Topic: [BTCT.CO] BTC-GOLD: 100 shares = 1 gram gold bullion - Closing (Read 12890 times)

Liquidation will be as follows:




The actual numbers are:

($1301 / 31.1034768) / $124.25 / 100 = 0.00336645 per share

Thank you. BTC-GOLD is closed.

BTC-GOLD shutdown official plan for shutdown.

Trading will remain open until btct.co stops market trading.

If you have 500 shares, you may request delivery of your gold by sending a PM or an email. The 15 share handling fee will be waived, but you will still be responsible for all shipping fees (including insurance), and any taxes/customs/import fees imposed by your country. Waiving the handling fee is a special offer not in the asset contract. You do not have to request delivery.

All remaining shares will be paid out at the spot gold price some time on 10 October USA time. The formula to calculate the price per share is:

(Gold troy ounce USD Spot price / 31.1034768 ) / (USD price of BTC) / 100 = price per share


Explanation of formula:

Spot price / 31.1034768: There are 31.1034768 grams in 1 troy ounce. This give us the Spot price per gram.
USD price of BTC: Will be taken from BTC-E
100: Is the number of shares that equal 1 gram


If you have any questions, please post.

BTC-GOLD shutting down.

Due to the exchange closing, BTC-GOLD will also close down operations.
If you have 500 or more shares, you may request delivery of your gold by sending a PM or an email. The 15 share handling fee will be waived, but you will still be responsible for all shipping fees (including insurance), and any taxes/customs/import fees imposed by your country. Waiving the handling fee is a special offer not in the asset contract.
If you have 499 shares or less, or don't want to take delivery of gold, then your shares will be liquidated at spot prices. This follows the asset contract.


Please make sure to set a Public Withdraw address in your exchange account. This is vitally important. DexX7 (who manages Ciphermine-PT) has a great "how-to" post here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3233637


FAQs


Will I still be able to trade?
Yes, you will still be able to trade. If you want to sell your shares now, your are free to do so. You have until Oct 7 (when the exchange will stop market trading).


If I just wait to for my shares to be paid, how much will I get?
I don't know. The gold spot prices go up or down just like any other asset. It depends on when they are sold.


When will the "left over" shares be sold? When will I get paid?
I plan to have everything sold by the end of October. Until then, the asset will remain trading for as long as possible until the exchange halts trading.

---

Thank you for putting your trust in me. I had fun managing this asset.


-Carnth


P.S. If you have any questions, please ask!

A second bar has been added to the bullion inventory.

A Valcambi 5 gram in assay card.

Photo showing both bars:






You can always view the Bullion Inventory on Google Docs:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqLxDN0JzEUNdE9vNG1zZWlrUTIwbFhrZzVtSUowc3c

Please note the date of that announcement.

"TRADING HAS BEEN HALTED ON BTC-GOLD BY THE ISSUER." is a result of me finalizing the asset contract back in December 2012. This was done before the first share was sold.
The asset has been operating continuously since.


If you want to see another example, take a look at my MiningCo.ETF asset. Again, I changed the asset contract several times while finalizing it--all before the first share was sold. And again, it has been operation continuously since.



But how come other assets don't have "Trading has been halted....?"

btct.co has undergone some changes since these early assets were released. Now, the exchange doesn't post a "Trading Halted" event when you change the asset contract before the first share is sold. (See my newer NASTY-PT asset.)

"TRADING HAS BEEN HALTED ON BTC-GOLD BY THE ISSUER."

Could you share the reasons for this, please?

I release shares in small batches. After those are sold, the market sets the price. Some people are content with holding shares and set lofty prices.
More will be released until a bar is completely sold. Is there is demand, another bar will be added to the inventory and sold. 

The Bullion Inventory now has relevant links to the forum topic where photos of the bars can be viewed.

The price of USD vs BTC has been on a steady increase. This has caused the price per share to drop.

Small walls will be on the exchange until the current bar of bullion is sold.
If you are interested in purchasing 100 or more shares, please contact me. You can send a PM or usually find me on the BTC-E chat box. I will quote you the most up-to-the-minute pricing.

The increasing price of BTC vs USD is making shares more affordable.

Remember, if you are looking to purchase 100 shares or more, please send a PM or find me on the BTC-E chatbox. I will get you the most up-to-date pricing and will direct transfer shares to avoid fees.

Thanks. We also had our first bullion withdraw on the LTC-GOLD asset.

+1 to an issue who communicates and shows the shareholders and the public that things are real.

I may be buying some myself. I think the market is only going to go up.
Definitely a better way to buy gold than my previous adventure a decade ago with an online gold trading site that has storage fees.
I put $100 when gold was still under $400... I looked the other day, with monthly fees, the account still exists..
I have $2 worth in gold left. So glad I put that money in, and the value went up.

Bar added to BTC-GOLD inventory:




Sunshine Mint 5 gram

Shares will be released is small batches.

I have decided to stick with grams.

This would allow for shareholders to transfer shares from LTC-GOLD <-> BTC-GOLD.  This would only work if there are unsold shares of the requested fund. For example, if there are 200 shares left unsold from a bar of gold bullion, up to 200 share are available to be transferred.
The number of unsold share are available at the publicly available Bullion Inventories spreadsheets of each fund (LTC-GOLD  BTC-GOLD).

Since both LTC-GOLD and BTC-GOLD equal 0.01 grams of gold bullion per share, I thought it would be a bonus feature to allow share holders to transfer shares from one to the other. All other contract rules will still apply. There is still a 500 share withdraw minimum in each fund. But by being able to move shares from one fund to another, it will be easier to achieve this goal with out the penalty of buying in both funds.

Note: Bullion inventories will never intermingle.  This will not affect the total number of shares in either fund as only unsold shares are eligible to be transfered. This will also not affect anyone who only wishes to invest in one fund only.

The BTC-GOLD contract has been updated to reflect this change:

Share transfer between LTC-GOLD and BTC-GOLD (on the BTC Trading Corp. exchange) can be requested.
Requests must be made in multiples of 100 shares.
Requests can only be completed if there are enough unsold shares available on the requested fund.
There is a fee of 5 shares per transfer.
Please contact the asset issuer to make your request.

One option is to price shares in SPOT only.  If someone wants to take delivery then they can pay a coinage fee (you are already going to charge shipping and possibly insurance on large deliveries anyways right)?  Then your gold reserve can be a mix of various coins (1/4 oz, 1/2 oz, 1 oz) and bars (5 oz, 10 oz).  There is one limitation to this though.  Your cost (until delivery occurs) will be higher than the net value of shares.  ETN generally handle this by either a) getting a cut of tx fees and/or b) doing a reverse split to cover fund operating costs (i.e. 100 shares is reverse split to 98 = 2% fund operating cost).  My understanding is that no exchange currently offers the ability to do reverse splits or entitles funds to a % of transaction fees.  You could roll all your fees/cost/profit into the delivery portion but it may mean you are equity "rich" and cash poor if you issue a lot of shares and nobody takes delivery.

Still having the fund be in spot only is the cleanest way to handle things, I would try to think of a way doing that.  Otherwise it is going to get "ugly" if/when you start mixing coins coin sizes (or buying coins in bulk which have a lower premium relative to spot).

If the legal aspect wasn't so risky I was considering opening a bitcoin denominated gold ETF using the method above.  Of course now I have way more than enough projects to occupy my time.

I would still like more input on the issue of grams versus troy ounces.

And to make it easier, I will put it up to a sudo vote.

Here are the two options:

Grams
Currently, the default would be to release the shares in grams where 100 shares = 1 gram.
At current BTC/USD prices, each share would be about 0.035 - 0.060 BTC (price subject to change based on a number of factors).
The minimum number of shares to withdraw physical bullion would be 500 shares = 5 grams (plus fees, shipping, etc.)

Troy Ounces
If we go with troy ounces, 1000 shares = 1 troy ounce.
At current BTC/USD prices, each share would be about 0.13 - 0.16 BTC (price subject to change based on a number of factors).
The minimum number of shares to withdraw physical bullion would be 250 shares  = .25 ounces (plus fees, shipping, etc.)



As you can see, going with troy ounces would make the share price much higher. Bullion overhead at 1/4 ounce is still pretty high (and already include in the share prices). The bullion overhead drops significantly at 1 ounce bars/rounds AND at 10 gram bars; but this might exclude some (casual) investors from ever being able to take physical delivery. Should the withdraw quota be 1 troy ounce OR 10 grams?

Again, I still have time to revise the asset contract. These changes can be implemented. But I need to know if there will be enough interest to justify making any of the proposed changes. I want to provide an asset that makes affording gold bullion accessible to everyone.

Please make you opinion matter. Increase you post count and let me know what you think.

Remember, shares will always be in the unit of measure. Meaning each share will be 1/100 gram with gram bullion or 1/1000 ounce with ounce bullion. I won't mix ounce bullion with gram shares.



The price per share will always reflect the USD/BTC price per unit of bullion. I expect share prices to be bitcents.

Grams or fractions of grams are still most likely your best bet, you can keep holdings and shares in increments of 10, and don't have to worry about ounce/troy ounce conversions or those pesky extra weight increments like 31.1 grams/troy oz. Even 1 gram shares would be high, at around $70 per share (cost of a recognized 1 gram bar approximately) so I would recommend keeping it at 1/10th ($5-7 per share) or 1/100th gram ($.50-$.70 per share) (Even more parenthesis (Price variation having to do with additional cost over spot depending on increment size))

I know you have had success in the LTC market here, but now keep in mind, you may be able to do larger share sizes, as Bitcoin holds a higher value. where you may be paying 10 LTC for a 1/100th gram share, you would be paying .05 BTC per share.  

The nice thing is, I have a 5 gram bar to ready to go, but I can also have troy ounce bullion (or fractional ounce) delivered as well.
I have time to change the contract to ounces or keep using grams all the way up until the first share is sold. I don't mind buying one way or the other.

And yes, each share will always be a fraction of the unit of measure.


0.01 grams OR perhaps 0.001 troy ounces.
Having each share = to 1/1000 of an ounce still achieves my goal of affordable shares.


Any other opinions out there? Is troy ounces a good idea? Do you not care at all? Feedback is welcome.

Thing is everyone that's serious about buying AU is going to run the numbers and the numbers have to be compared to gold bullion which is of course sold in Ozt. Sucks, but there it is and there's no escape. Couldn't you do a fraction of an Ozt just as easily to keep the cost of a single unit down?