ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[stripykitteh]

I would not characterize it as FC getting his lunch eaten when FC sells out of everything he ever offers. Even with populist suggestions that his products are overpriced. Such remarks lead me to believe that people think FC is losing potential profits on products he has not yet produced, which could be said for pretty much anyone else in the marketplace.

Continuously selling out of everything you produce is a sign of success, not weakness.

You are missing the point entirely.

[candoo]

Why does he not upgrade/increase the hashrate? Did anyone of the board members speak to him?
I dont think that Hardware sells are good in the long term view..

[candoo]

Because they are developing new hardware instead. Which is certainly more long-term.

And whats the reason to do only one thing instead both of them ?

[Lauda]

The new blades are pretty much useless.

[Vycid]

It still is slightly more lucrative, and brings in the money now instead of later.

Normally, when companies sell out of product,  we assume it was because they failed to maintain enough stock, not because it was "more lucrative". I am quite fascinated by these arguments.

[Strange Vlad]

Depends what "do the job well" means.

These guys are going straight for 28nm.

good for them. However friedcat obviously has much more experience with creating chips and devices for bitcoin mining. I would sooner trust Avalon or Asicminer to create new chip before KnCMiner and Cointerra and Hashfast since they have never created bitcoin mining ASIC chip before.

Making a functional ASIC is not excessively complicated. The complex part is the optimization.  I think you'll find it is really FC's team that lacks experience here, having designed only one chip - I quote, from AnandTech,

Ravi’s focus at SARC was on the CPU Mid-Core, including integer execution and special purpose registers

Being the chief architect on CPU mid-cores at one of the biggest consumer electronics companies in the world makes this guy far more qualified than a team of guys in China that made one simple chip at an archaic process node.

The hardware and boards should be the easy part, given the preponderance of existing packaging companies to partner with (at least for anyone with connections in the industry).

Point is - you should recognize FC has one year of direct experience and this guy has decades of related experience.

The notorious counterexample to what you said is Bitfury.  The guy had NO prior experience, NO special education, and yet somehow managed to develop a quite successful and well-optimized chip from scratch, within less than a year (including self-education), all by himself!

Now please don't imply that superstar engineer can make orders of magnitude difference.  Bitcoin ASIC is not a CPU core, it's just hundreds of small and simple identical SHA256 calculators, not really much to optimize there.

[Strange Vlad]

It still is slightly more lucrative, and brings in the money now instead of later.

Normally, when companies sell out of product,  we assume it was because they failed to maintain enough stock, not because it was "more lucrative". I am quite fascinated by these arguments.

Usually when a company dumps products at a much lower price than before it is to get rid of remaining stock for incoming new generation of hardware. Based on ASICMiners fairly stagnant hashrate (even though they have thousands of these blades left to sell) I'd say it's fairly safe to assume it won't be long before Gen 2 (Whatever that is) is on it's way.

No, they didn't significantly drop the price relative to the value (which is inverse proportional to difficulty).  Actually, the previous price drop (50->10) was even greater by absolute value.

And FC still has some room to drop the price through the next couple of months; I'd estimate that production costs are somewhere around 30 to 60 USD.

[Vycid]

Depends what "do the job well" means.

These guys are going straight for 28nm.

good for them. However friedcat obviously has much more experience with creating chips and devices for bitcoin mining. I would sooner trust Avalon or Asicminer to create new chip before KnCMiner and Cointerra and Hashfast since they have never created bitcoin mining ASIC chip before.

Making a functional ASIC is not excessively complicated. The complex part is the optimization.  I think you'll find it is really FC's team that lacks experience here, having designed only one chip - I quote, from AnandTech,

Ravi’s focus at SARC was on the CPU Mid-Core, including integer execution and special purpose registers

Being the chief architect on CPU mid-cores at one of the biggest consumer electronics companies in the world makes this guy far more qualified than a team of guys in China that made one simple chip at an archaic process node.

The hardware and boards should be the easy part, given the preponderance of existing packaging companies to partner with (at least for anyone with connections in the industry).

Point is - you should recognize FC has one year of direct experience and this guy has decades of related experience.

The notorious counterexample to what you said is Bitfury.  The guy had NO prior experience, NO special education, and yet somehow managed to develop a quite successful and well-optimized chip from scratch, within less than a year (including self-education), all by himself!

Now please don't imply that superstar engineer can make orders of magnitude difference.  Bitcoin ASIC is not a CPU core, it's just hundreds of small and simple identical SHA256 calculators, not really much to optimize there.

So, wait, what's the argument here? That FC has no advantage over the competition because his experience is no greater, or that he has no advantage because his experience doesn't matter?

(As I said before, it's the industry connections that will make CoinTerra successful at 28nm)

No matter how you slice it I see a company trading at a significant premium to fair value for no perceivable reason.

[Rival]

The perceivable reason is dividends with a track record. 

[Vycid]

The perceivable reason is dividends with a track record.  

Oh boy.

If you think past performance guarantees future return I've got some bad news for you.

There are better ways to evaluate future performance. Even if there is truth to the argument that AM is less risky than its competitors,  it is not enough to explain the massive valuation differential.

AM has released no plans that suggest it will remain particularly competitive.  You are all operating on misguided hope.

I'm bearish on misguided hope.

[candoo]

28nm  will finish the mining game for almost everyone... NO ROI

[glendall]

I'm really looking forward to the announcement of the Gen 2 product. Can't wait. I have high hopes. Hopefully it will come at just the right time....  I'm holding shares long, and hope they rebound to some extent to somewhere close to what they were going for last month...

I got faith in F. C.

[fumble]

I would not characterize it as FC getting his lunch eaten when FC sells out of everything he ever offers. Even with populist suggestions that his products are overpriced. Such remarks lead me to believe that people think FC is losing potential profits on products he has not yet produced, which could be said for pretty much anyone else in the marketplace.

Continuously selling out of everything you produce is a sign of success, not weakness.

Avalon sold out of everything they produced.
BFL sold out almost an entire year of product before shipping.
And the rest of the companies with no product that have collected millions of dollars?

These products would sell out if you encased them in a pile of dog shit. So for this industry, selling out has no weight.

[Ytterbium]

Depends what "do the job well" means.

These guys are going straight for 28nm.

good for them. However friedcat obviously has much more experience with creating chips and devices for bitcoin mining. I would sooner trust Avalon or Asicminer to create new chip before KnCMiner and Cointerra and Hashfast since they have never created bitcoin mining ASIC chip before.

Well, that's ridiculous.  Designing a bitcoin ASIC is easy.  You could do the basic logic layout in an afternoon. The future is figuring out how to make it more space and energy efficient.

[Rival]

These products would sell out if you encased them in a pile of dog shit. So for this industry, selling out has no weight.

Honestly, that was one of the funniest things I have read all week. And a good counter-point as well.

[BitAddict]

These products would sell out if you encased them in a pile of dog shit. So for this industry, selling out has no weight.

Honestly, that was one of the funniest things I have read all week. And a good counter-point as well.

The difference is that AM customers get what they order on time. No pre-ordering is the key.

BFL always ends f*** up. They just sell because they lie (especially BFL)
Avalon now is doing almost the same, at least their not that bad.
We will see what happen with KNC, CoinTerra, etc....

[philipma1957]

Depends what "do the job well" means.

These guys are going straight for 28nm.

good for them. However friedcat obviously has much more experience with creating chips and devices for bitcoin mining. I would sooner trust Avalon or Asicminer to create new chip before KnCMiner and Cointerra and Hashfast since they have never created bitcoin mining ASIC chip before.

Making a functional ASIC is not excessively complicated. The complex part is the optimization.  I think you'll find it is really FC's team that lacks experience here, having designed only one chip - I quote, from AnandTech,

Ravi’s focus at SARC was on the CPU Mid-Core, including integer execution and special purpose registers

Being the chief architect on CPU mid-cores at one of the biggest consumer electronics companies in the world makes this guy far more qualified than a team of guys in China that made one simple chip at an archaic process node.

The hardware and boards should be the easy part, given the preponderance of existing packaging companies to partner with (at least for anyone with connections in the industry).

Point is - you should recognize FC has one year of direct experience and this guy has decades of related experience.

this will be settled very soon knc and the other players will have the gear out soon and am will suffer.  or knc and the rest will have delays and am will do okay.

  To quote "bfl just give it 2 weeks time will tell".

[bitsalame]

Higher technology doesn't necessarily translate into market dominance.
It is really about marketing and competence of the management.

Betamax is the prime example.
Or BeOS
Or Digital Audio Tapes (DATs)
Or MiniDiscs
Or the Apple Newton PDA.

Apple has been selling crap phones, and people still buy it.
Some may argue that it is because they are targeting their userbase of idiots, but what I see instead is a company that actually understands the market and adapts itself towards what their targeted community needs.

The question is if these mining companies will have the skills to do the same towards the bitcoin community, after all it is really about understanding their clients and offering them what they really want.

FriedCat was competent enough to deliver exactly what he promised at the time he promised, and that is extremely valuable.
FriedCat was innovative enough to attempt tackling the problem of centralization in a spectacular way that nobody really expected: tiny usb miners. This move was both a commercial success with a symbolic message.

Past performance not necessarily reflects future performance, but past behavior rarely betrays future behavior.
It is humanely almost impossible, even if you consciously want to, to change one's principles, habits and personality.
That's why I trust FriedCat, and I laugh at the FUD on AsicMiner.

Regarding to CoinTerra, they seems great on paper, they have potential, but they could also be the next BetaMax.
This is not an engineering task, this is about running a business.
Also, just like a poker game, it is really not about your cards, but the amount of chips that you have left. In the long run, the one that has the more money wins the game. The same with every other aspect in the real world.

CoinTerra has roughly 1.5 million USD in investments, AND they are asking preorders, delivering late after the difficulty jump.
AsicMiner has hundreds of millions ready to bully anyone who wants to mess with them, hire anyone they want, and they never asked preorders AND always had a impeccable track records of deliveries.

The biggest commodity in the bitcoin world is trust.
AsicMiner is bringing trust by an excellent history of flawless performance.
CoinTerra is attempting to gain trust with a pretentious CV.

If I had to pick a horse, I would stay with AsicMiner.

[AM4Bitcoin]

Sry but were do you got the information that AsicMiner has hundreds of millions $ ? In the last financial report i see
Total: 169,520.57BTC most is send to the investors as dividends.

So 85000BTC at todays price are ~11million $. They have money, but not that much.
Also bitfury is making over 100k$ a day now and i dont think they will stop the development of there chips.

[Draino]

Sry but were do you got the information that AsicMiner has hundreds of millions $ ? In the last financial report i see
Total: 169,520.57BTC most is send to the investors as dividends.

So 85000BTC at todays price are ~11million $. They have money, but not that much.
Also bitfury is making over 100k$ a day now and i dont think they will stop the development of there chips.

If you include the company's value by share price, then asicminer wields hundreds of millions of $.