It may well make dividend reinvestment easier (right now, people with small holdings can't sell a small part of their holdings - e.g. if someone has 2 shares they can't sell 5% or 10%, they can only sell 0%, 50% or 100%).

But it wouldn't change growth significantly - as LTC-ATF wouldn't be selling new units just because they were cheaper.  The only scenario in which new units would be sold is if more LTC-capital were needed, and that needs 1 or more of the following to happen:

1.  LTC to fall a lot vs BTC, so we need more capital to secure our bonds.
2.  LTC-ATF to make heavy losses trading.
3.  Significantly more opportunities to trade to appear.

I'd like to think #2 is unlikely.  #1 is sort of happening (LTC is steadily falling vs BTC for approaching 2 months now) but at a rate where the profits we make are outweighing its impact.  #3 is slowly happening as well - we'll quite probably sell more bonds soon - but nowhere near fast enough to require selling more units (there just wouldn't be another dividend for a while is all).

If I thought there was any real likelihood of us needing to sell more units of LTC-ATF in the next few months then I wouldn't have paid a dividend last week.

My fault - I wasn't clear enough.

When I said "I won't bother reporting dividends like this in future" I didn't mean mean that I wouldn't report dividends - I meant that I wouldn't report them "like this" - i.e. the LTC paid, exchange-rate etc.  If anyone cares enough about those details they're available on LTC-GLobal.  I WILL report receipt of weekly dividends - but it'll just be brief.  So this week's report would be "Dividend of just over 0.6 BTC received for LTC-ATF.B1" - and I'd put it at the top of the next day's dividend report.

You little nit-picker!

Everyone knows that 10 apples (ASICs mining) are the same as 10 oranges (ASICs promised at some future date).

We just received our first investment income - 29 LTC dividend payment for this week on our 10K LTC-ATF.B1 (it's a round number as when paying LTC-ATF.B1 dividends I always round up to a tidy number for the convenience of investors when they do any math).

That, converted at the exchange-rate used when calculating the dividend (.02093) is 0.60697 BTC.  The LTC have been returned to LTC-ATF and the BTC transferred to this fund on BTC.CO.

This isn't a large enough payment to warrant me cancelling PURCHASE ask, doing a management fee calculation/payment, reporting new values and putting up a fresh Ask.  So until tomorrow's dividend, PURCHASE will have a slightly smaller markup on current NAV/U than usual (it's actually been less all week - due to valuing LTC-ATF.B1 at face and not counting in accrued interest).  The 2% markup on sales allows me to simplify reporting and accounting like this - without existing investors being penalised.  That's a large part of why it exists.

Unless anyone sees the need I won't bother reporting dividends like this in future - I can always produce the transactions if required (the amount of the dividends and the exchange-rate used are always reported on LTC-Global already).  I'd happily expose the read-only API for transactions on this account - were it not for the fact that it would reveal who traded in what shares when (which obviously can't be made public).

How would you do this?

As far as I can see an asset issuer only knows the email address of those holding shares - not the account name (which is what is needed to transfer shares).  So you'd either need to already know who all your investors were - or rely on them responding to an email from you telling you the account name to transfer to.

I ask because, as you probably know, a stock split is under discussion for LTC-ATF - and I couldn't figure out a way to be able to be certain I could do it manually even if I wanted to.

True - you can already do it, and as BTC-TC doesn't wait for many confirmations anyway it won't even take very long for funds to show up.

There's about zero chance of that.

Weexchange is run by Ukyo who runs Bitfunder.  So having the funds for Bitfunder managed by it adds no great amount of Counter-Party risk (as it's primarily Ukyo who could steal from both).

If BTC-TC were to use Weexchange then suddenly all funds deposited in BTC-TC could be stolen by BOTH ukyo AND burnside - so we'd have gone from one person being able to take our funds to two.

Bitfunder using Weexchange DOES add some small measure of extra security (a thief using, say, a key-logger needs to log your login information for TWO sites instead of one to steal).  But if you use a yubi-key on BTC-TC then you've already prevented nearly all thefts relying on weakness at the user's end anyway.

In terms of wallet security (at supplier's end) then Weexchange doesn't add anything - someone needs to get to the Weexchange wallet instead of a Bitfunder is the only difference.

It's the doubling of CP risk that makes the suggestion unworkable - in fact it would FAR more than double the CP risk (if we were to assume burnside and Ukyo were equally trustworthy) for a few slightly more complicated reasons.

Sold   572
Price   0.066231
Total   37.884132
Less Fee   37.80836374
Man Fee   1.134250912

Management fee of 1.134 BTC transferred.

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)    634.18617511
10000 LTC-ATF.B1    100.00000000
TOTAL ASSETS    734.18617511
   
Outstanding MINING   11411
Outstanding SELLING   11411
Outstanding PURCHASE   219
Effective Units   11630
   
Block reward   25
Difficulty   15605633
Hashes per MINING   5000000
   
Daily Dividend    0.00016113
50 days (Min Liquid)    0.00805649
100 days (Forced Close)    0.01611298
365 days (Buyback)    0.05881238
405 days (IPO)    0.06525757
400 days (Post SELLING div)    0.06445192
410 days (Pre SELLING div)    0.06606322
   
NAV Post MINING Div    732.31223549
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.06296752
Days Dividend Post Div   390.79
SELLING Dividend    -         
NAV Post SELLING Div    732.31223549
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.06296752
PURCHASE selling price    0.06611589
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.06170817

That's untrue.

You only have to consider single-player RPGs to see why.  How much grinding did you do in the best single-player RPGs you've played?  If you've ever played pen-and-paper RPGs you won't have done any grinding either.

Grinding exists because players can consume original content faster than the developers can produce it - not because it HAS to exist.  It's a replacement for meaningful content - a cheap way to keep players feeling like they're doing something whilst they wait for the next update.  It's also widely used as a means to inflate play-through time - so 2 hours of interesting gameplay becomes 102 hours of play time (100 of which is mindless grinding).  It is NOT something that MUST exist just because something's tagged as an RPG.

I'm expecting next difficulty change to be on Sunday - but it won't change dividends until Monday.  Last time I looked it was going to change very near the end of Sunday - if it changes after midnight GMT then MINING would get an extra day at the old rate and Tuesday would be first day MINING got the new rate (and SELLING got its first dividend).

In theory a bunch of new hashing could be added and the change happen earlier but that seems very unlikely.  For that matter, in theory a bunch of hashing could leave the network and the difficulty change not happen until later in the week - even so late that SELLING don't get a dividend at all.

Second Life?

Somewhere there's one or more people holding more DMS.MINING to balance that.  For every share being bet in one direction - there'll be one being bet in the opposite direction.

I can't give away details about specific investors but I can say the following:

• Both MINING and SELLING each have a few people holding a large chunk (1000+) then a lot of people with much smaller holdings.
• There are a lot more people holding MINING than SELLING (over double the number).

I'd guess there's quite a few MINING holders who haven't acually calculated a value for them - they've just (correctly) realised that if they hold a more expensive (per hash) PMB they can sell it, buy shares of MINING, keep the change and be better off.  They aren't guaranteed to make profit - but if they end up making a loss they'll have lost less than if they hadn't changed (they'll have got back the same in dividends but kept the difference in prices).

Not everyone is trying to hold just one or the other either - there's also people buying PURCHASE, splitting it and selling (or trying to sell) both for a small profit.

Here's the math.

NAV Post MINING Div    697.51179543

That's the total value of the fund after the dividend was paid.

If we divide that by the effective units (NUMBER of PURCHASE that have been given out in total) which is

Effective Units   11058

we get the value per PURCHASE (or NAV/U) :

NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.06307757

That's the amount we have in assets for every PURCHASE (or pair of MINING + SELLING) that exists.

If we now divide that by the amount MINING received in dividend which is :

Daily Dividend    0.00016113

we get the number you asked about.  Which is the number of days we could keep paying MINING the dividend it got today even if we didn't make any profit.

EDIT: If you do the math you'll get a VERY slightly different number - that's due to rounding errors (specifically the dividend paid is only accurate to 8 decimal places - as that's all BTC supports - whilst the dividend used in calculations is more precise).  If you want to work it out anad get an exact match then you'll need to calculate the owed dividend to more than 8 decimal places (the last digit is rounded to nearest value for actual payment).

My point wasn't that you were going to use item-malls - but that deciding upon a revenue model does also restrict game-design choices and so can't be decided upon entirely seperately.  I used item-malls as an example because that's what the other poster had posted at length about.

RCE, for example, pretty much rules out single-player offline games.  RCE means games need to either be player vs house or player vs player - as the key resource has to be both limited (in terms of creation - not in terms of some maximum ever issued) and redistributable.

I totally agree that Bitcoin and an RCE model are an obvious pairing - isn't there some gambling-based MMO that already does that (which isn't an argument against someone else also doing it)?.

The mechanism is this (and you'll see it in practice on Monday by the looks of it):

If capital rises above 410 days of (MINING) dividends at current difficulty then a dividend is paid to SELLING so as to reduce capital down to 400 days of dividends.

Imagine mining was paying 0.1 dividend per day and there was 40 BTC per mining share of capital.  That means there's 400 days of dividends for MINING put aside so they can continue to be paid.

Now imagine difficulty rose so that the daily dividend to MINING fell to 0.095.  We still have the same capital but there's now a bit over 421 days of dividends at the new rate.  We only need 38 BTC to provide MINING with 400 days cover - so each SELLING share would get a 2 BTC dividend.

MINING gets its dividends every day. SELLING only gets one when difficulty rises so that there's enough capital to pay them a dividend and still keep 400 days to cover MINING's payments.  If difficulty falls, stays the same or only rises below a certain amount then SELLING will receive no dividend at all.  If difficulty rises fast then SELLING will receive a large dividend.

And it's more complicated in the long-term - as SELLING could receive huge dividends a few times, then difficulty stabilises and it never receives another.  Or SELLING could receive nothing for a while - then suddenly difficulty surges and it gets dividended a lot whilst MINING dividends drop to being tiny.

As with ALL mining investments, results depend almost entirely on future difficulty changes.  Payouts for MINING will mirror those from identical MH/S in PMBs and also those of shares in fixed mining capacity (those with no reinvestment).  Payouts for SELLING (assuming there are some) represent the return of capital once it becomes obvious that the capital isn't needed to continue paying out to MINING.

There's a secondary point here that I've meant to address in more detail for a while - the issue of how long this fund will run for.

I believe a lot of people are massively misunderstanding the fund - and incorrectly assume that it will close down in a matter of months with me then starting up a new iteration.  I don't believe that to be the case.  I fully expect that in a year's time this fund will still be running - just with much lower prices for the 3 assets.  There's three ways in which the fund can close - let me address them in order from least likely to most likely and then focus on the main one.

1.  I decide to stop running it.  I don't see any likely reason for this - but it's a theoretical possibility.
2.  Capital falls below 100 days dividends for MINING and there's a forced closure.  For that to happen in the next year difficulty would have to stop rising VERY soon - I don't believe anyone thinks that ASICs are suddenly going to stop being sold.
3.  SELLING votes to close the fund.

For 3 to happen, two things have to occur: I have to put up a vote for closure and SELLING investors have to pass it.  Now the contract says nothing about when I'll put such votes up.  There's nothing sinister in that - my policy is simply that I'll raise such a vote if the market tells me SELLING investors would want a vote.  How can I tell when SELLING investors want a vote?  Well that's actually VERY easy.  Let's do a bit of quick math.  We'll focus on the normal situation (where capital is in the 390-410 days range).  It'll never be above that - or SELLING would get the extra - and if it's below 365 then SELLING would never want closure (as they'd get zero back).

So let's say capital is at 400 days dividend - which is ALWAYS where it would be after a dividend to SELLING.  And SELLING's best place to end is always going to be immediately after a rise in difficulty.

If the fund were to close, 365 days of that would go to MINING and 35 to SELLING.  i.e. MINING would get over 91% of the remaining capital.

What does that tell me?  It tells me that unless MINING is trading at nearly 10 times SELLING there's no way SELLING would vote for closure.

Why?  Because any SELLING investor who WOULD vote YES to closure would be better of selling their SELLING on the market than voting YES and then receiving back less.

So there's a really easy way for me to tell whether there's any point in having a vote.  Now consider this question:

How long do you think it is going to take before SELLING trade at around 1/10th the price of MINING?

Because until then there's no likelihood of closure in the most common scenario.  And I don't see that point being reached this year at all.

And let's end by getting back to the other point - about limiting supply of PURCHASE.  The above is ONE of the reasons why it's undesirable to limit PURCHASE - without a supply of PURCHASE I couldn't rely on market prices to assess whether closure was worth discussing : as MINING+SELLING=PURCHASE would no longer be (approximately) imposed as fact on market prices.

There's an effective cap on capital controlled anyway.

As time passes, sales of PURCHASE will become increasingly small when measured as a percentage of existing sales (that HAS to be the case unless sales of PURCHASE continually increase in volume).  At a certain point that percentage will fall below the percentage of capital which is given out as dividends each day.

Capital is kept below 410 days of MINING dividends.  So on any given day at least 0.24% of capital will be returned as dividends.  That immediately imposes the first cap - that capital will cease to increase once sales of PURCHASE fall below 0.24% of exisiting effective outstanding units.  In practice a cap would be reached far sooner than that if difficulty continues rising - as SELLING will also receive dividends (I can't calculate a percentage for them - as that requires knowing future difficulty : and if that were known that this fund couldn't even exist).

As far as CP risk is concerned, the market can take care of that itself.  Specifically, if potential investors believe the CP risk for me personally is being neared then they will presumably stop buying PURCHASE and hence impose an effective cap.  There's rather obviously no benefit to me in imposing an arbitrary limit below what the market is willing to accept.  If someone invests then subsequently sees market cap rise significantly - to above or near their personal tolerance - then that unexpected rise (and it would have to be unexpected or they rationally wouldn't have invested in the first place) will have massively increased liquidity allowing them to sell out at minimal loss.  In fact it will probably let them sell out with MORE profit than they anticipated - as the huge sales of PURCHASE that they didn't anticipate will have increased NAV/U a bit (or, more likely, slowed its fall relative to dividends distributed).

I don't believe the distinction between the type of game/revenue model is that black and white.  You can't, for example, design a game, seperately determine a revenue model and then assume that the two will fit.  Some revenue models fit certain types of game better than others.  As an extreme example consider a game developed with a total time to play-through measured in the 10s of hours.  If the game is great then it could do very well sold through app stores for a small one-off fee - but it would fail dismally if you tried to sell it using a monthly-subscription model.  To a significant extent the revenue model is coupled tightly to some aspects of the game.

There are also massive design decisions which have to be made in terms of game-play.  If you're going with the item-mall idea then you first need to determine which model of it you'll use.  All of these comments are my own views - not based on forum discussions.  I see item-malls as being split into two types:

1.  The model widely used - especially by all the Chinese companies - where players basically buy success.  The vast bulk of revenue in these games comes from a very small number of whales.  To be successful (at generating revenue) game design has to focus on ways for the whales to be able to compare their strength to other players and, ideally, bully those who haven't paid much.  That allows the whales to stand out (and see clear benefit for the cash they've handed over) - and also keeps operational costs down by driving out those who won't pay as they can't compete or achieve much.

2.  Item-malls aimed at taking a smaller amount of cash from a far wider user-base.  That means ensuring that no massive difference in progress/strength can be easily bought.  It also means having to appeal to players via actual content/game-play rather than just "if you spend some more money you can be the strongest."

Type 1 is what so many gamers object to.  Progress is achieved through use of a credit-card not a brain.  As someone who has played a LOT of games over the years (and continues to do so) I don't like type 1 from a player's perspective at all - because they don't provide the challenge I'm looking for.  But that doesn't invalidate them as a means of making a profit.  And that's where thestringpuller is, I think, going wrong.  As a game-player I far prefer type 2.  But investors in S.MG (should) want whichever will give the best return on investment - the company's focus should NOT be on "what will make the most players happy" but on "what will make the most profit for our investors".  And I'm VERY certain MP is on the side of investors not players.  

None of which to say the two (pleasing investors and having satisifed players) are mutually exclusive - it's just that it's far easier to develop something that focuses on one of them than to try to deliver to both.

Don't think it's to do with 2fa on ordering.

The problem I'm seeing today is that at times it's failing to obtain the balance of shares OR cash on ordering screens.  So for example just now I was unable to place orders at all on DMS.PURCHASE (from the issuing account) as when the page loaded it showed:

Balance: ฿ / Reserved: ฿ 0 / Available: ฿ 0
Other Reserved: ฿ 0 / Max To Avoid Order Cancels: ฿ 0

Notice it isn't showing a Balance of 0, but no balance at all.

Here's actual balance (from top of screen) :  Balance: 597.51181134

I've had same thing on the selling side as well - where it shows no share balance.

It basically seems to be timing out on reading data - then blocking placing orders as it doesn't think you have anything to buy or sell.  It fixes itself after after a few refreshes.  Depending on browser the page either doesn't load (what you're seeing) or does load but with missing data (what I'm seeing usually - though I've had the not loading at all problem in the past).

I'd guess it's all down to the strange policy of querying the BTC wallets rather than having that data store in a table (with a cronjob to add to the table when deposits are found and regularly check for block-chain forks etc).  That seems to be the main bottle-neck that's crippling performance.

Sold   1464
Price   0.066256
Total   96.998784
Less Fee   96.80478643
Man Fee   2.904143593

2.904 transferred as management fee.

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)    599.29356880
10000 LTC-ATF.B1    100.00000000
TOTAL ASSETS    699.29356880
   
Outstanding MINING   10758
Outstanding SELLING   10758
Outstanding PURCHASE   300
Effective Units   11058
   
Block reward   25
Difficulty   15605633
Hashes per MINING   5000000
   
Daily Dividend    0.00016113
50 days (Min Liquid)    0.00805649
100 days (Forced Close)    0.01611298
365 days (Buyback)    0.05881238
405 days (IPO)    0.06525757
400 days (Post SELLING div)    0.06445192
410 days (Pre SELLING div)    0.06606322
   
NAV Post MINING Div    697.51179543
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.06307757
Days Dividend Post Div   391.47
SELLING Dividend    -         
NAV Post SELLING Div    697.51179543
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.06307757
PURCHASE selling price    0.06623145
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.06181602