Let me explain what's happening to those too stupid to work it out for themselves (i.e. most of you).

BTC is rising vs USD.  If BTC rises vs USD by X% then the BTC paid for shares in this buy X% more hashes than they did when the IPO listed.  But the amount promised to investors isn't rising by X% - the gain gos straight to the issuer.  Yeah - you've been given 20% extra but that didn't even use up the hidden markup built into the IPO at the original price.

BTC rising vs USD is what makes most mining investments useless anyway.  When BTC rises, the price of hardware (in BTC) falls making the apparent profitabilty of mining rise.  That spurs more purchase of hardware - causing difficulty to rise.  Although USD-profit may slightly increase even afterwards this wipes out most of the benefit of the rate increase leaving you worse off than if you just held BTC during the rise.

Once you add in hidden levels of markup in the sales price plus a visible cut being taken via shares you end up lucky to make anything in USD terms and out of pocket in BTC terms.

What the issuer is doing is trying to bribe everyone into ignoring the IPO terms - by giving back a part of the increase in hashing power that your BTC could buy as a result of the exchange-rate change.  Which would leave them with not just the markup they'd originally planned to take - but also a bonus in keeping the extra USD generated by the exchange-rate move whilst guaranteeing that investors end up with a loss in BTC terms (i.e. worse off than if they just held their BTC).

What you need from an issuer if the exchange-rate is rising is a commitment that all BTC raised (or the same proportion as would have been the case if exchange-rate hadn't moved) will be used to purchase hashing power for investors.  But as they've never tried to be transparent in the first place there's little likelihood of it starting now.  And by the looks of it, little chance that they intend to honour the contract and return your funds if they fail to sell the 30k target stated in their contract.

Which kind of serves you all right for investing in such a pile of shite in the first place tbh.

Your CONTRACT says :

"Shareholder Protection

The IPO will prove successful with the sale of at least 30,000 shares. If fewer than 30,000 shares sell within 30 days, CryptX will refund the entire IPO to shareholders."

Do you know what a CONTRACT is?

Here's a hint : it isn't something that one party can change at will in forum posts.

EDIT : and "as early as end September" means absolutely nothing.  A useful time-scale is "no later than X".  "as early as" solely means "not before" and covers any date on or after the stated time.  It's a weasel-word phrase that gives the impression of one thing whilst actually meaning the opposite.  Careless readers think it means deployment is promised/guaranteed for end of September - when all it actually promises is that it won't be before then.  Noone wants to know the earliest date deployment of something could be (as it's meaningless) - everyone wants to know the date it's guaranteed to be deployed by.

My votes (with brief reasons) on these are :

ICEDRILL - NO.  Contract isn't up to date (it refers to a fixed 50 million shares for one thing which is no longer the case) and in any event this is a pass-through so the contract should be a simple pass-through one referring to the contract on the underlying asset.
PETA-MINE - NO.  No explanation of what happens with IPO funds - don't even know whether the need is to raise X USD or X BTC per share or what happens to extra if exchange-rate changes.  It looks like a PMB - but if so, why the shares allocated to management?
RENT1SPB - NO.  the contract looks nothing like a contract.  It's not clear what (if anything) investors actually own and are entitled to - and the accounts are opaque.
OPENRIGS - YES.  Some areas of the contract could do with improvement but the basics are there and if the website and full documents are looked at (along with comments from those dealing with him) this is a real venture and the entitlements of investors are fairly clear.  It's a slightly begrudging yes vote (as it's one of those horrible not-quite-a-share, not-quite-a-PMB things) but a yes vote nonetheless.

Sold   3991
Swapped   0
Total   3991
Price   0.01591
Total   63.49681
Less Fee   63.36981638
Man Fee   1.901094491

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)   2085.580572
9071 LTC-ATF.B1    90.71000000
Coinlenders CD 27/9   200.4216218
Coinlenders CD 12/9   101.1935666
Coinlenders Cash   3.93489073
Just-Dice Balance    245.05000000
TOTAL ASSETS    2,726.89065116
   
Outstanding MINING   170267
Outstanding SELLING   170267
Outstanding PURCHASE   9543
Effective Units   179810
   
Block reward   25
Difficulty   65,750,060
Hashes per MINING   5000000
   
Daily Dividend    0.00003824
50 days (Min Liquid)    0.00191219
100 days (Forced Close)    0.00382438
365 days (Buyback)    0.01395899
405 days (IPO)    0.01548874
400 days (Post SELLING div)    0.01529752
410 days (Pre SELLING div)    0.01567996
   
NAV Post MINING Div    2,720.01403229
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.01512716
Days Dividend Post Div   395.55
SELLING Dividend    -         
NAV Post SELLING Div    2,720.01403229
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.01512716
PURCHASE selling price    0.01588
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.01482
   
J-D House profit at report   5745

Notification of Testing

Over the coming weekend (31st August and 1st September) I will be testing a modified transfer bot that can automatically handle trades between BTC-TC and LTC-Global.  Testing may extend past that if necessary.

This testing will occur on the LTC-ATF.B1 and LTC-ATF.B2 securities.  Various accounts controlled by myself will be transferring these securities around - and extra of each security will be temporarily issued for the purpose of testing.

This testing will have no lasting impact (all extra sharcs issued will be returned prior to dividend payments) but will mean that at times the shares outstanding on LTC-ATF.B1 and LTC-ATF.B2 may significantly vary (testing isn't only of 1:1 exchanging but also of X:1 exchanging with fee deduction and return of shares not amounting to sufficient for a full trade to occur).

As well as shares outstanding varying in the securities themselves there will on occasions also be changes in shares held by the DMS accounts on both BTC-TC and LTC-Global.

All testing will be on accounts controlled by myself and manual transfers will be used to return all share counts to their correct values at the conclusion of testing (and before any dividend payments).

Notification of Testing

Over the coming weekend (31st August and 1st September) I will be testing a modified transfer bot that can automatically handle trades between BTC-TC and LTC-Global.  Testing may extend past that if necessary.

This testing will occur on the LTC-ATF.B1 and LTC-ATF.B2 securities.  Various accounts controlled by myself will be transferring these securities around - and extra of each security will be temporarily issued for the purpose of testing.

This testing will have no lasting impact (all extra sharcs issued will be returned prior to dividend payments) but will mean that at times the shares outstanding on LTC-ATF.B1 and LTC-ATF.B2 may significantly vary (testing isn't only of 1:1 exchanging but also of X:1 exchanging with fee deduction and return of shares not amounting to sufficient for a full trade to occur).

As well as shares outstanding varying in the securities themselves there will on occasions also be changes in shares held by the DMS accounts on both BTC-TC and LTC-Global.

All testing will be on accounts controlled by myself and manual transfers will be used to return all share counts to their correct values at the conclusion of testing (and before any dividend payments).

Posting this here as DMS' holdings are in public portfolios - the holdings of LTC-ATF.B1 may temporarily change during testing and holdings of LTC-ATF.B2 may appear at times.  There'll be no units of either actually trading for DMS so real holdings will remain completely unchanged.

Testing will not disrupt the existing bot - that'll continue running throughout unchanged.

Sold   1707
Swapped   0
Total   1707
Price   0.01594
Total   27.20958
Less Fee   27.15516084
Man Fee   0.814654825

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)   2030.836274
9071 LTC-ATF.B1    90.71000000
Coinlenders CD 27/9   200.3020176
Coinlenders CD 12/9   101.1298096
Coinlenders Cash   3.93267533
Just-Dice Balance    243.80000000
TOTAL ASSETS    2,670.71077675
   
Outstanding MINING   167342
Outstanding SELLING   167342
Outstanding PURCHASE   8477
Effective Units   175819
   
Block reward   25
Difficulty   65,750,060
Hashes per MINING   5000000
   
Daily Dividend    0.00003824
50 days (Min Liquid)    0.00191219
100 days (Forced Close)    0.00382438
365 days (Buyback)    0.01395899
405 days (IPO)    0.01548874
400 days (Post SELLING div)    0.01529752
410 days (Pre SELLING div)    0.01567996
   
NAV Post MINING Div    2,663.98678891
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.01515187
Days Dividend Post Div   396.19
SELLING Dividend    -         
NAV Post SELLING Div    2,663.98678891
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.01515187
PURCHASE selling price    0.01591
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.01485
   
J-D House profit at report   5444

Yeah, when I lowered the rate for B2 down to .35% per week from .6% on B1 I was half expecting to have to raise it to sell as many as I wanted.  Looks very much like I could have offered less without any problems - as there's very little sign of many people being willing to offer ANY almost-guaranteed returns.

Which leaves a serious lack of investments for those who don't want to gamble on the three main types of securities offered:

"I have a website, have done some mining and want to build ASICs so send me $X million"
"Send me $X million and I'll buy loads of ASIC pre-orders, keep a large chunk for myself if they actually show up and give you whatever's left"
"I held ASICMINER for a few weeks and they went up in price so I'd like to run an investment fund"

That's 90% of all IPOs.

Default on loans isn't that much of a concern with CoinLenders - most loans he does are secured by 100-150% collateral so he really doesn't care what they borrow for or whether it works out.  What concerned me more was the combination of two things:

1.  Before the last change (where it went to being a demo) it had changed from money being used for loans to money being used for loans, margin-trading, investment in securities etc (not his exact words).
2.  There was no personal guarantee any more and no accounting for what assets/funds actually back the investment.

Put those together and there's no way to know the extent to which capital is secure if some speculative move/investment gos south.

The problem he faces is that even if he fully intends to personally guarantee the deposits he can't say so - as to do so would undermine the whole point behind the change in his terms.  But without him saying it I can't really invest more DMS funds - as I'd be doing so based on a guess about what his intention was.  Whilst I may be fine making that guess with my own funds I can't in good conscience do it with other people's - as anything based on a guess fails to meet our criteria for investment.  So I'll be pulling our CDs as they mature.

It's unfortunate that there are few bonds around (the ones out there are all sold out).  It pretty much shows how full of shit all these new mining/ASIC companies are - although they'll happily predict huge profits for investors they won't put their money where their mouth is and raise their capital via loan/bond paying a fixed-rate.  Despite the fact that if they're right about the profits they'd make a lot more doing it that way.

There's a reason people who can actually make a decent profit offer bonds/loans rather than equity.  And there's a reason those who can't make a decent profit always sell shares.  At present there's not enough of the former and too many of the latter.

Exchange-rate : .0208
Adjusted NAV/U : 0.6611

At present we're up ~2.2% on the week with an estimated 1.37% being from trading and the rest from LTC continuing to fall vs BTC.

Fund's own bid is at : .648

Trading has been a bit trickier than usual last few weeks to crashes in the prices of various securities (strangely, some of the worse ones managed not to fall).  As we don't hold long-term investment positions much this sort of thing doesn't impact us to the extent it does actual 'investment funds' - unless, of course, we get caught holding securities when they crash.  That wasn't the case here - although we DO have significant holdings for a change (and they've gone up since last report) they aren't in the ones that crashed (exception being ASICMINER where we did pick some up during the crash - and may not end up making much profit on them).

The crash itself is no surprise - it's largely grossly overvalued mining stuff losing value so as only to be hugely overvalued : the real crash hasn't happened yet (and likely won't for another month or two).  I DON'T include ASICMINER in the 'grossly overvalued' category (it may well be overvalued but, if so, it isn't grossly so).

The new ASICMINER pass-through still isn't up for a few reasons:

1.  I had significant RL work the last few weeks which wouldn't have let me commit to the significant time needed after it launches to process transfers in and maintain constant bid/ask walls - the crash in price exascerbated this as it meant far more attention would need to be spent.
2.  Our new PT security is currentl glitched - I started updating it (did a few sections) but the actual contract can't be amended.  Somehow it's gone into a status as though it had been trading - where contract is locked against changes.  Will get burnside to fix this.
3.  I've received updated software which will allow cross-platform automated share swapping - once tested this will make life much easier for me to run the pass-through and also simplify the contract and explanatory notes I need to provide to investors.

Some clarification on points 1 and 3.  Initially (at least) the pass-through will be to shares of the pass-through on BTC-TC NOT to actual ASICMINER shares.  This simplifies life for me in a few ways:

1.  Transfers are much simpler.
2.  Obtaining new backing shares is much easier.

Investors will be able to transfer shares in both directions between the BTC-TC ASICM pass-through and our one.  I had been planning to do this manually initially - but now I have the updated software to test it makes sense to get that done first and start off with it already automated.  That reduces work-load for me and also allows the fee per transfer to be a lot lower.  Our pass-through will be a 100:1 split (each share in it representing 1/100th of a BTC-TC pass-through share).  Transfers will have the minimum possible fee - of 1 of our shares per trade.  That makes the maximum fee for a transfer 1%.

By doing this I largely sacrifice the ability to make profit for LTC-ATF by selling at a markup (we can safely assume the spread against BTC-TC will be arbitraged right down) - so our profit will come from the 3% fee on dividends.  That offers much better value for investors - and should also offer much better liquidity (as anyone who wants to can arb against the spread on BTC-TC).  In general when offering services such as pass-throughs I'd prefer to take a small percentage on a larger volume whilst offering good value than attempt to screw people by marking things up a lot.

Unfortuantely even with automated transfers there's still significant overhead for me - for each person who wants to do transfers I have to link their BTC-TC and LTC-Global accounts manually so the bot knows where to send to.  And that means I have to deal with a PM from each user, verify it vs an actual transfer and update the database for the bot.  Which is why the pass-through couldn't go live when I knew I wouldn't have much time - as I have to do one of linking accounts or manually maintaining bid/ask walls.

I still have some RL work to finish off today - then should be free until late next week (when I'll have some work to do again) so will try to get the modified bot tested over the weekend and the Security details updated.

Rough priority list for my work on securities (other than the usual daily trading etc which always occurs) is :

1.  Test modified transfer bot.
2.  Get ASICM pass-through finalised and up for approval.
3.  Get other new set of securities done.
4.  Get my website completed - It's frustrating that the website is mainly ready but needs to me to spend a few days working solidly on content before it can launch.

WEEKLY REPORT (W/E 25th August 2013)




2.3% growth this week - however only about 0.63% came from trading profits with the remainder due to LTC falling more significantly vs BTC.  Do remember that when I say 0.63% from trading profits there was actually a bit more made from trading - that figure is after deduction of all dividend payments made on bonds.

Management fee of 66 units for this week IS being taken  (you'll see HWM for start of this week was set to UNADJUSTED NAV/U from last week - making sure no management fee was taken on the gain in NAV/U from me not taking last week's fee).

Will update current spreadsheet to reflect the management fee and also some profitable trades that went through overnight then will make a third post - giving more report details and also current NAV/U, current bid etc.

WEEKLY REPORT (W/E 18th August 2013)

Apologies for reports being late - even when I don't publish a report I save a copy of the spreadsheet on the Sunday so it can be produced later.




Just over 2.5% growth this week - with ~2% from trading and the rest from the small fall in LTC vs BTC.

As this report was significantly late I'm foregoing the management fee of 72 units that was due (theoretically I'm taking it then giving it back - as the gain from it will show up in the next week's report.  That saved me changing formulas for calculating adjusted NAV/U for end of this report and beginning of next).

Will catch up today.  The fall in LTC/BTC has grown NAV/U (expressed in LTC - value has fallen if measured in BTC).  The collapse of many mining securities hasn't touched us - other than making trading profits very slim (not many opportunities to trade profitably in a falling market).  The general volatility has been hard to benefit from when most of it has had no obvious reason.

Going to catch up today.

Further to the above, TradeFortress has announced that Coinlenders is closing - and that the current site is only a demo, but one which has the same functionality as a real site would (a similarish approach to BTC-TC's "it's just a game" stance - though actually a worse one from an investor's perspective).

I was going to raise a vote on whether to stay invested or not - but that's pointless now as it's closing.  We'll pull our coins out when the CDs mature.  I couldn't care less if he wants to rename interest to "fee rebates" etc - it's the lack of any visible backing for deposits that's the real killer.  Without any personal guarantee to repay deposits I'd want to see some form of accounts and know to what extent capital exceeded deposits to allow for losses without depositors being impacted.

And I'm never impressed by a change in the TOS and/or contract for something without any notification or option to exit under the old (accepted) terms.

Sold   5243
Swapped   0
Total   5243
Price   0.01598
Total   83.78314
Less Fee   83.61557372
Man Fee   2.508467212

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)   2011.153756
9071 LTC-ATF.B1    90.71000000
Coinlenders CD 27/9   200.1806662
Coinlenders CD 12/9   101.0651211
Coinlenders Cash   3.93046117
Just-Dice Balance    243.39000000
TOTAL ASSETS    2,650.43000469
   
Outstanding MINING   165679
Outstanding SELLING   165679
Outstanding PURCHASE   8433
Effective Units   174112
   
Block reward   25
Difficulty   65,750,060
Hashes per MINING   5000000
   
Daily Dividend    0.00003824
50 days (Min Liquid)    0.00191219
100 days (Forced Close)    0.00382438
365 days (Buyback)    0.01395899
405 days (IPO)    0.01548874
400 days (Post SELLING div)    0.01529752
410 days (Pre SELLING div)    0.01567996
   
NAV Post MINING Div    2,643.77129903
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.01518431
Days Dividend Post Div   397.04
SELLING Dividend    -         
NAV Post SELLING Div    2,643.77129903
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.01518431
PURCHASE selling price    0.01594
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.01488
   
J-D House profit at report   5353

One of our CDs on coinlenders matured and a new one was bought.  The interest from the old one is listed as cash there as I haven't withdrawn it yet - as there's 2 withdrawal fees now (one to withdraw to inupts.io then a 2nd to withdraw back to BTC-TC).

The terms of coinlenders have changed - there's no longer a personal guarantee on the loans.  As there's no guarantee AND there's no disclosure of assets backing the deposits (and they can be used for speculation not just for safe loans) I'm not certain Coinlenders even meets our investment criteria any more.

Sold   1438
Swapped   0
Total   1438
Price   0.01601
Total   23.02238
Less Fee   22.97633524
Man Fee   0.689290057

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)   1936.504133
9071 LTC-ATF.B1    90.71000000
Coinlenders CD 28/8   203.9282483
Coinlenders CD 12/9   101.0003511
Just-Dice Balance    244.10000000
TOTAL ASSETS    2,576.24273245
   
Outstanding MINING   162263
Outstanding SELLING   162263
Outstanding PURCHASE   6606
Effective Units   168869
   
Block reward   25
Difficulty   65,750,060
Hashes per MINING   5000000
   
Daily Dividend    0.00003824
50 days (Min Liquid)    0.00191219
100 days (Forced Close)    0.00382438
365 days (Buyback)    0.01395899
405 days (IPO)    0.01548874
400 days (Post SELLING div)    0.01529752
410 days (Pre SELLING div)    0.01567996
   
NAV Post MINING Div    2,569.78453906
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.01521762
Days Dividend Post Div   397.91
SELLING Dividend    -         
NAV Post SELLING Div    2,569.78453906
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.01521762
PURCHASE selling price    0.01598
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.01491
   
J-D House profit at report   5521

Sold   3597
Swapped   0
Total   3597
Price   0.01605
Total   57.73185
Less Fee   57.6163863
Man Fee   1.728491589

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)   1920.619559
9071 LTC-ATF.B1    90.71000000
Coinlenders CD 28/8   203.8604451
Coinlenders CD 12/9    100.93536953
Just-Dice Balance    243.80000000
TOTAL ASSETS    2,559.92537390
   
Outstanding MINING   160934
Outstanding SELLING   160934
Outstanding PURCHASE   6497
Effective Units   167431
   
Block reward   25
Difficulty   65,750,060
Hashes per MINING   5000000
   
Daily Dividend    0.00003824
50 days (Min Liquid)    0.00191219
100 days (Forced Close)    0.00382438
365 days (Buyback)    0.01395899
405 days (IPO)    0.01548874
400 days (Post SELLING div)    0.01529752
410 days (Pre SELLING div)    0.01567996
   
NAV Post MINING Div    2,553.52217511
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.01525119
Days Dividend Post Div   398.79
SELLING Dividend    -         
NAV Post SELLING Div    2,553.52217511
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.01525119
PURCHASE selling price    0.01601
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.01495
   
J-D House profit at report   5449

Couple of other things to consider if you decide to try to proceed:

1.  If you do it, make the security name generic (e.g. BTC-Music) rather than specific.  That way it leaves open the possibility of investors voting to issue more shares to expand holdings.
2.  Be careful to consider the tax implications - especially if you're a US citizen.  It's likely there'll be tax withheld unless you complete documentation.  Either way it's  entirely possible any royalties paid are going to be treated as taxable income to you personally - so make sure it won't push you up into a higher band or something nasty (as there wouldn't be a way to push the tax liability onto investors without them also completing lots of documents).

You can put me down for 100 BTC.

I'd offer to escrow but don't think it's worth it because:

a) It's highly unlikely we'll win
b) I'm sure there won't be a problem selling whatever you want to sell.

Would suggest terms are that:

Shares are allocated in order of pledges up to whatever amount you choose to sell.
If you win then people have 48 hours to send their BTC once you've proved payment at your end.
Share are charged for at spot + 10% - extra being to cover exchange fees, pay you for doing it and cover the fee to list (spot being spot at whichever exchange you use).

And your call how many you sell and how many you keep for yourself.

I don't generally invest in fiat-denominated stuff but this seems like a bit of fun.