To be fair, I think most people here felt they were investing in a Belize company when they invested.  I know I did.  However, the Securities laws in the U.S. don't care where your business registration is setup at, they care about where business is conducted.  And so because Ken is in the States, he's subject to State (And Federal) law.  So by you telling them you invested in his illegal security, you're throwing him on the fire.  Not a good idea for the welfare of the business.  He can get socked at $100,000 an incident.

As to Dividends...  I think technically that Ken may not run afoul of the MSD investigation or the SEC (If there was one going on) because he hasn't paid a dividend to anyone.  At the moment a bunch of people gave Ken money for his business, but there has been no profit sharing.  So technically (and it's a stretch) it's not a security.  Which is probably why he doesn't want to give people their shares, because then they'd be wanting their dividend and he'd be in trouble.

I don't think Ken can EVER pay dividends.  Well...  He could, but he'd have to pick up and move out of the country and conduct business in a nation that allows this to happen.  Because even if the current MSD investigation ends, the minute he pays a dividend means he is engaged with an unregulated security and they can open it up again and charge him.

Alternatively, Ken could register as a real investment security, but I think he'd need a crap load of money to do that.  

At the moment, he may not be in trouble with the law.  Except CT...  But again, if he hasn't paid a dividend on CT, it's possible that he isn't doing anything wrong.  I'm not a lawyer, and that's pretty shaky, but it's possible.

That said, there are other non-security laws that would be broken if Ken promised a return on an investment and did not fulfill that obligation.  

Guys, if you're in the United States you should be very careful about promoting AMC to anyone, especially the MSD.  The MSD investigation is not whether Ken is running a good business or not, it's about selling unlicensed securities.  Which he did.  It's what the business is running on.  Don't freak out, they obviously know that because they read these posts.  They aren't interested in you writing them and saying, "We think it's great that we were able to give money to Ken to run a business and then partake in profit sharing."  Because that's illegal.  In fact, they ARE interested in you telling them that.  They want you to call them and explain that to them.  Seriously...  They do.

The Securities Act can have anyone who promotes such a security facing up-to a 1 million dollar fine and 10 years in prison.  That's not for running it, that's for PROMOTING it.  It likely has no bearing on you if you live in the Netherlands somewhere, but if you're in the United States, shut up.  If you want to reach out to the MSD and provide your information, that's up to you.  But don't post or write them letters saying how this is a good thing.  They take that information to mean you are trying to raise the share value of an unregulated security and therefor you are part of the problem.  

The MSD has a 5 year limit to bring charges, from the first infraction.  So they have about 4 years more to gather information before they charge anyone with anything (If they will.)  It would be stupid on their part to charge someone with something before it lapses because that enables them to gather more evidence and interview more disgruntled investors and purchasers.  So this MSD investigation will likely go on for another 4 years and then either close due to lack of evidence or they will charge Ken and start the court case.

Strap in...  It's going to be awhile.

You're doing it wrong.  The difficulty in May is 10 million and the PBMining price you set is .0056

The difficulty changed today.  It is currently 8 million.  And PBMining adjusted the price to .0053

Don't choose MAY.  Stick with April since that is now, today's difficulty, and the difficulty is factored on that.  If you choose May, it's 1 month in the future so it changes the difficulty to 10 million.

If you do it correctly, your investment profits.

You're not zeroing out the electrical costs, the accessory costs and the like.  You pay none of that.  You have to measure with the current difficulty vs what you're buying.  It profits.  Learn how to use the mining calculator.  It's funny that you think you're smarter than all the miners.  We must all be idiots right? 

I explained the math on how mining makes more than holding, but you're not getting it.  If you buy a Bitcoin and it becomes $4,000 in value.  Great.  Now, if I buy a miner for the same price that you bought the Bitcoin at.  The only reason the miner ever stops making money is if the cost of electricity is higher than what it earns.  If the value of Bitcoin reaches $4,000 then the miner WILL EARN MORE BITCOINS THEN I PAID FOR IT. 

You say no, but that is incorrect.  It's simple math. 

Well, it boils down to this.  Shareholders are entitled to a share of profits after expenses.  In order to prove there are no profits, Ken will have to release the books, and prove that all purchases were for the company.  He'll also have to prove that he didn't use any of the money for personal things in the first year.  That's just how the "contract" is worded.

Still, the entire act of operating an unregulated security is illegal and the judge may force AMC/Ken to liquidate and distribute materials to investors.  However, I doubt this goes before a judge.  Nobody is going to want to pay for that on either side.  It's going to be settled out of court, or Ken will lose by not showing up.  Court cases can take a long time though.

Maybe it'll be a coin toss...  Heads, you get a free miner.  Tails, no miner for you!

I don't think that's correct.  The current cost of a gh on PBMining is 0.0056.  https://tradeblock.com/mining/a/702307c1fb

It's profit by August forward.  Assuming current BTC price remains constant.  This is better than holding.

(Assuming not a ponzi for the purpose of this discussion only.)


I've already explained the apex where mining is worth more than holding, but you need a value around $4,000 for that to work out.  Which isn't likely.
 

It may never reach a court room.  It's more likely to be negotiated and never go to court.  

Or if it did, one party won't show up and lose by default.

Wow, someone did it. 

Just make an X1.5 and have it hash 50% more.

Nobody here agreed or signed a contract.  Everyone sent money to Labrat and expected him to follow through on what he was telling everyone he was going to do.  At best there was a verbal/text based understanding of what was going to happen.  But contracts via changed or otherwise don't mean anything because nobody is signing anything with a legal signature.  And no, Bitcoin signatures are not legal signatures and are not proof that we agreed to any contract.

LabRat is going to do whatever he wants.  And people in here will complain.  That's all that is going to happen unless someone sues him.  That's it.  He's probably not even reading this thread.  Probably out by the pool enjoying a cool drink and thinking about spending our money on his dinner. 

That's what happens when you trust people you don't know with a lot of money.  They screw you over.

You're mostly correct, there is some upper level Bitcoin price that it can rise to where Mining produces more profit than holding.  That's because the miner becomes unprofitable to run after a period of time when the electricity exceeds the miner's ability to produce coins.  However if the value of Bitcoin rises, the miner can run longer and produce more Bitcoins.  So in theory instead of earning only 1 Bitcoin, it could earn 1.1 Bitcoin if the value is large enough to make it worthwhile to keep running. 

The other thing, is that some people simply aren't good at holding.  It takes patience and confidence.  Mining sort of forces people to hold, but in a different way.  So that if the value of the coin rises, they gain the FIAT by the slow return on mining vs cashing out the Bitcoins now for a smaller profit.

Here's some questions for Ken...

1.  What happened with the eASIC deal's money?

2.  Did you get any monetary refund from eASIC?

3.  What became of Intellihash?

4.  Is there anyone currently working on the 28nm project full time?  Or is it waiting on funds?

5.  Assuming you are not currently providing dividends to existing shares, at what point does AMC make a profit so that happens?

6.  Will you provide some evidence of the MSD investigation?

7.  What is the plan after you fill the data center?  Open another one?  Collect the coins and finish the 28nm ASIC? 

8.  When can we confirm shares?  This should have no bearing on the MSD investigation.  We already own them.  We just want to confirm them.



Did I miss anything?

I don't think the compensation is bad at all.  Remember, you can sell these as well and probably make a good buck on Ebay.  Though I do think charging us for shipping and the extra PSU is going to be a logistical nightmare.  The process to send Bitcoins in when making an order was manual and had to be manually confirmed when I placed an order through the BA website.  Why go through that? 

Here's my suggestion, you're going to run these for X amount of time in order to do burn in testing.  So just take the Bitcoins you earn from that, pay yourselves for the PSU and shipping and avoid the hassle of collecting orders from people and dealing with the logistical nightmare of it.  Earn the coins, then just ship everyone three complete units (X3) and be done with it.

This will make your (And our) lives easier.

I have shares.  I have doubts that AMC is currently under investigation.  I'm considering calling them this week to inquire about the investigation.  I don't want to shine a brighter light on Ken and his situation with them if it's real, but he has completely dropped the ball on providing any shed of proof that it is real.  Even the fanboys who state they've asked him to do the same have come up empty.  

Ken tends to selectively pick what he wants to respond to, what he wants to reveal, and what he does.  He operates the company in a total vacuum and provides share holders with no information.

Share holders purchased a share of profits.  I'm certain there are no profits because the amount of money we started with vs what we have now is not even close to even and never will be.  Not unless Ken can generate enough money by selling boards and mining to get his own chip fabricated.  But even then...  That's probably a stupid thing to do.  There are various teams out there with complete or soon to be complete 28nm chips.  By the time Ken would produce a chip, the competition's chips will be proven and far cheaper.

The smart money would be to use large financial reserves to purchase entire inventories of failed companies that have proven products.  I think we'll see more than a few of these emerge over time due to the competition being so large for so few that can afford to mine.  Swooping in and buying out the inventory of failed mining operations or hardware manufacturers stands to get us more ghs per dollar than going after our own chip.

That said, I don't think Ken will ever distribute profits to share holders.  He'll continue to pay himself and his staff, and focus the rest of the money on other projects like making a chip or fabricating boards, etc.  

The only way we ever get our shares and get paid is someone has to sue him, so a court order happens and forces him to do as it instructs.  But then it's quite likely nobody would get anything.  See MtGox for further details on that one...

I think anyone who switches to the new contract is likely to see a decent return on their first few dividend distributions as Labrat tries to show how valuable it would be for people to switch and just accept the new contract.  Though it's probably not maintainable and subsequent contract profits will fall off for various circumstances.

The one subject Labrat has continued to avoid is the 150th of hardware that is on order.  Other than saying he is waiting on Monarchs, the actual number of orders seems to not be realistic given that he intends to use pre-existing PSU's for them.  Does he have that many?  Doubtful, so he must be getting fewer units than expected. 

I think there was a large portion of investment dollars lost or wasted.  I think that is what has caused this entire debacle.  He screwed something up or trusted the wrong people.

I understand the compensation, but how is this price matching at shipping time supposed to work for those who already paid?  Do we get some kind of refund?  Does that money apply towards what we're paying for the PSU and shipping of our bonus unit?  Is it just nothing?  How does that fit into the picture?

This is only going to get solved in a court room.  LabRat can modify contract terms at will, so until there is a legal motion to prevent him from doing so, it's just money poured down a black hole.  Lawyer up...  It's time to sue.

Here's what I don't understand.  Common sense will tell you that the MSD investigators read this thread of messages and the other locked threads.  Ken has even stated this to be the case.

So what mystery is there?  They already know we were sold shares.  They know what the contract details.  The info is still on the net if you do a cursory search for it.  Plus it's all right here on Bitcointalk.  So what exactly are we trying to avoid by not trading shares?  The new shares are on CT.  Somehow those are ok because they happened before the investigation.  But here's the thing...  OUR SHARES HAPPENED BEFORE THE MSD INVESTIGATION TOO!  We just had Bitfunder go down.  Which the MSD knows about.  They read the threads.  They aren't a bunch of idiots.  This is what they do for a salary.  Conduct investigations...

It's like common sense gets lost here and people just accept that Ken has all their money and nobody asks for proof of the investigation or really digs into why he can't provide said proof.  He can tell us that the MSD reads this thread of messages, but he can't show us their written document that says the company is under investigation?  Guys, I live in the United States, that's not illegal or weird or anything to show people that.  It doesn't jeopardize anything or put anything at risk.  It's public.  It's the nature of these things that the info becomes public.  That's why when you go the MSD website, all the info is stored there for you to look at.  

People think that the MSD is not going to bother Ken if he moves transactions around in Colored Coins instead of an exchange.  Like that might be too far-out and complicated for the MSD to figure out what's going on.  It's silly.  Of course they can.  If there really is an investigation, they already know everything.

If you think, "Well maybe Ken told them that he's not doing it anymore."  Then what he'd be telling them is that he defrauded a bunch of people out of millions of dollars.  That would go over really well with them at the MSD.  "Oh, you're done ripping people off?  Ok, case closed."  Of course not!

So they know what is going on.  So what is to hide?  Nothing...  So either the investigation is B.S. or this is the worst attempt at trying to hide a publically funded investment ever.  

The latest update said the Prospero's would ship on the 8th of May if everything goes right.