What you keep conveniently ignoring is that for those who only hold a few shares the cost of compiling the information will often exceed the value of those shares.  That's because in many countries the cost of an apostilled document is fixed and fairly high (there's only one authority that can apostille per country - for obvious reasons - so no room for competition on the price as it's a monopoly).

If I lend you 3 BTC then ask for an apostilled claim before repaying and an apostille costs you 4 BTC what are your realistic options?  That's the position a lot of your smaller investors are now in.

Your claim that you can't allow transfer of ownership now as GLBSE were previously doing it is a misinterpretation.  If you sold transferrable contracts (or bonds - as some would say you had previously characterised them) previously then the regulatory requirements on you remain largely the same irrespective of who handles the transfer of ownership.

Does anyone here actually KNOW the US law in terms of KYC/AML?  In the UK if a customer refuses to provide KYC information then the seller has to either provide a total refund OR (if they believe there's an AML-related reason for the refusal) make an SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) to the relevant authorities (who that is depends on the company's supervisory body).  In this instance it's plain that in many cases the refusal to provide the required information is purely an economic one - that doing so costs more than the benefits of doing so - so IF this were in the UK Giga would need to cancel the contract in its entirety where there was refusal to provide the information.

I'd suggest first port of call for anyone getting screwed like this (being asked to incur costs greater than the contractual benefit) would be whatever fair-trading / consumer protection bodies there are in the US.  Complaint would be that he entered into a contract with you then is asking that you pay more than the benefit to you of the contract before he'll honour his obligations - and that he sold the contracts as being transferrable and is now also forbidding transfer which is the only other way you could recoup ANY of the investment you're otherwise losing.

Exchange-Rate : .00514

Adjusted NAV/U : 21.014388
Bid at : 20.5

Had a few decent trades overnight (I bought the shares before going to bed and they sold whilst I was asleep) which pushed us up over 10% adjusted NAV/U growth so far this week.  LTC falling in price has also contrbuted to apparent profits - without the exchange-rate movement we'd only be at about 9.85% profit for the week so far instead of at 11.4% (Those percentages are trading profit - increase in adjusted NAV/U is lower due to project management fee deduction).

Paying dividends doesn't (or shouldn't) of itself gain a lot of trust.  Ponzis are better at paying dividends than real investments - until they stop.  Transparency is best way to get trust - provide a way whereby investors can see that you're doing what you say you're doing and making the profts that you say you're making from doing so.

You need to make an account (on the email address you used for GLBSE claims) THEN login and go to the claimasset page.  It'll then check for any assets assigned to that email address.

Can you confirm this is still the asset list?

Few quick questions:

1.  ASICMINER - Has friedcat confirmed you had 10 shares of this yet?  (I know he confirmed some but not all - my own haven't been confirmed).
2.  BDK.BND - Did you receive an email from Kluge confirming you held the bonds you're selling?
3.  You say "- I reserve the right to bid on any shares here with my personal money."  Can you confirm that you WON'T bid yourself on lots then immediately end auction (one of the reasons I absolutely hate auctions with no transparency on end time) - allows issuer to snipe (either on own account or through a proxy)?

Will likely have questions on a few more - will look over list nearer 20th when it gets towards time to start bidding.

Couple of minor issues for clarification:

1.  In the case of debts, are you accepting bids for part of the debt?  Would seem to me that would be tricky to actually handle - but either way it needs clarification (would assume people would bid for X BTC-worth of debt - but what is minimum size of X?).  I'd recommend selling debts in their entirety as likelihood anyone would be able to negotiate settlement on a small portion of it has to be tiny.

2.  What's the situation if someone bids on some shares then, before auction ends, the asset-issuer sends full/partial payment to you?  Potentially someone could end up with bids on shares that no longer have any value (if full settlement was paid).  Obviously regular weekly/monthly dividends can be ignored - but bids made on the basis that the share value includes all dividends since GLBSE vanished should be cancellable if payment in respect of them is made to you AFTER the bid was placed.  Other alternative would be to include all payments received since start of auction into the lot (applied as a discount when settling).  In the latter case, obviously if you received payments exceeding the bids then no sale would take place.

3.  Could you somehow indicate which assets the issuer has confirmed you have ownership of.  Asking particularly in respect of ASICMINER (which I'll bid on) as I know friedcat hasn't confirmed everyone's holdings yet (mine haven't been confirmed).  What's the scenario if an asset issuer subsequently denies that you owned specific shares that were auctioned?  If disclosure is made that an asset issuer hasn't confirmed your ownership of specific shares then I'd have no problem with it being buyer's risk - but obviously that requires you to identify which have been confirmed and which haven't.

Exchange-Rate : .00538

Adjusted NAV/U : 19.4900979
Bid at : 19.1

Off to a steady, if not spectacular, start this week.  In contrast to previous few weeks the majority of profit so far has been on LTC-Global (though we've already made enough BTC-denominated profit to cover this week's dividend on the bonds).  Hopefully this pickup in activity on LTC-Global continues now the holiday season is out of the way.

New securities (mainly GLBSE relistings) are popping up on BTC.CO and Bitfunder - which means more opportunites for profit.  It also means more opportuniteis for fuckups - as someone found out when they overlooked (due it not being publicised well) that there'd been a 30:1 split on RSM and bought shares at what would have been a bargain pre-split but was about 15 times value post-split (our fund wasn't involved in this trade at all).

New bonds are being issued up to a total of 2500 - with funds from this batch earmarked for Bitfunder (in fact the funds are already on their way there).  Bitfunder doesn't allow leveraging same funds across orders on multiple securities in the same wat LTC-Global/BTC.CO do - so unfortunately we have to keep more capital there to maintain same volume of orders.  Because of that I have to pass up marginally profitable trades - but there's enough decent opportunities there to still make trading there worthwhile.

That would be the payment usagi received other week and couldn't work out what it was for.

Weekly Report




Well, officially it didn't quite manage to be a 10% profit week.  We got over 10% trading profit then LTC rose significantly vs BTC pushing profits down below 8%.  Then LTC fell back against BTC, not quite getting back to 10% profit for us on the week as I type this (it may well be there by time I finish posting - but have to take a snapshot at some point to do the report).  In fact we still DID make over 10% trading - just it doesn't show in results as I wrote off the last 150 LTC of the bond ticker cost.

We have 1900 bonds in the wild now - I sold 100 to an order on the market when exchange-rate rose past the price it was at.  Of course exchange-rate then moved back other way - so whoever I sold to won't have any complaints.  Despite that we still have over 20% of fund capital exposed to exchange-rate changes.  As discussed previously, the obvious two solutions (sell more bonds and/or convert some BTC back into LTC) aren't really all that feasible - as we just don't need more LTC-denominated capital right now.

I have, however, figured out a wait around it.  What we ideally want to achieve is ALL of the following:

1.  Decrease or at least not increase our LTC-denominated capital.
2.  Keep our BTC-denominated capital the same (or a small increase wouldn't do any harm).
3.  Reduce the percentage of fund exposure to BTC.
4.  Ensure we keep bonds measured as a percentage of BTC-denominated capital below 90% (around 85% would be ideal - right now its 64%).

This can ALL be achieved by one simple measure - increase the number of bonds without actually selling any.  So the amount of capital the fund controls would be unchanged - just the BTC-denominated portion would now consist far more of bonds, lowering the fund's exposure to currency movements.

Based on current fund breakdown this would be done by issuing to every owner of units in the fund 2 LTC-ATF.B1 bonds for each unit they hold of the fund.  I would then further need to convert around 3 BTC-worth of the fund' LTC reserves into BTC.  We'd then end up with slightly more BTC capital than now (3 BTC more), slightly less LTC (3 BTC-worth less - around 550 or so) and exposure to BTC for the fund down from 20%+ to 12%ish.  Investors would still own the same percentage of fund as before.  NAV/U of fund units would drop by the value of 2 bonds - and future growth on those units would be at a higher percentage (assuming we make over 0.6% profit per week).  Total value of 1 unit + 2 bonds would be identical to the value of 1 unit had the bond issue not happened - and exposure/total profit for an investor would also be unchanged if you just held onto the bonds.  But of course you can then choose to decrease your BTC exposure by selling the bonds (or increase it by obtaining more on the market).  Were this to go ahead I'd offer to buy bonds at 100% face value from anyone who didn't want them (buy them with my personal account that is) and, of course, would offer a buy-back at over NAV/U on fund units if anyone simply didn't like the idea at all.

The principle behind what I'm suggesting is simply to try to reduce (as far as possible whilst maintaining obligations to bondholders) the fund's exposure to BTC - so that investors who WANT such exposure can choose to gain it to the extent they want (either by buying our bonds, holding BTC or doing anything else they choose).  Personally I actually WANT a decent amount of BTC exposure - but the correct way for me to get that is by investing seperately to the fund in BTC (obviously my preference is the fund's own bonds) so that I control the ratio.

The change would have minimal impact on management fees - I'd actually lose out on spread-sheet calculated fee due to bond payments being made before fee is worked out (so i'd lose out on 10% of the new bonds' weekly dividends).  But that would be balanced out by unit price being lower, so rounding down having less impact.

As the change would lower NAV/U, should new units need to be issued in the future (only likely if trade volume on the exchanges grows much faster than we make profit - we'd still have space to issue another 30 BTC or worth of bonds even before making ANY more growth) then I'd commit to offering them first to existing investors at NAV/U in ratio to current holdings - so noone lost out on the percentage of fund they hold due to the devaluation of units followed by issue of new units.

There's also a simpler alternative - issue a one-time dividend on the fund (of around 3.5 LTC per unit) then just sell new bonds on the market.  Easier for me to adminstrate - and could do it in conjunction with allowing investors to reserve 2 Bonds per unit they hold which they can buy for the value of the dividend (Dividend would be precisely the value of 2 bonds).  That would mean investors who didn't want bonds could just do absolutely nothing - and those who DID want bonds would just need to do an email exchange with me confirming the account name from which the dividend would be returned (and to which bonds would be sent).  I'd tend to go with the latter approach - as it avoids anyone who doesn't want bonds having to do anything at all.

Summary of Suggestion :

1.  A one-off dividend to unit-holders of 0.02 BTC (paid in LTC obviously).
2.  Sale of new bonds with a face-value equal to the total amount dividended.
3.  Unit holders would be entitled to purchase up to 2 bonds for each unit of LTC-ATF they hold at exactly face value (locked in at exchange-rate at time of dividend) - remainder would be sold on open market at usual rate.

Summary of impact of Suggestion :

1.  Reduced exposure to BTC for LTC-ATF - allowing investors better to balance their own exposure and minimising exchange-rate caused fluctuations in NAV/U.
2.  NAV/U of LTC-ATF units would fall by 0.02 BTC.
3.  Fund would have lower NAV - but same capital under its control.
4.  Funds controlled would be slightly less LTC-denominated and slightly more BTC-denominated - reflecting where growth is more likely and reducing need to issue more bonds in the short-term.
5.  Growth of NAV/U in future would be expected to be a slightly higher percentage - but a slightly smaller absolute number (ino change in either when aggregated for any investor who accepted and held 2 bonds per unit).
6.  Management fee would tend to decrease slightly as a percentage of profits but increase slightly as a number of units (very small difference in both cases - and often probably unchanged on both counts due to rounding).

Feedback (from anyone - but especially from investors) welcome - it may well be that noone except me actually cares about what extent the fund has exposure to BTC (or about accurately balancing their own exposure).  There's no desperate rush on it - so it's not an actual proposal yet.  It's just a suggestion on how the fund could address an issue that - whilst hardly disastrous - is presently not ideal.  Do note that originally there was no plan at all to deal with this - as back then nearly all trade was in BTC on GLBSE so there was no alternative other than massive BTC exposure.

Bid at : 18.6 or thereabouts (looks like currency has moved whilst typing all this up - so will calculate it after sending management units).

Management fee of 4 units - which will be transferred shortly.

This one puzzles me.  As far as I can tell any investor could choose not to accept the contract change and sell the shares back at 1.005.  If they were on a platform I traded on I'd buy them back and cash them in for 1.005 myself.

One last thing - for Lots that aren't listed on Exchanges it would probably greatly help you get most value if the asset issuer/debtor were to confirm that they will honour the transfer of assets/rights upon conclusion of the auction.

Options for where to put it would be:

1.  Here - where the people most likely to bid are.
2.  Auctions forum - where people can't edit or delete bids after making them.

Would suggest putting it in the auctions section but with a thread here - as the contents are clearly relevant to this section of the forum.

You MAY want to require a 10% refundable (if overbid) deposit from unknowns placing bids.

Would suggest putting everything in one thread -  and having clear rules on how to bid.

So your listing would have the various assets for sale - e.g. :

LOT 1 (BINGOM) : 100 shares of BingoMining split into 10 bundles of 10 shares (listed on exchange A).
LOT 2 (SCAMMERX) : 50 BTC debt owed by scammer X - whole debt is 1 bundle.
LOT 3 (LOTTOM) : 50 shares of LottoMining split into 2 bundles of 25 shares (not listed on any exchange).

Then my bids may be:

LOT 1 (BINGOM) : 2 bundles at 1.1 BTC, 3 bundles at 0.8 BTC, 5 bundles at 0.1 BTC
LOT 3 (LOTTOM) : 1 bundle at 0.6 BTC

By having a tag by each lot number and requiring the lot number AND tag to be listed it prevents any claims of misunderstanding what was being bid on later.

Other general guidelines:

1.  Have sniper period - so if you were ending auction at midday next Sunday, definition ofend date would be : "Bidding on each Lot will finish at the later of 12:00PM (midday) 13th January 2013 and 6 hours after the last valid bid on the Lot."  Having an anti-sniper period deters last-minute bidding (impossible to snipe).

2.  Make explicit that if the bids for any lots are lower than market Bids at end of auction then you will sell into market.  Absolutely NO private offers though - as that encourages people to try to buy in private, removing transparency and also removing competition resulting in lower results.

3.  So long as each bundle has a value around 1 BTC or higher, you can just set a minimum bid of 0.1 BTC and incrememnts of 0.1 BTC.  You may lose out on fractions somewhere that someone would have paid 0.21 to out bid 0.2 - but it'll be more than made up for by the occasions they actually outbid (and win) with 0.3 rather than 0.21.  Plus it means less bids.

4.  Encourage people to put ALL their bids in a single post - then quote it with increases when they add more bids (avoids issues like if someone in one post bids 0.3 on 2 blocks of LOT 1, thgen bids 0.4 on 3 blocks of LOT 1 in a second post - have they bid on 3 blocks or 5?)".

5.  Absolutely no removal of bids to be allowed.  If someone bids 0.3 for 2 blocks of LOT 1 they can't then bit 0.5 for 1 block and drop the bid on the 2nd block.

6.  Allow a short time-scale for correction of obvious typos - so if someone accidentally bids 12 BTC instead of 1.2 they get say 10 minutes to fix it in (quoting original, stating it was typo and correcting it).  Any attempts to correct after that would be a bid cancellation against the auction rules and result in all of their bids on everything being ignored.

Remember if you do it in the auction section YOU can't edit the OP after posting (nothing can be edited there) - so get it right first (e.g. post draft in here, wait for coments and correct it before posting it there).

There's no option to merge - but you can make your new account then log into the auto-created accounts and transfer the shares/BTC in them across to your new account.  There's no fee on transfers - so it just takes a litle bit of time but costs you nothing.

I'm not sure that listing BMF would actually solve much - the problem at root is the lack of liquidity in most assets.  Establishing a market price for BMF wouldn't do anything about that. 

As BMF is closing its value is the total value of its assets - nothing more or less.  Paying out based on a market price for BMF would actually made the situation worse - as if the market happened to value BMF above the value of its assets and you started distributing assets you'd run out of assets with BMF shares left that had received nothing.

They key issue is to establish the value of the assets BMF holds.  Problem is you can't do that on market due to illiquidity (plus some assets aren't even tradable).  Then once you've established value of the assets you can in theory give out assets instead of cash - but you then run into the problem that some investors may believe you've over-valued the assets you try to give them.

I believe there is a solution - which satisfies the main criteria:

1.  Transparent.
2.  No investor gets assets at above the price they value it at.

Weakness of it is that assets may not realise their true value - but that's unavoidable when closing down: there's no way to get full value for all assets AND do it quickly AND make sure no investor gets something they believe is overvalued and worth less than it's been given in lieu of.

Here's my proposal - maybe some tinkering around with it would improve it.

Sell ALL assets by public auction. Make an estimate of their ball-park value and split them into blocks worth around 1 BTC (only the order of magnitude matters) - much less and it's too much hassle, much more and you lose potential bidders.  People bid on blocks - so if you have 100 shares of BingoMining and you think they're worth around .1 BTC each then you'd sell them as 10 blocks of 10 shares.

Set a fairly long date for the auctions - like a week - with a decent anti-sniper clause (like 6 hours extension from last bid) and bids to be in increments of 0.1 BTC/block.  Top bidders win the blocks - obviously investors can bid and then will be effectively buying the shares with the proceeds from their final dividends.  One caveat on it - at end of auction if any of the assets can be sold on market for more than bids that would otherwise win then you sell them on market.

You can even sell off totally illiquid stuff like OBSI shares and Matthew debt - just instead of doing the transfer on an exchange you'd exchange GPG-signed messages assigning them all rights.

You should get more buyers in an auction than on a site - people don't have to sign up to bid and also don't have to tie up cash in bids waiting for a seller (one of the reasons why liquidity is so poor).

I really believe setting market-value for BMF is a red-herring - it seems like a good idea until you get down to the detail.  In principle you can't go giving investors shares unless they agree with your valuation of them.  If you agree on valuation then you don't need to know a value for BMF - just sell them the shares at the agreed price and they'll get their cash back in the final dividends (but I recommend AGAINST this as it's not transparent).

Public auction of assets is a commonly-used method in liquidation in RL - provided all investors know about it and are allowed to bid they have no real cause to complain things were sold under-priced.  If you trust specific investors not to default then you could, in theory, agree that their payment for assets they bid on can be deferred until after you've made partial settlement by dividend - so they can pay out of the first tranche of proceeds from BMF liquidation rather than having to find extra cash short-term.  That last point would achieve a similar end to giving assets in return for BMF shares - but with more transparency, explicit agreement on value and competition to ensure best price practical was achieved.

He's always done that - same as every time he does anything he makes a new locked thread and keeps bumping it to top of forum.

Am I reading this right - the majority of coins are going to a foundation that hasn't even been set up yet?

Isn't that kind of the wrong order to do things in?

"What happened was there was very little on sell side so some bright spark cleaned them out them listed at just over 10 * price."

Clearer?

Wouldn't expect it to jump - more like gradually rise.  They won't build a ton of boards then put them all online at once.  Initially they'd get 1 going then add more as they were built and tested.  Can't imagine them getting into mass-production just yet - that'll come once all the wrinkes are ironed out in first batch.  WHich is, of course, a massive reason to do self-mining.  Selling first units to customers when they've no had any kind of soak-testing is asking for trouble - wonder what odds anyone would give on a high failure rate in the early batches of ASICs shipped by other companies.

Was operator error.

What happened was there was very little on sell side so some bright spark cleaned them out them listed at just over 10 * price.  Along comes somes someone unobservant, thinks the spread is small and buys at just over 10 * the price on MPEx.  Bid would have been at around  0.0037 and Ask at 0.039.  Easy to miss that those 2 prices aren't exactly close to one another.