When it comes to bitcoin securities (an oxymoron if there ever was one), "never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice".

One failure, I might mistake intention. But after:
-Wozad (http://www.micro-funding.com/index.php?action=showstartup&startups_id=19)
-zenpad scam (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kg4ch/im_the_guy_who_launched_an_highly_overhyped/)
-Kronos.io scam (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/yb89v/bitdaytradecom_operator_has_already_lost_4000btc/)
-bitscalper.com scam
-Bitdaytrade scam
-Labcoin scam

(Im ignoring some fake watch "business"), all of these scams are still called "failures due to incompetence" by some, do you really think Alberto is just the worst CEO in history, or a better scammer than people give him credit for?

Heh..


https://picostocks.com/files/31/cointerra.pdf

I dont see the point in theorizing  over the location and the problem of their hypothetical chips based on when then they pull the plug or change the pool. As long as labcon doesnt provide clear proof to the contrary, even their existence is as likely as that of 10 feet tall green martian aliens.

Only the fab would have that (globalfoundries for BFL), and no fab is crazy enough to give the design for the masks to anyone else. Not even a chinese fab. And especially not for something as trivial as a bitcoin miner that would probably cost less than $50K to design and breaking that sort of confidence would instakill any fab.

Now you can theoretically try to reverse engineer a finished chip by "sanding" it down layer by layer and putting in under an electro microscope, but no one in their right minds would do that for a bitcoin asic, and even if someone wanted do, they could simply buy a few chips for next to nothing. THe idea that assembly in China is somehow putting BFL "know how" (cough) at risk is ludicrous.

I disagree. The hash chart suggests they have ~600GH mining consistently (10 avalons or whatever) and what they added recently is often being shut down or redirected to another pool for whatever reason (installing/relocating/electrical problems/network problems..) but not likely due to the asics. For Labcoin to achieve that hashrate with their own chip, they would have to be running thousands of chips, so hundreds of blades/devices. Even if they have a problem, those arent going to magically fail and resume working together. Nor that one would expect them to have come online all together in a matter of minutes.


Sure anyone who bought in after it became apparent it was a scam may still profit a bit from the scam if the scammers decide to pay out some dividends to buy themselves some time. Its not often a good idea to bet money on a scammer paying you though and I have no sympathy for anyone boosting this stock just to achieve that. Id call them complicit.

Poor analogy, even though it may be fitting too. No one wants a rolls royce or the price tag it comes with for mining. We want a pickup truck, a van, a digger, some efficient vehicle that costs less than what it may earn over its lifetime. Good luck to anyone investing in cadillacs.

Some of you are just plain silly. The difficulty involved in reverse engineering a finished asic in order to "steal" the IP is at least a few orders of magnitude higher than just designing a (better) bitcoin chip.

IM not sure how Fabrizzio was outed as a scammer, but for sure his brother in law, Alberto Armandi has been multiple times.
(eg https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93445.0)


More telling is that Howard wang confirmed he never finished the design of either 180 or 130nm chip and that they faced serious difficulties securing a fab in august. THerefore,  neither chip could have taped out before august, making the odds it was hashing last month small to non existent.


There is no evidence of a 130nm chip either. What evidence have you seen?


I disagree that this would be a good sign. Its a terrible sign. Why? Because they couldnt possibly already be hashing with their own non existent chip, so this just further proves they are running a scam and using the IPO money for other means (gambling, buying off the shelve hardware, etc). If they had not been hashing, but giving evidence of ongoing development, at least there might still have been a small chance they were (somewhat) honest and chips could be forthcoming eventually. 

Very few, if any asics would be turned off at this point. The vast majority is still at least marginally profitable, and even if they werent, they would be sold and start hashing elsewhere. What has become unprofitable (gpu's, fpga's,..) is so marginal in hashrate that you wouldnt notice it.

Now it is possible some big solo miners joined pools, but that still leaves me slightly baffled that the hashrate is seemingly flat or a tad down when, bitfury and KnC (and in all likelyhood, even BFL) are constantly adding significant amounts of hashing power.

Im slightly confused looking at the network hashrate graphs. First I thought it was just statistical variance, but its been going on for too long now. The past 4-5 days hashrate has been flat or even down slightly.

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-10k.png

Yet at the same time, we know KnC is cranking out >100TH per day and if you look at the pool stats, they all seem up significantly. BTCguild, eligius, Slush, ghash.io, they have added several 100TH to their hashrate over the past few days.

Whats up with that? Did someone turn off a large private pool or something?

Its actually only around that order of magnitude that I believe asic mining can become profitable again for (efficient) miners. Of course you wont have the fantasy of achieving a positive ROI in 2 months anymore that miners now have when preordering, but almost never achieve - ever, but difficulty will also no longer be increasing exponentially, if at all (beyond tracking btc price), so you can afford to write off your hardware over years rather than the few weeks or months you have now.

As long as its marginally profitable to mine, someone will do it, so you can bet we will get to difficulty levels in the billions with todays BTC price.

Im not sure I understand your point then. You agree with me there is a difficulty level (and electricity cost and btc value) where the lower power mode is more profitable than the turbo mode. Thats the point of that mode. Sooner or later we will hit that point. Some miners sooner than others (due to higher electricity cost, cooling costs etc). Why would it not make sense to include it in the chip?

For someone buying batch 1 coincraft miners today, that mode may not be a big concern, because the write off of the hardware is so much bigger than the electricity cost. But it wont always be like that. In fact, it wont be for very long. Bitmine is preselling its chips at $100 right now, but for some perspective, Bitfury is selling its asics at $19 a piece and Avalon was selling complete miners at a price that corresponds to just $2 per asic.  Now bitmine may not go quite that low, but even at $10-20 per chip, buying or running these chips when difficulty is 20B still makes sense, just not in turbo mode.

clear the "Profitability decline per year" and use the same electricity price I did. Or try a higher difficulty level. Either way, there is always a point where the non turbo mode will be more profitable, I could write you the formula if I wasnt too lazy to do it.

We are no where near the point where hashrate will level off. You are reading tea leaves. The "drop" is either due to statistical variance or perhaps a DDoS or KnC datacenter struggling, but this is not a reversal by any means. You will see it level off eventually, but not this year. Here is a 7 day average that eliminates the statistical noise:

https://blockchain.info/en/charts/hash-rate?timespan=180days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=7&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

I asked Luke-JR if he could check if the IP address that corresponds to labcoins account originates from either china or sweden (knc). The answer is neither.
I did not press him for where it did originate from (im guessing italy) since Im not sure if that would violate any privacy concerns, but thought this was worth mentioning.

NOt sure whats going on.
Pools are reporting massive increases in hashrate. BTCguild is ~700TH, eligius 360 TH back to 250, ghash.io is nearly 500TH.
Those are huge increases in just a few days.

And yet overall network hashrate seems down.

Oh, but I beg to differ. Even with electricity prices that are among the highest in the world, it has been wildly profitable for me. But that was back when hardware was priced to sell to gamers regardless of its mining potential.

translation: "I bought cheap labcoin shares so I dont care if its a scam and fabrizio walks away with 5000+ BTC of IPO investors, as long he pays some crumbs in dividends so I can make  a profit on this scam too".

More than double? Thats gotta be the understatement of the year. Have a look here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283820.0

Thats  ~20PH thats going to hit the network no matter what. And I suspect the actual number will be considerably higher, for instance I strongly suspect a boatload of BFL customers swapped their undelivered SC preorders to Monarchs.