A good friend and I have been hashing out a plan for a while. We are both very experienced Silicon Valley engineers, and would like to provide an alternative to the ASIC mining companies that are currently monopolizing the industry. As most of you know, Bitmain and Canaan are nearly the entire industry. (Together they make up nearly 90%) Both of these companies are Chinese, and neither one of them is completely trustworthy. Bitmain in particular is considered to be evil.

With GDDR6 RAM finally becoming available in short order, there is going to be a mad scramble to upgrade mining equipment. Bitmain is now selling its old stock of ASIC miners that are obsolete in order to prepare for this new generation, and the rest of us can only react. As long as the Chinese have a monopoly on mining, there is going to continue to be a bias in how this industry develops. We would like to break that monopoly.

I know many feel that mining is going to be discontinued shortly in favor of PoS chains, but most from the developed world don't understand how mining is actually used in Asia. In countries such as China, India, and even here in Thailand where we currently are, there are restrictions on sending currency out of the country. A workaround to this, and the reason mining has become so concentrated in China, is that mining can be used to bypass currency controls. Chinese can buy equipment in Yuan, they can pay for power in Yuan, and then generate cryptocurrency that can be deposited overseas for USD. With foreign currency overseas, they can make investments that the Bank of China would not ordinarily allow. Mining isn't going anywhere as long there is such a strong use case for it.

In order to keep this post short I will stop here and just say that we have a team of silicon valley natives who have been designing chips for 20+ years. Some past projects include things like lead designer of the Sparcstation. This is a real project with actual people who know what they are doing.

I would like to know if anyone would like to offer feedback on this industry, specifically the following:

   1. Given that we are planning to do this as an ICO, who would you approach first for seed funding? We probably only need about $100k to start. After that there are dozens of syndicate investors who would probably jump in at later stages. Only the first one is really hard. (Contact me privately if you want to discuss specifics.)

   2.What are the pain points of this project? I can speak for the advantages, but I am hoping to hear some of the disadvantages that I would need to overcome in any presentation. What would a potential investor, either syndicate or smaller investor during an ICO, look at critically?

   3.Strong community support will be essential for this project. As time is of the essence, what is the fastest way to build a sizeable community behind the concept?

Any thoughts are appreciated. This is an open discussion. We are going to proceed with the idea anyway, but thoughtful, constructive criticism is always helpful.