Bitcoin Forum

https://glbse.com/ipo/6

Initial offering of BFLS @ 0.7 BTC / share.  BFLS is a public offering for stock in an FPGA mining company with the ability to acquire the mining assets at any given time.  200 Shares per BFL Single unit will be issued, with 30 (15%) being kept by the operator to cover operational costs, maintenance, and unit replacement.  Units will mine at the operators facility/facilities, and dividends on the mining proceeds will be distributed on a weekly basis, split evenly according to the number of shares held. For example, if there are 200 total outstanding shares and weekly proceeds are 20 BTC, and you hold 50 shares, you will receive 5 BTC per week.

Any individual investing in the company may, at their discretion, transfer 200 BFLS shares to the operator in exchange for a physical BFL Single being shipped (CONUS only. Additional charge for international shipping.) to the individual. When a BFLS is redeemed, a new unit will replace the redeemed unit, and 170 BFLS shares will be offered at current market rate.

Should mining become unprofitable or other circumstances cause the operator to be unable or unwilling to perform his duties, sale of all hardware and equal distribution of funds will commence according to the number of shares held by each individual.  Additionally, should a BFL Single be unavailable for immediate shipping, the operator reserves the right to refuse the 200 BFLS shares until such time as a unit becomes available.

Shares will be on sale next week.  I will be releasing shares for sale in a controlled manner as the hardware comes online and begins mining.

Bump

Yet another excellent offering! Have you set a date, Inaba?

One week from yesterday will be the IPO.  Depends on when my shipment of BFL units gets in as to how many shares I'll release at the IPO, but there will only be 10 units (2000 shares) outstanding at any given time, unless I increase my FPGA holdings dramatically.  I plan on keeping a number of units in reserve for failure, mining, delays in shipments, etc... 

I will likely be offering the same for MiniRig boxes and RigBoxes as well.

watching

ditto.

like it

Got a lot of PMs on the subject, I will get to them soon - just got home and am dead tired, so I'll try to get all of them answered tomorrow.

Subbed. Like the backing of actual hardware.

Indeed and shockingly it appears the shares are priced to reflect close to the actual cost of the hardware.

In for this!

Count me in! ;D

So far one of the cheapest (the cheapest I could find/would trust) "PPS shares" on GLBSE. :)

(for comparison, MH/s per BTC spent:
Inaba: ~6 MH/s, assuming 830 MH/s per unit
gigavps: probably 5 MH/s
Meni: ~2.6 MH/s)

Good luck and please make sure to post extensive statistics on payouts!

I would like to ask the OP, are you guaranteeing a PPS rate on the shares held?

I reread the OP and did not find that guarantee.

Interesting twist with the single purchase option...

@gigavps - I believe this is not a guaranteed PPS like your bond offering.  Simply divides revenue by shares and paid proportionally.  I think it fair to assume the revenue would be ~100% PPS, however.

I am starting to think the real deal here is buying 1000 shares and asking Inaba to send you 5 singles.

* gigavps start dreaming of moar singles in the bottom rack......

Yep  ;D

Would this all blend together with more BFLS shares per miniRig and RigBox, meaning early adopters would gain from the upgrade / addition, or would those be offered in separate tickers when thie time comes?

I would assume Inaba's running these on his pool (EclipseMC), which would cause payouts to very a bit, but in the long term theoretically average out to 100% PPS.

I would assume Inaba would run these on GPUMAX and get 1.2x-1.3x-1.4x PPS.

GPUmax and then eclipse as backup ...

Maybe neither of us should assume.  :P

Inaba, what is your plan in regards to pool choice?

I love this idea and concept, but I can see a lot of the BFLs just being snatched up by those who can afford the 200 shares and are tired of waiting for BFL to deliver.

The premium being changed can really be explained away with getting the unit sooner. Might as well just buy the 10 units.

I understand that and don't disagree with it.  I just think it could keep this a rather small mining operation when the units keep getting snatched up.

thanks, I forgot that part.

Inaba,

Hopefully you can start to answer some of the outstanding questions in this thread.

Thanks,
gigavps

So each time theres a 'sale' of the single, you hold 30 shares of the asset.  After ~66 sales, you end up being 100% owner. Not bad.

Sorry guys, I had to fly to Phoenix on short notice and didn't turn on the laptop the whole time.  Back now and ready to go!

So what are the outstanding questions?  I thought a lot about this, and to prevent a run on singles, I am going to impose a 45 day moratorium as it were on on Single sales before I start getting the rotation of Singles going.  A lot of you contacted me about pre-ipo purchased, etc...  While I do want to get a sale rotation going, being able to provide everyone who wants one with a Single in a timely fashion without the waiting period, if I do that right now I will be virtually out of singles in a day. 

So what's the benefit, you ask, if you are wanting to use this GLBSE offering just to purchase single and not invest in a mining company?  Well, you can "purchase" a single and have it mining for you, basically, even though you don't physically posses a box.  Unlike ordering directly from BFL, your unit will be mining while you wait for it to be delivered, as it were, earning you income immediately, vs having your funds wait in limbo for 6+ weeks.

As far as were we will be mining - GPUmax is one place, Bonus Pool is another, and we'll also be trying to increase the income in other ways as they present themselves.

Have I missed any questions?

This one:

Oh, sorry.  No, I'm going to start a different GLSBE offering for that.  I am going to try to get to that today or tomorrow.

When (as in day) are you planning on releasing shares for BFLS?

https://glbse.com/ipo/6

Inaba,

- How many shares will you be releasing on Wednesday?

- If all the shares will not be released on Wednesday, what is the schedule to release the rest?

- When will the first dividends be paid?

- To be clear about dividends, whatever the equipment generates will be divided equally between all shares holders?

Thanks,
gigavps

Now I feel stupid. :P

Thanks gigavps.

Yes, everything the equipment generates will be equally distributed to all shareholders.  It's my understanding GLBSE handles this automatically, I just put in funds and say distribute to the shareholders.  I will be setting up a page similar to the BFL Single page I had so people can monitor the hashrate and such of the mining farm.

I haven't decided how many shares I am releasing on Wednesday yet.  On one hand I would like to release them all and let the market decide who gets what, but that has problems with a big player just snatching up all the shares in one go.  I may release some shares randomly throughout the day/days following the IPO until they are all released. 

My batch of singles haven't arrived yet, I expected/expect them this week... if the ship date slips, then there's not a lot I can do about that until they arrive.  I'll be making a post when I take delivery of the actual hardware though.

You originally said you would release shares as hardware comes online. Will you postpone the ipo if you havent received your hardware?

I will probably continue the IPO with the understanding that dividends will not be paid until the hardware comes online.  Although if there's a compelling reason not to do so, then yes I can delay the IPO.

I support the idea of the ipo moving forward, was just cuious as to your position on the matter.

This looks interesting.

Why not?

It would just be a matter of you thinking how many bonds is worth buying+running+etc each equipment and price accordingly. No need to fraction the great idea you have here! ;D

Is it possible to increase the number of shares available on an asset that's already created?

IIRC nefario can grant this manually.

Are you increasing them because you've increased your capacity, or are you changing the terms you mentioned earlier?

I was just asking to see if it's feasible to add in MiniRig Boxes to the offering or if creating a new offering is the way to go.  I also plan on increasing capacity beyond 10 at some point as well, so the need would be there also.

I feel like the investment into a mini-rig mining company is vert different than into a rent-to-own singles operation. If this current plan changed to add a mini-rig I feel like that could change the dynamic for many.

Different indeed most of the other offers I have seen are priced at about 2-3x more expensive than this one plus you can end up owning the hardware with this as well, not just some promise of you get the hash power forever for your money invested.

The investment is based on # shares per equipment value/running costs/etc, as well as the price of each share. Can't really see how the dynamics would change ???

Not fractioning this seems a really better investment, since you will be able to trade your shares for various equipment types over the long run, instead of your investment being devalued when singles are no more the flavor of the month.

I agree. As a potential investor, having potentiality of trading shares for up-to-date hardware is extremely appealing. I would much prefer it be one stock for everything rather than multiple for each.

On an unrelated note, Inaba, would it be possible for you to verify your identity with Nefario? You certainly have a good reputation here and run your own pool, but it would be nice nonetheless.

I can look into it... not sure what needs to be done exactly? 

If I were to combine the two (Singles + MiniRigs) how would the shares be priced, though?  They'd have to be pegged to USD I guess... so what's a good value? $1 USD per share?  More, less?  I'm certainly open to ideas.

$1 per share worked fairly well for someone else recently  :D

Get me a mini-rig pronto Inaba  -- seems you are a more public voice than BFL ;D

I'm afraid I haven't issued any assets on GLBSE, so I'm not sure exactly how the verification process works, but AFAIK you just send Nefario proof of phone, proof of email, proof of identity (copy of driver's license or the similar), proof of address, and show him Facebook/LinkedIn accounts if you have them. You can do none to all of that. I don't think it's that complicated; gigavps did it for his similar "perpetual MH/s" offering and seemed satisfied with the process.

As for share layout, I'm always glad to offer suggestions.

My initial thoughts:
- Shares priced at 1 BTC (~5 USD) (If you want higher priced shares, just multiply.  ;) )

Why: Easy round number, not ridiculously small but not too large. (I don't think really anyone would buy less than 1 BTC worth, but speak up if I'm not correct in that assumption.)

- Take the USD new price for a single/box, add ~10-20% depending on your wishes (estimating what you'd be comfortable with based on your previous stated prices) and set that as the trade-in price. (so, say, ~140-150 shares per single, ~3600-3800 shares per mini-rig, equivalent to ~5.5-5.9 MH/s per 1 BTC share)

Why: Flexibility for investors, some profit for you assuming USD/BTC stays fairly stable.

If you don't want to change your original contract, you could start with ($persingle/170/$perbtc).  This gives you a 15% overhead and makes shares .7BTC if a BFL is $600 and a BTC is $5 (and you take in $600 per single in the IPO).  However, I'd be very afraid to do this the way you have suggested and would recommend delaying the IPO and rewording the contract (possibly changing the ticker to make sure everyone is aware of the changes).  Why?  Because unless market price for the shares stays roughly proportional to the current share to USD ratio (or increases vs. that proportional difference), you risk losing money.  I see the following scenarios happening based on watching other shares:

1) $perbtc drops and shareholders who have received payments sell to break even in BTC (or at original purchase value in BTC, which is less $) and switch to a new security that looks better, buyers at the lower $perbtc get shares at a discount and therefore get BFLs at a discount if you are selling them and starting new units, which you publicly re-offer 170 shares for (keeping 30) at market value (meaning the $170 shares don't pay for the newly added unit and 200 coming back might not)

2) shareholders undercut your additional market offerings when they want to sell and they don't want to wait fro the 170btc ask wall to be broken, so either the additional single isn't paid for, or losses from scenario described in one et greater faster as you lower the ask for that offering

3) $perbtc increases and shareholders don't sell lower accordingly, so the share value in BTC is stable, but the $persingle gets higher and the BFL rotation doesn't happen

These are just examples of the problem with share price being in BTC while singles are sold in USD.  Even if the security was for something truly sold in BTC, the value of BTC hasn't ever been stable, so it is still like you are selling a commodity priced on another commodity instead of selling an item based on a currency.  This is just risk, if you are comfortable with it, that is fine.  Another good concern was brought up earlier in the thread though, that there wouldn't be any shares left in the wild after roughly 66 units were sold.  This assumes you don't sell the extra 30 shares you earned rotating BFLs, though, which you could.  Also, in order to keep dividend payments consistent/accurate for shareholders, you need to make sure shares are transferred to the correct account according to the farm's size (if
you sold a unit for 200 shares and didn't get another one started, the shares should go to the issuer account [where they won't receive dividends] until another one is started, but anytime all units are operational, all shares should be in your possession [or in public possession] so that 1 share is always worth the same GH/s until/unless newer better (mini-rigs getting more GH/sperUSD) equipment increases the average GH/s per share [at which point it should be kept stable at the newer GH/s of the bigger/better farm]).

The way I see it, you are buying a piece of equipment +cost of operation+maintenance upfront at a fixed price. If it turns more profitable later or not, it doesn't matter, because you already paid for it. You can even give it away for free later, if you'd like, because it's paid for when you bought it. My big question here is if Inaba has his "perpetual" running costs covered if there is no rotation of equipment.

1) New shares must not be sold at market value, but at the equipment+run+etc "perpetual" cost value, at the time of purchase of said equipment, so that 200 shares reflect the current USD price of the "complete package". If someone gets a BFL Single at a discount, then it's because others were willing to, as the Single was paid at the original time of purchase.

2) If needed, new equipment is only bought after Inaba sells the shares for the last equipment.

3) Rotation is really the question here, are you depending on it for this mining op to be profitable Inaba? What happens if people just want to buy shares and let you mine "forever"?

If Inaba just mines forever, he owns 15% of shares, income from that should cover operating costs.  However, if a unit fails, it won't cover replacement, so it shouldn't be treated as a contract, it should be treated as a company that buys back shares with capital (the singles), but an in production single that fails shouldn't cost Inaba if there is no replacement available.  This woud be the only reason for the GH/s per share to change.  However, the terms of the IPO don't necessarily state that, and they don't really state that the value of a single vs it's USD value will be used to peg (and adjust, if necessary) additional offerings.  That's why I said he may want to change the terms and delay the offering.  Changing the terms now will certainly upset some people whether they have a right to be upset or not (even though technically he holds all shares and can do that, someone with open buy orders might not get the chance to close them if time isn't given).  The other issues solve themselves with these changes, as long as Inaba understands he may hold 200 shares for a while after a rotation if the price is pegged.  He'll get the dividends for the shares, so that is fine.

Its totally up to Inaba and I recognize that, but if the terms are going to change right now, their better be a delay of a day or two and the changes made VERY clear for all of us with current open buy orders.

I think the intent is that the 15% would cover replacements. BFL offers a 6 month warranty and operating costs are pretty minimal (~$2-3/mo at ~.05 USD per KWH).

What time is the IPO?

It's never been my intention to keep shares back for my own personal stock, as it were.  I would resell the additional shares gained, keeping the total amount outstanding constant (or as constant as possible while units are rotated).  

I hate to peg this to USD, what do people think about making the share price dynamic... which is really is going to be anyway if people buy/sell shares for different amounts.  At some point in the future, the "cost" in shares of a Single or MiniRig will be more or less than the original value.  I guess I could post a current "exchange" share amount for hardware.  What are people opinion of doing it like that?  I have to give that some more thought, I'm not sure that's a good way to go about it either.

Yes, the 15% of shares that I keep cover operating costs and has been the intention from the start for the operating costs to be built into the initial buy price - so you can keep mining forever or the initiative is dissolved and hardware sold, etc...  If hardware were to fail, the resulting dividends would be lessened across all share holders, spreading the risk out across everyone until the hardware was replaced.  I actually plan on keeping a number of units in reserve anyway, so it should not be an issue.  The original single that I have has never given me any problems, so I don't anticipate too many issues as far as failed hardware goes if the unit lasts for 6 months, it's unlikely to fail barring accidents.

One problem I see with adding the MiniRigs in at this time or in the future, to this offering, is A) MiniRigs aren't available yet, B) I don't have one so C) Anyone investing will have to invest under the understanding that there will be no resulting returns on that investment until an MR ships, which is a minimum of 16 weeks I would imagine. 

I think the number of shares required to exchange for hardware should be kept constant (e.g., 200 for each single, 6000 for a mini-rig, etc), so that you always know how much "hardware" you have. What would vary is the price of each share, based on BTC/$, equipment cost, etc. at the time they are issued. :)

I tend to agree, Vbs.  But how would I account for adding in the MiniRig since the hardware hasn't arrived as of yet?  If I issue, lets just say 6000 shares additional for hardware that isn't online, how does that sit with people? 

Doesn't sit well. It would be tying up investor $ for 4+ months without getting any significant return. It essentially dilutes the return of the 2000 'working' shares for a long (and unknown) period of time. There is also the risk that a MiniRig will not show up at all (or, if you prefer a less extreme scenario, be months delayed).

I don't mind buying some shares for non-existent hardware (the 10 Singles you have on order) because there is the understanding that they will be delivered very soon. But issuing/buying shares for hardware that is 3-4-5 months away doesn't sit well at all.

Does GLBSE not allow you to issue more shares under the same ticker symbol as more hardware shows up? That would be the ideal case. If not, an alternative would be to issue a separate IPO for the mini-rig (if and when it shows up) under a separate ticker.

I think GBLSE has support for sub-assets, you can release them as BFLS.SEPTEMBER2012 or BFLS.MINIRIG. There are already some entries like that on the shares list for BTCBOND, https://glbse.com/assets

To make management even more clear/easy you could either:

* use subtickers per mining entity (BFLS.BFLsingle1, BFLS.BFLsingle2, BFLS.BFLsingle3...) and hand out 200 (or how many ever) shares there individually
* release new shares as you buy new hardware in your main ticker (start with 1000 shares, buy a new machine and release 200 more shares, bringing them to a total of 1200)

The first method might be more tedious to pay out (I don't know the new interface to GLBSE in detail), the second one might be a bit less obvious to shareholders.
With the first method you could even pre-release shares (or raise money) for hardware you don't yet own on a case by case way ("I'll buy machine X as soon as 80% of these shares are sold"), with the second method you won't have so much micromanagement on GLBSE side and could focus more on mining + making your shareholders some more coins.

Inaba, are you thinking of changing things before tomorrow's ipo? If so speak up so I and other can decide if we still want our open orders out there.

tgmarks - that's what I'm trying to figure out right now. 


This was my thoughts as well.  I don't think there's any way to issue sub-assets, or if there is, it's non-obvious on how to do it. 

I think for now, I will run the IPO as is and see how it works out.  I will create another offering for the MiniRigs that will come with the understanding that the hardware is not in operation yet.

There will be one change to the IPO: There is a 45 day moratorium to exchanging shares after the IPO to prevent people from just buying shares and immediately exchanging them for Singles.  This both gives people a chance to get shares and/or trade them, as well as giving me time to get a rolling rotation of singles going.  If I can get a cycle going faster than 45 days, I'll allow exchanges before that.

With the shares being released tomorrow, please understand that I do not have possession of the hardware yet. I expected it to be in by now and I am expecting it any day now, so no dividends will be paid until the hardware is in my possession, and barring any unforeseen circumstances getting it running (thought I can't think what that would be). 

Why go through the hassle of all this complexity? Do you really care that you own 3 shares in BFLS.BFLsingle1, 5 shares in BFLS.BFLsingle3, and 2 shares in BFLS.BFLsingle7? Or if you want to trade a share, do you really want to be forced to choose under which subticker to place an ask/bid? I'm not sure how GLBSE works, but I'm assuming there would be 10x more liquidity in an offering with 2000 outstanding shares rather than a subticker with only 200.

Isn't it much simpler to aggregate all like-resources (i.e. 10 Singles) into a single ticker of 2000 shares? Each share is identical. There is no concept of 'what Single this share belongs to', and investors don't care. They just care that they own X number of shares yielding Y income. A simple aggregate of 2000 shares for 10 Singles is simpler to buy, sell, understand, and manage.

Yes, there could be also some middle ground to the 2 extremes I presented, something like "BFLS.Singles" with X*200 shares and "BFLS.SomeotherFPGA/ASIC" with Y*???? shares later. This might make it easier to sell shares with a different "hash rate" in the future.

Inaba, I appreciate your direct response and clarity. I hope and expect that this venture will do quite well.

No need to complicate stuff, all shares should be under the one main "BFLS" asset.


When there is motivation for the acquisition of new equipment, a new sub-asset can be created if needed (as in the case of Mini-rigs, where the ETA is unknown), for example, "BFLS.MINIRIG", on which the shares will convert into the main asset "BFLS" when it arrives. This works similarly to making 2 different IPO's and merging them after, but in an easier way to implement.

To create a sub asset you just create the asset as normal, the only difference is the assets name.

So lets say your base asset is GLBSE and you want to create a sub asset called BOND
you would name the new asset GLBSE.BOND

Only the owner of GLBSE could create GLBSE.BOND

Can those assets be folded back into the main one at some point or are they a totally separate entity and they just happen to share a common portion of a name?  And is there a $40 fee per subasset as well?

Could you plz explain further how sub-assets are implemented? Can the owner merge them with the main asset when he chooses to?

I think that the easiest and cleaner way would be managing everything under the same asset. When you need to get new hardware, you just release new shares at market price, setting the price per share of the hardware accordingly. That way you don't dissolve the existing shares and you get the capital you need for the hardware. Other companies manage this kind of things in this way. Maybe you also can use motions to know what existing shareholders think about the proposals...

You can't do that, because you are diluting the worth of the previous investors' shares until the new hardware arrives. That's why you need a self-contained entity (a "sub-asset") until the new hardware arrives. Then you can merge everything together. :)

Inaba,

At what time is this thing being released?

Thanks,
gigavps

You're right. As a long term investor I wouldn't care too much about a few dividend payments a little diluted. I know it would be compensated in the long term. But I understand that it would be an issue for some people. Yes, a "sub-asset" which can be merged would be the ideal solution, but I don't think glbse can do that by now. Maybe Nefario can implement something like that...

Sub assets are totally separate entities and share only part of the name.

They cannot be rolled back into the main asset.

Creation fees are still the same.

Since, as Nefario stated, GLBSE does not support that function, seems we need another approach.

I can think of two options off the top of my head:
(1) Inaba pre-sells shares before they are released to interested parties (larger volumes only). This gives him sufficient capital to buy the hardware and he then issues the shares once the hardware arrives, transferring shares to those who pre-bought accordingly.
(2) Inaba issues a seperate, temporary stock each time he wishes to order more hardware. A share of this asset "guarantees" the buyer a share of BFLS upon receipt of the hardware by Inaba. He raises enough money, purchases the hardware, issues new BFLS shares, transfers shares to those who bought the temporary stock, and finally deletes the temporary stock. Crude, and I don't know what Nefario would think of this, but AFAIK it should work.

Is that something GLBSE dictates or is it when I transfer them out of the holding portfolio onto the market?  I really wish there was some documentation on GLBSE!

If it's the latter, I will start issuing shares between 0900 and 1100 CST and release them slowly throughout the day, likely around 170 shares at a time.

This could be done with a subasset.  Theoretically, you could sell the subasset and then when the time comes, transfer 1 BFLS share per subasset share to each account that transfers you subassets.  This is assuming that GLBSE shows this information on the frontend.  It does show where dividends come from, so I imagine it shows what account transfers come from as well.

I haven't done any issuing in GLBSE, but I'm guessing you can sell them at will.  I'm certain it was that way in the old system.  Also, about offering 170 at a time, have you looked at the number of open buy orders?  I am guessing you can just go ahead and issue them all at once, with the highest bidders getting the shares.  I'm pretty sure there's no way you can sell to a lower bidder unless you take payment outside of GLBSE with a limit per person and then transfer the shares to the appropriate accounts (where those buyers may well then sell to the highest bidder in GLBSE, earning money you could have fairly received).  You might want to do a low number at a time and keep looking at the buy orders to make sure there's not a big order taking them all, but even then, what can you do if there is (and as such, why worry about it)?

Why not buy them yourself then when they come in release more shares?

I'd encourage you to release the shares in one shot - there are enough orders out there to buy most of the shares.

Yes, a big dump would be fun.

Well, and honestly its a lot less annoying than sitting around refreshing GLBSE all day to see if your shares were purchased or if you need to adjust your bids.

I will release all available shares at once, in about 2 hours from now.  1100 EDT or there abouts.

Sweet, let the games begin.

More IPO fun for GLBSE  ;D

Is this now ?

I asked Nef to add GLBSE-time to the site, will be less confusing.

Yes, it's now 11:04 AM EDT.

So, what's going on? The number of shares issued jumped from 0 to 2000 but there was no sell order from inaba yet...

I'm not sure... Inaba?

I'm just spamming F5. :D

just checked the orders and there is a lot of demand for this, with people offering all the way upto 1 for a share initially worth 0.7

will be interesting to see how this goes over time. Wonder how many of the 200 orders for shares will request the hardware? At least 5 of over 200 shares.

Just counted 1600 orders for more than 0.71

Phil

You cant even crack the top 2k orders for the original ipo price now. So when is the trigger getting pulled on this?

I put up a bid 1@1 to prevent one buyer is getting all the stocks.
Just to prevent one big dog gets everything.

Bitcoin-rich buy all of these stocks & bonds and I think it's bad for bitcoin that a few people ...etcetc

I think I missed it but how many BFL singles are on order for this? 5?

Phil

@filharvey:
10. at least

2000 shares / 200 shares per unit = 10

How do the IPO's on GLBSE work? Is it highest bidder get the sale? Is it all shares are sold at the IPO price or done via auction ie highest first?

Highest bids first.

I'm not going beyond 0.76. It's a great offer, but there's always a lot of things that could go wrong...

OK, we are live! :)

Is that all the shares released? Looks like only about 1000 were released.

Phil

Ok, I released all the available shares.  Took me a few minutes to figure out how to handle it... getting the hang of GLSBE slowly.  

I will be making another offering for the MiniRig future, as well as releasing more shares for this asset as soon as I get more hardware in.

900 were released for public sale, 800 are pending at the moment to guarantee that no single entity will gain all the shares.  The other 300 are the 15%, for a total of 2000, or 10 units worth.  I wish I could see what accounts acquired the shares - I assume more than one or two people were able to acquire at least some shares?

Agreed - based on the BTC volume showing 703 seems like 1000 shares...

How long will the 800 be pending for?

Waiting just makes it more likely that big money gets all the shares.  They can take the time to look to see where the current bids are and bid the highest.

I will be transferring the 800 manually, not through public sale to assure the same person doesn't snatch up all of the publicly available shares.

I am going to create a new asset called BFLS.FUTURES . This will be a non dividend paying asset that you can trade for BFLS shares when hardware becomes available.  You will be able to trade 1:.85 as new hardware arrives.  So 100 shares of BFLS.FUTURES will get you 85 shares of BFLS.  I will increase the number of shares available for BFLS as new hardware is added and remove shares from public circulation as hardware is removed, so share dilution should never happen as the corresponding hashrate increase will increase the per-share dividend value.  If more hardware comes online than is covered by BFLS.FUTURES, then I will offer BFLS shares for public sale, but BFLS.FUTURES holders will have priority over public sale.

The above is subject to modification as I flesh out this idea a bit more, but I wanted to get it out there to get some comments and see if anyone sees a flaw in this plan.

How would you determine which of the BFLS.FUTURES shares get transfered when you get new hardware? Or will you only release BFLS.FUTURES shares for the exact number of new hardware you have or plan to get.

I'm not sure I totally understand the question - I will release X number of BFLS.FUTURES shares and with the proceeds order the hardware.  Once it arrives, share holders can trade in their BFLS.FUTURES shares for BFLS shares... there will never be more BFLS.FUTURES shares than there is hardware on order (with a reasonable lag time between share sales and ordering). 

I haven't figured out the value of X yet, but it's somewhat immaterial, since they are effectively vouchers for BFLS shares and thus no dividends are paid on them.  I'm thinking maybe a total of 2 minirig and 15 singles worth is the right number, so about 13,400 shares, though I may make that a random number around that value to give an odd number of shares, so people have a chance to buy them as opposed to people buying even block numbers and snatching them all up.

Why not 1:1 ratio to keep things simple?

Yeah, I was just thinking about that... for sanity sake, I will just do a 1:1 ratio and take the 15% off the FUTURES shares as opposed to the BFLS shares.  So BFLS.FUTURES shares can be traded for BFLS shares at a 1:1 ratio when hardware becomes available.

Yeah a 1:1 ratio will simplify a lot.

As for avoiding just a very few ppl snatching all shares, maybe using some kind of small batch round robin assignment would work? You'll have to do it manually, based on user forum info here (or other differentiation mechanic), since GBLSE is anonymous and anyone can create accounts at will. :P

Yeah, that would probably be best.  If you want shares, contact me via PM with the number of shares you wish to purchase and at what price.  I will be offering a portion of the shares privately, so I can be sure that multiple people get them and then I will offer the rest on the public exchange.

What will the price for these shares be?  Will it be a 15% discount from the IPO price of BFLS, or 15% off the current market price?

Inaba, it seems (to me anyway) like you are trying to back your offer with singles, but at the same time you do not want to give them up.

Until BFL starts shipping them with regularity, I think he should hold onto them. Otherwise, this asset is just a guaranteed "quick" (45 days) shortcut for buying singles, with a delivery estimate you can count on, unlike the delivery dates of BFL that we know are written in sand. So, for some people, having a definite date is worth paying premium.

Where I live, FNAC selled the iPhone 4 on its release day for 1200€ (at that time, ~$1740). It still sold out! ;D

I'm not trying to hold on to them, but I want to get a rotation going, otherwise I'm just selling shares for singles with no dividends to return to investors.  Ideally, I would like to have at least 10 singles and 1 MiniRig physically mining at a minimum (thus ~7200 shares outstanding) and I can rotate more in as hardware allows.  As VBS said, it would just be a way to get quick singles or an MR otherwise, which is not the intention.

I got a ton of PMs with regards to the shares, I want to be clear to everyone that I am going to be offering shares of BFLS.FUTURES, which is a non-dividend paying asset that you can trade, once the hardware is physically in my possession for BFLS shares.  BFLS shares will pay dividends, BFLS.FUTURES will not.  BFLS shares will be always be backed by physical hardware, BFLS.FUTURES will be 'backed' by hardware on order.

As far as the price for BFLS.FUTURES, it will be the same .7 BTC initial offering as BFLS shares, since it's a 1:1 trade when hardware arrives.

My thought is that if/when you buy BFLS.FUTURES shares, you contact me and tell me how many shares you bought and when and I will put your name on a list.  Once the hardware arrives, each share will be traded for BFLS shares in the order you bought/contacted me with your intention to trade BFLS.FUTURES for BFLS.  I realize some people may just be interested in trading both BFLS and BFLS.FUTURES, so this may be irrelevant to some of you - but the # of shares purchased is what will buy your place in line, not an individual, so if someone wants to buy BFLS.FUTURES shares and sell them later at a premium because they are "first" in line, that's fine - it's the shares that are holding the place, not any specific individual.  I hope that makes sense.  

Since GLBSE has no way for me to verify who bought how many shares when, I have to go with the contact/list route... until such time as GLBSE offers this ability, I can't see any other way to do it.  

Ok, I think I've responded to all the PMs, if not, I apologize, please contact me again.

I am offering BFLS.FUTURES shares as per these conditions:


If you wish to purchase shares prior to the IPO, please contact me with the number of shares of BFLS.FUTURES you want and at what price.  I will allocate out shares so they are as equitably distributed as possible.  Once that is done, I will offer additional shares for public sale.

Let me see if I understand. So BFLS.FUTURES will work almost as a bond to raise capital, but without any interest payment. So, you get the credit to buy equipment for free, and the buyer of the share/bond/asset/whatever has to wait on a line for the hardware to arrive and become functional. And he'll begin to be compensated for the invested capital only if he's granted it's place on the line for exchanging this asset one on one for another supposedly more valuable...

It's that it? Am I missing something? What if the minirigs won't ever arrive? What if it take forever? We all will be stuck with an useless electronic asset without any compensation for the waiting?

Doesn't sound like a good deal to me... Maybe if you include some dividend payments as a form of interest and some guarantee to buy back or exchange the assets at least partially if something goes wrong it could work, but otherwise I'm not seeing it...

Those who do see it are probably the ones who would rather have a partial stake in a unit or rather, risk a partial stake in a unit.  You could pay BFL for a unit and you would be in the exact same boat, waiting for hardware to arrive and out the money if it doesn't.  As such, why should Inaba take on extra risk to satiate you when he is essentially doing the same thing for you in a fractional manner?

It is basically an interest free loan given to the mining company for the agreement to exchange the bonds for shares in the company in the future.  The only profit would be if there is some kind of difference between the price of the bond now and the future price of the BFLS shares when they are converted or the dividend payments when having the BFLS shares.

Maybe the market will have a spread between how much the bonds cost and how much the shares cost.  It will be fun to watch, but for current shareholders it may be more economical to just get a 0% interest loan with a credit card to purchase more boards.

Inaba isn't taking any real risk if he's not backing the bonds nor paying interest. He's buying stuff for free, with the money of the shareholders. If everything goes well, he's making his living by reserving for himself 15% of the shares of each unit, which is the same as taking 15% of the purchasing value as well as 15% of the operational revenue. His operating costs will be covered by that 15%.

Lets add that the share is slightly overpriced at current rates (should be 0.625 with BTC @4.8, 0.6 with BTC @5, I really can't understand those who are trading it for more than 1.4), and we have a great business, almost risk free... from the operator's pov...

I understand the advantages of the fractional purchase for the buyer and that was what appealed me when the proposal appeared. But it only works if you have your capital immediately working after you buy the shares. If you have it in limbo for who knows how long, all the possible advantages are lost. You are just buying a piece of overpriced used hardware, and you doesn't even have a clue if this piece is ever arriving or working...


Yes, that's how I saw it. Too risky for the buyer. Great business for the operator. There's a big (and inexplicable) spread now, but I guess it won't last long. And if this mechanism really is implemented this way, it's guaranteed that the BFLS shares won't ever going to go too high, because the continuing issuing and selling of new shares at nominal price (the exchange of bonds for shares is effectively doing this) is going to dilute the value of the existing shares.

True, I shouldn't have said extra, but my point was that there's no reason for him to take on your risk (ordering a single [or fraction])I disagree, I say the shareholders are buying stuff and paying him 15% to manage the purchase and operation of said stuffThat would be a reason not to buy now, unless you are bullish on the value of BTCBuy the main shares at the market-set premium if you want instant gratification; buy the futures if you want to order part of a single that you don't have to operate at much closer to the proportional market rate of said single; buy the single directly from BFL if you don't want to pay a premiumIf this is true, it is still true if you order it directly from BFL, only you have to set it up and operate.  I don't understand why you think Inaba should take on your risk in order to offer you a service.

When the concept of this venture was presented I was really excited.  I thought it sounded like an amazing idea and that it gave something unique to the approach.  I loved that one could trade in their shares for a single given there was another one there to replace it and have more shares issued.  The concept was clear and presented well.

Now I think this whole thing has turned into a mess.  The 45 day rule is lame.  If you just stick to not exchanging the single till you have another to replace it with, you would be fine.  Only issuing 900 shares at first blew it for me as I was only in the top 1600 according to price offering, but figured that was all I needed as there would be 2000 shares.  I also think this whole BFLS.futures thing wont sell as people will just have to sit on their investment to even get into the real investment.

I thought BFLS was great in its creation, but feel that it has majorly failed in execution.

This seems a very good method. My only question is if you'll be able to verify how many shares are sold to each person in the public sale, so that when someone says to you "I just bought 100 shares, add me up to the list for conversion" you can really verify that, otherwise the BFLS<=>BFLS.FUTURES ranking list for can be easily cheated. :P

Well, I'm open to suggestions.  The 45 day thing is just for the first "round" as it were, it's not going to be an ongoing thing.  Once the mining is settled down and going and I have a rotation of Singles coming (and going, I'm sure), exchanges for physical hardware will be immediate, no waiting required.  My intention with the 45 days it to prevent people from just buying up the shares and then getting an instant single.  I want a mining operation going that is paying dividends to all the share holders first and foremost, with hardware sales as the secondary bonus given to everyone.  

So, in essense I am "sticking with exchanging the single when I have one to replace it" -  since I don't have a rotation going yet, I don't have anything to replace the exchanges.  Now that I have the IPO, I have more units on order and I'll have units to exchange - with BFLS.FUTURES, it will enable me to have a constant rotation of hardware, instead of a stuttered order of every 6 weeks.  The BFLS.FUTURES shares will then guarantee you the BFLS shares.

As far as dilution goes, I am structuring it so as to avoid dilution specifically.  200 shares will roughly give you 800 MH/s hashrate, always.  Even if I were to issue 10,000 more shares, it would all be backed by hardware, and your 200 shares would still be worth ~800 MH/s.  So if the total shares outstanding is 2000, or 20,000, 1 share = 4 MH/s dividend... that's really the whole point of this venture.  I want to provide the ability for people to own a fraction of a unit that always maintains it's value in MH/s, no dilution or changes regardless of what happens with the stock.  You'll always know 1 share = 4 MH/s.  

The original concept was a "rent-to-own" that kind of grew into this, and I think it's a great idea.  It will allow people to purchase parts of a single and slowly buy more of the single until they own the whole thing.  This applies to MiniRigs as well - you can/will be able to trade in ~5200 shares fro a MiniRig - you can acquire the shares over time and have your "fractional" Single or MiniRig working for you the whole time, instead of being stuck with all or nothing.

You can ignore BFLS.FUTURES and concentrate on BFLS if that's what you want. FUTURES won't take anything away from BFLS, it works in addition to BFLS.  Once the initial 45 day waiting period is over, it will operate exactly as you describe.

I have been trying to figure that out... I need to talk to Nefario about that.  Right now, I'm selling them privately and transferring them manually, so I know who they are going to and how many shares there are.  Should I make the list public in the first post in this thread, or keep it private?

I guess to keep track of them the shares must be numbered? They should be in the GBLSE DB, so maybe Nefario can expose that?

As for public or private, dunno. Needs more thought. :P

I (as an investor) don't have an issue with it being public; it would likely stop many "When am I getting my BFLS/Where in this list am I/This is unfair" type questions.

True, but it will also create a secondary market for "selling your position" on the list (you will attract investors wanting to play that market).

Needs more thought. :P

I think that because of the way this IPO was structured, there are several 'layers' to it which had appeal to different people for different reasons. One (perhaps obvious) benefit seemed to be that it would be a great way to get one's hands on a Single much quicker than ordering from BFL directly. Many people here have been trying to bypass the legendary/infamous "4-6 week" waiting line from BFL by buying up other's people's places in line, and this IPO seemingly opened a door for just that.

I don't presume to speak for Inaba, but I don't believe his original intent was to provide a 'move to the front of the Single line' service. The IPO's intent was to offer hashrate backed by physical hardware, with the added bonus/twist of allowing investors to trade in shares for that hardware. This was something not seen before on GLBSE.

My own attraction to BFLS shares was simply the ROI and the hassle-free nature of offsite mining. I wasn't interested in trading shares for a Single. I have no (or rather, very little) available infrastructure or desire to support significant mining hardware. Running a PC and Single(s) is not noise-free and generates heat. Neither of which is very appealing to me. What *is* appealing is the potential to purchase the equivalent of a Single and earn mining income, without any of the associated hassles.

My original, and simplistic, calculation went something like this:
(1) Order 1 Single from BFL:
Single cost: $600
Shipping: $30
Annual power cost: $50
TOTAL: $680 (first year)

(2) Purchase 200 shares of BFLS:
Share cost: 200 * 0.7 = 140BTC = $680 (assuming 1BTC = $4.85)
Shipping: $0
Annual power cost: $0
TOTAL: $680 (first year)

It seemed a no-brainer to purchase some BFLS shares instead of ordering a Single from BFL. Not to mention the "4-6 week" delivery delay from BFL. Now, we know it wasn't possible to purchase 200 shares at the IPO price of 0.7BTC/share. The price was bid up significantly higher. But even at 0.8 (or whatever the top few hundred shares were going for), it was a good deal.

Consider that a BFLS share at 0.8BTC/4Mhash is the equivalent of 1BTC/5Mhash. Compare to a 5Mhash Gigamining share (gigavps's recent IPO) currently going for 1.2 to 1.25 BTC/share. So from solely an ROI point of view (the contract details of Gigamining and BFLS are very different), a BFLS share is arguably a significantly better value.

From all accounts I'd say the BFLS IPO has been very successful. Not only were all issued shares sold (and quickly), but the average selling price was significantly higher than the original 0.7 offering. If this were my IPO I'd be quite happy. My only regret would be that I didn't have more than 8Ghash (10 Singles) of hardware to back more than 2000 shares.

But Inaba is building up, so additional shares will come.

It can be a good deal, but I think in the BFLS.FUTURES should have a definite date in the contract of when the BFLS.FUTURES contracts can be converted to BFLS shares.

While that would be nice, asking Inaba to guarantee a date by which BFL will ship the products on order seems unfair; he has no control over that.

Well he could say they are convertible upon arrival of the units ordered with that round of funding and in fact since he would know which shares went with what units then he could convert and notify the concerned parties once they do get there.

This is my intent exactly, which is why I created the FUTURES shares, so the people who buy the FUTURES are automatically guaranteed the BFLS shares before any of the public get them.  I will be ordering hardware with all proceeds, I'm not keeping any funds back, it all gets "reinvested" into hardware almost immediately.

Yes I had thought that was your idea from the start good luck with the venture and hopefully them boys at BFL pick up the pace on their assembly/shipping.

So hope us all.

What is the estimated delivery now?

They say 4-6 weeks at BFL thread here to keep track of it all when people actually get theirs.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67887.0

I think that's a little on the optimistic side. Most of the people who have received theirs already waited at least 8 weeks. One would certainly hope that BFL would speed up the process as production gets into gear, but hope tends to spring eternal.  ;)

I even agree that the whole idea was good, just disgruntled because I didn't bid high enough.

Inaba, didn't mean any hard feelings.

Inaba, you had mentioned about a month ago in a different thread that you had 30 Singles on order (though I don't recall you saying when they were ordered); are the 10 units earmarked for BFLS coming from this batch?

BFL is still working through their January orders, so if your order wasn't placed in January we may still have some weeks to wait.  :(

Yes, the 10 singles are in that batch.  I have  query out to BFL right now asking about when it's expected to be allocated to me... I hope to hear something back today. 

I am going to be placing a new order for more hardware shortly ... if anyone else wants in on BFLS.FUTURES, now is the time, before I place the order.  At least 1 rig box and more singles.. if anyone else wants in on a second rig box, speak up, cause the time between order and delivery on those is substantially longer than the singles.

Did they get back to you that day?  Did you make the next order?

Yeah, I will be making an announcement soon.  Another opportunity was brought to my attention that I discussed with BFL last night; I didn't get home until late.  I need to crunch some numbers and see if it's even feasible  with what I have on hand at the moment.  Once I figure out the direction to go, I'll announce it. 

BFLS should start paying some partial dividends soon, though.

I am going to press some of my personal hardware into working for BFLS until the BFLS hardware is available.  I will start with 4 or 5 units and may increase that as time goes on.  So expect dividend payments to begin within the next week, although they will be smaller/less than what you should expect once all the hardware is operational. 

Sounds great! Approximately when do you expect the full 10 to be online? Back on April 9th you had mentioned that you were expecting them that week. From the BFL shipping thread it looks like BFL is shipping early February orders now ... if you placed the BFLS order in February they should ship 'soon', but if you ordered in March I'm afraid we may still be looking at several weeks before delivery.

I am hoping to have at least a couple more by the end of the week at the latest, if not all ten.  I have a lot more than 10 on order, but I don't know exactly when they all be shipped (just like everyone else, I'm eagerly awaiting them as well) - I plan on ordering at least one minirig and more singles this week as well.  I was hoping to raise enough funds for two mini-rigs, but I think I'm going to be a few thousand short, so I'll just do singles instead.

Do I understand it right that I hardly can buy the BFLS.FUTURES on the market as I don't know from whom I do buy them and where he was on the list.
Do you still offer the futures for 0.7 for the minirig? How does it work? If I ask for let say 20 - you put ask order of 20@0.7 to let me buy in or how?

It was posted about a week ago (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75433.msg855331#msg855331) that the order would be placed soon.  Maybe you missed the boat.  Right now there is over 200 immediately available on glbse.

I was just thinking that if few more people joined in Inaba could be able to buy 2 minirigs instead of 1 minirig + some BFLS - that's why I was willing to buy directly from him.
Second point is - I see there are some on the market - I just don't understand how Inaba keeps the list of owners if I am not buying directly from him. If I buy them on the market he can hardly check that I really bought them (if it isn't from him) and the guy I buy them from will stay on the list - so maybe he can buy again in month or so again for 0.7 again and still have that place on the list which I would have bought from him. Or I can claim that I bought them from someone (as Inaba can't check it) and get on the list but buy them really only in the next wave but get those BFLS shares earlier.
Don't get me wrong - I don't want to create any mess I just want to know better how it works before I buy in.

As long as Inaba hasn't placed the order yet, I'm sure you'd be able to obtain some fresh shares - PM him.

Yes, you can buy some fresh shares from me.  I got the last check I was expecting in the mail today so I'll be placing the order this week.  As of right now, all BFLS.FUTURES shares will be converted to BFLS shares when the order comes in.

GLBSE prediction market launched (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77859.0)

The hardware order has been placed (Yesterday).  I will start dividend payments on BFLS shares this week, though it will only be a partial week with partial hashrate until I can press more hardware into service.

I sent out a dividend payment this morning, those of you with BFLS shares should see approximately .005 BTC per share payment.  That will, of course, increase as I add additional hashrate.  Hopefully sometime early this week.

I will be setting up a page on EclipseMC this week so you can view the real time hashrate of the units and an estimated payout per share.  Where are my units!!!!  Arg!

I have the new code almost done, so you'll be able to see the current mining hashrate/historical rate and estimated payout(s) and number of units active.

Sorry I haven't gotten the new stats page up yet.  Things keep getting in the way of my time!

I paid out dividends today, you all should have them in your accounts for BFLS share holders.  Still waiting on the rest of the hardware.

Thanks for the updates, Inaba.

Dividends paid out just now.  Continuing to bring new hardware online...

Been swamped with the new server deployment and haven't had a chance to work on the stats page.  I hope to get to that this week.

Since it looks like I will be hanging on to at least some GPUs for the near term future, I would like to ask what you guys think of me rolling some of my GPU power into BFLS offerings.  In the unlikely event someone wanted a GPU, I'd be willing to trade BFLS shares for GPU hardware as well - but I wanted to get the shareholders thoughts on rolling GPU power into the offering.

Since my GPU farm is/was so large, I always have at least a couple cards down/in for RMA, which is one of the primary reasons I  want to migrate to primarily FPGA mining, so income from the GPU based shares would be slightly reduced depending on hardware luck/failure, though I don't imagine it would be drastically reduced.

What's everyone thoughts on that?

As long as this does not reduce the existing expected dividend/share payout (i.e. one BFLS share being equivalent to 1/200th of the net profit from a BFL Single), it doesn't matter.

However this may not be possible to achieve because the profit from an 800Mhps FPGA is much greater than that from an 800Mhps GPU; I wouldn't want the addition of GPUs to reduce net shareholder profit.

Remember that currently, depending on electricity rates, anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of the profit from GPU mining goes to paying electricity. FPGAs don't have that problem. If an 800Mhps FPGA earns 10BTC, 9.5BTC of that is profit. If an 800Mhps GPU earns 10BTC, only 5-7BTC of that is profit.

The situation gets even worse in December when the block reward drops to 25BTC: GPU profitability, again depending on local electricity rates, will be hit much harder than FPGA profitability.

So what are the options?

One way is to reduce the # of shares allocated to a GPU. For example, 200 BFLS shares currently represent a BFL Single (~800Mhps). You wouldn't want to make 200 shares represent a 5970 (also 800Mhps) because a 5970 is much less profitable even though it has the same hashrate. So you might want to allocate only, say, 120 shares for a 5970 to account for its lowered 'net' hashrate (gross hashrate minus its running cost in electricity). That's just an example.

But even this breaks down when the block reward drops in December. Continuing to operate the GPUs will drag down overall profits per megahash; something that should be avoided.

A better way (perhaps the only fair way) of handling this is to create a new GLBSE offering strictly for GPU mining. That way you can keep the high-efficiency FPGA mining separate from GPU mining. They each have a different income/expense/profit profile, and should be best treated separately.

Those are my thoughts for now.

I'd also say keep it separate.
Pajka

Seems 2 factor authentication has gotten screwed up on GLBSE, and I am unable to login to issue dividend payments.  I will issue them as soon as I am able to login - probably tomorrow sometime.

I am still unable to login to GLBSE and Nefario has not responded to my support request as of yet...

Ok, got access and dividends have been paid.

I assume your dividend payment is calculated after electricity cost, right? Your dividend payment for this week is equivalent to about 880 mhash/s per bfl single without even counting electricity cost. Are you using something like GPUMAX to get higher than PPS?

Yes, BFLS is utilizing a number of different methods to get better than PPS rate when possible.  I'm not guaranteeing anything better than the flat PPS rate, but when fortune is good everyone gets a cut!

Any updates on futures equipment?

Very soon, waiting on a last batch of units now.  Hoping by the end of the week.

*crossing fingers* ;D

Apparently I managed to break GLBSE again, it's trying to charge me 265,795,000 BTC to transfer some shares that were issued erroneously.  Needless to say, the funds in my account are woefully short of 265 million BTC.  I can't issue dividend payments until those shares are reclaimed into the asset account so it won't dilute the dividend payments.

As soon as GLBSE support gets back to me and the issue is straightened out, I will issue dividend payments.

PS - if I ever do have 265 million BTC @ 5 USD or more per share, ya'll are on your own cause I'm out!

Any update on this? Those of us with futures shares are on the edge of our seats. ;)

Dividends for last week have been paid.

This week should see the last of the hardware, I hope.

I was searching for mining companies that are mostly invested in BFL singles and found yours.

Inaba, whats the exact number of mh per bond?

Roughly 4 MH per share net.  Though dividends have been paying out a bit more than that.

coming another end of week. Too much false hopes is worse than tell everyone frankly the real time schedule.

I'm waiting on the hardware from BFL.  If you are following the other thread(s), they are in a holding pattern waiting for cases.  I stopped by the labs this week to check on things... there is a huge stack of uncased units ready to go, so as soon as the cases come in it should be good.

Thanks for the update Inaba.

I am traveling today. I am going to try to get dividend payments out today but if I can't I will have them done hopefully Monday evening.

I am not in a place I can get the dividend payouts handled tonight.  I apologize, but they are going to be delayed a day... I should have them ready to go and distributed tomorrow night, a day late.  I apologize if this causes a problem.

Thanks for the heads-up. Appreciated.

Dividends have been paid.  I hope to have the hardware available this week as soon as the cases come in.  I'll keep this thread updated as soon as I know something.

Dividends for this week have been paid.  This was an exceptionally crappy week as far as mining goes... several factors contributed to a just over 100% PPS rate.  I am going to be making some changes to the way mining is handled, hopefully this week, so we should net greater than 100% PPS next week.

As far as BFLS.FUTURES, I am still waiting on BFL for the remaining hardware.  If you're following the other thread at all, you'll see no one has received a shipment of singles in ~2 weeks... as soon as I get the hardware, I will start converting BFLS.FUTURES shares.  I apologize, but I can't do anything without the hardware.

My physical miners have had a crappy week as well. Primary and backup pools underperformed. Just bad luck. Good luck happens just as often ... just have to wait for it.  I consider anything above 100% PPS to be a bonus; when it happens it is much appreciated. BFLS can mine at various 100%+ PPS pools to provide shareholders with 100%+ PPS, but those are not always reliable. The possibility of greater than 100% PPS payouts is one of the perks that BFLS shareholders enjoy, something the fixed 100% PPS mining bonds cannot claim. Though with that comes the risk that there may be times when back luck happens. ;)

Cheers for the service!

Inaba, I was going to hold off asking this until after the June 15 announcement, but perhaps I can pose these initial questions to get us thinking: as you know BFL has stated that they will honor a 1:1 swap of old/existing product for their upcoming SC line.

1] Can we assume that it is your intention to swap out the existing BFLS hardware when (and if) that opportunity is presented?
2] Would that decision go through a 'Motion Vote' on GLBSE for existing BFLS shareholders (I'm not sure how that works)?
3] How would the swap affect BFLS shares? i.e. right now a share is worth 1/200th of a Single (4.1Mhps). Let's say the $600 Single was swapped for a $600 SC product with 2x the hashrate. Would the BFLS share then represent 8.2Mhps (2x 4.1Mhps), or would you do a share split in which 1 share was converted into 2 with each one still representing the the same 4Mhps hashrate?

Probably too early to be making final decisions on this, but I'm thinking this is a topic that WILL be brought up sooner or later, and it might be good to at least start thinking about the various issues it will bring to the table.

Sorry I haven't responded to this before now, I wanted to have a better answer for you.  But in the interests of at least making people aware of that fact that I am considering the options, that's what I'm doing. 

1) Yes, that is the most likely scenario, although there are a few other options I am considering, but are fairly unlikely.
2) I don't have a current answer for this, but I'm open to it - although I'm not sure why anyone would NOT want that to happen.
3) I can not answer this right now due to the fact that I have proprietary information that has not been released publicly as of yet and any answer I give would disclose at least some of that knowledge.  But I will say the share distribution will be fairly distributed based on cost vs performance.  Currently while shares equate to ~4 MH/s, the share price was determined by the cost not speed, so expect more of the same without a very good compelling reason to change.  I did this because it prevents the shares from suddenly becoming worthless when newer technology comes out... as you can see with all the other mining bonds out there now, they are going to suddenly delvalue a whole hell of a lot if/when ASIC becomes common place - BFLS shares will retain all of their value since they are based on the hardware, not deterministic mining output. 

Once the rigboxe(s) come in, I will be selling the rigbox shares based on a similar formula based on Rigbox cost, not it's expected hashrate.  So again, you'll get the benefit of upgrades without the shares devaluing.

Mining went fairly well this week.  I was waiting on one last payment to come in and it just came in, but the transfer to GLBSE is taking longer than I'd like (Yay for 1 hour + confirmations).  As such, I am going to be headed to bed soon, so dividend payments will happen first thing in the morning (for me). 

Thanks for the payment, Inaba. A question for you:

GLBSE indicates that BFLS currently has 6395 shares that are receiving payments. It is my understanding that BFLS is allocated in exactly 200 shares per Single, and currently no other mining hardware is being utilized (MiniRigs are not in yet; GPUs are taboo).

Since 6395 is not divisible by 200 shares, exactly what hardware do those shares represent? That's assuming BFLS shares are released in blocks of 200 (200 per Single: 170 for public sale; 30 for you), and all released shares have been sold. Past dividend payments were paid across 4210 and 7500 shares ... also not divisible by 200. Just curious to know.

Basically what's happening is this: 

I have a large farm, and trying to manage it individually based on the type and location was proving to be almost impossible and still maintain and efficient operation.  As such, I pooled all of my mining resources one giant bucket, so they all mine to the same place and all the resulting revenues are generated together.  The odd share arrangement are shares that I have allocated to myself for the hardware I have in the bucket at a rate of 826 MH/s per 200 shares, minus some fudge factor (so I end up shorting myself a few shares). 

As I slowly sell off my GPU holdings, I am returning those shares to the BFLS bucket of unallocated shares (which is why you see the share count going down), and it will increase again when BFL finally gets me my remaining units.

That is reasonable, though I am surprised that GPUs are now part of BFLS.

My only concern would be if electricity costs are being taken out of BFLS gross profits. GPUs are much more power hungry than Singles so the presence of GPUs would drag net profits down. Depending on rates, a GPU's mining profits would be reduced by ~25% due to electricity cost. So, essentially, to net 826Mhps out of a GPU you'd actually need it to hash as 1100Mhps.

If this is the case, and you are paying for electricity out of BFLS gross profits, then I would submit that only 200 shares per 1100Mhps worth of GPUs should be allocated (not 200 per 826Mhps). Of course, the specific numbers depend on your electricity rates and the BTC exchange rate, but this is a reasonable ballpark.

The initial offering in the OP states that BFLS was an FPGA mining company and mentions Singles specifically. I think one of the reasons shareholders were attracted to this was specifically that there would be no GPUs involved, thus little overhead costs, and a high percentage of the gross profits would be distributed to shareholders rather than the electric company.

You had asked everyone's thoughts on adding GPUs to the BFLS farm before in this thread and I've presented my concerns here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75433.msg904121#msg904121 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75433.msg904121#msg904121)). There was one additional negative response to the idea, and no positives.

I think the message was that GPUs should only be added as a separate listing from BFLS, so they do not to drag down net profits. But if you are not paying electricity out of BFLS income (or paying a fixed fee regardless of how much you use), then this is moot.

Cheers!

From the OP:


That would include electricity. I am also somewhat concerned that some of the hardware backing this is not singles as was indicated, but as long as Inaba provides the equivalent hashrate/profits and honors the trade-in option, the difference is functionally nonexistent.

GPUs aren't added to BFLS as backed hardware. The equivalent shares are added to me to make management easier.  I think maybe that's where the confusion lies - there is no distributed shares out there that are not backed by BFL singles.

Electricity/maintenance rates are not factored into the shares at all, only pure hashrate vs shares, which is what the BFLS shares are. The maintenance/electricity is already factored into the 170/200 share split per unit, so 200 shares = 826 MH/s, which includes all maintenance/operational costs.  Any additional costs from operating a GPU vs a BFL Single comes directly out of my pocket, not the BFLS dividends.

The "extra" shares that are currently showing are factored from my GPU farms at a rate of 826 MH/s per 200 shares, but this is purely because all the mining income is going to the same bucket and would be difficult to split out (I already tried to keep them separate and it was a nightmare accounting wise).  So all my mining income is put into GLBSE and then dividends are paid out there - it makes the accounting much simpler.

Because of the negative response to the GPUs backing BFLS, I have not converted BFLS Futures shares and am instead waiting on actual BFLS hardware - that's why there is still BFLS Futures shares outstanding.  I am the only one holding shares that are backed by GPUs and I will not be selling/distributing shares that are not backed by BFL hardware.

Excellent, I think that clarifies things very well!

Indeed. Thank you Inaba, and my apologies for jumping to conclusions.

Inaba, regarding the BFLS Singles. Now that BFL has made new (faster) firmware available for the units, do you have any plans to flash some or all of them to a higher hashrate? I realize that not all Singles can handle that without throttling, but perhaps the climate in your DC is cool enough for them to operate at 864/872/880 or even 896.

This would be another way to increase dividend yield.

Yes, once I have everything setup like I want it, I will be slowly figuring out what's the most efficient firmware for each single.

how about the BFLS.Future? is there any sign of conversion?

As soon as BFL releases my remaining units, I will convert.  I sent an email this week to Sonny to see what was up, but I have yet to hear back from him.

Ok, I expect to have the additional Singles units next week, so I will be converting BFLS.FUTURES shares once I have the units in hand.

If/When I upgrade the Singles to the ASIC units, I will increase the amount of shares available according to the cost involved with upgrading (if I have to pay $600 to upgrade a unit, I will allocate another 200 shares per unit) and each unit will then require 400 shares to trade in for an ASIC unit.

On another note, I am going to be opening up BFLS.RIG for sale, here's how it's going to work:

I have two mini-rigs on order right now, I expect them to be available soon.  One unit is already spoken for through previous investments, the other unit is going to be put up as BFLS.RIG shares. The previously allocated unit will also have shares allocated to it, and the parties involved may or may not be selling their shares either immediately or in the future.  6058 shares will be allocated in total for a Minirig for a total of 12116 shares in RIG. 6058 shares can be traded in for the hardware.  Similar to the Singles, I will be keeping 15% of the shares on the second unit.

Once the details of the ASIC unit orders are publicly available, I will double the shares available for the Rigs and make them available as well, at that point, it will take 6058 x 2 = 12116 shares to convert your BFLS.RIG shares into a Rig/SC.

Dividends on RIG will be paid out the same way BFLS is currently paid, on a weekly basis and the amount will be what the unit(s) generate that week. Obviously, no dividends on RIG will be paid until I actually have the units in hand and they are mining.

Initial price on RIG shares will be between .5 and .7 BTC per share.  This includes a small premium due to the funds lost while my orders are in limbo, since the money has already been allocated and spent for the units.  RIG shares purchased are for a share of the unit, not to help fund the purchase of a unit, like many other offerings.  I will also be reinvesting the funds into the ASIC orders, which means the ASIC units will be "pre" purchased already, and you will be buying into already purchased units, not funding the purchase of ASIC units.  This is an important distinction, since it means you'll start generating revenue much faster than a unit you would be "funding" the purchase of.

I plan on offering this later today, but I would like to solicit comments at this time.  Also, should I start another thread or maintain it in this one?

I finally took delivery of the new BFL hardware.  Those of you wishing to convert BFLS.FUTURES, please contact me.  Include your user name on GLBSE and the number of shares you want to convert.

Then, transfer the BFLS.FUTURES shares back into the asset (or transfer them to me, GLBSE user name is, surprisingly "Inaba").  I will then issue you the appropriate BFLS shares.

Will BFLS revenue also be reinvested to purchase ASICs?  If I read correctly BFLS.RIG will not pay dividends but instead reinvest the revenue into the purchase of ASICs.

I am surprised this asset does not have more demand for the BFLS asset.  The volume is pretty light.  Have you thought of just rolling the BFLS assets into each other so they are not competing with each other for volume?

BFLS revenue will not be rolled into ASICs, it will continue to pay out dividends as normal.  When I upgrade BFLS to ASIC, I will issue more shares to account for the additional cost of the hardware and double the "share" cost of a unit from 200 shares to approximately 450 shares (not set in stone yet) to account for the increase in the cost of the hardware/upgrade cost.

I have a few other ideas I will be mentioning at some point in the future on the direction to go with that as far as BFLS goes as well.

For BFLS.RIG, it will pay dividends.  It's basically the same as BFLS, just with Minirigs.  Same deal on the upgrade to ASIC as well.  Rollings BFLS and BFLS.RIG was shot down by most people, which is why it's separate... read a few pages back in the thread for peoples thoughts on that.

BFLS and RIG aren't really intended to be a highly traded commodity... I think most people are investing for the dividends.  The difference between BFLS/RIG and other offerings is that all the hardware is paid for up front, out of my pocket and I pay out on what the unit earns.  You are basically buying into the hardware, not hashrate.  When you buy the BFLS and RIG shares, you are buying already purchased hardware, not paying for the purchase of future hardware (with the exception of BFLS.FUTURES of course) that may or may not materialize. 

If I understand it right, Inaba is intended to carry out a quite fair plan: the shareholders is and will be getting dividend payment until ASIC unit out ( since we all know quite well about the punctuality of BFL, this period may be longer than expected). When the ASIC out, the "company" pay Inaba shares to upgrade to ASIC. Then, the hash rate per share may be close to 10x as it is today.

Yes, this is a much better deal then GIGAMINING!

This is actually an incredible deal. Inaba is fronting the prepay money to upgrade all the Singles and MiniRigs to ASIC. And Inaba is probably first in line to get the upgrades. So if you have BFLS or BFLS.RIG shares now, you will see a ~20x increase in dividends when ASIC comes out without having to put in more money. Thanks Inaba!

Indeed it is a welcome change who would have thought a straight forward honest proposal that continues to be so and I highly doubt he is first in line gigavps seems to have the inside track on the hardware from BFL, first with the singles he has rack full of them when everyone else has trouble getting even one then mini-rig first again I think it will be third time lucky as well...

OK, I understand on the upgrade now, but I must have missed the motion or asking shareholders if they want minirigs in with BFLS.  When you made the order from BFL (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75433.msg855331;topicseen#msg855331) from the BFLS.FUTURES you stated that you had enough for a minirig and singles.  So I assumed that the minirig was going to be part of BFLS.

Yeah, at the time, I had planned on combining them. If you want to transfer your shares from BFLS to BFLS.RIG, I am happy to do that for you.

Hi DILLIGAF,

Can I ask why you like to talk about me so much? Am I that interesting?

As for having a "rack full" of singles before everyone else, this is a blatantly false statement. Let me point you to the following links to help you get your facts straight.

Very first single I received. I only received 1 and was not the first to receive them. I was just the first to make a post about it.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=65752.0

Here are some posts of the single farm growing, I ordered 10 after the 1, but received them in batches of three or four......
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=70611.msg813386#msg813386
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=70611.msg835294#msg835294
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=70611.msg850030#msg850030

If you are going to keep talking about me around the forums, please get your facts straight.

Best regards,
gigavps

I don't like rip-off artists.

Inaba, can you comment on what happens when you slowly upgrade your FGPA Singles to SC Singles. I assume you won't be able to upgrade them all at once. I'm guessing since this is a pooled operation, you can share the extra hashrate with everyone.

I'm thinking it will go something like this. Let's say for example you have a total of 10 FPGA Singles. So there are 2000 shares outstanding. Come October, let's say you only get 5 SC Singles upgraded. So you immediately sell 233 shares of BFLS per device. 233 shares because each BFLS share represents $3 in equipement irrespective of hashrate and the SC upgrade is $700. So for the 5 units upgraded, you issue 1165 new shares and withhold 15% for yourself. That increases the total number of shares outstanding to 3165. You then have 5 fpga and 5 sc Singles mining for a week and the amount of BTC generated will be divided equally among the 3165 shares. Does that sound like the right way to do it?

To be fair, you should also send out a dividend right before the upgrade, so new owners do not get the benefit of the coins that were generated previously.

Well, what will essentially happen is that I will front the money for the upgrade and take all the "doubled" shares for myself.  I will then sell whatever portion of the shares as I see fit.  I've already taken my 15% and if all the upgrade shares are in my account, the 15% of them are there by default.

So, even if I didn't sell any of the upgraded shares, everyone would still benefit from the upgraded hashrate.  But yes, I will be selling the upgraded shares, if there are any.  However, I am considering trading in all the singles for a portion of an additional rig.  If I do decide to do that, though, I will give plenty of notice and give people the opportunity of trading in their shares for the singles.  Got plenty of time on that front!

So I have everything mostly worked out with GLBSE.  However, I screwed up and distributed shares before paying this weeks dividend for the rigs, so I have now mixed partial week shares with full week shares.  I should have paid the dividends then distributed the shares.

As such, I am going to roll the dividends into next weeks since this week was not a full week of mining and it would be a minor payment anyway.  This will allow for proper/fair dividend distribution to all share holders instead of shortchanging some people and others getting a much larger amount than they should.

This will allow me to get all the rigs mining from the same start time this week.

Looking for some clarification on the dividend per share......

Whatever the rigs earn that week is divided evenly.

The rigs dividend should be payed to BFLS.RIG and not BFLS, right? I'm not sure I understand why the payment to BFLS for last week was less than before. What did it have to do with the rigs?

Ahhhh, so your cut came up front, and no ongoing expenses is subtracted from mining revenue?

How many GH/s is BFLS?

Rigs dividends are paid to RIG and BFLS is paid to BFLS. 

The units did not generate as much in funds last week, but it was still above PPS.  I have been turning down the GPUs that I was supplementing BLFS with slowly, but surely. 

With regards to RIG, my cut comes in the form of 10% of the shares go to me for operating costs, so there's no ongoing costs as it were for the shares you own.  I just keep 10% (or 605 shares) of a RIG if I sell all the shares.  So 5453 shares go up for sale for a rig, basically, and you need 6058 to trade in for a rig.

So how many GH/s are you slinging?

~50 for RIG and a bit over 25 for BFLS at the moment.

Sweet....thanks for the info. 

Hi Inaba,
what has happend that now we pay dividends to 400 shares more?
Pajka

More singles were added (2) and another one this week.

Thanks for the update.

What does this exactly mean?

Are you just taking the GPUs out of service while they are still profitable?
Or are you about to sell them to use the funds for another BFLS purchase or ASIC upgrade?

I am taking them out of service.  I am sick and tired of supporting them and RMAing fans and crap all the time.  They also take up a ton of space and generate a lot of heat.  I will probably miss the heat this winter, but I have minirigs to keep me warm. :)

Ok, but then the dividends will drop even more ...
How big is the GPU part?

And you can sell them and buy us some BFLS or use the money for upgrade to ASIC anyways.
What is the plan?

I'm not sure how that would change anything?  If I added more singles, I would add more shares and thus your payout would remain the same.  The plan is to upgrade the singles into a mini-rig SC when those become available.

Will BFLS shares then be turned into BFLS.RIG shares?

Yeah, I will convert them to RIG shares at some point.

So you mean that the GPU mining income was just a temporary bonus?

Yeah, until all of the singles came in.  They came in a long time ago, but I didn't feel like reconfiguring all the GPUs so I left them mining on the BFLS system until I take them offline.

I will post here when I have more information on the situation.  I'm afraid I don't know anything more than anyone else and I just found out about GLBSE closing for good, so I'll work through the issues and get everyone squared away ASAP. 

Ok, so I'm just as in the dark as everyone else with regards to GLBSE, but here is how I am going to handle the BFLS and BFLS.RIG.  Fortunately, since BFLS and BFLS.RIG were never designed as a security, bond or anything of the sort things are fairly easy.  GLBSE was a way for me to handle payments being divided up easily among a number of owners of the BFL hardware - this means I can pretty easily make the transition away from GLBSE.  BFLS and BFLS.RIG has always been a way for us to split the costs of purchasing a single or a minirig, so it's not really a hindrance, as I made no profit on shares traded, etc... and thus have no accounting to worry about as far as that goes.

What  you need to do:

Send me an email with the subject beginning: GLBSE:

In that email include the following:

Your GLBSE user name
Number of shares you hold of both BFLS and BFLS.RIG
BTC Payment address

Obviously, I will need to verify that information with the GLBSE records, assuming they are forthcoming as potentially promised.  Once that information is verified, I will include you in the payout rotations.  I will be withholding payouts temporarily to unverified shares/shareholders until they can be verified.

BFLS and BFLS.RIG will be combined into one payment, and BFLS "shares" will be converted into BFLS.RIG "shares" at a rate of 1.21:1, so for every 1.21 "shares" of BFLS you own, you will get 1 "share" of BFLS.RIG - this is because the monetary value of BFLS.RIG is slightly more than BFLS.  This actually works out well, as I was intending to upgrade the singles to an ASIC minirig anyway, doing away with BFLS all together. 

I will continue with the Sunday night payouts, but they will be sent directly to your wallet going forwards.  I had a substantial chunk of funds in GLBSE for payouts when it went down, so here's to hoping it's recoverable. 

I thought the 1:1 ratio was a bit unfair for BFLS assets owners, but we could live with it.

However:
If my math is right, the above ratio is even more unfair than 1:1.

Why 1.21?  Is it ($600/200) / ($15000/6058) = 1.2116 ?  But it is in opposite direction: 1 BFLS = 1.2116 BFLS.RIG
Precisely:
1 single worth of $599 gives 200 BFLS shares. One BFLS equals to $599/200 = $2.995
1 minirig worth of $15295 gives 6058 BFLS.RIG shares. One BFLS.RIG equals to $15295/6058 = $2.52476...
So the monetary value of BFLS.RIG is slightly less than BFLS, not "more than".
In effect: 1 BFLS = 1.186251 BFLS.RIG
Or: 0.843 BFLS = 1 BFLS.RIG, so the ratio should be 0.843:1

Maybe I didn't take into account something important, so correct me, please.

I'm going to have to go over the numbers again.  I was trying to factor in the administrative hold back on the shares and I may have screwed that up.

For simplicity sake, maybe we should just stick with 1:1 and I will make up the difference from my personal holdings as required. 

Really.  That sounds like an admission that you intentionally misled people in your OP.


I love how everyone who tried to make their offerings sound legitimate by using language which has real world legal meaning now wants to have it both ways and claim that they weren't really offering shares, bonds or other securities, they just called them that.  Either you were offering stock to the public or you misled people by claiming you were making a public offering of shares.  You can't have it both ways.

He always made it clear you were buying share in the hardware less the administrative fees when converted or you could leave the hardware with him and just get the BTC produced minus the administrative fees. Unlike most of the rest that offered these so called bonds at 2-4x cost of hardware with no ownership stake in the hardware once bought.

Yes, that is exactly right.  It has, from day one, been a proportional ownership in physical hardware and you are free to take that hardware at any time.

I agree with RHA here. 'Shares' of BFLS and BFLS.RIG represent a share of physical hardware. The idea being that one could exchange a sufficient amount of BFLS or BFLS.RIG shares for an actual unit: 400 BFLS shares for a Single, or 6058 BLFS.RIG shares for a MiniRig.

Fundamentally a BLFS share and a BLFS.RIG share do NOT have the same value:

BFLS (1 Single is 200 shares): $600/200 = $3 per BFLS share
BFLS.RIG (1 MiniRig is 6058 shares): $15295/6058 = $2.52 per BFLS.RIG share

Thus it is clear that a BFLS share is worth MORE than a BFLS.RIG share. In fact, 1 BFLS share is worth 1.19 BFLS.RIG shares.

Put another way, if a person were to convert 100 BFLS shares, they should receive 119 BFLS.RIG shares to get equivalent fair hardware value. The 1:1 swap as originally proposed would be unfair to the BFLS share holder.

Did you receive the glbse data ?

Negative, I haven't received any GLBSE data as of yet, nor have I received any of the funds I had in GLBSE.

If you haven't already, you may want to visit GLBSE and put your name in to release the info for the asserts to me. 

If you don't do this, I'm not sure I will be able to verify the number of shares you are holding of BFLS and BFLS.RIG.  I am not recommending you do this, because who knows what they will do with that information, but I've done it and hopefully we'll get some sort of resolution soon.

2 weeks past, still nothing from GLBSE ?

Nothing... I'm not sure who to even try to contact at this point.

Nefario by e-mail (doctor.nefario@gmail.com)
He reads e-mails. And answers sometimes. It seems he doesn't read this forum, so writing here is of no help.

Just sent him an email.

I assume Nefario / James McCarthy does not answer mail about this subject.

Isn't it about time to do something about this ?

What do you propose?

http://bongrippers.net/media/clap.gif

Your avatar is a perfect combination with that ice cream :D :D :D

Thanks, but I want to make clear that I'm not suggesting a bounty to ice him... :P

Would this be a way to get our data ? By paying Nef something ??

He responded to me, but said I had to wait.  He didn't say no... just said I had to wait like everyone else.  I'm not sure what else I can do at this point.  Hopefully he will release that information soon.

Are dividend retained for when we'll have full list of share ownerships ?

Yes

Seen elsewhere:

There were 179 assets at GLBSE, part of them inactive.
So we have to wait not more than ~40 days in worst case.

Well... I guess he's not going alphabetically, rats!

Hmm, well I have no idea where that puts us.

I have the payment back end ready to go though, so that's good.

I am only going to post further updates in the BFLS.RIG thread, so see that thread for future updates on this.

Youre swapping BFLS shares for BFLS.RIG when you get the shareholder info back ?

Basically, yes.  It's too difficult to keep them separated at this point and they were designed to be a 1:1 replacement (hence the 6058 strange value for a minirig vs 200 for a single).

I posted this as well in the BFLS.RIG thread, but it might be worth repeating here (apologies for the double post):

A single payout bucket is welcome but I have a concern about the proposed 1:1 conversion: a 1:1 conversion does not appear to represent fair value for BFLS shareholders. Unlike 'regular' mining bonds such as Gigamining, BFLS and BFLS.RIG represent a share of hardware, not hashrate, so:

BFLS (1 Single/200 shares): $600/200 = $3 per BFLS share
BFLS.RIG (1 MiniRig/6058 shares): $15295/6058) = $2.52 per BFLS.RIG share

This indicates that a BFLS share is worth more ($3/$2.52, or 1.19x) than a BFLS.RIG share. Put another way, 5098 BFLS shares ($15295) are worth the same as 6058 BFLS.RIG shares ($15295) which is the value of 1 MiniRig.

So to fairly convert the hardware value of BFLS into BFLS.RIG, 1 BFLS share should be converted to 1.19 BFLS.RIG shares. A 1:1 conversion would mean that BFLS shareholders take a 19% loss. If my analysis is flawed, I'd like to know where it fails.

I am being sent invoice for hosting of two single while due to GLBSE interupted trading I ended up being a few shares short of a complete unit.

Is anyone of you in the same position ?

Transisto, email me the details of the problem specifically and I will get it worked out.

I recall there was talk of possibly closing this thread and continuing discussions in BFLS.RIG but, in case this is still active, I'd just like to mention that I posted some thoughts (for discussion) on how to handle the current BFLS and BFLS.RIG shares once the ASIC upgrade begins:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1455088#msg1455088 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89902.msg1455088#msg1455088)

Oh I guess I can lock this topic huh?

Yes, all communication will be happening in the other thread listed in Epoch's post from now.