Market Discussions

A) No-one is hostile to you because you are a bank. The reason for this is that what you are doing is not running a bank and doesn't carry any of the dangers of banks in EvE. The reason you are attracting hostility is because you don't have a business plan that makes any sense - you are giving away free isk. Now, if you were to just say 'I'm role-playing' I don't think anyone would have an issue with that (well, not that big an issue). But you keep insisting that you are running a real business when you are not and this leads people to question your sincerity or your ability (or both).

B) 'Choosing not to interact with people' is a typical tactic of those who intend to scam. A recent example can be found in the TearJar thread - legitimate questions were asked, ignored by the OP, people invested and they lost their isk. If they had demanded rational answers before investing they would not have lost their isk. Now, it's entirely possible that you are not setting out to scam but you are following a pattern of behaviour that is extremely close to many previous scammers and that provides no benefits to a legitimate borrower or to those who invest. As such, much of the hostility you receive is due to the fact that you are making your own offering look very like a scam. If you are sincerely interested in advancing the investment community then you should be looking at adhering to best practice and removing as many elements as possible that are identical to those which typically occur in scam offerings. If you are unwilling to do that and instead desire to encourage people to invest in your offering despite the fact that it has various unnecessarily dangerous elements then you can hardly credibly claim to want to advance the interests of the investment market as you are encouraging people to make investments even when a risk assessment identifies various issues.

Those numbers seem pretty artificial to me.

Glad to hear it.

The rate of return for April is certainly higher than anticipated, and owes much to the margin between buy and sell orders for certain of the T2 hulls available in Essence, as well as the sale of slow moving items purchased in February/March.

We're happy to flip hulls for as long as it's profitable, but as the market will likely shrink in that category we're prepared to look at other ship and item categories where margins have opened up.

This is the same philosophy we have taken with the game. It governs our banking activities and our play style in general.

We know from experience how much of an enjoyment killer it is to grind out ISK in order to satisfy customers and other commitments, and that's not something we're interested in repeating.

A true five year plan?

Color us curious (and impressed). By any chance do you review your plan on a yearly basis, and have you made any significant revisions since you've been underway?

You're not offering a bank account.

Since the return is variable and performance based - this resembles the dividends paid via ownership of sercuritized equity. You've complicated it however through capping this variable return to a maximum of 10%, taking on the characteristic of the return on a debt instrument. Banks are typical of the latter.

Except it's really neither. Hybrid instruments are dangerous because it's difficult for someone to evaluate the risk/benefit.

Two questions then:

1. Why are you NOT an investment fund?

2. Are you a fractional reserve bank?

Why would he bother? You have consistently refused to respond to any direct critical analysis of your offering.

Your passive aggressive 'liking' of my posts without replying to them keeps me coming back.

Edit - And don't worry, I'll stick around. It seems like you are trying to drown out the critical comments with a constant barrage of bumps with trivial information so I'll drop in now and again to let any newcomers to the thread know what the issues are.

There is this wonderful thing called evesearch that lets you look things up yourself.

Delving further into evesearch and into the long and troubled history of investing on MD may enlighten you further as to why your offering looks suspicious. The main point, other than your lack of engagement with issues that have been raised, is that you don't have a real business plan and what you are doing simply doesn't make any sense from a financial perspective. Not all offerings with these characteristics end up as scams but they provide very useful indicators for investors who want to arrive at a rational risk assessment since offerings with these characteristics turn out badly at a considerably higher rate than those without.

Answering the following question will help to establish whether your offering is in good faith or not:

- Are you aware that you obtain no financial benefit from your offer as it is currently set up?

This question is important for establishing your competence. If you simply don't understand that this is the case then your business acumen cannot be trusted and an investor would be foolish to expect that you would not make another similar error that might cost them their isk. Of course, it is Far more likely that you do recognise that you are simply giving away money without any financial benefit to yourself. But if this is the case then a second issue arises. Investors must ask themselves the following:

-Why are you giving away free isk?

A common historical feature of scams on MD is what is known as 'rep grinding'. 'Rep grinding' involves building up a reputation as someone who can be trusted in order to exploit the image of trustworthiness at a later point so that one can steal a greater sum. There is, of course, a risk that any offering is part of a rep grinding process but for most offerings a potential investor is confronted with the possibility that the offering is part of a viable business plan that benefits the borrower. When the possibility of legitimate financial gain is excluded it is natural for an investor to consider that rep grinding to lay the groundwork for a future scam is much more likely.

There is another possibility. If you a) recognise that your offering does not benefit you financially, and b) are not grinding reputation to cash in on a future scam, then you are role-playing and enjoying pretending you are running a financially beneficial business without actually running one. But if this is the case you should make it abundantly clear. Whilst pretending can be fun it can also be perceived as deceptive. If you are pretending that your offering is something that it is not, i.e. a real business that is financially beneficial to both you and the investors, then you are presenting things as being the case when they are not in fact so. And this naturally leads to doubt about your truthfulness.

I offer these comments in good faith and I hope you will take them in the spirit they are offered. If I have missed something and your business plan does provide you with a financial benefit then please set me straight by explaining how. If I have understood correctly and it does not then please explain what your goals actually are in raising public money. If you are roleplaying, then you have perhaps come to the wrong forum. There is, in fact, a dedicated forum for roleplaying and if this is your aim then your offering probably belongs there rather than here.