Any still available?
Yes there is still at least half the offering available at the moment. Can i buy XBOND right FROM TAT to convert to NEOBEE? You can purchase XBOND from Havelock, however it is trading above face value. |
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The updated prospectus has now been released as promised, I shall shortly be uploading spreadsheet that contains matching data from the movements of the April Bubble, starting at the highest point and finishing at the lowest point across the 7 day period, with rudimentary trades to display that we would have survived. The updated prospectus can be found here: http://lmb-holdings.com/LMB_Holdings_Prospectus.pdf |
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please give us a link to the "updated" prospectus
Just making the final amendments, I was up until 6:30am making the updates, before I had to leave for a meeting at 9am. Just finalizing everything to ensure it is correct and delivered ahead of the XBOND pre-IPVO offering opening. Once it is completed and checked by all parties, we shall be making it public. |
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And there I was, thinking that the upcoming ASIC war was going to be an interesting development in the Bitcoin world.
Like I said before, I'm not sure whether a "Bank" is the right way to improve Bitcoin's mainstream adoption. But I do think that people would be more open for Cryptocurrencies if getting Coins were 1) as easy as walking into a bank branch and 2) hedged against volatility. Also an actual physical office with everyday people will probably inspire more confidence than shady looking Russian online exchanges filled with trolls and teenagers.
Either way, please, for the love of Crypto and all that is hashing, make sure that your clients know that there are risks involved in Bitcoin's volatility and that you are taking the appropiate steps to mitigate those. Be transparent about these measures. Make sure you can properly handle huge spikes of direct customer communications in times of large market movements. And always prioritize the safety of your client's funds over profit.
We are being very open about everything, we are also trying to bridge other gaps in the market to make Bitcoin available on traditional trading platforms. Our customers will be well aware of both the benefits and risks involved with Bitcoin, that is something that we will be making certain, we have a no small print policy, there is no fine print stating that our customer are unsecured creditors to us, or anything that the traditional banks don't make people fully aware of. We are doing our best to get away from the stigma now attached to the word "bank" here locally. We are a new way to control your own finances. Don't worry we are here for the long term so the security of our customers funds will always proceed profit requirements, unlike the traditional banks non of our Neo employees will have sales targets. |
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Many of these questions have been previously answered and many shall be addressed in the updated prospectus being released in a few hours such as the "what happens when BTC loses value", but I will go through them again for people.Surely, if someone is willing to put their "Money" into a bank that backs their assets with BTC they must have a significant amount of faith in the viability of a long BTC future.
Keep in mind it's Cyprus, where standard euros (backed by nothing) can one day be worth half what they were, and you still can't get them back. Granted, they will have to do some explaining. 7.5 million Euros worth of explaining, based on their business plan. As far as I can tell, the deal is that if BTC goes up, they keep the difference from their customers' deposits. If BTC goes down,  . I'm not sure why anyone would put their money in if they're exposed to risk for no reward. I eagerly await an explanation. I'd really like to see this work, but the prospectus makes me very uncomfortable. Even the "conservative" projections still assume bitcoin will go up.
Thanks for the questions, we offer the ability for our customers to use the Bitcoin protocol to benefit their own needs, many of Cypriots demands following the recent bail-in's is the requirement to place their money into a financial product where it cannot be taken against their will.
We shall also be offering time based deposits so the customer can deposit their money for a fixed period of time (6 - 60 months) and receive a percentage of any increases.
The updated prospectus will include scenarios, as to where there is a flash crash of -75% across a 2 hour period with no recovery in the rate on the first day of trading, followed by a run of all instant access deposits in the last hour of the branches working day.
We have a great marketing partner, our advertising includes TV, Radio, Print Media, OOH campaigns and lots of below the line activities to drive awareness of what we are bringing to the market. We have had coverage in the largest newspaper in the financial section, which explained the reasons as to why Bitcoin will be of benefit to Cypriots. That is why we have projected the level of deposits in the first month of €7.5m, in the grand scale of things here, is not a great deal of money considering one bank has been losing €10m per day in cash withdrawals whilst a €300p/d limit has been enforced. The vast majority of these cash withdrawals are making their way into closets and under mattresses.
We are also working on bringing other revenue streams online, such as insurance, international remittance and lending.I've got another question - obviously a lot of money has already been invested in this venture, if you're building a bank branch and making regulatory filings and so on. Where did this money come from? What does your balance sheet look like right now? If this money was fronted by the existing partners in this venture, why will they hold only 40% of the equity? Edit: Okay, I finished reading all of your prospectus. You seem to be operating on the assumption that you will receive 7.5 million euros of deposits, in the first month of operation, from a populace that is now wary of banking institutions. Can you provide any material defense of this assumption? Any precedents, like what is typical for a start-up bank? Furthermore, you conclude you will be profitable by March. Is this predicated on a continued increase in the value of bitcoins? At what point do you project an investment in this security would be more profitable than holding the bitcoins, ignoring speculative value?Also, what does the red square represent in this image? 
We will be profitable by march if the exchange rate increases at the rate described. We are providing even more detailed figures that demonstrate a drop in the price. One thing to remember is that we shall be increasing demand whilst reducing the availability of many coins for a fixed period of time through our time based accounts.
The red in the image represents the part of the building that will be the location of our flagship branch, the offices which have had the deposits and securities paid in full are on the first floor, there is a glass wall surrounding the veranda which will allow us to wrap our signage around the building as per the virtual branding representation of the branch.
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this from a consumer standpoint. What would my main motivation be to work with these services?
Is it just having an alternative storage of value other than the euro, or will there be services offered?
Surely, if someone is willing to put their "Money" into a bank that backs their assets with BTC they must have a significant amount of faith in the viability of a long BTC future. If they have this much faith in Bitcoin i would imagine they have done a considerable amount of research on their part. If they are this savvy about tech and finance why wouldn't that just manage their own BTC?
Tl;dr
What are we offering that the consumer can't just do themselves?
A simple solution, everyone on this forum can manage their own wallets and most can secure them sufficiently, but for the average man/woman in the street the idea of them managing and securing their own wallet is out of the question. Once people start reading or listening to someone talk about Bitcoin in a complex manner, something everyone here is capable of doing the average person will lose interest within 20 seconds of the word "cryptography" being used.Would your lawyers feel comfortable identifying themselves and their qualifications, and sharing some of their (ostensibly extensive) legal filings? The legal side of this seems just as important as the business side, and I don't think it's getting enough attention.
Our lawyers have confirmed their involvement with ourselves and that they are currently preparing the requests to the Attorney General to have a legal framework created for Bitcoin based businesses (This has been performed as part of the due-diligence by TATI). The legal questions were answered very early in the thread. Bitcoin is not money in Cyprus, so we are working hard to change that. Please also remember that Cyprus is much smaller than many other countries so getting in front of the right decision makers is much easier than it would be elsewhere in the world. These direct channels of communication are very much in place already.
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ETA on elongated prospectus?
Still working on the updated prospectus, it's 3am and the coffee is flowing! It will be released before the pre-IPVO offering opens tomorrow/today |
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The photos are awesome, looks like a Wall Street building being conquered by the Bitcoiners!
I will have to post some photos, so you can see just how much it stands out in the area, the owner got special permission to build twice the height of standard building regulations. |
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Can you post any real pictures of your branch and of the Bee debit card? And post the address of your main branch. I agree with neotrix. Some virtual pictures, a general description of your business without important details and some alleged contracts with several firms is not enough for a multi-million dollar IPO. I hope the prospectus update can clear the main concerns. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=289730.msg3115282#msg3115282Sure, the building has been constructed, the interior renovations start at the end of November the interior designers are providing their 3D walkthroughs 15 days from Thursday for the flagship branch, the offices we take delivery on the 23rd September. The address of both the head offices and the flagship branch is, 7 Stars Tower, Engomi, Nicosia. You can't miss the building! The Interior The first floor is our offices (We take delivery on the 23rd September) The renovations taking place in the offices (This photo was taken several days ago, since the raised floor has been completed throughout all of the offices) Another picture of the building (You can clearly see the glass wall surrounding the veranda on the first floor, this will be branded as per the image in the prospectus, the full length and width of the building will become signage for us.) The updated prospectus will include additional scenarios based upon the worst possible cases. We will also make it clearer as to how we operate because some misunderstandings have been made, increasing the concern from some people. |
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Initially the possibility of people withdrawing Bitcoin to the wild is slim because that would entail them understanding how to use Bitcoin in its raw format, we expect that until we open up the possibility for opening accounts from within the wider European Union direct Bitcoin withdrawals will be almost non existent.
The capital controls are under review in the September meeting of the Troika however this is of no concern because we are signing off on a partnership shortly that will enable the physical notes to remain in Cyprus whilst providing us with those funds electronically outside of the traditional Cypriot banking infrastructure. This ensures that we have zero exposure with our "competitors", ensuring they cannot try and complicate matters with frozen accounts, temporary holds etc.
Ah, so there will probably be a ruling long before your opening. That's good. We have spent the last 12 months making the necessary contacts with both regulators, government officials and key influential groups such as those now challenging the EU over the bail-ins. The initial lobbying efforts have been very promising, the president himself has spoken about the need for a "Plan B". One of the joys of Cyprus being small is the 2 degrees of separation, in larger countries this would have been a much drawn out process after speaking with personal assistants for months just to ensure a letter is passed onto the relevant person. Here we don't have that problem. Good to hear you have contacts. Do you have assurances one way or the other? Or are these verbal understandings, where you have consent to operate but not a guarantee of future shutdown (assuming you follow all regulations)? We have our Lawyers preparing the requests to have regulations placed upon us (specifically to create fitting regulations for a Bitcoin based business), we know that we can operate unregulated but it is not something we want to do. If we are regulated, it will give us a better reputation from the outset. |
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Just an opinion.
Bank of Cyprus had a market cap of only two magnitudes above the IPVO price, while having a large market share and dipping into a much larger range of businesses.
The opportunity is the mistrust of the Cypriots against their current banking system, but Bitcoin would sound equally shady to a lot of them. Mass adoption of Bitcoin could also expose Cyprus to external manipulation, so there is a risk that the grand plan would backfire. Moreover, remember Cyprus is a small country with ~1 million people, who are current having trouble spending money - expect much less consumer activity than your "usual" developed country, and note that a large part of this business revolve around consumer services.
Neo & Bee will at best grow just like an average start-up of its kind, probably even slower in its valuation in terms of Bitcoins. Nonetheless this can be seen as a worthwhile venture. If you believe in this startup, you should look away from the Bitcoin share price and focus on how it strengthens the Bitcoin economy. Basically, see it as a donation to help the rest of your Bitcoins rise. Good luck.
Thank you for the insightful post, The Bank of Cyprus market cap took some serious damage when they and the bank that was force-ably merged with them, had to levy 47.5% of deposits from the Bank of Cyprus customers that held more than €100k with them and Laiki customers lost everything over €100k, it is not the inability to spend money that is an ongoing issue, it is the broken trust that is of the biggest concern for Cypriot people. We are going to be addressing that broken trust, by telling people to let us gain their trust, we also have respected people in the Media willing to explain the technical aspects of Bitcoin and why we can deliver what we promise to do (Unable to take customers money without their consent) to their readers. Many people have vast sums of money hidden under the mattress because of this broken trust. We will also be adding more revenue streams in the near future, to ensure that we can grow at a sustainable rate. |
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Hi,
I must say your endeavour seems very bold and if sincere worth fighting for.
Politicians around the world are practically always serfs of the banking elite which does not like competition to say the least. Why do you think Cypriot political cast is willing to talk to you? Do you anticipate any repercussions from banksters/politicians in case of a success with Cypriot populous?
Btw, is it already ok to place buy orders for TAT.NEOBEE at BTCT as it is absolutely possible or should we wait for official IPVO on Friday?
Thanks and best regards
We have already established these contacts, they are willing to talk to us because we have been recommended to them by influential individuals. The "banksters" have destroyed their credibility with the populous here already and the recent appointments to the Bank of Cyprus board were not well received either, by the time we start making a dent in their businesses, for them to notice we will already be a huge success, we would have proven to be a solid alternative to the existing banks. You can place early orders, I do believe the assets are being publicly listed on the other two exchanges today, to allow for early bids to be placed. The first orders will get filled first once the shares are released. |
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This will end my sockpuppeting, but I'm most confident and optimistic about N&B out of all my current investments.
Who are you really then? (I ask because you use the term sockpuppet, and I want people to be clear that I do not involve myself in sock-puppeting, nor does cryptocyprus). It is certainly not me. I have PM'd N_S to see if he was one of the early investors on the private round that sold out. |
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I'm impressed  Thank you for your answers, this cleared up a lot. Issues of centrality aside, I do think an easy to use service layer of Fiat => Bitcoin => Fiat could very well help both mainstream propagation and closing the loop. Looking forward to see your updated prospectus. I'm especially interested in your planned ratio of Bitcoin reserves to Fiat accounts holding (eg. for every EUR 100,- in a Fiat account you hold EUR 200,- worth of Bitcoins at free market price) It will be a constantly changing reserve and ratio, because there are so many contributing factors. The updates to the prospectus will demonstrate this much better than words alone. |
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I realize that asking folks to peer into the murky future is inviting a lot of wild speculation. However, speculation about future event possibilities can sometimes spark innovative ideas. At the risk of drowning in a sea of ridicule, I ask these questions:
1. What will all of the monster hashing machines do after the last coin is mined?
2. What will the peer-to-peer network be doing?
3. What are the large holders going to do with their massive collections of BTC?
Looking forward to some interesting ideas.
/Frank
By this time there will be sufficient transaction volumes to provide miners with a greater income derived from mining fees over new block rewards. By 2140 when the last of the 21 million are mined, the entire 21 million will be distributed amongst millions of people (only if mass adoption occurs). |
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I failed to answer one part of the questions from HeRetik
number of current account holders of traditional banks, number of people closing accounts with traditional banks... ?
We know from the statistical figures released by the Central Bank every month as to what deposits are held by Monetary Financial Institutions, the Bank of Cyprus being the largest MFI has been losing vast sums despite the €300 per day withdrawal limit. I will provide a monthly breakdown of figures when I get a chance (maybe later this evening or early hours tomorrow morning). Sorry I don't have the time to do it right now.
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What is the total amount that will be raised?
The maximum income from the IPVO following a complete sell out of the public offerings would be BTC25,250 the required sales to get to market as planned is BTC14,097 by the start of February 2014. (Depending on the exchange rate) However the more we sell the stronger our starting position is. Please also note that the majority of our strategic partners are being compensated in BTC at their request, so these will not just be dumped onto the markets following completion of the IPVO. The prospectus will be updated (Monday/Tuesday) to reflect these figures, as some last minute changes had occurred. |
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Great post and questions HeRetik!
This project sounds very interesting, but I'm still not sure what to think. To be honest it sounds pretty crazy, but then again it might be just crazy enough to work. I do have a problem with the aspect of centralization though. If this takes off, it will bring quite some volume to the market, but it might also become a single point of failure, not unlike the legacy banking system. If this project goes awry and non-Bitcoiners lose money (i.e. your Fiat clients) the media is going to have a field day. Bitcoin should still be considered a highly speculative investment, therefore bringing "civilians" into the mix that are just looking for a safe place to store their Fiat seems pretty risky. Banks using high risk assets for saving accounts is partially what caused this financial mess in the first place. In other words, please make sure to have proper contingency plans and exit strategies prepared to avoid financial damages to your clients and reputational damage to Bitcoin. Nonetheless it's great to see a fresh, bold project apart from the regular mining operation or gambling site. Especially one that aims to propagate the mainstream use of Bitcoin.
100% agree that we shouldn't become a single point of failure, that is why we want others to follow in our footsteps once we have shown that Bitcoin can be adopted en-mass.
We are using multiple signature addresses to ensure that if we as a business fail, the depositor can gain access to their Bitcoin through a separate legal entity. This step by step process will be provided on account opening and available online, to ensure that the customer is well aware that they could get their Bitcoin out of their wallets if we were to go out of business.
Bitcoin will always be highly speculative and extremely volatile until it attracts more users and has many more real world applications, the volatility will only be addressed through volume, something we will be contributing towards. As our customer base grows naturally retained deposits shall follow suit, the more Bitcoin we hold for our customers, the more we will know what is happening to a larger percentage of the coins available. (For demonstrations sake and ignoring slippage; if we had a customer deposit €1m into a 12 month time-based deposit account, at the current price on Bitstamp $125.64 that would equate to BTC10640.7195, we would know that those 10640.7195 Bitcoin cannot be dumped onto the public markets to influence the price negatively for a minimum of 12 months, but that would only happen if we needed to liquidate those coins, to cover the withdrawal.)
It is still early for Bitcoin, however it will always be "early" if the big steps towards mass-adoption are never taken.
2 questions:
a) I'm not sure whether I understood your course of action correctly.
Step 1: Buy up Bitcoins on the free market (ie. other exchanges) which will serve as your backing
We will not acquire all of our coins on the free markets, doing so could mean that we are initially buying off the back of our own hype, so we will also be purchasing them away from the exchanges. We are also in talks with the owners of trading platforms, that operate out of Cyprus (for tax reasons) to ensure they integrate Bitcoin on their platforms, we are also proposing that the board members of the companies, that own these platforms partake in our lobbying efforts.
Step 2: Keep the Bitcoins in the local market (ie. Neo) and trade them at local prices
That is what Bee is for, to create somewhat of a closed loop economy, thus ensuring the maximum number of Bitcoin can remain here in Cyprus. Once others follow our lead it will present more opportunities to establish a new global infrastructure to allow frictionless cross border transactions between our own institutions. This would also allow the migration of customers deposits to others offering the same user friendly services should for any reason one of the businesses fail.
Step 3: Buy / Sell Bitcoins on the free market to make your Bitcoin holdings correspond to the Fiat your clients have deposited (at a much smaller Volume then Step 1)
Yes but also including other platforms that we shall trade on, we do not trade the funds held in our customers wallets, once the rate changes locally we shall automatically balance their Bitcoin from our own reserves, will will never be illiquid unless we cannot acquire enough BTC to complete the adjustments required following a drop in price, to our depositors wallets, as previously mentioned in the thread I shall be providing an updated prospectus either Monday or Tuesday that includes scenarios that include the worst possible case scenarios and their effects on our reserves and the strength of our business.
Step 4: Profit / Loss depending largely on the difference between the Fiat holdings of your clients and the Bitcoin backing required.
We will be introducing other financial related products to increase the amount of revenue streams we have, these include; insurance products, lending, international money transfer services and many others.
Is this correct or did I miss something?
b) What figures are you basing your estimated numbers of accounts on (eg. 3100 accounts in February)? Your expected reach in advertising, number of current account holders of traditional banks, number of people closing accounts with traditional banks... ?
We have a strategic partnership with Telia & Pavla BBDO who will be responsible for our marketing and PR activities, they have worked with some of the largest brands in the world and achieved great success when launching new innovative products to the Cypriot market. The figures in relation to our marketing reach for television advertisements are included in the prospectus, the reach is forecast at 85%, whilst targeted at those between the ages of 25-54. We also have radio, print media, online media and out of home campaigns (Billboards both inner city and along the motorways) happening alongside our below the line campaigns.
Sorry in case any of this has been answered before. I very much appreciate your transparency and responsiveness so far.
We want to be transparent with everyone and thank you.
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This definitely looks promising. I don't know how many people would be interested in bitcoin in Cyprus on their own, but given the government confiscations of money in bank accounts there, I would expect you'd have a lot of demand for it.
Yes, there is lots of demand for a solution to the problem that people have just experienced, but Bitcoin needs to be simple and the common shortfalls of Bitcoin needed to be addressed, so we have done just that to ensure the use of Bitcoin here has a good chance of taking off on a scale previously only dreamed about. |
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I really should read the white paper and everything that has to do with BitCoin. I understand almost nothing about the technical part of BitCoin. Shame on me!
Yes. It is great to know. And knowing will help you a lot in these days, however for Bitcoin to ever be mainstream, in my opinion it will have to eventually be completely unimportant to those using it to understand ECC, block chains, proof of work or anything technical really.. That is what part of my speech includes, because that is what we are doing here with Neo & Bee in Cyprus. |
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We haven't launched any PR campaign as of yet. People know we are coming but no mass media at this moment in time, our offices are located in a landmark building so that shall also raise our presence locally once we take delivery of them on the 23rd September.
The piece in the newspaper came as a pleasant surprise.
Monday/Tuesday an updated prospectus shall be released because the most concern in this thread has come from some misunderstandings on how we will be operating. These will all be addressed to make it much more clear as to what we are doing including the effects of a 75% flash crash over a 2 hour period without any recovery of the rate during that day. To make the scenario even worse, we shall include a run on 100% of instant access accounts during our first day of accepting deposits to demonstrate that we will still be in business should this event occur.
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