I think this is good news.  It sounds like, according to the original wording of the contract, they didn't have to give us *anything* until they were an *entire* month late, which they were not.  I was prepared to hear we got nothing extra from CT, or "credits" towards some future order which may or may not be profitable regardless.  Knowing we are getting 3 extra units is a nice bonus IMO.

As for the lack of financial report yet - at least samuel is telling us bad news straight up - "sorry, we don't have time yet, but later" instead of promising and not delivering.  I would be very happy to see more of this - this is the right way to do it.  Once the new hardware is deployed and things are settled down, we can talk more about these missing divs and how we might prove the situation (or make up for it).  For now, I agree that biggest priority is getting the machines and getting them hashing with the new added transparency.  That will ensure any future screwups are in the open and cannot be dismissed.

and I try to be the 'mathy' voice of reason.  See my last post for a list of things I want to see. Welcome, Samuel!

This is great news.  This is what we need to see more of.  Thank you for providing an independent party to verify the source of payments to the 1Garr address.  Thank you for working to get the machines hashing ASAP.  Also, thank you for committing to moving all funds into a transparent place.  Now, once they are all set up, please don't stop there!  We still have a lot of work to do to turn cog around and prove the trolls wrong.  Kako might be an annoying asshole, but many of his "doom and gloom" criticisms still have yet to be addressed!

The following things are still of critical importance IMO:
1. Ensure that the new address where all COG funds are stored will be verifiable and contains *all* the expected "reinvestment" funds (so it should have 50% of all divs since the time of the last CT order, right?)
2. Ensure that all of our hardware is using a visible pool like eligius, against the same address, and has backup pools should eligius go down, for best uptime
3. Ensure that the pools we use, along with their deposit address, are all documented ON THE WEBSITE (for BTC and scrypt miners) (we can't be digging through this entire thread to get critical info like our current hashrate, payout address, etc)

Once all of these are done, the "present" is taken care of, and there can be no question about stolen funds moving forward, the only questions are about the past.  To clear those up, we'd like to see the following:

1. The long-promised financial report.  How much did our CT order cost exactly?  What money came in/out last year?
2. What payout address was in use during the infamous "missing div" period?  Was the discrepancy due to your error, the pool's error, bad luck, or something else?  Any answer is better than no answer.

Finally, after that in priority, it'd be nice to have a discussion about next steps.
1. Tell us more about this PR person
2. What does our reinvestment fund look like?  Are we still in talks with CT?  Will we be placing another order soon?  How are the scrypt machines doing, is their return making that look like a better plan than more ASIC based hardware? (imma guess "probably not", but worth considering)

EDIT: according to my calculations, using *just* the divs paid while at Havelock, the total divs paid are:

( 0.00004482 + 0.00003787 + 0.00003650 + 0.00009597 + 0.00003463 + 0.00006925 + 0.00018734 + 0.00014051 + 0.00024161 + 0.00050147 ) * 10420 => 14.4834874BTC

This means if 50% of income is paid to reinvestment, we should have over 15BTC saved up, right?  How long before the BTCT->Havelock transition was the cointerra deal done?  does anyone have the BTCT data handy?  *OR* - Garr - the financial report should cover this and show exactly how much BTC our reinvestment fund contains, and we expect it to be at least that much...

At the risk of breaking my own rule about feeding bridge-dwellers:


I don't say much, but I do idle in #bitcoin all the time.  Sadly, #bitcoin doesn't seem to be logged somewhere to link to this witty discussion that followed.  I will have to add #bitcoin-assets to my list, I suppose.  Thanks for your highly constructive advice, troll.

Hey guys, thanks very much for the votes of confidence!  I originally didn't volunteer with Garr to play any official role with COG, but I would be willing to do so as much as I am able.  I work a full time software development job which leaves me very little free time, and the last thing we want to do is replace one unresponsive representative with another.  That said, I think I might be able to contribute with my presence (since I am on IRC/IM regularly while at work and can be brought in to deal with situations as they come up during USA west-cost working hours).

If Garr asks me, I'd be glad to help out however I can, but I am still hoping there will be other candidates with even more time to devote.

I am available on irc.freenode.net as "cmyers" and hang out in several bitcoin-related channels, so feel free to ping me there.

At current difficulty:

1.0/(2.621*1000*1000*1000*(2**32)/(0.750*1000*1000*1000*1000)/(60*60*24))*(25)*7*(0.98*0.5*(1/10420.0)) => 0.000043712 (actual 0.00003650)

At previous difficulty:
1.0/(2.19*1000*1000*1000*(2**32)/(0.750*1000*1000*1000*1000)/(60*60*24))*(25)*7*(0.98*0.5*(1/10420.0)) => 0.00005669
(actual 0.00009597)

This is only two data points, but you guys can do the remaining math yourself.  +/- 50% is not unusual when using smaller pools.  If things are orders of magnitude off (like the missing divs), that is when we have a problem.

Using my previously invented "instantaneous annualized return", at a share price of 0.04 we are currently making 4.745%.  Obviously, this will jump massively when the cointerra hardware arrives.

EDIT:  also, we see a "low week" followed by a "high week" followed by a "low week" - the obvious explanation is payouts happen every few days, and the high week had more paid out, possibly including some divs from the prior week, and the low week had btc still in the pool waiting to be paid out.  this is why more data is needed and there is insufficient evidence for lower-than-expected results at this time.  Also, I am assuming 2% pool fee above, it could also be 3 or 5%.

Price increasing can cause a machine to ROI that otherwise wouldn't have - IF you consider the purchase price in USD - but if it only ROIs due to increase in bitcoin price, you should have just bought bitcoins.

One rational explanation for why people buy hardware that won't ROI is it is a "premium" they are paying for "truly anonymous coins" - If you buy a $1600 miner, produce 1.5 bitcoins with it, and bitcoins are worth $800 each, you technically didn't ROI, but you might consider those 1.5 BTC you didn't have to sign up for coinbase or go meet someone on localbitcoins to obtain to be worth $1600 total (i.e. 33% markup).

Obviously, that said, it is still a very risky strategy since the projected return of a miner can vary so heavily between the time it is ordered and the time it is received, you could still end up paying an unreasonable markup.

As for bitcoin difficulty, there is NO clear correlation between price and difficulty or hash rate.  Value has gone up, hash rate has gone up, but so has my blood pressure and the number of seconds since 1980.  That doesn't mean they have anything to do with each other.  The price goes up when demand goes up faster than supply, but demand is fickle as a motherfucker and supply has a constant component from new coins, but is supplemented by people cashing out or buying things from vendors that convert to USD, which is a very complex system.

Quit feeding the troll, people.  A religious zealot is someone who believes for poor reasons.  A religious zealot will use whatever facts he can to support his presuppositions, and when the facts fail, resort to ad hominem attacks.

Sometimes zealots are right, and sometimes they are wrong.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day.  This troll was right that not everything was perfect with Garr, and mistakes were made, but he's been proven wrong that the intent was malicious.  There is no reason to believe it was in garr's best interest to pay 32BTC just to "further the scam".  FIMB was not a scam, it was just a failure.  COG is not a scam, and when the hardware arrives, it has the potential to be very successful.  But despite this new evidence, some people aren't looking at the evidence, and some people will never be convinced.  Those people should be ignored.

Nobody should forget what happened in the past, but they should consider all the evidence.  Garr is obviously making an effort here and we should continue to encourage him to improve, hire the help he needs, etc.

(Disclosure:  I own about 1.7% of COG by shares)

I'm really sorry FIMB defaulted, alincoln, but I am very glad things are being worked out.  I hope seeing the payment made, and getting this monkey off Garrett's back, will be the first of many steps to rebuild trust.  I'm looking forward to a bright future for COG.

It's also worth noting that earlier (Dec. 10th) I ran some projections (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67547.msg3916609#msg3916609):


We are currently at 2.19mil, under the lowest projection I made.  Things are going to ramp up when cointerra ships, no doubt, but we are on track to make a tidy sum still.

In other "happy joy!" news, Cointerra says on their blog they shipped the first retail unit and it is now in a customer's hands:
http://cointerra.com/pr-cointerra-begins-shipment-terraminer-iv-worlds-fastest-bitcoin-miner/

I wouldn't be surprised if we still don't actually receive our miners until February (they are still slightly behind schedule), but this is still great news.

Avalon chips were *also* ordered by COG.  Those avalons were able to be refunded and the refund was applied towards the cointerra order (hence, COG.F1 and COG.F2 will both mature when the cointerra order arrives, COG.F1 was originally for an avalon order which went sideways).

If Garr is doing it right, the ones listed on the cog website are only the cog order, but Garr should be able to confirm that for us.

Nothing is ever "about to happen" in bitcoinland.  Everything is "2 weeks away(tm)" until it has already happened.  Except maybe for ASICMiner, which for some reason, price jumps happen on estimated dates even when there is no news.

Quoted for truth.  At least *someone* understands what "shares" mean.

Obviously since Avalon blew up the only way FIMB would NOT be in default is if Garrett paid out-of-pocket.

The Avalon chips COG ordered were refunded, and those funds were applied to a cointerra order.  If I had to *GUESS* (and that's what we have to do when Garrett doesn't tell us anything, HINT HINT GARRET!), I'd guess he did the same thing with the FIMB funds and will be getting hardware from cointerra soon which he hopes to use to pay the FIMB divs owed.  The avalon failure isn't Garrett's fault, but the following things are:

1. Garrett didn't communicate what was going on with FIMB
2. The original FIMB contract doesn't seem to discuss risks at all - it isn't as obvious as it could be (but still pretty obvious IMHO) that if avalon chips fell through the bond would default or be delayed.


FIMB holders: FIMB are COG are both run by Garrett.  Garret is in default, COG is not.  Since this thread is seemingly the best way to talk to Garrett in public, I'm fine with you continuing to complain here, but please stop saying COG is in default.  Garrett is in default.

Garrett:  Please for goodness sake just explain the FIMB situation (if you're waiting on cointerra hardware, say so - if you are hoping to pay out of pocket - say so.  If the whole thing is going to default because of avalon's failure - say so.  These things are always a risk and people knew they were taking a risk when they invested).  Stringing people along with no news is the worst thing both for your rep and for other companies you also manage, like COG.

Garrett: Are FIMB and COG actually linked, or are they two separate enterprises both owned by you?  Does an FIMB default imply a COG default?  If so, that would be very disturbing, as the risks of FIMB were not discussed anywhere on the COG website and I didn't even know it existed until people came here to complain about it.

That said - people absolutely have the right to complain about FIMB defaulting, and that is absolutely Garrett's "fault/responsibility" and impacts the trust people have for him.  If FIMB defaulted due to no negligence on his part, then he should come forward and say so and explain the plan moving forward, and whether or not that impacts COG.  When a company fails, you don't call the CEO a scammer.  When a company disappears without paying their debts or explaining anything, however...  PLEASE Garret, answer these accusations and explain where FIMB and COG are and if they impact each other.

I'm not letting Garrett "off the hook" for the missing dividends and neither should anyone else - I explicitly mentioned them elsewhere in my post you selectively quoted from - but as superresistant said, for a security run over the course of more than a year, facing several high-risk adverse situations, COG has fared very well (and the actual amount missing, I believe, is a *portion* of the dividends from 6 weeks).

The other reason COG is "valuable", besides 2.05GH/share with 50% reinvestment, is cog has been around through three different exchanges and each time the operator didn't run off with the goods, though he could have.  COG has been paying dividends for over a year (and afaik there has been only one incident, somewhat recently, where divs were missed - we are still unclear on why).

As much as people have been complaining recently about this div issue (rightfully so!) many people trust COG over some unproven org that has been around for shorter, or said things like "oh, yeah, we're *totally* gonna have a petahash in march" or whatever, with no history of actually doing stuff like that.  Garrett was an early customer of Cointerra too, and supposedlly negotiated a *very* good bulk purchasing deal, and he has said he hoped to have another one for Q2 2014, again implying that COG's future is bright.

To clarify, after the last exchange move, there were some unclaimed share, but the *real* totals are 10420 shares + 100 COG.F1 + 100 COG.F2.  F1 and F2 started off different but a motion has joined them to be exactly equivalent now.  When the cointerra order arrives (should be in the next week or two) each F1 and F2 share will convert into 20 COG shares, and our current hashrate is ~750GH/s, but after cointerra it will be 28.75 TH/s


EDIT: Oh, almost forgot - we have also recently purchased some scrypt miners, so that is going to supplement DIVs (will still be converted to and paid in BTC).  It is unclear what the profit projections are on that.

I like that it is low-risk, but if it takes a lot of time/effort to set up that might be better spent elsewhere, that'd be my only concern.  There are always opportunity costs.  If it was easy to set up, everyone would do it.

Completely unrelated to recent discussion - I was recently pointed to GridChip, which is working on a Scrypt ASIC, and recently presented 400 developer boards in early december.

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=9545.0

Might be worth investigating - I am not very positive on altcoins in general but if we can make more mining altcoins then immediately converting to BTC, I'm in favor.