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Topic: ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It - page 1010. (Read 3917568 times)

hero member
Activity: 752
Merit: 500
bitcoin hodler
Has there been any word about the price of blades and/or USBs being reduced? I'm an advocate for selling them at as high a price point as the market allows, even though I'm purchasing them, but with with the recent spike in difficulty it would seem to make sense to consider a price reduction. A definitive yes or no over the next week or two would be great, I can't be the only one hesitating to place more orders due to this uncertainty.

they should be taken off the market for a while and then offered for lower price later as not to piss off the early buyers too much Smiley Obviously there is a lot of space for cheaper prices as ASICMINER can produce the blades and USB sticks really cheap.

and yes, this has been discussed before and I'm sure will be discussed again.
full member
Activity: 177
Merit: 100
pretty pointless discussion going on..
AM will make new price finding auctions as soon as its necessary, the update tells us it is still not.
Also the guess with 30-40$ cost per stick is propably much too high since the blades cost them around 100$ in production. The margin must be somewhat equal or they wouldnt take the hassle. My guess is 5-10$ for a stick.


 so AM sold 1btc blade for 50btc.    and a .3btc stick for 2btc

 this was pushed into divs payout  and divs have been huge.


All I am saying is 3 income sources;

1) blade sales
2)stick sales
3)mining   

AM will not keep 1 and 2 as high as they have been.  3) is kind of fixed in BTC count 22-30% of the hash. So expect an adjustment in divs and in stock price.

you are ridiculous. get out of here
legendary
Activity: 4354
Merit: 9201
'The right to privacy matters'
pretty pointless discussion going on..
AM will make new price finding auctions as soon as its necessary, the update tells us it is still not.
Also the guess with 30-40$ cost per stick is propably much too high since the blades cost them around 100$ in production. The margin must be somewhat equal or they wouldnt take the hassle. My guess is 5-10$ for a stick.


 so AM sold 1btc blade for 50btc.    and a .3btc stick for 2btc

 this was pushed into divs payout  and divs have been huge.


All I am saying is 3 income sources;

1) blade sales
2)stick sales
3)mining   

AM will not keep 1 and 2 as high as they have been.  3) is kind of fixed in BTC count 22-30% of the hash. So expect an adjustment in divs and in stock price.
237
sr. member
Activity: 264
Merit: 250
It feels like the same discussion is repeating itself after 10-20 pages over and over.
newbie
Activity: 23
Merit: 0
The comparison is faulty because AM is a company and the other alternatives are hardware.

Why is that relevant, you ask? Well, AM will (hopefully) continuously renew itself and its strategy in order to keep earnings high, whereas the hardware simply gets outdated and earns progressively less and less as time goes along. So: buying hardware may earn you more in the short term, shares in AM may earn you more in the long term.

Comparison is NOT faulty. It is a comparison of "investment" (whether in hardware or a company) and "return" (whether mined bitcoins or dividends paid out as bitcoins). I think most people will agree that the value of hardware (GPU or ASICs) will generally depreciate over time, so that is a "known." The big unknown is AM, which as you point out is a company. We hope they will continuously renew itself, but anything can happen.

It is faulty. Usually "return" is calculated as the appreciation in share price + dividends. If we make the assumption that the share price stays the same indefinitely, you will certainly realise a positive return whenever you choose to sell your shares. Obviously we would like to see the share price appreciate as well.

The rest of the investment examples are correct and you fix your GH/BTC rate when you purchase. With AM, your GH/BTC investment will increase overtime as Friedcat expands his mining effort and switch to 2nd gen ASICS etc. In the long term, this is where you want to be!
member
Activity: 94
Merit: 10
pretty pointless discussion going on..
AM will make new price finding auctions as soon as its necessary, the update tells us it is still not.
Also the guess with 30-40$ cost per stick is propably much too high since the blades cost them around 100$ in production. The margin must be somewhat equal or they wouldnt take the hassle. My guess is 5-10$ for a stick.
hero member
Activity: 728
Merit: 500
yes, it's not often you can get shares in a tech startup making $ from day 1.

Very remarkable indeed!
donator
Activity: 294
Merit: 250
Has there been any word about the price of blades and/or USBs being reduced? I'm an advocate for selling them at as high a price point as the market allows, even though I'm purchasing them, but with with the recent spike in difficulty it would seem to make sense to consider a price reduction. A definitive yes or no over the next week or two would be great, I can't be the only one hesitating to place more orders due to this uncertainty.
hero member
Activity: 525
Merit: 500
yes, it's not often you can get shares in a tech startup making $ from day 1.
legendary
Activity: 4354
Merit: 9201
'The right to privacy matters'
The point about asicminer shares being shares in a company as compared to products from a company, seems to get lost on some.

What could asicminer shares be worth in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years time? How much would they have earned by then in divs; what revenue streams will there be from applications and earning channels undreamed of yet?

Sure some hot new product may come onto the market, and you can keep product comparisons to that for interest sake if you must, but c'mon, these graphics cards and such with built-in rapid obsolescence are no comparison to AM shares.



mci was a stock company as countless others.


 I like AM they made money for me just because I am not on the same page as others when it comes to pricing of the gear that  they sell it does not mean that they have not made money for a lot of people.  Myself included.
hero member
Activity: 525
Merit: 500
The point about asicminer shares being shares in a company as compared to products from a company, seems to get lost on some.

What could asicminer shares be worth in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years time? How much would they have earned by then in divs; what revenue streams will there be from applications and earning channels undreamed of yet?

Sure some hot new product may come onto the market, and you can keep product comparisons to that for interest sake if you must, but c'mon, these graphics cards and such with built-in rapid obsolescence are no comparison to AM shares.
full member
Activity: 224
Merit: 100
You can't kill math.
I'm going to hazard a guess that the USB miners probably cost around $USD30-40 to make, which at $120/BTC would make them around 0.25BTC. There is plenty of room for them to drop the price (and quickly) as and when some actual competition appears.

This ^ AM is smart.

They are capitalizing on their investment and IP.

Intel does it too. They are so mainstream and have AMD to compete with though that the generations progress and prices decrease at a higher pace. AM has no such AMD, just a bunch of wannabe's as of yet.
sr. member
Activity: 448
Merit: 250
I'm going to hazard a guess that the USB miners probably cost around $USD30-40 to make, which at $120/BTC would make them around 0.25BTC. There is plenty of room for them to drop the price (and quickly) as and when some actual competition appears.
legendary
Activity: 4354
Merit: 9201
'The right to privacy matters'
The comparison is faulty because AM is a company and the other alternatives are hardware.

Why is that relevant, you ask? Well, AM will (hopefully) continuously renew itself and its strategy in order to keep earnings high, whereas the hardware simply gets outdated and earns progressively less and less as time goes along. So: buying hardware may earn you more in the short term, shares in AM may earn you more in the long term.

Comparison is NOT faulty. It is a comparison of "investment" (whether in hardware or a company) and "return" (whether mined bitcoins or dividends paid out as bitcoins). I think most people will agree that the value of hardware (GPU or ASICs) will generally depreciate over time, so that is a "known." The big unknown is AM, which as you point out is a company. We hope they will continuously renew itself, but anything can happen.

...

But the difference between AM and a piece of hardware is that AM is capable of strategic adaptation...

 I completely agree that AM can bust a move and when they bust one I will most likely buy in again.

   For now I see them with 6000 usb sticks  not sold and no new pricing strategy.   Now I concede I am not an insider and I have 0 info on what BFL can sell in the future but they have finished all of JULY 2012 and have started on August 2012.  On May 23 they had  June 23-25  shipped. So 2 weeks later (boy do we love that 2 weeks) they are up to August of 2012.  Just remember  1x  5ghs unit at 2.5 BTC = 16 sticks at a total of 32 BTC .  AM selling sticks  at 2 BTC may have looked good to most stock owners of AM but I always stated they were overpriced. Go back and look at my posts. So to me it looks like short term thinking on the part of AM. I am not second guessing since I said this at the get go.  

  Still the sticks may not be a big problem all that matters is AM paces the hash percentage correctly 22-32% and AM does not need to sell a thing just mine away and let others do the selling of the picks and shovels so to speak.
sr. member
Activity: 362
Merit: 250
The comparison is faulty because AM is a company and the other alternatives are hardware.

Why is that relevant, you ask? Well, AM will (hopefully) continuously renew itself and its strategy in order to keep earnings high, whereas the hardware simply gets outdated and earns progressively less and less as time goes along. So: buying hardware may earn you more in the short term, shares in AM may earn you more in the long term.

Comparison is NOT faulty. It is a comparison of "investment" (whether in hardware or a company) and "return" (whether mined bitcoins or dividends paid out as bitcoins). I think most people will agree that the value of hardware (GPU or ASICs) will generally depreciate over time, so that is a "known." The big unknown is AM, which as you point out is a company. We hope they will continuously renew itself, but anything can happen.

First, let me apologize to all the other readers of this thread for harping on about this.

Secondly, I guess "value" is a very subjective notion and I am perfectly happy to agree to disagree on this.

Furthermore, I agree with you that the future is uncertain - also with respect to AMs future performance, it is by no means guaranteed that it will continue to be successful.

But the difference between AM and a piece of hardware is that AM is capable of strategic adaptation. I concede that a specific piece of hardware may outperform AM for a short period (your example arbitrarily showed one year, and I suppose that is OK for your purposes, but my horizon is longer). Beyond the very short term, however, the capability to adapt becomes more important: in three years the piece of hardware you purchased today will continue to hash at 5 GH/s regardless of what the network hash rate is (i.e. essentially earning very low returns), but at that time I expect AM has expanded and evolved way beyond what it is today and continues to rake in large profits.

It is uncertain whether or not AM will still be raking in huge profits in three years. But I can guarantee that your 5 GH/s miner will be more or less worthless at that time.

Those are just my thoughts, and anybody is of course welcome to disagree and invest as they see fit, focusing on the time horizon or risk profile that fits their personal taste. So now that I shared that, I will stop harping on about it - back to your regularly scheduled programme... Wink
sr. member
Activity: 356
Merit: 255
The comparison is faulty because AM is a company and the other alternatives are hardware.

Why is that relevant, you ask? Well, AM will (hopefully) continuously renew itself and its strategy in order to keep earnings high, whereas the hardware simply gets outdated and earns progressively less and less as time goes along. So: buying hardware may earn you more in the short term, shares in AM may earn you more in the long term.

Comparison is NOT faulty. It is a comparison of "investment" (whether in hardware or a company) and "return" (whether mined bitcoins or dividends paid out as bitcoins). I think most people will agree that the value of hardware (GPU or ASICs) will generally depreciate over time, so that is a "known." The big unknown is AM, which as you point out is a company. We hope they will continuously renew itself, but anything can happen.

don't mean to burst your bubble, but yeah, it IS faulty. Everything in that list has a decelerating profit vector due to the fact that the hardware cannot be upgraded and has a definite lifespan (assuming hash rate increases over time - a pretty safe bet). The exception is AM, which not only mines using hardware like the other 3 examples, but also sells hardware to others, effectively offloading the lifespan-based risk at a discount and keeping the instant profits, which are then redistributed to shareholders.

It's rather like comparing 3 fixed-rate CDs versus a growth stock during a time of inflation. The CDs will perform less and less over time, but the growth stock is not limited to the fixed return that the CDs are, even though both are affected the same by inflation. (inflation is analogous to hash rate in this example)
legendary
Activity: 4354
Merit: 9201
'The right to privacy matters'
wrong a hd7790 cost 1btc generates 300MHs  

WTF? I didn't even mention a 7790, so how can I be wrong?


 right leaving out a hd7790 and using a hd7970 is wrong since a 7790 is the cheapest gpu for btc mining based on hash /power / price.  


 A hd7790 is 300 hash for 80 watts at 1.1 btc  

 a hd7970 is 650 hash for 240 watts at 3.3 btc    


 at todays rates  the hd7970 makes about $1.55 a day   2 hd7790's make about $1.67 a day    and you spent 3 btc to get the hd7970 and 2 btc to get 2 hd7790's...  of course if you are short slots some will argue the hd7970 is better. in my case I sold off used hd7970's and replaced with hd7790's worked out well sell one used hd7970 and get 3 new hd7790's pretty good deal.
legendary
Activity: 4354
Merit: 9201
'The right to privacy matters'

  MY concern is over the usb sticks if 4000 have been sold for 8000 btc do we have 6000 left to sell?  What will we try to move them at 2btc A STICK.? MY next concern is how many blade have been sold? How many are left to sell and will we still try to sell them at 30 BTC a blade.  Seems to me all the sales will drop a lot and dividends will be greatly reduced very soon as BFL will have all jalapenos delivered and up to real time in 90 days. see links

http://www.coindesk.com/butterfly-labs-finally-ships-out-last-years-jalapeno-orders/

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody/180-wednesday-6-5-2012.html

 IF true a BFL 5gh sold for 2.5btc that  will end AM income from sales.  This means AM will need more hash and less sales or far lower prices to sell enough  To keep current dividends high.  


Or we can all hope BFL will stop shipping the jalapenos at a fast rate.

We have heard a lot about BFL shipping 5GH/s devices. The problem BFL have is that is all they can ship. It appears that most of the chips used in the currently shipping devices are doing ~2.7GH/s each (2 chips/device). If you want the 7GH/s device, they want to charge you an extra $100 to use 2 ~3.7GH/s chips. The inference I draw from this is that their 'best' chips are ~3.7GH/s, but they have many more which are lower performing or do not work at all.

Their 25GH/s and 50GH/s devices will require chips with a minimum of 3.125GH/s hashrate each (8 for the little and 16 for the big) to meet the specs. That requires that BFL have those chips in volume. The next inference I draw is that if they chose to ship those bigger devices they'd go broke, which is why they're not shipping them.

The order book for big devices is a huge liability for BFL.
 

   yep and they promise to start shipping them soon. (2 weeks)  but if they offer  multiple 5ghs units to replace the little single and the single people will take them.

   I don't consider them to be a great company and I cancelled all my orders for little singles months ago  use that money to invest in AM made some good coin.  I have no complaints about AM from march 2013  to now.  they did nice by money.  I am pointing out that a 5GH/s unit for 2.5 coins is a lot cheaper then a usb stick for 2 coins  since you need 16 usb sticks to hash at the rate of 1 bfl unit.  I was pretty convinced that BFL would fail and I did cancel my larger orders in March  And in early May.  


 Once again the BFL  5GH unit is about 2GH per btc.

 The  AM 334MH unit is about 167MH per btc.   The AM blade is about 200MH per btc.   These units will stop selling very soon at those prices.  If BFL continues to ship. (big if)

  While a good amount of usb sticks sold 4000 there are 6000 not sold.  the 2BTC was always too high of a price.  When it first came out I pointed this out by comparing it to hd7790's my point was simple anyone with an empty slot in a pc was better off using hd7790 as it was 1btc for 300 hash and the stick was 333 hash for 2 BTC.  the 1 coin price difference takes more then 200 days to make up for in power savings.   A hd7790 cost 2 kwatt a day if your pc has room for it. at .25 usd a kwatt that would be .50 usd a day for power that means 240 days to be the 1 btc price difference. I purchased 8 hd7790's on APRIL  1 they hashed at 2400MH and earned  over 8btc back minus power about  7btc.  I was lucky and the first few coins earned  were high priced so my 8 cards now cost about 1btc.

  if I purchased  8 usb sticks my cost would have been 16btc I would be down  9btc.   this window is dying now since the power edge for the usb sticks will soon make them better then a hd7790.  the problem is the bfl 5gh unit crushes a usb stick and 2 bfl 5gh units bitch slap a blade. So the sales window for AM is closing at the current prices they charge.  Since no one knows ( a few do not us) what a stick or a blade really cost none of us know how low AM can price them.   So As I have been saying  AM's sales are going to drop in price or volume which means AM has to maintain its mining percentage to stay on top.  Hell for all I know AM can go to 150Th as I type and they are just going to keep at that 20-30 % level for years to come. I just do not see the equipment sales continuing to whale any more. Thus dividends will be lower. more like .02 not .038 a share. I see AM at 1.5BTC a share by Aug 1.  

But hell this is a market not real math and I am missing tons of info.  

member
Activity: 98
Merit: 10
The comparison is faulty because AM is a company and the other alternatives are hardware.

Why is that relevant, you ask? Well, AM will (hopefully) continuously renew itself and its strategy in order to keep earnings high, whereas the hardware simply gets outdated and earns progressively less and less as time goes along. So: buying hardware may earn you more in the short term, shares in AM may earn you more in the long term.

Comparison is NOT faulty. It is a comparison of "investment" (whether in hardware or a company) and "return" (whether mined bitcoins or dividends paid out as bitcoins). I think most people will agree that the value of hardware (GPU or ASICs) will generally depreciate over time, so that is a "known." The big unknown is AM, which as you point out is a company. We hope they will continuously renew itself, but anything can happen.
full member
Activity: 182
Merit: 100
I tried myself to create a list with AM shareholders based on yesterday's dividends:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtqphFCP56ordGVCakJxSU90MlB4MlBkZENya25pS2c

I got > 398k of the 400k shares. If you find any errors please let me know!


Since there are almost 400,000 shares on the list it mean PT shares are included. But there are no transfers with around 20,000 shares (btct.co and bitfunder). So it must mean the pass through exchanges don't get dividends in one transfer, but multiple.

Which of the transfers belong to pass throughs?

Hint: On the passthrus, you can see how many each hold (BF/BTCT). Check out the G Doc listed above to see which address that holds that number of shares. Presto...

How does it work? Does AM make one big payment to pass throughs and the pass through makes small payments inside? Or AM pays dividends to each share holder inside of a pass through?

Edit, while typing an answer appeared by burnside. Does that work the same way with BitFunder?

AM sends the dividends to burnside or deadterra and those people sends it out to that shares in the PT. Its indirect and you never come into contact with friedcat.
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