Maybe almost everyone feels that way, but some people (even if not the majority or even >1% of players) may seek to appear "hardcore" (or have a better chance of achieving something worth talking about in hardcore mode) among those who have actually taken the risk and put in the effort to be "hardcore." For those people, it may seem more valuable to have the Staff of Ultimate Sheep Herding (or whatever) on a hardcore server than a normal server. *shrug* I don't doubt there'll be a market -- I'd guess it won't be particularly large. As long as there's demand to buy items on hardcore servers for currency which doesn't have to be earned in-game, there'll be a way to buy it, and if you can't use the Blizz service, consumers will go elsewhere.

I'll push out what I think the market will take. The last thing I want is a public offering where an ask order just sits around on GLBSE. I'm currently leaning toward (and given the first IPO hasn't even occurred, this is pretty meaningless) .1BTC/share next month. If the market thinks I've undervalued the shares, they can bid higher for them prior to the shares being sold. Eliminating pre-IPO shares gives "the market" a much more powerful megaphone, and investors more power in determining what they think the shares should be valued at compared to a number I whip out just because it'd be an amount where I break even with regards to how much I'll receive in income monthly. While personally making a profit through these public offerings is a goal I have no interest in not achieving, I don't think it'd be nearly as cool as controlling where >40k BTC goes.

Right now, the "business loan" group I arranged only guarantees each lender brings 200BTC to the table. They can have more cash-on-hand they're willing to invest, but requiring they have more than 200BTC becomes exclusionary and counter-productive at this time. The amount presented for "business-grade" loans is probably fine for someone whose project only needs to hire a developer for a couple months, or start up some type of gambling website, and I think having an organization where we do larger non-consumer loans is a big step in the right direction - but for someone seeking to produce something physical or complicated, it will barely even make a dent in purchasing specialized manufacturing equipment, or, say, hiring a few salaried CSR employees. With >$200k in equity, there are a lot of exciting opportunities I expect to be presented. Ultimately, there's no reason I need the money right now. As far as I'm aware, no producers currently need larger loans than a few hundred BTC -- nobody's applied for a for what I'm charitably calling a business-grade loan. It's consumer loans, loans (or investment) for bot-feeding, or mining, which are all investments which scale well if you invest just a tiny amount, or a very large amount. There aren't really any significant barriers to entry from capital requirements, except ASIC development and perhaps sophisticated trading bots.

Maybe there are no promising ideas in the Bitcoin community requiring funding. I don't believe that. I believe there isn't enough money available to them on reasonable terms to make their ideas viable (or at least, not viable to be done using BTC for funding), and I think pooling community resources (and lending/investment risks) will make BTC lending to businesses more practical, and create some truly outstanding products in the future.


ETA: Sorry, went a bit O/T in response. There's a finite % of profit which can be sold off. Once the 100k shares are sold, the only way it can grow beyond is with the 10% cut I'll have remaining or through initiating a buyback, then re-selling at a later time. It's a large commitment, and while I don't want to "give away" my income for it, what I want much more is unimpeded upward momentum. If I post 2k shares one month and they just sit there - per the "IPO value preservation" provision in the contract, that's pretty much it. If I issue more shares, they'll have to just sit there with the others. There is an extreme disincentive from the contract and nature of this offering against letting BDK shares stagnate. I may be taking losses of personal income toward the start, but being able to continue raising funds, IMO, is much more important. Because of the way the contract and offering is designed, I think there's an almost unreasonable lack of risk for investors, as BDK itself will only grow through these. Long-term, I believe the conservative, patience-demanding way the public offerings are implemented will provide BDK with dramatically more funds in the end versus trying to meet my own personal income goals.


ETA: motion created regarding the issue of selling 2k/month vs. 5k/month. 2 motions will be introduced ~ a week prior to future public offerings to help me determine what shareholders want me to price BDK shares at. One motion will be to issue at a conservative price. One motion will be to issue at a more aggressive price.

Decided to go about this much more conservatively. The sales of profits (until ~.32BTC/share) don't really help me boost my personal profits, and I don't need money to the extent where I'm willing to gather it at a loss of personal income. I think BDK can reach .32BTC/share much more quickly with an extremely conservative, slow release of shares. I now intend to release 2k shares on the second of each month (instead of 5k/month), and not sell shares pre-IPO. After the four scheduled public offerings (May 2nd, June 2nd, July 2nd, August 2nd), I'm thinking I will sell 2k shares every two months until 2013. At that point, 2k shares will be sold every three months. 2014, 2k shares every four months. Depending on how this works out, it's possible shareholders will not receive as much increase in dividends as they perhaps expected short-term and mid-term, but I believe this will dramatically reduce the possibility of stagnation, and long-term, will result in dramatically higher dividends/share than it would've if I proceeded as I outlined in the OP. Once the share price of BDK surpasses .32BTC/share, I will re-evaluate.

CD rate changed again as a few CDs didn't renew. The current rate is 5%/32D, 11%/63D.

As well, the minimum and maximum amounts have been changed. Previously: min - 10BTC, max - 300BTC. Currently: min - 50BTC, max - 1000BTC.


Also very interested in hearing business ideas. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77647

Bet: .25 from 12tBgjKSPMNRH3CYVSAoXW7gu3vYq45bPY
# generated: 168
Payout: 2x bet, .5BTC


Edit: Exciting news! WGSE is planned to be automated by the end of the week. Same stats, same rules, same profit split to BTC100.

Bet: .05 from 1tcFMoKGYxJWVT5W1XksSm72qQaRnykPN
# generated: 955
Payout: 0x bet, .0BTC

Not really (an "NDA" is only as useful as it can be enforced), and 3 of the 5 lenders (IIRC) currently in the group are competent programmers in multiple languages with experience in web design. I, however, am both an incapable programmer, and dislike automation, so if you wanted to talk about that privately.....

You'd really just have to trust the lot of us not to be dicks. We value our reputation among ourselves, and I think it would be obviously implied that any ideas presented in seeking a business loan is privileged information.

If it wasn't obvious, I fully intend to use this loan to arb -- was intending to take half the loan, put it toward USD loans within the community, other half goes toward BTC loans and GLBSE. I do not like tying up money, but am willing to insure calculated risks against loss, and that's effectively what this deal is -- I take on the currency risk of converting half the USD to BTC, as well as the risks that come with re-lending or otherwise investing the money. There are many ways this deal could go sour for me, but I've looked at the risks and think it's wroth it. The only way the deal could go sour for the lender in this case is if I default. It's not as if the lender being repaid is contingent on my gains or losses.

Will consume ~100-150 watts (assume 125W), net ~20kH/s. Those figures are probably off up to 200% since it isn't listed in the Litecoin Mining Hardware Comparison Wiki page and I'm not familiar with Intel CPUs. Assume you pay $.1/kWh.

30 days @ 20kH/s @ current difficulty will net you ~$1.68 worth of LTC. (30*24*125)/1000=90kWh consumed. 90 * .1 = $9 in electricity consumed per thirty days. $1.68 < $9.00

My figures are probably way off, but even if you didn't pay for electricity, the wear on your CPU probably isn't worth it.


Edit: TDP of i5 750 is 95W. However, on the mining hardware comparison page, it appears the CPUs consume significantly more than the TDP when mining, so the power draw figure's probably roughly accurate (likely closer to 100W than 150W). 2500k performance vs. 750 shows 2500k is ~20% faster on benchmarks which may or may not be relevant. According to wiki page, 2500k hashes @ 31kH/s. 31*.8=24.8kH/s

Soo.... if optimistic, 30 days @ 24.8kH/s @ current difficulty = $2.09 revenues. (30*24*95)/1000=68.4kWh. 68.4*.1 = $6.84 expenses.

Right. 1k shares are reserved for the IPO on May 2nd (I'll be placing an order to sell them @ .055BTC each). However, there are >200 shares already "reserved" through bid orders placed, which requires those potential buyers' commit to having BTC in their GLBSE account for over a week, which I believe indicates fairly high demand, and expect there to be a kind of "auction" at the IPO. Whoever bids the most at time of IPO receives the shares.

The way I've decided to sell BDK profits works a bit like a pyramid. All funds raised through the public offerings, which will occur in small amounts on the second day of each month for at least four months, will boost BDK's equity and thus (ideally) dividends paid out. As the amount "IPO" shares are sold for will likely increase significantly every month, early adopters are greatly rewarded, both in a lower price for shares than later buyers, and also in that they stand to see dividends (and presumably, aftermarket share value) increase significantly each month as more funds are raised through public offerings since future public offerings do not devalue shares already held.

However, if there is an "auction-style" IPO, I honestly have no idea how much BDK IPO shares will sell for. Already at a 10% markup over pre-IPO shares, there appears to still be quite a bit of interest. Potential investors should be very careful not to screw themselves over, as next month, I may sell IPO shares @ .055BTC again, even if people bought @ .08 on May 2nd. Or maybe I'll sell IPO shares @ .075BTC next month -- who knows? Lots of risk -- should be plenty of meat on the bone for investors, though. I purposefully sold the initial IPO shares at a loss for me with regards to income I'll receive each month.


I don't mean to be a hype-peddler, but this should put everything in perspective for those who already did the math and figured the initial IPO shares are being sold at a loss for me: in the first month's IPO, I'm expecting to sell 5% of total shares for ~275BTC, but once all the shares are sold in 2-3 years, I want no less than 40k BTC raised through public offerings. I have no idea if I'll grow BDK to the size I want, but I do enjoy challenges.

I personally don't have much interest, but some other lenders do.

Instead of airing out your request for money to the public, a group of lenders (currently IBM, BDK, INAU, Mark, and HashKing) is now offering a way for productive members of the community to apply for larger sums to a closed group, allowing us to examine these larger loans collectively and meticulously. We're also interested in partnerships (silent or otherwise) where we buy a portion of your operation. You may request either USD or BTC, and while 1k BTC or more is available, we'd certainly be interested in deals which require less than that.

The questions to receive money are relatively tough for operational businesses, but are most likely to receive a favorable response. For participation and toleration of our questioning, we offer low-interest loans in larger amounts relative to consumer-grade loans. However, these larger sums of money are also available for those with only passion and a great idea. I cannot stress enough how important it is that you have a perfect and in-depth reputation within the community to be considered.

It is a multi-step process. We will first review your answers to our questions and give you an answer as to whether or not we're interested. If we are interested, we will schedule a meeting (either on IRC or Skype) between you and us where we'll have an in-depth Q&A, likely request ID and promissory note if it's a loan and we're still interested. Please be prepared for tough questions, and requests for facts and figures.


If you're interested, please fill out a loan application here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGo5MGl4cXZpaGVVb3BYREVQT0hhZlE6MQ


Cheers!



(Local rules for this thread: No requests for money in this thread. No competition is permitted to post in this thread. MPOE-PR and dank are not permitted to post in this thread.)

If you play on multiplayer, getting through the beta content takes less than an hour. It's hard to judge what the game will be at launch. There are a lot of hints on the Auction House page indicating it will be a fair bit more complicated than it is, which I think is - now - pretty simple (less the graphics taking physics into account, which are pretty nifty-looking), and very easy relative to Diablo II - but again, since it's only a portion of the Act I which is available on beta, it's hard to say. The Auction House wasn't working properly when I played yesterday, either, making it more difficult to gauge what D3 really "is."

The open beta started yesterday. Everybody with a Blizzard account (doesn't need to pre-order D3) can play. Download it and give it a go (I think the open beta ends either tomorrow or the day after) if you're interested. Blizzard has a very well-thought-out downloading process which employs p2p transfers and permits play even when you've only downloaded less than half the game.

(posted for the sake of disclosure -- these are not counted as gains or losses until time of sale, but changes the amount of assets BDK has -- I'll post this every week or two)

GLBSE Securities Re-valuation (reconciliation between BDK sheets & GLBSE):
TyGrr: BDK - 2BTC/share, GLBSE - 2BTC/share -- No Change
Cognitive: BDK - .69BTC/share, GLBSE - .63BTC/share -- total loss of 16.14BTC on paper
Gigamining: BDK - 1.5BTC/share, GLBSE - 1.55BTC/share -- total gain of .65BTC on paper


Total change in assets (on paper only) due to change in GLBSE asset valuation = -15.49



I also noticed someone paid .5BTC/share for 5 shares of BDK on GLBSE today. Just a quick reminder that IPO shares will sell for .055BTC.

Bet: .2 from 13YoCzpuYLHu9bBUYivma4tPFtuSZHkK58
# generated: 892
Payout: 0x bet, .0BTC

Bet: .2 from 13YoCzpuYLHu9bBUYivma4tPFtuSZHkK58
# generated: 61
Payout: 2x bet, .4BTC



(ETA: going to sleep. Don't place anymore bets unless you don't mind waiting ~9 hours. Cheers!)

Bet: .18 from 13YoCzpuYLHu9bBUYivma4tPFtuSZHkK58
# generated: 511
Payout: 0x bet, 0BTC

(no consolation prize as I had to change a digit in the tenths place, which was extremely demanding work relative to what I usually do, like type out 20+ word explanations about why changing one character in copypasta is so difficult)

Bet: .16 from 13YoCzpuYLHu9bBUYivma4tPFtuSZHkK58
# generated: 891
Payout: 0x bet, 0BTC

(easy copy-paste consolation prize sent again  )

Bet: .16 from 13YoCzpuYLHu9bBUYivma4tPFtuSZHkK58
# generated: 742
Payout: 0x bet, 0BTC

(sent a consolation for making the copy-paste really easy, though)