Update

Tomorrow I will only have the internet access in the evening (Beijing time), so please expect about a 6-10 hours delay of coupon payment. Thanks.

According to the problem of centralization, we are going to make our investors break even very fast, and we also want to stay in the ASIC mining business for long. Therefore, we have the incentive of causing neither the short-term nor the long-term panic.

In addition, we believe that Bitcoin could only be destroyed from outside, that is, people or organizations taking opposed position against Bitcoin. If honest miners or mining device manufacturers will make the network un-secure, the concept of Bitcoin as a great currency won't be a sound one, and we wouldn't start Bitfountain in the first place.

This week I have a way more limited time replying mails and PMs. Please expect a delay as long as 1-2 days. Though much information will be released to the board members only, direct questions from the community are still welcome.

In addition, timely reply will be back normal from next Saturday. Before that, please understand that there may be some delays. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Board members could also ask my partners for answers if I couldn‘t reply very soon.

12nd Payment

Calculation time: August 29, 06:14:34 forum time

Number of difficulty change: 1
Number of block reward change: 0

Time interval:

  Starting from: August 22, 05:58:58
  Ending at: August 25 01:46:39
  Total time: 244061s
  Difficulty: 2,190,865.97

  Starting from: August 25 01:46:39
  Ending at: August 29, 06:14:34
  Total time: 361675s
  Difficulty: 2,440,642.61

Hashrate of this week: 1.29299MH/s

coupon/share = (1.29299*10^6)/(2^32)*(244061*50/2,190,865.97+361675*50/2,440,642.61)=0.0039074

Number of Shares: 4851

Total Payment: 18.9547974

Weekly Financial Disclosure

Time: 09:49 AM, Beijing time
Date: August 29, 2012

Funds of Last Week: 86.405BTC
Number of Total Shares in Circulation: 5000

Assets:

JLP-BMD
Holding: 1569shares 156.884BTC
Dividends Paid: 2.532BTC

YABMC
Holding: 1000shares 127.000BTC
Dividends Paid: 3.052BTC

PIMP
Holding: 2030shares 345.100BTC
Dividends Paid: 6.112BTC

MOVETO.FUND
Holding: 109shares 130.473BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.000BTC

BFLS
Holding: 50shares 57.450BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.643BTC

Cognitive
Holding: 179shares 118.104BTC
Dividends Paid: 0.601BTC

BTC
Holding: 147.322shares 147.322BTC
Holding After Dividends: 134.382BTC

Calculated Dividends: 2.532+3.052+6.112+0.000+0.643+0.601=12.940BTC
NAV: 156.884+127.000+310.590+130.473+57.450+118.104+147.322-12.940=1069.393BTC
Weekly NAV Growth: (1069.393-1043.162)/1043.162=2.51%

In the first batch, we will get boards with multiple chips on each.
Single chips could be provided for sale later, when there are interested business partners.

The large volume sell was not caused by us. We sold the 8,000 Bitcoins mainly via btcchina, with some other ways. The international bank wire fee ((2000 rmb + bank fee) for each withdrawal) and the limitation of withdrawal of mtgox made us not choose them. We caught some rally in the middle but not all, and finally got about 535k rmb after the transaction fee (0.3%) and the bank fee (1%). The cost of the MLM mask-set production and the first batch of chips are now secured no matter how deep the BTC price will dip.

We are busy working with the simulation, which is trying to make things 100% right on the design side before taping out.

The line will be:
1. We finish the simulation stage.
2. We do the three things in parallel:
    (1) waiting for the foundry to make the mask and produce the first batch of chips.
    (2) negotiating the final price and making formal contract with the packaging service company.
    (3) produce the first batch of PCBs.
3. The chips are packed and used for making boards.

Stage 2 consumes most of the time, it's about 45-50 days including several days of merging PLLs into our layout.
Currently we have no serious problem of the design, according to first two back-end iterations in this month. Therefore, the optimal delivering time (within October) and the non-optimal delivering time (November) are still expected.

This is not a formal update. I will make a more elaborated one when we reach the next milestone (all simulation done). Hopefully more tangible results could also be given. And we are getting ready for the financial report for the first major payments.

Sorry to all people that I didn't manage to reply in time.

I think it's a good idea.

More specifically, it could be made optional, e.g, people could choose whether to show some of their assets to the issuer. It will keep the anonymous nature of GLBSE, but at the same time give people the choice of disclosure.

Thanks for the question.

In principle, anyone who could show the proof he owns 5,000 shares should be put in the board member list, and those who doesn't hold so many after some time will leave the list. This should be the right way.

However, currently the board member list is maintained in the way that only those who purchased 5000 shares from the issuer (me) are included.

The advantage of the first approach is that board members always use their own stake to represent their commitment. The disadvantage of the first approach is that we will need some serious effort to track the information of shareholders.

Therefore we don't know whether and how to switch to the first approach yet. Do you have ideas on that? Thanks.

I'm very sorry for all the confusion. By "extra" I didn't mean leftover unsold shares, I meant
the extra shares for large investors.

This sentence isn't a excuse for me to avoid my commitment with "technical difficulty".
It's just to explain that I understood it's very hard in the first place so my "extra shares" did
mean extra 10% and 12.5% for larger bulk purchasers, but not all leftover ones.

I'm sorry again and it's my fault to bring so much confusion in my last post of announcement.

Yes, I'm operating with binding commitments. There should be compensation if the result of the drama is not ideal. I used "I'm considering" to say that I'm thinking of some more compensating plans other than the plan-A. It will of course be the shareholders who would decide.

I'm very sorry, but the "extra shares" here means the extra shares for bulk purchasers. (10% for >=5,000 & 12.5% for >=10,000)
Sending leftover shares proportionally to shareholders is technically very hard. It is hard to track who owns how many, and for people who hold only a handful of shares it is impossible to give them fractional shares.

However, the proportion of the company represented by each share could be adjusted. I'm considering making it a little higher to compensate the shareholders if the recent 300BTC trade doesn't end up well, as a plan-B (plan-A is that my partners and I fill the gap).

Update

All pending orders are either executed or cancelled. There is still one trade unpaid yet.

The IPO is finally closed. Extra shares have been sent. Please check, and contact me if there's any mistakes. Thanks.

Update

The motion has been passed.

Voted Yea:46649
Voted Nay:17439

8,000 BTC will be exchanged for fiat within a relatively short time. We will not dump too fast if the bid wall is not thick enough.

When we start to pay for our expenses, the financials will be given to the public, while details of each spending will be given to board members.

The motion ID is 109. Please check the motion page again. Thanks.

Update

As the board member HorseRider suggested in the board members' mailing list, a motion is held to ask for selling 8,000 BTC and putting the fiat into the company bank account earlier than the due of pending orders. The Bitfountain does not participate this motion and it's all ASICMINER shareholders' choice. Please vote, thanks.

Update

IPO: There are still three pending orders. Two of them amount at 1,000 BTC each. All other orders are either cancelled or traded.
If they are not canceled but done, we could collect at a total of >14k of BTC, which would be enough for our expenses, as long as no extreme condition with the BTC price happens. So we still hold the original plan.

Chip: With our recent (from starting of IPO and now) effort, we successfully further reduced the ratio of power consumption to hashrate. It finally makes inexpensive packaging of our chips practical. Before taping out, a detailed spec (size, power, performance, pins, I/O interface, etc) of our chips will be made public.

11st Payment

Calculation time: August 22, 05:58:58 forum time

Number of difficulty change: 0
Number of block reward change: 0

Time interval:

  Starting from: August 15, 05:02:08
  Ending at: August 22, 05:58:58
  Total time: 608210
  Difficulty: 2,190,865.97

Hashrate of this week: 1.28159MH/s

coupon/share = (1.28159*10^6)/(2^32)*(608210*50/2,190,865.97)=0.0041419

Number of Shares: 4968

Total Payment: 20.5769592

Update

The mailing list for board members is created. A welcome mail is sent. More board members will be added to the mailing list.

If any existing bulk purchaser who already bought more than 500 BTC worth of shares and hasn't received the mail, please PM me so that I wouldn't miss anyone. Thanks.

Update

We are gradually reducing the position on several certain assets and switching to new ones. So please expect a little lower NAV and dividends in this week as well as the following next few weeks.