[BitCentury] Metabank 120Gh 65nm Pre-Order Proxy [CLOSED]

[bobsmoke]

Thank you Luis!
Email sent...looking forward for updates.

[Foofighter]

Thank you Luis!
Email sent...looking forward for updates.

+1

[Foofighter]

Dear Luis,

just double checked the contract but Iam wondering now why your company is legally placed at Bahamas, I thought you would have an offince in Moscow and you are currently located in Canada.

As I understand the situation, this would be just a private office in Moscow and you dont pay any taxes in Russia? Means your company is not predominatly located in Moscow? So is the adress in Bahamas just a letterbox company to save taxes?

Please explain.

Best regards
Foofighter

[digitalmagus]

Hi Foofighter,
We initially looked at incorporating in Canada, but once we sat down with our lawyers, we realized it made no sense given our staff thus far is already in 4 different countries, and will likely expand in the future to others as well.  We are not a typical operation primarily based in 1 or 2 countries. While today we are looking at shipping from Russia, tomorrow it could be designing PCB boards out of Australia, designing power components out of Taiwan, PCB printing and assembly from China and running a website out of Finland. Then 1 year later it could all change. So maximum flexibility will be key to being competitive.

Further, what is considered local for me as a Canadian, is considered offshore for the other business partners and potential future investors.
Likewise incorporating in the USA in certain states is considered 'offshore' from the perspective of many other countries. Even more so when incorporating in Russia. As such, since we would be considered offshore no matter where we incorporated, we then considered various countries to incorporate in that would be more or less neutral to any of our current and future business partners, investors and ventures. With this, we considered a location that was historically stable and then obviously, it made sense to consider corporate tax neutrality which we see as benefiting everyone involved including our customers due to retail price impact, granted individual import/duty taxes may still apply.

Bahamas was only one of many options, but we settled with this one as it could be done reasonably fast, inexpensively and our lawyers already have years of experience in incorporating other companies there without any issues.  To be clear, we are not trying to weave a complex web of offshore companies and tax structures to obscure what we are doing as has been popularized recently in the media with big conglomerates like apple, google, starbucks, etc. Sorry, we have no time or any interest in this,  we're just a bunch of engineers trying to get work done as fast as possible as anything Bitcoin related seems extremely time sensitive, as such being able to get things done FAST without a lot of bureaucracy was our #1 consideration.

Hope that helps,
Luis

[digitalmagus]

Speaking of getting Bitcoin related work done fast and across the globe, some of you might interested in the status of Bitfury's ASIC. On this Finish blog (use google chrome to translate to English), you can follow punin's adventure as he flies from Europe to Asia to acquire BitFury's chips from the factory, to then distribute them to all sorts of countries around the world for hard core engineer alpha testing.

https://bittiraha.fi/content/matka-alkaa

Enjoy!
Luis

[digitalmagus]

For those not wishing to read the entire (very amusing) saga. The TL;DR version is this:

1. The Chips have been acquired from the factory in Taiwan
2. Punin is already trying to test them on a PCB (presumably to address Bitfury's online bet which expires in just a few hours!)
3. Bitfury has privately acknowledged that BitCentury will be getting Alpha chips for testing and punin already has Nigel's shipping address in Australia! We will be posting pictures/videos etc as soon as we get them, but it's realistic a few days away, likely next week some time before we actually receive our alpha chips.

In the mean time, here's some pictures from punin's blog that might be of interest:

[digitalmagus]

Note: We are migrating Mail Servers right now (3:00PM PST)... please wait until we give go-ahead for any additional waitlist requests.

Edit: As of aprox 3:45PM PST mail should work for most people. If you get a failure to deliver message to: waitlist@bitcentury.com, please just try a bit later until DNS propagates around the internet.
Thanks
Luis

[digitalmagus]

Hello everyone,
I just wanted to let you know that I finished replying to everyone who had requested to be put on the waitlist so far. If you somehow didn't get an email from me yet, then please email me (not pm) your original email requesting to be waitlisted, and I will make sure you are in the right spot on the list, but I am pretty sure I got everyone.

Tomorrow, I hope to start emailing customers their sales contracts, although everyone hopefully already has had a chance to read them from my previous forum post.

On the Bitfury ASIC update front, we haven't much new to report. I don't believe that as of right now, there's been any confirmation either way of the preliminary test results, although it does look like Bitfury may have missed his bet deadline for June 15th.

Hope you're all having a great weekend...ideally not glued to the screen like I have been all day :-)
Kind regards,
Luis

[Foofighter]

Thank you Luis for the frequent news here!

Also waiting eagerly for the final test results of Bitfury.

regards
Foofighter

[digitalmagus]

Foofighter, you're welcome.

So the latest update is that 'punin' (the guy who flew from Europe to Taiwan to get Bitfury's chips from the factory), was not able to adequately test the chips in Taiwan. In short, he experienced some problems with the testing process, but not necessarily the chips.  There are many different ways to test ASIC chips from basic to advanced functionality. Some are very fast and crude methods that may in fact fry the chips being tested, to a wide range of ever more elaborate and safer methods that simply take longer because they require very specialized tools and may require test boards or even purpose designed PCBs... all the way to end to end testing which would actually require all software at all levels to be completed, and thus allow for a demonstration of bitcoin hashing.

Lacking the necessary tools in Taiwan, and possibly skill level, punin has already flown back to Eastern Europe and has handed the alpha chips to Bitfury late yesterday. Bitfury is thus in the process of doing some tests himself, and it looks like he may already have a PCB available by 'intron':



Since the June 15th bet is now off the table, individual testing/proof (by people, other than Bitfury), is now less of a concern and so we await Bitfury's test results.

Cheers,
Luis

[stripykitteh]

Tomorrow, I hope to start emailing customers their sales contracts, although everyone hopefully already has had a chance to read them from my previous forum post.

Digitalmagus, can you confirm whether the contracts have been emailed yet?

[digitalmagus]

Digitalmagus, can you confirm whether the contracts have been emailed yet?

I can now, they were all emailed this evening. Thanks for your patience everyone. I thought I was going to be able to get them out earlier but 'life' happened.
Kind regards,
Luis

[kev7112001]

is this metabank the same metabank that also is the bank for PRE-PAID credit cards from Ace Cash Express such as NETSPEND

http://www.metabank.com/

https://aceelite.acecashexpress.com/prepaid-debit-card/applyNow.m scroll to bottom
 "ACE Elite™ Visa Prepaid Cards are issued by MetaBank™, pursuant to a license from Visa USA Inc. NetSpend is an authorized Independent Sales Organization of MetaBank. Use of card subject to funds availability. Transaction fees, terms, and conditions apply. See Agreement for complete details. "

[digitalmagus]

is this metabank the same metabank that also is the bank for PRE-PAID credit cards from Ace Cash Express such as NETSPEND
http://www.metabank.com/

Hi Kev7112001,
No, I don't believe it is. We are referring to: http://metabank.ru, a Russian company.
Cheers,
Luis

[gateway]

sorry guys late to the post, can one still order the devices, what is the current price, is their a site that list all this info (one must hate to read all the threads all the time).

has estimated shipping changed from aug-oct or pushed back?

[digitalmagus]

sorry guys late to the post, can one still order the devices, what is the current price, is their a site that list all this info (one must hate to read all the threads all the time).
has estimated shipping changed from aug-oct or pushed back?

Hi gateway,
The Batch 1 of orders from Metabank is officially closed. Anyone can keep an eye on any possibility of more orders/batches opening up from Metabank in two main ways:
I encourage anyone interested to bookmark the 2 links below and check daily, and flag us if you see anything opening up. We are also checking daily, but it doesn't hurt to have more eyeballs scoping upcoming opportunities:
(use google Chrome for translation from Russian->English)


1) Their website: https://metabank.ru/asic
2) Metabank.ru's posts here on bitcointalk.org: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=14120;sa=showPosts

Since there is currently no way to accept new orders, we are simply setting up a wait list, which costs nothing to sign up for. See details here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=226846.msg2467253#msg2467253

Cheers,
Luis

[digitalmagus]

Hi guys,
I should have added this yesterday, but have been crazy busy recently. Bitfury claims his chip is fully working! That means actually hashing too, not just passing necessary voltage tests and what not.  If you have been following any of the ASIC developments in the past year or so, this is extremely impressive in the sense Bitfury is only self-taught, and learned and designed a 65nm ASIC pretty much all on his own in a very very short time frame. When I met Yifu at Bitcoin2013, even he mentioned that Bitfury was a crazy genius guy (paraphrase), but now we may very well have proof of this.

But it gets even better. According to him, his chip may even outperform his own pre-testing estimates for speed/power consumption. Before we all break out champaign bottles and do a little dance, it's better to get peer confirmations of this, or even better, wait until we get our alpha chips (ETA aprox 2 weeks from now) and verify all the claims for ourselves, but if true.... WOW!

Here's the relevant post from Bitfury in Russian. Use Google Chrome to translate.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg2515577#msg2515577

Cheers,
Luis

PS. For those that purchased pre-orders, if you haven't yet sent me your service agreements, it would be great to get them by end of day Friday, as I should have time this weekend to process them all on my end.

[Foofighter]

Thx you for the update, Luis.

This is really great news! Cant wait to get more infos.

regards

[auto2nr1]

Great news. Thanks for the update. Keep it coming.

[digitalmagus]

How's this for more Bitfury news...

Bitfury started an open bet here: http://bitbet.us/bet/450/bitfurys-asic-will-work-with-power-1/

...and placed 99 BTC of his own money on the YES side. The Yes side meaning that he if he didn't deliver less than 1 W per GH/s per chip by June 15th, 2013, he'd lose his coins to the opposing betters.

Well June 15th came and went, and he missed the deadline by a few days, so he lost the bet from a time perspective. Now a few days later his chip is proven to be working and supposedly exceeding the power/Gh numbers, and so he is actually paying out everyone else who bet on the YES side who believed in him - something he never had to do.

More details here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=228677.msg2516092#msg2516092

Genius + high integrity = Awesome!