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Topic: ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It - page 193. (Read 3917058 times)

full member
Activity: 155
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bitcoinAdd.net
divs tomorrow

We are complaining about newbies that post relevant, structured, funded information.
However, when a Hero member posts two words without any further information, nobody complains :-)
hero member
Activity: 938
Merit: 502
For reference, and is anyone more technically-inclined in the chip fab space able to roadmap gen4 info now that's we're two weeks into the next quarter:

Brief Answers to Shareholder Questions

First of all, we would like to explain the situation we had in this May. The sales of chips mainly happened before May, while the ramp-up speed of chip sales slowed down mainly because of the lack of flexible whole-device solutions (having features of easy transportation, widely available components, etc) from our customers (device producers). As dedicated projects on improving the design of BE200-based devices we believe we will see much better sales because the room for hash rate growth is still huge and our cost in terms of $/G is highly competitive.

The other point we would like to address is that we are not cooperating with any mining device producers other than in the forms of simple buyer-seller relationship. Nor we hold shares of any other device producers. Our pricing strategy was discussed in the board before, which targets low margin large quantity instead of high margin small quantity because: 1) If both device producers and miners can have real profit after risk premium we will develop reliable consumer of chips in the long time. 2) It alleviates the problem of many potential purchasers waste time waiting for future price adjustments. 3) Higher quantity of orders in this generation leads to much more support from the fab with respect to all future generations of chips.

1) On the Balance Sheet, approximately how many chips does the current Inventory (Products + Materials + Masks) represent?
A little less than 60P of wafers, most of which are on their final stages of production. The materials consist mainly of lead frames for packaging. The mask is re-usable for years if there are continuing demands for the corresponding wafers.

2) How many months of inventory do you estimate that represents?
Depending on the Bitcoin price. Under this price we expect it to be 1-1.5.

3) On the Cash Flow there was significant expenses for gen3 production (~6mil USD). Does that represent the bulk of gen3 expenses, or are the expenses for gen3 going to continue (additional wafer batches ordered, etc.)?
It represent the order we already placed and paid for. There still are forecast plans for June we haven't paid for. They may be cancelled or delayed to later months according to how fast customers can turn Bitcoin chips to hashing power.

4) When will dividends start, and how frequently will they occur?
When the cash-flow becomes positive. After we decide to put significant quantity of chips on ASICMiner owned farms it should be per week. Before that, per month.

5) What is the status of gen 3.1 (shipping to customers, I think?)? How much does it help with energy usage -- do we have final chip performance numbers yet?
All shipped chips are gen 3.0 ones. What we had chosen for 3.1 helps with energy usage at 10% range and has some performance degrades. The final chip performance number is about 0.7W/G at 0.78V and 320MHz. Below that voltage we have less power draw and less speed.

6) What is the progress on gen4?
It is 28nm and has two major improvements: the first one is to fix the design errors we had with 40nm (which made our silicon data two times worse than simulated data). We believe that 0.35W/G at rated speed of 400MHz would be achievable in 40nm if no mistakes were made before. The second one is the technology improvement from 40nm to 28nm in terms of density, speed and power.

We are on the stage of evaluating the final design choices by running the physical design flow on different settings.

7) What is the status of self mining? What is the rollout schedule for the data centers?

8 ) What is the status of franchising partners? When can we expect to see income from them?
We will report the more detailed status to the board first. The short answer is that deploying and financing is easy while getting cheap electricity and proper device solution takes time. When we have farms running we can update the related information with real time hash rate.

9) Can you please clarify this sentence from 21st April : "The dividend schedule will be aggressive, as AM will not require large sums of retained capital." < is this still actual, or meanwhile something changed?
It is still actual. The condition in May is not a part of the plan. When we were forecasted permissively about this summer's production power of the fab, we ordered as many wafers as we could to prevent the bottleneck with wafer production.

10) What is the average selling price of AM gen3 chips (price per Gh/s)?
About 0.5$/G for sold chips.

11) What is that ~4M CNY in financial report/expenses at exchange?
Exchanged to USD.

12) What is the cash flow ratio between the amount of Chips Fabricated and the percentage of the batch that is dedicated to cost.
There are no orders dedicated to cost in the short time. So it's 1:0.

13) What is the Break Even Point of this batch of Chips?
Although the cost of making could be estimated by companies with experience on fabricating chips of high-end technology nodes, we
would rather retain the accurate price per chip from the public.

14) What is the estimated conversion time from chip sales to dividends?
The conversion time itself is fast and should not be the main stagnation of the time frame.

15) Will the funds from future Gen 3 chips be used to fund Gen 4 chips or distributed as a dividend, and what relative percentage of income will be retained for Gen 4?
Both. 1/3 as forecasted.

16) Previously our Asicminer farm was mining bitcoins and distributing a weekly dividend, will Asicminer update its present hash rate in the mining farms to account for current difficulty changes and to procure a secondary supply of Bitcoins to adapt for rapid changes in Bitcoin prices?
Yes. But that should be when we replace the farm with BE200 based devices, otherwise it is no point considering the 0.12-0.15$/kwh electricity price we get for our old farms.

17) What ever happened to the dedicated PR person and should AM make a website for distributors and for Chip inquiries?

18) Can we please get weekly, bi-weekly or monthly updates about progress, plans, sales etc. for preventing FUD in this thread?

19) Can you please communicate more clearly/frequently with shareholders?
When we are sure we get a good solution for the lack of communication we will announce.

20) What are the future plans and visions of Asicminer?
There will be at least two generations ahead. If future Bitcoin market cap allows there can be more. As we are keeping the chip design capability to grow with state-of-the-art technology as well as good channels with fabrication we can be flexible in terms of business mode be it chip-based or device-based.
hero member
Activity: 752
Merit: 500
bitcoin hodler
$92/share for AM is pretty stinkin' cheap.

definitely, gonna send a few BTC to havelock
hero member
Activity: 644
Merit: 500
Inspired
$92/share for AM is pretty stinkin' cheap.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 502
I hope you are right...
That would mean a big fat dividend and I will be eating lobster tomorrow evening...  Grin

I will be eating my hat because I didn't buy more shares just before that. Wink
hero member
Activity: 938
Merit: 502
divs tomorrow

That is an interesting statement....
Any evidence to backup this comment???

Other than my analytics, it appears no.  I also hadn't commented on the status of dividends, although if you count the total BTC in the addresses I posted and those addresses belong to friedcat and co., ASICMINER has at least ~65k BTC on hand.

However, it would appear that the BTC from mining addresses are being amassed...
hero member
Activity: 837
Merit: 1000
divs tomorrow
full member
Activity: 141
Merit: 100
We will see divs tomrrow

Is that a conclusion you are drawing, or did you hear something?
member
Activity: 76
Merit: 10
We will see divs tomrrow
hero member
Activity: 752
Merit: 500
bitcoin hodler
New post to highlight significance.  Funds moved out of original (old solo) mining address to https://blockchain.info/address/1ERszMSERwHNR9Xty73KZXpsg1jjBXWcHh.  

This address in turn links to many of the other addresses mentioned through a ~500 BTC  transaction to https://blockchain.info/address/16V3hoVfbQmpQQpCSkAirjVHGfSFoDFSbW (to sign these tx's, FC would have to hold the private keys to all inputs), including, most notably:

https://blockchain.info/address/19iVyH1qUxgywY8LJSbpV4VavjZmyuEyxV
https://blockchain.info/address/3MkwFfGNQDve7vz1z6gUDVxkuQpcSV3Mz8
https://blockchain.info/address/13p5iQkqBEVgKmPeJqEL2LBRS44PjX1dZL
https://blockchain.info/address/1KryFUt9tXHvaoCYTNPbqpWPJKQ717YmL5

In addition, these link through 13p5iQkqBEVgKmPeJqEL2LBRS44PjX1dZL via https://blockchain.info/tx/8c958ec1993b9b64442db8e591746a5f93ed0787921df6627ba86474e9576bfa
https://blockchain.info/tx/e3fd553c14699ec480c588c963c22515d869fed59a8cc2aaecb30e84ab4be30e
https://blockchain.info/tx/3426ad6a3be780b008b0d8f392d4d62fe098271f1f23de38b483655ef7086273
!!


https://blockchain.info/address/12WRnQR85ZUT7dhmaHBNL5dde2QLYieW6v
https://blockchain.info/address/1B9KrM7bjhJ42qJSWr1KJrNTAP1SNGMpJu


The transactions

I'd seen these addresses a number of times before and have mentioned them in this forum, but the tx that definitively links them is when the funds were sent from 1HtUGfbDcMzTeHWx2Dbgnhc6kYnj1Hp24i (AM's old solomining address which has been receiving the BTCGuild output) to 1ERszMSERwHNR9Xty73KZXpsg1jjBXWcHh earlier this morning.

Also, in case anyone's looking (I'm out of BTC after buying AM shares earlier in the night after the aforementioned tx) - there's an arb opp to sell MINE/SELL pairs back to twentyseventy for BDD at the 0.01051/0.0055 level.

some seriously interesting stuff going on here. We need to hear from Friedcat ASAP...
hero member
Activity: 938
Merit: 502
New post to highlight significance.  Funds moved out of original (old solo) mining address to https://blockchain.info/address/1ERszMSERwHNR9Xty73KZXpsg1jjBXWcHh.  

This address in turn links to many of the other addresses mentioned through a ~500 BTC  transaction to https://blockchain.info/address/16V3hoVfbQmpQQpCSkAirjVHGfSFoDFSbW (to sign these tx's, FC would have to hold the private keys to all inputs), including, most notably:

https://blockchain.info/address/19iVyH1qUxgywY8LJSbpV4VavjZmyuEyxV
https://blockchain.info/address/3MkwFfGNQDve7vz1z6gUDVxkuQpcSV3Mz8
https://blockchain.info/address/13p5iQkqBEVgKmPeJqEL2LBRS44PjX1dZL
https://blockchain.info/address/1KryFUt9tXHvaoCYTNPbqpWPJKQ717YmL5

In addition, these link through 13p5iQkqBEVgKmPeJqEL2LBRS44PjX1dZL via https://blockchain.info/tx/8c958ec1993b9b64442db8e591746a5f93ed0787921df6627ba86474e9576bfa
https://blockchain.info/tx/e3fd553c14699ec480c588c963c22515d869fed59a8cc2aaecb30e84ab4be30e
https://blockchain.info/tx/3426ad6a3be780b008b0d8f392d4d62fe098271f1f23de38b483655ef7086273
!!


https://blockchain.info/address/12WRnQR85ZUT7dhmaHBNL5dde2QLYieW6v
https://blockchain.info/address/1B9KrM7bjhJ42qJSWr1KJrNTAP1SNGMpJu


The transactions

I'd seen these addresses a number of times before and have mentioned them in this forum, but the tx that definitively links them is when the funds were sent from 1HtUGfbDcMzTeHWx2Dbgnhc6kYnj1Hp24i (AM's old solomining address which has been receiving the BTCGuild output) to 1ERszMSERwHNR9Xty73KZXpsg1jjBXWcHh earlier this morning.

Also, in case anyone's looking (I'm out of BTC after buying AM shares earlier in the night after the aforementioned tx) - there's an arb opp to sell MINE/SELL pairs back to twentyseventy for BDD at the 0.01051/0.0055 level.
hero member
Activity: 938
Merit: 502
If he decided he didn't want to be a board member tomorrow and sold on the exchange, it would send the price through the floor, making shareholders more resentful, which (in a company with normal capital structure) may be enough to call a board meeting and replace the CEO.

How many times does it need repeating that the exchange price is irrelevant. It's based on a small fraction of AM shares and the sentiment of day traders. If it fell to 0 in such circumstances, I certainly wouldn't be resentful. Pretty much everyone would be buying up incredibly cheap shares and the price would quickly get back to its original level before the sell off.

Considering the exchange is the most liquid source of shares, I'd say it carries somewhat of a benchmark significance.  You don't see people responding to the question 'Where can I buy shares of ASICMINER?' with 'Hmm, your best bet would probably be to troll the forum looking for a holder who will sell.' (and, coincidentally, if they do, what price will the holder undoubtedly quote to determine their price?)
legendary
Activity: 826
Merit: 1004
Now apparently when you have a board member stating it is of considerably less significance than the other factors he gave.

So, let me get this straight, what you're saying is that the concerns posted by Jutarul are less important than the concerns posted by Jutarul.  Roll Eyes I suggest you pay more attention in the future to what you're reading and writing as that comment just makes no sense whatsoever.

If he decided he didn't want to be a board member tomorrow and sold on the exchange, it would send the price through the floor, making shareholders more resentful, which (in a company with normal capital structure) may be enough to call a board meeting and replace the CEO.

How many times does it need repeating that the exchange price is irrelevant. It's based on a small fraction of AM shares and the sentiment of day traders. If it fell to 0 in such circumstances, I certainly wouldn't be resentful. Pretty much everyone would be buying up incredibly cheap shares and the price would quickly get back to its original level before the sell off.
donator
Activity: 714
Merit: 510
Preaching the gospel of Satoshi
That probably won't happen here, as most shareholders still seem relevantly confident that FC is the man for the job (just the the job is becoming more complex and also idk if shareholders have voting rights or if AM "shares" aren't actually shares at all but rather depository receipts, which IIRC is the actual case here).

They are neither. They are an anonymous online promise.
Even oral contracts are legally valid.
We have more substance than that. Not because it is digital it makes everything less reliable.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 250
That probably won't happen here, as most shareholders still seem relevantly confident that FC is the man for the job (just the the job is becoming more complex and also idk if shareholders have voting rights or if AM "shares" aren't actually shares at all but rather depository receipts, which IIRC is the actual case here).

They are neither. They are an anonymous online promise.
hero member
Activity: 938
Merit: 502
Lixiaolai, one of the most famous guy among Chinese btc circle, said he held "6-figure" bitcoins. Someone found that he held at least 3319 AM shares.


What's the relevance of that. What is he famous for? Does he have any effect on asicminer?

It means that there are others there who may be seeking a board seat to get a closer view on the current situation.

How do you figure that he's seeking (or might be seeking) a board seat? All that shows is that during some point while asicminer was paying dividends that guy owned a certain amount.

Sure there's a chance that he is, but there's just as much chance that anyone else is too.

It accounts for part of the demand (higher prices) during that time as well.  Also, you don't generally sit on the sideline with 2/3 of a board seat in any company after 6 months of slowly buying in without pushing for the full board seat.  That leaves far less demand to be accounted for by variance if you were trying to price the market.

"Does he have any effect on asicminer?"

Seeing as he owns ~0.83% of the company, yes he has a nominal effect.  He owns enough to move the already-thin market.  If he decided he didn't want to be a board member tomorrow and sold on the exchange, it would send the price through the floor, making shareholders more resentful, which (in a company with normal capital structure) may be enough to call a board meeting and replace the CEO.  That probably won't happen here, as most shareholders still seem relevantly confident that FC is the man for the job (just the the job is becoming more complex and also idk if shareholders have voting rights or if AM "shares" aren't actually shares at all but rather depository receipts, which IIRC is the actual case here).
sr. member
Activity: 240
Merit: 250
Lixiaolai, one of the most famous guy among Chinese btc circle, said he held "6-figure" bitcoins. Someone found that he held at least 3319 AM shares.


What's the relevance of that. What is he famous for? Does he have any effect on asicminer?

It means that there are others there who may be seeking a board seat to get a closer view on the current situation.

How do you figure that he's seeking (or might be seeking) a board seat? All that shows is that during some point while asicminer was paying dividends that guy owned a certain amount.

Sure there's a chance that he is, but there's just as much chance that anyone else is too.
hero member
Activity: 938
Merit: 502
Lixiaolai, one of the most famous guy among Chinese btc circle, said he held "6-figure" bitcoins. Someone found that he held at least 3319 AM shares.


What's the relevance of that. What is he famous for? Does he have any effect on asicminer?

It means that there are others there who may be seeking a board seat to get a closer view on the current situation.  Speaking of which, Havelock holds like 5 board seats - why isn't board info disseminated to shareholders or what is the situation there?
sr. member
Activity: 240
Merit: 250
Lixiaolai, one of the most famous guy among Chinese btc circle, said he held "6-figure" bitcoins. Someone found that he held at least 3319 AM shares.


What's the relevance of that. What is he famous for? Does he have any effect on asicminer?
legendary
Activity: 1621
Merit: 1000
news.8btc.com
Lixiaolai, one of the most famous guy among Chinese btc circle, said he held "6-figure" bitcoins. Someone found that he held at least 3319 AM shares.
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