ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[Rodyland]

Why does everyone say "Auction!!!" Anyway?

Give us a set price, Quantity available and let us buy the crap out of them?

Everyone says "Auction" because an Auction is arguably the best (and easiest) way to get the best price.  Because, as shareholders in asicminer, we all want the best price for these things.

Every one of these things that ends up on ebay at a premium is lost profit to asicminer and its shareholders.

My other thought was that you could just mail one of these to each shareholder (one per share, one per ten shares, whatever) and then it's up to the individual shareholders to maximise their own value - either by mining, or selling.  

The idea of having an auction for a small-ish number of units, and then setting the retail price for the entire batch based on the price fetched at auction seems like a reasonable compromise.

The fact that it would be next-day shipping would also mean a significant price premium compared to all the preorder nonsense that goes on around these parts.

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[lophie]

How about a discount for the shareholders participating in the auction  , No really this could drive the share price a bit. Wouldn't it?

[Miner99er]

I guess then what I should ask is how to purchase 1 share so as to get in on the $39 price tag for shareholders then. I could easily see it going for many times that amount... thanks to the completely open market. :-/

if we're keeping a 1 month ROI on these things, $59 is a deal.

If we're looking at a 1 Year ROI, then they'll sell for $250 each, that's with a 26.4% increase in difficulty per month, every month.

I guess I like the former more than the latter... and share holders are opposite. I would figure the price will land somewhere in the middle... most likely $150.

[Peter Lambert]

Oh my god.

Is there somewhere we can sign up to buy one of these when they are available?

[Rodyland]

I guess then what I should ask is how to purchase 1 share so as to get in on the $39 price tag for shareholders then. I could easily see it going for many times that amount... thanks to the completely open market. :-/

if we're keeping a 1 month ROI on these things, $59 is a deal.

If we're looking at a 1 Year ROI, then they'll sell for $250 each, that's with a 26.4% increase in difficulty per month, every month.

I guess I like the former more than the latter... and share holders are opposite. I would figure the price will land somewhere in the middle... most likely $150.

To buy shares you find someone who is selling shares.  Look in the auction forum.  I don't like your chances of a single share purchase though.  Your other option is to buy a passthrough (PT) share on one of the exchanges, and then convert that to a real share.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159194.0

The other thing is, I really hope they sell these for a price denominated in bitcoin, and would be very disappointed if they were sold at a US$ price. 

[JordanL]

Giving a discount on hardware to shareholders is a terrible idea... especially for shareholders. Anyone can buy one or two shares of ASICMINER. Let's max out what we can get for these bad boys.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Giving a discount on hardware to shareholders is a terrible idea... especially for shareholders. Anyone can buy one or two shares of ASICMINER. Let's max out what we can get for these bad boys.

But that can raise the share value for shareholders. Definitely needs to be priced in BTC through.

[JordanL]

Giving a discount on hardware to shareholders is a terrible idea... especially for shareholders. Anyone can buy one or two shares of ASICMINER. Let's max out what we can get for these bad boys.

But that can raise the share value for shareholders. Definitely needs to be priced in BTC through.

Don't you think it would only cause a temporary bubble in share prices, which would fall as soon as the sale offer was over? That certainly wouldn't benefit those of us who want to hold our shares, or even invest further. I haven't crunched any numbers yet I'm just thinking out loud.

Agree with you 100% on BTC pricing. 

[Rodyland]

Giving a discount on hardware to shareholders is a terrible idea... especially for shareholders. Anyone can buy one or two shares of ASICMINER. Let's max out what we can get for these bad boys.

But that can raise the share value for shareholders. Definitely needs to be priced in BTC through.

Don't you think it would only cause a temporary bubble in share prices, which would fall as soon as the sale offer was over? That certainly wouldn't benefit those of us who want to hold our shares, or even invest further. I haven't crunched any numbers yet I'm just thinking out loud.

Agree with you 100% on BTC pricing. 

As someone who's invested in ASICMINER for the dividends, not the "capital growth", a rush of share buying for the purposes of securing a discount on miniminer units (do they even have a real name yet?) is a bad idea, yes.  If you're going to go down that path, you may as well sell all the units to shareholders at cost and let the shareholders distribute them as they see fit.

People need to remember that every miniminer we sell is going to directly compete with asicminer for mining hashrate, taking dividend payments directly from shareholders.  In a world with unlimited power and datacenter space, I think most sharesholders would agree that internal mining would provide the best ROI.

Given a lack of power, network and datacenter space, selling units for as much as the market will bear is a reasonable second choice.  It also has the added benefit of shifting some of the risk of future hash rate increases (beyond what we have already accounted for) into "the market", which some would argue would provide a better pricing of said risk.

And given that selling mining rigs is effecively bringing forward mining income for that hashing power (discounted to present value accounting for uncertain future events), the increased dividends for asicminer shares that represent that extra income will probably result in a healthy share price bump anyway.

Also worth considering - any time spent by asicminer management dealing with share transfers, shareholder discounts, and anything else that isn't directly related to building, deploying or shipping as many miners as possible is directly detracting from the value of asicminer shares/dividends.

[kano]

They are only 300MH/s (as I keep saying)

Even 1000 of them is only 300GH/s ... i.e. you need 3,333 of them to just reach 1TH/s
So unless ASICMINER is suddenly able to produce a lot more that 1000 of them, it wont make much impact on the network
(they are slower than most typical current hardware used by anyone but noobs)

[Rodyland]

They are only 300MH/s (as I keep saying)

Even 1000 of them is only 300GH/s ... i.e. you need 3,333 of them to just reach 1TH/s
So unless ASICMINER is suddenly able to produce a lot more that 1000 of them, it wont make much impact on the network
(they are slower than most typical current hardware used by anyone but noobs)

I may have missed it - how many are we looking at selling?  How much has rate are we selling vs deploying internally?

[John (John K.)]

They are only 300MH/s (as I keep saying)

Even 1000 of them is only 300GH/s ... i.e. you need 3,333 of them to just reach 1TH/s
So unless ASICMINER is suddenly able to produce a lot more that 1000 of them, it wont make much impact on the network
(they are slower than most typical current hardware used by anyone but noobs)

Friedcat's probably aiming for selling these as a novelty item - kind of like the small plastic keychain cameras or 'spy gadgets' you can buy at tourist spots.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

"What's that?"

"It's a password cracker! Can try 300 million two step SHA256 hashes per second!"

[kano]

"What's that?"

"It's a password cracker! Can try 300 million two step SHA256 hashes per second!"

No it can't ...

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

"What's that?"

"It's a password cracker! Can try 300 million two step SHA256 hashes per second!"

No it can't ...

Isn't 300 MHz 300 million hashes?

[kano]

"What's that?"

"It's a password cracker! Can try 300 million two step SHA256 hashes per second!"

No it can't ...

Isn't 300 MHz 300 million hashes?

300 million (double) hashes of (almost) the same data (with 32 bits changing) per second
- or more correctly, it tests all 4 billion (2^32) values for 'nonce' + 76 fixed bytes, in 14.3s

Password cracking requires hashing different values each time to see which one matches what you want.

[organofcorti]

"What's that?"

"It's a password cracker! Can try 300 million two step SHA256 hashes per second!"

No it can't ...

Isn't 300 MHz 300 million hashes?

300 million (double) hashes of (almost) the same data (with 32 bits changing) per second
- or more correctly, it tests all 4 billion (2^32) values for 'nonce' + 76 fixed bytes, in 14.3s

Password cracking requires hashing different values each time to see which one matches what you want.

So you're saying it's not the right kind of random?

[kano]

"What's that?"

"It's a password cracker! Can try 300 million two step SHA256 hashes per second!"

No it can't ...

Isn't 300 MHz 300 million hashes?

300 million (double) hashes of (almost) the same data (with 32 bits changing) per second
- or more correctly, it tests all 4 billion (2^32) values for 'nonce' + 76 fixed bytes, in 14.3s

Password cracking requires hashing different values each time to see which one matches what you want.

So you're saying it's not the right kind of random?

The input for each BTC hash is 80 bytes of which 76 are constant and the remaining 4 are cycled from 0 to 0xffffffff (internally by the device)

The input for each password crack hash will be different - USB wont really like getting 4 billion different inputs to hash in 14 seconds

I guess you could write an MCU which did only one hash and tested the result, but you'd still need to be sending it way too much data too quickly

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

The point of my faux-conversation is that you can tell your friends "I got this USB thingy that mines bitcoins! It tries 300 million two step SHA256 hashes per second!", not that it is meant to be used for anything other than bitcoin mining.

[qaz17209]

http://s14.postimg.org/7m2hyio8t/be_usb1.jpg?noCache=1365780610

Really nice... i think if those are auctioned too it would allow the small users to buy a miner too. But i dont know if it really will maximize the revenue for Asicminer because it looks like way more work has to be done for one single chip. On the other hand... if the real miners are too big then only few can afford it which would lead to a lower price per GH.
I hope you find a balanced result.

I hope thats not going to be the only one you're selling. I'd like to buy one of the full scale boards you've been racking. Even if I have to pay all 36 BTC I have to buy one.

You await that you can buy a miner with 36BTC? What hashrate do you await for this? Or do you want to take part in a groupbuy? I think the miners wont be small so that most users wont have the money and have to go group buy route.

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