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Topic: Andrew Laurus hoax - page 2. (Read 4070 times)

legendary
Activity: 1988
Merit: 1012
Beyond Imagination
August 05, 2013, 07:24:45 AM
#7
http://bitcoinexaminer.org/avalon-might-be-getting-a-200-million-investment-and-20nm-technology-to-become-the-leader-of-the-mining-market/

In this branch the only important factor is speed, BFL is proved to be too slow, Orsoc is good in ASIC design but they have been late to the bitcoin game thus don't follow what is happening behind the scene

There is one thing strange, the Avalon chip is designed by gridchip and now their cooperation broke, so I suppose both NGZhang and Yifu Guo have no good idea about the full design of a working ASIC chip. Maybe that is what those 200million is used for, they will fund a professional ASIC design house to manually create a high-efficient 20nm chip

If I had that amount of fund, I will invest in a quantum chip design Cheesy
hero member
Activity: 532
Merit: 500
August 05, 2013, 06:09:40 AM
#6
What's odd is the time the news broke, a Sunday eve, so some journals have run without confirming sources,  the fake shill twitter account that speads fud about KnC for a guy called Andrew Laurus who checks out no where else, and is potentially the worst possible person to have connected with Bitcoin (ex senior gov advisor and Lehman's bond broker - the type of person Bitcoin was specifically created to remove from influence) a half arsed landing page for a site that bears aesthetically too much similarity to the lines drawn in banknotes and a domain created on Friday.

The only thing that made me double take was the WSJ, but they aren't immune to flakey journalism, if this is what it is.

Personally I think someone is trying to flush out Yifu and elicit a response, by causing enough FUD any real contact anyone has for him goes bezerk and he has to respond to question after question until he come's out of hiding from the public and put's the record straight on this, and then clearly the bulk chips issue which he has avoided addressing. I'd hazard a guess Yifu is putting his head down and is trying to deliver on his promises...
legendary
Activity: 1204
Merit: 1002
RUM AND CARROTS: A PIRATE LIFE FOR ME
August 05, 2013, 05:15:48 AM
#5
It's an enormous amount, yes- but its small if you believe what the long term value of bitcoin will be. Also, it will allow chips to be made extraordinarily cheaply and embed able in all sort of commodity goods. (USB hubs, etc). If you believe in Bitcoin, and that it will be worth one day trillions, then it's not so much. :-)
legendary
Activity: 1062
Merit: 1003
August 04, 2013, 10:43:17 PM
#4
thats assuming this story hasnt been misreported Wink

A $200m investment seems overkill given BTC's worth. $20m would easily fund a very professional next gen chip development without the necessity for pre-order funding etc. Why would someone invest 10x that?
full member
Activity: 238
Merit: 100
August 04, 2013, 10:39:37 PM
#3
Great find sir.   The speculation will be rampant.  200m seems like a large amount when you have just over 1 billion market cap total.   There must be another play that either we don't know about it we will soon.

Yes, and the fact that the entire industry only brings in $131 million a year at the current prices, and will halve over time.

And of course, you need to have less then half the network as well.  It's really unlikely that you could make back a $200 million dollar investment purely by mining bitcoin.  This guy and other wallstreet types clearly think the price is going to go up.
legendary
Activity: 1330
Merit: 1026
Mining since 2010 & Hosting since 2012
August 04, 2013, 10:36:03 PM
#2
Great find sir.   The speculation will be rampant.  200m seems like a large amount when you have just over 1 billion market cap total.   There must be another play that either we don't know about it we will soon.
full member
Activity: 238
Merit: 100
August 04, 2013, 10:17:48 PM
#1
EDIT: This was obviously a hoax.  The WSJ has issued a correction (behind paywall here) and The Tavistock group has put out a press release disclaiming any association:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323997004578644491403250124.html

Quote
Joe Lewis, a billionaire foreign-exchange trader who teamed up with hedge-fund manager George Soros in 1992 to bet against the Bank of England, is the latest high-profile financier to throw his weight behind the virtual currency called bitcoin.

Mr. Lewis leads the Phoenix Fund, a Zurich-based private-equity fund that on Tuesday plans to invest $200 million in Avalon, a company that makes computer servers aimed at creating bitcoins, according to people familiar with the situation.

....

The Phoenix Fund was set up this year to invest in bitcoin mining-hardware companies. It looked at several of Avalon's rivals in the sector, including Butterfly Labs and KnCMiner but decided against investing, according to a person familiar with the private-equity firm's strategy.

....

The bitcoin deal was put together by Andrew Laurus, a former government-bonds salesman at Lehman Brothers who is also an investor in the fund. Avalon was set up by Yifu Guo, a pioneer in the bitcoin-mining industry. He was part of the team that developed the first ASIC bitcoin mining hardware. ASIC stands for application-specific integrated circuit, a type of custom-designed microchip. Mr. Guo couldn't be reached for comment.


So here's the question: Does this explain all of Josh's weird behavior lately? It's likely that Joe Lewis didn't tell the other people he was looking into investing with that he was also looking possibilities as well.

With Inaba's hubris, he probably assumed the deal was a definite go ahead.  That would explain why he was in here telling everyone that he was going to laugh at people who were predicting their failure, that he was going to "stick it up [our] asses" and that the bitcoin talk forum was a "minor player" in everything - clearly alluding to "major players" elsewhere, like Joe Lewis.

Anyway, obviously this guy decided BFL wasn't for him.  They have a chip design, but Avalon (and ASICMiner) have probably made enough to fund 20nm designs on their own.

Interestingly he also looked at KnC and wasn't interested.    
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