[BTC-TC] CIPHERMINE-PT - Industrial Mining & High Performance Computing

[dexX7]

Hi all,

just wanted to give you a no-update. I'm still waiting for the dividend and it will be sent out as soon as possible.

Sorry guys, with the gear being in Memset's datacentre and Kate being away, both Ross and I are the only ones who have access to it and both of us have been away this weekend.

https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,4582.msg51932.html#msg51932

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[shadallion]

Thanks!  Litecoin doubling this week can only be good for CipherMine shareholders!

[dexX7]

Thanks!  Litecoin doubling this week can only be good for CipherMine shareholders!

A good chuck of CIPHER's income are probably SHA coins like Bitcoin, but I agree! Though my biggest fear is that the coins were converted to fiat. Kate has this bad habbit and seems to prefer it over coins, but of course that's just a very wild guess and without any indication or basis.

I'll keep you updated, when I hear something.

[n00bwastaken]

Hi folks,

I was away for a few months, and came to know about BTCT and Litecoin global closedown only during the last few days.

Could someone please explain how I can get my CIPERMINE shares on BTCT and Litecoin Global?

Thanks!

[dexX7]

Dividend

Kate is back and we received a total dividend of 108.10237455 LTC for 5369 shares. This results in 1.02324808 BTC dividend for this pass-through, given an exchange rate of 0.010098 LTC/BTC and a 5.40511872 LTC fee.

Transaction: e5d5d08e446df24b12481b193bf0ed5d1d61f6e50a7760b1e53ee1131da30b71

This is what Kate said:

Dear All,

I'm back in the UK from my honeymoon, but fly out to Berlin this afternoon. I intend to do the two delayed dividends before I depart.

Apologies in advance but I don't have time to respond to all the comments while I've been away. I have had the zeitgeist update from my team though.

To those that have been patient, thank you. To those that have not, I remind you that a) I was abundantly clear that there would be a hiatus; b) the contract terms actually states that we shall do dividend payments at least once a month. That I do them weekly is merely being generous to you all, and in our many months of operation there have only been three occasions when I have not made a weekly payment on or near the usual time of Sunday evening. Given that it still requires some manual effort and we don't have the convenience of an exchange to do it, the easy route would have been for me to revert to monthly payments during this transition. That is not in your interests, so you should be grateful I have not done so.

I will have more news about the new exchange (CipherTrade.com) soon and hope to be able to make a big announcement at the weekend. Be assured that work has continued apace and CIPHERMINE and CIPHERMINE.B1 will soon be liquid and tradable again.

Apologies re. the power outages. In part this was a bizarre issue with the BitFuries causing their PSUs to shut down inexplicably, and partly due to a major power outage at our new Memset offices. Our new data centre there is not complete; the UPSes and generators are on-site but not yet wired up. The offices will soon be powered from that resilient infrastructure. Unfortunately we cannot put the BitFuries in our current facility mainly because they are very delicate and require constant fiddling (reseating boards and such). They are not data centre compatible hardware. To minimise impact we have split the infrastructure between two geographically diverse sites though so that an outage at either won't take us completely offline.

More soon re. divi payments soon. Need a cup of tea now!

Kate.

[dexX7]

Additional information

I decided to roll the two deferred weeks (week to 3rd Nov and week to 11th Nov) into one so that the dividends got the benefit of rising BTC prices in the calculations. CipherMine has benefited from the rising price (our bot has been holding of course) so that seemed fair.

During the period we generated a total of 67 BTC, and using the BTC price last Sunday that's a revenue of €16,470. This was lower than it should have been, mainly due to the aforementioned power issues. Less depreciation, power/hosting and bond interest costs leaves a profit of €14,835, 50% of which is dividends.

At a price of €3.00/LTC that made 2,214.80 LTC in dividends. A further €8,100 has been added to the hardware reinvestment fund, which we're leaving in the hands of our BTC trading bot for the time being rather than spending.

For more information on how dividends are calculated please refer to the business plan / shareholder contract or previous explanations in this thread.

I've not yet caught up with everything post-honeymoon so don't know the state of play re. GPGPUs.

Kate.

Cheers!

[shadallion]

Dex, could you give us your opinion of where CipherMine will be in 6 months?   

On a scale of 1 to 10, where are we right now in terms of our mining capacity vs where we want to be when all of our rigs that have bee pre-ordered are online and hashing away?

[dexX7]

Dex, could you give us your opinion of where CipherMine will be in 6 months?  

On a scale of 1 to 10, where are we right now in terms of our mining capacity vs where we want to be when all of our rigs that have bee pre-ordered are online and hashing away?

Oh, I'm very sorry, I missed that post. But it's a tough question to be honest..

I really can't foresee a timespan of six months and probably not even one month. Bitcoin is on the rise and still very far away from being "mainstream" or "widely used", but things like Bitcoin ATMs for example are huge in my opinion and in 2014 we will probably see more and more of them, which is a good thing for regular users. Mining is still a niche - preorders and shipping delays are very common and there are not many producers. I think the trend of a very rapidly rising difficulty will go on, because where money can be made, people will try to make money. ASRock announced two funny mainboard for GPU mining recently, which might be a precursor for "well known" hardware producers to step in.



CipherMine has more than 10 TH on order and it looks like that HashFast is finally making progress.

The list is probably not complete, but to give you an overview:

Miners hashing:

• 1 x 60 GH/s Batch 1 Avalon miner
• 1 x 60 GH/s Batch 3 Avalon miner
• 100 x Ztex 1.15y clones
• 10 x Quad 1.15y Ztex
• 6 x Cairnsmore CM1s
• 6 x Quintuple Sapphire 7950 Vapor-X GPU rigs
• 2 x Quad Sapphire 7950 Dual-X GPU rigs
• 1 x Quad Gigabye 7970 GPU rigs
• 1 x Quad mix GPU rig
• 9 x 400 GH/s BitFury units
• 2 x 550 GH/s KNC Jupiter units

Those units are on order:

• 8 x 400 GH/s HashFast BabyJet with Miner Protection Program
• 8 x 400 GH/s HashFast BabyJet Upgrades
• 4 x 1200 GH/s HashFast Sierra with Miner Protection Program

Hope I'm not mistaken. The list was constructed based on previous posts and docs.ciphermine.com/orders.

I'll send the dividend in a few minutes with a summary of the recent events.

[dexX7]

This weeks dividend

We received a total dividend of 65.35927745 LTC for 5369 shares. This results in 0.54642697 BTC dividend for this pass-through, given an exchange rate of 0.00880038 LTC/BTC and a 3.26796387 LTC fee.

Transaction: 78a33753219aa0722379902623ab00d591ed00927b2fe51f92ac839a75de2ac2

Posted on the Litecoin forums:

Dear All,

This week we brought in a total of 29.44 BTC, or €10,034. After costs; power/hosting €423, bond interest €505 and depreciation of €747; that leaves a profit of £8,360. That has bees paid out as 1,339 LTC (€3.12/LTC).

€4,926 has been added to the hardware reinvestment fund, which now stands at a grand total of €13,090.

GPGPUs are still not looking like they will be ready imminently, and in the mean time BTC's meteoric value increase has made SHA256 mining again look very appealing. I therefore believe we should spend our reinvestment fund on more ASIC mining gear for the time being.

HashFast are still my preference, but they are no longer offering their Miner Protection Programme (which, by the way, we stand to profit extremely handsomely from - all 8 x 400 GH/s BabyJets and 4 x 1.2 TH/s Sierras we have on order were bought with MPP) and CoinTerra's pricing is looking much more appealing (and their delivery dates are not much different).

I have therefore done some due dilligence on CoinTerra and have satisfied myself that they are a solid bet. They are therefore where we will most likely spend the h/w reinvestment fund. I'm giving HashFast until tomorrow evening to respond to a request for a special deal.

Kate.

CipherTrade news

More information about CipherMine's exchange are revealed. I highly suggest to check out the following thread:

Request for input on CIPHERTRADE, a new multi-coin securities exchange
https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,7176.0.html

[shadallion]

Great info, thanks dex.

Very cool news about the CipherTrade exchange plan, this sounds very promising.

[DrGregMulhauser]

More information about CipherMine's exchange are revealed. I highly suggest to check out the following thread:

Actually, dexX7, that brings up a question that's been floating around behind the scenes for quite awhile now: is there some reason you're still running a pass-through at all, rather than converting these all to direct shares?

After all, the purpose of a pass-through is to add some sort of value, usually in the form of access via a different exchange, or occasionally to provide fractional shares, etc. However, in this case, the pass-through is not providing additional value via a presence on a different exchange, and I'm guessing that holders of the pass-through aren't holding it just to have someone else convert LTC to BTC for them. Is there some other raison d'etre that I've just plain missed along the way?

If Kate is as successful in sorting out the morass of legal issues as she says she will be, and manages to list her security on her own exchange, there would obviously be little point in a pass-through -- unless you actually have plans to pass-through to somewhere else relevant... Is that the rationale for keeping it going?

(For context, I mention all this as someone who wound up his own 2000 BTC fund swiftly in the aftermath of the exchange closures, specifically because I felt that was the right thing to do for participants. Now I get that you've been very public in bizarrely ridiculing me, my competence, and the very fact I ran a fund at all -- without the courtesy of ever speaking with me directly, or making any actual arguments, or even levelling your ridicule while I happened to be present. If that's your thing, that's your thing -- but I hope you will take this specific question about the pass-through as a critical but constructive one, and answer it directly, rather than merely taking another opportunity to dump on me personally.)

[Ytterbium]

Mining is still a niche - preorders and shipping delays are very common and there are not many producers. I think the trend of a very rapidly rising difficulty will go, because where money can be made, people will try to make money. ASRock announced two funny mainboard for GPU mining recently, which might be a precursor for "well known" hardware producers to step in.

Hahah, I feel kind of bad for Asrock, they probably started work on that thing 9,10 months ago when GPU mining was a realistic option.

It's still pretty useful for litecoin mining though, someone should let them know about it so they can market it there.

[dexX7]

Hi Greg!

After all, the purpose of a pass-through is to add some sort of value, usually in the form of access via a different exchange, or occasionally to provide fractional shares, etc. However, in this case, the pass-through is not providing additional value via a presence on a different exchange, and I'm guessing that holders of the pass-through aren't holding it just to have someone else convert LTC to BTC for them. Is there some other raison d'etre that I've just plain missed along the way?

I started this PT to offer BTCT users a way to invest into CM and my initial plan was to establish an autonomous share transfer system between the PT and the underlying, to build a bridge between LTCG and BTCT. After the announcement of BTCT's closure my first impulsive thought was to shut down this PT and suggested that people move over to LTCG. Though there were some users without an LTLG account and very soon later CM decided to go the direct share route. Some transfered their shares, others did not. At that point I decided to simply continue with direct shares as well and see where it all leads to. The PT is small and therefore the fee is marginal, but it's not a big deal and I like the idea of being involved. There is non hidden agenda or similar.

Does this answer your question?

For context, I mention all this as someone who wound up his own 2000 BTC fund swiftly in the aftermath of the exchange closures, specifically because I felt that was the right thing to do for participants. Now I get that you've been very public in bizarrely ridiculing me, my competence, and the very fact I ran a fund at all -- without the courtesy of ever speaking with me directly, or making any actual arguments, or even levelling your ridicule while I happened to be present. If that's your thing, that's your thing -- but I hope you will take this specific question about the pass-through as a critical but constructive one, and answer it directly, rather than merely taking another opportunity to dump on me personally.

I'm shocked. This forum, Reddit and IRC are the only channels I use to communicate about something Bitcoin related. I crawled through my posts to see, if there is something that might be interpreted in a negative way, but I only stumbled this post I made in one of your threads where you asked about ways to "short mining". I followed your IPO passively, but stopped reading the thread after some time and with that you spaced out of my center of attention, so to speak. I never engaged knowingly in ridiculing or dumping on you and I'm confused now, so may I ask: what are you talking about or referring to?

To make this clear, I never had or have a negative grudge against you and also I think most of your posts have a high amout of valuable information. I'm happy to clear any misunderstandings, if there are any.

Edit: feel free to contact me via PM or email at dexx@bitwatch.co, if you prefer those.

[DrGregMulhauser]

I started this PT to offer BTCT users a way to invest into CM...

...CM decided to go the direct share route... I decided to simply continue with direct shares as well...

Yes, that was exactly the puzzle, since a "direct" pass-through is something of an oxymoron. As far as I can tell, holders of the pass-through get all the disadvantages of holding a pass-through (expense, counterparty risk, etc.) and none of the advantages of the sort of structure that would usually be dubbed a pass-through (namely, the feature of actually passing through from somewhere, such as another exchange).

I'm shocked. This forum, Reddit and IRC are the only channels I use to communicate about something Bitcoin related. I crawled through my posts to see, if there is something that might be interpreted in a negative way

Maybe it was a different user named 'dexX7' who was hobnobbing with TAT, Mircea Popescu and others on IRC in the midst of the BTC Growth IPO? (If so, I do apologise for assuming you were that dexX7.) The comically ill-informed condescension from the hobnobbers so thick you could cut it with a knife. I seem to remember the 'dexX7' user ridiculing those participating in the BTC Growth fund -- oh, and even unearthing a deliberately obscure (and obscured) Facebook page and thinking it was somehow relevant. (Gaaawwwwd I despise Facebook.) In retrospect, it's quite funny how some of the folks laughed at those selling ASICMiner to buy into BTC Growth, given that at the end of the day, those who adopted exactly that strategy wound up with roughly 275% as much money in their accounts than those who stuck with the former darling of the mining world.

...post I made in one of your threads where you asked about ways to "short mining".

I can assure you I didn't need to ask how to establish a short position. You were responding to someone else's question in the thread.

...I never engaged knowingly in ridiculing or dumping on you and I'm confused now, so may I ask: what are you talking about or referring to?

Okey dokey -- must have been a different 'dexX7', so I must apologise again for assuming the handle in two completely different contexts was owned by the same user. (Heck, for all I know there could be someone posing as me on IRC, since I have about as much interest in spending time on IRC as I have in Facebook -- there ya go, scammers, there's your opportunity to pretend to be me...) And in fact my original parenthetical comment for context risks hijacking your thread, so sorry about that too!

[dexX7]

I'd apprechiate, if you drop that sarcastic tone, but if that's your thing, that's your thing. My intention was not and is not to attack or ridicule you.

My IRC nick is registred and dexX7 is indeed me and not someone else.

I think I found the logs to the conversation you are referring to, so let's reflect on what was said on that day during your IPO. Everything I said in context of BTC Growth or you as person is included, nicknames shortened and non-relevant comments from others inbetween were removed due to their non-relevance and to make it easier to focus:

dexX7: hey guise. i liquidated all my amethyst shares to buy btcgrowth. who's with me? [1]
T: i'm holding amethyst til the end!
(... completely different topics for some hours ...)
N: Ok, so there's btcgrowth.com which has the same design and everything as mulhauser.net/psychologicalinvestor.com, BUT, albeit mulhauser.net links to the other websites of the network, it doesn't link to btcgrowth.com
N: Was any proof provided the guy is indeed the guy from mulhauser.net?
dexX7: he claims his id was verified by a ltc mod
N: The actual guy has been around long before the Bitcoin era according to domain registration. People seem to like his articles on finances. IF he can provide proofs of who he is, I guess 1500 BTC isn't too ridiculous.
N: But an exchange mod is no proof.
dexX7: what would you accept as proof of id?
M: dexX7 it's trivial to verify you're X if x is well known.
M: http://mytherapist.com/greg/about-counsellor.html
dexX7: should be him
dexX7: http://companycheck.co.uk/company/04455464 The latest Annual Accounts submitted to Companies House for the year up to 30/11/2012 reported 'cash at bank' of £1,708, 'liabilities' worth £10,696, 'net worth' of £-3,317 and 'assets' worth £4,926.    Mulhauser Consulting Ltd's risk score was amended on 13/02/2013.
dexX7: https://www.facebook.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx?ref=br_rs&fref=browse_search [2] << that's him [3]
N: btcgrowth.com is hosted on the same IP as mulhauser.net and psychologicalinvestor.com
J: unless someone used his photo for the profile, it's 100% him [4]
dexX7: all domains registred via name.com
dexX7: 3 people like his "offical" facebook page, a reverse search dumped 2 results.. one was a greg mulhauser. hm... :p [5]

Notes:
[1] Reference to the greatest BTC security ever
[2] Link censored
[3] Facebook profile without picture
[4] Sarcasm, because the profile has no picture
[5] The justification of why I'm sure that it's the correct profile, even without a picture

Is this what you are referring to?

No need to apologize. The way you expressed your feelings shows that you have a strong interest in taking about this, especially given the fact, that the above quoted conversation took place more than three months ago. Your claim is somewhat strong and offending and therefore I like to represent my point of view, too.

[DrGregMulhauser]

I'd apprechiate, if you drop that sarcastic tone...

Huh?

Everything I said in context of BTC Growth or you as person is included, nicknames shortened and non-relevant comments from others inbetween were removed due to their non-relevance...

...The way you expressed your feelings shows that you have a strong interest in taking about this...Your claim is somewhat strong and offending and therefore I like to represent my point of view, too.

On the contrary, I have no interest at all in rehashing selectively quoted snippets of your discussion with TAT, Mircea Popescu and others. If I was entirely mistaken, and you weren't really talking with them at all but were merely contemporaneously poring through low-grade information sources to try and verify my identity, then clearly I had the wrong impression, and I certainly do apologise.

(Remember I only mentioned this at all because I hesitated even to raise a question in your thread, given the flavour of those previous discussions and my preference not to experience a "shoot the messenger" reaction.)

The main point here is not a "he said, she said". The main point is the oddity of an ongoing "direct pass-through". That's far more worth the time to discuss, don't you think?

[medicine]

I welcomed this pass through when it was first introduced and was happy with DexX7 quick responses and turn around time.  BTC-TC abrupt shut down made it difficult if not impossible to shut this pass through down completely and thus it is still operating.  When Ciphertrade gets up and running it would be convenient to have this PT continuing to serve BTC investors on a second exchange.

I think DexX7 adequately explained the purpose of this PT earlier in this very thread.

I don't see any thing odd here.

[DrGregMulhauser]

...When Ciphertrade gets up and running it would be convenient to have this PT continuing to serve BTC investors on a second exchange.

I think DexX7 adequately explained the purpose of this PT earlier in this very thread.

That was actually the point: the original purpose of the PT is not and cannot be the purpose now. There is no second exchange on the horizon; there is not even a first exchange. Since the whole point of a PT is typically to provide a bridge from what is available on one exchange to what is available on another, when you take away not just one exchange but both, it's hard to understand why there's still a bridge.

(Suppose, for the sake of argument, that a "first exchange" were to appear. Would there be some reason to keep holding and paying for an illiquid "direct pass-through" while waiting for a mysterious "second exchange" to appear somewhere, just so you could avoid using the first exchange? We're not talking about LTC versus BTC, of course, since there is no exchange at all, whether denominated in LTC, BTC, or Fruit Roll-Ups...)

I took it that the "bridge going nowhere" aspect would be fairly uncontroversial and had assumed there must be some other compelling rationale behind it that I just couldn't figure out. From dexX7's original reply, however (before all the "he said, she said"), I take it that actually, no, there isn't any other additional rationale.

[Progressive]

Greg, there is an exchange on the horizon - the UK one, CipherTrade (with both BTC and LTC). Should be run by woodrake with Deprived and others. More info: https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,7176.0.html

[DrGregMulhauser]

Greg, there is an exchange on the horizon - the UK one, CipherTrade (with both BTC and LTC)...

Yep, I get that. I even referred to it in my original question.

What I don't get is why there is still a pass-through that isn't adding any passing through.

Generally speaking, for a pass-through to offer some value, one needs two exchanges: a primary exchange, where an asset itself is listed, and a secondary exchange where the pass-through is listed. The secondary exchange is, for whatever reason, more valuable to some segment of the population than the primary exchange where an asset is listed. For example, the secondary exchange might be denominated in a different currency, it might offer a different interface, or it might provide better liquidity. (There are other scenarios where a PT might be appropriate, but bridging two exchanges is the main one.) So, once you take away the secondary exchange, a PT loses its reason for being.

Suppose I said to you "hey, I'm going to run a new 'direct' pass-through for ASICMiner, so you can now get shares of ASICMiner directly from Friedcat, or you can get pass-through shares directly from me". Why on Earth would you buy them from me? Suppose someone now said "hey, did you know ASICMiner is finally going to be listed on an exchange again?" Then the question becomes even more pressing: why on Earth would you buy them from me instead?