Bitcoin Forum

Who is ZigGap and what do we do?

ZigGap is made up of a team of dedicated Bitcoin service professionals located in the eastern United States.

The word Ziggap comes from the Korean word for wallet ( 지갑 ).

ZigGap stands on top as the most trusted method for purchasing BTC, and plans to offer the widest array of methods to buy Bitcoin.

Current payment methods include:
MoneyGram (USD)
Western Union (USD)
National Australia Bank Deposit (AUD, NZD, EUR, GBP)
International Wire Transfer (Many)

Only options available to your location based on your IP may be shown.

Operators superb OTC rating: http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=aethero


ZigGap
ZigGap's profit is comprised of 50,000,000 shares in total.
1 share of ZigGap on BitFunder represents 1/50,000,000th of monthly profits after all costs.
ZigGap shares offer no voting rights. pieces of ZigGap on BitFunder do not represent real world shares of the company.

2,500,000 shares will be retained by ZigGap to maintain a growth and expansion fund. Should it be determined that the growth
fund is not needed, all amounts held by the growth shares will be equally distributed per share at the following dividend, and the
shares may be posted for sale.

As of the time of this writing, up to 35,000,000 shares will be released over time to the public on a varying time scale.
These funds will be used to secure agreements with processing companies, deposits, and other necessary needs.

Should the company be sold, the full amount of the purchase price will be evenly distributed among the 50,000,000 shares.

No salaries will be paid as an expense, and are only paid as dividend payments.

The first "Early-Bird" 10,000,000 shares have been posted for 0.00005 BTC each.
Additional shares will be sold at no less than 0.0001 BTC each.

Dividends
Dividends will be paid between the 1st and 5th of each month for the prior months profits.
A monthly statement will be provided at or around the time of Dividend payout.

First public dividend payout will be for the profits of the month of March at the beginning of April.

Forced BuyBack
No forced buyback may be enforced for shares of ZigGap.

History
Current month amounts will be periodically updated

Gross numbers for the month of March. Cumulative:

As of March 2nd, 2013:  

Volume:
$34,817
Gross profit (after Bitcoin spot cost, before other expenses, before taxes)
$1,431.28

-aethero

Seems like someone bought 8,660,569 shares within the first 90 minutes - leaving no shares for anyone else...
Can you make an announcement a couple of days before issuing the shares for the next round?

Judging from the trade times, 10mil shares (500btc) sold within 60 minutes almost exactly.

The first 10 million sold out in 60 minutes.

The next 5 million will go live 'sometime Wednesday' depending on the available time frame. As Wednesday gets closer this time will be specified.

The 5 million will be sold at a tentative rate of 0.0001 per share, depending on market demand. This means that any higher priced orders will get filled first, on a first come first serve basis automatically by BitFunder.

Should the 5 million not get sold within 24 hours of posting, any future sales will be delayed until I have determined the market is ready.

Any further share releases have no timeline or price determined as of yet.

Gratz, aethero.

This is why people need to pay attention to OTC ratings. They mean something ;D

The psychology of the bid wall on BitFunder is interesting to watch. I know that seems like a kind of obvious and uninteresting statement to make, but the volume on many assets on BF is often so small as to make the bid/ask mechanic a little "limp". With such a high volume of trades for Ziggap, combined with this information about the 0.001 offer on Wednesday, it makes the bid mechanic a little more interesting. Makes me wish I had the time to write a bot :)

It's 0.0001, not 0.001. The people paying 0.0029 right now are failing mafs.

I have my bid in at 0.0001 and I'm pretty confident it will be filled tomorrow. In fact I have some bids in at 0.00009 and 0.00008 as I'm pretty sure a lot of panicked investors will dump their shares when they realize what a horrible decision they made to buy in at 0.003.

ITS NOT WORTH THAT MUCH PEOPLE... eesh.

Thanks to a new payment processing partnership ZIGGAP is now offering cash deposits at Bank of America. This new payment method is more convenient, less expensive, and quicker.

Stay tuned for more news in the coming days and weeks about as of yet unannounced payment methods, products, and services.

You're going to love what we have in store.

And as usual please don't hesitate to let us know if you have any further questions or comments. We're here to help 7 days a week.

Oops, typo on my part. Although now that you mention it you can see some people on BitFunder in the trade history becoming confused between 0.00005 and 0.0004. The first batch was 000005 and it looks like people were trading 0004 thinking they are getting a deal  ???

ZIGGAP still owes people on BTCJAM over 900 bitcoins.

Who are this "team of dedicated Bitcoin service professionals"?

How can you be "on top as the most trusted method for purchasing BTC" when "ZigGap has only been online a couple weeks in private beta"?  Are you saying people who haven't even used the service trust it more than all alternatives?

"Operators superb OTC rating: http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=aethero" - GPG-signed message would be appropriate if you're laying claim to an ORC rating.  Or is this account already established as being linked to that ORC account? (I genuinely don't know if it is - as I shouldn't need to check if someone claims an identity that can be proven by cryptographic signature).

Are funds raised in the IPO going into the company or being taken out by the issuer(s)?  That isn't plain in the OP.

Are you registered as an FSP?

Apparently they are a registered MSB.
http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/msbstateselector.html

Why are your offices in Miami?

Links? / OP care to comment on this?

You can check for it yourself:

https://btcjam.com/listings/584

The loan for 910BTC was started on 2012-11-13.

Now you know where your invested coins are going to...... BTCJam.
Don't be surprised if the OP vanishes with your coins.

Obviously.

And they shouldnt be paying ANY dividends while still owing their original creditors.

We have a mailing address in Miami. Our primary business location is located in Huntsville, Alabama.

The initial owner of ZIGGAP did take out that loan to start the company, however that loan was taken out by HIM and not by the company. The funds from this IPO are for the company, and not for him. Ergo the funds from this IPO are not going to be used to pay the loan.

So someone else started Ziggap and has now sold it - and you (new owners) didn't take on the loan?
How do we know you won't sell it again - and this time the next owners won't take on paying dividends to the shares?

Once a company has skipped on its commitments once it's hard to have confidence it won't do it again - especially when there's no record anywhere I can see of a change of ownership (i.e. for all we know the 'new' owners could be same as the 'old' ones - and the change of ownership just an excuse to default on the loan).  This really should have been explained in your OP - rather than dragged into the light by someone else later.

Who said the company changed ownership? Right now this account is speaking as the company which is composed of a team of individuals. Who has skipped on any commitments? Is the loan behind? Or late? Or defaulted?

The point that I'm trying to make is that all personal assets or liabilities and company assets or liabilities are kept strictly separate from each other at all times. The owner of ZIGGAP took that loan, not ZIGGAP. ZIGGAP is composed of multiple individuals but was started by one individual.

Why not? It's perfectly acceptable to have accounts owing and still pay dividends. Let's check:

https://btcjam.com/listings/584

Borrower Reputation 100%
Positive:    147    Negative:    0
+bitcointalk    +bitcoin-otc
otc nick: aethero

This loan is in good standing. So I don't see why he can't also run a company that pays dividends.

Well what you say here doesn't match what was said in the BTCJam listing.

It's listed there as a business loan not a personal loan.

And there's NOT an "initial owner" - it says "Ryan and Stormy Schreiber," : or are "and Stormy" the two middle names of the owner?  If there are two people, one named Ryan and the other Stormy then which of these is the "initial owner" who has responsibility for the loan?  And does the other one know that he was never one of the owners?

Your (if it's you) responses to questions there further make it clear that the loan is to a business not an individual - discussing things such as what happens if the business fails.

Now it may well be that you intend to honour the debt and are now trying to CONVERT it into a personal loan: but spinning it as though it was always a personal loan (albeit used to invest in a business) just doesn't wash.

The problem is that the IPO funds are supposed to be going towards the business, ziggap, not used to repay a BTCJAM "personal" loan.

Yeah, there's no reason why having debt should prevent paying dividends - the vast majority of companies have debt of some kind, no matter how profitable they are.  What's wrong is that the debt was incurred in the name of the company but wasn't disclosed when selling the IPO: but then disclosing financial details has never been a strong point of BTC IPOs.

A loan FOR a business is not the same thing as a loan TO a business. How could Ryan or Stormy have taken a loan AS a business when the loan was used to create the business? It didn't exist before that.

Do you see how there are first and last names up there on the loan, but there are none anywhere on the IPO documentation or the website?

So just to confirm, zilch coins from this IPO will be used to pay back the btcjam debt? Will you be releasing accurate financial statements on all of your income and expenses, listed along with the monthly dividend payments?

Yes of course profit and loss statements will be listed along with dividends. The first dividend is in April. Expect a detailed profit and loss report and potentially other reporting of ZIGGAP's financial standing.

SO who was the "initial owner"?  

You claim it was a personal loan - yet one of your first responses in the BTCJam listing is:

"    Hi User #007, Nice nick! This BTCJam listing is an investment in the form of a business loan. Though it is highly unlikely, there is always a possibility that some sort of freak accident may occur that results in ZIGGAP failing. There are very few things that I can think of that could cause this to happen, besides something extreme like an unexpected death. However, since we are a multi-person team even in the event of a death the rest of the team could take over and continue the business. In the highly unlikely event that the business model itself fails we can always revert back to what we were doing with QuickBitcoins.net, which has been proven to be successful. Regardless the business would continue and the loan would be paid back."

That clearly states that a team/company has responsibility for repayment, NOT an individual.  Are you seriously saying you think your response there could be read as the loan being to a single person?

Is this "initial owner" - with the interesting middle names of "and Stormy" also schizophrenic - referring to himself as "we are a multi-person team"?  If it was a personal loan then only the individual borrowing would have responsibility to repay.

"A loan FOR a business is not the same thing as a loan TO a business."

It's a loan for ziggap, but not taken on behalf of the company. Retroactive change? Genuine intentions? You be the judge.

Ryan and Stormy Schreiber are two people. They are a married couple who for all intents and purposes are one financial unit. There are other additional members of the team as well. These include a primary developer, a designer, payment processing partners, and so on.

The main point is that throughout the BTCJam listing it is portrayed as a loan to a business not to an individual - to the extent that even after "an unexpected death" the loan would be repaid (it's unstated but reasonable to assume that even after an expected death it would as well).  Now the argument could be made that this was just explaining how the business would continue - rather than how the loan would be repaid - however, were this a personal loan then:

1.  It should clearly have be stated that the loan is NOT to Ziggap but to a (specified) individual.
2.  Instead of discussing how the business would avoid failure, the focus should have been on how the individual would repay IF the business failed (which is irrelevant if the loan is to a business - but totally relevant if the loan is to an individual).

The initial release was a blazing success, and the next release is tomorrow.

Please note that the market demand is starting to grow above the expected next release price. There are already several walls growing. This means that you might have to place your bids higher than .0001 if you want to get them filled.

how many shares will be in tomorrows release?

He had said 5mil. :)

thanks, I didn't see that.

The time of the next release has been specified to sometime Wednesday afternoon.

what time zone?

Central

The same bitcoin-otc identity is being used on both the loan and in this IPO.

From BTCJAM:
Credentials
OTC: aethero
Forum: ZIGGAP

I hardly need to point out the sad history of bitcoin companies which get sold and then suffer a catastrophic failure. There is also the  action of handing over the user data to a new owner without informing the customers.

Looks like they sold all the IPO shares so it doesnt really matter but just from a few things Ive discovered here I would avoid using their site and/or investing in it. Theres too many red flags.

Nah, the company wasn't sold at all.  I got that impression from his talk of an "original owner" - as though there'd been a subsequent owner prior to the IPO.

But still amusing how he claims a loan defined as a business loan and taken out in the name of ZIGGAP was somehow a personal loan to one of the multiple individuals/team referred to in the loan description and discussion.

What seems to have happened is they tried raising funds via a loan on BTCJam, it wasn't selling out fast enough so they split it into two loans - one of which got filled.  They then abandoned trying to fill the second loan and did this IPO instead and are now trying to reclassify the loan as a personal loan.  Reclassing the loan as personal one makes little odds so long as it's paid - and with no assets declared for the company they can strip its existing wallets to repay it (which is why it's always a gamble investing in a company that doesn't produce ANY accounts whatsoever prior to IPO - you can quite easily be buying something with zero assets).

The rush to grab funds whilst giving minimal information is always a red flag to me.  Though it by no means always means scam - just means they want cash before people dig too deep or have the time (or information) to do proper math.

Maybe I can clear things up and address some of the confusion.

This is aethero speaking, but not always aethero.

The company has never changed ownership.

It has been the same team of people all the way through. The confusion comes from attempting to keep the entity (ZIGGAP) and myself (aethero) separate from each other. This is a company forum account. I speak under it. Other members of the team speak under it. I am assuming responsibility of the loan myself financially so the company does not have to bear that burden. It will not affect dividends or the company books at all.

I think to help some of the confusion from now on posts will be signed by their respective authors.


-aethero

Could you please answer one more question: it says in the description

"Should the company be sold, the full amount of the purchase price will be evenly distributed amongst the 50,000,000 shares."

Now I understand that what I'm about to say may sound extremely cynical, but bear with me: what is to stop you reneging on this?

If the company was sold, then you guys are saying that you would distribute all the money from the sale (which is now your personal money) from the sale to the 50M 'profit shareholders', this is correct? Therefore this is a personal promise and not a promise from ZigGap? I'm not saying it's a bad thing but it needs to be clear that we're trusting the owners personally and not ZigGap.

Technically speaking there is nothing to keep me from reneging on that, but I would like to point out a couple of things:

• I realize this wouldn't have been possible without fund raising assistance. There would be no company to sell without it. That will not be forgotten.
• If there was a way for me to legally enforce that promise, I would.
• It's not like I would be giving away everything. I plan to personally retain a substantial quantity of what is released on BitFunder
• If this organization were to be sold I would want to start another one related to Bitcoin. If I broke that promise who would ever trust me again?

I believe anyone who did their part in making this a reality is equally deserving of what comes out. That is a belief that will not change.

-aethero

^

I had a couple of questions about profit booking.

Revenue is in USD. But dividend paying will be in BTC.
So...
Do you retain the profits in USD? Or convert it to BTC instantly?

Also, will ZigGap allow people to start selling their bitcoins too?
If so, its there any timeline for it?

Two questions:


1. How many shares will be released in the next release (Wednesday 2/27/2013) ?

2. How many shares have been released till now ? I can read in the description 10.000.000 "Early-Bird" but dont know if more shared have been releseaded apart of those.

This was something that was brought up in the Btc-e chat room by some investors of the loan. They threw a couple coins in and seen the loan was about to close out and were promising them to other people. They then went and had the loan split in two so the first half would fund fully and then they could try to fill the 2nd half. People complained to Btcjam about it and they said it would not happen again. Deprived was right saying the loan never filled. Think it got a total of 10% before it closed out.
So who exactly is responsible for that loan?
If the company was sold why did the proceeds not go to paying off the loan?

We already have the code for this in place, it's just a matter of doing the proper legal research. Once we have properly written terms of service and sales agreements in place it's simply a matter of flipping a switch. So yes. Very soon (weeks) after the release.



The release will be 5 million.

Until now 10 million have been released.

The next release is TODAY at 3:00 PM CST (GMT -6).

This is in approximately 1.5 hours.

The amount has been confirmed at  .0001

What advantage does Ziggap offer over services like BitInstant and Coinbase?

There are several. Just off the top of my head:

• Rates   - We charge less than BitInstant
• Speed  - Right now there is a long waiting period for CoinBase
• Service - Do you know of another service which offers dedicated phone, live chat, and ticket support?

hehehe

I am proud to say the next 5 million units have all sold.

Due to some members of the community voicing their opinions of ZigGap's reputation, a decision was made to postpone the
release of the last 7.5 million shares until we feel the community has accepted ZigGap, and that we have further proven ourselves.

When the next 7.5 million share are released, they will probably be close to whatever the market rate at the time is.
We have seen from Satoshi Dice releases that selling at far below the market rate can be detrimental to the pricing
and the market.

-aethero

I'm sure y'all will post it here far in advance as well :)

Just to be clear ...

- https://bitfunder.com/asset/ZigGap

Do you mean last 7.5 million or next 7.5 million ?

If I understood well there are still 50M - 10M (initial) - 5M (last) - 2.5M (reserved) = 32.5M shares left to release.

There was a mistake in numbers.

10m + 5m = 15m have been released to the public.

Another 22.5m (+15m = 32.5m) will be released to the public at a later date.

2.5m will be maintained by ZigGap for for for growth and maintenance purposes.

The remaining 15m is retained by employees as salaries.

-aethero

I see another mistake here: 22.5m + 15m = 37.5m (not 32.5m as you say)

So, not remaining 15m as salaries but only 10m

Also I didnt see before nothing about being retained 10m shares as salaries (is this first news ?)

There was a math mistake on my part. I was talking with Aethero on IRC and he copied and pasted that.

Should be 17.5 more will be released. And it would be 15m shares, not 10m as salary.

Basically, the agreement should be that 32.5m of 50m would be sold off to bring in funds needed to grow and expand the company.
Another 2.5m would be held by the company to continue expansion as long as it's needed.
The remaining 15m are paid out as salaries. "No salaries will be paid as an expense, and are only paid as dividend payments."

The 15m shares are salary compensation by the company for prior investments/work/time put into the company, as well as covering all future salaries needed to operate the company. That is how I understand it is supposed to work.

With the 17.5m being delayed, my understanding is that any profits maintained by those shares will be held by the company and used for growth and maintenance until they are sold. I believe that those funds will be treated the same as for the 2.5m shares, in which should they not be needed, will be dispersed among the remaining shares.

This is correct


-aethero

I feel this is a very good decision.

How are you going to decide on the price once the time has come?

I made some rough calculations (based on a share-price of 0.0001 BTC/share):

Given you make a monthly profit of $1000 (conservative?), dividends are 0.62% per month, 7.44% p.a.
Given you make a monthly profit of $2000 (optimistic?), dividends are 1.24% per month, 15.9% p.a.
Given you make a monthly profit of $3000 (very optimistic?), dividends are 1.86% per month, 24.7% p.a.
Given you make a monthly profit of $5000 (ultra-optimistic?), dividends are 3.1% per month, 44.25% p.a.

This can be a good investment, even in bitcoin-terms.

What are your expectation of monthly profits?

I see you're updating current profits daily in bitfunder description. Are you going to keep doing that?

Yes we plan to update this occasionally as time allows. I have made an update for today.

Gross numbers for the month of March. Cumulative:

Gross numbers for the month of March. Cumulative:

As of March 1st, 2013: 

Volume:
$4,002.34
Gross profit (after Bitcoin cost, before other expenses)
$134.73

-aethero

when is the next planned dividend payment?

First planned dividend is start of April for March profits.

thank you!

So this is the profit (before other expenses) for exactly 1 day?

How high are "other expenses"?

Even if these are $34 per day, this already puts us roughly into the "very optimistic" category from above with a sound 25%/year ROI.

Definitely a promising start!

If I read correctly, I think the company is in the US and the books are USD.  Don't forget to include taxes in the calculations.  I think you'd have to find out the tax rate from the Ziggap folks, as it's an LLC and taxes pass through to the owners in most cases, thus making the rate dependent on their other income sources if any.

Depends to an extent how they're treating payments to investors for accounting purposes.  They can't treat them as dividends (or they'd be running an unlicensed security) but can they treat is as loan interest (which could be paid pre-tax)?  Or will it just have to be paid off the books (i.e. after taxes paid in full as though it were payment to them personally).

Just to keep things honest, I assume that when the first month has passed, we'll also get a numbers showing the increased profit in BTC because you are converting your USD income to BTC regularly. This, of course, assumes BTC value rises a month from today...

I recommend a weekly dividend payment just so USD is converted to BTC much more frequently than once a month.

February saw the BTC value go from 20 to 33. Even if we don't expect BTC to appreciate by 13% per week, almost everyone over here is bullish about bitcoins. So converting USD to BTC at a higher frequency would be prudent.

Agreed, aethero already seems to be keeping tabs daily, so a weekly payout wouldn't be out of line. It also make the stock that much more appealing, allowing for reinvestment regularly.

I second/third this motion (yes I know we have no voting rights)

I'm so excited about Bitcoin I can hardly sleep.  So instead of sleeping last night, I was wondering if there was any value that ZigGap could add to the up-and-coming Bitcoin ATM industry.

I expect there will be several ATM manufacturers scrambling to come on line, and they'll need a good way of keeping their ATMs' USD and BTC inventories healthy.  Perhaps there is a role for ZigGap here?  Just something to think about instead of sleep :)

Interesting spin.  Call it a loan with zero payment toward principal?  That would definitely be deductible.

Gross numbers for the month of March. Cumulative:

As of March 2nd, 2013:  

Volume:
$8,975.88
Gross profit (after Bitcoin cost, before other expenses, before taxes)
$302.45

We expect this to grow geometrically as we get new payment processors on board.

-aethero

Guys.  A loan TO a business is not the same thing as FOR a business.

The btcjam loan was taken out by RYAN AND STORMY, to start ZIGGAP.  The loan was not taken out by ZigGap LLC, but by Ryan and Stormy.  They are two different legal entities, and therefore debt owed by (or to) one does not correlate to the other.  This it the purpose of an LLC.

Cool story bro.

Please point to where in the BTCJAM listing it indicates the loan is a personal one not to the business?  Do you notice that the account name taking it is out is ZIGGAP?  Do you notice that when asked what will happen if the business struggles he talks about what the BUSINESS will do not about what personal assets he has that would be realised to pay off the debt?

Do you notice it's listed as a business loan not a personal one?  Do you realise that if you go to a bank and ask for money to be loaned to you personally to invest in a business then it will be a personal loan not a business one?

Do you notice that earlier in this very thread he's stated he's assuming personal responsibility for the debt?  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=146611.msg1562542#msg1562542)

Do you realise that you can't assume responsibility for something if you're already responsible for it?

Are you any closer to getting the point?

The debt was to the company but he's now taking on personal responsibility to pay it.  That was agreed (including by him) a page or so back.  So long as he repays it, that's end of story.  If he defaults then it gets messy - but if he defaults then it gets messy regardless of whose name the debt is in.  And there's no reason why he should default as he'll have what was left of the loaned capital to make repayments from until dividends kick in.

You are missing the point entirely. It was listed as a BUSINESS loan and the company name was used to infer that it was involved.

If it was a personal loan it is listed wrongly on the site and btcjam might want to move it.

The loan description is highly misleading.

Whether they pay the loan back is not the point people are making.

I had a short panic attack a few minutes ago when someone on Reddit mentioned that Ziggap had defaulted on their loan.

That hasn't happened, and I have challenged that statement as false.

However, reading through this thread, it almost seemed that Ziggap was distancing themselves from their BTCJam listing. That's not going to happen either, especially since:

and
and

But I do see where the confusion perhaps arose. Could we get a clarification that Ziggap will in fact be repaying their obligations in full, on-time, as promised?

As opposed to something like this:

You guys seem like you WANT there to be a problem. The loan is good standing, and aethero is one of the most trusted names in the otc wot. There are more useful questions to be asking.

For example:
How will Ziggap verify its expenses and revenue? Will Aethero allow 3rd party audits, or somehow share details of financials in a more convincing way than typing text into a forum post?

I guess this should be done, but this is pretty pointless to talk about IMO.  Aethero has been around for a long time and has over 500 points on OTC (all from very trustworthy people).  I don't think he'll default on his loan.

The loan has not been defaulted on. As a matter of fact a 108 BTC payment was made just recently on February 28th.


We will be releasing full financial reports with breakdowns of expenses and income.

-aethero

i noticed that buying bitcoins through Bank of America is back. would you mind explaining why it went away temporarily? also the same question applies to the now non-existent option to buy bitcoins through Chase.

cheers!

We've decided to go with weekly dividends for the month of March. A dividend equal to 858.77 USD has been paid out today, March 7th. Additional dividends will be paid on the 14th, 21st, and 28th.

Awesome!

Dividend yield of 0.39% in the first week is not bad. Pretty impressive.

Hopefully we can grow quicker than the BTC / USD growth rate.

Today's dividend was a very pleasant surprise- thank you very much.  :)

+1

Thanks for taking our input seriously and switching to weekly dividend payments! Let's hope this stimulates the share price in the upwards direction too

This may have been answered, when you do profits do you take all the USD profits at the end of the week and then go purchase bitcoins for dividend purchases? Would it not be easier to just use the USD profit originally to buy bitcoins and hold those until the end of the week. It would be less vulnerable to market flux and would be more honest return in my opinion.
For example On a Monday a customer purchases 1 btc from you guys at 4.49% and that day the market rate was $37/BTC that means you would charge him $38.66 for $1.66$ profit. Could you not just immediately use that money to purchase ~1.0449btc 1 for the customer and .0449btc profit (minus fees and such). As opposed to perhaps the market jumping a bit on Friday to 43$/BTC and you can only purchase ~.0386btc profit. Now I realize this could flip the other way and end up benefiting but I would think it would be better to try to keep the books in btc and not try to gamble for as much of the process as possible since dividends and payments are in btc right? Would love to hear a counterargument to this as I'm really interested in this security.

Why does Ziggap require me to create an account to purchase coins?

Check out the page of your main competition here in Australia: https://www.bitinnovate.com/buy-bitcoins/ it's one click from the homepage, no registration, and I only have to fill in 3 form fields. In addition, their buy/ask price is displayed right there so I know how many fees I would pay. They charge 7.9% comission but I still pay it because it's just so damn easy to use.

I don't mean to be overly critical; Ziggap is doing lots of really good work but you don't display your fee on the page, then you present me with a registration form with 6-7 fields. That's old school web design, man! I want instant gratification.

It seems that ziggap's services aren't quite as competitive as they should be in terms of fees.. I'm certain that y'all have been doing lots of work to roll out new features and slash fees and what not.

That's why there haven't been additional posts or a continuation of your daily profit reports right?

To put it simply: Time. Or a lack thereof.

We've been growing so fast I can't keep up. I've had to increase rates in order to lower volume so that I can focus on getting the proper foundation in place for rapid expansion further down the line, when we're ready for it.


-aethero

thank you aethero for your prompt response!

sounds like good news to me ;D

Congrats on the first $100,000 in sales!

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1am3bt/ziggap_reaches_100000_in_sales_to_celebrate_weve/

coinbase is having a hell of a time right now.  ZigGap needs to figure out how to do bank transfers to BTC.  That's the only reason I have used Coinbase, but this week, their service is terrible.

ZigGap!  This is your opportunity!

Ta for the divvy!

Growing pains are good news.  Thanks for the much appreciated update.

Also, love the weekly dividends.


Absolutely.  From the sound of it, people are more concerned with convenience and speed than with fees, at the moment.  With Bitcoin prices rising so quickly, a few percentage points higher fees vs a 4-day wait is a no brainer.

The bank transfer is a big thing for me.  I really don't have another option to buy bitcoins.  I don't live in a city or near a cash deposit place, but I can easily move money via my bank account.

This is what paypal does, and it makes it really easy to use, IMO.  If ZigGap could do it, too, and maybe keep the fees under 3%, I think they would make a boat-load of sales really fast.  Everyone and their dog is complaining about Coinbase.

Don't hesitate, ZigGap, STRIKE!

Can we get an update? Thanks!

Their website's down, they haven't been selling bitcoins for most of the week and people (or is it Ziggap themselves?) are dumping their shares at near zero.

Other than that, it's all going great.

But I wouldn't expect a big dividend this week.

Is it going to be 10btc again..

Seems like they've sold ~2.5 million shares after the IPO. (Unless they transferred it internally to someone - can't make that out. But after the IPO, I had marked 2 addresses having 35 million shares. Now their total is a bit over 32.5 million shares.)

These seem to be the promoter's shares to me. Total is lower than 35 million.

https://bitfunder.com/assetlist
1ByB69QWDduwPsuLqhk8KuyrJZtpPNkKGg
1EQV7kGC3Lf5PYBPY1dAHxizcadgkBGfEu

Site still down, no announcement why.   :P

No dividend either.

Well there won't be a dividend as:

a) The website hasn't been much up for the last week to do any actual trade.
b) It's rather obvious the cash has been used for living expenses/paying down debt - leaving little/nothing to actually operate with.

You only have to look at what little figures have been produced to work out why b) pretty much HAS to be the case.  But here's the logic behind that conclusion for those unable to work it out themselves:

The company/owners were clearly short of cash (not necessarily assets - but liquid cash) when the IPO was launched.  This is a certainty as, were they not cash-strapped, they wouldn't have taken out the BTCjam loan at a high rate of interest in the first place.  This is further confirmed by the indecent haste of the IPO, the early-bird pricing (which is great for raising SOME cash fast - but absolutely horrible for actually selling out) and the total lack of disclosure of what assets the company had.

The business is one which needs significant funds to operate - moving funds around isn't instant, so ability to trade volume is constrained by capital.

Company founders were short of cash but had taken on the commitment to repay the BTCjam loan AND still had to make enough profit to pay their living expenses.

Now look at what profit was actually being made - and consider what portion of that would ctually go the founders (via their shares).  Is that enough to pay living expenses AND repay the BTCjam loan?  Nope it isn't.

So they either need another source of cash or have to raid working capital.  But if they had another available source of cash they wouldn't have needed the BTCjam in the first place - any other source of capital would have been much cheaper.  So it seems likely (not QUITE certain) that they had to steal from company capital (it IS stealing) - which then made the company unable to increase volume/profit leading into a death-spiral.

BTC rising when the debt has been converted to USD just makes a bad situation totally untenable.

The sale of extra shares at below the price they were supposed to sell at is just a desperate last-ditch measure to try to prop up something that's collapsed beyond repair (haven't checked but was a payment imminently due on the BTCjam loan?).  The structure of the IPO pricing meant that once prices stagnated they would always struggle to rise to a level where new shares could sell - as there's a bunch of people who bought at early-bird prices who can sell at a profit and would do so at the first sign of trouble to lock in profits.

And silly thing is the business likely had potential - it just needed an IPO structured so as to have a reasonable chance of actually selling out.

But no need to worry everyone - there's a fresh IPO up for you to invest in which also:

a) Had a big BTCjam debt
b) Won't disclose assets/wallet balances
c) Has shovelled out shares at "early-bird" prices so as to raise some capital fast without having to answer questions first.

And this time it'll all work out great - honestly!

Ain't the 'Early Bird' share setups mainly a way to give the knowledgeable insiders a first neat profit on their shares, while draining the available IPO-funds in the market from the venture into the sell walls just below the second IPO-batch prices.

Also the recent big volume sell order against a ridiculous low price smells like it.

Aethero, it seems better to give your investors some bad news, than release no information at all. At least your shareholders can act (un)wisely on it and move on or adhere to your venture. I'll took my BTC-loss already to cover the EUR-investment and still give it a chance by holding onto ca. 20% of my max holdings.

P.S. Except the forementioned IPO, there seems at least one other asset on Bitfunder being devastated by the exchange risk of its loan(s). Accompanied by extended online silence of the issuer. Probably to be followed by the holder of these kind of 'low risk investments'.

Flipping shares is definitely part of my game (and I have arguments for why early bird shares can be a good thing, but we'll save that for later), but I held my shares in Ziggap for a while after the IPO, because of aethero's otc reputation, projected divs, and potential to be a half-decent company.

However, after the two suspiciously neat dividends of .0000002, no communication, and the downtime, I decided to unload everything I had left. While I'm not the one that drove down market price, I'm sure what I did primed that to happen. Some other seller sold deep into obnoxiously low bids not longer after I bailed out, and now the price is crippled severely.

Their next loan payment is due on the 1st I think, so we'll see what happens. Hopefully, everything is fine, and I'll regret bailing out.

Either way, hopefully the bitcoin community is learning that it's time for a higher standard of business.

It's pretty clear the massive sell right down to 20 satoshis/share was by the issuer - there are 2 big blocks of shares which can ONLY be asset issuer's plus unissued and those have fallen whilst officially no shares were being sold.

Well done on getting out in time - I'm one of those who got low-ball bids filled by the dump.  The bids were there to pick up panic sells of course - just wasn't expecting it to be the issuer who panicked and sold (yet).  I'd (mis)calculated that the shit wouldn't hit the fan until next month for this security - so hadn't cleared my position yet.

Assume you mean Bakewell.  Loans in danger there are personal ones he took out, not ones from the company.  His company's actually fine - or would be, were he not stealing from it by dumping shares that weren't his to sell.

He has a past record of hiding from problems rather than facing them, so I wouldn't expect him to show his face too soon.  But I'd be less concerned about that one than this one (though still, obviously, pretty concerned).

Not until the money parts them.

Flipping is fine and fair in playing the market, but it hurts raising capital for the venture. Anyway, it doesn't matter if the issuer sells his already owned (virtual) shares to keep the proceeds. Not claiming it's the case, though.

If you plan well ahead and make everyone aware of the upcoming opportunity with early bird shares within a reasonable time frame, I suppose early bird shares can support a venture's marketing.

@Deprived - I've seen your comments in Bakewell's thread on the share dumping, but in general missed the nuances of the loan. Intermingling of the personal situation of the issuer(s) and the managed asset is probably a risk in ZIGGAP as well as in Bakewell.

You're getting pretty good at this, color me jealous.

Early-bird shares aren't, of themselves, a bad thing.  The way they're being done on recent Bitfunder IPOs IS a shockingly bad thing.

There's two things wrong with it (and they're linked):

1.  The depth of the discounts,
2.  The lack of advance notice.

Point 2 directly contributes to point 1.  IF the company gave advance notice of the launch then when they placed the shares there'd be bids already there raising the price at which they actuallly sold.  That would raise more funds for the company and provide additional information on which to base further pricing.  Dumping them without warning 100% leaves money on the table.

I can think of three reasons for doing it the way it's been done:

1.  An immediate need for cash right now - not in a few days.
2.  To allow insiders to profit (at the expense of the actual company and genuine investors)
3.  Because the details of the IPO wouldn't fare well with public examination before shares were sold.

ALL of those are terrible from an investor's perspective.  Numbers 1/3 are good for the company if (and only if) it's in a desperate situation and/or not viable.

I'm open to other explanations of how leaving cash on the table helps a good company - especially when by selling at the early-bird price (rather than the higher price that would have been obtained with prior notice) they tend to reduce/suppress further demand by setting an apparent low valuation on the shares.

Whilst I'm on the subject of design flaws in the way IPOS are being done, can we please stop with all this crap about selling shares of profits not of the company?  It doesn't protect against any issues related to unlicensed securities trading (a share of profit makes it a security without an associated equity entitlement needed).  It appears to just be a way in which 'companies' think they can get away with dividending out random amounts without producing any books - and without identifying what the company actually owns prior to IPO.

Either sell shares or issue bonds - not this abortion that lies somewhere in-between that is becoming fashionable.

S.DICE did it - but their operations are transparent and their cost of doing business negligible.  For most other businesses it's totally unsuitable - as assessing/confirming profits NEEDS proper accounts and also details of assets.

If you won't disclose assets, won't sell equity, won't give voting rights then take out a loan (bond) as you clearly have no interest in actually having shareholders.

We cannot exclude complete financial incompetence in this case.

Well yeah - but then a company led by financial incompetents wouldn't meet my criteria of how it helps "a good company".

One way is that Early Bird pricing instills short-term investor confidence, however unjustified that may be. A successful IPO sells, and there are obviously a lot of blind followers still out there. They take the brisk sales as a cue that other people are willing to risk investment. Even if you know for a fact that investment is from flippers, it's not like those flippers would bankroll a whole first round of an IPO if they didn't think it was worth the price of the next round.

Take AMC for example, where were the flippers on that one? That IPO was dead in the water because it was utterly deserved. If flippers decided to hop in, he may have had a chance at more uptake, but they simply weren't willing to take that risk, thus no validation was provided for less confident investors to follow along and buy in after the big boys.

Also consider that many flippers, like myself, do actually invest "long-term" (there is no true long term in bitcoin investing imo) in that very asset as well. As a matter of fact, I have held shares in every IPO I flipped right up until the point I felt that business was going to start resulting in a loss for me. Sometimes I even waited too long and got stuck, but that's not because of early bird pricing, it's because most bitbusinesses just suck in the end.

The flippers may take a profit, but they also bankroll the business. In this sense, a flipper is no less "genuine" an investor than someone who just wants to buy and hold 100% of their investment. There are "real world" situations like this on Wall Street as well. Sure, this can feel a little like insider trading, but all you need to do is stay in chat rooms and watch the securities forum for announcements. Is that time-consuming? Hell yes. Can it be profitable? Hell yes. But I have no concern for those that don't want to work as hard as myself, yet expect to make as much profit trading.

My first instinct getting into bitcoin investing was to seek out the best sources of information, and watch them like a hawk. Combine that with a little good sense and you can do pretty well.

Regarding the concern over insider trading, I have yet to see any shares of an IPO be sold without at least IRC/forum notice, but I also don't audit that behavior. Surely there is SOME info that is shared about an IPO beforehand with some people, as I doubt Ukto leaves 100% of his vetting to himself. Either way, if there are enough "insiders" and flippers, and flash IPOs become heavily chastised, it will probably just result in more businesses making private deals first, and then IPOing at higher overall prices, denying all opportunity for flippers without large bankrolls and insider connections.

Is that better or worse? Honestly I don't care, I'll seek out the best info resources for the best profits and keep doing my thing within whatever dynamic boundaries are created.

Please don't confuse any of my perspectives above to mean that I don't think there's room for improvement on ALL fronts of bitcoin business and investment. There probably are a number of alternative ways to handle things that are better than the status quo, not limited to different pricing "schemes", better vetting processes, better accountability of revenue and expenses, etc, etc, etc. I'm simply saying that it's not hard for me to find some rationale in early bird pricing.

They are online now...

This would be exactly how the BitBet IPO worked out. From the contract (http://mpex.co/?mpsic=S.BBET):


This was announced a few days in advance, the IPO itself was pretty exciting (and pretty successful). S.BBET is currently trading significantly over the 0.00001 earliest bird price, and I'd think this all comes to a fine example of how to do early bird correctly.


Indeed.


They did?!

I'm going to assume that ziggap plans to release the dividend on April 1st. However, such a deviation should have been previously announced

Inb4 april fools  ::)

So... this is a scam ?

considering i had 40btc in this. sigh :(

I wish I only had 40 BTC in this.  Once again, I get scammed.  I'm lucky I have any Bitcoins left at all.

Tell me about it! They owe me 68 BTC over the next 10 months, hoping I will actually see that again! Reading this topic hasn't filled me with a lot of confidence.

I just talked to ziggap, and they had a couple pieces of hardware go down.  They made good on a payment to me today for $1400 (not related to ziggap directly), and last weekend WAS Easter.

I expressed your concerns and I'm told they will be taken care of by end of business Wednesday (if not sooner).

-EP

As for me, I just PMed aethero on IRC.


Note: Non-authed, but his nick is password protected. People should probably standby until an official announcement.

How does lightning take out a laptop? 

I approve of this message. ;)

-EP

I assume it was plugged on the charger.

Really sorry guys n girls. The transcript is an amatuer behaviorists week-end homework. Its full of holes.

Well just go on #bitcoin-otc and query aethero on the matter then.

I'ma link this here. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106391.0

I'll wait for an official announcement before fireselling..

I've had this happen before... not fun. Motherboard was fried, didn't even boot to the BIOS.

Thing is, bitcointalk.org works just fine on an iphone, android phone, etc.  Register a new account if you lost your login, whatever.

Hardware failure is no excuse for the lack of some kind of announcement.

+1 


Communication is so hard these days...

Aaaaaand it's down again.

The bitcoin business scene is depressing.

People are either dropping the ball, scamming, or they are legit but act outraged/offended at why people are constantly skeptical of them dropping the ball or scamming.

I just sold all my shares at a massive loss.  I'm going to go out on a limb and assume this company is insolvent.  No other excuse for what they've done.

Calling it. Time of death 10:12PM EST.

eagerly awaiting aethero's return

so... ziggap is returning soon?

Only a few hours left of Wednesday.

Yes we are.

ZIGGAP is not dead.

This is a temporary situation.

I have not taken anyone's money, I have not run away, ZIGGAP is not insolvent, and I plan to resume operations as soon as possible.

I sincerely apologize about the sudden lack of communication. A combination of hardware failure and emergency personal family issues has resulted in the current situation.
ZIGGAP has practically been a 1 man operation. If something happens which results in that 1 man being indisposed the entire business is unable to function which is what is happening now. This is unacceptable to me, and anyone else who has a stake in ZIGGAP's success. Steps will be taken to remedy this so it doesn't occur again.

Proof that the company has not dumped any of it's shares can be provided upon request. I sold a few of my personal shares - I needed the funds because of the same personal issues. I have never and would never use company funds or assets for personal reasons and that has not happened.

Most likely the issues which have resulted in my absence will be resolved sooner rather than later. I will bring the site back up, resume normal operations, and bring in additional person(s) in order to prevent something like this from occurring again. I was actually seeking a partner for this venture at the time I had to take the site down.

At the moment I don't have a solid ETA on when I'll be able to move forward but it's looking like 1-2 weeks. This is not set in stone and if my situation changes I will let you know as soon as possible. My suggestion is that you get the cheap shares while you can.

If you are a ZIGGAP asset holder and want to know about the personal issues please feel free to send me a private message. Please include proof of your holdings.

Thanks,

-aethero

Thanks for the update aethero, sorry to hear you are suffering from some serious personal issues. I hope that you/your family are OK again soon and that you can find someone to help manage Ziggap with you so it can become a great trading platform as it's shown a lot of promise so far :)

thanks for the update aethero. glad to see you're still alive and can't wait to see the site back up and running. good luck with your adventures.

thanks for your clarifications

Thanks for the update! And thank you to everyone who sold at dirt cheap prices :).

Here's what I know, in summary format:
His BTCJam loan is 5 days overdue.  The payment that is due is around $15.4k (as of now).

He was on IRC yesterday but didn't really say anything useful.  He's currently MIA on IRC.  Usually, he idles on there 24/7.

I used to work for ZigGap.  I'm not going to say exactly how many shares he owns, as I don't think it's public information, but it's a pretty fair amount.  Less than half, but more than a fifth.

When I worked at ZigGap, I don't think there was more than 15-20 orders a day.  I'm not sure how much he makes on that, but considering all the downtime, and the dividends he pays, is that even ENOUGH to pay back the loan every month?  

I have no idea if this rumor is true.  I do know, however, that his site is down AND his loan is 5 days overdue.  I also know that he usually makes dividend payments every Thursday.  He hasn't made one this week.  I ALSO know that his site has been down for the past couple of days.

All of this, added together, really seems suspicious.  I have a feeling that he might have ran.  I don't think that he did this to scam us, but because he didn't have another choice.

HOWEVER:  There is a REALLY good chance that this is all some misunderstanding.  Don't lose hope yet!

Got the payment!

A pretty website does not a good business make.

The fact that the second and third dividends were both exactly 10 BTC tells me that he was just paying out a dividend to keep the shareholders quiet, not because ZigGap had actually made any money. I've seen this strategy before with other, now defunct, Bitcoin ventures.

Since the BTCJam loan is overdue, it's only further confirmation that ZigGap is broke.

I sincerely hope that nothing tragic happened to him, family wise, but I know if I was trying to hide from my creditors I would use the family excuse because it's not socially acceptable to question someone's claims when it comes to unfortunate family matters. Even I have to tread carefully while typing this out, lest I be criticized as an inconsiderate bastard.  ;)

The lightning excuse is only icing on the cake; I had to laugh at that one.  :D

You put the family issue conundrum very well. Tis, and always will be taboo, which is the attraction of use, of course.

The lightning tosh has kept me entertained for a while. I appreciate that being electrically qualified does not allow that person to fully understand the physics of lightning, but i can tell you, there's every physical reason why a laptop (and its hard drive) cannot be fried, plugged in or not, unless your sitting under a tree with it. Im fascinated to know what else got fried??

Just received my loan payment on BTCJam.

Me too :) Given that it has always been early before, its not the end of the world that it was a few days late. Hopefully the Ziggap website will be back up and running again soon :)

Same.

I'm at home. Things are wrapping up a bit sooner than I expected so ZIGGAP should be up and operational towards the early end of the time frames I quoted, if not sooner. A few things are still up in the air. I will update when I can.

Good to hear. There should definitely be a second person to process things, just in case. People are buying bitcoins en masse right now. Would be great to have ZIGGAP online.

What exactly was that timeline?

1-2 weeks since the 3... so 10-17 April. Guess we're at the end of it without news. Would be sad to see Ziggap go.

He also hasn't paid dividends from what I've seen.

He owes me money on BTCJam :(. 

Oh that's fantastic!  Two weeks is... April 17th?


Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, buying them right now!


Even earlier than April 17th?  Awesome, good thing I bought those cheap shares...


...or not.

 :o or the owner has passed away.

Was he struck by lightning, romerun? Such a shame he wasn't grounded!

Someone on OTC apparently did some work for him 4 days ago - maybe fixing the website?

http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=aethero

Being a natural born moron/risktaker I am willing to buy a few shares if someone is selling. Of course at rock bottom prices, since I have no more info on the state of the company then anyone. (Also share holder in Crypto-Trade so I guess I'm just throwing BTC at whatever muppet venture I can these days). PM me if you are reputable member/owner and want to offload a few BTC worth of shares.

I have some BTCJam debt.  PM'ing you now.

Holy balls of jesus, the website is back up.

Well aethero was well rated. Hope that's news whatever happened to him have gone better.

Glad to see the website is back. Hopefully he'll gives us some news soon and he can put everything back in order. Would have been silly to put a working business website in the dustbin.

This is one of these moments when I'm thinking. Darn: It seems I was correct, why didn't I buy more ;)

Heh, me too. At least I held, and didn't panic sell. But now I'm dreaming of that '5 zero' ask list :)

Ziggap, BtcQuick and BitPride all seem to have recovered a little. We need a name for them.. the three musketeers? The three ugly sisters (ok that one's a little mean ;) )

3 Ugly ducklings?

The three horsemen of the Bitpocalypse? An alive website, does not a working company make.

would be nice if we can hear from ziggap a bit of the current situation and the future plan

Uh, let me ask you this:
Would you want to buy BTC from a website that disappears for 2 weeks at a time?  That just stops paying dividends?

IMO, it doesn't matter that the website is up.  ZigGap is over at this point.

It's highly unlikely that Ziggap is "over". Bitfloor has closed this past week, Coinbase is having issues, and BitInstant is in dire need of competition. If it comes back to life, Ziggap's future looks quite bright, actually.

You're living in cloud cuckoo land.

Remember that Aethero has a personal commitment to repay the BTCjam loan.  Yet his finances were so dismal that he had to sell shares of the company into tiny bids to raise a few BTC.  You think he did that whilst Ziggap had hundred of BTC sitting around?  Seomehow he managed to raise the funds to pay off last month's BTCjam payment - but where's the next one coming from?  Do you really believe this was down to some personal emergency?  If so, I suggest you look at when he started selling shares - it was NOT when he vanished, it was earlier.

Do you honestly believe a lightning strike took out his laptop - in the process somehow removing his ability to regain his password here - and also jumped down his Internet connection and took the website down?  Did you miss that ZIggap actually logged in but didn't post whilst he was saying on irc he needed to recover his password?

Here's what I had to say about it (to investors in my fund) BEFORE he showed up or commented at all (we had shares in it):


Note the bolded sentence at the end - which is a pretty accurate depiction of what actually happened.

Deprived,

Just from reading these boards, it seems you are involved with too many scam companies.

I would say 98% of the companies listed are scams.

Be careful.

Right now I am just invested in ASIC MINER because I cant find any other non scams out there. 

Thoughts?

Depends what you mean by a scam.

I'd say majority of companies (including this one) didn't start off with any intention to scam or defraud investors.  Most fail because of gross incompetence.  People believing they can run before they've properly learnt how to walk.  People exaggerating things to sell shares (take a look at OP for this one - he claims a dedicated team of professionals yet soon as problems start he's whining about it being a one-man operation).

As I run a fund that trades, and as the majority of companies are badly run I have no option but to trade in them.  Whilst trading doesn't have the same degree of exposure as investment (I don't EXPECT them to make a profit for me - my profit comes from their investors) I do necessarily have exposure when a company suddenly gos bad (more accurately, when it suddenly becomes visible to everyone that it's bad - most were rotten inside from the start).  I have to manage that risk - which so far I've done OK at.

There's other non-scam businesses out there besides ASIC-MINER.  Most will make a loss for you if you invest long-term, but they'll do so (fairly) honestly if that's any consolation.  And don't forget ASIC-MINER was a gamble when it started - there was a significant chance they'd be late/never to market.  That ASIC-MINER has done so well is largely down to the total incompetence/deceitful behaviour of two of their main rivals.

ZigGap is made up of aethero, his wife, and a programmer (at least when I left).

I see so you are trading more than investing.  Well that is certainly different than what I am doing.

Wish you luck. 

*Chirp* ?

I sold my debt.  Got just under 50% worth, which is a profit (as BTC went up a lot).

ZigGap is over.

On an unrelated note this spells the death of the OTC/WOT network. Aethero was one of the most trusted people I've ever heard of.

I guess everyone has their sell-out price. For Aethero, it was a million shares at 0.0001.

Sad.

I think it's best to just trade with people you know. 

Also, aethero has always been unstable.  See copumpkin's rating.  The reasons I quit ZigGap:

• Aethero was unstable and often went into rants
• He asked me to do things I wasn't comfortable with, such as go around the Internet and post spam about ZigGap :(

If anyone is interested I am selling my existing Ziggap stake on BTCJam for 14.5BTC, they are listed on there already to buy. They are worth 62BTC, well assuming they are paid.

Also, aethero owns way more than 1mil shares.  He owes 20%-30%.

I don't know the community very well yet. I've had solid experiences so far with Jah, bitcQuick, and ASICMINER-PT, BTCINVEST in terms of dividend payouts.

ZigGap was my only disappointment so far, but then I invested blindly so you win some you lose some :)

Do you have any recommendations in terms of individuals you trust who run assets on bitfunder? Just on a personal level I mean.

Not really.  I don't really do Bitcoin assets much.  ASICMINER seems good, but I don't know them on a personal level.

Ironically, the only one I knew was aethero.   :(

Yes, ASICMINER kicks ass, they actually went up quite a bit recently which makes up for the ZigGap stuff in a way =)

Glad you made a profit!  I sorta made a profit too, if I'm counting in USD. 

Who I REALLY feel bad for are the people who had 60+ BTC there.

I've also had a solid experience with JAH, although dividends have died down recently  I had two shares but sold them off around a week ago.  ASICMINER-PT is way overpriced for my tastes right now, but DeaDTerra runs a few legit assets and also audits for usagi.

aethero. return pl0x

Dude there is a different website at that domain now, and the aethero hasn't even posted in this thread in weeks. And even if he does it will be more bs excuses so the share prices on Bitfunder go back.

He's still got his otc rating (http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=aethero) btw..

ziggap.com:


nice.

i don't even get the caliber thing anymore

I invested over 400 BTC as I was sold quite a grandiose plan for growth and revenue. Instead I got fake dividends for three weeks before the site went offline. Until I get my investment returned to me, I will ensure anyone Ryan tries to conduct business with is warned of his history.

With the amount of trading that he has done I'm sure several people know his address etc. With the amount that he must owe in total with his BTCJam loan and these investments there must be enough worth chasing him for... although squeezing blood out of a stone is generally a difficult thing.

Personally he owes me about 60BTC through BTCJam, although I'd settle for 30BTC which is what is outstanding on the capital as I'm willing to ignore the interest owed.

Everyone knows his address, actually.  Coingenuity knows his phone number.  Also: Someone on OTC hired a PI that found him.

So, anyone knows what's up exactly/reached him?

Latest "contact" is a response on Reddit blaming me for identity theft (as well as coingenuity calling him and telling him about the Reddit thread):

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1crk44/did_anybody_else_just_see_this_posted_and_quickly/.


Other than that, he's disappeared with no news.  The site is also gone from the domain; see ziggap.com.  

Holy crap, this just gets weirder and weirder. For those of you that skimmed over danieldaniel's link, here are some excerpts


(This is allegedly *not* posted by aethero)

User 'ZIGGAP' then goes on to explain that they never posted that, yet they don't offer one single explanation as to what is happening with the business. Bizarre. Here are the posts http://www.reddit.com/user/ZIGGAP

Sadly, we are probably dealing with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder)  :-\

We're not psychologists, so I would try not to "diagnose" him with disorders.  I think it's more likely that aethero (Ryan) posted this, and his wife saw it and deleted it.

Anything's possible, but let's look at all the possibilities.

Right, I am not a psychiatrist and I am only guessing. It could also be anything else and your version indeed sounds more plausible.

I was thinking more towards paranoid schizophrenia :)

wtf, just bring the site online, i will forgive, how hard could that be.

Ryan is gone, IMO.  I don't think the site is coming back up :(.

You seem to be one of the few aethero's most trusted people (according to bitcoin-otc). Can you not contact him/his wife somehow and find out what is going on?

I think even knowing that Ryan is having a nervous breakdown would be a service to the community and aethero himself. He might get better at some point and wish to contribute to this bitcoin thing again..

I have his address and stuff, but I never had the need to ask for his phone number.  Coingenuity has his phone number and has called his wife, iirc.

Right, but he does not seem too active on the forum anymore:

CoinG is idling in IRC 99% of the time.  You can find him (and me) in #bitcoin-otc on irc.freenode.net.

In case anyone cares: Loan is officially late now.

dear aethero,
pay a dividend, and the loans, then people will stfu hard

love, lil choadzilla

He's gone.  Hasn't been heard from from 3+ weeks, dividends not being paid, loan not being paid.

I'm just glad I sold my debt :(

Can't give him a formal diagnosis, but as a member of the secret bitcoin illuminati, I can give him an informal diagnosis of paranoid delusions reminiscent of schizophrenia - the psychosis is strong in this one.

Can someone step up and start a new exchange-processing service?  I'll buy equity...how much depends on the timeline.

http://bitinstant.com

(Gareth: You should pay me!  I just referred him! :))

What the hell, gimme your bitcoin address

Oh, well, that was a joke.  If you insist, though: 16sziuRhFXSiwNsoouf4YUZLYGLA6tnQeL

https://blockchain.info/tx/a04a5a4eea013d1f098f9d822f0786e6473eae3b9edaf0f0b6b12f16c634c420
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUQT4hykPd0

Wow, thanks!  :D

lol! That's awesome gareth and danieldaniel.  ZIGGAP was active on reddit, defending himself/herself/themselves from that post... but nothing else. super sigh

And I'm signing up.  Thanks.

:D!  I should get paid MORE!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy2sT-8N57Y

Oh, speaking of begging: I PM-begged Yankee for an internship at BitInstant, but he ignored me.  If I beg you, will you say yes?

Ah, fuck it, sending a PM now!  If you say no, you'll be making a high school student cry.  "You're bad and you should feel bad" will apply to you.

Send me your CV/resume

Sent it this morning, by the way.

Whoops, wrong thread?  ;)

(has had a question mark after payment)

What kind of exchange are you looking for?  Any specifics? I assume the biggest contributor would be cash to bitcoins?  This is something I have been thinking about as well, the community could use a replacement.  I don't think ziggap is coming back any time soon (or ever); unfortunately because I own shares and the value has done nothing but drop, while no dividend for a long while.  Have you found any other alternatives yet?  Thanks.

so when does this assfuck get a scammer tag?

lol

also why is this still listed on bitfunder? at least some warning would be appropriate.. because people are still buying those shares

+1

Ukyo, WTF? You need to add a mention of their insolvency, irrational owner, and lack of operational status to the BitFunder listing.

Yeah the fact that this trash is still on Bitfunder is pretty bad. At least he has started to take a hit on his otc rating now (not that he would ever use that identity to do business ever again; surely).

Care to up your assessment to formal?

I saw this earlier.  Is there some context that I'm missing, or did aethero just randomly say this in chat