http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/09/paypal-freezes-45000-of-mailpiles-crowdfunded-dollars/?update

For those that keep asking why we need Bitcoin.

[ASICMINER-100PT - issued by Rodyland]

Brand new listing, pending on btct.co

ASICMINER-100PT - issued by Rodyland

Rodyland can be contacted via PM on bitcointalk.org
or via email at rodyland.asicminer@gmail.com

This asset is a fractional (1%) pass-through for ASICMINER, the ASIC MINING company, to be listed on BTC-TC (btct.co)

Purpose

    The purpose of the ASICMINER-100PT is to allow people with smaller account balances to purchase an interest in ASICMINER shares without committing large proportions of their funds to the purchase.  This passthrough also provides a practical way for ASICMINER-PT shareholders to reinvest their dividends in ASICMINER shares.

FAQ / TL;DR

Q. Who are you?
A. I'm Rodyland on the bitcointalk.org forums, email rodyland.asicminer@gmail.com.  Been a follower of bitcoin since 2011, and want to do something active, positive and useful for the community.  I have provided my personal contact details to to BTC-TC, so that I may be contacted in case of emergency.

Q. What are the shares?
A. Each ASICMINER-100PT share is equivalent to 1% of an ASICMINER share, held in trust by the issuer, and listed on btc-tc.

Q. How big is the IPO?
A. Minimum of 2500 shares.  If less than that number are sold at IPO, the issuer reserves the right to refund all purchases and cancel the IPO.

Q. What do I get if I buy a share?
A. Each share is entitled to 1% of ASICMINER dividends, after adjustment for management fees (max 5%).

Q. Do you really hold the shares?
A. Pre-IPO: a source of shares has been secured, but are not held by the passthrough.  The issuer is also committing part of his own personal shareholding to the IPO.

25 of the shares at address 13TrtCeaatKpaVfcTjHvAgnwCSk2cNGmKy will be made available for Rodyland's ASICMINER-100PT IPO.

HE3dlvJZ9+QQSfSoelNfR1A4rH5k/itIkIZ/jIguZpHRJkB4e8hpCz7pu9retTD+OWdii8C+Dw9o3nZRkGdt4jY=

Post-IPO: yes, within a week of IPO.  The address holding the shares will be made public.  The private key holding the underlying shares will be shared with a trusted 3rd party so that in the event of disaster, all shares can be distributed to their rightful owners.

Q. Can I transfer my ASICMINER shares in?
A. Yes, and it's free.

Q. Can I transfer my ASICMINER-PT shares in?
A. Yes - details depend on getting burnside (owner of ASICMINER-PT) to transfer the shares out of ASICMINER-PT.  If the issuer holds shares in reserve, a straight swap deal may be available.  There are no fees for transferring shares in to ASICMINER-100PT.

Q. Can I swap my ASICMINER-100PT shares for ASICMINER shares?
A. Yes, for a minimum transfer of the equivalent of 10 ASICMINER shares, for a fee of 0.5 bitcoin.  Smaller transfers are not offered.

Q. Can I swap my ASICMINER-100PT shares for ASICMINER-PT shares?
A. Yes.  If the issuer holds sufficient ASICMINER-PT shares, a straight 100-for-1 swap may be available for a 0.1 bitcoin fee with no minimum transfer size.  Otherwise the requirements and fees are the same as for swapping for ASICMINER shares.

Q. What's the stuff below?
A. Actual Terms and Conditions, which everyone should read before investing.

IPO Terms

    For every 100 ASICMINER-100PT shares made available at IPO (or part thereof), one ASICMINER share will be obtained by the issuer and assigned to an address to be published.
    The private key associated with the underlying ASICMINER shares will be shared with a trusted 3rd party.
    The issuer has access to a number of ASICMINER shares that will be made available to the issuer after the IPO.
    If the transfer to the issuer fails or any part of the IPO is unsuccessful all ASICMINER-100PT shares purchased will be bought back by the issuer at the IPO price unless the issuer is able to secure another source of ASICMINER shares.
    ASICMINER shares will be transferred to issuer to cover the IPO within 7 days of IPO, and the address holding the issuer's ASICMINER shares will be made public when transfer from friedcat is confirmed.
    If the IPO volume does not exceed 2500 shares (the equivalent of 25 ASICMINER shares), the issuer reserves the right to terminate the IPO due to lack of interest.


Post-IPO Terms

    For every 100 ASICMINER-100PT shares on issue (or part thereof), one ASICMINER share will be held on file with Friedcat until such time as ASICMINER is listed on a public exchange.
    Should ASICMINER list on a public exchange, one ASICMINER share will be held on such exchange for every 100 ASICMINER-100PT (or part thereof).
    Each ASICMINER-100PT share is entitled to 1% of the management-fee-adjusted dividend payment of an ASICMINER share.  (That is, for each ASICMINER share, the management fee is deducted from the dividend payment and then 1% of the remaining is allocated to each share.  Per-share dividends will be truncated to 1 satoshi precision).
    A management fee of X% will be levied on each ASICMINER dividend payment where X is determined by the number of ASICMINER shares currently managed by the pass through.  For 50 or less shares (eqivalent of 5000 PT shares), the management fee shall be 5%.  For over 50 shares, the management fee shall be 4%.  For over 100 shares, the management fee shall be 3%.  For over 200 shares the management fee shall be 2%.  For over 500 shares the management fee shall be 1%.
    The management fee will be waived for the first 4 dividend payments of the passthrough.
    Payment of dividends will be made within 2 weeks of their issuance from ASICMINER.
    Dividend payments made more than 72 hours after their issuance from ASICMINER will have no management fee attached.
    Passthrough shares have no voting rights in ASICMINER.
    More pass-through shares can be issued, provided there is sufficient backing.  For example, if there is sufficient demand, the issuer may attempt to secure more ASICMINER shares, with the PT shares to be sold either on-market or off-market.
    If the passthrough ever holds enough shares to be awarded an ASICMINER board seat, any financial benefits obtained thereby (for example, free mining hardware) will be spread equally amongst all shareholders as special dividends, at times determined by the issuer.  Special dividends will be announced with at least 1 week's notice on the ASICMINER-100PT "News" page on the BTC-TC website (and optionally on the ASICMINER-100PT bitcointalk.org thread).

Transfer and Redemption

    The issuer supports transfer of ASICMINER shares into ASICMINER-100PT, and redemption of ASICMINER-100PT shares for ASICMINER shares, under the following conditions.
    Shares of ASICMINER-100PT can be redeemed 100-for-one for ASICMINER shares for a 0.5 BTC fee per transaction.  Any ASICMINER share redemption must be a multiple of 100 ASICMINER-100PT shares, and a minimum redemption amount of 1000 ASICMINER-100PT shares (10 ASICMINER shares) applies.
    ASICMINER shares can be transferred to ASICMINER-100PT, by transferring ASICMINER shares to Rodyland via friedcat.  Each such transaction will incur no charge by ASICMINER-100PT, and each ASICMINER share transferred shall result in 100 ASICMINER-100PT shares being credited your account.
    The above ASICMINER share redemption rules apply to personal ASICMINER share holdings, as registered with friedcat.  If and when ASICMINER shares are listed on an exchange, the issuer envisages that methods of transfer will change, but the underlying principles will not, however no promises can be made at this stage.
    The issuer will endeavour to hold a small number of ASICMINER-PT shares on BTC-TC.  If a shareholder wishes to transfer shares from ASICMINER-100PT to ASICMINER-PT and the issuer holds sufficient shares in ASICMINER-PT, transfer to ASICMINER-PT (100 ASICMINER-100PT for one ASICMINER-PT) will incur a 0.1 BTC fee (per transaction), and minimum transfer size requirements will be waived.  
    If insufficient shares in ASICMINER-PT are held by the issuer, a transfer to ASICMINER-PT will be handled as if it were a personal withdrawal.
    All share redemption and transfer requests must be in writing, and will be processed weekly at 12:00 UTC Fridays and at other times as deemed necessary by the issuer.  

Asset Termination

    Should the issuer of ASICMINER terminate the asset, any funds received through this asset termination will be distributed in full without any fee taken.
    During the IPO process should the issuer become unable to secure ASICMINER shares to fully-back ASICMINER-100PT the asset will be terminated and all ASICMINER-100PT shares will be bought back at the IPO price.
    The issuer reserves the right to close down the asset for any reason with a 30 day warning.  Should this right be exercised, every reasonable attempt will be made to transfer the assets into the direct control of the ASICMINER-100PT shareholders using the met hods described in the Transfer section above (waiving all fees and limits).  Any shareholders the issuer is unable to contact or unable to transfer the shares for within a 90 day window will receive a forced buyout at market prices at the end of 90 days following the closure. Any shareholdings that would result in a fractional ASICMINER share will be subject to forced buyout 90 days from closure.
    Should the issuer of ASICMINER choose to list ASICMINER on the BTC-TC exchange it may be necessary to terminate this asset.  If this is the case the ASICMINER-100PT shares will be automatically redeemed on the exchange for ASICMINER shares.  Holdings that would convert to fractional ASICMINER shares would be subject to forced buyback as per the asset closedown clause above.


Exclusion of Guarantees

    This pass-through makes no guarantees should any issues arise with ASICMINER's issuer. Should ASICMINER issuers requires any fees/process to claim or transfer shares arising from any issue/event, fees will be paid in full in the name of the pass-through holders from future dividends.


Revision history:
2013-05-01, Initial version
2013-05-02, added email contact
2013-02-02, added FAQ
2013-02-05, added escrow holding of PT shares, contact info
2013-02-07, removed escrow (just not feasible)

I am looking to purchase short-dated (~4 to 8 weeks) call options on ASICMINER shares, for sale via escrow.

I am looking for upwards of 25 shares - how upwards depends on the option premium.

American style (ie. exercise any time up to and including expiry date).

Must be at-the-money or just slightly out of the money.  I have every intention of exercising these options - I wish to lock in a price, but can't afford (yet) to complete the size sale I am looking to do with the funds I have on hand right now.

Everything negotiable.  Please PM me.

Edit: clarified.  Thanks Entropy-mc

Today I can't find the "new replies to your posts" and "unread posts since your last visit" links.

These are my most used features of this forum.

Have the links been moved somewhere I didn't notice?

I was wondering how others go about pricing mining-company securities.

I ask because I just bought some asicminer shares and by my numbers, assuming that what's supposed to and is likely to happen in the near future happens, then they are good value.

But I've looked at a couple of other securities, and the market prices seem outrageous - dividend ROIs closer to 12 months than 6; and even under ridiculously optimistic (impossible) scenarios, ROI 4+ months.

And for my money, 12 months may as well be forever given Avalon and other potential ASIC solutions could deploy tens  if not hundreds of TH in that timeframe.

As someone who just installed the bitcoin-qt client an waited over 8 hours for the block chain download (after 8 hours I was still more than 6 months behind) I was wondering what kind of solutions are in the works for this?

I've searched the forums, and the ASICMINER thread, at 137 pages long, is rather opaque.  Forum searches turn up lots of noise, as with google searches.

So, as someone who is considering buying in to ASICMINER, I have a few questions, such as
- does ASICMINER have a website
- what's the current (and future) hashing capacity
- how many shares on issue (now and future)
- how are dividends calculated, what is the maintenance costs, what's the dividend payment schedule
- if I "buy" shares from the auction forum, how do I know the person offering the shares actually has shares to sell?
- How are share transfers handled
- would I be better off buying on btct.co than the auction forum, or maybe on some other venue I'm unaware of

Thanks in advance

TL;DR: Avalon's "greed" is good for bitcoin as a whole, good for the longevity and the future of bitcoin.

1. Pricing in BTC normalises pricing in BTC
2. BTC52000 (minimum) is a nice chunk of change to process in real transactions for batch 3
3. Anyone who drops US$6k on a bitcoin mining rig must* have some faith in the whole enterprise
4. Profits Profits Profits

*(must as in "should have" rather than "ooh look free money")

And I think I should elaborate on #4, because not only do I think that's the most important one, but because Avalon's profits are taken straight out of the pockets of their customers so it may be hardest for people (especially their customers and people who wanted to be their customers but can't afford it) to understand. 

If you assume that Avalon merely broke even on their batch 1 and batch 2 orders at US$1500 (worst case and almost impossible to believe) then in fiat terms, at today's exchange rate of $70, the good people at Avalon are pulling US$2.8 MILLION dollars of profits for batch 3 alone.  If you assume that batch 1 and batch 2 were profitable in their own right at $1500, then we're talking $2.8M in monopoly rents (a much more reasonable assumption).

If the prospect of over $2.8M in profits from a single "run" of 600 product isn't enough to get others with the skills/knowledge/capital seriously interested, then I don't know what will.

But what's good for bitcoin isn't necessarily good for me, and I'm not buying, not at that price with an uncertain future delivery date.  If it were shipped tomorrow or next week, I'd be in.  On top of BTC88 being close enough to all my coin, with things such as ASICminer, BFL, helveticoin, not to mention Avalon batches 1 and 2, floating around out there or soon to be, I think people who are imagining a "worst-case" 6 or 12 month ROI are not sure what "worst case" actually means.  Even if the BFL and helveticoin are vapourware, once your ROI blows out past 6 months, you'll be competing with Avalon batch 4, maybe 5 customers too.

If the US$2.8M monopoly rent Avalon are extracting from batch 3 is enough to convince others to join the fray as well, your 12 month ROI could conceivably become never, because that's more than enough time for an organisation with the know-how to bring a product to market.

And I think that batch 3 becoming uneconomical with negative ROI (unless you've got free power) would be a good thing for bitcoin. For one, it would mean that there is multiple petahash of computation behind bitcoin, making the network that much stronger.  For two, it would mean multiple ASIC vendors, with different types of products for all sorts of use cases.  And all of that would (hopefully) come hand-in-hand with the mainstreaming of bitcoin.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=14910

Moderators, anyone?  I asked the OP and he says he didn't lock it.

Thanks