ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[ninjarobot]

I think the USB stick mining space is actually very significant so I'm happy that AM should be able to keep emphasizing on that with Gen2 as well.

Yes, I remember the dividends of the first USB sales. Yummy. And the financial showed more revenue from USBs than from blades!
There are BitFury-based USB miners in the works though?

I do hope that the Gen2 USB sticks will be able to provide at least 2GH/s and that they will be available in bulk from day 1. If they only provide a 2x increase (.333 GH/s > .666 GH/s) they will fail. Getting ~1W per GH @ 55nm might be challenging but not impossible so we will see...

[Strange Vlad]

Getting ~1W per GH @ 55nm might be challenging but not impossible so we will see...

Shouldn't be that challenging if Bitfury easily managed to go significantly below 1W/GH.
Though I definitely agree with "wait and see" approach.

[Puppet]

Getting ~1W per GH @ 55nm might be challenging but not impossible so we will see...

Shouldn't be that challenging if Bitfury easily managed to go significantly below 1W/GH.
Though I definitely agree with "wait and see" approach.

 I read bitfury did a true full custom design, ie, custom transistors, there us nothing very easy about that.

[binaryFate]

I've been thinking about the discussion that was going on here yesterday. Essentially there was a consensus that probably FC will only sell hardware, not adding anything to the ~60TH/s (in house or with franchisee) mining, until Gen2 (~December). The assumption was that we make more money that way. Now I think we were wrong to assume nothing will be added to the mining farm, and here is why.

FC released the public plan for the near future rather recently. I'm speaking about the statement where he mentioned 200TH/s to be deployed in September/October, and 1PH/s for the end of the year. I am too lazy to search for it, but it was less than a month ago.
There is no way, absolutely no way, that FC had such a plan less than a month ago, and then just changed his mind "oh, wait, after all, no! Forget 200TH, forget 1PH, let's completely change the plan and just sell for several months, leaving our hashrate droping close to zero". No way, they must have many projections of the near-term future, in terms of competition, difficulty rise, mining market, etc. Nothing unforseen has happened over this time period that would explain such a plan change. Especially for things that FC made public; not exactly something he does lightly.

Now I'm sure that we will get our 200TH/s soon (actually I came to write this and then discover it looks better than yesterday! yeah!).
That will be above 10% of the hash rate again.
And there will be hardware sells on top of that, because there is no reason to stop them. 

[EskimoBob]

I've been thinking about the discussion that was going on here yesterday. Essentially there was a consensus that probably FC will only sell hardware, not adding anything to the ~60TH/s (in house or with franchisee) mining, until Gen2 (~December). The assumption was that we make more money that way. Now I think we were wrong to assume nothing will be added to the mining farm, and here is why.

FC released the public plan for the near future rather recently. I'm speaking about the statement where he mentioned 200TH/s to be deployed in September/October, and 1PH/s for the end of the year. I am too lazy to search for it, but it was less than a month ago.
There is no way, absolutely no way, that FC had such a plan less than a month ago, and then just changed his mind "oh, wait, after all, no! Forget 200TH, forget 1PH, let's completely change the plan and just sell for several months, leaving our hashrate droping close to zero". No way, they must have many projections of the near-term future, in terms of competition, difficulty rise, mining market, etc. Nothing unforseen has happened over this time period that would explain such a plan change. Especially for things that FC made public; not exactly something he does lightly.

Now I'm sure that we will get our 200TH/s soon (actually I came to write this and then discover it looks better than yesterday! yeah!).
That will be above 10% of the hash rate again.
And there will be hardware sells on top of that, because there is no reason to stop them. 

It is pointless to pile up hardware, that can not earn profit. If the cost of chips+all the expenses can not return profit, % from total network is irrelevant.
Question is, can AM rigs, built at close to "cost", still earn more than it wastes on energy and other expenses like keeping it running etc.
If answer is No, then sell what you have at any price you can get and move on.

[binaryFate]

I've been thinking about the discussion that was going on here yesterday. Essentially there was a consensus that probably FC will only sell hardware, not adding anything to the ~60TH/s (in house or with franchisee) mining, until Gen2 (~December). The assumption was that we make more money that way. Now I think we were wrong to assume nothing will be added to the mining farm, and here is why.

FC released the public plan for the near future rather recently. I'm speaking about the statement where he mentioned 200TH/s to be deployed in September/October, and 1PH/s for the end of the year. I am too lazy to search for it, but it was less than a month ago.
There is no way, absolutely no way, that FC had such a plan less than a month ago, and then just changed his mind "oh, wait, after all, no! Forget 200TH, forget 1PH, let's completely change the plan and just sell for several months, leaving our hashrate droping close to zero". No way, they must have many projections of the near-term future, in terms of competition, difficulty rise, mining market, etc. Nothing unforseen has happened over this time period that would explain such a plan change. Especially for things that FC made public; not exactly something he does lightly.

Now I'm sure that we will get our 200TH/s soon (actually I came to write this and then discover it looks better than yesterday! yeah!).
That will be above 10% of the hash rate again.
And there will be hardware sells on top of that, because there is no reason to stop them. 

It is pointless to pile up hardware, that can not earn profit. If the cost of chips+all the expenses can not return profit, % from total network is irrelevant.
Question is, can AM rigs, built at close to "cost", still earn more than it wastes on energy and other expenses like keeping it running etc.
If answer is No, then sell what you have at any price you can get and move on.

The cost to build and run them (maintenance/electricity) is still ridiculously low compare to earning. It would be a mistake to believe thath because 55nm are out there and soon 28nm, our gen1 is obsolete in terms of just being profitable. The only reason to sell is because you earn even more, not because you're doomed to never break even. You'll see that from how low the price of the blades will be in the next few months.

[EskimoBob]

I've been thinking about the discussion that was going on here yesterday. Essentially there was a consensus that probably FC will only sell hardware, not adding anything to the ~60TH/s (in house or with franchisee) mining, until Gen2 (~December). The assumption was that we make more money that way. Now I think we were wrong to assume nothing will be added to the mining farm, and here is why.

FC released the public plan for the near future rather recently. I'm speaking about the statement where he mentioned 200TH/s to be deployed in September/October, and 1PH/s for the end of the year. I am too lazy to search for it, but it was less than a month ago.
There is no way, absolutely no way, that FC had such a plan less than a month ago, and then just changed his mind "oh, wait, after all, no! Forget 200TH, forget 1PH, let's completely change the plan and just sell for several months, leaving our hashrate droping close to zero". No way, they must have many projections of the near-term future, in terms of competition, difficulty rise, mining market, etc. Nothing unforseen has happened over this time period that would explain such a plan change. Especially for things that FC made public; not exactly something he does lightly.

Now I'm sure that we will get our 200TH/s soon (actually I came to write this and then discover it looks better than yesterday! yeah!).
That will be above 10% of the hash rate again.
And there will be hardware sells on top of that, because there is no reason to stop them. 

It is pointless to pile up hardware, that can not earn profit. If the cost of chips+all the expenses can not return profit, % from total network is irrelevant.
Question is, can AM rigs, built at close to "cost", still earn more than it wastes on energy and other expenses like keeping it running etc.
If answer is No, then sell what you have at any price you can get and move on.

The cost to build and run them (maintenance/electricity) is still ridiculously low compare to earning.

How do you know that? Have you seen any numbers (statements) form AM to back that up? Can you please give me a link?

It would be a mistake to believe thath because 55nm are out there and soon 28nm, our gen1 is obsolete in terms of just being profitable. The only reason to sell is because you earn even more, not because you're doomed to never break even.

Belief has nothing to do with it. Just simple math. Why waste time mining with this stuff if you can earn more by selling it and concentrating on developing the next gen chip? And if you add mining risks to this equation... huh. Let someone else have them and take the coin available now from sale.

You'll see that from how low the price of the blades will be in the next few months.

Exactly, because they become less and less profitable (to mine or to sell)

[DiabloD3]

I've been thinking about the discussion that was going on here yesterday. Essentially there was a consensus that probably FC will only sell hardware, not adding anything to the ~60TH/s (in house or with franchisee) mining, until Gen2 (~December). The assumption was that we make more money that way. Now I think we were wrong to assume nothing will be added to the mining farm, and here is why.

FC released the public plan for the near future rather recently. I'm speaking about the statement where he mentioned 200TH/s to be deployed in September/October, and 1PH/s for the end of the year. I am too lazy to search for it, but it was less than a month ago.
There is no way, absolutely no way, that FC had such a plan less than a month ago, and then just changed his mind "oh, wait, after all, no! Forget 200TH, forget 1PH, let's completely change the plan and just sell for several months, leaving our hashrate droping close to zero". No way, they must have many projections of the near-term future, in terms of competition, difficulty rise, mining market, etc. Nothing unforseen has happened over this time period that would explain such a plan change. Especially for things that FC made public; not exactly something he does lightly.

Now I'm sure that we will get our 200TH/s soon (actually I came to write this and then discover it looks better than yesterday! yeah!).
That will be above 10% of the hash rate again.
And there will be hardware sells on top of that, because there is no reason to stop them. 

It is pointless to pile up hardware, that can not earn profit. If the cost of chips+all the expenses can not return profit, % from total network is irrelevant.
Question is, can AM rigs, built at close to "cost", still earn more than it wastes on energy and other expenses like keeping it running etc.
If answer is No, then sell what you have at any price you can get and move on.

The cost to build and run them (maintenance/electricity) is still ridiculously low compare to earning.

How do you know that? Have you seen any numbers (statements) form AM to back that up? Can you please give me a link?

It would be a mistake to believe thath because 55nm are out there and soon 28nm, our gen1 is obsolete in terms of just being profitable. The only reason to sell is because you earn even more, not because you're doomed to never break even.

Belief has nothing to do with it. Just simple math. Why waste time mining with this stuff if you can earn more by selling it and concentrating on developing the next gen chip? And if you add mining risks to this equation... huh. Let someone else have them and take the coin available now from sale.

You'll see that from how low the price of the blades will be in the next few months.

Exactly, because they become less and less profitable (to mine or to sell)

I have to agree here.

[binaryFate]

Anyway we are not in a position to decide anything, we are just trying to guess what is FC's next move. What seems to us to make the most sense is maybe not what is going to happen, because we do not have all elements of knowledge in hands.

What I am sure, is that FC was planning to release 200TH/s in September/October, one month ago, and I do not consider likely that he changes completely his plan on such a short term.

[Lohoris]

I shudder to think of the electricity wasted otherwise.

I'm quite concerned about scaling too, but apparently most people aren't.

[tinus42]

I shudder to think of the electricity wasted otherwise.

I'm quite concerned about scaling too, but apparently most people aren't.

Can you copy paste what you wrote there here? It seems to be a private forum.

[Strange Vlad]

So about that sell-versus-mine tradeoff, there are not one but two considerations:

1) Time preference, already mentioned above several times.  This is more or less obvious: it may be preferable to get slightly less immediately than to get slightly more later, depending on how much "slightly" and how much is "later".  This is not only about APR but about market situation as well: when you have sufficient funds for current needs, your time preference is more likely to be "later but more" than when you need to gather more financial resources quickly.  Here franchising is treated as mining (if I understand correctly, franchising pays off over time, just like self-mining).

2) The less obvious factor here is anticipated network hashrate growth.  By favoring mining over selling they would be betting against hashrate growth relative to market (average public) expectation.  And by selling more they are clearly anticipating that the network will grow faster than the average public expects.  And here franchising is treated as selling (the price is affected by customer's network growth expectations).

So we can conclude that if AM is selling new units instead of deploying them, then it can only mean that at least one of the following statements is true (more likely both):

A) They have time preference for "less but sooner", which may indicate they are accumulating funds for massive final gen.1 production or for launching gen.2.

B) They anticipate higher network growth than the market expects.  This can assure us that they are trying to be well-prepared for the coming 28nm massacre.

Note that franchising volume doesn't indicate much on itself because it belongs to the opposite sides of decision.

As you see, I'm still bullish because both conclusions look optimistic to me.  Now with the current share prices I seem to be against the market, but sadly I don't have enough capacity to buy even more shares.  Regardless, an update from friedcat would be very nice.

[supert]

I think it's pretty likely Friendcat will have modelled his projections and optimised his strategy accordingly. I do recall him posting that hashrate growth for the network was under his predictions.

[candoo]

What happend to the hardware franchising?

[empoweoqwj]

Anyway we are not in a position to decide anything, we are just trying to guess what is FC's next move. What seems to us to make the most sense is maybe not what is going to happen, because we do not have all elements of knowledge in hands.

What I am sure, is that FC was planning to release 200TH/s in September/October, one month ago, and I do not consider likely that he changes completely his plan on such a short term.

I agree, he said that, and not long ago. Yet its getting towards the end of September, and we are still at 50TH/s per week, absolute max. So where is it? If it was being franchised out, it would be getting paid out as dividends. Its not.

[velacreations]

I agree, he said that, and not long ago. Yet its getting towards the end of September, and we are still at 50TH/s per week, absolute max. So where is it? If it was being franchised out, it would be getting paid out as dividends. Its not.

he didn't say he was going to deploy the whole 200 TH/s.  How much hardware has been sold?

[HorseRider]

What happend to the hardware franchising?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=235763.msg3165200#msg3165200

[JimiQ84]

in house hashing ~45TH/s
franchising ~15TH/s
sold ? 30 - 50 TH/s ?

[empoweoqwj]

in house hashing ~45TH/s
franchising ~15TH/s
sold ? 30 - 50 TH/s ?

Where are you getting the "sold" estimate from? Income? How much roughly has selling 30 - 50 TH/s raised?

[JimiQ84]

in house hashing ~45TH/s
franchising ~15TH/s
sold ? 30 - 50 TH/s ?

Where are you getting the "sold" estimate from? Income? How much roughly has selling 30 - 50 TH/s raised?

I am getting it mainly from one of the resellers - canaryInTheMine - he claims that he sold around 15TH/s. There are around 5 big resellers, so it's safe to estimate that 4 other sold together at least the same amount as the biggest one.