Say what? Try again, this time dont forget to enter maintenance fees.

The highest difficulty increment it will support is 4%, and then it takes nearly a year to break even. Morover,  it requires  an end difficulty that is just 90B, The only way difficulty will be that low a year from now, is if Bitfury 28nm falls flat on its face, KnC joins BFL and HF in bankruptcy, spondoolies is bombed by Hamas and friedcat put in prison.

Anyone who doesnt get his principal back to the last satoshi, please contact
Arlene.Ferris-Waks at lps.state.nj.us
Director of Investor Outreach at the NJ bureau of securities.
She is well aware of this scam.

Lets see. During the IPO phase, AM had the potential to produce one of the, if not THE first asic and with a fairly minimal capex and opex, obtain a huge % of the network. We had a CEO that was communicative and a market situation where even missing the specs by nearly an order of magnitude could still result in a (very) profitable operation. Guess what, i invested only a token amount.

Fast forward to today, we have a highly competitive market with several major players, enormous capex and opex requirements, razor thin margins, next to no room for error in execution, CEO is hardly saying anything, we've not seen a financial statement for ages, its release appears to be pending the recruitment of a spindoctor, we see some large investors importing their shares to havelock and dumping them. And you honestly think I judge this situation to be more compelling than the IPO?

Nop.

They are clawing back the >16% "trading profits" they supposedly achieved over the past weeks in an attempt to pay everyone back the principal (and they are not sure they can achieve that).  So obviously it was a ponzi scam, just one that got stopped early enough that its still possible to roll back, since it didnt operate long enough for anyone to withdraw their principal.

Major props to the NJ bureau of securities for acting quickly and stopping this before it spun out of control.

What profits? There were no profits even by their own admission. Check the chat log on their website:


So whatever "gains" have already been paid out are being clawed back, and quite possibly more than that according to the PDF:


https://esotericinvestments.com/close.pdf

they claim not to have made a satoshi for themselves. Yet if you add up the published trading profits, you get +15.7% over the past 5 weeks (not compounded). And somehow if you put the two together, no one made any profits and somehow there is probably even a net loss.

Rrrrrrrrrrright. Esoteric was no ponzi, and this is a real mammography unit:



BTW, if you think its gonna fly with the bureau that you pay back less than the principal  or that funds not withdrawn after 30 days are forfeited, you are in for another surprise.

IT doesnt matter who instigated it (and the FTC isnt exactly alone in filing suits). You are bound by court rulings, the funds held by a court appointed trustee. A court wouldnt decide that without proper reason. Or do you think the judge is a moron?

Alternatively, who would buy the new IPO for a price above AM1 market price? The only way to sell this IPO is by offering a discount over market price. Now think about that before buying, realizing that they have most of their 5PH unsold.

How rich is that, coming from you.


Now who's "inaccurate" ? Its not the FTC that seized your funds, nor is it the FTC that limited operations. it was a federal court. Can you not tell the difference?

The only thing laughable is drawing such incorrect conclusions from accurate numbers. Wanting to show the same market cap for AM1 and AM100 is what is laughable.

Market cap is correct. Its not showing asicminer marketcap, but that of AM1 or AM100.

Absolutely not.  Its like saying gold is not inflationary with the exception of gold mining. If you cant tell the difference between mining and money creation as debt, do some reading.


High risk, low reward.

Meh, I dont see the point. Its a scam just like any other form of scam. Perhaps with that difference that this kind of scam is pretty transparent. Why ban this, when we allow 1% per day ponzi's ? Why do you think forum admins give a hoot when they have no problems if people openly sell trusted accounts to buyers that clearly intend to use them for fraud? Those kinds of schemes are far more devious IMO.

There are several significant BTC stashes that will be liquidated soon.
The FTC seized and got permission to liquidate iirc something like 25K BTC from butterfly labs. The Australian government is about to auction 9K silkroad coins. There is the strong possibility that Tim Draper will begin cutting some losses on his 30K auction (or is already doing so). So in the short/medium time, I wouldnt be surprised if the price dropped further or at best remained flat.

Doesnt matter to me, Im still hodling. Ive been progressively selling fractions of my stash from $~10 all the way up to ~$1000 and down to $600. Ever since it dropped below that, I stopped selling. If it drops below $200 I will start buying again for the first time in forever, and I wont resume selling before its above $600 and then continue doing so each month until Ive sold half my initial stash. The rest is a long term pension fund .

Who'd have thought:

https://www.esotericinvestments.com/

Fortunately these wannabee scammers were so incompetent it appears they didnt raise more than a handful of BTC (according to chat logs on their site) and are more likely to ask/beg/steal the missing coins from their moms than risking jail time.

Bitcoin isnt like fiat money,  aside from mining, its not inflationary and so bitcoins arent created as a result of a growing economy,  therefore it cant support interest rates. Investing bitcoins is thus generally stupid.  If you factor in even a small % of scams (in reality its a HUGE %), statistically investors will on average lose bitcoins, its inevitable.

Ask yourself: where would you 'invest' your gold bullion ? Your apple shares?  Most places will charge you a fee to hold your gold or manage your stocks , instead of paying a return. Think the same way about your coins. They *are* your investment. Be happy they cost nothing to store securely.

Not only that. HK's ponzi deposits wheres supposedly 'insured' when in reality that insurance was also invested in that same ponzi, and patrick harnett ran his own ponzi trying to recover his pirate debts.

Im actually concerned about the opposite. If esoshit has only 10 BTC in 'customer' funds, and therefore an unfunded liability of just 1 or 2 BTC in "trading profits", agreeing to a 10 or 100 BTC bet would be a no brainer for them: just pay out the outstanding accounts and the 2 extra BTC from their own pocket, then collect the 100 BTC bet.  With Pirate or bitcoin trader I was pretty confident that no bet I could afford would cover their liabilities, but here, Im pretty sure thats not the case.


If no one complains about not getting their money back after x weeks or months, that would satisfy me. Of course they could do much better by opening their books, assign each customer some hashed ID so that everyone can verify their accounts are being presented.

Careful! Im willing to wager a lot of coins on this too, BUT, they seem to hold still very small amounts. If your bet is bigger than their liability, or even in the same ballpark, they would profit by actually paying out their customers from their own pockets and collecting our bet as the profit. It would also provide them with a big publicity bonus they could use for their next round.

Here is what happens if you are dumb enough to still believe the "because bitcoin" argument shields you from regulation:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-2824044/U-S-charges-Texas-man-running-bitcoin-Ponzi-scheme.html

Already fined $40M and now faces 20 years in prison. But yeah, regulations dont apply to bitcoin, right?

looking forward to the mug shot