ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[SebastianJu]

Out of interest... i believe there are 3 asicproducer that openly admit that they are working on such hardware. Which of these competitors will have the asics probably as the first available and when would that probably be?

How much would it hurt the other companies, that didnt come out first with asics, when they are a month or more later? Would the income be a third or can something like that being said?

[imsaguy]

Out of interest... i believe there are 3 asicproducer that openly admit that they are working on such hardware. Which of these competitors will have the asics probably as the first available and when would that probably be?

How much would it hurt the other companies, that didnt come out first with asics, when they are a month or more later? Would the income be a third or can something like that being said?

Obviously there will be the 'we did it first', but just like with FPGA, the first to have it out doesn't necessarily have all of the business.  There will be different performance characteristics, different price points, probably different shipping schedules (what good is being first if you have 2 months of backlog?).

[imsaguy]

Thanks for your view of it. So is there a possibility to say how much roi this investment will bring for maybe the first year and ongoing years? Can that be guessed somehow? Im thinking about private investing something. I dont have the money to buy 10,000 shares but 1,000 shares for $1,000 would be possible. Maybe $500 more. So maybe when i find 10 other buyers we can get the 2,500 shares for free on top of the paid 10,000 shares. But before thinking about how to manage such thing safely, so that everyone can feel safe about it, i would like to know how much roi this would bring probably. I mean i have read the thread and didnt find a hint yet that bitfountain is strange somehow so that i trust the project so far. But of course the minimum or maximum roi would be intersting. And i know that there will come some months without any income. But when the roi is correct after that timeframe...

Can something said about this? I know it would be much guessing but at least something...

IF I'm not mistaken, the IPO has finished, which means the bonus offer isn't available anymore.

[LazyOtto]

IF I'm not mistaken, the IPO has finished, which means the bonus offer isn't available anymore.

That is my understanding.

[Jutarul]

Thanks for your view of it. So is there a possibility to say how much roi this investment will bring for maybe the first year and ongoing years?

Ok. That might be of interest to a few people, so I'll do some math. (my focus is on the second series of chips which get sold to the public, ignoring self-mining and sustained business/profit). If you feel that some numbers are off, let me know.

It's pretty safe to say that each ASIC chip which is produced and meets a minimum specs will be sold - just because the market is at a vacuum. While ASICminer still hasn't determined the price level, its competitors have:
BFL, 40 GH/s , $1300 (http://www.butterflylabs.com/order-form-bitforce-sc-single/)
bASIC, 27 Gh/s, $1070 (http://www.btcfpga.com/index.php?route=product/product&manufacturer_id=11&product_id=58)

I expect ASICminer to outperform any competitor, both on specs and price point. But the price won't be much lower than any competitor - that wouldn't make sense from a profit point of view. Given that, ASICminer could probably sell 50GH/s at $1000.

The production schedule is not out (yet) but let's assume ASICminer can produce 50 TH/s worth of chips in the second series. This corresponds to a total sales price of $1,000,000, which should be 50-80% profit (considering the overhead costs). So you're looking at a company valuation of $500k-$800k for the second series alone! Right now ASICminer is traded for about $240k. So the ROI on that second series is more than 100% if you buy now.

[Jutarul]

Right now ASICminer is traded for about $240k.

200,000 public shares + 200,000 private shares = 400,000 shares total * 0.12 = 48,000BTC ~= $480K

Am I wrong here ?

dividends/profits are paid to ASICminer (200k shares max). There may be some motions to "re-invest" the profit into a sustained business. The exact ratio is yet to be determined and mainly depends on shareholders.

[imsaguy]

Ha Ok, I didn't read carefully enough this section =>

"3. Before the buyers of ASICMINER break even against the IPO price, 100% of
all net gains from Bitfountain will be paid to them. This means that each of
the ASICMINER share will get 1/x of the total net gains of Bitfountain, in
which x is the number of ASICMINER shares in circulation, before the investors' principals are completely paid out. "

Won't the share's value be devaluated when that dividend gets fully paid ? (I'm such a n00b in ecnomics)

Its possible, but I doubt it.  The self mining and sale of hardware as an ongoing concern is where the real money is at.

[Jutarul]

Hm... the bonus is only attached to ipo... too bad.

Jutarul... so you mean that after the first batch of asics is sold one would have gotten a dividend of 100% and still having 100% of the sharepricevalue... if not even more.

yes. Because the profit margin for selling the chips is considerable. That's why other players try so hard to produce chips as well.

[imsaguy]

What would be really nice is that shareholders get some kind of priority to order and get delivered a miner board when the production starts ...

my 0.02BTC

I suggested that as well, although verifying ownership would be difficult as Nefario doesn't release holdings info.

[imsaguy]

I suggested that as well, although verifying ownership would be difficult as Nefario doesn't release holdings info.

There is a share exchange facility that could be used to prove ownership
I could exchange a share against another fund's share made only for that purpose and raised by Asicminer

+1
Great idea, It would be tedious, but it would work.

I believe share transfers have fees.

[Jutarul]

What would be really nice is that shareholders get some kind of priority to order and get delivered a miner board when the production starts ...
my 0.02BTC

Yes - ASICminer will have to solve the allocation problem.
While FIFO (first come, first serve) is usually the simplest it may not be the  best strategy (BFL has similar issues and they employ some lottery scheme).

I suggested a dedicated GLBSE account for that purpose a while ago. Each share would reserve a certain allocation for a particular series of chips. Then you have a market for ASIC hardware orders. ASICminer could provide an initial incentive to count the IPO price of the order towards the final hardware price. The only problem with that scheme is that you get speculators, which just buy these orders in order to sell them at a higher price. And these speculators may not be interested in buying the actual hardware, which may delay the selling and inflate the price of the hardware. To counter that, the shares would have to be issued at a significant fraction of the final price, e.g. 50%. Then the speculators have a significant stake and need to get their investment back ASAP. Also another issue is AFAIK that GLBSE charges transfer fees proportional to the traded asset. This would cut into the profit from sales.

In the end, ASICminer has to find a way of filling the orders with either an optimal strategy to make profit, and/or one which has the least damaging effect on reputation and sales.

[Digigami]

What would be really nice is that shareholders get some kind of priority to order and get delivered a miner board when the production starts ...

my 0.02BTC

+1

I was going to ask about this as well.. I am currently a shareholder (small holding but slowly growing), but I think it would be awesome for shareholders to have priority when it comes time to start selling hardware. How this would best be accomplished I haven't come up with any good ideas yet, but please try to keep us informed as to what direction you would like to take.

Please make sure this is not only available for large account holders / board members only. Perhaps once we figure out an appropriate way to prove our ownership of shares, maybe stating a minimum number of shares or investment required to qualify for priority orders would be a good idea. If announced far enough ahead of time smaller stake investors like myself can increase our holdings over time up to the level required. This should also encourage some more interest in the stocks and likely increase the price prior to having hardware ready for sale.

Just spouting thoughts out loud here now.. back to work

[DutchBrat]

What would be really nice is that shareholders get some kind of priority to order and get delivered a miner board when the production starts ...

my 0.02BTC

+1

I was going to ask about this as well.. I am currently a shareholder (small holding but slowly growing), but I think it would be awesome for shareholders to have priority when it comes time to start selling hardware. How this would best be accomplished I haven't come up with any good ideas yet, but please try to keep us informed as to what direction you would like to take.

Please make sure this is not only available for large account holders / board members only. Perhaps once we figure out an appropriate way to prove our ownership of shares, maybe stating a minimum number of shares or investment required to qualify for priority orders would be a good idea. If announced far enough ahead of time smaller stake investors like myself can increase our holdings over time up to the level required. This should also encourage some more interest in the stocks and likely increase the price prior to having hardware ready for sale.

Just spouting thoughts out loud here now.. back to work

Maybe come up with a scheme where X shares give you right to X % discount on an X amount of devices

Else anyone could just buy 1 share and be eligible for the same discount as a holder of 1000 shares

You can transfer your shares to Friedcat to prove you have the shares at the moment of ordering, then Friedcat will transfer them back

The transfer fees will be the price you have to pay to get the discount (I do not know what the transfer fees are, so this  might be completely un-economical)

[imsaguy]

The transfer fees will be the price you have to pay to get the discount (I do not know what the transfer fees are, so this  might be completely un-economical)

Its like .5% or something.  If the bigger shareholders end up locking their shares anyway, it would make things easier for multiple reasons. Just more paperwork.

[jjshabadoo]

Well I am also adding shares and would certainly like a shot at buying the hardware in a priority position since we have invested in the company to begin with.

Hopefully this will happen and I think the concept should also have to do with holding the shares for a period of time before and after you buy hardware to help reduce speculation and sell-offs.

[EskimoBob]

ASICMINER is getting dumped hard.
I guess someone had a bad flashback from 2011 Asic miner scam from China and freaked out.
...and bots are following.

[SebastianJu]

Maybe only friedcat sold shares for everyone that bids at least 0.1BTC for a share? Or a shareholder sold his shares because he knows he can still get more shares for 0.1BTC from friedcat? But i tip on friedcat because selling the shares for exactly 0.1BTC wouldnt make sense for a shareholder.

Anyway... i sent a pm to you, friedcat, on thursday but didnt get an answer while i see you online all the time.

Thanks!
Sebastian

[irritant]

friedcat: do you have any more pictures maybe? or something to show

[Jutarul]

Maybe only friedcat sold shares for everyone that bids at least 0.1BTC for a share? Or a shareholder sold his shares because he knows he can still get more shares for 0.1BTC from friedcat? But i tip on friedcat because selling the shares for exactly 0.1BTC wouldnt make sense for a shareholder.

Anyway... i sent a pm to you, friedcat, on thursday but didnt get an answer while i see you online all the time.

Thanks!
Sebastian

It's unlikely that friedcat would put more shares on GLBSE for sale without issuing a motion.
It's more likely that one of the speculators is loosing patience. (After all ASICminer won't produce dividends until November). That would also explain why the price is not going below 0.1, because the speculator doesn't want to loose money on it.

Anyway - that's good news for anyone who wants to invest and hasn't done so yet, because that keeps the buying window open even longer...

[ninjaboon]

IF I'm not mistaken, the IPO has finished, which means the bonus offer isn't available anymore.

That is my understanding.

I guess picking it up from the market price is better. Its going for a really low price on GLBSE now