Yeah it's unlikely it had much to do with the inflation to date.  But consider if he announced he was closing down and looking for a replacement manager.  At that point if you held a significant number it would be worth selling to yourself at progressively higher prices just to inflate the buy-back if no replacement manager was found.  With enough shares (or enough people cooperating) you could block any vote to approve a new manager anyway and force a buy-back.

It's one of the reasons why nothing I run (or will run) has a buy-back clause related to market price - those allow manipulation in both directions (down by issuer IF issuer is allowed to sell new shares and up by investors).

It's a different risk here than for most funds.

Most funds promise in the event they cant continue to sell off assets and share it out to investors.

Sandstorm promises :

"If on the unlikely chance that Sandstorm can't continue:
Shareholders will be fully informed and a suitable replacement for management will be sought after. If this attempt is unsuccessful, shares will be purchased back at 105% of the 7 day average. All remaining assets will be liquidated and distributed to shareholders through dividends."

So he promises to by buy back based on market price - which is horrible for a fund to do.  Having made that promise I think korbman's perfectly valid point is that he should be demonstrating that he has the assets to do so (NOT just the assets the fund holds) otherwise the fund is backed by a promised buyback value which can't be delivered.

Buy-backs based on market price are widely used - and are bad in pretty much every case.  They either allow the issuer to talk (or flood) the price down first OR they expose the issuer to having to pay an excessive amount.

With the current trading price for Sandstorm I have no idea whether the issuer could afford to buy back per his contract - and it would be unreasonable for him to do so anyway.  But that's what his contract promises - and some part of the price rise MAY be due to that, with people realising that per the contract if they can inflate the price then even if it shuts down they get to keep whatever rise they've managed to achieve.

Buy-backs should be based on what's received for assets - other than for bonds where a fixed price should be determined in advance (or a formula provided allowing calculation of the price).

His contract APPEARS to say that shares will be bought back at 105% AND investors will receive proceeds from selling assets.

Sold   1177
Swapped   0
Total   1177
Price   0.048759
Total   57.389343
Less Fee   57.27456431
Man Fee   1.718236929

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)   1496.221803
12581 LTC-ATF.B1    125.81000000
Coinlenders CD    201.76530809
Just-Dice Balance    108.23866033
TOTAL ASSETS    1,932.03577165
   
Outstanding MINING   40943
Outstanding SELLING   40943
Outstanding PURCHASE   634
Effective Units   41577
   
Block reward   25
Difficulty   26,162,876
Hashes per MINING   5000000
   
Daily Dividend    0.00009611
50 days (Min Liquid)    0.00480554
100 days (Forced Close)    0.00961107
365 days (Buyback)    0.03508041
405 days (IPO)    0.03892484
400 days (Post SELLING div)    0.03844428
410 days (Pre SELLING div)    0.03940539
   
NAV Post MINING Div    1,928.03977667
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.04637275
Days Dividend Post Div   482.49
SELLING Dividend    0.00792846
NAV Post SELLING Div    1,598.39799215
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.03844428
PURCHASE selling price    0.04036650
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.03767540

As noted, delay was because I hadn't scheduled the MINING dividend for PURCHASE which meant wallet balance didn't get to where spreadsheet said it should (it was less than 0.1 BTC off but wrong by enough not to be due to rounding of dividends).  Every day before posting the report I make sure the apreadsheet matches what actually happened.  With a SELLING dividend I do so after paying the MINING dividend - which found my error today.  Only 2nd time they haven't matched - previous one was where someone had bought PURCHASE right as I was cancelling the order so my outstanding count was wrong.

SLight delay is because the wallet balance didn't exactly match what was in the spreadsheet.  Turns out I hadn't scheduled todays MINING dividend.  That's going through now - after which everything should balance and SELLING dividends will go out.

Don't think the problem is so severe for Sandstorm as majority of investors bought prior to sale on Havelock.  Price SHOULD drift back down as some of the ones already holding it sell to lock in profits (and maybe to buy back in once its fallen to lower levels).

Raising more funds at the higher price is one of worst things to do for a whole bunch of reasons which I can't go into detail on as got to do other things right now.  But in short either:

It doesn't sell out at the high price - at which point price collapses anyway and issuer is locked in to not selling cheaper or they screw anyone who bought directly from them at the high price.

It does sell out - in which case it'll get flipped to a new even more absurd range and the issuer has added legitimacy to a price well above underlying value plus set a precedent for the markup they're expected to issue more at.

Issuer should just disclose what they're doing with their personal shares (Are they holding them or selling into the inflated price), make sure everyone knows whats actually backing each share and let the market fix itself.  Selling more just because something sold out makes no sense - if issuer needed to sell more then why didn't they do so (or announce that it would happen) in the first place?

If I'd had an account/funds on Havelock I'd have tried to buy a chunk to flip.  This always happens with any IPO which has a small market cap - a few people buy it out then try to resell it at a huge markup.  Some of them actively try to manipulate the market as well.

To see it really in practice, LTC-GLobal is the place to look - would guesstimate half the securities there are, or at some point have been, manipulated up by one or two people holding a lot of the shares, bidding it up, buying off themselves to make the inflated price look like an active trading range etc.

As TAT said, limiting how much one account can buy is NOT the solution.  Solutions, such that they are include:

1.  Giving significant notice of IPOs (a week plus)
2.  Issuer ensuring that the real underlying value is well publicised - unfortunately many issuers prefer their shares to trade at inflated prices (as they can then sell personal holdings and/or issue new ones at the inflated prices).
3.  Educating investors.

#1 is important - not so much because it'll change who gets the shares but because:

a)  It ensures investors are aware of the IPO price for a period of time.  That reduces the problem of ones who never realised it was happening and aren't properly aware of just how inflated a post-pump price is.
b)  It maximises sales revenue for the Issuer.
c)  It reduces whining afterwards - as well as legitimate complaints of not being aware because of short notice.

#2 is tricky as, on the face of it, it acts against the issuer's own interests - most issuers seem to believe that their share price rising is automatically a good thing.  I disagree with that belief but it appears widely held.  It's also very hard to get the message through anyway - I repeatedly said noone should buy my LTC-ATF.B2 at much of a markup (as it's a fixed rate bond only paying about 17% per year) yet within an hour of selling the first batch someone had bought them at over 80% markup to face despite it being callable at 105% of face.

#3 is the best solution (to the extent that there is one).  The problem right now is that investors over-react to anything they perceive as good or bad news.  An IPO is considered good news - as is the arrival of an ASIC - and both are seen as a valid reason for a price to absolutely sky-rocket.  When both should have already been largely priced in already - the former by the issuer and the latter by the market.  We're in the silly situation where as soon as mining companies receive ASICs their price inflates making them even worse that over-priced PMBs.  And where any time anything with a small market cap IPOs it's pumped by speculators/flippers/traders (or actual market manipulators) and the actual investors happily play along.

The solution isn't trying to stop the speculators/flippers etc - it's trying to inform investors so they don't play along other than where it's actually warranted.

Missed that part.

Not to prove mining is unprofitable but that PMBs were horribly over-priced - and offer a more reasonably priced alternative (and allow those who believed them over-priced to express that with BTC rather than just with forum posts).

If you buy a mining rig and mine with it you may make some profit.  If you buy its output at 20 times the cost of the hardware then likely you won't.  Not the same thing

The part that we're nowhere near the levelling off yet.  So dividends AFTER the levelling off represent a very small part of ALL dividends that will be received.  If there was any reasonable chance of levelling off (by which I mean less than about 3% rise per difficulty change on average) in the near  future then DMS couldn't work - for the reasons you describe.  But that's not where we are.

You also misunderstand how closure is likely to work - specifically that MINING get a years worth of dividends assuming ZERO increase as a lump sum.  Unless growth completely halts for a long time that's a pretty good final payment.

So yes - in a steady difficulty environment MINING wouldn't work.  But in a fast-rising difficulty it keeps up with payments well then (theoretically if SELLING act rationally) just as difficulty drops below a rate of 3% they get a payment of 365 days at CURRENT difficulty.

News-flash - there's these things called ASICs being made and as they arrive difficulty is rising a lot.  We aren't at - or near - steady difficulty : but it we were then each MINING share could receive 90% of the PURCHASE price very quickly - rather than in the years it would take to get the same from other PMBs.

Don't underestimate the value of 365 days of dividends immediately rather than waiting years for them whilst praying difficulty doesn't start rising fast again.  And they get paid that by contract (unless SELLING gamble and don't close - when MINING get more but not all at once) - I can't get off cheap by talking the market price down then buying back based on market price.

EDIT:  Short version is you're totally ignoring the value of CP-less cash now rather than CP-exposed cash trickled to you over years.

This the absolute core of what you get wrong.

Yes - DMS is great for some speculators (for others its absolutely horrible - e.g. IPO flippers).
But MINING is also great for investors  - if any PMB is profitable in current price range then MINING is.  That's a HUGE IF of course - there's a whole load of people holding SELLING who think even at the current price MINING will never make a profit (and nor will any other higher priced PMBs if so).

You can't have it both ways.

Either the price will recover - in which case they haven't made a loss.
Or it won't recover - in which case how can it keep happening?  How much cheaper does it have to be before having to maybe wait a few days to sell is worth it?

And people who bought, saving that 8%, haven't lost it unless they planned to sell now (there's a very minor exception to that if difficulty now dropped - but that's not what's happening).  They'll receive exactly the same dividends as they'd have got if the price had doubled, halved or remained unchanged.

People buying PMBs or contracts buy an income stream.  They still have it and its underlying value hasn't changed.  What HAS changed is the price the market is trading it at.

There's precisely one reasonable scenario in which your agrument definitely makes sense (other than for a tiny minority of people with horrible cash-management skills).  That's if BOTH of MINING and BFMINING were sginficantly over-priced at the start.  In that scenario, a falling price of MINING represents the market realising it was over-priced - and BFMINING not reacting so fast gives investors there more time to get out, possibly losing less.  Or it would if there were any bids.

If they weren't overpriced initially then MINING dropping BELOW a fair price isn't bad news at all as :

a)  It will almost certainly recover once people realise it's underpriced.
b) The investor can buy more at bargain prices if they want.

The sole time it's THEN bad news is if they have an overwhelming need to sell right now (i.e. they're horrible at managing their money and shouldn't be touching ANY security without issuer-provided liquidity).  But, as already pointed out, they can't sell any volume on BFMINES near starting price either (anyone in a desperate rush to sell needs bids waiting).

On the subject of percentages be careful what you look at when considering what people are reacting to.  Some people are using sites that predict NEXT difficulty based on current hash-rate - those are suggesting a 20% rise next time as well, so they may be basing their judgment on that.  I think thay's unwise - as with only a tiny sample since difficulty change there's no way to distinguish between increased has-power and good network luck.  But don't assume all price movements are necessarily just because of what HAS happened - some people factor in other things (not all of which SHOULD be factored in of course).

I should add one thing.

There IS a good reason why there'll usually be high volatility on MINING the day before the first dividend after a large difficulty change.  SELLING will get a massive dividend the next day - because of that people have to pull SELLING bids in advance of the didivend.  That process starts the day before - and results in a wide spread on SELLING (with maybe a few orders from those who didn't cancel in the gap).

Because MINING and SELLING can be arbitraged vs PURCHASE that leads to uncertainty and a wider than usual spread on MINING.  Because this only occurs after a large difficulty rise that it going to tend to be demonstrated by a downward movement of MINING.

So larger spreads and a bit more volatility ARE expected on the day before large SELLING dividends.  Which has zero impact on actual investors - and adds lots of potential fun for those trading.  On the previous two occasions the price recovered back to where it was before - which can't continue forever as we know the value of PMBs falls over time.

If someone wants to sell right now then yes - they'd make a heavy loss.  But at least they CAN sell - on BFMINES there's next to zero bids above HALF the IPO price even though nothing has changed.  So right now it's choice between selling at 20% below where it was yesterday or selling at 50% below where it was yesterday.  And something in IPO which hasn't yet paid a single dividend or done anything shouldn't be dropping at all.

I DO agree that MINING isn't any use for speculators who want to buy something at IPO and watch the price rise.
For investors who buy to hold for dividends the daily trading price ONLY matters when they want to sell.
And if the price is low because of panic now (as you think) rather than being an actual correction from being overvalued (which some think - as it basically hasn't fallen for 3 weeks) then it's a great time to buy it right?

IF your theory about the double pressure making panics move the price is right then it's actually a BETTER option for the specific people you identified.  They just have to time their buy for one of those panics - then worst case is they sell at bottom of another (getting same profit as alternatives but with less capital tied up) and best case is they make an immediate profit when the price rises back up.

Your logic is just terribly flawed as assume people will do the worst possible thing - then use the assumption that people CAN do worse on MINING than BFMINES ((if they pick the worst timing for everything and do some half-hearted mix of investing/speculating) as somehow meaning that they will.

We'll find out in a few days whether this was a panic dump or an overdue correction - a lot of the volume was actually some people buying SELLING because of its dividend tomorrow then others arbitraging via PURCHASE and dropping MINING to balance.

The real key today is the lack of people BUYING PMBs at all - suggesting a price move downwards is coming for all.  Majority of volume on TAT.VM was TAT offloading a load more into the bids of people who naively believed they could buy then flip for a profit.  The price didn't  fall lower there as he opened up a nice spread, so noone other than him was selling much into bids and he was only selling down to .004.  

Anyone desperate to be able to sell securities immediately without significant loss shouldn't invest in EITHER of MINING or BFMINEs (or any other security without a guaranteed bid-wall from the issuer).  MINING can move around a lot (bids tend to be small but replaced quite a lot - so even if price is stable it can take a while to sell any quantity) and BFMINES has near zero demand above 50% of IPO - so no way for anyone to sell any sort of amount anyway without having a haircut that's near a decapitation.  If people want immediate liquidty stick to securities where the issuer provides it - or don't invest at all.

If people can wait a day or two then IF this is just a panic/over-reaction/excessive arbitrage of SELLING demand then price will recover.

Pretty much regardless of everything else, it's generally better to buy the under-priced one than the over-priced one (speaking relatively - both may be under-priced or both over-priced).  Either MINING is so cheap it can be bought and forgot about, confident of profit or it isn't.  And if MINING isn't cheap then BFMINES must be over-priced (or the chances of profit slim).  

You'd better hope MINING price rises - or your sales are going to drop through the floor.  As I don't think there's THAT many 'investors' who will pay 1/3 more for non-delivered hardware just because they're worried MINING occasionally spikes downwards AND have faith that bids will appear from nowhere on BFMINES if they ever need to sell.

I got same message - as I'm sure loads of others did.

Deleted it and gave him negative feed-back.

EDIT: removed link from the post.

I assume when you said "unwarranted vote with a comment" you actually meant "vote with an unwarranted comment" - as it would clearly be rather silly to have a voting system if burnside already knew which VOTES were warranted.

Think the suggestion fails on logical grounds anyway.

Say I'm a moderator (I'm not) and I vote with the comment "Asset isn't fit to be listed" or "Contract is unfair to investors".  If burnside is going to determine whether the comment is fair or not then he may as well just approve or delete the asset in the first place as he can't rule on the fitness of the comment without (largely) determining the thing that the listing process is supposed to do.  That, in a nutshell, is the problem with ruling on comments - that the effort to determine whether comments are fair could be as much as, or even exceed, that to determine whether an asset should be listed without bothering with moderators at all.

One possible bodged solution would be to allow asset issuers to check a box whereby no public comments from moderators would be displayed - just the tally of votes.

I don't particularly like it but it would at least allow those sensitive souls who don't want anonymous and unhindered commentary to get it.  Of course it would also make it harder for them to change moderators' minds.  But you can't really have a scenario where comments are allowed - but only if the asset issuer likes them.  The choice would basically be between allowing feedback or not allowing it - with no horrible middle ground of "allow feedback unless I don't like it".

Then anyone who wanted existing comments removed would just ask for all their votes to be cleared and the box ticked before voting recommenced to reenable trading on their asset.

Well yeah - we ARE trying to solve the wrong problem.  We're trying to define how an upaid and unqualified group of people selected entirely on the basis of owning specific shares should act when determining whether a security and issuer are fit to list or not.  And we're also discussing how much ability potentially unfit issuers should have in suppressing criticism of themself.

There's NOT going to be any easy solutions to that - as the former (the moderator concept) is by no means an ideal concept.  But there's a lack of feasible alternatives on a low budget - the Bitfunder approach (one guy has a quick look then says yes) is at least as bad (don't think AML's first draft where it predicted mining more coins per day than the whole network does would have got through on BTC-TC - nor would a company that wouldn't even disclose its AREA of business).

Ultimately you get what you pay for.  Bitfunder and BTC-TC both want listing to be cheap (and neither can afford to raise their fee significantly if the other doesn't) so the means of appraising those listings is also going to be cheap.

Yeah, on reflection tend to agree with you - as arguing against the comment IS a form of other pressure.  I think agreeing not to threaten or engage in legal action is reasonable though.

In theory I'd like to see comments like that not allowed.  In practice I think they have to be allowed.

First two general points:

Moderators MUST be allowed to make their votes anonymously.  Otherwise we open the door to issuers harassing them by PMs, blackmailing or threatening them or offering to bribe them.  Anonymity is a key part of allowing honest expression of opinion without fear of reprisal.  Legal threats are one element of that - we don't want people changing votes from NO to YES because they're threatened with legal action.

The second point is also key : issuers must be allowed to respond to allegations against or negative about them.

In theory I'd like comments like the one in question to be deleted because it lacks sufficient specific detail for usagi to be able to work out what it is that is claimed to constitute fraud.  Short of explaining every action he's ever made in respect of all securities he's run it's impossible to refute the claim.

In practice I don't think it's an approach that can be taken.  For that to be done then some means would have to be provided where someone making a strong accusation was anonymously able to provide proper supporting detail for it.  And IF that were done then it would then lead on one-sided results, where those saying NO had to justify their responses in detail whilst those voting YES didn't have to.  If, for example, someone voting no and saying "Dishonest" had to justify that characterisation then a similar level of justification should also be required for those voting YES and saying "Honest".

Somewhere, of course, there HAS to be a line.  If, for example, a NO vote said "Issuer is a paedophile" then I assume you'd delete it - or would you be inclined to let it remain if accompanied by a link to a page justifying the claim? (NOTE : I'm NOT in anyway accusing usagi of being a paedophile - it's just an extreme example I picked).  I think the line (at which a comment is not allowed even WITH justification) has to drawn at around the point where comments become personal in nature rather than related to the issuer's conduct in business.  This comment is short of that line so doesn't warrant deletion because of its nature.

That leaves the matter of the issuer being able to respond.  To an extent, issuers have that ability even if the detail of an allegation isn't spelled out.  Were I viewing that comment without any preconception of usagi's character then I would tend to discount it if I could also see a response from usagi saying "Please be more specific about what you believe consituted fraud."  If whoever made the vote didn't respond (by editing their response to include a link to a pastebin or whatever) then I'd tend to ignore the specifics of it (especially if it were the only allegation of such a nature).  Issuers can also make (and link to) threads in which explain why an allegation is ridiculous - they can even make those threads self-moderated so that if their accuser DOES post details they can just delete it.  So it's not as those they're totally without recourse.

My suggestions are two:

1.  Provide a means whereby an issuer can respond to a NO vote with their (brief) response being shown below the NO vote.
2.  Add to Issuer Terms that by listing an asset they undertake not to threaten or engage in legal action or exert other pressure to attempt to make Moderators edit or remove votes.

As 2 would be change to the terms, obviously any existing issuers not accepting it would be free to delist their asset.

You have the principle wrong.

Let's assume every change happened just like the current one.

Next dividend would NOT be 0.008 again.  The amount of the dividend depends on what the current NAV/U is - and that will be much smaller after this one.

So next dividend would actually be more like .0064 then the one after that .0051 etc.  Each time the size of the dividend would get smaller - so although it would tend towards 0 it would never actually get there. (EDIT: that's assuming similar difficulty rise to this one, similar profits from investment etc).

The amount of the dividend isn't actually a percentage of SELLING price anyway - it's based on PURCHASE price (which is a reflection of NAV/U) and isn't the same as the percentage difficulty rsie (it's just a coincidence that this time it happens to be the same % of SELLING price).

The total assets drop when the dividends are paid - that's what they're used for where they go.

You can see how it works yourself.  Just start off with some number like 10 - and take off 10% each time.  How long does it take you to reach 0?

With what you were describing it would reach 0 in 10 gos.  But if you keep multiplying it by 0.9 (which takes 10% off CURRENT value) then you won't reach 0 ever (subject to limitations of whatever you do it on).

Any chance of adding the ability to repay recurring dividends?  So I could check a box for "Daily" by a dividend then it would make the same payment at the same time every day until cancelled.   Would guess daily and weekly are the only ones likely to be of much use.  Dividend should be able to be a fixed amount or a fixed amount per share as at present.