Sure, I appreciate the feedback. We don' know what will happen to the value of BTC or the network hash rate in December any more than anyone else does, but we think our predictions are pessimistically realistic - if that makes sense.

I'm genuinely sorry to hear about your situation. It's not nice being made redundant, or worse still to be made to FEEL redundant, especially when you have spent the larger part of your life in a skilled job. I've been there and it's not a good place. Hope that you get work again and get back on your feet.

Just as an aside, have you thought about trying to get work in the UK or the Middle East? the UK economy in South East England is on a roll just now, and there's lots of jobs in construction (residential and commercial). I can't see a skilled US citizen having any problems getting a work visa. Try looking on indeed.co.uk or monster.com. Good luck,

Well, thanks for the compliment on our proposal. Nice to know that you at least read it, but it would be helpful to get some detailed feedback as to what you think is missing technically?

If you approach a bank for a loan, they measure your creditworthiness on what security you can offer. Your experience is only one of the 'risk' factors they consider, but ultimately they want a means of getting at least some of their money back if you fail. That's the bottom line in the UK, it might be different elsewhere.

A VC company is totally different. They do consider your background and experience and consider it essential if the project is to fly. However, they can place constraints on what you do, and of the 3 that we approached, 2 offered funding but their constraint was that the asic would only be used in-house; no sales to Joe Public, no design bureau to help start ups. No from us.

There is nothing anonymous about the company or it's director.

But thanks for answering our question, good to know you've got something to keep you occupied.

Dear me, that's a very pessimistic attitude, If you look at our plan, we predict a network hash rate of 280PH by December...our systems will still be very viable at that time, please look at the section about 'Jane', our typical citizen from Colorado who pays about the same you do for electricity. Look at the prediction we made for her earnings using our Guaranteed Supply Program, it was based on BTC at $500, not $600 or $700. Jane would make over $2200 off her miner plus the upgrades in 2015, even when the network hash rate hits 500+PH by the end of 2015.

So please look at the plan again. Thanks for your good wishes, please keep watching our project, if you would like to be added to our
e-mailing list, drop us a line.

Thanks for your very pertinent post, I'm please to answer what i can at present:

1. Yes, warranty is 2 years. If you look at the section about the chip, you'll see that our design spec is for maximum die temperature of
    75C. That should ensure the chips have a long lifetime.

2. Please see our earlier post about this. Our engineers have extensive experience in mil/aero systems design and in industrial control, to    
    name but a few. Problem is, you can never really trust what people say about themselves online, can you? We expect people to look at
    our whole proposal, not just one bit. It's not all about the chips, this is a carefully thought out and structured plan.

3. We have set a target on IGG to show what need to do the job properly. We are trying to source funds from other avenues to supplement
    this, including funds of our own. It won't come as any surprise to anyone that's read our plan that we have worked out several options if
    we don't reach our target. Before we did anything including drawing down the IGG funds - we don't get funds until after the campaign
     ends -  we'd go to our customers with these different plans and ask their approval to proceed. If they say no, then we don't take the
    money, simple as that.

4, We have targeted delivery for the end of December as you say. Naturally as engineers we have built in some padding in our timescales
    to allow for the inevitable problems that will appear. We will keep our contributors and other customer fully informed about what we
    are doing, good and bad, just as we did in our plan, but if there was going to be a substantial delay then we would give customers an
    option to cancel and get their full payments back.

If you would like any further information, please feel free to ask or email us directly.

Thanks for your post and input, it's much appreciated. Contrary to what you say, the forum crowd are actually very easy to deal with, I 've been dealing with blue chip customers for nearly 40 years, and believe me when I say that the forums are child's play by comparison. Yes, we are fully aware who's the 'shills' and fanboys on here, but we are professionals and don't rise to their bait. There's plenty we could say about them, but that's descending to  a level we don't want to visit. We have nothing to hide, but to come on and declare the provenance of our staff - which you can never validate or check, no reputable company will tell you a thing about their employees - seems a totally fruitless exercise. If we had wanted to scam anyone, we could have got 5 random people, photographed them in suits and bunged on some made up cv's  on Linkedin. We didn't because we're from a generation where actions did indeed speak louder than words - especially words spoken when hiding behind an alias. Exactly how successful have the companies been that have trumpeted on about their teams and people?

As for our design, any idiot will realise that we are not going to open our design files for all to see. Any half decent chip designer or competent electronic engineer knows full well that SHA256 is essentially made of three simple digital blocks: flip flops, full adders and 32 bit fast adders. A snippet of information about one or all of them is all you need to know how someone is doing something different, and we're guarding our snippets very carefully. It's funny that no one has yet come to us and said "you can't do this or say you have x performance because........." and there's a good reason for that. It is feasible, it's a question of implementation. Give that away and you lose your business edge. We have told you what our margins are, and broken down how the money will be used. Now that is verifiable, and any competent engineer will confirm it's accuracy. We've actually structured a design rather than saying we have a pretty box, and thought through how to implement it. Do you really believe scammers would go to so much trouble? Most of them have trouble spelling.

The funny thing about our pitch is that it seems that no one has actually read it right through. Our post was originally part of a larger business plan, an so we expect that most of the forum users aren't used to seeing something in this format or so comprehensive. It's about 20x larger than any other initial pitch and tries to address virtually everything about what we want to do, and how we intend to get there. No other 'new' company has ever addressed most of what we have addressed in our plan or stuck their neck out and made predictions. No other company has warned you to check and recheck what you read, or addressed the elephant in the room, namely the companies/people who  are quickly taking over Bitcoin mining.

Ultimately, time will tell if we get our funding or not. if we don't, it will have been a good learning experience. If we do, then we hope to be able to restart the mining scene so it once again becomes open to anybody.

Not sure I understand what 'fragmentary results' you would like to see?

Yes we have, but even if we were inclined to hand details of our chip design over to someone that hides behind a username, I sincerely doubt you would understand them, Try reading the books we recommended, then come back and tell us why it's bullshit. if you have technical information to share that says were wrong, then show it. Don't include everybody in 'we' - you might not like what you read but others are free to make up their own minds.

Thanks for your good wishes. Hopefully we'll be given the opportunity to prove that we can deliver what we say. The only other thing I'd say is that we have designed our systems with obsolecense in mind, that's why they're modular.

Ok, but thanks for your interest anyway. If we do get funded and get our systems built don't be shy in coming to us for your future mining requirements.

I was only kidding - but LTD companies come from many jurisdictions apart from the UK. Old colonial habits die hard.

Interesting post. I don't have a house worth anywhere near $400k let alone $4M, so asking a bank to take it as security isn't an option. If anyone did have the money to make their own asic without outside help, then I sincerely doubt they'd be posting on here looking for sales, they'd be mining away with them. Most of todays miners made their money through pre-orders, so I'd have to disagree with much of what you say. At the end of the day no one forces anyone to pre order anything, it's up to the individual to make the choice.

Who's Black Arrow? Only kidding. No, we're not out to scam anyone. Hope you enjoyed reading our proposal though.

Thanks. Hope you enjoyed reading it, it was a lot longer than originally planned but as they say, the devil is in the detail.

It comes in at about 0.17-0.18 Joules/GH running at spec'd voltage of 0.85V. You can get it down lower, but the internal delays go way up and so the clock speed has to come down. It also gets more difficult to predict timing.

If you'd read the text then you would have clearly seen two names mentioned. You can also see the Indiegogo page and who's leading the project, so I suspect you may ave simply skimmed over it.
.
Now, if you really think that we're going to present detailed CV's to a poster on a forum that hides behind a username, then that's simply not going to happen, If you want an engineering or financial discussion, then we'll gladly have one.

Thanks for your good wishes. It is a lot of money, but unfortunately that's what's needed to get the chips and systems built!