Since when shooting oneself in the foot is a good business strategy? Any kind of strategy for that matter?
Bitcoin is a typical case of so-called disruptive technology (you should read The Innovator's Dilemma). So if current financial market leaders don't offer Bitcoin services to customers, someone else will and this someone else will eat their market anyway. So the only way they can survive is to adopt Bitcoin, even though it will probably reduce their overall profit margins. |
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Definitely not no religious fanatic and have some concerns of my own. However, trying to deny that their was never a plan to sell or never a plan to expand, or invest into next gen technology?
By "no plan" I mean that for example friedcat has not communicated a plan that allows shareholders to answer the following questions: - what is the process node of the next gen chips (110nm, 90nm, etc)? - what are the estimated NRE costs? - how many blades will be sold? - what are the estimated revenues for the total sale of blades? Also, as of March 12, shareholders could not answer the following question: - what hashrate will ASICMINER expand to beyond 50 (or 50+12) Thash/s ? As of today, he communicated 200 Thash/s, but shareholders still cannot answer: - where will the 200 Thash/s be hosted? (this is 1.5 megawatt!) - how fast can they expect to deploy it? Because shareholders cannot answer these questions, they cannot estimate the risk or the worth of the ASICMINER shares. I think there was a confusion as to what I meant exactly by "no plan". I hope to have cleared that up. |
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Rodyland: and what makes you think I have not started selling my shares?  Just like the Bitcoin bubble to $266. I was openly saying it was a bubble and that a crash was coming. And I acted accordingly selling some of my BTC holdings. I do not understand why you see my arguments as "FUD" or "trolling". I think I express my ideas and reasoning clearly. |
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I was making a point, not trolling. I wanted to underline the difference between a company having a vague idea ("we may want to sell hw in the future") versus a company having a clear execution plan ("we will sell product X, having specs X, at price X, we estimate X in revenues, the risks are X, we will do X to minimize them").
Eventually, a company that has a clear vision and plan is more valuable than a company with the same resources and people but with no vision and no plan.
I have argued in the past that ASICMINER should sell hardware. Even today, friedcat is not saying much about his plan. How many blades will he sell? How will he determine the price? Will he continue to do auctions or set fixed prices? If all these questions were answered, it would raise the value of ASICMINER in my eyes.
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Thanks for the notice guys. Note that all my numbers are at the chip level. I added to the OP:
~230 Mhash/Joule (NOT FINAL) as estimated from BFL's 65nm ASIC prototype. They claim 170 Mhash/Joule at the wall. Both Avalon and Bitfountain/ASICMINER/friedcat lose ~25% of the power in AC/DC and DC/DC conversion and other elements, so if BFL experiences a comparable loss, we can infer 170/.75 = ~230 Mhash/Joule at the chip level.
I will update the thread title once the number is final.
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Sorry, but no. You'll have to dig a little deeper than that.
Well then show me friedcat's posts predating March 12 mentioning plans to expand beyond 50 Thash/s (or beyond 12+50 Thash/s) or plans to sell hw -> There are none. From friedcat's post from August 9, 2012: If our chips are successfully produced, all the following businesses will
contribute to the shareholders' return:
Self-Mining with First Batch of Chips At least 12TH/s in
total, that is equivalent to 30MH/s per share, or 300MH/s per BTC.
Hashrate/Chip/Board Selling Net profits are
conservatively calculated as $5 per GH/s. That roughly equals to 0.5BTC per
GH/s with the current BTC/USD exchange rate. It means that each time we sell
1TH/s of hashing power in various forms, the net profit per share will be
1.25mBTC, that is, 1.25% of the initial investment.
Self-Mining after Mass Production Unlimited hashrate in
theory because of the low margin cost. But in reality we have to consider the
cost of management (labor) and place (rent). We believe an expansion to 50TH/s
is not hard to achieve. That pushes the hashrate per share to 155MH/s, or
1.55G/s per BTC.
Next-Generation Products The plan will be discussed among
board members and approved by shareholders, because it would require keeping
some of the revenues instead of paying them all as dividends. The return of
this stage is difficult to estimate, since in the Bitcoin world everything may
happen and happens even quicklier than imagination. But we personally believe
that much more potential profits wait there.
This shows friedcat was undecided between selling hashrate contracts, or hardware. As I said, there were no definitive plans to sell hw. Even though it was always a possibility "up in the air". 237, I am not a "non-shareholder trying to FUD the price down". (First of all what makes you think I don't own undervalued IPO shares? ) I am sharing my honest opinion. Yes, ASICMINER may turn out to be the Microsoft of Bitcoin mining in which case 1 BTC / share may be undervalued. But my point is, so far, there is not enough data to support this future success. Possible yes. Very likely no. Again I am speaking as a very, very conservative investor. Sometimes these conservative positions can lead to miss insane investment opportunities, and that is fine. |
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No actual plan. But selling was planned before IPO.
No "plan", but "planned"? Your sentence is self-contradictory. |
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Sorry, but no. You'll have to dig a little deeper than that.
Well then show me friedcat's posts predating March 12 mentioning plans to expand beyond 50 Thash/s (or beyond 12+50 Thash/s) or plans to sell hw -> There are none. I'm not going digging for posts, but you should be looking about 8+ months ago. Also, if you think the 50, or even the 200TH expansion for that matter, and selling a few boards is all that is in store for asicminer.. well.. you need to do some DD. Let's not even talk about next gen as you're a little behind already.. Sigh. You are not digging because you have no data to support you. Here I dug one post up for you: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.msg1529563#msg1529563As of Feb 15, friedcat had no plan to sell devices. He was merely "considering it", but had no plan. I think you are the one who is behind or, at best, misinformed |
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Sorry, but no. You'll have to dig a little deeper than that.
Well then show me friedcat's posts predating March 12 mentioning plans to expand beyond 50 Thash/s (or beyond 12+50 Thash/s) or plans to sell hw -> There are none. |
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friedcat had "no plan to sell" and "no plan to expand" ? I think you need to check your info
I am correct. As of March 12 (the time I referred to when I said "back then"), friedcat only planned to expand to 50 Thash/s and did not plan to sell hardware. That is what he communicated to shareholders. These 2 plans emerged later, in late March or early April. |
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And so? 600btc isn't that much...
600BTC + deployment of additional 12TH very soon. These will basically triple the dividend in the coming weeks. And so? That alone, tripling the dividend from .007 to .021, is still way too insignificant to justify 1 BTC per share. At best you will see .021 for a few weeks... there are literally hundreds of Thash/s about to be deployed by the competition (the 100TH project, Avalon OEM chip sales, Avalon batches 2 & 3, BFL... eventually). Pretty quickly, your .021 dividend is going to fall back to .007 or so. Even friedcat himself has said he only expects to represent ~10% of the global hashrate throughout 2013 (that means a .0063 BTC dividend on average). I have said it before that AM shares were overpriced (back when friedcat had no plan to extend beyond 50 Thash/s, and no plan to sell hardware). The fact that friedcat announced a plan to extend to 200+ Thash/s, and to sell hardware, re-valued ASICMINER in my eyes, but at the same time the landscape of the competition has also suddenly become a lot more active. |
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Hm, can someone explain to me why these look just like Avalon blades?
The do not look "just like" Avalon blades. Or maybe to a non-electrical engineer they look "just like" each other  For one, Avalon has a lot more power circuitry on the board itself. |
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Micon: I sent 100 BTC to http://blockchain.info/address/1Dtf7TrZrQr7QooVGoKfd99rxHNoikQ3EHTerms of the bet copied below (and very slightly edited for clarity): BFL will ship out at least 3 ASIC mining devices capable of at least 150MH/s per watt to at least 3 customers (at least 1 device per customer) who post pix & verify hashrate by 12:01am EST July 1st 2013. No BFL-employee or anyone that has been to BFL labs personally can qualify to publish pix & hashrate. Power should be measured just like in our first bet: by adding up current from all the device's DC inputs (12V jack, USB cable, etc.) It will not be measured "at the wall". The purpose of this bet is to avoid wildly varying efficiencies of power adapters and computer hosts. mrb believes the above statement is true. Micon believes it is false. Micon, please quote me and send your 100 BTC. Dooglus: thanks for being the escrow! |
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ASIC costs literally millions of dollars to develop, I wish you the best of luck though you will have a pretty long road to get there.
No it doesn't. Avalon designed a 110nm ASIC with NRE costs around $200-300k. |
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Can I understand this correctly please before I bid.
These last few posts are "1 @ 20" This means they are buying one blade at 20btc? One blade is 10Mhash right? Who the hell is spending $1400 on ten Mhash?
It is 10 Ghash/s as explained in the OP. |
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Damn it, am I missing something? I'll ask again, I'm not sure I understand how this trade-in will work... Didn't every batch 2 customer already paid his order in full? Was there a trade-in option on the site when buying from batch 2 that I missed? If people that have already paid their order in full send units for trade-in what kind of benefit will they get? A refund of the 300 dollars for each Icarus/400 dollars for each Lancelot? Or will they get credit towards a future Avalon purchase?
Many trade-in customers have neither ordered, nor paid yet. If you have FPGAs then you can just send them to China for trade in. And after sending the FPGAs, how do you purchase a discounted Avalon? The "trade-in / get credit" link on http://launch.avalon-asics.com/ never worked (I tried before, during, and after the 2 waves of batch 2). I was able to order during the 2 waves of batch 2, and because the link was not working, I ended up paying full price each time. I think I will not even bother attempting to trade in my Icarus units. Instead I will resell them. |
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Micon, I am willing to put up a bet on the same terms as SgtSpike's last bet, with 100 BTC each.
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When asked "who runs bitcoin?", I wish Berwick had thought of answering "who runs the Internet?" instead of mentioning the Federal Reserve.
Yes. That or "who runs gold?" |
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