Topic: Should I start Diablo Mining Company, a 1M BTC startup? - page 4. (Read 10996 times)

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2006/02/5-mw-wind-turbines-headed-onshore-and-off-43241

Can you clearly state the purpose of building this datacenter and why using USD to fund it is defeating it? I actually couldn't really find it from the posts in the other thread.

Then I have to ask you, if you really think that it is possible for this company to mine even close to >2 million BTC (1 million stays with the company, 1 million = dividend)?

Especially considering:
* Adding hashrate increases difficulty
* block reward halves every 4 years, next time already ~December 2012
* FPGAs can be outperformed by ASICs
* 1KW of solar panels takes ~8-10 m² of roof space. Also I'm not sure if Maine is the perfect place for solar energy anyways... it might be better to invest into a solar farm in New Mexico if you want to feel better about energy consumption. This won't help you in case of a blackout in Maine though.
* many Bitcoiners might not like the idea of giving anyone 1 million BTC. If you had that many coins, crashing Mtgox and doing some great deals there would give you far more BTC than you could ever realistically expect to mine.
* an initial investment is suggested that would cost 10 000 investors 100 BTC each. Do you think GLBSE could even handle the load just from the visitors? There are more practical limitations and also theoretical ones like: there are ~20k hosts connected to the network probably - this would mean every single one of them would need to pay 50 BTC to this venture, just to visualize the size to you.
* GLBSE is highly unregulated, has terms of service that wouldn't stand a chance at most courts and has not been used for anything even remotely that size.

Anyways: Most operations on GLBSE are too small to have currency conversion as a real factor (though on GLBSE 1.0 some people REALLY got stung by that, look up "DISHWARA" or "SIN" when the bitcoin prices crashed and they needed money...), this one would be by far too large to ignore it. Again, Dollar denominated, paid in BTC (via BitPay, MtGox codes, directly, whatever) would be completely fine with me and I really would support Diablo going forward with that. 1 million BTC however is in my opinion doomed to fail, as it won't mine enough BTC to even break even. Ever.

For the record, no, I wouldn't sell all million at once, that would be insane and suicide. It may take me an entire year to sell it all in the absolute worst case.

I am not exactly sure what you're point is because I was advising him to mine and then hold on to his bitcoins in case the price continued to rise or at the very least stayed the same.

To simply dump a large amount of bitcoins into the market would be unwise in any situation because the rapid influx of any currency results in the rapid decline in value.

...which would (as explained above) bring down the value of any asset of the company that is paid in USD or any other "official" currency out there. I still fully support having a 5 million USD company, paid for in BTC if you want to, that does what Diablo (who even wrote his own bitcoin miner!) described in his thread. If I would expect the value of bitcoin to crash, I would vote for having this company in BTC of course, since then you would buy hardware + stuff for 5 million USD that might be worth 5 million BTC if the value drops. If you expect it to rise though, it makes really no sense to spend BTC on shares that will hold assets paid in USD.

Also if you say "well, then buy your stuff at an online store that allows you to pay in BTC!" - that's not useful either until these prices are completely stable and decoupled from the USD. Otherwise it would be even worse, should the BTC price rise.

If you have to ask, Id say the answer is no.
But dont let me or anyone stop you from starting a mining company and see how far you get.

Count me in old bean. Full disclaimer: I support Vladimir's initiative as well.

Assuming of course you're finances are in order and this operation will not come at dear cost I would advise yes.

The current price index of the bitcoin has seen a steady increase and hold which indicates a large demand for new bitcoins.

If you mine a significant sum of these and hold on to your margins you may see a further spike in the price of the bitcoin as well as more demand for lending.

You can either trade in the bitcoins for cash, goods, or services or decide to lend them to lend/donate them to supporters for profit or aesthetic.

Well if you expect the price to rise a lot then you need to make sure to change the BTC to USD only after that change ... or whole this thing will be inferior compared to any new company coming afterwards.
Consider - you rise 1M BTC - convert to $5M to use for buying all you need - then BTC jumps to $10 - your investment of 1M BTC has value of only 500k BTC. Anyone who starts new company with 500k BTC now gets the same amount of money to start his - but he'll generate the same income - so he would get to double ROI (in BTC) compared to you.

I would invest only if your shares were valued in USD at the time of selling the BTC you get from me, not BTC.

This could be done via Bit-pay for example. 1 share = 1 US cent, I send you x BTC and you get 140.98 USD for these BTC. As soon as the amount is confimred by BitPay, I get 14098 shares out of the 500 000 000.

Nope. Any step that doesn't involve minimizing the operating cost is a step in the wrong direction. I think this is a shit or get off the pot moment for Bitcoin. Either we can float startups that are small by silicon valley standards, or no one will take Bitcoin seriously.

I honestly think this is the right time for Bitcoin to finally take off. A lot of us, including me, have put a lot of hard work and effort into making Bitcoin, and I think everyone would like to see that hardwork finally pay off.

BTW, the implications are, by this time next week, we could be looking at Slashdot and Hacker News headlines of "Company IPOs with $5m using BTC alone". I imagine BTC prices would double or triple with the news.

What does 1M ($5,000,000) BTC buy and are there ANY intermediate steps you could take besides going for the entire amount in one shot?

I think you ought to be able to do it. And it isn't as expensive and difficult as building a Tier 4 datacenter, since you need no power backup (except maybe generators) and little to no redundancy (except maybe on the internet connection).

The plan is to issue 1 million shares (no additional shares or bonds forever, although splits might happen if/when GLBSE supports it) at 1 BTC each..

Poll is set to show results after 7 days, poll will only run for 7 days.

Contract: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.861305
Plan: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.867837