Bitcoin Forum

Summary

Sandstorm is a collective investment vehicle which strives to maximise the potential of BTC’s that are invested in it. Sandstorm will use sophisticated investment strategies to ensure that the goals are met and the company grows into a mature entity within the BTC community.


Description

The creator of Sandstorm has been creating wealth through BTC related activities for a long time. This company is simply an extension of these activities. More capital means further wealth creation which is the primary long term focus of this company. This wealth will be fairly distributed among shareholders.
Sandstorm plans to invest BTC in the smartest way possible to maximise profits to investors. Profits will be used to rewards shareholders and grow the company. BTC related activities will be analysed for their potential as a long or short term investment.​


Contract

Sandstorm's Goals:
-Release weekly dividends of at least 1% of the capital gathered from public offerings. This is a minimum expectation.
-Achieve consistent growth in value, share price and dividends

Plan:
The plan is to start small with an IPO of 90,000 shares. These will be priced at .001BTC each, raising 90BTC capital.
Capital will be invested in reliably profitable BTC related elements.
Profit from each week will be distributed through weekly dividends every Friday. Weekly profits exceeding 1% of the capital from public offerings will be divided into carryover funds and dividends. Carry over funds are a way to grow the company and act as a safety mechanism.
Once the company has reached a mature stage, where the abilities of the company have been proven, further public offerings of 90,000 shares at a time will be issued to raise further capital.
There will no more than 1,000,000 shares issued in the long term.
This is a long term collective investment vehicle which will be operational for as long as management is able and BTC exists.

Ratio
For every 9 shares issued, 1 will be issued to the creator of Sandstorm. (i.e. once all IPO shares are sold, Sandstorm will own 10000) This is incentive.

Investment
Shareholder funds will only be invested in things related to BTC:

• Investing in other virtual securities
• Buying and selling other virtual securities
• Mining hardware trading
• Mining operations (potentially)
• BTC/USD trading (small amounts due to higher risk)

If on the unlikely chance that Sandstorm can't continue:
Shareholders will be fully informed and a suitable replacement for management will be sought after. If this attempt is unsuccessful, shares will be purchased back at 105% of the 7 day average. All remaining assets will be liquidated and distributed to shareholders through dividends.

Assurances:

• Subsequent shares will not be issued without a majority vote.
• Investments will only be of the nature as described above.
• The structure will not be changed. (i.e max 10 issues of 100,000 shares)
• The creator is in this for the long term and will not give up.
• This collective investment vehicle will be managed every day.

Product

A place for people maximise returns on BTC without the associated stress of holding long positions on investments. It is aimed at people within the BTC community searching for a relatively low risk investment with high rewards.


Organisation

Joshua Mutch is the sole operator of Sandstorm at this time and will make decision regarding all investment activities within the boundaries of what is specified above. Any other decision regarding changes to the company will require a majority vote from shareholders.
Joshua Mutch has a comprehensive background in economics and the Australian Stock Exchange.

Issuer
Joshua Mutch
Sandstorm - A Collective Investment Vehicle for BTC
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
+61422072562
joshua.d.mutch@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/josh.mutch

Financing

The financials of Sandstorm will be updated and released weekly after dividends have been distributed. This will offer transparency to shareholders and potential investors.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhkfI_u94nYydFRIaTlBNE14aHBZNzIxRlBLWlhzTlE&usp=sharing

In case of updates to this contract:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L0iXSEu_JkmPi6JvqPb0I0xg_CnSJq9Bx-A1pBHbmzU/edit?usp=sharing

I replied, "there's really no way to verify this. That's why I always recommend that people only invest what they feel comfortable with, and that varies from person to person."

Young characters are either n00bs or alts. I was a n00b. But I decided it would be better to be considered an alt than a n00b

"I know this does look like a ponzi scheme and there is no way for me to prove  that it's not. I can only offer my assurances that this is not a ponzi scheme"


You only started posting a week ago. Did you SERIOUSLY think about trying your luck at copying Currin Trading?

Nice. That is a long time ago :)

This isn't a short term thing for me i guess i'll just have to prove my integrity over time.

This isn't a ponzi. I guess I would think the same thing from an outside perspective. Might have to get friends to buy some shares.

Any way don't expect anyone to get involved before its on an exchange :)

This isn't a ponzi.

Why not just list it at BTCT and get it over with?

.b

Which is exactly what I did. Throughout the early stages I held up to 30% of the fund.

Because he needs to sell 5 BTC worth of shares first to pay the listing fee.

Why not just list it at BTCT and get it over with?

.b

I'm not sure how helpful this is, but if your fund is operating on btct.co you can turn on a publicly viewable profile in the account settings.  It will give you a URL where you can send people to verify any btct.co assets your fund is holding.

Cheers.

So how do you reconcile "This isn't a ponzi." with "weekly dividends of at least 1% of the capital gathered from public offerings"?  What am I missing here?

Because he needs to sell 5 BTC worth of shares first to pay the listing fee.

And that's what's wrong with this (same thing that's been obviously wrong with a bunch of similar attempts to start funds).  There's no sign of any of the profits the issuer claims to have made being invested in the fund.  Which leaves only two possibilities;

1.  The issuer doesn't have any funds.  That would suggest either he doesn't make profit OR he can't manage his own finances.  Neither of which is a good advertisement for running an investment fund.
2.  He's investing his own cash elsewhere.  Which means either a conflict of interest (if he's doing same thing with his own cash in parallel then which do you think will get priority on buys/sells?) or that he believes this isn't as good an invetsment as whatever he's doing with his own funds.

If someone starts a fund I expect to see some of their own cash/assets already in it - preferably verifiable - to show that they a) aren't broke and b) have some skin in the game.

Listing on btct is an initial risk which will be solely paid for be me not sandstorm.

Risk ??

How do you expect this to succeed when you're unwilling to take any kind of 'risk', especially a $70 listing fee? It's an expense if you want to have a shot at getting it listed.

Risk ??

How do you expect this to succeed when you're unwilling to take any kind of 'risk', especially a $70 listing fee? It's an expense if you want to have a shot at getting it listed.

It's what I did as well - paid listing fee myself and have never held less than 40% of the fund (currently hold a bit over half of the main fund and over a third of the 250 BTC-worth of bonds issued).

Risk ??

How do you expect this to succeed when you're unwilling to take any kind of 'risk', especially a $70 listing fee? It's an expense if you want to have a shot at getting it listed.

Is this kind of self buying not looked down upon?

It's a fund, no problems with buying it yourself. Didn't you say that you want to buy 66% of your IPO?

To be frank, you're really not going to get approved if you apply now.

Or voting with unsold shares, like what we had with NYAN.

Cheers burnside, at last something constructive. Transparency may as well start now. This is my trading profile at btct.co:

https://btct.co/api/act?key=xxx
I got 5 "real shares which could be confirmed by Friedcat or Gyom.

Anyone want to humour me and become the second shareholder. I mean they are .001BTC each.

That's probably not the one you want to use.

Hit the "Settings" tab on the Account page, there's an option there "Public Portfolio".  If you turn that on, then on the "Account Information" page it will give you a URL to share out.

Cheers.

I would like to see more information first, and preferably at least an application on BTCT.

For example, I can't really determine if this is a fund, bond, or company. You call it a company but pay dividends like it's a bond and hold other assets like it's a fund.

Ignoring the possibility of a ponzi, it does seem a bit chaotic to me. I would like to know clearly what your portfolio and income will be beyond the vague 'BTC related' description you have now. Am I investing in mining? Gambling? Bakeries in Mexico? It is very difficult to understand what my benefits would be, beyond handing over my portfolio to you for you to use however you feel like (as long as it's related to BTC somehow).

.b

These are only some possible ideas. The world of BTC is obviously dynamic and I intend to be ahead of trends.

I know what you're saying because you've already said it. The issue I have is that this is too vague. 'Whatever comes up' is not a sound investment strategy and with zero credibility or track record, you'll have a hard time convincing anyone that you'll be able to better judge what those upcoming things are worth.

In short, stick to an investment profile so investors know what they are buying. 'Anything I can find' isn't a strategy, it is a lottery.

.b

PS: I understand you will make some form of judgement on new opportunities, but like I mentioned, you have no credibility to prove that you are better at making those judgements than anyone else.

Weekly Report:

I haven't been able to get this fund onto an exchange as of yet. Burnside has indicated that after operating the fund for awhile he will put it to a vote on btct.co.

For this reason I am the majority shareholder. Only a small amount of shares have been purchased by other people. This week all profits are going to dividends. The dividends that I receive this week will go to next weeks carry over.

Profits
.9BTC from trading AM-PT shares
.42BTC from trading basic shares
.2 from trading AMC shares
 .38BTC from AM share dividends

~1.9BTC gone to dividends

Current Assets

2500 AMC shares bought at @ .0005
48 BTC

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhkfI_u94nYydFRIaTlBNE14aHBZNzIxRlBLWlhzTlE#gid=0

Current Assets

2500 AMC shares bought at @ .0005

Kthnxbye.

Kind of interesting what you're doing, I'm also based in Australia and doing something similar, my fund pulled in "Total Weekly Divs = 2.81010797 BTC" this week so far. I do trading pretty much full time. Would be interested in getting a bunch of us together in the same office or something.

Maybe its possible to launch this fund on bitfunder.com ?

Just confirming that BitHub purchased 1000 shares for 1btc. Please forward Divs to - 1CFzfqdJjn3bjkZTtQdZU9ZCBWjSh2AFPu

Sandstorm's Goals:
-Release weekly dividends of at least 1% of the capital gathered from public offerings. This is a minimum expectation.

I don't see this in the OP, maybe you said this somewhere, but what percentage of profits are sent out as dividends?

Also, you do not address when/if/how additional shares will be issued?

There are two main things which concern me about this :

Is this a goal or a minimum expectation?  A goal is something you hope to achieve a minimum expectation is something you assume you WILL achieve.

What happens if you have a losing week?  Do you still pay at least 1% in dividends?  If so, where does it come from.  If not do you REALLY expect that you'll never have a losing week?

If you intend to guarantee a minimum return then this isn't a fund - it's nearer a bond but without any demonstration of assets supporting the claimed guarantee of a minimum return.

If it's nowhere near guaranteed then your goals boil down to "make profit" - which isn't exactly enlightening as a goal (nearly every business at least claims that).

There are two main things which concern me about this :

All of these carry high fiat-exposure.  If you buy hardware it's almost always going to have a price/value in fiat.  If BTC then rises sharply vs fiat you MAY make a profit in fiat - but in BTC (what your fund is valued in) you'd make a loss.

Paying for something in BTC doesn't magically make its value/price static in BTC.

If you trade BTC/USD then at times you will hold USD.  If BTC then rises you will lose (in BTC).

Mining is pretty much fiat-denominated most of the time (right now it isn't - but within a few months it'll be back to being fiat-denominated).

How can you aim for (let alone nearly promise) BTC-denominated profit when a significant part of your planned activities will bear heavy exposure to the BTC/fiat exchange-rate?

You'll find there's actually very few things you can do which have low fiat exposure.  That doesn't mean you can't do them - but it does mean you need to be realistic about claims of profits every week.  And it also means you need a strategy to actively assess, manage and reduce the risks that exposure brings.

Kthnxbye.

It doesn't look like you know what you're doing.

Release weekly dividends of at least 1% of the capital gathered from public offerings. This is a minimum expectation.

It is aimed at people within the BTC community searching for a relatively low risk investment with high rewards.

Once the company has reached a mature stage, where the abilities of the company have been proven, further public offerings of 100,000 shares at a time will be issued to raise further capital.
There will no more than 1,000,000 shares issued in the long term.

However I plan to operate the fund in a way not dissimilar to my portfolio. Never have I had a negative week and when you pay as much attention to the markets as I do, it is not hard to achieve an average 1%.

Just a quick question for investors.

JMutch (as mentioned in the prior post) has asked me about listing on BitFunder.

Sandstorm having the asset description being what it is, I would like to ask for thoughts, concerns, interests by users to see this listed. (or not..) :)
And please, fully explain reasoning for not's. ;)

Thanks,
Ukyo

There is literally no reason to return raised capital back to shareholders in this manner- unless you want to make it appear as though the fund has some form of positive cash flow. This is the same strategy that all HYIPs abide by.


Your 'plan' so far appears to be to trade miscellaneous securities and hope to profit. Speculation ≠ Investment, and is anything but low risk. The sad thing is, other than you saying the fund is "low risk", you don't address risk at all.


Nowhere in the contract does it state how future offerings will be priced. Red flag for potential future dilution.


Do you honestly expect people to believe that?

Contract

Sandstorm's Goals:
-Release weekly dividends of at least 1% of the capital gathered from public offerings. This is a minimum expectation.
-Achieve consistent growth in value, share price and dividends

-The IPO is tiny. This is a reflection on the amount of trust i think i deserve. Which isn't much. I'm not kidding myself here. I think people should wait before forming an opinion on my understanding of economics and ability to trade BTC related elements.

-The key word there is relatively. Sandstorm is less risky than trading yourself but obviously more risky than a lot of the funds on the market.

100% profits up to 1% of capital raised will go to dividends. Profits above this will be divided into a reserve "carryover fund" and further dividends. The allocation will depend on the health of the carry over fund. This carry over is a safety net for the chance of a negative week.

-Dividends only come from profit through the trading and investment activities. I don't know why you would think i would do this. I'd take dividends out of my own pocket before taking them out of the fund.

I am just repeating what you said. "Releasing dividends of at least 1% of the capital gathered from public offerings." You stated you are going to raise money and then you are going to release 1% of it back to shareholders each week. The language you used that I quoted makes no mention of profit, only raised capital from issuing shares.

It could have been stated more clearly, but you do not have to purposely misread his words.

The obligation does not lie with the reader to interpret the contract when things are unclear or worded poorly. It sits with the issuer to be clear and concise.

Wait, are we considering that OP an actual contract? If it is supposed to be a security contract, the issuer should gpg sign it so we can know if it gets modified.

You can view the actual contract submitted on btco.co. The language in the contract is slightly different than the OP, but much of it is still poorly defined and vague.

I am just repeating what you said. "Releasing dividends of at least 1% of the capital gathered from public offerings." You stated you are going to raise money and then you are going to release 1% of it back to shareholders each week. The language you used that I quoted makes no mention of profit, only raised capital from issuing shares.

To those saying 1% a week is untenable, I have been getting at least that much on my (admittedly small) portion of my portfolio in bitcoin investments. But I have had a few negative weeks, saying you never have negative weeks sounds a bit fishy. (My USD investment portfolio has been averaging about 1% a year, stupid stock market economy grumble grumble grumble mpfh ...)

I agree. I don't understand why people are labelling this a HYIF. An average of 1% a week is not high by any means in the BTC world. Anyone that understands the different markets can easily achieve this.

I mean you can make .5% a week by simply putting your funds in a loan. You can make  .3 to 1.5% percent a week by simply putting your funds in AM shares and leaving them there.

Even without compounding, this is something like 52% a year. That sounds like a High Yield Investment Fund (HYIF) to me.

I can assure you these shareholders will share the profits whatever they may be. I'm definitely not running with anyones money or creating an unsustainable investment structure ie ponzi HYIF.

Just so you know, this is almost directly quoted in lists of "What to watch for in a scam". Just sayin.

Why is it in "locked" instead of "awaiting approval"?

Is your name by any chance Ian Bakewell?

ohh carefull in 18 days it will expire ;-)

Assets:
10 ASICminer shares @ 2.5
7 ASICminer-pt shares @2.48
10 bASIC shares @.69
4 BTC

Joshua Mutch has a comprehensive background in economics and the Australian Stock Exchange.

At the moment I'm selling IPO shares manually. So PM me if you are interested.

I believe Sandstorm will get onto one of the exchanges eventually, hopefully soon. At that point direct shares will be transferred onto the exchange. Cheers.

i don't follow were you on the virtual exchange before,,,i see samdstorm "locked" on btct..thanks

Nothing nefarious.  We asked him to operate it for 3 months, producing spreadsheets, etc, before we would allow it to be put to a vote by the mods.

Cheers.

thanks for the divs josh, interesting week you forgot to tell me about basic mining :P i missed out on that myself (hard to keep on top of everything, but things with asicminer worked out on my end.

The conditions are that you need to show 3 months operation before a listing can be considered.

https://btct.co/faq

where does it say that?..thanks

https://btct.co/create
Go down to: Asset Issuer Terms of Service.

Hello Joshua,
thanks for previous answers.
I just want to ask about this: "Weekly profits exceeding 1% of the capital from public offerings will be divided into carryover funds and dividends. Carry over funds are a way to grow the company and act as a safety mechanism."
How is the weekly profit above 1% divided between "carry over fund" and dividends? Is there a formula?

There is no formula at this stage. I believe one is needed. It'll be something 1% of capital raised to divs then 30%to divs 60% to carryover. At this stage I'm just trying to divid it for the best interest of Sandstorm.

I have provisionally been accepted onto Havelock and therefor I'm going to suspend selling direct shares until Sandstorm is on there. I might be unreachable during this week.

"weekly dividends of at least 1% of the capital gathered from public offerings"

Dividends drawn from the capital of later investors? That sounds really familiar. Isn't there a name for this kind of scheme?

It's what I did as well - paid listing fee myself and have never held less than 40% of the fund (currently hold a bit over half of the main fund and over a third of the 250 BTC-worth of bonds issued).

I loled.

This is what I'm doing also - except I own 100% of the fund! :)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuQ3xQRnpXqEdG5yMHZCaVkydWM5V1pzZld6WmtZa2c&usp=sharing

so what secures your securities&why where and when can we buy shares ,,,all 79 of them to flip..thanks

I am currently not selling shares in my fund. I want to build up my reputation first and I'd like to be able to show the public (potential investors) how I have performed, without risking other people's money.

You can follow my fund thread at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=212761.0

I am currently not selling shares in my fund. I want to build up my reputation first and I'd like to be able to show the public (potential investors) how I have performed, without risking other people's money.

You can follow my fund thread at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=212761.0

jmutch didn't log in since 5 days... pretty strange
the weekly reports are normally on friday. (2 days ago)

anyway I'm lucky that i didn't invest here..

Assets
10 ASICminer direct shares (@2.5)
7 ASICminer-PT shares (@2.48 effective)
1 ASICminer-PT share (2.95)
16.45 BTC

Assets
10 ASICminer direct shares (2.5)
7 ASICminer-PT shares (2.48 effective)
2 ASICminer-PT shares(3.1)
20 Cognitive Shares (.28)
50LTC (.026)
28BTC

put me down for another 5btc worth of shares.

As a side note, the newly issued shares will be available under the IPO section for Sandstorm, so make sure to put your order in that section to get in on the IPO (at the IPO price). 

At the same time, people who own shares already can start listing them in the normal trading section at whatever price they want.  Cheers.

So you're opening the door @ 2013-07-12 01:00:00. Can you let us know what timezone are the IPO timings are in?

I still am convinced it's actually EDT.

I still am convinced it's actually EDT.

why does this show trading on havelock, when its not active until tomorrow?  what happened to the 0.001 price noted in your overview?  activity today of 236 shares shows the price is 0.0108 per share

Here's a handy link to know when this IPO goes live in your timezone:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Havelock+Sanstorm+IPO&iso=20130712T01&p1=179

(Correct me if I'm wrong ofc.)

Goddamnit. Who the fuck is placing buy orders at .01?!

No kidding, what is going on here. People making 20X their money instantly?

on the same token... 0.02?

The IPO was literally less that 10 minutes ago, and it is trading 20X the offering.  I have a feeling it's manipulators tying to pull one over on a few suckers.  Placing a few buy orders at and below IPO and going to bed.

The IPO was literally less that 10 minutes ago, and it is trading 20X the offering.  I have a feeling it's manipulators tying to pull one over on a few suckers.  Placing a few buy orders at and below IPO and going to bed.

the limit should have been 500 shares or something more reasonable. obviously people are bored and want to flip this quick. the IPO price was cheap, even though this company is so far worthless in every respect.

the limit should have been 500 shares or something more reasonable. obviously people are bored and want to flip this quick. the IPO price was cheap, even though this company is so far worthless in every respect.

That did sell out fast.... But guys do a proper analysis and watch your decimal places. I my opinion the units aren't worth 20x the IPO! It's a free market just be careful please.

Why is this IPO live, and why are people paying 20x more than it's worth. Wake up people.

Why is this IPO live, and why are people paying 20x more than it's worth. Wake up people.

It's OK, the people who are dumb enough to invest into this "investment vehicle" is dumb enough to to pay 20x IPO.

Hopefully this will dissuade people from investing without doing due diligence.

It's OK, the people who are dumb enough to invest into this "investment vehicle" is dumb enough to to pay 20x IPO.

Hopefully this will dissuade people from investing without doing due diligence.

What if you soul purpose of purchasing was the fact that your due diligence said this would happen with this IPO and your thought process was to hold it for less then 4 minutes.

Why is this IPO live, and why are people paying 20x more than it's worth. Wake up people.

What if you soul purpose of purchasing was the fact that your due diligence said this would happen with this IPO and your thought process was to hold it for less then 4 minutes.

indeed, it was written in char 72, bold, underlined, those who would acheive to buy at IPO price would do at least 10X within minutes !

I've try to, did'nt succeed to buy.. seems my ping is'nt fast enought ;)

Why is this IPO live, and why are people paying 20x more than it's worth. Wake up people.

It's OK, the people who are dumb enough to invest into this "investment vehicle" is dumb enough to to pay 20x IPO.

Hopefully this will dissuade people from investing without doing due diligence.

I've been announcing this IPO over the last week. "why are people paying 20x more than it's worth?" i have no idea.


I can't take responsibility for other people actions. But I think saying that people are dumb to invest in Sandstorm is very unfair. I've been working hard on making profits for the early adopters over the last 6 weeks. If you'd follow this thread before all this happened you'd see that I've made legitimate trade decisions to increase the value of the Sandstorm units. Just not to the order of 20x.

The only way from here is forward. I'm sorry to anyone that made an error in judgement when buying units.

Once the company has reached a mature stage, where the abilities of the company have been proven, further public offerings of 100,000 shares at a time will be issued to raise further capital.
There will no more than 1,000,000 shares issued in the long term.

No need to apologize.  It was right there, black and white, what the offering price was at.  You have no control over the idiots who are about to have their asses handed to them.  I'm heavily interested in doing an investment, but not at these prices.  I'll wait for it to come down to the initial price (which it will) and then I'll jump in.

and then will you sell to idiots for 25% profit, or more?

nay-nay... not good to publish 19.000 shares with a limit of 10.000 pro person.

in the fact, IPO was sold out not only in 5 seconds but in 8-9 orders - one was for 10k - almost the whole initial offer...
correct me if im wrong.

so who wonders why price is(was) driven high?

sure price will settle down, but literally 5-6 people have made 20x profit in seconds and the rest - lost the same :)
brain is a good thing to have, lol

exactly, this whole thing kinda went to shit, I would say some more IPO offerings will need to happen...with better limitations, etc. But idiots will still trade at a much higher amount and people will keep buying them to loose their money

Scam.

Scam.

or just don't participate in this shady scheme

Hello all,

I thought I'd address some of the issues brought up here.

1. "It's a scam":  The bitcoin community relies heavily on trust and we try to be as transparent as possible, as well as try to have our listing companies be as transparent as possible.  So far I have not seen any evidence of Sandstorm being dishonest.  Ultimately it's up to you as an investor to decide if the risk of purchasing any shares in any listing is worth the reward.

2.  "IPO sold out too fast/weren't enough shares": Sandstorm only released a limited number of shares because that represents the number of shares on which Sandstorm decided it can return a attractive dividend based on the assets it currently manages.  They could have released more shares but this would dilute existing investors' holdings/return on investment, which would have been not in the investors best interests.   

3. "The price is too high": I can't speak as to why an investor would pay X price for a share. It's up to each investor to determine at what price they believe a share should be worth and trade accordingly.  If you feel something is overpriced, then you do not need to purchase it (and I've seen numerous people post this sentiment as well).

All that being said, we're always open to suggestions to improve the IPO process and improve Havelock in general.  One option we can consider is limit the maximum number of units per person during an IPO based on a percentage of the units being released.  IE person A can only purchase 10% of the units at a time.  If anyone else has thoughts on how to improve the process, pleases let us know either here on bitcointalk.org or contact us at info@havelockinvestments.com.

It's an exciting time in the bitcoin world and the interest in Sandstorm shows that the community cares a lot.   

Thanks,
Mitchell

Sandstorm only released a limited number of shares because

Hello all,

I thought I'd address some of the issues brought up here.

1. "It's a scam":  The bitcoin community relies heavily on trust and we try to be as transparent as possible, as well as try to have our listing companies be as transparent as possible.  So far I have not seen any evidence of Sandstorm being dishonest.  Ultimately it's up to you as an investor to decide if the risk of purchasing any shares in any listing is worth the reward.

2.  "IPO sold out too fast/weren't enough shares": Sandstorm only released a limited number of shares because that represents the number of shares on which Sandstorm decided it can return a attractive dividend based on the assets it currently manages.  They could have released more shares but this would dilute existing investors' holdings/return on investment, which would have been not in the investors best interests.    

3. "The price is too high": I can't speak as to why an investor would pay X price for a share. It's up to each investor to determine at what price they believe a share should be worth and trade accordingly.  If you feel something is overpriced, then you do not need to purchase it (and I've seen numerous people post this sentiment as well).

All that being said, we're always open to suggestions to improve the IPO process and improve Havelock in general.  One option we can consider is limit the maximum number of units per person during an IPO based on a percentage of the units being released.  IE person A can only purchase 10% of the units at a time.  If anyone else has thoughts on how to improve the process, pleases let us know either here on bitcointalk.org or contact us at info@havelockinvestments.com.

It's an exciting time in the bitcoin world and the interest in Sandstorm shows that the community cares a lot.  

Thanks,
Mitchell

Hi Mitchell,

i think the issue is not that there were not enough shares but that it was possible to a person with 2 accounts without too much efforts to buy out everything and then speculate by being 100% shareholder on havelock

why weren't there some tighter restrictions as to how many shares one account is allowed to buy?

Mitchell not James??

That aside I'll throw a quick one in there on this IPO, I did not see a notice in the Browse IPO's dashboard or maybe I haven't observed it in detail a function that announces such listings would be handy.
Such as a page announcement well before the release
Another issue I have is that while the ASICminer whole share passthru was announced on the main page no infromation was made available regarding the Sandstorm IPO and notice given besides this forum thread I would like to see the front page updated and this sort of information made more obvious on release
https://www.havelockinvestments.com/index.php

That said I appreciate your work and am glad to see the team is growing
My regards to you Mitchell its a pleasure to see a new face and always my top regards to James
Freedom

Thanks for the welcome and both James and myself are excited about growing Havelock.

We did have an email announcement go out regarding Sandstorm but we can definitely look at ways of improving communication, such as posting all upcoming IPOs to the main page.  We'll also be releasing a twitter account which will help provide Havelock-related information.  Thanks for your feedback.

Browses email
Blames windows update I forgot to check for a while once it closed my tab panes got to hate those darn resets when you leave the computer for 10 minutes  ;)
Found the e-mail thanks for the fast reply

11/07/2013
A new public offering is NOW AVAILABLE for Sandstorm (SDSTM)
Total Units: 19700
Maximum Units Per User: 10000
Price: 0.00100000BTC/unit

Thank you for investing with Havelock Investments!
https://www.havelockinvestments.com


Two quick questions first regarding the Twitter feed will that be separate from the Canadianbitcoins feed that is being used currently or will both release separate information regarding each.

Second regarding Canbit should the havelock thread or the Canbit thread be used when posting questions guess I'll ask here my query today regarding if any progress has been made since June regarding the KYC documents with any of the Big 5/6
Although thinking about it I don't think National has been used yet
Thanks as always for the fast reply ^^

Well I also do a lot of trading so this is interesting since you listed in Havelock I will have to believe LB cough I meant havelock on this one and give you a chance hes pretty observant on his listings
Best of luck I can use you as my index
See if I beat the index in any given week and get a bit of capital back  :D

Congrats on your IPO selling out in less than a minute too shoot darn napping on the ball to self well +0.5 BTC I'll play with the idiots and just use profit from the retardness level rising till I lose the profit and have whats left shares at fair market value and whatever I made from just using the profits from the silly trades

But Hot Dang kicked some aussie arse there I applaud you again and am scared now at the market will wait patiently for what you said is Fair Value and just arbitrage accumulated profit till logic kicks in and yes I will take the risk I am doing diligence and well mumbles if the market wants to do what it does lets it this will be a hard lesson for those who don't pay attention markets are rational, when people do their due diligence but before that kicks in its madness

Anyways I have just one more thing to say
Idiots with money are a guilt free opportunity  ;)

Edited in
I read through the thread 10 pages is not much to read through compared to some threads ^^
Anyways I would put the dead man switch info on page 1 that's about it
Best of Luck looks fair enough in retrospect your IPO is the most profitable tip of the week

LB: Secret ninja  ;)

Hello all,

I thought I'd address some of the issues brought up here.

1. "It's a scam":  The bitcoin community relies heavily on trust and we try to be as transparent as possible, as well as try to have our listing companies be as transparent as possible.  So far I have not seen any evidence of Sandstorm being dishonest.  Ultimately it's up to you as an investor to decide if the risk of purchasing any shares in any listing is worth the reward.

2.  "IPO sold out too fast/weren't enough shares": Sandstorm only released a limited number of shares because that represents the number of shares on which Sandstorm decided it can return a attractive dividend based on the assets it currently manages.  They could have released more shares but this would dilute existing investors' holdings/return on investment, which would have been not in the investors best interests.   

3. "The price is too high": I can't speak as to why an investor would pay X price for a share. It's up to each investor to determine at what price they believe a share should be worth and trade accordingly.  If you feel something is overpriced, then you do not need to purchase it (and I've seen numerous people post this sentiment as well).

All that being said, we're always open to suggestions to improve the IPO process and improve Havelock in general.  One option we can consider is limit the maximum number of units per person during an IPO based on a percentage of the units being released.  IE person A can only purchase 10% of the units at a time.  If anyone else has thoughts on how to improve the process, pleases let us know either here on bitcointalk.org or contact us at info@havelockinvestments.com.

It's an exciting time in the bitcoin world and the interest in Sandstorm shows that the community cares a lot.   

Thanks,
Mitchell

think i'm still entitled to those 6btc worth of pre IPO shares, 1btc when we were talking via SMS messages last week or so and the 5btc worth i posted in the thread on the wednesday/thursday. As i think your reason that you posted in the thread after mine were have become invalid. Can you still honor those transactions from your own stash of shares?

In hindsight, I would have done the Havelock launch a little differently. However me nor Havelock could've  predicted that things would unfold this way. To sell more shares simply to give more people a chance of buying would have gone against the original contract. It would have also diluted the unit value which goes against Goal #2 in the contract. It's also unfair to early investor.

The bolded line is concerning.  Allowing folks to immediately purchase half the IPO and you couldn't predict this type of buying?  Free market economy at its best.

Then someone will simply use two or three or four accounts.

If you're running an exchange, you need to be fair. If someone wants to buy all their shares available, then let them. Do not create artificial limitations.

A better IPO would have been launched in batches anyways.

+1

I don't think there should be limits on how much of an IPO can be purchased.

Also, I think the IPO could have been advertised better. I talk to James all the time, and I am on Havelock's website all the time, but I had no idea the IPO was at 1am EST.

I just happened to not be subscribed to this thread.

I probably wasn't going to buy anyway, but if I had known it was so soon, I would've read the prospectus and known right away the 100btc IPO would sell out and could be flipped.

Thanks for taking the time to read the whole thread. It great to have an informed opinion.

Assets
10 ASICminer direct shares (2.5)
6 ASICminer-PT shares (2.48)
3 ASICminer-PT shares(4.34)
20 Cognitive Shares (.28)
30.67 BTC

Yup this IPO was utter BS. Was online at the exact right time and it was instantly sold out (couldn't buy 1 share).
And now there are idiots paying 20x the IPO value, wow...

+1

I don't think there should be limits on how much of an IPO can be purchased.

Also, I think the IPO could have been advertised better. I talk to James all the time, and I am on Havelock's website all the time, but I had no idea the IPO was at 1am EST.

I just happened to not be subscribed to this thread.

I probably wasn't going to buy anyway, but if I had known it was so soon, I would've read the prospectus and known right away the 100btc IPO would sell out and could be flipped.

I share your sentiments exactly, Deprived. That's an excellent description of what happened an exactly as well as how to prevent issues in the future.

As far as moving forward, I see the issue that Sandstorm now has capital of 100BTC but a valuation of over 1000BTC. Sandstorm now either needs to raise more capital or disappoint investors who will have over-hyped expectations on their returns. It's either that or the share price will drift back down to reasonable levels, which will make for some disgruntled investors.

3.  Educating investors.
...

#3 is the best solution (to the extent that there is one).  The problem right now is that investors over-react to anything they perceive as good or bad news.  An IPO is considered good news - as is the arrival of an ASIC - and both are seen as a valid reason for a price to absolutely sky-rocket.  When both should have already been largely priced in already - the former by the issuer and the latter by the market.  We're in the silly situation where as soon as mining companies receive ASICs their price inflates making them even worse that over-priced PMBs.  And where any time anything with a small market cap IPOs it's pumped by speculators/flippers/traders (or actual market manipulators) and the actual investors happily play along.

The solution isn't trying to stop the speculators/flippers etc - it's trying to inform investors so they don't play along other than where it's actually warranted.

Summary
Sandstorm is a collective investment vehicle which strives to maximise the potential of BTC’s that are invested in it. Sandstorm will use sophisticated investment strategies to ensure that the goals are met and the company grows into a mature entity within the BTC community.

Description

The creator of Sandstorm has been creating wealth through BTC related activities for a long time [1]. This company is simply an extension of these activities. More capital means further wealth creation [2] which is the primary long term focus of this company. This wealth will be fairly distributed among shareholders.
Sandstorm plans to invest BTC in the smartest way possible [3] to maximise profits to investors. Profits will be used to rewards shareholders and grow the company. BTC related activities will be analysed for their potential as a long or short term investment.

Sandstorm's Goals:
-Release weekly dividends of at least 1% of the capital gathered from public offerings. This is a minimum expectation.
-Achieve consistent growth in value, share price and dividends

Plan:
[…]
Once the company has reached a mature stage, where the abilities of the company have been proven, further public offerings of 100,000 shares at a time will be issued to raise further capital.
There will no more than 1,000,000 shares issued in the long term.

Investment
Shareholder funds will only be invested in things related to BTC:

• Investing in other virtual securities
• Buying and selling other virtual securities
• Mining operations (unlikely)
• BTC/USD trading (small amounts due to higher risk)

If on the unlikely chance that Sandstorm can't continue:
Shareholders will be fully informed and a suitable replacement for management will be sought after. If this attempt is unsuccessful, shares will be purchased back at 105% of the 7 day average. All remaining assets will be liquidated and distributed to shareholders through dividends.

Product

A place for people maximise returns on BTC without the associated stress of holding long positions on investments. It is aimed at people within the BTC community searching for a relatively low risk investment with high rewards.

Issuer
Joshua Mutch
Sandstorm - A Collective Investment Vehicle for BTC
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
+61422072562
joshua.d.mutch@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/josh.mutch

Financing

The financials of Sandstorm will be updated and released weekly after dividends have been distributed. This will offer transparency to shareholders and potential investors.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhkfI_u94nYydFRIaTlBNE14aHBZNzIxRlBLWlhzTlE&usp=sharing

In case of updates to this contract:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L0iXSEu_JkmPi6JvqPb0I0xg_CnSJq9Bx-A1pBHbmzU/edit?usp=sharing

Weekly Report:
Profits
.9BTC from trading AM-PT shares
.42BTC from trading basic shares
.2 from trading AMC shares
 .38BTC from AM share dividends

~1.9BTC gone to dividends

Current Assets

2500 AMC shares bought at @ .0005
48 BTC

To be honest that is just a quick buck. I have no faith in AMC, it's just a short term opportunity. What's wrong with buying something for .0005 and selling it 3 days later for .0007?
 

In short, stick to an investment profile so investors know what they are buying. 'Anything I can find' isn't a strategy, it is a lottery.

PS: I understand you will make some form of judgment on new opportunities, but like I mentioned, you have no credibility to prove that you are better at making those judgments than anyone else.

I know this does look like a ponzi scheme and there is no way for me to prove  that it's not. I can only offer my assurances that this is not a ponzi scheme

Well said, Korbman.

Swinging back around, #3 is not the best option but should be a requirement for any company trying to dive into securities of this nature.  But #1 is important - the immediate option for one/handful of parties to immediately take all stake in an IPO is a death knell.  It serves as a race to the gate in which the only incentive is early buy and quick dump during excitement. I have serious doubt that anybody who purchased the initial shares genuinely gave a damn about the investment short of "First dibs, now you buy from be sucka!". 

And to back my point, email from Havelock today in regards to PHM.  300k shares, 100k purchase option per person.  Pump and dump with (sorry) a weak business plan attached (plan to buy from BFL is a business plan?).  I'm really hoping this is a joke or a mistake because this will be Sandstorm v2. 

I'm actually considering pulling by funds from Havelock completely because this is two strikes in the first week I've been involved with them.  This is just plain irresponsible, it almost looks like PHM is literally a pump and dump of an IPO because the plan is *so* incomplete.  I would expect some quality control for potential investments.  As stated previously, BTC can be a shady world and I would hope/expect the goal isn't to sucker new people in with this stuff only to leave them burned and pissed at the whole process.  'Cause that's the gut feeling I'm having right now.

(wall of text)

Korbman, you raise some good points, and some that are a little off the mark.

-- The Sandstorm Description does not "promise" or "guarantee" profits, last I checked. He states the yield as goals. I agree that his methods and strategy are left to mystery though...
-- When a fund issues new shares, it does not necessarily dilute the value because the bitcoins gained all belong to the fund. While they may not dilute things, it's possible for him to push down the price if they are overvalued however. Maybe the answer is that he should have included exactly how he will price future releases, and what will trigger him to do so, etc.
-- Regarding your worst-case scenario where Mr. Mutch can't "buy back" the shares in the event of dissolution, one one hand this is a risk for most assets. However, in this case, dissolution should involve the liquidation of assets on behalf of the shareholders, not a buyback.
-- Yes, Mr. Mutch could easily share his BitFunder wallet address so we can verify his holdings via the Public Asset list. He should also make public his BTCT.co portfolio since the allow this. Only Havelock does not have this feature, ironically...

He could certainly share his asset listings, but to a certain extent this would somewhat undermine the value of the fund since anyone could watch his trades and benefit without being part of the fund. I'm not saying that the transparency wouldn't be worth it - merely that it somewhat reduces the value of underlying trading decisions, which seem to be a significant portion of the profits.

I hate to bring this up since I don't want to compare Mr Mutch with one of the world's greatest investors, but Warren Buffett didn't tip his hands to investors - he expected them to trust him to do what was in their best interest, without being involved. Of course, he had yearly audits to prove his holdings.

-- Regarding your worst-case scenario where Mr. Mutch can't "buy back" the shares in the event of dissolution, one one hand this is a risk for most assets. However, in this case, dissolution should involve the liquidation of assets on behalf of the shareholders, not a buyback.

It's a different risk here than for most funds.

Most funds promise in the event they cant continue to sell off assets and share it out to investors.

Sandstorm promises :

"If on the unlikely chance that Sandstorm can't continue:
Shareholders will be fully informed and a suitable replacement for management will be sought after. If this attempt is unsuccessful, shares will be purchased back at 105% of the 7 day average. All remaining assets will be liquidated and distributed to shareholders through dividends."

So he promises to by buy back based on market price - which is horrible for a fund to do.  Having made that promise I think korbman's perfectly valid point is that he should be demonstrating that he has the assets to do so (NOT just the assets the fund holds) otherwise the fund is backed by a promised buyback value which can't be delivered.

Buy-backs based on market price are widely used - and are bad in pretty much every case.  They either allow the issuer to talk (or flood) the price down first OR they expose the issuer to having to pay an excessive amount.

With the current trading price for Sandstorm I have no idea whether the issuer could afford to buy back per his contract - and it would be unreasonable for him to do so anyway.  But that's what his contract promises - and some part of the price rise MAY be due to that, with people realising that per the contract if they can inflate the price then even if it shuts down they get to keep whatever rise they've managed to achieve.

Buy-backs should be based on what's received for assets - other than for bonds where a fixed price should be determined in advance (or a formula provided allowing calculation of the price).

His contract APPEARS to say that shares will be bought back at 105% AND investors will receive proceeds from selling assets.

Yep, he definitely set it up poorly. I hadn't even considered that it could cause the price to inflate, but I'm skeptical that is what's going on anyway. Pumping the price long-term is unsustainable, unless Mutch works some real magic with increasing the actual value of the fund.

Sandstorm promises :

"If on the unlikely chance that Sandstorm can't continue:
Shareholders will be fully informed and a suitable replacement for management will be sought after. If this attempt is unsuccessful, shares will be purchased back at 105% of the 7 day average. All remaining assets will be liquidated and distributed to shareholders through dividends."

His contract APPEARS to say that shares will be bought back at 105% AND investors will receive proceeds from selling assets.

Whoa, so you just buy and sell the stock to yourself until it gets so high it is unreal, then convince him he should shut down the fund and he is contractually obligated to give you 105% of the market price and additionally whatever assets the fund holds. That is a great way to get all the issuer's money, when are we starting?

Korbman, you raise some good points, and some that are a little off the mark.

-- The Sandstorm Description does not "promise" or "guarantee" profits, last I checked. He states the yield as goals. I agree that his methods and strategy are left to mystery though...
-- When a fund issues new shares, it does not necessarily dilute the value because the bitcoins gained all belong to the fund. While they may not dilute things, it's possible for him to push down the price if they are overvalued however. Maybe the answer is that he should have included exactly how he will price future releases, and what will trigger him to do so, etc.
-- Regarding your worst-case scenario where Mr. Mutch can't "buy back" the shares in the event of dissolution, one one hand this is a risk for most assets. However, in this case, dissolution should involve the liquidation of assets on behalf of the shareholders, not a buyback.
-- Yes, Mr. Mutch could easily share his BitFunder wallet address so we can verify his holdings via the Public Asset list. He should also make public his BTCT.co portfolio since the allow this. Only Havelock does not have this feature, ironically...

Sandstorm's Goals:
-Release weekly dividends of at least 1% of the capital gathered from public offerings. This is a minimum expectation.

If I'd had an account/funds on Havelock I'd have tried to buy a chunk to flip.  This always happens with any IPO which has a small market cap - a few people buy it out then try to resell it at a huge markup.  Some of them actively try to manipulate the market as well.

To see it really in practice, LTC-GLobal is the place to look - would guesstimate half the securities there are, or at some point have been, manipulated up by one or two people holding a lot of the shares, bidding it up, buying off themselves to make the inflated price look like an active trading range etc.

As TAT said, limiting how much one account can buy is NOT the solution.  Solutions, such that they are include:

1.  Giving significant notice of IPOs (a week plus)
2.  Issuer ensuring that the real underlying value is well publicised - unfortunately many issuers prefer their shares to trade at inflated prices (as they can then sell personal holdings and/or issue new ones at the inflated prices).
3.  Educating investors.

#1 is important - not so much because it'll change who gets the shares but because:

a)  It ensures investors are aware of the IPO price for a period of time.  That reduces the problem of ones who never realised it was happening and aren't properly aware of just how inflated a post-pump price is.
b)  It maximises sales revenue for the Issuer.
c)  It reduces whining afterwards - as well as legitimate complaints of not being aware because of short notice.

#2 is tricky as, on the face of it, it acts against the issuer's own interests - most issuers seem to believe that their share price rising is automatically a good thing.  I disagree with that belief but it appears widely held.  It's also very hard to get the message through anyway - I repeatedly said noone should buy my LTC-ATF.B2 at much of a markup (as it's a fixed rate bond only paying about 17% per year) yet within an hour of selling the first batch someone had bought them at over 80% markup to face despite it being callable at 105% of face.

#3 is the best solution (to the extent that there is one).  The problem right now is that investors over-react to anything they perceive as good or bad news.  An IPO is considered good news - as is the arrival of an ASIC - and both are seen as a valid reason for a price to absolutely sky-rocket.  When both should have already been largely priced in already - the former by the issuer and the latter by the market.  We're in the silly situation where as soon as mining companies receive ASICs their price inflates making them even worse that over-priced PMBs.  And where any time anything with a small market cap IPOs it's pumped by speculators/flippers/traders (or actual market manipulators) and the actual investors happily play along.

The solution isn't trying to stop the speculators/flippers etc - it's trying to inform investors so they don't play along other than where it's actually warranted.

Korbman, you raise some good points, and some that are a little off the mark.

-- The Sandstorm Description does not "promise" or "guarantee" profits, last I checked. He states the yield as goals. I agree that his methods and strategy are left to mystery though...
-- When a fund issues new shares, it does not necessarily dilute the value because the bitcoins gained all belong to the fund. While they may not dilute things, it's possible for him to push down the price if they are overvalued however. Maybe the answer is that he should have included exactly how he will price future releases, and what will trigger him to do so, etc.
-- Regarding your worst-case scenario where Mr. Mutch can't "buy back" the shares in the event of dissolution, one one hand this is a risk for most assets. However, in this case, dissolution should involve the liquidation of assets on behalf of the shareholders, not a buyback.
-- Yes, Mr. Mutch could easily share his BitFunder wallet address so we can verify his holdings via the Public Asset list. He should also make public his BTCT.co portfolio since the allow this. Only Havelock does not have this feature, ironically...

It's a different risk here than for most funds.

Most funds promise in the event they cant continue to sell off assets and share it out to investors.

Sandstorm promises :

"If on the unlikely chance that Sandstorm can't continue:
Shareholders will be fully informed and a suitable replacement for management will be sought after. If this attempt is unsuccessful, shares will be purchased back at 105% of the 7 day average. All remaining assets will be liquidated and distributed to shareholders through dividends."

So he promises to by buy back based on market price - which is horrible for a fund to do.  Having made that promise I think korbman's perfectly valid point is that he should be demonstrating that he has the assets to do so (NOT just the assets the fund holds) otherwise the fund is backed by a promised buyback value which can't be delivered.

Buy-backs based on market price are widely used - and are bad in pretty much every case.  They either allow the issuer to talk (or flood) the price down first OR they expose the issuer to having to pay an excessive amount.

With the current trading price for Sandstorm I have no idea whether the issuer could afford to buy back per his contract - and it would be unreasonable for him to do so anyway.  But that's what his contract promises - and some part of the price rise MAY be due to that, with people realising that per the contract if they can inflate the price then even if it shuts down they get to keep whatever rise they've managed to achieve.

Buy-backs should be based on what's received for assets - other than for bonds where a fixed price should be determined in advance (or a formula provided allowing calculation of the price).

His contract APPEARS to say that shares will be bought back at 105% AND investors will receive proceeds from selling assets.

Hi TAT, allow me to retort :D

1% dividends -- I sort of took it as an implied promise, based on the quote:
Since it is a "minimum" expectation, I should be able to look forward to 1% per week. What happens if it goes below 1%? I dunno.

Dilution -- If I remember correctly (and anyone feel free to correct me on this), but dilution happens when additional shares are introduced into the market, which can not only have an effect on the price, but also voting control as well. In this case, 100,000 shares are currently issues and dividends / voting power are divided as such. With the introduction of additional shares (up to 1,000,000), both dividends and voting power are diluted (including stock value, depending on how they're priced).

Repurchases -- Yup, pretty right about that...but it's still really quite odd that you'd promise to repurchase stock when things go sour. It's normal for Bonds and Notes, but certainly not Stocks.

Public Asset List -- Wholly agree with you here. If Sandstorm is hosted on multiple exchanges, I'd like to see holdings on each one complied for Investors. That would be pretty cool :)

1% isn't a promise but if you were to an analysis of the current assets of Sandstorm it's clear that this goal can easily be sustained for a long time.

The weekly reports make it clear to anyone the state of affairs at Sandstorm. This transparency is there so investors can make informed trading decisions.

Quick interjection here..


You're going for a Masters in Economics, and you're trying to tell us that you seriously believe you can sustain a 52% annual ROI for a long time?


Clear to who, exactly? The newbies who bought on hype on page 7?

As I said before, I (and many others) look for details on your investments..not just a typed up asset list. Purchase and sale prices, dates of purchase, quantities purchased on those dates, weighted share value per asset, profit / losses modeled over time..hell, if you're feeling frisky model out a CAPM for your portfolio. The more data I see, the more likely I am to put in my BTC50, BTC100, or BTC200, etc.


EDIT: Where's MPOE? She's usually all over this stuff..

It should be very clear to newbies that Sandstorm only is investing 100BTC (~$10,000) worth of capital. What fantasy would those newbs be imagining that would make these investments worth 10x that amount? Even if Sandstorm guaranteed (which is not the case) the 1% dividend minimum, there's no way anyone can think the valuaion should be $100,000+. There's no excuse for people buying at that value if they even skimmed the prospectus.

But if I buy in at a higher price, that just means he has more capital to work with, so he can make me an even higher percent yield! [/noob]

But if I buy in at a higher price, that just means he has more capital to work with, so he can make me an even higher percent yield! [/noob]

+1 for everyone who actually might believe this. He said he wasn't planning well his 40k shares so you are making other shareholders and/or speculators wealthier, not him or his funds assets per se.

He will be utilizing all the capital, or it would make zero sense to have it traded on a bid/ask scenario.
no different than if the shares totaled only 100 btc and he took a small decline he would than trade with less, he is likely now going to have well over 1000 and will trade with that. i will believe that until he mentions otherwise , which im sure he will not.

Quick interjection here..


You're going for a Masters in Economics, and you're trying to tell us that you seriously believe you can sustain a 52% annual ROI for a long time?


Clear to who, exactly? The newbies who bought on hype on page 7?

As I said before, I (and many others) look for details on your investments..not just a typed up asset list. Purchase and sale prices, dates of purchase, quantities purchased on those dates, weighted share value per asset, profit / losses modeled over time..hell, if you're feeling frisky model out a CAPM for your portfolio. The more data I see, the more likely I am to put in my BTC50, BTC100, or BTC200, etc.


EDIT: Where's MPOE? She's usually all over this stuff..

There's a fundamental misunderstanding here about how an IPO works. Jason IPOed 60K shares at 0.001 per share. It doesn't matter these shares resold for > .01 per share; Jason doesn't benefit from that until he sells his own at the higher price. He has only has 100BTC (60BTC raised from the IPO + 40BTC for his own stake) to work with plus whatever his 40K shares earn from dividends to reinvest.

I don't think that there's any scam going on here and in fact I'll be happy to buy shares at or near .001 / share. I just don't see how it's valued at 10x that amount.

well either way, thats decent motivation to do well having 40000 shares potentially worth more than $40,000 dollars.

and 10x evaluation is nothing compared to stocks and funds with P/E ratios of MUCH MUCH higher,

seeing as i personally made close to 1000% in one of my best months daytrading cryptos, 10x evaluation doesn't seem so high,  in fact potentially very cheap

ps: im not biased as of yet, but am purchasing this week when funds arrive.  as i dont want to sell my ltc :)

Assets
10 ASICminer direct shares (2.5)
6 ASICminer-PT shares (2.48)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(4.19)

10 Cognitive Shares (.28)
100 RentalStarter shares (.0149)
40 bASIC shares (.27)
38.4BTC

Generally speaking, the willingness of the OP to thoroughly answer any and all questions can be indicative of the effort they’re willing to put into their business.

Thanks for addressing some of the points which i think are misleading in Korbman's post. I'll take an in-depth look at his post and make a response later.

Alright. 11 pages later (read twice) and I think I’m ready to craft a response :P

First, let me preface this by saying I respect the decisions made by Havelock administrators.
In my 9 months of being hosted on their exchange, never once did I ever have any qualms with how operations were run, and Lightbox was always incredibly responsive to questions not only posed by managers, but investors and customers in general.

That said, I’m quite shocked with how this whole situation has developed; between the vagueness of the ‘investment fund’ (more on that momentarily) and the seemingly rushed IPO, something doesn’t quick sit right with me given how methodical and organized previous listings were.

To the topic of Sandstorm – here’s where the fun begins. Yes, this will be an extensive post and I apologize. As a forewarning, my responses may sound rude and/or condescending, but I assure you I don’t mean them that way. I imagine it as if you and I are sitting at a table and I’m asking these questions with more of an upbeat attitude.
Generally speaking, the willingness of the OP to thoroughly answer any and all questions can be indicative of the effort they’re willing to put into their business. Let’s see how this goes…


How do you define these strategies? Can you prove your past performance?

Some examples of investment strategies that are:  employing risk management principles to the sandstorm portfolio, technical graphical analysis, etc.

Past performance could be proven by disclosing previous trading logs. I'm not going to do this. I believe my performance should be measured by what I have done with Sandstorm to date.



[1] – So far as I’ve seen, this has been just ‘words on paper’. Echoing my question above, can you prove your performance on previous investments?  Essentially the question becomes – “how much wealth” over “how much time”?

I get the impression everything I write here will be "words on paper". I created around 60BTC profit over 6 months from a 28 BTC investment whilst cashing out my original $ investment. Some of this was through high risk trades with alt coins which I wouldn't expose Sandstorm to.

[2] – Either your inexperience is showing or this was just poorly worded (I’m going with the latter for now). Increasing the amount of capital is not directly correlated to an increase in wealth creation. With improper diversification it’s actually a great way to increase risk…and mismanagement can lead to great losses as well.

I kind of agree which you there. This has been noted and may be included in a few proposed changes to the prospectus. However, more capital allows for diversification into things that couldn't be invested in otherwise. I think you're missing the point here a little bit. I realised that I had a skill in something I turned this into a product which can be bought and sold.

[3] – I suppose this goes back to the “sophisticated investment strategies”. A bit of clarity and transparency could make all the difference here.


No contract has been created so far as I’ve seen..more of a prospectus than anything else.

You're right again, the whole description is more of prospectus. I labelled this section "contract" simply so that I could emphasis Sandstorms obligations to shareholders. So people can later call me out and say "hey that goes against the contract" if I do something that goes against the original prospectus.


From what I’ve gathered through the rest of the thread, you’re promising a weekly 1% dividend (minimum), with the expectation of achieving growth.
Growth over time is normal, but if you truly are a legitimate fund, then promising a set percent of dividends per week is not possible. There are far too many variables (both known and unknown) to promise anything in Bitcoin, and I’ve learned this firsthand.

I don’t have a problem with dividends. I do have a problem with guaranteeing them, as that’s usually indicative of a scheme.

This is incorrect. Nowhere have I guaranteed a minimum dividend. I was simply giving a indication of what to expect from Sandstorm. This is 1%(1BTC a week) is a goal which I intend to meet and have thus far.


How do you plan on releasing more shares to the public down the line without diluting investors’ holdings?

This is a challenge for sandstorm. One way is to only release small amounts of units in the future for capital raising (10,000-50,000). This will have a small impact compared to the possible gains which could be made from Sandstorm holding more capital. Right now I have no intention of raising further capital for Sandstorm. If further capital in sought it will be done in a way which will minimise dilution (see goal #2)


I’m actually quite curious about this. Why not mine? Mining can provide a stream of income for your fund, which may be helpful when times get tough (and they will).

I'm a bit sceptical about the difficulty trend VS cost of hardware. With the relatively small amount of capital Sandstorm has, I believe better returns can be made through trading. Buying one Avalon would take over half of Sandstorms portfolio. Sandstorm is not a mining company.


Hypothetical scenario:
Sandstorm is sought after in Australia for securities trading and is pending a lawsuit. Managers of Sandstorm are unable to find a suitable foreign replacement to take over and decide to follow through on “Plan B” (repurchasing).
Bitcoin has risen in value to $250 each. Investor [A] owns 1000 shares of Sandstorm, and the 7 day average is BTC0.1.

How do you plan on repurchasing 1050 shares (valued at 105 Bitcoins) now that they’re worth $26,250?

This is definitely an issue with the contract which is especially relevant with the valuation of Sandstorm shares. I don't have 60,000AUD to buy out the 60,000 units at market value. I'm also planning to propose a change to this. Somthing like:
All remaining assets from the last weekly report will be liquidated and distributed to shareholders at a per unit basis
I think this is a more fair solution for all parties.


Whether in Bitcoin or “real world” trading, there is no such thing as a low risk / high reward investment. Marketing yourself this way leaves me a bit skeptical.

I see your point here. I haven't even stated relative to what. I think I'll propose to delete this pointless sentence altogether.


Naturally, we appreciate the marginal transparency, but after the Bakewell scam names and addresses don’t quite mean as much anymore.
More words on paper...but i invite you to call the number so we can discuss sandstorm over the phone  ;). I've identified myself to havelock as per their conditions.  


I think you posted the wrong Google Docs link. The ‘financials’ you posted are just shares sold. Where’s the income statement? Maybe a balance sheet? Current assets held by the fund? Dates when shares were bought / sold, their respective prices, profits / losses?

The financials are a summary of the weeks as sandstorm progesses. I believe that this is sufficient information when combined with the weekly reports. It has been noted that this is a weakness Sandstorms transparency. I invite you to take a closer look at the weekly reports. By giving a weekly asset list along with what price they were bought, it is easy to deduct what major trades have happened during the previous week.

Phew! Now that we’ve got that out of the way, on to the rest of the posts:


Do you have any proof of your holdings and when they were purchased?


TradeFortress has a point, even though he didn’t vocalize it.

I thought the idea of this fund was to make “smart” “low risk” investments? To me, that means only investing in securities which you are confident in. Gambling with potential scams with the hope that “it’ll go up to .0007” is not investing, it’s speculating.

Imagine in those 3 days that the price dropped to .0003. What then? Buy and hold and hope for the best?

As Furuknap aptly noted:

In short.
I never gamble with shareholders funds. I make calculated investment decision based of various information.
I invested 1.25BTC into AMC at that time. An intentionally tiny amount which correlated with the large amount of risk that position held at the time. Simple risk management.
I do a lot of research so that I can make informed decision. When you buy into sandstorm you place trust in those decisions.

And in terms of being transparent with your actions…


…this is a bit unacceptable. There are numerous ways to show your background operations, which would instantly clear up quite a bit of skepticism.

As I write this, I’m beginning to question why you’re more than willing to reveal your identity, yet you won’t want to reveal the details of your investments. And before you say it, no, that “Asset List” with a bit of math does not qualify as ‘detail’.
Refresh this link every minute: https://btct.co/portfolio/gLk7Eg== There, you have a live feed of 95% of Sandstorms portfolio!;) In all seriousness I am looking at a more detailed accounting strategy for Sandstorm.

Done! (for now of course)
I thank you for taking the time to read this and no hard feelings. We’ve had far too many scams around here and it’s only proper for members to vet new entries. Most the established members here share the same sentiment that I do, so I’m hoping this will provide you with a channel to clear the air so to speak.

Assets
10 ASICminer direct shares (2.5)
6 ASICminer-PT shares (2.48)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(4.19)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(4.22)


10 Cognitive Shares (.28)
100 RentalStarter shares (.0149)
35 bASIC shares (.27)
3500 AMC shares(.0025)
16.45 BTC

Some examples of investment strategies that are:  employing risk management principles to the sandstorm portfolio, technical graphical analysis, etc.

Past performance could be proven by disclosing previous trading logs. I'm not going to do this. I believe my performance should be measured by what I have done with Sandstorm to date.

I get the impression everything I write here will be "words on paper". I created around 60BTC profit over 6 months from a 28 BTC investment whilst cashing out my original $ investment. Some of this was through high risk trades with alt coins which I wouldn't expose Sandstorm to.

I kind of agree which you there. This has been noted and may be included in a few proposed changes to the prospectus. However, more capital allows for diversification into things that couldn't be invested in otherwise. I think you're missing the point here a little bit. I realised that I had a skill in something I turned this into a product which can be bought and sold.

You're right again, the whole description is more of prospectus. I labelled this section "contract" simply so that I could emphasis Sandstorms obligations to shareholders. So people can later call me out and say "hey that goes against the contract" if I do something that goes against the original prospectus.

This is incorrect. Nowhere have I guaranteed a minimum dividend. I was simply giving a indication of what to expect from Sandstorm. This is 1%(1BTC a week) is a goal which I intend to meet and have thus far.

This is a challenge for sandstorm. One way is to only release small amounts of units in the future for capital raising (10,000-50,000). This will have a small impact compared to the possible gains which could be made from Sandstorm holding more capital. Right now I have no intention of raising further capital for Sandstorm. If further capital in sought it will be done in a way which will minimise dilution (see goal #2)

I'm a bit sceptical about the difficulty trend VS cost of hardware. With the relatively small amount of capital Sandstorm has, I believe better returns can be made through trading. Buying one Avalon would take over half of Sandstorms portfolio. Sandstorm is not a mining company.

This is definitely an issue with the contract which is especially relevant with the valuation of Sandstorm shares. I don't have 60,000AUD to buy out the 60,000 units at market value. I'm also planning to propose a change to this. Somthing like:
All remaining assets from the last weekly report will be liquidated and distributed to shareholders at a per unit basis
I think this is a more fair solution for all parties.

The financials are a summary of the weeks as sandstorm progesses. I believe that this is sufficient information when combined with the weekly reports. It has been noted that this is a weakness Sandstorms transparency. I invite you to take a closer look at the weekly reports. By giving a weekly asset list along with what price they were bought, it is easy to deduct what major trades have happened during the previous week.

In short.
I never gamble with shareholders funds. I make calculated investment decision based of various information.
I invested 1.25BTC into AMC at that time. An intentionally tiny amount which correlated with the large amount of risk that position held at the time. Simple risk management.
I do a lot of research so that I can make informed decision. When you buy into sandstorm you place trust in those decisions.

Refresh this link every minute: https://btct.co/portfolio/gLk7Eg== There, you have a live feed of 95% of Sandstorms portfolio!;) In all seriousness I am looking at a more detailed accounting strategy for Sandstorm.

It is hard to read some of these things when I only have good intention for Sandstorm. I mean I own 40% of it.

Overall I do appreciate the feedback. It shows me where the holes are so that they may be fixed.

Assets
10 ASICminer direct shares (2.5)
6 ASICminer-PT shares (2.48)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(4.19)

10 Cognitive Shares (.28)
100 RentalStarter shares (.0149)
15 bASIC shares (.27)
3000 (.0025)

46.2 BTC

So, obviously I have a conflict of interest here, but the fund is down 23.36% in one week if I read this correctly.

And what you did as a fund manager to "prevent" it from tanking like the rest of the market was buying Labcoin and then selling some of them?

Any shareholders still reading this thread?

On the next episode of TOP FUND MANAGER, Lord Sugar tells it like it is!

Although less shareholders means more profit for me! :)

I don't think josh really cares about sandstorm or its shareholders. One lil lousy update a week? If we're lucky. What myself and S.E.C and A.S.I.C (australian securities and investments comission) are investigating and interested in, is that the Fund manager Josh Mutch setup a localbitcoins account around the same time as doing the IPO https://localbitcoins.com/ad/19465/purchase-bitcoin-bank-transfer-australia-australia

Now the question becomes is he selling sandstorm IPO funds to buy things for himself in the real world or he just doesn't care anymore and is cashing out before it really does turn into a shitstorm?
 

Hey guys,

It's up to the free market to price the Sandstorm units. IMHO Sandstorm shares are still overpriced. I think the "value" of the shares are about 2 or 3 times the IPO price. Anyone who's done any research into Sandstorms assets would know this. Currently I'm really working on increasing this value without placing to much risk on Sandstorm.

I see Sandstorm as performing quite well. I know there is volatility in the market right now. This is why Sandstorm has long term positions which act as a buffer against the market falling. People look to much into the short term in the BTC world.

Of course i'm acting in the greater interest of shareholders. I put a lot of hours into operating this fund the best way I can. I think updates once a week is sufficient. If you want to know whats happening with sandstorm, why not ask? It just doesn't feel right spamming my own thread.

As to the accusations regarding my localbitcoin account. This is completely ridiculous. I've made a lot of BTC through trading long before I began Sandstorm. Don't I a have a right to turn some of my personal BTC into fiat? If i ran off with the IPO funds how did i pay for the assets in the public portfolio on btct.co? Why would I sell stolen BTC through a user account with my name on it? Do you guys really think that i'm that stupid?

For disclosure I've sold around 15 BTC through localbitcoin about a month ago out of my personal wallet and 5BTC about 2 months ago, also from my personal wallet. I've also bought BTC from localbitcoins.com. I think it's a great site.

These slanderous comments from other fund managers are tiring. I'm sorry about my negative tone in this message. It's just hard to see constant criticism against something i've put so much work into over the last 2 months. I suppose i should get used to it.

you should do think in the long term.
lost xx% THIS week? and gain next week - no?? what about next month? or year??
be more patient and give josh a try to do main job and not waste the time trolling here.

besides it seems to me that some subjects are interested for detailed "updates" everyday (no, best - hourly!) to peep on josh's strategies ;)
this is his weapon, and he's not obligated to tell the world about each and every aspect of it.
nevertheless - please write right here YOUR detailed strategies FIRST, then ask from someone else the same.

guys, that's a trust.
there is no evidence for josh's bad intentions, obviously.
i bought small amount of shares and getting some dividends for that.
the overpricing of shares is another issue and not josh's merit. also not directly... :)
weekly reports are fine too - maybe this can be fine-tuned in the future, but this is not an excuse and reason to disallow him to use his own "capital" as needed.

be more polite.
we're all coming from nowhere once.
if that's the main reason - do not trust those people "from nowhere" (first) and do not yammer (then).
it's YOUR choice to risk, and risk is not the same as scam - look for difference.

Hi felente,

I was pointing out that ...

Assets
10 ASICminer direct shares (2.5)
6 ASICminer-PT shares (2.48)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(4.19)

4000 Labcoin Shares(.001)
10 Cognitive Shares (.28)
100 RentalStarter shares (.0149)
15 bASIC shares (.27)
15 bASIC shares (.41)
3000 Active Miner shares (.0025)

35.87 BTC

Still horribly managed.

Do you have any changes that you would suggest to the way I manage Sandstorm?

Do you have any changes that you would suggest to the way I manage Sandstorm?

Yes, by providing more transparency for starters. I have to manually calculate your NAV. This is absolutely unacceptable for an "investment vehicle".

Yes, by providing more transparency for starters. I have to manually calculate your NAV. This is absolutely unacceptable for an "investment vehicle".

Start expanding SandStorm as a company and hire another trader or something or analysis.

pretty disappointing divs brah.



What are the plans for SandStorm from now till end of the year to expand...Also can you layout some sort of blue print for next year?

Also, the bitcoin market isn't the problem, your assets all being in sh*tty overvalued mining companies/PMB's is the problem. Funds are supposed to be diverse, and you pretty much have every coin in some kind of mining security. My fund actually made a good profit in the last few weeks, during the "decline", so it's not completely true that the market is to blame for sandstorms big losses.

Josh why are your weekly reports so... uninformative? They mask virtually every important headline figure. Just show the total NAV, the total profit/loss and the dividend.

I was kind of joking before when I said that you probably do it to mask the bad performance, but now I'm actually thinking this is indeed the case, because nothing else can explain such terrible reporting.

Also, the bitcoin market isn't the problem, your assets all being in sh*tty overvalued mining companies/PMB's is the problem. Funds are supposed to be diverse, and you pretty much have every coin in some kind of mining security. My fund actually made a good profit in the last few weeks, during the "decline", so it's not completely true that the market is to blame for sandstorms big losses.

I'm looking at your listing on BTC-TC and the thread here, and I have several questions and comments:

First, I'm a little confused about your listing on BTC-TC. From this thread and your financials, it looks like your fund is already established. Are you selling more shares? If so, then how can you sell the shares at 0.001 BTC when they are apparently not worth that amount. It seems like someone, either the new shareholder or the current shareholder, is going to lose money.

The details on the btct listing are the original prospectus from when I was first looking for an exchange. It has been locked until now. Burnside has unlocked this listing. I thought it would be a waste of 5BTC to simply delete the listing

Sandstorm has finished selling the IPO. No more shares will be offered at .001. Sandstorm has been happily trading at Havelock for the last month or so.

• How do you make money running this fund? You don't list any fees.

I currently make very little from operating this fund. I do it because I enjoy doing it more than anything. Although this PR stuff is starting to get time consuming. I Make money through the dividends( i own 40,000 units). If I can manage to increase the value of the sandstorm units I see this as a financial incentive.

• Your financials spreadsheet is confusing and it lacks important information. If anything, you need to split it into two: Asset/Liabilities and Income. Combining them like you do makes it hard to read. Also, it seems to list some assets, but not all.

Thanks for the usefull feedback

• The list of assets in your report is confusing. For example, why do you list some securities twice? Are they on different exchanges? You list a BTC amount. Is this the "carryover fund"?

The amount next the assets are the price at which they were purchased. I purchased the same assets at different price points.

• It is necessary to state the NAV, and details about its computation, in the weekly report. There is not enough information in the report for a shareholder to calculate it.

There is enough info to calculate NAV. As indicated previously, this will be done for you in subsequent reports
[/list]

• How do you determine the dividend amount? The first says that dividends are at least 1% and the second seems to say that dividends are at most 1%, though it is not clear.

Dividends come from profits from trades and other dividends. Anything above 1BTC(1%) can be divided into the carryover or further dividends.

• What happens the the portion of the profits that doesn't exceed 1%?
• How are the profits exceeding 1% split?

this has been addressed

[/list]

• What is a "per unit basis"? I guess it means that shareholders receive an amount represented by their portion of the total number of shares. It would be nice if it were clearer.
• It should say "all assets held by the fund" rather than "all remaining assets from the last weekly report".

Thanks for the feedback

Finally,

The value of this fund depends completely on your trading ability. Do you have a track record? Can you provide information documenting your experience?
I've been operating sandstorm for 10 weeks and it's still making profit each week. I hope that this counts as something

Lol what is the PMB I'm investing in?
Never have never will

Lol asicminer and basic are shitty mining company?
I'd have to disagree with you there

Your comments do make me laugh a bit.

I still don't hear of any plans about the future of sandstorm or what you plan to do to take this from your bedroom to something proper?


So does SandStorm have a plan from now till end of the year to shape things up for next year?

True or false, sandstorm's assets are almost entirely made up of Bitcoin mining stocks/assets?
My point was that your "investment fund" is not diversified (it is made up almost entirely of mining stocks) and is simply made up blindingly buying in to highly priced IPO's and hoping for the best.

I'm glad you find it funny, unfortunately your shareholders do not. You have absolutely no business investing other people's money, I said this early on and the results speak for themselves. You lost people's money because you are, frankly, no where near competent and skillful enough to manage a fund.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who take other people's money and lose it because they have delusions of being a big-shot fund manager. I'm done with this thread, I only hope that people do a little bit of research before throwing their money in the toilet.

Assets
10 ASICminer direct shares (2.5)
6 ASICminer-PT shares (2.48)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(4.19)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(3.85)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(3.81)

3000 Labcoin Shares(.001)
10 Cognitive Shares (.28)
100 RentalStarter shares (.0149)
15 bASIC shares (.27)
15 bASIC shares (.41)
3000 Active Miner shares (.0025)

6.31 BTC

The fund is performing well.
Only the people who bought at ten times the IPO price are to blame.

Yup; no clue what people were doing valuing the portfolio at 1000+ BTC when it had like 200BTC in assets.  If you're just automatically assuming he's going to turn it over 5 times, you're doomed to be disappointed.

Assets
10 ASICminer direct shares (2.5)
6 ASICminer-PT shares (2.48)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(4.19)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(3.81)

2000 Labcoin Shares(.001)
10 Cognitive Shares (.28)
100 RentalStarter shares (.0149)
15 bASIC shares (.27)
15 bASIC shares (.41)
3000 Active Miner shares (.0025)

22.53 BTC

Yeah, unfortunately they have to now resort to forum posts instead of listing an asset on GLBSE.

Hey, can we have our shitty, pointless update for the week please?

Assets
10 ASICminer direct shares (2.5)
6 ASICminer-PT shares (2.48)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(4.19)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(3.81)
1 ASICminer-PT shares(3.15)

1000 Labcoin Shares(.001)
10 Cognitive Shares (.28)
100 RentalStarter shares (.0149)
15 bASIC shares (.27)
15 bASIC shares (.41)
3000 Active Miner shares (.0025)
2000 Active Miner shares (.0052)

9.98 BTC

Weekly Report.

It’s obvious that the difficulty is going to keep rising at an exponential rate. It’s definitely time to do a bit of a restructure. It seems that any mining company not producing their own chips won’t be able to keep up in the coming months.Therefore it was necessary to sell Cog and Basic. Even at a loss for basic. It has fallen further since selling

It’s seems that the .05% bonds products are very low risk and somewhat liquid for small amounts. It seems logical to place a percentage of Sandstorm spare BTC in one of these.

BTCQuick is proving to be a solid asset. Only a very small amount was invested into this asset as I feel Sandstorm could be late to the party with this one. Never the less it could continue to grow.

Gox continues to hint at the eventual adoption of LTC. Therefor 100LTC were purchased at what seems to be a low price of .0201BTC

On ASICminer, more excellent news from them. I feel the share price is focusing on the divs and hashrate, not future potential. The climate will be completely different come October and I beleive AM has the competence to take it’s shareholders into that climate.

Very first week of negative profit calculation. Not extremely bad after 3 months operations. Never the less I will do my best to prevent this from happening.

Happy trading.



Profits
-1.79BTC selling bASIC
.95BTC  Selling Cognitive
.34BTC LTC trading

.310 BTC ASICminer Dividends
.014 BTC ActiveMining Dividends
.045 BTC Ukyo Loan



Total =BTC -.131

Dividends
1/100000 = .00001 per share (1.134 taken from carryover)

Last weeks assets

Assets
10 ASICminer direct shares (2.5)
6 ASICminer-PT shares (2.48)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(4.19)
4 ASICminer-PT shares(3.81)
1 ASICminer-PT shares(3.15)

1000 Labcoin Shares(.001)
100 RentalStarter shares (.0149)
3000 Active Miner shares (.0025)
2000 Active Miner shares (.0052)
1000 UkyoLoan(.0108)
1000 btcQuick(.0058)
100 LTC (.0201)

8.45BTC

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhkfI_u94nYydFRIaTlBNE14aHBZNzIxRlBLWlhzTlE#gid=4

Still not disclosing the most important financial stat, NAV, in your weekly reports?

Allow me to do it for you so that the public/investors are adequately informed:

NAV: 116 BTC - down -34 BTC since two weeks ago. Or, down ~30%.

And two weeks before that, down some 30% again.

I like how you write down "profit" in your statements so that newbs think it's not making a huge loss, as if there is remotely any profit made from this fund.

I don't understand? You claim to have a weekly profit of 5.067, however your NAV went from 116.13 to 107.28, which to me looks like you should be reporting a loss of 8.85?

In your analysis you say RentalStarter is stagnating, I think that is a narrowminded view of the situation. This is an asset which is dollar/physical asset based, so the recent increase of the BTC price should have pushed the price downward, the fact that the price of RentalStarter stayed pretty consistent means that it has increased in value along with bitcoins.

Weekly Report.

To be completely honest, things are not looking great for Sandstorm right now. Labcoin just saw a huge drop, lack of trustable information. Activeminer just saw a “dump” and ASICminer is continuing their general decline. Even btcQuick had a difficult week.


RentalStarter shares were liquidated for a good profit. I can’t see this company having a huge amount of growth in the near future. The rise in BTC/USD works against this company.

good thing noone cares anymore. Sounds like you've lost complete faith in sandstorm and in your skillset. When will sandstorm be closing down?

Gee talk about jumping to conclusions.

Definitely haven't lost fair in sandstorm or my skillset. Might prompt a change in strategy though.

Sandstorm won't be closing in the foreseeable future.

Not being cruel or anything, but you really should have lost some faith in your skillset. The fact that you haven't lost faith is why you should never manage other people's money or an investment fund. You are inexperienced and overconfident, and worst of all, you still appear to think you know what you are doing.

You lost more shareholder money than the general market change. For example, BTC-EQTY B fund lost just 16% in the same period that sandstorm lost what, like 60-80%? Same with BTCINVEST, it is down about 15-25%, so you lost far more than TF also.

For those who are still watching this thread: I told you so.

After the btct.co announcement, Sandstorms NAV took a significant hit. It would be very difficult to recover the fund to anything close to IPO value whilst maintaining 1% dividends. The fund was turning into a value destroying operation. It is fair to say at this stage that the fund was a failure.

This statement makes no sense to me. How did the NAV take such a big hit? Everything was suddenly priced for a discount, you should have taken the opportunity to buy the shares cheap, you could have made a huge profit off all the panic. Or maybe you did make a huge profit off the panic and you don't want to tell your shareholders, you are just taking all that profit for yourself?

So most newbs had no idea that the fund was a trainwreck.

Actually, it is. From the start, (and even until now) jmutch didn't disclose important stats that would help dumbasses newbs figure out what is worth what. For example, he refused to include NAV changes of the fund in his weekly reports because the fund was performing horribly, which hid the true state of the fund and made it very difficult to measure its value. He also showcased the fund as making "profit" when in fact it had made enormous losses in NAV, via highly misleading reporting methods, and the way he presented that in those weekly reports was very (and purposely) dishonest. So most newbs had no idea that the fund was a trainwreck.