September 16, 2013
Subject: ActiveMinings virtual Board of Advisors Stand Down
It is with deep regret that we wish to announce that the current ActiveMinings virtual Board of Advisors is standing down, effective immediately.
The reasons for our resignation are threefold:
1) Some members of the board wish to pursue other avenues within the Bitcoin world that are tied to potential conflicts of time and interest, so the ethical choice is to step-down.
2) The board was originally convened primarily to improve upon pressing communication issues and the initial setup of the internal structure of ActiveMining. Despite our best efforts, some issues still remain in these areas, especially Marketing/PR. As such, we have recommended and facilitated the hiring of professional PR services which Ken has agreed to do.
3) Various strategies being undertaken by ActiveMining are contrary to those being advised and incompatible to the beliefs of current advisors to what would be the best overall outcome. At this time, we feel ActiveMining would be better serviced by a new board with a line of thought more in-line with the CEO vision and/or the hiring of key internal staff, such as a Director of Sales and Marketing.
We have made a number of diligences and recommendations, including:
- Engaging professional PR services to resolve what we see as significant PR and marketing issues.
- Creating a high quality website incorporating a new web store (for which we prepared a template).
- Revamping of the product line-up to reduce costs and to increase clarity for customers (for which we provided specifications) from the consumer to the professional market.
- A more strategic approach to the business as a whole, emphasising profitability and stability (for which we provided detailed guidance).
- Reduced emphasis on the CEO being the key decision maker across all areas of the business. In particular, we strongly recommend that ActiveMining hires new staff in key areas.
- Increased communication and clarity for shareholders.
- Increased information for customers.
We are grateful for the opportunity to serve as virtual advisors for ActiveMining since the 20th August 2013, and we offer our best wishes for its success.
Since there's been some controversy about the reasons why the advisory board was dissolved, I thought to elaborate a bit.

The initial motive for creating it in the first place was to push forward some issues that kept reappearing, especially the lack of consistent PR. Everyone on the advisory board kept at it while it made sense to do so. The decision to step down was mostly because we felt a certain point was reached where we've already addressed and insisted as much as possible on what we believed are/were the main issues we thought ActM needed improvement on (the list above) and concluded what Ken really needs is on-site help from key internal staff.
Like the title says we were "advisory" and there's not much else to do when you feel you've pretty much addressed everything, whether agreed to or not.
Personally, I think professional PR services/marketing is of the utmost importance and should be pursued
asap. Other than that I would say that the consumer side of VMC is still unexplored and smaller systems on mini-ITX cases would rack a lot of sales, as not everyone wants a 4U case.