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(Recent update: We are collecting the shareholders data. Please check:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.msg1264071#msg1264071)
As some people might have already known, we have been working
on our own design of ASIC miner chips for quite a while.
(
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91173.0) The front-end (RTL) design,
optimization and simulation has finished and we are currently focusing on the
physical design. From existing data, we are convinced that it will be very
profitable thanks to the reasonable NRE, low margin cost, and revolutionary
speed and power consumption compared to all the current mining devices. Our
project will greatly contribute to the Bitcoin community and Bitcoin itself, by
offering nice return to investors and at the same time securing the network
significantly.
We are in a close race with our competitors. It is quite possible that
Bitfountain will be the one to have the world's first working ASIC-based
devices for Bitcoin mining. In this case, there will be fantastic early return.
Even if we are not the earliest, our company will still have a lot of room to
make money, because the impossibly insane price wars are not likely to happen,
or at least not all at once if they do.
About the Company ASICMINER is a GLBSE-listed partner company of the
Bitfountain IC company registered in China. After the fully issuing of
ASICMINER shares, each one of ASICMINER and Bitfountain controls 50% power to
make decisions and shares 50% of the total profits, but the ASICMINER investors
will first get 100% of the total profits until they have their principals paid
back. After the first payment, the dividends will always be paid weekly in each
Wednesday of Beijing time.
To be more detailed, ASICMINER has 200,000 shares in total. Each share gets
1/400,000 of the voting power of, and the regular dividends from, the Bitfountain
IC company registered in China. In addition, before investors of ASICMINER
break even against the IPO price, all net gains from Bitfountain will be paid
to them. The issuer could stop selling ASICMINER whenever enough funds for the
expenses are collected.
IPO The GLBSE ticker is ASICMINER. 200,000 shares are issued. Initially,
30,000 are for public sale. 170,000 are for private bulk purchase via PMs and the
asset transfer system of GLBSE. The ratio may be adjusted but the total number is
always 200,000. The price per share is set at 0.1BTC. Given the fluctuation of BTC price,
the IPO will be closed when collected funds exceeds the expected expense and the
expected abundance reservation. No more shares will be released to the market other
than the very 200,000 ones.
Each investor who privately buys 5,000 or more shares will get extra 10% ones,
plus a position on the board of Bitfountain. 10,000 or more shares will get
another extra 2.5%. Board members could ask for details of Bitfountain, as well
as inspecting and monitoring our financials.
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Business plan and Estimated Return The expected starting date of chips
manufacturing is late August to September, 2012. The chips are supposed to be
deployed and start hashing in October to November, 2012.
After the ASIC miner chips are produced and deployed, we will first directly
mine with them, then use part of the revenue to make user-friendlier mining
boards or rigs for sale.
If our chips are successfully produced, all the following businesses will
contribute to the shareholders' return:
Self-Mining with First Batch of Chips At least 12TH/s in
total, that is equivalent to 30MH/s per share, or 300MH/s per BTC.
Hashrate/Chip/Board Selling Net profits are
conservatively calculated as $5 per GH/s. That roughly equals to 0.5BTC per
GH/s with the current BTC/USD exchange rate. It means that each time we sell
1TH/s of hashing power in various forms, the net profit per share will be
1.25mBTC, that is, 1.25% of the initial investment.
Self-Mining after Mass Production Unlimited hashrate in
theory because of the low margin cost. But in reality we have to consider the
cost of management (labor) and place (rent). We believe an expansion to 50TH/s
is not hard to achieve. That pushes the hashrate per share to 155MH/s, or
1.55G/s per BTC.
Next-Generation Products The plan will be discussed among
board members and approved by shareholders, because it would require keeping
some of the revenues instead of paying them all as dividends. The return of
this stage is difficult to estimate, since in the Bitcoin world everything may
happen and happens even quicklier than imagination. But we personally believe
that much more potential profits wait there.
Potential Risks and Tips on How to Hedge We list all possible risks of
our project here, and the most straightforward way to hedge each of them.
BTC drops too much in value This will finally make mining
unprofitable because even with ASIC devices people still have to pay
electricity bills and operating fees. Hedge: take a short position on BTC.
BTC increases too much in value This might make your
investment of your Bitcoins to ASICMINER less profitable than simply holding
them. Hedge: take a long position on BTC.
Failure to produce The IC production has some minimum
failure rate. We have some fund reservation ourselves to cope with this
scenario, but the risk here is still not zero. Hedge: diversify your portfolio
by also making bets on our competitors.
Outpaced too much by competitors It will make the
difficulty very high and our efficiency/price less attractive. Hedge: same as
above, making some bets on competitors of us.
Risk Compensation for Investors To further compensate the risks of
investors, we give investors following privileges.
You Break Even First We (Bitfountain) will not take any
net profits from mining or device sales until the investors (ASICMINER) break
even against the IPO price (0.1 BTC per share). It means that each share of
ASICMINER will first have 1/x of the total net revenues as dividends, in which
x equals to the total number of ASICMINER shares in circulation, and have
1/400,000 after the principals of the investors are paid out.
Return On Rally If the price of Bitcoin rallies too much,
then we probably don't need so much money to make our project succeed. We will
return part of the principals as big dividends before we tape out the chips
when BTC/USD exchange rate rises a lot.
Return When Discontinuation 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.
No Future Dilution Each share of ASICMINER always
represents 1/400,000 of the whole company. If we have to attract more investors
in the future, we will only sell our own Bitfountain shares.
Extra Words The OP is kept as brief and clear as possible, if you have
any further questions about details, just ask. Advices and criticisms are also
welcome.
