One thing that scares me:
The dividends are getting lower in each pay out. At the current level of dividends it represents a 7% yearly which seems very low. I know that in the future this will depend of the rentability of the underlying assets, which relys in serveral things like new mining hardware, difficulty, BTC/$ parity etc...
You are correct. Dividends have continued to decrease. Let me explain...
Future Outlook - My guess as to what's to come.
Just about all companies are holding off on purchasing new equipment, except for ASIC devices. Until ASIC devices are in the hands of mining companies, dividends from them will continue to wane.
All the mining companies in the fund have ASIC devices on order. Since ASCIMINER and a few other lucky individuals already have ASIC devices in their hands, dividends from the underlying companies will continue to decrease. Once the ASIC devices are in the hand of the mining companies, our dividends will increase.
Do you have any prediction about the rentability of the fund in the next 12 months or so ?
No.
But we can look at it this way:
Mining dividends are always based on how much of the total hashing power of the entire network the company has.
There are about 144 blocks mined per day... about 3600 BTC per day (at 25 per block). That's it. Even if there were a billion TH on the network, all that would be mined in a day is still about 3600 BTC.
If company X has 0.5% of the total hashing power, they make 18 BTC per day.. on average.
Since ASICMINER and a few other ASIC devices have increased the overall network hashing power while the mining companies' hash rate have stayed the same, the dividends are getting smaller. Because their hashing power--compared to the entire network is getting smaller.
Just as an example (not based on any calculations) now company X would have 0.15% of the total network hashing power and make only 5.4 BTC per day. Again this is just an example. I made no calculations.
Once the mining companies have their ASIC devices mining, their hashing power will once again increase and "take back" some of the overall hashing power that they lost.
Congnative lowered their dividend by 50%, and ~20% of the fund in made up of that 1 asset, so it is reflective.
This has decreased the overall dividend that the fund pays. But at the same time, this will allow Cognitive to purchase new hashing power in the future. Making sure that they will not continue to lose overall hashing power and the entire network grows.