[closed] Zeta Bitcoin Mining

[Graet]

Thanks zefir
got email
All the best in your future ventures
You know where to find me
Best wishes
Graet

[1713514864]

1713514864

[1713514864]

1713514864

[zefir]

Update: all claimed shares bought back; winding up almost complete


Dear (ex-)investors,

winding up ZETA-MINING is almost done: from the 4000 outstanding shares before GLBSE closed, I bought back all but 239 for 0.1BTC per share. Those remaining ones will remain claimable until end of Q1/2013 and will be granted the cash-out option. With that few shares left and no reasonable incentive to refuse the cash-out option for the remaining investors, I quit calculating and accounting of further dividends. With it, ZETA-MINING is effectively closed.


Thank you all for the great support. I wish you the best of luck with your further investments and your remaining claim processes with other assets. I am very sorry that your investment in ZETA was a loss (like any other mining investment in 2012). For sure it is no comfort to me, but if it makes you feel better: I lost way more than anyone of you. On the other hand, I learned a lot - not only technical aspects but also a lot on human nature and its dark side.

As soon as I receive my electricity bill at the end of this year, I plan to do a final revision and present you how this mining venture went from the issuer's / operator's perspective.



Cheers,
Zefir

[zefir]

Dear (ex-)investors,

while I was catching up this forum threads, I stumbled on this post that affected me personally: the author accuses security issuers of misusing the GLBSE fiasco to push investors out of their shares through buy-back-offers. AFAIK so far I am the only one who offered a cash-out option, therefore I feel personally attacked and indirectly charged with fraud / scam.

In my emails to investors and in this thread, for several times I explained why 1MHps will never make you more than 0.1BTC mining income over its remaining lifetime. I hoped for your understanding and your appreciation of that offer as my way to thank you for your support. In no way I did force anyone of you to take that offer, that's why I can't accept any allegations harming my integrity.


If anyone believes that this was a bad deal and expects to earn more through mining, I am willing to back my expectation with hashing power: 1GHps for 50BTC. That is, I'll sell you perpetual mining contracts for half the price I bought your ZETA-MINING shares back some days ago. If your math works for you, feel free to contact me for further details.



Cheers,
Zefir

[dishwara]

You didn't paid dividend for the time Nefario holding assets.
You just sent email explaining about dividend returns & asked/forced them sell.
Bonds bought with out giving dividend for more than a month.

[zefir]

You didn't paid dividend for the time Nefario holding assets.
You just sent email explaining about dividend returns & asked/forced them sell.
Bonds bought with out giving dividend for more than a month.

So you think you should get the pending dividends and a cash-out option to sell your shares for more than twice they are worth? You for sure can ask for that, but sorry: that's not the deal.

We discussed this in detail over email; if you changed your mind and would like to chose the dividends, please contact me. We can reverse the cash-out any time and you will get the accumulated and all future dividend payments instead. From the feedback received I'm pretty sure that this dealing was in the investors' best interest, and I'll do anything to counter your doubts about that.


Finally, it would be fair if you could please stop claiming that I forced you or anyone else to cash-out, since that's just not true (and evident from everyone's confirmation email).


Thanks,
Zefir

[zefir]

Dear Bitcoiners and Ex-investors,

the wind up is almost complete: all but 27 shares were bought back. The holders of those did not respond to my emails so far, so I need to assume they left the community. If they remain silent until end of March, I am going to donate 2.7BTC to some Bitcoin related project.


As promised, with the closing of ZETA-MINING I want to provide some numbers as reference for the chronicles of failed bitcoin mining ventures - here we go.

Expenses
ZETA-MINING was build around 5 BFLS and 50 Cairnsmore1 FPGA boards. Setting up the rig and operating it in 2012 took 46.1k$ as follows:

Type	Amount (k$)
Setup Costs
50 CM1 boards	32.0
5 BFLS	3.0
Taxes + Shipping	4.1
Installation + Infrastructure	2.8
Currency Conversion Fees	0.7
Operational Costs
Electricity	3.1
Redundant ISP	0.4
Total	46.1

Income / Assets
During 2012, ZETA-MINING mined 2337 BTC.

The remaining value of the assets is hard to estimate. While BFLS still have a resale value matching their initial price for the trade-in program, CM1 boards are more or less worthless. With ASICs existing, I do not expect to get more than 100$ per board - considering shipping costs and handling effort, it barely makes sense to sell them. Same goes for infrastructure: PSUs do have value, but are heavy and costly to ship, USB hubs and cables are worthless.

Asset	Resale Value (k$)
47 CM1 boards	2.0
5 BFLS	2.5
Installation + Infrastructure	1.0
Total	5.5

Result
46.1k$ were invested to mine 2337 BTC. With the remaining asset value of 5.5k$, the investment per mined BTC is 17.37$/BTC, which coincidentally more or less matches the current exchange rate.


Investor's Perspective
As stated before in this thread, investing in ZETA-MINING was a loss, like any other investment in Bitcoin mining in 2012 was. Many investors took my offer to swap their shares for ASICMINER, therefore it is difficult to quantify how high the loss for investors effectively is. What can be quantified is the number for someone who remained invested from IPO to the final buy-out. Those investors bought shares for 0.295BTC, received 0.0819BTC in dividends and finally sold for 0.1BTC per share.

That's an absolute loss of 0.113BTC per share or 38% of their initial investment.

Issuer's Perspective
Quantification of my own loss is even more difficult: on top of the ASICMINER swaps and other offers investors took (like buy-backs that always have been in favor of investors), it all depends on when BTC has been converted to fiat to cover my expenses.

This is roughly how it went:

• sold 7500 shares for a total of 2212.5BTC
• converted those at ~5$/BTC to 11k$
• paid back investors ~1350BTC
• sold mined BTC regularly for $, averaged to 8.5$/BTC

As a result, my net investment was 35.1k$ compared to a net mining income of ~8k$. Minus the assumed remaining asset value of 5.5k$, my net loss is somewhere at 21.6k$, or 61%.


Bottom Line
I am tempted to modify the valuation parameters to let this look better, like denominating it fully or partially in BTC, assuming ideal exchange rates / times, assuming ASICMINER will succeed and sky-rocket, etc.

But that's not relevant. No matter what: this was a disastrous investment - for investors as well as for me as the issuer / operator.



Sorry for that and all the best,
Zefir