I own shares because i see it as an investment. I doesnt care about the shareprice because its the dividend im interested it. I would buy the best paying stocks in normal share too because im no speculator. I wouldnt care about Asicminer when it is only a company that earns money for itself. I invested because i get a reward.
And this ASIC-Business is something different from real world businesses. In real world there are many opportunities to invest in. A mining company doesnt have much areas to invest in. What should they buy? Solar panels? It would be a loss in fact because of the low ROI. So a normal mining company might be comparable, when they mine with GPUs or FPGAs because the profit is way lower.
So whats the investment tha AM could do now that would lead to even higher returns? Because thats whats investments are for. Not for stockpiling money without a plan. Im with you with a financial cussion for bad times... but collecting bitcoins without common sense... i dont see why.
I think you dont see the enourmous profits AM is making. You speak like AM has to collect many weeks of money to buy something. In fact AM collects each week so enourmous much money that it can pay nearly everything with it.
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.
Why should AM buy a new ASIC-Company? First there would be competitors that would like to buy this company too and second... AM wouldnt have a gain from it. They already have ASICs, they can bring 1TH of hashingpower only for $10000 only. So buying another ASIC-Company would be a waste of money for AM. Or what do you think would be worth it to outbid other interested parties?
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".
I doubt there is an insurance. Or that an insurance company is willing to invest into Bitcoins and ASICs for a reasonable price. They would see it as a high risk and would demand high rates that doesnt make it useful to use the insurance.
You know that there are 40000 or so unsold shares? And you know that bitfountain owns 200000 shares? Im not sure if all the div for these shares are paid out to the actual persons behind AM or if there isnt some kept in bitfountain. I would guess so.
A burning down would mean a good chunk of weeks without dividend of course. And im sure the costs for coming back to the feet are already there. And when you see that it only needed one of the old low dividends to pay for 200TH... then i dont feel insecure with such possible happening. It could be handled without problems. Of course this can change once ASICs are weay less profitable in mining but thats not the case yet.
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.
Nope... i would say thats a bad investment. Buying a new datacenter is way way more expensive than simply churn out some more TH of hashingpower. They already created a datacenter for their needs anyway, so im sure its perfect for mining.
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.
Thats natural for mining ventures. But till now AM has space to grow. Until thats not maxed out this effect wont come into the game. It will. And maybe then another politics is needed, but thats far away now.
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.
Im not fearing the dividend going down. In fact i think its natural when AM has saturated his field of possibilities. But it would still be a great opportunity because AM can churn out TH for low money. There would have to be a company that can beat this. For example a better chip with double hashpower that doesnt cost the double price in production.
