Topic: [ActiveMining] The Official Active Mining Discussion Thread [Self-Moderated] - page 505. (Read 771302 times)

One of whom (me) has told you repeatedly that you're wrong for multiple reasons so let's not be misleading about it.

As pointed out in PM, the frustrated AB quit en masse and listed issues/recommendations in public for all shareholders to read. Do you think they will a) buy, b) hold or c) sell? Now that's regardless of what anyone has actually done, but common sense says (c) - both due to frustration and because they don't agree with the company direction.

Can I go now?!

PS It's not a Ponzi, it just has sales/marketing issues!
PPS Check all the mining stocks! Bad day at the races.

It's not a ponzi - there is no way eASIC would issue a press release and not follow through, especially on their brand spanker flagship 28nm product.

so... as far as I can tell... the PONZI or whatever this fuck this is, is done.

To say I don't have evidence is absurd - I spoke to two AB members directly - to say sharing this information is childish is... I'm not sure... a bit of a backwards comment really. I'm asking for clarification essentially on behalf of all shareholders.

Sure you might be right regarding their motives, but I'm not going to trust your gut feelings with my investments.

Well this is great fucking news to wake up to.

There is nothing inherently bad about insider trading. In fact, some economists say that insider trading should be permitted.
The evidence does not reek or suggest any insider trading.
If people with special knowledge of an imminent announcement of a new deal, or that chips were produced and ready for sale, or that delivery of finished machines was going to be announced, and they started buy stock before the announcement to take advantage of a low pre-news announcement price, that would be insider trading.

What we see with ActM is simply people who were on the board, who are angry and/or at Ken (rightfully so, given that Ken doesn't always listen to advice) who decided, most due to emotion, to liquidate their shares.  I have also spoken with some of these "insiders" and they have said that they still believe in Ken's long term vision, but are frustrated in the short term.

To make the accusation that insider trading is going on, without evidence, without even invented evidence is sort of icebreakerish/crumbish behavior. Attacks without backing are childish.

The term "insider trading" is usually associated with doing something wrong, with lying and cheating, so making that accusation is inciteful and not insightful.

My feeling is that the advisory board got frustrated, and they took their bats and balls and went home and then got angry and disgusted and then got rid of their team jerseys.

Also, the bitcoin community is always looking for the next big thing which will make them all rich beyond belief, and now NeoBee is it. People are selling other stocks to have funds to get into the NeoBee IPO.

Ken has publicly shared the Active Mining timeline, and although, I too am impatient, and would like more regular public statements from Ken, it is impatience and lack of communication which has caused the lack of short term confidence in ActM.

Look at the holdings of the major shareholders of ActM on BF. None of them have liquidated.

I should clarify this - from what has been communicated to me, ie. "that a AB member believes the AB have universally liquidated..." although it makes bugger all of a difference to the point and the surrounding questions.

As someone with a more successful business than Ken, and as someone who is actually a marketing expert, I have to say I agree with VE. The hardware sales were far worse than I expected. I also happen to own a legal services business and in that respect I agree with Ken, they would only send him a takedown. The product needs some kind of visual representation, but there are better ways if shareholders object.

At the end of the day, Ken's job is to act in the best interests of shareholders.

ActM could do $1mil+ in preorders in less than a month - I could make it happen if Ken is interested. However it sounds like the advisory board were making good efforts in that direction which Ken ignored.

Ken - you can't be good at everything and you need to face the fact you're not a businessman. Thats been made abundantly clear. This isn't a criticism, its something us entrepreneurs need to be aware of. For example I know of myself that I can't self motivate and I'm a little too risk averse - so I have people help me in those areas. To be frank, the sales/marketing side needs to be delegated to someone with that skillset.

Regardless - I still don't understand the boards universal liquidation, it smells extremely fishy.

Sorry - was going to answer this privately but it needs doing here. And you need to stop misquoting what someone mistakenly thought as fact. I don't know what all the others are doing and it's their private business now.

Besides, see our public resignation letter. We didn't hide our unhappiness over certain things and we felt that the only fair way to do it was to be open to stop precisely this sort of nonsense and to maybe nudge things in the right direction in a different way. It was the only viable approach at that point.

Shareholder conference stuff never happened - we couldn't get that far.

It never happened. I never got a message or a call in regards to this happening.

That ones for you, icebreaker.

In a recent attempt to promote Kens product, I have become more disappointed in him than ever.  In a recent PM conversation, he told me that I "need to get a little experience in life" after I told him how risky, immoral, and sleazy it is to copy images from another hardware manufacturer for your own product promotion.  I reminded him that a large portion of his potential customers come right from bitcointalk.org, where they are constantly reminded of his shameless ripoff images from ASUS.  

He then proceeded to tell me, "Out of 26,000 visitors per month on my site, how many of them do you think are EXTREMELY BOTHERED by the pictures?".  It doesn't matter, Ken.  A proper business does not do this.  Here's a copy of the PM:

"No, they would just send you a C & D, then I would take it down.  Anyway, they would have to have the copyright on the image registered with the copyright office before they could do anything anyway. I doubt that they have all their images registered with the copyright office.[/quote]"

So I said..

and I added...


his reponse...

"You need to get a little experience in life, we are not going to have a legal battle with ASUS.  All ASUS would do is send us a take down notice and we would take it down.  End of story.  "
[/quote]



I guess Ken has proven here that I am wrong.  I have zero marketing capability because I believe in originality and not poor photoshopping skills that nobody even falls for.  I apologize for my lack of life experience, Ken.

Most of the selling this morning has been me.  I have been so blown away by his poor behavior in PMs last night that I think this stock is going to be properly priced at .001.  This would require  $1.2 million in PROFIT (not sales) to pay off the share price.  

It is simply too hard for me to imagine that this man is capable of making this with his ignorant and childish marketing methods.  Rising difficulty levels are a small barrier compared to his lack of ability.  

The only reason he has some sales (not nearly enough we need) is because we funded him $1million for a great chip from eASIC.  That is ALL he has going for him, and everything else he does is shit.

But it does... advisory board all resign and sell-up... what do they know the rest of the shareholders don't know? You've got to see this is the logical conclusion from such events.

What happened to the '100k+ Shareholder Only' conference call or whatever meeting thing?  Did that ever happen?

Before this gets out of hand, it was only a Advisory Board.
What bothers me is that we have no real Board, elected by shareholders to look over CEO, who looks after Managers and so on.

No I don't. In fact I chose not to trade - beyond div reinvestment - to avoid that very issue. As I said, we weren't under NDA and the marketing is all public (inherently). The website and PR issues have been discussed to death. Communication is the primary thing we were there for and clearly we didn't manage to do things as we wanted to.

Lewicki was very upset with Ken over the website and has not hidden this. It's a personal issue between he and Ken and nothing to do with anything else. In fact not even the old advisory people know everyone else's positions now, as the person Vince spoke to -privately- has just been reminded... because this is what happens when people say what they think rather than what they know.

The focus now should be on helping Ken with marketing. He has great chips but I don't believe the hardware sells itself, not these days. If the marketing is sorted quickly and the right sales are done, I would feel differently.

However, I'm going to leave this thread now and let Ken manage it how he needs to and not with distractions.

heh, by the sounds of it you're a bigger shareholder than all the board members combined.

This needs to be addressed.

Right now, Ken needs to put as much focus as he can spare into addressing these issues.  Knowing that board members with insider knowledge of the inner workings of VMC are now not confident enough to not only stay on as advisers (for feeling that their efforts are a lost cause), but have also reached the point of liquidating their holdings, does not bode well to lowly shareholders such as myself.  

Have we made any updates on hiring PR?

Are there any plans to start a marketing push to hopefully bring those sales numbers up?

I have to agree with ffsixtynine's sentiments on both of these issues.  There is not nearly enough focus on either of these, and I think that it is the one thing that is keeping potential clientele at bay.  Marketing is one of the most important components of any fledgling company, and it is apparent that the current marketing strategy (assuming there is one) is not working.

You've got to admit it reeks of insider trading...

We had no NDA with Ken and so no privileged information could change hands. Ken likes to keep things close to his chest anyway and some things he has to legally.

One thing we did know before you is that an eASIC press release was in the works but that was only told to us verbally by Ken when we kept pressing the point so we still didn't -know- for sure until eASIC posted a release up on their site.

In my case, I've quit this week over what I see as sales & marketing issues which I have not hidden from Ken, you, or anyone else. Ken and I disagree on those but it's all public info (website, direct marketing to miners, lack of PR coverage, sales).

Edit: As for advice, he took some and left some. I've been open about that too. It's his company, it's up to him what he chooses to do, not you or I. That's not to say he wouldn't benefit from additional board members IMHO (not advisory - people still forget that we were essentially just members of the public who had the opportunity to give him feedback).