It looks a bit like you may be making a slightly unfair and misleading comparison.

You're mainly holding ASICMINER.

When calculating your own profits you include the increase in share value of ASICMINER as well as the dividends you received from them.  Then you compare it to just the dividends from ASICMINER.

That's claiming that a pass-through to ASICMINER (which takes a management fee) can somehow outperform ASICMINER itself.

If you want to compare your performance to ASICMINER's then you also need to add in the growth in price ASICMINER itself has experienced.  And it isn't the same story then.

If you're going to hold mainly ASICMINER then you're pretty much just a pass-through to ASICMINER - with insufficient diversity to offer any protection against any significant fall in ASICMINER prices.  Nearly everyone on these forums already knows ASICMINER has been a great investment really - and doesn't need to buy into a fund to gain exposure to it.  So making profit on the back of ASICMINER investments isn't offering anything of real value - far more attractive would be if you could generate returns similar to ASICMINER's dividends (NOT growth) without ASICMINER exposure - then you'd be offering a useful alternative and a way for people to diversify/spread risk.

Think sock-puppet is the term you're looking for.

Well we have 100 BTC already invested.  The rest depends entirely on SELLING.  I raised 3 suggestions earlier in the thread - only 2 of which I expect to go to a vote.  I've been waiting on feed-back (seeing as SELLING get to vote) - if none arrives then I'll put a vote up anyway tomorrow.  It'll only be a 24-hour vote (with the securities so new most investors are going to be active).  If the votes pass on any of them then we'll have more cash invested very shortly thereafter.

It is, of course, entirely possible that SELLING owners might decide that they'd rather take no risk - and not invest at all (other than in my bonds, where counter-party risk is already accepted).  They may also decide they don't want to lend - even with solid collateral.  It's entirely in the hand of SELLING share-holders which investments they believe are low enough risk - of the ones that I've already narrowed down to those I believe to be in the right risk area.

I'll make another post now about loans - and get the ball rolling on those too.

It sounds strange having investors decide whether we invest at all - but this isn't a typical security in ANY ways.  As issuer I don't decide how many get sold, I don't decide what price SELLING/MINING trade at, I don't decide dividends (they're defined by formula) and I don't even get to decide whether (and where) we invest.  I can effectively veto any investment - but I don't have the right to force it (exception being LTC-ATF.B1 - and even there if any SELLING investor(s) with a decent chunk of votes requests it, I'll put up a vote for it to no longer be invested in).

The most likely explanation is that the account from which you (the OP) were sent funds was compromised - and the person you dealt with wasn't the legitimate owner of the account.

The bank is acting on the assumption that you were a partner of whoever gained control of that account - and hence a part of the scam.  The removal of the other $6k (and locking of all related accounts) would then be a precautionary measure in case other payments were also part of the scamming that the bank believes you're in on.

I'd expect the $6k to be returned fairly promptly - once the bank is satisfied the sending accounts were under the control of their rightful owners when the transactions occurred.  The $1.5k I'd be less inclined to expect return of - I'm not from the US and have no idea what your banks' policy is on payments made by 'hacked' accounts to innocent parties.  I'd recommend getting legal advice - not so much to get back your cash (the $6k is going to come back - the $1.5k probably not) as to make sure your credit rating doesn't get totally screwed by entries on it relating to the incident.

They should be (and are) less - you need to be looking at ASICMINER in terms of their hashing power when comparing.  1 MH/S of ASICMINER shares pays a LOT more than 1 TAT.VM share (as it also gets incoem from sales of hardware).  It also COSTS a lot more - so no point directly comparing them as it's apples and oranges.

If ASICMINER sells a bunch of hardware and pays a massive dividend, TAT.VM won't get a bigger dividend.  If ASICMINER holds back most (or all) of a week's dividend to pay for development costs TAT.VM won't get a reduced dividend.  TAT.VM will get paid what its contract defines - and the ASICMINER shares are the visible proof that those commitments can be met.

Just to finally put that little cockup behind us, it occurs to me than anyone who bought a MINING in the 2 hours between the dividend actually being paid and when it should have been paid will have lost out.

Rather than waste a lot of time tracking those people down and compensating them, I've transferred 1.5 BTC from my personal wallet to the issuing wallet and made a 2nd payment to ALL MINING share (not PURCHASE as they all got theirs fine).  That's about 1/3 of my management fee for today - so seems a fair penalty for me to pay.  It also ensures that absolutely noone (with the possible exception of 2 shares sold just now - if the seller had missed both dividends) is worse off than they should have been - and the vast majority of MINING holders will have got a small bonus of 1 day's dividend.

Corrected report has now been posted above - it's calculated as though all dividends were paid at the same time and the ending NAV of it accurately reflects the current holdings.

NAV/U (and selling price of PURCHASE) actually ROSE today.  That's because sales in the last 24 hours of PURCHASE were high (as a percentage of existing ones) so the effective 1.8% markup on new sales was a larger amount than the dividend paid to MINING+PURCHASE.  Don't expect that to happen often.

Sold   2301
Price   0.066163
Total   152.241063
Less Fee   151.9365809
Man Fee   4.558097426

Management fee of 4.558 has been transferred.

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)    506.93042319
10000 LTC-ATF.B1    100.00000000
TOTAL ASSETS    606.93042319
   
Outstanding MINING   9258
Outstanding SELLING   9258
Outstanding PURCHASE   336
Effective Units   9594
   
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    605.38454385
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.06310033
Days Dividend Post Div   391.61
SELLING Dividend    -        
NAV Post SELLING Div    605.38454385
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.06310033
PURCHASE selling price    0.06625534
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.06183832

20 MINING dividends would have been just over .00322 BTC.  Have sent .01 from my personal account to the person who missed both dividends - so he's now been set right and the fund itself has .00322 BTC more than it otherwise would have.  Corrected report shortly.

Nah it's a big OOPS on my end.

The dividend processed 2 hours ago - i.e. 2 hours early.  I'm assuming I must have set it for then in error - and noone (especially including myself) noticed it.  As I wasn't around then I didn't spot it running.  And when I saw it as processed and posted earlier I STILL didn't notice it had run 2 hours ago.  Only noticed eventually when I went to my own holdings and viewed my dividends

It doesn't do any great harm - but does mean the report is wrong (including calculation of new price).  It also means the single transfer I did in the interim meants one investor didn't receive a dividend at all - I'll manually send him his.  So if you're the person who traded in 20 PURCHASE 45 minutes before the official dividend time, you'll receive a transfer for 20 * MINING dividend from me.

On the first point, that's why I said "in most scenarios".  My view is that right now the likelihood of that is tiny.  Longer-term that could change - at which point MINING would also stand to gain from capital growth.

On the second point, yes - CP risk is where a very large chunk of losses are incurred.  It's entirely possible that SELLING investors may decide they view the EV of ALL investments as negative.  One point I should clarify is my own voting.  If I hold a significant number of SELLING (I currently hold a significant number of BOTH SELLING and MINING) then I won't vote so as to pass a motion where, were my votes excluded, there would be more NO than YES votes.

One last point on CP risk - which I assume most will have already realised.  LTC-ATF.B1 (the bond issued by my own fund) was pre-approved for investment due to the CP risk in that being almost entirely a risk already accepted by all investors when they transferred (via the market) BTC to an issuing account controlled by me.  It is impossible to participate in DMS without accepting CP risk from myself and from burnside (BTC-TC) hence the two of us not needing a vote to be considered acceptable CP risk.

Looks like the dividend payment on MINING is still stalled - will give it 10 more minutes then leave a message for burnside.

At present dividend payment seems stalled on MINING.

Dividends for both of MINING and PURCHASE show as complete in history - but the issuer wallet balance has only dropped by the amount for the PURCHASE balance.  This type of delay isn't unknown - so for now we just wait.

Of a bit more concern is that there are clearly 9258 outstanding MINING but right now the history tab shows the dividend as being paif to 9238.  The last transfer I did WAS for 20 shares - but was 45 minutes before the dividend.  We'll see if it corrects itself when the dividend finally pays.  I'll hold off on putting more PURCHASE up until the dividend has fully processed (I need to verify final wallet balance against my calculated one anyway).

Outstanding means sold ones - not unsold ones.  And for all practical purposes such as calculating dividends or working out valuations you should treat ASICMINER shares as being BitFountain shares (the 400,000).

Each ASICMINER share has an enitlement to 1/400,000th of their profit - but isn't actually a share in BitFountain (the company issuing the ASICMINER shares).

For practical purposes you should assume there are 400,000 shares - all of which are outstanding.  The details aren't worth explaining - if you MUST know them then read firedcat's posts in the ASICMINER thread.

What you've proposed is 100% fine - can only assume goat didn't read it correctly.

INVESTMENTS

One of the stated objectives of this fund is to generate some revenue from our capital rather than just have it all sitting around idle on BTC-TC.  There are two stated methods by which this will be achieved - investment/loans to existing businesses and secured personal loans.  In this post I'll be addressing the former of those (a proposal will be put forward about the latter in a few days time).

BALANCING THE NEEDS OF TWO GROUPS OF INVESTORS

There are two primary groups of investors with an interest in capital managed by DMS : holders of MINING shares and holders of SELLING shares (PURCHASE holders are effectively members of both of those groups).  The interests of these two groups of investors are not aligned with one another when it comes to management of our capital. 

• It would be in MINING's best interest if capital were just held wherever is the safest - be that on BTC-TC or in a private wallet of mine - as in most scenarios they gain nothing from any profit it generates ut end of losing out if there's any large loss (in general a loss of under 10% will never affect them, a loss of over 70% definitely will by triggering a forced closure).
• It would be in SELLING's interest to invest wherever the likely EV (Expected Value) was highest.

Part of my role as manager of the fund is to balance these two competing sets of interest.  This requirement was very much on my mind when the contract was written.  My intention (hopefully clear from the contract) is to address this by:

1. Only allowing DMS.SELLING to vote on proposed investments - DMS.MINING can't be allowed to veto (which giving it voting rights would do).
2. Limiting those investments to be considered to ones which are very low-risk.

LOW-RISK INVESTMENTS - WHAT ARE THEY?

So what do I mean by low-risk investments?  In general terms I mean ones where the likelihood of ANY loss of capital is minimum.  Specifically I mean investments which meet ALL of the following criteria:

1.  They have a fixed face-value defined in BTC.  DMS is 100% BTC-denominated - anything we in invest in must treat our investment as being strictly in BTC.
2.  The issuer (or borrower) must have a track-record of handling investors funds on a scale similar or larger to our own investment in them - and doing so in accordance with their agreements.
3.  The interest or profit we would make on such investments must have a guaranteed minimum of at least 10% APR (or equivalent).
4.  I must be satisified that the issuer or borrower has liquid (or easily made liquid) assets significantly in excess of any liability towards us plus any similar liabilities of equal or higher seniority.

Those conidtions could be summarised as (in order) the investment target accepting BTC-denominated investment (to be returned in BTC), having previously shown themselves to be competent and trustworthy with similar sized investments, offering a minimum return to make investing worthwhile and having the ability to repay our debt even if they suffer significant loss.

SPECIFIC POSSIBLE INVESTMENTS

Here are three potential investments that may appear to meet the above criteria.  I won't give my views on them yet - but I WILL say that 2 of them I'm fine with and the third I'm not.

1.  Buying CDs (the financial instruments, not the storage media) from TradeFortress  (coinlenders.com) - APR somewhere around 26-27%.  Loans without collateral ARE fine to businesses/established traders.  We'd be be buying the 30-day ones (deposits have no guaranteed minimum rate, 90-days is longer than we can safely commit to).  We would NOT be accepting Ripple BTC in settlement
2.  Graet.loan on Bitfunder.  This is a loan in the form of a bond paying 0.05% daily.  If we invest in this, Bitfunder would also need to be approved by vote for counter-party risk - I'm not anticipating that being an issuer.
3.  Namworld's BTC-BOND on BTC-CO.  A bond paying a minimum rate of just over 10% P.A. - with larger dividends from time to time. 

Do not get hung up over the issue over whether any of those is issued by a company or an individual.  Claiming to be a company doesn't add any security.  All three of the above are, in effect, personal loans managed in the form of a bond or a CD.

If you have strong views on one or more of them but would prefer not to raise those views in public then I am happy to accept PMs.  I will NOT discuss them by PM - but will present your views here without identifying the source.  I'll give my own views once others have had a chance to respond - my views will NOT, of course, be anonymous.

All comments on the above three possibilities, general concern/comments on investment or proposals for other suitable places to invest are welcome.  I'm not aware of any alternatives which come close to meeting all my criteria but would love to be wrong on that.

We need a BTC address so that we can send you a random (unspecified) amount of money.

EDIT: Oh forgot to mention that I also have 100 BASICasic mining shares to sell.  I'm assuming we can all make our own up to sell - as they don't need any description, proof of assets or any other tedious details.  I'll undercut the OP by 1 satoshi per share as well.

If I invest in a company I'm looking for management skills from the management, not technical skills or detailed knowledge that their underlings should have.  The majority of management skills transfer between ANY two areas of business if the companies are of a smilar size (some skills are needed more in small companies, others more in large ones).

MP is effectively the CEO/MD of MG.  The only skill-set that matters much is whether he has the skills needed to be the person in charge.  EVERYTHING else can be hired.  The decision of whether to invest or not rests solely on whether you:

a) Believe he CAN fill that role well (i.e. is capable).
b) Believe he WILL fill that role well (i.e. will deal fairly and honestly with investors and put in the effort needed).

Whilst it WOULD be a bonus if he already had experience running this type of business that's all it would be - a bonus.  If he's capable of filling the first leadership role then one of his first hires (or consults) will be someone with the industry-specific knowledge.

A large proportion of business failures are ones where the leader has MASSIVE knowledge of (and experience in) the industry/sector.  They fail because their experience and ability isn't in the role of leading a company.  Open two threads promoting 'businesses' on these forums and you'll almost certainly find at least one such - quite probably two (you may have to check back in a few months to be sure about the failure bit).

I'm not making any comment on MP's ability in this post - purely othat you're not even looking at the right thing to measure, so arguing over the measurement itself would be a total waste of time.

Some things can't be audited - and just have to be taken on trust.

That such losses are not passed to shareholders was (near enough) explicitly clarified by Erik during the IPO:


If it can't be verified by the block-chain then it can't be in the financial statements - and so can't be passed to investors (by deductions when calculating net profit).

If your claimed reason for no auditing is that it can already be done then:

1.  You don't need to have audits.
2.  You can't charge anything which investors can't verify themselves via the block-chain.

Those two points go hand-in-hand : if you want #1 you have to provide #2 (and lose the ability to pass many costs on).

A burglary (and for that matter a theft from a BTC wallet) wouldn't be allowed to be deducted anyway - as they aren't marketing or development costs: the only two categories of deduction allowed when calculating net profits.