[GLBSE] BFLS.RIG - BFL Hardware mining & Sales

[Inaba]

Payment just went out... had a little bug in the script that wasn't letting it send and got it fixed.  I'll do one more manual iteration and then I'll automate it.  I'm actually pretty excited about it!   It will make things so much easier on me and more predictable for everyone else!

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[RHA]

I've got a payment, thanks. It is one transaction with multiple outputs (the proper tool for the payments).
It looks like 0.00101545 BTC per share and my shares count is OK.
I think that the earlier amounts will be complemented soon.

[Epoch]

I've got a payment, thanks. It is one transaction with multiple outputs (the proper tool for the payments).
It looks like 0.00101545 BTC per share and my shares count is OK.
I think that the earlier amounts will be complemented soon.

How much was sent out in total? If it was around 100BTC and the payment was 0.001/share, it would mean there are around 100,000 shares outstanding. Is this right? That's the equivalent of about 16 mini rigs.

[lumberjack]

How much was sent out in total? If it was around 100BTC and the payment was 0.001/share, it would mean there are around 100,000 shares outstanding. Is this right? That's the equivalent of about 16 mini rigs.

Output was 105.26389291: http://blockchain.info/tx/c8fc47b8ec6c323a885b6ef2b1846889a80c7b3fb786199f5aa8dc55d37c636a

So, somewhere in the area of 103600.

[Inaba]

Second payment has gone out.  Things look good ... I just set it to automatic, so it should check every hour and when the balance goes over 100 BTC, it will trigger a payout.

Yes, there is just under 100,000 shares outstanding.  Keep in mind, most of those minirigs are hosted minirigs, not BFLS rigs.

[HorseRider]

I have some shares for sale, and the price is 0.498BTC/share. and anyone who bought 50 shares at once will have another 1% discount. The Chinese New Year is a traditional point for clearing the debt and giving Lucky money to children. I am quite in need of cash now.

The sale of the shares should be conduct through the PM system of the forum, and the record of the PM will be held as evidence before all transactions are closed.

To reduce the burden of Inaba, I will first record and public the transaction in this post. I will pay the dividend accordingly in this selling period. And after most of shares are sold out, I will deliver the shareholder list to Inaba, and Inaba can update his script at once.

Just PM me your number of shares to buy, email and bitcoin address. (Which I will give to Inaba.) First come first serve.

[Inaba]

Umm yeah, that's not exactly how that works.  I'm not going to being facilitating the buying and selling of shares.  That is far, far too much work and liability.

[PsychoticBoy]

How do I get rid off those shares then?
Will you buy them back Inaba?

[Epoch]

Second payment has gone out.  Things look good ... I just set it to automatic, so it should check every hour and when the balance goes over 100 BTC, it will trigger a payout.

Inaba, is the payout threshold still set to 100BTC? If so, it hasn't triggered (we're above 200BTC).

I haven't heard any feedback about the 100 BTC threshold from other shareholders ... is it too often? Not often enough? I got used to the weekly payments under GLBSE but if a more frequent payment is preferred, that is fine as well.

[Inaba]

Hmm... Bitcoind is throwing an error when I try to do the sendmany.  Thanks for pointing it out, I will look into it now and get it fixed.

*EDIT* -  Fixed now, payment just went out.  It should work going forward.

I'm open to a different threshold for payment, I just picked 100 BTC arbitrarily, since that should average around once a day or so... but if people would rather have larger payments more infrequently, I'm fine with that as well.

[Epoch]

I'm open to a different threshold for payment, I just picked 100 BTC arbitrarily, since that should average around once a day or so... but if people would rather have larger payments more infrequently, I'm fine with that as well.

I'd say leave it as-is at 100BTC; no need to put in more work than necessary. The benefit of frequent payments is that if something breaks, it doesn't take long for someone to notice.

[Vbs]

Yeah, the 100 BTC threshold seems a good choice, averaging for daily payments.

[Epoch]

With BFL ASICs shipping soon (mid-February as per the current BFL timeline), BFLS equipment should be receiving an ASIC upgrade hopefully not long after. I'd like to clarify what this means for current BFLS and BFLS.RIG shareholders and open some discussion.

My understanding is that ASIC trade-ins for BFLS hardware has already been ordered and paid for. Once the upgrades begin, here are my thoughts on a reasonable way to proceed. By this I mean that share value is preserved throughout the ASIC upgrade process. Consider:

For BFLS (Singles):
- currently 1 Single represents 200 shares and is worth $599. 832Mhps per Single.
- 1 BFLS share is thus worth $3.00 and corresponds to 4.16Mhps.
- a Single SC upgrade costs $699 yielding 60,000 Mhps.
- Inaba would assign 433 shares total for each SC Single: 200 shares (the original $599) would stay with the current owners. The additional 233 shares (the $699 upgrade cost) would be assigned to Inaba.
- each BFLS SC (Single) share would still be worth $3.00 as before ($3 x 433 shares is $1299, the full price of a Single SC); shareholders would not lose (or gain) any value.
- each BFLS SC share would produce 138.4Mhps (60000 / 433 shares).

For BFLS.RIG (MiniRig):
- currently 1 MiniRig represents 6058 shares and is worth $15295. 26400Mhps per MiniRig.
- 1 BFLS.RIG share is thus worth $2.52 and corresponds to 4.4Mhps.
- a MiniRig SC upgrade costs $14604 yielding 1,500,000 Mhps.
- Inaba would assign 11842 total shares for each SC MiniRig: 6058 shares (the original $15295) would stay with the current owners. The additional 5784 shares (the $14604 upgrade cost) would be assigned to Inaba.
- each BFLS.RIG SC share would still be worth $2.52 as before ($2.52 x 11842 shares is $29899, the full price of a MiniRig SC); shareholders would not lose (or gain) any value.
- each BFLS.RIG SC share would produce 126.6Mhps (1500000 / 11842 shares).

Notice that after the ASIC upgrade, a BFLS share will have 1.1x the hashrate of a BFLS.RIG share (right now BFLS.RIG has the advantage in hashrate).

If we still want to combine BFLS and BFLS.RIG shares into one pot after the ASIC upgrade (I think we do, if for no other reason than to simplify the logistics), the above analysis supports a 1:1.1 conversion. That is, 1 BFLS share becomes 1.1 BFLS.RIG shares.

To be fair to BFLS.RIG shareholders, and as suggested by previous commentors, any conversion should wait for the ASIC upgrades to begin so that BFLS.RIG owners can enjoy the higher hashrate/share they currently get.

Inaba, what do you think? I suspect you've already put some thought into this issue and may already have your own plans, but I'm throwing this out here for discussion. Anyone else see this as a reasonable (or unreasonable) approach?

[Inaba]

You've summed it up nicely Epoch, thanks. 

At this point, I'm not sure I see a need to specifically combine the shares since the code is in and the share type is separate in the DB it's largely academic.  Although I will likely be upgrading all of the singles to a minirig and paying the difference just for the sake of simplicity in management. If someone were to want to actually trade in shares for a single, it might become an issue which is my only concern at this point.

[Epoch]

Inaba, when you get a chance can you check on the status of the payout script?

I'm not sure what exactly triggers a payout once we accumulate 100BTC, but we've been at 109 for 47+ blocks ... since then several Eclipse blocks have been confirmed (beyond 120 confirmation) and paid out; and the pool has found new blocks during that period as well.  There were some anomalies with the stats displayed on the Eclipse website for the past few hours (these seem to have been fixed), which may or may not be related.

I can't think of anything else that the script might be waiting for so perhaps it is stuck. Not a big deal, but I thought I'd bring it up in case people are expecting a payment.

[Inaba]

Payout script is disabled at the moment. I will have it running again tonight.  I was diagnosing some latency issues with a couple of the boxes, one of them being the BFLS box.  The latest payout should come tonight once I get a chance to sit down and re-enable it. 

[BR0KK]

Is there any chance that you got a list of shareholders from nefario?

I can't access glbse (its  gone), i don't have a list (my error i know) but i know that there must be a list out there since i was contacted by many other companies to claim my shares on several platforms!

I didn't here from you?

[Inaba]

I sent out several emails, made a Google Doc and made a number of posts in these threads during the claims process over the course of a couple months.  Feel free to read back in this and the BFLS  threads to follow the course of events.  All but a handful of shares were accounted for.

[BR0KK]

Ok I'll go through the thread and look for it.

It can't be much shares. 10 for RIG and 20 to 30 for BFLS.(or less I don't know for sure). Maybe I do have a log somewhere.... I'll search for it!

[Epoch]

I've been meaning to write this when the BFL ASICs started shipping, but it probably doesn't hurt to get the ball rolling on this a bit earlier. I may be opening a can of worms, though; we'll see.

Inaba, I have initial questions about the existing hardware and how it maps to outstanding BFLS and BFLS.RIG shares:

1. are all (or at least a large majority of) BFLS shares backed by Singles?
2. are all (or at least a large majority of) BFLS.RIG shares backed by MiniRigs?

Whether they are or not is not that important right now (unless someone wanted to convert their shares to hardware, I suppose), but it may become important with the conversion to ASIC. Which brings me to another set of questions:

3. can you share some details of your current plan in converting the existing BFLS and RIG hardware to SC ASIC? Specifically (but not limited to):
3a. is it your intention to convert ALL existing FPGA hardware?
3b. have the upgrade orders been placed with BFL yet?
3c. are any of these orders likely to be part of the 'first batch' shipment from BFL?
3d. what is the (best guess) expected rollout schedule once ASIC shipments start and conversion begins?

And regarding BFLS and RIG share conversion:

4. will share conversion happen along the lines I've outlined here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1455088#msg1455088
4a. will BFLS and RIG shares be combined at this point, or still kept separate? Currently the hashrates of a BFLS and RIG share are essentially identical (1.5% advantage to RIG) but after conversion an 'SC BFLS' will have 10% more hashrate than an 'SC RIG' share. This may be an opportunity to combine the two into one pot using a 1:1.1 ratio as discussed earlier.

The reason I ask is that I've been using the blockchain to track BFLS(.RIG) dividend payments in detail since the end of December. This has been straightforward because the hardware is all FPGAs and both BFLS and RIG shares hash at approximately the same rate.

But that will no longer be case once ASICs start replacing them, so I'd like to get a sense of the hardware breakdown to be able to calculate the expected dividend payments. There will be a transition period until all FPGAs are replaced; I'm not too worried about tracking that. I'm more interested in what the final hardware will be and how it will map to 'SC BFLS' and 'SC RIG' shares. Or if the two share types will be combined going forward.

A lot of questions in here, and not the type to be answered easily or quickly; I apologize for that. But I'll thank you in advance for any clarification you can provide.