Quote from: ciscokid on April 08, 2014, 03:02:04 AM

Quote from: Ursium on April 07, 2014, 03:01:05 PM

Ask away!

Here is a re-post of my questions:

1- Will any of the IPO bitcoin be used to fund personal expenses like food/travel/accommodations?
If you mean will staff embezzle funds by purchasing personal items with the investors money, I'm slightly offended by that question. Of course not.
How will you know? Our finances will be transparent.

2- Prior to IPO, are we going to get a breakdown of where exactly the funds go?
There is no IPO, but an Ether sale, akin to a pre-order. There's a 70+ pages business plan in the works. We anticipate it to be an open equity, open software, open salary template for future projects as well as ours. We're currently finalizing it. I think you will like it .

3- If underfunded, we will all get full refunds correct?
This assumes that there is a cap or a min. There is no such thing. We have been developing and distributing the software in a complete open source manner since day one while self-funding so far.

4- If ethereum "fails" for any reason after launch, and Vitalik decides to scrap the idea and do something else, will the investors get stake in whatever new project Vitalik takes on?
The project is completely (and already is) open source wall to wall. Assuming it implodes (tech turns out impossible to implement), we would of course return whatever is left post burn-rate to the Ether buyers.

5- There seems to be a fair amount of risk involved here. Why is it that early investors are only getting 2K ether for 1 BTC? How exactly was this number arrived at? It seems very inflated for an IPO considering it is still a brand new tech that needs to be created, could very well fail, be copied, not have enough interest to see a return on the investment etc etc.
The market will decide the true value of the Ether cryptofuel, not us.

5a. Why not reward the early investors more for taking on huge risk? 10,000 ether per 1 BTC seems fair considering the risk involved.
Why not 1M ether per BTC? Why not 1:1? It's irrelevant, the value of Ether isn't decided by us, but by the markets.

6- Theoretically will the cost of using Ether cause the price to always remain low? Because people would not use it if it's too expensive right?
We're aiming to keep fees low enough to encourage first adopter use, yes.

7a- Added these since last post: Will any of the devs/mods be investing their own money into the project to purchase for Ether, at the set 2k Ether/1BTC ? If so, approx how much will be purchased?
No idea. Doesn't matter as these aren't shares. We all believe in Ethereum as a long term platform for societal change, so personal investments are to be expected. You could say that the last few months working as volunteers is an investment, too.

7b- What kind of appreciation are you expecting at one year, two years and 3 years? I know this is really does not matter, nor can it be accurately predicted at all. But I just want to know what is going on in your minds, even if it is not accurate at all. Helps me to better gauge where you guys are coming from. If you guys are indifferent that is useful to know as well. And yes, I understand you guys are primarily about developing tech, not creating another speculative investment. But I still would like to know where exactly you guys stand.
If we could predict the future, we likely would do better predicting lottery numbers. Not for us to say.