Bitcoin Forum

[GLBSE] Bitcoin Mining Fund (see post #2 for FAQ)

A 50,000 BTC fund is small ?

Fair enough. What experience and credentials as a fund manager do you have ?

How long have you been involved with bitcoin and using GLBSE ?

Trust isn't such an issue as before, as I assume you will be fully verifying with GLBSE ?

What monthly dedicated time commitment will you be making ? Please state hours.

I may be willing to provide access to trading tools which could improve your performance as a fund manager but let's get the basic questions out the way first.

This is the sort of fund I am looking for.

It's a 10,000 BTC fund; maybe you meant USD.  However, even that is not small for a first time offering.

Holding multiple mining symbols has the advantage of receiving dividends throughout the week, rather than only weekly.  Paying dividends only monthly may make some less likely to invest.  A month is a long time, when bitcoins are involved.  Another disadvantage of this is how it's going to affect the price.  The price of the fund wont be steady, but will depend on the time to the next payment.  This is because the dividend is large, compared to the price.  You can see this behavior, for different reasons, in the PPT.* funds.  I haven't observed it for miners.

Right.  The primary issue there is scale.  It's not so difficult to turn $1 into $2 again and again.  There's even a story out there about a guy who (through multiple trades) traded up from a paperclip to a car.  Or was it a house?  It is a lot more difficult to turn $1 billion in to $2 billion, let alone do it repeatedly.

Warren Buffet has been warning that Berkshire Hathaway is getting so big it won't be able to generate the stellar rates of return it has in the past.  



Zero risk, huh?  I'd take that action if it *really* were zero risk, but the reality is that there are always some risks.  Even US Govt bonds have some risk.  Congress almost defaulted last year.  With more than $250k in a regular bank savings account you run the risk of loss if the bank goes under.  Your brokerage probably only insures your cash up to $5mm.

You could say the "premium" return rates on many glbse securities are there in large part *because* a lot of the investors understand that they really are pretty risky (compared to the dow 30, reits, junk bonds, or even your buddy's new restaurant).

Why strictly mining companies? There are benefits from them such as constant dividends if price falls, but other than protection features like that I can't find a reason not to invest in others.

Not accusing you of anything BUT if you would come to the lending thread today and ask for lets say 20...heck... 10 coins even , you would get scores of replies grilling you why they should trust you etc...etc...    Asking for 10,000 coins from the start is a brave move. I hope you are genuine but caution investors.

Two things that I would change/consider:

1) 1 BTC share price is bad for liquidity imho. - please make it 10 or even 1 Bitcent a piece and just issue 10 or 100 times more shares.
2) Monthly aggregated payouts will fluctuate a LOT especially with assets like YABMC that pay out after difficulty changes. Other assets also pay out only each weekend - there are months with 5 weekends...

Also I certainly do NOT like the "no insurance" policy, since you're likely selling at a NAV above 100%. To be worthwile, your NAV would need to be below 100% in my opinion.

Monthly payments + huge IPO can also lead to at least some time of "buy on the 29th and get double dividends". If you start with 0 assets, it's not good to buy in early and if everyone buys in late, there are no dividends yet here.

Cool!

Awesome insight on giga's operation. BMF seems like it will be a very promising asset.

As a fund manager of MU, I have some questions. Hopefully they could help you elaborate a more detailed proposal.

1. Will the dividends of BMF solely come from the dividends of mining assets you receive? For example, if you buy 10,000 shares of Gigaming at 1.5BTC/s, and sell them at 1.6BTC/s after a month. Will the profits all be used for re-investing, or will you pay some of them as dividends?

2. Will you actively contact asset issuers for cheaper bulk purchase of shares? If so, have you already started at least getting them known?

3. There is already a GLBSE listed fund solely on mining investments called M.ETF. It has already existed for a long time. It's not an ETF though, it's a mutual fund as yours. The fund manager (JL421) made a very impressive summary of mining assets before he did the IPO (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66610.0). If you do something similar, your fund will be more attractive to investors.

Are there mining companies on GLBSE you don't include in your fund? Why not?

Thanks for the comprehensive answer!
Regarding item 8: I'm new to GLBSE (and investment in general) - but looking at BMF there, I realized that if I bought shares at 0.95 or 1.0 , I wouldn't be able to get my money back unless you successfully sell your remaining 9000+ shares - because there's noone buying for more than 0.1 . Since it would take a lot of capital to fill buy the rest of the shares, the risk seems pretty high.
If someone (you?) would place a bid at 0.8 or something, it might help psychologically.. ?

Thanks again for your answer!

Could you share some thoughts on mining shares vs mining bonds, and how this affects BMF?

Well, some make a point out of their assets being shares as in you're buying not only parts of mining output, but parts of the actual hardware. Which would make a difference if it were sold f.ex. And that it gives voting rights. The difference might be in the contract, and might be hypothetical, depending on the trustworthiness of the operator.

That's what BMF is for - I can leave that to you ;)

As far as I understood that, they meant that you can not buy 10% of shares and then request to be sent 10% of their hardware in return. In the end you own the value of the hardware (as you get paid whe liquidating) but not the hardware itself. It's really badly worded, that's true...

Just a comment on your website - I saw no direct link to your GLBSE page. It would be convenient to have one.
The page says "footer here" at the bottom - this might be a good place for it.

Can't believe I missed it because of glbse downtime today :(

I don't know if GLBSE supports this, but you may consider  1/10 share split. 1 BTC per share is too high. I believe you could sell more and have bigger trade volumes at lower price. You investors would benefit out of this as well. When they decide to sell their shares they will find more bidders.
 BTW, do you plan to sell only those 10000 shares or you may issue more anytime you want to?

If you had lower prices people could easily reinvest their dividends into your fund. This way they may reinvest them into other assets and your fund will grow slower.

I like the daily dividends move. It's easier to gain confidence in a bond when you see regular dividend payouts, and that takes a while with weekly payouts.

Almost like mining ;) this is going to be great :)

If you mean me, I never bought your bonds  8)

At what GLBSETime are the dividends paid?

No, an arbitrary IPO price-per-share, as a means of suggestion, is meaningless to anybody who is deep enough into bitcoins to be buying and selling on GLBSE. This is the one reason you list to support your decision, and it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Nobody here is going to be "fooled" that the company has increased in value (I'm not even sure what you mean by this in regards to BMF) whether you chose 1 btc or 100 btc to be the price-per-share. This fund sounds really cool, and I think it is a great idea. I have been considering investing, but this answer was kind of a turn off for me frankly. I completely agree with GeoRW.

Apple IPO: 22$, split three times since

Only noticed this motion by chance on GLBSE. Would be nice it there was a notification (icon on site and via  email). Otherwise I would have never known.

I can't see the motion on GLBSE. Not by clicking motions in the menu, or clicking "Old motions" on the BMF page?

Turns out that in some browsers, the motion was hidden beneath the menubar.
I was able to vote now. (I think - clicking again lets me vote again.... hmmm)

That's just GLBSE's lack of voting confirmation...

I have a question: Seeing that the BMF description mentions to only invest in miners and your opinion of bonds as you stated in the NastyMining thread... I was looking at the BMF holdings: Seems to me there are a lot of bonds in there while miners are left out i.e. FPGA.CONTRACT (not saying that they should be in BMF).

Just wondering what the approach is for BMF?

Thank you for the explanation, it's a bit clearer now.

Sorry to hear you're sick. I hope you get well soon!

Don't strain yourself, and get well!

What's the reason for the crash in your opinion?
Some people just cashing out, shifts of investments to pirate, increase in difficulty, what?

Increase in BTC price, increase in difficulty, BFL's ASIC announcements.

Mining bond prices were hit especially hard by all three, and so many of the assets on GLBSE are in some way dependent/related to/invested in mining bonds that nearly everything crashed. Also (IMO) some recovery from extreme overvaluation, which (IMO) isn't yet complete. Some bonds were (IMO) ridiculously inflated; a few shocks are bringing them much closer to their actual value.

Im personally avoiding bonds and only invest in mining companies with hardware that has a clear upgrade path, or growth shares like Moore.

I hope you are feeling better.

Just wondering: What happened to the promised daily dividends for June? It looks good to me up until the 15th, but then there are more and more gaps?

(GLBSETime whilst posting this: 14:38, Sun Jun 24) 

What is the outcome of the motion?

A little off-topic from saving the NAV and such but...

I really enjoyed the the two interviews you (usagi) did with gigavps and Garret about their respective mining ventures. (These interviews can be found on the BMF website: http://tsukino.ca/bmf/ )
It was an insightful look as to how "the pros" mine Bitcoins.
Thank you very much.

I hope that you will be able to continue to interview more of the operators of the securities that BMF has a stake in. It helps me (as an investor) to know that there are real people behind the ticker symbols.

Looks good!

What made you get rid of COGNITIVE?

Could you add a column what the tickers actually are? Some suggestions: i.e. Mining bond, Mining company (actually mining), Mining company (not (yet) mining)

Seems to me that when difficulty rises, mining bonds fall (and thus BMF).
And it's not like difficulty is going to fall any time soon?

This is good.

I am wondering how the block reward halving will affect mining companies returns. In effect they will be cut in half.

Cut in half at first... but then it might drive out a lot of miners, for whom it'll no longer be profitable to mine (or more profitable to mine litecoin or something). This may or may not be enough to lower difficulty. And then asics will throw any prediction out the window.

If NAV has fallen below 1 shouldn't you just ask CPA to audit and pay-out on your insurance policy?  The policy was for NAV falling below 1 - and you stated it was about 0.57.  If that doesn't trigger a payout what does?

If I am reading this correctly, CPA signed a contract to payout when BMF was below 1 ?

But BMF was already below 1 when the contract was signed.



This is like signing a contract to pay out on your house getting burnt down when your house has already burnt down.

Will you gpg sign a  contract stating that you will eat a hat on camera if its not at 1btc per share ?  :D

RSM - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63257.0 - just needs to sell ~250 shares @BTC0.30 each to be operating at 48(MH/s)per share on delivery of our ASIC's.  I know were not issuing dividends until we receive the hardware but that's a better (MH/s)per share rate then most if not all our competitors.  Were planning on issuing 300 new shares on Monday at BTC0.30 each to take us to >51.6(MH/s)per share.  Although if we can shift another ~1400 shares at BTC0.30 we would be operating at >54(MH/s)per share or 1(GH/s)@<BTC5.55.  Just thought I'd let you know.  We've been operating over seven months now and I know Nefario personally.

There are a few bfl competitors popping up it might be a good idea to diversify and support them as well. For instance ordering a https://www.btcfpga.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=58 (https://www.btcfpga.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=58) in case bfl is all smoke and mirrors.

usagi, I would like to invest in BMF however I'm a bit concerned with the inconsistent dividends (0.001 for a few weeks).. what happened there?

Questions about BMF's insurance policy with CPA.

Summary of the situation can be found in this post : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113708.msg1229467#msg1229467

No need to comment on all of that lengthy post (unless you really want to).  My questions boil down to these:

1.  Is BMF entitled to claim under that policy now (and previously) with it's NAV/share being under 1.0?
1a.  If answer to 1. is "Yes" then why hasn't it?
1b  If answer to 1. is "No" then what IS BMF insured against if it isn't NAV/share falling below 1.0?  Does this represent good value to BMF investors for their 550 BTC worth of premiums.

2.  On September 10th in regards to the policy you said ""This was announced, publicized, motioned, voted on and passed two months ago."
2a. Where was it announced and publicised?
2b. Where can I find the motion?
2c. Where can I see the results of the voting?

It's October and you're still asking about this???

I hold BMF (don't judge me) and I'd like clarification about this also.