Update
The mass production of Block Erupter USB is to be done today. Busy testing and packaging will start.
About the argument of dividend payments, our view is that we will distribute the net income after necessary costs are excluded and funds for foreseeable future (expansion, gen-2 chips) are reserved. Bitcoin is already an investment itself having a great potential. Any investment, no matter how profitable, based on "turning Bitcoins to fiat first" requires double consideration. We can invest the RMBs to bonds and they are almost bound to be more profitable than just holding the RMBs, but we can never say the same to Bitcoins.
So we feel that it is most responsible to let the shareholders decide how to do with the abundant Bitcoins. We will of course find other investments (which are focused on helping the Bitcoin economy therefore benefit all Bitcoin holders), but they are all involved in different risk and return model than a mining/mining hardware company. The shareholders of ASICMINER are in principle not supposed to bear the new different risks on doing other business than Bitfountain's. So if there are new investments, they will be as new adventures, in new collaboration structures, and after a significant period of time since ASICMINER is always the most important job for us to do before the company could gradually run itself with a little less founder involvement.
Thanks for the clarification and update.
As one of the critics of the dividend policy, I would like to stress that I am still bullish about ASICMiner, but that I think a more modest dividend policy would benefit the company better in the long term. In the short term, high (and incredible) dividends drive share prices up on expectation of future dividends to a point where early investors will have no way of exceeding their yield from sale through dividend.
A hard correction, regardless of how fair in terms of stock trading, will taint the stock and company and can make it difficult to secure trust in the share. Volatility is good for gamblers, not so much for investors.
At this point, if you stick with your expectations of getting 10% of the hashing network on average over the next 3.5 years, the real yield is around 5% per year where most people see ten times as much in a short period and buy based on that.
As far as I can see, there have been no fundamental changes in your company that would warrant a 50% increase in company value over the previous week. I believe the market would calm down if you were to publish those previously announced financial reports so that we have better insight into earnings and capacity for future earnings and sales.
.b
