ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[JaredR26]

Someone will need to write a script that pulls the asicminer solo mined blocks and estimates hashpower from that at x difficulty.  Anyone up for it?

[Caesium]

My question now going forward (for everyone, not specifically Friedcat), for an company like this, is there any advantage to using the pools at all?

Solo mining provides

1) No operator fees
2) All transaction fees (which have been consistently rising since Bitcoin started)
3) Less risk from pool owner trust
4) Less risk from pool downtime and DDOS attacks

At a cost of
1) More variance (who cares when you have significant hash power)

You've summed it up pretty well. With this proportion of the network hashrate variation really isn't a problem. Who cares if we don't find a block for 6 hours, then find 5 within 5 minutes, it'll all go into the weekly dividend anyway.

[JaredR26]

"Diversification is a protection for ignorance, It makes very little sense for those who know what they're doing." - Warren Buffet

Don't know if this is Warren Buffet supporting the idea of diversification, or sarcasm.  Let's take a look at what Warren has as of Dec 21, 2012.

1.) Wells Fargo & Co ........ financial
2.) Coca Cola Co .... consumer
3.) International Business Machines .... tech company
4.) American Express Co .... financial
5.) Procter & Gamble Co .... consumer goods
6.) Wal Mart Stores Inc .... department stores
7.) U S Bancorp Del ... financial
8.) Directv ... cable tv service
9.) Davita Inc ... health care
10.) Phillips 66 ... oil and gas
11) KFT ... food
12) INTC .... tech
13) Viacom ... cable tv service
14) Ingersol Rand ... industrial goods
15) National Oil Well Varco  ... oil and gas
16) Johnson and Johnson ... drug
etc.

His personal wealth is comparable to the market value of a lot of those companies. I'd say he diversifies partly because he's forced to. It's hard to buy a lot of shares even when you have the money, and when you try it's hard not to end up buying more expensive shares. Then it's also not easy to find a nice way to cash out when you hold lots of stock.

Just to be clear...

Buffet's net worth: ~53B

Walmart's market cap: 256B
Proctor and gamble: 216B
Johnson & Johnson: 239B
Wells fargo: 213B
IBM: 230B

To pretend like he is "forced" to diversify is to completely ignore the scale of those companies.  Just adding those 5 up is an order of magnitude off from his net worth.

I'm not taking a side or making any point other than that particular logic doesn't work here.

[runeks]

Someone will need to write a script that pulls the asicminer solo mined blocks and estimates hashpower from that at x difficulty.  Anyone up for it?

I'm working on it.

[mc_lovin]

"Diversification is a protection for ignorance, It makes very little sense for those who know what they're doing." - Warren Buffet

Don't know if this is Warren Buffet supporting the idea of diversification, or sarcasm.  Let's take a look at what Warren has as of Dec 21, 2012.

1.) Wells Fargo & Co ........ financial
2.) Coca Cola Co .... consumer
3.) International Business Machines .... tech company
4.) American Express Co .... financial
5.) Procter & Gamble Co .... consumer goods
6.) Wal Mart Stores Inc .... department stores
7.) U S Bancorp Del ... financial
8.) Directv ... cable tv service
9.) Davita Inc ... health care
10.) Phillips 66 ... oil and gas
11) KFT ... food
12) INTC .... tech
13) Viacom ... cable tv service
14) Ingersol Rand ... industrial goods
15) National Oil Well Varco  ... oil and gas
16) Johnson and Johnson ... drug
etc.

His personal wealth is comparable to the market value of a lot of those companies. I'd say he diversifies partly because he's forced to. It's hard to buy a lot of shares even when you have the money, and when you try it's hard not to end up buying more expensive shares. Then it's also not easy to find a nice way to cash out when you hold lots of stock.

Just to be clear...

Buffet's net worth: ~53B

Walmart's market cap: 256B
Proctor and gamble: 216B
Johnson & Johnson: 239B
Wells fargo: 213B
IBM: 230B

To pretend like he is "forced" to diversify is to completely ignore the scale of those companies.  Just adding those 5 up is an order of magnitude off from his net worth.

I'm not taking a side or making any point other than that particular logic doesn't work here.

Just wait until those billions start flowing to Bitcoin.. 

ASICMINER shares around $250 right now (2 x $125).  When a Bitcoin costs $1000's of dollars in the next couple years, the ASICMINER shares could become very very valuable. 

[richard_dein]

To pretend like he is "forced" to diversify is to completely ignore the scale of those companies.  Just adding those 5 up is an order of magnitude off from his net worth.

I'm not taking a side or making any point other than that particular logic doesn't work here.

Yeah... no.

Imagine you have a lot of money and considering buying 4000 ASICMINER shares. That's just 1%, but it's still not easy. In fact, it's going to be very, very difficult. Even if you to buy at 2.2 per share (slightly above the price at btct) you might not even get 500 in one day.

If you try to spread it out in a week or so you might end up paying say 2.5 per share. If you spread it out in a month you won't really get a good deal either, because ASICMINER would probably still rise at an uncomfortable pace.

Even if you still decide to spread it out over a relatively long time frame, you'd be sitting on an idle pile of money for some time; if there's something better while you're waiting, you'd like to put your money there.

To actually get a good deal you probably need to talk to some large shareholders who is thinking of cashing out, and be careful not to advertise so much that the share price rockets up because you're too famous for being rich, or really be patient with your buying strategy. Both of these happen quite a lot.

Now Warren Buffett probably faces this quite often. Every time a new pile of cash arrives at his hand, he has to think of ways to turn them into shares. Then there's the painful time of cashing them out; if you try to sell 4000 shares of ASICMINER-PT on btct at once, you see most of your shares turning to peanuts.

"Comparable to the market value" was more of a matter of speech, because even with one tenth of his wealth it's not an easy task to turn all money into shares of a handful of companies at good prices.

[miTgiB]

"Diversification is a protection for ignorance, It makes very little sense for those who know what they're doing." - Warren Buffet

Don't know if this is Warren Buffet supporting the idea of diversification, or sarcasm.  Let's take a look at what Warren has as of Dec 21, 2012.

1.) Wells Fargo & Co ........ financial
2.) Coca Cola Co .... consumer
3.) International Business Machines .... tech company
4.) American Express Co .... financial
5.) Procter & Gamble Co .... consumer goods
6.) Wal Mart Stores Inc .... department stores
7.) U S Bancorp Del ... financial
8.) Directv ... cable tv service
9.) Davita Inc ... health care
10.) Phillips 66 ... oil and gas
11) KFT ... food
12) INTC .... tech
13) Viacom ... cable tv service
14) Ingersol Rand ... industrial goods
15) National Oil Well Varco  ... oil and gas
16) Johnson and Johnson ... drug
etc.

His personal wealth is comparable to the market value of a lot of those companies. I'd say he diversifies partly because he's forced to. It's hard to buy a lot of shares even when you have the money, and when you try it's hard not to end up buying more expensive shares. Then it's also not easy to find a nice way to cash out when you hold lots of stock.

Just to be clear...

Buffet's net worth: ~53B

Walmart's market cap: 256B
Proctor and gamble: 216B
Johnson & Johnson: 239B
Wells fargo: 213B
IBM: 230B

To pretend like he is "forced" to diversify is to completely ignore the scale of those companies.  Just adding those 5 up is an order of magnitude off from his net worth.

I'm not taking a side or making any point other than that particular logic doesn't work here.

Berkshire Hathaway's market cap (464B) which is what owns all those above is the 5th largest company in the world, behind Exxon Mobil, Apple, General Electric, and Cheveron. Buffet's net worth is just his holdings in BRK-A

Also, not taking sides, the man is very talented with investing, I wish I could learn 1/2 of what he's forgotten over the years.

[Dexter770221]

.... talk to some large shareholders who is thinking of cashing out ...

Like DeaDTerra https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=210933.0
I'm wondering what he heard there that he want to dump 2800 shares...
Price dropped already...

[CMMPro]

It's nothing new, he has been selling G.ASICMiner-PT for a few weeks...they had ~4130 shares, 2800 left.  
Closing down 'Gamma' fund.

No FUD to spread here sorry.

[sleger]

.... talk to some large shareholders who is thinking of cashing out ...

Like DeaDTerra https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=210933.0
I'm wondering what he heard there that he want to dump 2800 shares...
Price dropped already...

On the other side there is TAT who still needs to buy about that amount so they should just work out a deal between themselves at mid price. Market price should therefore not move.

[ThickAsThieves]

It's nothing new, he has been selling G.ASICMiner-PT for a few weeks...they had ~3600 shares, 2800 left. 
Closing down a fund.

No FUD to spread here sorry.

This is correct, DT holds a large amount of shares on behalf of a bunch of fund asset holders. He is liquidating that fund to pay everyone out and close the old asset. Sure, it'll affect the market a bit, but only for a few days. ChEEpCoINZ!

[ThickAsThieves]

.... talk to some large shareholders who is thinking of cashing out ...

Like DeaDTerra https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=210933.0
I'm wondering what he heard there that he want to dump 2800 shares...
Price dropped already...

On the other side there is TAT who still needs to buy about that amount so they should just work out a deal between themselves at mid price. Market price should therefore not move.

Possibly, but I try to buy off-market, so it's a little more tricky as I think DT wants to keep the shares within BitFunder if he can...

[Franktank]

First solo block:

https://blockchain.info/tx/cba743ea1b7904c5624e0ee75f12d177ceb214c07f8e8b55ff2eb082404eb54a?show_adv=true

From now on the solo result of ASICMINER will have "Mined By ASICMiner" within the CoinBase.

And it begins... *Insert Inception Bass Noise*

[btclvr]

First solo block:

https://blockchain.info/tx/cba743ea1b7904c5624e0ee75f12d177ceb214c07f8e8b55ff2eb082404eb54a?show_adv=true

From now on the solo result of ASICMINER will have "Mined By ASICMiner" within the CoinBase.

You're not including transactions?

What?

https://blockchain.info/block-index/383941

Transaction Fees   0.1392 BTC


My question now going forward (for everyone, not specifically Friedcat), for an company like this, is there any advantage to using the pools at all?

Solo mining provides

1) No operator fees
2) All transaction fees (which have been consistently rising since Bitcoin started)
3) Less risk from pool owner trust
4) Less risk from pool downtime and DDOS attacks

At a cost of
1) More variance (who cares when you have significant hash power)

If another fork event occurs, friedcat will have to be on top of it and potentially change the version of the protocol used for solo mining. See http://bitcoin.org/may15.html

[runeks]

Still working on the script.

So far it says the following blocks have been mined by ASICMiner:

Code:

blockhash								blockheight	difficulty	timestamp
000000000000010c9335c90f6e1f2d2a9af73ca078d660c98988234309b9dba3	237079		11187257.4614	1369069056
000000000000007e6a981b8d2604801dd11f8a668d7b474f0f828a9e4c30c0d5	237088		11187257.4614	1369074825
000000000000001c9b6fb89f95d1676d41f160f4f5ccf102243a6ef7ff015da4	237097		11187257.4614	1369082215
0000000000000105874616cf0700309a068ea89377077c432e52d8c18bbbb0b2	237099		11187257.4614	1369083698

[MikkisJ]

This is a noob question...

How does transfer of shares happen? I understand the owners of shares are in your database, but how can I see when someone transferred shares to another owner, me?

[ex-trader]

Ok, I will do the heavy math for you
21.000.000 btc - 11.000.000 btc = 10 more millions to mine. (total coins minus already mined coins).
10.000.000 btc / 400.000 pcs  = 25 BTC per share (if we mine 100% of it).

So, number of coins yet to be mined per share is:
2.5 btc if we maintain 10%
6.25 btc if we maintain 25%
12.50 btc if we hit 50%
25 btc if we somehow hit 100%

That would be correct if in your examples above (using 10%) you were happy to invest 2.5 BTC now and wait about 10-20 years to receive the same 2.5BTC back in mined coins (ignoring costs/fees/electricity etc).

If on the other hand you want to actually earn a return on your risky investment then the value has to be discounted by your desired return rate. I did the maths many pages ago, the relevant bit is:

"If ASIC Miner could mine 10% of all coins forever, then they mine 1Mn BTC for a total of 2.5 BTC/share (ie 1Mn/400k)
Assuming that an investor wanted a positive net return then they'd pay less than 2.5BTC to buy that income stream, probably nearer 1BTC, for a roughly 25% IRR over the long holding period."

With this in mind and assuming a 20% long-term share 2BTC is a fair value right now.

The counter-argument is the possible added value of transaction fees, but at this stage it is very unclear what these will be worth.....

[sleger]

That is assuming a 20% market share which could very well be their mining market share. But in addition there is hardware sales, which at the current price are probably sold at the "right" price, as in exactly for how many bitcoins they would bring back.
So indirectly AM could own well more than 50% of the share indirectly through their sales, and the sales bring income very fast.
So there are some arguments for AM shares to be priced well more than 2 BTC.

[stslimited]

That is assuming a 20% market share which could very well be their mining market share. But in addition there is hardware sales, which at the current price are probably sold at the "right" price, as in exactly for how many bitcoins they would bring back.
So indirectly AM could own well more than 50% of the share indirectly through their sales, and the sales bring income very fast.
So there are some arguments for AM shares to be priced well more than 2 BTC.

correct and they deliver much faster than all other sha-256 asic companies. (I received mine in New York 48 hours from receipt of payment)

so they could have that market cornered

There could be an opportunity for them to sell more shovels

[bobboooiie]

It's nothing new, he has been selling G.ASICMiner-PT for a few weeks...they had ~4130 shares, 2800 left.  
Closing down 'Gamma' fund.

No FUD to spread here sorry.

Wait, what happens to poeple who have PT`s from them ? Am I still gonna be able to trade and who is gonna provide liqudity for market ?