Exchange-rate : .00587

Adjusted NAV/U : 16.1744

Bid at : 15.91

With immediate effect the fund is going to begin trading on Bitfunder in addition to the existing sites we trade on.  An additional 600 bonds (6 BTC face value) will be placed on the market to raise BTC-denominated capital for this.  Trade on the site is picking up nicely - and although some assets listing there are dead/dieing ones there's also some that are definitely alive and kicking.  From what I've seen so far it has a similar approach to LTC-Global/BTC.CO (simple interface and responsive developer).  Pretty certain that within a few weeks (or even days) it'll have passed Crypto to be in second place for volume (not counting MPex as that's a totally different beast and several orders of magnitude larger in terms of volume).

I've no plans to increase bond interest rate at present - there's no desperate rush to sell this batch (we can temporarily take slightly higher exposure to exchange-rate and use our own funds if necessary) and I'll be taking a decent chunk of them myself (after giving a few hours so others get a chance first).

There's still limited trading opportunities on BTC.CO, but it's definitely picking up.  Assets relisted (from GLBSE) on any site tend to have an initial 'exuberance' period after relisting (where everyone's happy operator has relisted and not run with their cash) suring which they trade above (what I believe to be their) real value.  I have to be careful not to get sucked in then and end up holding assets when price drops to a more realistic level.  Obviously when we actually HAVE some of those assets (as was case with BitBond) it offers a great opportunity to first few to get out at a good price (lowest Ask is already below the cheapest price we sold for and lowest bid way below that).

Although we've had a few weeks of low (by our historical standards) profits, I'm very optimistic about the fund's future.  Even if we 'only' made 2% per week (below our worst week other than when GLBSE closed) we'd still be outperforming just about every non-ponzi business that has lasted for any period of time - and the bonds let us leverage 'cheap' capital to increase the profit for holders of actual units in the fund.  But nonetheless there WILL undoubtedly be some terrible weeks at some stage - eventually we'll get stuck with holdings in a scam/disaster that collapses- so investors should definitely NOT expect profits every week forever.

Once new bonds have sold and I've moved funds around will update OP with a list of where we currently trade and approximate percent of total controlled capital held on each.  That will allow (current or potential) investors in either units or bonds to get a rough idea of how platform-based risk is spread.

Thanks - answered my questions, however a new one now arises.

FAQ says : "Selling fees range between between 1% and 0.5%(or lower with discounts) based on your account tier.
We be offering some promo permenant discounts and can lower your accounts fee rate per tier."

But the table listing permanent rates (no discounts) has all rates between 0.1% and 0.05%.  Either there's a decimal place error somewhere or the table is listing some sort of initial promotional rate rather than the actual permanent rates.

Thanks for the answers - the ones I haven't quoted above addressed my questions fully.

On 2. I think you missed my point.  The FAQ tells me that there ARE different fee rates (from .5% to 1%) but not what the volume requirements for those points are.  e.g. you start off at 1%, after paying X BTC fees it drops to .9% after another Y BTC to .8% etc.


On 3. You part-answered half the question (it's instant to withdraw from site to my WeExchange wallet) but not the main issues:  Do they charge me a fee for using their service and are withdrawls from them instant (I tried going to their website but there's basically no info there unless I register which involves giving a name, address etc).

On 4.  The question isn't whether everything's backed - obviously any order on the book MUST be able to be filled: if someone places an Ask at .00001 then it should fill every Bid on there without exception (assuming prices are limited to 5 dec places precision).  But allowing the same funds to cover multiple orders on DIFFERENT assets doesn't break that - it just means that if someone clears one order book then some orders on other books may go.  That can happen anyway - key is that every book is still 'honest' in that every order in it is backed all the time it's up.  The system I prefer helps pretty much everyone: daytraders (like me) can leverage their funds better, covering multiple (relatively) illiquid markets with the same cash.  Investors who want whichever of a few 'good' deals fills first can do that.  That adds more liquidity meaning lower spreads for those investing - and more confidence in liquidity for investors which leads to more sales for asset issuers.  And the increased volume gives more revenue for the site.  To be completely clear i absolutely do NOT support anyone being able to place bids exceeding available cash on a single asset - but using the same cash to bid on multiple assets (with auto-cancellation when a purchase would otherwise make a bid uncovered) is totally fine: it's no different to anyone else to if the bidder actually had more cash but was cancelling their orders on other assets when a sale on one occurred.

Thing is, it's an entirely pointless discussion for purely logical reasons.  Let's assume ASICMINER gets its ASICs out first and ends up controlling 50%+ of hasihng power.  Then either:

Friedcat is going to abuse that to double-spend - in which case us talking about whether to use one pool or many is going to achieve precisely zero.

Friedcat is NOT going to abuse that to double-spend - in which case using ANY pool or combination of pools only adds risk and inefficiency.

Nowhere is there ANY scenario in which using one pool or many pools reduces  risk.  It's not like double-spending can be done without anyone noticing - which would need to be the case for using pools at all to make ANY sense whatsoever (as if that were true then there'd be a purpose to it - ensuring that it wasn't being done in secret).

Put a different way, if he's willing to use pools then there's no need for him to do so.  If he's unwilling to use pools then us asking would change nothing.  Either way it's wasted effort : it costs him (and us) money for no benefit and no reduction in risk (in fact a possible increase in risk).

Not sure why people are getting in a fuss about possible 51% attack by a pool operator.

If ASICMINER is first to have operational ASICs then there's no need to use a pool at all (other than maybe 1 device for testing purposes).  The function of pools is to give payouts near the average - nothing more.  If ASICMINER is first then it'll get pretty steady mining income anyway as it would be a decent chunk of network power - so zero reason to use a pool.

If, on other hand, ASICMINER is NOT first with ASICs then its ASICs wouldn't be anywhere near enough to do a 51% attack anyway - only thing to avoid would be mining on same pool as another ASIC producer who was privately mining not selling (and don't think there's any of those anyway).

So where's the issue?

On relisting, my preference would be (in order):

1.  BTC.CO (best functionality)
2.  Bitfunder (looks promising to me)
.
.
.
10th Crypto - shockingly bad interface : doesn't even show which orders are yours in market list and most operations seem to take way more clicks than they should.  Already well overtaken in trading volume by BTC.CO and sure Bitfunder will pass it in a matter of weeks.

If possible it would be great if only those people who wanted their shares moved to the platform had them moved - and those who didn't want the risk had theirs manually managed (as would be the case if the share wasn't relisted at all).  I'm NOT in favour of a website where you can only trade ASICMINER - it'd be better than nothing but means extra transfer fees/delays every time I want to buy/sell ASICMINER for something else.

Just had anohter look at your site - good to see some more assets on there.  Am considering creating an account there - before I do, I have a few quick questions (I've read the FAQ - apologies if any were answered there).

1.  Is it possible to change the BTC address associated with an account or are you tied to the one you enter on account creation?  I haven't actually fired up a BTC client for ages (use just exchange accounts) but would obviously need to so so if the account I enter on creation is not changable thereafter.

2.  I see there's a floating scale for trading fees.  Where can I find a list of the rates and volumes needed to qualify for them?

3.  I see references to Weexchange.  As best I can make out, I'd need to create an account there then deposits/withdrawals to/from my account on your exchange would be done through them.  Two questions arise from this (if my understanding is correct - if not, then I'm totally at a loss as to what they do):
a) Is there any fee charged for using them as an intermediary (fee to me that is - don't care whether or not you pay a fee on top)?
b) Do you know if deposits/withdrawals to/from them are instant or have to go through some approval process?  i.e. if I withdraw from your site can I be confident to get the BTC to wherever I want 6 blocks later (I'm assuming the withdrawal from site to my wallet on Weexchange would be immediate)?

4.  Can't tell from looking at orders - but is it possible to apply the same funds to orders on different securities (as on BTC.CO) or does every order have to be backed by seperate BTC (as on GLBSE and CRYPTO)?

5.  Is there a reason for listing volume per asset in number of shares not in BTC?  BTC gives a much clearer picture of activity level (10 shares at 0.1 BTC is, to me, same economic activity as 1 share at 1 BTC - not 10 times as much)?

Good to see a nice clean/clear interface like BTC.CO rather than the abortion that Crypto is (can't find ANY way there to see my orders on an asset at the same time as the market orders for it).

Cool - so there's no fixed mark up: you'll charge whatever you think the market will bear.  That's fine - and a perfectly sensible and transparent way to do it.

So what's your own cut on it?  i.e. if I buy 1 BTC worth of bonds and MPOE-O breaks exactly even, how much do I get back?

Your post mentions trader margin (which I assume to mean your markup) but doesn't say what that is (if fixed) or how it's calculated (if variable).

Other than that seems a sound idea.  Anyone investing needs to read up on how that capital is used (and profits calulcated) before investing - so a link to that may have been a good idea (there's nothing dodgy about it - it's just not what a lot of investors will be used to, as it actually makes sense).

On what basis do you believ votes allocated purely to retain 30% for growth should vote?

By doing this you're basically saying that you get to vote with 50% of all shares every time (20% go to you, 30% to growth) so you only have to buy 1 share and you can pass any motion at any time.  So any time you choose you can withhold dividends, vote to close and pay back nothing etc.  It basically makes investment in the company worthless - as you get half the votes without having to part with a cent, so can change anything and do anything you want.

If the company were to close down, would growth shares get a portion of the proceeds from liquidation?  If yes - then where would those funds go?  If no, then pretty obviously they don't hold equity and can't vote (they're just a clumsy method to hold back 30% for growth).

Seems strange you'd devalue your company like this just to hang onto a few BTC - but issuers doing everything they can not to return funds to investors isn't exactly new.  FWIW if I'd held shares I'd probably have voted YES - retain the cash for growth - but fixing a vote to do it isn't the way to get a change.  Passing a motion is MEANT to be hard - as contracts should be rarely changed - it's not meant to be something operator just does on a whim without overwhelming support from investors.

He tends to sell shares slightly above the actual BTC price they'd need to be to raise exactly $10 (makes sense - as it protects against small exchange-rate changes while offline).  Extra conversion is what he says he has left over after selling the BTC and taking out the $10 per share.

Ask him for details of the guy/company he reported.  I asked him about this ages ago (wanted to avoid the scenario where he kept the money but was able to avoid a scammer tag by refusing to provide information), and quoted his reply (so it was there if he went on a deleting spree):

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91646.msg1189273#msg1189273

Key is he said "I will provide all details I have in the event of default, and I would leave it up to individual investors whether they wish to pursue the issue".

Doubt he'll provide anything of use - but at least then you can write those shares off totally, having tried.

One more minor clarification needed.

Contract says:

"For every four IPO shares of bASIC-Mining sold one share will be paid
to bASIC-MINING management as a founder?s stake."

The issue not addressed is what happens if the company itself buys back shares.  Two options I see:

1.  Company not allowed to buy back shares.
2.  If share bought back then 1 founder share returned for each 4 bought back.

I'm sure you can see why one of these two is needed.

WEEKLY REPORT




This week saw the release of our BTC-denominated bonds.  1000 were initially placed on the market with a face value of 0.01 BTC each to raise BTC-denominated capital of 10 BTC.  They sold out pretty quickly - and there was still unmet demand left at the end (an order I couldn't fill of ~200 + I wouldn't have minded a few hundred more myself).  That bodes well for us being able to sell more when the need arises without having to raise the rate we pay (or at least not by much).

First dividend on the bonds has been paid - I rounded it up to nearest 0.5 LTC so investors got a fairly legible number as their dividend - will do that regularly so its easy for them to add up what they've earned on their bonds.  At week's end we have exactly 0 BTC-denominated assets held (other than actual BTC).  During the week we did briefly hold some assets - but sold them off making a 0.3 BTC profit.  Whilst that sounds (and is) tiny, remember that the total cost of servicing the bonds is only around 0.06 BTC per week (it'll be slightly higher due to my rounding up on dividend + exchange/movement costs of funds).  So the capital raised by bonds has already earned its first month's dividends (the trade we did definitely would NOT have occurred before we sold the bonds).

Activity on LTC-GLOBAL has continued to be extremely sluggish - it may well be a seasonal thing (before Christmas people don't tend to do a load of investing).  We still made a modest profit for the week.  The ticker has been depreciated by a further 15 LTC this week.

There's a new line under "Net Asset Value" towards the bottom of the spreadsheet.  This line has the title "% NAV BTC Denominated" and represents the percentage of LTC-ATF NET assets that are BTC denominated.  This is AFTER deduction of liabilities in respect of the bonds - and is an accurate measure of the degree to which LTC-ATF units are susceptible to changes in the LTC/BTC exchange-rate.  The issuing of bonds has reduced this slightly from last week - even though we've significantly increased the amount of BTC deployed.

Management fee of 1 unit will be taken shortly after posting this.

Bid at : 15.83

It's not true to say that there's NO evidence to support any other scenarios.

For one thing there's the FACT that the final payment was made in two chunks - which only makes sense if large chunk of shares were held by himself and he didn't have funds to pay it all out in one hit.  You can't check now (as it's been delisted) but they were made in pretty close proximity - not like he had half funds on online and paid them out then a day or two later paid out the rest when the remainder got online.  Investing in your own asset makes sense sometimes (I own a good chunk in mine) - but in this case it wouldn't make legitimate sense (unless you believe adding fake volume to your own asset's trading is legitimate).

You also pointed out that my assets could equally easy be scams.  Well, there's no way to prove that I don't intend to grow them to a certain size then run off with the funds.  But there IS an absolutely key difference - that in my case anyone can verify (not totally - but almost entirely) that I'm doing what I say I'm doing, making the profits I say I'm making from doing it, and have the assets I say I have as a result.  So even if noone can be absolutely 100% sure I'm not going to scam (and noone CAN be sure of that except me - same for any unsecured asset) they can at least know that I have a functioning, profitable business model and hence don't need to scam to make a profit running it.  That wasn't the case with the asset this thread was for - and we still have no way of knowing whether it was a legit profitable endeavour or a failed ponzi that's been turned into a loss-leader for a second try later.

Businesses with no proof they're actually conducting a profitable business haven't exactly got a great track record here - just look at Pirate, OBSI.HRPT and all the various "Loans/investment" opportunities that turned out to just be dumping their funds into pirate rather than doing what they claimed to be doing.  So personally I'm always going to be extremely sceptical of ANY asset which either doesn't disclose its business or doesn't/won't provide some evidence that it's actually doing what it claims.  And I'd be doubly suspicious if matey from this thread showed up in a few months trying to run the same thing again.

That's a dangerous and naive perspective to take.

You may be right - but you could also be totally wrong (about it being a legitimate business etc).  Here's an alternative scenario - I'm NOT saying it's necessarily what happened - but it's equally consistent with what happened as your theory that it was a legitimate business not an intended ponzi.

Hypothetical scenario:

(To date

1.  He starts it as a Ponzi.
2.  It doesn't really take off - even though he buys a fair few shares himself (from himself) to make it look like it's growing.
3.  As it's a ponzi he can't PROVE it's real to get more customers so he decides instead to try to convince everyone he's totally trustowrthy - and turn it from a Ponzi into a long-con setup for a future ponzi.
4.  He announces it has to close for fairly vague reasons.
5.  All investments are repaid - but as he owns a load of shares himself and doesn't have enough cash to repay all at once he has to do the final payout in 2 parts (and transfer back from private account to issuer account in between).
6.  The cash repaid (and dividends paid) to actual investors is much smaller than it would appear from the records - as a lot of the shares were never actually sold to anyone other than himself.

(In future)

1.  He reappears saying he can now (for equally vague reasons) begin running the business again.
2.  He relists and this time bonds sell much faster - as he's proven (according to you) that the business is real and he's trustworthy.

IF that's the scenario then attitudes like yours are why it would be worth it (for him) taking the gamble of losing a bit now to potentially make lot more down the line.  It's exactly same principle as people who do conifdence loands that get bigger and bigger until they reach the size they aimed for and run with the cash.

Or, of course, it could all have been a legit business as you say - but assuming that to be the case isn't necessarily very smart.

The hardware already owned + the already pre-ordered ASIC.  Are they being GIVEN to the company by you?  SOLD to the company by you (If so, for how much?), loaned to the company by you? 

Imagine a scenario where you only ever sell 100 shares.  Do those 100 shares (and your own 25) then own the hardware (plus the cash from the 100 sold shares)?  If not, what relevance does the hardware have to the offering?

After how you started DMF (for those who don't know it was given a small portfolio of shares before sales even started - adding great value to the IPO), wouldn't surprise me if you were giving them - and hoping that would generate enough sales that your 20% would cover it - it sure worked well for DMF.  But would like to be sure.

Yeah, he screwed you for the last 10% of invested funds after you'd lost the first 90% all on your own.

Back on topic, last traded price of ASICMINER on GLBSE was around .108 (about 10 minutes beofre GLBSE died top bid was about .105 and lowest Ask about .11).

It had usually been trading in the .11 - .12 area but had fallen just below that last few days of GLBSE as someone was unloading a big chunk of them.  That had happened before - and price had always rebounded back up afterwards.  On most recent news I'd tend to value them a bit higher - but it's a total gamble given how completely unreliable initial delivery dates have been for all ASICs (and the potential for more significant delay on this one and others in later stages of product assembly/testing).

Removed my post - as I'd misinterpreted what you meant by 2500 sold (because of your system sold doesn't mean same as outstanding as it usually does).  Yeah - assigning them after a block is sold works to advantage of investors (means their dividends don't drop so heavily while a batch is half sold).

The initial 1000 bonds placed for sale have all been purchased.

No new ones are currently be sold by Issuer - so all Asks on market will be by investors and may not be anywhere near the current face value.  If any bolds are sold back to Issuer then those will be relisted at usual price (face value +1% basically).

There are no plans to sell more bonds right now - more will only be made available when LTC-ATF needs more BTC-denominated capital.  When that will be depends pretty much on how quickly the volume of assets and trades builds up on BTC.CO (primarily - already it has way more trade volume than Crypto), Crypto and maybe Bitfunder.

Of course they can't vote.  Otherwise you'd have 50% of votes even if you didn't invest a cent of your own in buyinh shares.

Same as if company shut down they wouldn't get a share of what was raised from selling assets - as those shares are owned by the company itself not by you.

They're basically treasury shares that are being reserved so as to mess up voting/valuing etc just to save having to multiply income by 0.3 to work out how much to reinvest.  Put like that hopefully it's pretty obvious how bad an idea they are.

Shares for management is different - those are owned by you, though debatably it's still a bad way to do it as in theory you could have closed down right after selling first load of shares, distributed raised funds amongst shares and kept 20% for doing nothing).  Plus it by no means clear what happens if you ever buy shares back - do you have to return some management shares to treasury?  Do you not get to take new ones until shares sold surpasses old highest level? etc.