DeVCorp: DeVCoin Development "corp"

[markm]

First, please note that whether or not the term "Corp" indicates, on the planet known as M5, some specific form of legally incorporated corporation, it can also be a more generic term; it might help to think "Marine Corp" rather than "IBM Corp" although I suppose the Marines too are some kind of legally designated body or institution. One can also though refer to a chain gang of men working on roadworks as a corp or corps or men, can one not? (Maybe it is a confusion between corp and corps? Hmm...)

Whatever, the point here is not to jump to the conclusion that DeVCorp is some kind of limited or unlimited company or corporation officially "incorporated" here on "the planet known as Earth"; currently it is not, and whether it ever shall be is unknown and possibly not even considered important or relevant by the Martian authorities of the planet known as M5.

It is an asset issued on the Digitalis Open Transactions Server.

To that end, I thought it might be a good idea to post the proposed contract insofar as I have it so far for feedback rather than import it to the server willy-nilly while it possibly needs more work. It is intended to be a DeVCoin based operation among the aims of which will be to uphold and if possible increase the value of DeVCoins and, of course, to increase its own worth as measured in DeVCoins in order to be able to offer hopefully higher and higher buyback prices, in DeVCoins, for its stock:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<digitalAssetContract version="1.0">

<entity shortname="DeVCorp"
longname="DevCorp stock" 
email="markmetson@sourceforge.net"/>

<issue company="DeVCorp"
email="DeVCorp@MI5ius.M5"
contractUrl="http://contracts.MI5ius.M5/DeVCorp.contract"
type="currency"/>

<currency name="DeVCorp" tla="sDVC" symbol="sDVC"
type="decimal" factor="1" decimal_power="0" fraction=""/>

<!-- CONDITIONS -->

<condition name="backing">
  DeVCorp stock is backed by the assets, activities,
  bylaws, goodwill etcetera of the actual Corp, which is
  registered as a limited liability company by the
  administration of and under the laws of the Martians
  of the planet known as M5. Its offices on that planet
  are located in the city known as MI5ius.
</condition>

<condition name="audit">
  DeVCorp stock is primarily secured by the assets of
  the Corp and, where the Corp operates legally under
  local laws of various civilisations, of course by such
  provisions as local civilisations might have regarding
  ownership of property, defense of property and so on.
  Where what passes for or pretends to be local
  civilisation fails to provide such protections, DeVCorp
  take such measures itself as it deems prudent under the
  prevailing conditions and circumstances.
</condition>

<condition name="purchase">
  In order to obtain DeVCorp stock you must utilise an
  Open Transactions server supporting the use of said
  asset.
</condition>

<condition name="redemption">
  Redemption implies failure of the Corp, inasmuch as
  stock is not normally considered a redeemable asset
  but, rather, a tradeable asset. Redemption in the
  event of the failure of the Corp would presumably be
  administrated by the bankruptcy departments of the
  regions in which the Corp still has any assets at
  the time of the failure / bankruptcy.
</condition>

<condition name="rate">
  It is not yet contemplated that this will be
  dividend-paying stock, thus no rate of payment,
  calculation or release of dividends applies.
</condition>

<condition name="buyback">
  The Issuer reserves the right to buy back all
  outstanding stock, thereby terminating the use of
  this instrument.

  Furthermore it is contemplated that buyback offers
  be one of the mechanisms by means of which the
  Corp attempts to uphold and increase the value of
  its stock.

  Thus instead of issuing dividends, the Corp is
  expected to increase the amount of value it 
  offers per unit of stock to buy back units of its
  stock.

  The Corp should, ideally, have some internal
  notion of the liquidation value of its assets
  and thus in principle be capable of computing
  a per unit of stock liquidation value below
  which price its stock ought in theory to be a
  bargain and thus at which it should try to buy
  up as much of its stock as it can obtain at or
  near such a value-floor.

  Furthermore it should be customary for the Corp
  to use bots or periodic scripts to keep floor-
  value offers in effect on any servers where this
  contract is in effect, to some extent that does
  not threaten the survival and prospering of the
  Corp by expending assets on buying its own stock
  cheap that would better be invested in some
  other bargain or opportunity that might also
  be available to it.
</condition>

<condition name="liability">
  The Corp is not liable for any damages use of
  this contract with your software or on your
  computing equipment might cause, nor for any
  loss or inconvenience you might experience due
  to the performance of stock markets, trading
  platforms, brokers, or acts of man woman child
  god or natural force(s) or events. In any event
  liability is limited to the terms and conditions
  specified in this contract.
</condition>

<condition name="mint">
  Float - the total quantity of DeVCorp stock
  outstanding - is created by a Mint account,
  specially set by the Operator.

  Disbursements from the Mint account are to be made
  on receipt of duly signed and public authorization
  from MI5ius.  All disbursements from the Mint
  account are to be made to the single Currency
  Comptroller account identified by the authorization.

  From time to time, the Currency Comptroller may
  direct the Currency Manager to return DeVCorp stock
  to the Mint for the express purpose of reducing the
  float. Such directions should be ignored; stock,
  once issued, remains in existence until and unless
  the entire issue is disolved, which itself is also
  not contemplated.

  This issue of stock consists of 1,000,000 (One
  Million) individual integer units of stock, no
  more and no less. Any not in the possession of an
  entity other than the Corp are implicitly and
  explicitly in the possession of the Corp.
</condition>

<condition name="privacy">
  The purchase and trading of DeVCorp stock normally
  are done on the basis of strong privacy. By
  purchasing or trading this stock you agree that
  your purchase, trading, use, ownership, possession
  and material interest in this stock are governed by
  the laws and customs of the city of MI5ius on the
  planet known as M5 and that such laws and customs
  overrule any local laws or customs any civilisation,
  purported civilisation, government, barbarian horde,
  gang of thieves, outlaws, bandits, lawyers,
  politicians, pirates, thugs, muggers, cutthroats,
  militia, military, police, babysitter, parent,
  nanny or other entity might pretend, claim, or
  promulgate.
</condition>

<!-- KEYS -->

<key name="contract">
- -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
***CERTIFICATE OF ISSUING NYM WILL GO HERE***
- -----END CERTIFICATE-----
</key>

</digitalAssetContract>

-MarkM-

[caston]

You will need to float Devcoin to give it value. Something like mtgox but mtdev

[markm]

You will need to float Devcoin to give it value. Something like mtgox but mtdev

You seem to mean the Digitalis Open Transactions Server, which is a cryptocurrency / stock / etc exchange...

-MarkM-

[markm]

It looks like DeVCorp is going to have some competition, co-operation, siblings, or whatever: more corps based on DeVCoin as their currency of choice / currency of issue.

So far the numbers of DeVCoins going into each are: DeVCorp 18,200,000; GDC 16,200,000; GFC 18,200,000; GRC 18,200,000.

Most likely each will issue a million shares, thus so far it is looking like the shares will be upwards of 16.2 or 18.2 DVC each at time of initial issue.

GDC is General Development Corp, GFC is General Financial Corp, GRC is General Retirement Corp. In general, typically in the Galactic Milieu one can say "Galactic" instead of General, thus these can also be referred to as Galactic Development Corp, Galactic Financial Corp and Galactic Retirement Corp. ("General" is basically a euphemism we use instead of "Galactic" when we don't want to draw due or undue attention to the involvement of the Galactic Milieu.)

-MarkM-

[markm]

Okay, turns out they all issued a million shares and all shares sold at 20 DVC each.

-MarkM-

[caston]

This is an interesting experiment. BTW what do these companies do?

[markm]

This is an interesting experiment. BTW what do these companies do?

DeVCorp's aim is to increase the value of DeVCoins, so it will do whatever it thinks will accomplish that goal, within the limitations imposed by the resources at its command,

General Development Corp is I suppose in a way a kind of "me too", anything DeVCorp does that actually seems to turn a profit, General Development Corp is likely to also try to get its fingers in the pies. However, General Development Corp is more about actually directly making profit than about increasing the value of DeVCoins. It also is not so insistent on using DeVCoins for everything, for example it is quite willing to develop stuff for groups, such as clans, fellowships, theocracies et al, who prefer to pay in GRouPcoin. For example GDC already helped one Fellowship negotiate the development of a Clanhouse and the installing of it in a selected/negotiated location. That is actually something GRouPcorp had been hoping to do, but GRouPcorp is still in the process of being set up.

General Financial Corp aims at the finance field, from trading the various currencies through owning shares of any other corps it feels worth owning shares of to running of banks and stock exchanges.

General Retirement Corp is a "me too" smaller-time imitator of GRF (General Retirement Funds), smaller-time in that it doesn't run its own entire currency like GRF does, it just has a million shares issued whereas GRF kind of has 21,000,000 shares issued except that GRF's 21M GRFcoins are not really shares, unless maybe you view them as preferred shares, since GRF operates them as just another currency, with no actual voting or sharing rights accruing to the holders of GRF coins. Like GRF, it will be into real-estate a lot since a lot of retirement involves having a really nice piece of real-estate to retire to; and the running of really nice retirement homes. Dabbling in politics in matters of interest to retirement-age types of people is also part of what GRF does, but GRC might not really get into that part as much being more of an actual for profit corporation than a huge mysterious multigalactic corporation of shadowed/hidden history and assets and so on like GRF is.

-MarkM-

[markm]

This is an interesting experiment. BTW what do these companies do?

At time of my last post, DeVCorp was finalising a loan of 1,000,000 DeVCoins at just under half a percent per day, compounded hourly. This was a refinancing arrangement for secured debts that had been denominated in GMC and GRF scrip and paying interest of about 1% a day, compounded hourly. The debtor's credit is still very good, in fact better even that it was back then, so even if no payments were made at all (due to their natural preference for first paying off completely their higher rate loans) the fact that they would now owe about 2520776.55 is actually a good thing; holders of DeVCorp shares would actually prefer that. Indeed it would have been nice for DeVCorp to have been able to provide a larger loan. It was felt though that it would be wise to keep some funds handy to actually buy shares in the event some of the debtors arrange to "go public" since obviously any operation able to pay off such high interest loans is going to be quite the earner once all its loans are paid off.

-MarkM-

[smoothie]

This is an interesting experiment. BTW what do these companies do?

At time of my last post, DeVCorp was finalising a loan of 1,000,000 DeVCoins at just under half a percent per day, compounded hourly. This was a refinancing arrangement for secured debts that had been denominated in GMC and GRF scrip and paying interest of about 1% a day, compounded hourly. The debtor's credit is still very good, in fact better even that it was back then, so even if no payments were made at all (due to their natural preference for first paying off completely their higher rate loans) the fact that they would now owe about 2520776.55 is actually a good thing; holders of DeVCorp shares would actually would prefer that. Indeed it would have been nice for DeVCorp to have been able to provide a larger loan. It was felt though that it would be wise to keep some funds handy to actually buy shares in the event some of the debtors arrange to "go public" since obviously any operation able to pay off such high interest loans is going to be quite the earner once all its loans are paid off.

-MarkM-

Not exactly sure what you said or what you are doing...honestly...

[markm]

Due to lack of miners, even with merged mining, it was necessary for a number of blockchain-based currencies to retreat from the blockchain type format for now until their transaction volume is large enough for transaction fees to attract enough miners.

-MarkM-

[smoothie]

Due to lack of miners, even with merged mining, it was necessary for a number of blockchain-based currencies to retreat from the blockchain type format for now until their transaction volume is large enough for transaction fees to attract enough miners.

-MarkM-

Could you once again name these other currencies?

[markm]

Due to lack of miners, even with merged mining, it was necessary for a number of blockchain-based currencies to retreat from the blockchain type format for now until their transaction volume is large enough for transaction fees to attract enough miners.

-MarkM-

Could you once again name these other currencies?

Ones I actually had blockchains up and running for include britcoin, botcoin, CDN, GMC, GRF, NKL, UNS and CZB.

They were run quietly using addnode and no IRC but still it became obvious that as soon as a connection port got leaked any large mining farm could attack them too easily.

-MarkM-

[smoothie]

Due to lack of miners, even with merged mining, it was necessary for a number of blockchain-based currencies to retreat from the blockchain type format for now until their transaction volume is large enough for transaction fees to attract enough miners.

-MarkM-

Could you once again name these other currencies?

Ones I actually has blockchains up and running for include britcoin, botcoin, CDN, GMC, GRF, NKL, UNS and CZB.

They were run quietly using addnode and no IRC but still it became obvious that as soon as a connection port got leaked any large mining farm could attack them too easily.

-MarkM-

So...then they are all in like a premine stage?

[markm]

So...then they are all in like a premine stage?

All the coins were minted at the start, so yes, they are totally "pre-mined" chains.

There is no way anyone can afford to "back" millions of coins mined by third parties, and the plan was to actually "back" one's currency instead of just dumping it in the hope that someone else would "back" it.

-MarkM-

[markm]

I have set up evaluation / assessment scripts that add up all of a Corp's assets, deduct its liabilities, and divide the result by the number of shares.

Their findings for DeVCorp are that it its net worth is 1303.11736842 DVC per share.

That is pretty good for a Corp that launched so recently at an initial offering price of 20 DVC per share.

Note that it is not the last traded price nor the lowest or highest or average traded price but simply an actual accounting of the assets held by the Corp and the liabilities of the Corp. Whether anyone who picked up its offering will part with any shares, and if so at what price, is entirely up to them.

-MarkM-

[markm]

As more and more groups adopt Cyclos and/or Open Transactions, growth has been accelerating.

Tables and plots have been put online at http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/digitalisassets.html to help visualise that growth.

More groups have equipped themselves with Tor and I2P, it looks like Torchat is possibly currently the most popular / mainstream communication method between guiildmasters, clanmasters, association masters, or whatever each group likes to call its top administrators. More and more groups have set up CoffeeMUD as a relatively inexpensive mode of representation of a clanhouse or guildhall or whatever they like to call their headquarters or regional hubs. The fact that Tor and I2P can cause players to experience "lag" seems to actually serve to help encourage taking a more strategic than reaction-time twitch-time tactical approach to using the system, which basically serves as a kind of glorified and human-readable API.

Note that these deployments are not public-facing yet, they are internal tools and testbeds used by members of groups; work continues among those groups who consider three dimensional graphics an affordable expense on setting up beautiful clan/guild/etc demesnes using OpenSim on the theory that when the time comes for public faces immersive three dimensional virtual environments might be the way to go.

When last I posted to this thread the general opinion had seemed to be that imagining that each and every nation implemented in standard distributions of Freeciv might end up being played and it would become necessary to start implementing additional nations for that platform seemed a far future pipedream; but groups have been forming faster lately than the freeciv developers have been adding more nations to the standard distribution and more groups have started seriously considering taking on the Freeciv scale of play.

The security passphrase system in Open Transactions has been making it impractical to have trading scripts running 24/7 unattended by human operators so almost all trade has continued to be off-market, with group administrators largely serving as group members' interface to between-group trade.

The latest evaluation of DeVCorp puts its net worth at 61020.09941520  DVC per share, however as noted previously  that is not the last traded price nor the lowest or highest or average traded price but simply an actual accounting of the assets held by the Corp and the liabilities of the Corp. Whether anyone who picked up its offering or has since managed to acquire one or more of its shares will part with any shares, and if so at what price, is entirely up to them.

Please remember that from the point of view of the planet known as Earth DeVCorp is a fictional corp based on a fictional planet in a fictional timeline and is not any kind of legally incorporated entity; the currencies it deals in are game-currencies, virtual tokens some of which have the interesting gameplay feature of being able to be traded between games, taken home by players to their own homes, used by players in games of their own invention and so on, not any kind of legal tender. The corp is simply a prop in a multifaceted game.

-MarkM-

[markm]

The latest figures, found at for example http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/sharesindvc.html show latest per share valuation as 3753350.67447690  DeVCoins.

Obviously this figure is based on the "conversion rates as units of account" not on actual depths of markets since obviously the corp would be worth more devcoins than even exist using these figures.

The figure is thus based on "assuming you could get enough devcoins at the purported current going price" which of course one never can; trying to do so would drive up the price of whatever coin you are using to represent the price in terms of.

(The only reason that showing the value in terms of dollars wouldn't similarly be a little out of whack is there are so darn many dollars printed that obtaining as many as the corp is worth might not make a big change in the market price of dollars.)

-MarkM-

[markm]

Because DeVCoins now have a forum of their own, this thread is now being continued at

http://coinzen.org/index.php/topic,2728.0.html

-MarkM-

EDIT: CoinZen seems to have died so I guess we are back to this thread.

-MarkM-

[markm]

The latest figures, found at for example http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/sharesindvc.html show latest per share valuation as 727909.48251748 DeVCoins.

GRouPcorp has been introduced to the (New) Horizon (NHZ) network as asset ID 10245382461165869807 and DeVCorp should be on there soon.

-MarkM-

[markm]

DeVCorp has now been implemented on the (New) Horizon platform (NHZ) as asset ID 4088694585236995314

-MarkM-