Those results are in line with what I'd estimated - that only those getting very early ASICs will really make bank on them.  In his graphs by late batch 2 the Avalons will be struggling to pay for themselves.  And he doesn't seem to have even counted ASICMINER's haspower in (should be 12 TH/s coming online in next few weeks and the production run of chips for a much of bigger batch has already started).

If you 're going to list it on two sites I'd suggest making one the main and the other a pass-through to it.

If there's ever any votes, somewhere needs to have the official result - and they can't both vote in one another's motions.  The pass-through's vote would end before the main vote - then you'd reflect their votes in the main one by using 2 proxy accounts (one to vote yes, other to vote no) - you couldnt vote the pass-through as a block if it could be of similar or greater magnitude to the main one.

Yeah - but difference there is that there's a much greater degree of certainty that the overwhelming majority of voters were aware of the vote.  If this (like local elections where I live) had been publicised months in advance and everyone mailed a reminder (ballot slip) a few weeks in advance and advocates of all parties been canvassing, sending propganda mailshots etc then yes - it's reasonable to assume that the vast majority of those who didn't vote were intentionally abstaining (and hence not counted in the criteria to pass).  But where you can't have any certainty of awareness of the vote, you can't reasonably assume that people are CHOOSING not to vote.

Choosing not to vote = abstaining
Not being aware of the vote is NOT abstaining

It's too low for things like contract changes.

With that criteria a single investor with 30% of shares could (with assistance from the operator - or if the operator themselves) pass pretty much any motion just by having it run for a short period of time and not publicising it well.  And the most ironic thing is that if every other shareholder was opposed to it they'd WANT 20% of them to notice the motion and vote against it (to reach the quorum).

Unless you can be confident an overwhelming majority of shareholders KNEW about the vote I don't see anything less than 50% of outstanding shares (discounting anyone who abstained) being acceptable.  Contract changes shouldn't occur based on how many investors even knew there was  a vote - they should occur because a majority (of ALL investors weighted by shares) took an affirmative action to pass it (either voting yes or abstaining to reduce the majority needed).  You just can't have 30% of shareholders imposing a contract change on the other 70% because most of the other 70% didn't realise there was even a vote (That wasn't the numbers here - just making the point).

I'm pretty certain this motion would have passed if left up longer - but it wasn't left up longer.

I'd tend to think there were two seperate criteria for this one to pass (both of which needed to be met):

1.  That half or more of shareholders approve the change (50% of outstanding shares less abstains) - that should be a requirement for just about any change to a contract: a majority of investors (weighted by shares)  stating that they would like the change.
2.  Garr's own requirement of 70% that he imposed - which would only require 70% of those who voted to approve.

It's possible to meet #1 and fail #2 - if most investors vote and the results are close.
It's also possible to meet #2 but fail #1 (which happened here) - if the vote ends before a large chunk of investors have even voted.

What I can't work out is what the large investors are doing.

I mean if someone is putting thousands of BTC in (which some are) then how hard is to figure out that rather than put it all in at X% (where X% is the lowest rate they'd prefer to risk at rather than not bear the risk) they should put all except 100 BTC in at X% and the last 100 BTX at 100% or 1000% or whatever - to guarantee getting the whole pot when there's insufficient capital offered for the rate to be capped.

As 100 becomes a smaller pecentage of their total committed capital they need a smaller chance of capital being exhausted for this to be profitable.  If they know other investors then this 100 BTC max-rate block could be privately shared between them reducing the cost to them of ensuring a scoop (where insufficent capital is offered) even further.

That's why I was surprised at absolutely no cap on rate - as when one individual can submit different bids it's very easy to game (yet noone seems to have bothered doing it).

Believe from memory burnside's default rule is majority of outstanding shares (if the contract specifices differently then I ASSUME that would be OK).

The problem of not enough votes usually arises because of a mix of voter apathy plus many investors not checking the forums/site often enough to even notice there was a motion - so votes need to be up a lot longer to get a majority.  In theory that makes sense - as a minority of shareholders shouldn't be able to change a contract just because the rest didn't notice there was even a motion.  But in practice it becomes a problem if a decent chunk of shareholders rarely if ever check here/the exchange.

Abstains work differently on BTC.CO.  They get removed from the number of available votes - so work in practice as going along with the majority vote.  So if there were 1000 shares then 501 would usually be needed to pass something (unless higher that 50% was required).  If 100 shares voted abstain then only 451 votes would be needed to show a 50%+ result (as the 100 have effectively asked to have their shares ignored in the vote).  Look at the votes on the LTC-Trading pass-through to see this in practice.

I'd also tend towards the motion not having passed - a contract change needs the support of a majority of shareholders, not the support of a minority whilst the majority didn't even express an opinion.  At same time it seems unlikely ALL those who didn't vote would vote no - so it would hardly be a grave injustice if it as considered to have passed: it would just set a precedent where a motion to do something daft could be passed with 10% of votes if it was run for 1 day and not publicised.

Ah right - I remember your bid now.  It was made after the auction had ended.  Strangely you then claimed usagi had edited the post to add in the "21.5 hours from now" part - despite it being in the auctions forum where it's impossible to edit posts.

Though can't blame you for getting confused over when it ended - it WAS, after all, the second time the end date had changed (I didn't make any bids after the first change of end date - an auction where I'm committed to bids but the seller isn't committed to an end date doesn't appeal to me at all).

And why shouldn't I worry about your investors?  Someone has to - and it doesn't seem like you do.

AValon haven't actually shipped anywhere near 20 TH.  Their annoucement may have said that they'd shipped - but if you read it more carefully you'll find they only actually confirmed shipping 2 boxes, with the rest supposedly trickling out over the next month.  The topic title led me to expect a picture inside of them rolling up to customs/DHL with a trcuk-load of boxed ASICs - the reality was rather different (they seem confused about the diference between "have shipped" and "have started shipping").

Would guess that's becasue Sweden allows you to register an Ekonomisk Förening - which is a form of Credit Union that requires no licence or capital (and no KYC requirements either).  Of course to do that all users have to be members of an assocation (no more than 1000 allowed) and, unless he also has a seperate offshore payment processor setup (which would charge fees so as no profit was made) he has to pay 30% of all declared profits to Sweden.

Only thing that concerns me is whether after a few weeks he'll get bored of it and just keep the funds - as happened with his mining company where he stopped mining after only a few weeks and since has just constantly delayed doing anything and is only now, with ASICs out, trying to sell off the crappy hardware that noone wants.

At least his investors are getting back a bit more than yours have so far.  Haven't you got the 60% you received back from DeadTerra to hand out to your investors?  At least usagi has been paying out funds when he receives them - unlike you.

Feels strange defending usagi - but seems like all the investors of his with guarantees (Nyan.A/YARR) will be getting back full value before long.  Unlike your guarantee which seems to mean you'll give back something when you feel like it - which may be this year, may be next, may be never.  No sign of you forwarding the funds from DeadTerra - and no sign of you selling the mining farm you claimed to have when selling your bonds to make a start on settling your debt.

As for the Imsaguy debt, the last content of any note in that thread was nearly a week before the auction ended.  Anyone who believed him that a deal was imminent could have bid more for the debt - including Imsaguy himself.

Exchange-rate : .00345
Adjusted NAV/U : 34.2925
Bid at : 33.6

Whilst it looks unlikely we'll be setting any records this week, we're on target for respectable growth.  At present we're up just over 10% for the week with the majority of that (over 8%) from trading.  With ASICs finally arriving there's a fair amount of volatility in the price of most mining stocks which offers decent opportunities for trading - as well as a bit more risk than usual.

The S.BBET pass-through has pretty much stalled at present - it has a fairly wide and static range on MPEx (.001 bid, .0016 Ask) and there seems little interest on LTC-Global in buying at the Ask or selling at the Bid.

S.DICE has seen steady trade.  January it made just over 20k BTC profit of which 10% (2K BTC) will be paid at as dividend on MPEx in the next few days.  99% of received dividend/share will be passed through to our pass-through as per contract.  At current prices it looks like being somewhere in the 2.5%-3% range which is perfectly respectable.  As soon as I notice the dividend arriving on CoinBR I'll cancel my Ask, do the math and pay out the dividend - until then there's still time to buy shares and get this month's dividend.  Dividend is paid at some point in the first 5 days of the month - he's updated the accounts so it could be at any time.

The only other options I ever saw there were some puts and calls on the ponzi JDBIF (that's the one that promises 20% per month, hasn't paid that since October but still trades) and there was one option up on IBB for a little while.

Yeah - it was a nasty spot to be in.  One the one hand you really want to get ASICs as soon as possible, on the other their communication hasn't exactly been awe-inspiring or confidence inducing.  But of course if a bunch more batch 1 ASICs arrive then it'll be a lottery trying to get an order in in the few minutes available whilst their site effectively gets DDOSed by miners trying to throw BTC at them.

From their perspective if a good chunk of batch 1 has been shipped I'd be tempted to delay batch 2 until after a fair few of them have arrived (so there's no doubt about their capability) then do a MUCH bigger batch 2 and see if they can get people cancelling BFL orders to buy from them.  This is their one chance to grab a good chunk of those orders (unless BFL totally drop the ball and still haven't shipped anything by end of February).

Highest id was at .35 or so yesterday, but all trades for the last week or so have been off the ask wall at .4.  That got cleared last night and the .5 ask wall started on - so the rise was 25% and was just a case of moving from one tier to the next of sales.

Exchange-rate : .0035
Adjusted NAV/U : 32.997
Bid at : 32.3

It's been a slow but steady first half of the week.  NAV/U (before management fee) is up a bit over 6% - with ~4.4% being from trading and the rest from LTC falling vs BTC.  Nothing like as spectacular as last few weeks - but still a good week (I consider anything over about 3% a good week).

There's been a lot of activity on S.DICE over the last day or so - I assume people buying them up to collect the dividend due within the next week.  Last time I checked it looked like being about a 3% dividend (based on current price) but that could change in the last day easily if the whale keeps playing (he can lose or win 10k+ BTC in a day).  S.DICE has been staying solidly in the .0072-.00745 range for a while now - will be interesting to see if it stays there after the dividend.  Sometimes people dump shares right after collecting dividends - but equally last month the price rose after dividend as people noticed it was paying very respectable amounts.

Not a lot happening on S.BBET - lowest ask is about .0016 and highest bid about .00105.  I managed to sell some shares off at .00155 and cleared out all Asks on LTC-Global below that - so anyone who wanted to take their profits has now done so.  If I get hold of some cheap I'll put up an Ask much cheaper - until then my Ask is the lowest one at ~.47 representing the price I'd have to pay to replace the fund's float shares.

Nope - I wouldn't ship them any money yet either tbh.

No matter what you do now, you aren't getting the first batch of ASICs that arrive - so no big bonus for being in the first lot mining.  A lot depends on whether you believe BTC will rise over the next few months.  If you believe it'll rise (or at least not fall) then it's highly likley the most profitable course of action is to wait for the first wave of price-cuts on ASICs before ordering.

Aside form anyhting else, Avalon's power-specs are a lot worse than BFL's - so Avalon are going to have to cut prices to remain competitive if/when BFL ship.

One other thing I don't know the answer to (as not into mining myself) - how long are the warranties on the Avalon/BFL gear?  That's a pretty massive thing to take into account that I haven't seen discussed yet.

Even if you hold 99% of shares you can't just pass a motion without a vote.  There's two reasons for this:

1.  Holding a proper motion/vote gives smaller investors a chance to point out things which may change the majority shareholder's vote.
2.  Without a vote there's not any proof that someone actually DOES hold a majority of shares.

If he was holding back all cash that should have been dividended then that's actually MORE reason to keep accounts updated - as cash in hand is rising quickly.  Without accounts no investors can value the shares for their books.

Hopefully I'm wrong about him - but when someone refuses to provide up to date accounts it's hard to assume anything other than that they're scamming.

Your situation was slightly different - as you weren't actually doing anything or generating any income so there was nothing to update accounts with.

I'm a shareholder from time to time

I'd advise being cautious with Avalon - their desperation for fast cash suggests they're having some serious issues.  Whilst it's obviously not a scam as such, I'd want to see more than a few of them arrived before assuming they're actually in a position to guarantee a steady stream of them.

It may just be as simple as they wanted to pretend to meet their shipping date - and only had a few actually ready by then but pretended they were ready to start shipping whole-sale.  Or it could be far worse - e.g. serious yield issues meaning they need cash to run another batch of chips off just to meet batch 1 commitments.

Something still smells very wrong with it - but it could be nothing more than bad PR/communications combined with stretching the truth on the state of their assembly line.

IF amazingrando has resurfaced then that changes things a bit - will have to reassess DMC value when we see what happens there.  I don't have much hope for BTCMC at all - it's pretty obvious the guy has just been spending what was mined and has now been stalling for months: There's no reason why GLBSE going down should stop him producing his accounts like before.

Is there any date by which you plan to buy back - or is plan just to wait until people get bored and sell back for tiny amounts, leaving cash left over for you?

Anyway, thanks for the answer - I have eough info to go on now.