Im only just looking in to this company, so bear with me. IPO:
The 28 nm chips are not going to be particularly good. It's not a custom design (BitFury showed how than can change things a lot). And yet, custom design for 28 nm is on the way.
Today even 65nm chips provide sellers a gigantic markup. Having "bad" 28nm available at cost before almost anyone else cant be a bad thing. While eAsic can certainly supply a lot of chips, we have no idea at what cost. True; but you can make educated guesses based on this chart: http://www.easic.com/Spatr7ve/website-wp1/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Managing-Risk-and-Cost-Nextreme-NEW-ASIC-to-Standard-Cell-ASIC-Migration-v056.jpgGranted its for the previous generation, but should give us some idea. The point were traditional cell based asics become cheaper than easic's nextreme is between 300 and 900K units according to them. Lets put it at 500K for arguments sake. That would mean 500K chips from AM would cost about the same as it would cost cointerra/KNC etc (although KNC is likely using a similar process) including NRE. 500K is a pretty decent amount that represents many millions of dollars in hardware sales (and/or mining revenue). Total market cap was simply very high for an IPO. It looked more like the price it should have if everything goes well than the price it should be for such a risky market. I could use some help here. What is their market cap? On btct I see 7,531. Is that right? ~$1M doesnt seem all that much to me. The asic design and masksets cost more and are worth a whole lot more if they can bring this to market this year. There seem to be no particular valuable in-house competence; you'd have to wonder what is the value of a company only outsourcing. Fair point. OTOH, this approach does have it advantages too, the work is more likely to be done by people who have experience and a clue, even if you have to pay them a premium. Given the nature of this market, paying a premium for hiring people's skill is not something to be avoided IMO. The selling of shares was very weirdly done. (I don't remember exactly.) ITs addressed in their faq, and seems like a reasonable/honest mistake. Anyway, Im seriously considering investing in this. I just want to find out a little more on how they intend to turn chips in to miners. Who is doing the PCBs, the software etc? |
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This is called "chip level final test". They said, they won't do it. At least this is what is written in the open day Q&As report.
I know, I just assume they misunderstood the question as chip testing is like a few dollar cents per chip and pretty much always cheaper than paying for mounting and PCB. Anyway, as you said, its their problem. |
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Thanks! I paid with Paypal so refund will be very difficult, if not impossible. Wish I had paid with creditcard, read that some people are successfully getting refunds from the creditcard company.
You should be fine with paypal, even if you didnt use the CC: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=295187.0 |
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There was a concrete question at the KnC open day, if they will do any wafer level or chip level final tests. They clearly answered with no.
If this is still true, they are currently doing a blind packaging of all dies (including the completely bad dies from near the edge of wafers and dies with electrical shorts) and they will assemble all these chips to PCBs. The first time they will notice that there is something wrong with a single chip is when they try to hash with it assembled to a PCB.
This is probably the fastest way to get a chip hashing (because they save the time required for bringing up and debugging a production test environment). But it could be that they have to throw away a lot of fully assembled PCBs. Not optimal in terms of costs, but finally KnC’s problem.
You can test the chips after packaging, but before soldering it to a PCB. Soldering untested dies/chips on a PCB makes no sense to me, I cant believe thats what they will be doing. |
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If everybody stayed possitive the price would still be above 0030.
The more you fud the more you loose it seems ...
Let me guess, you said the same when the pirate ponzi began collapsing? If only everyone had stayed positive, we would now each have a bazillion BTC on our pirate accounts. Damn those fudders! |
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as soon as Paypal is able to force the guy to pay the negative balance in his account. Which is never usually.
Common. Lets not pretend BFL not only would have no money (which is ludicrous) but also would have no assets. Based on public posted preorders I estimated their revenue for their 65nm asics alone to be in the $50M region. Add whatever you feell for their earlier FPGA's and some for monarchs. They are not broke and a few $100K in chargebacks isnt gong to change a damn thing. |
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Next 25/09/2013 11:03 260064 150 571 756 x1.34 http://dot-bit.org/tools/nextDifficulty.phpIm guessing it will be a tad more than that, since the trend is clearly up and dot-bit doesnt do any trending. Last 120 blocks may have been statistically lucky, but with the increased hashrate that may end up being more representative: Last 120 19/09/2013 20:44 258889-259009 164 194 855 x1.46 |
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If this is true, Paypal will be able to refund only until the balance of the frozen BFL account is positive. It won't last forever, and will not be enough to refund everyone.
Customers neednt worry. BFL has that cash many times over, and even if they didnt, it still wouldnt be their problem. see what happens when you have negative balance with paypal.. |
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TheSwede was never actually involved in the development of ASICs - he was just a spokesperson.
How could he not be involved? From the IPO: The company is running two separate development teams in both Europe and China, enabling the paralell development and production of 130 nm ASIC and the future 65 nm ASIC chips.The only possible reason I could have seen to invest in labcoin is those asics, but Im now willing to bet crazy odds thats never going to happen. |
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Lets gather a best of swede to keep this entertaining. I make the beginning Best explanation right there. "One does not simply build a million dollar business without knowing what one talks about"  Any USB miners in-hand for shipping? If so I'm interested in 10+
That was quick. IPO took 3 minutes. I am curious how the share price will develop when the open market trading starts.
Trading at about 2x IPO price right now. Looks like it might go higher, I managed to get some at 0.00020 that I am NOT letting go of Have an in-hand BFL 60GH? Only interested in one that comes with the BFL supplied power supply as I am buying it for a friend who wants to try out mining. Only in hand and US preferred for quick delivery.
Its quite obvious to me he is putting zero effort in to developing an asic and just using your funds to play with, speculate on btct, buy mining gear (that will never roi), but home brew asics? I think you can safely forget that. No one working on a project of that magnitude would be bothered with or have time for shopping around for some USB miners. So you may as well stop asking for a bitcoin address, at some point he will be able to provide one, mining there with the same unprofitable gear everyone else has. |
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18x18 = 324 mm^2 for 400GH.
Thats a big chip, perhaps bigger than I expected,
Turns out its not such a large die after all; its an MCM, multichip module that constist of 4x 81mm˛ dies, which is much closer to the size I had expected. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=262052.msg3190992#msg3190992Interestingly, calculating the number of chip candidates with this size yields a smaller TH/wafer potential. I would have expected the opposite, smaller squares can better fill a circle, but the default values for spacing between dies more than offset that gain. Its only a few %, not worth redoing my math for, probably a bigger factor is the MCM packaging which will cost more than traditional asics. |
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The total die area is approximately 324mm^2. The die is split in 4 - i.e. under the metal lid there are 4 dies in a square arrangement, each approx 9mm x 9mm with 5mm gap in between each one (for better heat dissipation and spreading).
AHa. That explains a lot. I already wondered why anyone would develop such a large die for bitcoin mining. It really is only a ~100GH/s 81mm˛ die, with 4 of them in an MCM. Interesting, and probably a good idea. |
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Cooking oil is a very bad idea. It won't last long when exposed to heat not to mention the smell. Mineral oil is the only way to go. The 3M solution is even more expensive than mineral oil.
Mineral oil is better if you can find it at a reasonable price, but its not because its cooking oil that you need to cook it. When pumping it through a radiator it should be easy to keep the oil below ~40C or so, and at those temps and properly sealed vegetable oil should last longer than your asic will be profitable. Even if it goes rancid at some point, it costs next to nothing to replace it. You could probably even "recycle" it by putting it in your diesel car. |
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IM pretty sure theswede will soon be hashing faster, but it wont be with his own chips, rather with these: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=226846.220(see his posts on that page) Who in their right mind would buy bitfury's if you can produce your own asics at <1/10th the cost? Thats like BFL buying avalons. |
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I still do not understand why so many people don't see the obvious.
Many people don't care, they're cheap enough that they're fun. To me, and a lot of other folks it's just a pure giggle to run these things. I used to spend money upgrading PCs and wasting electricity on the old distributed computing projects like RC5, OGR and SETI@Home. Those made nothing back, it was just a race on a web page. Now I spend money of mining widgets, but at least they make a bit of money back so I can buy more mining widgets. Its not surprising there are people like you (mining for fun, not profit), especially with these USB devices. What is surprising is that are so many that they are driving the price, even from machines that are way beyond funny prices. You'd expect for profit miners not to buy when its not profitable and hence, despite some "for fun miners", you'd expect the price to drop to somewhere around marginal profitability but thats not happening. |
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The picture KNC posted looks like a partially assembled (or maybe a completely assembled?) chip, does it not? I see orientation marks on the other four cores, which each appear to have 100 or so of those round things on them. What are those round marks, a solder connection point or something?
they are solder balls. AFAICT, the picture floating around isnt a packaged chip yet, its a cut naked die that has been bumped (surface pads and flip chip solder balls added). Next step is mounting that to a substrate, reflowing, adding underfill etc. Only then do you have what is generally called a "chip". Here is a picture:  more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_chip |
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The more blocks are mined per month due to the speed of growth of the network, the more inflation we have
- current bitcoin inflation is BTC4500 * 365 / BTC11.7millions ever mined = 14% per year. Not so big. Still requires >$200M extra in fiat to maintain its value. Not so small either. |
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Until at least one asic manufacturer steps up and acts responsibly - this mining roi issue is not going away anytime soon.
Dont blame the asic manufacturers. Its the miners demand that creates these prices. But this situation was entirely predictable and predicted. Even if an asic manufacturer tomorrow starts selling asics at $1/GH, its very unlikely miners will make a profit. THe lower price will just result in higher volume, and thus higher difficulty and all those miners will be equally screwed once the asic price drops further, which it will once demand slow down. This is a race to the bottom, and for 28nm that bottom lays somewhere close to $0.1/GH and depending on electricity cost and efficiency, a resulting network hashrate >100PH. Overall miners will lose every step of the way down there. |
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3600 btc/day * 30 days * $130/btc = $14million revenue. - it is 2016 blocks * 25 BTC / 11 days = 4500 BTC/day at current difficulty increase. Or 4500 * 30 * $130/ BTC = $17.5million/month. You can argue that, but be aware that you are implicitly assuming an inflow of extra fiat to maintain that btc exchange rate. The more blocks are mined per month due to the speed of growth of the network, the more inflation we have and the more fresh fiat needs to flow in to exchanges to maintain that constant btc price. |
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You think I am joking? 10% would be roughly an additional 800TH in Jan, 880TH in Feb, 968TH in Mar, 1065TH in April, 1172TH in May
Pumping out 800 TH/s in Jan is going to be easy. That's only a few thousand chips. Even at $3 per GH that's over $2.4million. You honestly think people will spend $2.4M in Jan, $2.64M in Feb, $2.904M in Mar, $3.1944M in Apr? Thats where you get it fundamentally wrong. A few thousand more chips is a few tens of thousands more dollars in production cost, be it today or in 6 months or 12 months. Yes, someone will spend that kind of money (and lots more) to be able to sell it at a profit, even if that profit will diminish month after month and will be no where near were it is today. As long as the market price per GH is well above production cost (likely <$0.1 per GH for the asic) more chips will be produced and added to the network. The price of this chips isnt set, its merely a result of demand, ie, their perceived profitability to the miner. |
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