Try alberto.armandi at gmail.com.

Edit: I understand the reference, not what the OP is trying to say with it.

There is no advantage to take. The mining bonds prices went down because the market expected ASICs to arrive and correspondingly the coupons from the bonds to decrease. Assuming the market is right, the issuer's debt on the bonds went down anyway, buyback or no buyback. The buyback clause in this case does not cause the investors to lose or the issuer to gain - the loss/gain was due to the hardware advance.

Once again - anything which affects the profitability of mining causes the bonds to decay whether there is buyback or not. Block halving in particular is a known event and should be priced in to the bond valuation in advance, if there is any drop in the traded price around the time of halving it means the market is irrational.

You need to distinguish between stocks, expiring bonds and perpetual bonds.

In stocks there is no need for the clause. The issuer isn't taking any risk, and he can at any time close down the company, liquidate the assets and distribute the proceeds to shareholders.

For bonds with a specific expiration date, there is also no need for this - the bond is normally bought back at expiration.


For perpetual bonds this is absolutely necessary. Mathematically such a bond pays out forever. But this isn't practical; most such bonds decay over time, and once the value is low enough it makes no sense to continue physically paying tiny coupons forever if the issuer moved on. Even if the bond does not decay, there can be any number of legal, financial, technical or medical issues that could prevent the issuer from continuing to do whatever the bonds were meant to do - not having an out is much more risk than anyone could bear (and with an out it's still very high risk for the issuer, but at least bounded).

So a buyback clause must exist. The only question is how to do it in a way that makes sure that investors don't lose, relative to what they would have gained if the payout did continue indefinitely. For bonds with a given BTC denomination this is easy - just some multiple of the face value (I usually pick 120%, so in the "worst case" investors would gain 20% in addition to coupons already accumulated).

But mining bonds have no fixed BTC value. When I invented them I figured that a multiple of the traded price is appropriate, as this is the most objective BTC-denominated valuation of the bond. And I'll note that I used 120% of 30-days highest price, which virtually guarantees no loss will occur (some later bonds didn't remain faithful to the principles).

Nowadays I don't think traded price is the best choice, and some multiple of the ELE (extrapolated lifetime earnings) is better. I'll use that if I issue a new series of mining bonds, and I hope other issuers will do the same.

But I don't really buy the "create panic and buy back cheap" argument. If the issuer wants to play dirty he can just abandon his obligations regardless of any buyback clause - the clause doesn't help him much with this regard. He will need to cause the traded price to drop by over 20% and sustain this for a month - hard to do that without doing something really nasty. Also, if he does indeed create panic, he can simply buy bonds on the open market when people dump them, without any buyback clause.

It's sad to hear that this is the end for CoinCard, which used to be one of the pillars on which Bitcoin rested and which played a vital role in me personally getting involved with it.

I wish you luck in your future ventures and hope they will be as fruitful.

I need to go long on BTC, and I would like to do it with a CFD just like I previously discussed, except this time I'm taking the long side. If you're looking to short BTC, this is for you.

Preferably this will be done with reputable members, without any collateral offered by either party. If sufficient trust cannot be established we will consider collateral or escrow. No money will be transferred when the agreement starts, and only bitcoins (not USD) will be sent when it ends.

For now I'm looking for a 500 BTC contract but this may be extended in the future, either with the original party or another party.

How this works: When we start the agreement, we record the BTC exchange rate $O. When either party wishes to settle the contract, we look at the current exchange rate $C. I will then pay you 500*(O/C-1) BTC (equivalent to 500*(O-C) USD, which is what you would have gained by selling 500 BTC and then buying them). If this is negative you pay me 500*(1-O/C) BTC.

To avoid confusion about the exact time in which the exchange rate is determined, I suggest that we use the opening rate in the charts on mtgox.com at some future time we decide.

Duration: The contract will last until one party decides to settle it, which it can do with 2 days notice. This should be enough time to prepare the settlement payment, but a leniency of a few days in actual payment will be allowed. The minimum duration is 2 weeks and the contract can't be ended before this time elapses. These terms are negotiable.

Contract refreshment: To avoid either party being in too much debt to the other, the contract should be occasionally refreshed (for example, whenever the exchange rate moves by $1). To do this, I will pay 500*(O/M-1) BTC where $M is the current exchange rate, and then M will be assigned as the new value for O. (The exact value of M isn't as critical as the initial O and the final C).

Alternative method: I'll lend 500 BTC and receive a loan of $6500 Mtgox USD. The loans will act as collateral for each other and carry no interest. You can sell the bitcoins to take a short position, or use them without needing to have a long BTC position.

FWIW I used to play a lot with my brother back in the day, and I still have a sizable collection. But nowadays I only play maybe once a year.

That's not the whole story either. When I talked with Jed he said there was never a Magic: the Gathering Online Exchange running on mtgox.com, he just got the domain thinking he may want to make one one day.

Please don't, that's dishonest and intrusive. And won't be effective anyway when there's ASIC.

On Aug 28 2012 the contract with teek was concluded with a final price of 10.89.

Both shares and blocks. (This is the "double" in DGM.)

As ooc says the total amount you get on average is the same in PPS and DGM (with the same fee), no matter what is your mining pattern. If you mine 22 hours a day you get 22/24 of what you would get for mining 24 hours, in both PPS and DGM.

Ok.

The OP is wrong and a non-sequitur, the conclusions don't follow from the facts.

The situation with Pirate is causing a bank run where everyone rushes to withdraw all of their deposits. This can cause liquidity problems for all depositors, whether they are invested themselves or not.

Take Nckrazze for example. If he has 35% reserve and a customer constituting 10% of the deposits withdraws, he now has 25% reserve until he can replenish it (which takes time). After a few more withdraws the reserve will run out. He doesn't know in advance how many people will want to withdraw and it is legitimate to serve the first requesters in full.

With INAU it's even sillier. "Insured" doesn't mean he has funds lying around in completely liquid form doing nothing. If he did he'd have no need to take the deposit. The insurance means he has the funds in some useful illiquid form, and will pay them back in a default once liquidated.

I'm not saying anyone is or is not a liar, just that it doesn't follow from the facts you mentioned. And of course, if you hold yourself to a higher liquidity standard that's great.

M4y83 1N5734D 0f L337 5P33K w3 k4n u23 73h pH0n371C 5y573M pH0r c0n50N4N72.
noO8 V3R51ON: 3ay9e i201ea1 o8 5ee1 09ea7 we 7a2 u0e 1e 8o2e1i7 0y01e3 8o4 7o20o2a210.
H4x0R VeR510n: 39 2011 8 51 097  72 0 1 8217 0013 84 7202210.

1'|\/| |\|07 .-34|_|_`/ P|-||_|_|3|\|7 \|/17 |_337 5p33|< 50 1'|\/| |_|51|\|' 7|-|12 0|\||_1|\|3 7.-4|\|5|_470.-.

If coins are lost the value of each coin will go up, yes. I think much less coins will be lost than you think - people can lose a few bits here and there but are more careful with large sums, and backing up the wallet is easy. Which means the effect on the economy should also be fairly small.

The share difficulty needs to be decided in advance. If a miner configured as a 32 miner submits a 1 share it will be rejected. If a miner configured as 1 submits a 32 share it will count just like a normal 1 share.

Well there's https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_summary.pdf.

This may have something to do with the fact that you're looking at EUR rather than USD. It's possible that the last price displayed is a USD trade converted to EUR, which needn't exactly match the orders you've placed.

Though you should ask Mtgox directly because if this is a bug, it's a fairly serious one.

Alberto says he will write a status update later this evening.