Would be pointless until 20Mission is proven self-sufficient. We'd basically get a portion of a lease, which isn't much of an asset. Maybe some convoluted contract could be made up by a judge where everyone owns Ringcoin IP rights. If JRO is indeed keeping money to himself, this would be totally different - but I'm unaware of hard evidence in favor of this. If there's a source for the 5kBTC in JRO's Gox account, everything changes -- but, a court obviously isn't going to award gov't funds on behalf of JRO's debt. Jared, as far as I can tell, has no responsibility in this at all. He's still busy with the Dwolla lawsuit, which may also indirectly result in a payment. So, as I see it, it's just a waiting game. Days, weeks, years - who knows. It's not like with Bitcoinica where they had funds, and then *poof* they disappeared. We're post-poof. If good stuff happens to them, good stuff possibly happens to us. If bad stuff happens to them, bad stuff happens to us. I'm hoping for good stuff. For everyone involved, there's been a lot of frustration, sweat, and tears. Some reversal of luck, I think, would be well-deserved, though unexpected.

I mean, basically - that going to kick down 20M's entry-way and putting a knife to JRO's throat would probably do less good than taking a shit at home, drinking an alcoholic beverage, and enjoying the company of family. I also think filing a lawsuit would do an equal amount of "less good" -- unless it's proven that JRO has 5kBTC sitting in Gox. 20M's address is public. I have no intention of driving from MI to SFO, but if someone wants answers, that's where to go. I think they use some smart-phone app to prevent unauthorized access into buildings, so better bring a crowbar if they refuse entry.

All that said -- 20M is in a high-demand area for their service, and their dorm-style rental units are not too uncommon in that area. The business plan seems solid, and they have delegated appropriately. A successful 20M could effectively result in a "successful" REBATE and Zip.A. I don't think JRO's a scammer, I think IceHill has just been a failure due to mistakes unable to be foreseen, and some mistakes which were a result of not being hardened vets in the field of site design and team management. With almost all Bitcoin-centric businesses, most of us are way out of our comfort zone, and learning as we go along. Though, I'm open to being proved otherwise.

None, I would think. Maybe it could be argued that since no legitimate companies raised funds, and that they were personally issued by JRO - JRO is personally responsible. I have no idea, though. JRO happens to have access to a lawyer. I do not.

20Mission is registered in California. He sent me the ID # and it was on there, but it's no longer in my logs. You might be able to find it doing a search just for 20Mission on CA's business page. Fwiw, Jared didn't have any involvement until 20Mission, AFAIK, and I have no idea if any money was actually spent on 20M, or if Jared paid for everything. However, there was definitely development going on for projects like Kronos before it received any actual funding. I'm guessing the idea was that the funds would be loaned to "Kronos" until fundraising completed. Their rent contract doesn't start collecting until early January since they were doing improvements, IIRC - so the only money that could've been spent would've been fairly minimal... sprinklers, minor furnishings, paint, maybe some lumber... I know JRO was doing a lot of physical work over there, and I believe that's why he has an equity stake.

Everything's hinging on 20Mission, it seems. So... maybe you could get a lien on his dividends, a stake in 20Mission, or imprison him... dunno what beneficial result suing could have unless he really does have 5kBTC in Gox, though that'd be contrary to when he told me he moved what he had to USD something like 6-10 weeks ago.

Placed up an ask. 2000 units @ .101

Will remain up until September 3rd, or until sold out. Cheers,
Ben

The libertarian in me is shouting you down. The tiny compassionate part agrees with you. The problem arises when deciding what guidelines to use in "identifying" a ponzi. All you can really do is state suspicion, unless there's some type of confession. As already shown in this thread, there are plenty of ponzis fitting the OP's loose definition, and ponzis, also, that run contrary to the loose definition - and a good bit of disagreement over what indicates a ponzi. I mean - what kind of rules should be in place? You must disclose all finances? You must release all government and other third-party identification when the legal definition of Bitcoin is up in the air? You must not return over 50% on investment per year?

There is obviously a difference, though there's a similarity in that equity's being removed (maybe not in your case) to pay dividends at a loss, which is where the Ponzi claim was coming from, I assumed. I wasn't trying to defend the lack of communication, and lack of transparency.

I'm going to disagree with SgtSpike, and post my own wild, baseless, counter-figures:
Worth $750k
Cost $60k (~500-700 dev hours)
Requires 8 man-hours per day to maintain (not improve!), with most of that involving customer emails.

How much do you need? I always hunt in suicide threads for good lending opportunities. Estates are pretty easy to successfully sue unless they have a lawyer, and sometimes you can get lots of cool junk out of it.

I don't think I'd go so far as to call it a fraud to pay out "false dividends." Sloppy, though, to perhaps be generous. I know Goat, for example, paid dividends to shareholders of TyGrr when he said he was operating at a loss, and I've paid gratuity dividends to holders of both BDK and BDK.BND, even though I was not contractually obligated to, and it cut into the company's equity, which at least affects holders of BDK. I did make sure to state the dividends were not from BDK profit, however.

ETA: If anyone wants any other questions answered, I'll tell anything I know, with one exception, being why JRO has been despondent and self-isolated for a few weeks, and has not made payments, as that involves something personal to him which I wouldn't feel right about disclosing without permission. I'll probably disclose that story eventually if I'm convinced not to expect repayment, though.

Looks like 750-850BTC was paid out in dividends. He allegedly raised 10kBTC (I think it's more likely he paid someone like INAU buy the bulk of shares at a discount and resell them, which isn't too uncommon), and of course he didn't issue more shares of Zip.A, so I'm not sure that's much of a Ponzi. However, he did launch REBATE soon after. I'm not sure how much that one raised -- I never liked the idea much... I'm assuming it raised significantly less than ZIP.A. Again, however, that one I know was sold to a large purchaser/reseller who does roughly the same job as an underwriter - takes the risk and hassle of the IPO, but has a great profit margin unless things go South.

Kronos was scheduled to raise funds after REBATE, but I started some shit with the GLBSE team over launching a competing service, and the Kronos IPO was promptly cancelled by GLBSE, with ZIP.A/REBATE/BDK/BDK.BND frozen for a while. We never re-tried a Kronos IPO, because the service was compromised at almost the same time, which led to Alberto being removed. That was problematic, since he was one of the lead devs. Another was found (the service had to be built from the ground-up because the code was no longer trusted), but he ended up declining. There was, for a time, talk also about raising funds for 20Mission. This obviously won't go forward until the situation changes dramatically, but that may be fine, since they don't need to pay rent until January, I believe, and the idea makes good business sense, even excluding commercial leasing ideas.

Obviously, funds were being muddied. The solution to that was to launch "IceHill," which would've made the sloppy accounting more acceptable, where the parent company would move funds around as needed, instead of having isolated projects which'd need to raise funds by themselves. Based in Iceland, IceHill would be the parent company of the service-providers. The IP rights were to be held by RingCoin, based in SFO, and still in existence, AFAIK. Unfortunately, IceHill ended up existing de facto as JRO, with him moving funds around to different projects as he pleased, without respecting accounting barriers (AFAIK). I'm not much one to talk, though... I fairly frequently mix business funds with personal funds.

Dividends paid.

Issued: 13843 bonds (1384.3BTC FV)
Interest Payment: (1384.3*.01)=13.843BTC

Next payment date: August 27

ZipConf is currently unable to prevent sophisticated double-spends, like a Finney attack. AFAIK, it can prevent very simple double-spends, but basically it'd act mostly as an insurance agent, which just makes it a giant target for sophisticated attacks. When it was brought up that the entire system should be re-coded, it was thought to be too expensive, and the project was put on the back-burner. So, it just sits in "beta."

I doubt the dividends were "accurate."

You have a source on 5k in JRO's Gox account?

BDK.BND will not be affected by a Pirate default. BDK/IOU is currently pausing all operations, from new loans/CDs, to currency exchanges, to coin swaps. Dividends will be paid normally, no matter what happens with Pirate or the exchange rate.

I currently own far more than enough USD to buy back BDK.BND if my BTC operations were to become a total clusterfuck. I don't say that to be a jackass, just to state that there is no reason for current investors to worry. I do not plan on issuing any more BDK.BND units until I have a better idea of what will happen from Pirate closing shop. I do not plan on issuing a buyback, but Pirate closing up may accelerate my plans to eventually buyback and issue a lower-yield bond. I will have a better idea of what I want to do within a month.

Just to be absolutely clear -- there is nothing that can happen in the Bitcoiniverse which would cause me to default on BDK.BND. There is no need for investors to worry.


(ETA: Meant to post this on Friday. Just found it was still sitting up on laptop. Bond dividends coming within 6 hours. Need to resync blockchain.)

This service is currently suspended due to extreme volatility and large shifts in the market outside the exchange rate. I currently do not know when services will resume. Apologies for any inconveniences, and thanks for business so far. Cheers,
Ben

Is Trendon Shavers really more trustworthy than pirate@40?

Should have Internet connection some time Monday. Apologies for how slow I've been to respond. Cheers,
Ben

You can't collect from someone with no money, and a shitstorm will damage reputation necessary to collect funds for payback.

I suggest everyone just keep calm, and give this a couple months' more time. Investors could be screwed, yes, but collecting at this point won't salvage much. We can be angry, but try to keep it out of mind for a while. These various securities have effectively become loans, and I can speak from experience to say it's a very bad idea to ruin someone in trying to collect money when they need to collect money themselves. Loans need to be symbiotic, and that means you can't immediately turn on the rape switch when someone's in default. To do otherwise would result in tragedy for everyone with their neck out. Partial loan calls can be symbiotic if it forces a business/individual to cut away all the fat, but in this case, we'd be taking all his meat.... okay - bad analogy.


JRO might speak in depth, eventually... hopefully - but at this point, it seems we're better off expecting repayment within a year, and not demanding answers in the meantime. I believe I am most exposed, fwiw. I don't mean to be a bully, and I have no authority to do so, but I would very much unappreciate actions which harm JRO, as it harms everyone with money in him. Especially if you have nothing at stake, please shut up.  

ETA: Not directed at anyone in particular.

Alberto saw hack first, IIRC. He took the action of locking the user's account and telling him he knows where he's located, as you may recall from an earlier Kronos thread. The team was not aware of the issue until the user posted that thread, AFAIK. JRO heard after I did, around the time Nef cancelled the Kronos IPO and the rest of that shitstorm was going -- I remember because I told JRO both those news items on the same morning phone call. The hack's not really the issue here, though, and I'm not taking a side against Alberto necessarily. Keep in mind, JRO didn't lose money from the hack, however. What really set the projects back, first off, was cash-mixing between ventures, and that allowed something much worse to happen, but that's pretty personal, and up to JRO as to whether or not he wants to release that.

I don't see much point in me getting involved, and suggest non-cynics refrain from getting too riled up as it may be more detrimental than helpful for those with money in, but of course feel free to do as you please.

I plan on being mostly unavailable until mid-Wednesday. Heading out to do the final walk-through (and move all the lumber to repair/replace the deck) in a few minutes, and should own the house within 2-3h. Don't plan on fucking around, so should have everything moved from various houses and the deck repaired by mid-Wednesday. Everything else should be done soon, but isn't particularly pressing... need to rent a propane tank, though. Forgot about getting that done. There is no Internet out there, yet, so I'll get that scheduled tomorrow, and see if I can get a decent cell data connection to tether the laptop, to. For investors, this also means the piddle 1GH/s of hashing power will be offline whenever I move it - probably last thing Wednesday, so hopefully will have cable service by then (though, the dividend blackout's still in effect until August 27th, so it won't have any significant impact aside from equity/assets being lowered by... Idunno, .7BTC over what they could've been in a truly ideal situation, which might reduce next month's dividends by .0000000000000001/share or something). I'll probably come back to the house I'm currently in, which does have an Internet connection, a couple times per day, but I don't know if there'll be people waiting on me, or if I'll be able to fuck around inside the house and get BTC business taken care of.

If you absolutely need to get in touch with me now, feel free to call/text 814-314-9308. Leave a message, I'll read it to make sure you're not a time-wasting sales rep, and then I'll get back with you within a few minutes (assuming I get any reception)... or just keep calling over and over until I'm pissed off enough to answer the phone just to make you stop.  Please don't quote my phone number. Cheers,
Ben