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Topic: This D.C. bitcoin company raised $2.3 million to ... mine more bitcoins (Read 1889 times)

legendary
Activity: 2436
Merit: 1561
In mining, lots of costs can be deducted as company expense/investment, while the bitcoin income can disappear into cyberspace, maybe it is this aspect attracts lots of industry miners  Grin

Good point. But still, to pull that off, the official, recorded income would have to be higher (at least slightly) to justify such operations.
legendary
Activity: 1988
Merit: 1012
Beyond Imagination
In mining, lots of costs can be deducted as company expense/investment, while the bitcoin income can disappear into cyberspace, maybe it is this aspect attracts lots of industry miners  Grin
Q7
sr. member
Activity: 448
Merit: 250
Let's hope whatever business operation they are into it will be long enough to pay back to the investors with a profit. Somehow at current mining difficulty I suppose they must be looking to invest and based their operations where production cost is cheap. Else whatever investment or fund put in by right it will give lower return as time pass by and just wondering how they are going to maintain that.
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 252
What are these guys supposed to be, more cloud mining stuff? Another web wallet? Whatever they're doing, someone has really hope they aren't some kind of ponzi/pyramid... Let's see where this goes. Not really convinced...

From reading the article, I got the impression that they're a private mining firm:

I think the company is not telling us everything. Mining is not that profitable anymore, not enough to validate a $2.3 million investment. They must be expanding into another market niche.
They obviously know something we don't but they have shown they're able to make profit with the current conditions to get the investors.

You shouldn't assume that they are profitable just because they managed to get investors on board. It's actually pretty common for VC investors to pour money into non-profitable companies, especially in the tech space. There was another story a while ago involving an exchange called Buttercoin which raised (and promptly burnt through) $1.3 million of funding despite never turning a profit:

I agree with you, unless the chips are incredible or the electricty costs are very competitive, there is not much ROI at present in the mining sphere
It could translate to profits if the price shifts upward but as we are currently still in a downtrend for Bitcoin prices it seems like a business model and risk hedge that will just bleed.

That said if they were speculating for a Bitcoin Halving in a year this is a good time to enter and mine till that date passes, as it could keep them in a good position for that point in time.

Even if they predict the price to increase, it would probably make more sense to buy the bitcoins directly than go through the extra step of setting up miners in order to generate bitcoins. If they had access to cutting-edge ASICs then they might be profitable although I'm not sure if this would still be the case once manufacturing and R&D costs are taken into account. Cheap electricity is another factor that could make a mining more profitable, but virtually all large-scale mining firms (which would be their main competitors) already have access to cheap electricity rates anyway and given the current conditions, we already know that mining isn't currently very profitable for even them.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 500
Trust me!
Good to see that happening. Usually it really doesn't make any sense buying Bitcoins in order to buy new mining equipment. You take quite a risk and in the end may end up with less BTC than you invested. If you do it on this scale, though it might just work!
legendary
Activity: 2436
Merit: 1561

Face it, Bitcoin died a year ago. Use it to gamble, buy your drugs or move on. There's nothing to be seen here anymore.

And yet you're still here, spamming with your sig to earn something that 'died'...
hero member
Activity: 560
Merit: 502
Or it could just be some nut giving away his money cause he's so old he doesn't know what to do with it. You guys act like Morgan Stanley invested in BTC.

Face it, Bitcoin died a year ago. Use it to gamble, buy your drugs or move on. There's nothing to be seen here anymore.
hero member
Activity: 700
Merit: 500
It's a fairly interesting idea if they can mine more than cost.
Add hash to a secure network and raise the difficulty without adding much value to the network besides the miners, is the whole point of the company.
Keep control through their mining presence and get some coins.

In this sense, the system is self-perpetuating. Each transaction of bitcoins must be verified and added to the ledger by bitcoin miners, who are then rewarded for each successful verification. With more bitcoins.
I am surprised that a company in America can mine at a profit, and at such a profit that it is worth investors while to invest.
I wonder if they have some special mining equiptment, or if they have a renewable energy source that means they basically get free electricity.

Otherwise as far as I am aware, ROI is either luck or improbable!

I agree with you, unless the chips are incredible or the electricty costs are very competitive, there is not much ROI at present in the mining sphere
It could translate to profits if the price shifts upward but as we are currently still in a downtrend for Bitcoin prices it seems like a business model and risk hedge that will just bleed.

That said if they were speculating for a Bitcoin Halving in a year this is a good time to enter and mine till that date passes, as it could keep them in a good position for that point in time.
legendary
Activity: 4046
Merit: 1389
Still waiting for a time when whole wallets can be encrypted is such a way that they can be transferred to another person, and the first person will not be able to use any of the addresses therein, and the second person will have control of the addresses to use as his. In addition, nobody else will be able to transfer a wallet he happens to find, unless he has the right PGP address for that wallet.

When this happens, Bitcoin will be deemed so strong and anonymous that investors will flock to mining.

Authorities will realize that they don't have any control anymore, so they will start shutting the big mining operations down. After this is done, they will start going door-to-door after all the bitcoins they can arrest people for holding.

Smiley
legendary
Activity: 868
Merit: 1006
Sounds like a HYIP type operation with early investors banking on Bitcoin blowing up.

Sorta like a "Legit" Ponzi scheme, if there is such a thing.  If Bitcoin goes to zero, these guys are going tits up for sure.
No one that gets on the Bitcoin ecosystem believes "bitcoin will go to zero". When you get into this you have real reasons to do so. It's reasonable to think Bitcoin is not going to zero during our lifetime.
hero member
Activity: 1372
Merit: 783
better everyday ♥
Sounds like a HYIP type operation with early investors banking on Bitcoin blowing up.

Sorta like a "Legit" Ponzi scheme, if there is such a thing.  If Bitcoin goes to zero, these guys are going tits up for sure.
hero member
Activity: 672
Merit: 500
I think the company is not telling us everything. Mining is not that profitable anymore, not enough to validate a $2.3 million investment. They must be expanding into another market niche.
They obviously know something we don't but they have shown they're able to make profit with the current conditions to get the investors.

They could be selling the block reward halving pitch and investors are buying it. Do the investors know how much bitcoin they can buy with $2.3 million? How much profit they can make buy just sitting on them without the mining equipment costs and electricity?
hero member
Activity: 672
Merit: 500
I think the company is not telling us everything. Mining is not that profitable anymore, not enough to validate a $2.3 million investment. They must be expanding into another market niche.
legendary
Activity: 2436
Merit: 1561
Is the "Bitcoin Shop Inc" for real or just some scam company boasting about how much money their mining ponzi took in while trying to bring in more marks?
...

I haven't heard of them until I came across this thread. I'm not an expert but their accounts doesn't look very healthy (and frankly a little bit strange):

http://investors.btcs.com/xbrl/btcs-20141231/

Note the total revenue for the year (2014) of only $38k and 'general and administrative costs' of... $14 million, resulting in net loss of nearly $15m.
They'll be in trouble if they don't start to generate profits soon. Unless their goal is to raise as much of VC capital as possible, pay themselves nice salaries and dissolve.

We probably don't have the full picture though, so lets just wait and see.


legendary
Activity: 2212
Merit: 1038
Is the "Bitcoin Shop Inc" for real or just some scam company boasting about how much money their mining ponzi took in while trying to bring in more marks?

I see on their website (www.btcs.com) they're also into ATMs, another Bitcoin ponzi space (so I've heard) where customers/investors are getting it up the poop chute.

The management team looks like a banker and two NASA henchmen...
hero member
Activity: 644
Merit: 500
I was reading the other day about new revolutionary mining system which would basically consist of an underwater (or some sort of cooling liquid) mining cave, that would keep the machines cold 24/7 and running at maximum capacity. Anyone has the link for this?
never heard about underwater mining cave cooling, it's too risky in my opinion. Because many organism live on that cave which possibly bother your mining process.
maybe this one?
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/2/5165428/bitcoin-mine-in-hong-kong-uses-jelly-to-keep-cool
Open bath immersion cools computer components by submersing them in liquid with a particularly low boiling point.
legendary
Activity: 868
Merit: 1006
I was reading the other day about new revolutionary mining system which would basically consist of an underwater (or some sort of cooling liquid) mining cave, that would keep the machines cold 24/7 and running at maximum capacity. Anyone has the link for this?
sr. member
Activity: 861
Merit: 423
Bullish sign that hedge funds and likely wealthy individual investors are investing in local mining operations. Just another chink in btc's armor.

As the weak hands get off bitcoin, strong hands will get in. This is how long term trading works everywhere.
legendary
Activity: 2436
Merit: 1561

Also, they're trying to kill to many rabbits with one stone only.

What do you mean by that? Are you referring to them running multiple type of services? If so, what's wrong with that? It's a very good way to see which activities are profitable (and focus on those) and which ones are waste of time. Plus, it's a good way to maximise utilisation of their skills/equipment/facilities effectively reducing the costs.
legendary
Activity: 3066
Merit: 1147
The revolution will be monetized!
Just to be clearer. They are not mining more bitcoins they are competing for the bitcoins that will be mined by someone.
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