Im not better for sure... but why do you think there are investments gone lost that could have lead to even higher return? I mean AM paid already for everything possible to invest. Of course a financial cussion would be good for bad times... but only piling up bitcoins for no reason doesnt make much sense. Then i would be better in optimizing these bitcoins myself.
In a growing market, dividend payments are rarely a long-term strategy, and by gosh this is a growing market. Opportunities arise at a moment's notice. Having cash on hand is never a bad idea, and it wouldn't be worse for investors as long as they are confident in friedcat and his abilities to run the shop.
Let's imagine, hypothetically of course, that one mining company ACME Mining had a huge order for next-gen chips in production, paid for, but not delivered, and then went belly-up for whatever reason. With a few piles of cash, ASICMiner would snap up the order and possibly make a killing.
Let's further imagine that the server center housing a chunk of AM miners burned down and that due to a clerical error, the insurance for whatever reason covered only 75% of the losses. Now friedcat could say "Fine, we'll cover the remaining 25% from our holdings while we fight this in court" instead of "sorry guys, we won't get a dime from the insurance until we've fought this in court".
Let's imagine that a perfect data center went up for sale that would reduce AM costs by 5% due to, I don't know, better ventilation, shorter travel time, free cocaine for the staff... Now friedcat could say "great, I've always wanted a dedicated data center" and swipe his cell phone, saving 5% cost in a few minutes before the competition could arive.
There are plenty of scenarios where AM having a chunk of cash would benefit the solidity of the company.
Be aware, though, that the current policy of paying 90% of profits looks fine on paper, but could ultimately doom AM. If prices of electricity rose and prices of BTC dove, the profit would shrink drastically because, I suspect, most costs for AM is denominated in RMB.
We're basking in comfort right now because we own 30% of all generated coin, but companies are drooling over their chip designs to get at that money, and if AM isn't staying ahead, having no cash at hand could easily lead to a situation where they can't afford to pay for the next generation of chips required to leap ahead again.
Finally, if you go to bed now and wake up in early December 2016, you'll find out that dividends have at least halved simply from the drop in block reward. This will also affect share prices, at least when the herd realizes that the eventual halving needs to be pro-rated from today's price.
Because there is roughly 40ish months left until the halving, the share value will be, in a perfect equation, reduced by 1/80 every month. At the current price of ~฿1.7, that means 0.0215 per month of 0.0053 per week, but note that this is share
price, not
value.
Start deducting 0.005 from your dividends each week and see how much is left, if AM gets its expected 10% of the network hash rate on average throughout 2013. I guess the ROI looks somewhat different then.
Despite this, I am
still bullish about AM. I'm just not as certain at these prices if the extreme dividends people expect are paid out.
So, a high dividend in a growing market is not a long-term strategy. Having cash at hand allows AM to seize oportunities that we as individuals wouldn't get and will give them better options for maintaining profitability also beyond 2016.
.b
