[Cryptostocks] BBBB Bitcoin Emerging Market Fund

[Squeaker]

So nice to have all of this communication lately, after so long with silence. Very reassuring.

Please, keep us posted on developments. Even if you have nothing new to report, just a wave hello and a comment that you're continuing to hold current positions, would be enough.

=squeak=

[Surf Capital Management]

Thank you, Squeaker.

I have been invited to do a radio interview on Cincinnati Public Radio (91.7 WXVU) and in Oxford, Oh (88.5 WMUB) on March 12 at 1pm. We will be doing a segment on Bitcoin giving listeners a basic definition, some history, how the process of using Bitcoin works, etc...

Also, it looks as if BTCQuick is ceasing operations and returning funds to shareholders. This will take place after the credit card chargeback windows have passed, which could take up to six months.  

Over the weekend I was doing some due diligence and like the following securities: IceDrill.Asic, this seems like a transparent operation using HashFast ASICs. The shares are currently illiquid but the company is developing a proprietary trading platform to relist them soon. I'm interested in the development of Scrypt ASIC technology and have spoken to a few people who have pre-orders at Alpha Technology for their Viper Series. I question the legitimacy of this company. However, during my due diligence I stumbled upon this little gem. DigitalCoinFarm (Cryptostocks: DigitalCoinFarm) seems like a transparent operation run out of Taiwan by a few programmers who may or may not have Scrypt ASICs coming soon. More due diligence is required on this one.

PS: Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia has shown some interest in Bitcoin. I have been a long-time proponent of Wikipedia accepting Bitcoin and I think it would be a perfect fit for the company.

[thy]

...
Also, it looks as if BTCQuick is ceasing operations and returning funds to shareholders. This will take place after the credit card chargeback windows have passed, which could take up to six months.  
...

Ascension(BTCQuicks ceo) said after Credit Card and ACH chargeback windows have passed and that it was a 6-12 months period, hopefully they havent lost to much on that, there was also a small dividend after bitfuder closed, 8 satouchi per share that some that haven't registered there shares yet also will get.
We will probably get more information later this week when he presents more details in the coming memo.

[Surf Capital Management]

Hello Investors,

Here is a link to the recent radio interview I had on Cincinnati NPR affiliate WXVU. The show's producer was surprised by the amount of callers and traffic that the interview brought to the website.

Recently, a couple members of the Cincinnati Bitcoin MeetUp group made waves when they announced at the Texas Bitcoin Conference that they had developed a hot wallet that will be iOs compatible. All this in light of the current Apple blockade on wallet apps. Lamar Wilson and Lafe Taylor of 212ths LLC have developed the Pheeva Wallet, a hot wallet implementing "Coin-Ids" which act as personalized avatars used to send Bitcoin to other Pheeva wallet holders. This is a big improvement over having to type out the 32 character alpha-numeric Bitcoin wallet address.

The Bitcoin Emerging Market Fund (BBBB) initiated a position in the Neo & Bee Payment Network  (Havelock: NEOBEE) on 03/07 buying 18 shares. The fund will continue to increase this position in the near term. I love the tangibility of NEOBEE's assets. They have brick and mortar branches and will be providing vital financial services to an area that has traditionally been "under-banked." I must note, however, there is substantial political risk with this investment. We, as investors, do not know how the Cypriot government will act toward a new financial institution like this. This is especially true given the political turmoil occuring in Ukraine and the Crimea region.

The performance of our holdings in Cognitive Mining (Havelock: COG) is disappointing. COG recently received 10th/s of a 28th/s order from Cointerra. The machines have been under-performing (2th/s/unit promised, ~1.6th/s/unit actual) and have been plagued with power cycle issues. Management has also been showing signs of incompetence. This has caused shareholders to raise a motion to liquidate the hardware on eBay and return funds to shareholders. If the motion passes it will surely be the end of COG as the will have depleted their stock of working capital. The fund's cost basis on these shares is in the range BTC.035/share range so we are technically breaking even...

[dython]

just bought my shares while listening to the interview you posted. I think you did a good job of breaking it down for the public. will follow thread, keep us updated

[Surf Capital Management]

Thanks Dython, I appreciate your feedback.

Quick Update:

Ciphermine shares will be liquid once again beginning Friday, March 28th. Ciphertrade is a proprietary trading platform developed by the Ciphermine team. BBBB owns 38 shares of Ciphermine. I don't have any estimate at what the value of the position is, including accrued dividends. The position was initiated when USD/LTC was ~$4 so there has been a nice appreciation in the currency since the position was opened.

As a huge fan and avid listener of Let's Talk Bitcoin I am looking to make an acquisition, for BBBB, of LTBcoin once it goes public. This will allow investors to gain from the appreciation of the LTB network by directly incentivizing the production of high quality content for which the shown is known. Congrats to Adam Levine for his hard work and dedication to crypto-currency education and awareness.

Bitcoin 2.0 applications such as Mastercoin, Bitshares, and the Ethereum project are on BBBB's radar. The fund will seek to take positions in these projects by investing in the individual tokens upon which the projects are based. Bitcoin 2.0 have the potential to open a whole new level of innovation built atop the Bitcoin Blockchain. We are excited for decentralized smart contracts and trustless escrows!
 
Crypto-trade is back up and running. After a brief security breach which cost the company about $30k the site is functional. The 9 share of Crypto-Trade that BBBB owns are intact. ActiveMining shares are also floating on CT's exchange. The current bid of BTC.0007/share values BBBB's ACTM stake at BTC2.1.

Finally, BBBB will be undergoing a large transformation. Co-manager Rob Kelly and I are developing a full fund prospectus which will clearly define the operations of the fund and provide a framework for allocating raised capital. Following the completion of this prospectus we will initiate a secondary IPO on Cryptostocks in which we try to raise an additional BTC100 and justify a total valuation of BTC150 (~$87k). There will also be updates to the Surf Capital Management webpage.

#Surfs UP

-Garrett

[dython]

second the motion to go for LTBcoin, if you want btc/ripple  https://www.kraken.com/

[Surf Capital Management]

*Figures are subject to change.

An official Secondary Offering and Prospectus as well as balance sheets, current positions, etc. will soon follow.

[Squeaker]

Thank you for the clear plan of action for the SPO.

Not sure if allocation so much in the lending field is such a good idea, but I haven't really spent much time looking into that, so I will defer to your research on that. If you believe your plan in that respect, to be a good risk to take, based on your own research, then I'll go along with it.

=squeak=

[Surf Capital Management]

Thank you for the clear plan of action for the SPO.

Not sure if allocation so much in the lending field is such a good idea, but I haven't really spent much time looking into that, so I will defer to your research on that. If you believe your plan in that respect, to be a good risk to take, based on your own research, then I'll go along with it.

=squeak=

Peer-to-peer lending is risky. We can mitigate fraud losses by our due diligence. BTCJam provides great analytics on borrower creditworthiness. We have found that BTC/USD linked loans have a far lower probability of default. The majority of the portfolio will comprise of these.

[Surf Capital Management]

Update 4/12:

We have published our revised Fund Prospectus and information about our upcoming Secondary Offering taking place April 21.

The April 3rd dividend was paid from liquidating 30,000 Ripple (XRP) into BTC and from the remains of our BTCJam and BTC.sx accounts.

[Surf Capital Management]

BBBB International Communication Network

Nederlands
Deutsch
中国的
pyccкий
português
français
עברית

We've been improving our communication with the international Bitcoin community. Take a look!

[vm_mpn]

"The Bitcoin Emerging Market Fund (BBBB) initiated a position in the Neo & Bee Payment Network  (Havelock: NEOBEE) on 03/07 buying 18 shares. The fund will continue to increase this position in the near term. I love the tangibility of NEOBEE's assets. They have brick and mortar branches and will be providing vital financial services to an area that has traditionally been "under-banked." I must note, however, there is substantial political risk with this investment. We, as investors, do not know how the Cypriot government will act toward a new financial institution like this. This is especially true given the political turmoil occuring in Ukraine and the Crimea region."

LOL.... I was laughing so hard I actually fell down from the couch and felt guilty afterwards, so I bought some shares of BBBB... Call me crazy but I would rather be a part of a train wreck than watching it from the outside. Hey, it's how I roll  

[Surf Capital Management]

Company Name: ActiveMining
BBBB Position: 3,050 shares

Outline
Since 2009 the Active Mining Corporation (AMC) has performed crypto-currency mining operations while also manufacturing and selling ASIC devices that are produced through its subsidiary, Virtual Mining Corporation (VMC). Public investors currently own 10 million shares which account for 40% of company profits while AMC owners hold the remaining 15 million shares.

Product Development
The Virtual Mining Corporation produces its own application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) bitcoin mining machines which it classifies under the name of “fast-hash.” A recent developments in VMC's product development was an announcement in late 2013 that they were working with and utilizing eASIC components in their new products. On the 21st of January 2014 AMC announced that they had purchased the intellectual property for the 55nm UMC Bitcoin Mining ASIC. The UMC 55nm ASIC is supposed to represent a more advanced version of the eASIC product and the delivery of the chips is expected in the second quarter of 2014 – the second fiscal quarter of the year began on April 1 but AMC has yet to announce the delivery of the UMC chips. 

Operations
According to VMCs website their current bitcoin mining operations utilize 6 Avalon Batch 2 @ 64 GH/s each for a total of 384 GH/s (source: VMC – About). Bitcoin mining operations were significantly hampered for a few weeks leading into April due to air conditioning problems within AMC. In addition to this temporary setback there has been a great deal of speculation about AMC's ability to remain profitable with bitcoin mining due to increasing costs and difficulty of mining algorithms. AMC CEO Kenneth Slaughter has assured investors that as long as the cost of BTC remains high ($500 +) he will be able to generate strong profits for the company from its mining operations.

Revenue Projections
According to an analysis and projection of mining payout schedules (source: TradeBlock) across all eleven Virtual Mining products the company will have a cumulative return of $91,233 USD by April of 2015. However, the company is also expected to show significantly diminished revenue and profit levels at that point; bringing in $598 and $149, respectively. In the far shorter term a projection of revenues for May of 2014 show a different story. Virtual Mining is expected to bring in a revenue of $119,300 with profits of $118,842 however, the cumulative return for this period will be $95,933 in the red. High fixed and operating costs leave multiple Virtual Mining products unprofitable for the remainder of 2014. According to ActiveMining Corp.'s own financial projections posted on Crypto-Trade they currently have combined liquid assets in excess of $3.4 million and their projections place Virtual Mining profit's to be ~$40 million for 2014.

Share Trading
After the closure of the BTC-TC exchange in October of 2013 ACtM suspended all dividends and became untradeable. In response to investor pressure ActiveMining (AMC) began trading on Crypto-Trade on December 5, 2013 with all shares being publicly listed in January of 2014. Since AMC's appearance on Crypto-Trade there have been no dividend payouts listed. At its initial offering AMC offered a “shareholder guarantee” that promised everyone a payout of 0.0025 BTC before the owners received any dividends on their shares. To-date 629 BTC has been paid out to shareholders which accounts for only 2.5% of the promised amount, there has been no timeline offered for the remaining payout to investors.
 
Controversy
AMC CEO Kenneth Slaughter has been regularly posting updates on the company and responding to investor and customer questions online through bitcointalk.org. His company updates and attempts at reputation management can be found through his personal account: kslaughter. There has been a great deal of online distrust towards AMC because they have yet to reveal the 2013 financial reports. Mr. Slaughter has assured everyone that the company books are currently being looked over by his accountant and the final report will be an audited version of the financial records. AMC has also faced criticism in its delays in processing customer refunds. AMC was utilizing the Mt. Gox exchange to transfer bitcoin (BTC) to fiat currency for the purposes of refunding customer money. Subsequently AMC lost BTC when Mt. Gox collapsed in february of 2014 and they have yet to cover all customer refunds that were requested prior to the loss. Kenneth Slaughter has stated that AMC has been under MSD investigation but has yet to share any real details on the investigation or how long it is expected to take. He has however, frequently skimmed over questions regarding the investigated and stated that he believed coloured coins to be the answer for AMC. 

[Surf Capital Management]

BBBB Secondary Virtual Offering now Live on Cryptostocks

Our secondary round of funding has begun. For more information, including prospectus and offering details, refer to the Cryptostocks page.

[vm_mpn]

Hey, at least you are honest and transparent, and it worth something. Probably pick up a few shares (down with the ship I go)

[serejandmyself]

Sounds like a great idea, ill pick up some shares. Like the transparency bit, and the ecosystem part too.
Keep up the good work guys. Hope you grow fast 

[jerfelix]

Hey, I'm just here to vouch for the guys at Surf Capital Management.



Although I don't have a long history with these guys, I have known the CEO of Surf Capital Management for about a year, in real life.  He heads up our local (Cincinnati) Bitcoin meetups and has represented Bitcoin well in presentations and on radio.  (Here's a link to one radio broadcast http://wvxu.org/post/brother-can-you-spare-bitcoin )

Although I can't vouch for their investment skills (you can read this thread and see their published success rate in the past; they're pretty transparent), I think one risk - the risk of them flaking out and taking off with your bitcoins - is probably minimal.

So yeah, you don't know if I am a paid shill (I am not), but I just wanted to put in a quick word of endorsement.  They haven't let me down yet, and I have a lot of respect for the CEO.

Best of luck to you, Surf Capital Management!

[Surf Capital Management]

NeoBee Statement

BBBB will take a minor loss on this position. Although due diligence was performed, necessary steps were not taken to ensure that the company (NeoBee) would remain solvent following a severe devaluation of the Bitcoin exchange rate. Stress tests need to test the sensitivity of Bitcoin reserves to liabilities  making sure that companies no longer face solvency issues. This is difficult considering the lax reporting standards enforced by the Bitcoin community.  Contrary to prior analysis, the biggest risk Neo faced was not the Cypriot government but internally incompetent management. There is speculation that Danny Brewster, NeoBee's Chief executive, will face legal charges in an unspecified jurisdiction.

[NotLambchop]

NeoBee Statement

BBBB will take a minor loss on this position...

Minor as in "i sold before trading halt," or minor as in "all the coin's gone, but it wasn't much"?