ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[empoweoqwj]

I'm a tiny bit displeased by the fact, that AM doesn't have love for the international anymore.. ;(

Seems that BTCGuild is gonna ship International in a few days!

"International Sales Update:
Starting August 2, international orders will become available." (Source)

Would be aaawesome if they decide to add the blades!

I can't take too much good news in one day. Gives me palpitations. Let's leave the blades news a bit. Regular good news stream  

[elasticband]

how do people who originally bought sticks from Friedcat at 1.99BTC each take advantage of the coupon discount system?

[lophie]

how do people who originally bought sticks from Friedcat at 1.99BTC each take advantage of the coupon discount system?

In cryptographic identities we believe. The way of the true Bitcoiners.

Need I say more?

[chriswilmer]

Well it is also a problem for people sending transactions.  They have to wait longer for an initial transaction confirmation because ASICminer is passing those transactions on to the next miner to find a block.

Someone pointed out it also leads to more orphaned blocks for ASICminer, although I think this doesn't happen too often.

[elasticband]

how do people who originally bought sticks from Friedcat at 1.99BTC each take advantage of the coupon discount system?

In cryptographic identities we believe. The way of the true Bitcoiners.

Need I say more?

cool, will wait and see

[keeron]

All these price cut confirmations (and massive jumps on group buy/btcguild orders) is giving me a good indication of our weekly dividend...

Can't wait for those blade sales to be official! Bring on the basics, BFL/Avalon. Though at this point might as well buy the hardware from asicminer and fulfill your preorders :-)

[notme]

Well it is also a problem for people sending transactions.  They have to wait longer for an initial transaction confirmation because ASICminer is passing those transactions on to the next miner to find a block.

Someone pointed out it also leads to more orphaned blocks for ASICminer, although I think this doesn't happen too often.

ASICMiner has a higher percentage of orphans than any pool.

[SimonL]

What are the conditions for a buyback of ASICminer

Here are the only conditions:

If we haven't raised enough money to tape out before August. 28, 2012, we will return 100.5% of the total raised funds to investors of ASICMINER. The 0.5% is for compensating the GLBSE fee.

That's it. Question answered!

So now 2012 has passed...

each ASICMINER share always owns 1/400000 of the company.

...Friedcat's contract with us isn't for life, it's for eternity.

I'm ok with that!

No issues here ^_^
We will grow old together haha

I'm curious about this no buyback clause situation. Does that mean that even if say, a huge company is interested in buying the entirety of ASICMINER's operations that the company controlling ASICMINER, Bitfountain, will not be able to sell, even if the offer were incredibly high for each share? Would this mean the company offering to buy back the shares would need to consult and negotiate with every single holder to buy out all the shares? Or would it simply mean that the majority holding of Bitfountain's shares would shift owners and the new owners would be obligated to continue serving the rest of the shareholders according to the initial IPO conditions?

Pardon me if I sound a little naive, but is this a good or a bad thing?

[empoweoqwj]

What are the conditions for a buyback of ASICminer

Here are the only conditions:

If we haven't raised enough money to tape out before August. 28, 2012, we will return 100.5% of the total raised funds to investors of ASICMINER. The 0.5% is for compensating the GLBSE fee.

That's it. Question answered!

So now 2012 has passed...

each ASICMINER share always owns 1/400000 of the company.

...Friedcat's contract with us isn't for life, it's for eternity.

I'm ok with that!

No issues here ^_^
We will grow old together haha

I'm curious about this no buyback clause situation. Does that mean that even if say, a huge company is interested in buying the entirety of ASICMINER's operations that the company controlling ASICMINER, Bitfountain, will not be able to sell, even if the offer were incredibly high for each share? Would this mean the company offering to buy back the shares would need to consult and negotiate with every single holder to buy out all the shares? Or would it simply mean that the majority holding of Bitfountain's shares would shift owners and the new owners would be obligated to continue serving the rest of the shareholders according to the initial IPO conditions?

Pardon me if I sound a little naive, but is this a good or a bad thing?

I think the whole "can ASICMINER ever be sold and under what conditions" is an incredibly high-priority question to ask friedcat. We all need clarification on this from the cat's mouth

[SebastianJu]

Are you familiar with the phrase "past performance does not guarantee future return"? The important word here is "guarantee". The observation that Bitcoin did well in the past does not serve as a reasonable argument for why it will continue to increase in value in the future.

It looks like you missed the point. When i found bitcoins 2 years ago it looked to me like all was done already. It looked to me the same way like you look on it today.
Of course there is NO guarantee that it goes forward the same way. So if you believe that the current status is the end of the line then its ok to me.

[bobboooiie]

What are the conditions for a buyback of ASICminer

Here are the only conditions:

If we haven't raised enough money to tape out before August. 28, 2012, we will return 100.5% of the total raised funds to investors of ASICMINER. The 0.5% is for compensating the GLBSE fee.

That's it. Question answered!

So now 2012 has passed...

each ASICMINER share always owns 1/400000 of the company.

...Friedcat's contract with us isn't for life, it's for eternity.

I'm ok with that!

No issues here ^_^
We will grow old together haha

I'm curious about this no buyback clause situation. Does that mean that even if say, a huge company is interested in buying the entirety of ASICMINER's operations that the company controlling ASICMINER, Bitfountain, will not be able to sell, even if the offer were incredibly high for each share? Would this mean the company offering to buy back the shares would need to consult and negotiate with every single holder to buy out all the shares? Or would it simply mean that the majority holding of Bitfountain's shares would shift owners and the new owners would be obligated to continue serving the rest of the shareholders according to the initial IPO conditions?

Pardon me if I sound a little naive, but is this a good or a bad thing?

I think the whole "can ASICMINER ever be sold and under what conditions" is an incredibly high-priority question to ask friedcat. We all need clarification on this from the cat's mouth

I think that question is pretty self explanatory. Who do you think would buy asicminer as a whole ? If you think about what AM is, it only has good value for some lets say 1-2 years (and that is pretty optimistic), after that there will be competitors with better and more efficient ASICs presumably. For what asicminer would be worth in BTCs that would be a huge gamble or even reckless investment to make. The only real possibility in my eyes is that BTC would explode to 1k+/BTC, some big mainstream company would take interest but even after that would such a company need anything from "underground Chinese" operation ?

[JordanL]

What are the conditions for a buyback of ASICminer

Here are the only conditions:

If we haven't raised enough money to tape out before August. 28, 2012, we will return 100.5% of the total raised funds to investors of ASICMINER. The 0.5% is for compensating the GLBSE fee.

That's it. Question answered!

So now 2012 has passed...

each ASICMINER share always owns 1/400000 of the company.

...Friedcat's contract with us isn't for life, it's for eternity.

I'm ok with that!

No issues here ^_^
We will grow old together haha

I'm curious about this no buyback clause situation. Does that mean that even if say, a huge company is interested in buying the entirety of ASICMINER's operations that the company controlling ASICMINER, Bitfountain, will not be able to sell, even if the offer were incredibly high for each share? Would this mean the company offering to buy back the shares would need to consult and negotiate with every single holder to buy out all the shares? Or would it simply mean that the majority holding of Bitfountain's shares would shift owners and the new owners would be obligated to continue serving the rest of the shareholders according to the initial IPO conditions?

Pardon me if I sound a little naive, but is this a good or a bad thing?

I think the whole "can ASICMINER ever be sold and under what conditions" is an incredibly high-priority question to ask friedcat. We all need clarification on this from the cat's mouth

I think that question is pretty self explanatory. Who do you think would buy asicminer as a whole ? If you think about what AM is, it only has good value for some lets say 1-2 years (and that is pretty optimistic), after that there will be competitors with better and more efficient ASICs presumably. For what asicminer would be worth in BTCs that would be a huge gamble or even reckless investment to make. The only real possibility in my eyes is that BTC would explode to 1k+/BTC, some big mainstream company would take interest but even after that would such a company need anything from "underground Chinese" operation ?

That is one hell of a presumption. ASICMINER is light-years beyond any of the competition, and they are an extremely forward looking company... their next-generation of ASIC chips will likely be coming online before BFL ships half of thier pre-orders from last september.

The likelihood of any of the so-called competitors with their "pre-orders" actually producing real-world hardware that is more efficient than what ASICMINER is able to produce is extremely unlikely, in my humble opinion.

Also, they are not an "underground Chinese operation"... Bitfountain is a legally registered corporation operating legally in the PRC.

[SimonL]

What are the conditions for a buyback of ASICminer

Here are the only conditions:

If we haven't raised enough money to tape out before August. 28, 2012, we will return 100.5% of the total raised funds to investors of ASICMINER. The 0.5% is for compensating the GLBSE fee.

That's it. Question answered!

So now 2012 has passed...

each ASICMINER share always owns 1/400000 of the company.

...Friedcat's contract with us isn't for life, it's for eternity.

I'm ok with that!

No issues here ^_^
We will grow old together haha

I'm curious about this no buyback clause situation. Does that mean that even if say, a huge company is interested in buying the entirety of ASICMINER's operations that the company controlling ASICMINER, Bitfountain, will not be able to sell, even if the offer were incredibly high for each share? Would this mean the company offering to buy back the shares would need to consult and negotiate with every single holder to buy out all the shares? Or would it simply mean that the majority holding of Bitfountain's shares would shift owners and the new owners would be obligated to continue serving the rest of the shareholders according to the initial IPO conditions?

Pardon me if I sound a little naive, but is this a good or a bad thing?

I think the whole "can ASICMINER ever be sold and under what conditions" is an incredibly high-priority question to ask friedcat. We all need clarification on this from the cat's mouth

I think that question is pretty self explanatory. Who do you think would buy asicminer as a whole ? If you think about what AM is, it only has good value for some lets say 1-2 years (and that is pretty optimistic), after that there will be competitors with better and more efficient ASICs presumably. For what asicminer would be worth in BTCs that would be a huge gamble or even reckless investment to make. The only real possibility in my eyes is that BTC would explode to 1k+/BTC, some big mainstream company would take interest but even after that would such a company need anything from "underground Chinese" operation ?

As I understand it when big players want to enter the market they buy out promising businesses to get a head start, Microsoft did it, facebook did it, etc. Bitfountain has a huge head start, they are organised, resourceful, have been unflinchingly reliable, and are already planning into the future for projected growth. IMO any CEO looking to break into Bitcoin mining big time as a mining company or even just a producer of mining equipment would give their left nut for all those advantages. VCs are dropping significant amounts of money on startups that can prove themselves in the Bitcoin space. None are looking to start from scratch. Satoshi dice is the first mover in the gambling space with a shareholder base, it got sold for a small fortune. Knowing that, ASICMINER could become a possible target for acquisition for someone with very deep pockets. What I'm curious about is, is Bitfointain's members even slightly interested in such an acquisition. There are no terms for a buyout, nor is there an explicit statement indicating whether Friedcat et al. are even interested in a possible buyout.

All I know about the terms regarding the shares is that there will only ever be 400,000 . Anything regarding forced selling or forced buying is not defined. I honestly believe in Friedcat's willingness to do right by his investors but does this really mean shareholders have absolute control over their assets? If so that's pretty amazing, traditionally there's always some kind of caveat.

[empoweoqwj]

What are the conditions for a buyback of ASICminer

Here are the only conditions:

If we haven't raised enough money to tape out before August. 28, 2012, we will return 100.5% of the total raised funds to investors of ASICMINER. The 0.5% is for compensating the GLBSE fee.

That's it. Question answered!

So now 2012 has passed...

each ASICMINER share always owns 1/400000 of the company.

...Friedcat's contract with us isn't for life, it's for eternity.

I'm ok with that!

No issues here ^_^
We will grow old together haha

I'm curious about this no buyback clause situation. Does that mean that even if say, a huge company is interested in buying the entirety of ASICMINER's operations that the company controlling ASICMINER, Bitfountain, will not be able to sell, even if the offer were incredibly high for each share? Would this mean the company offering to buy back the shares would need to consult and negotiate with every single holder to buy out all the shares? Or would it simply mean that the majority holding of Bitfountain's shares would shift owners and the new owners would be obligated to continue serving the rest of the shareholders according to the initial IPO conditions?

Pardon me if I sound a little naive, but is this a good or a bad thing?

I think the whole "can ASICMINER ever be sold and under what conditions" is an incredibly high-priority question to ask friedcat. We all need clarification on this from the cat's mouth

I think that question is pretty self explanatory. Who do you think would buy asicminer as a whole ? If you think about what AM is, it only has good value for some lets say 1-2 years (and that is pretty optimistic), after that there will be competitors with better and more efficient ASICs presumably. For what asicminer would be worth in BTCs that would be a huge gamble or even reckless investment to make. The only real possibility in my eyes is that BTC would explode to 1k+/BTC, some big mainstream company would take interest but even after that would such a company need anything from "underground Chinese" operation ?

As I understand it when big players want to enter the market they buy out promising businesses to get a head start, Microsoft did it, facebook did it, etc. Bitfountain has a huge head start, they are organised, resourceful, have been unflinchingly reliable, and are already planning into the future for projected growth. IMO any CEO looking to break into Bitcoin mining big time as a mining company or even just a producer of mining equipment would give their left nut for all those advantages. VCs are dropping significant amounts of money on startups that can prove themselves in the Bitcoin space. None are looking to start from scratch. Satoshi dice is the first mover in the gambling space with a shareholder base, it got sold for a small fortune. Knowing that, ASICMINER could become a possible target for acquisition for someone with very deep pockets. What I'm curious about is, is Bitfointain's members even slightly interested in such an acquisition. There are no terms for a buyout, nor is there an explicit statement indicating whether Friedcat et al. are even interested in a possible buyout.

All I know about the terms regarding the shares is that there will only ever be 400,000 . Anything regarding forced selling or forced buying is not defined. I honestly believe in Friedcat's willingness to do right by his investors but does this really mean shareholders have absolute control over their assets? If so that's pretty amazing, traditionally there's always some kind of caveat.

Exactly, AM are very likely to be a target because they lead their field and VC's are interested in the space, especially if the bitcoin price picks up again. And until friedcat makes a statement to clarify, its as clear as mud what rights / control shareholders have. Clarification please.

[Mabsark]

What are the conditions for a buyback of ASICminer

Here are the only conditions:

If we haven't raised enough money to tape out before August. 28, 2012, we will return 100.5% of the total raised funds to investors of ASICMINER. The 0.5% is for compensating the GLBSE fee.

That's it. Question answered!

So now 2012 has passed...

each ASICMINER share always owns 1/400000 of the company.

...Friedcat's contract with us isn't for life, it's for eternity.

I'm ok with that!

No issues here ^_^
We will grow old together haha

I'm curious about this no buyback clause situation. Does that mean that even if say, a huge company is interested in buying the entirety of ASICMINER's operations that the company controlling ASICMINER, Bitfountain, will not be able to sell, even if the offer were incredibly high for each share? Would this mean the company offering to buy back the shares would need to consult and negotiate with every single holder to buy out all the shares? Or would it simply mean that the majority holding of Bitfountain's shares would shift owners and the new owners would be obligated to continue serving the rest of the shareholders according to the initial IPO conditions?

Pardon me if I sound a little naive, but is this a good or a bad thing?

I think the whole "can ASICMINER ever be sold and under what conditions" is an incredibly high-priority question to ask friedcat. We all need clarification on this from the cat's mouth

I think that question is pretty self explanatory. Who do you think would buy asicminer as a whole ? If you think about what AM is, it only has good value for some lets say 1-2 years (and that is pretty optimistic), after that there will be competitors with better and more efficient ASICs presumably. For what asicminer would be worth in BTCs that would be a huge gamble or even reckless investment to make. The only real possibility in my eyes is that BTC would explode to 1k+/BTC, some big mainstream company would take interest but even after that would such a company need anything from "underground Chinese" operation ?

That is one hell of a presumption. ASICMINER is light-years beyond any of the competition, and they are an extremely forward looking company... their next-generation of ASIC chips will likely be coming online before BFL ships half of thier pre-orders from last september.

The likelihood of any of the so-called competitors with their "pre-orders" actually producing real-world hardware that is more efficient than what ASICMINER is able to produce is extremely unlikely, in my humble opinion.

Also, they are not an "underground Chinese operation"... Bitfountain is a legally registered corporation operating legally in the PRC.

AM are only ahead of the competition in delivery time frames. Both Avalon and BFL have shipped or brought online more hashing power and every ASIC developer apart from Avalon are using more efficient ASICs than AM. Also, AM's next gen chips won't be coming online until November. There's no need to spread such misinformation and it just reflects poorly on AM.

[JordanL]

What are the conditions for a buyback of ASICminer

Here are the only conditions:

If we haven't raised enough money to tape out before August. 28, 2012, we will return 100.5% of the total raised funds to investors of ASICMINER. The 0.5% is for compensating the GLBSE fee.

That's it. Question answered!

So now 2012 has passed...

each ASICMINER share always owns 1/400000 of the company.

...Friedcat's contract with us isn't for life, it's for eternity.

I'm ok with that!

No issues here ^_^
We will grow old together haha

I'm curious about this no buyback clause situation. Does that mean that even if say, a huge company is interested in buying the entirety of ASICMINER's operations that the company controlling ASICMINER, Bitfountain, will not be able to sell, even if the offer were incredibly high for each share? Would this mean the company offering to buy back the shares would need to consult and negotiate with every single holder to buy out all the shares? Or would it simply mean that the majority holding of Bitfountain's shares would shift owners and the new owners would be obligated to continue serving the rest of the shareholders according to the initial IPO conditions?

Pardon me if I sound a little naive, but is this a good or a bad thing?

I think the whole "can ASICMINER ever be sold and under what conditions" is an incredibly high-priority question to ask friedcat. We all need clarification on this from the cat's mouth

I think that question is pretty self explanatory. Who do you think would buy asicminer as a whole ? If you think about what AM is, it only has good value for some lets say 1-2 years (and that is pretty optimistic), after that there will be competitors with better and more efficient ASICs presumably. For what asicminer would be worth in BTCs that would be a huge gamble or even reckless investment to make. The only real possibility in my eyes is that BTC would explode to 1k+/BTC, some big mainstream company would take interest but even after that would such a company need anything from "underground Chinese" operation ?

That is one hell of a presumption. ASICMINER is light-years beyond any of the competition, and they are an extremely forward looking company... their next-generation of ASIC chips will likely be coming online before BFL ships half of thier pre-orders from last september.

The likelihood of any of the so-called competitors with their "pre-orders" actually producing real-world hardware that is more efficient than what ASICMINER is able to produce is extremely unlikely, in my humble opinion.

Also, they are not an "underground Chinese operation"... Bitfountain is a legally registered corporation operating legally in the PRC.

AM are only ahead of the competition in delivery time frames. Both Avalon and BFL have shipped or brought online more hashing power and every ASIC developer apart from Avalon are using more efficient ASICs than AM. Also, AM's next gen chips won't be coming online until November. There's no need to spread such misinformation and it just reflects poorly on AM.

What misinformation are you talking about?

Other companies have brought more hash power online than ASICMINER... are you high? That is simply false.

My opinion is just that... my opinion. Personally I can't imagine that any other company will be able to compete with ASICMINER over the next few months (who else is shipping ASICs??), or in November when their next generation of chips are ready. They have proven that they have the ability to manufacture chips on a large scale, and there is no reason to believe that some other company will gain and advantage on them in that respect.

[SebastianJu]

Thats the 9. quote in a quote... Surely no one will read everything again...

[JordanL]

Sorry my fault now this thread is going to be excessively long.   ;-)

Seriously though point taken, thanks.

[velacreations]

I don't really understand why AM dropped the price on the USBs.  They were selling great at ~1BTC.  I can only assume that they are trying to clearn inventory to make room for new hardware.

Will blades go on sale next week?

[binaryFate]

I don't really understand why AM dropped the price on the USBs.  They were selling great at ~1BTC.  I can only assume that they are trying to clearn inventory to make room for new hardware.

Because competition is here now, with prices between 0.6 and 1:
http://thegenesisblock.com/avalon-k1-usb-bitcoin-miner-to-rival-asicminer/