The above is still a concept; I have not made a final decision whether I would like to offer these bonds. I am writing this to hear any thoughts about the idea and learn if anyone would be interested in buying such bonds.
A face value equal to half the maturity value was chosen mainly because this leads to an effective interest rate equal to the decay rate, which is intuitive. A greater maturity value can be used, which will allow making an investment with a lower collateral (essentially a higher margin ratio), but this will mean that the decay rate needs to be higher for a given effective interest rate, which is less robust.
The asset as described can be cleanly equated to a negative deposit against collateral. There is an alternative offering I am considering: Dropping the right to sell the bonds at face value (and replacing it with a compensation clause for a scenario that the BTCST program changes materially without defaulting). This allows more flexibility with the pricing, but makes it harder to compare directly with BTCST deposits, except for the fact that this is a bet on an imminent default. Opinions on the preferred variant are also welcome.
So this offering, if does happen, is an indirect statement that you believe pirateat40 will
not default, right?
As far as I understand it, you are betting that it will take less than 10 weeks for pirate to default. (0.93^10 = 0,483982307)
If it takes longer, you would've been better off keeping your BTC - if it takes shorter, you make a profit.
Basically yes, but that's not accurate. You need to consider this with respect to a complete model of the default time probability distribution.
If I believe that Pirate has a probability of p to default, and that the time of the event in this case is exponentially distributed with mean m, then the expected amount I will have to pay per 1 BTC face value worth of bonds is
\[ 2p \int_0^{\infty} (1/m)\exp(-t/m)(1-r)^t dt = 2p / (1 - m\ln(1-r)) \]
Sorry, the "you" in my question was Meni
I just wanted to clarify that I understood the motivations for this offering, as they seem to be different from Mircea's (not that I fully understand his, either).
Mircea's offering is basically just like PPT, but with some tweaked terms, some more precise description of terms, and where they are issued without being backed by actually depositing funds in BTCST (which is relevant only for the issuer, not for investors).
The main difference with Anti-Pirate is that they are exact opposites. PPT are positive, Anti-Pirate is negative. Buying Anti-Pirate can be compared to selling PPT, and vice versa. MPOE-PR has made a big deal in this thread out of the fact that these can be sold, borrowing as necessary.
The issuer of an asset always takes the opposite position of a buyer of an asset; if his desired position is neutral, he will have to seek an alternative means to take the same position as buying the bond. For mining bonds this is generally buying hardware; for PPT this is depositing funds in BTCST; etc.
The 2nd difference is that Anti-Pirate is perpetual while PPT has a set time. As the one who first mentioned the term "perpetuity" in the PureMining thread you can surely appreciate that, but anyway think what would it be like if instead of offering PureMining I would offer PureMining.March, PureMining.April, PureMining.May...
Finally, Anti-Pirate is an original (individually at least, globally until shown otherwise) methodology to provide perpetual negative bonds. Not that the idea is groundbreaking, just a correct application of some concepts to the issue at hand.
EDIT: I'm not sure you can deduce my personal motivation for (considering) offering the bond, since its place in my entire investment portfolio needs to be considered.
If Meni invests the proceeds from sale of anti-pirate bonds into pirate, he will come out ahead so long as default doesn't happen in the next 5 or 6 weeks.
I will not comment on whether I did or will invest funds into Pirate. I will say however that availability of funds is not really much of a problem as far as such investment is concerned, only default risk (and possibly, lack of storage demand).