Hello Folks:
Many thanks for your considerate and informative responses to my 7 questions yesterday. I just have a few additional questions and comments:
1. Is it correct to assume that you will always value MINE at the stated 200 days of dividends, no matter where in the cycle we are? For example, after a typical 14-day cycle will dividends be based on 200 days or on 186 days?
2. I understand where the 1% fee goes much better now. But I don't see how the Issuer of the fund makes any BTC. If that fee is just enough to pay HL their fee and to provide a small buffer then how does the Issuer get rewarded for all of the quality time, energy, and ongoing management work necessary to bring this innovative concept to market and to make it a success? The Issuer deserves compensation for all this work and hassle!
4. I got the 2,514,532 Difficulty number from the IPO Prospectus on p. 4. Many thanks for the link to the actual data--it really helps to clear up this issue. Might I suggest that you include this link directly in future communications with investors, especially those of us who are kind of hazy on the nuts and bolts of how hashing & mining works?
I assume that you set the penalty at 1/2 % per day for MINE transactions because it reflects the shorter remaining life of the fund, at 1 day less/ 200 days standard. So in this way it's like the situation with ex-dividend valuation of shares of common stock, where the market price of the stock falls by the $ amount of the quarterly dividend on the ex date. Since you pay dividends each day this adjustment makes sense.
In sum, if I get your plan correctly now the 0.2431 BTC for EXCH is ultimately divided between MINE and SELL holders depending on whether the difficulty increases rapidly (favoring SELL) or slowly/as expected (favoring MINE). So it really IS a zero-sum game! In effect your derivative functions as a LEAP where the time frame is several months, MINE represents a call option for those bullish on mining investments, and SELL represents a put option for those bearish on mining investments. I really like this concept!
Ill try to answer these questions to the best of my knowledge.
1. MINE always pays out 5gh/s worth of dividends daily. This is a fixed rate that can be calculated mathematically. 180-200 days left of dividends is the target with those 20 days being a buffer zone (difficulty adjusts every 14 days so he left 6 days worth of dividends extra just in case or something)
2. Because naturally the value of Exchange should be equal to the sum of mine and sell combined (because dividends can only ever add up to neatly the cost of an exchange) this means the 1% markup is reasonable. I see about 100btc trading now so that means at most he will give out like 99btc and keep the 1% or 1btc.
3/4 info regarding bitcoin difficulty can be found all over the interwebs if you just google it.
You are right about it being a zero sum game but it is hugely different from options.