[IPVO] [Multiple Exchanges] Neo & Bee - LMB Holdings

[ThickAsThieves]

A public ledger of shareholders does not protect direct private trades. Only escrow can do that.

Exchanges are, essentially, automated escrow systems, and that is why people bother with them.

first of all, a public ledger shows ownership.  I shouldn't have to explain why transparency is a good thing in BTC securities.  It should be the bare minimum of a direct shares system.

Secondly, it insures that YOU, the manager, are managing the shares properly.  Being the escrow AND the issuer/manager is a conflict of interest, and certainly does not add trust to a transaction.  so no, a biased escrow does not protect private trades.

Guys, this isn't hard, and I'm surprised you are even arguing against more transparency and public accountability.

It only shows ownership in the moment, OTC traders could be readily scammed if they simply trust a ledger. The seller can simply collect your money, then move the shares to Havelock and sell them again. Escrow is the only solution for OTC trades. Some would consider trading on an exchange to be the safest way to trade.

I have no issue with a public ledger, as long as the holders are aware their wallet address and share count will be public, and aware that the ledger does not guarantee ownership for anything other than that moment.

You don't have to use TATI for escrow. Whether you trust TATI for the service is your own decision. We just recommend all trades are done as safely as possible. There is no conflict of interest in facilitating a private transfer of units. All fee-based services are optional.

[velacreations]

It only shows ownership in the moment, OTC traders could be readily scammed if they simply trust a ledger. The seller can simply collect your money, then move the shares to Havelock and sell them again.

yes, of course, but if someone is selling shares in an auction or whatever, people want to know if they even have the shares to begin with.  There have been more than a few cases of people trying to sell shares they didn't even own.

Also, it's not that fast or easy (.5 btc fee, right?) to move shares to HL. 

We shouldn't have to trust you, that's the whole point.  A public record would show that you (or whoever is managing the shares) is doing the job correctly.

I have no issue with a public ledger, as long as the holders are aware their wallet address and share count will be public, and aware that the ledger does not guarantee ownership for anything other than that moment.

if you own shares on an exchange, I thought that information was already public.  It was on bitfunder.

[crumbs]

People should forget about dividends by now and worry about this business getting clients and start generating profits. Dividends are a secondary issue. If the shares are worth less than you would have if you had just hold your BTC, this is because the company has grown less in value compared to BTC, which is just one of the possible outcomes when you had invested in it. Had the BTC dropped and the company value not in the same proportion, you would have lost less, so in no way you can say that this company worthing much more in terms of fiat money is bad, this is completely nonsense. When you buy the stock you add another layer of risk than can both protect you from losses and reduce your gains. Supposing in a far future a stock of this company value is worth 10x less in terms of BTC, but BTC becomes worth 100x more in terms of fiat and this "100x in fiat" has half of purchasing power than it had at the beggining, it would be nonsense to say you lost money in this since you can buy more than you could before. Would you be better if you had just hold your money all this time? Yes, sure, but in no way you could know that this was the outcome of this situation. The whole thing "1.2 BTC is worth more than 1 BTC" is a lie if you consider it at different times. If today I can go to the restaurant and pay my lunch with 0.1 BTC and in 3 years the same lunch costs 0.05 BTC, then 1 BTC now is worth less than 1 BTC in three years regardless the "1=1" thing. Being against it is believing that in an opposite situation, when you have inflationary money, that "1 dollar is always 1 dollar so they are worth the same".

^^Pure nonsense.
This argument has been shot with silver bullets, killed with fire & burred with a wooden stake through its heart.  Yet the zombler refuses to stay down.

So again:
If you are holding BTC-denominated securities which are tanking, sell them & keep your money in your wallet.
If BTC gains value relative fiat, you'll win more.
If BTC loses value relative fiat, you'll lose less.
If BTC price stays the same, the value of your coins will stay the same, while the tanking shares depreciate.
Children know this.

When you invest in a security using bitcoins, YOU ARE NO LONGER INVESTED IN BITCOINS. This is 100% true if you invest in a company that is not bitcoin related and holds no assets in bitcoins. This is NOT true for bitcoin mining companies who have expenses in fiat but revenue in bitcoins. Higher bitcoin value means more profits for them.

Now, Neo&Bee is somewhere in the middle but they are much more like the first example. They will hold assets in bitcoin but they necessarily had to convert bitcoins into fiat to fund the development of their business. So even if the bitcoin value goes up, their valuation in terms of bitcoin goes down. You aren't invested in bitcoin anymore. You are invested in a company.

Here is an example. Let's say a company raises 10,000 BTC when Bitcoin is at $100. That is $1 million.
Say they convert half of that to fiat for $500k and keep the other 5,000 BTC. Say there is 1,000,000 outstanding shares. Each one would worth 0.01 BTC.

Now let's say the price of bitcoin goes up to $250. The company has 5,000 BTC left which is now $1.25 million in bitcoin, plus $500,000 in cash (or assets they purchased with that cash).
The company is valued at $1.75 million, or 7,000 BTC. Wait, that is LESS than the 10,000 BTC they raised. That's right, it's because they had to convert some BTC to fiat when they started. The more they converted the more their valuation in terms of BTC dropped when the price of BTC went up. Now, each share is no longer worth 0.01. It's worth 0.007 BTC.

Let's say you spent $10k and bough 10,000 shares. Those shares are only worth 70 BTC now instead of the 100 BTC you spent but that 70 BTC is worth $17.5k. So you actually made $7.5k in terms of fiat. But, of course, you would have made more if you had simply held the BTC.

What does this all mean? It means that if you are going to invest in a company, you must believe that the valuation of that company will increase faster than the value of bitcoin!

With Bitcoin tripling in the past few months, this is very very hard to do.

I still feel that Neo&Bee is a good investment, though. Why? Because their success is somewhat independent of the price of bitcoin. It's a way to diversify your investments in a way that is not directly related to the very volatile bitcoin market. It's a way to invest in bitcoin's future without simply just buying bitcoin. If Neo&Bee succeeds it will likely cause the price of bitcoin to rise as it will create more demand for bitcoin. So it also helps your bitcoin investment.

I'm not debating if Neo&Bee is a good investment, my point was pretty trivial:

"If price [in BTC] of BTC-denominated shares decreases over time, they are a bad investment, and should be sold at the first opportunity."*
This holds true regardless of exchange rate, the price of BTC in dollars, the price of dollars in yen, or the price of yen in temple virgins.

There is no scenario in which shares losing value in BTC would be more profitable to hold than BTC itself.  If you can think of one, i'd be interested in hearing it.
My initial reply was in response to gannicus making a case that BTC-denominated shares, losing value in BTC, being a good investment regardless (if share value in fiat grows due to favorable BTC exchange rate).  That's nonsense, and has no upside as opposed to simply holding bitcoin.

   *This does not hold true if the shares pay dividends.  Will gladly go through the maths if you wish

[cryptocyprus]

The public ledger is used to ensure that it is clear that we haven't issued more shares than we stated in the agreement. Between the data available on HL and our own public ledger for the shares we hold directly people can calculate themselves exactly how many shares we have sold.

We can allow people to mask their address for privacy, those that trade OTC can make their address public and demonstrate to potential buyers they have control of the private keys relating to that address.

With regards to TATs fees, if you don't like their fees for services they provide independently, offer them yourself for less, if you have the trust amongst the community.

[velacreations]

The public ledger is used to ensure that it is clear that we haven't issued more shares than we stated in the agreement. Between the data available on HL and our own public ledger for the shares we hold directly people can calculate themselves exactly how many shares we have sold.

where is this public ledger available?

With regards to TATs fees, if you don't like their fees for services they provide independently, offer them yourself for less, if you have the trust amongst the community.

alternatively, the issuer (YOU) could offer migrations to exchanges for free and provide a real direct share solution with public accountability.  You know, since we are the ones giving you money.

Is it really too much to ask to expect the issuer the be transparent about share ownership?

[gannicus]

"If price [in BTC] of BTC-denominated shares decreases over time, they are a bad investment, and should be sold at the first opportunity."*
This holds true regardless of exchange rate, the price of BTC in dollars, the price of dollars in yen, or the price of yen in temple virgins.

Ok then, two situations for you:

You own 10,000 shares worth 1 BTC each, which can be sold by 300 USD each.

Two months later, you can chose between these two outcomes (only):

1. The shares are now worth 2 BTC each, which can be sold by 100 USD each.
2. The shares are now worth 0.5 BTC each, which can be sold by 1000 USD each.

Supposes the USD maintains its inflation course as it is now, which is very likely to happen, so that a n amount of USD have a purchasing power of (pratically) n times compared to a single amount.

Which one is the good and the bad one?

The fact that you DON'T KNOW the future MATTERS. You could have just hold your BTC for the case 2., and you would surely have more USD, . But just like you hold them and BTC/USD increased it could have decreased, which in this case owning the shares instead of BTC may give you some protection in your loss. The cost of "owning" this protection is what justify your losses if BTC/USD increases but your share values decrease. It is like hedging your position in BTC with future contracts (which in this case have exactly this purpose) with such leverage that you sacrifice part of your gains if BTC/USD increases in order to lose less if BTC/USD decreases. If you do that and BTC/USD increases, was this a bad decision? Sure, because simply holding your BTC would have been better. But before this happening, was this decision justifiable? Totally, because you did not know that this was the outcome. I hope you understand my point now.

[cryptocyprus]

Should we concentrate all of our efforts on managing sharholders migrations or should we develop a valuable business, if we were setting up something small then we wouldn't require 3rd party management services. Those who have witnessed first hand the scale of what we are bringing to market and the steps we are taking to enable the masses to use Bitcoin in their daily lives have been left astonished. We are extremely different to pretty much everything else in this section. We have also gone to extreme lengths with TAT (including him visiting Cyprus) to validate everything I claimed in the plans to be even more transparent with every aspect of our business.

We will be providing this level of transparency, coupled with a level of privacy predetermined by the shareholder themselves. If you had concerns about the lack of a platform, I am guessing you are not a shareholder.

[velacreations]

Should we concentrate all of our efforts on managing sharholders migrations or should we develop a valuable business

it's not either or.  plenty of other businesses that are much larger than NeoBee have provided these solutions for their shareholders.

don't give us false choices and act like you can't provide an easy way for shareholders to manage shares.  Not only is it disrespectful to your shareholders who have invested millions of Euros with you, it's a weak excuse for you (or your share management team) not planning ahead.

The shareholders did not choose the exchanges you listed on, you did.  Therefore, you are responsible for the shortcomings, not us.  And we certainly should not have to bear the costs of you figuring out how to keep track of shares. That's the price you pay for not doing this in the beginning.

It shouldn't take "all of your efforts" to provide a public list of shareholders or a direct shares solution.  In fact, it should save considerable amount of time for everyone involved, especially since we hear that it costs .5 btc to migrate shares that are worth .002 btc.  

If you can't dedicate the time required to address the needs of your shareholders, then you have no business running a company in this sector, and you certainly have no business requesting investor funds.

[crumbs]

"If price [in BTC] of BTC-denominated shares decreases over time, they are a bad investment, and should be sold at the first opportunity."*
This holds true regardless of exchange rate, the price of BTC in dollars, the price of dollars in yen, or the price of yen in temple virgins.

Ok then, two situations for you:

You own 10,000 shares worth 1 BTC each, which can be sold by 300 USD each.

Two months later, you can chose between these two outcomes (only):

1. The shares are now worth 2 BTC each, which can be sold by 100 USD each.
2. The shares are now worth 0.5 BTC each, which can be sold by 1000 USD each.
...

1.  Irrelevant, the share price (in BTC) increased.  We're only concerned with shares with tanking prices.  

2.  You've made money in fiat.  If you sold the shares like i told you to, and kept the BTC, you'd have $2000.  Having $2000 is better than having $1000.  

BTC exchange rate is irrelevant when dealing with BTC-denominated stock, BTC is the unit of account here.
If this helps, you're not deciding between holding fiat & holding BTC-denominated stock, but between holding BTC & BTC-denominated stock. This eliminates fiat as a variable.  
No need to complicate simple stuff.

If you do have a scenario where one profits by holding failing BTC-denominated stock (instead of holding BTC), or
a scenario where one better limits losses by holding failing BTC-denominated stock (instead of holding BTC) --
 i'm still interested in hearing it.

[gannicus]

keep us informed on the procedure to move to havelock.

Apparently "very soon" means at least one day and "soon" means at least two days here. We must get used to it.

If you do have a scenario where one profits by holding failing BTC-denominated stock instead of BTC, i'm still interested in hearing it.

I will not simply because there is not, and I never said that it was the case. What I am saying is that if a drop in BTC/USD rate somehow increases this stock value in BTC and an increase in BTC/USD rate somehow decreases its value (which in practice is true at least at some level, because people can buy more bitcoins when it decreases and so buy more stocks, while when it increases people sell stocks in order to sell BTC), it may be justifiable to buy it depending on how these effects on BTC/USD price will reflect on an specific stock price (this is the important point). The situation for you, again:

Suppose that at the initial time, BTC/USD = 300
You have 10,000 shares worth 1 BTC each. Let's suppose these stocks are of a company that manages a fund, which will lose or win money based on BTC/USD rates so that these effects for each outcome will surely happen.

You have two possible outcomes:

1. Two months later, BTC/USD = 1000. You know that if this happens, the shares will be worth 0.5 BTC each .
2. Two months later, BTC/USD = 100. You know that if this happens, the shares will be worth 2 BTC each.

You don't know if you will have 1. or 2. Is it justifiable to buy these shares?

[enderbender]

Should we concentrate all of our efforts on managing sharholders migrations or should we develop a valuable business

it's not either or.  plenty of other businesses that are much larger than NeoBee have provided these solutions for their shareholders.

don't give us false choices and act like you can't provide an easy way for shareholders to manage shares.  Not only is it disrespectful to your shareholders who have invested millions of Euros with you, it's a weak excuse for you (or your share management team) not planning ahead.

The shareholders did not choose the exchanges you listed on, you did.  Therefore, you are responsible for the shortcomings, not us.  And we certainly should not have to bear the costs of you figuring out how to keep track of shares. That's the price you pay for not doing this in the beginning.

It shouldn't take "all of your efforts" to provide a public list of shareholders or a direct shares solution.  In fact, it should save considerable amount of time for everyone involved, especially since we hear that it costs .5 btc to migrate shares that are worth .002 btc.  

If you can't dedicate the time required to address the needs of your shareholders, then you have no business running a company in this sector, and you certainly have no business requesting investor funds.

bro, get a job

why the hell u moving shares so much anyway? pick a home n chill out

youre the one with no business sayin shit about shit

youre a shareholder, not teh gotdamn queen of england... smh..

[cryptocyprus]

We are still available on a public market, we are providing further solutions that were requested for people. The fees to migrate are not received by me, they are the managing agents, at a newly reduced rate than detailed in the agreement. An agreement you had no concerns with if you invested, or did I miss the part where it is now 0.5btc per share? I know 100% that if it was 0.5btc per share to transfer I wouldnt have agreed to it.

I could always add more employees to the payroll to manage everything internally because every member of our team is working extensive hours to bring this to market with some parts ahead of schedule, reducing profitability that will reduce value for all shareholders including those that do not wish to ever move their shares.

[lolstate]

I could always add more employees to the payroll...

I say crack on with what you have been doing to date... building a serious Bitcoin company that sets an example to others on how it should be done. I have full confidence in Neo's approach to carving a niche in this new economy.

[velacreations]

why the hell u moving shares so much anyway? pick a home n chill out

hey, I would, but they keep closing...

[velacreations]

I could always add more employees to the payroll to manage everything internally because every member of our team is working extensive hours to bring this to market with some parts ahead of schedule, reducing profitability that will reduce value for all shareholders including those that do not wish to ever move their shares.

there's no secretary over there that can work Excel? You act like keeping a public list on Google docs is a big deal.

[scarce]

I could always add more employees to the payroll...

I say crack on with what you have been doing to date... building a serious Bitcoin company that sets an example to others on how it should be done. I have full confidence in Neo's approach to carving a niche in this new economy.

+1. that's what shareholders value the most.

[N_S]

there's no secretary over there that can work Excel? You act like keeping a public list on Google docs is a big deal.

That'll do pig, that'll do

[lewicki]

Danny,

When would it be possible to get an overview of financials? Particularly, is Neo still holding onto the ~9500 XBT gathered from the IPVO thus far (has our investment appreciated with the rise in XBT)? Would you mind reiterating what its purpose will be (I believe, to hold them as reserve and to pay for expenditures).

Thanks

[cryptocyprus]

A Google spreadsheet, is that how Twitter manage their new shareholder list? We are trying to raise standards here.

We still hold the vast majority of our IPVO funds in BTC, we will be producing a financial update in the not so distance future.

[Fabrizio89]

A bubble is probably coming in the near future, do you think you'll be ready to play with the market as an experiment at least?

We will see how the market progresses, we will be running simulations regardless of the actual market movements to test our solutions in the not so distant future!  

We are now planning two conferences to introduce Neo & Bee to merchants here in Cyprus, 200 individual merchants are going to be represented at each of these events across November 13th & 14th.

I hope you can share some projections on how a surge like this one (which is going crazy atm in China) would affect your business. No rush since it's still going on and I know you guys are busy, just a little reminder.
We are obviously looking forward to those conferences too. Do you think you could set up a streaming?
Thanks.

EDIT

we will be producing a financial update in the not so distance future.

Oh, didn't see this. Great.