Bitcoin Forum

It looks as though Coolio is selling of the rights to his entire music collection.  See story here:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/aug/21/coolio-music-catalogue-rights-career-chef

I was wondering what people thought of bidding on this under a bitcoin investment.  Myself, or someone else could create a security to bid on the music collection.  We would agree upon a max bid, I was thinking around 240K which would give an annual return of close to 10% in annual royalties.  If not enough money is raised or the auction isn't one the money would be returned to investors less any fees accrued along the way.

I was thinking it could be pretty cool publicity for bitcoin, and give a nice diversified asset from the usual mining companies. 

The auction ends in 4 days so this would have to be thrown together pretty quickly if even possible at all.

Thoughts?

LOL....well it's half serious, that's why I called it a feeler.

I mean if the auction could be won for 150K, that would be 15% return in fiat on a tangible asset.  Plus the publicity for bitcoin could be good.  But I'll stick with my first response, half serious.

Do you know much in dollars a 10% royalty would be per year? 

I like the idea. If someone comes up with a good strategy for increasing royalty revenue, I'll kick 24k towards it. I'm thinking along the lines of viral advertising, using a new distribution model to gain publicity. Basically try a bunch of different tactics to try to get those royalty payments to shoot up and make the investment a really good one.

EDIT: I also think the max bid should be somewhere in the upper 6 figures if we want a hope at winning.

So for like 10btc, I could own as much as like 1% of all Coolio's life work?   That's actually pretty solid, to be honest.

The article said it earns just over $23k per year in royalties.

Hmm, well maybe there is enough interest to give it a go.  Worst case everyone gets the coins back less some small fees.  Is there enough time to get approved on an exchange?

Do it why not?  ???

I am in... not only will i constantly play Gangsters Paradise while walking into work threw one of those thinkgeek themesong shirts.... dat man can cook!

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/12/08/how-to-cook-ghetto-gourmet.html (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/12/08/how-to-cook-ghetto-gourmet.html)

Dont' be stingy with that dime bag of pepper!

 8) -io

-1phone1world

Investing in the music industry is saaaaaafe

I'll get on creating the asset first thing tomorrow.

reserved

I already go out to the car singing "come along and ride on a fantastic...." And my girlfriend rolls her eyes. So now when I blast it on YouTube everyday I'll be like "But babe! I bought bitcoin stock in coolio!!!"

 (This is great aside from that whole thing where any investment with fiat returns sees diminishing bitcoin gains as the price of BTC goes up)

Also, even if we got the money together some jerk off rich kid child actor who was a teen in this era will buy up the rights as some ironic sentimental thing. I can see it now...

Who bought the rights to Coolio's collection? Fuckin' Macaulay Culkin. For $10 million.

Ha ha, I really like this idea.  ;D
Count me in if the asset is created.
Where? Btct?

Wie probably won't win the auction or won't make a lot money/btcs with it.
But it's fun and can maybe get some publicity for bitcoins in general, so then we all can still profit.

im in & I guarantee investment from a number of my pals.

get it on BTCT see what happens dude.

Much as I like BTC-TC that's probably not a good idea - in fact I doubt any exchange is.

If the auction finishes in 4 days then OP would need USD in hand in 405 days time.  That could be tough even if done via direct transfers on the forum - but in 4 days to get approval on BTC-TC and a manual withdrawal and exchange it to USD on an exchange and get it withdrawn to an account?

This is unlikely to work unless OP has the cash himself to pay if you win (then get it back in BTC). If you win the bidding you have to pay within 24 hours by cashier's cheque/paypal/credit-card.

So forget it unles OP has the cash himself OR already has the facility to cash BTC on that scale out very rapidly.

EDIT:  If you were to go ahead best way would likely be to do it off-exchange with investments made in USD not BTC (so pay by bank transfer) then list on an exchange afterwards to handle dividends etc there.

It's a great idea, but listing on an exchange really stacks the timeline against you.

Yes I definitely wish I would have known about this earlier.  I'm not as worried about getting the money converted to fiat, I'm sure the auction house will give you 48 hours or so to get the money to them.

Hate to spend $500 to list the asset when the odds of getting it done in time are pretty low, and of course I got called into work at 6AM this morning so only have access on my phone.  If someone else with more time today wants to take the idea and run with it I'm all for it.  Otherwise I'll try to get it on BTCTC later, but clock is really starting to tick.

I wouldn't count on any specific timeframe if you list on BTC-TC. All new listings have to be approved by shareholders of LTC-Global (the company that BTC-TC is a part of) and it can take days or longer to have sufficient approval.

Why are you sure they'll give you 48 hours when they only give everyone else 24?

Where have you previously managed to cash out $100k+ of BTC in 24 hours?  Most exchanges have withdrawal limits below that even if you've completed all the KYC/AML document checks.  Unless you've actually been through the pain that is moving significant sums of BTC into cash you should avoid assuming it's an easy and fast process.  Just getting it transferred into your account wouldn't necessarily let you get a cashier cheque (or check if you're from the US) drawn against it immediately.

So you'd have to convert to USD before you even knew if you'd won to be able to pay in time - meaning 2 sets of conversion fees if you lose and have to refund.

Depending on what we win the auction for, if it's under 200K I was going to float it and wait for the cash out to repay myself, but fair warning, the timeline likely makes this a fun idea but not feasible.  Too Bad.

Well if you can float the cash yourself then the timescale doesn't matter.

Just bid on it yourself then if you win it worry about creating a security afterwards.  I'm sure there'd be enough interest to sell whatever portion you wanted to - and no lost fees if you lose the auction.

Valid point.  Not sure I feel comfortable bidding more then maybe 125K on it, but you are right, there does seem to be more then enough interest to sell the rest.

I like your idea! I'd definitely put a couple of bitcoins in this if you create a security.

I like the idea as well. I would invest in it...

If I was rich, this is the exact type of thing I would spend my money on.

Since you are worried about conversion, make the bid IN BITCOINS.  If its one of the upper bids, it will draw a lot more attention then bidding in USD with bitcoin backing...

The site makes you register to bid and they won't accept BTC.

Here is the Financial Data for the Coolio's Catalog:

http://imgur.com/a/dJDCd

IMHO I believe it will go higher than the $250K range, since it garnered a lot of publicity.

But the idea in general for a fund that invests in Royalties and is distributed worldwide via a Bitcoin security is very interesting!

If the main point of this exercise is getting Bitcoin publicity, why not do a press release just stating you and the other members of the bitcoin community are raising funds in BC, how much has been promised, how much you need etc. to buy the catalog.
Sounds like a good story as is!
(of course doing this will drive up the price...)

David

This is a decent good idea.  I can pledge 100K to start and willing to sell some of that off if more then enough comes in.  I'm not good at the press release, reddit, etc.... type of stuff though.

Earning a decent return is also part of the exercise.

I can do 2 things:

1) I can write a press release if you'd like.

2) I can write a "Gangster's Paradise" bitcoin song once we win, and we'll be able to use it without having to pay any royalties to anyone!

We've been spending most our lives living in a bitcoin paradise...

Hilarious.

Press release would be great, but how do we track pledges.  My thoughts are that anyone who pledges money in advance would get the right to the exact amount they pledged in relation to what the auction was won for.

If we win the auction, all of the people who pledged would then have the option to sell all or a portion of their holdings in the IPO on one of the exchanges.  The IPO would likely be at a small premium.  IE.. we win the auction for 150K, and we IPO it at 165K value.

I would have to only bid on maybe 70% of the pledges as I can only afford to front so much and would need the pledges to me in a hurry.  Maybe we could get an escrow to start holding the pledges now and bid on that.

I posted the link to this thread on r/bitcoin and r/bitcoinstocks and its currently at or near the top of both.

Alright, if this goes down, let me know, I'm down to write a press release.  I don't think you'd want a speculative press release though, would you?  I am guessing you'd only want one once the fund is officially released so you could gain investors.  And of course, another one once we win the auction   ;)

maybe coinbase will make an exception for this -

This is a majorly cool idea - and huge in terms of value for the bitcoin community. Props on the idea, and if this one doesn't come off, definitely an idea for the future!

thats awesome!! don't have much btcs but in this case i would invest some..  8)

I'll be in on this for 10BTC.

I would be in too :D but only if OP has enough money to float the bid himself and then sell out the shares after the fact

That is my plan unless I come up with something better in the short-term, but my cap is $175K and unfortunately I don't see that bid hanging on.

Due to the potential final bid price unfortunately this may have a slim chance - but if you are serious about the 175k you should definitely look for a similar idea in the future that would generate PR for btc. I'm pretty certain you would get all you investment back in a short period of time by floating on an exchange and you could issue 95% of the interest for 100% of your investment and thus make an instant 5% on the deal to cover your costs and make a little instant profit.

Good luck!

If you got weird Al Yankovich onboard for that it would go global! It might confuse people over his Amish version though :D

This is a great original idea!

In terms of Press Releases and PR we would be happy to help and I believe our services would have the most impact.

Here is our Bitcointalk thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=181318.new#new

Our services: http://bitcoinprbuzz.com/services

I'd be in on this too, and I'd love to talk about it on my podcast to generate other interest if you start selling shares. This could be pretty cool.

Great idea. I'm in - I'll pledge at least 10BTC.

You can put me down for 100 BTC.

I'd offer to escrow but don't think it's worth it because:

a) It's highly unlikely we'll win
b) I'm sure there won't be a problem selling whatever you want to sell.

Would suggest terms are that:

Shares are allocated in order of pledges up to whatever amount you choose to sell.
If you win then people have 48 hours to send their BTC once you've proved payment at your end.
Share are charged for at spot + 10% - extra being to cover exchange fees, pay you for doing it and cover the fee to list (spot being spot at whichever exchange you use).

And your call how many you sell and how many you keep for yourself.

I don't generally invest in fiat-denominated stuff but this seems like a bit of fun.

Couple of other things to consider if you decide to try to proceed:

1.  If you do it, make the security name generic (e.g. BTC-Music) rather than specific.  That way it leaves open the possibility of investors voting to issue more shares to expand holdings.
2.  Be careful to consider the tax implications - especially if you're a US citizen.  It's likely there'll be tax withheld unless you complete documentation.  Either way it's  entirely possible any royalties paid are going to be treated as taxable income to you personally - so make sure it won't push you up into a higher band or something nasty (as there wouldn't be a way to push the tax liability onto investors without them also completing lots of documents).

In for 10 up to 20 BTC. Agreed, this sounds fun.

Great feedback, Thanks.

I agree, it's kind of unlikely we'll win, but it may open up the possibilities now to do this in the future with a little more notice.

If this idea gets some media attention it could bring awesome results. But I would not jump the gun on this but rather come up with a solid plan.
True, Coolio's songs would be an awesome asset, but you could start this as well in a couple of weeks with some other artist.

This model could evolve into something very interesting, I'm really excited to see where this is going!

Would invest.  ;D

Absolutely in if this (or something similar in the future) happens.

Crazy idea! I'd be in for 25 BTC.

Well that's annoying.

**This item has been sold through our “Buy It Now” option**

I logged in to bid and that's what I saw.  There was no word of a buy it now option, it must have popped up right when the auction started.  I wonder what the price was?  We might have had a shot.

As I said in a post before (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=281256.msg3018852#msg3018852), the idea in general is great. It does not necessarily have to be Coolio – although that would have been great.

I will invest

Well that's unfortunate, but keep your eye out for other similar opportunities. You definitely have the communities interest!