ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[friedcat]

How much has Bitfountain already invested, to give it right to 50% of shares?

Thanks for your question. Bitfountain has already invested 10k$ for the labor cost and EDA tools fee of physical design.
We ourselves made the logic-level design, tuning, and optimization so this part is almost free. We also keep another 15k$ or
so as a reserve for unexpected scenarios, but un-spent yet.

Of course the amount invested buy ourselves is much smaller compared to what we want to raise. Therefore it
resembles to the model that we become the 50% shareholder by contribution of mostly actual execution and technology factor.

Pricing of investment in venture business is always hard. Some would say 50% is unfair to the investors, because they
take almost all the risk. While others would say 50% is too high, since many angels provide all money for a startup to
bootstrapping out of it's infancy while only take 10-20%. But the greatest thing about market is that people vote with
their own stake, therefore the market cap of ASICMINER will tell us whether it's under- or over-priced in the next months
to come.

[Jutarul]

Also it would be nice to get updates on how the private-bulk fund raising fares....

Got about 50,000 shares of private-bulk pre-ordering already. Not fully executed yet though.

Cool. So together with the public GBLSE numbers it looks like you already have 30% of the funds accumulated within the first 2 days. That's a good sign I think

[silverbox]

If ASICMINER beats BFL to production and complete units, How do you plan to address the 51% issue..

Example  ASICMINER builds 30 T/hs of equipment.  BFL 0.  Network is at say 15 T/hs.

ASICMINER will then be 66% of the network.. 

This could be a problem.... 

[DeaDTerra]

If ASICMINER beats BFL to production and complete units, How do you plan to address the 51% issue..

Example  ASICMINER builds 30 T/hs of equipment.  BFL 0.  Network is at say 15 T/hs.

ASICMINER will then be 66% of the network.. 

This could be a problem.... 

Yea that won't be a problem. The network is huge, even with massive production of ASICS it won't reach 51% and even if it would, they would have no incentive to attack the system as their whole investment is based on the Bitcoins they mine and that they can sell them off to make a profit. If they each 51% I suggest mining a p2pool.
//DeaDTerra

[friedcat]

Update

Here we show something visual.

The first picture is the IC layout of the whole chip after P&R. The big cyan bar in the bottom center is the pins of the chip. Purple bars above and below the chip, as well as the light blue bars in the left and the right of the chip, are all power pads. The small rectangle in the bottom left is the blackbox of PLL IP module. The rest parts are real hashing units doing the actual job of erupting blocks.



The second picture is a magnified local part of the hashing unit. It's harder to tell which part is which in this picture, but it feels very nice for us to see how our logic design turns out physical.

[friedcat]

Yea that won't be a problem. The network is huge, even with massive production of ASICS it won't reach 51% and even if it would, they would have no incentive to attack the system as their whole investment is based on the Bitcoins they mine and that they can sell them off to make a profit. If they each 51% I suggest mining a p2pool.
//DeaDTerra

Thanks for answering when I was away. Yes, we are part of the Bitcoin world and rely on the security of Bitcoin to succeed. And if we ever reach 51%, we could use p2pool, or scatter our hashrates to different mining pools with explicit names like ASICMINER, and hence make the statistics public to all people who are concerned.

[Lethos]

Going p2pool from the start with that sort of hashing power would probably be a good idea. Alone you could be bigger than any other pool, unless their was a pool you really wanted to mine on.

[friedcat]

Going p2pool from the start with that sort of hashing power would probably be a good idea. Alone you could be bigger than any other pool, unless their was a pool you really wanted to mine on.

I'm not familiar with p2pool. We want to always make our hashrates public, or our financials won't be transparent enough. I wonder if it is easy to identify how much hashrates are contributed by us from the p2pool statistics alone.

[Lethos]

Going p2pool from the start with that sort of hashing power would probably be a good idea. Alone you could be bigger than any other pool, unless their was a pool you really wanted to mine on.

I'm not familiar with p2pool. We want to always make our hashrates public, or our financials won't be transparent enough. I wonder if it is easy to identify how much hashrates are contributed by us from the p2pool statistics alone.

Ah yes, I see your problem. You could do it, but having a 3rd party verify your hashrates by using a pool would be them confirming the numbers.

[HorseRider]

If the first batch of chips are proved to be successful, how soon will the next batch of chips come out and be ready for mining? I'm financial modeling this venture.

[HorseRider]

If ASICMINER beats BFL to production and complete units, How do you plan to address the 51% issue..

Example  ASICMINER builds 30 T/hs of equipment.  BFL 0.  Network is at say 15 T/hs.

ASICMINER will then be 66% of the network..  

This could be a problem....  

@silverbox

friedcat is a bitcoin believer. If he succeeds,  the bitcoin network will only be more secure and I'm more confident about the future of bitcoin.  Only the government and some irrational attackers controlled the ASIC technology will damage the security of bitcoin.

Friedcat will sell the ASIC mining rigs to the community for profit. Sooner or later, there will be other ASIC like BFL/largecoin which contribute to the total hashing rate.The competition will make cheap ASIC mining rigs distributed to every corner around the world, and it will make the bitcoin hater even more impossible to attack the bitcoin network.

[tucenaber]

If I understand correctly, Bitfountain is doing the manufacturing and ASICMINER is buying the equipment from them.

My questions:

- If you were sneaky you would siphon off some portion of the chips to yourself. You can get the chips for marginal cost and get insane profit from these. The ASICMINER investor is none the wiser and picks up the tab for the development, since ASICMINER is not involved and can keep totally open books. As long as you don't get too greedy you will be able to pull it off, as the new 'mystery miner'.

I'm not saying you will do this but I would like to hear your response.

- Is there a way for me to invest in Bitfountain directly? That seems much more interesting to me. You know, the only one making money from the gold rush was the guy selling shovels. I'm already too exposed to the mining risks, but selling shovels seems like a plan

[friedcat]

If the first batch of chips are proved to be successful, how soon will the next batch of chips come out and be ready for mining? I'm financial modeling this venture.

The chips will be as soon as immediately after the first batch of chips are tested by the foundry. But deploying of the newly produced chips still takes some time (PCB production, mining operation creation, employees and rents from expansion, etc).

On the chips' side, in our recent investigation to the foundry, it told us that although the minimum requirement for the first batch is 12 wafers, we have the privilege to stop paying the rest 9 ones if the first 3 ones fail to test. Therefore, the "first batch" is re-defined from 12 wafers to 3 wafers, and this is a good thing, because we could register the actual first batch as much more than number of 12 and don't have to pay for them before the mask set is proved to be correct.

[friedcat]

Thanks for your question.

If I understand correctly, Bitfountain is doing the manufacturing and ASICMINER is buying the equipment from them.

Actually not. One ASICMINER share represents 1/400,000 of the net profits from Bitfountain. Therefore the answer to this question:

- Is there a way for me to invest in Bitfountain directly? That seems much more interesting to me. You know, the only one making money from the gold rush was the guy selling shovels. I'm already too exposed to the mining risks, but selling shovels seems like a plan

will be that:

Investing in ASICMINER is investing in Bitfountain. No matter Bitfountain mines with its own hardware, sells its hardware/hashrates, or even expands its business domain, ASICMINER shareholders get all possible means of profits of Bitfountain proportionally.

- If you were sneaky you would siphon off some portion of the chips to yourself. You can get the chips for marginal cost and get insane profit from these. The ASICMINER investor is none the wiser and picks up the tab for the development, since ASICMINER is not involved and can keep totally open books. As long as you don't get too greedy you will be able to pull it off, as the new 'mystery miner'.

I'm not saying you will do this but I would like to hear your response.

This is the most significant problem here. There has to be a way for the board members or wider shareholders to monitor our financials and business operations. Representations could be sent by the board and do much of the job, and when we grow larger some professional auditing will be also very important. We will keep everything as transparent as enough with the help of our investors.

[BitcoinINV]

Im not sure I understand let me just check, If I understand here.
Your making equipment ASIC type, Seems pretty clear but want to make sure.
Are you Selling or not selling this equipment?
You are or are not a mining company as well?

[BitcoinINV]

Probably irrelevant at this early stage but are there any plans for socket mounting and pin compatibility on future versions?

Also, should everything work out and hardware become available to buy might there be any discounts to shareholders?

Or maybe some test batches to investor for testing and feedback?

[friedcat]

Im not sure I understand let me just check, If I understand here.
Your making equipment ASIC type, Seems pretty clear but want to make sure.
Are you Selling or not selling this equipment?
You are or are not a mining company as well?

Yes. We are making ASIC chips for Bitcoin mining purpose.

We will be selling the equipments, but are currently not accepting pre-orders.

We are a mining company as well. Since at least the first batch of chips, and probably more, will be consumed by us for self-mining. The investors will get both the profits from self-mining and device-selling.

[BitcoinINV]

Ok im about to be in the market for more mining gear and im going the ASIC way. My faith in BFL being done in time is very low. With that being said I would love to have a choice, and not forced to go with one company. I wish you well in your venture and will be following very very close to progress.

[friedcat]

Probably irrelevant at this early stage but are there any plans for socket mounting and pin compatibility on future versions?
EDIT: And if so would it be an open layout, ie. Would you allow competitors to make pin compatible chips?

Answer to the first question is: our chips are made with I/O simplicity in mind, so there is nothing serious hampering the compatibility on future versions. But as you said, this stage is early and future compatibility is not on the highest priority when making choices.

The second one: We are not planning to disallow that.

Also, should everything work out and hardware become available to buy might there be any discounts to shareholders?

There will be. There will also possibly be a small number of free devices for the community. But both needs to be approved with the motions by all shareholders.

[friedcat]

Ok im about to be in the market for more mining gear and im going the ASIC way. My faith in BFL being done in time is very low. With that being said I would love to have a choice, and not forced to go with one company. I wish you well in your venture and will be following very very close to progress.

Thanks. Though some information will be only kept for board members, our progress and milestones will be updated to the public for anyone to see.