ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[NotLambchop]

...
how about 0,05 for every sharehodler??? God knows the ride from 4 to here was hard.
...

That's not how stocks work.

Friedcat sold your shares below today's market price (@.1BTC I think).  That's all the money he got from each share.
He did not profit from you buying the shares for @4BTC, just like he would not lose any money if you decide to sell your shares @.0001BTC.
It's completely out of his hands.
The guy who bought the shares @.1BTC and sold them to you @4.0BTC (a 4000% markup) got your cheddar, not Friedcat.
Why would Friedcat pay you for your mistakes?

[bitsalame]

I'm starting to lose some trust in Friedcat, not because of the lack of shareholder info though. I noticed a mistake in the Round 2 pricing and he basically just brushed it off as there not being any mistake at all.

Round 2 Sales
Full 10-devices set including:
  40 Hashing Units
  40 Thermal Pads (optional, on demand)
  3 Ethernet Controllers (1 for redundancy. One controller can in principle drive as many as 8 full devices)
  10 Cooling Kits
  10 Fans
  Free Assembling
7.9 BTC/set

Hashing Unit: 0.160 BTC/piece for <400 pieces
                   MOQ at 40 pieces. (Each unit hashes at 200-215GH/s in typical clock)

Thermal Pad: 0.007 BTC/piece. MOQ at 40 pieces.

Ethernet Controller: 0.069 BTC/piece. MOQ at 2 pieces.

Cooling Kit: 0.069 BTC/set. MOQ at 10 sets.

Fan: 0.014 BTC/piece. MOQ at 10 pieces.

If you do the maths, you'll see that the total actually comes to 7.717 BTC not 7.9 BTC. I pointed this out to FC who said that the 7.9 BTC price includes assembly. The post clearly states "Free assembling" and FC has made numerous posts about preferring to ship unassembled. It just makes no sense whatsoever. I've also pointed that out to him but haven't heard back from him yet and the post hasn't been corrected.

I'm surprised no potential buyers have pointed this out in the sales thread yet.

omg, you are naive, aren't you?
Nothing is free in this world, especially in the business world.
Do you really think that any "free coupons" in any convenience store is actually "free"? The costs are always included in the final price.
Make your own calcualtions, go to ebay or amazon and check all the "free shippings" offerings of any product. You might find either $10+free shipping or $7 +$2.99 shipping... most likely all of the listings will have almost the exact same total price.
This is normal business practice. It is logical that they will want to charge some time for the time consuming process of assembling the units, really could you blame them?
They probably just forgot to spread it out through the different parts.

This is a irrelevant point to nitpick, the main point is that with the price correction it is now the cheapest offering in the market.
Lets put things in perspective, you are complaining about 0.183 when the actual discount is -2.5 BTC.

[shawshankinmate37927]

I'm starting to lose some trust in Friedcat, not because of the lack of shareholder info though. I noticed a mistake in the Round 2 pricing and he basically just brushed it off as there not being any mistake at all.

Round 2 Sales
Full 10-devices set including:
  40 Hashing Units
  40 Thermal Pads (optional, on demand)
  3 Ethernet Controllers (1 for redundancy. One controller can in principle drive as many as 8 full devices)
  10 Cooling Kits
  10 Fans
  Free Assembling
7.9 BTC/set

Hashing Unit: 0.160 BTC/piece for <400 pieces
                   MOQ at 40 pieces. (Each unit hashes at 200-215GH/s in typical clock)

Thermal Pad: 0.007 BTC/piece. MOQ at 40 pieces.

Ethernet Controller: 0.069 BTC/piece. MOQ at 2 pieces.

Cooling Kit: 0.069 BTC/set. MOQ at 10 sets.

Fan: 0.014 BTC/piece. MOQ at 10 pieces.

If you do the maths, you'll see that the total actually comes to 7.717 BTC not 7.9 BTC. I pointed this out to FC who said that the 7.9 BTC price includes assembly. The post clearly states "Free assembling" and FC has made numerous posts about preferring to ship unassembled. It just makes no sense whatsoever. I've also pointed that out to him but haven't heard back from him yet and the post hasn't been corrected.

I'm surprised no potential buyers have pointed this out in the sales thread yet.

Let's not forget that English isn't friedcat's native language.  He may not have understood what you were trying to say.  Plus, he's hopefully swamped trying to fill orders and doesn't have time to edit posts that no one else is complaining about.  But, I agree that it would be better to just include an assembly fee for those that prefer to have the hardware shipped to them pre-assembled and his cost breakdown should look something more like this:

–––––––––––––––––	––––––––––––––––––
Hashing Units:	40 x BTC0.160 = BTC6.400
Thermal Pads:	40 x BTC0.007 = BTC0.280
Ethernet Controllers:	3 x BTC0.069 = BTC0.207
Cooling Kits:	10 x BTC0.069 = BTC0.690
Fans:	10 x BTC0.014 = BTC0.140
Assembly:	= BTC0.183
–––––––––––––––––	––––––––––––––––––
	Total Cost: BTC7.900
–––––––––––––––––	––––––––––––––––––

[Mabsark]

omg, you are naive, aren't you?
Nothing is free in this world, especially in the business world.
Do you really think that any "free coupons" in any convenience store is actually "free"? The costs are always included in the final price.
Make your own calcualtions, go to ebay or amazon and check all the "free shippings" offerings of any product. You might find either $10+free shipping or $7 +$2.99 shipping... most likely all of the listings will have almost the exact same total price.
This is normal business practice. It is logical that they will want to charge some time for the time consuming process of assembling the units, really could you blame them?
They probably just forgot to spread it out through the different parts.

This is a irrelevant point to nitpick, the main point is that with the price correction it is now the cheapest offering in the market.
Lets put things in perspective, you are complaining about 0.183 when the actual discount is -2.5 BTC.

Like you suggest, I made my own calculations and found FC's to be wrong so I informed him of the error. How on earth does that make me naive? False advertising is not normal business practice at all and until the mistake in that post is rectified that's what it is. As a shareholder, mistakes are not something I like seeing AM make, no matter how small they are. Do you really want people calling FC a liar and a thief or a simpleton who can't do basic maths? We've had enough problems of late, we don't need crap like that adding to them. Either fix the price or add an assembly fee. Problem solved. As it stands though, it's just false advertising and that's something we probably all despise.

PS: Will you give me 0.183 BTC? After all it's only 0.183 BTC so you may as well do so. 

[ensurance982]

Yeah I guess the offer could have been worded a bit better, but in the end it just means that if you choose the 'complete' miner the assembly is already included. Don't really see such a big problem in that. The prices are clearly visible for everyone involved and it's not like the numbers don't add up or something...

[jjdub7]

friedcat -

What is the QA (quality assurance) process currently in place for all the relevant parts being manufactured with the tubes?  What is the defect rate for each part in the manufacturing process?

[bitsalame]

omg, you are naive, aren't you?
Nothing is free in this world, especially in the business world.
Do you really think that any "free coupons" in any convenience store is actually "free"? The costs are always included in the final price.
Make your own calcualtions, go to ebay or amazon and check all the "free shippings" offerings of any product. You might find either $10+free shipping or $7 +$2.99 shipping... most likely all of the listings will have almost the exact same total price.
This is normal business practice. It is logical that they will want to charge some time for the time consuming process of assembling the units, really could you blame them?
They probably just forgot to spread it out through the different parts.

This is a irrelevant point to nitpick, the main point is that with the price correction it is now the cheapest offering in the market.
Lets put things in perspective, you are complaining about 0.183 when the actual discount is -2.5 BTC.

Like you suggest, I made my own calculations and found FC's to be wrong so I informed him of the error. How on earth does that make me naive? False advertising is not normal business practice at all and until the mistake in that post is rectified that's what it is. As a shareholder, mistakes are not something I like seeing AM make, no matter how small they are. Do you really want people calling FC a liar and a thief or a simpleton who can't do basic maths? We've had enough problems of late, we don't need crap like that adding to them. Either fix the price or add an assembly fee. Problem solved. As it stands though, it's just false advertising and that's something we probably all despise.

PS: Will you give me 0.183 BTC? After all it's only 0.183 BTC so you may as well do so.  

What I meant is that he might have originally intended to do something like this:

–––––––––––––––––	––––––––––––––––––
Hashing Units:	40 x BTC0.160915 = BTC6.4366
Thermal Pads:	40 x BTC0.007915 = BTC0.3166
Ethernet Controllers:	3 x BTC0.0812 = BTC0.2436
Cooling Kits:	10 x BTC0.07266 = BTC0.7266
Fans:	10 x BTC0.01766 = BTC0.1766
Assembly	= BTCFree
–––––––––––––––––	––––––––––––––––––
	Total Cost: BTC7.900
–––––––––––––––––	––––––––––––––––––

Basically distributing the 0.183 BTC shuffled on the existing pricing, and leaving the "Free Assembly" for the psychological effect.
Anyway, the arrangement of the pricing is irrelevant, a substantial discount of 2.5 BTC was being offered from its original 10.4BTC to 7.9BTC.
Calling it dishonest is ridiculous, you are making waves on an actual non-issue.

Probably they just hurried up to finish the orders and got the raw price list published, and now it wasn't easy to edit the post because they either had to recalculate the whole price list or suddenly had to add an Assembly Fee with the risk of causing confusion...
Anyway, the new final price of 7.9 BTC, which seems to have been the original price target, still reflects a generous 24% discount; and I think that to call it "deceitful" or accusing of false advertising for an honest mistake and for you losing the opportunity to exploit a semantic loophole for an extra 1.75% discount is quite a stretch, don't you think?

Let's be reasonable.

In any case, I guess that Friedcat is now forced to make some statement on this overblown non-issue. Congratulations, Mabsark.

BTW, having said that, I would appreciate some attention to detail. Some areas that the company seem to be struggling a bit is in its marketing, sales and quality control dept.
AM first mover's advantage is gone, and the game has changed a lot. The first period was all about technical expertise, enginereed by geeks for geeks. Now the tide has changed and it is time for business expertise, how to target the market of clueless laymen and corner the market.
If AM is targeting the retail market, they will have to pay a LOT more attention to the user experience. Don't leave any space for misunderstandings, please start focusing on simplicity, practicality and intuitiveness.

It is time to depart from the forum nonsense and have some professional PR, HR, Marketing, support and a proficient sales team. I hope to see advances in these areas.

[stompysteve]

I'm starting to lose some trust in Friedcat, not because of the lack of shareholder info though. I noticed a mistake in the Round 2 pricing and he basically just brushed it off as there not being any mistake at all.

Round 2 Sales
Full 10-devices set including:
  40 Hashing Units
  40 Thermal Pads (optional, on demand)
  3 Ethernet Controllers (1 for redundancy. One controller can in principle drive as many as 8 full devices)
  10 Cooling Kits
  10 Fans
  Free Assembling
7.9 BTC/set

Hashing Unit: 0.160 BTC/piece for <400 pieces
                   MOQ at 40 pieces. (Each unit hashes at 200-215GH/s in typical clock)

Thermal Pad: 0.007 BTC/piece. MOQ at 40 pieces.

Ethernet Controller: 0.069 BTC/piece. MOQ at 2 pieces.

Cooling Kit: 0.069 BTC/set. MOQ at 10 sets.

Fan: 0.014 BTC/piece. MOQ at 10 pieces.

If you do the maths, you'll see that the total actually comes to 7.717 BTC not 7.9 BTC. I pointed this out to FC who said that the 7.9 BTC price includes assembly. The post clearly states "Free assembling" and FC has made numerous posts about preferring to ship unassembled. It just makes no sense whatsoever. I've also pointed that out to him but haven't heard back from him yet and the post hasn't been corrected.

I'm surprised no potential buyers have pointed this out in the sales thread yet.

Let's not forget that English isn't friedcat's native language.  He may not have understood what you were trying to say.  Plus, he's hopefully swamped trying to fill orders and doesn't have time to edit posts that no one else is complaining about.  But, I agree that it would be better to just include an assembly fee for those that prefer to have the hardware shipped to them pre-assembled and his cost breakdown should look something more like this:

–––––––––––––––––	––––––––––––––––––
Hashing Units:	40 x BTC0.160 = BTC6.400
Thermal Pads:	40 x BTC0.007 = BTC0.280
Ethernet Controllers:	3 x BTC0.069 = BTC0.207
Cooling Kits:	10 x BTC0.069 = BTC0.690
Fans:	10 x BTC0.014 = BTC0.140
Assembly:	= BTC0.183
–––––––––––––––––	––––––––––––––––––
	Total Cost: BTC7.900
–––––––––––––––––	––––––––––––––––––

If they are pre assembled then don't have to worry about hanging in the sales section answering assembly issues

[Mabsark]

Anyway, the new final price of 7.9 BTC, which seems to have been the original price target, still reflects a generous 24% discount; and I think that to call it "deceitful" or accusing of false advertising for an honest mistake and for you losing the opportunity to exploit a semantic loophole for an extra 1.75% discount is quite a stretch, don't you think?

I wasn't even trying to buy a miner and it doesn't matter if it was an honest mistake, until it's corrected it's still false advertising and reflects poorly on AM.

[vortex1878]

Anyway, the new final price of 7.9 BTC, which seems to have been the original price target, still reflects a generous 24% discount; and I think that to call it "deceitful" or accusing of false advertising for an honest mistake and for you losing the opportunity to exploit a semantic loophole for an extra 1.75% discount is quite a stretch, don't you think?

I wasn't even trying to buy a miner and it doesn't matter if it was an honest mistake, until it's corrected it's still false advertising and reflects poorly on AM.

Bored much? Instead of counting beans you could help people counting screws for their unassembled tubes... 

[AllInBit]

Did anyone know about this Digcoin project?

 "The Digcoin(www.digcoin.com) project includes expansion of an existing mining factory and purchase of additional hashing power.
Hashing power is directed to Discus Fish mining pool and income is sent to this address: 1P6tPUYGFxNnteLsdauVAScpkeUShPvRR7
Transaction records of this address show that income is about 28 BTC per day, which is the product of 1.3 PH/s. The Digcoin project will increase hashing power to approximately 4 PH/s
Digcoin is a digital currency cloud mining platform built and operated by Huobi. Digcoin has deep integration with Huobi spot trading, BitVC derivatives trading and wealth management, Quickwallet multi-signature wallet service, and other digital currency products and services of Huobi.
Digcoin has developed deep cooperation with Avalon,ASICMINER , and other well-known mining machine manufacturers. As of 2014.8.26, Digcoin is estimated to contribute 2.5% of the Bitcoin network's total hashing power.
Digcoin is an open platform; its mission is to make mining more convenient and more profitable." - Bitvc.com




  

[Rival]

I am surprised no one has pointed out a particularly obvious issue with the BE200 chips which caused a significant loss of revenue to AM. The power consumption of the chips came in higher than expected. For large mining units, that is not really an issue because the consumption vs the g/hash is still pretty decent. The real problem is that AM cannot produce simple 1-chip usb units similar to the 333 Mhs units. There are no USB hubs on the market that can handle the power requirements of a full compliment of (not designed, not released) USB miners.

The market should have been flooded with BE200 single-chip USB miners by now. Unfortunately, the power requirements locked AM out of that very lucrative market. For shareholders this is a real punch in the gut.

Disclaimer: Still a stockholder and still hodling.

[RoadStress]

I am surprised no one has pointed out a particularly obvious issue with the BE200 chips which caused a significant loss of revenue to AM. The power consumption of the chips came in higher than expected. For large mining units, that is not really an issue because the consumption vs the g/hash is still pretty decent. The real problem is that AM cannot produce simple 1-chip usb units similar to the 333 Mhs units. There are no USB hubs on the market that can handle the power requirements of a full compliment of (not designed, not released) USB miners.

The market should have been flooded with BE200 single-chip USB miners by now. Unfortunately, the power requirements locked AM out of that very lucrative market. For shareholders this is a real punch in the gut.

Disclaimer: Still a stockholder and still hodling.

Mining isn't the same like last year. What worked in the past doesn't mean that it will work in the future too. Mining is moving forward towards big ass machines.

[wasubii]

I am surprised no one has pointed out a particularly obvious issue with the BE200 chips which caused a significant loss of revenue to AM. The power consumption of the chips came in higher than expected. For large mining units, that is not really an issue because the consumption vs the g/hash is still pretty decent. The real problem is that AM cannot produce simple 1-chip usb units similar to the 333 Mhs units. There are no USB hubs on the market that can handle the power requirements of a full compliment of (not designed, not released) USB miners.

The market should have been flooded with BE200 single-chip USB miners by now. Unfortunately, the power requirements locked AM out of that very lucrative market. For shareholders this is a real punch in the gut.

Disclaimer: Still a stockholder and still hodling.

The market for small usb miners is insignificant in terms of hash rate deployed in the face of the petahash mines. Things have moved on since 333mh/s would cut it. Much better to focus on a deployment method that will occupy the centre ground between mass market (home miners) and industrial and just make one product rather than a plethora of options.

[DebitMe]

I am surprised no one has pointed out a particularly obvious issue with the BE200 chips which caused a significant loss of revenue to AM. The power consumption of the chips came in higher than expected. For large mining units, that is not really an issue because the consumption vs the g/hash is still pretty decent. The real problem is that AM cannot produce simple 1-chip usb units similar to the 333 Mhs units. There are no USB hubs on the market that can handle the power requirements of a full compliment of (not designed, not released) USB miners.

The market should have been flooded with BE200 single-chip USB miners by now. Unfortunately, the power requirements locked AM out of that very lucrative market. For shareholders this is a real punch in the gut.

Disclaimer: Still a stockholder and still hodling.

Mining isn't the same like last year. What worked in the past doesn't mean that it will work in the future too. Mining is moving forward towards big ass machines.

And that is missing a huge part of the market for small time miners, miners who just want to mine to be apart of it, hobbyists, and people who want to learn.  I agree with the above post, and it is unfortunate that there is no USB version of this chip as I still sell 333 MH/s units on amazon daily.  They are still a hot commodity.  And they could be priced to be profitable.  One of the things that annoys me the most is that people say you can only make money when you have a lot of starting capital, which is just not true.  I am not here to get rich, but I can get decent returns on S3's and other miners that I buy that grows my capital.  Even small fries can earn money if they know what they are doing and play the game right.

[Rival]

I am surprised no one has pointed out a particularly obvious issue with the BE200 chips which caused a significant loss of revenue to AM. The power consumption of the chips came in higher than expected. For large mining units, that is not really an issue because the consumption vs the g/hash is still pretty decent. The real problem is that AM cannot produce simple 1-chip usb units similar to the 333 Mhs units. There are no USB hubs on the market that can handle the power requirements of a full compliment of (not designed, not released) USB miners.

The market should have been flooded with BE200 single-chip USB miners by now. Unfortunately, the power requirements locked AM out of that very lucrative market. For shareholders this is a real punch in the gut.

Disclaimer: Still a stockholder and still hodling.

Mining isn't the same like last year. What worked in the past doesn't mean that it will work in the future too. Mining is moving forward towards big ass machines.

Selling miners to consumers is pretty much exactly what it was last year. AM sold a ton of those 333 MHs units. Tens of thousands. More 1-chip USB miners than anyone else ever did combined. Go to ebay, even today over half of the ads are for 333 Mhs USB miners. The market is HUGE. AM did not walk away from that market by choice.

[RoadStress]

And that is missing a huge part of the market for small time miners, miners who just want to mine to be apart of it, hobbyists, and people who want to learn.  I agree with the above post, and it is unfortunate that there is no USB version of this chip as I still sell 333 MH/s units on amazon daily.  They are still a hot commodity.  And they could be priced to be profitable.  One of the things that annoys me the most is that people say you can only make money when you have a lot of starting capital, which is just not true.  I am not here to get rich, but I can get decent returns on S3's and other miners that I buy that grows my capital.  Even small fries can earn money if they know what they are doing and play the game right.

I see a contradiction in your statement and I have highlighted why. Last year it was very easy to profit off a USB miner, but this year it's a bit trickier and like you said people have to know what they are doing. Hobbyists and people that are just learning how mining works (there are still people that are asking questions about variance on the Pools section) will likely fail now with a USB miner and maybe they will never come back to mining again. Just comparing r/bitcoinmining with our Hardware section and there is a clearly difference in mining knowledge which I found to be a good argument for my statement.

Selling miners to consumers is pretty much exactly what it was last year. AM sold a ton of those 333 MHs units. Tens of thousands. More 1-chip USB miners than anyone else ever did combined. Go to ebay, even today over half of the ads are for 333 Mhs USB miners. The market is HUGE. AM did not walk away from that market by choice.

Please read my post again. I said that past performance isn't a reference for the future performance. If you want to play the yes-no-yes-no-yes-no game then just let me know.

[Rival]

And that is missing a huge part of the market for small time miners, miners who just want to mine to be apart of it, hobbyists, and people who want to learn.  I agree with the above post, and it is unfortunate that there is no USB version of this chip as I still sell 333 MH/s units on amazon daily.  They are still a hot commodity.  And they could be priced to be profitable.  One of the things that annoys me the most is that people say you can only make money when you have a lot of starting capital, which is just not true.  I am not here to get rich, but I can get decent returns on S3's and other miners that I buy that grows my capital.  Even small fries can earn money if they know what they are doing and play the game right.

I see a contradiction in your statement and I have highlighted why. Last year it was very easy to profit off a USB miner, but this year it's a bit trickier and like you said people have to know what they are doing. Hobbyists and people that are just learning how mining works (there are still people that are asking questions about variance on the Pools section) will likely fail now with a USB miner and maybe they will never come back to mining again. Just comparing r/bitcoinmining with our Hardware section and there is a clearly difference in mining knowledge which I found to be a good argument for my statement.

Selling miners to consumers is pretty much exactly what it was last year. AM sold a ton of those 333 MHs units. Tens of thousands. More 1-chip USB miners than anyone else ever did combined. Go to ebay, even today over half of the ads are for 333 Mhs USB miners. The market is HUGE. AM did not walk away from that market by choice.

Please read my post again. I said that past performance isn't a reference for the future performance. If you want to play the yes-no-yes-no-yes-no game then just let me know.

This is not an issue of profitability for consumers. It is an issue of profitability for AM. It is inarguable that having the capability to produce single-chip USB miners allows you access to a specific market. If you (choose to ignore)(get blocked out of) that market, then you do not realize any profits from it. It is also inarguable how lucrative this market has been in the past. There is always the possibility that the future will be a completely different dynamic. However,  I defy anyone to suggest there is no market for single-chip USB miners. In fact, I tend to think the market for USB miners at this time may be higher than the market for larger industrial-style machines from a total capital investment standpoint.

[freedomno1]

Sorry guys, FC didn't show up in the closed session of meetup in Guangzhou on 24th August and we have to submit the questions collected through email.
However, we did bring some update on other mining sectors in China:
Information is for reference only.

Thanks for sharing that always nice to see what the mining sector is doing
Especially when a lot of it is in China.

[webbrowser]

Yes, BE200 chips missed their design target. But it was hardly as though AM intended this to happen.

How much power does a single BE200 chip consume anyway? If it's ~0.7 W/GH and nominally 10GH like I read, that's approximately 7W. I guess it should still be possible to run them on high power USB ports. Feel free to buy a batch of chips and turn them into consumer-friendly USB miners, if  you're convinced about the potential.

On the other hand, even if the BE200 hadn't missed its power design target, it would not have squeezed within the 2.5W power envelope that standard USB ports would provide. I trust that FC and team had good reasons to aim for the large scale and high density market.