ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[Vandroiy]

If BFL and Avalon can't provide significant hashpower to the community, ASICMINER may be forced to either hold back hashpower for a while or push the date for creating customer ready devices. Anything above a 1/3 target for the hashpower hashrate is thin ice because of the fleeting trust in the decentralized nature of bitcoin.

I could not agree more! ASICMINER could adjust hashrate with a feedback loop to keep it at a constant level of below 50% with some safety margin.

What does that help? Unless someone checks how many of their chips are ready for activation, they'd still de facto have 51% control they can enable at will. Bitcoin is not decentralized as soon as they have the ability to control the network and thereby do things like undo transactions or require arbitrary fees for block chain inclusion.

[MrTeal]

If BFL and Avalon can't provide significant hashpower to the community, ASICMINER may be forced to either hold back hashpower for a while or push the date for creating customer ready devices. Anything above a 1/3 target for the hashpower hashrate is thin ice because of the fleeting trust in the decentralized nature of bitcoin.

I could not agree more! ASICMINER could adjust hashrate with a feedback loop to keep it at a constant level of below 50% with some safety margin.

What does that help? Unless someone checks how many of their chips are ready for activation, they'd still de facto have 51% control they can enable at will. Bitcoin is not decentralized as soon as they have the ability to control the network and thereby do things like undo transactions or require arbitrary fees for block chain inclusion.

The obvious solution would be that if Avalon and BFL have still not shipped in bulk by the time ASICMINER has their additional 50TH/s coming out of the fab, they could keep their existing 12TH/s and begin offering that 50TH/s for public sale as they talked about during their IPO. Their design might not be conducive to selling 60GH/s to individuals, but even if they ship full rack kits it would preserve decentralization without negatively impacting their bottom line.

[leofar]

What does that help? Unless someone checks how many of their chips are ready for activation, they'd still de facto have 51% control they can enable at will. Bitcoin is not decentralized as soon as they have the ability to control the network and thereby do things like undo transactions or require arbitrary fees for block chain inclusion.

The obvious solution would be that if Avalon and BFL have still not shipped in bulk by the time ASICMINER has their additional 50TH/s coming out of the fab, they could keep their existing 12TH/s and begin offering that 50TH/s for public sale as they talked about during their IPO. Their design might not be conducive to selling 60GH/s to individuals, but even if they ship full rack kits it would preserve decentralization without negatively impacting their bottom line.

ASICMINER can just sell some hash power in their data centre

[Gabit]

ASICMINER can just sell some hash power in their data centre

That would have no impact on the trust issue, they would still control it.

Their design might not be conducive to selling 60GH/s to individuals, but even if they ship full rack kits it would preserve decentralization without negatively impacting their bottom line.

Actually if they were to sell it with BFL prices = $21,67/GH, that would give income of $1 083 333 (50TH), and that would be 38159 BTC, or 0,095 BTC / share. Of course minus manufacturing costs (half? 19079 BTC or 0,0477 / share ). And if BFL isn't shipping for people at large, they could ask more. Selling shovels, is the most profitable.

[SebastianJu]

I think its unlikely that asicminer will remain the only player in business for long. But even when asicminer will have above 51%... you simply couldnt know. They could mine from different ips solo and you never know that asicminer has above 51% hashpower. So friedcat simply wouldnt tell and earn silently. All shareholders would earn their fair share and not a single asicunit has to be thrown away to one lucky guy.

I only say there are ways so that you never know how much hashingpower asicminer runs and no one could complain about a risk of some kind. And units should be sold or given away really only when mining with it is way way less profitable.

[MrTeal]

I think its unlikely that asicminer will remain the only player in business for long. But even when asicminer will have above 51%... you simply couldnt know. They could mine from different ips solo and you never know that asicminer has above 51% hashpower. So friedcat simply wouldnt tell and earn silently. All shareholders would earn their fair share and not a single asicunit has to be thrown away to one lucky guy.

I only say there are ways so that you never know how much hashingpower asicminer runs and no one could complain about a risk of some kind. And units should be sold or given away really only when mining with it is way way less profitable.

ASICMINER is the only entity known right now that controls that sort of hashing power. Should BFL not test well and require a respin, that would push them out past the arrival of the additional 50TH/s. If that happens and given the issues that Avalon has been having, if we do not see reports from people that all of Avalon's batch 1 and most of batch 2 has come online but the network starts pushing up to 50TH/s+, it would be strange to not assume that it is ASICMINER with around the 50% or more mark regardless of what IPs the people are mining from.

[SebastianJu]

I think its unlikely that asicminer will remain the only player in business for long. But even when asicminer will have above 51%... you simply couldnt know. They could mine from different ips solo and you never know that asicminer has above 51% hashpower. So friedcat simply wouldnt tell and earn silently. All shareholders would earn their fair share and not a single asicunit has to be thrown away to one lucky guy.

I only say there are ways so that you never know how much hashingpower asicminer runs and no one could complain about a risk of some kind. And units should be sold or given away really only when mining with it is way way less profitable.

ASICMINER is the only entity known right now that controls that sort of hashing power. Should BFL not test well and require a respin, that would push them out past the arrival of the additional 50TH/s. If that happens and given the issues that Avalon has been having, if we do not see reports from people that all of Avalon's batch 1 and most of batch 2 has come online but the network starts pushing up to 50TH/s+, it would be strange to not assume that it is ASICMINER with around the 50% or more mark regardless of what IPs the people are mining from.

That would be great but of course you cant judge for sure that its asicminer. As far as i know its very hard to identify solominer anyway. So i believe no one can say for sure its asicminer. Even now people think ocassionally that its avalon here and there that shows high hashpower. Who knows at the current information politics?
At least i would vote against selling asics now. Even when its possible to make an attack that would be senseless because you only can harm with such attack but not earn money with it. So before an asic is given away because of some hypothetical reason the hashingpower should be hidden between solomining.
I mean if 51% would be such a big danger and such a big advantage it could have been done already from other persons. Thats not a reason to give away a cashcow-asic and give single person an unfair advantage.
I wonder anyway how much hashingpower is running right now. It seemed to grow slowly when they built it at btcguild. So i wonder how many days or weeks they need to bring up 50TH anyway. And when i look at http://blockchain.info/de/charts/hash-rate it looks its not growing fast now too.
So no, i see no danger that 51% can be achieved nor do i see that there is a danger that it would be used. And of course no asic should be given away only because of this unjustified fear.

[bitfair]

I would go even further and say: FULL POWER ON THE MINING - REGARDLESS!

Just do it honestly and openly.

If ASICMINER gets more than 50%, and causes some kind of panic, then those who are not panicking can pick up some cheap coins. The network didn't break when Deepbit had more than 50%, and it won't break if ASICMINER has it either. For those that do panic, their trust should return when BFL/Avalon powers up. For those that don't panic, no harm done.

[Jutarul]

Honestly I am not sure what should be done, but I will say that this would be one awesome problem to have!

Go friedcat and team!

This.

I mean if 51% would be such a big danger and such a big advantage it could have been done already from other persons. Thats not a reason to give away a cashcow-asic and give single person an unfair advantage.

No need to "give away" a cashcow-asic. You can employ a licensing scheme, where the mining operator and the supplier do a 50% split of the profit. It's giving up a controlled portion of the hashing power for reestablishing decentralization ( there is still a loose bond, i.e. loyalty towards the supplier, but it's a more democratic control of the deployment).

[memvola]

I mean if 51% would be such a big danger and such a big advantage it could have been done already from other persons. Thats not a reason to give away a cashcow-asic and give single person an unfair advantage.

No need to "give away" a cashcow-asic. You can employ a licensing scheme, where the mining operator and the supplier do a 50% split of the profit. It's giving up a controlled portion of the hashing power for reestablishing decentralization ( there is still a loose bond, i.e. loyalty towards the supplier, but it's a more democratic control of the deployment).

I wouldn't take a messy route if there is a chance to trade risk for a good enough price. If we can't find buyers who evaluate the risk within the range of our predictions, they could always lease, though the lessee has to be local and regularly inspected. I'm still talking about building and selling/leasing farms though. IMO it's much easier to pull off in a short time frame than producing consumer grade units.

[SebastianJu]

Honestly I am not sure what should be done, but I will say that this would be one awesome problem to have!

Go friedcat and team!

This.

I mean if 51% would be such a big danger and such a big advantage it could have been done already from other persons. Thats not a reason to give away a cashcow-asic and give single person an unfair advantage.

No need to "give away" a cashcow-asic. You can employ a licensing scheme, where the mining operator and the supplier do a 50% split of the profit. It's giving up a controlled portion of the hashing power for reestablishing decentralization ( there is still a loose bond, i.e. loyalty towards the supplier, but it's a more democratic control of the deployment).

That would mean the licensetaker would be under control of asicminer. The people that are afraid would claim then that asicminer could use their hashingpower to make an attack even then.
And no, splitting profit would still mean that one person would get big money while the others have to take the normal share. That wouldnt be fair.

But i think these problems are of a so theoretical nature that its not worth to speculate much about it.

[matauc12]

Isn't the 50TH barely in the pipelines atm anyways? (ie 2months away). So why are we trying to fix an unlikely problem that could maybe arise in god knows how long?

For all we know, 51% is not likely at this point, so let's not fix a problem we don't have.

[bitfair]

The urgent/non-urgent payments (except for 2nd round packaging/PCB/assemly cost) appear to total at around 5200 BTC (or approx. 865k RMB/140k USD).

Looking at the mining stats at BTC Guild, seems like ASICMINER has found 69 blocks so far, estimated mining revenue is then 1725 BTC. (I know I'm not making corrections for fees/PPS - this is just an estimate.) I'm also going to guess that ASICMINER is the "anonymous" miner on Ozcoin who has found 7 blocks, for another 175 BTC. So let's say a total of 1900 BTC so far.

That should put ASICMINER revenue so far at about 35% of the costs given. Assuming a steady hashrate of 3.5 TH/s gives around 480 BTC/day at this difficulty, which mean all these costs should be covered in 7 days from now. Of course, if hashrate increases, like all shareholders are hoping for, the costs should be covered much quicker (12 TH/s gives approx 1600 BTC/day).

Updating my estimate, the unpaid bills of 140k USD are now approx. 4850 BTC due to a BTCUSD increase, my estimate of mining revenue so far is between 2300 and 2500. Meaning that at the current rate of ~480 BTC per day, those costs should be covered in approximately 5 days.

Of course, it is reasonable to expect an increase in the hashing power too, so 5 days is kind of a "pretty bad case" scenario...

BTW: I'm starting to wonder if the top 3 on ozcoin (https://www.ozcoin.net/content/hall-fame-round-shares-bitcoin) are all ASICMINER. Could it be? I mean, who else could it be? Avalon? They seem to be new players, though, because they recently displaced HPC and bitinstant, which were #2 and #3 yesterday.

[SebastianJu]

I hope at least the first one at ozcoin is asicminer. But when i see at the overall hashrate the hashrate of the network isnt rising too much in the last time. Thats why i wonder if the building of asicminer-racks is moving on smoothly. And of course i wonder... when it takes days to get a couple TH online how many weeks will be needed to bring 50TH online. I mean if they dont find a way to make the production process faster that would become a problem. Of course i dont know how much TH they have till now but it doesnt look like the overall hashingpower is rising fast nor did they give out the info that 12TH are online. I dont know what they work on but i think they have to find a way to make it faster.

[eleuthria]

I hope at least the first one at ozcoin is asicminer. But when i see at the overall hashrate the hashrate of the network isnt rising too much in the last time. Thats why i wonder if the building of asicminer-racks is moving on smoothly. And of course i wonder... when it takes days to get a couple TH online how many weeks will be needed to bring 50TH online. I mean if they dont find a way to make the production process faster that would become a problem. Of course i dont know how much TH they have till now but it doesnt look like the overall hashingpower is rising fast nor did they give out the info that 12TH are online. I dont know what they work on but i think they have to find a way to make it faster.

Overall network hash rate will move a lot soon.  BTC Guild's luck since the difficulty change has been abysmal, roughly HALF the block generation we should be having at this speed, which would swing the overall network hash rate graphs about 2.5-3.5 TH/s under what they should be.

Although ASICMINER shareholders can look on the bright side, imagine if you were solo mining/p2pool and only seeing half the earnings you expected instead :p

[ineededausername]

I hope at least the first one at ozcoin is asicminer. But when i see at the overall hashrate the hashrate of the network isnt rising too much in the last time. Thats why i wonder if the building of asicminer-racks is moving on smoothly. And of course i wonder... when it takes days to get a couple TH online how many weeks will be needed to bring 50TH online. I mean if they dont find a way to make the production process faster that would become a problem. Of course i dont know how much TH they have till now but it doesnt look like the overall hashingpower is rising fast nor did they give out the info that 12TH are online. I dont know what they work on but i think they have to find a way to make it faster.

Overall network hash rate will move a lot soon.  BTC Guild's luck since the difficulty change has been abysmal, roughly HALF the block generation we should be having at this speed, which would swing the overall network hash rate graphs about 3.5 TH/s under what they should be.

Then I hope asicminer is taking PPS...

[matauc12]

I hope at least the first one at ozcoin is asicminer. But when i see at the overall hashrate the hashrate of the network isnt rising too much in the last time. Thats why i wonder if the building of asicminer-racks is moving on smoothly. And of course i wonder... when it takes days to get a couple TH online how many weeks will be needed to bring 50TH online. I mean if they dont find a way to make the production process faster that would become a problem. Of course i dont know how much TH they have till now but it doesnt look like the overall hashingpower is rising fast nor did they give out the info that 12TH are online. I dont know what they work on but i think they have to find a way to make it faster.

Overall network hash rate will move a lot soon.  BTC Guild's luck since the difficulty change has been abysmal, roughly HALF the block generation we should be having at this speed, which would swing the overall network hash rate graphs about 3.5 TH/s under what they should be.

Then I hope asicminer is taking PPS...

So then we have to deal with the criers about high PPS fees. Can we switch to a different crying subject? I'm dry.

[LazyOtto]

So then we have to deal with the criers about high PPS fees.

5% !!!

And lost cut of the Transaction Fees!

You must be nuts!

 

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Just a public notice:

Hello,
I would like to transfer my 69 shares of ASICMINER to TradeFortress after a 24.84 BTC has been transferred to 1D6GzDPbDfZUw9Xs5v9hnXkD6ULx8A85T1.

The shares are with the bitcoin address, 1D6GzDPbDfZUw9Xs5v9hnXkD6ULx8A85T1

-Soutenniza

[Soutenniza]

I confirm this. Please transfer the shares to tradefortress,  please friedcat.

Just a public notice:

Hello,
I would like to transfer my 69 shares of ASICMINER to TradeFortress after a 24.84 BTC has been transferred to 1D6GzDPbDfZUw9Xs5v9hnXkD6ULx8A85T1.

The shares are with the bitcoin address, 1D6GzDPbDfZUw9Xs5v9hnXkD6ULx8A85T1

-Soutenniza