[Smidge.Com] - A virtual, actively managed, multi-asset digital currency fund

[Smidge]

Smidge.Com – A virtual, actively managed, multi-asset digital currency fund

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This fund has been operating privately from July 31st, 2013 to Nov 10th, 2013. No IPO has been conducted on an exchange, wind down including reimbursement of funds has been completed during Nov 10th, 2013 until Dec 9th, 2013.

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[1713573169]

1713573169

[Smidge]

reserved

[Smidge]

reserved

[xaviarlol]

Hi Smidge,

A few questions...

Do you have any experience investing in virtual currency stocks?

If so, have you been successful at it? Do you have any statistics on your past performance, preferably verifiable?

[hl5460]

Folks are interested in tradeable shares. 

[Smidge]

Hi Smidge,

A few questions...

Do you have any experience investing in virtual currency stocks?

If so, have you been successful at it? Do you have any statistics on your past performance, preferably verifiable?

Hi xaviarlol,

Thx for the questions! I am actively engaged in investing in virtual currency stocks since April 2013. Please note that this fund is only to a small extent focused on daytrading activities, it is about mid-to long term capital growth. This is where my previous experience of stock-picking comes in, which I have been doing successfully since 2006.

The first security was bought on 2013-05-24 (verifyable on btct.co). There were a total of 18 BTC invested from my own capital. Please note also that I did not start with the whole 18 BTC that I invested, but gradually fed in further BTC (the last 5 just on 2013-07-10).

We are now at 24.7212 BTC, as you can see in the sheet. Dividends for today would be 0.23979725 (will be reinvested or added to next Sunday's first dividend payment, not decided yet).

[Smidge]

Folks are interested in tradeable shares. 

Hi hl5460,

At the moment, you can trade your shares to others at any time. There is a simple process to transfer shares from owner to owner by simply e-mailing us. I think this will become interesting and heavily used when the direct shares are sold out.

The next step is an IPO on one or multiple exchanges. Please check out the business plan I posted for detailed information.

[Smidge]

Another thing I would like to add (will be added to next version of business plan) is: We are also interested in share swaps for our pre-IPO offering. If you are the owner of an operation that you listed on an exchange and want to trade some of your shares for ours, please let us know. We will then evaluate your security and decide upon an investment.

If you are interested, please PM me. Thank you.

[matthewh3]

I'd just like to add my concern in that from the very start of bitcoin stock exchange trading that I've seen many investment funds come and go.  The main reason being that investment funds traditionally invest in Blue Chip companies.  While in bitcoin land they aren't any.  What is your magic to be able to succeed where many others with the best intentions has failed AFAIK.

[Smidge]

I'd just like to add my concern in that from the very start of bitcoin stock exchange trading that I've seen many investment funds come and go.  The main reason being that investment funds traditionally invest in Blue Chip companies.  While in bitcoin land they aren't any.  What is your magic to be able to succeed where many others with the best intentions has failed AFAIK.

Hi matthewh3,

Most (meaning 80%+) of traditional investment funds do not beat their compared index (US funds compared to the DOW, etc.). There is a quite a few studies about this. The reason is poor stock picking and horrendous fees (a normal managed fund takes 5% Issue surcharge, 2% admin fee + earnings based fees). That means, you are paying for the fund manager's Ferrari most of the time.

Smidge.Com takes a mgmt fee of 4.5% on dividends only, that's it. The substance of the fund will not be touched. The "magic", meaning our competitive advantage, has been detailed in the Strategy section of the business plan. It describes our capabilities and some of the detailed actions.

Two things that I would add are size and determination. The fund will over time grow and be able to invest large sums that give us an advantage on the market and in invested securities. I will also personally add more of my own capital into the fund, as I did before. Determination means that we are in this for the very long run, as you can see in the work that was already put into it. Even with small amounts of capital, we are able to operate just fine. Maybe that was not stated clearly enough, so thank you for asking.

tl;dr: We will make this work in the long run, no matter what

[BitHub]

Okeeeeey, i don't want to waste time. "The shareholders of the fund “Smidge.Com A” will hold 765,000.00 shares, while Smidge.Com shareholders will hold 135,000.00 shares." - I'm reading you plan on issuing a few of these com a, com b, com c, etc. But i want more skin in the game, so its better to have shares in smidge.com overall yes? So are you selling shares in smidge.com now or just com.a fund etc.

[Smidge]

Okeeeeey, i don't want to waste time. "The shareholders of the fund “Smidge.Com A” will hold 765,000.00 shares, while Smidge.Com shareholders will hold 135,000.00 shares." - I'm reading you plan on issuing a few of these com a, com b, com c, etc. But i want more skin in the game, so its better to have shares in smidge.com overall yes? So are you selling shares in smidge.com now or just com.a fund etc.

Hi BitHub,

Good question, thanks. You can think of Smidge.Com as a holding company that operates the funds and owns a minority share in each of them. When a second or third fund is launched, there will be another discounted pre-IPO offering of shares for existing shareholders only (like we are doing now for the first one, publicly) as a reward for early trust. After that, they will be publicly available.

I cannot tell you at this point if we are going to IPO the holding company. It could be a long term option tough, when we reach very broad diversification.

[BitHub]

Hmmmm interesting, Please send me a PM when you will start issuing shares in the holding company that is smidge. Would like to get in on those shares.

[Smidge]

I'd just like to add my concern in that from the very start of bitcoin stock exchange trading that I've seen many investment funds come and go.  The main reason being that investment funds traditionally invest in Blue Chip companies.  While in bitcoin land they aren't any.  What is your magic to be able to succeed where many others with the best intentions has failed AFAIK.

Hi matthewh3,

Most (meaning 80%+) of traditional investment funds do not beat their compared index (US funds compared to the DOW, etc.). There is a quite a few studies about this. The reason is poor stock picking and horrendous fees (a normal managed fund takes 5% Issue surcharge, 2% admin fee + earnings based fees). That means, you are paying for the fund manager's Ferrari most of the time.

Smidge.Com takes a mgmt fee of 4.5% on dividends only, that's it. The substance of the fund will not be touched. The "magic", meaning our competitive advantage, has been detailed in the Strategy section of the business plan. It describes our capabilities and some of the detailed actions.

Two things that I would add are size and determination. The fund will over time grow and be able to invest large sums that give us an advantage on the market and in invested securities. I will also personally add more of my own capital into the fund, as I did before. Determination means that we are in this for the very long run, as you can see in the work that was already put into it. Even with small amounts of capital, we are able to operate just fine. Maybe that was not stated clearly enough, so thank you for asking.

tl;dr: We will make this work in the long run, no matter what

I would like to add here that purchasing shares of the fund is completely free of charge, meaning 100% of your investment "gets to work" immediately. You won't have to sit out eventually breaking even first for a few weeks before getting ROI on your investment.

[chinchs]

I, Do you accept another coin (like LTC)? There are smaller packages to buy? How much hashpower we got per share (aprox)? Thanks!

[Smidge]

I, Do you accept another coin (like LTC)? There are smaller packages to buy? How much hashpower we got per share (aprox)? Thanks!

Hi chinchs,

We currently acquire assets only by BTC and LTC, so the answer would be yes. The other coins in the balance sheet are only used for speculation on BTC/LTC. Please mention when ordering that you wish to use LTC, I will reply with the amount based on the current exchange rate from LTC-Global, www.litecoinglobal.com

Regarding smaller packages, there have been numerous requests and discussions. Bottom line is, there are now packages available for 125 shares instead of 250, for BTC 2.5 instead of BTC 5. Of course, there is still no fee involved (see my previous post, #2780871). Please mention this when ordering.

I cannot tell you how much hashpower there is per share at the moment, but you can see all our investments in the balance sheet I posted before and go from there. I will be able to tell you the growth rate, the dividends and the annual rate of return next Sunday when we get the next snapshot of the fund's status.

[CoinBomb]

why not launch this on btct / bitfunder etc?

[Smidge]

why not launch this on btct / bitfunder etc?

Hi CoinBomb,

We are not yet at the stage you described, although it is the next step. Please check out "Raising Expansion Capital & IPO" in our business plan posted above or on the website.

[burnside]

Hey there.  Thank you for applying to btct.co for listing.  I have a few questions I need answered prior to admin unlock:  (feel free to PM me anything you deem sensitive, but the more you can post here the better people will feel about it.)

- Have you owned, operated, or managed a business before?  Please tell me about it.
- Have you run a fund of any kind before?  Is it somewhere documented that we can check out?
- Do you have linkedin?  Can you connect with me?  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanburnside
- What is your current day job?  How long have you worked there?

Thanks!

[Smidge]

Hey there.  Thank you for applying to btct.co for listing.  I have a few questions I need answered prior to admin unlock:  (feel free to PM me anything you deem sensitive, but the more you can post here the better people will feel about it.)

- Have you owned, operated, or managed a business before?  Please tell me about it.
- Have you run a fund of any kind before?  Is it somewhere documented that we can check out?
- Do you have linkedin?  Can you connect with me?  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanburnside
- What is your current day job?  How long have you worked there?

Thanks!

Hi burnside,

As mentioned to you before, I am targeting a public listing not right now, but in the near future. An admin unlock of "SMIDGE.COM-A" would be greatly appreciated though.

- Have you owned, operated, or managed a business before?  Please tell me about it.

I have, great question. Gaming veterans will know that Smidge.Com was actually launched by myself in 1998 as a games website for the game Interstate'76. It grew into a whole network of gaming sites pretty quick (3d-shooters.com, deltaforce2.com, interstate82.com and several others), with Smidge.com being the central site. It had 1,000,000 pageviews per month in the year 2000, which was a pretty big deal back then. You can check out www.archive.org to see snapshots of the good old times
The gaming network went great for years, but finally (after I also turned down an awesome buyout offer) imploded with the Dotcom Bubble. I finally shut it down in 2004 I think.
I went on to study business administration and computer science and founded an online ERP system for small businesses with a partner in 2006 (coded, launched and operated). It was acquired by a wholesaler in 2009.

- Have you run a fund of any kind before?  Is it somewhere documented that we can check out?

Not a public fund, but as I mentioned before, I have been successfully investing in stocks since 2006 for myself and a family fund. It was pretty turbulent at times from 2008 on, as you can imagine. If you have the time, you can check my tweets for hints on what I've invested. I am considered by friends, family and coworkers as an expert in macroeconomics. This passion is also how I got drawn into the current environment

- Do you have linkedin?  Can you connect with me?  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanburnside

As a business man, of course. I just added you.

- What is your current day job?  How long have you worked there?

I work full-time as Key Account Manager in the B2B space since 2010.

EDIT: Edited for grammar and spelling and accuracy.