ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[furuknap]

Then don't.  The door is that way.

Friedcat has been 100% honest, and every thing he has said has worked so far- Blades sold and shipped immediately, hashing power visible and going up, etc.

You are demanding more transparency at the same time everyone else demands that he move faster and deploy the 50 TH/s tomorrow.  Stop acting like a bunch of whiny children.  There is a direct inverse correlation between the size of Friedcat's updates and the work that AM does for that week.  For the last 6 weeks he gave lots of updates, and mostly not much was happening.  Now everything is happening at once, and everyone who isn't whining here like you wants Friedcat to focus on deployment & manufacturing first, then communications and corporate structure.

I have not questioned friedcat's honesty or dedication, so stop those strawman arguments.

Look, why don't you put your money where your mouth is? There are plenty of PT shares for sale 

.b

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[MPOE-PR]

You deserve it because you are effectively lending them your money based on the promise that they will be able to repay it at some point or that you can sell your debt on an open market. If you or other investors have little information on how to evaluate the risk of that debt, then essentially it introduces more risk to you.

Debt and equity are fundamentally different things. Your name is Schmoe, and you have no business here.

[furuknap]

You deserve it because you are effectively lending them your money based on the promise that they will be able to repay it at some point or that you can sell your debt on an open market. If you or other investors have little information on how to evaluate the risk of that debt, then essentially it introduces more risk to you.

Debt and equity are fundamentally different things. Your name is Schmoe, and you have no business here.

I'm truly glad you focus on red herrings, so why don't we make this discussion about accounting instead, then?

.b

[Socket54]

I enjoy reading this thread but last 5 or so pages have been a buncha jargon that needs to be sumed up in a nice and tiddy post

Investor #1 wants a good company, complete with a brick and mortar establishment and marketing built for a growing company. Something that will stand out more with better transparency. #1 is probably thinking to himself does anyone even know what these guys real names are, what they look like anything?

Investors #2, 3 enjoy the the lemonade stand style structure currently implemented and stand by good ol buddy systems of honesty and good neighborly business practices. Problem is where is the lemonade stand? In a basically anonymous series of internet forums...

Now while the lemonade stand may have been good for a few funny monies here and there, i see this company as way overdue for a upgrade.

just my 2 satoshi's

[memvola]

Investor #1 wants a good company, complete with a brick and mortar establishment and marketing built for a growing company. Something that will stand out more with better transparency. #1 is probably thinking to himself does anyone even know what these guys real names are, what they look like anything?

Investors #2, 3 enjoy the the lemonade stand style structure currently implemented and stand by good ol buddy systems of honesty and good neighborly business practices. Problem is where is the lemonade stand? In a basically anonymous series of internet forums...

For me, it's not about this distinction. I'm a patient Investor #1 who prefers good solutions to unreasonable demands.

We could also discuss #2 vs. #1, but I don't observe that the recent debate is focused on that.

[Socket54]

Investor #1 wants a good company, complete with a brick and mortar establishment and marketing built for a growing company. Something that will stand out more with better transparency. #1 is probably thinking to himself does anyone even know what these guys real names are, what they look like anything?

Investors #2, 3 enjoy the the lemonade stand style structure currently implemented and stand by good ol buddy systems of honesty and good neighborly business practices. Problem is where is the lemonade stand? In a basically anonymous series of internet forums...

For me, it's not about this distinction. I'm a patient Investor #1 who prefers good solutions to unreasonable demands.

We could also discuss #2 vs. #1, but I don't observe that the recent debate is focused on that.

Well you got to look at it from a potential investor standpoint too. This isnt like Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) where you know exactly what your getting into.

Here your going on the word of something all but anonymous. While it was nice 200 some odd pages ago to throw a few nickels and dimes about in a lemonade startup, this company is much deeper then that now and that is a good thing.

 Now it just really needs to catch up with itself, asicminer is basically in a battle with avalon much like Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) and Apple Inc (AAPL) for supremacy in the asic market. BFL is due to the nature of all their hangups, the red headed step child of the industry. Sorry BFL but for all intents and purposes you know this is true;)

Yet we hardly know a thing about any of them?

[talnted]

It'd be a bond if it were debt.  They sold shares.

I'd look that up with an accountant if I were you :-)

A share is a declaration of debt in the form of ownership. In other words, a shareholder gives the face value of a share to the company and the company acknowledgeds that debt in the form of a share of ownership. It is generally an irredeemable and interest free debt unless the company is liquidated at a balance, but it is still a debt.

The premium a shareholder gets from that share is the share price, the debt owed by the company to the share holder is the face value.

Yeah, technically, the term debt refers to something that will be paid off and earns an interest, whereas stock equity is not paid off and any 'interest' paid is called dividends, but in practice it is the same thing. You sell shares and increase your debt (or stock equity).

Otherwise, issuing shares would be an income for the company, which it certainly isn't.

Look, the technicalities of book keeping is irrelevant to the discussion. Even if a share holder is comfortable with the return they have gotten, that return is still tied to a promise made at the IPO by the company and the expectation of the share holder that those promises will be kept. The risk the share holder puts on the possibility of a default on those promises, plus whatever earning they expect from their investment, is the price they expect to get from an eventual sale.

At this point, it seems nobody has any clear answers to how we can evaluate that risk. That uncertainty should make an investor uncomfortable at some level, regardless of whether they believe in a bright future for Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general.

.b

You do realize that the PROMISE that was made by the ASICMINER project was that all shares would be paid back in full from what they cost when they were sold.  Each share cost .1 BTC and this is all the money that ASICMINER ever collected from the initially sale.  That was paid off already.  Initially investors are free rolling at this point. That promise was fulfilled.  
You keep talking about the debt owed by the company to the shareholders..  There is no more debt.  That was completely paid off in the first 4 dividend payments.  Your entire write up above makes it obvious that you have no idea the history of ASICMINER and of the shares that were sold.
 
Think of these shares more as venture capital that ASICMINER sought after and gave those who put in money a slice of the equity in the company.  That amount was repaid in full.  Now we are trading around those slices of equity based on what we feel they are worth.  
Friedcat owes you nothing.  The promise he made to repay shareholders was upheld.  Now it is our job to decide what we want to pay for these slices of equity.

Stop thinking of these shares in the fashion you consider publicly traded companies.

[talnted]

You deserve it because you are effectively lending them your money based on the promise that they will be able to repay it at some point or that you can sell your debt on an open market. If you or other investors have little information on how to evaluate the risk of that debt, then essentially it introduces more risk to you.

Debt and equity are fundamentally different things. Your name is Schmoe, and you have no business here.

Thats exactly right. Please furuknap do your research before spending all this time talking about irrelavant arguments.  See my post above this. Dont buy shares if your not confortable with the risk.

[velacreations]

Dont buy shares if your not confortable with the risk.

How do you determine the risk without having information to base that decision on?

I asked for more information after last week's update, and I got a similar response from fellow shareholders.  More information is not a bad thing, guys.  It is not an attack on Friedcat or AM to request details on what is planned for the next few weeks.  It would have been nice to know we weren't going to get the profits from the last auction.

Am I saying Friedcat is a bad guy because of this? no.  Do I think less of AM because of it?  no.  Do I deserve it as some sort of special entitlement? no.

I'm just saying it WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE to know what was going on beforehand.  Is that really too much to ask?

It looks like we are hitting the additional 7.5 TH/s as promised, and that's wonderful news!  Personally, I'd like to know what the plan is for the coming weeks, both on deployment and auctions.  

If Friedcat is too busy to communicate with shareholders, I completely understand. Is there anyone else in the company that can participate in the communications and updates?  I'd be happy to help develop a website/place for official updates and information.

[JaredR26]

I enjoy reading this thread but last 5 or so pages have been a buncha jargon that needs to be sumed up in a nice and tiddy post

Investor #1 wants a good company, complete with a brick and mortar establishment and marketing built for a growing company. Something that will stand out more with better transparency. #1 is probably thinking to himself does anyone even know what these guys real names are, what they look like anything?

Investors #2, 3 enjoy the the lemonade stand style structure currently implemented and stand by good ol buddy systems of honesty and good neighborly business practices. Problem is where is the lemonade stand? In a basically anonymous series of internet forums...

Now while the lemonade stand may have been good for a few funny monies here and there, i see this company as way overdue for a upgrade.

just my 2 satoshi's

I think the problem here is patience.  Everyone in the Bitcoin world is used to things moving at lightning speed.  After all the rise from 15 to 266 took less than 90 days, and the crash took only hours.  AM's first 3TH deployment happened ridiculously fast.  The latest rise from 8.0TH/s to 13TH/s happened ridiculously fast.

But the real world doesn't work that way.  The reason there was such a delay at 6.5/7 TH/s is because the real world moves slowly- on the order of weeks, months, and years.  100 years ago, the world moved even slower- DECADES, not months.

Expecting to go from lemonade stand to Microsoft in weeks is just not reasonable.  The complaints raised are absolutely valid, the timelines they are expected under are not- a proper corporate structure takes months to years.  These are all things that Friedcat is aware of as well.

My opinion is this- I don't mean to come down so hard on furuknap because he simply represents a larger problem, a problem that consumes the vast majority of companies.  This problem is shareholders wanting info, results, and profits, and wanting them *NOW*.  This leads to executives who curtow to shareholder whims, delivering quarterly results at the expense of long term planning.

Realistically speaking, AM is more open and communicative to shareholders than virtually any other company.  Weekly updates?  Details on internal workings and long term plans, often months ahead of time(200TH/s announcement, 50TH/s dates, blade sales info, USB miner info, etc)?  And yet you want more?  Moreover, because all shareholders have access to this information, *all* competitors have access to this information as well.  And you want *more* information?

The biggest and best companies out there all have made a habit- Ignoring shareholder short term wants.  Amazon, Apple, Google... Do you think they give a crap about shareholder quarterly demands?  Nope.  They care about the customers' wants, and the long term planning of the company.  Shareholders buy the company *because* they have do a good job, not because the CEO's convinced the shareholders he was going to do good.

So all that said, we should come up with a list of our requests for Friedcat in a single place.  That way it is easy for him to read, easy for us to track, and easy for him to respond.

I have started a spreadsheet with three requests here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiOjtcD8SdisdEJ6MXcwZHdnZVV1YjhvQ1dNTnVwMUE&usp=sharing

Please keep reasonable timelines(months or years for large projects), and ensure that the request you are making is actually important- Friedcat's time as well as AM's time is on a premium right now due to the deployment and sales.

[memvola]

Well you got to look at it from a potential investor standpoint too. This isnt like Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) where you know exactly what your getting into.

Did you know what you were getting into a few months after Microsoft was founded?

I'm just saying it WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE to know what was going on beforehand.  Is that really too much to ask?

Of course not. But if you have read this thread, you will realize that the more they deliver, the more is demanded from them. The questions have already been asked, and the difficulties in answering them are crystal clear. The crowd is getting impatient because the stakes are getting higher, but they did get higher exactly because of Bitfountain's pragmatic approach in the first place.

Moreover, because all shareholders have access to this information, *all* competitors have access to this information as well.  And you want *more* information?

I wish more people realized this.

[JaredR26]

 More information is not a bad thing, guys.  

That is not true.  More information for you is also more information for competitors.

To summarize what is known:
1. AM may have upwards of 200TH/s on order, although this is not confirmed.  They also have agreements in place such that they could order substantially more.
2. AM has in their possession 62 TH/s of AM 10GH/s blades ready to deploy, minus what has been sold so far(0.6TH/s).
3. 13 TH/s is deployed, with 2 more TH/s estimated to be deployed tonight(by tomorrow morning for those of us in America).
4. Of the remaining 48 TH/s, at least 50% will be deployed for AM hashing.  Some undetermined percentage of the remainder will be sold.
5. The company has a philosophy of around 50% reinvestment in the company, and 50% dividend payouts, which means AM likely has a lot more future ahead of it.
6. The order(?) or production of the USB miners has begun, and AM has reserved substantial funds to pay for it and integrated circuits as needed for deployment.

That is what is known.  I daresay you should be able to use that to evaluate AM's value yourself.  Worst case, you can use prices from the most recent auctions to evaluate AM's true value, and estimate for yourself the future value based on the above & Friedcat's statements.

[talnted]

Dont buy shares if your not confortable with the risk.

How do you determine the risk without having information to base that decision on?

I asked for more information after last week's update, and I got a similar response from fellow shareholders.  More information is not a bad thing, guys.  It is not an attack on Friedcat or AM to request details on what is planned for the next few weeks.  It would have been nice to know we weren't going to get the profits from the last auction.

Am I saying Friedcat is a bad guy because of this? no.  Do I think less of AM because of it?  no.  Do I deserve it as some sort of special entitlement? no.

I'm just saying it WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE to know what was going on beforehand.  Is that really too much to ask?

It looks like we are hitting the additional 7.5 TH/s as promised, and that's wonderful news!  Personally, I'd like to know what the plan is for the coming weeks, both on deployment and auctions.  

If Friedcat is too busy to communicate with shareholders, I completely understand. Is there anyone else in the company that can participate in the communications and updates?  I'd be happy to help develop a website/place for official updates and information.

How much more information do you need to determine risk and what you would be willing to pay for an equity share?  You know how much hashing power there has, you know the bitcoin address that receives the bitcoins from the pool, you can see how much is received thus generally derive how much profit there is once a reasonable cost is established (look at past dividend payments).  Friedcat does a great job giving us estimates as to when deployment will happen (it appears much is unknown to him as well).  He does an excellent job communicating and upholding his own deadlines.  He has explained deployment stages, and always revisits them to give an update.  Deployment is not a perfectly predictable thing as he has run into issues in the past.  He explains when auctions will happen, and has just updated that USB sticks are going to begin being massed produced.  He explains when costs are incurred from week to week as well

This ASICMINER project is unbelievably transparent in my opinoin.  What else are you seriously looking for?

If you feel like all this information is not sufficient do not buy the shares if you feel the risk is too great.  Don’t buy shares and then come here and beg for Friedcat to specifically lay out in excruciating detail what will happen every single day for the upcoming weeks.

[furuknap]

How much more information do you need to determine risk and what you would be willing to pay for an equity share?  You know how much hashing power there has, you know the bitcoin address that receives the bitcoins from the pool, you can see how much is received thus generally derive how much profit there is once a reasonable cost is established (look at past dividend payments).  Friedcat does a great job giving us estimates as to when deployment will happen (it appears much is unknown to him as well).  He does an excellent job communicating and upholding his own deadlines.  He has explained deployment stages, and always revisits them to give an update.  Deployment is not a perfectly predictable thing as he has run into issues in the past.  He explains when auctions will happen, and has just updated that USB sticks are going to begin being massed produced.  He explains when costs are incurred from week to week as well

This ASICMINER project is unbelievably transparent in my opinoin.  What else are you seriously looking for?

If you feel like all this information is not sufficient do not buy the shares if you feel the risk is too great.  Don’t buy shares and then come here and beg for Friedcat to specifically lay out in excruciating detail what will happen every single day for the upcoming weeks.

Again, strawmen and slippery slopes usually don't make for good arguments. I believe at least my request was very clear; I explicitly do not want to know what friedcat has for dinner every day.

I would love to know

1. What are the two-three month perspective on hashrate, earnings, and profitability
2. What are the funding requirements to reach those goals and how will that funding take place?
3. What is the current financial situation of the company (ie assets, liabilities, running costs, currency denominations, and so on)
4. What is the policy on managing capital (ie is it exchanged every week, do they set aside capital for unforeseen expenses, etc)

Nobody is asking for any excruciating detail, least of all on a daily basis. I'd be fine with far less frequent updates that we're already getting.

In fact, if it boils down to it, I really want to know just one thing, once a month: Is the operation going according to your plans? If the answer is yes, fine, if the answer is no, I would like to know that there is a plan to mitigate the issues. I don't even care what those plans are, I trust them to know far more about what to do than I could know. They can prove the plan's success by answering "Yes" to the same question next month or two months down the line if that's how long it takes to resolve whatever issues there are.

.b

[velacreations]

What else are you seriously looking for?

basically, to know ahead of time whether or not profits from this week will be included in next week's dividend.

Based on the information we received last week, we were all expecting to receive a larger dividend, due to the auction and the increased hash rate.  It would have been nice ahead of time to know that those profits were not going to be included in the dividend payment this week.  I made the mistake of assuming that more profits = larger dividend, based on the information I had received.

Again, this isn't the end of the world, and it certainly isn't cause for me to sell shares, but that kind of information would have been appreciated by shareholders like me.

[JaredR26]

What else are you seriously looking for?

basically, to know ahead of time whether or not profits from this week will be included in next week's dividend.

Based on the information we received last week, we were all expecting to receive a larger dividend, due to the auction and the increased hash rate.  It would have been nice ahead of time to know that those profits were not going to be included in the dividend payment this week.  I made the mistake of assuming that more profits = larger dividend, based on the information I had received.

Again, this isn't the end of the world, and it certainly isn't cause for me to sell shares, but that kind of information would have been appreciated by shareholders like me.

You are thinking far too short term.  AM not paying that dividend does not mean AM is worth less.  They still have the money, and even better than that, they are investing it for you.  Now rather than having the money in your account, the company is worth a bit more.

The only realistic way to evaluate a company is *not* dividends.  Both Amazon and Berkshire pay no dividends, but have among the highest returns of any investment over the last 10 years.  The way to evaluate a company is to look at what they are *earning,* not what their shareholders are getting.  The companies earnings are all public knowledge.

[talnted]

How much more information do you need to determine risk and what you would be willing to pay for an equity share?  You know how much hashing power there has, you know the bitcoin address that receives the bitcoins from the pool, you can see how much is received thus generally derive how much profit there is once a reasonable cost is established (look at past dividend payments).  Friedcat does a great job giving us estimates as to when deployment will happen (it appears much is unknown to him as well).  He does an excellent job communicating and upholding his own deadlines.  He has explained deployment stages, and always revisits them to give an update.  Deployment is not a perfectly predictable thing as he has run into issues in the past.  He explains when auctions will happen, and has just updated that USB sticks are going to begin being massed produced.  He explains when costs are incurred from week to week as well

This ASICMINER project is unbelievably transparent in my opinoin.  What else are you seriously looking for?

If you feel like all this information is not sufficient do not buy the shares if you feel the risk is too great.  Don’t buy shares and then come here and beg for Friedcat to specifically lay out in excruciating detail what will happen every single day for the upcoming weeks.

Again, strawmen and slippery slopes usually don't make for good arguments. I believe at least my request was very clear; I explicitly do not want to know what friedcat has for dinner every day.

I would love to know

1. What are the two-three month perspective on hashrate, earnings, and profitability
2. What are the funding requirements to reach those goals and how will that funding take place?
3. What is the current financial situation of the company (ie assets, liabilities, running costs, currency denominations, and so on)
4. What is the policy on managing capital (ie is it exchanged every week, do they set aside capital for unforeseen expenses, etc)

Nobody is asking for any excruciating detail, least of all on a daily basis. I'd be fine with far less frequent updates that we're already getting.

In fact, if it boils down to it, I really want to know just one thing, once a month: Is the operation going according to your plans? If the answer is yes, fine, if the answer is no, I would like to know that there is a plan to mitigate the issues. I don't even care what those plans are, I trust them to know far more about what to do than I could know. They can prove the plan's success by answering "Yes" to the same question next month or two months down the line if that's how long it takes to resolve whatever issues there are.

.b

My last post was actually in response to another post.. so strawment and slippery slopes doesn’t make sense here.

As for the information you want, great, who wouldn’t want to know all of those fine details?

I will be satisfied as long as you realize NONE of this information is OWED to you.  There is no debt.  As long as you realize all these shares represent is equity in this project, than great.

BitFountain in the company.  Friedcat raised money for this project.. called ASICMINER.  He repaid that money fully.  Those shares still retained equity in the company after they were repaid in full.  The profit from this project is paid out in dividends to those shares of equity.

This asset is really simple people.  Its not the same as a common share of a publicly traded company.

[MPOE-PR]

This ASICMINER project is unbelievably transparent in my opinoin.  What else are you seriously looking for?

An actual contract (such as), their listing on a reputable exchange (such as), actual monthly reports (such as). Without these you are basically holding dust, like it or not.

(No, the fact that "it paid already X dollah" is not necessarily an argument - so did pirate.)

[velacreations]

You are thinking far too short term.  AM not paying that dividend does not mean AM is worth less.  They still have the money, and even better than that, they are investing it for you.  Now rather than having the money in your account, the company is worth a bit more.

yeah, I agree, but that's where the whole "knowing what the plan is" thing comes into play.  Did they not know they were going to invest that money a week ago? 

I am not using the dividend amount to value the company.  I was using the amount of profits to estimate the weekly dividend. 

Why is this important to me?  Because I use dividends to buy more shares!

[ThickAsThieves]

To anyone that is interested, I have gone live with a new fractional passthrough of ASICMINER shares.

You can learn more about how it works and why someone might be interested here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192498.0

You can buy the shares on Bitfunder here: https://bitfunder.com/asset/TAT.ASICMINER

While I think this is relevant to this thread, it's possible I am biased and some of you will be angered at this "shameless self-promotion". If so, you can take comfort in knowing that I will pay the price in hell upon my day of reckoning.