ASICMINER Speculation Thread

[JordanL]

To the moon folks, to the moon.

Those who were/are shares for under 4BTC last week are insane.

[velacreations]

To the moon folks, to the moon.

Those who were/are shares for under 4BTC last week are insane.

yes, I agree.  We may see .04+ dividend in the coming weeks, and I expect share price to top 5 in August.

[kleeck]

To the moon folks, to the moon.

Those who were/are shares for under 4BTC last week are insane.

It's still under 4. I'm thinking it probably won't hit/pass 4 until Monday or Tuesday.

[btcbot]

Yah, although traditionally it has dropped the half a day before the dividend because the sell off earns more.

I don't see that.  I typically see a rise right before dividend...

I've been seeing Tuesdays as down days, too.  Any source of historical data available? 

[Rannasha]

Yah, although traditionally it has dropped the half a day before the dividend because the sell off earns more.

I don't see that.  I typically see a rise right before dividend...

I've been seeing Tuesdays as down days, too.  Any source of historical data available? 

http://www.coinflow.co/chart/ASICMINER-PT has a historical graph.

The BTCT API also willingly spits out the entire trade history if you want to run your own analysis.

[btcbot]

Yah, although traditionally it has dropped the half a day before the dividend because the sell off earns more.

I don't see that.  I typically see a rise right before dividend...

I've been seeing Tuesdays as down days, too.  Any source of historical data available? 

http://www.coinflow.co/chart/ASICMINER-PT has a historical graph.

The BTCT API also willingly spits out the entire trade history if you want to run your own analysis.

Right... would be nice if I didn't have to login to look at the API.   

https://btct.co/api/ticker/ASICMINER-PT

I'll do a dump sometime this week...

[tinus42]

Does anyone care about the fractional shares offered on Havelock? (ASICM100)

What are the advantages of having one over the other?

Pro: you can buy AM100 shares when you don't have enough for a full share (and they are a good target for reinvesting divs)
Contra: you only get 95% of divs, TAT takes 5% for "management fees". AM1 shares pay out 100%

[btcbot]

Does anyone care about the fractional shares offered on Havelock? (ASICM100)

What are the advantages of having one over the other?

Pro: you can buy them when you don't have enough for a full share (and are a good target for reinvesting divs)
Contra: you only get 95% of divs, TAT takes 5% for "management fees".

When they're more than 5% cheaper than the full shares, more shares/divs... 

[tinus42]

When they're more than 5% cheaper than the full shares, more shares/divs...  

Exactly.
It looks like people can't into math. Or they're in for the other benefits of full shares, of course.

From Havelock, yields:
AM1      32.76%
AM100      33.53%

In the near future AM1 shares should be convertible to direct shares. Maybe that explains the slight difference. AM100 shares should be multiplied by 100 x (100/95) for comparison as the 5% fee is priced in. That currently gives 3.789 vs 3.9 for AM1.

[Rannasha]

When they're more than 5% cheaper than the full shares, more shares/divs...  

Exactly.
It looks like people can't into math. Or they're in for the other benefits of full shares, of course.

From Havelock, yields:
AM1      32.76%
AM100      33.53%

In the near future AM1 shares should be convertible to direct shares. Maybe that explains the slight difference. AM100 shares should be multiplied by 100 x (100/95) for comparison as the 5% fee is priced in. That currently gives 3.789 vs 3.9 for AM1.

There will be additional buying pressure for AM100, since it's easier to get into as you don't need almost 4 BTC to get a single share. This makes AM100 much more attractive for smaller investors, which translates into increased demand.

[tinus42]

When they're more than 5% cheaper than the full shares, more shares/divs...  

Exactly.
It looks like people can't into math. Or they're in for the other benefits of full shares, of course.

From Havelock, yields:
AM1      32.76%
AM100      33.53%

In the near future AM1 shares should be convertible to direct shares. Maybe that explains the slight difference. AM100 shares should be multiplied by 100 x (100/95) for comparison as the 5% fee is priced in. That currently gives 3.789 vs 3.9 for AM1.

There will be additional buying pressure for AM100, since it's easier to get into as you don't need almost 4 BTC to get a single share. This makes AM100 much more attractive for smaller investors, which translates into increased demand.

I guess you will notice this more when BTC to $ goes up. When 4 BTC is worth something like $2000 it's more than likely that people will buy fractional shares. I wouldn't be surprised if Friedcat would announce an official stock split by then. It's crazy when a Asicminer share would be worth more than two times as much as a Google share.

[freedomno1]

To the moon folks, to the moon.

Those who were/are shares for under 4BTC last week are insane.

Nice time for this And for moderation haha

[101111]

This is quite intuitive, but what about the reverse scenario where the BTC price climbs by a few orders of magnitude? I have a hard time imagining what effect that would have on BTC denominated stock prices for mining companies. It can't have NO effect...

Ok I'm not saying it doesn't have effects, I'm trying to say that USD exchange rate appreciation or depreciation shouldn't be taken into account into determining how much you gained or lost.
Because you would have gained or lost the exact same % if you just hold the BTC without investing them.

Add on the dividends and that's around 30% more BTC per year for the AM shareholder.

On a related note, let's say BTC rises from $100 to $200 over the next 12 months. As it rises the increased overall market confidence would allow the yield on AM to fall to say 15% ie a doubling of the share price.

[mrtg]

Hi, I've been trying to estimate future AM market-share based on current evolution, and I came up with some interesting numbers; I'm curious what everyone else thinks about this.

First, the assumptions:

• Difficulty is rising approx. 50% per month
• AM is working on 2nd gen chips which will be available in December
• AM 2nd gen chips will be built on 65/55nm, compared to 130nm for current gen

I. Efficiency
Generally, every die shrink allows for a roughly 40% increase in the number of transistors; coupled with a more optimized design and potential increases in clock-speed, all while keeping the same overall architecture - we're probably looking at an 80% performance increase for the same power use. Given the two steps of shrinking (from 130nm to 90nm to 65nm) we would achieve about a 3.2x increase in performance.

Existing chips perform at 332MH/s, so this hypothetical 2nd gen. design would then hash at ~1.1GH/s. With overclocking that becomes ~400MH/s, or ~1.3GH/s for the 2nd gen. chip.

That would give us the following:

• USB Erupters v2: 1.1 - 1.3 GH/s
• Small Blades v2: 17 - 20 GH/s
• Normal Blades v2: 35 - 40 GH/s

Of course, this all assumes a realistic evolution of the current AM chip design. At this very moment, significantly better designs exist on the market -- the BFL chips actually perform at a top speed of 3.75 GH/s and are also built on the 65nm process. It is possible that AM does a complete overhaul of their chip and approaches (or even exceeds) those speeds; however there is no way to predict that.

II. Difficulty
Far from being science by any definition, predicting difficulty is more like a black art. That said, it's safer to err on the side of caution here and assume a 50% monthly increase (and even that might be conservative). 4 months from now, in December, that would give us:
- Difficulty: 5x what it is now or ~190Mil.

Given I + II, the resulting price for a 2nd generation AM blade comes out between 4.5 BTC and 8 BTC - using e.g. the TGB calculator, a 40GH/s device would yield a maximum of ~4.5BTC if the difficulty keeps rising with the same rate, and even at 40% diff. rise it would not yield more than ~8BTC.

If AM can maintain a profit given the NRE and production costs for the 2nd gen. chips, they could still keep up selling them at the above prices. But what about self-mining? Given a difficulty increase of 5x and performance gains of just 3.2x, AM would need to increase their deployment area by 50-60% and replace all boards with the new chips just to keep their current share of network power; whether that will be possible or not remains to be seen.

Of course there are many unknowns that could influence the outcome for the better or worse (difficulty rising slower or faster, BTC prices increasing or decreasing, 2nd gen. chips having 10x performance, production/deployment delays etc) but overall I'd say the above analysis covers the middle ground, and if it comes to pass we'll be looking at similar profit levels in December compared to August. If anything happens and AM misses some of the targets, we could be looking at a 60% decrease in mining revenue as well as sales income.

As for impact on share prices, after a rise in the coming weeks due to increases in blade sales, they will likely level off and see a decline towards the end of the year, until production-level 2nd gen. chips start coming up en masse. What do you think?

DISCLAIMER: I currently own shares in AM as well as other mining ventures.

[velacreations]

• AM is working on 2nd gen chips which will be available in December

I thought 2nd Gen was expected in Oct/Nov?

[mrtg]

• AM is working on 2nd gen chips which will be available in December

I thought 2nd Gen was expected in Oct/Nov?

Well, according to this they will have "experimental products" in the November-December time frame; honestly, December might be optimistic in this case, as we've seen time and time again (even with AM) delays happen for months at a time.

[velacreations]

Blade pricing - 10.25 btc
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=271054.0

[velacreations]

• AM is working on 2nd gen chips which will be available in December

I thought 2nd Gen was expected in Oct/Nov?

Well, according to this they will have "experimental products" in the November-December time frame; honestly, December might be optimistic in this case, as we've seen time and time again (even with AM) delays happen for months at a time.

ok, I see, now.  Here's the quote from FC, if anyone wants to see it:

August-September: Deploy/sell all hashpower arriving in July and early August.
September-November: Deploy/sell the hashpower ordered at early July.
November-December: Experimental products of 2nd-gen chips and modular large-scale deployment solutions.

So, Nov/Dec is for experimental product and large-scale deployment solutions.  So, yes, December is probably reasonable, January to be conservative.

[shawshankinmate37927]

I'll throw in a crazy speculation... hey, wouldn't it be crazy if ASICMiner ran a steady business for the next 10 years? Everyone here casually assumes, understandably, that the risk is high and everything that exists today could be gone in a year or two, but what if it didn't? Can you imagine collecting 10 years of dividends from ASICMiner if they held onto 10% of the hashrate? What if bitcoins are worth a $10,000 USD each? That would be crazy. Not impossible though... consider that although many competitors are emerging, electricity and labor is still (almost) the cheapest in China. After everyone gets to the 15nm process (or whatever), the price of electricity/labor/taxes will pretty much determine who the major players are.

There, that's some pie-in-the-sky speculation for you.

hehehe     This is pretty much how I look at it too.

In a lot of ways Friedcat himself seems to take a long view, too... good customer service, over-delivering, hefty dividends, never over-promising.  I suspect we'd get bought out before 10 years is up, though...

If friedcat and the folks at Bitfountain decided to accept a buy out offer at some point in the future, hopefully it would only be a buy out of the 236,038 shares that they own and not something that's forced on all shareholders.

[Vycid]

I'll throw in a crazy speculation... hey, wouldn't it be crazy if ASICMiner ran a steady business for the next 10 years? Everyone here casually assumes, understandably, that the risk is high and everything that exists today could be gone in a year or two, but what if it didn't? Can you imagine collecting 10 years of dividends from ASICMiner if they held onto 10% of the hashrate? What if bitcoins are worth a $10,000 USD each? That would be crazy. Not impossible though... consider that although many competitors are emerging, electricity and labor is still (almost) the cheapest in China. After everyone gets to the 15nm process (or whatever), the price of electricity/labor/taxes will pretty much determine who the major players are.

There, that's some pie-in-the-sky speculation for you.

hehehe     This is pretty much how I look at it too.

In a lot of ways Friedcat himself seems to take a long view, too... good customer service, over-delivering, hefty dividends, never over-promising.  I suspect we'd get bought out before 10 years is up, though...

If friedcat and the folks at Bitfountain decided to accept a buy out offer at some point in the future, hopefully it would only be a buy out of the 236,038 shares that they own and not something that's forced on all shareholders.

Considering that 236,038 shares is a controlling interest in the company, you'd best hope they buy you out also, or they're gonna dilute your ass into next week.