New Project - Serious Feedback Request From the Community

[rustyh17]

If you could purchase "larger than 24nm" chips in MAR/28/14 from a NEW COMPANY under the following conditions:

• Chip front end design is complete, verified, and has a functioning FPGA for proof test.
• Chip designer has contract with fab in place.
• Power draw is < 1W/ghps
• Price is = $1.50/ghps for 1st wafer run (chip only @90% yield).
• Price is = $0.85/ghps for subsequent wafer runs (chip only @90% yield).
• If multiple wafer runs were sold, all buyers would receive either more chips or BTC refund.
• All of your order funds held in BTC by 3rd party escrow (community-trusted) until first shipment occurs.
• No refunds unless the project is failure. (Failure being clearly defined as being late more than 30 days or chip yield < 50% or power draw >+25% or NRE not recovered.)
• Buyers would be able to add orders up until NOV/01/13 before cut-off with chip fab on initial wafer volume.
• You get to have a say in how the chip PCB is designed and packaged.
• Chip interface specs are freely published for community PCB developers. If no developers step up, company would provide PCB design and production.

Would you do so?

Please note that this is NOT a hypothetical exercise. This is a crowd-sourced business decision. Please provide feedback and your background (to gain some context). We appreciate your help
and consideration!

[Vagnavs]

I'd be interested, but would need to know more

Who would be the third party escrow service?

Would you accept credit card whether it be PayPal or directly?

regards

[rustyh17]

I'd be interested, but would need to know more

Who would be the third party escrow service?

Would you accept credit card whether it be PayPal or directly?

regards

A community-trusted third party (or parties) escrow service (such as JohnK or equal).

The conversion from fiat to BTC is to the buyer's account. All funds held in escrow would be BTC.

[qwk]

Maybe, but sounds too expensive to me.
I might be looking for a follow-up to my 10 Sierra's.

[amer]

I would feel a lot better knowing about the track record of the players involved in building this company. Obviously a price point of sub $2/GH/s is better than anything that's been promised so far. The question isn't about specs, it's about likelihood of reaching market - so the reputation of who is involved matters more than the promise.

Would you take a $2 per GH/s chip from AMD or a $0.50 per GH/s from we-aren't-allowed-to-tell-you-yet? Considering the fact that there are more failed ASIC suppliers than successful ones..

[PaperClip]

No, I would not. You see, you have chosen very bad time to enter ASIC market.
Although now you specifications look amazing, in December and January a lot of new companies will start to deliver their devices. Difficulty at that time will go up, up to ten times more than current. And any ROI prognoses with current increase rate will be wrong starting from year 2014. Your device delivery in April is so late, and so far away, that risk is very high. Your offer will be accepted only by guys with big pockets, who invest into everything that possibly can mine.

My background - I am just watching hardware forum for half a year now, trying to follow any related news.

[Dalkore]

I am not sure now is the time to try and build a new chip.  The prudent thing at this point is to wait til Jan/Feb to see where the difficulty is and if it would be ethical to bring another chip online.   Customers needs to have at least a reasonable expectation to ROI before the hardware becomes marginal or it is really just gambling and speculation on FX rates.


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