ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[Vycid]

I have no idea what you are talking about. Cointerra's current price is $3/GH for January delivery. Correct?

If this is about whether or not Cointerra will actually make good on that delivery, that is another subject entirely, and we have entered the realm of hypotheticals rather than facts.

I would remind you that AM is not presently delivering Gen 2 hardware either, but nobody seems to have any problems with assuming that will happen on schedule. It seems only appropriate that we compare Cointerra's hypothetical hardware with AM's hypothetical hardware. If we have the current price for one, we can infer the value of the other.

But discussion was initially about gen1 500TH/s. Which is supposed to be "deployed" (hashing, sold, franchised) in october. So the price around $12-$14 per GH/s stays valid.

One possibility is that the 500 TH/s is sold in October.  That 500 TH/s is worth $14 per share, or 0.10 dividends per share according to the absurdly high Gox rate, assuming the current conservatively-estimated market price of hashpower drops in half.  If we note that lower denominations of hashpower are irrationally priced higher by the market, and if we value by Bitstamp, we can get up to 0.15 per share...

Another possibility, of course, is that we simply mine with that hashpower, putting us back in the ~20% share of network range, which is a good place to be as well.

I am looking forward to October.

Ah, you are correct. I think there was some confusion about whether we were talking about Gen 1 or Gen 2 in the last couple of pages.

[physalis]

But discussion was initially about gen1 500TH/s. Which is supposed to be "deployed" (hashing, sold, franchised) in october. So the price around $12-$14 per GH/s stays valid.

"Deployed" does not mean sold. It means it's hashing for AM.
But friedcat never said 500TH will be "deployed" in october, this is what he said:

• We made an order of another brand of power chips which are about two weeks late. In October this will provide another 500TH/s (Gen1).

I'd really like to know how much they're actually planning to deploy.

[physalis]

No blocks for 7 hours

[JimiQ84]

No blocks for 7 hours

just bad luck, hashing is proceeding in normal way

see http://erpao.info/

[ianp]

"Deployed" does not mean sold. It means it's hashing for AM.

According to a well-informed source, the 500TH deployed does include units sold, franchised and/or hashing for AM. It's all inclusive.

Not at liberty to name the source, but I really have nothing to gain or lose by stating this information. Just throwing it out there.

[wtfvanity]

"Deployed" does not mean sold. It means it's hashing for AM.

According to a well-informed source, the 500TH deployed does include units sold, franchised and/or hashing for AM. It's all inclusive.

Not at liberty to name the source, but I really have nothing to gain or lose by stating this information. Just throwing it out there.

Right...

[shawshankinmate37927]

But discussion was initially about gen1 500TH/s. Which is supposed to be "deployed" (hashing, sold, franchised) in october. So the price around $12-$14 per GH/s stays valid.

"Deployed" does not mean sold. It means it's hashing for AM.
But friedcat never said 500TH will be "deployed" in october, this is what he said:

• We made an order of another brand of power chips which are about two weeks late. In October this will provide another 500TH/s (Gen1).

I'd really like to know how much they're actually planning to deploy.

Has friedcat ever said that when he uses the term "deploy" he is referring to self-mining?

In this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.msg2984489#msg2984489 when answering the last question he seems to be referring to franchising,

The term "deploy" sounds ambiguous and I've asked about this term in the past.  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=235763.msg2612040#msg2612040)  It just seems to cause confusion.

[ThickAsThieves]

I can confirm that Friedcat uses the term "deploy" loosely to mean any means of getting the hashes onto the network (selling, implementing, franchising, etc).

[chriswilmer]

I'm trying to understand why ASICMINER is waiting to decide on the order size for Gen2... given the opportunity cost of not mining blocks and the, presumably, low cost of manufacturing the equipment... shouldn't the order size for Gen2 just be "as much as humanly possible given ASICMINER's budget"? What would the rationale for choosing a smaller order size be?

[Fabrizio89]

I'm trying to understand why ASICMINER is waiting to decide on the order size for Gen2... given the opportunity cost of not mining blocks and the, presumably, low cost of manufacturing the equipment... shouldn't the order size for Gen2 just be "as much as humanly possible given ASICMINER's budget"? What would the rationale for choosing a smaller order size be?

Probably because one order of the right size in the right moment is better than the alternatives they have. I'm with them if they want to wait and see the capabilities of the competition before deploying.

[chriswilmer]

I'm trying to understand why ASICMINER is waiting to decide on the order size for Gen2... given the opportunity cost of not mining blocks and the, presumably, low cost of manufacturing the equipment... shouldn't the order size for Gen2 just be "as much as humanly possible given ASICMINER's budget"? What would the rationale for choosing a smaller order size be?

Probably because one order of the right size in the right moment is better than the alternatives they have. I'm with them if they want to wait and see the capabilities of the competition before deploying.

I guess it's hard for me to imagine the complexity of the decision space. It's like ASICMINER is in a drag-race... regardless of what the other competitors are doing, the safest strategy to win is to just go faster.

[moribana]

I'm trying to understand why ASICMINER is waiting to decide on the order size for Gen2... given the opportunity cost of not mining blocks and the, presumably, low cost of manufacturing the equipment... shouldn't the order size for Gen2 just be "as much as humanly possible given ASICMINER's budget"? What would the rationale for choosing a smaller order size be?

Probably because one order of the right size in the right moment is better than the alternatives they have. I'm with them if they want to wait and see the capabilities of the competition before deploying.

I guess it's hard for me to imagine the complexity of the decision space. It's like ASICMINER is in a drag-race... regardless of what the other competitors are doing, the safest strategy to win is to just go faster.

It is not at all obvious to me that somebody will win this race. It can happen that at some point mining will cease to be profitable. That is, you invest money into gear and when in half a year you have it in hand you realize that you will never make your investment back. But at that point there is no way back.

I feel that the point when this can happen might be very close. So it is not obvious that delaying the final decision is a bad strategy.

[ninjarobot]

I'm trying to understand why ASICMINER is waiting to decide on the order size for Gen2... given the opportunity cost of not mining blocks and the, presumably, low cost of manufacturing the equipment... shouldn't the order size for Gen2 just be "as much as humanly possible given ASICMINER's budget"? What would the rationale for choosing a smaller order size be?

Probably because one order of the right size in the right moment is better than the alternatives they have. I'm with them if they want to wait and see the capabilities of the competition before deploying.

Playing "Wait and see" is a dangerous game if you are a mining hardware manufacturer.

[glendall]

I don't think  waiting is necessarily a bad idea. There are many unknowns currently, friedcat could conceivably be waiting for the dust to settle.

While the last 2-3 months, and current times, are pretty crazy for the amount of ASICs coming out, and with ROI windows being broken by a few weeks worth of delays, it is conceivable to imagine that things will stabilize in a further 2 or 3 months, to a point where there a much smaller range of gh/$ mining equipment.

Maybe friedcat had something like these 3 options to choose from:

option1) spent a massive amount of capital to rush to market a gen 2 product that he might not be able to sell, depending on whether all of knc, cointerra, hashfast, etc etc etc all ship on time.

option2) spend another 2 months of development time to double the efficiency / hashes of his design, and some ASIC companies are out of the picture.

option3) spend another 4 months to make assure that his design, and amount of ordered chips, will be have a profitable gh/$ ratio in addition to knowing that his product will be one of the better options available on market.

Just saying, waiting is not a necessarily a bad strategy.  Asicminer has a large amount of resources and experience.  Say they sitting on 5 million dollars, just to make a figure up. Conceivably you could spend 5 million dollars in development costs 6 months from now and still have a product that is the most cost effective when reaching market, instead of 5 million 2 or 3 months ago, when your product may or may not be a complete wash.  

I don't even think Friedcat is waiting. Just saying, that there would be some merits to that. And total hashing output is important, but not as important as how much you are paying for your TH's and how fast you can scale, which is something he seems to be focusing on. It's possible that friedcat's 'gen 2' may be better one of the better than the early gen 2 products, and come out at just the right time for it to be the best option available to consumers. It's not an inconceivable scenario...and potentially better than rushing towards releasing product just as fast as they can. 
 

[philipma1957]

I'm trying to understand why ASICMINER is waiting to decide on the order size for Gen2... given the opportunity cost of not mining blocks and the, presumably, low cost of manufacturing the equipment... shouldn't the order size for Gen2 just be "as much as humanly possible given ASICMINER's budget"? What would the rationale for choosing a smaller order size be?

Probably because one order of the right size in the right moment is better than the alternatives they have. I'm with them if they want to wait and see the capabilities of the competition before deploying.

Playing "Wait and see" is a dangerous game if you are a mining hardware manufacturer.

the game has become very difficult.  look at the bit fury stick same power as an am stick  truly exists is not vaporware/  So if AM want to do sticks  what is the correct move?
 Build a 1gh stick and sell for .3btc?
Build a 2gh stick and sell for .6 btc?  
Make a clone of the bit fury 2.5gh and sell at .7btc?

Can Am do any of the above by nov 1st?

[lucasjkr]

History is replete with companies promising x and either delivering either y or absolutely nothing; asicminer is one who's reputation from that standpoint is untarnished; instead they suffer for having historically charged extremely high prices per hash, compared to their competitors, with the flip side being that there has never been a question of whether they could provide what was purchased.

Cointerrra, yes, has an impressive resume behind it. But lots of other companies have wowed people right up until they suffered delays or worse.

Not to bash coin terra. They sure do appear legit. That said, I've more faith in AM's hypothetical hardware than Cointerra's. Though I also know that they'll charge an arm and a leg for it.

[romerun]

I saw cointerra showed of their fpga a week ago, how long would it take to transform fpga to a working asic unit. I remembered seeing KNC having their fpga show off videos months ago, before accepting pre-orders, and til now they still have nothing.

[donut]

KNC [...] still have nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFOcI8nK2xI&feature=youtu.be

Bam.

[superduh]

shares haven't been this cheap since march

[stripykitteh]

shares haven't been this cheap since march

I wonder if vycid is now a bull at these prices? Too bad if he has to change his avatar.