ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Data centers in china are extremely expensive.  It isn't a 1:1 comparison.

All the more reason to start looking for cheap power at data centers outside of China.

Iceland, Canada, Washington, and Nevada all have cheap power.  So do Belarus and Ukraine, from what I hear around here.

Currently it might be more worthwhile to deploy it in China for faster turnarounds - no shipping, export/customs issues ..

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[JaredR26]

Data centers in china are extremely expensive.  It isn't a 1:1 comparison.

All the more reason to start looking for cheap power at data centers outside of China.

Iceland, Canada, Washington, and Nevada all have cheap power.  So do Belarus and Ukraine, from what I hear around here.

Currently it might be more worthwhile to deploy it in China for faster turnarounds - no shipping, export/customs issues ..

^

This.  We can restructure for a lower cost structure later.

[gmouse]

Regarding selling devices.  I appreciate the cautious tone friedcat takes about pricing.  It would not surprise me if certain other ASIC companies never ship, as pre-orders were in $US that has now depreciated 90% against BTC since those prices were announced.  Pricing in BTC seems to mitigate the risk of error to me.

Also, will any consideration be given to shareholders to purchase devices?  One can hope... 

[HorseRider]

I think the fairest pricing strategy would be auction.

[DutchBrat]

Clarification of Unsold Shares
Now ASICMINER controls 163,962/400,000 of the whole identity, while Bitfountain controls 236,038/400,000.

I was under the impression that 50% of all profits were to be distributed to the investors and the other half to the Bitfountain founders. Now it's become roughly 41% for investors and 59% for BF because you stopped selling shares early. Did the original contract allow for this?

What if ASICMINER had been fully funded after only 50k shares were sold instead of after 164k, because of a sudden rise in BTC price? Then we'd have 50k/400k = 12.5% share for investors and 350,000/400,000 = 87.5% share for Bitfountain now?

Doesn't look like a fair solution to me. To get back to a 50/50 ratio for investors and founders, as it was originally announced, you'd have to subtract the 36k unallocated shares from the 200k Bitfountain shares instead of adding them. No?

It has always been said that 1 share of ASICMINER would get 1/400000 th of the dividends.... And it still does.

There are still 200.000 Asicminer shares and 200.000 bitfountain shares.... Only bitfountain now holds 36.038 shares of Asicminer.... Nothing wrong with that

[BitHub]

Hi, I'm a ASICMINER share holder, from friedcat not a PT. I am very interested in buying one when available, could you put aside any for share holders first and maybe leverage their shares to buy one if short on btc?

[LainZ]

I also think that an auction shall be a great way to set a correct price for ASICs. Preferably with senior members and based on a some computation for expected ROI.

Thank you friedcat, for your patience and dedication. great update!

[Mausini]

Clarification of Unsold Shares
Now ASICMINER controls 163,962/400,000 of the whole identity, while Bitfountain controls 236,038/400,000.

I was under the impression that 50% of all profits were to be distributed to the investors and the other half to the Bitfountain founders. Now it's become roughly 41% for investors and 59% for BF because you stopped selling shares early. Did the original contract allow for this?

What if ASICMINER had been fully funded after only 50k shares were sold instead of after 164k, because of a sudden rise in BTC price? Then we'd have 50k/400k = 12.5% share for investors and 350,000/400,000 = 87.5% share for Bitfountain now?

Doesn't look like a fair solution to me. To get back to a 50/50 ratio for investors and founders, as it was originally announced, you'd have to subtract the 36k unallocated shares from the 200k Bitfountain shares instead of adding them. No?

It has always been said that 1 share of ASICMINER would get 1/400000 th of the dividends.... And it still does.

There are still 200.000 Asicminer shares and 200.000 bitfountain shares.... Only bitfountain now holds 36.038 shares of Asicminer.... Nothing wrong with that

Yes, but it doesnt make any sense. If thats true, unsold shares received dividends. But why would shares that have not been sold be entitled to ipo break-even privileges??

[gog1]

Update

Clarification of Unsold Shares
Now ASICMINER controls 163,962/400,000 of the whole identity, while Bitfountain controls 236,038/400,000. The former shares will not be diluted, while the latter will. Whenever we need to sell shares to raise funds or giving potential core employees shares/options, only our (Bitfountain's) shares will be reduced.

We consider it to be very fair to investors, because while either letting the investors break even first or protecting the investors from dilution are seen everywhere, having both at the same time is not that common, especially when the portion at the investors' side is already large.

Device Selling
After careful consideration, we decided to address it as a very important decision ahead. There are two factors that serve as the motivation of selling our devices earlier than what we planned before:

1. Vacuum of Deployment. We are now experiencing one. The unconventionally high power density makes our devices hard to be deployed to professional data centers, which also have very high rent charges as their extra downside. So we had and will have to build them of our own. It's a difficult task in a sense that besides the long cycle, unexpected incidents will create a period that we have a lot of devices lying there waiting to generate hashes.

2. Quantity in the Future. The price negotiation of the full mask is almost finished, so if there are no surprises, we will have virtually no third-party limitations on how many chips we could produce in this year. If the exchange rate of BTC against USD further shoots up in the next few months, we could even produce hundreds of wafers each month. Deploying all of them in time is out of our reach unless we expand significantly, which might be pre-mature and inflexible.

The most significant factor in selling devices is pricing. Devices are extremely illiquid because the trading and transportation are great ways of wasting the precious hash-time. Therefore no one knows how they should be priced yet. We would like to do the price discovery with auction by small quantity. The total number used for discovering the price will be very small compared to the whole batch, and the slow deployment rate before the construction of the whole farm infrastructure of the rest and arriving devices provides another motivation.

Other Info
We met a temperal black out this morning. It's caused by the capacity expansion (installing cables and switches). The PCB of the main board and the power module have been finished. The assembling will start as soon as the chips are packaged and passed the automatic tester. Our use of ~0.5MW of power in the new place is also approved. The network bottleneck is not in the internet connection side, but in our local Ethernet. It could be solved by optimizing the firmware and the switch structure, but a simple hot-fix is to add more internet connection accounts and routers, which is what we are doing now. The slow pace of the infrastructure building is also a hard limit, and it forced us to scatter a small portion of our devices to temperal places. They should be put back as soon as the permanent place is OK.

Any ETA as to when AM will hit 12TH? 50TH?

[lophie]

Yes, but it doesnt make any sense. If thats true, unsold shares received dividends. But why would shares that have not been sold be entitled to ipo break-even privileges??

This is a valid question. However it does not mean anything now since we already broke-even the IPO price.

[Mausini]

Yes, but it doesnt make any sense. If thats true, unsold shares received dividends. But why would shares that have not been sold be entitled to ipo break-even privileges??

This is a valid question. However it does not mean anything now since we already broke-even the IPO price.

It does mean something. If dividends were paid, I would like to know what happened to them.

[SebastianJu]

Part of my day-to-day work is running a data center, if you guys are in Toronto, more than willing to volunteer my time ~~

^This.  AM should have planned out exactly which data centers to deploy at ahead of time.

The data centers should be selected on the basis of cheap power and proximity to their pools' hosts.

Scrambling around building their own is a big loss of time and focus from their core competency of designing, producing, and running ASICs.

I think these are problems that couldnt be foreseen easily. In such projects you always have something coming up you never thought about before.

Im a not small shareholder myself but i dont think shareholders should get an advantage for buying asics. That wouldnt lead to the maximum price. And i think selling the asics will mean a fair price. Only you have it in an instant instead having to mine for a year or so.

[friedcat]

Yes, but it doesnt make any sense. If thats true, unsold shares received dividends. But why would shares that have not been sold be entitled to ipo break-even privileges??

They haven't been entitled to any privileges. The "you" in "you break even first" mean merely investors, not ASICMINER shares themselves. In another word, we have paid all net profits before the investors break even to the circulating 163,962 shares. Otherwise the date of finishing our first clause couldn't have been so early given that we had paid all the emergent debts and balance payments.

[DiabloD3]

friedcat, exactly how much GH is currently operating atm?

[Mausini]

Yes, but it doesnt make any sense. If thats true, unsold shares received dividends. But why would shares that have not been sold be entitled to ipo break-even privileges??

They haven't been entitled to any privileges. The "you" in "you break even first" mean merely investors, not ASICMINER shares themselves. In another word, we have paid all net profits before the investors break even to the circulating 163,962 shares. Otherwise the date of finishing our first clause couldn't have been so early given that we had paid all the emergent debts and balance payments.

Thank you for clarifying this!

[SebastianJu]

friedcat... how long will it take until single asic miner are built and how many TH do you plan to sell? I think selling all 50TH would lead to bad prices at the end because i think the number of peoples able to buy such an asicminer asic are limited. So did you guys already plan how many machines with how many TH you want to sell?

[romerun]

Does the asic rig really need professional grade ISP ? What prevent AM from renting apartment with electricity included and mine the shit out of it ?

[SebastianJu]

Does the asic rig really need professional grade ISP ? What prevent AM from renting apartment with electricity included and mine the shit out of it ?

Friedcat said already that some machines are at other places. But that seems to be not a solution for many TH.

[DiabloD3]

Does the asic rig really need professional grade ISP ? What prevent AM from renting apartment with electricity included and mine the shit out of it ?

Cooling, electrical availability, and security. Also, most apartment complexes forbid commercial use.

Lets take Avalon as an example, the numbers should be similar to ASICMINER boards due to similar tech.

A 3 module Avalon would need 600w to do 66gh. 600w on 120v is 5 amps. You can put 3 of these on a standard NEMA 5-15 120v line, or 15 amps to run 198gh. This is equivalent to 8 amps on Euro 230v, so you could plug 6 of these on a single circuit if you're using an appropriate 230v/30a circuit. This is also approximately 9 watts per gh.

This also means you need about 2050 BTU/hr cooling per unit. Home air conditioning units are usually low efficiency and non-redundant, and are often sold in 9000 or 12000 BTU sizes and are not meant to run 24/7. A 9000 BTU unit could service 3 units and could wear out during the course of a really hot summer. A 9000 BTU air conditioner could use 600 or more watts.

So, for every 3 units, you're using 1800 + 600w, or 20a on 120v, or to round up to the least common multiple between 15 and 20, 12 units would take 60a. 60a would be 4 circuits, or probably all an average apartment in the US has that isn't dedicated to water heater, heat/cooling, oven, or fridge.

In the US, an apartment, even a small one in a unpopulated area, could go for $1000-1500/mo. For that, you're getting no building security, having to pay for your own cooling, having to staff your own on site techs, for 12 units that do 792GH.

Instead, he could do business with a DC that handles high compute density customers, and pay $2000-2500/mo per rack, get 4 120v 20a circuits, security, redundant cooling, and on site techs as part of the cost, and given 9 watts per gh, and given 9600w per rack, you'd end up with about 1067gh or approximately 12 4 module Avalons or 16 3 module Avalons.

Given the shape of the Avalon case is approximately 4U and using 4 module Avalons you can put 1584gh physically into a single rack, given the 80a 120v budget, 1056gh, leaving 24U empty or 1/3rd of the rack or 2U in between each unit.

[romerun]

hm. I'm renting a 10U rack space with 6amp in a ISP in Thailand. It goes about $350 monthly.