ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[VJain]

My attempts (not really) at pump and dump xD.

If that worked I assure you in the near future you will regret the dump part.

I was mostly being sarcastic. I'm probably going to sell 10-15 shares to help pay for a vacation, need to reward oneself now and then .

My view is that the price will double it's current value in the next 6 months, so I agree with you dumping now wouldn't be that good of an idea... wait... people should dump so I can buy more for less! .

[ex-trader]

Much of this is natural growing pains for a new and massively expanding company, I've seen this many times before from the inside in companies I've been involved with.

The problem for ASICMiner is that they setup expectations, based on the payment of weekly dividends. There is no real need to either pay dividends that frequently and thought should be given as to whether it's optimal, since the volatility of weekly dividends is a potentially unnecessary distraction.

Given that ASICMiner is self-financing there is less requirement to appease the market with a flow of information designed to support share-price and more reasons to focus on the actual business, with a less frequent but more detailed set of information and perhaps a less frequent but larger dividend.

By way of comparison, most larger companies only issue quarterly earnings report and pay dividends twice-yearly, with interim announcements of major news. Within private companies that have raised external finance there is usually more frequent reporting, since the owners like to feel closer to the business.

This is now a $50m business, perhaps it should be able to at least have a short blog page somewhere, so that the weekly commentaries can be held as an easily readable time-series of items. Also posted on here could be a monthly or quarterly balance sheet and P&L account.

[Akka]

Not OK:



When will ASICMINER start to distribute its Hashingpower a bit?

[davos]

[...]

I'd rather see him auction large lots of the usb miners - effectively wholesaling them to distributors. It would be beneficial in creating larger economies, keep the wholesale price competitive, and would enable people to retail them through whatever mechanism they felt best served retail buyers.

Edit: I'm thinking of large lots at the 100's of units level. 128 would be good as it would parallel 4 of the block erupter blades for chipcount while still enabling some level of wholesale volume.

That is the dumbest idea so far. Why would you want to start a 'price gauging' war between re-sellers when it's proven right here they don't need re-sellers. Only thing that would happen is that ASICMINER's margin would be lower and sale prices would be higher.

Professional retail distribution would require BitFountain/AM to hire additional staff dedicated to managing a large rotating inventory, customer service, etc. It might require them (as was originally suggested) to start processing non-BTC payments from around the world - complicating their accounting.

Obviously you sacrifice some level of margin by selling equipment to retailers as an OEM, but you also save yourself a lot of headaches. Adding a full-scale retail operation adds an entire level of business complexity for relatively low marginal gains. The original wholesale price, if set by auction, would cut significantly into retail margins while eliminating a great deal of operational complexity for AM. The price AM gets would be less, obviously, than the final cost to retail buyers... but it couldn't be that much less as efficient dedicated retail operations would make it work. When I think of a retailer I'm not thinking of some guy on this site buying 128 units and selling them for a 100% markup also on this site - price competitiveness would emerge when BitcoinStore and other retailers made bids on 10s or 100s of lots and then sold them through their more efficient system.

AM would get a very good price, and consumers would get better access and service.

[Newar]

Not OK:

More accurate: http://blockorigin.pfoe.be/chart.php, but

When will ASICMINER start to distribute its Hashingpower a bit?

Yeah..

[ineededausername]

Not OK:



When will ASICMINER start to distribute its Hashingpower a bit?

We can only connect well to BTCGuild right now, so the answer is... never.  Until we solo-mine.

[JimiQ84]

just fun fact: 3% fee on BTC Guild had cost Asiminer about 1100 BTC (AFAIK)

[kokojie]

Why not merged mine NMC at a pool with merged mining? (not sure if btcguild still has it). Could be earning 108% more.

[wtfvanity]

Why not merged mine NMC at a pool with merged mining? (not sure if btcguild still has it). Could be earning 108% more.

Stratum protocol doesn't support NMC. 108% more sounds misleading, do you mean 108%? Or do you mean 8% more?

[kokojie]

Why not merged mine NMC at a pool with merged mining? (not sure if btcguild still has it). Could be earning 108% more.

Stratum protocol doesn't support NMC. 108% more sounds misleading, do you mean 108%? Or do you mean 8% more?

hmm, if earning is 100, then 100 * 108%, what do you get? or did I learn math wrong?

Stratum does support NMC, mine at bitminter.com and you'll see.

[SmiGueL]

Hashrate slowly rising

We're @ 20% of the total hashrate _{(pretty much an all-time-high)}

[TheSwede75]

Why not merged mine NMC at a pool with merged mining? (not sure if btcguild still has it). Could be earning 108% more.

Stratum protocol doesn't support NMC. 108% more sounds misleading, do you mean 108%? Or do you mean 8% more?

hmm, if earning is 100, then 100 * 108%, what do you get? or did I learn math wrong?

Stratum does support NMC, mine at bitminter.com and you'll see.

Technically you were wrong. They could be earning an extra 8%, not 108% more. Also: Why not merge mine all the SHA256 coins if you are going to go down that road. IX, DEV and NMC.

[wtfvanity]

Why not merged mine NMC at a pool with merged mining? (not sure if btcguild still has it). Could be earning 108% more.

Stratum protocol doesn't support NMC. 108% more sounds misleading, do you mean 108%? Or do you mean 8% more?

hmm, if earning is 100, then 100 * 108%, what do you get? or did I learn math wrong?

Stratum does support NMC, mine at bitminter.com and you'll see.

Technically you were wrong. They could be earning an extra 8%, not 108% more. Also: Why not merge mine all the SHA256 coins if you are going to go down that road. IX, DEV and NMC.

That's what I was saying. You said 108% more. You meant you could earn 108%. There is a huge difference between that.

Again, stratum protocol does not support merge mining name coins. That is probably the biggest hurdle. But, maybe some programming would be worthwhile to make that possible. even if it were just 2% extra, you could be talking about 10,000USD extra a month, which may pay for itself in just a few days if the whole ship heads solo.

[gramma]

Why not merged mine NMC at a pool with merged mining? (not sure if btcguild still has it). Could be earning 108% more.

Stratum protocol doesn't support NMC. 108% more sounds misleading, do you mean 108%? Or do you mean 8% more?

hmm, if earning is 100, then 100 * 108%, what do you get? or did I learn math wrong?

Stratum does support NMC, mine at bitminter.com and you'll see.

Slush also supports Stratum with NMC. And it's 8%-ish more, or 108% of what we're now getting (not net of fees, of course, and Slush's are lower than 3%). Can't speak to bitminter. I'd also like to see the hashes spread out a bit whenever possible.

[wtfvanity]

Why not merged mine NMC at a pool with merged mining? (not sure if btcguild still has it). Could be earning 108% more.

Stratum protocol doesn't support NMC. 108% more sounds misleading, do you mean 108%? Or do you mean 8% more?

hmm, if earning is 100, then 100 * 108%, what do you get? or did I learn math wrong?

Stratum does support NMC, mine at bitminter.com and you'll see.

Slush also supports Stratum with NMC. And it's 8%-ish more, or 108% of what we're now getting (not net of fees, of course, and Slush's are lower than 3%). Can't speak to bitminter. I'd also like to see the hashes spread out a bit whenever possible.

That isn't accurate from what I've read. Slush only supports NMC on getwork which has a huge fee.

Also..  want to make a pitch (again) about merged mining nmc, dvcm ixc under stratum.  I know they may be dead coins to some, but they still can be converted to btc - at least nmc - because the conversion to btc rate is enough to make it noticable when the btc rates are as high as they are..

[wtfvanity]

Here's a better quote one quoting Slush saying they do not support NMC on stratum.

I just checked the Slush stats, and I can't stop wondering why Slush with 8Ths is making dozens of times less nmc blocks than bitminter pool with its 5.8Ths: https://bitminter.com/blocks?commodity=NMC. 

I think he explained that earlier... 

Stratum pool don't have support for Namecoin (yet), so around 30% of hashpower isn't mining for Namecoin. Still you should have higher namecoin income than on other pools, because quite a lot people didn't filled NMC address...

I'm considering to drop of NMC support, because this project is basically dead and current merged mining sources are incompatible with latest bitcoin development (no support for merged mining over getblocktemplate etc). There's no project development since merged mining has been introduced in last October...

Thanks for the info  . I couldn't find that information on the website. Profit wise its better to support nmc, as it gives ~8% extra profit, at no expense. So when pool OP says that he's not going to support something that gives profit, while its a known fact that most pools are barely making any profit to stay competitive, it doesn't make any sense. Anyway, I wish Slush low CDF to make enough btc for a good website UI =).

[Newar]

Again, stratum protocol does not support merge mining name coins. That is probably the biggest hurdle. But, maybe some programming would be worthwhile to make that possible. even if it were just 2% extra, you could be talking about 10,000USD extra a month, which may pay for itself in just a few days if the whole ship heads solo.

It may not "support" it, but it works well anyway on both BitMinter (NMC) and Bitparking (NMC, IXC, DVC) pools.

[furuknap]

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)

1. 62+200=262TH/s. Earnings and profitability highly depends on the competitors and how the price range the purchasers will accept after two to three months. And please bear in mind that they are perspectives, only bonds could usually give a fixed range of profit predictions.
2. The final margin cost for 1TH/s is less than 10k$, the actual number depends on the volatile price of PCB components. Installing and power bill are currently low. We will be self-funded.
3. We are virtually free of any liabilities at this moment. The rest, as said above, will be generated from our Bitcoins and fiat transactions as well as contracts.
4. They are all set aside as reserves for the future. We do not get the Bitcoins sold only one day before the merchants knock our door asking for payments.

And for the Block Erupter USB sticks. Please stay tuned for later news.

Very nice update, friedcat, much appreciated. This answers, combined with your expectations of periodic financial updates, the concerns that I had almost to perfection.

One follow-up question, or rather request for confirmation; you mentioned in 2) that you will be self-funded. I assume that means you won't be looking at external investors but that funding will still need to come from regular earnings and thus reduce dividends from current levels?

Finally, and as mentioned, this would at least be sufficient to me: Are you comfortable with the progress you are making according to your plans?

I'm asking this because I know you and your partners have the same interests in this as we have, and if you are satisfied, that probably means we should be too.

Thanks again from a still confident shareholder,

.b

[mrb]

Damn, so many haters here. You, guys, have got to give credit for all the work friedcat has done so far (processing payments from the auctions, distributing dividends, deploying and shipping equipment) because it's due. He definatelly exceeded my expectations.

In case it is me you call a hater: I am not.

I am just correcting bad information spread by others who say that "everything is rosy and went perfectly as expected".

[matt4054]

We can only connect well to BTCGuild right now, so the answer is... never.  Until we solo-mine.

Why is this? What prevents ASICMINER to mine on other Stratum pools with selectable share difficulty, like 50BTC or whatever other Stratum pool? Not complaining here, but I really don't have a clue why "we can only connect well to BTCGuild right now".

I admit I haven't read the full 220 pages of this thread, but I estimate that the thread has grown too large to avoid repeats, if that question was already answered in the past.