[BitFunder] IceDrill.ASIC IPO (235 Thash Mining Operation powered by HashFast)

[will]

Will or DT,
As indicated in the second post:

Since it is already the second half of October, could you please confirm that everything is going according to plan? Is the physical mine location ready for chip delivery? Can we get some more detailed information, for example the country, funds spent on mine construction etc.

Thank you in advance

Everything is still going according to plan. The physical location in Canada is ready and waiting to receive. The density halving (move from Sierra form factor of 2U to 4U due to a PSU configuration change) resulted in a fair amount of newly required readiness work.

The latest publically available information from Hashfast about delivery timing was posted by Amy Woodward:

Not surprisingly, this was indeed one of the questions that came up last night.

And, as of a few days ago, ... ...  it looks like we're probably going to slip, by about a week.

Ironically, not because of the silicon, even though that is the part of the system that takes the longest to manufacture. That's going through the foundry smoothly. But we ran into a delay sourcing one of our other components.

We've now found an alternative source. But that delay means it'll be challenging for us to ship finished systems before the end of October.

It's disappointing, but unfortunately these things happen. I'm glad we've made it this far through the process, and are still so close to our target date.

(I'm watching every day to see how close Cointerra will come to their targeted tapeout date.)

Amy Woodward
VP Engineering

HashFast Technologies

[Ytterbium]

Hi All

We've been reading all of the feedback and will answer all questions and address all concerns shortly.

Why not just give US investors their money back for what they paid on shares? I would be happy with that. If I was going to buy hardware I would just buy directly from hashfast instead of through you. If you're unable to live up to the terms of the arrangement for whatever reason, it's not the investors fault. Just issue a refund to all US investors and move on. If you have to take a loss to do so, so be it. Stop pushing your problems off onto investors.

That's how investing works.  You buy the company, you buy their problems.

[Mythoranium]

Everything is still going according to plan. The physical location in Canada is ready and waiting to receive. The density halving (move from Sierra form factor of 2U to 4U due to a PSU configuration change) resulted in a fair amount of newly required readiness work.

The latest publically available information from Hashfast about delivery timing was posted by Amy Woodward:

Not surprisingly, this was indeed one of the questions that came up last night.

And, as of a few days ago, ... ...  it looks like we're probably going to slip, by about a week.

Ironically, not because of the silicon, even though that is the part of the system that takes the longest to manufacture. That's going through the foundry smoothly. But we ran into a delay sourcing one of our other components.

We've now found an alternative source. But that delay means it'll be challenging for us to ship finished systems before the end of October.

It's disappointing, but unfortunately these things happen. I'm glad we've made it this far through the process, and are still so close to our target date.

(I'm watching every day to see how close Cointerra will come to their targeted tapeout date.)

Amy Woodward
VP Engineering

HashFast Technologies

Will, great thanks for the information!

Do I understand correctly that hashfast deliveries will also be from Canada, so any possibility for shipping/customs delays are almost non-existant? (possibly even an in-person pickup once the devices are ready)

Being a sysadmin myself and managing a datacenter daily, I find this project very interesting, regardless of the fact that I am also a shareholder. It would be very nice if you made some documentary videos of the installation of the hardware etc. But that, of course, is up to the mine operators.

[hd060053]

ok, cut your losses and sell while u can at these prices.


hashfast wont deliver until mid-november.

https://hashfast.com/updated-shipping-news/


"Once the substrates arrive, we can place the silicon and finish production. Our updated estimate is that the rigs will begin shipping in mid-November."

[pedrog]

ok, cut your losses and sell while u can at these prices.


hashfast wont deliver until mid-november.

https://hashfast.com/updated-shipping-news/


"Once the substrates arrive, we can place the silicon and finish production. Our updated estimate is that the rigs will begin shipping in mid-November."

So, what changed? That's 3 posts above...

[hd060053]

ok, cut your losses and sell while u can at these prices.


hashfast wont deliver until mid-november.

https://hashfast.com/updated-shipping-news/


"Once the substrates arrive, we can place the silicon and finish production. Our updated estimate is that the rigs will begin shipping in mid-November."

So, what changed? That's 3 posts above...

Everything changed. The shareholders must suffer 3 more diff increases, each with 50 %. The price will fall at the same value.

Just my tip: sell now before its too late.

[pedrog]

ok, cut your losses and sell while u can at these prices.


hashfast wont deliver until mid-november.

https://hashfast.com/updated-shipping-news/


"Once the substrates arrive, we can place the silicon and finish production. Our updated estimate is that the rigs will begin shipping in mid-November."

So, what changed? That's 3 posts above...

Everything changed. The shareholders must suffer 3 more diff increases, each with 50 %. The price will fall at the same value.

Just my tip: sell now before its too late.

We already knew that...

[DeathAndTaxes]

Let's be clear, I am no lawyer and I always follow the laws in all things.

This is just speculation. A company, not based in the USA, whose principals (CEO, etc.) is not living in the USA, and whose assets are not in the USA would be pretty hard to stop or prosecute if it was being traded on a networked, distributed exchange.

Don't let hubris cloud judgement.

Outside the US isn't black and white, more like shades of gray.  On one hand you have places like Somolia and on the other you have places like the UK whose government is very friendly to their runaway colony.

Case in point.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg
A company outside the US operating servers outside they US, with employees outside the US, regulated and registered outside the US, and owning bank accounts outside the US.

The DOJ with the help of friendly courts in more than 14 countries seized over 87 bank accounts with assets totaling at least half a billion dollars.

Not a single penny was in a US bank account but the DOJ got every last cent along with IP, patents, trademarks, domain names, software source code and sought more than $3B in damages (mostly settled out of court).    Players might have their funds returned to them in 2014 if everything goes according to plan.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Everything changed. The shareholders must suffer 3 more diff increases, each with 50 %. The price will fall at the same value.

You know for a certainty that each of the next 3 difficulty changes beyond the currently pending one will be >50%?

[Deprived]

Let's be clear, I am no lawyer and I always follow the laws in all things.

This is just speculation. A company, not based in the USA, whose principals (CEO, etc.) is not living in the USA, and whose assets are not in the USA would be pretty hard to stop or prosecute if it was being traded on a networked, distributed exchange.

Don't let hubris cloud judgement.

Outside the US isn't black and white, more like shades of gray.  On one hand you have places like Somolia and on the other you have places like the UK whose government is very friendly to their runaway colony.

Case in point.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg
A company outside the US operating servers outside they US, with employees outside the US, regulated and registered outside the US, and owning bank accounts outside the US.

The DOJ with the help of friendly courts in more than 14 countries seized over 87 bank accounts with assets totaling at least half a billion dollars.

Not a single penny was in a US bank account but the DOJ got every last cent along with IP, patents, trademarks, domain names, software source code and sought more than $3B in damages (mostly settled out of court).    Players might have their funds returned to them in 2014 if everything goes according to plan.

Guess you aren't familiar with what actually happened there.

1.  Nothing like 'every last cent' was seized.
2.  The seizures weren't because of the business they ran (online poker) but because of offences related to the banking system.
3.  For the 2 largest sites (Stars and Tilt) all player funds of non-US players have already been returned.  In Stars' case they never went missing - and US players there got their funds back very quickly.  In Tilt's case that only happened after Stars bought them out early this year.  With Tilt/Cereus the problem was that the seizures triggered collapse because both were running a fractional-deposit scheme on players' funds - so collapsed when a bank-run occurred post-seizure (Cereus was already in problems even before that).

What got those companies screwed was the way in which they acted to try to circumvent banking restrictions - where similar laws apply across all involved countries.  Also a lot of the offences DID occur in the US - where transactions originating and ending in the US were mislabelled to try to get past US restrictions on bank transfers related to gambling.

Which isn't to say it's necessarily safe to sell BTC-denominated shares to someone in the US from anywhere - just that the example quoted isn't a good one to use as the action taken wasn't because of the "selling" but because of the (irrelevant to BTC) offences committing trying to trick US banks into processing transactions.

[Minor Miner]

Everything changed. The shareholders must suffer 3 more diff increases, each with 50 %. The price will fall at the same value.

You know for a certainty that each of the next 3 difficulty changes beyond the currently pending one will be >50%?

Do not go there.   Of course you can extrapolate this curve.  Mining will never make money, no one should buy miners until they are in STOCK and the manufacturer has actually risked capital to make a profit.

[VolanicEruptor]

I'm Canadian by the way, if anyone wants a highly critical investor to check things out,  I'll go if you bitches cover my flight 

[Ytterbium]

Everything changed. The shareholders must suffer 3 more diff increases, each with 50 %. The price will fall at the same value.

You know for a certainty that each of the next 3 difficulty changes beyond the currently pending one will be >50%?

Do not go there.   Of course you can extrapolate this curve.  Mining will never make money, no one should buy miners until they are in STOCK and the manufacturer has actually risked capital to make a profit.

No one is ever going to sell IN STOCK Miners at a price that can ROI.  They will just keep them and mine with them. I would say the pre-order model is exhausted as well: there's no trust left and the difficulty is rising so fast now there's no guarantee that a pre-order will ever be profitable by the time you get it, even if it is on schedule.

So yeah, I don't really see much of a future for profitably individual mining. It will be people mining for fun at no real profit, plus big industrial mines fully optimized for power, cooling, etc.

Although theoretically individual miners in their homes may be more cost effective in the long run, since on a small scale people don't have to pay for extra staff, or extra cooling. So a mining hashing ASIC may want to simply fab ASICs and sell them to make money, rather then trying to deal with all the power and cooling and associated issues for running their own large scale mines.  But they'll likely be able to over-charge.

[crumbs]

Here's a possibly amusing aside:
We talk as if mining will always be profitable for *someone*, that someone perhaps being an ASIC manufacturer.  That's not necessarily the case.
The only condition which needs to be met for mining to be unprofitable for *everyone* is money invested in a year of mining needs to be greater than total money available from mining.  This could easily happen if enough manufacturers enter mining, if bitcoin price falls, or if NRE investments by manufacturers are large enough.

[Ytterbium]

Here's a possibly amusing aside:
We talk as if mining will always be profitable for *someone*, that someone perhaps being an ASIC manufacturer.  That's not necessarily the case.
The only condition which needs to be met for mining to be unprofitable for *everyone* is money invested in a year of mining needs to be greater than total money available from mining.  This could easily happen if enough manufacturers enter mining, if bitcoin price falls, or if NRE investments by manufacturers are large enough.

In that case, the fabs make money.

[crumbs]

Here's a possibly amusing aside:
We talk as if mining will always be profitable for *someone*, that someone perhaps being an ASIC manufacturer.  That's not necessarily the case.
The only condition which needs to be met for mining to be unprofitable for *everyone* is money invested in a year of mining needs to be greater than total money available from mining.  This could easily happen if enough manufacturers enter mining, if bitcoin price falls, or if NRE investments by manufacturers are large enough.

In that case, the fabs make money.

Sure.  As would the delivery truck drivers who deliver the unprofitable miners.  As would the lawyers, who handle the flurry of frivolous lawsuit which will ensue when miners realize they overpaid and attack the manufacturers.
The popcorn vendors are already counting profits
So i agree.

[rtt]

To be fair, they're *not* buying assembled miners @ retail -- they're buying lots of chips, wholesale.  Bulk orders of parts don't enjoy the same benefits as individual retail products.

crumbs pretty much nailed it.

Will IceDrill be covered under the miner protection program that was recently announced?

Sorry, needed a bit of time to compare our notes from the offering then with the current public (Baby Jet) MPP.

1. The premium on the "insurance" was substantial, and was only presented as an option at the highest level of bulk buy, which was well beyond what we calculated the IPO fundraising could achieve in the current competitive, highly-saturated mining investment market.
2. While it makes sense for a smaller mining operation to "buy into" the MPP deal by ordering from batch 1, we believe our scale implementation will mitigate the risk of not achieving an acceptable ROI better. These risk mitigation factors include:
   a) Economy of scale build-out: ensuring a lower bottom line and thus extended profitably.
   b) The MPP is a once-off deal. Our costs see a relative decrease as we add more future capacity according to the 25% re-investment clause. IOW We'd much rather spend the premium that would otherwise go toward insurance on buying extra hashing power for lower prices in the future. Remember, a 25% reinvestment will probably result in more than 25% capacity increase (otherwise we probably won't do it).

A lesser issue:
Clause 9 of the MPP offered to us: Any capacity due will be sent via a common shipper (Fedex, UPS or similar), as chips only, and to the same address as the original machines were sent. In the absence of an open reference design for the PCB, taking receipt of only the chips at our scale didn't really make sense. This is not to say that the reference design won't be made public in the 3 months leading up to the MPP trigger event, just that it was an unquantifiable unknown at the time. That said, the Baby Jet MPP offering alludes to the probability that Hashfast will open-source their PCB design or make it possible to license it out to other manufacturers, which is great.

Reading the final version which appeared @ hashfast.com a few hours ago I can say that the MPP has evolved really well from the community feedback Hashfast has received in the last few weeks. It's a great addition to the retail Baby Jet 1st batch offering. It pretty much cancels delivery date risk and is a huge huge deal. It's refreshing to see an ASIC company present something like this to sweeten the pre-order deal, listen to community feedback and adjust accordingly. It means they're doing their homework and we applaud them for it.

I understand the MPP was not used for IceDrill. Not sure if helps others, but that's not the issue.

I'd like to know what recourse this project has with HashFast in case of delayed delivery? The mine seems to be ready and waiting (and paying rent).

My simple question: will HashFast pay any monetary damages to IceDrill if they do not deliver the product in November for instance?
How about if they do not deliver in 2013 at all?
What if they begin delivering in 2015 instead?

[Bargraphics]

I understand the MPP was not used for IceDrill. Not sure if helps others, but that's not the issue.

I'd like to know what recourse this project has with HashFast in case of delayed delivery? The mine seems to be ready and waiting (and paying rent).

My simple question: will HashFast pay any monetary damages to IceDrill if they do not deliver the product in November for instance?
How about if they do not deliver in 2013 at all?
What if they begin delivering in 2015 instead?

This thread has been dead silent recently.

I'm interested in the above Bold Text as well.

Any new information or updates since we've last heard from Will on the 22nd?

[bittymitty]

Hashfast have some more pictures

https://hashfast.com/pictures-of-the-ciara-assembly-floor/

I don't think there was any protection plan?  Why would they need one when its not their BTC to lose its the investors?

Anyway the good new is shares are at bargain basement prices now

[will]

Hi All

Apologies for the quietness, we've been in contact with Hashfast about the new delivery schedule over the last few days.

We'll have an updated delivery date from them on Tuesday and will share it as soon as we get it.