► ► ►HashFast Endorsement

[cypherdoc]

My Fellow Bitcoin Advocates,

I am pleased to announce that I have been selected as a paid sponsor for HashFast Technologies LLC.  I have also been asked to join their Board of Advisors.

As most of you know, I have been involved in the Bitcoin community for a long while now.  I have made my contributions here on the Forum mostly in the form of economics, investing, and Bitcoin theory since early 2011.  I have given my perspective in countless debates, mainly in my two epic gold threads beginning back in August of 2011, Gold: I Smell A Trap: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=35956.msg443129#msg443129 and Gold Collapsing, Bitcoin UP: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg799814#msg799814.

The following academic paper and it's authors believe that I have had a significant impact on how the community thinks:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2263707

Selected quotes:

Breaking Out of the Bank in Europe - Exploring Collective Emergent Institutional Entrepreneurship Through Bitcoin

" Among the most influential individuals in the Bitcoin community are the mysterious founder, Nakamoto, and the five influential individuals in the community, for whom we could not find any identifying information on the Internet. It seems that an individual’s “real world” identity is not required to take an active role in the informal organization of Bitcoin. "

" As highlighted by scholars studying institutional entrepreneurship (Battilana et al., 2009; Dorado, 2005; Lounsbury & Crumley, 2007; Rao et al., 2000), some actors drive institutional change through their conscious action"

Some of you know that I have a very successful Bitcoin-only newsletter, "Financial Risk Analytics", that has been active on this forum since April 2012.  Within that letter, I give my views on Bitcoin, gold and silver, and the stock market.  I believe that Bitcoin is playing a significant role in shaping the world's financial economy, it's just that most people don't realize it yet.   But from an active Bitcoin business perspective, I have always stayed in the background to preserve my anonymity and because I never saw an opportunity that truly sparked my interest.  I am an active professional in a totally different industry and don’t need Bitcoin for my future security. That desire to stay uninvolved changed this past week.

When HashFast announced that they were open for visits something compelled me to jump on a plane and investigate personally their physical headquarters last week at Uniquify.  My intent was to evaluate their legitimacy with the goal of buying their mining hardware as I have been an active miner since mid 2011.  What I came away with was the impression of a hardworking, legitimate team of dedicated people trying to realize a vision.  A vision to become the top ASIC mining development firm in the world.  Having spent 9 yrs of my own higher educational life in the Bay Area, a new Silicon Valley/Palo Alto based mining development team peaked my interest. These people are doing what I believe to be extraordinary work.  I was there only a day but have been in communication with them almost on a daily basis since.  I had the opportunity to walk around the office and interact personally at great length with the principals involved, not only in HashFast, but with Uniquify.  I am convinced that being embedded within Uniquify affords significant research/business advantages.  

The fact that HashFast itself is composed of Simon Barber and his team of 4 scientists makes them a force unto themselves from the development perspective.  The fact that HashFast has direct access to the team of 28nm world renowned scientists from Uniquify to design the physical layout of the chip makes them a combined force to be feared.  Simon is an academic from Cambridge University and has been involved in the Bitcoin community from the beginning. How many ASIC mining companies have an engineer employed at PARC? He has written a seminal paper on Bitcoin theory and economics which has contributed greatly to our understanding of just what is Bitcoin.  He has been working on his proprietary version of an ASIC chip for almost 2 years.  I believe this form of long term involvement with Bitcoin, such as I have demonstrated, is critical to understanding how to design a properly functioning chip that will be fast and efficient and deliver to small and industrial miners the return on investment that they deserve.  

Eduardo de Castro is their CEO and visionary.  He has an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.  As I have worked with him closely over the last 2 weeks, I have come to believe that Eduardo is a man with integrity, driven by the goals and beliefs of a true Bitcoiner, i.e., a belief in transparency, openness, honesty, and hard work. He believes in free markets.  I believe that Eduardo's goals are noble and that you will believe this also once he announces publicly his plan for buyer refunds and the Miner Protection Plan.  

These two principals are guiding the company's vision to be the best in industry.  I happen to think they have a great chance at achieving that.

The HashFast "BabyJet” ASIC mining machine will be a first-of-its-kind technology (400GH/s per ASIC chip, significantly less than 1 Watt per GH/s) slated for delivery by late October. Speeds greater than 400GH/s are being achieved on extensive industry-standard testing with 28nm ASIC physical design leader Uniquify.  Under 350W power draw.  Their goal is to under promise and pleasantly surprise.  The extensive testing being done has been consistent, repeatable, and surprisingly improving to extraordinary levels just in the last two weeks alone.  And let me not forget one other significant thing; this unit has water cooling.  NO MORE NOISE.  There is a God!

I have had the opportunity to look into the eyes of the principals involved as well as shake their hands.  I have worked with them closely for the past two weeks.  I believe that these people will make a full faith effort to deliver on their promises. Whether or not they are actually able to deliver working units by November, I can’t absolutely guarantee.  But, I believe that they have the talent and work ethic to make that a distinct reality.  


Long Live Bitcoin,

cypherdoc

hashfast.com/shop

[DyslexicZombei]

Intriguing. I'm new here but you obviously have the background to come to your own educated conclusions. You make me want to hold off on my last 2013 rig pre-order just to see what HashFast will unveil in the next couple of weeks.

Buyer refunds in mind?
Miner Protection Program?
Water Cooling?

Sounds like someone's been paying attention to the gripes of miners & their pre-order difficulties. Ideally, I'd want to support an American ASIC mfg. over foreign ones, but companies like BFL make it so hard!

[cypherdoc]

If I can order via credit card I would order one.  The web site is a little unclear about payment methods but it looks like Bitcoin only.

no, it uses BitPay which will convert your USD to BTC.  

the site isn't open yet but is due to be anytime now.  get ready.

[Xialla]

OP: TLDR
*payment only in BTC - so where is my guarantee that you will refund me anytime? may I use escrow?
*not working prototype, no video or photos. just some CAD render of black box and want our money now?
*almost 3 months of waiting and free thousand of dollars loan. splendid.

and because you are from USA, I should also add 20% VAT to webpage price. hm.(

[cypherdoc]

OP: TLDR
*payment only in BTC - so where is my guarantee that you will refund me anytime? may I use escrow?
*not working prototype, no video or photos. just some CAD render of black box and want our money now?
*almost 3 months of waiting and free thousand of dollars loan. splendid.

and because you are from USA, I should also add 20% VAT to webpage price. hm.(

as Ytterbium has so eloquently pointed out, you're not going to get any asic mining company to fund the entire NRE, tapeout, and production costs just so you can buy a profitable money generating machine.  otherwise, they would just mine with it.

[cypherdoc]

OP: TLDR
*payment only in BTC - so where is my guarantee that you will refund me anytime? may I use escrow?
*not working prototype, no video or photos. just some CAD render of black box and want our money now?
*almost 3 months of waiting and free thousand of dollars loan. splendid.

and because you are from USA, I should also add 20% VAT to webpage price. hm.(

plus, you want a cheap machine?  go look at their prices.

[cypherdoc]

If I can order via credit card I would order one.  The web site is a little unclear about payment methods but it looks like Bitcoin only.

no, it uses BitPay which will convert your USD to BTC. 

the site isn't open yet but is due to be anytime now.  get ready.

I would order if I could get the protection offered with a credit card purchase but it is not worth the risk to buy these things with bitcoins.

hang tight.  from what i understand, your BTC's are going to be guaranteed as well, though we all will want to hear it from the company itself as i am not a representative.

[Simon Barber]

Yes - what cypherdoc says is true - we endorse this. Let's do this.

[ampu]

Yes - what cypherdoc says is true - we endorse this. Let's do this.

Please add CC payments

[cypherdoc]

Yes - what cypherdoc says is true - we endorse this. Let's do this.

Please add CC payments

no, they want only those committed to leaving their BTC with HashFast until the end of the year.  if they fail to deliver, they have said they will give full refunds in BTC.

again, anything i say here needs to be confirmed by the officials of the company.

[Flying Hellfish]

OP: TLDR
*payment only in BTC - so where is my guarantee that you will refund me anytime? may I use escrow?
*not working prototype, no video or photos. just some CAD render of black box and want our money now?
*almost 3 months of waiting and free thousand of dollars loan. splendid.

and because you are from USA, I should also add 20% VAT to webpage price. hm.(

as Ytterbium has so eloquently pointed out, you're not going to get any asic mining company to fund the entire NRE, tapeout, and production costs just so you can buy a profitable money generating machine.  otherwise, they would just mine with it.

Sorry, really not trying to be rude here but I am wondering one thing here.

As investor you put up money (fund) to help start the business (which is a risk) and in return (rightfully so) you stand to make increase in value if the company is successful.

As a customer we get to put up money (fund) to help start the business (a risk) and in return we get a product, that's value is reduced (ATM) exceptionally quickly.

Both people put up money and risked it, one of them gets a lot of possible long term upshot while the other gets, well almost no long term upshot? I mean its almost bad for early customers (and conversely really good for investors) if the company is really successful and sells millions of dollars of miners/chips as it makes their initial purchase less valuable, faster.

I feel like a new term should be coined for the ASIC revolution as I think all pre-order folks should be called investomers instead of customers.

[cypherdoc]

OP: TLDR
*payment only in BTC - so where is my guarantee that you will refund me anytime? may I use escrow?
*not working prototype, no video or photos. just some CAD render of black box and want our money now?
*almost 3 months of waiting and free thousand of dollars loan. splendid.

and because you are from USA, I should also add 20% VAT to webpage price. hm.(

as Ytterbium has so eloquently pointed out, you're not going to get any asic mining company to fund the entire NRE, tapeout, and production costs just so you can buy a profitable money generating machine.  otherwise, they would just mine with it.

Sorry, really not trying to be rude here but I am wondering one thing here.

As investor you put up money (fund) to help start the business (which is a risk) and in return (rightfully so) you stand to make increase in value if the company is successful.

As a customer we get to put up money (fund) to help start the business (a risk) and in return we get a product, that's value is reduced (ATM) exceptionally quickly.

Both people put up money and risked it, one of them gets a lot of possible long term upshot while the other gets, well almost no long term upshot? I mean its almost bad for early customers (and conversely really good for investors) if the company is really successful and sells millions of dollars of miners/chips as it makes their initial purchase less valuable, faster.

I feel like a new term should be coined for the ASIC revolution as I think all pre-order folks should be called investomers instead of customers.

once you see details of their Miner Protection Plan and refund details all your fears will melt away.

[reactor]

Looking at the price, I have to speculate...

I personally hate when people are like "Yo, mining.thegenesisblock.com that stuff!", but I have to step up with some cost analysis.  If the price remains the same, delivery is close to on track (so we'll say Nov 1st), and price remains about what it is today, you're looking to peak at about $1150 profit from your purchase.  This is conservatively estimating that difficulty will only go up by around 75% monthly and price will remain steady at current pricing.  If pricing slumps to around $95 USD, you'll never even make $500 from this machine.  

What sense does this make to pre-order without the security of at least a credit card purchase behind it?  While I will agree there seems to be an impressive team behind this hardware, this is effectively like buying a block erupter and expecting it to pay itself off.  It never will, it's really a stopgap that is a fun novelty and enables folks to continue mining when GPUs are no longer effective and there is no other shipping alternative.  

It would be excellent for the team to explain the pricing vs. hashpower as it really is not an attractive offer with such uncertainty heading into the next six months.  For a market hungry for new hardware and deciding where to place bets for the next generation, this doesn't scream "place your bet here".  

[cypherdoc]

Yes - what cypherdoc says is true - we endorse this. Let's do this.

Please add CC payments

no, they want only those committed to leaving their BTC with HashFast until the end of the year.  if they fail to deliver, they have said they will give full refunds in BTC.

again, anything i say here needs to be confirmed by the officials of the company.

Some unknown person saying they will give refunds is not the same thing as chargeback protection.  I will only buy miners with a CC unless they are delivered fist.  Once I have it hashing I will send the BTC.  With all the risks of mining it is not worth it to be sending thousands of nonrefundable dollars to unknown people who have not delivered anything yet.

yes, it's not that there is NO risk.  the whole Bitcoin concept is at the bleeding edge of technology.  Bitcoin itself may fail.

perhaps you should go visit their office?  that has made the difference for quite a few ppl around here.

[cypherdoc]

This is conservatively estimating that difficulty will only go up by around 75% monthly and price will remain steady at current pricing.  If pricing slumps to around $95 USD, you'll never even make $500 from this machine.  

reading a hashrate graph is similar to reading a stock chart which i specialize in.  there is no way it can go parabolic forever.  what's going to happen is that it will eventually retrace heavily at some point as the shakeout in the industry begins.  those companies with the fastest chip and maximum power efficiencies are going to survive.  i don't think HashFast plans on being one of those.

plus, if the BTC price goes up, which i definitely believe is going to happen in a major way, the best strategy is to get a hold of as many BTC as possible, as fast as possible.  mining rigs help facilitate this.

[SirWizz]

 
....

those companies with the fastest chip and maximum power efficiencies are going to survive.  i don't think HashFast plans on being one of those.

...

Don't worry, neither do we .

[Ytterbium]

OP: TLDR
*payment only in BTC - so where is my guarantee that you will refund me anytime? may I use escrow?
*not working prototype, no video or photos. just some CAD render of black box and want our money now?
*almost 3 months of waiting and free thousand of dollars loan. splendid.

and because you are from USA, I should also add 20% VAT to webpage price. hm.(

as Ytterbium has so eloquently pointed out, you're not going to get any asic mining company to fund the entire NRE, tapeout, and production costs just so you can buy a profitable money generating machine.  otherwise, they would just mine with it.

While that's true, one thing an unscrupulous chip maker could make a chip and sell it at what seems like a profitable price, but sell so many that you'll singlehandedly drive up the difficulty so much they'll never make ROI.  That was obviously BFL's plan from the beginning.

In fact, the longer you can delay your shipments and keep the difficulty low in order to take more orders, the more money you can make... no wonder they took so long for BFL delver and only started shipping units when credible competitors came out.

Without knowing how many chips a company is planning to sell, there's no way to evaluate what the chips are actually worth.  One thing I liked about Avalon, at least initially, is that they had a specific number of units they planned  to ship (until they started taking chip orders...)

___

no, they want only those committed to leaving their BTC with HashFast until the end of the year.  if they fail to deliver, they have said they will give full refunds in BTC.

again, anything i say here needs to be confirmed by the officials of the company.

If they are looking for people with the mindset of venture capital investors, then they should treat people the way they would treat any VC.  That means lots of detailed information people can use to evaluate the investment. I think Labcoin did a good job of doing that (I got IPO shares), but obviously being in the U.S. you can't do a public IPO that way.

I don't doubt that these guys can produce a chip, I'm sure they'll be able to.  The question is: will that chip be able to make ROI given their prices, and given the massive increase in network strength caused by chips from KnC, Cointerra, Labcoin, BTCGarden, ASICMiner, along with possibly the Avalon pre-order chips shipping

That said, there are probably a lot of people out there who have plenty of money to throw out on things like this, so there's a good chance you might get a ton of pre-orders.

reading a hashrate graph is similar to reading a stock chart which i specialize in.  there is no way it can go parabolic forever.  what's going to happen is that it will eventually retrace heavily at some point as the shakeout in the industry begins.  those companies with the fastest chip and maximum power efficiencies are going to survive.  i don't think HashFast plans on being one of those.

Ugh, this is so wrong. The most likely path of a hashrate graph is that it will trace a sigmoid function.



It will start accelerating, then start to slow down when people stop increasing their hashrate as it becomes less profitable.  There is no way that hashrate will ever go down unless the price of bitcoin also colapses, so that mining ceases to even cover electricity costs. (Of course it'll be superimposed on another, slower growth caused by More's law as transistor density increases, but we can ignore that for now)

Right now, the difficulty will have to go up something like 100x before it starts to get close to power costs. At those rates a 400Gh/s device will only make a few dollars a day.

[Xialla]

reading a hashrate graph is similar to reading a stock chart

yes almost, with only one small difference. bitcoin is jumping up and down, but hashrate is still going up (just check both charts for last 3 months). and because KNC (most likely) and Avalon will deliver their devices/chips BEFORE HashFast send their miners (there will be huge hashrate raise), is imho much better to buy BTC (if you believe it) instead of preorder.(

[cypherdoc]

reading a hashrate graph is similar to reading a stock chart

yes almost, with only one small difference. bitcoin is jumping up and down, but hashrate is still going up (just check both charts for last 3 months). and because KNC (most likely) and Avalon will deliver their devices/chips BEFORE HashFast send their miners (there will be huge hashrate raise), is imho much better to buy BTC (if you believe it) instead of preorder.(

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

[SirWizz]

here's an interesting game theory proposition:  what if all those cc orders housed at KNC or with BitFury get cancelled b/c ppl believe in the HashFast team and concept?

Here's a more reasonable proposition - you're probably high on something (is it the pay they promised you?) - KNC/Bitfury would not let that happen...