Topic: [HAVELOCK] Crypto Financial (CFIG) Official Thread - page 15. (Read 68624 times)

Assuming it's not a bug, I wonder if the 173,282 shares still represent a 20% stake in the company, or if they now represent a 17.3282% stake.

If the remaining 26,718 shares were sold on the market by the issuer then the total issued shares would be the full 200,000 outstanding units.  The fact that the site doesn't reflect that indicates that either the site is wrong (bug) or the shares weren't sold they were simply removed.

Units outstanding (in any company) is the total units owned by someone.  Each unit represents an equal share of ownership.  If the company has sold 200,000 units then there has to be 200,000 units outstanding. 

I might be wrong here, but my assumption was that the remaining ~26k shares would be added to the "outstanding units" count, once purchased.

Of course there is no evidence the off market transactions ever took place.  The issuer simply records them in the ledger.  Of the public portion of the Initial PUBLIC offering only 6,614 shares were sold (992 BTC).

I'm fairly certain whatever whale(s) have taken a liking to CFIG bought out the remaining IPO shares. I'm not sure what your point is about the 173,282. That's how much was sold during IPO, the remaining 26,718 were just purchased in full @ .15. Hence, the .15 wall is now gone.

I assumed the same, but check this out:


Given that the original number was 200k shares, it kinda looks like they didn't go anywhere. This just keeps getting weirder.

Ooh. Interesting catch. I assumed a private buyer, but they should've purchased on the market...

Edit: I guess they only said they'd be placed on the open market, not that they could only be sold on the open market. A private buy could still scoop them. but why not scoop the ~20 BTC below .15 as well?

Looks like the remaining shares @ 0.15 have disappeared from the order book. They didn't get bought up; where did they go?

Couldn't help but notice that all of the remaining IPO shares disappeared this evening... A private buyer?

We will post any updates Here on this Forum, On Havelock Investments and on our own Website.

Also Crypto Financial will be neutral when it comes to Crypto Currencies, So if an exchange that would like to deal with Fiat to XYZ Crypto Currencies comes along we would be happy to work with them. The Crypto Currency in question does need to meet some criteria of adoption by users and volume which we will determine in the future as needed. For now we believe that the only Crypto Currencies that truly meet our customers needs for an exchange is Bitcoin and Litecoin. If another alt-coin is requested by our customers in the future it will be considered.

Thank you,

Crypto Financial

Thank you standardcrypto for a great way to explain our business model (Maybe we should have hired you to be our PR agent    )

And as you stated you did live in Panama in the past, so you do understand the Business environment here and how Panama is a great place for our Business Venture.

We appreciate your support,

Crypto Financial

CFIG,

When can we expect news on partnerships and other developments? Do you plan on doing regular updates? Will they be posted here or on your website?

Thank you!

Excellent post. You have actually consolidated and verbalized many thoughts that are floating around out there. Your prose was easy to read and showed a great deal of thought and attention into how an entity like CFIG could operate in today's environment.

While no one can accurately predict the future, I sincerely think that we are still in the early days of crypto. It shares many of the same features as the early days of the Internet. In my mind, bitcoin going to ASIC is like users going from dial up to early DSL. Crypto currency is the next level up technology that our world needs. Built upon the foundations of the Internet, governed by none, crypto currency will be the nexus of commerce for years to come.

Crypto currency will, in short order, be adopted by the global community. It's adoption will share many of the same traits and properties as the Internet growth had experienced. Unlike the Internet growth cycle, this technology can present a real opportunity for those that have the foresight, wit and fortitude to venture into an uncertain future. The Internet growth cycle was largely hamstrung by industrial giants and they pick and chose who the lucky "dot com" winners would be. Here, commerce can be made directly between individuals and even companies without any middleman. This is what the Internet was built for. This is what the people everywhere needs.

Until this invention, there has not been any currency in all of human history that allowed a person anywhere on the planet to freely conduct a transaction with another. Where the Internet provides the freedom of speech to everyone; crypto currency provides freedom of action.

This is the first real 21st century invention that has the greatest potential of freeing all of us from the shackles of the Industrial Age and the evils of industrial war. This invention has the greatest chance to propel humankind into the next Age.

My only hope will be that this here nascent community will be enlightened enough to support it's development and to resist the terrors of the industrial overlords and its tactics.

A very thoughtful analysis. Thank you for posting that.

I agree, it would be a smart move for CaVirtEx to become a customer of Crypto Financial (CF). I think CaVirtEx is an excellent exchange and if they become a customer of CF they could easily offer their services to the CF customer base.

I always appreciate good analysis that raises some interesting points.

Thanks for posting and I do hope that they succeed, with the recent news in Germany and the lines of people exchanging bitcoin the possibilities here are large and those with the capital available will be in the best postion at executing through their strategies.
http://rt.com/news/bitcoin-exchange-berlin-currency-941/

Regarding the other exchanges an example of attrition might occur if someone capable and trustworthy comes along.

Not to say they are bad exchanges just some people may be getting a bit irritated and start looking towards alternatives which is where CFIG comes in.

Anyways will still keep observing

Congrats on your IPO best of luck to CFIG and I wish for your success and for the greater growth of bitcoin development.

I have thought a lot about CFIG in the context of what comes next for bitcoin, and posted a lengthy analysis at our company blog:

http://blog.standardcrypto.com/

The bad news, from an investment perspective, is that I think for outsize return CFIG has to succeed really big. Bigger than MtGox probably.

The good news is that based on product/market fit, I think this could actually happen. And, my understanding is the 20% of the owners that bought the public IPO will have first dibs on exchange fees, before the 80% private start earning dividends.

CFIG is exactly what the bitcoin economy needs, today.

I expect great things from CFIG.

Reposting from blog below:

"Could Panamanian CFIG grow bigger than Mtgox? That’s the asicminer sized question. (Thoughts on CFIG IPO)

TLDR:

Long CFIG (CryptoFinancial) is Short MtGox and Btc-E. And to some extent long Alt-Crypto, short Bitcoin.

TFA:

CryptoFinancial IPO concluded today, with about 80% sold.

This is a meh result in Bitcoin world, where IPO investors have been somewhat spoiled, with common expectations to double or triple their money in weeks. I think prospects are still good however, and the company is a buy, even more so if the price falls post IPO. Full disclosure: StandardCrypto is long the IPO, and plans to buy more if the price goes down after trading begins.

At any rate, CFIG is now one of the largest publicly traded bitcoin companies by market cap: currently 150k BTC, with 30k from the IPO and 120k privately held. Judging by the bitcointalk forum thread at

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/havelock-crypto-financial-cfig-official-thread-269191

and the lukewarm uptake of IPO stock, there's mostly pessimism about CFIG's business model and prospects for success. And no surprise: this is a hard to value company, and the current valuation is extremely high.

I'll give my own somewhat optimistic take, and I'll try to keep it short.

CFIG is a Panamanian financial services startup that aims to offer full and convenient bitcoin/fiat conversion to individuals, and KYC/AML (Know Your Customer / Anti Money Laundering) regulatory compliance services to exchanges.

Though it is not a bank, CFIG will work closely with the banking industry to make it easy to spend bitcoin in a fiat dominated world. In particular, CFIG plans to offer a debit card where customers can spend from their bitcoin with conversion automatic, like Americans tourists spending Euros with their USD-funded ATM cards when vacationing in Europe. This idea isn't exactly original -- bitinstant was supposed to have implemented in 2012. But, bitinstant is busy editing their home page, the Winklevoss twins are working on an ETF, and so no one has acutally done the debit card thing yet. So, CFIG could be first.

The pitch to individuals could be something like: "The safety of Bitcoin, the convenience of Fiat." With the American banking system in increasing disarray, the migration "offshore" of tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans is not outside the realm of possibility. Adding bitcoin to the mix sweetens the deal. Now, I wouldn't expect CFIG to be the only player in the "offshore bitcoin/usd for middle class people" market, but they could have first mover advantage.

What I like about the CFIG business plan is that the customer piece and the exchange piece are linked in a way that makes a lot of sense for grabbing a big piece of market share from existing bitcoin exchanges and payment processors in the coming months and years.

CFIG is not a bank, and will not pay interest on deposits, or as some call it "Fractional Reserve Bitcoin." But CFIG *will* provide regulatory compliance services that banks are good at, and exchanges have proved terrible at, particularly in the USA and painfully at mega-exchange MtGox. The idea is that CFIG will do compliance up to par with USA Fincen and OFAC requirements, and provide a consistent interface to the fiat world for bitcoin exchange startups hungry for market share and not thrilled about having to do compliance themselves -- which is estimated to cost in the single digit millions *per exchange.* CFIG won't be the only financial entity trying to smoothe the path for US bitcoin startups. Internet Archive Credit Union and Silicon Valley Bank come to mind as current players. But CFIG is an early entrant, and in some sense being US friendly but not physically in the US gives it a leg up. Pure focus on the regulatory and bitcoin/fiat interface pieces, while not getting distracted by everything else a bank provides, can be seen as a competitive advantage as well.

In some sense, the CFIG business plan is the opposite of Buttercoin, which plans to provide a trading engine and revenue share with existing money services businesses that already have compliance under control. But compliance is really the hard part, which is why CFIG's plan makes more sense to me.

The optimistic scenario as I foresee it goes something like this. CFIG acquires a large number of individual "private bank-ish" customers through its debit care and painless bitcoin/fiat services. These customers are great for PR and brand building but don't bring in that much revenue, because how much can you really charge for wire transfers and these aren't interest deposits. Where CFIG wins is on exchang fees shared with its partner exchanges.

The problems are: how can CFIG justify its current valuation, let alone grow to justify the risk of invesing in a startup. And how does owning CFIG compare with just owning bitcoin?

For CFIG to fulfill its business plan projection it needs a lot of exchange volume. To put it plainly, it needs to be handling MtGox level volumes of trades through its partners. And to grow, in bitcoin valued terms, it probably needs to wind up a few times bigger than MtGox in the hand-wavy future. To skip to the good stuff, have a look at page 33 of https://www.havelockinvestments.com/reportdownload.php?id=21 (other docs at https://www.havelockinvestments.com/) and http://bitcoincharts.com/ for existing exchange volume. Gox currently handles 600k bitcoin monthly, bitstamp 300k, and there on page 33 CFIG projects 17280 BTC annual transaction fee revenue on monthly transactions of 400k bitcoin.

Exchange fees won't be the only source of revenue for CFIG, but I think it's fair to focus on them as the main measure of success as CFIG launches over the next few months and fights to wrangle a dividend. If CFIG can grow its volume to gox/bitinstant levels, projected annual revenue from transactions is 17280 BTC, with a 0.3% transaction fee. So (as a side note) with their partner exchanges tacking on a bit, expect to see 0.4-0.5% exchange fees from CFIG, but with a lot more convenience than current exchanges can offer.

Bottom line for an investor: can CFIG grow to MtGox level size and beyond? I think maybe it can. MtGox has a lot of people nervous right now, and btc-e isn't exactly a model of customer service. Bitstamp seems to be executing well, but even on this well run exchange there's no bitstamp debit card you can spend off of. There's room for another big player, and the convenience factor of the debit card and related tightly coupled services could launch CFIG into the big leagues.

But even at Gox level transaction volumes, and revenues matching the projections in the business plan, we're only at 9x earnings for the current valuation. Well, this is why I said for the IPO to make sense the end game has to have CFIG volume significantly larger than Gox. How much larger? I don't know, but I have ten fingers, so I am going to say 10x -- which allows for current investors to be rewarded at 10x if they're in it for the long haul. Or to put it another way, consider every multiple of current gox size to be investor reward for courage -- or punishment for hubris if it doesn't materialize.

10x gox volume wasn't in the business plan, and I'm going to treat this like a good thing. CFIG principals seem to be sober minded people. But that's what investors should be looking for as a metric for whether they should invest, and the yardstick of performance that CFIG needs to be held to if they are to deliver value.

What about holding CFIG versus just holding bitcoin? Now that's a really hard question.

If you think bitcoin is going to go 100x in a handful of years, as a reserve / tax evasion wealth sink, somewhat like digital gold but with actual transactions at the low end of the probability spectrum, you are probably better off just hoarding bitcoin. CFIG will do well compared to USD, but won't be able to keep up with growth in BTC if "real world" transaction volume (like buying milk with fiat on a bitcoin backed debit card) lacks traction.

However, if you think crypto currencies "milk buying" transaction volumes will go up a lot, CFIG could take a real cut out of the fiat/crypto transaction flow, and the sky is really the limit, never mind what the business plan says. Well, the sky isn't really the limit (I call sky the limit 100x), but CFIG could go up 10x and wind up as an asicminer sized bitcoin blue chip stock paying massive dividends to the early crowd. I'd be happy with 2x bitcoin, too. (I just don't want 0x!)

Two more points, and sorry I didn't keep this short like I thought I would.

1) I am pretty convinced that crypto currencies are going to dominate our future, but I am not totally sold that bitcoin is going to win this race. CFIG is well positioned to soak up crypto/fiat flows going into the future even if bitcoin turns out to be an also ran. I like these types of hedges.

2) Although they're an elusive and pseudonymous bunch, I like the CFIG team from what they say publicly. I think we'll see more transparency as the story develops. And, I have lived in panama, and I think it's a great place to do this project.

To my readers, thanks for your time, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Good luck investing.

Fingers crossed."

Virtex and Crypto financial are very different business models... In fact, I hope that virtex becomes a customer of crypto financial in the future!

Virtex is a similar idea who had a successful IPO.  The difference is that Virtex had a reputable service and a history.

This might be too soon to ask, but will there be an expansion into other cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin? I occasionally frequent Litecoin forums, and I feel that there's a pent up demand for Litecoin holders to use their coins, and if Crypto Financial could tap into that market then it could become a nice source of income.

Apologies if this has been asked/answered already.