AMD ‘could be devastated’ by Mining
William Blackwell  22/02/2014  Posted 22 hours ago

In an article published today, Daily Finance argues that cryptocurrency mining may be hampering development at AMD.

The AMD flagship graphics card, Radeon R9 290X, is a hard-to-find commodity out there. Online retailers such as NewEgg and Amazon either list it as ‘Out of Stock’ or ‘Special Order’. Trying to find any half-decent AMD graphics card at a Bitcoin-centric retailer is futile. They’re just not available – and when one is for sale – it is priced at a premium.

Everyone knows: these pieces of high-grade technology are the heart of the best – and most profitable – home-built mining rigs.

So, if their high-end graphics products are so sought after, how can this possibly be to the detriment of AMD?

Consider that the R9 290x was developed as a PC gaming card, specifically introduced into the market to compete with NVIDIA’s Geforce GTX780. However, cryptocurrency miners found that the R9 has excellent hashing performance and bought it up en masse. NVIDIA cards, for various reasons, do not compare well with equivalent AMD products and chip-for-chip, the AMD will always out-perform its rival.

Instead of the R9 fulfilling its role as competition to the Geforce GTX780, it was diverted into a new, unintended market as mining rig GPU. PC gamers, unable to find the R9 in the market opted for the next best thing, namely the Geforce, and NVIDIA retained dominance in the gaming ecosystem.

Nvidia and AMD, the two dominant players in the gaming market, have been locked in a strategic battle for market dominance. AMD’s Mantle API was supposed to be pervasive amongst gamers – had the R9 fulfilled its function of showcasing the new Mantle system, and it’s SDK. Dominance of gaming, on both the gamer PC and the game designer fronts, would have secured AMD’s market share for several years.

NVIDIA’s strategy is different and more far-reaching. NVIDIA is targeting the phenomenon whereby gamers tend to change cards a lot yet stick with the same monitor for years. G-Sync is a proprietary architecture whereby next generation NVIDIA cards will depend upon – yet enhance – NVIDIA G-Sync technology embedded in the monitor. By locking the gamer in via the monitor, NVIDIA hopes to secure its market share for longer.

The rapid rise of mining and the co-incidental suitability of AMD’s GPU products for the task have derailed their strategy in the gaming race. PC gamers, whom either cannot find or cannot afford, the R9 are diverted to the Geforce and AMD is left with a hugely invested market strategy gone wrong. Shareholders have to be calmed and informed, and somehow AMD must find a way to turn this setback into an opportunity.

Will they opt to rejoin the gaming race, having fallen behind a lap? Or will they choose to change their game and get in the mining rink with ASICs?

Given the daily escalation of mining difficulty, time is of the essence, and AMD will have to decide quickly in which pool to seek it’s fortunes.

My toughs: Heheh... This is cool . We bought all AMD Radeons

PrimeDice.com down Maybe pd3 ? What is happening ?

U need to start advertising big if u want ur ponzi to work. So start doing it .

Shall we all do another round ?

Here we go... Now do one more payout. I will get in some players from PD . Big investors

Yeah we need to know if people getting in on this or its just us. U need to advertise more . Get new people in. And we will invest more and more...

U mean for ur sig or for ponzi ? For ur signature u can't until u reach 50 activity and can have link in ur sig.
As for ponzi. Invest this will be alive for a while.

Cool book, useful .
Also i would participate .
My addy: 1microLtvk1LzFzdbBeoWz9pBfXkP26yJ

Next round of payouts coming soon ? We have 2 conf. And cant wait to invest it again . Go ponzi go go go ...

Edit: Anddd got paiddd!!!

Exactly . And i would like for they to close , its stupid to have some exchange jumping with price to much up or down and they are doing it both.

I see but that is why i am wondering . Will u take percentage or u will take leftover when u decide to shut it down. We all know how ponzi is working . And u are doing it for profit.
So just would be nice to know how will u take profit.

BTC China Lowers Commission Fees
William Blackwell  22/02/2014  Posted 21 hours ago

BTC China is open for business and is offering lower trade commissions starting 24 February 2014.

From their website:

         Starting at 12 noon (China time) on February 24, 2014, BTC China will lower the trading commission fee from 0.3% to 0.1% for all users.

         For market-makers who place limit orders that add to market liquidity, they will be exempt from the trading commission, and will additionally get a 0.1% market-maker rebate!

Sign of Change

In an exclusive interview with CryptocoinsNews two weeks ago, Bobby Lee outlined the positive changes for China based exchanges. The current announcement is effectively BTC China swinging open its doors and saying: “Open for business!”

This is good news for Bitcoin, considering the masses of liquidity and sheer volume of trade BTC China brought to the Bitcoin market before the PBoC reigned in exuberance in November.

Popular opinion has it that BTC China could be the best candidate to take over the lead from Mt.Gox – along with its customers and market share. Additionally, many feel that BTC China, although having it’s own customer account validation process, does not have anybody in the West looking over it’s shoulder at customer’s private data, nor a stick big enough to demand that the Chinese exchange divulge personal information or transaction details.

In his recent CCN interview, Bobby Lee had the following to say:

 It appears to us that the reason there was a hard government crackdown with a one punch, two punch in December is because they thought there was too much volatility. The government has a right to think it is too volatile.

We need a few months for the dust to settle, so the Chinese consumers regain confidence. There is demand for Bitcoin in China. Bitcoin’s features remain, it hasn’t become less scarce, less decentralised or less a store of value.

Hang dai, Mr Lee, Hang dai.

Yes, and why not. As long as we keep investing we get paid.

@nitansh how much u taking ? Some percent or whatever left on that addy at the end ?

Following the Money: Trends in Bitcoin Venture Capital Investment
Garrick Hileman (@garrickhileman) | Published on February 23, 2014 at 16:00 GMT | Analysis, Companies, Investors, Startups

CoinDesk is releasing its ‘State of Bitcoin 2014′ report on Tuesday, which takes an in-depth look into the evolution of bitcoin and the potential hurdles it is still yet to face.

This article is the first of a two-part series drawn from the report. The series looks at the trends in venture capital investment in bitcoin.

It assesses how venture investment in bitcoin to date compares with other related investment sectors (eg financial technology), or previous major waves of investment (eg the Internet).

It also examines the types of bitcoin companies venture investors have focused their funding on.

Look out for part two, which will be published tomorrow and focuses on which regions have been receiving the lion’s share of venture investment in bitcoin.

Venture investment: early Internet vs early bitcoin

Venture capitalist and Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen recently compared the current understanding of bitcoin’s overall potential, as well as its current stage of development, to the Internet circa 1993 and the PC in 1975.

Does the level of venture capital invested in bitcoin to date reflect Andreessen’s assessment?

Table 1: VC Investments in Bitcoin Companies, 2012-Present

VC-investments-bitcoin-companies
Sources: CoinDesk, Dow Jones VentureSource, VentureScanner

Comparing this bitcoin investment to date with investment in the early Internet, (Table 2) reveals that that significantly less funding (approximately 20%) has been allocated to bitcoin compared to Internet startups, which pulled in just over $500m in venture investment in 1995.

Table 2: VC Investments in US Internet Companies, 1995

vc-investments-in-us-internet-companies
Sources: PricewaterhouseCoopers, National Venture Capital Association

With regards to the above comparison, there are several important caveats. First, due to data availability limitations there is no way to compare the Internet investments circa 1993 with bitcoin 2014, as 1995 is the earliest year in which we have Internet investment data.[1]

The above Internet investment data also reflect only US investments as global data are not available, so while the vast majority of early internet investment was US-based the $507m figure is likely understated for these reasons.

On the bitcoin side, the $97.5m in venture capital that has been publicly reported underestimates the total, which would include unreported venture investment, by tens of millions of dollars.

For example, we know that Andreessen Horowiz has invested just under $50m in bitcoin-related startups, and that Coinbase only received $25m in the Series B in which Andreessen Horowiz participated.

Another Andreessen Horowiz-backed startup, Ripple, has received two rounds of undisclosed funding, indicating that the company may have received upwards of $20m. CoinDesk is also aware of, but not privy to disclose, other bitcoin startups that have received million-dollar-plus funding rounds, and these figures are, therefore, excluded from this analysis.

Finally, it has been estimated that upwards of $200m has been invested in bitcoin mining hardware and infrastructure to date, a figure which exceeds even a less conservative estimate of the total venture capital invested in bitcoin to date. Perhaps the appropriate Internet analogy to this mining hardware investment is to compare it to the significant fiber optic and broadband infrastructure investments that were occurring alongside the growth in Internet startups.

Chart 1: Number of VC-backed Companies: early Internet vs early bitcoin

number-of-VC-backed-Companies-early-Internet-vs-early-bitcoin
Sources: PricewaterhouseCoopers, National Venture Capital Association, CoinDesk, Dow Jones VentureSource, VentureScanner

Looking at the number of deals from 1995, we can see a total of 156 total funding rounds, with nearly two-thirds of the rounds being first sequence financings.

In contrast, all but one bitcoin financing (Coinbase’s November 2013 $25m Series B) have been first or seed round investments.

In short, the data fit Andreessen’s story that the current bitcoin investment lifecycle is relatively less mature than the Internet’s circa 1995, and perhaps more akin to where the Internet investment environment stood in 1993.

Chart 2: VC Investment in 1995 Internet Companies vs bitcoin

VC-Investment-in-1995-Internet-Companies-vs-bitcoin
Sources: PricewaterhouseCoopers, National Venture Capital Association, CoinDesk, Dow Jones VentureSource, VentureScanner

Looking at the data on VC investments in Internet companies for 1995, we can also see that a much greater sum of funding was directed towards Internet companies than has been directed at bitcoin to date (Chart 2).

In 1995 there was $508m invested in Internet companies, an amount which was very close to an even split between first sequence and later stage financings. In other words, by 1995 over 50% of the funding was going to just one-third of the venture-backed Internet companies.

Overall, if VCs are proven correct that bitcoin represents an opportunity on par with the Internet then we can expect investment in bitcoin to increase by several orders of magnitude from current levels.

30 VC-backed bitcoin startups across five distinct sectors
There have been 30 bitcoin companies in total that have received publicly-reported venture funding to date (see Table 3).

Note: A number of additional companies not included in the table are rumoured to have received non-publicly disclosed venture capital investment.

The universe of venture-backed bitcoin companies can be broadly classified into the following five distinct sectors:

Exchanges – companies that operate a bitcoin trading platform (eg BTC China)
Financial Services – the broadest category, including everything from bitcoin ATM operators (eg BitAccess) to white label exchange providers (eg Buttercoin) to alternative payment networks (eg Ripple) to bitcoin gift cards (eg GogoCoin)
Mining Hardware – producers of bitcoin mining equipment like ASICs (eg BitFury)
Payment Processors – outsourced virtual alternative currency payment solutions (eg BitPay)
Wallets – secure storage and transfer mechanisms for digital alternative currency. Several payment processors also have wallets (eg Gliph)

Chart 3: Sector distribution of Bitcoin VC investment

Sector-distribution-Bitcoin-VC-investment

Payment Processors lead the way in terms of total share of VC investment (38%), followed by Financial Services (23%) and Exchanges (14%). Pure-play wallets are the smallest category at 1% of total VC investment.

It is interesting to note the relatively small VC investment in mining hardware companies (13%) given that it is very likely the largest legal revenue generating sector of the bitcoin economy with over $200m in mining hardware revenue to date.

Table 4: VC Investments by Industry, 2013 ($m) for United States

vc-investments-industry-2013

While by no means insignificant, the $97.5m in publicly disclosed venture capital invested in bitcoin companies to date (Table 1) is relatively small compared with other investment sectors that have been beneficiaries of significant venture capital investment (Table 4).

The grey shaded areas of Table 4 are intended to highlight bitcoin-related investment sectors. For example, investments in bitcoin wallets could perhaps fall into more than one category, including Software and Financial Services.

Part two of this series, which will be published tomorrow, examines where the majority of VC investment in bitcoin companies has come from. Silicon Valley, surely? Not necessarily …

——————————————————————————————————

[1] Notes on sources and methodology: unfortunately, the earliest industry-wide venture capital historical data is for 1995, two full years after the year Andreessen compares the Internet to bitcoin (1993). Bitcoin investment data spans 2012-early 2014 because the vast majority of bitcoin investments to date occurred in 2013.

I got paid again. I just use different addyes. Guys u should post when u get paid for him to gain some trust.
Keep it going man.

I will invite more people when i see this working. Hope we can keep it alive for u .
Ponzi iz the man !

Sweet! I GOT PAID !
Now lets wait a few people and invest again
This is fun .

So, looks like this is starting ? . Im getting in
U better start paying out fast, if u want to get some early trust . Good luck !

I actually invested 0.05ish btc for 5 gsh on pbmining . Its making me 80k per day so money return in 60ish days and u have that ghs for 5 years

Than its not for me. I will advertise Primedice even for free. They are just great. Tnx for info anyway.

They are sim games yes ? Then i am not shocked . I rely hate sims .

Yeah they are good have no limit for bets. But i just can't stand their 90's so ugly design .

Actually for new players faucet is 100 sat. Just coz of bots. But in pd 3 u will get points for chat and playing so faucet can go up to 20k sat .
And yes it is best dice game on the internet.