Quote from: chriswilmer on January 26, 2014, 04:58:07 AM

How about this for idle speculation. FC started getting worried that everyone was a spy from a competing mining company and felt that he could trust no one. Hence the drop in communication. Maybe gen2 chip designs were indeed stolen and the paranoia is justified. I could see myself going slowly crazy this way in his position.

former business partners or team members taking AM's design and selling products with new chips under another name.
not to forget Bitmain's no-preorder policy (what a coincidence Lips sealed

):

Quote

We created a myth in bitcoin community: no pre-orders, shipping on time, even pre- shipping. We are earning more and more trust from worldwide customers.

...created a myth...more and more trust...welcome to AM's business model - oh the irony

well, sounds not too much like scraping the bottom of an empty barrel in my ears.
this whole mining business is like the goldrush all over again and a lot of shenanigans are going on as seen with other companies.

after chinese new year and (hopefully) successful tapeout it's defintively time for a board meeting with Q&A and an update to all shareholders to get back to old strengths and shed some light on these assumptions & future plans for 2014.
to quote fc's words:

Quote from: friedcat on November 22, 2013, 04:45:49 PM

PR & Communications
We understand that transparency and communication to shareholders and the public needs improvement. We are in the process of identifying a dedicated employee for this. We will issue bi-weekly reports for shareholders and improve response time for questions.

while being in this doubtful mood i have to add it once again:
if AM plans on selling branded products for the endconsumer market on a larger scale in the future,
with growing competition the lack of a website is really starting to disappoint me.
(bitmain, knc, cointerra...every company has a site with shopsystem and partly a support forum while by contrast AM relies on scattered resellers, a facebook page and bitcointalk threads. as long as it works that way...good, but for how long?).

oh and by the way, what happened to the planned Blockchain-based exchange?