Topic: ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It - page 1236. (Read 3917543 times)

I'd like to contribute to the ASIC selling / giving samples to the community discussion:

Friedcat said in his last update, the only reason for giving samples to the community is that it has been promised before. There used to be technical and economical reasons, but those are gone. I simply have to say "because it has been promised before" is no valid reason to give away value owned by shareholders for free. A lot of things that have been promised had to be adjusted to unforeseeable situations. Can you really make an exception here? The one and only appropriate way to give away free sample boards is, because it creates vale for shareholders and definitely not "because it has been promised before".

I think we can all agree that physical decentralization of the bitcoin network is very important. Because everybody profits from decentralization in the long-run, it makes a lot of sense for bitfountain to sell ASICS. When I tried to figure out which business model makes more sense, bitfountain's or AVALON's and BFL's with their pre-orders, I had an idea. Call me crazy, but wouldn't bitfountain be in a very good place to accept ACTUAL pre-orders themselves right now? As friedcat said, they have something more like a prototype than a product right now, but what they also have is a high reputation for being the first ones to start hashing large-scale and proven technical expertise. Perfect time to accept pre-orders for a consumer product - not like AVALON and BFL collecting huge amount of money without having anything. Also, people who were promised a sample board could at least be granted priority orders.

Comments?

ok guys, we should get back on topic.

Friedcat said that we can expect ASICMINER hashrate to rise this week. I have just checked and we still seem to be around 6 Thash/s. Do the shareholders have more information? According to the simple mining calc we should still mine ฿4,835.78    per week so it's fine, but I'm hoping for some new update about how is the deployment going. I thought the first batch was supposed to be 15 Thash/s. I understand that some chips will fail and it's a lot of work to deploy this much hashrate but it would suck if almost 2/3 of the first batch were bad...

Correct, the transactions are sent to the miner who then builds the block from it.
Mining software can then do various automated checks against other pools, a local bitcoind, etc.
Bitcoin Foundation cannot enforce anything. Miners need to "vote" by choosing where and how to mine.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getblocktemplate#Decentralization Sounds good. If thats not fakeable then this should be Standard for pools i think. At least if the >50% attack problem is taken serious. I mean in internet its easy to have fake-accounts and so on. If it can be prevented with this technique that a single person becomes a threat because he silently owns some pools or maybe even hacking could be a possibility. So if the minersoftware would automatically check if it works on the real thing and stops the work once something is wrong then this should be done.

But i wonder if it isnt fakeable. I mean mining means only hashes, salts and so on. And these things are presented from the pool as a solominer. I believe to remember that the groundhash was something like the last hash plus the transactions that are taken into the new block. If all transactions are given to the miner so that he can calculate the hash it should be safe. The salt wouldnt matter then. But im not so deep into it. Maybe im incorrect here. But at least it sounds like an interesting thing. So if its secure than bitcoin foundation should enforce this...

We also need the ability to trade options.

Diablo3d should lend his shares to MPEX to create an AM derivative market.

Doing so would reverse the current situation, where DMC shares sell for less than 1/11th of AM-PT.

*crossposts*

Dividends are paid weekly on Wed/Thu, look for the most recent post by Friedcat for the latest update.

How often are the dividens paid? Is there any recent update on the project's status?

No, it isn't.

p2pool is the only decentralized pool. How is this even a discussion?

The pool that drops certain kind of transactions?

No it's not decentralized Mr. FUD.
Not sure how you get "doesn't exist" = "not as ideal as it could be" ... oh right yes I know ... it's called FUD

Miners have the freedom to "add/remove" transactions by hopping to another pool when they see a double spend (or anything else) in the template.
Sure, it's not as ideal as it could be, but it's still decentralized.

Until you let miners exclusively add/remove what transactions they mine in your pool, you're not decentralized.  Last I checked, that isn't available on your pool.

- Without the community acceptance and adoption The Bitcoin Foundation decisions won't change a thing.


- My thoughts exactly. That is why I can't wait for patch 3 of Avalon to purchase and start crunching on P2POOL.

This is true of centralized pools (like the ones ASICMiner is currently using.. why??), but decentralized pools allow the miner to do their own realtime auditing.

Ok Jutarul... i see that you have the priority of a safe network first and not the personal gain. At least the 8 month income for the price looks like that to me. That would be a fair price that even takes into account the raising difficulty and competition. If every shareholder would think similar then selling wouldnt be such a bad trade for bitfountain and its shareholders.

Regarding the pools i still think they are a bigger risk. Of course the hashingpower is temporarily given. But thats enough to combine the hashingpower and make an attack. The miners wont notice that you use the hashingpower to make a for.
You wouldnt be able to attack constantly anyway so it doesnt matter when the poolminers are taking away their power after the attack. Because an attack only can work once. After that its noticed and the accounts are closed where the btc should be sold or similar. The same goes for a single person with asics. Bitcoin foundation would simply change the algo and the asics are useless. So i still think that pools are the easier way to attack. Simply create or buy silently some pools, attract miners with a good offer and you could attack if you wish. The pool miners only would notice when it already happened.

Please mark my words: Mining is there to protect the value of BTC. It's not there to make a profit. It's a subsistence industry. The high profit margin for mining is a transient phenomenon due to technological progression. We already had quite a stagnated phase during the GPU era. The industry will certainly be profitable for businesses which sell the tools and equipment, but the mining may even become an investment which directly costs money.

As such the only thing I care about is a company policy which protects the value of BTC. And for that, decentralization is critical. Putting serious hashing power into one facility under one leadership is a liability to the security of the network. Same is true for mining pools - however with mining pools the hashing power is temporarily given and not owned by the operator - huge difference!
And when I talk about decentralization - I mean a global one, with hashing power spread evenly throughout all jurisdictions. Otherwise a single government can flip the switch.

And I don't necessarily want a unit. The reason why I personally do mining and would acquire such a unit, is to promote decentralization, which strengthens BTC as a whole. Couldn't care less about the associated profits - if there would be any. Hell, I'd even offer a non-profit operation, with all earnings (minus power and associated costs) going to bitfountain.

You take the projected earnings of the unit over a target ROI (e.g. 8 months). That's your minimum sale price in the absence of an equilibrated market. Also you can auction them off - there are several mechanism which are good to maximize the earnings through sales.

There are some drawbacks to hardware selling. But considering that it should only happen if ASICMINER makes a fortune from mining already, I think the trade off is acceptable.

Can I send my shares to any burse (btct / bitfunder)?

ASICMINER-PT is a passthrough of ASICMINER.

Of course you want to make it sold because you want to be one of them that get a unit. At least it sounds to me when i remember the last posts of you in this thread. But what if you arent one of the "lucky" owners at the end? Some others got it for some reason instead you? You still would feel that its a good thing? I would feel that some random person would make a fortune and the shareholders got some crumbs instead.
Or whats the intended sellingprice per gigahash for you? How much percent of a years income? Only out of interest. I mean when i see the selling prices of avalon then its really crumbs only what they get for it. And when they realized that i really can imagine they are the miner at ozcoin. Of course that wouldnt be fair for their buyers but if they have realized that they sold the units for 1% of the worth it would mine in a year (of course with hypotetical same income over time) then, as a business to make money, there is a risk that they mine themself instead giving all units to buyers.
So what would be the price per GH in your opinion when bitfountain would start selling now?


Youre right in regard of ethics. Its not a good thing to do. But i still see the fear of >50% attack as unfounded. I mean only that you assume that its not possible to do now doesnt mean nothing. If you can assume that bitfountain can be a threat then some poolowners could plot and work together. Its the same risk or even easier to achieve high hashinpower under ones control this way. Even when asicminer would start selling units or spread it under some persons... you would never know that asicminer doesnt have these people under control or have a contract that they are dummies.
So thats all hypotetically possible already. But when one company, that proved of wanting to earn money, has >50% then its a problem suddenly? I mean such attack wouldnt make sense for earning money. At the end you have to trust that friedcat wants to make money and has no intent of attacking. The same goes for the network how its now. You have to trust that there isnt a poolowner that has silently some GH solomining itself so that he would have >50% with his poolminers. You would have to trust that the persons that control the pools are different persons in fact and so on. Its all trust at the end.
I mean if 51% attack would be able to earn money then it would be a more real threat. But it isnt. It would be way more better to mine with that hashpower. So only someone who wants to harm the network would do so.
Plus... its always spoken about panik... i highly doubt that such thing will happen. Only if the chain was compromised i can imagine that. But only because it could have happen in the past? Then it would be better to assume that there is already someone who can attack because he has a plan...