ASICMINER's future is to self-mine, as the current growth of difficulty will discourage anyone from buying hardware. friedcat expected this environment from day one and it's encouraging that he priced his hardware properly the whole way down.

friedcat was smart to pick 55nm/65nm 2nd gen node size; chip efficiency won't matter until China runs out of cheap electricity and space or the difficulty increases much, much more. friedcat can probably produce more hashrate at 55/65 than any competitors can produce in 22/28, for at least some time. Mining is a very parallel operation and any companies working on efficient tech (like the absurd quad core miner which makes zero sense) are preparing themselves for mining in very tight margins some 12 months in the future.

I have my horses on friedcat no matter how many people decide to sell. I agree that it's much riskier now and that warrants a lower share price. I think friedcat has made some very calculated decisions and was clever with how he invested. He also has a ton of money he can spend on virtually whatever he thinks is necessary, and he wouldn't have put so much effort into 2nd stage business planning if he wasn't serious about the next steps he was taking. I also have no reason to doubt him considering what he has already achieved.

What a fascinating market. Good luck to friedcat and everyone else holding.