And I sent you a photo of my house that is on the interweb

FAQ:

Do I send before the 19th, will I lose my spot?
You don't have to send before the 19th.  Not anticipating people losing "spots" because this has a different profile to the restricted deposit accounts.
There is a "however" (added 18/8) - an account that has not been funded by 25th August will be closed and the spot re-offered.

When do I have to send?  Is it before the 19th?
Investments from the fund will not be made until the 19th (i.e. there will not be any income to the fund before then).  Like most deposits, I will account for the funds when received.  Initial funds should be provided by 25th August and at that stage I can assess the size and determine asset allocations.

What if you have lumpy investments that dump six months of profits in all at once?
Some assets do pay monthly or quarterly.  That would produce abnormal returns in that week.  For those occasions there would need to be a bonus payment (linked to an excess above 5% say).  Restricting the impact of any one asset on the whole portfolio should moderate those swings.

What size/duration is this fund planned to be?
It is a reasonably sized investment, but it is not open ended.  I did consider limiting it to 10k and having two or three of equal sizes, but it is easier (logistically) to keep it together for the moment.  Also, the term is related to the future and in six months time it is very unclear what the economy might be.  Not a very helpful answer, but I don't have a crystal ball.

How do we see the asset allocation?
The forum pm system is not very good due to the limits, so I intend on providing a weekly email newsletter.

yay - I'm famous.

This sits in "Securities" rather than my usual lending section thread because it is a little more aggressive in approach and not as reliable.

Based on some work I have been doing I believe there is space for this particular fund and because it is a little different labelling it Kraken seems appropriate.

Basic parameters:

• Fund commences 19 August 2012.  
• Investments may be made in multiples of 100BTC.
• Withdrawals may be made in multiples of 100BTC.
• Contributed capital is backed by my personal funds.
• Returns will be paid weekly (currently planning on Fridays) - no compounding or automatic reinvestment.
• Target and maximum return 2.5% per week. (for the ponzi people, that would be 361% annually, but it's only 130% because it is non compounding.)
• Minimum weekly return 0% - any losses will be funded personally.

You will need to request a unique deposit address and supply a unique return address.  I will have a sensible limit on the number of investors because I don't want to spend my whole life doing weekly payments.
Returns obtained over and above 2.5% are taken as my fee - that's how I can afford to support the minimum return and "insure" the capital.  If I have coins sitting idle, they don't lose money, but impact on the average return.

Obviously the question is "What am I doing with the coins?"  
If I was to provide a simple answer like buying 50 BFL singles and going mining, or putting 10,000 coins into XYZ asset on GLBSE then there wouldn't be much science in that and it would ruin the market that I am looking at.
Also, I do expect people to assume funds might simply be going into BS&T and accuse me of feeding an illegal activity.  Due to the vitriol that goes with that, this will not be an open thread because there will be no point debating that.

So what am I going to use funds for?  Some will be going into my "vulture" capital business interests, some into some long-term BTC investments I have held in real-life ventures (such as an equipment manufacturer), some in BTC assets, a small amount of futures trading, some into various risk/reward adjusted investments that are available in the bitcoin world.

Edit: Currently 25 registered users.  18 currently paid.
Edit 19Aug: The largest commitment made was 1000 coins, and that was before the closure of one of the largest (and smartest) BTC operations.  In fairness, I consider a 1,000 maximum per account is appropriate making the absolute maximum size of Kraken Fund 25,000.

Kraken Fund#2 wait list (several):
HonsetBob, Rolo TonyBrown Town, BinaryMage, aghori, EskimoBob, Onichan, LoweryCBS, coinft, Mousepotato, Goelmer, CecilNiosaki, bruiser, Gigavps, "pm page 122", Electricbees, Macboy80, Brunic, Coin.Karma, Litecoin, Simonk83, DeadTerra, mb300sd, ScottJ, REF, nave, Soros Shorts, ShadowAlexey, Cobra

For information, I had a request lodged a little while ago, and I confirmed with DT the loss on the investment.  I am happy with the returns received over the past few months, and while a drop at the end is not ideal, I am realistic and understand the issues DT has with market liquidity.  I would not expect him to manipulate the funds resources just to me my withdrawal look better and I commend him for that.

I was actually referring to the rates often quoted for loans to members, a practice established before deposit taking was the norm.

I would also like to clarify if you comment is an accusation that I am a criminal?

I have been giving this quite some thought and want to provide an opportunity for feedback before implementation.

With the recent changes (in July and now in August), it is a good opportunity to reset the PPT.x offerings back to their original formula.  That is, issue at 1.00 and return four times the top BS&T interest rate of 5%, so repaying 1.20.

I believe this is most consistent with the original offering and changing the floor price from 1.04 to some other number to balance the needs of investors and dividend right holders is guaranteed to get the balance wrong.

A minor protest.

I'll disagree with that for two reasons.

1: Most of the loans are denominated in weekly or monthly rates and the way bitcoin works, an annual rate is less meaningful.  People don't look for 12-month instruments, 4 or 10 weeks is heaps (months are still like years).
2: The APR system used in the USA is a very poor indicator that is quite confusing and misleading for non-US people - took me ages to work it out, and it is terrible.

In the WPW I settled on a one month equivalent rate to rank the interest or return being paid.  Over one year, the difference between compounders and weekly payers would be huge.

Browsing the threads - I notice this comment and wish to add one of my own.  I have previously loaned 600 coins to TheBoss without problem - it was collateralised, but still a large loan for a new customer.  I have not accessed a credit rating or position for him, nor been approached to add it to WPW.  I'll look at that tomorrow.

I hate facebook for how they screw with your information, but then I hate Apple for how they screw their "customers" too so I'm pretty unlikely to "friend" you.

I have RL information on the forum (or simply look me up), but there are others who will offer better rates.  Failing that, I have several deposit takers I could recommend.

Yes, the opposite would be true - people tend to look at self interest, and if 1700BTC or what ever it is is was worth only $1700, the BTC holders would be pissed off and the $$ holders out of luck.  (hmm, nice asymmetry)

Anyway, I'm still looking at recovery although my progress is slow - but that only addresses one person, and not the actual number of WBX scammed people.  Andre should have some shit land on his doorstep for this mess, but certainly there are many people involved.  It have been six months (or so/or nearly), so some division seems sensible.

either way, it's messy - if I ended up with 1/2 of what I was owed, I'd be content 

I didn't get a useful response from the agency I contacted last month, so checking an alternative.

On the price appreciation, that sounds nice for those out of pocket $$, but those out BTC might be less happy.  I don't think there was ever a comprehensive list of creditors available either.  Given six months has passed, some pro-rating payment might be easiest to put the whole thing to rest.

gene, your sarcasm is misguided, but obviously you think I am dishonest and have no integrity.  Also if you bother to read the posts properly you will see it is not AAA- but AA- as I added in some additional discriminating factors into the WPW CR process.

Also, the rating is related to the issuer and not the issue and relates more specifically to the bank-book and not the projects.  The disclosed liabilities to assets ratio is around 70% and the size of the business is a bit less than 10k coins.  Personally, I consider some of the projects are high return and high risk, the transparency is not there.  Accordingly I do not have exposure to those investments.

I considered Joel's questions and debate in this thread to be informative and useful - Thank you Joel.

edit: I was interested enough to find out what I might have done to piss-off gene.  Other than the fact he was absent for the last eight months, the current post pattern and content appears entirely consistent with his earlier 2011 material and he appears to hate everyone.

The above numbers are an indication of the reduction in dividend from the calculated ones done at time of sale.  So the next dividend will still be 246BTC in total.  The one after 255-43 = 212BTC and so on.  The PPT.B's that are most affected will be around 256-193=63BTC.

Learning of the change this morning the priority was to get some information out to people, and yes getting the right level for the balance between premium/insurance/dividend and demand for product all goes into that mix.

Just follow the links in WPW.

Again - thank you for your points and thinking (and your posts in various other threads).

One of the things to keep in mind is that the people taking deposits are a wide mix of operating models.  Some are more like banks or financial institutions, others more like start-ups seeking capital for expansion or working capital to do something (maybe mining, maybe trading).

Fundamental to the ratings is if there are assets to cover liabilities, and if things go wrong, how badly wrong does it go.

If I had one customer with a 10000coin on-call deposit, then redeeming that could give me quite a lot of difficulty.  If it is 100 customers of 100 each, that  is much easier.  That is why people should ask to see what the various metrics are.

Also, when I am choosing an investment, I definitely ask questions, including deposit and withdrawal addresses.  For example, with Starfish I run a modestly sized address book with details on 200 customers (receiving and sending) and expect people I deposit with to be able to track my funds.  There are people I am happy to invest with and others not (and there are size breaks too) thus I deposited 2000 coins with someone yesterday, and another person just 10 coins.

At the cheap end I have an E46 in the drive.  (318ti 2000 model - basic, and fun to hack around in)

Some interesting points.  Not all of them are applicable to the people offering services.  Some comments/observations:

1: Having higher liquid reserves can be useful, but at a 20-30% level would leave small (by customer number) or poorly diversified operations exposed to contingent events.  Also, the short-term asset market is not as liquid as many people would like. 

2: Tracking maturities in a "point in time" system is not practical and some CD issuers manage this internally, but not visibly.  It is a cash-flow management issues and relates to solvency (paying debts as they fall due).

3: Surplus or net assets - covered.  Should it be greater than 100% is debatable - that goes to risk profile and the nature of the business.

4: If I wanted to look at security, I'd also look at the kind of websites and other things people do, but there are some clever thieves out there.  That is part of the due diligence anyone should do before investing.  That might also assume coins are sitting idle which is unlikely.

New rates for BS&T have been announced and are expected to take effect in about a week.  This changes the profitability of PPT.x and PPT.DIV as the contract requires a full payment in the event of an interest rate drop.  Initial calculations suggest the change will cut the dividends as follows:

PPT.D   0BTC
PPT.E   43BTC
PPT.A   119BTC
PPT.B   193BTC

These numbers are approximate.

The next issue (PPT.C) will be at a new strike price to maintain a fair balance between the partially insured nature of the bonds and the new 5% underlying BS&T rate.