It's a good question, and one I often rethink since there are quite a few ways that repurchasing can happen.

As everyone knows, the original set of contracts had to be voided in order to completely overhaul the way the repurchasing occurred (otherwise insolvency would have ensued)...but I truly wanted to keep to some semblance to what I had originally thought out. Add in the fact that most people purchased during the 2012 IPO at BTC1.0 and it made sense to try and stay above that. That's where the notion to buyback at the "minimum" of BTC1.005 per Note came into play.

But is BTC1.005 a good number to work with? I'm not entirely sure. It certainly has its benefits for those who are seeing some of their Notes bought back every 2 weeks. If I switch to a repayment of BTC0.5, I'll then be able to buy back twice the amount during that same period...but I'd wager that investors wouldn't be happy with that decision since the majority bought in at BTC1.0, even if it meant more people saw the benefits.

I've been trying to strike a balance between keeping to my word and being practical, though it's certainly easier said than done. I'm more than happy to look into another method if someone has an idea, just let me know. 

Does that help?

We see this time and time again where people somehow expect that Coinbase operates in the same manner as Mt. Gox, BitStamp, or the other true exchanges. For the latter examples, live order books are used to process your buys / sells...which is why you're able to act quickly to sell / buy during the spikes and dips we've seen over the past week. You're trading with people directly on the exchange.

Coinbase, on the other hand, is used more to sell Bitcoins than to purchase them (thanks to the massive price volatility).
Selling happens instantly at whatever the market rate is, and depositing to your bank account happens within a few days. Buying Bitcoins is a challenge since there isn't an order book...If you want to buy 5 Bitcoin at $500 each, Coinbase has to withdrawal $2500 from your bank account to make the exchange. But if during that time the price soars to $600, $700, etc, they can't just suddenly withdrawal $3000, $3500, etc. from your account...nor can they only give you a smaller amount of Bitcoins than you originally ordered. The result is for them to cancel your order.

This has been partially resolved as of July this year.
http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2013/comp-pr2013-132.pdf
http://www.sec.gov/News/PressRelease/Detail/PressRelease/1370539730583#.UowNP8SsiG4

No need to necro a thread when a quick Google search will do.

I always hate the rushed feeling of all this. Documents are released to the public, and 24 hours after that the fund goes live. That's never enough time for an investor to make a calculated decision on whether or not investing is a good idea. Add in the "Get it while we offer at a 50% discount" attitude and everything starts to blend in with the other quickly thrown together short-lived ventures.

I'm not saying Havelock doesn't know what they're doing or that this isn't any less legitimate than I think it is...just more of a "I wouldn't do it this way for various reasons" kind of thing.  

*Facepalm*
lol, I told James about this on IRC minutes after he published the docs the first time around 

You seem to have missed the last part of my sentence, even with the emphasis.

Massive growth this year isn't indicative of a trend, and I agree that we will hit $1,000 *way* before 2018. But how many people do you think would sell at $1,000? I'm not talking about us on the forums, I'm talking about the normal people that are getting interested in Bitcoin now while the value is $400, or the big investors / investment funds who bought in at $100-200. For them to see massive xxx% short-term returns on their investment (compared to normal securities markets), I'm betting they'll dump quite a bit. It's more than enough to drive the price back under $1,000...and we all know how finicky people can be when they start seeing the market drop...

There are dozens of factors at play here that you may not be giving credit to. Stability takes time.

You're spot on when you say this is a difficult question to answer, at least for me. The way I look at it, Bitcoin is similar to cash. The global M0 supply (physical currency) is valued at around $5-ish trillion...if Bitcoin can capture even 0.5% of that market, Bitcoin would be worth a bit over $1,190 per coin (spread over 21 million total coins). That's fairly substantial by any means, but by then you have to ask the question, "Will it peak at 0.5%"?

There are a lot of barriers to entry for Bitcoin, at least speaking to the need to have a computer (or computational device such as a smart phone, tablet, etc), know what encryption is, what an address is, how it operates, and how to keep your coins safe. That's a lot more to handle than the average person is will to take on (in today's technological environment).
I certainly see Bitcoin reaching $1,000+, though it may take 5-10 years to get there and stabilize.

I'd be inclined to say "no" in this case, simply because it's quite a tremulous market right now. As global adoption increases, Bitcoin goes through yet another set of growing pains, and all industries utilizing Bitcoin begin to feel the same pain (to varying degrees).
The increased regulatory concerns around Bitcoin denominated security exchanges has certainly had a negative effect on the market. Tie that in with the vast increase in Bitcoin value and you'll soon find that it may make more sense to just buying and holding coins.

Speaking to mining funds, profit margins (when measured in Bitcoin) will always be decreasing. When thinking long term, this is something should be expected as the difficulty increases. The margins we (in the cumulative sense of KCIM, HIM/HMF, COG, and others) planned for in 2012 (or earlier) were completely overturned by the flood of ASIC developers that have come to market. My guess is that this will continue to happen for quite some time as well. At this point, anyone that promises you hefty mining returns has either never mined before or has no idea how the mining market works.

I may be missing something, but how is that different from any of the other preorder models vendors touted? Aside from ASICMiner (as far as I remember), every other developer sold a 'place in line' regardless of whether their tech panned out or not.

Partial. Thankfully I didn't have much, and I received about 75% of my funds back.

Oohh no. no no no. Please tell me this isn't the right link...because otherwise this is very damning information.

It's one thing to have a security breach occur, draining BTC4,000 from the site. To continually allow the site to run normally for over 14 days with users unaware of the gravity of the situation is not just irresponsible, but borderlines criminal negligence. You were aware of the situation, yet you allowed deposits to continue.
I'm having a very difficult time fathoming the reasoning behind keeping the breach under wraps for so long (hell, I used Inputs within the past two weeks), so any explanation here would be helpful.

 

Very true, and updated my post to reflect the funds being..."stolen"...

There's not enough information for me to make an informed opinion yet...but seriously, who keeps BTC4100 in a hot wallet? It seems like criminal negligence at that point...

Just as a reference point for this comment: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=248803.msg3504172#msg3504172

BTC4100 has apparently been "stolen" from Inputs.io. Not much information yet, but it still needs attention.

True. And also interesting is that Gigavps is the CMO for HashTrade

And I received mine as well, though 3 hours ago at this point
Thanks again!


So now that there's proof of a transaction, time to speculate on what drives people to continually purchase from BFL? I'm not sure about others, but if I had to spend $1,000,000 on mining hardware, I'm willing to reason I'd be able to strike a deal with 2 or 3 other developers other than BFL...

This is the one. At least per a bit of Googling -- http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11283333.htm




If only I had found this thread sooner

EDIT: Funny how the only [tiny] image of the BitPay receipt (that I could find so far) is paired with an article written by someone from BFL </tinfoil hat>

Hi Acorcos,

I wish we could pull in that much off just one Single!

We've been mining at full speed with all received equipment since October 12th (since that's when I got the Jupiter up and running properly). The deposits are larger since I readjusted how often pool payouts are made. It was set to a limit of 1.0 BTC on Gigavps's pool, but has been readjusted to 0.5 since then (hence the change starting around 22nd/23rd). Prior to last week, we were pointed to BitMinter and a 0.1 BTC payout threshold, which happened numerous times per day.


And while we're on the subject, mining revenue will continue its bi-weekly move to the Fund wallet for Note repurchasing...and I'm sure there are a number of you who are happy to finally see some action on their Havelock account. All that's left at this point is to push forward and hope January (and CoinTerra) brings some better news.

I'll be honest here - the inability to answer straightforward "who are you" type questions, especially over the course of 5 business days and a weekend, is typically an early death knell for aspiring entrepreneurs.  

Interesting. Watched the stats drop as if all equipment was 'turned off' ..but seems back to normal now.

If you're going to try and run a Ponzi, at least put some effort into it