Cointerra Mining ASIC coming soon

[Ytterbium]

A simpler way to prove you are who you say you are would be to have everyone on your team at least mention cointerra on their linkedin profiles.

[jlsminingcorp]

Silicon efficiency effects price, ultimately your ROI, it's probably more important than power efficiency as most ASiCs are not close to worrying about that yet.

Yup, smaller die = more dies per wafer = lower cost per chip.

[sarcasm] Guys we really need to think about our environmental impact too. I want to see a full life cycle assessment from all new ASIC manufacturers from now on. [/sarcasm]

Seriously though, power efficiency probably isn't a big deal in terms of cost, but it does have a big impact on how you deal with heat. It's a lot easier to get rid of 80W than it is to get rid of 800W and so on.

[cointerra]

A simpler way to prove you are who you say you are would be to have everyone on your team at least mention cointerra on their linkedin profiles.

Will be rectified immediately.

[ElusiveMiner]

Will you guys be selling off any stocks, or are you completely self-funded?

[nightengale]

A simpler way to prove you are who you say you are would be to have everyone on your team at least mention cointerra on their linkedin profiles.

Will be rectified immediately.

Thank you for addressing this. Hopefully this will get you back into the positives on dexX7's magical trust scale.   

[Bitcoinorama]

A simpler way to prove you are who you say you are would be to have everyone on your team at least mention cointerra on their linkedin profiles.

Will be rectified immediately.

Thank you for addressing this. Hopefully this will get you back into the positives on dexX7's magical trust scale.   

Admittedly anything that verifies helps, but they are who they say they are.

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The "We hate pre-orders" crowd isn't thinking clearly. They want massive profits with zero risk.  But chip makers have no reason to sell chips at anything less then what they think the chips would produce over the next 6, 12, months or whatever timeframe they have.

I don't know why people refuse to get this - if mining companies have chips on hand, and they don't have customer pre-orders to fill, then they are just going to mine with them, and will only sell at exorbitant prices!
...

The problems with your argument start with your premises.  In IRL pre-order, zero risks are implicit -- that's the standard.  IRL.

A pre-order purchase are not wagers on whether a company will deliver.  
It is not a wager on whether the company intends to deliver.  
It is not a wager on whether a company exists.  
It is a purchase -- like any other.  
It is also not an investment in a company -- those are called "investment," or, when little info is available, "gamble" or "foolishness."

Further, referring to Cointerra "mining company" is wholly unfounded.  By its own admission, Cointerra is presently doing no mining, owns no mining hardware, mining components or has any other tangible links to mining.  
If we chose to be loose & liberal with our terminology, we could call Cointerra "virtually a virtual mining company but not quite" or "possibly a fabless ASIC company with no ASICs to its name, but prob'ly just trolling."

Further still, claiming that a fully-funded ASIC manufacturer would simply mine with its own chips only exposes *another layer of absurdity,* a different topic i'd be happy to chat about later.  For now, suffice it to say it's one of the oddest justifications for giving money to strangers that i've ever heard.  Yes, buying mining gear may be a fool's errand, but buying it with no assurance the gear will ever materialize, or that you'll ever receive it?  Sillier still.

[dexX7]

A simpler way to prove you are who you say you are would be to have everyone on your team at least mention cointerra on their linkedin profiles.

Will be rectified immediately.

Thanks. Already up here:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/ravidiyengar

[aerobatic]

This is the way that the 28nm asic companies have chosen to operate their businesses, starting with KnCMiner and now Hashfast and soon after, Cointerra.

The simple fact is that to enter production of a 28nm asic has high up front cost that must be financed somehow (investors or pre-orders).  Taking pre-orders is effectively crowd funding, and its very effective as everyone could potentially win (provided the company can be trusted to ship when they say they will).  Its a very similar risk to backing a Kickstarter campaign.   We (the miners) get to place our bets on which horse(s) to back. and the mining asic companies get to raise the production costs that they need to enter full scale production and deliver to their customers.  Im fine with this model and have previously ordered from KnC (and I intend to order from the other new guys too when they let me)

The older generation asic companies doing 55, 65, 110 or 130nm didn't have the same problem because the up front production costs were much lower... (NRE's in the thousands instead of millions!) and even then, some of those still pursued the pre-order strategy (and failed to deliver - yes, I am one of those still waiting for my BFL boxes, which I assume will not be delivered to me in a commercially useful time)

and as someone else said, if these companies raised their production costs some other way, and didn't need to take pre-orders to finance their production... then either their price of hardware would be much more expensive (to cover the investor's return) or, as was mentioned, they wouldn't need to sell any and would be mining themselves like asicminer and no doubt some others out there.

there are other models that might work too, for instance, building out a mine and selling terahashes on it (like what cloudhash and coinlab are doing).  but theyre still taking prepaid orders to fund their purchases of stock from all the usual suspects.

of course, you could always find someone wealthy to back you (like the insane rumour of joe lewis backing a bitcoin asic).. but the sums involved don't seem to make sense to the investors.. and if it were true, there is no chance that this asic would be offered for sale to miners like us.

I wouldn't be surprised if the mining asic companies that can raise their production costs without doing presales, probably wont sell their mining gear until after they've used it to mine some coins themselves and will sell it when it gets a bit longer in the tooth, while they move onto the next asic.

You say its insane to make preorders without any assurance.. but how do you get assurance other than the word of the company and presumably knowing who the principals of the company are, and whether they have backgrounds you believe in.  any order of anything in the bitcoin space has a level of risk attached to it that isn't present in the real world when you order a book from amazon.  Youre betting on the execution risk of a startup, and betting on bitcoin at the same time.  The only way you can decide whether its a good bet is to look closely at the people behind the company and decide if you think theyre up to the challenge.  Its exactly the same way that VCs make investment decisions in the real world.  Bet on the people behind the company.

...
The "We hate pre-orders" crowd isn't thinking clearly. They want massive profits with zero risk.  But chip makers have no reason to sell chips at anything less then what they think the chips would produce over the next 6, 12, months or whatever timeframe they have.

I don't know why people refuse to get this - if mining companies have chips on hand, and they don't have customer pre-orders to fill, then they are just going to mine with them, and will only sell at exorbitant prices!
...

The problems with your argument start with your premises.  In IRL pre-order, zero risks are implicit -- that's the standard.  IRL.

A pre-order purchase are not wagers on whether a company will deliver.  
It is not a wager on whether the company intends to deliver.  
It is not a wager on whether a company exists.  
It is a purchase -- like any other.  
It is also not an investment in a company -- those are called "investment," or, when little info is available, "gamble" or "foolishness."

Further, referring to Cointerra "mining company" is wholly unfounded.  By its own admission, Cointerra is presently doing no mining, owns no mining hardware, mining components or has any other tangible links to mining.  
If we chose to be loose & liberal with our terminology, we could call Cointerra "virtually a virtual mining company but not quite" or "possibly a fabless ASIC company with no ASICs to its name, but prob'ly just trolling."

Further still, claiming that a fully-funded ASIC manufacturer would simply mine with its own chips only exposes *another layer of absurdity,* a different topic i'd be happy to chat about later.  For now, suffice it to say it's one of the oddest justifications for giving money to strangers that i've ever heard.  Yes, buying mining gear may be a fool's errand, but buying it with no assurance the gear will ever materialize, or that you'll ever receive it?  Sillier still.

[Bitcoinorama]

This is the way that the 28nm asic companies have chosen to operate their businesses, starting with KnCMiner and now Hashfast and soon after, Cointerra.

The simple fact is that to enter production of a 28nm asic has high up front cost that must be financed somehow (investors or pre-orders).  Taking pre-orders is effectively crowd funding, and its very effective as everyone could potentially win (provided the company can be trusted to ship when they say they will).  Its a very similar risk to backing a Kickstarter campaign.   We (the miners) get to place our bets on which horse(s) to back. and the mining asic companies get to raise the production costs that they need to enter full scale production and deliver to their customers.  Im fine with this model and have previously ordered from KnC (and I intend to order from the other new guys too when they let me)

The older generation asic companies doing 55, 65, 110 or 130nm didn't have the same problem because the up front production costs were much lower... (NRE's in the thousands instead of millions!) and even then, some of those still pursued the pre-order strategy (and failed to deliver - yes, I am one of those still waiting for my BFL boxes, which I assume will not be delivered to me in a commercially useful time)

and as someone else said, if these companies raised their production costs some other way, and didn't need to take pre-orders to finance their production... then either their price of hardware would be much more expensive (to cover the investor's return) or, as was mentioned, they wouldn't need to sell any and would be mining themselves like asicminer and no doubt some others out there.

there are other models that might work too, for instance, building out a mine and selling terahashes on it (like what cloudhash and coinlab are doing).  but theyre still taking prepaid orders to fund their purchases of stock from all the usual suspects.

of course, you could always find someone wealthy to back you (like the insane rumour of joe lewis backing a bitcoin asic).. but the sums involved don't seem to make sense to the investors.. and if it were true, there is no chance that this asic would be offered for sale to miners like us.

I wouldn't be surprised if the mining asic companies that can raise their production costs without doing presales, probably wont sell their mining gear until after they've used it to mine some coins themselves and will sell it when it gets a bit longer in the tooth, while they move onto the next asic.

You say its insane to make preorders without any assurance.. but how do you get assurance other than the word of the company and presumably knowing who the principals of the company are, and whether they have backgrounds you believe in.  any order of anything in the bitcoin space has a level of risk attached to it that isn't present in the real world when you order a book from amazon.  Youre betting on the execution risk of a startup, and betting on bitcoin at the same time.  The only way you can decide whether its a good bet is to look closely at the people behind the company and decide if you think theyre up to the challenge.  Its exactly the same way that VCs make investment decisions in the real world.  Bet on the people behind the company.

...
The "We hate pre-orders" crowd isn't thinking clearly. They want massive profits with zero risk.  But chip makers have no reason to sell chips at anything less then what they think the chips would produce over the next 6, 12, months or whatever timeframe they have.

I don't know why people refuse to get this - if mining companies have chips on hand, and they don't have customer pre-orders to fill, then they are just going to mine with them, and will only sell at exorbitant prices!
...

The problems with your argument start with your premises.  In IRL pre-order, zero risks are implicit -- that's the standard.  IRL.

A pre-order purchase are not wagers on whether a company will deliver.  
It is not a wager on whether the company intends to deliver.  
It is not a wager on whether a company exists.  
It is a purchase -- like any other.  
It is also not an investment in a company -- those are called "investment," or, when little info is available, "gamble" or "foolishness."

Further, referring to Cointerra "mining company" is wholly unfounded.  By its own admission, Cointerra is presently doing no mining, owns no mining hardware, mining components or has any other tangible links to mining.  
If we chose to be loose & liberal with our terminology, we could call Cointerra "virtually a virtual mining company but not quite" or "possibly a fabless ASIC company with no ASICs to its name, but prob'ly just trolling."

Further still, claiming that a fully-funded ASIC manufacturer would simply mine with its own chips only exposes *another layer of absurdity,* a different topic i'd be happy to chat about later.  For now, suffice it to say it's one of the oddest justifications for giving money to strangers that i've ever heard.  Yes, buying mining gear may be a fool's errand, but buying it with no assurance the gear will ever materialize, or that you'll ever receive it?  Sillier still.

These are all good points, but most importantly for all concerned with 'future product' that are paid for now, pay with protected payment means, i.e. credit cards (after calling your card issuer and confirming their consumer protection stance, varies country to country, card to card).

Paypal will only protect you for 45 days, credit cards can protect you for significantly longer, but not debit cards, although debit cards and bank transfer payments can be protected for upto 45 days if paid for through Paypal.

Ironically KnC claim to be ready by the end of September, and now is around 45 days before the end of September, so now it's a completely risk free bet with KnC that you can pay by Paypal and cancel in 44 days if they have no evidence of producing a fully working product!!

Hopefully misinformation and claims of a scam can soon be put to bed.

[aerobatic]

Its also not fair to compare IRL with anything bitcoin related.  theyre so different as to make comparison impossible.

there is no 'money printing' machine that can be bought IRL.   that's a bitcoin eccentricity.. the fact that you can buy a box that will 'mine coins' for you and generates an ROI measured in days or weeks and not years... is a very bitcoin related thing.  And to get such a thing, requires you to take risks not normally associated with IRL !

The problems with your argument start with your premises.  In IRL pre-order, zero risks are implicit -- that's the standard.  IRL.

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You say its insane to make preorders without any assurance.. but how do you get assurance other than the word of the company and presumably knowing who the principals of the company are, and whether they have backgrounds you believe in.  any order of anything in the bitcoin space has a level of risk attached to it that isn't present in the real world when you order a book from amazon.  Youre betting on the execution risk of a startup, and betting on bitcoin at the same time.  The only way you can decide whether its a good bet is to look closely at the people behind the company and decide if you think theyre up to the challenge.  Its exactly the same way that VCs make investment decisions in the real world.  Bet on the people behind the company.

I never addressed the sanity of making speculative pre-orders.  I simply pointed out that "pre-order" is not the correct term for wagering on a product that may or may not materialise.  
In cases where the buyer bases his decision on sufficient data, the correct term is "investment."  
In cases where the decision is based on little or no data, it's called a "gamble."
In cases where the data is false, sensationalized or misleading, it is called "being scammed."

This is not pedantry or semantics -- it points to the very core of the bawing regarding BFL and now Avalon.
If the distinction between pre-orders and investments is truly rhetorical, why the temper tantrums?  People invested their nickels, took their chances, and when the investment proves to be subpar, they cry to PayPal?  
Why do you think PayPal doesn't let you buy IRL stock & chargeback?  Or gamble in Vegas & chargeback if you lost?  Why do i even need to point this out to adults?

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These are all good points, but most importantly for all concerned with 'future product' that are paid for now, pay with protected payment means, i.e. credit cards (after calling your card issuer and confirming their consumer protection stance, varies country to country, card to card).

Paypal will only protect you for 45 days, credit cards can protect you for significantly longer, but not debit cards, although debit cards and bank transfer payments can be protected for upto 45 days if paid for through Paypal.

Ironically KnC claim to be ready by the end of September, and now is around 45 days before the end of September, so now it's a completely risk free bet with KnC that you can pay by Paypal and cancel in 44 days if they have no evidence of producing a fully working product!!

Hopefully misinformation and claims of a scam can soon be put to bed.

If you are gambling, or investing, while pretending that you are purchasing a pre-order, *you are scamming the credit card companies or PayPal.*  Please understand that what you are doing is functionally identical to gambling on credit & charging back when you lose.  I'm not saying it's not an interesting scam, but it's just us chickens here, you're amongst friends, let's call a spade a spade.

[aerobatic]

Now we're getting quite a bit off topic... but, as someone who comes from the gambling sector... (my day job is online poker in europe)... I can tell you that people regularly buy poker chips with their credit cards and paypal... and play, and then sometimes they lose.. and occasionally, just occasionally, they try to pretend that it wasn't them and they claim to have their credit charged back.

the gambling industry calls this 'friendly fraud'... ie: its not stolen credit cards but simply people having 'buyer remorse' the day after they had a big loss and trying to pretend it wasn't them.

the annoying thing about this is that the credit card companies and paypal will always side with the customer, even if we can prove without a shadow of a doubt that it was them, and the player used the correct pin, and the same ip address, and had the same play habits and poker strategies as every other time they played for the last x months.... but still, the cc companies take from our account and pay back the player.  that's just 'our cost' of doing business and we have to live with it.

This is not pedantry or semantics -- it points to the very core of the bawing regarding BFL and now Avalon.
If the distinction between pre-orders and investments is truly rhetorical, why the temper tantrums?  People invested their nickels, took their chances, and when the investment proves to be subpar, they cry to PayPal?  
Why do you think PayPal doesn't let you buy IRL stock & chargeback?  Or gamble in Vegas & chargeback if you lost?  Why do i even need to point this out to adults?

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Its also not fair to compare IRL with anything bitcoin related.  theyre so different as to make comparison impossible.

  Thanks, at least someone has a sense of humor.

there is no 'money printing' machine that can be bought IRL.   that's a bitcoin eccentricity..

Oh, where to begin...  I have about a hundred arguments in the alternative for this.  I'd like to at least point out that *any investment* is your "money-printing machine."

the fact that you can buy a box that will 'mine coins' for you and generates an ROI measured in days or weeks and not years... is a very bitcoin related thing.  And to get such a thing, requires you to take risks not normally associated with IRL !

Pointing out that bitcoin investing, no matter how many "virtual" prefixes are added to obfuscate the fact, is still IRL.  I wish i could bypass sympathy and bask in schadenfreude...

[Bitcoinorama]

...
These are all good points, but most importantly for all concerned with 'future product' that are paid for now, pay with protected payment means, i.e. credit cards (after calling your card issuer and confirming their consumer protection stance, varies country to country, card to card).

Paypal will only protect you for 45 days, credit cards can protect you for significantly longer, but not debit cards, although debit cards and bank transfer payments can be protected for upto 45 days if paid for through Paypal.

Ironically KnC claim to be ready by the end of September, and now is around 45 days before the end of September, so now it's a completely risk free bet with KnC that you can pay by Paypal and cancel in 44 days if they have no evidence of producing a fully working product!!

Hopefully misinformation and claims of a scam can soon be put to bed.

If you are gambling, or investing, while pretending that you are purchasing a pre-order, *you are scamming the credit card companies or PayPal.*  Please understand that what you are doing is functionally identical to gambling on credit & charging back when you lose.  I'm not saying it's not an interesting scam, but it's just us chickens here, you're amongst friends, let's call a spade a spade.

Look if the companies are claiming they can meet these deadlines, and have gone to lengths to provide proof as to who they are, their experience etc. and are asking you to hand over payment and are making it possible to do so by payment methods that charge fees specifically to insure against fraud then where is anything underhand happening from the point of view of the buyer?

You can pre-order playstations, xboxes and cars ahead of their release. That's why consumer protection exists, to protect the consumer against possible fraud and hold those behind it responsible.

I rang and spoke to my credit cards issuing bank, I did not try to defraud them, I explained explicitly in no uncertain terms what it was for and there may be a risk of fraudulent activity and they told me that is what their consumer protection was for and I was protected. I confirmed that they are giving me the ok to proceed, and they said yes. So no one's trying to defraud the payment processor, or the card issuing banks unless it's the vendor.

Believe it or not Paypal do pre-screen sellers using them as a payment processor especially when there are unexplained sudden spikes in sales. KnC had a massive issue winning them over and had to provide a huge amount of evidence due to the miss selling of pre-orders on eBay and delayed delivery. KnC felt the Paypal brand was an important association to have.

There were issues in the beginning where their Paypal account was locked until they sat down and ironed things out with Paypal, also Paypal is not active in most of Asia, and doesn't recognise Asian address format. So they had to work around that...

Determining how to pay with a means that has purchase protection when you have any reason to be uncertain is just performing due diligence and acting on it.

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You can pre-order playstations, xboxes and cars ahead of their release. That's why consumer protection exists, to protect the consumer against possible fraud and hold those behind it responsible.

No. Either grant my point that there is a qualitative difference between "pre-order" and "invest," or concede that you are investing on credit and charging back when things go wrong.  I hope this explains why  i take pains to differentiate the two.

I rang and spoke to my credit cards issuing bank, I did not try to defraud them, I explained explicitly in no uncertain terms what it was for and there may be a risk of fraudulent activity and they told me that is what their consumer protection was for and I was protected. I confirmed that they are giving me the ok to proceed, and they said yes. So no one's trying to defraud the payment processor unless it's the vendor...

Please understand that phone call means nothing, much less sets a legal precedent.  You are, in fact, defrauding the credit card company unless you believe you will get your miner with the same certainty as you believe you'll get a book from Amazon.  You, as you have admitted, are nowhere as certain.

[Bitcoinorama]

...
You can pre-order playstations, xboxes and cars ahead of their release. That's why consumer protection exists, to protect the consumer against possible fraud and hold those behind it responsible.

No. Either grant my point that there is a qualitative difference between "pre-order" and "invest," or concede that you are investing on credit and charging back when things go wrong.  I hope this explains why  i take pains to differentiate the two.

Technically we are buying an electronic box we plug in a wall that connects to the net. Whether it's wizardry makes a profit is yet to be seen. No company can guarantee anything but their best effort we will realise ROI as too many factors are outside of their control, like the Bitcoin economy.

I rang and spoke to my credit cards issuing bank, I did not try to defraud them, I explained explicitly in no uncertain terms what it was for and there may be a risk of fraudulent activity and they told me that is what their consumer protection was for and I was protected. I confirmed that they are giving me the ok to proceed, and they said yes. So no one's trying to defraud the payment processor unless it's the vendor...

Please understand that phone call means nothing, much less sets a legal precedent.  You are, in fact, defrauding the credit card company unless you believe you will get your miner with the same certainty as you believe you'll get a book from Amazon.  You, as you have admitted, are nowhere as certain.

I am pretty damn certain. I've proven to myself they are a real company with experience of meeting deadlines. I have not defrauded myself or my card issuer at all, even they have confirmed that, furthermore I went to the length of recording the conversation, so on their head be it legally. I've gone to greater lengths proving they are legitimate than I've ever done with an amazon seller.

There is far more chance of my card issuing bank standing by my purchase which is protected under UK law by section 75 of the consumer credit act, especially after speaking to their own fraud department and having a fraud protection representative of my card issuing company stating on record saying I can proceed, twice.

With Amazon the resolution of the dispute is between you, the seller and Amazon's goodwill unless, you similarly pay by credit card and then you are protected by section 75 as well.

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...your edit:
Believe it or not Paypal do pre-screen sellers using them as a payment processor especially when there are unexplained sudden spikes in sales. KnC had a massive issue winning them over and had to provide a huge amount of evidence due to the miss selling of pre-orders on eBay and delayed delivery. KnC felt the Paypal brand was an important association to have.

There were issues in the beginning where their Paypal account was locked until they sat down and ironed things out with Paypal, also Paypal is not active in most of Asia, and doesn't recognise Asian address format. So they had to work around that...

Determining how to pay with a means that has purchase protection when you have any reason to be uncertain is just performing due diligence and acting on it.

I was merely pointing out you're now likely to be safer in purchasing from KnCminer with Paypal now if they are to make good on their claims of having proof of a working product by September though that might not cover you past 45 days and the product is in your hands, again ring your issuing bank, check what protection exists on your credit card, and make an informed choice as opposed to acting on heresay and impulse. In any case you'll likely be protected to such point you see real evidence of an actual mining product from them...

Why is this relevant?  Do you or do you not agree that a pre-order is different from investment or speculation?  Shall we backtrack?  would you like to change your position?
I limit the scope of my replies to concise, defendable points, and now the conversation is steered to which of the various investment schemes makes the best pre-order.  

The other question still remains:  Why all the bawing over the BFL & Avalon?  Why are the informed investors being hauled away in whaambulances?

[Bitcoinorama]

...your edit:
Believe it or not Paypal do pre-screen sellers using them as a payment processor especially when there are unexplained sudden spikes in sales. KnC had a massive issue winning them over and had to provide a huge amount of evidence due to the miss selling of pre-orders on eBay and delayed delivery. KnC felt the Paypal brand was an important association to have.

There were issues in the beginning where their Paypal account was locked until they sat down and ironed things out with Paypal, also Paypal is not active in most of Asia, and doesn't recognise Asian address format. So they had to work around that...

Determining how to pay with a means that has purchase protection when you have any reason to be uncertain is just performing due diligence and acting on it.

I was merely pointing out you're now likely to be safer in purchasing from KnCminer with Paypal now if they are to make good on their claims of having proof of a working product by September though that might not cover you past 45 days and the product is in your hands, again ring your issuing bank, check what protection exists on your credit card, and make an informed choice as opposed to acting on heresay and impulse. In any case you'll likely be protected to such point you see real evidence of an actual mining product from them...

Why is this relevant?  Do you or do you not agree that a pre-order is different from investment or speculation?  Shall we backtrack?  would you like to change your position?
I limit the scope of my replies to concise, defendable points, and now the conversation is steered to which of the various investment schemes makes the best pre-order.  

The other question still remains:  Why all the bawing over the BFL & Avalon?  Why are the informed investors being hauled away in whaambulances?

Only in so much as above I have stated your investment buys you an electronic box that connects to the Internet and doesn't make any guaranteed promises of ROI.