ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[Vycid]

Yes please link citation of being registered as a Chinese business. That would be news

There is this:

Hi everyone. Our team has just started a project of mining ASIC design & production. We believe it will be both profitable for us and good for the Bitcoin community if we fully work it out.

It is widely believed that the NRE cost of ASIC is very high, while the margin cost of mass ASIC production is very low. However, we happen to be in China, where the NRE cost is much more reasonable (~150k$ for 130nm, ~500k$ for 65nm, furthermore much less if you do a 1/N mask) than most people thought. And we are going to take well advantage of that.

Our approach is incremental in all aspects. We will set several milestones and see what will happen if we achieve each of them. The report on each stage will be posted here.

In the design stage, including both the front-end and the back-end, we are going to fund ourselves. When we are finally ready to turn our design into real chips, we will seek investments, possibly both inside and outside the Bitcoin world. The first batch of our ASIC will not be an end, and we are going to renew our technology with the evolution of the hardware industry, so we are going to make this project a long-term one. However, this thread is not for investment asking, but merely for discussion and our status report.

Open discussions (feel free to add more!)

1. Self mining .vs. Selling hashes .vs. Selling hardware

2. Warnings, e.g. what are the typical causes to a failed ASIC manufacturing

3. Approaches to get enough funding for production

(To be extended)

Status reports

July 18
We have had our IC design company registered at Shenzhen, China. The name of our company is "bitfountain"

We also have signed the confidential contract with the IC manufacturer and got the process library necessary for correct DC synthesis.

July 29

Front-end work done. Preliminary specification given.

August 2

More optimization and trade-offs applied. MH/J improved and Watt/mm^2 reduced at the cost of some chip area increase.

August 11

The pictures of our IC layer are revealed.

(Larger pictures: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.msg1092138#msg1092138)

September 22
We are in the taping-out process with the foundry. The chip spec and interface made public.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91173.msg1211518#msg1211518

(To be extended)

Or this:

Could you give us the results of your chat with friedcat?  Inquiring minds want to know.  Thanks

I have received some documents, and from what I can tell the company Bitfountain, is registered july 12 in Shenzhen China. I have also received the names of the partners where only two is actually officially shareholders but the third (the hardware wizkid) will be added later on I am told. The names are the same as the owners of Bitfountain, so that's good. There seems to be an agreement with a manufacturer, but I cannot say if that's legit or not.

I have not (yet) been able to make up my mind about the viability of the project, or gotten any assurances. But Friedcat seems trustworthy and he's a Haskell* programmer, and what scammer would be a Haskell programmer? That's like a contradiction in terms, lol.

We'll see.





*)  Haskell=obscure programming language, of which I am a fan.

Or lots of other posts discussing Bitfountain.  The emphasis is mine in both posts.

Surely you realize this does not constitute proof of registration, in China or anywhere else.

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[notme]

Surely you realize this does not constitute proof of registration, in China or anywhere else.

Of course.  But it gives you enough information to get off your ass and verify it yourself.  But you'd rather make statements you can't back up.

[vlaoou321]

btct  Transaction errors

[tinus42]

is ASICMINER allowed to write a motion proposing a stock split? I believe a 10:1 stock split would greatly benefit the company.

Shares are trading at almost 5BTC right now, which is around 450~ USD per share. This is a great sum of money. The next best option are the TAT.ASICMINER shares which are 100:1 but incure a 5% fee.

A 10:1 split would mean shares would be at 0.47/share, which will be a much more acceptable entry point for many newcomers.

Shares of Apple trade at more than $400. At one time over $700. They still sell well.

[finlof]

is ASICMINER allowed to write a motion proposing a stock split? I believe a 10:1 stock split would greatly benefit the company.

Shares are trading at almost 5BTC right now, which is around 450~ USD per share. This is a great sum of money. The next best option are the TAT.ASICMINER shares which are 100:1 but incure a 5% fee.

A 10:1 split would mean shares would be at 0.47/share, which will be a much more acceptable entry point for many newcomers.

Shares of Apple trade at more than $400. At one time over $700. They still sell well.

or Google @ $900+...

[SOSLOVE868]

is ASICMINER allowed to write a motion proposing a stock split? I believe a 10:1 stock split would greatly benefit the company.

Shares are trading at almost 5BTC right now, which is around 450~ USD per share. This is a great sum of money. The next best option are the TAT.ASICMINER shares which are 100:1 but incure a 5% fee.

A 10:1 split would mean shares would be at 0.47/share, which will be a much more acceptable entry point for many newcomers.

Shares of Apple trade at more than $400. At one time over $700. They still sell well.

or Google @ $900+...

Group buy of one Google shares seems urgently needed...

[Ashitank]

btct  Transaction errors

Exactly I am trying to sell 1 Acisminer-pt share but get invalid ask error 

[vlaoou321]

btct  Transaction errors

Exactly I am trying to sell 1 Acisminer-pt share but get invalid ask error 

oh··

[VeeMiner]

nice rise in the hashrate - it seems like the 45 Thash/s is there to stay...

[Lohoris]

Yeah, I've read about working conditions in China.  Workers on the factories can easily work 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week.  But they don't complain, they are very hard-working people.

The word is "slaves".

[yuchuanzhen]

Yeah, I've read about working conditions in China.  Workers on the factories can easily work 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week.  But they don't complain, they are very hard-working people.

The word is "slaves".

Yep,pretty much.
But I don't like this word.

[Lohoris]

Yeah, I've read about working conditions in China.  Workers on the factories can easily work 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week.  But they don't complain, they are very hard-working people.

The word is "slaves".

Yep,pretty much.
But I don't like this word.

Calling that with other words won't make them happier.
We must face reality.
They're slaves, and we are a bit evil since we buy and use their products.

[VeeMiner]

Calling that with other words won't make them happier.
We must face reality.
They're slaves, and we are a bit evil since we buy and use their products.

this thread has many time diverted from it's original topic. This is the furthest we've been so far I think. Please take this discussion elsewhere.

[Lohoris]

Calling that with other words won't make them happier.
We must face reality.
They're slaves, and we are a bit evil since we buy and use their products.

this thread has many time diverted from it's original topic. This is the furthest we've been so far I think. Please take this discussion elsewhere.

Ethics of the company are quite obviously on-topic.

And they are definitely more on-topic than global warming.

[runeks]

nice rise in the hashrate - it seems like the 45 Thash/s is there to stay...

It seems ASICMiner can't keep up with the increase in the rest of the network: http://runeks.dk/bitcoin/#week

Yeah, I've read about working conditions in China.  Workers on the factories can easily work 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week.  But they don't complain, they are very hard-working people.

The word is "slaves".

You don't seem to know what a slave is. Voluntarily working 10 hours a day 6 days a week is not slavery.

Only us spoiled Westerners don't know the difference.

[lophie]

nice rise in the hashrate - it seems like the 45 Thash/s is there to stay...

It seems ASICMiner can't keep up with the increase in the rest of the network: http://runeks.dk/bitcoin/#week

Yeah, I've read about working conditions in China.  Workers on the factories can easily work 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week.  But they don't complain, they are very hard-working people.

The word is "slaves".

You don't seem to know what a slave is. Voluntarily working 10 hours a day 6 days a week is not slavery.

Only us spoiled Westerners don't know the difference.

Not so sure about that. Sometimes you don't need lashes and chains to control slaves. You just have to push them into the right direction by the force of tyrannical governments.

[runeks]

nice rise in the hashrate - it seems like the 45 Thash/s is there to stay...

It seems ASICMiner can't keep up with the increase in the rest of the network: http://runeks.dk/bitcoin/#week

Yeah, I've read about working conditions in China.  Workers on the factories can easily work 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week.  But they don't complain, they are very hard-working people.

The word is "slaves".

You don't seem to know what a slave is. Voluntarily working 10 hours a day 6 days a week is not slavery.

Only us spoiled Westerners don't know the difference.

Not so sure about that. Sometimes you don't need lashes and chains to control slaves. You just have to push them into the right direction by the force of tyrannical governments.

Are you saying that the tyrannical government of China is forcing these people to work?

Voluntarily choosing to work doesn't mean that you love working. It means you prefer the benefits of working over what you would get if you do not work.

[binaryFate]

Stop the off-topic. All these comments apply to most of the companies that deal with electronic, so bring your discussion with you on a more general forum, but out of here.

[tinus42]

nice rise in the hashrate - it seems like the 45 Thash/s is there to stay...

It seems ASICMiner can't keep up with the increase in the rest of the network: http://runeks.dk/bitcoin/#week

Yeah, I've read about working conditions in China.  Workers on the factories can easily work 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week.  But they don't complain, they are very hard-working people.

The word is "slaves".

You don't seem to know what a slave is. Voluntarily working 10 hours a day 6 days a week is not slavery.

Only us spoiled Westerners don't know the difference.

In the 19th century people worked even longer hours in the West. And their children did too. Then we got the labour movement. Which initially was crushed (Pinkerton agents shooting on strikers). But they won. In China the labour movement obviously didn't get any traction. Ironically as China is supposed to be a worker run state.

[empoweoqwj]

Its embarrassing, everyone's an expert on slavery and China now. And its got bugger all to do with AsicMiner. People work in China to feed their families, same as everyone else. Just they get paid less. If you wanna talk about real slavery, look what Europe did to almost the entire African continent, or how the US railroads were built. That was real slavery.

Calling Chinese factory workers slaves is just idiotic. I live in Thailand and farm workers get paid very little here for very hard hot work. Its not slavery. Its just a hard hard living. But  they choose to do it. It ain't slavery.