ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[SebastianJu]

This is true of centralized pools (like the ones ASICMiner is currently using.. why??), but decentralized pools allow the miner to do their own realtime auditing.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getblocktemplate#Decentralization Sounds good. If thats not fakeable then this should be Standard for pools i think. At least if the >50% attack problem is taken serious. I mean in internet its easy to have fake-accounts and so on. If it can be prevented with this technique that a single person becomes a threat because he silently owns some pools or maybe even hacking could be a possibility. So if the minersoftware would automatically check if it works on the real thing and stops the work once something is wrong then this should be done.

But i wonder if it isnt fakeable. I mean mining means only hashes, salts and so on. And these things are presented from the pool as a solominer. I believe to remember that the groundhash was something like the last hash plus the transactions that are taken into the new block. If all transactions are given to the miner so that he can calculate the hash it should be safe. The salt wouldnt matter then. But im not so deep into it. Maybe im incorrect here. But at least it sounds like an interesting thing. So if its secure than bitcoin foundation should enforce this...

[Luke-Jr]

This is true of centralized pools (like the ones ASICMiner is currently using.. why??), but decentralized pools allow the miner to do their own realtime auditing.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getblocktemplate#Decentralization Sounds good. If thats not fakeable then this should be Standard for pools i think. At least if the >50% attack problem is taken serious. I mean in internet its easy to have fake-accounts and so on. If it can be prevented with this technique that a single person becomes a threat because he silently owns some pools or maybe even hacking could be a possibility. So if the minersoftware would automatically check if it works on the real thing and stops the work once something is wrong then this should be done.

But i wonder if it isnt fakeable. I mean mining means only hashes, salts and so on. And these things are presented from the pool as a solominer. I believe to remember that the groundhash was something like the last hash plus the transactions that are taken into the new block. If all transactions are given to the miner so that he can calculate the hash it should be safe. The salt wouldnt matter then. But im not so deep into it. Maybe im incorrect here. But at least it sounds like an interesting thing. So if its secure than bitcoin foundation should enforce this...

Correct, the transactions are sent to the miner who then builds the block from it.
Mining software can then do various automated checks against other pools, a local bitcoind, etc.
Bitcoin Foundation cannot enforce anything. Miners need to "vote" by choosing where and how to mine.

[VeeMiner]

ok guys, we should get back on topic.

Friedcat said that we can expect ASICMINER hashrate to rise this week. I have just checked and we still seem to be around 6 Thash/s. Do the shareholders have more information? According to the simple mining calc we should still mine ฿4,835.78    per week so it's fine, but I'm hoping for some new update about how is the deployment going. I thought the first batch was supposed to be 15 Thash/s. I understand that some chips will fail and it's a lot of work to deploy this much hashrate but it would suck if almost 2/3 of the first batch were bad...

[Mausini]

I'd like to contribute to the ASIC selling / giving samples to the community discussion:

Friedcat said in his last update, the only reason for giving samples to the community is that it has been promised before. There used to be technical and economical reasons, but those are gone. I simply have to say "because it has been promised before" is no valid reason to give away value owned by shareholders for free. A lot of things that have been promised had to be adjusted to unforeseeable situations. Can you really make an exception here? The one and only appropriate way to give away free sample boards is, because it creates vale for shareholders and definitely not "because it has been promised before".

I think we can all agree that physical decentralization of the bitcoin network is very important. Because everybody profits from decentralization in the long-run, it makes a lot of sense for bitfountain to sell ASICS. When I tried to figure out which business model makes more sense, bitfountain's or AVALON's and BFL's with their pre-orders, I had an idea. Call me crazy, but wouldn't bitfountain be in a very good place to accept ACTUAL pre-orders themselves right now? As friedcat said, they have something more like a prototype than a product right now, but what they also have is a high reputation for being the first ones to start hashing large-scale and proven technical expertise. Perfect time to accept pre-orders for a consumer product - not like AVALON and BFL collecting huge amount of money without having anything. Also, people who were promised a sample board could at least be granted priority orders.

Comments?

[gog1]

ok guys, we should get back on topic.

Friedcat said that we can expect ASICMINER hashrate to rise this week. I have just checked and we still seem to be around 6 Thash/s. Do the shareholders have more information? According to the simple mining calc we should still mine ฿4,835.78    per week so it's fine, but I'm hoping for some new update about how is the deployment going. I thought the first batch was supposed to be 15 Thash/s. I understand that some chips will fail and it's a lot of work to deploy this much hashrate but it would suck if almost 2/3 of the first batch were bad...

Where did you see 6 TH?  BTCGuild still has it listed at around 3.8 TH for the past couple of days.  Given the significant hashing power coming on, I think ASICMINER going solo + merge mining with NMC; switching to pool with lower fees.  Or even better, create its own pool and mine there, then collect a fee off of others' hashing power.  This seems to be a relatively easy way of enhancing shareholders' value.

[Luke-Jr]

Friedcat said in his last update, the only reason for giving samples to the community is that it has been promised before. There used to be technical and economical reasons, but those are gone. I simply have to say "because it has been promised before" is no valid reason to give away value owned by shareholders for free. A lot of things that have been promised had to be adjusted to unforeseeable situations. Can you really make an exception here? The one and only appropriate way to give away free sample boards is, because it creates vale for shareholders and definitely not "because it has been promised before".

Well, I don't have the list of sample board recipients, but I'm pretty sure this is the same list providing boards for development to at least myself (for BFGMiner support), Kano (for cgminer "support"), and Diablo-D3 (for DiabloMiner support?).
Providing hardware to the people responsible for supporting it in software is generally considered standard practice in the industry.
From the shareholder perspective, there is value in having these device supported for the day when they finally begin shipping.

[SmiGueL]

Where did you see 6 TH?  BTCGuild still has it listed at around 3.8 TH for the past couple of days.  

They're also mining on Ozco.in with about 2.2 TH/s

I've created a graph (semi-real-time-updating) with the total hash speed.

Click on it for a more detailed version.

[lophie]

Unless you know for sure I'll have to say these 2 things. Bitfountain2 disappeared, and coincidentally, the 2th anonymous output got bumped by a similar amount that the bitfountain slave was hashing. And second, 2th Avalon?

So you are saying friedcat lied to us about the anonymous miner?

[Maciek]

There are 400 000 shares of ASICMINER...
Each worth ca 0.60 BTC...
400000*0.6 = 240 000 BTC
which is (today at 48usd/btc rate) = 240000*48 = 11 520 000 USD

Am I correct here?

My question is:
How much is the equipment owned by ASICMINER worth?


We could compare it to Avalon's 65Gh/s @ 1499USD
6000Gh/65gh = ASICMINER has power of 92,31 Avalons which is = 92,31 * 1499 = 138 372 USD.


Am I wrong?

[Deprived]

There are 400 000 shares of ASICMINER...
Each worth ca 0.60 BTC...
400000*0.6 = 240 000 BTC
which is (today at 48usd/btc rate) = 240000*48 = 11 520 000 USD

Am I correct here?

My question is:
How much is the equipment owned by ASICMINER worth?


We could compare it to Avalon's 65Gh/s @ 1499USD
6000Gh/65gh = ASICMINER has power of 92,31 Avalons which is = 92,31 * 1499 = 138 372 USD.


Am I wrong?

You're trying to value ASICMINER based on the 6 TH currently mining.  Remember there's another 6TH or so nearly ready and chips for 50 TH more already starting assembly into finished units.  Plus, the main value, which is the ability to produce loads more very cheaply.

If you think of ASICMINER as just a mining company then obviously it's WAY over-priced.  But it's not just a mining company.

[Maciek]

  But it's not just a mining company.

May I ask you to write a little bit more about this issue?

Is the ASICMINER going to sell some produced ASICs and share the income between its shareholders? Or why is the value so high?

[Deprived]

  But it's not just a mining company.

May I ask you to write a little bit more about this issue?

Is the ASICMINER going to sell some produced ASICs and share the income between its shareholders? Or why is the value so high?

You need to read the thread - especially the earlier part of it.  Sales are a possibility, maybe even a likelihood.  So is producing loads more ASICs for self-mining.  So it producing next-gen ASICs.

[SebastianJu]

The one and only appropriate way to give away free sample boards is, because it creates vale for shareholders and definitely not "because it has been promised before".

Well, I don't have the list of sample board recipients, but I'm pretty sure this is the same list providing boards for development to at least myself (for BFGMiner support), Kano (for cgminer "support"), and Diablo-D3 (for DiabloMiner support?).
Providing hardware to the people responsible for supporting it in software is generally considered standard practice in the industry.
From the shareholder perspective, there is value in having these device supported for the day when they finally begin shipping.

But that isnt needed. The asics are mining already even without minersoftware-developers having a prototype. So one could think about giving small free samples away once the asics are sold, so that more minersoftware could work, but now it wouldnt be wise. And i wonder if even that is needed when the actual miner works without problems anyway.

Correct, the transactions are sent to the miner who then builds the block from it.
Mining software can then do various automated checks against other pools, a local bitcoind, etc.
Bitcoin Foundation cannot enforce anything. Miners need to "vote" by choosing where and how to mine.

I only say that bitcoin foundation is a center organisation that should have the stability of bitcoin in mind. So if there is a way to secure the pools, so that no attack could be done with their hashingpower then the bitcoin foundation should pressure in this direction. I mean it would be easy to claim that there are "unsafe" pools that should change something and the pools would follow when miners and bitcoinusers start to demand it.
It would be for the sake of securing bitcoins isnt it?

There are 400 000 shares of ASICMINER...
Each worth ca 0.60 BTC...
400000*0.6 = 240 000 BTC
which is (today at 48usd/btc rate) = 240000*48 = 11 520 000 USD

Am I correct here?

My question is:
How much is the equipment owned by ASICMINER worth?


We could compare it to Avalon's 65Gh/s @ 1499USD
6000Gh/65gh = ASICMINER has power of 92,31 Avalons which is = 92,31 * 1499 = 138 372 USD.


Am I wrong?

Your way off with the worth of asics. First... in some days we will have 62TH/s, not only 6. Then... avalon is quite stupid, because they sell their units for a price they would get in half a week, if they would let mine these units for themselves. So at least one should take the mining income of 8 months as the price for the asics.

That would be for 6TH: $1,011,202.39 per month and selling these 6TH would cost at least $8.089619,12 (when taking the mining revenue of 8 months only into account)
and for 62TH: $10,449,091.37 per month and selling these 62TH would cost at least $83.592.730,96 (when taking the mining revenue of 8 months only into account)
See: http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator

Of course there will be changes because of competition, difficulty and more asics will be bought on top later when seeing a months timeframe.

But i think the worth of bitfountain is way higher than you calculated.

[peterepeat]

I see ASICMINER back on top at Ozcoin - does anyone know what happened to that 2.7TH Anonymous from ozcoin?

[mrb]

There are 400 000 shares of ASICMINER...
Each worth ca 0.60 BTC...
400000*0.6 = 240 000 BTC
which is (today at 48usd/btc rate) = 240000*48 = 11 520 000 USD
Am I correct here?

My question is:
How much is the equipment owned by ASICMINER worth?

Your calculations are correct. But what makes ASICMINER worthy is not its assets (equipment), it is its future gains (mining revenues).

One share is currently worth 15 Mhash/s (only 6 Th/s are deployed). It will soon be worth 30 Mhash/s (as soon as they finish deploying the first batch of 12 Th/s). And it will later be worth 125 Mhash/s (when they reach 50 Th/s total). At these hashrates, one share would respectively mine about 0.05, 0.1, and 0.45 BTC per month at current difficulty.

Therefore, if as an investor, you must compare the share price (ca. 0.6 BTC) to these short term revenues to estimate whether it is likely or not that you will recoup your investment.

Personally, if ASICMINER had 50 Th/s deployed today, I would be very confident that a share is worth at least 0.6 BTC. But given that they are extremely slow to deploy even the initial 12 Th/s, and the uncertain timeframe as to when 50 Th/s will be up and running, I consider 0.6 BTC/share to be overpriced, therefore a risky investment. But that is just my opinion. I tend to be conservative. Other investors might think differently.

[MrTeal]

Your way off with the worth of asics. First... in some days we will have 62TH/s, not only 6. Then... avalon is quite stupid, because they sell their units for a price they would get in half a week, if they would let mine these units for themselves. So at least one should take the mining income of 8 months as the price for the asics.

That would be for 6TH: $1,011,202.39 per month and selling these 6TH would cost at least $8.089619,12 (when taking the mining revenue of 8 months only into account)
and for 62TH: $10,449,091.37 per month and selling these 62TH would cost at least $83.592.730,96 (when taking the mining revenue of 8 months only into account)
See: http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator

Wow, imagine if they could bring 248TH/s online, they could be making almost $42M a month! Incredible.

[Deprived]

That would be for 6TH: $1,011,202.39 per month and selling these 6TH would cost at least $8.089619,12 (when taking the mining revenue of 8 months only into account)
and for 62TH: $10,449,091.37 per month and selling these 62TH would cost at least $83.592.730,96 (when taking the mining revenue of 8 months only into account)

I think you'll find that if they added another 56 TH then network hashpower would also rise by 56 TH.  No way they'd be able to do that for a month without difficulty rising.  Having 10 times the hashpower suddenly only gives 10 times the income until next difficulty adjustment.

[SebastianJu]

That would be for 6TH: $1,011,202.39 per month and selling these 6TH would cost at least $8.089619,12 (when taking the mining revenue of 8 months only into account)
and for 62TH: $10,449,091.37 per month and selling these 62TH would cost at least $83.592.730,96 (when taking the mining revenue of 8 months only into account)

I think you'll find that if they added another 56 TH then network hashpower would also rise by 56 TH.  No way they'd be able to do that for a month without difficulty rising.  Having 10 times the hashpower suddenly only gives 10 times the income until next difficulty adjustment.

Yes, thats right... im not the mathematician so i only made a simplified calculation to show the direction.

[MrTeal]

I consider 0.6 BTC/share to be overpriced, therefore a risky investment. But that is just my opinion. I tend to be conservative. Other investors might think differently.

How can 0.6 BTC per share be overpriced? In no way thats true. I got 0.02135376 BTC per share in each of the last 2 weeks. 52 weeks with this are 2.22BTC. That would mean you value one share on the dividend of 14 weeks only. Thats 3 months. Of course the dividend will split in half once the ipo-price is paid back and there is still the risk of rising competition and difficulty but on the other hand... there are 6TH online only and 10 times as much will come soon.
So no... in no way i would sell for as low as 0.6BTC. Even 2.22BTC would be way too less for me, simply because i know how much hashingpower will be online soon.

Right now Asicminer is about 15% of the network, while they might temporarily exceed that even Friedcat is only talking about averaging 10% over the year. Also keep in mind they're only paying out 150k shares until 0.1 is paid. After that dividends will be paid to all 400k shares.

0.6/share is overvalued IMO, let alone an insane number like 2.2.

[LazyOtto]

Also keep in mind they're only paying out 150k shares until 0.1 is paid.

I don't think that is the case.

There are 200k shares in the ASICMiner, 'preferred', pool.

Just because they weren't sold doesn't mean they don't exist.

AFAIK, BitFountain owns those unsold ASICMiner shares - I think around 30k. As well as their own 200k.