Huh? Are you feeling OK?

I don't know where or when it was that you decided I was somehow deserving of such a heap of empty-headed abuse, especially as I don't recall the two of us ever directly discussing anything of substance with one another that ought to have left either of us with any particularly strong impression one way or the other about the other person.

From out here in the real world, it sounds like you've decided to be an MP lemming or something, with this sort of content-free drivel. As for MPOE-PR, OMG that is too funny.

I guess you haven't actually bothered to read what a fool she made of herself the last time she decided to start an argument with me -- but writing as if you think you know when you obviously do not have the faintest idea sure doesn't reflect well on you.

Anyway, sorry OP -- I have no idea why, but TAT has had some kind of bizarre misfire here and decided to drag your discussion into the gutter with zanily off-target ad hominem attacks directed at me rather than offering something of actual substance to the conversation.

Back to the actual topic, anyone, or has TAT's outburst thoroughly poisoned the water?

Properly speaking, market capitalisation is normally applied to the equity value of a publicly traded company. Last year there was an interesting thread about alternative measures, such as monetary base, that might be closer to what the OP was after.

Hmmm, condescend much?


Many folks with investment experience out in the fiat world would likely reply that exchanges have no business whatsoever offering either "guidance" or "due diligence" or anything remotely related -- and that they should, instead, make it their business to provide the smoothly functioning underlying mechanics that everyone else needs to be able to count on. Admittedly, exchanges which make that their business will also likely enforce sane listing criteria as part of ensuring the underlying mechanics really can work smoothly. But those criteria have little or nothing to do with trustworthiness or -- more importantly -- with whether something is a good investment or a poor investment. Rather, those criteria centre on accountability.


Nor, however, is trust a magic bullet to protect people: on the contrary, "trust" as reflected by crude mechanisms like the WoT has almost nothing to do with separating good investments from bad. It is only the presence of bona fide and well validated negative trust which reveals anything whatsoever of relevance to the job of separating good investments from bad; the presence or absence of positive trust tells us virtually nothing about the competence of an individual as a manager, entrepreneur or investor, or about the merits of any particular investment associated with them.

(The WoT is better understood as an attempt to solve the problems created by conflating privacy and anonymity than as any direct indicator of investment quality.)

From the perspective of "smart money" investment capital flowing into Bitcoin, the WoT is singularly irrelevant. When VCs and angel investors fund projects, that capital comes into the Bitcoin economy because of the efforts of real, identifiable people, with known identities and real world accountability, people whose levels of competence can be directly assessed by the investors. That capital does not flow into a project because a pseudonymous and ultimately unaccountable would-be entrepreneur has 999 positive ratings on the WoT.


IMHO, not in the least (for the last of those three questions). But even if it could, "trust" as reflected by something like the WoT will never cut it from the perspective of an investor.

Suggesting otherwise might seem neat and tidy at first glance, but it's actually confusing the relatively easier job of ensuring mechanical compliance with a set of requirements -- foremost among them, not running off with someone's coins -- with the ultimately much harder job of separating the wheat from the chaff in a field of investment candidates.

With the relatively rare spectacular exception, the fiat world has the mechanical compliance part down pat. Very few people worry, for example, that the underwriters for this or that latest IPO are going to run off to Bermuda with everybody's money. And yet, people do in fact lose their shirts and their Bermuda shorts every single day as a result of making bad investments. If there were the sort of connection between the "trust" part and the "good investment" part that some might like you to believe in, we'd all be fiat zillionaires by now.

Glad to hear it -- you're very welcome! 

Bitcoincharts.com provides a "Load raw data" link along with its charts; it might not be in exactly the format you're envisioning, but it could be transformed with a little grepping.

RTFM. 

You're doing a splendid job of wasting time again.


Perhaps you have difficulty reading basic data and/or do not know the meaning of the phrase "return of capital", since anybody who grasps what it means would also recognise the irrelevance of the bot to that phase of the winding down of a fund.

Acquiring a basic level of competence before coming to this thread to pollute it would have helped you to understand that an initial value of 0.1 BTC and a final return of capital of 0.08838512 BTC represents a decrease of approximately 11.6%.

Sigh.  

The reality here is all a matter of public record for anybody who bothers to read, but by the looks of this drivel it appears that Mircea Popescu either can't be bothered to read or has so convinced himself of his own godliness that he thinks he can just make stuff up and the band of sycophantic pseudonyms will eat it up with stars in their eyes.

If you had bothered to read the original post in this thread, there's a nice summary there. The original BTC Growth fund raised 2000 BTC in around 30 hours when it launched on BTC-TC. You and MP make complete fools of yourselves by claiming otherwise.

And as for the subsequent performance of that fund, if you had bothered to check, you would have found that in fact, it dropped by a total of 11.6% from inception to final return of capital -- thereby outperforming every other comparable fund available, while the broader market tanked. Not only did it outperform all other comparable funds available at the time, but over the same period it also outperformed nearly all individual Bitcoin-denominated equities, and it outperformed them by a wide margin.

(In case you hand't noticed, the forex fund, which this thread is about -- you know, the actual fund which is supposed to be the topic of conversation for this thread, rather than the thread being merely a destination for empty-headed trolls to make themselves look silly -- is a completely different fund.)

You can add this to the previously mentioned list of occasions on which you have insisted on making a spectacle of yourself by starting an argument with me without even attempting to prepare yourself with an adequate grasp of the facts, and I therefore have wasted my time handing you your a** on a platter.

You and the other misguided troll have wasted quite enough of my time during the last 24 hours, so I'm sure you'll understand that I have no interest in wasting any more guiding you in the direction of material you could easily have found for yourself with just a click or two.

Read the website. If you don't understand something, get in touch directly. If you are not an accredited investor, it won't be worth your time.

Today I have observed much more than enough of both your current and historical treatment of other human beings on this forum. So, don't expect me to engage any further with you here on the forum merely because you've decided temporarily to try and have a "real discussion". Welcome to my "Ignore" list.

Yawn.

So the answer is no, then -- you don't have anything substantive to contribute to the topic of the thread?

Have you come over here to pollute this thread just because you're upset on behalf of your CryptoREI buddies? I can think of no other reason why a complete stranger, with no history of involvement in any of my funds and who has demonstrated no knowledge of me whatsoever -- and who has a long and scamworthy history to brag about (for those who don't know: here, or here or here) -- would bother coming here to hurl personal insults at me rather than trying to do something productive with their life.

If so, please do invite yourself over to their thread and share your deep and meaningfuls there instead.

Try re-reading your original post.

Or maybe you'd just like to say that it wasn't really you who dropped in a mention of REITs because you were only quoting somebody else mentioning REITs -- and that doesn't count? 

You had the opportunity for some constructive engagement here, you had the opportunity to identify some gaping chasms of confusion in your offering, you had the the opportunity to achieve at least a marginal improvement in how your plans are being articulated. As I said, I'm done here; good luck to you.

(Oh, and you do get that REIT = Real Estate Investment Trust, right?)

Hey, way to raise the calibre of conversation -- bravo, you've really distinguished yourself. 

As I've said before, I prefer to focus on discussions of substance, and when someone is able to offer something of substance, I respect that -- whether I happen to agree with them or not. When someone insists on flapping themselves about in my face with some kind of personal attack or empty-headed condescension, I may respond to them briefly, but generally speaking I do not chase them around or belabour the point any longer than necessary to shake their sliminess off me.

So, did you have something worthwhile or substantive to contribute to the actual topic of this thread, or are you in the same category as MPOE-PR?

In mathematics, we use the phrase "proof by reference to converging irrelevancies"...


I can assure you, I won't be wasting any more of my time on my apparently pointless attempt at offering feedback on a few of the outright howlers from your "offering". Kthxbye.


Excellent question.


I didn't bring up REITs -- the OP brought up REITs, as if they were in any way relevant.


Congratulations! If that's the level of detail and coherence you expect from someone asking for your money, then you are exactly the sort of "investor" the OP needs.

It might be easier to assume that someone whose standards are a little different from your own simply doesn't know how to read, but that doesn't make it so.

Obviously you're not forming a genuine REIT; that's why it's hand waving to talk about REITs. The question has nothing to do with "most real estate terms"; it has to do with whether you are prepared to offer something other than hand waving.


You're failing the sniff test pretty badly here. You've not yet explained even 1% of how you might possibly think about maybe one day potentially if the moon is in the right phase organise the capital structure, let alone 100% of how you will actually do it. Generally speaking, not knowing how you're going to structure a business until after you've entered into business commitments is not a good sign.


I cannot tell you what would be "acceptable", but I can tell you that failing to provide a cogent offering document, failing to elucidate the basics of capital structure, and failing to offer even a vague outline of how a business will operate is not a recipe for inspiring confidence in the people you're asking to support your project.

Few people have much positive to say about MPOE-PR, but you're missing point, which is that if you have any actual business plan, put it here and make it part of the public record, don't just link to some random document on Dropbox.

While you're at it, you might consider addressing a whole boatload of questions around the topic of why you're looking to raise equity financing as opposed to debt financing, despite indicating that the latter via a "hard money" lender is next on your agenda. (Or maybe you're looking to offer this as securitised debt? It's hard to tell based on what you've actually written so far.) As far as I can tell, apart from some irrelevant hand waving in the direction of REITs, you have yet to spell out anything at all about capital structure.

Bored now (again).

Time to run off back to your scientology thread and try to find your emperor something to wear -- or just keep hoping that nobody else really understands why he got himself into such a pickle trying to be an options market maker that he actually had to back out of the business completely.

Gosh, you are just so unbearably clever that I don't know how I ever got by without you.

Have you noticed, MPOE-PR, that each and every time you have attempted to start a substantive argument with me of any kind, I have handed you your a** on a platter? Check your own posting history and note how many times you have followed me around and insisted on starting something, only to wind up looking like...well, like someone who isn't garnering much positive PR.

You start arguments with me, I finish them. You start mud-slinging matches with me, I get bored, and so does everybody else.

The thing is, I -- like most people who know up from down in Bitcoin land -- don't actually spend any time at all thinking about you or talking about you or your puppet master. It's only when you insist on getting in people's faces that anyone actually bothers with you -- and hey, I get it, that's why MP pays you every month to try and drum up attention for his shrivelling empire. When you do start banging around and making a spectacle of yourself, I'm sorry to break it to you, but huge swathes of the folks who grok the finance end of things just laugh quietly and walk away.

The difference is, these folks have the class not to belabor the point, they have the class not to run around after you saying "hey, look at this joke I just made up about you, and I think it's really funny, and aren't I brilliant?", and they certainly have the class and the self respect not to bother writing up such drivel for public consumption and handing out the URLs to it. It's just an embarrassment to us all -- but most of all to you. It's just that you don't seem to realise it yet.

So, as I've told you pretty much every other time you've jumped up and down in front of me, begging for attention, if you have something worthwhile to contribute -- like, say, an actual cogent argument or a statement of fact -- then I'm all ears, I respect that. But if you're just here to piss all over somebody else's discussion thread, why don't you go somewhere else where you're actually welcome, or maybe start a fan club thread for yourself and perform in front of whatever audience chooses to attend?

Isn't "Link Me" the Australian "get a job" site?  

I suspect MP's PR lackey could do with one of those -- especially now that MP has finally realised the gross inadequacy in his former approach to options market making, as discussed elsewhere. (Or maybe we're all to believe that market makers are supposed to get caught out accidentally transacting a boat load of options they're inadequately prepared for, and then supposed to scramble around in a panic for a couple of days after the fact as they try to hedge the position they accidentally got themselves into...yeah, that must be it...maybe that's how it's supposed to work... Or you know, maybe it's just those doggone data feeds...yeah, blame it on the data feeds, 'cause it certainly couldn't have been incompetence at the helm, could it?)

But why import the boringness of MP into this thread?  

(Edit: Oh, and to answer the question, in case it wasn't as obvious as it should have been: people actually doing real finance don't tend to hang out with a band of sycophants banging out mindless drivel on IRC and thus don't run around offering pointers to others to retrieve their archived gems of such mindless drivel.)

Final NAV and Overview

For the month to 7 March 2014, the BTC Growth Forex Volatility Fund's final net asset value dipped to .0966 BTC per unit, turning our previous cumulative rise of 1.3% into a cumulative decrease of 3.4%.

We were negatively affected first by BTC.sx's failure to execute orders, as reported previously, and then even more so by ICBIT's flip-flop on excluding Mt Gox from March futures settlement.

On 18 February, ICBIT's administrators repeatedly refused to acknowledge the possibility that Mt Gox should no longer be considered a functioning exchange for the purpose of calculating settlement of the March futures contract, claiming that doing so would wrongly amount to moving the goalposts on the terms of the contract. (Of course, ICBIT's administrators have repeatedly moved many different goalposts, with little or no warning to traders using their platform.) For anyone with a view that Gox's problems would continue or worsen in the short term, this refusal to acknowledge the possibility of excluding Mt Gox from settlement calculation appeared to represent a clear opportunity, since the burgeoning volume and plummeting price at Gox all but ensured that settlement would be calculated on the Gox price and that the futures would therefore fall significantly.

Just two days later, however, ICBIT administrators announced that they would, after all, exclude Mt Gox from March settlement calculation. While this move brought clarity to a market undoubtedly puzzled by ICBIT's prior refusal to acknowledge the obvious, it was also strongly negative for those of us who had taken their previous refusal to acknowledge the obvious as a reliable indicator of the exchange's intentions with regard to the March contract.

As for BTC.sx, which was built atop Mt Gox, the service shut its doors to trading during the month; the fund ceased trading on the platform after the order execution failure, however, and was thus unaffected by the closure.

Fund Rollovers and Return of Capital

Registrations for a potential second round of the fund, as well as for the two companion funds -- one long-only, and one short-only -- closed on 6 March 2014.

However, in line with my comments at the end of the "Selling the Froth" article, I have elected not to proceed with these funds for the time being. Therefore, all capital will be returned to participants shortly. For those with new registrations of interest, please note that this means no bitcoins should be sent at this time.

(Incidentally, for anyone interested in the particular strategy outlined in that article, according to my calculations the approach continues to offer guaranteed profit up until a roughly 350% gain in the value of BTC vs. USD, assuming a 10% cost of fiat capital and excluding any additional gains from lending BTC -- at least, if you trust ICBIT. Even at a 40% cost of capital, it remains profitable up until a 200% gain in BTC vs. USD.)

I would like to thank all participants for the opportunity to offer this fund and also for their patience with the impact of the unforeseeable vagaries of the exchanges which the fund relied upon.