You can join the DragonMint community channel at
https://t.me/DragonMintThere are indeed meetings going in Miami between customers and MyRig and Halong staff. There was never a "demo day", this was a rumour that started because some people reported publicly they had appointments to meet and discuss their orders in Miami which happens to be around the time of the "BTC Miami" event. These are unrelated. FYI, it's not possible to have a public conference in any case, because the meeting organizers of BtcMiami bind the whole area with non-compete agreements prohibiting hotels from hosting any other Bitcoin events. I presume this is because they drive so much premium paying customers, they can muscle these terms. The Miami meetings are 15 minute slots per customer by prior arrangement, with mutual NDA in place to protect customer's interests as well as our own. If they like to say they were at the meeting, and they saw the miner, that's fine of course. This is normal.
As for the miner, DragonMint 16T is a real product and is hashes at ~16TH. We deliberately chose minimal publicity because demand is too high, the last thing we need is the entire world banging at our door when we cannot meet demand. The point of publicity is to sell, and we have zero difficulty.
The blake2b miner is also real, and there'll be a video of that coming soon. Surprise, we have more algos on the way too, and if you don't like that, we are sorry. Our engineering team has a lot of fun and enthusiasm for making new ASIC products. Since we have the resources, we let them play. Consider this like Google's 20% work rule where employees can spend 1 day a week working on anything they like for the company. New algos do not interfere with out flagship BTC product because resources are siloed.
Halong Mining is a huge project with lots of moving parts. We have chosen our particular strategy deliberately, even though it may not appear to be traditional - we're not in a traditional space anyway. This whole magical internet money has already ballooned out of all proportions - it's literally insane - so Halong's approach is frankly tame in that backdrop.
In any case, there will be no vindication until miners show up in mass starting in March. Even then, there will never be an end to criticism regardless of what we do and our long term strategy is more important. As far as we are concerned, letting conspiracies run wild will only make us look better when all of our promises turn out to be true. We wont change or be cajoled to change our strategy. Some of the conspiracies are pretty amazing, from being an overclocked Ant to a stolen miner. We might actually give a prize for the most imaginative theories after March, that could be fun. Let's be playful. Healthy scepticism is very welcomed, so keep it coming.
Our goal is very simple, we're going to stimulate competition in the mining space because we believe that is the best way to support the utility of Bitcoin. It is only by maintaining and strengthening the unique properties of Bitcoin, that the utility can increase - it's the foundation. The consensus protocol relies on rational economic incentives, so, if these assumptions hold true, it will be profitable. If not, Bitcoin is a failed project anyway.
For those in the community calling for the downfall of the incumbent mining manufacturer, we have a different point of view - if that happened it would be a disaster, and a failure of the core objective of our project. We believe competition through innovation - at the end of the day, we're all contributing to Bitcoin's security, and we all win when we work collaboratively. There's plenty room for everyone and let's have fun while we are at it. Bitcoin is about building a different future that includes individual financial sovereignty as a foundation.
Thank you.