ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[furuknap]

If this is going to be a nonissue, then disregard my previous posts.

Disregarded :-)

There's no doubt in anyone'sl mind what's going on. I seriously hope none of the buyers expected AM or anyone else to just hold back until they got their money's worth back.

If they had no idea that AM was scheduled for deployment _and_ that their deployment to as much as possible is the actual reason why they could also sell off a chunk of TH, then I would just like to add that ignorance is usually very expensive when investing those kinds of sums.

.b

[1713578117]

1713578117

[1713578117]

1713578117

[1713578117]

1713578117

[1713578117]

1713578117

[SebastianJu]

I think a good way to get the best of both worlds is to commit to attempt to maintain a set percentage of the global hashrate, and sell the excess. (Say, 20%... I'm not really a fan of the 10% idea, that seems pretty low given the very small number of ASIC players that are publicly known, and by the end of the year, ASICs will control over 90% of the hashrate, if not sooner.) That way, shareholders have a predictable income stream from hashing, and purchasers of devices would know that their devices aren't going to be undercut by AM in any unknown way... pricing of devices would be stabilized (good for purchasers, which should increase demand for devices with better known values of return versus the competition with unknown levels of self-mining), and the only real cause of an individual miner's profit rate decline would then be the global hashrate growth, same as it has been historically.

If the AM share of global hashrate approaches 25%, priority shifts to sales to get it down to 20% for the benefit of device sales... if it goes to 15%, it shifts more to mining. (20% is just a number in my head, I'm sure there's a statistical sweet spot that someone can calculate... perhaps it really is 10%, I dunno.)

Why 25%? Why not 45% (To remain under 50% and the variance of networkhashrate around this). I think Asicminer now is in the best position of all producers. They can buy for low money many chips. Seeable from the lower dividends. Not much lost. They seems to have created a workflow that will lead to fast deployment. That means they can create new hashpower very fast. Probably faster than any other. Even Avalon with the selling of their Asicchips and the DIY-Miner wont be able to outbid this fast i believe.

So then, when reaching the 45% border, Asicminer could start to sell Miners. Maybe buy 1000TH, remain 750TH to hold the 45% and sell the rest in form of miners. Maybe more to take the customers from the other companies away (Mean, i know...) This way its possible to get the earnings of some months mining in a moment so that the real earnings are going above 50% without waking fear of the people about a >50% attack.

At the moment i dont see a company or concept that could beat Asicminer. At least from the infos available.
...
If only... the datacenter would be ready with proper power and network so that Asicminer could play out its power...

[bitfair]

Instead of throwing around percentages with little basis, I believe it is better to think in terms of net present value:

First step: make a forecast of difficulty.
Second step: make the choice: if (current price that a miner can be sold for) > (forecasted net present value of the mining profit from the miner), then SELL IT.

Of course, this relies on forecasting difficulty somewhat accurately. More importantly, if there are currently space/power limitations on deploying the miners, it is very likely that the choice of selling a large amount of miners immediately is the most profitable one.

With some more numbercrunching, one could also work with a probability distribution around the forecasted difficulty, and use portfolio theory to hit the risk/reward sweet spot.

I think a good way to get the best of both worlds is to commit to attempt to maintain a set percentage of the global hashrate, and sell the excess. (Say, 20%... I'm not really a fan of the 10% idea, that seems pretty low given the very small number of ASIC players that are publicly known, and by the end of the year, ASICs will control over 90% of the hashrate, if not sooner.) That way, shareholders have a predictable income stream from hashing, and purchasers of devices would know that their devices aren't going to be undercut by AM in any unknown way... pricing of devices would be stabilized (good for purchasers, which should increase demand for devices with better known values of return versus the competition with unknown levels of self-mining), and the only real cause of an individual miner's profit rate decline would then be the global hashrate growth, same as it has been historically.

If the AM share of global hashrate approaches 25%, priority shifts to sales to get it down to 20% for the benefit of device sales... if it goes to 15%, it shifts more to mining. (20% is just a number in my head, I'm sure there's a statistical sweet spot that someone can calculate... perhaps it really is 10%, I dunno.)

Why 25%? Why not 45% (To remain under 50% and the variance of networkhashrate around this). I think Asicminer now is in the best position of all producers. They can buy for low money many chips. Seeable from the lower dividends. Not much lost. They seems to have created a workflow that will lead to fast deployment. That means they can create new hashpower very fast. Probably faster than any other. Even Avalon with the selling of their Asicchips and the DIY-Miner wont be able to outbid this fast i believe.

So then, when reaching the 45% border, Asicminer could start to sell Miners. Maybe buy 1000TH, remain 750TH to hold the 45% and sell the rest in form of miners. Maybe more to take the customers from the other companies away (Mean, i know...) This way its possible to get the earnings of some months mining in a moment so that the real earnings are going above 50% without waking fear of the people about a >50% attack.

At the moment i dont see a company or concept that could beat Asicminer. At least from the infos available.
...
If only... the datacenter would be ready with proper power and network so that Asicminer could play out its power...

[Rodyland]

I hope they start using other pools asap.

If we don't start getting more hashing power online soon, it won't matter which pool we use.

You are absolutely clueless about what's going on, aren't you?

Obviously  .  How about instead of passing out insults you educate all of us?     

[talnted]

I hope they start using other pools asap.

If we don't start getting more hashing power online soon, it won't matter which pool we use.

You are absolutely clueless about what's going on, aren't you?

Obviously  .  How about instead of passing out insults you educate all of us?     

This thread is not the place.  Its already clogged up with too much commentary, making it very difficult to follow actual asicminer project developements.

[Rodyland]

This thread is not the place.  Its already clogged up with too much commentary, making it very difficult to follow actual asicminer project developements.

Surely that would have been the perfect place to post a link to your new thread where you enlighten us ignorami.   

[radiumsoup]

Instead of throwing around percentages with little basis, I believe it is better to think in terms of net present value:

First step: make a forecast of difficulty.
Second step: make the choice: if (current price that a miner can be sold for) > (forecasted net present value of the mining profit from the miner), then SELL IT.

Of course, this relies on forecasting difficulty somewhat accurately. More importantly, if there are currently space/power limitations on deploying the miners, it is very likely that the choice of selling a large amount of miners immediately is the most profitable one.

With some more numbercrunching, one could also work with a probability distribution around the forecasted difficulty, and use portfolio theory to hit the risk/reward sweet spot.

Well, my point is that there's sure to be a perfect ratio that would generate maximum profit at any given point in time, and I'm pretty sure that, until all other ASIC manufacturers get up to speed, mining in the short term at much higher than 10% of global hashrate is better since difficulty is lower now than it will be in the future, and we seem to have a definitive leg up on the other manufacturers... but I have no idea what the optimal ratio actually is today, let alone in the future. It is, after all, a moving target... you're absolutely right that it depends entirely on total global hashrate (i.e. difficulty) and cost for devices per TH/s in the open market versus the going exchange rate for fiat. If BTC goes either up or down in value versus fiat, that will affect the optimal ratio of mining to selling by AM, as the prices people are willing to pay for devices, even in BTC, is affected by how valuable the BTC being generated are against their preferred fiat. If exchange rates are flat and hardware is not due for a generational update (as in changing the die size to a smaller process width), then it makes more sense to sell shovels. But, if we have a leg up in technology, it makes sense to keep that new technology (the "new shovels", so to speak) to ourselves until someone else comes out with a good competing product, while unloading the old shovels to the market. Only when there's a balance of power should we primarily focus on selling shovels, since the effect of our own addition to the hashrate would be balanced by the other manufacturers. Whenever we have the advantage, we displace our own in-house shovels with the new ones until it makes more sense to sell them, since our addition would have a greater effect on the difficulty levels and we would be the only ones able to take advantage. You are also very much correct when it comes to physical capacity, since we can't mine if there's no juice/space/cooling to run the machines. But I see that as an exception to the formula given the amount of space contracted recently.

I think this is mostly a time-to-market problem, really. The faster we can get the new shovels to market compared to the other ASIC manufacturers, the more we should hold back sales to be able to use them ourselves and to encourage the highest prices possible for the new shovels that we *do* sell. And, to circle around to my original point, if we commit to a certain percentage of the global hashrate, we have an advantage against the other manufacturers (on the basis of hardware sales) on two fronts: establishing market trust in the ability to deliver quality goods (we mine with our own shovels, after all) and stability in supply because everyone knows we're not only transparent about how many we're keeping for ourselves, but we're also depending on our development of new technology for our own mining efforts, meaning that we are going to push the envelope for our own good (which translates to the good of the buyers as well.) This is in the same general spirit as the Ferrari model, where if global demand for a car is 10,000 per year, they make 9,999 of them and command top dollar.

[bitfair]

Instead of throwing around percentages with little basis, I believe it is better to think in terms of net present value:

First step: make a forecast of difficulty.
Second step: make the choice: if (current price that a miner can be sold for) > (forecasted net present value of the mining profit from the miner), then SELL IT.

Of course, this relies on forecasting difficulty somewhat accurately. More importantly, if there are currently space/power limitations on deploying the miners, it is very likely that the choice of selling a large amount of miners immediately is the most profitable one.

With some more numbercrunching, one could also work with a probability distribution around the forecasted difficulty, and use portfolio theory to hit the risk/reward sweet spot.

Well, my point is that there's sure to be a perfect ratio that would generate maximum profit at any given point in time, and I'm pretty sure that, until all other ASIC manufacturers get up to speed, mining in the short term at much higher than 10% of global hashrate is better since difficulty is lower now than it will be in the future, and we seem to have a definitive leg up on the other manufacturers... but I have no idea what the optimal ratio actually is today, let alone in the future. It is, after all, a moving target... you're absolutely right that it depends entirely on total global hashrate (i.e. difficulty) and cost for devices per TH/s in the open market versus the going exchange rate for fiat. If BTC goes either up or down in value versus fiat, that will affect the optimal ratio of mining to selling by AM, as the prices people are willing to pay for devices, even in BTC, is affected by how valuable the BTC being generated are against their preferred fiat. If exchange rates are flat and hardware is not due for a generational update (as in changing the die size to a smaller process width), then it makes more sense to sell shovels. But, if we have a leg up in technology, it makes sense to keep that new technology (the "new shovels", so to speak) to ourselves until someone else comes out with a good competing product, while unloading the old shovels to the market. Only when there's a balance of power should we primarily focus on selling shovels, since the effect of our own addition to the hashrate would be balanced by the other manufacturers. Whenever we have the advantage, we displace our own in-house shovels with the new ones until it makes more sense to sell them, since our addition would have a greater effect on the difficulty levels and we would be the only ones able to take advantage. You are also very much correct when it comes to physical capacity, since we can't mine if there's no juice/space/cooling to run the machines. But I see that as an exception to the formula given the amount of space contracted recently.

I think this is mostly a time-to-market problem, really. The faster we can get the new shovels to market compared to the other ASIC manufacturers, the more we should hold back sales to be able to use them ourselves and to encourage the highest prices possible for the new shovels that we *do* sell. And, to circle around to my original point, if we commit to a certain percentage of the global hashrate, we have an advantage against the other manufacturers (on the basis of hardware sales) on two fronts: establishing market trust in the ability to deliver quality goods (we mine with our own shovels, after all) and stability in supply because everyone knows we're not only transparent about how many we're keeping for ourselves, but we're also depending on our development of new technology for our own mining efforts, meaning that we are going to push the envelope for our own good (which translates to the good of the buyers as well.) This is in the same general spirit as the Ferrari model, where if global demand for a car is 10,000 per year, they make 9,999 of them and command top dollar.

You may be right, but I think you are overthinking it. For instance, the BTC exchange rate is of little importance, since the choice is between mining and selling - both of which are paid in BTC.

After you have a difficulty forecast, you easily estimate many BTC a particular device will generate over its lifetime, for example, 50 BTC. Then say someone is willing to buy the device for 55 BTC. What do you do? Sell it, of course - you'll make more money!

And you can simply repeat this procedure for every device until the highest of the two values is below the marginal cost of producing the miner - at that point production is no longer profitable.

Of course some of the profit needs to go to R&D for next generation technology, but even then the basic principle remains the same. And you have to be good at forecasting difficulty and always keep the forecast up-to-date. And you need to know how much people are willing to pay for the devices. I assume AM has a difficulty forecast, and with the recent auction, AM has also learned more about what people are willing to pay for the devices.

PS: Even if your mining earnings estimate for the device is 50 BTC and someone is willing to buy it at 50 BTC, you should sell - because having 50 BTC in your wallet.dat today is much better than maybe having 50 BTC at some point in the future (because you eliminate uncertainty and you may re-invest it the 50 BTC from the sale).

[SebastianJu]

Instead of throwing around percentages with little basis, I believe it is better to think in terms of net present value:

First step: make a forecast of difficulty.
Second step: make the choice: if (current price that a miner can be sold for) > (forecasted net present value of the mining profit from the miner), then SELL IT.

Of course, this relies on forecasting difficulty somewhat accurately. More importantly, if there are currently space/power limitations on deploying the miners, it is very likely that the choice of selling a large amount of miners immediately is the most profitable one.

With some more numbercrunching, one could also work with a probability distribution around the forecasted difficulty, and use portfolio theory to hit the risk/reward sweet spot.

I believe selling or mining isnt the question. Mining has to be more profitable all the time because any sane miner only will buy the miner when he see the chance to meet ROI in a certain amount of time. Otherwise mining is only something for fans of a product or contributors to bitcoin but not for investors. So even if one could guess the difficulty so good it wouldnt help much because if selling would be more profitable you need buyers that lose money. And there arent endless that doesnt matter if they will break even. Of course when one is after the fast money its another thing.
I believe here is a good guess: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178051.0

[radiumsoup]

You may be right, but I think you are overthinking it. For instance, the BTC exchange rate is of little importance, since the choice is between mining and selling - both of which are paid in BTC.

After you have a difficulty forecast, you easily estimate many BTC a particular device will generate over its lifetime, for example, 50 BTC. Then say someone is willing to buy the device for 55 BTC. What do you do? Sell it, of course - you'll make more money!

And you can simply repeat this procedure for every device until the highest of the two values is below the marginal cost of producing the miner - at that point production is no longer profitable.

Of course some of the profit needs to go to R&D for next generation technology, but even then the basic principle remains the same. And you have to be good at forecasting difficulty and always keep the forecast up-to-date. And you need to know how much people are willing to pay for the devices. I assume AM has a difficulty forecast, and with the recent auction, AM has also learned more about what people are willing to pay for the devices.

PS: Even if your mining earnings estimate for the device is 50 BTC and someone is willing to buy it at 50 BTC, you should sell - because having 50 BTC in your wallet.dat today is much better than maybe having 50 BTC at some point in the future (because you eliminate uncertainty and you may re-invest it the 50 BTC from the sale).

I think I might not have been clear in part - the exchange rate affects what people are willing to pay (in fiat) for the rig. We know this to be true watching BFL orders, which (presumably, based on order numbers) spiked considerably when the value of BTC went over $200. That's because they were buying based on current promised hashrate vs. expected difficulty vs. (then) current exchange rate. But you're correct in that it shouldn't matter at all when looking purely at BTC values... it's just that it's demonstrably NOT restricted to miners paying with BTC. Everything else I think we can agree on... just different pages from the same book

[SebastianJu]

Whoa... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=181982.0 looks like competition for Asicminer in some weeks. The amount of BTC at that address means 54 x 10,000 Asic chips bought... 152.28TH... but at the end... Asicminer has already ordered 200TH, paid and are producing... AM is a head on top of others...
But i really didnt think that already so much chips were ordered.

[bitfair]

I believe selling or mining isnt the question. Mining has to be more profitable all the time because any sane miner only will buy the miner when he see the chance to meet ROI in a certain amount of time. Otherwise mining is only something for fans of a product or contributors to bitcoin but not for investors. So even if one could guess the difficulty so good it wouldnt help much because if selling would be more profitable you need buyers that lose money. And there arent endless that doesnt matter if they will break even. Of course when one is after the fast money its another thing.
I believe here is a good guess: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178051.0

I believe the question of how many devices to sell versus how many devices to mine with is essential to optimising profits.

Miners aren't necessarily insane just because they disagree on what the difficulty will be in the future. In theory, the amount a miner/investor is willing to pay is directly related to his/her expectations of future difficulty - and different people naturally have different expectations! Those with optimistic forecasts are willing to pay a higher price than those with pessimistic forecasts. If you sell devices to those with more optimistic forecasts compared to your own, you will make more money by selling it than you would expect to make by mining.

I think I might not have been clear in part - the exchange rate affects what people are willing to pay (in fiat) for the rig. We know this to be true watching BFL orders, which (presumably, based on order numbers) spiked considerably when the value of BTC went over $200. That's because they were buying based on current promised hashrate vs. expected difficulty vs. (then) current exchange rate. But you're correct in that it shouldn't matter at all when looking purely at BTC values... it's just that it's demonstrably NOT restricted to miners paying with BTC. Everything else I think we can agree on... just different pages from the same book

Interesting point - but also note that BFL has priced their machines in USD, so that when the exchange rate increases, so does the ROI: the price of BFL machines in terms of BTC actually decreased in that period, whereas the expected return in terms of BTC remained unchanged (more or less). If the machines are priced in BTC in the first place, it will probably develop differently since the ROI does not change.

[SebastianJu]

I believe the question of how many devices to sell versus how many devices to mine with is essential to optimising profits.

Yes, of course thats the question.

Miners aren't necessarily insane just because they disagree on what the difficulty will be in the future. In theory, the amount a miner/investor is willing to pay is directly related to his/her expectations of future difficulty - and different people naturally have different expectations! Those with optimistic forecasts are willing to pay a higher price than those with pessimistic forecasts. If you sell devices to those with more optimistic forecasts compared to your own, you will make more money by selling it than you would expect to make by mining.

No, miners mustnt be insane to buy. They have different reasons to buy for prices that wont make ROI. But at the end the reason to buy many miners is to earn money. And there selling becomes less profitable than selfmining. Because the miners will only pay prices that they think of they could break even. That means you cant make a business model out of fans, early adopters or users that dont know what they do. So i say selfmining is the most profitable thing. Selling has to come after it.
Maybe selling of some units should happen all the time to determine if the market is hungry for good prices or not. Depending on that one could decide where to put more effort into. But like i said... selfmining will be the most profitable part for a long time, at least since we get near 50%.

[gmouse]

I don't mind that there is chatter in this forum.

The 200TH paid for and on the way for AM cannot quickly be disposed of in weekly auctions of 10 blades each.  The hinted flood of ASIC hardware, with the speculated 150TH in bulk Avalon chips, with whatever BFL can ship, makes my mind boggle.

If AM cannot place all the hardware online due to the "51% issue" -- and cannot wring the last bit of profit out of auctions in an efficient way, then perhaps it is time to think along different lines.

The hardware, somehow, needs to be in the hands of shareholders, be it mining in the yet-to-be running data centers, our in our hands, directly.  Be it 1 blade per xx shares, whatever...  We can mitigate the chaos a bit by forming shareholder collectives that take possession of the hardware and mine with it; entities that are totally separate from AM, for example.  A fair bit of logistical work, sure...  It is worth thinking about "other solutions" though, as we may very well find that soon enough, we cannot effectively sell or bring online all the hardware that is made.

[furuknap]

I don't mind that there is chatter in this forum.

The 200TH paid for and on the way for AM cannot quickly be disposed of in weekly auctions of 10 blades each.  The hinted flood of ASIC hardware, with the speculated 150TH in bulk Avalon chips, with whatever BFL can ship, makes my mind boggle.

If AM cannot place all the hardware online due to the "51% issue" -- and cannot wring the last bit of profit out of auctions in an efficient way, then perhaps it is time to think along different lines.

The hardware, somehow, needs to be in the hands of shareholders, be it mining in the yet-to-be running data centers, our in our hands, directly.  Be it 1 blade per xx shares, whatever...  We can mitigate the chaos a bit by forming shareholder collectives that take possession of the hardware and mine with it; entities that are totally separate from AM, for example.  A fair bit of logistical work, sure...  It is worth thinking about "other solutions" though, as we may very well find that soon enough, we cannot effectively sell or bring online all the hardware that is made.

This is at best throwing money out the window and at worst completely bonkers. A shareholders group would have no idea how to run a stable mining operation and the mere discussion of such an option would take months during which time we'd lose a truckload of money, and by that I mean a big, big truck, one of those massive Australian ones with 5 or 6 trailers. Carrying bits.

Selling hardware that cannot be used immediately realizes a huge part of their potential earnings at no cost and instantly, and considering the relative short lifespan of these units, it would be much better to get them in the hands of customers so the customers get as much value as possible before the relative value falls too.

.b

[gmouse]

This is at best throwing money out the window and at worst completely bonkers. A shareholders group would have no idea how to run a stable mining operation and the mere discussion of such an option would take months during which time we'd lose a truckload of money, and by that I mean a big, big truck, one of those massive Australian ones with 5 or 6 trailers. Carrying bits.

Selling hardware that cannot be used immediately realizes a huge part of their potential earnings at no cost and instantly, and considering the relative short lifespan of these units, it would be much better to get them in the hands of customers so the customers get as much value as possible before the relative value falls too.

.b

It wasn't my intent to sound completely bonkers.  My main intent was to draw attention to the fact that 10 blades a week doesn't sell the 200 TH worth of hardware quickly enough.  And if, there cannot be more sales than that a week, then we just need to be thinking up creative ways to get the hardware into the world.  I agree that chaos would ensue if we tried to set up groups of shareholders; so shall we instead settle upon disposal at an arbitrary price, or trickle the hardware out in weekly lots of ten blades? 

[JimiQ84]

The following auctions of blades will be after the collection of the feedback and (possibly) the modification and improvement of the design/manufacturing. But before that there will be auctions of USB sticks as soon as they are available. Shipping will also be immediate.

The users of the first round of auction are granted a free upgrade option to the blades of the improved design with the timescale the same as the free replacement warranty.

So, no flooding the market with erupter blades. That's good, I think.

[furuknap]

It wasn't my intent to sound completely bonkers.  My main intent was to draw attention to the fact that 10 blades a week doesn't sell the 200 TH worth of hardware quickly enough.  And if, there cannot be more sales than that a week, then we just need to be thinking up creative ways to get the hardware into the world.  I agree that chaos would ensue if we tried to set up groups of shareholders; so shall we instead settle upon disposal at an arbitrary price, or trickle the hardware out in weekly lots of ten blades? 

I didn't buy shares in a company to run it. I buy shares in a company because I trust the management to care for my interest in the same way their decisions would care for their interest.

As such, I do not feel obliged to critique the week-by-week operation of AM by friedcat any more than I would critique the week-by-week operation of Microsoft by Steve Ballmer.

.b

[Rodyland]

The following auctions of blades will be after the collection of the feedback and (possibly) the modification and improvement of the design/manufacturing. But before that there will be auctions of USB sticks as soon as they are available. Shipping will also be immediate.

The users of the first round of auction are granted a free upgrade option to the blades of the improved design with the timescale the same as the free replacement warranty.

So, no flooding the market with erupter blades. That's good, I think.

I agree.  However I think that flooding the market with mini-miners would be a good thing.  For one, at the right price point (sub BTC0.5 shipped globally), I think they'll have a very high "I don't care about the price or ROI, I just want one" factor.  I am of course assuming that the unit profit a batch of mini-miners is disproportionately higher than the equivalent profit from putting that same number of chips on a blade (which it should be, to make it worth asicminer's time to build, IMHO).

Add to that a "pay now, ship tomorrow" web store and I can imagine a flood of orders that would bring DHL to their knees. 

And, of course, I want one too. 

[gmouse]

It wasn't my intent to sound completely bonkers.  My main intent was to draw attention to the fact that 10 blades a week doesn't sell the 200 TH worth of hardware quickly enough.  And if, there cannot be more sales than that a week, then we just need to be thinking up creative ways to get the hardware into the world.  I agree that chaos would ensue if we tried to set up groups of shareholders; so shall we instead settle upon disposal at an arbitrary price, or trickle the hardware out in weekly lots of ten blades? 

I didn't buy shares in a company to run it. I buy shares in a company because I trust the management to care for my interest in the same way their decisions would care for their interest.

As such, I do not feel obliged to critique the week-by-week operation of AM by friedcat any more than I would critique the week-by-week operation of Microsoft by Steve Ballmer.

.b

We can collectively be Steve Ballmer here.  Just sayin...  I bought my shares to have the interest enough to at least point out the obvious.