Against the easiest ways to attack yes - but I wouldn't recommend thinking of it as 100% safe.

The flaw in question didn't require the thief to obtain the login for the victims - it just required the victims to visit other websites whilst logged into Bitfunder.  Unless the 2 raised in that thread are actually old-style key-logged password etc that just happened to occur at the same time as the flaw in Bitfunder was being abused.

There were reports of many more than 2 people affected by it.  At the time there was no way to prevent it with 2FA (2FA only applied to logging in which didn't make any difference).  The way to prevent it was not to visit any unknown links whilst logged into Bitfunder (using a different browser for Bitfunder would also prevent the easiest route for attackers but isn't necessarily totally safe) and logging out of Bitfunder before doing anything else.

The problem WAS the result of bad decisions in respect of Bitfunder's design - it accepted POST requests without verifying they originated from a session connected to Bitfunder (so the attacker only had to send the request and it would work if you were logged in - without any need for them to obtain information about your session or even know who you were).  Transfers was just the easiest way to abuse it - not the only way.  The public assets list for Bitfunder was likely very useful to attackers as well - as it allows them to transfer 1 share then work out how many you have left to know how large a transfer to clear the rest, plus also allows them to see what else you hold they can steal.

Good luck finding an official thread for CPA or Nyan.

News is that the usual dodgy shit is still going on.  It's now next to impossible to work out how many hsares of BMF are outstanding - as the ones owned by Nyan and CPA have STILL not been transferred to their correct accounts.  That means the issuing account holds assets of Nyan/CPA as well as those of BMF - a shockingly bad practice that usagi refuses to abandon.

Usagi placed shares up for sale (and sold some) but it's impossible to tell whether they were new shares sold or ones that previously belonged to Nyan/CPA.  Logic says that they should be ones belonging to Nyan/CPA - as they're allegedly closing down, so if the fund i tself sold new ones Nyan would HAVE to undercut it as there's no way they could sell above what BMF was selling for.  But logic - and acting responsibly on behalf of creditors - don't feature heavily in usagi's arsenal.  Without knowing whether the sales are fresh from the fund or existing ones DOES impact potential investors - as, in theory, where sales are above NAV/U new ones are worth more than existing ones (as the extra gos into the fund thus raising the overall NAV/U).

BMF has paid dividends.  One would assume Nyan and CPA received their portion off the records - yet there's no sign of distribution of that to Nyan.  It may be that usagi mistakenly believes that having made some promise (which he shows little intention of keeping in any reasonable time-scale) to personally repay investors somehow frees him from giving them money they're already entitled to - that would be incorrect.  Funds obtained from dividends or from sale of remainign assets (e.g. BitVPS) should still be getting distributed.  There's been no news on BitVPS - yet it's paid a dividend.  Either funds from sale and/or funds from dividends should have been passed to Nyan.A.

It's obvious that usagi has lost interest in paying back nyan.a - and funds which should go there are being used for his other activities.  In fact when BMF relaunched there were also unaccounted for funds belong to BMF - though the bulk of those have now reappeared.

BMF seems to be doing well - investing in core mining businesses such as Just-Dice.  Never let it be said that little things like a contract ever got in the way of usagi doing anything (prior to the new contract being passed other investments were fine - now they aren't as there's no provision in the contract for investing in non-mining assets).  Interestingly there's no provision for any management fee in the new BMF contract - one of the few occasions where usagi correctly valued something.

I'll be making a request for trading to be halted if the outstanding shares issue isn't sorted - it's just not acceptable for something to run where there's no visibility of how many shares are outstanding.

That's the truth of it - there is (or was) profit to be made buying at IPO and selling later regardless of how well it does long-term.  Presumably most of those posting here are those who bought cheap (or cheapish - most did NOT buy cheap) and now want to talk people into being the ones they sell to.

My fund picked up 2000 of them at 0.6 each in the first batch - and has now sold them all for a decent profit.  So I've no reason for (or interest in) talking the price up.

Those who believe it will make a good profit from its business if bought at the current price are almost certainly deluding themselves - they may, of course, be able to make a profit by selling it on to the next batch of purchasers.  Mining's not a very profitable activity at the best of times - let alone when you have to overcome a massive price:value ratio (even aggressive reinvestment doesn't change that much - if you compound a small profit it remains relatively small).  And has anyone at all worked out how a company with its identity known can run a dark-net exchange?  Seems kind of missing the point somewhat - if you're known to be running it then you're just as open to enforcement issues as if it were run on the normal net.

It's great for getting publicity for LTC and the exchange - but that could all backfire if, in a year's time, people look back and see they've received only a tiny percentage of what they invested as dividends, the value of assets hasn't grown a lot and the price has fallen by far more than the dividends received.  And that's what WILL happen once the feeding frenzy finishes.

I've madea nice profit for my investors from it.  I could have made more - and may well be leaving a lot on the table.  But there's no risk of me losing any of my profits when reality sets in - which is a risk the rest of you are happily (or blindly) accepting.  Good luck to you all.  I'm sure Kate will do her best - but the current price sets a very hard target for her to try to deliver on.

The sale of more shares is about the best thing possible for current investors BTW - just look at the capital/share now then look at what it will be if more shares are sold for a much higher price.  This isn't some company that'd delivered amazing profits and is trying to sell shares cheap.  It's a new IPO with a speculative bubble where the sale of new shares actually locks some real value in for current investors.  If you believe she can deliver unheard-of (for mining) profits on current capital then why are you whining about something that will get you a lot more capital per share?  Only reason to complain is if you KNOW the price is way too high and are worried it'll stop the price rising - in which case you're speculators/traders not investors and your opinion isn't important anyway (that's NOT a criticism - I'm a speculator/trader as well - but the company's concern is those who will end up with the shares more than those who are just trying for a short-term profit).

You may want to clarify this as it makes no sense at present.

If you borrow BTC you CAN'T buy BTC - as you already have BTC.  Borrowing to lock in a rate only makes sense in two circumstances:

A.  The loan is denominated in USD.
B.  You intend to SHORT BTC (which means SELLING not BUYING).

To go long on BTC you have to borrow USD (or BTC with repayment pegged to USD - so the loan is denominated in USD just transacted in BTC).  So either you mistakenly said "BUY" when you meant "SELL" or you meant the loan to be denominated in USD but failed to say so.

Sold   959
Swapped   0
Total   959
Price   0.049263
Total   47.243217
Less Fee   47.14873057
Man Fee   1.414461917

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)   1154.302956
13100 LTC-ATF.B1    131.00000000
Coinlenders CD    200.84834856
Just-Dice Balance    103.93539478
TOTAL ASSETS    1,590.08669961
   
Outstanding MINING   33501
Outstanding SELLING   33501
Outstanding PURCHASE   362
Effective Units   33863
   
Block reward   25
Difficulty   21,335,329
Hashes per MINING   5000000
   
Daily Dividend    0.00011786
50 days (Min Liquid)    0.00589288
100 days (Forced Close)    0.01178577
365 days (Buyback)    0.04301806
405 days (IPO)    0.04773236
400 days (Post SELLING div)    0.04714308
410 days (Pre SELLING div)    0.04832165
   
NAV Post MINING Div    1,586.09568467
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.04683861
Days Dividend Post Div   397.42
SELLING Dividend    -         
NAV Post SELLING Div    1,586.09568467
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.04683861
PURCHASE selling price    0.04918054
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.04590183

I'm in the UK, so currently GMT+1.

I've considered automating it but there's not really enough volume to justify it at present.  I'm currently mainly working on my website which should be up in about a week (it's already functional just needs content added and some tidying up).  Once that's done I'll be focussing back on interacting with the sites (to pull data for my website, to do some basic trading/price maintenance for me and also to automate transfers - as there's other things I have planned which could also use similar automation).

Depends whether I'm awake or asleep.  I check regularly for transfers in and do transfers out soon as I notice.  You sent whilst I was asleep - so had a longer wait.

Sold 500 more LTC-ATF.B1 at about 10-15% over face value (about as low as I'll sell ours).  Just-Dice has made good profit as well.  Those two together (plus slight gain from a few sales of PURCHASE) almost covered today's MINING dividend.

Sold   437
Swapped   0
Total   437
Price    0.049273
Total   21.532301
Less Fee   21.4892364
Man Fee   0.644677092

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)   1109.555951
13362 LTC-ATF.B1    133.62000000
Coinlenders CD    200.71804498
Just-Dice Balance    103.75225179
TOTAL ASSETS    1,547.64624747
   
Outstanding MINING   32473
Outstanding SELLING   32473
Outstanding PURCHASE   431
Effective Units   32904
   
Block reward   25
Difficulty   21,335,329
Hashes per MINING   5000000
   
Daily Dividend    0.00011786
50 days (Min Liquid)    0.00589288
100 days (Forced Close)    0.01178577
365 days (Buyback)    0.04301806
405 days (IPO)    0.04773236
400 days (Post SELLING div)    0.04714308
410 days (Pre SELLING div)    0.04832165
   
NAV Post MINING Div    1,543.76825805
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.04691734
Days Dividend Post Div   398.08
SELLING Dividend    -         
NAV Post SELLING Div    1,543.76825805
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.04691734
PURCHASE selling price    0.04926321
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.04597900

You're comparing apples and oranges.

The bank-roll management for S.DICE and just-dice is vastly different.  S.DICE needs a higher house edge as it's willing to risk far more of the bank-roll per throw of the dice.  As just-dice only risks a maximum of 1% of BR per roll it can operate with a lower house edge without any significant ROR.

Sold   623
Swapped   0
Total   623
Price   0.049338
Total   30.737574
Less Fee   30.67609885
Man Fee   0.920282966

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)   1086.891966
13862 LTC-ATF.B1    138.62000000
Coinlenders CD    200.58256134
Just-Dice Balance    101.29424563
TOTAL ASSETS    1,527.38877305
   
Outstanding MINING   32066
Outstanding SELLING   32066
Outstanding PURCHASE   401
Effective Units   32467
   
Block reward   25
Difficulty   21,335,329
Hashes per MINING   5000000
   
Daily Dividend    0.00011786
50 days (Min Liquid)    0.00589288
100 days (Forced Close)    0.01178577
365 days (Buyback)    0.04301806
405 days (IPO)    0.04773236
400 days (Post SELLING div)    0.04714308
410 days (Pre SELLING div)    0.04832165
   
NAV Post MINING Div    1,523.56228744
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.04692649
Days Dividend Post Div   398.16
SELLING Dividend    -         
NAV Post SELLING Div    1,523.56228744
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.04692649
PURCHASE selling price    0.04927281
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.04598796

No pass-through planned to S.MG - I'm not expecting enough market activity to be worth running one.  The S.MG we hold are just for LTC-ATF to make a profit from (we've sold some off at 50%+ profit but aren't really in a rush to sell the rest).

Here's a little bit of math that some of you may find of interest.  Let's look at what happened if anyone bought PURCHASE at the start and just held it.

They'd have bought initially when price was 0.065258
Allowing for 0.2% transaction fee that would have cost them 0.065388516

In total they'd now have received  0.01787841 in dividends (the total of all SELLING and MINING dividends to date).

PURCHASE is currently selling at 0.049338
They could put their PURCHASE back up for sale at 0.049337 and reasonably expect to sell it (strangely there's been a few hundred PURCHASE sold - all of them into bids at a lot less than just below my Ask price).

Less transaction fees that would get them 0.049238326
If we add to that the dividends to date we get a total of 0.067116736

If we subtract the initial purchase price we get a profit of 0.001858736
Which is 2.848% in the 22 days the fund has been running - or over 0.9% per week.

The return from doing that is likely to fall (as new sales of PURCHASE represent an ever decreasing percentage of current outstanding ones) but it does go to show that there's quite a few ways people could have made a profit from DMS.

Heh I sold mine (my fund's) at about 0.75 (the first time - have bought and sold many times since) - everyone gets it wrong occasionally (they were bought for ~0.1 around IPO).

Furuknap's article does describe most of the factors to weigh up when considering his contract - though it misses out one of the largest ones (the BTC/USD exchange-rate - in general if that rises ALL mining investments become worse, if it falls they become better).  It also doesn't much address comparing his contract to alternatives.  It would have been more useful had it provided formulae to work out return for standard scenarios (e.g. difficulty rises steadily to X until end of year then stays constant - what is return by end of 2014, so people could plug in different X).  But noone else provides that so no reason why he should.

Sold 500 of our LTC-ATF.B1 on the market.  After converting to BTC DMS received 6.32415 BTC.  I'm not trading for DMS but I'm not going to turn down free money for it.  It would take nearly a year to make that profit back in 0.6% per week dividends - so we'll let someone else do the waiting and take the profit now.

Sold   941
Swapped   0
Total   941
Price   0.049418
Total   46.502338
Less Fee   46.40933332
Man Fee   1.39228

BTC Balance (BTC-TC)   1054.565051
14362 LTC-ATF.B1    143.62000000
Coinlenders CD    200.45554343
Just-Dice Balance    101.41844995
TOTAL ASSETS    1,500.05904443
   
Outstanding MINING   31472
Outstanding SELLING   31472
Outstanding PURCHASE   372
Effective Units   31844
   
Block reward   25
Difficulty   21,335,329
Hashes per MINING   5000000
   
Daily Dividend    0.00011786
50 days (Min Liquid)    0.00589288
100 days (Forced Close)    0.01178577
365 days (Buyback)    0.04301806
405 days (IPO)    0.04773236
400 days (Post SELLING div)    0.04714308
410 days (Pre SELLING div)    0.04832165
   
NAV Post MINING Div    1,496.30598416
NAV/U Post MINING Div    0.04698863
Days Dividend Post Div   398.69
SELLING Dividend    -         
NAV Post SELLING Div    1,496.30598416
NAV/U Post Selling Div    0.04698863
PURCHASE selling price    0.04933806
PURCHASE buy-back price    0.04604886

WEEKLY REPORT




This was undoubtedly a good week for LTC-ATF : we achieved growth of 8.94% despite LTC rising by 10% vs BTC.  Had the exchange-rate not changed we would have grown by over 10%.

There have been no significant developments to report since my update in the middle of the week.  We've now divested ourselves of most of our CIPHERMINE holdings at a significant profit - some of that won't show up until next week's report.  The price of it rose above what I'd anticipated in the short-term (largely because whoever bought the bulk suppressed supply by not listing his for sale) so I was happy to sell more ours than I'd initially intended.  I'll happily take the profit now rather than over the year it would take with their optimistic projections (or the far longer period it would take with any more realistic model).

My focus over the last days and coming weeks has been on my website.  The name has been chose and domains registered (same name with a bunch of different TLDs) plus hosting acquired.  By the end of this week logo and styling should largely be complete and I'll then spend probably most of a week writing initial content so it launches with enough on it to make it worth visiting.  Once the site is complete I'll move to releasing weekly reports there (though with a link to each one posted here).  Discussion can still continue here - but reports will then be more clearly laid out and it'll be far easier to find past ones.   The website should help LTC-ATF by increasing awareness of our various products (including, of course, future ones that don't yet exist).

The vote on whether to conduct a 100:1 split passed with no votes against.  I will be contacting burnside after making this post and asking him to implement it at his convenience.  He now has a script to it which will modify all market orders - so the order book will NOT need to cleared.  I will, however, be reducing LTC-ATF's own buy-back bid until after it just to be on the safe side (so you'll see a bid for 25 units rather than 100).  Once the split is complete I'll post an update of current NAV/U and also make a news post.

I hope to get our new bond listed for moderator on BTC-TC today.  I'll be looking to sell 50 BTC-worth initially - opportunities for trade have increased so we can use slightly more capital.  There'll likely be more sold in the near future - I'm looking to expand trading to Havelock and also launch a new pass-through operated by LTC-ATF, both of which will require a bit more capital.  With the recent rise in LTC vs BTC there's no problem at all covering that - but it means there'll likely be no dividend for a while.  Dividends are, of course, only good news for those of you who can outperform LTC-ATF in your own trading.  For those of you who prefer dividends based on some principle you'll be able to simulate them by selling off a percentage of your holdings each week - the stock split makes that possible.  If you can sell at above NAV/U (very likely) then it'll work out better for you than if dividends had been paid.

Bid is at 54 (spreadsheet above would suggest lower but we've made profit since the report - even after a firther 10% rise in LTC vs BTC).
2 units are paid as Management fee this week.

Think both of you (aito and Entropy) are misreading/misunderstanding the exclusivity clause.

It does NOT stop AMC buying chips from elsewhere.
It DOES stop AMC selling the chips they pay to develop to anyone other than VML.  If AMC are paying the NRE then they should be allowed to sell the chips wherever they want - it's basically none of VML's business.  Tieing yourself to an unproven manufacturer is foolishness - and giving away 30% of chip sales profit is charity.

You're horribly misguided with point 2.

It's actually in the interest of shareholders for Ken to sell more shares.  You need to look carefully at who owns waht shares and what each share is entitled to - then maybe you'll agree.  Work out what share of profit you get now and what share of the company you own.  Then work it out again if more shares are sold (bear in mind those sales generate capital).  The results are NOT what you seem to think.

Actually looking at the new FAQ it appears he's not taking quite so much now.  AMC it getting 10% of gross not net.

That he can change the terms at all (even in the favour of investors) shows just how bent the whole scheme is.  Things like the split of profits should have been subject to a signed contract before they were ever announced in the first place. He seems to have changed the split of cash and also changed it from AML lending the money to VMC to produce the chips to AML doing it itself (but, wierdly, VMC doing the negotiating with manufacturers - which makes little sense).  That change isn't necessarily a good thing - as it essentially protects VMC from taking any of the loss if things go wrong (I'd assume the change was made so AMC had no claim on VML if $1 million profit never arrived to repay the capital).

Unfortunately a LOT of the things wrong with this are pretty common ones in BTC land - such as giving a fixed block of shares to the issuer (beyond any for which actual assets existed) regardless of what does/doesn't sell at IPO.  That led to scenario where after 5 million shares had sold, Ken had 40 million with only 5 million beloning to those who put up most of the capital (all bar his few Avalons).  Even when 20 million have sold he'll still have 2/3 of the active shares.  He's not along in this sort of stupidity - nor in the pathetic use of shares to represent reinvestment : is it REALLY that hard if you want to reinvest 20% of profits to only dividend out 80% of profits?

Why is it in AMC's interest to give exclusive rights to VML?

"AMC also guarantees chip exclusivity to VMC, so that AMC won't negotiate a chip supply contract to any other bitcoin systems manufacturer. AMC gets 70% back from the profits on the sale of bulk chips, while VMC gets 30%."

If VML is going to sell them in bulk then clearly it has no objection in principle to others buying them.  So why do they need a 30% cut from sales?  If AMC is going to pay for the chipos up front then they should take a leaf from VML's book - and take cash for pre-orders from VML.  Somehow I don't think Ken would be quite so keen on preorders going in that direction ..  At a minimum there's no reason for AMC to pay VML upfront for preorders if AMC is fronting all the cost for the chips - the expensive part of NRE.