singles]*200 = [#new BFLS shares assigned to Inaba]. So, with 19 asic singles, Inaba will get 19*433 - 40*200 = 227 new shares.

For .RIG: [#new asic minirigs]*11842 - [#existing fpga minirigs]*6058 = [#new BFLS.RIG shares assigned to Inaba].

Or, alternatively,

For BFLS: [#new asic singles]*433 - [#existing fpga singles' shares] = [#new BFLS shares assigned to Inaba].

For .RIG: [#new asic minirigs]*11842 - [#existing fpga minirigs' shares] = [#new BFLS.RIG shares assigned to Inaba].

Using this proposal, it's just a matter of Inaba deciding on the number of new shares he wants/needs to cover for the overhead cost margin of running the hardware. :)

I'm fine with swapping out for the same power footprint, as that is ultimately the root of the problem.  Space can be managed most likely, but power is much more difficult to manage - 19 singles would consume almost double what power consumption is now, which is right around 3000w. 

Let me see what I can shuffle around and see if I can somehow fit almost 20 singles in somewhere.

Maybe now it would be more beneficial to you (to increase power efficiency) to just convert all those singles into minirigs? Using Epoch's values, a "1.5TH asic minirig" is 11842 .RIG shares, so a real 500GH asic minirig is 3947.3(3) shares.

So, [#new 500GH asic minirigs]*(3947+1/3) - [#existing fpga singles]*200*3/2.52 = [#new BFLS.RIG shares assigned to Inaba].

With three 500GH asic minirigs, that's 3*(3947+1/3) - 40*200*3/2.52 = ~2318.19 .RIG shares to you; existing BFLS shareholders get converted to .RIG shares = 3/2.52*#BFLS shares. :)

(another option is using 2*500GH minirigs + 4*SC singles, for example)

Edit: Asic MiniRigs behave internally as 8 SC singles (480TH), see my post below.

SC minirigs and SC Singles have roughly the same power efficiency. Space requirements are different.

Oh, I just looked it up now that this thread reappeared and it seems I have still one single unclaimed share in BFLS.RIG... :o

Any way to still claim that?

True. :)

I was checking giga's post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=237710.0) and it seems each 500GH minirig behaves internally like 8 SC singles with a max of 480GH (8*60GH), so if space is not a problem the SC singles should be the best choice (more redundance with larger area for heat dissipation, lesser work for fans).

So, if Inaba prefers to convert everything to SC singles (or do a mix, with one asic minirig counting as 8 sc singles), using the .RIG referencial (more granularity),

(hardware # based): [#new SC singles]*433*3/2.52 - [#existing fpga singles]*200*3/2.52 - [#existing fpga minirigs]*6058 = [#new BFLS.RIG shares assigned to Inaba]
or
(share # based): [#new SC singles]*433*3/2.52 - [#existing fpga singles' shares]*3/2.52 - [#existing fpga minirigs' shares] = [#new BFLS.RIG shares assigned to Inaba].

This assumes all BFLS shareholders get their shares converted to .RIG shares, using [#shareholder's new .RIG shares] = 3/2.52*[# shareholder's actual BFLS shares].

Edit: Added formula.

Just to clarify: The conversion factor of existing BFLS shares to 'new shares' would be diffferent than the conversion factor of existing BFLS.RIG shares to 'new shares'; there should not be a 'blanket' conversion if we want to be fair (I own approximately equal amounts of both so this doesn't affect me much, but it would negatively impact those holding more BFLS than BFLS.RIG). I assume we want to be fair.

BFLS is worth more than BFLS.RIG in terms of $; even more so if we are constrained to the same power envelope simply because a BFLS share represents significantly more power than a RIG share and can be converted to significantly more SC hardware/hashrate/income.

My calculations a few posts up show the details of this.

Absolutely! BFLS shares are worth 19% more ($3/$2.52) than BFLS.RIG shares, that's why each single sc is worth 433*3/2.52 = ~515.48 BFLS.RIG shares.

I've always accounted for that in my formulas above. :)

That's valid if our power envelope is unrestricted. If Inaba wants to maintain the SAME power envelope, BFLS is actually worth 71% more than BFLS.RIG. This is because BFLS represents FPGA Singles that can be upgraded to a lot more hashpower than the equivalent in BFLS.RIG (representing FPGA minirigs that use about 1/2 the power of the FPGA Singles for a given hashrate and thus cannot be upgraded to as much SC hardware). See my post here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg2476669#msg2476669

Yep, I saw your post, but unfortunately, that solution penalizes heavily BFLS.RIG owners, since their shares are now only worth (35.57MH/61MH) 58% of BFLS shares, while they should be worth ($2.52/$3) 84% of BFLS shares. I hope we really go with an alternative solution. :(

Agreed, but that's what the numbers say under the power budget restriction. Pragmatically, though, I doubt we'll have any trouble reaching a reasonable solution that will make most shareholders (including Inaba, of course) happy. :)

The key is that we start getting SC hardware hashing for shareholders ASAP!

May your words echo through the halls of the bitcoin gods! ;D ;D ;D

$14,604.00 per invoice minus the shipping - $348 (credited back)

And the reason for my post.....
I see the 6058 shares for the minirig (fpga).
It was mentioned that the upgrade would be 11842 shares.

Uhhhmmm, I might be looking at this wrong; however, my question is:
If I were to have a minirig (fpga - $15k) earning (for example) 1BTC daily on a 25Ghash machine, then why would I pay to upgrade (ASIC - $15k more) 1.5THash for simply double shares to earn 2BTC daily?

Am I looking at this wrong?

I'm working on a deal for more power and space... stay tuned (like ya'll wouldn't), so it may not be a problem going forward.

Hi Michail1, there are 2 key points to understand:

1] the upgrade to SC is 'free' for all shareholders. If you have 6058 shares of BFLS.RIG today, you will end up with 6058 shares of BFLS.RIG.SC. That would not represent a full minirig SC, however, just a fraction of one (something like 6058/11842, or roughly half). This is how the upgrade can be done for no out-of-pocket cost to the shareholders; Inaba has already paid for the SC upgrade and his contribution is converted into extra shares for himself (based on Inaba's upgrade cost relative to the FPGA hardware value).

2] there is no 'double your shares' here. Whatever shares you have now, you will have the same amount after conversion to SC. The difference is that an FPGA share represents roughly 4Mhps now, but a converted share represents something much higher: more like ~35Mhps to ~125Mhps depending on how much hardware Inaba is able to convert. So after the (free) conversion, your hashrate (and, thus, earnings) will be much higher than today.

Hope that clarifies things a bit.

It seems to clarify a little assuming it was Inaba paying for the upgrade in equipment...
My stance is.... What if I (Me) pays for the upgrade from FPGA to ASIC.
Example:  I pay $15k for FGPA and I pay $15k upgrade to ASIC.
I would have paid from 6058 to 11842 shares?  (Which by example gives me from 1BTC to 2BTC daily?)

If this is the case, then I would be a fool to buy such.  This is why I am confused and maybe I am in the wrong thread based on ME paying for the devices vs simply shares that people can buy in on.
Because.... I would NOT want to pay for an 25GH unit making 1BTC per day and pay for a 1.5TH unit to make only 2BTC a day based on shares.

Much higher?  Yes, if 25ghash today is 1BTC daily, then a ASIC 1.5TH should be 60 times (60btc) daily.
(Sorry if I am still misunderstanding)

What you are describing sounds more like hosting: i.e. you own an FPGA minirig, you have Inaba hosting it under the BFLS.RIG umbrella, and want to pay to convert it to an SC minirig. So you would end up owning an SC minirig, and would expect to get the income generated by such a device. Actually this is not much different than the 'regular' shareholders here who effectively own fractional (as opposed to full) FPGA Singles and/or minirigs.

Let's continue with your scenario: hypothetically, if you had a $15k FPGA minirig (6058 BFLS.RIG shares) and if you were to pay an additional $15k to upgrade it to a minirig SC then, yes, you would end up with double the shares (11842 shares). But those would all be converted to BFLS.RIG.SC shares, not FPGA, and those 11842 shares represent a full SC minirig (1.5Thps). I say 'hypothetically' because if you haven't paid for your upgrade yet, it may be too late. I believe BFL's upgrade window has closed and even if not, the upgrade cost would be much higher now that the hardware costs have doubled recently.

But back to your specific example: double the shares for $15k, yes. But after the (again, no-cost to you) conversion they would no longer be 'fpga shares'; they would be 'sc shares'. So you'd have the full hashrate of an SC 1.5Thps minirig generating 60x the income of your current 6058 FPGA minirig shares. Hopefully this makes things somewhat clearer.

Now, the details of share conversion (how many extra shares per SC Single? How many per SC minirig? Will BFLS shares be converted to BFLS.RIG; etc) haven't yet been finalized. But the bottom line is that if you own shares equivalent to an SC minirig, you will get the income expected from an SC minirig. Just like it has always been with BFLS/BFLS.RIG.

Hello,
Yes, that is exactly what I had meant.
You cleared it up with regards that I would be converted from BFLS.RIG to BFLS.RIG.SC which would earn 60 times the current rate (assuming I did have the minirig and did prepay for the asic upgrade).
I guess it would have to be thought about for people that later paid for the upgrade to ASIC minirig AFTER the price changed and after the minirig was changed from 1.5th to .5th.

Thanks.  Of course I might have more questions.  Thanks again.

Great news! Tuned at 1000%! ;D

How do one get involved in this , are shares being sold some where ?

Not now. The BFLS IPO (a public offer) was over a year ago: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75433.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75433.0) and BFLS.RIG a year ago: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902)
Then, until October, people were able to trade the shares at GLBSE. Now the shareholders are kind of rentiers.

Looks like the payout script may need a kick ... ;)

+1 ;)

So... Eclipse went from 2 to 8TH... any news ?

Gigavps had an early order for 4 minirigs = 6 GH/s.

I believe BFLS.RIG also had an early order for 2 rigs/3TH.

Still no news? :'(

It's only been three weeks. :)

Ok Josh, it's time ...

I know you ordered 2*1.5TH Asic rigs way before Giga so why aren't you sharing profits with your shareholders ?

Because I have no minirigs.  As soon as I get some, I will.

Not possible.

Sorry, I don't believe you.

Eclipse went from 2 to 10 TH... and you don't have a rig ?

From BFL_Jody's blogs on the BFL forum, they are still working through 'Day 1' (June 23/2012) orders for minirigs and singles. So not everyone who ordered those on the first day has yet received anything. Josh seems to be one of those unlucky ones. And he isn't alone.

As for Eclipse going to 10TH (actually 12TH as I write this), there are many Avalons, ASICMiners, and BFL Jalapenos (plus whatever Singles from 'Day 1' already shipped) out in the wild now, and continuing to increase ... it isn't unreasonable to expect that at least a portion of those would mine at Eclipse. Look at how much Slush (18TH now) and Eligius (10TH now) have increased over the past month or two; they each added nearly 10TH to their 'pre-ASIC' hashrates ... and so did Eclipse. Nothing particularly unusual here.

Before an angry mob forms to cry "Foul!", how about waiting until minirigs from 'Day 2' start shipping. Assuming Josh has 'Day 1' orders, he should have his by then. And if he doesn't, I'm sure he'll be as angry and frustrated as the rest of us.

Josh, can you share what actual SC hardware is earmarked for BFLS/BFLS.RIG, and how much of that is a 'Day 1' order? I think the issue of power requirements was left unresolved; you last mentioned that you were working out a deal to make more power available.

One thing I can confirm is that Day1 orders which paid with BTC are ahead of Day1 orders which paid via wire as it took BFL several days to confirm a wire. == Day4 order.

The reality of the situation is that I'm probably not going to get all of my orders in the order I ordered them in (that's quite a sentence).  Due to the delay in our shipping and the huge backlog, I am going to have to take a back seat to other paying customers.  It's doubly frustrating for me, since I bought and paid for orders before my employment for BFL was even a consideration or in the works, so there's no technical ethical dilemma to resolve... however, lots of people are/would be upset if I took all of my orders on day one for fairly obvious reasons and cries of bias and unfair treatment would abound.  Rightly or wrongly (and it pisses me off, make no mistake), I am simply not going to be able to take all of my orders in the order I should, because I am employed by BFL.

This whole deal really stresses me out to be honest and every day I consider just selling the whole deal and not having to worry about it anymore.  I would potentially consider selling the whole BFLS part and parcel to a trusted buyer, but I'm not even sure how to value it properly for a sale and if there is even anyone out there that wants to run BFLS in the same manner.  I would really like to move on and not have to focus on this particular issue any longer, as I really don't have time for it currently. 

As far as power and space goes ... I can acquire enough for those things, but it is fairly costly, so I'm not sure how to convert the BFLS shares into the ASIC shares at a fair rate, since the current rate measured by the percentage held back for operating costs is likely to not be enough to cover expenses going forward.  While it will be fine up front, on the back end I would be taking a substantial loss I suspect, so converting now at one rate would not account for the rate later on. 

One thing I can do in that situation is take the hosting costs out from the top before paying out shares and once the hosting cost is satisfied each month, start paying out the shares as appropriate.  That'd kind of a headache though.

Ok, but we're talking here about 2 rigs, Giga bought 30 orso, how can this be such a problem ?

Why don't you cancel the ordered rig upgrades, get a refund and rename this project BF.RIG ? ;)

This way you will not have a problem with clients/hosting/power costs, less the 3 kW usage for 3 TH and operational from October.

I'm not trolling, just trying to think out of the box (into another box;))

Gigavps does not have anywhere close to 30 rigs at this time.  I'm not sure why people think he's got tons of rigs right now. 

For 3 TH, that would run over 14 kW of power, not 3 kW

I meant the other BF... 2.7 GH/sec @ 0.8W/GH.

Using this would solve a lot of your/our problems.

Or is this not something you would like to consider ?

The only demonstrated efficiency for Bitfury is 1.2GH/sec @ .8W/GH.  There's still no working product available, so it's kind of moot.

I don't know the meaning of the word 'moot' but that chip is tested by a lot of people and is working fine.

https://bitcentury.io/blog/initial-testing-of-bitfury-asic

I'm only suggesting something, you have to come up with a solution.

If you no longer want to deal with BFLS/BFLS.RIG then buy out the shareholders, as per the original terms:

BFLS: $600/200 shares is $3.00 per share.
BFLS.RIG: $15295/6058 shares is $2.52 per share.

Josh,
Are you thinking that people should take delivery instead of hosting?  It would be an option I wouldn't mind if you suggested as such.
And/Or take partial delivery.

Still wondering if you have come up with a plan for WHAT could be hosted?
Just MRs?
$300 for original MR converts to $300 for MR (1.5th) or $325 or $300 per MR (500ghash), etc.

I am interested in seeing what you have come up with before waiting until taking delivery of units.

Also, is there any hint as to how many units are in the queue (and how many in that queue are slated to come to you (hosted or purchased by you)).
- Just hurts to see Jody posting MRs shipped from Day1 orders as I can't imagine there being that many.

Any idea how many FPGA units were paid upgrades to ASIC?

I don't know what you paid, but this is what I paid:

The really big problem is that the asic upgrade is not factored there. If Josh doesn't want to deal with this further, the best way would be to liquidate everything after the conversion to asics, by auctioning them. This would guarantee a correct book value for the shares, based on the current value of asic hardware.

Yes, I agree with that. Existing BFLS and BFLS.RIG shares would be converted to 'ASIC' shares using formulas found earlier in this thread, meaning that additional shares would be created and assigned to Josh. The ASIC (and remaining FPGA) equipment would be auctioned off with the proceeds distributed according to how many shares are held.

I have stated numerous times that I would prefer to continue as a shareholder here, but I respect the terms of the original contract which states that should the operator be unable or unwilling to continue, the assets would be liquidated and the proceeds disbursed. If that is what Josh decides to do, it is his decision to make.

+1 for preferring to continue as a shareholder.  That being said, if a liquidation is forthcoming, I think an auction would be the best way to go about doing so. 

Could I please get an answer on this one?! :(

I have no intention of playing the Devil here but, pragmatically, let it go. One share is not worth anyone's time, including yours. You would currently be getting approximately 0.00005 BTC per day.

Not really, Sukrim.  It's all pretty much done and buried at this point.  Do you have other shares already active or just that one?

So BFL can deliver the rigs we ordered but you refuse to accept these because of what reason exactly?

Your job overthere ??

Nevermind..

Josh, I was going to wait a couple of weeks before posting this, but don't really much point in delaying.

We are all seeing the income from BFLS/BFLS.RIG drying up as difficulty climbs. It is only going to get worse as the weeks pass. With your post a week ago stating that you really don't know when the ASIC gear is going to show up, and you considering stepping down from BFLS or liquidating it, it leaves shareholders in somewhat of "limbo".

If no one is stepping up to purchase BFLS, and ASICS are not expected to show up any time soon, I think (as much as I hate to say it) that liquidation may be in the shareholders' best interest and we should seriously consider/discuss it. And the sooner the better, because our asset value will only drop as difficulty continues to climb.

Let me start by throwing out a few thoughts to encourage discussion.

Option 1: Full Liquidation

- factor in the ASICs already ordered. If all FPGA hardware has been earmarked for upgrade, the calculations here apply:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1455088#msg1455088
or, if not all FPGA hardware has been reserved for upgrade, these calculations will need to change a bit.
- auction off the hardware (ASIC preorders and whatever FPGA gear that isn't slated for upgrade). Another option might be to negotiate with Lab_Rat; he is looking for hardware to add to his mining farm and he would certainly pay a premium for ASIC gear that will arrive soon. With his recent IPO he should have a lot of bitcoin.
- distribute the BTC to shareholders.
- BFLS and BFLS.RIG would then be considered cleanly closed.

Option 2: Partial Liquidation

- Josh, in case you want to keep some of the incoming ASIC hardware for yourself, here is a way to do so. With the extra shares you would obtain from the ASIC conversion (see links above), you would certainly have enough for 1 or more SC MiniRigs and Singles. So instead of paying yourself out in BTC by liquidating everything, you would keep some of the hardware in lieu of your payment.
- as a rough example, let's assume you get assigned 1/2 the shares of an ASIC minirig and you have ordered 6. Your shares are then the equivalent of 3 minirigs. You liquidate 3 of them and distribute the proceeds to the shareholders (excluding yourself), and you keep the other 3 for yourself.
- this way, BFLS and BFLS.RIG are still cleanly closed, and you get to keep a chunk of the ASIC hardware whenever it happens to show up.

In both Option 1 and Option 2, shareholders would receive the exact same payment. The only difference is that Option 1 gives you your cut as well, while Option 2 gives you a portion of the incoming ASIC hardware in lieu of your cut.

Comments?

Option 1 is probably the best way to go, although it's hard to value the upgrade's in a sale price, since I don't have a specific ship date and there's no way I would even begin to guarantee one at the moment.  That's my only concern with that.

Hmm, do you know who at BFL is responsible for determining when you get your gear? Any chance of getting some firm info from them? It is unreasonable to keep you in the dark about your own place in line.

You have Day-1 orders. I can understand BFL wanting to avoid the appearance of giving you preferential treatment as an employee, but a 'reasonable' worst-case would be that once BFL is done with all other customers' Day-1 orders, they would then release yours. I'm not running things there but if I were, I'd release your Day-1 orders before shipping out other customers' Day-2 orders. Doing any different is beyond unfair, employee or not. Your orders were placed before you were employed there.

If you truly cannot know when your orders will arrive, have you considered the option of just selling the ASIC preorders at-cost? You/we don't lose anything (except the possibility of selling at a higher price), and we'd be able to begin liquidation immediately. I'm not suggesting you *should* do this, but merely throw it out there for general consideration.

+1

I think Inaba (as a personal customer) should get the orders filled in the exact same place as he originally put them. Doing otherwise is not a fair treatment neither to Inaba neither to any of the BFLS shareholders, since at the very least anyone that got into BFLS(.RIG) is getting a very costly delay with no practical justifiable reason (in my understanding). One of the key points in valuing this offer against others was Inaba's Day 1 upgrades.  :(

^^^ +1

What Vbs said.

hmm i would have thought as long as we can continue on long enough it would be better to auction off the real "in-hand" ASIC's rather than all the issue's in selling off the dreaded "Pre-order".

I only have this one from you.

I still have full control over both my email address you have on file (where I did not receive any mail from you about claiming shares by the way) as well as the Bitcoin address associated with the share.
I know that currently I would only get very little, however to my understanding it has been accumulating dividends already for months by now...

Some good discussion going on here. Please continue.

@Vbs: you make good points, as you often do. Mentioning the BFLS(.RIG) valuation relationship with expected ASIC delivery is spot-on.

@Server: thanks for joining the discussion. The more discussion we have the better and more informed our decision can be.

@Blank: I agree that selling in-hand ASICs is *much* more preferrable (and profitable) than selling pre-orders. But this  is a tough call. If we *knew* that the ASICs would arrive in, let's say, 1 or 2 or even 3 months then I'd say "let's wait for them". If we *knew* they would arrive July 2014 then I'd say "let's liquidate now". Our problem is that, from what Josh has said, we *do not know* when they will show up. Could be next month, could be next year. It is difficult to evaluate the best course of action under this condition. It is why I am encouraging discussion, and your input is very much appreciated!

@Sukrim: I have been maintaining a database of dividends/per share for BFLS(.RIG) payments since Day-1. If you can tell me the date of your last payout, I can tell you fairly accurately how much your share has accumulated since then.

Shares have not been accumulating any dividends.  All dividends have been divided up equally between active shareholders.

I should reasonable expect the ASICs within 3 months, that's almost guaranteed.  I'd say even 2 months. 1 month is iffy.  If people want to hold on to it and then sell the in hand ASICs when they arrive, I'm certainly willing to do that.

Let me throw one other option out there: Inaba, for those preferring not to wait, would you be willing to offer an at-cost buyout? It turns out to be 0.06 BTC/share for both BFLS and BFLS.RIG according to my calculations.

The benefit to you would be higher profit since you'd be able to sell the ASICs at above-cost when they arrive and your portion of the shares would be greater; the benefit to shareholders would be that they free up their BTC now.

Using the numbers in my 'converting to ASIC' post I linked to earlier, here is what it might look like:

For BFLS (Singles):
- 200 shares per Single become 433 shares per SC Single
- at-cost value of an SC Single (50Ghps) is $2500
- each share is worth $5.77 ($2500/433), or 0.06 BTC

For BFLS.RIG (minirigs):
- 6058 shares per minirig become 11842 shares per SC minirig (1500GHps)
- at-cost value of an SC minirig (1500Ghps) is 3x $22484 or $67452
- each share is worth $5.70 ($67452/11842), or 0.06 BTC

Epoch are you Josh ?

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8516/8592811243_e16792e6ae_b.jpg

No, @server, I scowl more than Josh does so I don't *think* we are the same person (EDIT: I see you've edited your post since I posted this). And I don't speak Korean nor do I fly planes. And I drive a hybrid vehicle which would make Josh either scowl or laugh at me. Or both.

Seriously: BFLS(.RIG) has always been tied to the hardware. For example, 200 shares of BFLS represented a $600 Single, making 1 share worth $3. Back then, if BTC was worth $9 you would have paid 0.33 BTC/share.

Yes, today BTC is worth 10x as much: $90. But your 1 share of BFLS still represents 1/200th of a Single, which is still $3. If you were to buy 1 share today it would not cost you 0.33 BTC as it did months ago; it would cost you 0.033 BTC.  

And why? Because that is what 1 share is worth. It still represents the same thing: 1/200th of a $600 Single or $3. And that is what you originally paid for it. You seem to be under the impression that you paid 0.33 BTC for 1 share of BFLS; you didn't. You paid $3. There is a difference. What that 1 share allowed you to do between the time you purchased it and now, is collect dividends. The share itself didn't change in value.

In today's valuation of BTC (I used $95), 1 share after adding in the ASIC upgrade, is worth exactly 0.06 BTC. That is, $2500/433 for an SC Single. Yes, if we did these calculations a year ago, it would be closer to 0.6 BTC/share instead of 0.06 because BTC was worth 1/10th of what it is now ... but the share's fiat value would still be the same. And these shares are valuated in fiat because they represent physical hardware that has a fiat value.

It sounds as if you would not want to part with your shares for 0.06 BTC/share. That is fine, and is your choice to make. It is neither right nor wrong, good nor bad. I've only presented this to Josh as an option. If he doesn't accept it, none of us are going to be parting with our shares for 0.06 BTC/share. And if he does, anyone who wants to be bought out can be. Others who prefer to hold on to them, such as yourself I'm assuming, would be free to do so.

There is no need for hostilities; we're just having a conversation and discussing possible options for the situation we find ourselves in. We are all in the same boat together. No one is talking about forcing people to do something they don't want to do.

Ok, I understand, thanks Epoch for explaining that I'm screwed... I will back off.

If anyone is curious, my records show that 1 share of BFLS has paid out approximately 0.5366 BTC in dividends since the end of April 2012).

For those that have held on to their earnings, the dividends from that initial $3.60/share investment in 2012 would be worth $50 today. In terms of BTC, an initial investment of 0.7-0.8 BTC/share would not quite have been recovered yet (and with today's rising difficulty is unlikely to); that is perhaps the only blemish. Results look better from a fiat perspective.

Now that Josh has expressed his interest to wind things down, let's see how best we can proceed to maximize value for ourselves.

IPO was 0.6-0.7...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg990272#msg990272

Glad someone's awake! You are actually referring to BFLS.RIG; I was using BFLS as an example, which started much earlier. BFLS IPO share price in BTC was 0.7-0.8 BTC/share but the exchange rate at that time was only $4.80/BTC. So BFLS was selling for around $3.60/share which is a 20% premium to its actual hardware value of $3.

RIG IPO'd at the end of June for 0.6-0.7 BTC. At that time BTC was worth $6.25. So a RIG share was going for around $3.75-$4.35. The actual hardware value of a RIG share was $15295/6058 or $2.52, making an investment in RIG more expensive. But it did give you a slightly higher hashrate. Those buying in at 0.6 BTC were paying a 50% premium; those buying at 0.7 were paying a 73% premium.

My records show that RIG started paying dividends at the end of August so, for RIG, 1 share has returned about 0.205 BTC to date (compared to a 0.537 return for BFLS since its inception in April 2012). I had forgotten the two were so different; thanks for pointing that out, @server.

One thing to take away from this is how important TIME is for bitcoin mining. BFLS had only a 4-month headstart on RIG, but in those 4 months it managed to generate more BTC per share than RIG did in its entire 11 months of operation. This is directly due to increases in difficulty; the same thing is happening now and that's why our dividends have slowed to a trickle. Which is why the call for action.

WTF?!

You did not contact me after the GLBSE meltdown and then you give away the proceeds from my share to other share holders as bonus? It was certainly not part of that contract that I have to be proactively reading this thread to receive any dividends (that you could easily have sent me as you (still) have an address associated with my share). Since when does one have to be "active" to be a share holder?

I'm certainly NOT pleased in how this is/was handled... >:(

You had months and months to claim your share. I sent out multiple emails and made multiple posts.  All unclaimed shares (less than 100 of them, 34 if I recall properly) were considered abandoned.  So yes, I did contact you, you failed to respond, sorry!

JackRabiit, please take your lies and misinformation somewhere else.  This is not the thread for it.  You can't spell, you have no grammatical skills, you apparently can't even post a single actual fact and your signature is full of misinformation and lies as well.  In short, please go away.  It's obvious you've not even read this thread, you just want to throw your uninformed, useless 2c into the ring because it makes you feel special and you need the attention to validate your existence.

I'll remove the post i planted in this thread, because it was horribly incorrect.

(@JackRabiit  - ???  Read this (and BFLS) thread from the very beginning. You will understand more.

@Epoch - Starting from July 2012 the shares had greater value, because the hardware was promised to be upgraded with an early order. The future income was accounted for into a current price of the shares at GLBSE. For many months people were waiting to have this fulfilled.
Now, because of too strict BFL policy, the promise cannot be kept. Josh surely tried but failed to explain to them that the ordered ASIC upgrade (at least half) is a (kind of) property of the BFLS(.RIG) shareholders, not of him. In other words, it's shareholders' order, because the machines to be upgraded are theirs (funded by them). BFL  holding back the implementation of the order, is doing harm directly to shareholders. Josh's lost income from ASIC is replaced by a salary. The shareholders have no such a reimburse. Maybe it's time for shareholders to explain it to a decision-making person.

I think there was only a handful of additional shares sold since the demise of GLBSE, so I'm not sure that the share valuation on most of the shares had that taken into account.  Just my a side note, not that it really affects anything at the moment.

Josh, have you had a chance to think about offering this as an option to folks?

Yes, I would consider an at cost buy out, sure.  The only caveat to that is I can't guarantee a shipping date at the moment, but other than that, I would be glad to sell at cost to be relieved of the responsibility.  I would love to continue operating BFLS, but I simply don't have the time any more and my time is going getting more scarce as times goes on and BFL expands and I do not want BFLS to languish and become an albatross for everyone involved.

I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing. It sounds like you are talking about a 100% buyout of BFLS hardware/preorders by some individual from you. I was talking about the possibility of you offering to buy back shares of individual shareholders who want "out".

For example, Ralph has 100 shares of BFLS. He wants out now. The at-cost value of 1 share is 0.06 BTC as I proposed in an earlier message. So Ralph's 100 shares are worth 6 BTC.

So my question would be: Would you be willing to give Ralph 6 BTC now in exchange for his 100 shares? This is what I meant. Apologies if I wasn't being clear earlier.

Oh, sorry... yes I'm still open to that idea as well.  It's definitely not off the table at the moment.

What is the current number of singles and rigs ordered? And what is the rough timeline for delivery. I saw you saw maybe 2 months, certainly less than 3.

Phil

The mining hardware upgrade been paid by US "the share holders", the early position in the delivery line is ours "the share holders", we paid much more than the coast of the hardware at the time we bought the shares cause you had an earlier position in the delivery line. Now who gives the right for BFL to delay our orders? How would you agree on that? If all share holders find this reasonable, I personally find it so hard to make any sense out of such unfair decision that is still open for more unfair options and calculations.

First of all, no one but me has paid or upgrades.  I paid out of my own pocket.

Second, the vast majority of the shares were sold long before the ASICs were even announced and long before I started working for BFL.    There are a handful of shares that were sold after the ASICs were announced, but that is just a tiny fraction of the total shares and were out of my own personal holding.  Any valuation on the shares was done on the value of the FPGAs.

Fil, is your question how many do I personally have on order or how many are allocated to BFLS as upgrades? 

Was for BFLS as upgrades. But if you want to say how many you have on order as well fine :-).

Phil

Josh it's time to come up with a solution for this.
Stalling is not a solution.

I really get the feeling I'm being screwed over by you and BFL.
I don't like this feeling.

Ok, I will make a final payout of .026 BTC per share and discontinue BFLS.  I will try to get that done ASAP.

Shouldn't you ask shareholders if they are OK with this ?

Well, the solution is to wait or I pay out of my pocket and make everyone whole. .026 BTC per share is more value in USD than the shares cost, plus whatever they have generated in the interim = profit for everyone, except me. :) 

Maybe this is working for the BLFS shares, but the problem I tried to address was that you sold BLFS.RIG shares 1.5 year ago with the promise that you would operate 2*1.5 TH/s rigs.

You changed your mind about this and left shareholders hanging without compensation.

We're waiting now for more then 12 months and still you refuse to address this problem.

ASICs wern't even announced 1.5 years ago, so I'm not sure where you are getting that info from. 

As for "leaving shareholders hanging without compensation" what do you mean?  .026 BTC per share is more than the original price of the shares and share holders have been getting paid on those shares since the start, I'd say that's a tidy profit.  No one has been waiting for ASICs for 12 months, no one.

As for refusing to address the problem, I am addressing it, I'm basically buying back all the shares at greater than face value and dissolving BFLS.

This thread, first page... 1 year and several months ago:

But who's counting... outcome stays the same. YOU REFUSE TO MINE WITH THE 3TH ASIC RIGS >:(


I was talking about BFLS.RIG and not BFLS... you sold .RIG shares with a promise to mine with 2 asic rigs of 1.5 TH each.

Ok, so if you don't want me to buy out your shares for more than face value and you don't want to continue mining the FPGA, what do you want that is within the realm of possible at the moment?  I can't mine with what I don't have.

I'm not real clear on what you want me to do, aside from invoke the clause:

You don't have the Asic rigs because you don't want to accept delivery before other customers get theirs. Right ?
So the fact that you can't mine is because of your own choice.

You didn't tell your shareholders this when you sold the shares.

It's a miracle that the BFL posse still doesn't have a scammer tag.
I guess too much Ad money blown up Theymos' ass ...

I think not... but maybe you're right about the 'blown up' part :P

Well, the fact that I did not work for BFL at the time would seem to make that a difficult thing to do.

Is this a reply to my post ?

Inaba, we, BFLS.RIG shareholders, are also essentially the customers of BFL. This is the undeniable truth. BFL should treat his customer fairly.

Good luck with that. BFL treats its customers as nuisances. Their practices violate US law. I expect no difference from this endeavor.

Ok, I understand this is your reply to my post and I will continue on this.

You're telling that you didn't know at that time you sold the BFLS.RIG-shares that you would become an employee of BFL later that year.

This is irrelevant because you did know what promise you made to your shareholders.

I believe you want this to be a win-win deal for you and BFL, but this cannot be without consequences.

I have paid out the final payment for BFLS shares, everyone should have received .026 BTC per share.

BFLS and it's derivative are now closed permanently.  Server, I'm sorry if this upsets you, but it really is the best thing for everyone going forward and nets a tidy profit for everyone who held shares.  Each $600 units worth of shares has paid back $759.2 + whatever it's earned over it's lifetime, which is not an insignificant amount and is > 100% profit on the investment.  I think that's pretty good for a little over a year, personally.

For each share of BFLS.RIG, I paid 0.5 BTC. And over the past year, I made 0.28261 BTC per share. With this measly 0.026 BTC payout, my total returns per share is 0.30861 BTC that I paid 0.5 BTC for. In terms of BTC (since that's what I and most people paid these shares with), these shares lost 40% of its value. What a deal!

So no, it's not pretty good. I bought these shares expecting it to at least make back the cost after ASICs came out. Inaba, you really disappointed me. BFL not coming out with ASICs last year was bad enough already. You deciding not to convert your BFLS and BFLS.RIG miners to ASIC as you had promised really puts it over the edge.

WTF, Inaba. We have paid you Bitcoin, not USD. We buy bitcoin earning machines from you, but not a USD debt notes. How can you end the contract without the consensus of the other side. We are supposed to have ASIC mining machines to mine bitcoin for us.

I am going to write the SEC official a letter complaining about this. You have issued the securities without registration and now you have scammed the security holders.

HorseRider, you agreed to this clause when you purchased the shares:


I'm invoking the clause, end of story.  In addition to that, you purchased a portion of the hardware which you could have redeemed at any time, there was no securities involved, so I'm sure the SEC will not care what you have to say, but by all means, go ahead.  This was a group effort to purchase hardware, which is what happened.  You were not promised any dividends or returns of any sort, only what the hardware generates.  I have, in effect, purchased the hardware back from you with the final payment and our "contract" is done.

Mining did not become unprofitable so you're unable or unwilling.

It must be you're unwilling because you refuse to accept delivery of Asic rig upgrades of your "own" company.

So now you blow us off with a tiny payment and you can keep all hardware/Asic profits for yourself.

I believe 'upset' is not the word I would use.... fury comes to mind... Bitfury (http://bitfurystrikesback.com) ;)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28686048/bfl/butterflylabs.png (http://bitfurystrikesback.com)

(quoted for personal use)

Hmmm.... and you were mocking my efforts.  FAILURE.

LOL! ;D

So, if the price of BTC today was $0.50 and he gave you back .7BTC would you be happy?

Can you prove he doesn't already have the rigs and is mining for himself?

No, all I can see is that EclipseMC is up >20TH since BFL is delivering Asic hardware.

But this is because of "Mining equipment of clients"

I write this loss off just like I did with Tawsix.

BFL is exit too. Unreliable.