ASICMiner Quarterly Report (Investor’s Take) & News [UPDATED 10/20]

[Franktank]

“For the discussion in the last few days, what we... I could say, is only that our IC design team had achieved fantastic results, as everyone could see and compare, with the most limited funds (barely more than 100k$ raised last August) and most inferior mask-set of choice (130nm which belongs to the antiquity era), and I'm proud of it.” – friedcat

Q1 Financial Report

ASICMiner has paid out a total of 67,515.09 BTC since first IPO payout on Feb 28th. Listed below are the weekly dividend payouts:

02/28 (IPO)   0.023544
03/06 (IPO)   0.019163
03/13 (IPO)   0.023786
03/20 (IPO)   0.025998
03/24 (IPO)   0.007508
03/27           0.003775
04/03           0.002556
04/10           0.006956
04/17           0.006967
04/24           0.007731
05/01           0.007354
05/08           0.011085
05/15           0.036222
05/22           0.020842
05/29           0.026538

ASICMiner’s revenue has originated from both mining and hardware sales.

•   Mining income has generated 57,338.24 BTC since the farm has come online.
•   Hardware sales (from the first three auctions, then Blade & USB sales) came up with the remaining 10,176.85 BTC thus far.

[Edit: Numbers originate from BTC mined and profit from hardware sales paid]

Part of dividend payments from the week of April 3rd and 10th were reserved for the 200 TH/s mask, 100 wafers, and 50 TH/s batch components.

ASICMiner Share Info/Value

Of the 400k shares, approximately 10% (or 40k) shares are currently on passthrus (burnside, DeaDTerra, & TAT). Total dividends paid is currently .23/share. Prices currently average 2.5 BTC a share, roughly yielding 45-55% APY with the most recent dividend of 0.026. For those that bought sub 1 BTC, looking at an ROI of 1 year (assuming constant dividend payout). Those who bought at IPO (0.1/share) are feeling pretty damn good about themselves right now.

ASICMiner Hash Rate

Feb 28th – Apr 25th: 6-7 TH/s
Apr 26th – May 4th: 8-16 TH/s
May 5th – May 9th: 17-20 TH/s
May 10th – May 29th: 19-20 TH/s
May 29th – Present: 22-25 TH/s

[Courtesy of SmiGueL’s tables and graphs]

Projected Key Marks:

50 TH/s in the coming weeks
262 TH/s in the coming months

As the hashrate comes online, this will help keep our weekly payouts at a steady rate against the shipping of Avalon’s Batch 2 (and soon to be Batch 3 & BFL’s hardware).

Upcoming Competition

With other startups like:
•   BitFury & 100 TH/s
•   BTC Garden
•   AMC
•   DIY Manufacturers/Kits (w/ Avalon chips)
•   Others not mentioned

ASICMiner is in the prime position as industry leader and can remain in first place, so long as friedcat and the other board members take the necessary, calculated steps to keep it that way. While these startups still appear to be very unproven (and everyone has their own opinions about them), some have started to make noticeable steps (Bitfury’s 65nm).

Hardware Sales

With Avalon and BFL coming soon^TM, investors are starting to wonder if prices will start dropping on current hardware. Bitfountain must now consider (as I’m sure they are) what is the appropriate price point to maximize both profit margin and sales volume. DIY kits will start making their way to folks, providing cheaper alternatives for the mining community.

Looking Forward

Friedcat has already mentioned of 2nd generation chip, which appears to have a higher hash rate with lower power consumption. Their implementation into the next generation Block Eruptor Blades and USB will help secure the ASICMiner’s advantage as the ASIC generation matures. As to when it moves from prototype phase to production phase, is anyone’s guess. Until someone else can provide a more compelling product, ASICMiner appears to be “head and shoulders above” the other mining companies.


DISCLAIMER: I own ASICMiner Shares.

Note: I have little to no background in finances (Biochem here) so any feedback and constructive criticism is always welcome. If there are numbers that are incorrect, please PM me. The remarks and points made are solely my own, and not BitFountain/ASICMiner. If you think I should continue these on a 3 month basis, let me know.

Sources:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=49840;sa=showPosts
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkPdXsQFT-vIdHRVUjQ5Ql9BQWR6OENLMkhyUktUblE#gid=0
https://blockchain.info/address/1HtUGfbDcMzTeHWx2Dbgnhc6kYnj1Hp24i
https://blockchain.info/address/115tTroRo3B9ZDQ6ATJGDCHcNEVbjJoZnF?sort=1
https://bitfunder.com/asset/G.ASICMINER-PT
https://bitfunder.com/asset/TAT.ASICMINER
https://btct.co/security/ASICMINER-PT
https://btct.co/security/TAT.ASICMINER

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[Franktank]

Appreciate the kind words but I may end up removing all the 'Thank you' posts. I would like to keep this as clutter-free as possible, to serve more as a reference thread than discussion post (see main thread). Right now, I'm going to be submitting investor questions on a monthly. Please PM me with questions you would like friedcat to address, with the subject line "ASICMiner FAQ". I will compile them and send it to him. As previously mentioned, friedcat may not answer the question if he deems that it may divulge Bitfountain's strategy/plan to competitors.

A monthly date will be provided later, to give people a deadline of question submission. For now, send me those questions and don't take offense if I remove your post in this thread to keep it as clean as possible.

EDIT: Please keep questions related to ASICMiner, I will not submit questions like:

 - What is your favorite color?
 - Are you single?
 - Do you have BFL pre-orders?

Cheers

[Franktank]

Update

The wafer of the first half (100TH/s) of next batch is to be out of fab.
More than 4,000 USB devices are sold out in total.
The demand of blades are surprisingly long-lasting and still high.

With respect to the mining business, we have never seen it as a drying up one
in spite of persistent block halving. If Bitcoin ever rises as a successful currency
in a few years, and the transaction fee has to be, say, 15BTC each block on average,
to prevent attacks from organizations that are all over the world and begin show
up when Bitcoin flourishes, what we could expect is 27.5BTC per block after the
next block halving, and more than 15BTC forever in the further future.

The shares "missing" are those missing from the original GLBSE database when we got
them. Some people had failed to report their Bitcoin address. Among them, several ones
successfully redeemed their shares after we mailed them for the address info. But the
rest failed to mail back.

The delay of confirmation of this week's dividends is caused by the payments of real
dividends are chained after the satoshi transactions, which are now refused by most
of the clients. We will either stop the satoshi payments, or unchain the payment in our
modified scripts.

Link

[Franktank]

Update

The chips of the second batch will be ready in smaller packages during this week and the next one. We are preparing for the (larger) mass production of USB devices and blades, as well as necessary wholesale price adjustments.

The hashrate drop this week was caused by an internal troubleshooting which took about 10h, followed by a series of bad luck (which happened to involve the whole network).

Link

[ThickAsThieves]

OFFICIAL UPDATE

I have some news for everyone after a brief e-mail exchange with Friedcat. He has answered the 3 questions I submitted from our recent poll below:

-- There was news about a presentation by Rockxie about ASICMINER. Can you confirm this was an official presentation and summarize the news that was shared about upcoming plans for the mining farm and the Mini Blade?
Friedcat: They are true, though some projected dates from our side were more-or-less overly determined in his presentation.

-- When can we expect the first financial report?
Friedcat: We are asking board members if July 23 is acceptable.

-- Could Bitfountain provide an official live hashrate meter from ASICMINER for your mining farm, or could you periodically confirm the current hashrate?
Friedcat: Yes. Our internal management system is towards its completing. Directing the data to a public webpage is easy.

In other news, Friedcat has also officially confirmed my new status as a board member!

I am truly honored and proud to have achieved this, and I look forward to playing any role I can to further ASICMINER's success.

[Franktank]

Update

Financial Status

Mining Income: 102,041.82BTC
Blade Sales Income: 29,594.75BTC
USB Sales Income: 37,524.00BTC
Total: 169,520.57BTC

Device and Infrastructure Expense: 397,800.00$ + 4,909,930.00￥
Electricity Expense: 729,542.05￥
Labor Expense: 327,081.00￥
Logistics Expense: 132,184.90￥
Deposits: 117,506.01￥
Total: 397,800.00$+6,216,243.96￥

Balance Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al1fvFT7Sd5bdEthNEpIWWxpcW90RFBQOFZ6aFlxT0E&usp=sharing

Hardware Franchising

This is a new business model option besides self-mining and hardware sales. We will rent the excessive hashing power to financial and technical capable people, accepting full deposits at the market price, shipping the devices and collecting a certain PPS rate based on the theoretical hashrate. The PPS rate, the dividing of cost coverage, as well as warranty/exit strategy are being discussed in detail and executed as small-scale experiments.

This model is similar to hardware sales in the aspect that we do not have in control on how the users make use of our devices, therefore has more decentralization in spirit. And like with self-mining, it aims at settings in scale, enjoying the reduction of NRE cost and operating cost overall, and reducing potential marketing/advertisement/customer service costs.

Project Timeline

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

Link

[Franktank]

This is the permanent place for announcing ASICMINER Hardware news. The information on all former related threads might be obsolete.

Contact
Users who bought our hardware before are recommended to switch to the new e-mail address for troubleshooting and support. And for new users, please make sure you use the new e-mail address.

The new e-mail address is (asicminer.help@gmail.com).

For warranty replacement, please contact the reseller first. From now on, the corresponding reseller will fulfill your warranty directly if the products are sold via resellers.

Current Resellers in Each Zone

US: eleuthria, CanaryInTheMine, SilentSonicBoom
Canada: teek
EU, Switzerland and North Europe: yxt
China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau: rockxie
Australia: leotreasure@gmail.com
India: Pinwheel(TBD)

Purchasers from the rest of the world can buy the products directly from us.

Products Update

Please note that the resellers usually get the products after one week or more
from the day we ship out.

Blade (Old Model):
  Restocking date - August 11, 2013

USB
  Restocking date - August 11, 2013

Blade (New Model):
  Availability date - August 18-25, 2013

(To be extended)

Link

[Franktank]

Update

We have collected several shareholders' questions for answering.

Could we have an official live hashrate meter from ASICMINER?
We have an internal one, mainly for troubleshooting when some of the racks going down. The hashrate meter based on the blocks mined reflects more of the real speed (plus luck of course). We will buy more bandwidth before making it accessible by the whole internet. It also requires more commitment in maintenance.

For more transparency, is it possible to share a wallet address for depositing income from ASICMINER hardware sales?
We use a different deposit address for each payment transaction. But a centralized nexus address is good. Then people could see how the funds are separated as dividends and expenses.

Besides mining, hardware sales, and franchising, are there any other potential sources of revenue?
There are many possible ones considered, but none can support serious sound business model based on a 1-2billion dollar total market value of Bitcoin: selling patents, offering solution for mining farm construction, assembly service, etc.

Why has the hashrate dropped the past weeks?
It dropped in different few days. Some of them are internal hardware/network glitches, some of them are luck based. We haven't identified any form of DDOS attacks recently though.

There hasn't been a huge hardware dividend payoff: is it because of reduced margins, or delays?
Because we are collecting funds to get ready for the exponentially increased devices to be assembled in September and October.

How are things going regarding your business plan? Did you account for the sudden network hashrate increase? How is the international expansion of ASICminer coming along?
The business plan is unchanged. The network hashrate increase was still under our projection. The total hash target originally set for the end of this year would probably achieved earlier.
The ASICMiner expansion via franchising is still much within China border. The internationally deployed portion will dominate when the gain of operation cost outweigh the delay and cost of international shipping/assembling abroad.

Link

[Franktank]

Q2 Financial Report

ASICMiner has paid out a total of 117,515.62 BTC over the last quarter, a 74.05% increase from last quarter (67,515.09). Listed below are the weekly dividend payouts:

ASICMiner's revenue originates from both mining and hardware sales.

- Mining income this quarter resulted in 65,766.79 BTC, with 64,441.84 paid out. This indicates a 12.38% increase of 57,338.24 from last quarter, despite the 4x increase in difficulty (15,605,633 to 65,750,060).

- Net hardware sales income resulted in 52,035.07 BTC, indicating a 157.71% increase from last quarter (20,190.97).

Note: The term "Net hardware sales" was used because all expenses were deducted from gross sales revenue, while nearly all mining income was paid out. The sheer increase in sales revenue is largely due to sales starting at the end of last quarter.

ASICMiner Share Info/Value

Of the 400k shares, approximately 45k shares exist on whole share passthrus (burnside, Ukyo, and TAT). From June 1 to Aug 28, BTCT share prices increased from 2.481 to a high of 5.14 and fell back down to an average of 2.78 on August 28th's dividend payment. Share prices were determined by the the trading volume from the previous week's dividend payment up until the announcement of the direct share dividend payment of the following week.

Upcoming Competition

Other Startups:
-   Labcoin/ActiveMining
-   200 TH/s (via Bitfury)/IceDrill/Alydian
-   CoinTerra/HashFast/Bitfury/KnC Miner
-   Others not mentioned

ASICMiner has maintained the position as industry leader up to this point but adequate competition appears to be on the way. Companies like Labcoin/ActivemMining hope to enter as both mining farms/hardware sales. Large scale mines like 200 TH/s, IceDrill, and others plan to get their hardware soon and deploy in the coming months. Alydian is taking a similar approach to ASICMiner's "hardware franchising", renting out TH/s for a fixed duration. CoinTerra, Hashfast, Bitfury, & KnC Miner have joined Avalon/BFL in sales, taking preorders for the fall shipment.

Hardware Sales

Block Eruptor blades and USBs have continued to sell well, with the noticible decrease in price as other appealing alternatives appear. With such high demand for hardware, competitors now promise more efficient/smaller chips. Bitfountain is aware that hardware sales will soon become a very crowded market; turning into a commodity war, to fighting over razor thin profit margins. Their advantage still, is being able to get hardware into consumer hands quicker than anyone else.

Looking Forward

Little by little, more information is starting to come out on Bitfountain's 2nd generation chip. While the latest friedcat updates indicate 2nd gen assembly in September/October, investors have considered if those estimates are enough against the exponential hashrate growth. Friedcat has done his best to maintain the balance of being transparent as possible to investors without revealing too many trade secrets to the competition. Keep in mind that Bitfountain has run all possible simulations of selling all hardware to mining with all hardware and everything in between, choosing what is most profitable for the collective whole. Realize that they've done their research with all the new companies that hope to take the top spot from them.

All current investors should know that there are large scale plans in place for Bitfountain/ASICMiner in the fall. The "leaked" slides talk of the second mine deployment (~1 PH/s) and a larger variety of mining hardware. Competition is coming, there is no doubt about that. Any investor thinking otherwise is only deluding themselves. For those that think Bitfountain/ASICMiner's days are numbered, my question to you is this: If not them, then whom?


Disclaimer: I own ASICMINER shares. If there are numbers that are incorrect, please PM me. The remarks and points made are solely my own, and not BitFountain/ASICMiner. Any suggestions/critiques are always appreciated (via PM). Lastly, I only ask that if you're going to repost this somewhere else, please credit myself as the author.

Edit: Added the link for the slides, presented by Rockxie

[Franktank]

We are glad to introduce our new model of Block Erupter Blades to the market. The hashing unit, the power module, and the ethernet controller are now integrated into one board, resulting in a more compact design with higher computation density.

Besides the original power connector, the plug-able gold fingers are added to the blade. The blades are also complemented with a back-plane for them to fit in (10 in 1). It makes deployment easier and quicker.

While the back-plane is compatible with any normal PSUs with its cable-based connector, it also offers a slot for a certain brand of widely available PSUs (Part Number: HP DPS 800GBA or ATSN 7001044-Y000).

Spec: 10GHhash/s guaranteed.
         Rated speed 10.752GHash/s.
         200mm x 160mm in size.

Resellers:
US: eleuthria, CanaryInTheMine, SilentSonicBoom
Canada: teek
EU, Switzerland and North Europe: yxt
China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau: rockxie
Australia: leotreasure@gmail.com
India: Pinwheel

Purchasers from the rest of the world can buy the products directly from us. One back-plane will be provided per ten Block Erupter Blade (New Model).

Former warranty conditions still hold.

Mailing address for sales: asicminer.blades@gmail.com.
Mailing address for support: asicminer.help@gmail.com.

To purchase, please send your full name/address/zip code/phone number to the mailing address for sales.




(To be extended with more points to note)

Link

[Franktank]

Again, I do appreciate all the kind (and unkind) words/PM but I will be removing all those posts eventually. Want to keep this as clear/concise as possible, thanks for understanding.

[Franktank]

OFFICIAL ASICMINER UPDATE
 
In an effort to take ASICMINER to the next level as a business, the board met today to discuss ways we can provide better service to our customers and better communication to our shareholders. Below you will find some updates of what's been going on behind the scenes.
 
PR & Communications
1. The board has committed to meeting even more often than we have been, and intentionally gleaning whatever info can be shared from each meeting, and posting it to public.
2. The board will be assisting with writing these posts to make things easier for Friedcat.
3. The board is in discussions to create content and designs for an official website.

BTCT closing
Today, we discussed this topic and Friedcat will be reaching out to Burnside to determine the best way to handle all of his PT shareholders. Burnside might just give Friedcat a database to process, and TAT Investments has offered to handle a full migration to the AM1 asset on HavelockInvestments.com if it is feasible and agreeable.

LTC ASIC
ASICMINER determined LTC ASIC is not viable since a high-speed memory bus is much more useful in other industries and very expensive to make in this regard.

Hardware Update
• Already shipped devices(Gen1, already shipped) were limited by quantity of the power chip supply we pre-ordered before two months.
• We made an order of another brand of power chips which are about two weeks late. In October this will provide another 500TH/s (Gen1).
• If any deal of ordering Gen1 chips from outside buyers via us is reached, additional orders will be made.
• The size of the Gen2 order will be decided as appropriate, according to the network difficulty when it is time to finalize the order size.

Franchising
The board is working to polish the franchising program and is currently discussing the idea of hosting auctions to determine the best pay-per-share rates for ASICMINER, and what profitability the franchises require to operate. ASICMINER intends to grow the franshising program at a faster pace in October, so please participate in this process if you are capable of hosting blades and looking to mitigate some of your risks in buying hardware.
In order to make accurate bids, franchisees need 3 things:
1) Some of the blades as a sample, so they can plan and see what they are doing.
2) Reliable estimates and timelines for delivery, as this can severely impact the ability to operate efficiently.
3) Clear terms or a formula to know when their PPS value can be adjusted as the difficulty increases.
 
Custom Cooling Systems
We have been finalizing on our HK datacenter with our professional partner on immersion cooling. This product will be of interest both miners, and other industries that require cooling of similar hardware. Our cooling system partner built it as an exhibition house where everything is clean and shiny for investors/buyers to visit and for ASICMINER to make videos as a demonstration.

Sales/Advertising Update
ASICMINER is pursuing for additional sales & advertising opportunies. A Google Ads campaign will be considered, as well as Reddit and other websites. Forum ads are getting expensive now, and ROI is unclear for them.

Link

[Franktank]

Quick Update

We are still on track of accumulating reinvestment funds, continuing from last month, so please expect less-than-raw-income dividends in the next few weeks. The financials will be given out in October 20s, as mentioned in the last update.

Self-retained (not sold) Hashrate distribution:

Air cooling datacenter - 47TH/s
Under franchising - 19TH/s
Immersion cooling - 5TH/s with 3-5TH/s per day towards 60TH/s in total.

[ DO NOT POST SESC LINKS ]Link[/url]

[Franktank]

Quick Update

The original vague range of October 20s is now made accurate at October 27th, when the projected publication of financial reports. This time it will be more detailed and informative than the last time's.

Upcoming scheduled to be happening (in time order):

Imminent repricing according to the market and the quantity.
Immersion cooling exhibition.
Payment system out of pre-alpha.
Blockchain-based exchange out of pre-alpha (whether to migrate whole ASICMiner database is still a serious debating topic).

Link

[kmtan]

await for the report。。。。

[Franktank]

Update

PR & Communications
We understand that transparency and communication to shareholders and the public needs improvement. We are in the process of identifying a dedicated employee for this. We will issue bi-weekly reports for shareholders and improve response time for questions.

Next Gen Chips
The projected time of taping out of Gen3 is January 20. Power consumption target estimation is <0.2W per G on low power mode and <0.2$ per G on wafer cost. Please notice that the timeline is of course subject to change/adjust, and the estimation on power and cost is also based on software tool/simulation results.

Current Hardware Sales
The number of cubes left for sale/deployment is 9000. About 1/3 are ordered already. All older devices (USBs/new blades) are sold out.

G.ASICMINER
If nothing unexpected happens, Ukyo will provide a shareholder list to Friedcat on Dec 1, for direct shares.

Link

[stienski]

i need help with the config for Erupter blade v2. I  want to run it to ghash or eligius....

[ThunderSheep]

This thread is for accumulating investor information.  I'm not a miner but after a quick search I think the following thread would be the best place to start looking for answers.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=205369.0