ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[freedomno1]

Of course people are locking in profits, because I am fairly sure that bitcoin will dip again soon. That is the benefit of the early adopters that they can now take all those shiny Winklevoss dollar bills we are all so opposed to...
Also, US senate.

That said, with the amount of money and us selling about 10-12% of current network capacity in the last week and the next weeks, I don't see why more people are selling, but it is the small(er) investors that are on Havelock. But if I were one of the whales, I'd sell 100-200 shares right now, cash out to Euros or dollars, and buy myself a new car. Bonus points if you cashed out at 5

My plan was to cash out half my shares at 5 because I bought at 2.5. But the price never quite got there on btct as far as  I know, got to around 4.8 from memory. People with direct shares could have auctioned some off for 5 I suppose.

But actually now, I'm happy to still have all my shares. Being invested heavily in a Chinese bitcoin mining company seems to be the exactly right place at this point. Time will tell of course.

The market was crazy today hard as heck to try and figure out where to move on the exchanges

[freedomno1]

Of course people are locking in profits, because I am fairly sure that bitcoin will dip again soon. That is the benefit of the early adopters that they can now take all those shiny Winklevoss dollar bills we are all so opposed to...
Also, US senate.

That said, with the amount of money and us selling about 10-12% of current network capacity in the last week and the next weeks, I don't see why more people are selling, but it is the small(er) investors that are on Havelock. But if I were one of the whales, I'd sell 100-200 shares right now, cash out to Euros or dollars, and buy myself a new car. Bonus points if you cashed out at 5

My plan was to cash out half my shares at 5 because I bought at 2.5. But the price never quite got there on btct as far as  I know, got to around 4.8 from memory. People with direct shares could have auctioned some off for 5 I suppose.

But actually now, I'm happy to still have all my shares. Being invested heavily in a Chinese bitcoin mining company seems to be the exactly right place at this point. Time will tell of course.

The market was crazy today hard as heck to try and figure out where to move on the exchanges

Easy. wherever you can buy low, and sell h ... Oh, ya. Wherever you can buy low. Selling is not an option  

He-he there were brief selling moments when the exchange rate in fiat went down 200 bucks whistle
But ha-ha pretty much this until the exchange rate stabilizes (Not for a while Senate news is still bringing volatility (EDIT Volatility as in above the usual bitcoin volatility we are all used to lol )

[pietpatat]

Is there anyway to contact friedcat? Does he respond to PM's?

I transfered my shares from BTCT to direct shares but I didn't receive any dividend last week ( I did receive it the 2 weeks before that so I hope everything is ok with my shares )

[steamon]

I invested around 19 btc I earned with selling a miner. When it was 2,5 btc and little above. Have 6 direct shares currently. On short time I would sell on 5. But I am for the dividends see it like long term rents from a bank. When I look back in 5 years I might have 10 btc or more again. I might have lost some btc yes. But if 1 btc becomes over 5000$ I am also happy with the result. But nothing is sure how stuff will go. Maybe divendends go to the roof in the near future.

If AM becomes even more low then I might buy more shares. But me succes in bitcoin is in asicminer hands.

Bitcoin is risky don't use money you can't afford to lose and by happy with the results this ride brings. I still have regrets when btc was 8$ but yea I follow the above rule so there will by more chances in life.

[Trance]

Q: Why could I trust you?
A: In principle, like scientific theories, trustworthiness can only be
disproved. However some facts might contribute to more confidence: My ID, phone and email have all
been verified in GLBSE. I started running the fund called MU on GLBSE before it updated to version
2. I am also responsible for the GLBSE-listed bond MOORE.

Q: What about your partners?
A: They are my friends also located in China. I know them in person, trust
them myself in person. They are enthusiastic to this project and already commited a lot of hard
work at their best to make it succeed.

Q: Are you qualified of running Bitfountain and ASICMINER?
A: The short answer is yes.
    The long answer is: Although I myself come from a software background, my other two partners
have been worked in the IC field for long. One of my partners worked in a national lab focusing on
microprocessor design, the other worked in an CPU-for-embedded-device startup. Mining ASICs are
easy to be made work compared to their former projects, and the only problem is how good we could
make it to be. In this aspect, we have done almost all baseline optimizations and some more
aggressive ones. The uncommonly high heat density of mining ASICs is another technical problem but
we are also confident in solving it nicely.

Q: Why don't you raise money from angels or venture capitals?
A: Because most of them come from a different background to Bitcoin. The risk
model of their minds is far away from that of the Bitcoin community. They would consider Bitcoin
itself as an extra major, if not the biggest, source of risk. Therefore they usually tend to pose
harsher clauses than the Bitcoin community on us.

Q: Why don't you borrow money to do it?
A: Same as most startups: the expense is beyond the number we could borrow
from a normal channel. Plus, we are frank that our project involves quite a few risks. We choose to
share both the risks and the profits to investors willing to take them.

Q: Why do you choose to do IPO so early when you haven't reached the stage
of sending your final designs to the foundry?
A: Because we have to save time. If the IPO takes too long, or doesn't work
out so that we have find inferior ways to raise funds, time elapses and we will be outpaced by our
competitors. A IPO in parallel with the later stage of physical design will make the arriving date
of our products earlier. Plus, if we finally have found that it is necessary to cancel the IPO,
100.5% of all raised funds will be turned back to investors.

Q: What if your first generation of chips are outdated? What if the other
companies deliver their products earlier than you do?
A: The so called "outdated" technology is exactly why we have so inexpensive
NRE. And we plan to do self-mining before product-selling, to avoid pre-maturely triggering a
fierce price war. There will almost definitely a relatively long window for both us and our
competitors to profit before the market price of hashrates falls down to their margin cost. In
this time range, the difficulty will not exceed a level that even with our technology of choice,
the electricity fee and management cost is still negligible compared to the Bitcoins mined.

Q: The privileges of board members are vague. What exactly could they do?
A: Some of the information and details of our company is only provided on
request of board members. Board members can monitor our business running face to face, or send
representations to do it. We also hope that board members could help us with a full-fledged
open financial management on both the RMB-nominated and BTC-nominated funds.

Q: How will your MU and MOORE interact with ASICMINER?
A: I will try to keep as objective as possible and evaluate ASICMINER as yet
another normal startup when considering the configuration of the MU portfolio. MOORE, on the other
hand, will be boosted up to in MH/s per share with ASICMINER in exchange of its raised funds when
our chips come out, and also will be used as one of the mechanisms for ASICMINER to sell hashrates
in the future.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: What is your fundraising target? How do you decide whether this IPO succeeds or not?
A: The minimum target is 100k$. If the raised funds surpass this number, we will consider that our IPO is successful. However, we would like to raise more (120-140k$) because keeping the budget at minimum is very prone to unexpected scenarios.

Q: So you will send the extra shares at at time?
A: Yes.

Q: How do you achieve so low costs?
A: There are several factors.
  1. 130nm node size. As the mainstream switches to 28nm, the 130nm existed for so long that even many smaller foundries could do it very well. The intense competition of manufacturing in China brings the price of everything down, including ICs.
  2. MLM(Multi-Level-Mask). Compared to full-mask, this technology reduces the cost of mask-set to half with the exchange of increasing the margin cost by about 40%. This is a good deal for us because the margin cost of chips themselves is one of the lowest cost in our budget.
  3. Low EDA license fees and low labor cost in China.
  4. We ourselves did most of the RTL design, optimization and simulation.

Q: Why don't you use Bitfountain for your GLBSE ticker?
A: Because the ASICMINER shareholders (GLBSE investors) have an extra set of privileges upon Bitfountain shareholder (us).

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-mysterious-mac-and-pc-malware-that-jumps-airgaps/

how do miners know we are safe from USB having this problem and hacking info

[data]

Bitcoin is risky don't use money you can't afford to lose and by happy with the results this ride brings. I still have regrets when btc was 8$ but yea I follow the above rule so there will by more chances in life.

Well, if I had made perfect decisions, my 60 euros I had invested would now be 250k. This way, they are at about 35-60k, depending on the current value of bitcoin, and that is with having  "diversified" a few k to euros to hedge against a bitcoin crash. Of course it would be nice to have a quarter million, but you know... I was to lazy to get myself into  bitcoins in the very beginning, because I didn't see it going anywhere, now I am a firm believer and won't even exchange a whole anymore unless it hits 5-10k each, which would probably also mean that I wouldn't have to because I could just pay with them directly.

[data]

A common and recurring theme in this thread are two things:

• Friedcat has not lived up to his promise of keeping 10% of the network
• ASICMINER is ripping of their customers, because the hardware will most likely not get a positive ROI

ASICMINER has produced a bit more than 1 PH, which at current network capacity is about 22% of the network. So one way to look at it would be the following: ASICMINER have gotten more than the expected income of about 22% of the whole network so far, with some of it kept back for further development and salaries. How anybody thinks that ASICMINER or friedcat failed is beyond me. Also, the paid out profits so far are only for the first 500TH, so while the income will be way less than for the first 500TH, investors still have some to come.
Current valuation could still be appropriate depending on the assumed risks that necessarily exist with developing better hardware, but I think ASICMINER have the money for pretty much any developer on the whole world, if they wanted to.

[silverfuture]

Friedcat is the brainchild of the most successful bitcoin venture to date. He put together a business plan and executed it perfectly when everyone else was scratching their heads. I bought at ipo and have only been increasing my position since then. 

[novusordo]

There's one thing I haven't seen any shareholder address yet:

Taxes.

How in the world would one declare Asicminer divs on one's taxes? Considering it's not a "real" security, would it be smarter to declare it as income? If that's the case, you'd have to calculate the value of your dividends at each dividend payout and report that as your income.

Any other ideas for doing it in a way that keeps the IRS happy, while keeping the most amount of divs?

Obviously it'd be best to consult a professional, but I'm curious what others have had for ideas.

[Rival]

The logical solution to taxes is simple: You determine taxes when (and if) you convert to fiat. At least that's the way I see it. When it becomes income in a fiat system, then Caesar gets his due.

[Alphi]

There's one thing I haven't seen any shareholder address yet:

Taxes.

thats because it belongs in the general securities thread not the ASICMINER thread.
each country has a different take on it...

most of them consider it a capital gain once you exchange the "virtual" currency into fiat..
I believe there is a youtube lecture on the subject from a tax lawyer speaking at the last bitcoin conference.

[bitsalame]

There's one thing I haven't seen any shareholder address yet:

Taxes.

How in the world would one declare Asicminer divs on one's taxes? Considering it's not a "real" security, would it be smarter to declare it as income? If that's the case, you'd have to calculate the value of your dividends at each dividend payout and report that as your income.

Any other ideas for doing it in a way that keeps the IRS happy, while keeping the most amount of divs?

Obviously it'd be best to consult a professional, but I'm curious what others have had for ideas.

As long as you don't convert them to fiat for a year, you'll technically be paying capital gains taxes which is only 15% in the us. (Germany it is free)

It would be unwise to declare it as income, you'll end up paying 35% tax

[fdebuck]

There's one thing I haven't seen any shareholder address yet:

Taxes.

How in the world would one declare Asicminer divs on one's taxes? Considering it's not a "real" security, would it be smarter to declare it as income? If that's the case, you'd have to calculate the value of your dividends at each dividend payout and report that as your income.

Any other ideas for doing it in a way that keeps the IRS happy, while keeping the most amount of divs?

Obviously it'd be best to consult a professional, but I'm curious what others have had for ideas.

As long as you don't convert them to fiat for a year, you'll technically be paying capital gains taxes which is only 15% in the us. (Germany it is free)

It would be unwise to declare it as income, you'll end up paying 35% tax

I'd be ecstatic if my income taxes were only 35 %... #Europe

[data]

well, the guy at the german finance ministry office told me: If I declare it, they will gladly accept everything I am willing to give. If I do not declare it, I can't be held accountable for it as they haven't yet figured out how to deal with it. Worst case is that I have to pay taxes in retrospect, but as I have recently moved to Switzerland I hope to resolve this "some other way"(TM)

[data]

Or you could just not pay taxes. It's not hard to get cash for bitcoins if you really need that stinky fiat money.

Where can I convert a few hundred bitcoins for cash right now without taking too much of a hit? And how do I store that securely?

[aahzmundus]

Havelock is having an IPO, they are valuing themselves at 6,250 btc.  Seems interesting and thought people here may be interested in knowing about it.

https://www.havelockinvestments.com/fund.php?symbol=HIF

[bitcoin.newsfeed]

Havelock is having an IPO, they are valuing themselves at 6,250 btc.  Seems interesting and thought people here may be interested in knowing about it.

https://www.havelockinvestments.com/fund.php?symbol=HIF

They're valuating themselves for 6250 BTC so 4 300 000 $ ...       ... is this for real or bad joke ? ... who the hell will be participating in this IPO now, when we're awaiting decentralized stock exchanges like blockchain based from AM, colored coins and mastercoin soon ? Also their only income is from trading fees. It seems to me like one dishonest action for last chance of taking even more BTC from bitcoin securities market investors, we were witnessing a lot of BS, scams and disappointments in past months, please don't ...

And friendly reminder : This is AM thread.

Will we get official update from Friedcat soon? Its almost 20th.

[blackreplica]

aren't the dividends due already?

[Kouye]

aren't the dividends due already?

Nope, 10 to 20 hours to wait, still.

[bitcoin.newsfeed]

aren't the dividends due already?

Nope, 10 to 20 hours to wait, still.

Its Tuesday ! Dividends are/and always were on Wednesday (UTC) .