friedcat

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Re: [GLBSE] ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It August 09, 2012, 08:18:17 AM

Last edit: August 14, 2012, 04:28:25 AM by friedcat #2 Q: Why could I trust you?

A: In principle, like scientific theories, trustworthiness can only be

disproved. However some facts might contribute to more confidence: My ID, phone and email have all

been verified in GLBSE. I started running the fund called MU on GLBSE before it updated to version

2. I am also responsible for the GLBSE-listed bond MOORE.



Q: What about your partners?

A: They are my friends also located in China. I know them in person, trust

them myself in person. They are enthusiastic to this project and already commited a lot of hard

work at their best to make it succeed.



Q: Are you qualified of running Bitfountain and ASICMINER?

A: The short answer is yes.

The long answer is: Although I myself come from a software background, my other two partners

have been worked in the IC field for long. One of my partners worked in a national lab focusing on

microprocessor design, the other worked in an CPU-for-embedded-device startup. Mining ASICs are

easy to be made work compared to their former projects, and the only problem is how good we could

make it to be. In this aspect, we have done almost all baseline optimizations and some more

aggressive ones. The uncommonly high heat density of mining ASICs is another technical problem but

we are also confident in solving it nicely.



Q: Why don't you raise money from angels or venture capitals?

A: Because most of them come from a different background to Bitcoin. The risk

model of their minds is far away from that of the Bitcoin community. They would consider Bitcoin

itself as an extra major, if not the biggest, source of risk. Therefore they usually tend to pose

harsher clauses than the Bitcoin community on us.



Q: Why don't you borrow money to do it?

A: Same as most startups: the expense is beyond the number we could borrow

from a normal channel. Plus, we are frank that our project involves quite a few risks. We choose to

share both the risks and the profits to investors willing to take them.



Q: Why do you choose to do IPO so early when you haven't reached the stage

of sending your final designs to the foundry?

A: Because we have to save time. If the IPO takes too long, or doesn't work

out so that we have find inferior ways to raise funds, time elapses and we will be outpaced by our

competitors. A IPO in parallel with the later stage of physical design will make the arriving date

of our products earlier. Plus, if we finally have found that it is necessary to cancel the IPO,

100.5% of all raised funds will be turned back to investors.



Q: What if your first generation of chips are outdated? What if the other

companies deliver their products earlier than you do?

A: The so called "outdated" technology is exactly why we have so inexpensive

NRE. And we plan to do self-mining before product-selling, to avoid pre-maturely triggering a

fierce price war. There will almost definitely a relatively long window for both us and our

competitors to profit before the market price of hashrates falls down to their margin cost. In

this time range, the difficulty will not exceed a level that even with our technology of choice,

the electricity fee and management cost is still negligible compared to the Bitcoins mined.



Q: The privileges of board members are vague. What exactly could they do?

A: Some of the information and details of our company is only provided on

request of board members. Board members can monitor our business running face to face, or send

representations to do it. We also hope that board members could help us with a full-fledged

open financial management on both the RMB-nominated and BTC-nominated funds.



Q: How will your MU and MOORE interact with ASICMINER?

A: I will try to keep as objective as possible and evaluate ASICMINER as yet

another normal startup when considering the configuration of the MU portfolio. MOORE, on the other

hand, will be boosted up to in MH/s per share with ASICMINER in exchange of its raised funds when

our chips come out, and also will be used as one of the mechanisms for ASICMINER to sell hashrates

in the future.



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Q: What is your fundraising target? How do you decide whether this IPO succeeds or not?

A: The minimum target is 100k$. If the raised funds surpass this number, we will consider that our IPO is successful. However, we would like to raise more (120-140k$) because keeping the budget at minimum is very prone to unexpected scenarios.



Q: So you will send the extra shares at at time?

A: Yes.



Q: How do you achieve so low costs?

A: There are several factors.

1. 130nm node size. As the mainstream switches to 28nm, the 130nm existed for so long that even many smaller foundries could do it very well. The intense competition of manufacturing in China brings the price of everything down, including ICs.

2. MLM(Multi-Level-Mask). Compared to full-mask, this technology reduces the cost of mask-set to half with the exchange of increasing the margin cost by about 40%. This is a good deal for us because the margin cost of chips themselves is one of the lowest cost in our budget.

3. Low EDA license fees and low labor cost in China.

4. We ourselves did most of the RTL design, optimization and simulation.



Q: Why don't you use Bitfountain for your GLBSE ticker?

A: Because the ASICMINER shareholders (GLBSE investors) have an extra set of privileges upon Bitfountain shareholder (us).