Well, I'm staying.  Staying in a 5-star hotel with wife for drinks and a decent meal and breakfast on Saturday morning.  I know exactly who's paying - Thanks P@40!

Arrrrgh, dragging me kicking and screaming into 2012.  I'll look at it after I do the credit rating stuff I've been planning.  Today was a full day on Starfish BCB, good thing I have a flexible day job.

Damn, if imsaguy can be a ponzi at 3%, I want to be a ponzi at 1.5%/week.  I have a thread, and don't limit deposits (much) and I'm tightening the interest rate.  So far that makes me spot on as I don't even care for mining much.

My approach at the moment is that it's hard to hack someone's account if there is no site to hack.  That's why I have not gone down the fancy web site route.  Might be a bit of an old approach, but I have too much of other peoples funds at stake to make a stupid mistake putting something on the web.  Anyway, what's wrong with contacting someone directly for funds - it rules out some dubious characters on the first cut. 


(I think I need a small stone building in amongst these fancy mirror glass towers - I aim to have safe money for my customers.)

WTF has gold got to do with anything.  Most US wars are over oil and ideology and that's where the money is.

And which one is the US dollar most likely to be associated with?

Stretched the deposit rate for July, but I don't see it continuing into August, so from 1 August 2012 the deposit rate will fall to 1.0%/week.  The other minor change is limiting individual deposit accounts to 2000 coins (allowed to exceed this level via compounding).  This is to make sure there is space for smaller accounts.

Only other news is putting in place a dead-man switch.  This has involved trawling through six months of records and filling in a few blank spots so that my replacement can wind out all of the positions/assets/loans/deposits in an orderly fashion.

The original ponzi business model was transparent enough.

Also, look around at the businesses you think you know and question their models.

Hi Zefir - sorry for making a long-winded pm in response.  Let me try with the short version - you're not completely screwed (and that's not supposed to be financial advice).

Realistically, the change in the pass-through business and competition changed the value of the DIV shares several weeks ago and that is reflected in the recent average trade prices around 0.6 (5-day average).  We have looked at several different options to retain value based on the original premise including issuing more, issuing uninsured and running different auctions for different time-zones.  (cedus - still nothing preventing you putting in bids at a time that suits you given the low prices and thin bid volumes).

As for the , that's not written in the contract, and nor should it need to be.  Simple principles of company law require Directors to uphold their fiduciary duties to stakeholders.  Plus,  screwing over shareholders is an incredibly stupid thing for an issuer to do and would do considerable damage to the other business that we (the PPT issuers) are involved in.

As for future value - that's still an unknown. 

Done. (easy for a good piece of repeat business).

In other news, I was considering the troll feeding frenzy that goes around new loan requests and considering what processes would make it easier for new borrowers.  It links to a few concepts I've had floating around for a while, but it needs to be a bit easier.

Obviously you can blame me - I'm feeding the trolls.

New users come along, find out what's what and work out how it works. 
They then run the gauntlet of trolls asking for a minor loan in public, or approach a lender via pm.
I'm prepared to risk a few coins to find out is someone is genuine or not, but that doesn't mean I am going to lend them hundreds.

I've just answered a pm and then saw the post and thought it might be worth repeating the bulk of the contents here, particularly because of the comment about the "market looking elsewhere" and certainly we have been watching the progress, success or otherwise of this venture keenly with each passing bond auction, and the growth in competitors.


_______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________


The notion of just shutting up shop (ceasing) is not so straight forward because we have a duty to protect the interests of PPT.DIV holders and that includes those of us that have/are/do hold those shares.  Also, the current case is not one where we actually have an option to simply stop trading.  Pirate has not defaulted, and BS&T is continuing.  The only way we see that would be possible is if all of the outstanding shares were held by someone wishing to cancel them (say, if I held all 9000 DIV shares).

It was anticipated some months ago that the interest rate might change.  The choices in that circumstance would be to wind everything up (undesirable as people have invested in PPT.DIV for the profit share, and the underlying premise/operation can continue), or reset the payment based on the new interest rates (which we have determined is the best course of action at this time - pending some other other we had not thought of).

If the motion were to fail, the PPT offer would still take place.  For this week it would have around 3.5 weeks of 7% interest and one week of 5% or 6% depending on the size of the BS&T deposit (maybe 7% but less likely).  For the following week it would be 2.5 to 1.5 and buy the time we get to August it would all be on the new rates.  Leaving the current floor of 1.00 and paying 1.28 on maturity when income is 0.24 (say) would incur a loss and the PPT.DIV dividends would, of course, fall to zero.

The other big change in the PPT.x space has been the large group of copy-cat offers where people can buy large quantities of pass-through bonds.  That linked to the very large availability consumed by those offerings took a lot of value out of our business.  Having seen todays reaction, that looks set to continue.  Also, people do not appear to value the insurance - it has been derided as a gimmick by some, but fundamentally it seems people are all in on the BS&T risk, or invest somewhere else.  Back in late April and early May, the market was more concentrated, since then, bidding has been around 1.02, and that is not a profitable level going forward, so we have to do something now.  Certainly the auction this week should clearly indicate how buyers of the PPT.x bonds assess and value the changes.

Overall, Burt had a brilliant idea back in April and we (the six of us) collectively put in a lot of work to make something that did work, and put around 4000BTC at risk.  We had a lot of requests to make a share of the profits available and the best option was to segment the profits from the underlying capital and operations - and we did that.  There was potential for the whole thing to blow up (pirate default) and there still is, but it looks like BS&T is running a while longer yet.  However, competition has also come along with people prepared to run pass-throughs for virtually no margin.  In hindsight, we would have collectively been better off leaving 4k in BS&T.  But for now, PPT.x offerings are set to continue as there isn't an event that would cause or allow a winding up of the company.

Actually no, that doesn't happen so easily.  The way the business is set up doesn't allow it to be shut down like that, and it's not an "easy" decision.  However, we also need to protect the value of the business and return acceptable returns to the PPT.DIV holders.  Obviously making a perpetual loss renders the DIV shares worthless, but we're aiming not to incur losses with the change in payable interest rates.  This was well signalled even as early as the very first PPT.A issue - if the rates change, so do the payoffs.  Because we have voting shares with PPT.DIV, the motion is required to be put.

Fundud - will either be "fun" or "dud" (or a mix of the two).

For explanation, the 1.04 was arrived at by a fairly simple mechanism. 

The interest rate available for PPT will probably be 6%/week and previously it was 7% for four weeks.  4 * 6% is 24%, but the mechanics of the contract is tied to the 1.28 payout so it was easier to set 1.04 rather than lowering the payout to 1.24 to give effect to the interest rate change.

Thank you - I wasn't expecting a full release of customer specific data, only the overall ability to make good the promises.  This is made a bit harder in bitcoin as the ability to have wide/diversified holdings is much less than in other markets.

Starfish BCB has been growing quite nicely over the last six months.  Deposits are approaching 10,000BTC and the loan book is still healthy for the short-term future around the same level.  Investments are ticking along.  However, good loan opportunities have been getting a little more scarce over the past few months and while June added five new loans to the portfolio, and idle coins are starting to accumulate. 

July will probably be the last month with 1.5%/week interest for deposits. 

I have also advised a regular customer that their latest deposit would be accepted at 1%/week and that would have taken them to around 2k.  This seems to be a sensible maximum and will only affect a few people in the short term.

I still think offering new accounts is important, so deposits up to 100BTC will not be a problem for those wishing to open one.

(And if people want BS&T pass through, I can accommodate that, although other operators are likely to offer fancy web interfaces and other cool bits.)

Yes, actually, I do, plus the post history and pm's help.

Do you have any coins at stake, or are you simply preaching fire and brimstone?

Please disclose the claims paying ability of CPA such as a basic three line balance sheet (assets, liability, spare liquid assets).  Without this information, the 100% insurance is only as good as the backer, and I'm not interested in taking "someone's word" on this.  An investor now has to rely on YARR, CPA and BS&T all doing their best to meet obligations.

As a counter example, Starfish BCB backs deposits (approx 9000BTC worth) with assets of approx 29,000 coins.

Can't be a very urgent loan - two days since pm sent offering to fund.  I assume it is not required.