The coming flash crash in AMC

[lysr]

as someone who was a share holder the dividends went

20million to reinvestment
15million Kens possession
5million were fighting for the small bit of dividends,

Im sorry to say it but I got rid of the rest of what I had yesterday after s_stylez P.I. - like post, dhenson's post of the virtual office box and Ken's absolutely horrible way of handling the current situation mostly by staying quiet or when answering giving only mediocre answers and more promise I had enough,

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt but in this case I was blinded mostly in the huge raise in share price, I am just thankful that I got out in the green but the people who bought in out of the large wall are the ones who are really suffering right now,

Ken until everything is changed from the bottom up everyone in this thread who was calling pump and dump was on point, some handled it way more professionally and like adults than others but the point was brought to surface, I wish you the best but things are definitely in need of changing,

Wise decision.
The AMC bubble reminds me of the recent Bitcoin bubble, expect to see similar pattern in price movement.

[1714899832]

1714899832

[1714899832]

1714899832

[1714899832]

1714899832

[1714899832]

1714899832

[1714899832]

1714899832

[furuknap]

What I really don't get is:

  Why did people think 2 days ago that 0.0025 was a great deal?
  And now, two days later, with minimal changes to the underlying issue, think it's not a great deal?
  On an asset that per stated plans, will take months to deliver?

The market really doesn't make any sense to me sometimes and trying to make sense of it really hurts my brain.

As an exchange operator, these are questions you should never ask except in cases where you suspect foul play in the free trade of assets. In fact, you're putting people in more danger by offloading their responsibility and risk.

What the vote system allows, but sadly doesn't, is a peer review of the contract, the terms, the seriousness of the issuer, whether the important questions investors need answered are properly answered, and so on.

Right now, and with your questions even related to the valuation of a company, the vote system is a vote about whether someone thinks they could make money off an asset.

Some voters take their responsibility seriously and judge listings based on merits that will put responsibility, risk, and reward solely on investors, as a free market should. However, apparently the majority would only vote on listings they find interesting, profitable, or something to that effect. The result is that new or radically different types of assets would have a hard time being listed.

There is no accountability for voters, as they can vote anonymously. There's no transparency because their interests are not disclosed (think voters that do not want assets competing with their own held assets). In fact, we don't even know the usernames, much less the names of half of the voters. Asset issuers have no way to reach the voters directly, except to post to their own discussion threads and hope voters are interested enough to monitor that, post in the News thread on the site (polluting that even further), or similar, which is public and could disclose confidential information.

For example, and specific to my pending listing, I am working on a new plan as a backup in case LTC Global voters can't be bothered to do what I pay them to do. That plan contains sensitive information about the asset that I do not want publicized until the plan has come together. Still, voters may need to know about this information and I have no way of reaching them.

The result is that voters based their votes on valuation, not on the asset. For new assets, this makes it virtually impossible to get an asset listed, as it turns into a speculation game from voters, not a factual review that would give the market the ability to decide valuation of a company. Voters take away investor's ability to invest in whatever they wish and basically say "wee don't think you'll make money on this so we're going to prevent you from having the chance".

Finally, why on earth would there be a clause about voter participation being above a certain level? Do you US types postpone the election of a new president until at least X have voted? No! You set a date, and at that date, you tally the votes. Whoever has the most votes is said to win. There would be riot in the streets if you included a clause saying that the democratic candidate needs at least X votes to win.

The way the system works now, only one type of vote is counted. The rest are at best guidelines for investors who happen to buy through that particular website.  Only Yes votes matter and you need 5 of them. You could have 3000 No votes; as long as you get 5 Yes votes, you win the election. It's not even half of the voters; according to your 20+ voter comment, 25% of the voters need to somehow be encouraged to vote favorably. If the rest scream their lungs out about real problems in the contract, who cares? You get listed if you can bribe, threaten, over-promise, or otherwise get 5 people to supprt you.

It's actually even worse because you can even buy one vote yourself and that seems somehow to be quite OK.

If there are changes to be made it's going to require more manpower to help filter better and to help the issuers plan their IPO's better.  I've been discussing getting more people involved lately, I will continue to pursue those avenues.

The exchange needs to either dispose of the voting system or it needs clear, transparent guidelines for voters to follow, guidelines that are enforced by you or a team of yous. You don't need more people to keep a system that's already broken.

.b

[Kyune]

Only Yes votes matter and you need 5 of them. You could have 3000 No votes; as long as you get 5 Yes votes, you win the election. It's not even half of the voters; according to your 20+ voter comment, 25% of the voters need to somehow be encouraged to vote favorably. If the rest scream their lungs out about real problems in the contract, who cares? You get listed if you can bribe, threaten, over-promise, or otherwise get 5 people to supprt you.

It's actually even worse because you can even buy one vote yourself and that seems somehow to be quite OK.

This does seem like a design flaw.

[Deprived]

Only Yes votes matter and you need 5 of them. You could have 3000 No votes; as long as you get 5 Yes votes, you win the election. It's not even half of the voters; according to your 20+ voter comment, 25% of the voters need to somehow be encouraged to vote favorably. If the rest scream their lungs out about real problems in the contract, who cares? You get listed if you can bribe, threaten, over-promise, or otherwise get 5 people to supprt you.

It's actually even worse because you can even buy one vote yourself and that seems somehow to be quite OK.

This does seem like a design flaw.

It actually used to be different - the requirement used to be that you had to get a score of +5.  So if you had 2 no votes you'd need 9 Yes votes to pass.

In theory I much prefer that (old) way - but there's a few problems with it :

Number of voters changes as people buy and sell shares.
Some voters don't vote at all - or aren't very active.
Counting NOs as double gives undue weight when some people may vote NO for invalid reasons (e.g. they run a competitive asset or they don't understand a contract or they just don't like the issuer).

Unfortunately pretty much ANY voting system is going be flawed when the criteria for voting is unrelated to capability to properly assess securities.  And that ends up where we are now:

People criticise assets that were approved.
Those whose assets aren't approved (or take a long time) blame the voters.

I'm not going to get into whether your asset should be approved or not (I've previously indicated that I'd have voted YES if I had a vote).  But let's just say that I've yet to see someone who had problems getting votes come here and say "This time the voters were right and I'm cancelling my security as it wasn't up to scratch."  ALL issuers who don't get votes as fast as they'd like are going to blame the voters - so when it happens (as is the case here) it doesn't actually shed any light on the situation - as you'd be saying it whether your asset should have been approved or not.

At root the problem is money.  To have securities properly checked is potentially expensive - you need multiple people doing it (to avoid bias) and those capable of doing it properly aren't going to be cheap.  If some panel of suitable people were to be paid to screen securities then the registration fee would need to rise significantly.  And that's where the problem comes - because most issuers believe their contract is already fine.  So why would they pay a large fee to BTC-TC to have some panel agree with them when they could list on Bitfunder much cheaper?

BTC-TC and Bitfunder compete with one another in part on price - neither can afford to raise their listing fees if the other doesn't.

The starting point for improved standards (both in approving worthy listings and rejecting bad ones) would, in my view, be for burnside and Ukyo to agree that they'll BOTH raise their listing fees significantly.  Then they'd have the budget to do more DD on listings.  Until then BTC-TC is limited to doing whatever can be done for free - which means unpaid volunteers who may well not be competent.

[furuknap]

I'm not going to get into whether your asset should be approved or not (I've previously indicated that I'd have voted YES if I had a vote).  But let's just say that I've yet to see someone who had problems getting votes come here and say "This time the voters were right and I'm cancelling my security as it wasn't up to scratch."  ALL issuers who don't get votes as fast as they'd like are going to blame the voters - so when it happens (as is the case here) it doesn't actually shed any light on the situation - as you'd be saying it whether your asset should have been approved or not.

I would actually appreciate if there was even sensible No-votes. I wish to offer a good asset (and even suggested to implement a sort of guarantee, as described in my thread) but there simply isn't feedback beyond "I wouldn't buy, it's too expensive". The comments beyond that have been addressed (No immediate hashing explained by a bonus period, bonds never returning principal explained by explicit contract change, rebranding to mining contract, etc).

I react to the feedback I'm given; in fact, if I was actually willing to 'cheat' I would just have bought the final vote myself.

Right now, however, 80% of voters say Yes. Which means nothing.

At root the problem is money.  To have securities properly checked is potentially expensive - you need multiple people doing it (to avoid bias) and those capable of doing it properly aren't going to be cheap.  If some panel of suitable people were to be paid to screen securities then the registration fee would need to rise significantly.  And that's where the problem comes - because most issuers believe their contract is already fine.  So why would they pay a large fee to BTC-TC to have some panel agree with them when they could list on Bitfunder much cheaper?

This is a valid point, but on the other hand, I would much rather pay 5 peole 1BTC (of three people 1.6BTC) to have a guaranteed outcome than to throw 5BTC to someone who doens't have to bother and still get my money. In fact, I would double my payment if I knew there was an outcome (even if it wasn't positive).

BTC-TC and Bitfunder compete with one another in part on price - neither can afford to raise their listing fees if the other doesn't.

The starting point for improved standards (both in approving worthy listings and rejecting bad ones) would, in my view, be for burnside and Ukyo to agree that they'll BOTH raise their listing fees significantly.  Then they'd have the budget to do more DD on listings.  Until then BTC-TC is limited to doing whatever can be done for free - which means unpaid volunteers who may well not be competent.

It still doesn't address the question of what the listing fee gets you. Right now, it gets you nothing, unless someone happens to be interested or thinks that the volume will give them personal benefits. Right now, there is no incentive to vote at all except for guaranteed high-volume assets.

.b

[iCEBREAKER]

2010 is an impressively early signup date.  Good to know Ken is a very early adapter, way ahead of the curve kind of guy.  He may have paid for our Avalons with his cheap old coins.

In contrast, btc megamouth has been here all of 4 months.   

Ken has contributed to the community by giving AM some badly needed competition, while providing us Joe Sixcoin types with an excellent investment opportunity.  I've already doubled my money a couple of times and am now playing entirely with the money given to me by scared little speculators waving their weak hands around. 

In contrast, btc megamouth's main contribution is to ride our coattails with yet another crummy cafepress t-shirt.

I support family businesses.  The proprietors have extra incentives to succeed and benefit from dealing with less HR issues. 

6 Avalons, 20k chips, and a lot of capital represent a substantial amount of "substance."  Certainly more than AM began with and more than btc megamouth's t-shirts will ever amount to.

No risk, no reward; if you can't take the heat GTFO the kitchen.   

[Deprived]

I'm not going to get into whether your asset should be approved or not (I've previously indicated that I'd have voted YES if I had a vote).  But let's just say that I've yet to see someone who had problems getting votes come here and say "This time the voters were right and I'm cancelling my security as it wasn't up to scratch."  ALL issuers who don't get votes as fast as they'd like are going to blame the voters - so when it happens (as is the case here) it doesn't actually shed any light on the situation - as you'd be saying it whether your asset should have been approved or not.

At root the problem is money.  To have securities properly checked is potentially expensive - you need multiple people doing it (to avoid bias) and those capable of doing it properly aren't going to be cheap.  If some panel of suitable people were to be paid to screen securities then the registration fee would need to rise significantly.  And that's where the problem comes - because most issuers believe their contract is already fine.  So why would they pay a large fee to BTC-TC to have some panel agree with them when they could list on Bitfunder much cheaper?

This is a valid point, but on the other hand, I would much rather pay 5 peole 1BTC (of three people 1.6BTC) to have a guaranteed outcome than to throw 5BTC to someone who doens't have to bother and still get my money. In fact, I would double my payment if I knew there was an outcome (even if it wasn't positive).

There's two problems with that :

1.  If the 5 BTC fee gos to the people reviewing the contract then there's nothing left for the Exchange.
2.  1 BTC doesn't buy much time.

Expanding on point 2 - what would you expect for your 1 BTC?  Say I was a reviewing your contract and I found a few things unclear or objectionable (but fixable) do I reject it?  Or do you amend it pay another 1 BTC and try again?

Could anyone properly review, say, my DMS contract for 1 BTC?  It's pretty complicated - and HAS to be to properly cover all the bases.  Is the reviewer expected to write up a critique if they fail it?  How long do you think it would take to review AMC's contract and point out all the problems with it.

As soon as the process gos beyond "Read it, approve it if it's perfect otherwise reject it" time taken rapidly escalates.  Yours isn't actually a great example - as it's pretty straightforward.  But some apparently simple contracts/IPO plans have issues that would take quite a lot of explaining just to get the issuer to understand what the problem was - things like exchange-rate exposure and why they can't have fixed price in BTC when their assets and revenue are all in USD.

The fee for reviewing either has to be high or it has to be variable.  With small IPOs such as yours (no offence intended) the bulk of fees the exchange will EVER receive is the listing fee.  Listing fee is 5 BTC.  You're having 100K shares at .04 BTC each - so 400 BTC total value.   The exchange makes 1.6 BTC if you sell them all via the market and they all need to change hands again more than 2 times each before trade fees would exceed the lsiting fee.  That's why reviewers can't be paid from the current listing fee.

And without significantly raising the fee there's just no way to get a group of competent people to review IPOs/contracts with any complexity.  About the only way to do it without raising the fee IS a "perfect or fail" approach - where ANY signficant defect in the contract causes a fail without any feedback provided other than that reason.  So on AMC it would get failed immediately because the contract explicitly created a conflict of interest with Ken representing both AMC/VML.  Then if that got fixed and he resubmitted again it may get failed because his projections showed him mining more bitcoins than the total netowrk could mine (which was in his original draft).  That would minimise the time taken on reviews - as you could just stop reading as soon as you found a serious problem or a contradiction.  And it would force people to get it right first time - either by being competent themself or by paying someone competent to avoid having to keep paying 5 BTC fees trying to list.

But of course then they'd just run over to Bitfunder instead - as there if the contract had one fairly minor flaw they wouldn't have to pay 2 fees.  Competition between multiple exchanges is great on many levels - but because it's perceived as being on price it leads to a race to the bottom.  Meaning on Bitfunder you just have to persuade Ukyo - why doesn't seem to pay attention to detail at all - and on BTC-TC you're at the mercy of a bunch of randoms voting on whatever criteria they want.  And that means ones that should be rejected getting accepted and ones that should be accepted getting delayed or rejected - think we all agree on that, just maybe not so much on which ones fit in each category.

[oaxaca]

a guy who is proven scammer and failed magician.

"proven"?  Did you even read these postings from New Zealand?

http://www.magicnewzealand.com/ezine-archive/2007-Jan-to-Dec-2007/488-Apr01-2007.txt
http://www.magicnewzealand.com/ezine-archive/2007-Jan-to-Dec-2007/489-Apr08-2007.txt
http://www.magicnewzealand.com/ezine-archive/2007-Jan-to-Dec-2007/490-Apr15-2007.txt
http://www.magicnewzealand.com/ezine-archive/2007-Jan-to-Dec-2007/491-Apr22-2007.txt
http://www.magicnewzealand.com/ezine-archive/2007-Jan-to-Dec-2007/499-May13-2007.txt

Let me summarize:

April 2007 - Some guy says "I have been RIPPED OFF. I paid U.S. $1225.00"

Then - Same guy says "I filed a complaint with the Reno PD, but they aren't able to help me much"

Then - The editor of the zine says "Suggest that anyone having similar problems with Mr.Darin Carolus
          should lay a complaint with the Ethics Committee of both Societies."

Then - Dude says "Received this message from Darin Carlous..."

May 2007 - Department of Business and Industry, Nevada Consumer Affairs Division says "A careful
                evaluation of your complaint has been made. The intake officer has determined that
                the proper agency that may be able to assist you in resolving the issues in your complaint is:
                U.S. Secret Service"

Translation "We're not interested, talk to somebody else".  

The Secret Service says: "The mission of the United States Secret Service is to safeguard the nation's
financial infrastructure and payment systems to preserve the integrity of the economy, and to protect
national leaders, visiting heads of state and government, designated sites and National Special Security Events.

Then nothing for 6 years?

I think you should stop throwing around words like "proven scammer".  Do you see any proof?

I'm sure (I hope) that Ken will explain who this guy is and is not since he is listed as an officer.

[oaxaca]

I'm sure (I hope) that Ken will explain who this guy is and is not since he is listed as an officer.

Well, dumb people never figure out anything themselves. That is why they usualy got scammed by people like Ken.

OK, so you take the word of a random person who has been rebuffed by the Police, and the Nevada Consumer
Affairs Division as gospel?  Just because somebody posts something to an ezine is good enough proof for you?

and you call me dumb?


Keith Garrett writes: "blah, blah, blah" and it is God's Truth.

Ken writes: "blah, blah, blah" and it is a scam.

Really?

[oaxaca]

"Mr. Carolus is a recent subscriber to Magic New Zealand"

Guy comes to this forum today, makes an account, scams me for some coins and log off. An example. You wanna tell me you will trust him?

Your example is nonsense.  How can you claim Mr. Carolus is a scammer without any shred of proof and still retain any form of self respect?

[themagicdrake]

For you it is "without any shred of proof" but for me it is all proof I've ever need. Get out of the (mental) cave and deal with all sort of people
for few decades. Do not miss dealing with worst of mankind. You'll get a lot of experience out of it and your intuition might start working finaly.

http://cdn.meme.li/instances/400x/27345166.jpg

[oaxaca]

but for me it is all proof I've ever need.

Case Closed!

[Entropy-uc]

I think you're still not clearly understanding the main problem with AMC btw.  The problem is that its structure so that even if it DOES make profit from hardware sales under 5% of it ends up with investors.  How much less than 5% depends on a definition of 'profit' imposed by VMC (which shareholders have no say in or oversight of) - which makes the 'no salary' clause of AMC worthless (as Ken can give whatever he wants as salary to himself/friends/family before profit comes anywhere near AMC) and on how much profit is made.  To get 2.5% return on capital requires $2 million profit on sales to be made - that's sales of ASICs that won't even be out until end of this year/early next by KEN's estimate.

Definitely does not sound good for investors.  Though my understanding was that most of their returns would come from the mining that AMC would be doing.  Either way, a return seems a long, long way off.

This is my major objection to the whole offering.  If you take Ken's own projections of hashrate, plug in a realistic model for the network power (he seems to assume that every Avalon chip but his get dropped in a shredder), and value the company as what it is, a mining company with all it's IP stripped by the operator you will get something close to $5M as the value 6 month from now if he executes on everything he says he will do, and no nasty surprises appear in the market.

$5M is 0.0005 per share.  So his original offering price already was extracting essentially all the value of the company before it has ever executed on anything.  There was no margin for an investor to gain anything if he succeeded! And from that level he raised the price.

When it was at 0.0008 he was touting that the true value of the company was 10-15x higher.  15x higher would be $120M - more than the annual value of all bitcoins available to miners.  Yes ASICMINER is getting that valuation, but they have the hardware business and a dominant position in the mining space.  There is zero chance anyone will capture as strong a position as ASICMINER has today.  Most likely Ken will be one of a dozen consortia that scramble to capture 2 or 3% market share of the network.

That would be ok, and a decent company.  But not when the IPO lists at a price that would only be supported by more than 10% share.

[carnitastaco]

2010 is an impressively early signup date.  Good to know Ken is a very early adapter, way ahead of the curve kind of guy.  He may have paid for our Avalons with his cheap old coins.

In contrast, btc megamouth has been here all of 4 months.   

Ken has contributed to the community by giving AM some badly needed competition, while providing us Joe Sixcoin types with an excellent investment opportunity.  I've already doubled my money a couple of times and am now playing entirely with the money given to me by scared little speculators waving their weak hands around. 

In contrast, btc megamouth's main contribution is to ride our coattails with yet another crummy cafepress t-shirt.

I support family businesses.  The proprietors have extra incentives to succeed and benefit from dealing with less HR issues. 

6 Avalons, 20k chips, and a lot of capital represent a substantial amount of "substance."  Certainly more than AM began with and more than btc megamouth's t-shirts will ever amount to.

No risk, no reward; if you can't take the heat GTFO the kitchen.   

L.      O.        L.

[Entropy-uc]

Let's try to keep things constructive and informative here.

The idea is to help people avoid losing their shirt to a fast talking huckster by providing facts.  And to provide constructive input on how to avoid this kind of situation in the future.

Baiting folks that view the investment in a different light isn't helpful.  Ultimately a lot of people are going to lose money in this situation.  Some of the pro AMC folks might even have perspectives that we can learn from.

And the ignore button helps me with those that don't contribute in a constructive way on both sides.

[furuknap]

This is a valid point, but on the other hand, I would much rather pay 5 peole 1BTC (of three people 1.6BTC) to have a guaranteed outcome than to throw 5BTC to someone who doens't have to bother and still get my money. In fact, I would double my payment if I knew there was an outcome (even if it wasn't positive).

There's two problems with that :

1.  If the 5 BTC fee gos to the people reviewing the contract then there's nothing left for the Exchange.
2.  1 BTC doesn't buy much time.

Expanding on point 2 - what would you expect for your 1 BTC?  Say I was a reviewing your contract and I found a few things unclear or objectionable (but fixable) do I reject it?  Or do you amend it pay another 1 BTC and try again?

I used 5BTC as an example because it's what's being charged now. We're accustomed to western level salaries, however, and I can tell you that I could hire a skilled person to work for five hours reading contracts and looking for issues for 1BTC where I currently live. That's far less time than I spent reading (and I think understanding) the DMS.* contracts. The degree to which one needs to be a lawyer is still in question; I certainly don't expect to account for every legal loophold that exists with my reading of the contracts.

On the other hand, I would trust your vote if you voted because I've come to know that you seem to have rational arguments and a good understanding. I would build a similar trust with other voters if I came to understand their thought process too. Right now, however, I barely know who votes and it's open for purchase effectively.

If there was a panel, say consisting of five trusted people, where upon listing a new asset, three of those would be picked at random to review the listing, I think it would serve both the investors, the asset issuers, and the exchange much better. Prices may have to go up but so would the quality.

I don't think the exchanges have yet reached a stage of commoditization. I think there's still a huge market to be taken and trying to save pennies to win a war is a bit like trying to win at Le Mans by not starting your engine too much prior to the race to save gas.

I've said it before; I think the exchange that wins this race is the one that implements the most reasonable way that secures investors, themselves, and asset issuers the best. I really don't think pricing is part of it to the extent you think.

.b

[carnitastaco]

Let's try to keep things constructive and informative here.

The idea is to help people avoid losing their shirt to a fast talking huckster by providing facts.  And to provide constructive input on how to avoid this kind of situation in the future.

Baiting folks that view the investment in a different light isn't helpful.  Ultimately a lot of people are going to lose money in this situation.  Some of the pro AMC folks might even have perspectives that we can learn from.

And the ignore button helps me with those that don't contribute in a constructive way on both sides.

yes, and at some point, after all those facts have been provided ad infinitum and the asset issuer has proved over and over and over again that there's no reason to trust him, and the contract was horribly written and terrible for investors from the very beginning, and it's all explained in simple words and the math has been shown very clearly all you can do is laugh at defenses of the scam that ignore all the analysis and numbers.

I was very very surprised that this asset made it to BTCTCO, but in any securities market there's always going to be some amount of survival of the fittest going on, and I'm not sure how you stop someone determined to throw away their money from throwing away their money.

[hamiltino]

I don't understand why bitFunder and BTCT arn't doing anything about this. Why don't i see an entourage of people discussing the biggest scam in bitcoin investment history???

[freedomno1]

I don't understand why bitFunder and BTCT arn't doing anything about this. Why don't i see an entourage of people discussing the biggest scam in bitcoin investment history???

BFL 

[hamiltino]

I don't understand why bitFunder and BTCT arn't doing anything about this. Why don't i see an entourage of people discussing the biggest scam in bitcoin investment history???

BFL 

BFL are shipping operational ASIC Miners though. Eventhough they ship 1 miner per year with an order que of 100000000000