[LABCOIN] IPO [BTCT.CO] - Details/FAQ and Discussion (ASIC dev/sales/mining)

[ThickAsThieves]

TAT you called pump and dump on Activemining are you sad that you didnt get any IPO shares and trying to bring down the price? I dont get how this is any different from any real world company CEO's dont hold private shares they are all listed on the market

I made money on ActM, and Labcoin, like many. Not because I have long-term faith, but because I knew the market would act irrationally. I have no holdings in either anymore.

This is different because these people are not paid a salary out of some current income stream, like Google. They are paid in a finite amount of shares. When those shares are not enough to justify doing the job, those people will quit. That time is now really. They'll have more than $1m in coins after selling off, and the odds are that's the most profit Labcoin will ever see for itself.

[ajk]

Lol thats funny

so you admit that you made money off of a company in which you were so convinced was a Pump and dump you also said you would never put money into ActM to which I can fully remember,

These guys put money into the company as well and as investors we all put money into the company because we believed that they will deliver

Ya they arent making money now they are TRYING TO DO THAT,

you are contradictory and sounds like you use your power to benefit Yourself, Im cool with that but im also going to call it out like it is

Edit

Hence why you also admit that you have no shares probably cause you sold and are trying to bring the price down to rebuy

[Lohoris]

People bashing Labcoin have a right to their opinion of course but IMO, despite the launch which was a bit messy and not their fault

srsly?
rushed launch? their fault.
wrong timezone? their fault.
stupid share distribution? their fault.
server overloaded? btct fault, but if they didn't rush the IPO, this might not have happened.

[Lohoris]

BFL also looked most promising, professional and very good communication/forum presence, which brought in a LOT of money. But it's the Chinese companies that deliver.

technically it's AM that delivers, and this happens to be Chinese.
pretty a stretch to assume that one single (!!) case makes a trend.

[Lohoris]

Read the BTCT terms of service.  It's supposed to be a "entertainment purposes only" "virtual" exchange, technically speaking the owners of the company can just run off with all the BTC and abandon the company, whether or not they sell their shares.

As far as I know, that disclaimer is less effective than a lucky charm and has no legal value whatsoever.

[burnside]

the 3 million shares should either not be tradeable on BTCT until a certain amount of time
OR the shares should be marked/colored in a way so that people know that they are buying the team's shares. this would also indicate for everyone to panic - heh

I agree, there's a reason there's a IPO "lock up" period for insiders in real world IPO. Especially when labcoin is going against the norm on btct (insider shares are not normally tradable)

I would like to point out that the 'Lock in' period for founders/insiders is one of those 'sometimes there is one, sometimes not'. I can also say that the Labcoin team didn't even consider this in the IPO process due to no one being interested in selling out shares in the project. That said, I will talk to Sam this weekend to see about a public solution that will allow share holders to feel secure in that the Labcoin founders and developers are not selling out.

Two ways this can be addressed on BTCT.

- The founders could turn on their public portfolios and publish a list of url's where the shares are held.
- (with Labcoin's consent) if they send us a list of accounts that are holding the shares we can lock the accounts and publicly state the number of shares effectively "in escrow".

Swede & Burnside, We need a reasonable explanation about the 3m shares.

Maybe you didn't notice yet.
Let me explain it to you: they don't give a shit about what you think or do. I thought this was clear by now.
I'm so happy they cut me off from buying shares and didn't a give shit instead of working something.
These shares are one big clusterfuck and it won't end pretty.

IPO day was a greater than 24 hour work day for me.  IPO work, then day job, then IPO work, then up all night answering hundreds of PM's and support requests.

People bashing Labcoin have a right to their opinion of course but IMO, despite the launch which was a bit messy and not their fault

srsly?
rushed launch? their fault.
wrong timezone? their fault.
stupid share distribution? their fault.
server overloaded? btct fault, but if they didn't rush the IPO, this might not have happened.

I'll take the blame for the wrong timezone.  That one was me.  I get it, UTC from here on out.

Stupid share distribution?  I think that was probably the only fair and equitable way to do it given how oversubscribed it was.  Labcoin could have gone auction-style and they showed class and chose not to.

Cheers.

[Mabsark]

TAT you called pump and dump on Activemining are you sad that you didnt get any IPO shares and trying to bring down the price? I dont get how this is any different from any real world company CEO's dont hold private shares they are all listed on the market

I made money on ActM, and Labcoin, like many. Not because I have long-term faith, but because I knew the market would act irrationally. I have no holdings in either anymore.

This is different because these people are not paid a salary out of some current income stream, like Google. They are paid in a finite amount of shares. When those shares are not enough to justify doing the job, those people will quit. That time is now really. They'll have more than $1m in coins after selling off, and the odds are that's the most profit Labcoin will ever see for itself.

ActM has seen over 1000% ROI in just a couple of months and I have no doubts whatsoever that Labcoin will as well. You were wrong about ActM and you will be proven wrong about Labcoin too.

[Ytterbium]

But seriously just chill.  If you don't trust these guys with your money, then don't hold the shares.

It's not as simple as that. The greater issue here is the legitimacy of the market itself.

We care, so we kick and scream. I don't want issuers acting like scammers, or investors buying into scams, regardless of whether I hold shares.

It affects everyone. It affects the value of everything, and bitcoin's health in general.

Oh please.  The whole point of bitcoin is that it's cryptographically secure, that it's a P2P system run algorithmically with no central point of trust. You don't need to have confidence in anything other then the algorithm itself in order to be sure that they won't get taken away from you or inflated away.

The bitcoin stock exchanges are the exact opposite.  They are centrally controlled.  Just look at what happened with GLBSE. The exchanges may be fun, and they couldn't exist without bitcoin. But the bitcoin system itself would be just fine without them. KnC, HashFast, Avalon and others were able to build chips without needing to raise funds on bitcoin stock exchanges.

Read the BTCT terms of service. They clearly state that the exchange is for "entertainment purposes only".  Claiming that you're worried they're going to sell shares and stop caring about the company when they could also just run off with all the money anyway is completely absurd.

Oh well, whatever.  If you want to sit around and panic about it go ahead I guess.

I'll take the blame for the wrong timezone.  That one was me.  I get it, UTC from here on out.

Stupid share distribution?  I think that was probably the only fair and equitable way to do it given how oversubscribed it was.  Labcoin could have gone auction-style and they showed class and chose not to.

Cheers.

Seriously, they could have made over a million dollars by doing a normal bidding process but chose to sell at their specified rate. A few people missed out being able to flood the market and then whined and cried they weren't able to use huge stacks of coins to force everyone else out. I think the share distribution worked out really well.

Read the BTCT terms of service.  It's supposed to be a "entertainment purposes only" "virtual" exchange, technically speaking the owners of the company can just run off with all the BTC and abandon the company, whether or not they sell their shares.

As far as I know, that disclaimer is less effective than a lucky charm and has no legal value whatsoever.

Legal value where?  Do you think the government is actually going to let you sue if you're not happy with the performance of these shares? And what court are you going to sue them in?  In China?  In Belize? In whatever country you're from?  The fact that you agreed to the T&C is going to be a huge impediment to actually getting a judgement against anyone.

On the other hand, if a company actually does something completely illegal then you might be prosecuted for fraud, or whatever. Sure. I certainly wouldn't recommend trying to scam anyone.

But ultimately these exchanges run on trust.  They are not real exchanges with a real SEC that can come in and fine people if they screw up. Don't invest if you don't trust the companies

[canth]

I'll take the blame for the wrong timezone.  That one was me.  I get it, UTC from here on out.

Stupid share distribution?  I think that was probably the only fair and equitable way to do it given how oversubscribed it was.  Labcoin could have gone auction-style and they showed class and chose not to.

I think the share distribution was fair, the bug with balance sent many hours earlier not displaying until 'fake withdrawal' is made polling bitcoind , not so much. I lost  $10,000+ due to this; would of been nice to allow purchase at original IPO price for few minutes for those that were affected, but anyway shit happens

There is a "refresh" button next to account balance - anyone that didn't think to try it when looking at the wallet really seems to not be trying all that hard. Idiosyncratic, yes. Bug, no I don't think so. Somehow the rest of us have been dealing with it for many months now.

[Ytterbium]

There is a "refresh" button next to account balance - anyone that didn't think to try it when looking at the wallet really seems to not be trying all that hard. Idiosyncratic, yes. Bug, no I don't think so. Somehow the rest of us have been dealing with it for many months now.

The refresh button wasn't working at that point, for some reason. I definitely clicked the refresh button a bunch of times, and it didn't do anything.

Still, I'm glad it didn't work since I'm sure I would have ended up with far fewer shares if there had been a complete free for all.

[matt4054]

There is a "refresh" button next to account balance - anyone that didn't think to try it when looking at the wallet really seems to not be trying all that hard. Idiosyncratic, yes. Bug, no I don't think so. Somehow the rest of us have been dealing with it for many months now.

Arrogant, it is, Sir.

No, the refresh button didn't help. And probably got hit more than a million times during the bug.

Only a fake withdrawal would fix the balance bug, and the info was given out after the cutoff.

Anyway, we accepted bad luck (hopefully that was just that), so at least be decent.

[dvdrewritable]

There is a "refresh" button next to account balance - anyone that didn't think to try it when looking at the wallet really seems to not be trying all that hard. Idiosyncratic, yes. Bug, no I don't think so. Somehow the rest of us have been dealing with it for many months now.

you think nobody thought to press refresh button   , be serious.  Balance only became visible after pressing withdrawal for 0.001.

[Lohoris]

Stupid share distribution?  I think that was probably the only fair and equitable way to do it given how oversubscribed it was.  Labcoin could have gone auction-style and they showed class and chose not to.

I think it didn't make much sense, because it was easily gamed if you had enough funds.
I want 100, there are 2x bids, I bid for 200 I get 100 anyway (and suckers who didn't have enough funds, got less).
I wouldn't call that fair.

Honestly I have no idea why didn't they just fill the higher bids, after all it was market price...
Since I've already read someone against this method, I'd like to know why.

[Ytterbium]

I think it didn't make much sense, because it was easily gamed if you had enough funds.
I want 100, there are 2x bids, I bid for 200 I get 100 anyway (and suckers who didn't have enough funds, got less).
I wouldn't call that fair.

Except for the fact that people couldn't get their funds into the system because of the glitch.  If not for the glitch, then I would agree with you. However, most people got about 40% of what they bid, which is reasonable.

Honestly I have no idea why didn't they just fill the higher bids, after all it was market price...
Since I've already read someone against this method, I'd like to know why.

It would have meant more money for them, sure.  But they valued their company at 10k BTC for a reason. Presumably that's that they actually think it's worth at the moment.

If they'd allowed a speculative runup in price, the value would have become ridiculous and it only would have dropped after the the shares started to sell, which would have made a lot of the people who did buy shares pissed off - and you'd just be taking money from people with more money then sense.

Having a company's price jump up after IPO makes the company "look good", at least in the real stock market, while having it collapse after an IPO makes it "look bad".

They may also not have been able to actually spend the money right away anyway, although it seems like if their first chip works they could have used the extra money for a bigger initial run and more production capacity to get their additional chips online faster.

IMO, they should have just issued more shares to fill demand, and used the money for bigger wafer runs and for doing their next gen chip at a smaller feature size.

[canth]

Stupid share distribution?  I think that was probably the only fair and equitable way to do it given how oversubscribed it was.  Labcoin could have gone auction-style and they showed class and chose not to.

I think it didn't make much sense, because it was easily gamed if you had enough funds.
I want 100, there are 2x bids, I bid for 200 I get 100 anyway (and suckers who didn't have enough funds, got less).
I wouldn't call that fair.

Honestly I have no idea why didn't they just fill the higher bids, after all it was market price...
Since I've already read someone against this method, I'd like to know why.

It was fair because the issuer gets to set the rules, they had a price they wanted to IPO at and they had a set amount of funds they wanted to raise.

"Real world" IPOs work in a similar fashion. Just because you wanted 200 shares, doesn't mean you get them - you bid for them and find out the day or so before the IPO whether or not you get your full allotment.

[canth]

There is a "refresh" button next to account balance - anyone that didn't think to try it when looking at the wallet really seems to not be trying all that hard. Idiosyncratic, yes. Bug, no I don't think so. Somehow the rest of us have been dealing with it for many months now.

you think nobody thought to press refresh button   , be serious.  Balance only became visible after pressing withdrawal for 0.001.

Apologies - I thought people didn't try the refresh. I haven't seen that before - I guess BTCT hasn't seen an influx of BTC like that before either.

[burnside]

There is a "refresh" button next to account balance - anyone that didn't think to try it when looking at the wallet really seems to not be trying all that hard. Idiosyncratic, yes. Bug, no I don't think so. Somehow the rest of us have been dealing with it for many months now.

you think nobody thought to press refresh button   , be serious.  Balance only became visible after pressing withdrawal for 0.001.

Correct.  The sync behind the refresh button was overloaded and not working.  It works now, but it was not operating correctly while under load.

[Lohoris]

"Real world" IPOs work in a similar fashion. Just because you wanted 200 shares, doesn't mean you get them - you bid for them and find out the day or so before the IPO whether or not you get your full allotment.

It's not random, however, there are some set rules.
And some rules are better than others.
These were stupid, for the reason I explained.
First come first served (with some cap) might have been much better.

If you write a rule assuming something happens, and people manage to exploit it in their favour, you've failed. This is what happened here.
No big deal, but refusing to admit that this rule was deeply flawed is hugely delusional.

[HuLaN]

I find it hilarious that "ThickAsThieves" who is...

a) an ASICMINER Board Member; ASICMINER - an established company with similar business plan as the recent upstarts
b) heavily involved in a minor competing exchange to BTCT where neither Labcoin or ActM trade
c) runs several ASICMINER pass throughs
d) has no investments in Labcoin or ActM (or so he says himself)

...goes through lengths to spread misinformation and FUD about the companies where he directly profits if people lose their trust.
As icing on the cake he is also concerned about the overall legitimacy of the market in one sentence and in the next he describes how he bought in to the recent IPO's only to make a quick buck'.

[canth]

"Real world" IPOs work in a similar fashion. Just because you wanted 200 shares, doesn't mean you get them - you bid for them and find out the day or so before the IPO whether or not you get your full allotment.

It's not random, however, there are some set rules.
And some rules are better than others.
These were stupid, for the reason I explained.
First come first served (with some cap) might have been much better.

If you write a rule assuming something happens, and people manage to exploit it in their favour, you've failed. This is what happened here.
No big deal, but refusing to admit that this rule was deeply flawed is hugely delusional.

First come first served would have pissed off a greater number of people. It's possible that I'm delusional, but then again, maybe it's the few remaining grumblers who just won't let go...

How about starting a thread with a vote for new features for the rules you want to implement, rather than complaining about the supposed flaws in an unprecedented event on BTCT?