You maybe misunderstand how I value it.  As with all mining securities I'm effectively valuing them in USD then converting it into BTC at the current exchange-rate.

Put simply I value them at the answer to the question:

"If I were to purchase hardware with hashing power equal to what the company has, then split that across the number of outstanding shares they have, what would the result be?"

Then adjust it up (or down) if there's factors that tend to make the company a better (or worse) investment than most - which, in my view, would be upwards for Cognitive.

The answer to that question varies massively with the exchange-rate - i.e. it falls a ton when BTC rises a lot vs USD.   Which is, of course, a large part of the reason why historically few mining companies have ended up making a profit (for investors).

With pre-orders then the base for valuation is what it would cost now to pre-order the same (or equivalent).  Adjusted upward to compensate for the earlier delivery existing pre-orders can expect and adjusted down in line with whatever your view is of the likelihood of delivery never happening (or happening so late as make them near worthless).

Pretty sure most "investors" don't so anything like that - their means of valuing a company is to see what range it's trading in and (if they're smarter than average - which doesn't actually mean a lot) buy towards the bottom of that range.

If you get a judgment of any kind that's entirely different.

Not sure why you think he'd agree to judge.me arbitrating though - and they won't issue a judgment without BOTH parties agreeing to them hearing the case.  You producing a forum post (about an entirely different dispute with him) is NOT going to convince judge.me to do anything.

You saying he's guilty has no legal standing.  Not even if you say it's obvious or that everyone knows.  I agree he's totally guilty - but that's also completely irrelevant.

As for Ian incriminating himself in court - not sure what you're trying to say.  I'm the one saying the court/legal system is the way to go.  You're the one who seems to think it can all be ignored because Usagi says he's obviously guilty therefore Avalon will agree as that's enough for them to break a contract.

And if it ever gets to court then just think about what you're saying.  He's either going to:

1.  Plead guilty.
2.  Plead non-guilty.  And this may shock you - but guilty people who plead not-guilt often lie!  Seriously - they do!  I know you'll find it hard to believe - but the minute they plead not-guilty they've started lieing and will tell more lies.

So in exactly what circumstances do you think he'd be giving testimony in court and telling the tuth?  The only defendants who do that are innocent ones.  And people who plead guilty (or don't deny the allegations in civil cases) don't give evidence.

A little bit of logical thinking would do you a world of good.

The reason I suggest the Police rather than the courts is purely one of time.  If you try to bring a civil complaint then it will take a fair while to get to a hearing.  As with Avalon the courts are NOT going to immediately issue a judgement or order just because usagi says he's obviously guilty - they like to give the other side time to respond and there's proscribed periods of time for responses etc.  Not even if you get shareholders in an unregulated security who agree with you to pass a vote saying he's guilty.  Wherease the police can cause action to occur much quicker.  Ideally you want someone who made a straightforward loan to him to make the initial complaint - that's a much clearer case to make and there's no risk of the Police getting side-tracked by questions over the nature of the security.

One thing I do agree with you on is that Ian Bakewell is likely shitting himself right now - though he'll get over that if everyone wants to mess around with shareholder motions rather than doing something productive like going to the Police.  Though if Bitcoin price falls much lower he may be able to repay everything anyway (though I'm by no means convinced his story about some opportunity to renovate trailers is the truth).

What you seem to miss is that Avalon is NOT a pretend company that only exists as an entity in a thread on a forum.  It's a company operating in the real world.

Real-world companies DON'T take it upon themselves to decide what has and hasn't been proven in disputes between others.  They rely on a legal system and law-enforcement to give them directions in those circumstances.

And aside from those issues do we really want to say it's OK for a company to break a deal they made because THEY decide their customer wronged someone else?  Should ALL companies in Bitcoin-land start breaking contracts whenever they decide the other party owes money to someone else?  Who decides whether such decisions are right?  Should we all just start selectively honouring our obligations based on whether we think the other party is deserving?

I run a fund and have issued bonds on it myself.  If I'm sure an investor owes someone else a debt they're overdue on - or believe they scammed - then should I hold backfunds if they try to sell to me and give it to who I think they owe money to (I'm NOT actually aware of any such investor - but IF one existed)?  If not, why not - if you think Avalon should do that?  Either you believe companies have the right too do that - or you don't.  If your argument is over the level of proof then who decides whether the evidence is sufficient?  If it isn't the company then surely it can't be you - the party claiming to be wronged! (NOTE: I 100% believe Bakewell is in the wrong - don't interpret ANYTHING I say as trying to defend him).  There has to be some uninvolved arbiter - which, shockingly, is the role of the legal system (with law-enforcement gathering the evidence when criminal behaviour is believed to be involved).  Bitcoin has no alternative to that - so the choice is either use the existing system or descend into anarchy where anyone can break deals at will so long as they claim to believe they were right to do so.

In summary: not only do I believe this approach will fail but I believe it MUST and SHOULD fail.  As the precedent if it succeeds is a horrible one.  At a minimum report it, get a crime number then provide that to Avalon and ask them to delay shipping until either Ian responds to them and/or the issue is resolved.  If the purchase is being criminally investigated then they likely DO have sufficient grounds to hold back on shipping to him.

Where you run into an (obvious if you look at it logically) problem is that you're trying to claim two entirely contradictory things:

1.  That Bakewell (company) is the same thing as Bakewell (individual) - i.e. that it's Ian trading as the company.  You have to claim this to have an entitlement to the Avalons as they were ordered in his name.
2.  That Bakewell (company) is entirely seperate to Bakewell (individual) - you have to claim this for any sort of shareholder motion to have any meaning or for anyone other than Ian to be able to act on behalf of the company.

If you want to claim that the company is an entity beyond Ian Bakewell personally trading then you immediately cease to have any right to approach Avalon - as their contract was with the individual.  Whilst if you say Bakewell was synonymous with Ian personally then shareholders can't pass any motions on its behalf.  The situation would be (slightly) different if the Avalon's had been ordered in a company name but they weren't.

If A (Avalon) owes B (Ian Bakewell) and B owes C (shareholders) and B defaults on their obligation to C then C has no direct right to anything A owes B.  If A gives stuff to C then they have NOT fulfilled their obligation to B - and B then has a claim against them, regardless of the merits of C's claim against B.  Which is (partly) why Avalon won't get involved.  There's loads of other reasons why they shouldn't get involved anyway - but that's the most glaringly obvious one.

Did you obtain proof of his identity before sending him all the BTC?
Did you obtain proof of any significant assets he owned (to go after now) in case BTC price rose?

I don't do a lot of lending - but if I did (and it was a significant sum) minimum I'd require would be conclusive proof of ID and proof of assets showing ability to repay if BTC price rose (mining operations lose value when BTC price rises - both in terms of realisable value of hardware and also due to less BTC being mined due to increased mining coming online in response to the increased price).

I received some emails from him after having expressed reservations about this project.

I haven't had (or got today) time to look at them in great detail - but on the face of it, it definitely seems as though he DOES have orders for the hardware he claims to have ordered (I have order numbers, screen-shots of amounts paid etc) and that at least the majority of those were ordered and paid for before he began selling shares to the public.

That's obviously a vast step up from most such offerings.  And the way he's dealt with my criticisms/comments IS what I'd expect from someone who was legitimate rather than a scammer.

I can't say with certainty that what I was sent wasn't edited/faked - but if he gives permission I could ask BFL to verify that the orders he's shown to me exist, are in his name (which I have) and are for what he claims they're for.

I've also seen some evidence of sales - though that's harder to verify.

Whilst I'm not going to vouch for this or anything I'd say there's a very high chance that he intends to do *and is capable of doing) what he's offering to do.  How profitable it wil be is for investors to decide for themselves (and largely depends on what BFL do - which is beyond anyone's ability to predict).

Exchange-rate : 0.02
NAV/U : 61.617
Bid : 60 (lower if I'm AFK)

NAV/U is likely slightly wrong - Bitfunder is down for maintenance at present so can't check our holdings there.  No big deal as this isn't an end of week report.

It's turning into a respectable week - we're up just over 8% with abouth alf that from trading and the other half resulting from LTC's drop against BTC.  LTC has been incredibly stable vs BTC around hte 0.02 area for the last day or two - with the LTC/USD rate swinging around wildly in time with the BTC/USD one.  That's not too surprising - as the volume traded on LTC/USD is generally a LOT lower than on LTC/BTC, so moves in BTC/USD tend to get arbitraged into the LTC/USD rate with a much smaller impact on the LTC/BTC one.

The fall in LTC/USD has caused trading to resume a bit on LTC-Global - so some of the securities I'd had to mark down heavily in the last weeks have started selling again.  Some are being sold for less than we bought them for (inevitable with USD-valued securities - even at current price of $1.5, LTC is still a lot higher than it was when they were bought) but at least they're selling for more than we have them on the books for.  And some are selling for an actual profit (a few for very good profits).

Non-LTC trading has been going well on both Bitfunder and BTC.CO (with a bit from trading S.DICE/S.BBET on CoinBR as well).

If LTC stays where it is then it'll be close whether we manage to totally recover last week's losses.  But if we can get anywhere near - with LTC still over double what it was 2 weeks back - then I'll be happy.  Of course LTC will probably make its next big move before the end of week (in which direction I have absolutely no clue - I could make a case for either direction) and that will end up having a large say in where we end up.

19 units have been sold back to the fund.  The second 10 were sold back by me (at about 57-59 from memory) however about an hour later I personally bought 10 units at 75 off the market.  That may seem strange behaviour but there's a method in my madness:

I had no personal holdings on BTC-E at the time (they were elsewhere making me profit) - and BTC was just going into a crazy spell.
So I sold back 10 units on LTC-Global then traded the LTC with the fund for LTC on BTC-E (I use a seperate account there, as well as on LTC-GLobal, but DO do swaps with the fund - so as to minimise delays in transfers and also avoid the 0.5 LTC withdrawal fee on BTC-E).
I then used those funds to trade an easy profit on BTC-E (not something I could do with the fund - as it involved taking on a USD position which I never do with the fund unless for an instant arbitrage opportunity).
I then swapped 750 LTC back via the fund to LTC-GLobal and bought the 10 shares on the market - leaving me with a few hundred LTC profit.

So everyone won out of it:

I ended up with same LTC-ATF shares but a few hundred extra LTC.
The seller got their units bought at 20-25% over NAV/U.
The fund got to buy back 10 units reducing capital (which, with the rate stable, is what we want to do) meaning profits get shares over less units - so more gain/week for remaining investors.

In general I keep private funds and LTC-ATF funds seperate - I have my own private accounts on LTC-GLobal and BTC-E and have never done private trades (or held balances) on the other sites we trade on.  There are only two areas in which they sometimes overlap:

1.  Trades - such as above.  There's no confusion on these at all.  I send (e.g.) 750 LTC from LTC-ATF to my personal account on LTC-GLobal then (or other way round - order obviously doesn't matter) move 750 LTC using a BTC-E code between accounts in the opposite direction on BTC.E.  I do these for the benefit of either party (myself or the fund).

2.  Liquidity loans.  These only ever occur very short-term and only ever happen with me lending funds to LTC-ATF, not the other way round.  These aren't because LTC-ATF has run out of funds, just because the funds are in the wrong place and can't be moved quickly.  LTC-ATF rebalances funds on BTC-E to maintain the correct ratio of LTC:BTC.  If the rate moves fast then occasionally the fund can end up without sufficient funds of the right denomination to convert.  This can also happen if someone sells back a bunch of shares or if we sell a large amount in a pass-through.  In that situation, if I have funds of my own sitting idle on BTC-E, I'll lend a bunch to the fund so the fund can convert whilst waiting for its own funds to arrive from wherever (Bitfunder is only quick source - and that's an hour - BTC.CO/LTC-Global/CoinBR all need manual approval for the sort of amounts I usually move nowadays).  That transfer is done by 0-cost BTC-E code and repaid (with no interest of course) as soon as the fund's own coins arrive.

I'd hope everyone agrees that neither of the above two scenarios is at all dodgy or against the interests of the fund (the 1st is sometimes benefical - the 2nd always beneficial as it allows the fund to lock in a rate removing exposure to exchange-rate movements).  Right now there's no chance of me doing #2 as all the personal funds I had on BTC-E were converted to fiat when BTC was at 200+ and are making profit elsewhere (though will be moving some back into BTC/LTC today probably).

Well the company exists - i.e. is registered.

Whether they actually have orders for the claimed hardware is unknown - seems very likely they ordered something from BFL, but whether 1 Japaeno or 20 mini-rigs is anyone's guess.  Most likely GUESS (and that's all it is) would be that they've ordered some gear are planning to buy rest with funds they raise but are claiming to have ordered all as it sounds better.  Whether they intend to actually pay out is also anyone's guess - exactly same chances as when you send money to anyone else without any track-record or history here.  Some of them are genuine - a lot aren't.  Are the odds good enough to gamble (which is what it is - as there's a significant non-zero chance it's a scam)?  Depends how much you like gambling.

Address seems to be a mail-forwarding address which is never a good sign but not exactly hard evidence of anything wrong.

Will you make a profit if you invest?  Can't verify their figures but IF they have preordered the hardware and IF BFL deliver before too long and IF they aren't scamming then you'd probably make profit if you're in the first bunch of shares.  Later batches (where hardware DEFINITLEY isn't ordere yet) it's highly unlikely the profit will justify the risk until you're sure they're paying out - at which point it's too late anyway.

My recommendation?  If you're serious about investing then require proof they bought ALL the hardware they claim to have ordered BEFORE the date they started taking orders.  If they can't/won't prove it then walk away - there's no reason for them not to prove if they actually ordered.  And if they haven't ordered all but are doing a pre-order thing then they already lied once so zero reason to trust them again.  If, on other hand, they DID order it all then there has to be very good chance they're genuine - which is certainly unlikely to fail to make a profit (whether anywhere near what they estimate depends very much on how early their orders were and just how soon BFL actually ship).

Do also make sure to check WHEN they'd start paying.  Is it as soon as they start mining or is it a few months later after taking the best profits for themselves - from memory there was something on the site that suggested they wouldn't pay anything until July even if the machines arrived tomorrow.  And make sure to get clarification on what happens if BFL don't ship on time, the machines break down etc - if you have a 1 year contract then it ain't much use if you end up not mining at all for some of it (is it 1 calendar year or 1 year of actual mining?)

All these unresolved details are one reason why you should always be very wary of dealing with anyone who posts stuff up and offers only the choice of order/don't order - without any clear mechanism for resolving/clarifying queries BEFORE parting with cash.

Those comments were not so much addressed at you as at potential investors - who should always be wary of any investment claiming likely returns without revealing the basis on which they were estimated.  If you've been around here for a while you'll likely be well aware of how badly people got burned investing in fixed-rate mining bonds (in particular - but mining investments in general) before.

Any credible model has to address issues well beyond just hash-rate - things like projected BTC/USD exchange-rate are critical.  It only needs a badly wrong estimate on one such factor (or totally ignoring its impact) to make an otherwise reasonable projection entirely useless.  As you refuse to explain how you arrived at your suggested returns it's pretty hard for anyone to verify them.

There's also some detail in your contract which could use clarification.  As an example, consider the situation where the price of new hardware makes purchasing it non-profitable.  Do perpetual contracts still invest 30% in expansion even though it won't make a profit?  If not, where does the 30% go?  Does that change if the issue is seen as likely to only be short-term?

Is a 10% management REALLY expected to cover ALL costs?  Even if BFL rigs end up failing after only a year?  Seems hard to see how 10% can cover all costs AND also cover replacement for ALL units when they eventually fail.  Or is that when "perpetual" ends?

Are investors paid on what you actually mine or on PPS?  That's kind of an addendum to the previous point - as if their machine breaks down do they then get zero income from 1 GH/s of non-functioning hardware?

Is the 30% reinvestment done at cost - or at a similar markup to the original investment?  The contract is strangely silent on specifically how the increase in capacity is applied.

What happens if BFL fail to deliver by July?

etc etc

The devil's always in the details - and you've provided very few of those.  Choosing whether to invest or not is about far more than whether something is a scam.  There's also the minor issue of whether it will be profitable.  That's even more critical on an investment like this which appears to offer no exit strategy.

Well dealing with the 4 statements in order:

1.  Deleted all posts.  TRUE - after GLBSE vanished you deleted the vast majority of ALL your posts not just BMF ones.  How is that a lie?
2.  Locking thread.  TRUE - you admit so yourself.  That you did it because you didn't want to reply to what you viewed as me trolling is the reason WHY it's locked not evidence of it NOT being locked.
3.  Won't provide updated information.  TRUE.  My post that you believe was trolling pointed out that, contrary to your previous post, the information in OP was NOT up to date.  Have you updated it? No.
4.  Refuses to pay out to shareholders.  TRUE.  You HAD stated you weren't going to pay out more funds until your securities were approved for trading.  That appears to have been deleted from your contract on BTC.CO now.

What do I want you to do?  Pretty simple:

BMF:  Produce a proper accounting of what happened to all assets, ESPECIALLY the mining hardware and the funds raised from them.  If there's still significant assets left then, with proper info on what assets the shares have, I don't personally object to BMF being traded provided you dividend out further funds as they're received.  Right now I (and others) believe there's some very dubious crap going on over the hardware - and that some hardware listed as belonging to the company before GLBSE shutdown has vanished without trace.

NYAN.A: You promised to repay this in full personally.  Now you seem to want to weasel out of this. I wouldn't personally hold you to that promise (provided you acknowledge no longer keeping it) but if you don't intend to pay in full then you need to properly account for its assets.  And that also gos for whatever assets CPA and NYAN had - as those should go to NYAN.A investors.

NYAN.B/C: These have zero value - and should either be closed or left dormant indefinitely (in case obsi evr shows up).

NYAN/CPA: CPA had some assets - specifically BMF shares at least. Proceeds from this need to go to NYAN.A unless you're honouring your previous promise to repay NYAN.A in full.  Not sure if Nyan had assets or not.  If not then no reason to keep it open.  If it did then they should go to Nyan.A (and nyan.b if any overflow - unlikely) then it should be closed down.

TU.SILVER: You need to decide what it actually is and amend contract to reflect that.  If only a minority of the price of shares is silver then it is NOT a silver shop and any claim that is is just a plain lie.  If it's an investment fund that guarantees holding at least 1 unit of silver per share then cool - make that plain the contract - and stop lieing about it being in any way an economical or competitive way to purchase silver.

KONGZI: No issues with this one - other than that you're yet again asking for new investment without having properly closed down the old ones.

Basically sort out the mess on the old companies and decide what the new one is and stick to it (and have a contract that reflects what it IS not what is was, presumably, originally intended to be).  All the time you leave BMF/NYAN.A lieing around festering for no reason and with no clear accounting you can rely on me regularly raising it.  If you look at my last post in your TU.SILVER thread I believe I have a slightly less hostile than usual explanation there of what the problem is with what you're trying to do - selling options on shares than are 75% effectively just BTC is near worthless and dishonest when you portray them as being options on silver.

Here, for posterity, is the prediction:

"Remember, nothing is unfailable, but right now, BTC is 175, and JDIBF predicts a full regeneration to 250 US$ level, very very soon. You can check the date and time of this post, and tell me if JDBIF can help you to invest better. Don't fight with Mt.Gox. Invest with us and relax. JDBIF, the best algorithm on BTC market."

Any clarification on what "very very soon" means?  Today?  Tomorrow?  Within a week?

I don't doubt BTC will reach $250 again - assume everyone here believes that or they're wasting their time being involved in it (if BTC doesn't reach $250 again then it's failed).

Actually I think you'll find part of the reason for the discount on Cognitive shares IS the existence of COG.F.  Cognitive shares will tend to fall until they're slightly above COG.F.  They've likely fallen too far - but in the recent bull market for BTC nearly all share prices have been taking a kicking (ASICMINER being the notable exception).  Certainly, at a MINIMUM, Cognitive should be trading at .125 + the expected dividends to be paid out until COG.F hardware arrives.

That's unless someone has done the math and determined that even with the COG.F hardware it's still overpriced at .125.  I haven't actually done the math for Cognitive on that - but it's not impossible.  The approximate value of Cognitive ignoring COG.F is the cost of 7 Singles equivalent at the new prices + the 2nd-hand value of the existing mining gear converted into BTC and divided by the outstanding shares.  As that's what it would cost to order that hardware now.  That would then need to be marked up because it's an already running company with infrastructure in place and a solid reputation.  And further marked up because pre-orders already in place are worth more than new orders.  But that's how I value mining companies - haven't actually done it for Cognitive yet though (I've been lazy and been trading it based on a floor price of around .12).

A very glib answer - which totally misses the main issues.

First off, your results CAN'T be duplicated by using the bitcoin profitability calculator - as difficulty isn't the only factor which comes into play, especially for the perpetual contract.

With the perpetual contract a lot of the potential comes from the reinvestment.  But what that deliver isn't ONLY affected by difficulty - but also by the price of additional hash-power.  Without knowing what price you're assuming expanded capability will be able to be bought at there's no way anyone can possibly attempt to validate your projections.  If you're estimating returns of 6 BTC on a 1 BTC investment in first year then with the returns only representing 60% of mining output that means 3 BTC minimum must have been reinvested.  So depending on how you believe expansion will be priced the actual mining power/contract at the end of a year is going to be somewhere within a large range very much higher than the initial power bought.

And on pricing you face a bit of a two-edged sword:

If supply is (as at present) totally unable to meet demand then price for hardware will continue to rise (on the secondary markt if not the primary) and delivery will take a long time - meaning the benefit from extra investment will be a lot less (and a lot later) than a naive model may assume (and I've seen some terrible models where cash available for reinvestment was assumed to automagically instantly turn into active hashing power).

At the other extreme, once supply surpasses demand then mining will return to where it has historically been - with more miners joining rapidly until profits are slim to non-existent.  At which point reinvestment just becomes throwing good money after bad with, as usual for mining companies, yourselves taking your 10% cut from TURNOVER even when no profit is being generated (due to payments to contract owners going out at a rate slightly slower than the assets they own depreciate).

That's why my question about selling it in the first place (if it exists - glad to see you ordered at least something, but it could be 1 Jalapeno for all a quoted email proves).  The returns you've offered MAY be possible on what you've currently ordered - but definitely WON'T be possible on later batches.  Shocking as it may be, there's loads of other people planning to do the same thing - and once you all try doing it, none of you end up with the expected profits.  That's the nature of BTC mining - that it's very briefly NOT the case is an exception caused by a lack of supply during the transition to new technology.

Sorry if you read it wrong.

My comment wasn't meant to imply that was the ONLY work you'd done - clearly from your website you've done a LOT more than that.

But that's the only work that the existence of a Limited Company proves - that was my point.  As some people mistakenly believe that the fact a company actually exists it, of itself, prove of some major commitment - when it's not (in the UK at least - some countries it may be tougher).

I DO like the approach you've taken with contracts (similar route to Gigavps) - it's the sensible way to get around the otherwise thorny issue of having to register as an FSP.

Thanks - so we now we know the £15 and 5 minutes were spent to create a Limited company.

Is there any proof that the far more significant sum was spent to buy the hardware?  Presumably there's purchase orders /receipts in the company name which can be produced and verified by BFL.

That plus some explanation of the math and this could be legit.

Though still puzzled why if you already have hardware that will make (by the site'e estimates) a 500%+ profit in the first year you'd want to give away 90% of it in return for a loan you don't need.  It's not like you can now order more ASICs at the same price - or with the same delivery time.

Nah, Bitpride, btcQwik and Ziggap appear to be having some private competition to see who can miss deadlines/fail to produce accounts/not deliver on dividends the most.  Ziggap's ahead but the other two are definitely putting up some strong competition.

I use DueDil myself - guess the one you found is too new to have got through to their records yet.

Still strange that their website doesn't mention that Ltd company at all - any company with Limited Liability is meant to ensure that it's prominently stated.  It's not allowed in the UK to claim limited liability later if it's not disclosed in advance (though that hasn't stopped Giga trying it - maybe laws are different in the US).

Was any evidence offered to show that company is actually behind it?

EDIT:  NOTE IT SEEMS THERE ARE 2 VERY SIMILAR NAMED COMPANIES.  LEAVING MY ORIGINAL POST BELOW BUT AN NO LONGER ASSERTING THIS IS DEFINITELY A SCAM.


It's a scam then.

Technology IQ limited is private limited company registered in 2004.  It's inactive according to Company House - hasn't filed accounts since 2007.  By no means could it be considered a newly registered company.

Technology I.Q. Limited
Company Number: 05090982
Company Type: Private limited with share capital
SIC Code: 5186, Wholesale Of Other Electronic Parts And Equipment

Note that the nature of the business isn't even consistent with what he's claiming.  He's just using the name of an inactive company hoping noone would do any due diligience and would just take his word that was his company.

Took all of 30 seconds to figure that out.  30 seconds it seems most people won't use to verify even basic facts.  It's VERY easy to check details on UK companies.

Looking slightly deeper not only are they inactive they actually dissolved:

Date   Filing Details
14 Apr 2009   Final Dissolution   
30 Dec 2008   First Dissolution (Gazette)

At time of their last accounts (2nd Nov 2007) they had total assets of £96,913 plus total liabilities of £137,227. They were due to pay £137,227 to creditors and were owed back £86,327 from trade debtors. The company's current book value was £-40,314.

So no shock they ended up folding.

There's no newly reigstered company with the same name (don't think you could even create one with same name).

So yeah - Scam.

Certainly no harm in contacting Ian - just don't let him stall you for too long.  Would have thought contacting him would have been done before even making forum threads tbh (you phoned him up before after all).  If you want to waste your time contacting Avalon then knock yourself out - just don't be surprised when the answer ie either "No", "I need a court order" or "Please provide me contact details for a Police Officer who can confirm these were purchased with stolen funds".

If you go to the police then yes, all hardware would be seized.  But if Ian isn't cooperating then it's better for the hardware to be with the police than with Ian - as the Police won't sell if off for cheap before you can get a court order or reach agreement for possession of it.

I'm not being paid by anyone to say anything btw.  I ONCE received an unsolicited payment from MPOE-PR (last year I think) that wasn't tied to any specific post I'd made and had no strings attached.  Disagree with my agenda by all means - but at least accept it's my OWN agenda not someone else's.  And I'd keep all mention of BMF etc to their own thread - except you always either delete or lock threads about your own companies.

NOTHING that has 200x leverage can be done without big risks.  Leverage increases profit at the expense of also increasing risk - that's the nature of the beast.

What we have here is a supposed fund that:

1.  Failed to pay the dividends it had promised.
2.  Gave no explanation of that for many months - then finally ocmes up with the excuse that they stopepd paying dividends to raise the share price.
3.  The share price has fallen in the meantime.
4.  No monthly results or statements of holdings of ANY kind are provided.  ALl you get are (sometimes) random amounts paid as dividends which in no way match the promised returns.
5.  Apparently profit is being made by trading fiat currency pairs.  It would be hard to make a BTC-denominated profit doing that.

This time round there's a bit more explanation than the first time the scam sold shares.  But there's still absolutely basic howlers in it, such as:

1.  Not understanding the different between Copyright and Patent.
2.  Claiming you can do massively leveraged trading without high risk (only possible if the outcome is KNOWN).
3.  Still no explanation of how the fund is valued - let alone historical valuations.  This one's problematic for JDBIF - as if he produces historical results that DON'T show a massive profit then it gives the lie to some of his claims.  If, on the other hand, he invents historical results that DO show a massive profit then some of his investors (I assume there ARE some - not all of the sales can be to himself/his alts) may want to cash out at that price.
4.  Claiming to be run by an incorporated company that hasn't even been incorporated.  That's a criminal offence in most countries - attempting to obtain money by deception.
5.  Believing he can incorporate a company to run a collective investment scheme - not many places you can do that without also needing to register with relevant regulatory authorities.

In short it's a pretty obvious scam.  That he's come back to try to steal more funds after not getting enough first time round says a lot about his low opinion of the level of business sense of Bitcoin users.  On that one point he's probably correct.