Edit: In case anybody read the above message without context, it is a retaliatory negative feedback for the negative feedback I gave them immediately prior.
Edit 2, Jan 5th, 2015: ASICSPACE's message above now says this:The first way you can know Jtoomim is full of BS. He's claiming we're asking for preorders. We're not.
Check out pictures of the mine we are building:
[img]https://i.imgur.com/WqLy4n9.jpg[/img]
I thought this would get ugly. I just find it difficult to watch those guys cruising for easy marks here to pump and dump. QuiveringGibbage created this thread for people to describe their experiences with other hosting providers, and I felt that I owed it to everyone else to state my experience with ASICSPACE as a customer, even though I knew it would result in retaliatory mudslinging.
I don't want to get drawn into a long flamewar here, because I have way too much to do as it is, so I'll stop replying to this topic soon. This is probably my last post on the topic of ASICSPACE [Edit: except for the edits above], unless someone other than ASICSPACE asks me a question about my relationship with them.
As some serious accusations have been leveled against me as a hosting provider, I do feel that I should explain a little more about our relationship, and make some comments about my experience with ASICSPACE as a former business partner. A few points:
Jtoomim posed as an investor for our business. He claimed that he did not want to start a business, and instead just needed hosting space for his arriving batch of SP30's.
I "posed" as an investor? That's an interesting take. Not accurate, though. I approached them as a customer. Once it became apparent to me that they were not capable of competently hosting my machines, I decided to do it myself.
I did not initally intend to start a hosting company. I had another successful business making these:
http://brain-trainer.com/product/heg-starter-package/https://www.upgradedself.com/products/upgraded-focus-brain-trainerI was in China at the time, working on an ultrasonic echolocation project (
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10103162599232593 -- please do not friend me, as I use facebook for actual friends). I was also mining bitcoin on the side, and was looking for a hosting provider for my mining operation. ASICSPACE (then MyRigSpace) seemed to be it. I approached them as a customer. They said they didn't have enough capacity yet for the machines I had coming (7 Black Arrow X-3s, a Cointerra, an SP10, and a July SP30) in their Hillsboro warehouse, but that they were getting a site in Moses Lake. This was April. They thought they would have it in about a week. Their prices seemed good, and Robert seemed pretty smart, so I thought I would go with it. Later, my brother and I doubled down, and we decided to buy 37 SP30s from the August group buy. Later still, we ordered another 30 SP30s from the September batch.
Robert and I had some nice conversations via Skype. We discussed different ways of building a datacenter. I had a lot of ideas about ways in which they could save money, and I shared them with Robert freely. Eventually, Robert dropped this on me:
[5/5/14, 1:53:31 PM] Robert Van Kirk: this is what i want to offer you:
[5/5/14, 1:54:16 PM] Robert Van Kirk: i will do my best to learn as much about electrial work, but what would really calm my nerves is this:
[5/5/14, 1:54:42 PM] Robert Van Kirk: first i want to offer you:
[5/5/14, 1:54:52 PM] Robert Van Kirk: full ownership over your racks for their lifetime
[5/5/14, 1:55:08 PM] Robert Van Kirk: and no fees
[5/5/14, 1:55:18 PM] Robert Van Kirk: we'll just pass our basic costs onto you
[5/5/14, 1:55:37 PM] Robert Van Kirk: so those racks will be useful for a long time after your equipment is no longer profitable
[5/5/14, 1:55:51 PM] Robert Van Kirk: they may be worth up to 100k a year
[5/5/14, 1:56:07 PM] Robert Van Kirk: maybe 60k
[5/5/14, 1:56:24 PM] Robert Van Kirk: we can also offer you a seat on our board of directors
[5/5/14, 1:56:52 PM] Robert Van Kirk: in return, we want you to 1) finance the cost of constructing your racks
[5/5/14, 1:56:57 PM] Robert Van Kirk: including any overruns
[5/5/14, 1:57:32 PM] Robert Van Kirk: and especially 2) i want you to work with us, to teach us how to install the electrical equipement.
[5/5/14, 1:57:40 PM] Robert Van Kirk: if we can learn how to do that ourselves, that's incredibly valuble to us
[5/5/14, 1:57:53 PM] Robert Van Kirk: as we can then start building on a mass scale
[5/5/14, 1:58:24 PM] Jonathan Toomim: full ownership of our racks, but what about the electrical and cooling equipment?
[5/5/14, 1:58:44 PM] Robert Van Kirk: yes, everything that is required to create your racks
[5/5/14, 1:59:58 PM] Jonathan Toomim: man, i need a clone
[5/5/14, 2:00:10 PM] Robert Van Kirk: also, we may want a small stipend for our salaries, so we can afford pizza until we've ramped up production
[5/5/14, 2:01:49 PM] Jonathan Toomim: i think we'd also want partial ownership or a share of future profits, especially if we're paying you guys a stipend
We eventually settled on 30% ownership of ASICSPACE for helping them build an initial 400 kW, of which we would have exclusive at-cost access to 200 kW. I would fly in from China and help them with the build, and we'd also pay for setting up the 200 kW (since we would have to do that anyway if Mike and I wanted to make use of our SP30s). Later, they decided they didn't want the stipends, and wanted to trade those for 5%. I thought that wasn't a fair exchange, but agreed nonetheless.
The essence of the agreement was that they would provide premises on which to build the DC and 3 people for the summer. My brother and I would provide capital and guidance. The goal was to do most of the construction during June, so that we would have 1 month of buffer before the SP30s arrived. They thought they would have the lease signed by the middle of May at the latest. I was supposed to fly over to the USA from Shenzhen around May 15th, and come up to WA around June 1st and help them. I got to work on designing the datacenter, sourcing components, and ordering the ones with long lead times.
When late May came around, they still didn't have a space. I got a bit worried, so I flew up to join them on a scouting expedition. We checked out the places that they had been looking at so far, and each one turned out to be unsuitable for some reason. I soon had to return to California to take care of some business with my other company, expecting them to keep looking. They took a week off from the search. I kept working on the datacenter design and sourcing throughout. When they got back and started informing me of their search, I got the impression that they were again looking at the wrong stuff, and negotiating poorly with the landlords. I flew back up to help again.
We ran into several problems on that trip. The hood of Damir's car was broken, and on his way up, it flipped up in the wind and smashed his windshield. He continued to drive it for several days until the police noticed. They detained him for a day for driving such a dangerous vehicle. While he was detained, my miners (SP10 and CT) in their Hillsboro datacenter stopped hashing. Upon inspection, it became apparent that the issue with the Hillsboro warehouse was that Damir had neglected to pay the internet bill. Also, they couldn't pay the bill any longer because they were out of money in their joint account. When I heard this, I handed Robert $500 cash to put in their account so they could pay the bill. However, they weren't able to pay the bill because Damir was in police custody at the time. It wasn't until several days later that they were able to get my (and their other customers') miners running again.
By this time it was mid- to late-June, near the end of the period I had originally scheduled for building. I had already ordered tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment for our build (all my money, none of theirs), but I had to tell our vendors to hold onto it all because we had nowhere to ship our equipment to. Also, one of the three people they had promised would help us for the summer only showed up for three days.
While I was a customer of MyRigSpace/ASICSPACE, my machines experienced roughly 85% uptime. When an issue cropped up needing a miner reboot, or clearing a circuit breaker that tripped due to an overloaded circuit, or resetting a switch that overheated in the direct sunlight, it usually took several days for them to get in and fix the issue.
After many episodes like these, it became clear to me that not only could I not rely on them to actually find the location as per our agreement, I also didn't trust them to take care of our miners once they arrived.
I reexamined the deal that I had made with Robert and Damir. Basically, what I was doing was helping them find a location (which they had promised to find entirely on their own), providing labor (I was going to have to hire people to replace the worker they had lost, plus many others to be able to have the DC ready by the time our X-3s and SP30s arrived), providing 100% of the capital, and providing nearly all of the buildout planning. In exchange, my brother and I would get 25% ownership of their company, plus 50% of the profits for any capacity above 400 kW that we built.
On Thursday, the 26th of June, I told Robert that I was thinking of "jumping ship." I told him that I no longer had faith that they could deliver the premises that they had planned, and I told him that the informal agreement we had made had turned out be extremely unbalanced and untenable. I told him that even though we had never actually signed anything, I felt bound to the agreement; however, as they had failed to deliver on essentially all of their obligations under our agreement in a timely manner, I told him that I considered that agreement to be null and void. I told him that I might be willing to continue collaboration if we could renegotiate the terms of the deal to be less ludicrous. Over the next day, we came close to an agreement between Robert and I. We hadn't discussed it with Damir yet, because he was still AWOL after having been detained by police.
On Friday, the 27th of June, I drove Robert with me to check out another warehouse that we had seen listed for lease earlier. It turned out this warehouse was entirely suitable. We talked over a price and terms with the landlords, and we came to an agreement. Everything was looking up. On the ride back, Robert and I had essentially reconciled. When we got back to the house, Damir was there. We first told him that we had finally found our warehouse. I then told Damir that over the last few days, I had been thinking of jumping ship, and that I might be willing to collaborate with them if we renegotiated the deal to be at least 50/50%, if not 75%/25% in my favor.
Damir's response was that if I thought I would be better off without them, that I should leave, that there was nothing in our agreement that obligated me to keep the deal (Damir, why did you even say that?), and with the general sentiment of anger that I would think that my contribution was worth 3x their contribution. After listening to Damir yell at me for about 3 minutes, and hearing him repeat the words "you should leave" several times in several different grammatical constructions, I decided to follow his advice. A person whose idea of hardball negotiations is to tell his business partner to leave so that he can get his former business partner's share wasn't the kind of person I wanted to work with anyway.
Damir and Robert then called the landlord, and made an appointment to meet with them at 7:00am on Saturday morning. After talking with them, they had the impression that they had gotten the building. In order to do so, they offered the landlord the price we had agreed upon the night before plus $5 per month per kW that they used, as a balance against the "amortized value of the switchgear and transformer" in the building, or something like that. The landlords said that this seemed like a really sweet deal, and could be a lot of money.
I met with the landlords at 4 pm the same day. I explained that I was no longer working with Robert and Damir of ASICSPACE. I walked away with the lease. I offered them less money than Robert and Damir did. I didn't even offer them any more money than we had agreed upon the night before. The reason that they chose to go with me instead of them was pretty simple: I convinced the landlords that I knew enough to successfully build a datacenter, and that I would actually be able to pay rent.
Let me show you guys the math. The lease on the section of the building we both wanted to use was $2700 per month. Robert and Damir only had about 20 kW worth of customers at the time, and the building only had about 30 kW of immediately usable capacity. If they sold all of that at $100/kW, and if electricity and everything else were free, that would be at most $3000 of revenue, leaving the two of them with $300 per month for food. Their biggest investor other than my brother and I had given them about $5000. They were down to a few hundred dollars in their bank accounts. Damir has wealthy relatives, but they had viewed Damir and Robert's inability to secure a lease as a sign that they weren't going to succeed with their venture, and had refused to invest. Essentially, the gambit that Robert and Damir were making was to sign a lease that they would default on immediately in the hopes that the fact that they had a building would either allow them to get money from other investors (Ponzi scheme anyone?) or convince me to return to their team.
Anyway, I got the lease, and they didn't, and then they defaulted on the $950/month rent at the warehouse that they already had, etc. etc.
he didn't provide us so much as a finder's fee for the site.
Robert and Damir refused the stipend we offered them at the beginning in order to retain another 5% ownership. After we separated, they started demanding some sort of payment for their time. Sorry guys, that's not how it works. You don't get to negotiate something away at the beginning and then claim you still deserve it at the end.
In addition, he promptly started a business he earlier claimed no interest in starting.
I didn't have any interest in it when we started. I was left with little choice but to build the DC myself, since I had 230 kW worth of miners already ordered and arriving in around 1-2 months.
In summary, I would be very wary of hosting anything with Jtoomim. He has proven himself to be duplicitous on multiple occasions, and his claims that we owe him something after the stunt he pulled are laughable.
[5/15/14, 9:40:21 AM] Robert Van Kirk: one way you could help us
[5/15/14, 9:40:36 AM] Robert Van Kirk: is we have $2k tied up in the security deposit on the location.
[5/15/14, 9:41:05 AM] Robert Van Kirk: we really could use that cash to help us ship some of the gpu miners back to customers.
[5/15/14, 9:41:32 AM] Robert Van Kirk: or even just part of it.
We gave them that money. We got 1/4 of it back.
Anyway, I'm curious to hear whether ASICSPACE will deny that they defaulted on their lease, or that they allowed their internet bill to go unpaid for several months, or that they took hashrate from their customers for themselves, or that they were unable to return property to their customers in a timely fashion. Those claims are verifiable or falsifiable. They're factual.
