I think having a piece of satoshidice is pretty cool, being they are currently the most popular addresses, etc. Big part of bitcoin culture.
I think ASICMINER is an interesting gamble. I like the way Flying Dutchman Bitcoin Fund is run.
BTC-Mining/Namjies's fund is prolly worth the mention along with the Dutchman.
They yield 5% / month
Actually there's no fixed limit on what they yield, it's an auction-based model (sort of like how Treasuries are sold). That aside, the yield has sort of stuck around 5%.
then the price should be rising in relation to the lost opportunity cost of just holding those shares during that period.
In practice the opposite is more likely I'd think.
We may be talking at cross-purposes.
Consider ASICMINER as something which starts with value X (IPO price) then at some future date will suddenly become worth Y. The point at which it becomes worth Y is when the chips begin mining. Now for the purpose of evaluating Y you have to look at the different possible outcomes and the chance of each then calculate the EV at that point (which includes the chance of zero value due to the chips never working).
For ASICMINER to be a viable investment at all, that value Y (the EV of all outcomes at some future point) has to be higher than X. If you believe it lower than X then obviously the share only has value if you short it.
My point about value rising was on the assumption that Y is higher than X (that's my assessment and we'll NEVER know if I was right or not - as we'll only know what actually happens, not what the likelihood of that particular outcome actually was).
If we take as a given that Y is higher than X then my argument is that the value of the share should gradually rise from X to Y until the instant when the outcome is known when it'll either drop or rise based on the actual results. The alternative argument is that the value stays at X until the outcome is known then changes all at once.
My argument in essence relies on two points:
1. Money not making a profit is an opportunity cost. I can't see any valid argument against this other than if the contention is that there's no way to make profit from money. So if the value of the share doesn't rise then there's zero incentive to buy it at the start rather than use your money to make profit and buy into it later.
2. If it has an expected value Y in the future then its value to you NOW is Y less the profit you could reasonably otherwise make from employing your funds elsewhere in the meantime (to be pedantic that also has to be adjusted to account for your tolerance of risk/variance).
Irrespective of which pricing model you use, as time passes and more information becomes available, you should become better able to estimate what Y is (and adjust your pricing accordingly). My argument also relied on the fact that so far no news has emerged about ASIC or BFL or any other competitor that changes anything significantly. BFL have upped their specs as expected - but the key issue is who delivers first.