I would like to ask ( btw I have not even a single clue so don't hesitate to eli5 this)
How much capital would one need to start a business and get asic chips at lowest price from a manufacturer or make one yourself?
I am guessing (assuming?) getting couple of chips and reverse engineer it and make thousands of the same stuff would be costly if not impossible.
So lets assume this scenario , I get 10-20 scrypt asic miner chips , pay someone to reverse engineer and find out how its made , go to a chip factory with him , explain the manufacturer how it should be made with him and pay them to make couple thousand at least. How much capital would this take?
Or any other example you might have in your mind.
TL;DR , how much would i need to have to become next asicminer,gawminer company.
I created a component for vending machines and kiosks that used biometric scanners and a custom FPGA that had to be put into a custom chip package onto a board with surface mount components. The electrical engineer (who had 40+ years experience) ran about 80k a year to design the board, and a second guy to write firmware for about $45 a year, the initial development tools and packages ran about 50k, the production runs themselves were about $80k, with an inital order minimum of about $125k. Expect to spend a 6-9 months in development with another 2-3 months for QA and other post production work. I'd say you would want to hire a team to design and build it for you that already has relationships with small run shops that can do contract manufacturing. Expect to spend $250-400k... now you know how pre-orders got started in the asic arms race
