Why was the IPO offer price chosen as 0.000001? In order to purchase post IPO, it's a minimum double of the IPO price (0.000002). Supposing the IPO purchased the Gridseed device for $180, post IPO one now needs to pay a minimum of $360 for the device.
If the offer price was 0.0001, a post IPO purchaser could offer 0.000101 or $181.80 using example above.
The price per 5chip device from the manufacturer is 160 usd and you will need to order a minimum of 200 miners from the manufacturer and spend some time and invest 32 000 usd+ if you would like to buy those miners yourself at that low price.
Stocks you can trade to and get in/out of whenever you like, if you buy 200 miners yourself it's a slightly bigger operation to get in/out of a position than just typing a price and pressing a button.
Compare GRID with other stocks investments and you see why people buy stocks at higher than introduction price.
The expected dividend/return will be high even when you buy at 0.000002 or higher.
Lets take a few example:
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People buy shares in CRYPTSY for 0.2 btc a stock, it's introduction price was 0,05 btc per stock so that's 4 times the introduction price for example that people pay there now, Cryptsy return around 0,2% per week in dividend if you buy it at 0.2 btc.
Some people even buy Vircurex stock for 0,1-0,15 btc and they have been in violation of there contract for soon 1 year now and pay 0% in monthly dividend and if you buy into Vircurex then your buying a share of a company that is at -1000 btc or something if you believe there numbers.
BSVM (bitcoiin mining) people buy shares for 0,06 btc and there dividend is around 0,2% per week.
GMP(BTC mining) people buy there shares at around 0,25 btc, dividend around 0,25% per week
MGMP(BTC mining) people buy there shares at around 0.000900 btc, dividend around 0,07% per week
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If you run the numbers for GRID you see that you can expect a retrurn of something like 9% or possibly even up to 17% per week on this share if you bought at 0,000001. but lets count low and say:
9,00% a week at 0,000001 btc per share
4,50% a week at 0,000002 btc per share
3,00% a week at 0,000003 btc per share
2,25% a week at 0,000004 btc per share
1,80% a week at 0,000005 btc per share
...
0,90% a week at 0,000010 btc per share
0,45% a week at 0,000020 btc per share
0,22% a week at 0,000040 btc per share
so even if you buy in at way higher than introduction price you will still make better profit on this share than most other shares on Cryptostocks, maby that answers your question.