I'm interested to know how the ASICMINER stock will evolve in the next three years, so I'm asking myself the following questions:
1) What are the projections for the future of this stock?
2) What is the end game?
3) Will this stock still exist in a year's time?
4) Will the stock be diluted again with new shares?
5) What are the projections for the increase stages of the MH/s per share?
With the 50TH/s ASICMINER expansion soon on the table, and 125 MH/s per share we are looking at ฿0.05/week/share at current difficulty. The 51% avert capping and ASIC expansion by other miners will erode this potential dividend significantly due to difficulty increase.
If ASICMINER can maintain their processing share over the next year then investors entering the ASICMINER-PT offering now can recover their investment in that time at a dividend of ฿0.02/week/share for 12*4=48 weeks. The value might be in the stock itself and not necessarily the dividend, but I wonder how one can position oneself to profit best from cryptocurrencies in the next year.
First of all, how did you get here without the minimum 5 newbie posts? I don't mind, I just wonder how that's done :-)
I've been trying to figure out ASICMiner for a while now. I am a current investor, but I'll admit I bought at much lower rates than current trades from ignorance, not from any foresight. To remedy that, I've started with some further investigations. I'm overall a complete novice in investing; I use cryptocoin investments to learn. I haven't lost any money yet, but that's just dumb luck, not skill.
I think the cryptostock investors are blessed or cursed with a high risk, high reward market only, where even the most low-risk investments one can make, such as AM, would still scare Satan's investment advisor if he had one. A traditional investor would probably not touch AM with a ten foot pole, but compared to other investments, it's as safe as... and there I was about to say 'the bank'.
In any case, what intrigues me with AM is its ability and flexibility to harness a rapidly shifting market, both in terms of exchange rates (selling hardware when prices in USD go up, mining when prices go down) and in terms of capacity (selling to stay south of any 51% limit, mining to stay competitive).
From what I've seen after reading friedcat's updates during the previous months, they care about the community but manages to include business sense into that care. Compared to many other companies in the crypto world, they are well managed, semi transparent, keeps (mostly) the promises and schedules they make, and enjoys a good reputation.
They are also early in the market. Where some other competitors only now or later have real products, AM has had products in production for a while and has gained very valuable experience. This knowledge is worth its weight in gold (and again with those horrible metaphores; knowledge doesn't weigh anything and gold is crashing), especially in an arms race where a month may make or break a business model.
These are factors that I feel favor AM as an investment. However, there are downsides as well.
First, I don't understand the business of selling of hardware. That is, I understand why AM sells, but I cannot understand the buyers in this situation, and that worries me. We've seen insane prices for AM hardware, but is that a sustainable level or are we just seeing an initial buyer rush? Can AM keep selling hardware profitably if prices go up, say to US$500 or will that kill the BTC-denominated sales?
This brings me to my second worry; I don't know anything about the AM accounting books. Are their expenses denominated in BTC or USD? How does a fluctuating exchange rate affect their business model? Will a crash in BTC price cause massive drains on BTC resources? Does AM maintain USD assets for paying expenses denominated in USD?
And speaking of expenses, what are they? This speaks to your question 4. Will AM require further financing to develop the next generation of chips? I've seen the post from friedcat about not deluting the current AM investors, but I cannot understand how we can make such a promise. If BTC/USD crashes, the price an investor would have to pay in BTC/share would be insane, and it would be extremely difficult to find someone wou'd be interested.
I greatly appreciate friedcat's updates and have learned plenty from them, but there still, as far as I have been able to determine, has not been published any business plan, updated financial reports, and other reports that traditional companies would publish, such as market updates, future prospects, ROI on investments and chip generations, and so on.
Overall, I'm positive (keep in mind, I am an investor so I benefit from you believing that too), but the risks involved and the lack of transparency worries me, as a new investor.
.b
