Market Discussions

In this case, I will apologize to VV personally.

My view, however, that audits provide very very little value and may actually increase the risk of an investment, still stands. Even VV does not seem to disagree that no real assurance can be obtained.

My goal is to educate the MD community that an audit does not guarantee a safe investment.

If I wanted to scam people, I would create a blank alt with no skills, no assets, no connections, make a thread, and talk my way out of getting an audit done.

An audit doesn't tell you whether the business will be or will not be successful (on a scale of success - bankrupt - scam). It's not even supposed to tell you that. An audit will only tell you whether a business even has a chance to be successful.

The idea that somehow the audits are weeding out scammers is ridiculous. The majority of offerings are never audited. Those that are will surely pass unless the scammer is an idiot. Given the large number of offerings in which the person freely admits or notes that there has been no audit (randomly selected), I can't see how it's any kind of deterrent. Nor does having an audit create a more lucrative or attractive offering than ones that don't. Other than going through the motions in some sort of role playing mode, they don't appear to serve any real purpose.

Of course, Mr.OP, if you're going to launch a scam offering, you want to do your media manipulation well in advance of the deed. This game is filled with too many smart people.

You're either a dumb scammer or a bad businessman. Poking people with sticks while trying to break into the market is not the best idea.

Let's put it this way: I have 1b ISK spare to invest. My own business is stretched to the limits so much that adding that 1b won't make a difference in profits. All of my friends I trust are in a similar situation. That 1b can either sit in my wallet and do jack schitt, or I can invest it publicly. Who would you rather choose - somebody who has a verified solid history of running a successful business for a year, whether or not his intentions are honest, or somebody who for all I know might be an NPC alt created solely for the purpose of scamming?

Blah, finally got me to bite on passing "real life business knowledge."



First of all an audit is a general term meaning checking or verifying. The specific financial audits done by accountants are a whole another creature than VV's operation.
What VV is doing is comparing and verifing the known history to try and verify the bond issuers claims are even reasonably possible. He is verifying a history of behavior, or auditing that behaviour.


No finacial audit would ever be possible on a Eve character since there is no legal possesion of anything,any assets can be tranfered without legal recourse of the lender. A third party holding colleteral may be helpful, but again they are aonly as good as their word.



VV is also provinding proof for his work in his long reports, accounting firms do not do that (and believe me the amount of paper and schedules is insane, even on small operations), This is because no company would want to give up its detailed accounting records to their compettiors. BUT if they did some smart financial analyst would have discovered the off balance sheet shannigans at Enron 6-10 earlier and Enron and it would have imploded much earlier.


Enron stands as one of the greatest black eyes of the accounting professions of all time,along with Worldcom and the one man shop who signed off on Madoff's audit.


Do audits really prove that it is a good investment (in Rl or EVE), nope, but they do help support the borrower has not started cheating yet. And sometimes just that fact someone is watching causes better behaviour.



I beleive that Bad Bobby openly refused to be audited, so if you only bought audited bonds at least you would not have been in his scam victims pool.

I probably shouldn't be posting this while suffering from hydroxol-caused checmical imbalance and insomnia all at once, but running an audited bond myself I figured it'd be relevant. And I wanted to.

I got an audit for many many reasons. Gaining trust probably being one of the smallest ones. The bond is even overcollaterized, and in hindsight I would most likely have gotten by just fine without either audit or collateral. Admitably I'd to some degree even have been interested in getting audited without launching a bond as it DOES give you a few valuable insights(Well, did for me).

Yes, the auditors offers consultancy and opinions, which alone is worth the rediculous low cost they're charging. These opinions are for you as an investee to consider, if you disagree - ignore them, they're also for the investors to ponder as it gives a second opinion of someone supposedly objective. I have never before ran a bond, his opinions means I have someone to bounce ideas with. Mechanics changed during the setup of my bond, which forced me to make drastic changes. This role could probably be filled with a lot of people, having someone experienced with past and current similiar bonds aswell as the details of your own operations makes things alot easier.

As for sharing the APIs in public to verify claims, yes, it's free, it also shares those oh so important cashcows. I chose to share my keys with VV as I trust him not to exploit anything he finds in them, and not to share it to third parties.

Furthermore a huge portion of the audit is not based on the API in the first place. It's based on whatever the auditor can get hold of regarding the client. Just how deep that goes varies from auditor to auditor, and most likely from service to service. "Simple" checks such as going over the forum history and checking any dubious posts, from the client or any supposed trusted friends or alts(which the API would help to confirm) being but one part of it. This is information mostly already available to the potential investors, but most won't spend the time to go over it. The audit means they don't have to assuming they trust the auditor.

The one piece of security I imagine an auditor actually could provide is busting ponzis through repeated checks. If each month you get a detailed report that this month the "NAV increased by X and Y primarily due to Z type operations" a ponzi is virtually impossible to orchestrate. It obviously prevents no one from taking what he has and run, it just ups the ante in terms of effort invested to pull the same size of scam off. Looking back a huge portion of the big scams could not have been done with

Long drunken story short, it seems to me your big beef is the terminology, not the service. Call it whatever you want, the service is sound, regardless of wether certain clients and investors seem to expect things not provided

I wish to sincerely thank all the dear Investees who found my services a positive contribution to their business!