[HAVELOCK] Bliss Devices - Scrypt ASIC, IPO Monday May 22nd 11 AM EST

[havelock]

Havelock Investments is pleased to announce the addition of the Bliss Devices Fund.


Company name: Bliss Devices
Company website:http://blissdevices.com/
Fund Symbol: BLISS
Units offered: 90,000  (30% Stake)
IPO date: May 26nd, 2014 11:00 AM EST


Structure of the offer:

Batch#          # of units          % equity          Price/Unit          Discount % from next batch          Total batch (BTC)
1                  30,000                  10%            0.038  BTC                     58%                                  1,136
2                  30,000                  10%            0.091  BTC                     40%                                  2,727
3                  18,000                   6%             0.152  BTC                     33%                                  2,727
4                  12,000                   4%             0.227  BTC                     --                                     2,727
Total             90,000                  30%                                                                                       9,318


CEO - Paul Chen
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pchen408

• Managed $65M Display Systems product line at Maxim Integrated
• Lead designer at Fortinet for 3 key security-­‐based ASIC projects
• MSEE from Columbia University, BS in Computer Science from Brown University, MBA in Entrepreneurship from MIT Sloan

CTO - Steve Zhang
https://www.linkedin.com/in/guansongzhang

• 10+ years designing network security ASICs at Fortinet
• Proven track record of successful first-­‐time-­‐right tape outs – 8 projects over 10+ years with 5 different process nodes
• MS in computer engineering from NYU Polytechnic, BS in Computer Science from Tsinghua University, Beijing

Investor Protections

•Escrowed IPO Funds
–IPO funds will be held in escrow by Havelock Investments and will be released to Bliss for actual expenditures.

•Investor Repayment Priority
–Net company profit will be first distributed to shares sold to investors at this IPO fully recuperated before any dividend is paid to the Founders’ shares

•Founders’ Shares Lock-Up Period
–Trading of the Founders’ shares will be restricted. These shares will not be able to be traded until both IPO investors have fully recuperated their initial investment

•Quarterly Financial Reports

Please take the time to read our full prospectus before investing at the following link:
https://www.havelockinvestments.com/reports.php

BLISS is a provider of high-performance Scrypt ASIC mining hardware based in Silicon Valley.

The founding team, including Paul Chen and Steve Zhang, have over 20+ years of experience in the semiconductor, network security, and cryptocurrency industries combined and a proven track record of first-time-right ASIC design and production, operational management, on-time customer deliveries, as well as mining hardware sales.  Having taped out 8 highly-complex ASICs at Fortinet, a leading network security provider, both have a history in successfully bringing high-performance, next-generation chip designs to market.

Our products include the advanced Scrypt ASIC, Scryptr, boasts a hashing performance of 4.8MH/s at only 16W, or at the industry lowest 3.33W per MH, along with the Neon product line starting with the Neon Mining Cards that come in various interfaces such as PCIe, SPI, and USB.

Our initial focus is on the industrial mining market but we will launch consumer products closer to the August delivery date.  We also plan to roll out service-oriented offerings such as hosted mining and optimized mining pools.

Our chip design has been fully verified and include a FPGA demo here.  Tape out is scheduled for early June, with an August 2014 delivery date.

http://youtu.be/LLrQ40qUegg

For more technical info and news updates, please visit our website at www.blissdevices.com

Thank you for your consideration,

The Bliss Devices Team

[pleiotropik]

This is an exciting addition to the line of companies you offer on the exchange, i'll be ready with the buy button on monday. Congratulations on adding a mining equipment manufacturer.   

[SamboNZ]

Just to confirm, the IPO date / time is definitely EST vs EDT?

[jimmothy]

Would you guys consider ditching the preorders?

[tokyoghetto]

I am going to throw some BTC at this IPO. I am very impressed.

[pchen_blissdevices]

jimmothy,

Currently, our business is focused on the industrial-scale miners, hence we only offer chips and boards.  Because we offer boards with many different interfaces, the PCIe card is also suitable for the consumer market, where we believe preorders give us a way to allow those interested to get early access to the hardware and also gauge market demand for our products in the consumer space.  We understand the sensitivity around pre-orders in the consumer market and hence are not actively promoting any pre-sales.

-Paul

[Anotheranonlol]

Would you guys consider ditching the preorders?

Why would they? Customers can finance their operation that way, and they don't actually have to deliver the product before earning.

last time i checked your site out you have photoshop ethernet card which claim is high speed scrypt miner, to be fair it is just a placeholder like cointerra use shopped cpu, but it's not inspire confidence. Companies which ask for pre-order are raise on silicon valley telemarketer mentality - over promise, collect funds and under deliver, is what's happened consistently in the past

The comparitive analysis in the chart compares between alpha tech..who? those are a few guys in a shed opposite an indian takeaway on the outsourcing tricks.
 knc, who are serious players and a gpu. Where are innosillicon, silverfish etc. these are your serious competitors, their NRE paid off and they are ahead.

Also, Where are the details about how you will mine scrypt-n coins?

[pchen_blissdevices]

all good points.  Since launching in March, we've revisited and changed our product strategy.

Gridseed, we consider the 1st generation of Scrypt ASIC, as they were 1st to market.  As for InnoSilicon and Zeus, who are both China-based and already in the market with 7 and 12.5 W/MHs chips respectively, they do have a couple months of market lead, but eventually be replaced by more power efficient chips. sub 4W/MHs, as evident in the Bitcoin ASIC space. 

For Scrypt-N, Scryptr mines at 1.6MH/s for N=2048 and degrades about 33% for every step-up in N factor.  The next increase for Vertcoin is not until 2/25/16.

[aleph0]

Thanks for the info, Havelock, and for the posts in this forum, Paul. Having read the full Prospectus a few times, I have a few questions  that I'm hoping one or the both of you can clarify:

• Page 9 of the Prospectus outlines the use of funds from each batch of the IPO. Is the full sum raised from each batch to be devoted to its corresponding listed use on page 9, or only a portion thereof? On a related note, how will these actions be funded should one or more of the batches not be sold in full?
• Is the IPO the only source of funding for Bliss operations and coverage for development costs and expenses? More broadly, what is the operations plan and the impact on unit holders if one or more of the batches are not fully sold?
• When will open market trading of BLISS units on Havelock begin?

•Investor Repayment Priority
–Net company profit will be first distributed to shares sold to investors at this IPO fully recuperated before any dividend is paid to the Founders’ shares

What does this mean? The Prospectus says something similar but less awkwardly phrased: "Investors of preferred units will be paid in full from net company profits before any dividend distributions to Founder shares." Paid in full for what? They are unitholders buying a stake in the entity, not lenders expecting payback of principal, are they not? Is this proposing some sort of market-based share buyback? Apologies if I'm overlooking something obvious, but I'd appreciate clarification.

•Founders’ Shares Lock-Up Period
–Trading of the Founders’ shares will be restricted. These shares will not be able to be traded until both IPO investors have fully recuperated their initial investment

Again, I'm not clear on what's being proposed here: by what mechanism would an IPO investor have "recuperated their initial investment"? A unitholder could gain return on that initial investment either by selling (in which case he would no longer be a unitholder) or via dividend payment. So are you saying Founders' shares will not be tradeable until all IPO investors have been paid back the full sum of their initial outlay in dividends? Surely not. Please clarify. Also, what do you mean by "both" IPO investors?

Much thanks in advance for your responses!

[SamboNZ]

...how will these actions be funded should one or more of the [IPO] batches not be sold in full?

+1 on this question!

[Anotheranonlol]

all good points.  Since launching in March, we've revisited and changed our product strategy.

Gridseed, we consider the 1st generation of Scrypt ASIC, as they were 1st to market.  As for InnoSilicon and Zeus, who are both China-based and already in the market with 7 and 12.5 W/MHs chips respectively, they do have a couple months of market lead, but eventually be replaced by more power efficient chips. sub 4W/MHs, as evident in the Bitcoin ASIC space.  

For Scrypt-N, Scryptr mines at 1.6MH/s for N=2048 and degrades about 33% for every step-up in N factor.  The next increase for Vertcoin is not until 2/25/16.

Thanks for answers. SF have prototype and is around 7w, there is room for improvement like you say.  Most interesting was your scrypt-n mention. http://coinmarketcap.com/vtc_7.html

[E.Sam]

For Scrypt-N, Scryptr mines at 1.6MH/s for N=2048 and degrades about 33% for every step-up in N factor.  The next increase for Vertcoin is not until 2/25/16.

Scrypt-N uses exponential memory increases to work, so regardless of ASIC, GPU or CPU, it will only work for specific N-values for as much RAM as you have available.
I suspect that an ASIC can be made to work by reducing the number of threads, thus allowing more ram per thread, but that only goes so-far, and the devs for Scrypt-N are free to adjust N to any value they like... Leaves them the option to push the N value higher than the "currently available" ASICs can support.
Working through a HW change to add RAM is much more time consuming than just changing a variable in the Scrypt-N algorithm, so they can easily keep-up with technology and progress.

Quote from a thread in Litecointalk. Care to comment?

[aleph0]

Bliss and/or Havelock,

Would you be able to answer the questions that have been raised on this board the past couple days? I realize it's a holiday weekend in the US but considering the IPO opens tomorrow and you're hoping to raise over 9000 BTC of investor coin, it surprises me that you're not actively addressing questions posed by parties clearly interested in your venture.

Thanks and kind regards.

[havelock]

Funds will be held in escrow and refunded to investors in the event that the first block is not fully sold out. 

The investors will receive dividends before any of the founders receive any dividends up to the amount invested per unit.

Havelock Investments

[SamboNZ]

Funds will be held in escrow and refunded to investors in the event that the first block is not fully sold out. 

When you say the 'first block', are you referring to the first 30,000 batch of shares or the entire 90,000 IPO?

If you mean the first 30,000, does this mean that in the event that all 90,000 shares do not sell, that all batches will be refunded, or is this on a batch by batch basis?

[havelock]

The first 30,000 offer.

[SamboNZ]

Ok, so if what will happen in the event that the subsequent batches don't fully sell?

[Skele]

Funds will be held in escrow and refunded to investors in the event that the first block is not fully sold out. 

When you say the 'first block', are you referring to the first 30,000 batch of shares or the entire 90,000 IPO?

If you mean the first 30,000, does this mean that in the event that all 90,000 shares do not sell, that all batches will be refunded, or is this on a batch by batch basis?

i would like to know this too, currently there are 29,000 remaining.. lets see what happens next.

[pchen_blissdevices]

Let me clarify the terms.

In the event that Round 1 does not fully close, all Round 1 investors will receive a refund on their total investment.

In the event that Round 2 does not fully close, all Round 2 investors will receive a full refund on their investment.  However, Round 1 investors will not receive a refund since this capital will have been used to pay our vendors for services rendered, hence the deeper discount from Round 2.

In the event that Round 3 does not fully close, no refund will be offered to any investors, as we will be a viable business.  We are currently working with large clients on product deals that do not involve raising money on Havelock, as well as funded by preorder from our website and bridge loan financing.  Havelock serves as a supplement funding source for non-US investors for our core strategy of pre-selling to large industrial customers.

Also, Founder shares cannot be traded or receive any dividend payments until all previous investors are paid back in full, starting with Round 1, 2, etc.  These terms incentivize us to generate enough profits to fully pay back our investors before we receive any profit distributions.  We are fully committed to building a long-term viable business and hence have structured the terms in such a way for us to do so.

Sorry for the confusion and hope this clarifies things.

-Paul

[SamboNZ]

Thanks for the clarification Paul.

One more detail; If round 1 sells, but subsequent rounds do not, I assume that you will seek the capital shortfall from other sources?  In other words, in this scenario, what is the risk that round 1 investors will have invested in a non-viable business due to lack of capital?