Goliath

[mtminer]

If you do loans or shares you need to register with the various UK & US authorities. You have tax / legal compliance issue for various countries. In the US if you get past a certain share holder count the SEC requires you to go public.

I would just sell the devices.

[rocks]

I know many people want to know the fine detail but that's knowledge that we don't want to give away as said previously.

Yohan, not stating anything  is completely your preoperative, but I don't know why you're asking for my money then.

At the very least I would want to understand a few metrics in order to evaluate how this compares to what I think Avalon will bring.
a) Ghash/s per $ of capital cost
b) Ghash/s per Watt
c) Ghash/s per Total opex cost (server space, electricity cost, etc)

The technology question is irrelevant I could call it ASIC but that actually doesn't mean anything really. In true meaning a CPU is an ASIC so is actually a FPGA both raw and loaded. I could equally well use a long description which is more accurate but that would confuse all other than the very technically orientated in this forum.

The definition of CPU, FPGA and ASIC relates to how the computation is performed. Not the fact that they are silicon chips. Sorry, calling a CPU an ASIC  is a pet peeve of mine, so please excuse the clarification.
- A CPU performs computation as a series of instructions, very inefficient
- A FPGA performs computation in logical LUTs, better than CPU but still inefficient
- An ASIC performs computation directly on transistors, most efficient

We have moved on technology wise from what we did on Cairnsmore1 and we have learned many things doing that project and from running our own mining rigs based on CM1 boards. Generally CM1 was our way to learn about Bitcoin and what works and what doesn't. CM1 was very deliberately limited in the technology that we deployed and that was to meet timescales and do what we promised.

Designing PCB boards that house FPGA chips supplied from Xilinx/Altera is a completely different skill set than designing and fabricating an ASIC where you have to be first time right or all investment is lost. bASIC and BFL are learning this. Just because Cairnsmore1 was a success, does not mean the next engineering project will be. Again it comes down to how can I evaluate if you are capable of building this project, if I don't know what the project is doing?

One last thing that confuses me. You say that we will be able to measure the effect in the network hash rate prior to funding. But that would mean the project is already complete and working, which begs the question, "why do you need my money to fund something that is already completed???"

[Raize]

If this is a distributed cracking project, I may be interested. I need an AES-128 password cracked and my GPUs are tied up on something ATM...

[CoinHoarder]

If you are selling hardware, you better announce the specs/price/pre-order quickly, because everyone has already plopped down a big chunk of change for ASICs. I can't imagine there's a whole lot of money left in the bitcoin investor ecosystem after everyone buys shiny new ASICs. Time is of the essence for such a project.

[mightycount]

...
we think is competative with the currently announced ASICs.
...

Very fine verbiage. I'll bet the subtle difference between competative and competitive opens up some room for creativity should thing end up in court

[rocks]

Short answer is we are not asking for money yet. We are merely asking whether there would be interest in either a share or loan relationship. We know some people won't like these sorts of arrangements and we want to understand to some level how many people do or don't like these mechanisms.

If we do decide to go ahead with this sort of offer then at that time we will announce performance numbers we expect for a given amount of money.

....

As to skillbase at Enterpoint it's way wider than just PCBs and FPGAs. FPGAs are our main specialism nowadays but we do many other things. After all we were designing electronics well before FPGAs reached the designer masses and we can deal with almost any electronics technology that might be needed in a design.

Fair enough on both points. I look forward to the results when you are ready to discuss them.

My interest would be in a share based relationship, provided the performance numbers worked out. Not interested in loan relationships.

[bitboyben]

Stat's don't lie most people want to run the hardware themselves. It would be nice to have a no hassle offer of managing the equipment for other investor types.
Make them, sell them, keep some for management if you want.

Just don't take pre-orders.

[Lethos]

Yohan, I like your CM1 boards, got a few mining away next to my HTPC. I always hoped you get into ASIC's. So I was happy about this news.
Since if I was to buy more for mining, it be with you. Not so happy about mining bonds however.

I know mining bonds are risky, but I did buy ASICminer, since I took a gamble they would be out first and make a big profit, looks like there is a chance of that. If you aren't first with a new technology, mining bonds aren't usually a good deal, so if I'm getting hardware I'd rather buy it.
Without any details, mining bonds don't seem like a good deal to me, I'd rather buy Goliath once I have the same sort of openness you gave us with CM1, where has that gone Yohan?

With a name like Goliath, is it going to be similar to the Merrick 1, with 100 chips on 1 board?

I always prefer to buy local, so like with the CM1's, I'll buy your hardware if it is available, as the only UK supplier.

[bcpokey]

I am always wary of these share/bond based projects, where the operator holds all the cards, and the 'shareholder' has no real legal claim should the operator suddenly vanish in a poof of smoke. I've yet to see any enterprise in bitcoinlandia where this has not happened in one form or another. ASICMiner is the closest, as GBLSE wasn't really their fault, but it was still a part of the set-up.

If there were some legally certified, punishment-enabled consequence-dealing body backing the deal I would be interested, as the opportunity to reap coins without having to secure the overhead on myself sounds attractive.

That said, we would of course need to have some written terms as to $/Hash, operating costs, and what cut would be taken for "admin" and what have you, as well as what future dilution might mean.

Too many people happy to go on a wing and a prayer, and the inevitable result is never good.

[arklan]

hardware in hand and under my ownership, or i'll pass. just my thoughts. i've watched the cairnsmoore development and such with much interest, and have significant faith in enterpoint as a company. i just prefer having my hardware at my site.

[Keninishna]

If goliath ever does come about can enterpoint please take cm1 trade ins!?! also if goliath is ever released as unit, please use a new company to get usb cables. thanks.

[Bogart]

hardware in hand and under my ownership, or i'll pass.

Same.  I want something I can tweak, pwn, and make my bitch.  Having it sit off in some data center and never even seeing it takes all the fun out of it.  I also want a conversation piece.

Similarly, I would never buy a gold or silver ETN.  I would only buy physical metal that I take possession of.  9/10ths of the law blah blah.

[mrb]

Contrary to most people, I would be okay to go with shares or loan notes, as opposed to mining with my own hardware.

But at one condition: that the dividends or payments are defined by a formula that matches very closely the theoretical mining revenues of what I would invest in. In other words, Enterpoint must eat the costs of any mining downtime, no matter what its cause is. If you are not willing to eat these costs, then ship me hardware so I can manage it and be in full control of my (very small) downtime.

[arklan]

so, to make sure i understand that correctly: you are currently not planning on selling anything, but are developing something for... self-mining? or something else?

[MrTeal]

Small update on what we are doing. Given the share/loan note doesn't seem too popular we won't use this mechanism to finance Goliath. For the short term we will continue to build the small system option with our own funding up to maybe something like 100TH/s based on our first generation devices.

At some point we will look again at whether a spin-off for customer use is possible with gen1 devices maybe when we start to get more serious on the planned gen2 parts.

What do you consider to be short term, and what kind of timeline are you talking about for a 100TH/s buildup?

[spiccioli]

We are technically ahead of everyone we know of so we will use that lead wisely.

We are hopeful to switch the first parts of the Goliath system over to live mining before very long and will give the first BFL, Avalon and any of the unannounced other ASICs some serious competition.

Truly bad news for us small miners... 

spiccioli

[CoinHoarder]

So... you decided not to take on any investors? Or you've already got deals in place done privately?? Or you are going to sell the Goliaths to individual investors??

I am still interested in being a possible investor/customer, just wondering what yalls plans are as of now.

[Cablez]

I really must have missed something somewhere.  So are you selling anything at all?  How would you be competition to anyone if its a completely private deal?

EDIT: What is this some kind of freaky arms race? Or you just want to force a price decline for hardware?

[arklan]

a part of me is thinking "well, if it's either investor or nothing..." hmm.

[Dagger75]

We are technically ahead of everyone we know of so we will use that lead wisely.

We are hopeful to switch the first parts of the Goliath system over to live mining before very long and will give the first BFL, Avalon and any of the unannounced other ASICs some serious competition.

Truly bad news for us small miners... 

spiccioli

Amen Spiccioli, it truely is very bad news for us Small miners.  The Bitcoin network will either Thrive or Die out depending on what us small miners, as a group, decide to do.  The Bitcoin network can not and was never intended to be controlled and possibly overwhelmed by these Hardware Companys mass producing and mining 5%-10%-20%- or even 30% of the Network individually. 

If no one has any faith in the security of the network, because it is no longer decentralized by the Huge number of small to medium size miners, than it will no longer grow and will wither away and die.

100TH/s is 10% of a 1000TH Network...way too much for any 1 entity to controlled.  I would think this would be obvious to anyone.  This is my take on it and everyone is entitled to their opinion but Do Not Troll me if you feel otherwise.