I would like to thank everyone for their support and understanding. It really means a lot. Having other people's money taken under my watch has made me feel just about as awful as I've ever felt in my life.
I think I should have a poll to determine how to pay the funds back. Here are the options I'm thinking:
1. Pay back over time with exchange fees.
2. Same as #1, but raise fees to expedite.
3. Sell shares of Poloniex to cover the debt; dividends paid regularly.
4. Award such shares to everyone immediately and consider that repayment.
Let me know if I'm forgetting an option here.
About recent deposits--it really wouldn't be fair to deduct deposits made after the BTC was taken. Obviously I should have posted a notice on the Balances page, but it is not difficult to make an exception for recent deposits.
I will be hiring a security programmer after this is dealt with.
I'd raise the fee to 0.3% or even 0.5% and additionally sell shares. You can then cover the dividends with the extra fee and with the shares you can pay back the 12%.
Yes, this is a good proposal. To refine a bit further:
1. 30 day period of selling shares, say at $4M pre-money valuation, which is a fair valuation for a tech start-up with early traction but high-risk security flaws
- eg. if you sell $1M worth of shares, you would be selling 20% of your Company at $4M pre- and $5M post-money.
- to make this attractive to investors, you may also consider offering a 50% annual preferred return for two years to compensate for the high-risk nature of the operation (which would create a defined path for re-coup of initial capital investment)
2. If you fail to reach the full amount by selling shares, then also raise fees to 0.5% until the full-amount of the debt has been re-paid
3. Under this set-up, the "payment cascade" for incoming fees over the next 2 years would be as follows:
- first, to pay account holders to make them whole (if not fully covered by proceeds from sale of shares)
- second, to pay the 50% preferred return to equity holders
- third, to distribute to equity holders pro rata with their equity share in the business
If you went into Dragon Den with that proposal, the Dragons will be laughing their heads off and tell you to bugger off.
As Theo would say, "why should i give you any of my children's inheritance"?