Bump! 

Exactly.  That is why I am taking the opposite approach.  The principal will be repaid first.  And it will be repaid with revenue, and not profit. 

I am locking this thread.  I believe the pros and cons of this approach have been fully hashed out.  I have one full lender committed, for 1 of Tom's $1,069 models.  If others are interested (and I hope they are), please feel free to contact me by PM. 

Thanks,
Nolo

You can offer a loan.  (You could also make a private offering of securities as opposed to a public offering, but I'm not even going down that road.)  But you are correct.  A public offering of a security without being registered under the 1933 Securities Act is illegal. 

I will structure the transaction in such a way that it is a loan with a structured payment plan.  The risk of loss is if the ASICs never actually appear.

The lender eats the lost if ASICs are vaporware.  That is the whole purpose for me deciding to do this.  I could just purchase the ASICs myself otherwise.  They can mitigate their losses by having multiple lenders join them.  Not a conflict at all, but I should have made that more clear.  Not going to reformat these into mining bonds, as that would be issuing securities.   I am not in any way going to be involved in the mess that comes with issuing securities.  This is a loan.

I have now had several people contact me about being interested in this.  All seem to have different reasons for doing so, and some I didn't even think of.  So for various reasons, not all financial, it does make sense to invest in this.  We just disagree on your last point.  

Terms:

1) You loan me the amount necessary to purchase one or multiple ASIC(s).
2) Once I receive the ASIC I immediately begin mining with it.  The first 100% of the amount the ASIC(s) earn, up to the amount you loaned, will be sent to you.  (Revenue not profit.  I will eat the electricity cost, as it is pretty cheap here anyway.)  
3) Once paid off, for the life of the ASIC I will send you 10% of the profits earned by the ASIC(s) weekly.  
4) If the ASIC is ever sold, I will then send you 10% of the liquidation amount of the ASIC(s).

So the way the return on this investment works is 1) Full repayment of your loan; 2) 10% of the earnings weekly; and 3) 10% of the liquidation amount.

There are two areas of risk for the investor:

1) ASICs are a scam and never ship.  You lose your investment.  This is why I am making this proposal.  I want to get into ASICs, but also want to mitigate my risk, and am willing to pay to do so.  
2) I'm a scammer.  Not very likely for two reasons:  1) I've built a solid reputation online; and 2) If I were to get caught scamming, I do not believe the legal profession would look very kindly on one of its own doing so, and there would be harsh consequences.

This is just an outline of the proposal.  For anyone that is interested, I have an actual contract with full details.  (The full details are just be more in depth, but fully comply with the terms of the above outline, unless we agree on other terms.)

Why not just buy an ASIC yourself?  People this might be a good investment for include:
1) Those who do not have the full amount to purchase an ASIC (I am willing to split this up into multiple lenders);
2) Those who wish to mitigate their risk of ASICs being a scam and never shipping (by grouping with multiple lenders);
3) Those who have high electricity rates; and
4) Those who do not want to manage the operation themselves
5) You live overseas, and the time for shipping, customs, and excess cost make the purchase of ASICs unfeasible for yourself. 

Feel free to pm me if you're interested as well.

Argon.  pffft....the All Retard Gas

Xenon is where it's at. 

Have you tried this guide for cgminer?  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=117221.0

I use cgminer for LTC all the time, and don't have any problem using scrypt. 

ASICs have not been released.  And likely will not be in the wild for some time.  (IMO.  Others will likely disagree with me.)

Why can't you get litecoin working?  What's the problem?

So what's the answer to the problem? 

I never had confidence.  That's why I won't order until I see they actually exist and calculate my ROI.  Sure, if they do materialize, I'll be at the back of the line on receiving, but I don't have to stress out over whether I just lost several $1000 on vaporware. 

I understand why BFL did that.  I would think they anticipated that people would start demanding refunds once the delivery date was delayed by so many months.  They also should have known that the date they were publicly stating wasn't possible.  The concern for the customers should be when these aren't delivered on January first and the flood of refund requests come in.  This would most likely put the company in severe cash flow problems as I would think they have already paid their suppliers, rent, and employees.  

(All the above is obviously speculation as I am just basing my theories on general business operations, and have no specific knowledge of BFL.)

In theory, the threat of a 51% attack is always present.  At what hash rate would you guys consider the risk pretty well mitigated?  I know it depends on the coin, as they're slightly different.  But just looking for a ballpark number. 

Yep, that's why I wanted to post here to get an opinion.  Willing to throw a few bucks on it, but only if I could get it working and mining with 3 gpus.  If it couldn't handle that strain, I'll look elsewhere. 

Same with the 6 pin.  I have never seen it before, and have no clue what that is.  Don't even know where you would get a psu that would have that connector. 

Even for $14? lol 

I mean if its going to fry a gpu though, then I suppose you're right. 

Hi there friend!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/300810765385?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

I was just strolling through ebay when I ran across these really cheap motherboards.  They have (1) 16x slot and (2) 1x slots.  Any reason I couldn't throw a few gpus on this and let it mine some alt coins?  I've never used a motherboard from a manufacturer like Dell or HP before.  Thinking about just throwing in a slow socket 775 celeron into that. 

And is that a 6 pin CPU power connector on that board?  What is that? 

It really depends on what it is your business does.  If you just sell things, it isn't an issue.  But of most common concern to btc businesses that are in the money service industry, are the anti money laundering regulations of FinCEN, and then state licensing requirements.  

If once you get into it, and you want a detailed explanation of how these laws work and effect your business, shoot me a PM.  I've helped several business owners from this forum develop a plan to come into compliance with the law.  

Be very careful of the legal ramifications of starting a bitcoin business as well, especially if based in the United States. 

Nope not litecoins either.  You would lose far more money than you would ever make with such a low hash rate.  If you want to mine bitcoins, forget it unless you have serious $ to invest.  If you want to mine alt coins just for fun, and break even, maybe make a little profit, then you need to look into getting yourself a PC with graphics cards.  If you're serious, and need specifics, https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison isn't a bad place to start looking. 

I don't know if its real or fake, but it's a very nice looking watch, and I'm not a watch guy.