This is the most confusing IPO of all time, wtf am I supposed to do?

[sumantso]

This all leaves me completely and utterly confused... if I keep my PTS, will I continue to get shares of every future DAC? or is that only for AGS holders now?

AGS and PTS are on par in this regard, though you can't sell AGS with the tradeoff being you get a lot more BTSX from AGS.

So basically if your whole purpose of PTS was to make and hold, for returns on future DAC's... its actually pointless to keep PTS and you might as well get AGS since you get more of every future DAC?

There may be some 3rd party DACs which may decide honour PTS but not AGS.

You get more of BTSX - 2,5x time in fact; but not the future ones since AGS is going to keep generating after 28th February. Remember, by future DACs, I mean entirely different DACs. All the BTSX chains which are going to be released will follow the initial BTS XT and so, yes, AGS is much better.

[sumantso]

I wonder if buying PTS right now is that great a deal, especially with prices around 0.03 BTC. Lets say you buy PTS now which essentially means you are valuing BTSX at 0.023 BTC. With 4 million BTSX right at the start it means a market cap of some $50m!!

Of course, we all here believe BTSX will be worth a lot in the long run, but initially prices will be way lower than what you will be getting with PTS right now. A lot of people have donated to AGS when 40-50 BTCs were being donated a day; which means they bought BTSX at some 0.0027 BTC. I would expect big sell offs to at least recover the initial investments when price rises a few times.

I also expect PTS to be cheaper too in early March, unless I3 intervenes. Bytemaster has already alluded to the possibility of PTS market manipulation by I3 which is a very scary prospect.

[bitbro]

@AdamBLevine.  If he wants to do real investigative journalism he'd go back and source quotes from the forum. 

I, for one, believe in and trust Invictus.  They have only continued to maximize value for me as a shareholder throughout the process, from November to the current moment, and I believe they will continue to do so.  Granted, I was not a lazy investor, and I followed my intuition, my gut, and the advice of the Invictus team.  Those who did not have the wherewithal to invest as best as possible, I don't feel sorry for. This is the real world, don't expect me or anyone to hold your hand and walk you into every great investment maneuver. 

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.


 

[toast]

If you followed I3's advice, your expected returns kept going up, just not optimally. Could have been better. I think it's hard to be fair when the expected value of the thing as a whole jumps by orders of magnitudes. AGS should have come first, I3 definitely fucked up with PTS and they admitted it and made it better.

This was mentioned elsewhere but it comes down to whether or not you think it is bad to take away unrealized opportunity. When I3 announced an early snapshot they took away the chance for your PTS to earn you even more BTS (another 2.5x multiplier, when AGS:PTS was cheap, after the previous 5x which all PTS owners got). Remember prior to the announcement the market was predicting a much later snapshot (from PTS/AGS ratio). They never caused the PTS to give you less value out of future DACs, which is why I'm not too concerned.

You're a champion for the guys throwing in their support but not necessarily their time and attention. I think it's a bit irresponsible for I3 to be collecting money from that audience at this stage. It seems like nobody is in a rush to help make things user-friendly until after the snapshot.

[Darkbane]

This all leaves me completely and utterly confused... if I keep my PTS, will I continue to get shares of every future DAC? or is that only for AGS holders now?

AGS and PTS are on par in this regard, though you can't sell AGS with the tradeoff being you get a lot more BTSX from AGS.

So basically if your whole purpose of PTS was to make and hold, for returns on future DAC's... its actually pointless to keep PTS and you might as well get AGS since you get more of every future DAC?

[sumantso]

This all leaves me completely and utterly confused... if I keep my PTS, will I continue to get shares of every future DAC? or is that only for AGS holders now?

AGS and PTS are on par in this regard, though you can't sell AGS with the tradeoff being you get a lot more BTSX from AGS.

[Darkbane]

This all leaves me completely and utterly confused... if I keep my PTS, will I continue to get shares of every future DAC? or is that only for AGS holders now?

[CLains]

If the disagreement is a matter of economic judgement, then you're disagreeing primarily with how to run the company to achieve maximum returns, rather than disagreeing with how to allocate shares fairly.

1. Not going back on their word.
2. Allocating shares fairly.
3. Maximizing the value proposition.

Furthermore, are we investing in Invictus as trusting their judgement to maximize the value proposition, or are we investing in Invictus to complete a preordained scheme that we believe will maximize the value proposition?

Most people don't understand Bitshares and trust in the judgement of the people developing it. Of course if we can communicate ideas that will improve the judgement of Invictus then we should do so for our own sake, but then we should focus on improving what we perceive to be wrong.

From what I can tell you're arguing against a mix of the above three components. As an investor, I'd like to see you suggest alternatives that do not lower the value proposition. And if people disagree on whether or not it lowers the value proposition we're then in the realm of argumentation. As an interested participant, I'd like to see you suggest how Invictus should proceed from here.

Dwelling on past mistakes are only relevant as guide to avoiding future mistakes. And better than telling people what to avoid is to suggest alternatives that are superior.

[dirktadwater]

Adam, that was exactly what I was thinking. I actually heard about PTS on your show, and bought a bunch after hearing about it. Lo and behold I come back a couple months later and Invictus has essentially halved any investing advantage I had by buying back then. Needless to say I'm a little ticked off.

[AdamBLevine]

I believe future invictus chains will derive from BITSHARES which were derived from PROTOSHARES rather than BITSHARES being derived from PROTOSHARES and then PROTOSHAREs continuing to derive future chains for its holders.    Did I misunderstand this?   Did this change?  If it did, thats a BIG DEAL because it means you're an idiot if you hold protoshares rather than maximizing your bitshares.

Only other BitShares X chains will be derived from BitShares XT. These are all the assets-backed-by-prediction-market variations, like with interest or different consensus algo or other small feature set change experiments.
Other invictus chains will be derived from AGS/PTS still. Not 100% sure but I imagine something like DomainShares would not be derived from BTS XT.

My point exactly.   We are six days from the snapshot and even you, who are on the forums every day and posting in most forums do not really know whats going on with regards to future allocations.   That uncertainty makes it IMPOSSIBLE for a fair price to be established.  This is a joke.

[AdamBLevine]

When the deal gets better for someone, it gets worse for someone else. 

If I have a company and people pay for computer hardware, electricity, malware developers, mining pools, cost of acquiring and putting setting everything up, etc. to get a share in my company then the only winner is the third party services. Why? Because the money going into these services do not add any value. Why do they not add value? Because the type of security that they help provide can be replaced with a type of security that costs nothing.

With the introduction of AGS, PTS holders could add value to the company directly by investing in AGS. Now suddenly Invictus is a first-mover in the realm of acquiring serious funding. With the old PTS model Invictus was backed by a tiny team of coders with a few dollars up their sleeve. With AGS we're now sitting on PTS backed by a growing team of coders with millions of dollars to spend on development, legal issues, promotion, etc.

If you don't think Bitshares will be worth anything, then just sell some PTS now (they're as high as BTC was at 1000+), and then buy them back after the snapshot. Or use the money to buy Bitshares after launch. From an investor perspective the ROI is off the charts every way.

You may have a point if you discuss promises, etc. but that's another discussion. As far as ROI goes I don't see how PTS holders are losing out. Their company were the first to replace a ridiculous business model with an ingenious and profitable one. We'll see in a few months time though.. This is a rapidly evolving field and everybody will constantly be making mistakes.

Things do change very fast, which is why it's so important to set up a deal that has room to manuever.  When Invictus jumped from 90% mined to 100% premined, did they leave themselves any room?  I don't think they did.  When AGS was first proposed I argued that while it was OK to devote 10% of Bitshares to AGS, it was crazy to completely remove mining because the deal had involved 90% of Bitshares being distributed through non-monetary means whereas now it was 100% monetary to buy in.

Invictus definitely wins, but everybody else?  Depends on how much you're paying attention.   Was that the deal people signed on for?  That they acquire the coins and then have to read the forums weekly to see when the deal changes so they can quickly respond before other people have an opportunity to protect themselves?   Change is the enemy, and the visible cost is the tip of the iceberg.

[toast]

I believe future invictus chains will derive from BITSHARES which were derived from PROTOSHARES rather than BITSHARES being derived from PROTOSHARES and then PROTOSHAREs continuing to derive future chains for its holders.    Did I misunderstand this?   Did this change?  If it did, thats a BIG DEAL because it means you're an idiot if you hold protoshares rather than maximizing your bitshares.

Only other BitShares X chains will be derived from BitShares XT. These are all the assets-backed-by-prediction-market variations, like with interest or different consensus algo or other small feature set change experiments.
Other invictus chains will be derived from AGS/PTS still. Not 100% sure but I imagine something like DomainShares would not be derived from BTS XT.

[AdamBLevine]

If you listened to Invictus up until the middle of December and did what they asked, acquiring PTS by mining or buying them, you are the biggest loser of Invictus investors.  You say the deal got better because you're looking at this numerically.  I think the deal got worse because I look at it comparatively.   

In December holding PTS meant you were in the most advantageous position to receive Bitshares.   Now your position is not even 1/3rd as valuable as the position of someone holding angelshares, which cost about the same as PTS.     This is confusing, has been poorly announced, I still have yet to see a blog where people who don't sit on forums can actually understand whats going on.   

There are TONS of projects out there people focus time, when you have a project like Bitshares that is under medium-long term development, many people will not look for a month or more waiting until they hear "news" that gives them a reason to check their stake.     Anyone doing that with Bitshares will find they missed an opportunity.      I'm trying to help get the word out, Daniel and Charles Evans wrote an editorial we just published at LTB but even that article does not explain the ACTUAL situation, which really annoys me even further.

They talk about lots of use cases that are far in the future, but unless I misunderstood the post last week about the Bitshares snapshot and launch, I believe future invictus chains will derive from BITSHARES which were derived from PROTOSHARES rather than BITSHARES being derived from PROTOSHARES and then PROTOSHAREs continuing to derive future chains for its holders.    Did I misunderstand this?   Did this change?  If it did, thats a BIG DEAL because it means you're an idiot if you hold protoshares rather than maximizing your bitshares.

[CLains]

When the deal gets better for someone, it gets worse for someone else. 

If I have a company and people pay for computer hardware, electricity, malware developers, mining pools, cost of acquiring and putting setting everything up, etc. to get a share in my company then the only winner is the third party services. Why? Because the money going into these services do not add any value. Why do they not add value? Because the type of security that they help provide can be replaced with a type of security that costs nothing.

With the introduction of AGS, PTS holders could add value to the company directly by investing in AGS. Now suddenly Invictus is a first-mover in the realm of acquiring serious funding. With the old PTS model Invictus was backed by a tiny team of coders with a few dollars up their sleeve. With AGS we're now sitting on PTS backed by a growing team of coders with millions of dollars to spend on development, legal issues, promotion, etc.

If you don't think Bitshares will be worth anything, then just sell some PTS now (they're as high as BTC was at 1000+), and then buy them back after the snapshot. Or use the money to buy Bitshares after launch. From an investor perspective the ROI is off the charts every way.

You may have a point if you discuss promises, etc. but that's another discussion. As far as ROI goes I don't see how PTS holders are losing out. Their company were the first to replace a ridiculous business model with an ingenious and profitable one. We'll see in a few months time though.. This is a rapidly evolving field and everybody will constantly be making mistakes.

[toast]

When the deal gets better for someone, it gets worse for someone else.   I continue to be disappointed by the inability to acknowledge that.

The people for whom the deal got worse is *people who were holding PTS for speculative value*, NOT people who were holding for shares in I3's DACs. The original deal was better for people wanting to sell PTS right before snapshot or sell BTS right after launch, but worse for someone who thought I3's DACs would become successful and wanted to maximize returns from this prediction.

If you bought PTS to invest in BTS and then stopped following along, you'll notice your PTS now award a much higher share than before. Nice investment!
If you bought PTS to invest in BTS and *have* been following along, the above is still true you had the chance to get cheap AGS for like a month.

You have one good point I think, and that's that I3 changed their promise at all. It costs some credibility, but I thought it was worth it.

I feel like I'm in the same situation as you (bought PTS before the big changes) but from my perspective the deal has been getting sweeter and sweeter.