Quote from: twentyseventy on August 05, 2014, 12:58:55 PM

Unless you pay in excess of all invested capital (you pay out more in total than all invested capital), then you can't prove that it's not a Ponzi. Regularly scheduled payments that look like interest / principal payments can just as easily be payouts from existing/new investors unless you can independently verify (on the blockchain) that the remaining funds do still exist.

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3: Because it's a bond, investors would have a promised return amount, and they would get the amount whether my program is profitable or not. If I don't make profit, then I would pay the interest out of pocket.

Bonds sounds like fun, but they've turned out terribly for investors. Ukyo loan? Graet loan? TAT's bond is an success in a field of failures, but that's about it. And how much capital on hand do you have to pay interest out of pocket?

Thanks for the critiques, it provides a lot to think about. Out of pocket, I could pay several thousand dollars worth of interest if my system didnt make any profit. I could do a proof of reserves pretty easily.

To clarify, the bond payouts would be in excess of all investor's capital. If I did 1-month bonds of $100 with 10% interest over that period (denominated in USD), all investors would receive $110 back, and they would all receive it simultaneously - I could set the payout day as the last day of the month for simplicity. Then, on the subsequent day, I could start a new round of investments, and invite the prior investors to invest again and the new bonds would be accepted over a period of a few days. I wouldnt accept any investment outside the posted rounds. I could set up a single address to receive all incoming funds, post the address, and at the end of the month I would send all funds back out through that address. If anyone tried to send money to that address mid-month, I could immediately send it back to the investor and add them to the contacts list so they would be informed of the start of the next round.
This strategy does have a downside that I would need to regularly liquidate and I would not have any of the investment money for 1 or 2 days per month. But, it would be publicly available proof of the amount of funds going in and the amount being sent back out, and anyone could check that each transaction out is 110% of each transaction in (after converting to dollars). I would prefer if each investor can accept the funds back using the same address that they sent from, but that may not be possible for all investors.
I could accept and manage the funds as btc-denominated amounts if the majority of investors really wanted that. Id prefer to do it all as dollars or all as BTC, as this would be simpler for other people to independently verify.

chris45215

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