Market Discussions

First; let's not turn this into a bash Darth thread. I'm trying to set something straight, that's all.

@Darth

You seem convinced that all new ideas are bad ideas is the point. There's been a tremendous diversity of new suggestions and ideas here and you've uniformly shut them all down.

You like to say that I haven't learned anything; yet the Insurance experiment was 100% profitable and no one lost money. It was backed by cash just in case it did lose money (as a business). It started just fine and gracefully shut down. I was not afraid to try, I was not afraid to fail, and I ensured the customers who took a risk were protected.

You like to say I haven't learned anything - yet you haven't read or addressed all the work I've described and stated I'm doing around semi-automated FIFO accounting and auto-generating financial statements. You also haven't drawn any connection between my post-mortem analysis of EBANK that I've stated a few times and how reporting was an Achilles heel. To be fair, perhaps not everyone has, so let me spell it out...

Until I get semi-automated consolidated financial accounting across multiple characters with auto-generated financial reporting....I will not be starting another Bank. I was able to do Insurance because the business model involved transactions that were almost all out-of-game, so the ledger entries were easy. All my future projects have to have this level of accounting - this is why it takes me longer to launch things these days. I've written pages and created in great detail the methodology for this and the challenges (such as the "magic bucket" that requires asset reconciliation against known transactions). I have expended a great deal of energy learning and acting on the things I've learned.

Part of EBANK's great challenge in liquidation was it's reporting - to this day I can tell you how much Ricdic RMTed, but I cannot tell you exactly how much was lost in total when his account was banned. The hardest lesson I learned was that detailed and timely reporting is absolutely critical. A report that takes weeks to compiled manually is no good. Loans were easy...it was when we diversified into research, production, market manipulation, and trading is when we got into trouble from a reporting perspective.

Semi-Collateralized loans were actually quite profitable, even with the standard rate of default. It's when we risked larger amounts of uncollateralized debt in a single large customer (a large alliance) is when we got into trouble.

These are the things I've learned. I'm sure you can tell me which lessons I've missed?

Seriously. There seems to be a fair amount of disagreement, and that is to be entirely expected on such a heated topic as banking in EVE. But let us try to move things back on the topic itself rather than letting things devolve into a personal argument.

I'm gonna call bullshit on that. If you actually cared about results you would engage with people in the way most likely to influence their actions. Instead you opt to engage with them in such a way as to suggest that you are rather concerned about .... the projection of a certain spaceship forum personality/reputation. None of the valid points you make gain additional traction through the manner you choose to make them in. Quite the contrary in fact.

Now, let's get back to bashing Hexxx. That's the important thing.

Some additional random points.

I brought an example of possible opt-in trustability (or better, a model for enforced penalty) which seems to be the only concrete thing in this thread.

Now, don't hate me but my suggestion was in theme with a purple unicorns thread because it's basically the only thread worth reading in MD since weeks, even just for relaxing purpose.

Otherwise, I suggest to look at why CCP won't implement anything:

1) As I said before strives to slow down money velocity and segregate it. It's their only way to keep giving in game faucets well larger than sinks (it's a game after all) while not exploding the economy.

2) CCP modelled an economy, not a finance model. They introduced as little finance mechanisms (i.e. margin trading) as possible. Even shares were just sketched and not really functional beyond mechanical dividends payment.

This has to do with:

- the game being space ships themed and not Wall Street themed.

- the *vision* of the first developers has been totally lost. Those ancient guys could slam together inextricable code that somehow worked, somehow created the best PvP game ever, somehow put in all the foundations that even today are still at the basis of the game. Those who came later, may be the best "draw the lines between the numbered dots" ever, can be the best maintenance, code style guys in the universe, yet they can't create one fundamental new thing that completely changes EvE like the first ones. They lack of the mad scientist "insanity and genius" required to make something totally NEW. Therefore forget finance and whatever in EvE till they find new Creative people, with the capital C.

- risk of finance aware people to completely take control of the game. It seems impossible but it's not.
Even with one bank that was smaller than formally implemented banks would be, Ricdic could make the PLEX market, could push an alliance instead of another and so on. Put in some RL implemented fund / institution that can gather 10-20T (possible just by swing trading + fixed ratio money management) and you'll see the effects.



Last but not least: Hexxx (the following might be hard to read, my English is bad at drawing lines between concepts).

He is a charisma person, the "chairman incarnate". He could attract the big MD (and not just MD) players of the time and create an artificial meta-world. This is why EBANK could exist, it was a gigantic hype / hope bubble formed by people who believed in it.

This self convincing-quasi groupthink behavior has seen many studies and I see it happening everyday in RL finance.
It's also known as self fulfilling prophecy or Thomas theorem:

"If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences"

Hexxx is a good cathalyzer for these meta-worlds, he convinced people to actually perform the gruelling task of semi-manual tellering because the grand idea looked so... superior, magnificent, unheard of. I don't blame him, HE is paying for a MMORPG game and purple unicorns are legit in there.

What happened then? Those who studied Popper know about reflexivity (RAW23, this is for you!). EBANK was an huge example of that. The general playerbase would see all those shiny important players involved in that incredible and self believed safe "too big to fail" venture (yes any RL connection is not a coincidence).

That created an huge trust bubble, with the same mechanics that slap "the rational markets" theories in face and make RL trading possible (see George Soros, Popper's student and big reflexivity principle proponent, once again it's not a random coincidence!).

Looking back, what was Bad Bobby if not another trust bubble? The original intent was different, the resulting bubble was similar.

When Hexxx tried the insurance, once again he created another bubble, this time convincing only the former most loyal friends.
But times were changed, the enthusiasm could not catalyze the general playerbase again. Plus it's harder to interest someone into a second insurance (when most don't care for the NPC insurance at all, except suicide gankers => adverse selection => BAD for insurance) than into a bank, a novel concept into a far younger and trustful EvE age.

You are truly a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a sesame seed bun and your posting style is certainly not that of someone who gets a big kick from trying to make other people feel bad. It's all about the practical RESULTS dammit!

Hey, whatever you need to do to keep your world in order.

My RL trading mentor said me: "are you enthusiastic about trading?"

"don't you feel all of this is just ... amazing?"

"don't you love the very market mechanics, how this gigantic social structure works?"


If so, then you are just at the beginning.


Because you'll be a grown trader only once you wake up in the morning with the idea you'll go make money. Boring, repetitive, tangible money but with the head on the shoulders and not in the clouds.

The above sentence depicts the two thoughts expressed in the thread.

I don't think this paragraph was entirely just. Incarna was the beginning of just this sort of creativity, although not as far as we know geared toward the marketplace. Now, I won't stand here and argue Incarna wasn't a disaster or that I have any interest in walking in stations, dust514, or vampires. What I will say; however, is that the player base is now hyper-sensetive to just this sort of development.

The player base, by-in-large, WANT those devs working the kinks out of existing code and making existing gameplay worthwhile. Any hint that CCP is off on yet-another "this is going to be awesome," trip and they loose their ****. Rightly so, seeing as the last two times it happened we got PI and new clothes on our avatars while the rest of the game stagnated hard.

TL;DR: Bemoaning the fact CCP isn't trying to innovate rather than fix the game is an extreme minority opinion.

rofl

"soon"

Edit: I will absolutely send you a free copy. I'd honestly love to get your feedback and I think you'd really enjoy it.