Quote from: jomay on September 17, 2014, 06:56:17 PM

Quote from: vesperwillow on September 17, 2014, 02:21:06 PM

I based my figures off of Jupiters batches 1 and 2, where KNC's internal insurance invoiced their value at $1000USD when being shipped back to them, or within their company controls.
[...]
Consider how many tens of millions they took home in profit on their tax statement. Their profit margins weren't 30%, they were generously higher.

Yep, the 1000$ marginal cost sounds about right. Not sure how much the ASIC NRE's are, though. If they got 25m$ for the Titan Batch1 they may have spent 10-20m$ on R&D?
Batch2 was pure profit, though.

Quote from: s1gs3gv on September 17, 2014, 03:12:41 PM

I don't think KNC is in a cash flow position to do anything special for their customers.
They seem to be struggling. The latest series A won't last them long.
Expect to get the absolute minimum possible from KNC these days, at the very last moment.

Well, that doesn't add up when considering the calculation above. Unless...
Did you ever wonder why it says "KnC Sweden 20nm AB"? I'd guess because there are "KnC 28nm AB", "KnC Cloud", "KnC Private Mining", "KnC Holding" etc. The founders kept the 10's of m$ in their holding (or private accounts!) and make sure that any failure in the future doesn't cost them a penny.

The KnC 20nm is probably struggling to meet payments because of the Neptune debacle (first tape out botched etc) and was close to go bankrupt. As the latter is really not pretty both from bad publicity as well as the "annoying" legal investigations KnC tried to avoid the bankruptcy with dubious measures. Such as offering 5%-10% more refund money if the refund is delayed. And start taking Titan pre-orders - which has saved them.

Disclaimer: I don't know any details and all of the above is pure speculation.

Smart move on KNC part with Titan no refund. Bitmain coming December too, with Scryot machines 1/3 the price. $5/MH