Until today I've had no time in the last few weeks to see if there was a reason for the falling SD stock price and have only now caught up with this thread over the last few days (
from here).
Erik,
I have much respect for you but disagree fundamentally with the way you appear to be seeing this situation with the 'loan', my thinking being more aligned with Pale Phoenix, ThickAsThieves and Peter Lambert.
My claim is that the betting pool belongs to the business and was sold as part of the assets of the business. Your starting point appears to be that it was a loan and that you may withdraw that loan at any time without consultation. And though you have moved from this in what you are currently proposing you appear still not to have shifted from the belief that it was and is a loan.
I strongly request you:
- accept given there was no documentation of this that the situation is not as clear cut as you have portrayed it;
- accept given you do not own the company 100% that you do not have legitimate authority to decide on this and act on this unilaterally;
- look to a means of resolving this with shareholders, whether debating here, arbitration or whatever;
- agree not to do anything with said pool until the issue is resolved.
I am not right now expecting you to accept my point of view unequivocally, only to accept that those not happy with where you are on this right now are not 'making a fuss' but have a case that needs at least to be taken seriously and not dismissed out of hand. If you take this money from SD you need to understand others see this not as 'repayment of a loan' but as taking the money from SD. I'm not saying you shouldn't have access to or use of this money but let's get the basis on which this money is being removed (e.g. as an equivalent of a 'director's loan' or as repayment of your 'loan' to the business) first. If it is established it is yours then you should not need to pay out of your own pocket to replenish it at all. However if it is the business's then if taken at all it needs at some point to be repaid in full. What I'm saying is we should establish what is what
before such a transaction should take place.
Given that there was no list of liabilities and assets there is no indisputable proof that the pool was an asset. Neither is there indisputable proof that it was there as a loan. We can all regret it was not made clear but what neither you nor any of us can legitimately do is to retrospectively and without agreement say 'this is what should have been written in the documentation and I shall therefore act accordingly'.
It is not that anyone is trying to take this money from you. But if I am not alone having made the assumption the betting pool belonged to the business then this will have formed part of people's assessment of the value of the stock at the time of purchase. What I'm saying is you already sold the same proportion of that sum as you did the rest of the assets and future profits to stockholders and that
this asset was already reflected in the popularity and price of the stock. From this perspective you sold the asset therefore can not subsequently claim it's yours to have back.
My case is simply that a betting pool is as essential to a gambling business as widgets are to a widget seller - in fact more so because you can simply stop selling widgets when you've run out of stock whereas a gambling business always needs the means to pay out on a run of consecutive big wins. It is therefore not unreasonable to have assumed the betting pool was an asset owned by the business and consequently sold as part of the business.
You might have been lucky from day 1 but it would have been ludicrous to have started the business depending on a run of losing bets in order to pay out on the wins. You provided a betting pool and increased it in accordance with probable requirements whilst the business was entirely yours and you were free to see that as part of the assets of the business or as a loan. Only if you decided to separate business money from your own and maybe use a separate bank account or set up a limited company would you have to decide one way or the other. What happened when you brought a partner on board? You are not obliged to tell us given it was a private agreement but it might help if we knew how ownership of the money making up the pool was determined at that juncture.
I absolutely should have disclosed that there was a betting pool...
You didn't need to. Not only did we know there was a betting pool from the discussions regarding its size and associated risk of losing the bank but it also goes without saying a gambling business has to have the means to pay prizes. The serious omission if you wanted it form part of the arrangement, was stating that this money
did not belong to the business and was therefore not part of what was being sold.
Nowhere was it ever mentioned by me that SD owned a big pile of bitcoins.
But we knew the amount of the betting pool - the business's operating capital - and nowhere was it ever mentioned that that money was not SD's.
My mistake for letting the site use my coins since the beginning.
I can see you see it as 'letting the site use your coins' but when people set up a business requiring assets, such as stock or a betting pool, this is the capital investment made. You can't seriously regret using your coins given that SD would have fallen at the first big win had you not?
I think the following analogy illustrates how you have been failing to understand this:
It's like if I had been letting SD use my personal hosting account for free, and then one day said, "he guys, we need to get a hosting account for SD because I don't want it using mine anymore."
I believe a better analogy would be had you bought a server to host the site yourself then when selling the business, retained ownership of the server whilst assuming the buyers would somehow guess the server is not part of the deal* only to say a few months down the line: "btw, that server is mine and I am on the company's behalf using company money in the form of this month's profits to buy it from me". Can you see how shareholders might take exception to this?
I understand this is not what you are proposing to do at the moment and appreciate given the way you are seeing this that you are 'giving up' your monthly dividend...
In effect, this won't change things much from the current situation. I'll bear the whole cost of the betting pool, it'll just be smaller now.
But my primary concern is that the betting pool not be lessened. If anything that should be increasing slightly over time. If the amount of the betting pool represents the acceptable risk of the business running out of funds and that is sometimes less then there is an increased risk of running out of funds meaning a means of increasing or replenishing the pool needs to be established in the longer term. As has been pointed out part of the MPEX agreement is that it not come out of the dividend so whether or not you are taking a part or the whole of the current pool this is something which will need addressing. But in the meantime if you were to take the money without planning to replace it full then to the extent it is short is not only the taking of an amount some believe is not yours to take but is also an increased risk of the business being caught short in terms of payouts.
I hope this is not coming across in an accusatory manor. It is not my intention to lay blame nor to imply wrongdoing on your part. But we do have a fundamental disagreement here which I'd like you first and foremost to acknowledge is an issue and secondly to suggest how you would like to see it resolved.
* - which incidentally would have been obvious had you been charging the business for its use (or in the case of the loan, had been charging interest)