Ultima Fund - BitCoin investment fund

[ultima]

It is not a ponzi scheme. You can all decide to withdraw all your funds right now (or any time in the future) and you will get all your bitcoins back.

[farfiman]

Bernard Madoff was running his ponzi scheme for decades, with many happy customers, who withdrew their money... Its just the way ponzi schemes are played.

Since this ponzi scheme is at its beginning..then we 1st users will do OK...the suckers at the end will lose.

But Seriously   ,  "Its a ponzi scheme " is being very much overused on this forum .
Bitcoin as a whole is considered such a scheme by many... but we don't believe that now... Do we?  

[Explodicle]

Bernard Madoff was running his ponzi scheme for decades, with many happy customers, who withdrew their money... Its just the way ponzi schemes are played.

Since this ponzi scheme is at its beginning..then we 1st users will do OK...the suckers at the end will lose.

But Seriously   ,  "Its a ponzi scheme " is being very much overused on this forum .
Bitcoin as a whole is considered such a scheme by many... but we don't believe that now... Do we?  

Weasel words. A Ponzi scheme requires someone in control of the fund who knows when to cash out. Many of the early adopters have already sold their shares from when Bitcoin was worth much more last year. Bitcoin holders lack the coordination for a widely distributed Ponzi scheme.

The Ponzi potential is a problem with all opaque investment funds controlled by a single entity.

[farfiman]

Bernard Madoff was running his ponzi scheme for decades, with many happy customers, who withdrew their money... Its just the way ponzi schemes are played.

Since this ponzi scheme is at its beginning..then we 1st users will do OK...the suckers at the end will lose.

But Seriously   ,  "Its a ponzi scheme " is being very much overused on this forum .
Bitcoin as a whole is considered such a scheme by many... but we don't believe that now... Do we?  [wink deleted]

Weasel words. A Ponzi scheme requires someone in control of the fund who knows when to cash out. Many of the early adopters have already sold their shares from when Bitcoin was worth much more last year. Bitcoin holders lack the coordination for a widely distributed Ponzi scheme.

The Ponzi potential is a problem with all opaque investment funds controlled by a single entity.

Maybe I was misunderstood...  I don't believe bitcoin is a ponzi scheme...
shouldn't have put the wink at the end...

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

Improve trust? For one, they shouldn't be anonymous.

They cannot afford not to be. What they are doing probably breaks tons of laws, and I don't even need to know where they live to make such claim. You just can't legally open your own startup to compete with financial institutions like this. They must remain anonymous if they want to survive.

[Cluster2k]

Improve trust? For one, they shouldn't be anonymous.

They cannot afford not to be. What they are doing probably breaks tons of laws, and I don't even need to know where they live to make such claim. You just can't legally open your own startup to compete with financial institutions like this. They must remain anonymous if they want to survive.

Remaining anonymous is also very handy for if or when the fund manager decides to disappear with everyone's bitcoins, or the market is blamed for the fund's collapse.  This is the reason why funds and managers tend to be registered and regulated. 

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

Remaining anonymous is also very handy for if or when the fund manager decides to disappear with everyone's bitcoins, or the market is blamed for the fund's collapse. 

I understand this. It doesn't inspire trust. Nobody should invest in it more than what they can lose.

But what other alternative does the fund administrator have? What's he's doing is illegal in the entire world AFAIK, even being perfectly ethical.

This is the reason why funds and managers tend to be registered and regulated. 

Please... the reasons they are regulated are mainly

• To protect established business from new competitors
• To allow government to track and tax money

It has nothing to do with protecting costumers.

[ultima]

Currently I am trading BTC/USD and doing bitcoin exchanges arbitrage. I don't have any positions in other currencies at the moment (options, index CFDs mostly).

All investments denominated in other currencies are bought with borrowed money, so the only thing exposed to BTC/USD rate is profit/loss of a position. I never sell bitcoins and use currency to buy something else.

About benchmark... do you have any sugestions what benchmark could a bitcoin trading fund use? I have no idea.

[ultima]

They cannot afford not to be. What they are doing probably breaks tons of laws, and I don't even need to know where they live to make such claim. You just can't legally open your own startup to compete with financial institutions like this. They must remain anonymous if they want to survive.

I would be happy to register a company and everything. But to start a hedge fund I would need more money in my fund than the entire bitcoin economy to cover all legal costs. I would rather continue investing my own money.

Everyone can always go with regulated and safe funds. Give your money to some mutual fund, they will charge you the same fees as I am and simply buy a few stocks and hold them forever. But it will be super mega regulated and safe.

And then some day the company goes broke and they tell you they don't know where your money is. Nothing happens... I know a few people who lost money with MF Global (and before someone starts, I know MFG is not a mutual fund, it is just an example). Why are big companies in favor of more regulation? Because they are the only ones who can afford it, no new players can enter the industry.

[farfiman]

Some of you (catfish)are taking this to far...

The guy opened a nice small investment fund... nobody expects you to put your life savings into it.
But a few spare coins on the chance he does good,  why not?

No riskier than loaning bitcoins on the loan thread to make a few % a month, or gambling
a few coins here and there.

[ultima]

I think none. Entire bitcoin economy is a pocket change for hedge funds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_bullion_market#Market_size

The average daily volume of gold and silver cleared at the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) in November 2008 was 18.3 million ounces (worth $13.9 billion) and 107.6 million ounces (worth $1.1 billion) respectively. This means that an amount equal to the annual gold mine production was cleared at the LBMA every 4.4 days, and to the annual silver production every 6.2 days.

All bitcoins at the moment are worth a little more than $50 million. And only a small amount of bitcoins are traded. So imagine a hedge fund decides to throw in a little change, a few hundred or a million USD. There is no way you can buy that amount without pushing the price to the moon.

[ultima]

Im happy to hear that. Longer track record is something we are counting on.

Current price volatility is very hard to manage. People think the fund should go up if the price of bitcoin goes up, but the reality is that it is very hard to go long bitcoins with bitcoins. You can do that using Bitcoinica, but it is very risky. You get USD if the price goes up, but the bitcoins are also more expensive, so your profit buys less. If the price goes down you loose USD and your bitcoins used to maintain margin are worth less. The result is if you buy 100 bitcoins with 100 bitcoins deposit and the price goes up 100%, you get only 50% BTC profit. But if the price goes down 50% you loose 100% of your bitcoins. We need bitcoin futures or options in the bitcoin economy.

[StewartJ]

I am researching your fund as a possible investment.

Looking at the fees listed on your web site.

    Deposit fee: 3.00%
    *Profit fee: 10.00%

How did you come up with this as your funding model? Just curious. If I were to make one long term investment, aside from the auto-calculated profit-fee, you would charge me for just the initial 3% deposit, correct?

You state in your FAQ that you trade in publicly traded companies/funds. Any way for shareholders to track your investments? Are these listed in your investor reports?

Why are you not listed on the GLBSE, Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange, like other Bitcoin-based funds?

Your fund model appears to be using a pool of bitcoins as collateral for investment in conventional companies/funds. If investments go negative, you dip into the bitcoin funds to cover losses. When this happens, do you report to the shareholders when and how many bitcoins are used to cover losses? And if so, how do you report this information.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my concerns.

SJ

[ultima]

I looked at various mutual and hedge funds and based my fees on their expenses. Yes if you deposit 100 BTC you get 97 BTC to your account. That is all.

I post my actions on fund's twitter account (also displayed on the ultimafund.com page) and in monthly reports. December report is coming this week.

I looked at GLBSE and decided it is not a good solution. I never wanted to have a closed end fund. You would have to sell your shares to a buyer. If there were no buyers at the time, you could not get your money back. And people would have to use GLBSE to be able to invest in this fund. This is a big problem, to limit yourself to a small group of people that know what GLBSE is. Instead I wanted an easy to invest thing, like mutual fund. You open an account and make a deposit.

I post most of the position changes on fund's twitter account. All other details are included in monthly reports.

[StewartJ]

I looked at various mutual and hedge funds and based my fees on their expenses. Yes if you deposit 100 BTC you get 97 BTC to your account. That is all.

I post my actions on fund's twitter account (also displayed on the ultimafund.com page) and in monthly reports. December report is coming this week.

I looked at GLBSE and decided it is not a good solution. I never wanted to have a closed end fund. You would have to sell your shares to a buyer. If there were no buyers at the time, you could not get your money back. And people would have to use GLBSE to be able to invest in this fund. This is a big problem, to limit yourself to a small group of people that know what GLBSE is. Instead I wanted an easy to invest thing, like mutual fund. You open an account and make a deposit.

I post most of the position changes on fund's twitter account. All other details are included in monthly reports.

Thanks,  I do like the liquidity aspect of your fund.  I have noticed it's almost impossible to sell out of GLBSE shares without incurring a loss.

[tacotime]

so... where is this thing?

[ultima]

Do you hold tygrr tech stock?

I will take a look at GLBSE when I have some time, it looks some kind of a geeky-type thing, very comlicated. Could you please send an email to info at ultimafund.com with some financials. I looked at your forum thread, but there are 19 pages of conversation to read .

so... where is this thing?

We had some server problems yesterday.

[holorga]

you have a very well done site. nice statistics, data exporting, looks great.

[copumpkin]

Can you comment on why your site looks almost identical to hyipbit.com? Is that a common template? There are other features of it that suggest they came from the same source, too.

[DannyM]

The site was so nice he made it twice