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What happens if the initial 2M shares don't get sold?
We will adjust the investment per startup according to total amount raised. We will keep all Seedcoin Fund I unit holders informed of any change in the investment amount depending on total amount of bitcoin raised through this offering. |
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The median equity stake Seedcoin Fund I should get from each investment in the SFI startups is 10%. 100% of these equity stakes will go to the SFI unit holders therefore the question should be 'What % of ownership will the SFI unitholders hold into the startups?" (not 'us'). There are two main reasons why I cannot give you a precise breakdown of each equity stake per company: - fundraise on Havelock Investments is not yet complete, the equity stakes effectively acquired by SFI will depend on the actual investments completed (which may differ from the initial intention) so we need to wait for the final amount of the fundraise to know the actual stakes; - some startups have asked us not to divulge their valuation at this stage. However, I will go back to each entrepreneur and see who allows me to mention the agreed upon equity stake for the prospective investors of SFI on public forums such as this one. As soon as I get a positive answer from these entrepreneurs, I will publicize the information here. fyi today's article about Seedcoin and SFI : http://www.coindesk.com/seedcoin-incubator-brings-bitcoin-startups-world/we are doing our best to provide as much information as we can about this raise and the Bitcoin startups of Seedcoin Fund I to the general public. |
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I wrote you an email with a couple of questions, and asked if there was a thread at bitcointalk.org you could refer me to.
You did neither, just said you were busy.
So sorry, I'm too busy to invest in your half-arsed idea of an IPO
LMAO, thanks for sharing. I think it is quite important to share this kind of (missing) feedback with other users. To be honest, it pissed me off. I read all their literature (2 hrs), and prepared just a simple couple of questions because their was several obvious things missing from their prospectus e.g. what % of the companies they were investing in they would actually own, which of the companies they were investing in actually paid dividends, and they couldn't be bothered to answer. Companies that expect investment are going to have to do some basic legwork to get people onside. Some people at least attempt due diligence before giving their bitcoins to random people  This was my reply to your message on Dec. 12 (your message was dated Dec. 10 evening time) : "I am at the Inside Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas so not easy to reply earlier. If you want to talk I am available at 415-509-9028 and will fly back to Hong Kong on Friday morning." from my email to which you did not answer since the 36 hours delay in my answer had discouraged you from participating to the IPO. Once again I am sorry I did not reply in the 24 hours of your message. The 'random people' as you define the entrepreneurs who will receive the bitcoin from this raise are hard working entrepreneurs who are providing helpful and relevant services to the bitcoin community, bitcoin exchanges, payment processors, wallets, etc. Their business plans are available on http://www.seedco.in/home/havelock None of these entrepreneurs have made public any dividend distribution plans as of today, contrary to mining operations where bitcoin may become available soon after initial hardware investment has been made, non-mining Bitcoin-centric companies live by the same rules as any other startups meaning they need to build something, original products and/or services, acquire clients and manpower to service these clients before paying out dividends. If you are looking for a short term, dividend paying investment this fund may not be the best option, although focused on seed-stage startups Seedcoin is looking for companies with promising prospects on the medium to long term and dividend distribution is not our main criterion of investment when selecting startups for the fund. |
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So this 2m shares is just for the listed companies. The next 2m shares will be for future companies?
Any idea how much of these companies profits go into the dividends?
yes the next 2m shares will be for future companies, each Seedcoin Fund tranche offering will introduce new seed-stage startups. Each company will have its own dividend policy we cannot impose a uniform dividend policy to seven companies in different markets and at difference stages of development or profitability. 100% of the company shares allocated to Seedcoin Fund will belong to the subscribers of the offering taking place on Havelock and all shares held by the fund will be entitled to the same dividends as any other shareholder of the company. I think investors should take into consideration that it is reasonable to expect that these startups, vetted by Seedcoin and guided by its managers and mentors, and funded, in part, by the Havelock members buying units of this fund, are increasing their chances to succeed among Bitcoin startups. In the event of a buy out or a major investment into these companies the Seedcoin Fund unit holders will get special dividends as compensation for their contribution to the success of these early-stage Bitcoin startups. |
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[...] However, I think you should mainly look at the startups since they will be the recipient of most of the bitcoins raised, a small portion of the funds raised will go towards ensuring we can keep providing services to the startups and their founders. The Bitcoin startups are located in various countries around the world and are responding to different needs or solving specific problems in the bitcoin ecosystem.
MEXBT.com
The first professional exchange for cryptocurrencies in Mexico.
No qualms here; I think every country should have their own designated exchange to help facilitate local acceptance. What's the expected growth in the Mexican Bitcoin market?
answer from Gabriel Miron, founder of MEXBT.com MEXBT is the first Profesional Bitcoin exchange for Mexico, and part of Latin America. We are aiming for an average growth of 50% each month in the first few months of operations. Our main focus is to target the remittance corridor from the United States to Mexico, but this will be tackled after we have established MEXBT as the most reliable Bitcoin exchange in the country. |
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How can you be so sure of this? It would actually be against Havelock's new policy to do that. Certainly these incubated businesses don't need all the money at once, do they? Havelock can gradually dispense money based on invoices and such or some other proof showing how they're going to be spent. It's either this or Havelock doesn't stick to their own terms.
This will be a case by case decision and in conformity with Havelock's policies and approval of transfer of coins. |
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[...] However, I think you should mainly look at the startups since they will be the recipient of most of the bitcoins raised, a small portion of the funds raised will go towards ensuring we can keep providing services to the startups and their founders. The Bitcoin startups are located in various countries around the world and are responding to different needs or solving specific problems in the bitcoin ecosystem.
Let's focus on this for a moment. Monero - Monero.co
Monero makes it easy for e-commerce merchants to accept Bitcoin by integrating existing payment processors to their store. Our free plugins and subscription-based SaaS solution uses sophisticated user-experience design to allow merchants to easily switch between payment processors and to view customer analytics in a well-designed user interface. We target e-commerce merchants that already accept Bitcoin through existing payment processors and merchants in rapidly expanding markets, like China and Latin America.
I dug into this a bit (briefly), and as far as I can tell it's just a simple application / plugin that allows you to accept Bitcoin payments through various exchanges. What's the business model behind this, and how does this differ from setting up a typical "Bitcoin Accepted" Mt. Gox button for payments? Answer from Nikos, Monero's founder: Monero is creating a collection of plugins for various platforms that will allow merchants to easily integrate existing payment processors (Bitpay, Coinbase, BIPS, GoCoin, BitPagos) into their e-commerce stores. Merchants will not have to integrate each processor separately and the plugins will allow easy switching between them. Although the plugins will be free and open-source, Monero will generate recurring revenue through a Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) model by providing additional capabilities to merchants. At this moment, Monero does not publicize the list of features that the SaaS will provide, since they are under development. You can sign up for the Monero mailing list at monero.co in order to receive up-to-date information about those SaaS features. One clarification: In your question, you mentioned integration of existing exchanges, like Mt Gox. Monero will not integrate those. Instead, as mentioned above, it will integrate payment processors like Bitpay, Coinbase, BIPS, GoCoin, and BitPagos. |
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[...] However, I think you should mainly look at the startups since they will be the recipient of most of the bitcoins raised, a small portion of the funds raised will go towards ensuring we can keep providing services to the startups and their founders. The Bitcoin startups are located in various countries around the world and are responding to different needs or solving specific problems in the bitcoin ecosystem.
Let's focus on this for a moment. Hive - grabhive.com
Hive is an attractive, easy-to-use Bitcoin wallet for OS X and Android that features a built-in app platform for merchant discovery. Hive provides an answer to the three fundamental questions: How can I Get, Send and Spend Bitcoin?
How does this startup provide a more thorough service (in terms of speed, security, and reliability) compared to blockchain.info or Bitcoin-QT wallets? How large is the market for a Mac OSX wallet, as compared to Windows or Linux?
Answer from Wendell, Hive's founder: Hive is not for Mac OS only, the intention is to be on all platforms, and in fact we made this announcement last month: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=334383This funding round is going towards making Hive available on more platforms. Re: the inquiry, those topics aren't our specific purview. While we of course strive to achieve all of those things in spades, our intention is primarily to be an introductory wallet with built-in merchant and services discovery. Our focus is that, and decentralization. http://www.coindesk.com/hive-osx-wallet-promises-app-integration/However: Security -- we are actively working on BIP32 (Hierarchical Deterministic Wallet) and Trezor (hardware wallet) support. We will hopefully be one of the first. Speed -- We are an SPV wallet based on bitcoinj, so it's very fast indeed. Reliability -- Since we are using bitcoinj we rely on it for a fair amount of our reliability, but we've built in a large number of checks on every level. Additional things we add on top are automatic backups (which goes beyond the typical, for example we auto-detect things like Dropbox and set automatic encrypted backup point there) |
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@Seedcoin
Does this fund also have a maintenance fee or is that 11% off a one time fee that covers all future expenses?
There is no maintenance fee, 11% is a one time fee. |
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We are helping Bitcoin startups with attractive businesses prospects and some already profitable. Our structure is quite similar to standard funds whereby a management company helps a fund to find viable and interesting opportunities in a specific sector or industry, in our case, cryptocurrencies.
Except that there is zero basis for imagining you're any better equipped than the average bipedal life form to "help", "find", or otherwise create any sort of value. Managing other people's funds and identifying worthwhile projects are not trivial tasks; they require specific expertise. Not interest, not passion, not "we talked to some guy named Dan and he likes us", expertise. That's what you need to focus on demonstrating. And that, well before you solicit "investments". See here. Sure your are right managing other people's funds requires expertise. I have been involved with private equity and venture capital for the last nine years mainly in China and South East Asia. I also would like to point out - specially for the "find" part - that I have personally met most of the entrepreneurs including the founders of MEXBT.com, GoCoin, Hive, BTC.sx; my partner has met the Cryptopay co-founders in the UK; I will meet Monero's founder next week and our Austin-based mentor has met the founder of zSIM. We have organized a conference in Singapore, the first bitcoin conference in Asia, on November 15 where many of these entrepreneurs were present and we had 200 attendees from all over the world. So in the "find" area I can say we have been quite active, in addition to the tens of entrepreneurs my two partners and I have talked to in meetups, over skype, and via email. For the "help" part we have already been providing services in finding partners, registering companies, assessing risks and the regulatory environment, defining the business model, defining the business strategy and targeting certain markets. Of course much more work still needs to be done but this is what we do daily. I think the result of this work will very soon demonstrate our focus and dedication to our main task: helping entrepreneurs around the world to build successful bitcoin-centric startups. |
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Korbman's analysis is exactly what I'd like clarification on from Seedcoin. You've provided a list of a handful of companies with their stated goals, but nothing about the projected timeframes for deployment, possible market, or profitability. Can we get some numbers here, or at least more details?
And can we have any details about how/when dividends will be issued?
as a reply to Korbman and your question I have started contacting the founders so that they can reply to the comments made by Korbman earlier from Korbman re. Cryptopay What sets this startup apart from BitPay.com? In other words, why should I consider using Cryptopay instead of the *very* well known (and reliable) BitPay?
response from Cryptopay We are located in Europe and one of our key feature is that we know how to become fully compliant with the current local legal framework. Our payouts to Europe don’t impose any limits on the amount and are credited to merchant’s bank account the next working day. As our company is still early stage — we can be flexible on our business model and we are happy to provide the solutions for merchant’s with specific needs. Cryptopay is going to roll out our POS solution within the next month and that might be something that could increase the adoption of Bitcoin payments to brick&mortar stores. At the moment, as we don’t serve US customers, we are working outside the scope of American regulations, so our legal costs are significantly lower than in the US. PS: We believe, that you can’t rely on just one company, even if it is “very” well known. ------------ I will post startup business plans / pitchdecks asap on: http://www.seedco.in/home/havelockBTC.sx pitchdeck is there now, more coming. |
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(1) and (2) are mutually exclusive. Either the IPO coin are distributed to the startups, or they are in Havelock's wallet, never both.
Bitcoins are transferred to the startups but the company shares are held by the fund so (1) and (2) are intrinsically associated to this transfer of coins for equity. As a unit holder you provide bitcoin to the startups and you get shares in return, the difference here is that these shares are held by the fund. |
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Hi Korbman, Re. the startups I will reply a bit later but I will also give a chance to their founders to reply, so getting back to you soon on this. --------------- Re. these issues: > I see there are 3 entities associated with this project; SFI (the "Fund"), SHL (the "Issuer"), and SML (the "Management"). Am I to presume all 3 are the same company? I ask because the prospectus notes (under Offering Structure) that SHL is offering 10,000,000 units (20% on December 12th, 80% sometime within the next 365 days), but also that:
Quote
The offering on December 12th, 2013 will represent twenty percent (20%) of the units of the SFI (total units 10,000,000). [...]
my answer: SFI is the Fund name, the company name is SHL so yes SHL = SFI we just use SFI to make it clear this is a fund. SML is a different company, it is the fund management company managing the funds raised by SHL. As you may know a 'fund' is just a company holding other companies' shares so it needs a management company to manage those funds. re. the management fees they are set at 11% so startups will receive 89% of the amount raised so BTC1,780 in total. ------------- All the startup business plans/presentations have been provided to Havelockinvestments.com I will arrange it so that potential investors of SFI will have access to these asap. |
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I think i get it, i'll try to put it in my own words:
1. I hand over my money.
2. You take a management fee, and invest my money in another company.
3. ...or not -- that's left up to you.
4. If the companies you invest in make money, we both get rich.
5. If they all lose money, i go broke and you still get paid.
6. If the above terms are still not to your liking, you reserve the right to change them at any time.
7. I also take a risk on you or your Panamanian exchange walking off with my coin. It would be crass to suggest such a thing anywhere but in bitcoin securities. In bitcoin securities, on the other hand, i would be insane not to.
People who were not directly scammed by asset issuers were scammed by the exchanges. Havelock, the exchange you are associated with, has exactly zero assets trading above IPO price. None.
*If any of the above is inaccurate, i welcome your corrections.
Hi Crumbs, yes the decision to invest has to remain ours otherwise our service is not so clear nor in conformity to how we present it. The management fee is actually helping us providing services to the startups to make sure they do succeed. As I mentioned above some of the startups are in profit mode but of course as with any investments there is always a probability for some to lose money at any given time. When you say 'we both get rich' let me point out to the fact that 100% of the startup equity is held by the fund, this means if the companies make money the unit holders are in first line to get dividends or benefit from the appreciation of such equity. In this particular case the bitcoin will be transferred soon after the IPO to the target companies and should not remain long on Havelockinvestments wallets which I believe have proven safe since they started operating and the Panamanian fund is licensed. Everyone knows reputation is the first asset in the bitcoin securities world and of course this offering is a clear sign of trust on our behalf for the Panama Fund but I leave it up to each potential investor to assess any risk related to buying units via Havelockinvestments.com. |
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I tried reading your prospectus, but there were so many TLAs managing other TLAs that i lost track. What i make out thus far: 1. You wish to raise $10,000,000 with an unsecured loan from us, so that you could, in turn, issue loans to other startups. 2. If things work out well, you reserve the right to change the terms of the prospectus at any point in time. 3. Somewhere along the line we expect to see profit, but exactly how is unclear from your prospectus. 4. Though you admit that your company is not worth 10 mil, you nevertheless are selling shares in  as if that is worth 10 mil. That's what the shares add up to. Could you clear this up? I'm not sure if i should be investing my BTC in your firm, or in a promising flash game site which is also trying to raise a few mil. on Havelock (Havelock, whose own IPO already failed to raise half the money it set out to make, but is being traded anyhow. On Havelock. Yeah.). Anyhow, the flash site doesn't work, but its owner is very enthusiastic about its future. Help me decide? Thanks. Hi Crumbs, We are helping Bitcoin startups with attractive businesses prospects and some already profitable. Our structure is quite similar to standard funds whereby a management company helps a fund to find viable and interesting opportunities in a specific sector or industry, in our case, cryptocurrencies. A fund is mainly a company holding other companies shares so this is why the management team is quite important in the startup selection and investment process and management of the fund. However, I think you should mainly look at the startups since they will be the recipient of most of the bitcoins raised, a small portion of the funds raised will go towards ensuring we can keep providing services to the startups and their founders. The Bitcoin startups are located in various countries around the world and are responding to different needs or solving specific problems in the bitcoin ecosystem. Our company's value is actually a completely different topic which is not part of this IPO, the BTC10,000 we totally wish to raise - over a few offerings - is the amount of bitcoin the fund will invest. The unit holders will hold 100% of the fund. The fund will itself owns shares of the startups so the BTC10,000 should be considered as the available funds to invest in startups and the profit comes from the profit of these startups, and possibly dividends of these startups. Instead of buying units of seven bitcoin companies through seven offerings you have the possibility to buy units of a fund which plans to invest in seven startups (for now) and many more later. I hope this is clearer, let me know if you have any more questions. thanks |
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I've just watched an interview with you. The project is interesting.
However, are you aware about the recent change in Havelock policy that doesn't allow you to withdraw all the funds at once and invest, but only gradually and you'll have to justify to them how all the money is spent. Don't you see this as a potential issue, having to justify yourself to the exchange? It's not a practice I've seen elsewhere.
Hi, Actually this is not a new feature at Havelock, I have been talking to Havelockinvestments since August and the fact that funds must be withdrawn gradually and justified was already mentioned and accepted by us. We have no issue with this and we feel it helps assuring funds are used appropriately. |
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The number of totally bizarre and baseless IPOs that are starting up everywhere is ridiculous.
The boat has sailed on suckers willing to throw their BTC blindlessly in to "profitable" ventures.
Until notions of "success" change for BTC securities, I don't foresee success.
The valuation of this company, assuming $1000/BTC is $10,000,000.
Absolutely ludicrous, in my opinion.
$10,000,000 is not the valuation of a company, nor of Seedcoin, this is a fund whereby 89% of the funds raised will be invested in several bitcoin startups. Out of the first raise of BTC2,000 we will invest in seven startups, payment processors, bitcoin wallets, bitcoin exchanges.. in various locations around the world. So there is not a single valuation but the valuations of the investment targets to consider. Some of these startups are at revenue and even at profit stage. For BTC10,000 to be raised over a few raises Seedcoin will help developing a large number of startups and therefore the whole bitcoin ecosystem, this is our main motivation and interest. |
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Bitcoin cannot be legally used as a currency to buy goods and service in China. The Big Brother says so. Individuals can get away with small scale trading (as in trading bottle caps) but business cannot accept it as a currency without risking running into problems with the authority.
I am not sure there is a specific law addressing this issue in China yet, of course the only government legal tender is RMB but that would be similar to any other country where legal tender is equally the country's own printed fiat. I know some Chinese suppliers of electronics, for example circuit boards, RAM etc currently accept to sell in BTC, after the transaction they may or may not change BTC into RMB or another currency (if they did convert BTC into RMB which is quite easy in China, the authorities would probably not be aware of the preceding BTC transaction unless the supplier reported it), that is up to the supplier at this point but I am not sure it is considered illegal, I would assume it is one of those issues in a legal grey area for now, tolerated until banned or encouraged, let's hope for the latter... |
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I agree that China has a cash based economy but this is changing more and more. Ecommerce has grown exponentially in the past few years which means both credit card payments and ecommerce payment processors (like alipay and tenpay) have also grown very fast. I trust if either one of the mega ecommerce/internet companies such as Alibaba or Tencent were to accept bitcoin there would be a tremendous growth in bitcoin usage in China. These are some numbers I have noted from a recent webinar I participated to and organized by Kapronasia and which I believe will be included in a report they are producing called 'Bitcoin in China' : - 134 accounts on Tabao and 2 on Paipai accept bitcoin for bitcoin exchange; - 10 product merchants on Taobao accept bitcoin; - Yesbtc.co accepts third party Bitcoin transaction guarantees; - Huanle 95 allows bitcoin to buy phone credit. Offline only one cafe in beijing accepts bitcoin (but I know of a restaurant accepting bitcoin in Chengdu). There are 11 transaction platforms in China, most known and used one being BTC China. I think we'll see these numbers evolving rapidly, China is the second country in the world in terms of bitcoin wallets 84000 wallets in China (still according to kapronasia) and 14000 bitnodes -> 11.3 % of the world's total. These numbers being lower than in an article on Coindesk published back in June where China was #1 for bitnodes: http://www.coindesk.com/chinas-romance-with-bitcoin-continues/I am based in Hong Kong and often in China so I follow the bitcoin market in China quite closely. If I hear of exciting news I'll let you know and I'll post it on the bitcoinHK twitter account. fyi I am also organizing Bitcoin Singapore 2013 ( www.bitcoinsingapore2013.com) on November 15. If you are in Asia at that time you can come by and meet several Asian cryptocurrency entrepreneurs. |
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