Market Discussions

Alternately, send me 20 million isk and I'll put you on Goonswarm's "no gank" list. He might only pay out 20 million, but I stop you from ever getting ganked!

At first I thought, damn why didnt I think of that first?

then I thought to myself, Oh heck no I dont want ISK going back and fro between me and goons, dont want to be investigated one day.

You have one (1) client as of now, is this correct?
That is, you have 20 million ISK from someone else in your wallet.

How will you pay them back if they get ganked now?
From your own wallet? In that case, this doesn't seem like a viable business (cough)

Or will you pay them 5% of the insurance pool? That is, 1 million isk? In this case, you're not keeping your "Minimum payout" plan.

Am I correct in assuming that this business is (more-or-less) only viable if you get a lot of clients? (Such that you always have someone elses ISK at hand to pay out, cough)

What I'm trying to get at is: What will you do if everyone gets ganked/pulls out at the same time? What is your backup-plan? How can I be sure that you won't just say " 'eff it, I'm keeping the isk"?
Will there be a third party holding any assets?

Also, what will you do about scams? I could (potentially) buy a hulk and fit it to have 20k EHP, and then gather some friends (read alts) to "gank" it, just to get a "quick" 20 million (you know, 40 mil minus what I paid).

And a quick notice; I do not currently own a hulk, and have no idea what the cost of insuring one is, nor what it pays out. The (customer-)scam-part may not be viable at all, and if it isn't, I apologise.

Edit:
Also, I see that your toon is from (late-) April. As such, I assume that it is not your main. Would you care to disclose all of your alts?

This is my main. You can choose to believe that or not. I have a character named Sven-Ole Torssen on the same account, in a NPC corp with no SP.

I previously played Shadowbane (PvP low-fantasy MMO) last decade during summer breaks while I was in colllege, and am currently on the design/test team for the Shadowbane Emulator project as of March 2012.

In the time between that game shutting down in July 2009 (and graduation from university) until recently, I didn't have time for MMOs with my career at DoD in Arlington, VA, and living/working in India before returning state-side. At best, I could do CoD and SC2. Now I do have time.

I previously had two EVE trial accounts last decade, but again, either didn't have time to get into the game, or was involved playing Shadowbane during summer breaks while in college.

It's an incentive to encourage the purchase of policies. Has nothing to do with "honor".


I don't have and don't expect to have 51 policies in the next five seconds. I expect it to take some time before reaching that number.

At this point I have 1 policy in place and it's pretty pointless to speak of a far-off hypothetical situation as if I had them at this very moment with the assets I have at this very moment.

That being said, entertaining your impossible hypothetical, here's a snapshot of a spreadsheet documenting payouts and the positive and negative balance of the insurance pool in the event that I had:

• 51 people purchase policies in the next 5 seconds, and
• 100% of them were immediately ganked in quick succession today, with the
• 500 million in assets I have today and hypothetical 1.02 billion ISK insurance pool

http://s19.postimage.org/fj5avz4nl/spreadsheet.jpg

The result would be I would be able to pay out 1.52 billion, and be unable to cover 119 million isk in due payouts.

47 policies (92%) would be covered, and 4 policies (<8%) would go uncovered.

That being said, I currently accrue 75 million in ISK and assets per day, and I fully expect:

• two more days to pass (150+ million gain in ISK + assets)
• far before I have 51 policies in place.

But the answer to "Again, then what will you do?"

• rat for a couple days

I'll cover the rest of your post momentarily, however, if you continue in this absurd vein:

I'll ignore any further posts you make.

http://eve-search.com/thread/1515816-0/page/1

This was the last player run insurance.

I do actually have a few questions:

How long have you spent researching/looking into this plan prior to launching it?

It seems from one of your posts that you are US, is this correct, and if so, how do players in other timezones contact you in the event of a claim?

FAKEEDIT: Do you have any experience in the financial sector? Not that it is important, just trying to gauge whether you have experience in the field, or are an interested observer of insurance

I apologise if you're feeling attacked. I'm actually trying to help you. I want your service to be legit, but EVE is a ruthless place and, as such, you need to convince me that you are not like the rest of "them".

You also need to convince me that you will not simply ignore my requests for payouts, because I looked at you the wrong way, or because I got angry that you took 24.5 hours to "process" my case and acted irrationally (by sending mad evemails, or worse).
(For clarity and the record, I have NOT sent Hrothgar any ISK, so do not mistake the above for a bad "he took my isk" attempt)

My point: I want to be assured that you will pay me back, (almost) regardless of the circumstances.


Okay. In my own defence, while that may be a theoretical example, it is by no means an impossible scenario. If I recall correctly, a regular occurance is people (mass-)pulling out while there aren't enough isk left, leading to people not being paid.
Assuming that you had, say, 100 customers and 1 was ganked while 99 of 'em was pulling out would leave you at a disadvantage (ISK-wise). And while you may have made enough ISK to cover that loss, it is not always the case.

I also want to say that, while I appreciate that you took the time to make a spreadsheet to show me, you did not have to do so. I am perfectly capable of doing math.

Have you done any research as to how many hulks are ganked per day? And how many hulks are being piloted? Anything like that? (Just some rough estimates would be fine)
Assuming you had 10% of those as customers, and there was a 30/70 split between ganked/not-ganked, you'd still lose isk after a few days/weeks.

I understand that your service is based on a low gank rate. What about the "stupid rate" (getting blown up by belt rats)? You know what they say about estimating stupidity.
This is also why I am asking for the calculations and research that you have done (I half-assume). No need to post more spreadsheets, just give me some of the rough numbers you've found, and possibly some sources. Alternatively, port 'em all to gDocs so I can look at it "in real time".
As stated earlier, previous insurance services folded (for one reason or another). Why won't yours do the same?

The service previously linked in this thread (By Rhivre) seems to have a lot more thought and research put into it; it still folded.
That said, I'm not trying to insinuate that you have not done a lot of research beforehand, but I have yet to see it from your posts.

Oh, also, quoting your post in another thread:

150-300% on 125-150 trades per day sounds like a lot. Of course, without knowing your items etc. etc., I should not jump to conclusions, but that still sounds ilke more than 75 million (assuming you're utilizing most-to-all of your 500 million).
(I do not wish to know your trade secrets, I have a perfectly fine income as it is)


Alas, you have still not answered my question: How can I be sure you won't run off with my isk?

The first thing I have done is provide my API ID and key for public viewing. That way clients and prospective clients will be able to audit, that I have in fact:

• received the premiums I've claimed were paid
• that I make the appropriate payout in the event of loss
• that the insurance pool is what I have said it is

The transactions, times, and dates should also give people a pretty exact idea of precisely what I'm doing and how my time playing EVE is occupied - executing buy and sell orders and profitably trading. I've also opened my contracts log so people can be sure I've never engaged in and do not engage in contract scams.

At this time, policies will be exclusively sold for Hulks. If that's successful, I may expand to cover Skiffs and Mackinaws. The next logical step would be to cover modules, rigs, and implants in the event of pod loss, but that's a pretty huge step. There are a lot of variables, and would be an enormous expansion in the variety and number of items, and their range and fluctuations in value, that may prove extremely difficult to competently do good business in providing insurance service.

I have no plans at the present, and do not forsee expanding coverage to PvP and PvE pilots. I'm just one person, and I think it's best to start small, have a strict focus, and not make things extremely complicated by orders of magnitude and time-consuming. I think that would be just too much for one man to do.

With regards to scams, they're obviously extremely widespread, and due caution is warranted and skepticism is understood.

That being said, if I were to do scams, I think it'd be far easier to do margin scams and the 50000x Noxicum liquidation scams I see spammed in trade hub local. I've actually had a 500 million private bounty offered and a fail-gank against me for calling scams scams in local and harrying the scammer (which I think their pisss-offedness has since mostly subsided).

I can't promise the sun, moon, and stars... but I can offer a forthright and fair service, and see where it goes.

I'm not sure how any previous honestly-run EVE insurance services failed, but again, I will keep 80% of the premiums in reserve. Around half of the invested 20% should be in buy orders at any given moment, so 90% of the premiums will be held as liquid assets.

Additionally, I fully intend to maintain an absolute minimum of 50% in personal assets and ISK, completely separate from the insurance pool. If necessary, I will cease taking on new clients if it means that my personal assets and ISK would be equivalent to less 50% of the insurance pool, only taken on new clients as my personal assets are adequate to meet that 50% minimum threshold.


Actually, it seems to me like he was trying to do too much (insuring anybody in any ship against any type of loss - the number of variables and risks are enormous). So complex in fact it looks like they either wrote or planned to write software to be able to do it.


From what I've observed, Dodixie has much wider margins between high buys and low sells than Jita, for example. I never place a buy order if the lowest sell order isn't 150% greater. There's no shortage of goods with decent volume that meant that threshold.

I have approximately 40-50% of my ISK tied up sell/buy orders. I like to maintain a measure of liquidity to mitigate risk. The end result of me investing 100% of my ISK versus 50% of my ISK, all else being equal (same level of return) is merely a time delay in the accumulation of (isk) wealth.

All else being equal (same level of return), purely for the sake of argument, instead of reaching 1 billion in wealth 5 days from now, I'll reach it in 7. Instead of reaching 5 billion in 40 days, I'll reach it in 42.


You're asking me to resolve something that would be your own internal dilemma.

You can read what I say, you can watch what I do. But given you're asking a question about yourself, and not me, only you can answer it.