That was my basic assumption but I did not want to take the slings and arrows for the speculation.

The reduction in AM shares corresponded quite closely with an increase in BTC guild hash share. I immediately postulated that AM moved some amount of hashing from private to BTC guild, but for what reason I could not fathom. It may well be staging for transition to newer eruptors, but once again, not sure what the exact reasoning would be.

I would tend to look for things outside of strictly mining or mining hardware producers. Sure, the dividends are there, but we really need to be investing in projects that will expand BTC beyond these niches. That is how we help BTC expand it's reach and acceptance.

As far as I can see, the current exchanges are almost completely devoid of such investment options. Is it simply because no one is developing anything?

No kidding, I would like to hear more about this $500.00 limit.

There does not seem to be any correlation anywhere in the code between dollars and bitcoins anymore than than there is between bitcoins and bananas. If a bitcoin cannot be worth more than $500.00, how many bananas can it be worth?

There is no need to respond. The only change to their percentage of the global hash will come from those gpu miners who decide to turn off their machines because they are no longer profitable at $100 /btc. I do not anticipate that this number will be very large, as it will be more than made up over time by additional ASIC miners coming into the game.

You are correct, you cannot expect both rising difficulty and steady returns to coexist except in the special case where your personal hash rate increases to ensure a steady percentage of global hash. This I believe is the special case we see in AM, as their stated goal is to maintain a steady percentage of the global hash. If I misunderstand the intention of AM then I stand corrected.

Aside from temporary distortions caused by excessive hash rate increases over short periods of time, the number of blocks solved (and therefore btc mined) remains constant over time, this is precisely the function that increasing difficulty performs.

25 coins x 6 blocks/hr x 24 hours x 365 days = 1,314,000 total btc mined in the entire universe per year. This on average will remain stable until the next halving. If AM maintains 20% of the total hash, they will receive 262,800  coins per year from mining. With 400,000 shares outstanding that breaks down to 0.707 coins per year per share before expenses.

If you assume that AM can keep at 20%, this number is fixed regardless of hash rate or difficulty. 0.707 coins per share per year.

Once you move past this point you are playing with all sorts of variables that are pretty much just best guesses. We don't know their expenses, but we can guess. We don't know what hardware sales will be, but there are no shortage of guesses. We definitely have no idea what the btc/fiat conversions will be one year from now. By playing with those numbers you can pretty much end up with any results you like, from AM shares having a fiat value of anywhere from zero to a million and beyond. It just depends on what values you wish to assign to the variables. For example:

Assume AM keeps 20% market share, makes an additional 10,000 btc profit from hardware, and one btc becomes worth $200. The math becomes pretty simple.

262,800 from mining, 10.000 from hw for 272,800 coins x $200 = $54,560,000, divided by 400,000 shares = $136.40 per year income per share. That is about 45% of the current cost of a share.  1000 shares would net you $136,400 per year, on an investment of $300,000. This also ignores the increase in value of AM shares that would inevitably occur. Factoring that in, and you may find yourself a millionaire very quickly.

But of course, like I said, change any of the variables just a little and these results jump all over the place. That is really what investing is all about. Plug in your worst case, best case, and most likely scenarios and see where you end up.

I find the certitude some posters display to be quite disturbing. There are a multitude of variables at play here when attempting to perform a reasonable analysis of the potential returns of the various available bitcoin investments. Most of those discussing this are limiting themselves to just a few, and by doing so provide themselves (and others) with projections of limited value.

The effects of the entire bitcoin ecosystem must be considered, and this of course also includes the fiat conversion rate of bitcoins. I find it odd that this particular variable gets ignored repeatedly, so perhaps it is worth exploring this aspect. Obviously many of the associated costs of mining and of hardware sales must be performed after a conversion to fiat. It is unlikely that Friedcat pays for the electricity in his farm directly with btc, nor does BFL pay their labor costs in btc. It should be safe to state that currently nearly all of those associated costs require a conversion to fiat. If one were to consider the values ONLY AT THE TIME OF CONVERSION you get an extremely different narrative. Imagine the following scenario:

Joe GPU is mining btc at home. He is making 1 btc per day. At $100/btc he makes $100/day.The difficulty doubles. Joe is sad, because now he finds that he is only mining 0.5 per day, for $50/day. But Joe does not need the money at the moment, so it just keeps going into his wallet. The difficulty doubles again. Joe is really pissed. Now it is only $25/day. You would assume at some point that eventually Joe's electricity cost would exceed his btc income, and then Joe will go extinct. All things being equal, you would be right. But all things are not equal. After all of these months of mining, the fiat conversion rate for btc has changed repeatedly. Suppose it is $500/btc when he is mining .02 btc /day. Amazingly, not only is Joe earning exactly the same amount (in fiat terms) as he was when he started, but the fiat value of his wallet has exploded in that timeframe. Miners who were running a GPU farms last year when the difficulties were low and the fiat value of a btc was $2 have seen this to be all too true.

Right now this scenario is being temporarily derailed by two factors, both related to ASICs. The first factor is the number of ASICs coming on line in a short time frame is causing btc to be mined at a rate higher than 6 blocks per hour. Although subsequent difficulty increases will stabilize the rate, the current supply glut is driving down the btc conversion rate driving down profits. This imbalance will inevitably self-correct with obvious consequences. The second factor is a desire by many miners to convert btc from ASIC mining to recoup the costs of the newly-delivered rigs in fiat form. Once these costs have been recouped, many miners will be more inclined to keep larger and larger potions of their btc in btc form, or to spend it within the btc ecosystem. Once the ASIC destabilization has corrected, the system should return Joe GPU (and now Mary ASIC) to the scenario above, wherein rising fiat conversions and rising difficulty rates work in sync to ensure stable mining rates (in fiat terms).

We have seen this relationship from another angle, that being the increase of share price (in btc) of ASICminer. In effect, we are all suffering from the Red Queen Syndrome when you look at it considering most of the variables. Miners are (in general) running as fast as they can just to stay where they already are. So are the investors in ASICminer. You may purchase a share of ASIC miner today for 3.0btc, which is $300 fiat. If in a year you may find yourself at a value of 3.0 btc, but a fiat value of $3000, with weekly dividends the same size today as measured in btc, but with a fiat value in excess of $100. Friedcat need only play the Red Queen in an environment of rising difficulty and rising fiat values, he needs only to maintain his share as the system grows and btc ecosystem expands. If you believe he can do so, then there is probably no better investment for btc at this time. But even if you believe he cannot, it is likely still a better investment than just sitting on coins or purchasing gear yourself.

Bitcoins are not orange juice. Orange juice gets consumed, bitcoins do not.

That said, I think the point being missed by many is that bitcoins will always be profitable to mine... for somebody. Those with the best margins will continue to mine, those with the poorest will drop out. But as has been stated repeatedly, 3600 coins per day, whether mined by CPU, GPU, FPGA, or ASIC. Talk of this group or that group getting priced out means nothing. It never did, because someone will mine 3600 coins today, tomorrow, and the next day. The price of BTC does not make a single extra coin per day get mined even if every person on earth starts mining tomorrow. The difficulty simply rises to bring the number mined per day back to 3600.

The supply is increasing by 3600 per day and there is nothing anyone anywhere is going to do about it. Difficulty assures this. How much it costs Joe Blow to mine does not affect the price of bitcoins in the least. He may stop mining if it becomes unprofitable, but everyone who keeps mining will share the coins he would have mined. They will be mined anyway whether Joe mines them or not.

When a miner becomes unprofitable it is simply because other people are drinking his milkshake. Everything else is noise.

Oddly enough, difficulty has very little to do with the value of BTC. I know it is counter-intuitive, but it is nonetheless true. In any given time frame the number of coins mined on average is stable. When it gets out of whack, the difficulty adjusts to get it "back in whack". The difficulty level functions as an automatic stabilizer on the supply. When a bunch of GPU miners blow a gasket because the difficulty rose and their profits evaporate, what you have to understand is that other people simply brought more hash power online and took the profit from the GPU miners. But the amount of coins mined remains stable. (There are minor variations when the hash rate gets way ahead of the difficulty, as just happened, and a larger than normal amount of coins are generated before the difficulty can catch up.)

The only thing an increase in difficulty means is that some people have increased the hash rate and are now taking an increased slice of the pie. The size of the pie however, remains basically the same. Only three things can increase the value of BTC: Increased levels of fiat being exchanged for BTC, increased levels of economic activity utilizing BTC, and decreasing the amount of BTC that is liquid and available for purchase/transactions that already exist (liquidity squeeze). If you see anything that indicates that these things are happening, it is a good indicator that BTC prices will rise.

Difficulty has no more than a temporary transitive effect on BTC price, and it can be safely ignored.

Satoshis and Div received. Good to do business. Will leave trust. Thanks!

I vote you just give the shares to the highest bidder 

At least missing the 21516 that BTC Trading Co claims they have. That's a good place to start.

Not to mention all the TAT shares they have.

Friedcat would probably not send dividend confirmations for any shares owned by either ASICMiner or BitFountain. I mean, why would he (they)?

Only 2 days left before dividend. Can we send info to FC without the laggard?

Payment and PM sent 5/31

New world record bid.

1@2.52

Got my shares and most excellent dividend. Everything went perfectly. A+ all involved.

It is still so early in the game that the biggest fortunes have not even begun to be built.

2 days left until dividend and no confirmation yet. I assume seller will forward dividends if transaction delayed beyond Wednesday?

53 million shares to solve could be chalked up to really really really bad luck. Once in a few years or so kind of bad luck.

90 million shares means something is broken.