There are some practical limits. E.g. one target spec is about 1200W-1500W per device, because that's what most US households can deliver per breaker (10A) (probably 1200W to allow for some buffer). Other countries may allow more or less. Dependent on the target customer base (US might not be the majority  ) that number may have to be scaled. Above 1.5kW you're looking at custom power supply installations, where usually an expert has to be involved. Here in Finland it is not unusual to have 16A breakers in ordinary homes to supply simple wall sockets. That, and our higher voltage (230V) makes it possible to use electric appliances up to 2000-2500W without any special arrangements. I don't know about rest of the Europe though. Euro 230v seems to be 20a sockets the same as the average American home has 120v 15a. |
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In a suprising turn of events, Diablo-D3 has agreed to hire me, usagi, as his representative in this issue.
I will speak on behalf of Diablo-D3 and represent him in this issue. My fee is 5 btc. Diablo has expressly authorized me to field all questions on behalf of the GLBSE, investors, and the public on this issue.
We are issuing a statement: Things have gotten blown out of proportion. Everyone wants what is best for DMC and for investors. Therefore we are prepared to make an offer. The DMC contract will be modified as follows:
1. Diablo-D3 will modify his contract to state his business plan:
a) Buying shares of mining issues on GLBSE.
b) Buying hardware (when appropriate) for the datacenter.
c) Buying solar power (possibly before mining hardware) and possibly reselling solar power into the grid should surplus exist.
d) Selling dedicated hosting/web hosting if there is spare datacenter capacity
e) Other sources of income, from time to time, to be passed through shareholder approval via binding motion.
2. Seeing as how if the business he runs can't exist if it can't pay him a reasonable amount, the dividend structure will be changed as follows:
a) Out of all the money DMC recieves as income (excluding sale of shares), Diablo will recieve 20%.
b) The remaining 80% will be used to cover operational expenses.
c) Of the money remaining after operating expenses, half will be paid as dividend each month, and
d) the remainder will be used to expand and grow the company.
3. Diablo-D3 will hire smickles of S2 capital management to do accounting for DMC (effective immediately).
This simple 3-step plan shows that Diablo-D3 is competent enough to manage DMC and is the best person for the job.
I will be speaking with Nefario immediately to vet this and see if we can't turn this situation around.
I knew I should I have bought that giant red USB button they had on ThinkGeek. |
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From the sound of it his biggest mistake was to issue his shares on a platform that forces everything to be denominated in, and traded in, bitcoins.
His goal seems to be to build something of real actual usefulness type of value, not to play exchange-rate games to make things look useful by looking at them only from the viewpoint of the bottom line of one single currency's accounting of the venture.
Bitcoin seems to be a particularly bad unit of account to be using in fact, because it is itself an investment that is likely to out-perform most markets. It is quite likely that simply buying and holding bitcoins is better than almost any investment other than ones in which someone has been talked, convinced, fooled or suckered into using bitcoins as a unit of account thus ends up owing the investors more bitcoins than were invested rather than merely more buying power than was invested.
In fact his overall operation seems like the kind of thing where the "sysbucks" I used in my Internet Provider Utilities toolkit could be useful, as the "sysbucks" serve as a currency specific to the range of goods and services provided by the provider independent of how many of some other currency the sales staff manage to sell "sysbucks" for at any particular point in time.
-MarkM-
qft. |
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I remember one of the very first posts when he brought this idea up being to get someone more business savvy to help him out, which he declined. Probably would've been a good idea.
Its not that I refused, I would have loved to have been the technical cofounder of this and let someone else take on the full time job of Chief Ego Officer, but the community simply doesn't have such people, and there have been wildly successful businesses that have been ran by technical solo founders. The community is going to have to figure out how to run a successful company, but destroying DMC in the name of greed isn't going to help things. |
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I've only referred to mining here - not to running a data-centre. That's because this apaprently is (or was supposed to be) a mining company.
Read the op. |
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Yes, that does not include maintenance costs.
Dragging BTC/USD exchange prices into this is a red herring. It doesn't matter what the price of BTC is because the power company charges us in USD. Power usage is the largest operating cost of a data center, more so than anything else by a huge margin, and this operating cost can only be measured in USD.
Solar power, as I demonstrated, can reduce this operational cost by up to 1/5th. Let me repeat what I just said: our largest operational cost, a smart investment early on can reduce this to 1/5th. This is an economically driven decision, and it is not a tiny return on investment whatsoever.
Insurance cannot be applied solely to the solar panels, such insurance would apply to everything, and would be a separate operational cost, thus obviously not included here in these calculations.
Additionally, small scale solar panel installations are surprisingly low maintenance if they don't have sun trackers (no moving parts). Maintenance will obviously only cost a fraction of what we paid for the panels no matter how difficult the maintenance is.
The more you post, the more obvious it becomes you really don't have any clue whatsoever. If investors invest BTC then profit/loss needs to be measured primarily in BTC. VERY simple example using small round numbers. These figures ONLY demonstrate the effect exchange rate has and have NOTHING to do with how long it would take to break even. We'll say current exchange rate is $10=1 BTC WEll say equipment costs $1000 (10 BTC) We'll say your electric costs/week are $5 and your equipment reduces that to $1 So your equipment is saving you $4 = 0.4 BTC per week and is worth $1000 (10 BTC) Now let's say at some point later the exchange rate is now $20=1 BTC Your equipment is still worth $1000 - but that's now only 5 BTC And you're still saving $4 per week in electic costs - but that's now only 0.2 BTC Electricty being sold in US$ does NOT cancel out the impact of exchange-rate fluctuations on the value of the actual equipment. It actually ADDS to the impact of exchange-rate fluctuations. When you're talking about a mining operation that is cancelled out to some extent by the increased value of mined coins. If you're talking about a data-centre which sells its services in US$ then the exchange rate also has huge impact on profitability (expressed in BTC). Put very simply, even if everything else works out as good about your plan, your plan is doomed to utter and complete failure (when expressed in BTC) if BTC continues to gain strength vs the dollar. At best your plan could be considered as shorting BTC (or at least betting that it wont rise against the dollar) - until, of course, we consider the utterly pathetic rate of return it would give even if all your optimistic expectations proved true. See, I said it was a red herring, and you just demonstrated why. Don't worry, I fell for this early on too. Let me repeat something, the electricity costs USD no matter what. If electricity is our largest operating cost, it doesn't matter if it costs thousands of dollars or dozens of Bitcoins... if I can cut that the whole way down to 1/5th of it, we save thousands, or we save dozens. That operating cost doesn't go away because we calculated the math in a different currency. BTC prices since its inception have been rather random. Without an actual economy to back Bitcoin, it will continue to be unstable. Your example of BTC doubling is just as possible as BTC halving. We pay electricity in dollars, hell, we pay every cost in dollars, it simply doesn't matter what the price of BTC is now or what it will be in the future, we must pay those costs. |
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792Mwh would cost me (assuming a commercial rate instead of industrial, I'm not sure what the minimum is to get into industrial) $85,219. 660kw of panels would cost $462,000 to install, or only a little under 6 years at current rates.
That's assuming no maintenance costs. If the investment is in BTC then that's also assuming the BTC/US$ rate remains unchanged. If, for example, BTC doubles in value aginst the $ in those 6 years then after the 6 years (assuming zero maintenance costs) you'd still only have made back half your initial investment in BTC. Where what you propose really starts to fall down is if you compare it to any other investments on here - or even directly to mining. Compare s[pending that money on power-generation to spending it on more mining power (and just buying the power) and using part of mined income to expand. You'll find the mining makes way more profit (or less loss) whether BTC gos up. down or stays unchanged vs the us$ (only possible exception is if it devalues far less quickly AND bitcoin crashes in price). All the solar-power does is suck away loads of the cash for a possible tiny return a long way down the line. I don't dispute your claim that long-term investing US$ in solar power could generate some profit. But we're talking baout investing BTC not US$ - and you need to compare it to other investment available. Just because something could make a profit doesn't mean it's a good idea to it - if there's other options equally (or more) accessible that could make more. Unless, of course, the decision to do it is entirely politically rather than economically driven. Without ongoing maintenance costs your estimate of 6 years is totally unrealistic. For one thing you'd need insurance - or if someone vandalises it are the shareholders just supposed to kiss goodbye to their investment? Yes, that does not include maintenance costs. Dragging BTC/USD exchange prices into this is a red herring. It doesn't matter what the price of BTC is because the power company charges us in USD. Power usage is the largest operating cost of a data center, more so than anything else by a huge margin, and this operating cost can only be measured in USD. Solar power, as I demonstrated, can reduce this operational cost by up to 1/5th. Let me repeat what I just said: our largest operational cost, a smart investment early on can reduce this to 1/5th. This is an economically driven decision, and it is not a tiny return on investment whatsoever. Insurance cannot be applied solely to the solar panels, such insurance would apply to everything, and would be a separate operational cost, thus obviously not included here in these calculations. Additionally, small scale solar panel installations are surprisingly low maintenance if they don't have sun trackers (no moving parts). Maintenance will obviously only cost a fraction of what we paid for the panels no matter how difficult the maintenance is. |
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Nefario just got done explaining on IRC that the audit is already in process. [\\\] is imsaguy.
[08:43:47] <nefario> I've hired an outside party with qualifications
[08:44:01] <nefario> they will work out a profit and loss
[08:44:14] <nefario> then I'm getting someone else to write a report (another auditor)
[08:44:17] <nefario> and finally
[08:44:33] <nefario> a third person to verify the profit and loss, and report are correct
[08:46:36] <Diablo-D3> I dont trust you to chose auditors.
[08:47:07] <nefario> I've only gotten one so far
[08:47:09] <mircea_popescu> why not ? he could "hire" usagi, an anonymous "3rd party" with "qualifications". he knows ito integral calculus!
[08:47:12] <[\\\]> <nefario> I've hired an outside party with qualifications << whom?
[08:47:18] <[\\\]> the auditor should be well known
[08:47:24] <[\\\]> in fact, its announced BEFORE the audit
[08:47:26] <Diablo-D3> I agree with imsaguy
[08:47:29] <[\\\]> at least on a real stock exchange
[08:47:35] <Diablo-D3> this whole thing is extremely shady
[08:47:49] <Diablo-D3> not only that, the shareholders should have to agree to the chosen auditors as well
[08:47:54] <[\\\]> aye
[08:48:03] <[\\\]> I think Diablo-D3 is a douchebag
[08:48:04] <[\\\]> don't get me wrong
[08:48:07] <[\\\]> but this stinks of shady
(nefario goes on to talk about the london Bitcoin conference)
[08:48:43] <[\\\]> notice how my questions go unanswered?
[08:48:47] <[\\\]> Who is doing the audit?
(nefario continues to ignore the question)
[08:50:02] <[\\\]> Who is doing the audit of DMC?
[08:51:06] <nefario> [\\\]: I'll announce it later
So, shareholders. Not only do you not get to vote on who the auditors will be, nefario will not even say who they are. The report may not even be released until AFTER the vote. He also refused to answer the question if smickles would be allowed to be one of the auditors (one of the few people I trust to fairly look at corporate financials).
What gives, nefario? You claim I haven't been transparent enough, and you turn around and do worse?
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Now, see where I said "at today's power prices"? Prices will only go up. We can pay an upfront price now in a large lump sum, or we can pay several times that over the next 30 years. You call it substitution of cost, I call it massive reduction in cost. The largest cost of a data center is power, which I've dealt with in two ways.
Why should the prices go up if even you can provide power for less. Wouldn't the market regulate itself with new suppliers? Ask your parents what they used to pay for electricity before you were born. It was much lower than what they pay now. The prices are only going to continue going up, and there is no indication this will stop. The market is already heavily regulated and power companies are operated as state sponsored legal monopolies. That was a rhetorical question. Income and inflation outweigh the price increase - so in fact it has become cheaper. Panel prices will also drop. Wind powered energy is still technologically advancing, also. Don't confuse USD inflation with bitcoin inflation. I wold not object to solar panels as a political project, but that should not be part of DMC, and even than it would only work if the calculations are founded on solid data.
Its been part of the plan since the beginning. If you don't like it, then don't invest. If you are able to do the calculations, I won't object. Here in Maine, since I moved here 23 years ago, power prices per kwh have doubled while my kwh monthly usage has decreased. My entire bill is not kwh, so my overall bill hasn't doubled; but compared to USD inflation, USD has not inflated that quickly (only 85%). I've done some of the calculations for solar earlier in the thread and in the op: it costs about $700 per 1kw of panel installed which produces 1200kwh actual per year in Maine. According to the EPA's Electric Power Monthly report*, commercial electricity is 10.76 cents a kwh, industrial 7.49 cents a kwh; these are retail prices include distribution/transmission overhead (for example, I pay 0.071 per kwh from the supplier, 0.068 per kwh for the distribution, 0.023 for the transmission, for a total of 0.162 cents per kwh for residential, which is actually a tad higher than the EPA's report). Maine pays net energy billing for facilities 660kw or less with a rolling 12 month window, plus I can resell power back to them at wholesale rates (a little less than than the 0.071 cents/kwh from the supplier in my above example) for anything over that. Now, that cap is 660kw not 660kwh. As in, I could install 660kw panels of panels and generate 792Mwh a year of power and pay effectively $0** to Bangor Hydro, our local power company, for the first 792Mwh of usage of the year. 792Mwh would cost me (assuming a commercial rate instead of industrial, I'm not sure what the minimum is to get into industrial) $85,219. 660kw of panels would cost $462,000 to install, or only a little under 6 years at current rates. These panels will last about 30 years give or take, so at today's rates that is $2.556 million dollars of electricity for an up front cost of $462,000, or about 5.5 times cheaper power. The same numbers for industrial are $1.779 million, or 3.8x cheaper. To further run the numbers, 792Mwh a year, 22kw per rack maximum usage including cooling, that is 4 racks fully loaded at 24/7 max power usage, or about 8-16 loaded more conventionally. Edit: $700 per 1kw does not include single/multi-axis tracking systems. Here in Maine they tend to not be worth it, although because panels are getting smaller/energy densities are getting higher, they may be worth it in the future. * http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_06_a** not sure how the taxes work here, but thats around 4% of the bill |
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Now, see where I said "at today's power prices"? Prices will only go up. We can pay an upfront price now in a large lump sum, or we can pay several times that over the next 30 years. You call it substitution of cost, I call it massive reduction in cost. The largest cost of a data center is power, which I've dealt with in two ways.
Why should the prices go up if even you can provide power for less. Wouldn't the market regulate itself with new suppliers? Ask your parents what they used to pay for electricity before you were born. It was much lower than what they pay now. The prices are only going to continue going up, and there is no indication this will stop. The market is already heavily regulated and power companies are operated as state sponsored legal monopolies. I wold not object to solar panels as a political project, but that should not be part of DMC, and even than it would only work if the calculations are founded on solid data.
Its been part of the plan since the beginning. If you don't like it, then don't invest. |
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(...) went against the original contract (...)
Where? |
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Even in the op, the closest you could have come was buying a small building and getting solar covering the roof
You potentially would have been able to run a rack or two for mining, then rent space.
There would be at least as much space for two or three dozen racks, and we'd be aiming at high density computing. Not all racks are created equal, many data centers are equipped to handle only 2 to 4 kw of gear in a rack, we'd be at 25-30kw of gear per rack. People are paying $20-30k/mo per rack space for high density computing, were as a sparsely populated rack 2kw would only go for $1k/mo, sometimes less if you find a really good deal. Now, if I can get a suitable building cheaply and can be renovated for our needs? That could be a lot more than just three dozen racks. |
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That is Apple's solar farm powered data center facility. They have one, so why can't Bitcoin?
The problem is you don't even seem to understand the term "costs". You cannot eliminate operating costs, with solar power, you can only substitute them with other costs. (power with mainatanence-costs, capital-costs (interest or opportunity costs), insurance etc.) Thats not true. Even here in Maine, (at today's power prices) solar panels will last around 30 years and hit ROI in 15 through resale at retail electricity prices alone; commercial and industrial power prices are still higher than retail, so if we consume most of are electricity that way the ROI is higher. Now, see where I said "at today's power prices"? Prices will only go up. We can pay an upfront price now in a large lump sum, or we can pay several times that over the next 30 years. You call it substitution of cost, I call it massive reduction in cost. The largest cost of a data center is power, which I've dealt with in two ways. The first is obviously the green power, the second is the fact that we are so north and that are summers are so mild that we won't need 24/7/365 HVAC. I've done preliminary cost analysis on a water chilled in row cooling system using a larger than needed water tower for external heat exchange plus large scale air economization, we'll use a lot less power than, say, building it in MD/DC/VA or SoCA/AZ/NM/TX like a lot of DCs are being built, even if you account for better solar coverage than Maine. |
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As I said before, if nefario succeeds, then shareholders cannot be paid dividends because I will not send one more BTC to GLBSE and nefario will refuse to release a list of shareholders and their number of shares.
Nefario, could a motion be raised to release a list of shareholders to Diablo? Looking back at TYGRR.BOND.P you didn't seem to want to budge on that issue, but if the shareholders vote in favor of it, I can think of no reason why you wouldn't be able to do it. Let's say you are the type of person who values privacy. You do not want anyone to know anything about you. Now let's say you are a shareholder of DMC/TYGRR.BOND.P. Should 51% of the shareholders of DMC/TYGRR.BOND.P be able to vote to violate your privacy by having your name and holdings placed on a shareholders list? I brought this up earlier, but no one cared. A lot of people traded assets with DMC, a lot of people probably do not want their names released. Even if you blank all their names out, it gives an improper view of what really happened. |
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As I said before, if nefario succeeds, then shareholders cannot be paid dividends because I will not send one more BTC to GLBSE and nefario will refuse to release a list of shareholders and their number of shares.
Nefario, could a motion be raised to release a list of shareholders to Diablo? Looking back at TYGRR.BOND.P you didn't seem to want to budge on that issue, but if the shareholders vote in favor of it, I can think of no reason why you wouldn't be able to do it. Let the motion be later. It all depends on nefario here. If the current motion passes no, then I remain as CEO, and the plan continues. If the current motion pass yes, the assets will have to be written off and replaced, then that sets the plan back about a year, and we need to make other arrangements to pay shareholders. |
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Diablo, as a shareholder I implore you to cooperate by allowing Nefario to release the CSV. While this is a complete mess, and there have been mistakes made on both yours and Nefario's parts, this will just get messier if you end up getting taken out of DMC. I have confidence that if you can make it through this, DMC can be successful.
DMC is a fantastic idea, combining renting out shelf space and selling cloud services with Bitcoin mining. If you keep being hostile towards Nefario and Usagi, you're not going to win, no matter who's in the right. You're not showing your shareholders why they need to vote to keep you on-board right now.
I voted against the motion. This is under the assumption that you can get your shit together. You've obviously made mistakes, but you need to acknowledge them, and grow from them.
In other words, please don't fuck this up.
I'm hostile towards anyone who is trying to harm shareholders. If nefario wins, then not only does DMC lose, but so does every single asset on GLBSE. DMC can be successful no matter what nefario does, but even if DMC is successful this doesn't mean shareholders are unharmed. As I said before, if nefario succeeds, then shareholders cannot be paid dividends because I will not send one more BTC to GLBSE and nefario will refuse to release a list of shareholders and their number of shares. You think I'm not showing my shareholders what they need? They need a leader who will protect their interest in the company, they need a leader who will follow the plan and not destroy the wealth of assets that has been built to make this plan happen. Why do you think I've been in talks with building business relationships not only with other major Bitcoin companies, but also with companies in the ISP industry? Because I believe in the plan. It is financially sound, and it can be the thing Bitcoin needs to show the world we're serious about what we're doing. We can do this. |
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since it was their capital in the first place,
This point seems to be overlooked by some and needs to be stressed. The assets, like the company, belong to the sharesholders and no one else. Its not your company Diablo, you sold it and then you (mis)managed it. Except I never mismanaged it. I may have not always been able to turn a profit, but I haven't mismanaged it. |
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Obsi do you understand that Diablo a) broke his contract b) lost 1000s of bitcoins of investor capital, c) is witholding assets from DMC shareholders and to top it all off is d) accusing his largest shareholder of conspiring with nefario to steal 100% of DMC's assets? Do you realize he actually said that?
a) Nope. b) Lost? Not quite. Get screwed on fixed mhash bonds? Yes, I will admit that was not one of my finer moments. c) Withholding? No. Withholding the good news until the ink is dry? Yes. Plus, it has no monetary value until we have customers. d) Largest? Nope. Second largest? Possibly. What you and nefario both have said do not make your case look good, he has clearly said he will look for a new CEO, and you "warned" me that if I didn't do what you said something would happen in the near future. Is it just a coincidence such a thing happened? |
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For one thing you breached this:
"Given that, I am asking for 200k shares at 1 BTC each."
You clearly identifed that the shares were to be sold "at 1 BTC each". Not exchanged for other shares worth way less than that.
That's the easiest breach to demonstrate.
Aside from specifics of contract breaching you also, as any director of a company does, have an obligation to act in the interest of your share-holders. Spunking away 95% of nav without any proper accounting for it is clearly not fulfilling your resposibilities to those who entrusted you with their funds.
The text you quoted is NOT in the contract. I have not violated the contract as stated on GLBSE. I do have a responsibility to my shareholders to act in their interest: investing in assets that I believe will massively appreciate in value over the coming months is acting in their interest. Just because asicminer and abmo are both worth around 0.10 BTC now doesn't that their combined value and dividends paid cannot be ten times that or more over the next year. This is how investing works: you buy at the bottom, you sell at the top. |
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