You can never cash out (at the old price) when the price of a share collapses.  It's unfortunate - but true - that you can cash out all the time you don't want to, but as soon as you need to you're no longer able to.   Just look at all the ex-GLBSE companies listed on Bitfunder/BTC.CO.  There's plenty of people who'd love to cash out - but can't (at a price they're willing to take).  Your business will be no different (NONE are) - when it's doing well noone wants to cash out, if it does badly loads of people will want to cash out but won't be able to without incurring a heavy loss.  Volume right now has ZERO to do with that.  Or are you guaranteeing buy-back based on previous highest trading price?  I thought not.

Mining is about the most predictable form of BTC investment around - it'll lose money (all the time it's profitable more people will start mining until it ceases to be profitable - meaning a loss for investors unless you find one of the rare investments where operator's pay comes from profit not turnover when you'll break even or make a tiny profit).  Only the very first wave of ASICs or those investments with some significant edge (manufacturing ASICs, very cheap power etc) will ever make any noticeable profit for investors - the rest just earn cash for operators whilst losing investment capital.

The general problem with BTC investments is that with BTC being deflationary by design very few fiat-denominated investments stand any chance of producing (BTC-denominated) profit - they can make fiat-denominated profit but will still be likely to end up worse than idle BTC would.  That will tend to balance out long-term -as deflation will be curbed by a lack of utility (reducing demand), leading to a state of equilibrium.  But we're some way off that (like a few years).

Investments like this are sort of good for the community/BTC as a whole.  Although the odds are very heavily in favour of investors making a loss (that's by no means uniquie to BTC - most startups fail period), at least by doing so they're spreading the word about BTC.  It's unfortunate (when it comes to investment) that BTC is deflationary - as even when I see half-decent investment opportunities I KNOW that statistically I'm better off with BTC in my wallet than investing (if BTC succeeds the idle BTC will appreciate in value more than any traditional business - especially considering a 90% failure rate, if BTC fails then either way I've lost - so why invest?).

Note that I see a strong distinction between investing (buying shares to make a profit from the dividends or growth of the company) and trading (buying to sell higher and make a profit from the market).  Something like this I'll happily trade (buy the early-bird shares and flip them below 2nd batch price) but without assets backing the shares there's no way I'd personally invest.  There's definitely far worse investments around though (e.g. the two blatant scams currently listed on Bitfunder).

What I see from your limited gfinancials is that you launched 3 months back and sales have declined ever since - suggesting once you'd tapped your initial fan-club of purchasers there was little revenue left to be had.  Generally when investing I look for a company whose sales increase - not decline: hence my mention of projections.

What dividend/share do you expect to be paid in March, April, May etc?  That's the sort of information I'd like to see - but can't really fault you for not giving it given the willingness of the community to throw money at people who provide no information at all.  We all saw how everyone got burned first time round doing that - guess it needs a 2nd round to drive the point home.  Hopefully you aren't one of the companies proving how idea + marginally profitable business + investment does NOT automatically mean profit (but statistically there's probably about a 90% chance you are).

Would guess they saw ZigGap sell a ton with no real plan, no record, no projections etc and figured they may as well copy the contract and get a load of BTC themselves.  Heck I'm tempted to make an alt, register a domain and sell 50 million shares myself - just need to sell 10 million 'cheap' at an Early Bird price and people will just throw their money my way to get in on the 'bargain'.

I just had a proper look at the bonds list.

Here's the list:


    198xX3n8ov4ejgEsWjt3SpPRkDuieL3EHA 120.00000888
    1dNhiuBxKFjkxi5uWYhKzyy3rr65nMkDo 100.00000888
    1D7YtrxnyK3ug3Rvp9jX66T8kVzWww9Jr8 4478.46233504
    1NTfLJi1AZgzeXNHF5Gx1sAmRj6RBE7qxe 100.00000888
    1Pk9FAH7dCGBZ1mw5HbU9AgAvYhrQnFZFp 100.00000888
    1Mn65Q9Xm6NBoPdF8ppS3AzgRLt92ZKtTq 100.00000888
    16yqE5GW2iLnXvCX3SHe6r5UbRFAuARond 2`157.00762056

The last one is the one that was cut off - so that one must have bid 4.8% too.  We know that's the one that was cut off for a few reasons:

1.  I'm pretty sure the list is done from lowest to highest requested rate.
2.  We know none of the others were the cut-off point (all the ones ending in 888 obviously got full allocation and the 4467.xx one submitted exactly same amount previous month so clearly didn't get cut off).

If we then look at January list we see:

198xX3n8ov4ejgEsWjt3SpPRkDuieL3EHA 120.00000888
1D7YtrxnyK3ug3Rvp9jX66T8kVzWww9Jr8 4`478.46233504
1Mn65Q9Xm6NBoPdF8ppS3AzgRLt92ZKtTq 100.00000888
16yqE5GW2iLnXvCX3SHe6r5UbRFAuARond 2`261.23910617
1swAzHw1zTWqoi5184VinvUxLWnBskPVW 3`708.33297766
1CqQiHmp2T3TWXZx3J7yueDxH5rVnZ9A94 1`726.89016169
1A2hqHVSUERAT3t1yJ7ggYCQccvH6pZGZm 1`904.91150845

Notice that the one that was cut-off this month occurs before the last three larger investors - indicating (if I'm correct about hte lsit being in requested-rate order) that he asked for less than 3 of the other 4 large investors (who presumably invested again this month but didn't have their funds used).  Whilst it's possible he copied your rate it seems highly unlikely that a regular investor would change to exactly same rate as a small investor (changing to 1 satoshi less is always better).  I think it's just coincidence that he picked same rate as you - a round number just below the expected average.

IF 3 largish investors missed out in Feb there has to be a good chance they'll bid lower this month (or that at least 2 will - it's entirely possible the last one who bid 9.99 in Jan in a 2nd bid from someone, equally it could be someone who's fairly risk-averse and doesn't want their funds used unless the potential return is high).

Check your junk folder for the email sent to you when the account was created.  That will have your PIN in it.  If that doesn't work you'll need to contact burnside and he'll resend the email to you.

WEEKLY REPORT




Slightly worse results this week compared to recent ones - 13.2% growth but only 8.43% after adjusting for exchange-rate movement.  There are a few reasons for this:

• With BTC rising sharply, there was very little buying going on at BTC-denominated exchanges.
• Bad timing.  I launched our S.MPOE pass-through and immediately it dropped a bit - so instead of selling at a small profit, we were selling at a small loss compared to what we bought at.  That's no big deal - as we expect to absorb profit/loss on out float for pass-throughs and just make sure we're replacing sold stock at a small profit.  However:
• Shortly after that, LTC dropped.  That had the effect of forcing me to raise prices on pass-throughs (as, although the underlying BTC price hadn't moved, the LTC-denominated price obviously had rose.  That made the shares look expensive compared to what they'd previously been sold at and pretty much killed all pass-through sales for the rest of the week.
• More bad timing.  I put new bonds up for sale, went afk for a few hours, came back and LTC had dropped and the bonds had sold at below face value instead of slightly above it.  Not much I can do about this until we get a fully functioning bot that can set prices AND convert on BTC-E when sales occur (without the conversion, pricing is pretty meaningless - as we end up gambling on exchange-rate movement).

Still, hardly a disastrous week - I'm still not totally sure how we ended up making such a respectable profit at all.  I did quite a few trades but nothing especially spectacular - it just shows how if you keep making 5% here, 10% there etc it can add up.

On the pass-throughs there's finally signs of upwards movement on S.DICE again, with the Ask wall at .0069 gone.  I'd expect price to go up a bit before dividends.  At present S.DICE looks like dividending out upward of 10k BTC this month (still less than last month) - it sounds like a lot, but remember there's 100 million shares to spread it between.

S.BBET seems stalled - with little activity on it.  This week I again bought back some shares, decreasing the number outstanding.  I'm buying back well above the price they sold at - but it's slow as I can only buy back when I manage to sell some on MPEx.  Have had top Bid pretty much non-stop for the last few weeks but never had anyone sell into me - so been unable to sell more at a competitive price.  Noone wants to buy at the MPEx Ask rate (and rightly so in my opinion) so for now this is pretty stagnant.

S.MPOE hasn't really sold much yet - I'm blaming a combination of market saturation (a few IPOs recently that have sold quite nicely), uncertainty in general with LTC's price drop (some will have cashed out to BTC at least temporarily - or to buy into the Novacoin pump/dump) and the apparent price hike on it (actually BTC price fell but that tiny drop was drowned out by the much larger drop in LTC).

Bid is at : 49.8
Management fee this week is 6 units which will be transferred shortly.

The conspiracy theory breaks down as the information would only be useful IF the people using it could predict what demand for bonds would be.  Setting it at 4.8% if demand was for a higher quantity would be potentially giving up on cash, similarly if demand was lower then they wouldn't get anything.  Though it is a bit of a coincidence that it ended on exactly that - either yours was highest bond paid or someone else DID choose 4.8%.  It makes no sense for someone to pick 4.8% because you did - 4.799% makes far more sense.

I'm a bit puzzled why you picked 4.8% anyway.  Are you really SURE that if the final rate ended up at 4.7% your investors would prefer to get nothing than risk their capital?  Because that's what setting a rate of 4.8% means - that you'd rather not invest than take any lower.

I'd have thought you should just be setting your rate at somewhere around 2% - so investors funds get used any time it'll cover your premium + the max 1% selling fee.

More likely its whoever bought up the big chunk at .0062 trying to sell off at a 3% profit.  THINK they were earlier listed in the high .007x range.

The -1 is because the trust has been extended in both directions.  So, at the extremes, you could be owed $1 by him OR owe him $1 (or anywhere in between).  The 0 (current state) is where neither of you owes the other anything.

Public list isn't complete as it only contains entries for those who have entered a BTC address to be published.  So, e.g., if an asset is imported from GLBSE and shares assigned to email addresses with no existing account then there won't be any BTC address published for them (as there isn't one to publish).

Unless that's somehow changed recently - last time I checked listed shares for assets were (in some cases significantly) below those shown as outstanding.

Using BTC addresses rather than email addresses gives some degree of anonymity - but at the cost of ease of use and (more importantly) completeness.

Don't really need a backup of a partial list (which is all you can get on Bitfunder) when, as an asset issuer, I can get a full list of my investors on BTC.CO any time I want.

My view is that making a partial list public does more harm than good (it gives out information that shouldn't be in the public domain - allowing correlation between various holdings and also determination of the holdings in an asset by someone buying or selling).  Investors have to trust the asset issuer anyway if they want their investments honoured - so why not trust them to hold the list in the first place?

Publishing an incomplete list is the worst of both worlds - it doesn't give the information necessary to continue operations whilst giving out information to everyone that they have no right to be given.

This is a sreiously bad idea - and one of the scams I see as being likely to happen quite a lot (NOT accusing you of scamming - but what you're doing is exactly what a low-level scammer would do).

How it works is this:

Scammer extends trust to loads of people - but deposits no assets so that trust can't be realised.
Scammer asks people he trusted to trust him back.
Some idiots trust him back.
Scammer withdraws BTC based on that trust - leaving victims holding IOUs from him instead of BTC (if they trusted in some other currency then he borrows in that currency, converts to BTC and withdraws).
Scammer vanishes.

Extending trust because you can is dumb.  Extend trust only when you need to.

Ripple's just a ledger system that records who owes what and who has offered what trust.  It doesn't enforce or validate extended trust.  Making life easier for honest people to conduct business also makes life easier for scammers - Ripple will be the scammers' best friend if it takes off (same as BTC was/is).  Fast, easy and irreversible transfer of funds is good for those doing legitimate business but an absolute god-send for scammers.

If you legitamtely want to take out a loan against BTC in cold-storage then send them to cold-storage belonging to the lender.  If a lender has no way to gain control of collateral in case of default then it's not collateral anyway: just proof that you, in theory, have the means to honour your debt.

If fact you don't extend credit to friends of friends anyway.  You extend credit to friends.  They can then choose to use that credit to extend credit themselves to their friends (your friends of friends) - but you don't end up with an IOU from anyone you haven't personally extended credit (trust) to.  If the friend of a friend defaults, you still own the IOU from your friend.  If they then won't honour it because they were defaulted on they aren't much of a friend and you need to evaluate better how you're handing out trust/credit.

But I'd advise strongly against thinking of it in terms of 'friends' anyway - this isn't about friendship, it's about money.

People are extending credit at present to test the system - not to make a profit.  Provided they do it with sums they don't mind losing that's no problem.

The Ripple system doesn't force you to extend trust without charging interest (or gaining benefit in some way): that some people are doing so isn't a failure of the system, more a failure of people to realise that doing so isn't actually a great idea.

Most people using the system will likely NEVER actually have a good reason to extend trust to anyone other than a gateway.

You have to think of extending trust as being the same as providing a line of credit: and price it appropriately.  The use of the word "Trust" is perhaps unfortunate - as a lot of users are going to misunderstand it and then get bitten hard by it.

If I 'trusted' you enough to lend you 10 BTC I absolutely would NOT extend 10 BTC of 'trust' to you in the Ripple system for free.  I'd maybe do it if you paid me a 1 BTC fee up front and agreed that the line of credit would only be available for 2 months.  That's how I see Ripple being used - not as some WOT type thing with lines of credit in place everywhere all the time.

Where I see massive issues is the first time a gateway gets hacked/gos rogue and is no longer able (or willing) to honour its IOUs.  In my view, Ripple's long-term future hinges very much on that not happening until it's gained very significant traction.  An early gateway default would kill it.

If you extend a 1 BTC line of trust to someone, they can use it at any time.  Would assume that's why it's advised not to do it until you understand what's happening.

What seems to have happened here is:

User A extended 1 BTC worth of trust to user B
User B used that trust to place an order for 10K XRP for 1 BTC
User A was notified that 1 BTC of theirs was being used to back an order for 10k XRP

Where the system fails a bit is in not notifying user A WHY their 1 BTC is about to be (possibly - if the order fills) used.

Bottomline is if you extend trust to others for X BTC then be aware that at ANY time X BTC (or X BTC worth of IOUs) you own can vanish to be used by those others (and would be replaced by IOUs from the people you extended the trust to).

When you trust someone for X BTC think of it is as you saying "You're entitled to take X BTC from me at any time you choose in return for an IOU as I trust you to repay it".  When you think of it in those terms you'll soon realise you shouldn't be extending trust other than when you WANT it to be used.

Trust isn't some vague thing like on the WOT - it has a defined and realisable value.  If you trust someone (person X) then someone else who doesn't but who trusts you (person Y) can use your trust to lend to X with YOU responsible for repayment to Y (and YOU assume the risk of default by X - as Y holds an IOU from you and you hold an IOU from X).

Correct me if I'm wrong - I'm also new to Ripple (and not handing out any trust until I need to).

rp9MRdxyzm6XrVM3BRi8V69GtDYdYhymDr

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Incidentally if you bought your latest silver from Coinabul then surely, unless you're selling at a loss, your thread title is incorrect - as THEY must be cheaper than you

Yeah.  And presumably at some point Avalon's claims of having shipped will become a reality (it's becoming increasingly obvious that their original shipment was just a few prototypes to let them raise funds from batch 2 preorders to finish off batch 1).  Remember also that if the whole 12 TH/s comes online the next difficulty will arrive a bit quicker.

I'm not convinced BFL's current timeline is reasonable - unless they're intending to ship out units that are totally untested and just hope they work (and continue to work for a significant period of time).