Today was a sad day, because the clearing of overdrafts destroyed Rakshasa's dreams (as per previous post). I feel very bad personally, despite that recruiting him did not end up well, which caused game-wide problems, and that it was predominantly me (along with the select shareholders of GSIC) who needed to foot the bill. The rising XMR combined with a paused game was devastating for anyone who was short, no matter what reason. And I would have to be rude to say that it is a useful experience (even if that is true, been there myself).

The low mood arrived to the markets as well: 52 hours after the opening, CKG goes for 62,500 and CON is 6.9 mil, the lowest price ever for CON. This indicates that the markets perceive there is a real risk of default. There has been no Town Council talk or any new information arriving, just markets.

GSIC survives the -700 mil cupping and has listed some of Rakshasa/Freemasonry treasures for sale. Since the situation in items markets is clearly "blood running on the streets", the precious jewels and other fine goods are at compelling prices. Do not buy when everyone is buying, buy now!

The remaining cases of negative balance are ILUVBTCFOC and PJ. The former can handle their own affairs, but I'd like to utter a word about PJ. He is our first full-time team member who made a terrible mistake right after the game was paused. Unsure about the exact rules, and unchallenged by the others since he is a core dev, he market sold some items and withdrew the money. I had no way to leave the trades in force, because they had caused overdraft to the buyers, who assumed that the game is paused as it had been told. When we woke up to the severity of the situation, the trades were reversed, so the now-massive overdraft fell on PJ who had already withdrawn the much less valuable XMR only weeks before. If you have heart for PJ, please help him now. Anything is appreciated but the most appreciated is cold hard M. King will donate 100 million towards our dear and longstanding developer's plight.

Other than the above, we are fine, and I have spent the nice Saturday to seek ways to activate the existing playerbase just enough, while reserving time for the CEO duties including searching the new CEO.

King has pledged 1,000 CKG (plus non-disclosed other prizes) to a raffle whose tickets everyone, great and small, can gain by activating himself in the game. Everything counts as activation. I will mention some of the awarded amounts here in the following days as well. I cannot monitor everything that happens - and doing it would be counterproductive for my duties - so even the getting of the RAF-4 tickets is somewhat of a chance I might for instance decide to "reward people who trade in a certain item category that usually has trading (eg. CAN, gems, IC/SCI)". Then go to that category and give a few tickets to everyone who has been a recent buyer or seller in these items, or has bids or asks. Certainly, contribution towards the game project such as helping with data, qualifies to a lot of tickets. We want the game back to life, in every way

ADD: most game items are lacking any guidance about the going price, and it may feel stupid to bid on eg. NPC because their activation is far in the future and some are even questioning if we live that long! So, a few guidelines:
* Collectibles (items with no function) are worth exactly the sum that the parties agree upon.
* Economic things (anything related to production, consumption, or building) tend to be priced in EUR even though their prices are denominated in XMR. Town Council sets the "NPC salary coefficient" and has historically aimed to keep it constant in EUR. Currently we are almost exactly 10x higher than before the pause, so the rule of thumb is to cut one zero, eg. BLD used to be 8,000, now 800 might be close.

That's all folks!

Yes, after the multi-year double top at 0.01, I said that it's only 30% likely that we go up before visiting 0.004.

So I was wrong at a 70% call.

After that I have been both wrong and correct, but can hardly give better than 60-40 as the situation is so interesting. For the reader that might sound being in the complete darkness, but for the trader, even 55-45 are nice odds if you can forecast them correctly.

Now it is not in the cards to go to 0.004. The lowest realistic retracement is revisit to the 2014 ATH, about 0.01.

Town Council court decision #1 concerning the case

Whereas,
FREEMASONRY (385) has a balance of -693,511,465 M ;

The account is an ingame corporation managed by RAKSHASA (328): 1,044,378 M ;

Who also owns the said corporation fully, without any stock issued or documents ;

Whereas,
The markets in the game opened in 2016-9-1 ;

Gamemaster made the decision that overdrafts need to be covered under threat of foreclosure ;

FREEMASONRY assets are far insufficient to cover the overdraft ;

Whereas,
when (the player behind) RAKSHASA was contacted, he made the claims:

1. The overdraft was caused by bug that caused the Building module to be unusable so that BLD did not have any sink.
2. This made BLD unsaleable.
3. The company did not have possibility to adjust operations and was bound by agreements with another company to continue.
4. The bug should have been fixed or the game paused.
5. Since this was not done despite his calls to action when the situation was ongoing, the faulty production should be rolled back and NPC cost credited (to all the building companies in the said period, approx 1644-1647).
6. There was no negligence in operation and the accrual of the overdraft was prudent. Before the situation started, FREEMASONRY had 300 mil in possession, and when the game was paused, the BLD accrued, was worth more than the overdraft.
7. RAKSHASA should be isolated from bearing FREEMASONRY losses because the accounts were managed independently.
8. The Town also owes him 6 weeks of admin salary.

Whereas,
the members of the Town council support that:

1. The principle in the game is, and has always been, that operations in the game, its markets and production, happen entirely at the player's own risk. Consequently the player's belief that BLD would continuously have use, does not bind the game to actually ensure this is the case.
2. The markets remained open and during all this time, BLD was being traded. Merely the fact that selling a large amount would have crashed the price does not mean that selling was impossible. Managing market risk is one of the central tenets of the whole game.
3. Companies are self responsible for their actions.
4. All bugs need to be fixed, and the game was paused. Initial attempt by GM to pause the game was voted down.
5. Rollbacks happen when the action itself is performed wrongly, eg. if BLD had been produced in 10x the quantity, or only the cost of the production charged with no production happening. This is not the case here, the production happened exactly as it should. Whether BLD was usable immediately or not, or if there was a bug causing illegitimate repairs at no cost, only causes the actual faulty actions such as free repairs to be rolled back. Loss of opportunity is not, and has never been, a cause for a rollback.
6. The policy with overdrafts is somewhat unclear. The operation of year change scripts requires that overdraft must be possible, but it is still forbidden to cause oneself to run on overdraft, or perpetuate it.
7. Having a 100% self-owned and managed additional character capable of running protracted overdraft (which player characters usually cannot do themselves due to the need to buy food, only possible with positive balance) does not create limited liability.
8. King said the "employment contract" had effectively terminated when there was no agreement on the continuation of work. Nevertheless the Town never issued an order to stop working on earlier responsibilities.

So, Therefore,
the COURT finds:

I  The production of BLD has happened correctly, and the situation in the game, on balance, does not warrant a rollback of the production or its cost. The direct effects of the bug/s have been, and will be rolled back. The game was sufficiently operational that the production could have been sold, or cut down, or funding arranged, partners recruited, deposited, etc. What happened was market risk becoming true.

II  100% self-operated and managed side characters do not enjoy limited liability.

III  Whether RAKSHASA was negligent in operating the company, in the scale of (criminal, criminally negligent, grossly negligent, negligent, prudent), the negligence was not big. Company was operated with high risk and the decision to take protracted overdraft when the assets still were in excess, was risky but not unusual. Especially since Rak himself rallied for the game to be paused, it is questionable to not sell the product in advance. On the other hand, the magnitude of the XMR rise (which caused this to become a problem and a court case), was unexpected. All this is, however, of no consequence since because of (I)&(II) he is anyway liable for the overdraft.

IV  Town must pay RAKSHASA 750 EUR/month for the admin duties for 6 weeks, which translates to 86,600,000 m (final). EUR-denominated debts stay EUR-denominated until they are converted to M for payment.

V  Because the overdrafts need to be covered and the game does not have jurisdiction to cause (the player behind) RAKSHASA to deposit to cover them, all the assets in RAKSHASA and FREEMASONRY are not likely to cover the overdraft, and the situation in the markets is precarious,
Characters #328 Rakshasa and #385 Freemasonry are swept to #395 GSIC. This causes the overdraft to disappear because it is merged with the GSIC positive balance. Depending on how much the assets can be sold for, GSIC shareholders take a hit of about 400 mil ($5,000).

VI  The verdict is executable. There is a court of appeal (King) and parties (RAKSHASA/FREEMASONRY, TOWN, GSIC) have 7 realdays to show disagreement. This session is free of cost.

This leg is not finished. 0.04 is the target. From there I am not sure.

All the eyes are in XMR price, and why not -- 12 € is better than nothing.   

Meanwhile the game plan is taking shape. The basic bottleneck why we could not go to Clans, is the insufficiency of me. Even if I might have been adequately capable to function as a CEO, GM, King and lead designer at the same time, the hours are not enough.

So we streamline to an intermediate phase with CKIP activated and markets open, and allow the newly-enriched XMR holders (or anyone else) to come to the game and speculate. Meanwhile the game fulltime team makes its transition from a hobby project to a startup.

The game has almost 9 billion in different Buildings pools. This money is earmarked to their benefits, but not so strictly that it could not be used reasonably to other purposes. The solution I devised is as follows:
* Ensure all buildings data is correct, revert illegal (unpaid) repairs etc to the extent possible.
* Assign all buildings to Office pool, which is a good proxy for a generic usage, and pays M.
* Give one-time 15% dividend (in total 1.438 billion) to all the buildings, in fiat value a very nice windfall even though it's just one year in normal game.
* Designate the rest of Buildings pools money to Town general purposes, ensuring that the remaining amount in Buildings pools more than exceeds the interest available when the game was last running (roughly = fiat value will be 1-1.5x the previous).
* Announce that no building taxes or extra taxes of the past, need to be paid, so they are forgiven.
* Announce the Town confiscation of 1-SE and B.9, because the fixed land rents have become so punitive that there is no way to eke out any profits. The owner may of course keep his land, but by default it is taken, for the owner's own benefit.

This is just the first stage of land rejuvenation. More follows! The whole inside of the Great Wall will be mapped and available to be explored graphically, and available for purchase and building. The initial purchase tokens will be available in progressive prices so that the middle class has a real reason to log in and grow their wealth while waiting for the game to reopen!

saved for backup, in progress

CKIP specification

Background: read the /CKIP tab 4 times from TownMgn.

New fields
Account:parent (int, validation: existing char_id)
Account:CKIP_level (int, only system sets this)

New commands
DEPOSIT char_id amount     (superadmin only)

If amount not a positive integer, print: "Invalid amount." and abort
If char_id is not a valid char_id, print: "Invalid char_id." and abort

  player_amount = floor(0.91*amount)
  system_amount = amount  - player_amount
    CREATE M player_amount char_id [deposit]  //action type = deposit
    CREATE M system_amount 500 [deposit]   //"500" will be replaced with the CKIP system account char_id


If char_id:parent = ""
   town_amount = system_amount
   player
   CREATE M



CKIP

find ancestors
print: "Your ancestors, starting from parent, is
[list of parent char_id, char_shortname, CKIP_level_text
[/list]

Is there a source for the historical data on Poloniex XMR lending? Been so busy that somehow managed to completely ignore this interesting economic phenomenon this far 

As long as I am the CEO among other duties, I will need to ensure our finances.

The debacle about if we can pay the CON dues, abated for now. More than a third of the main dissident's CON are already bought by others, and when there is no more overhang, Town can begin to issue more. The interest payments are paused with the time, which is unfortunate, but fits in with everything else being paused as well. On the other hand, I don't believe changing the rate of the passage of time is required. Buying CON now seems risky short term, but it is a long term investment! Rather than thinking small, think of CK's chance to make it big, and how valuable CON is in that scenario, and how much it has already paid as interest by then. After all, if CK fails, CON is not any more risky than anything else!

We need to enlarge our full-time team, and the fulltimers need to be always available and up to their tasks. Only the best is good enough, so we will pay well. The fulltimer pay will consist of base pay (EUR/week converted and paid in M every friday), plus bonus-options (determined and paid monthly, in gold, and come free-trading only after 12 realmonths if work is still ongoing).

The gold for the bonus-options, which will be massive in amount, comes from Coinshop, which, despite owned by the King, was recently pledged to be for the benefit of the game, so that King may not take back of the gold. Up to 100,000 CKG can be used for this purpose.

Full-time team is important, but no less important are the various admins and other helpers. Their duties will be mapped, and the compensation will be "by minute" as before. Unlike before, the admins also qualify for bonus-options, for fairness' sake, and to help retain them.

Town Council will also get a token compensation. It will become a more supervisory body when the 4-member team is large enough to handle most practical issues. Town Council will nominate the CEO, who in turn will decide on the other team members.

CKIP starts, and makes deposits yield "only" 91-92% to the depositor, and the rest goes to the marketers. The immediate sponsor, whom the depositor indicates, gets about 2%, and the person who recruited him, gets something, etc. Town's share is 9% on the deposits made by anons, and a fraction of those where the upline does not contain a diamond. <-MLM terminology.

We will get CKIP ready as soon as possible, and (well everyone is free to aim to whomever..) aim the marketing to the new XMR owners who can now join the "XMR club" = CK. To make the game interesting as a speculation platform before it is opened, we need to make up something. But these guys are coming from Poloniex so even with time stopped, we should be able to offer a more wholesome speculation experience.

Casino will open. Raffles will be organised. The rules that determine the value of the various ingame items are made more clear to allow more interesting trading.

Meanwhile the CEO will be recruited, and the push towards Clans done. When Clans is ready, clock will start ticking again, and we have a greatly increased community playerbase, and are fully ready to welcome the gamers to CK, and to XMR.

Lot area is currently underused. It can only be used to build buildings on, and leaving space for anything else is not really encouraged. Empty lots are sitting empty with no income, even small.

This will change so that a Lot will have possibility to contain Improvements whose number is limited by the Lot area. The earlier thought about wood buildings (which will come in Clans) is integrated with the new thought of having possibility to boost any Lot - perhaps unless it is completely filled with a building, in which case most of the improvements cannot be built.

An example 400 sqm lot which contains a nice 120 sqm 2-story house, and has about 280 sqm of free space, this could have a CAN field, VEG garden, lawn and outbuildings. Most decorations will not yield very much, but on the other hand they can be built by hand (lower levels get free self-WP), and tie up land so that its demand and value is also upheld.

Larger plots of land that are not immediately needed for building, can be made parks that will grow in stature over the decades and promise to yield quite nice income after a long time, depending on game success. A park can also be cut down if building is needed. Parks will continue to increase the nearby buildings' yield.

Another use for lots of any size is farming. The best VEG come from inside the walls  - natural fertilizer or something - so over time all the space not needed for other purposes should become veggie gardens.

Once again, an attempt of making a Rulebook, something more illustrative than the "TOS" and more compact than the Wiki

Reminds me of me and David drinking 24 h only wine and cognac.

ATH is not broken without a breather. I give 50%+ odds that it will be broken though. And remember that the rise is logarithmic, we are not going to 0.025 or 0.030 but 0.040 before the next plateau.

It is important to realize which rules apply. I am seeing a lot of late 2010 here.

Thud #80 was asked to be our CEO based on his excellent credentials. The proposal was good enough to require him to think about it overnight but he narrowly declined ($80k per year + gold options). He nevertheless sees the potential in the game and bought 100*CON.

Thud will occasionally help as a strategic consultant. Meanwhile the search for a CEO continues professionally.

Markets have now been open for 27 hours. Prices have come somewhat down from yesterday's highs, HM02B100 is now @11.6 and CON is @10.0.

Before the CEO is up and working, it is reasonable to concentrate on easy and important tasks such as starting the CKIP marketing incentive plan, and focus marketing to the new XMR owners. Marketing to gamers is realistic only when we have a game, but to get there, the gap must be bridged with new blood. So the paused game will act as a speculation platform with possibly new assets, and the Palazzo Casino open as well.

Town fundraiser is imminent. Currently blocking is an overhang of CON that DrC #101 is selling. 244*CON from the original 376 remain unsold and are listed @11-12. Also the treatment of land and buildings in the new system requires thought.

Rakshasa #328 was contacted and he claimed that the Freemasonry #385 losses that threaten foreclosing of both the company and Rakshasa account, are caused by such a bug in the game mechanics that a rollback is the right way to remedy it. This would roll back money to Freemasonry and other building companies, and cancel the BLD produced. If others have some claims concerning actions roughly in the period from my holiday (1644) until this day, please make yourself heard. The Town will appoint an investigative judge to hear the case, and the final verdict is given by the gamemaster (or, King, depending on the nature of the claim, but both are the same guy).

Also consider what you can do for CK! We are back in the situation that was untenable during the late spring, and still is - too much burden on one guy, causing massive delays all over the place. I will contact you and ask you to help out in well-defined things. I am not going to break, but the schedule will bend unless things get organised The CEO is still some time away, but my new plan is to transform us to a speculation platform in the meantime, because that can be done concurrently and near instantly.

Do we have 10-20 people willing to come to the 1st Global Monero Castle Summit?

I think it could be held 4 weeks from now, or some later time.

It's possible to come for 5 days, but the main event would be a weekend one.

Do we have 10-20 people willing to come to the 1st Global Monero Castle Summit?

I think it could be held 4 weeks from now, or some later time.

It's possible to come for 5 days, but the main event would be a weekend one.

Town Housing Corp (THC)

This company was unable to reset marketmaking, because the majority of its assets are buildings. Building pool payouts have not been adjusted, and unless they are, the situation will cause a massive windfall for owners (and new builders) of buildings.

Hence there are currently no offers. Providing them would be disingenuous because it's me who will likely decide how the buildings pools are treated.

The stock price used to be 670k, and the cash at hand is 100k/share. So with the buildings taken into account, the value should be in the range 250-670k per share, making this the best surviving company of the "great revaluation of 1647".

Dues were paid and a happy dividend given, of course

FTFY

Not sure if "insane obsession" is fair. I have more than 7,000 posts, and perhaps 1,000 have anything to do with Monero.

I am both buying and selling titles for hefty prices. The game is that they give you status, because their presence makes the difference between people who have paid $10k for "nothing" and those who haven't.

People may self decide how they want to spend their money. The poor will need to pit the different wants against each other, but the rich can typically satisfy all their wants, ie. buy a donator tag, and a dinner, and a new car, at the same time. I don't know if buying it has done me any good, but also at the time of buying, having an extra $10k or not, was not of consequence either.

What are the important things you'd like to spend money on?

NewCorp

This succinctly named corporation used to be the largest in the game by marketcap (S-NC: 50 bil). There is currently a large uncertainty factor in how to value land. It used to be that Town was selling an empty chapelry for 1 bil, but this will have to be revisited.

In thinking how to restart market making and thus make valuation for this company (needed to value many other companies), we ended up to a starting value that is 1/5 of the pre-pause value.

It is possible that this is way too conservative, just as yesterday the CON and HM02B100 starting prices were. But the market will decide! In addition to the properties listed in the company holdings, it owns 21 full chapelries, and operates NewFarms.

Also NewCorp has paid its dues and doled out an extra dividend

This is the time to buy land cheaper than it ever was.



The Hypothecary Bank in CryptoTown

The seasoned Bank had a rude awakening with more than a billion overdraft. This is now completely covered.

What remains in the assets and receivables side, is:

* 960 mil worth of outstanding debt, which has expiry dates in 1652...1680. All debt is secured, but the value of security has probably sunk below the principal. Also there is uncertainty when 1652(etc) will take place, so all this debt is now valued at 50% (480 mil)
* 114*CON are valued at (1140 mil)
* CKG and stock portfolio altogether (240 mil)
* Bank Building, plus all other assets and collectibles (250 mil)

Since the Bank has 1,000 shares of stock, its starting price in the market making is 2.13 mil per share. Even after covering the massive overdraft, the Bank shed only 2/3 of its M-denominated value during the pause.

Bank has now both paid its dues and doled out an extra dividend

The Bank is a handy way to leverage the speculations, and when the game resumes, it stands to gain from the loans.


Town Housing Corp (THC)

This company was unable to reset marketmaking, because the majority of its assets are buildings. Building pool payouts have not been adjusted, and unless they are, the situation will cause a massive windfall for owners (and new builders) of buildings.

Hence there are currently no offers. Providing them would be disingenuous because it's me who will likely decide how the buildings pools are treated.

The stock price used to be 670k, and the cash at hand is 100k/share. So with the buildings taken into account, the value should be in the range 250-670k per share, making this the best surviving company of the "great revaluation of 1647".

Dues were paid and a happy dividend given, of course

CEO search has started and one candidate is spotted and promised to answer tomorrow.

Markets opened today and the initial prices proved to be too low. Currently both HM02B100 and CON are about 14 mil.

Getting the new team working and the game in an interesting and playable condition takes time, so be patient.

Registration is open, and market speculation is (soon) in full force. Please invite your friends to participate!

Deposits and withdrawals will be enabled tomorrow after saddam posts the new TOS.

Town will make a fundraiser soon, issuing CON and some kind of land tickets.

My plan is that all the land within the City Walls is mapped and opened, and sold if it hits the reserve ask.

Happy trading! Market making will be updated again, earliest in the morning