ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[VeeMiner]

Why AM is mining in BTCguild pools instead of solo-mining?

Diversifying to keep the solo farms under 40% 

we all wish

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[jjdub7]

any dividend payment of any size would be a good sign

No definitely NOT at 0.0003BTC level!

lophie, you've got the mindset of fiat-corporate 4xQuarterly dividends.  If AM could've balanced its cashflow projections over the past year and a half and paid dividends on a normal, smoothed schedule, the stock would've stayed at a stable price instead of bubbling to upwards of 4 BTC a share before losing half that value in a matter of weeks because it was unsustainable.  That's why AM had to finance so much of the gen3 production instead of being able to pay up front.  

If you can't grow the yield organically through reinvestment in your R&D, and instead have to finance your project roadmap to the point where you're cycling between being in the red and having your business boom, then the stock isn't an investment, but rather a speculative gamble.  It's true that the mining chip space is extremely competitive, so some risks must be taken to survive and grow (and of course hindsight is 20/20, although I never bought shares last time around because while AM's a great and innovative startup, it wasn't worth BTC1.6 million).

Hopefully this time around, the financials (including depreciation of mining assets) will be structured so as to smooth dividends (e.g. weekly dividends as a share of moving average revenues) and avoid the single-company boom/bust cycle.  Granted though, I can see why FC would want to achieve ROI for investors - there aren't many other venues for raising BTC40k in capital.

[lophie]

any dividend payment of any size would be a good sign

No definitely NOT at 0.0003BTC level!

lophie, you've got the mindset of fiat-corporate 4xQuarterly dividends.  If AM could've balanced its cashflow projections over the past year and a half and paid dividends on a normal, smoothed schedule, the stock would've stayed at a stable price instead of bubbling to upwards of 4 BTC a share before losing half that value in a matter of weeks because it was unsustainable.  That's why AM had to finance so much of the gen3 production instead of being able to pay up front.  

If you can't grow the yield organically through reinvestment in your R&D, and instead have to finance your project roadmap to the point where you're cycling between being in the red and having your business boom, then the stock isn't an investment, but rather a speculative gamble.  It's true that the mining chip space is extremely competitive, so some risks must be taken to survive and grow (and of course hindsight is 20/20, although I never bought shares last time around because while AM's a great and innovative startup, it wasn't worth BTC1.6 million).

Hopefully this time around, the financials (including depreciation of mining assets) will be structured so as to smooth dividends (e.g. weekly dividends as a share of moving average revenues) and avoid the single-company boom/bust cycle.  Granted though, I can see why FC would want to achieve ROI for investors - there aren't many other venues for raising BTC40k in capital.

I consider myself a man with very little knowledge generally but my curiosity and thirst to learn helped me living up till this day. You see all what you wrote is correct and all ASICMINER moves were spot on as the best course of actions ( for asicminer, the entity ). But as an investor and a trader the absence of the frequent updates and trickles of divs are making me nervous. Lost plenty with GLBSE, I lost more in WeExchange Jon Mon'troll's robbery. Also TradeFortress, and Bakewell. Generally I made more than I lost, alot more. But it still stings like a bi#$@

I will not lose with asicminer, being a pessimist is helping me doing exactly that. So My opinion if we got a div of 0.0003 is... RUN FOR THE HILLS.

[vortex1878]

The 60P of Gen3 were completely paid upfront from withheld dividends. No financing was needed. That is clearly visible in the last financial report (almost no liabilities).

[jjdub7]

The 60P of Gen3 were completely paid upfront from withheld dividends. No financing was needed. That is clearly visible in the last financial report (almost no liabilities).

What was the cause for the negative cashflows then?

[vortex1878]

The 60P of Gen3 were completely paid upfront from withheld dividends. No financing was needed. That is clearly visible in the last financial report (almost no liabilities).

What was the cause for the negative cashflows then?

To pay for Gen3. If you have more money flowing out than flowing in during a certain period, your cashflow is negative.

(Edited for correcting my own stupidity. Thanks, jjdub7.)

[RoadStress]

He is expecting facts from me, but he isn't sharing any! I still don't understand why are the shareholders so biased or so blind? I thought that people investing money have a larger idea of everything in general, but here I see only people with horse glasses.

2 words: long term

edit: (Bonus) 2 words : shill down

It seems that the lack of dividends made you a bit desperate for some money and it's funny that you told me to shill down while you are pulling shit like this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=778953.msg8783030#msg8783030

Big boys do what they want, and face the consequences.

Good luck with the consequences.

[jjdub7]

The 60P of Gen3 were completely paid upfront from withheld dividends. No financing was needed. That is clearly visible in the last financial report (almost no liabilities).

What was the cause for the negative cashflows then?

To pay for Gen3. If you have more money flowing in than flowing out during a certain period, your cashflow is negative.

More flowing out than in, but no, obviously I get what you mean.  Is lithography generally paid for as a lump sum or in payments?

I guess I'm just caught between understanding that a gen lifecycle requires a massive amount of capex (ergo you'd need to drop bank on the lith) and wondering why R&D financial allotments and forecasts aren't spread out across generations instead of compacted into a single cycle.  I've felt before as though AM has just been a succession of loosely coordinated design projects rather than the full-scale company it should represent, and I've expressed my desire for AM to consider expanding service offerings to diversify its businesses.  FC and co. certainly have niche expertise that reaches beyond just the realm of mining coins.  

IBM Global Services (business IT strategy unit sold to IBM by PricewaterhouseCoopers in '02) just announced their "internet of things" model for cloud device management based on blockchain technology (i.e. "private" blockchains in enterprise clouds that function similar to NMC as a registry system).  IBM itself makes excellent CPUs (on an i5 now actually), but their proposal forecasts billions of devices operating in the quasi-private cloud by 2020 - CPUs, no matter if they're based on 5/14/20nm architectures, aren't going to be able to secure the enterprise divisions of corporate IT in the model, as it will likely be based on SHA-256 or similar.  This may end up creating a situation in the future where hashing ASICs are included in end-user computing devices alongside integrated CPU/GPUs for identity access management (IAM) purposes as the concept of physical storage fades into the realm of virtual machines.  These types of partnerships would make revenue from current mining/hardware sales look like a damn pittance, and would be quite marketable in a room with the right people.

Source: https://gigaom.com/2014/09/09/check-out-ibms-proposal-for-an-internet-of-things-architecture-using-bitcoins-block-chain-tech/

The hardware consulting work would be zero capex, and any chip sales that follow would just be gravy and could eventually lead to enormous contracts. I'd suggest that this and other similar ventures leveraging the company's blockchain know-how are ideas well worth exploring.  Oftentimes I feel like this thread gets a bit too acutely focused on AM's products' ability to create cryptocurrency that we overlook the other uses of the blockchain.  

Has anyone else thought about this type of diversification or had any similar ideas for growth?  I think they'd be worth communicating to the board, and perhaps in a town-hall setting (shares = opportunities to speak?)

lol I see you trollin', Stress.

[vortex1878]

Löl, yes. More out than in. Thanks for pointing that out. I just woke up... ^^

I'll edit it.

[RoadStress]

Has anyone else thought about this type of diversification or had any similar ideas for growth?  I think they'd be worth communicating to the board, and perhaps in a town-hall setting (shares = opportunities to speak?)

FC used to talk about diversification and idea for growth besides mining. From what I can remember he wanted to start various services around the blockchain like an exchange for example, but it seems that he forgot about those plans or the mining business didn't allow him to concentrate on anything else. I know that all the shareholders look at FC like a God and never ask himg any sensitive question, but the ideas were definitely present in the past.

[trek27]

1) IMO this is the most plausible explanation of recent inflows to 1HtUGfbDcMzTeHWx2Dbgnhc6kYnj1Hp24i:

...
The answer to "why not all at once?" is: Because they don't want to manually log into all accounts every week/month and dump coins into the mining distribution wallet.
...
So really, there's nothing to suggest hidden hash power at BTC Guild, and this was not an attempt at share price manipulation.
...

2)  I don't think the above implicates imminent dividends. Before September there was a transaction of around 51btc and ... we are still waiting.

3) I'm convinced AM has more hashrate outside BtcGuild - net income is probably used/stashed for production/deployment/development.

 

[trek27]

Has anyone else thought about this type of diversification or had any similar ideas for growth?  I think they'd be worth communicating to the board, and perhaps in a town-hall setting (shares = opportunities to speak?)

FC used to talk about diversification and idea for growth besides mining. From what I can remember he wanted to start various services around the blockchain like an exchange for example, but it seems that he forgot about those plans or the mining business didn't allow him to concentrate on anything else.

Yes, this is very interesting.
However, for the moment, FC should be 100% concentrated on getting AM on track in current model (chips, miners, self-mining) - just a matter of priority.
When AM claims, in sustainable way, let's say equivalent of 25%-30% of network hashrate, then such ideas could be absolutely great for the more distant future.

[RoadStress]

Yes, this is very interesting.
However, for the moment, FC should be 100% concentrated on getting AM on track in current model (chips, miners, self-mining) - just a matter of priority.
When AM claims, in sustainable way, let's say equivalent of 25%-30% of network hashrate, then such ideas could be absolutely great for the more distant future.

In my view AM has already lost the mining game with both miners sold to customers and the self-mining. I mean Bitfury who started later than AM has/had ~40%-50% of the network hashrate at one point just a few months ago. Even KnC started with one 10MW DC and now they have 3 DCs. If they can do it then AM, who had the head start could do it too, but at this point they just don't matter. Call it trolling or whatever, but it's just my opinion based on what's going on: low sales, no information about the self-mining hashrate. As always feel free to contradict me with facts instead of calling me names.

[Mabsark]

What information would you like to see?

Passing this question on to the others. Yeah, csv-export of all trades or shares im-/export would surely be nice. I can also second the request for recent trades, that list needs to be bigger.
But I guess you were just offering to give us some data to play around with, right?

I also agree that that recent trades list is far too short.. As well as increasing it's length, a link to the csv at the top or bottom of the recent trades list would work well.

[Mabsark]

any dividend payment of any size would be a good sign

No definitely NOT at 0.0003BTC level!

Would such a dividend along with news of gen 4 tape-out suffice? Would such a dividend paid every week for the next year be acceptable to you? What exactly are you expecting anyway in the form of dividends?

[jdany]

Yesterday wasn't a big surprise.  But, it also wasn't a big event.
Now, if it kept paying out 10BTC every hour, and didn't stop... that might have been a big event.

I do expect more of these smaller events to start happening.
Mining.
Equipment sales.
Chip sales.
Franchise mining.
People aren't sitting on their thumbs - there are lots of coins sitting somewhere.
And will probably start consolidating in known addresses

And then you have Gen4 on the horizon...

[Mabsark]

Yes, this is very interesting.
However, for the moment, FC should be 100% concentrated on getting AM on track in current model (chips, miners, self-mining) - just a matter of priority.
When AM claims, in sustainable way, let's say equivalent of 25%-30% of network hashrate, then such ideas could be absolutely great for the more distant future.

In my view AM has already lost the mining game with both miners sold to customers and the self-mining. I mean Bitfury who started later than AM has/had ~40%-50% of the network hashrate at one point just a few months ago. Even KnC started with one 10MW DC and now they have 3 DCs. If they can do it then AM, who had the head start could do it too, but at this point they just don't matter. Call it trolling or whatever, but it's just my opinion based on what's going on: low sales, no information about the self-mining hashrate. As always feel free to contradict me with facts instead of calling me names.

FACT: You don't have any information to be making the claim that miners are not selling as well as expected. You don't have the necessary info to backup the majority of your claims.
FACT: You keep making stuff up and presenting it as facts when it's actually just opinion.
FACT: With PSU and shipping included, 3 Tubes costs less than a single SP20 and will provide 2.4 Th/s compared to 1.7 Th/s.

[NotLambchop]

...
FACT: You don't have any information to be making the claim that miners are not selling as well as expected. You don't have the necessary info to backup the majority of your claims.
...

None of you have any info, because no one who does is talking to you.
Two possible reasons for this:

  1.  Things are going swimmingly, and Friedcat enjoys trolling you.
  2.  Things are, indeed, as ass as they seem

Not that I don't enjoy your pep talks, Mabsurk, I do.  Something romantic about doggedly sticking to untenable positions, and fuck logic and common sense.
And, I won't lie, there's teh lulz.

[hdbuck]

Lulz

Teh only lulz in here are your lameful once in a while trolling

[NotLambchop]

Which scam thread do I remember you from, hdbuck?   Not that it matters, they're all basically the same.  Did it go something like this?
  
  1.  I called a scam.
  2.  You thought you knew better.
  3.  You raged.
  4.  The scam, as promised, turned out to be a scam.
  5.  You forgot to admit your stupidity and apologise, because stupid.

Just for giggles, tho, which one was it?  No lying now, you're probably no better at that than at investin'

  ~Happy Investing!