Starting a new FPGA mining farm/contract! Cognitive Resurrected on[Havelock]

[Deprived]

That is a good criteria.  A quorum of at least 50% of the shareholders need to participate and >50% of the voting participants is required to pass the motion.

It's too low for things like contract changes.

With that criteria a single investor with 30% of shares could (with assistance from the operator - or if the operator themselves) pass pretty much any motion just by having it run for a short period of time and not publicising it well.  And the most ironic thing is that if every other shareholder was opposed to it they'd WANT 20% of them to notice the motion and vote against it (to reach the quorum).

Unless you can be confident an overwhelming majority of shareholders KNEW about the vote I don't see anything less than 50% of outstanding shares (discounting anyone who abstained) being acceptable.  Contract changes shouldn't occur based on how many investors even knew there was  a vote - they should occur because a majority (of ALL investors weighted by shares) took an affirmative action to pass it (either voting yes or abstaining to reduce the majority needed).  You just can't have 30% of shareholders imposing a contract change on the other 70% because most of the other 70% didn't realise there was even a vote (That wasn't the numbers here - just making the point).

I'm pretty certain this motion would have passed if left up longer - but it wasn't left up longer.

[stochastic]

That is a good criteria.  A quorum of at least 50% of the shareholders need to participate and >50% of the voting participants is required to pass the motion.

Unless you can be confident an overwhelming majority of shareholders KNEW about the vote I don't see anything less than 50% of outstanding shares (discounting anyone who abstained) being acceptable.  Contract changes shouldn't occur based on how many investors even knew there was  a vote - they should occur because a majority (of ALL investors weighted by shares) took an affirmative action to pass it (either voting yes or abstaining to reduce the majority needed).  You just can't have 30% of shareholders imposing a contract change on the other 70% because most of the other 70% didn't realise there was even a vote (That wasn't the numbers here - just making the point).

It is better than local elections where I am from where < 15% of the eligible voting population actually votes and of actual voters those with >50% win the election or proposition.

50%  of all shareholders need to participate in the voting process for the motion to be valid and of those voting 70% need to vote YES.  So if there are 8000 shares total, 4000 shares need to have cast their ballots.  Of the 4000 ballots cast 2800 need to vote YES for the motion to pass.  Governance is always a tricky subject, but people can always vote with their feet as well, if they don't like the direction of a company then the share price goes down as they leave and other people don't want to join.

If it takes 70% of the eligible shareholders to participate and vote YES to pass a motion, that is fine, I just want to know how the voting works.

Maybe a motion to change the contract that states the minimum amount of time a motion needs to be open for voting, how the tally of motions will take place, and what quorum, if any, is required for a motion to be valid.

One way to inform shareholders is to require them to vote.  If they are not going to vote since they don't care what happens then they can vote ABSTAIN and their vote will not be counted.

[Deprived]

That is a good criteria.  A quorum of at least 50% of the shareholders need to participate and >50% of the voting participants is required to pass the motion.

Unless you can be confident an overwhelming majority of shareholders KNEW about the vote I don't see anything less than 50% of outstanding shares (discounting anyone who abstained) being acceptable.  Contract changes shouldn't occur based on how many investors even knew there was  a vote - they should occur because a majority (of ALL investors weighted by shares) took an affirmative action to pass it (either voting yes or abstaining to reduce the majority needed).  You just can't have 30% of shareholders imposing a contract change on the other 70% because most of the other 70% didn't realise there was even a vote (That wasn't the numbers here - just making the point).

It is better than local elections where I am from where < 15% of the eligible voting population actually votes and of actual voters those with >50% win the election or proposition.

Yeah - but difference there is that there's a much greater degree of certainty that the overwhelming majority of voters were aware of the vote.  If this (like local elections where I live) had been publicised months in advance and everyone mailed a reminder (ballot slip) a few weeks in advance and advocates of all parties been canvassing, sending propganda mailshots etc then yes - it's reasonable to assume that the vast majority of those who didn't vote were intentionally abstaining (and hence not counted in the criteria to pass).  But where you can't have any certainty of awareness of the vote, you can't reasonably assume that people are CHOOSING not to vote.

Choosing not to vote = abstaining
Not being aware of the vote is NOT abstaining

[Code_red]

is it reasonable to assume that the other 50 percent of shareholders would overwhelmingly vote no? So far shareholders have overwhelming voted in favour of it and I represent most of the vote against.

[Deprived]

is it reasonable to assume that the other 50 percent of shareholders would overwhelmingly vote no? So far shareholders have overwhelming voted in favour of it and I represent most of the vote against.

Nope it's not  reasonable to assume that - as I said, I'm pretty sure the motion would have got sufficient votes to pass ahd it lasted longer.  But it's a vote to make a very major change - so no assumptions should be made either way on how people vote: the vote should last long enough that all investors get their say.

For the record, I held (on behalf of my fund) Cognitive shares at time of the vote (still do) and voted Yes - my concern isn't this motion specifically passing but the principle of setting a precedent that contract changes can be made where only a minority of shareholders even vote (likely, in my view, to the voting period being too short for a majority to even become aware of its existence).

There's some things which, even in BTC land, can't be accelerated too much.

I should note that, in apparent contradiction to my stance here, my own fund HAS made contract changes twice with only 24 hour votes - but both times:

1.  The proposal was explained in detail some time before a vote went up - with no arguments raised against it (some questions, which I answered of course).
2.  Over 75% of all outstanding units voted yes with zero No votes and zero Abstains.
3.  I hold just under 50% myself - but only vote Yes if there's no significant No votes (I won't push through a contract change if there's any significant objection to it - obviously a 1 unit investor voting No wouldn't deter me).
4.  If I make a contract change I also offer to buy back any units at just above current value (this is necessary as mine's a fund - so shouldn't really change contract at all with outstanding units - this allows anyone who objects to get back more than if I closed the fund and restarted it with new contract).

So me passing motions in 1 day isn't really comparable - as there's factors making it very different in practice.

[stochastic]

is it reasonable to assume that the other 50 percent of shareholders would overwhelmingly vote no? So far shareholders have overwhelming voted in favour of it and I represent most of the vote against.

Nope it's not  reasonable to assume that - as I said, I'm pretty sure the motion would have got sufficient votes to pass ahd it lasted longer.  But it's a vote to make a very major change - so no assumptions should be made either way on how people vote: the vote should last long enough that all investors get their say.

For the record, I held (on behalf of my fund) Cognitive shares at time of the vote (still do) and voted Yes - my concern isn't this motion specifically passing but the principle of setting a precedent that contract changes can be made where only a minority of shareholders even vote (likely, in my view, to the voting period being too short for a majority to even become aware of its existence).

There's some things which, even in BTC land, can't be accelerated too much.

I should note that, in apparent contradiction to my stance here, my own fund HAS made contract changes twice with only 24 hour votes - but both times:

1.  The proposal was explained in detail some time before a vote went up - with no arguments raised against it (some questions, which I answered of course).
2.  Over 75% of all outstanding units voted yes with zero No votes and zero Abstains.
3.  I hold just under 50% myself - but only vote Yes if there's no significant No votes (I won't push through a contract change if there's any significant objection to it - obviously a 1 unit investor voting No wouldn't deter me).
4.  If I make a contract change I also offer to buy back any units at just above current value (this is necessary as mine's a fund - so shouldn't really change contract at all with outstanding units - this allows anyone who objects to get back more than if I closed the fund and restarted it with new contract).

So me passing motions in 1 day isn't really comparable - as there's factors making it very different in practice.

We need to have the time for a vote to take place, the quorum requirements, and percentage of votes needed to be pass a motion set down and not done on a whim or be inconsistent.  The precedent needs to be set in the contract.

[MPOE-PR]

3.  I hold just under 50% myself - but only vote Yes if there's no significant No votes (I won't push through a contract change if there's any significant objection to it - obviously a 1 unit investor voting No wouldn't deter me).

This is probably wise.

4.  If I make a contract change I also offer to buy back any units at just above current value (this is necessary as mine's a fund - so shouldn't really change contract at all with outstanding units - this allows anyone who objects to get back more than if I closed the fund and restarted it with new contract).

This is certainly best practice. I wish most people would be doing this to the point it becomes a matter of course.

We need to have the time for a vote to take place, the quorum requirements, and percentage of votes needed to be pass a motion set down and not done on a whim or be inconsistent.  The precedent needs to be set in the contract.

A very good point.

[Garr255]

Hey all,

First of all, I'd like to apologize for my absence for the past two days.

On GLBSE, non-voting shares were treated the same way abstaining shares are treated on BTC-TC: They are discarded from the total vote tally. In the past, this was always how Cogintive had done its voting. However, because of the amount of people asking for a specification here, I propose we set some definitions for voting.

There are a few fair methods of doing this. Personally, I would prefer that we set a minimum motion duration plus an email going out to all shareholders at the beginning of the motion, then we treat all non-voting shares as a BTC-TC style abstain vote.

Another option that I consider fair would be stochastic's suggestion:

50%  of all shareholders need to participate in the voting process for the motion to be valid and of those voting 70% need to vote YES.  So if there are 8000 shares total, 4000 shares need to have cast their ballots.  Of the 4000 ballots cast 2800 need to vote YES for the motion to pass.  Governance is always a tricky subject, but people can always vote with their feet as well, if they don't like the direction of a company then the share price goes down as they leave and other people don't want to join.

If it takes 70% of the eligible shareholders to participate and vote YES to pass a motion, that is fine, I just want to know how the voting works.

Maybe a motion to change the contract that states the minimum amount of time a motion needs to be open for voting, how the tally of motions will take place, and what quorum, if any, is required for a motion to be valid.

One way to inform shareholders is to require them to vote.  If they are not going to vote since they don't care what happens then they can vote ABSTAIN and their vote will not be counted.

I believe that with the whole exchange migration, there still might be a considerable amount of idle shares, even though the login info etc has been successfully sent to shareholders. I'm sure burnside could investigate this and come back with a number of shares whose dividends have not been withdrawn, or some other gauge.

So although I believe that this particular vote passed with 92% voting for (as it would have on GLBSE), I think that we should cast a revote using one of the above methods. Of course, I'm open to alternatives as well. So, shareholders, what do you propose?

Also, 100% of revenue for the past week will go out as a dividend today. I want to get this sorted out before executing a change!

Happy superbowl day!
--Garrett

[btcash]

Sorry I miscalculated. Everything adds up 

[stochastic]

Hey all,

First of all, I'd like to apologize for my absence for the past two days.

On GLBSE, non-voting shares were treated the same way abstaining shares are treated on BTC-TC: They are discarded from the total vote tally. In the past, this was always how Cogintive had done its voting. However, because of the amount of people asking for a specification here, I propose we set some definitions for voting.

There are a few fair methods of doing this. Personally, I would prefer that we set a minimum motion duration plus an email going out to all shareholders at the beginning of the motion, then we treat all non-voting shares as a BTC-TC style abstain vote.

Another option that I consider fair would be stochastic's suggestion:

50%  of all shareholders need to participate in the voting process for the motion to be valid and of those voting 70% need to vote YES.  So if there are 8000 shares total, 4000 shares need to have cast their ballots.  Of the 4000 ballots cast 2800 need to vote YES for the motion to pass.  Governance is always a tricky subject, but people can always vote with their feet as well, if they don't like the direction of a company then the share price goes down as they leave and other people don't want to join.

If it takes 70% of the eligible shareholders to participate and vote YES to pass a motion, that is fine, I just want to know how the voting works.

Maybe a motion to change the contract that states the minimum amount of time a motion needs to be open for voting, how the tally of motions will take place, and what quorum, if any, is required for a motion to be valid.

One way to inform shareholders is to require them to vote.  If they are not going to vote since they don't care what happens then they can vote ABSTAIN and their vote will not be counted.

I believe that with the whole exchange migration, there still might be a considerable amount of idle shares, even though the login info etc has been successfully sent to shareholders. I'm sure burnside could investigate this and come back with a number of shares whose dividends have not been withdrawn, or some other gauge.

So although I believe that this particular vote passed with 92% voting for (as it would have on GLBSE), I think that we should cast a revote using one of the above methods. Of course, I'm open to alternatives as well. So, shareholders, what do you propose?

Also, 100% of revenue for the past week will go out as a dividend today. I want to get this sorted out before executing a change!

Happy superbowl day!
--Garrett

We just need a set of operating rules that will set a quorum needed for a motion vote to be valid, a timeline for the length the motion is up for voting, and the percentage of the voting shares that need to pass a motion.  The higher the quorum the lower the majority is needed.

Ex.
quorum: 60%
motion passes: 51%
voting timeline: 2-3 weeks
undeclared shares: removed the quorum requirement

[stochastic]

You sold 8619 shares @ 0.63. So you collected a total of 5343.78BTC.
Cognitivemining.com lists equipment worth only ~500BTC. What happened to the remaining 4700BTC?
Did I miss something?

Can you use the x6500s to mine litecoins when asics hit bitcoin? Or what is the plan?

The 8619 shares were initially sold when bitcoins were valued at ~$5/BTC.  I think the rest were sold during the summer when it was about $7/BTC.  It is now +$20/BTC.  I also believe that the IPO was priced at 0.55 BTC per share at the IPO.  So during the IPO if someone purchased bitcoins to purchase shares of Cognitive they would have bought each share for about $2.75/share.  Currently, to buy a share of Cognitive would cost someone $7.27/share with a dividend yield (based on the last trade of 0.339BTC/share) of 20% per year.

[btcash]

Sorry I miscalculated. Everything adds up 

[Vernon715]

Do you know when your ASIC's are coming in?
[you are ordering some, right?]

[Garr255]

The 8619 shares were initially sold when bitcoins were valued at ~$5/BTC.  I think the rest were sold during the summer when it was about $7/BTC.  It is now +$20/BTC.  I also believe that the IPO was priced at 0.55 BTC per share at the IPO.  So during the IPO if someone purchased bitcoins to purchase shares of Cognitive they would have bought each share for about $2.75/share.  Currently, to buy a share of Cognitive would cost someone $7.27/share with a dividend yield (based on the last trade of 0.339BTC/share) of 20% per year.

That's all correct except the IPO was BTC0.50

Do you know when your ASIC's are coming in?
[you are ordering some, right?]

Yes, Seven BitForce SC Singles are paid for and were ordered quite a while ago. Although they claim they will ship by the end of this month, I have as good of an idea as anyone with regards to BFL's ASIC delivery timeline. They're really good about not communicating their plans clearly :/

[Garr255]

We just need a set of operating rules that will set a quorum needed for a motion vote to be valid, a timeline for the length the motion is up for voting, and the percentage of the voting shares that need to pass a motion.  The higher the quorum the lower the majority is needed.

Ex.
quorum: 60%
motion passes: 51%
voting timeline: 2-3 weeks
undeclared shares: removed the quorum requirement

I highlighted the sentence that I am basing the following on:

I believe we should set it up as similarly as possible to the original contract. So here's what I propose:

Quorum: 40% (because of the rather learge amount of shares that are owned by those who do not check this forum or btc-tc frequently enough to see that a motion has been set in motion )
Motion passes: 70%
Poll duration: 2 week minimum
and again, undeclared shares: removed from the quorum requirement

I will post a motion where we will change the voting strategy to this. For that motion, we will use the GLBSE style voting, which is calculated by: YES shares divided by total voting shares.

I will also raise the motion for offering the forwards contracts, and for the growth fund. How the outcome is calculated for these will depend on the outcome of the motion regarding the outcome of future motions. Now that's a mouthful.

In addition to these, I would like to open a Cognitive passthrough on https://www.litecoinglobal.com/ , which is owned and maintained by the same guy as our current exchange. This would allow for an additional gateway for investing in Cognitive, which ultimately leads to higher share prices. If there are no objections to this, I plan on listing the passthrough this weekend.

Cheers,
Garrett

[Code_red]

What terms did you have in mind on the pt?

[stochastic]

We just need a set of operating rules that will set a quorum needed for a motion vote to be valid, a timeline for the length the motion is up for voting, and the percentage of the voting shares that need to pass a motion.  The higher the quorum the lower the majority is needed.

Ex.
quorum: 60%
motion passes: 51%
voting timeline: 2-3 weeks
undeclared shares: removed the quorum requirement

I highlighted the sentence that I am basing the following on:

I believe we should set it up as similarly as possible to the original contract. So here's what I propose:

Quorum: 40% (because of the rather learge amount of shares that are owned by those who do not check this forum or btc-tc frequently enough to see that a motion has been set in motion )
Motion passes: 70%
Poll duration: 2 week minimum
and again, undeclared shares: removed from the quorum requirement

I will post a motion where we will change the voting strategy to this. For that motion, we will use the GLBSE style voting, which is calculated by: YES shares divided by total voting shares.

I will also raise the motion for offering the forwards contracts, and for the growth fund. How the outcome is calculated for these will depend on the outcome of the motion regarding the outcome of future motions. Now that's a mouthful.

In addition to these, I would like to open a Cognitive passthrough on https://www.litecoinglobal.com/ , which is owned and maintained by the same guy as our current exchange. This would allow for an additional gateway for investing in Cognitive, which ultimately leads to higher share prices. If there are no objections to this, I plan on listing the passthrough this weekend.

Cheers,
Garrett

Is there anyone that owes more than 40% of outstanding shares or at least 2 people with 20%?  Also, how will the 500 shares used to cover the expenses be used in the voting?

[Garr255]

Is there anyone that owes more than 40% of outstanding shares or at least 2 people with 20%?  Also, how will the 500 shares used to cover the expenses be used in the voting?

No and no: the majority shareholder owns less than 20%. Also, those 500 shares are a part of my holdings, so they always vote with what I vote for. In this case, I have voted yes for all the raised motions.

[Deprived]

Quorum: 40% (because of the rather learge amount of shares that are owned by those who do not check this forum or btc-tc frequently enough to
and again, undeclared shares: removed from the quorum requirement

Pretty sure the second of those statements is unneeded.

If there's 1000 shares then a 40% quorum requirement means 400 need to vote for any result to count.

If the other 60% do nothing it doesn't matter.  You CAN'T remoe them from the quorum requirement (40%/400 votes) as that would give a negative number (-20%/-200 Votes).

So wording should be more along the lines of:

At least 40% of outstanding shares must register a vote (Yes/No/Abstain)
Of those that express an opinion (Yes/No) at least 70% must vote Yes for the motion to pass.
Motions will always be worded such that a Yes vote is required to make any change to the contract.

Last point is needed otherwise some tricky operator could make a motion to leave the contract the same - and the motion failing would mean it changed

So if there were 1000 shares outstanding, 300 voted Yes, 50 voted No, 100 Abstained then:

45% would have voted - so quorum was achieved (at least 40% of shares voted in the motion).
300/350 = 85.7% voted Yes
And motion would pass.

Had the 100 who abstained done nothign then the motion would fail as only 35% showed any awareness of there being motion.

In principle I'm not keen on minority changes to a contract - but with a 2 week period minimum and the fairly low level activity of many investors, what you propose seems a reasonable compromise.

[stochastic]

Quorum: 40% (because of the rather learge amount of shares that are owned by those who do not check this forum or btc-tc frequently enough to
and again, undeclared shares: removed from the quorum requirement

Pretty sure the second of those statements is unneeded.

If there's 1000 shares then a 40% quorum requirement means 400 need to vote for any result to count.

If the other 60% do nothing it doesn't matter.  You CAN'T remoe them from the quorum requirement (40%/400 votes) as that would give a negative number (-20%/-200 Votes).

So wording should be more along the lines of:

At least 40% of outstanding shares must register a vote (Yes/No/Abstain)
Of those that express an opinion (Yes/No) at least 70% must vote Yes for the motion to pass.
Motions will always be worded such that a Yes vote is required to make any change to the contract.

Last point is needed otherwise some tricky operator could make a motion to leave the contract the same - and the motion failing would mean it changed

So if there were 1000 shares outstanding, 300 voted Yes, 50 voted No, 100 Abstained then:

45% would have voted - so quorum was achieved (at least 40% of shares voted in the motion).
300/350 = 85.7% voted Yes
And motion would pass.

Had the 100 who abstained done nothign then the motion would fail as only 35% showed any awareness of there being motion.

In principle I'm not keen on minority changes to a contract - but with a 2 week period minimum and the fairly low level activity of many investors, what you propose seems a reasonable compromise.

It looks like the motion requires a 60% quorum.