Many of these questions have been previously answered and many shall be addressed in the updated prospectus being released in a few hours such as the "what happens when BTC loses value", but I will go through them again for people.Surely, if someone is willing to put their "Money" into a bank that backs their assets with BTC they must have a significant amount of faith in the viability of a long BTC future.
Keep in mind it's Cyprus, where standard euros (backed by nothing) can one day be worth half what they were, and you still can't get them back.
Granted, they will have to do some explaining.
7.5 million Euros worth of explaining, based on their business plan.
As far as I can tell, the deal is that if BTC goes up, they keep the difference from their customers' deposits. If BTC goes down,
. I'm not sure why anyone would put their money in if they're exposed to risk for no reward.
I eagerly await an explanation. I'd really like to see this work, but the prospectus makes me very uncomfortable. Even the "conservative" projections still assume bitcoin will go up.
Thanks for the questions, we offer the ability for our customers to use the Bitcoin protocol to benefit their own needs, many of Cypriots demands following the recent bail-in's is the requirement to place their money into a financial product where it cannot be taken against their will.
We shall also be offering time based deposits so the customer can deposit their money for a fixed period of time (6 - 60 months) and receive a percentage of any increases.
The updated prospectus will include scenarios, as to where there is a flash crash of -75% across a 2 hour period with no recovery in the rate on the first day of trading, followed by a run of all instant access deposits in the last hour of the branches working day.
We have a great marketing partner, our advertising includes TV, Radio, Print Media, OOH campaigns and lots of below the line activities to drive awareness of what we are bringing to the market. We have had coverage in the largest newspaper in the financial section, which explained the reasons as to why Bitcoin will be of benefit to Cypriots. That is why we have projected the level of deposits in the first month of €7.5m, in the grand scale of things here, is not a great deal of money considering one bank has been losing €10m per day in cash withdrawals whilst a €300p/d limit has been enforced. The vast majority of these cash withdrawals are making their way into closets and under mattresses.
We are also working on bringing other revenue streams online, such as insurance, international remittance and lending.I've got another question - obviously a lot of money has already been invested in this venture, if you're building a bank branch and making regulatory filings and so on. Where did this money come from? What does your balance sheet look like right now? If this money was fronted by the existing partners in this venture, why will they hold only 40% of the equity?
Edit: Okay, I finished reading all of your prospectus.
You seem to be operating on the assumption that you will receive 7.5 million euros of deposits, in the first month of operation, from a populace that is now wary of banking institutions.
Can you provide any material defense of this assumption? Any precedents, like what is typical for a start-up bank?
Furthermore, you conclude you will be profitable by March. Is this predicated on a continued increase in the value of bitcoins?
At what point do you project an investment in this security would be more profitable than holding the bitcoins, ignoring speculative value?Also, what does the red square represent in this image?
Everything has been initially my own work up until I acquired the services of some of the team members and partners. The branch hasn't been built by ourselves we have signed the leases and all deposits and securities have been paid. We only hold 40% because the fact that I am running this IPVO to raise the necessary capital, it is an extremely large volume of Bitcoin and as with anything in life and Bitcoin there is risk, those that invest in me and my team to execute this need to be rewarded sufficiently. When Neo & Bee is successful the potential and the benefits we will receive for being the first mover will not be comparable to anything previously seen in Bitcoin, by only holding 40% ourselves this provides more incentive to work even harder to make the smaller holding worth more. The benefits for Bitcoin as a whole once mass adoption becomes common in many nations will also be something that was only "talked" about, these possibilities will never happen unless someone takes that initial step to make it a reality. With the current situation here and the dis-trust in traditional financial institutions, we have the strongest platform to build solid foundations for such a move. Cyprus is also not too big to achieve the coverage required for people to learn about ourselves, but it is also not too small to go unnoticed on a global scale.
We will be profitable by march if the exchange rate increases at the rate described. We are providing even more detailed figures that demonstrate a drop in the price. One thing to remember is that we shall be increasing demand whilst reducing the availability of many coins for a fixed period of time through our time based accounts.
The red in the image represents the part of the building that will be the location of our flagship branch, the offices which have had the deposits and securities paid in full are on the first floor, there is a glass wall surrounding the veranda which will allow us to wrap our signage around the building as per the virtual branding representation of the branch.
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this from a consumer standpoint. What would my main motivation be to work with these services?
Is it just having an alternative storage of value other than the euro, or will there be services offered?
Surely, if someone is willing to put their "Money" into a bank that backs their assets with BTC they must have a significant amount of faith in the viability of a long BTC future. If they have this much faith in Bitcoin i would imagine they have done a considerable amount of research on their part. If they are this savvy about tech and finance why wouldn't that just manage their own BTC?
Tl;dr
What are we offering that the consumer can't just do themselves?
A simple solution, everyone on this forum can manage their own wallets and most can secure them sufficiently, but for the average man/woman in the street the idea of them managing and securing their own wallet is out of the question. Once people start reading or listening to someone talk about Bitcoin in a complex manner, something everyone here is capable of doing the average person will lose interest within 20 seconds of the word "cryptography" being used.Would your lawyers feel comfortable identifying themselves and their qualifications, and sharing some of their (ostensibly extensive) legal filings? The legal side of this seems just as important as the business side, and I don't think it's getting enough attention.
Our lawyers have confirmed their involvement with ourselves and that they are currently preparing the requests to the Attorney General to have a legal framework created for Bitcoin based businesses (This has been performed as part of the due-diligence by TATI). The legal questions were answered very early in the thread. Bitcoin is not money in Cyprus, so we are working hard to change that. Please also remember that Cyprus is much smaller than many other countries so getting in front of the right decision makers is much easier than it would be elsewhere in the world. These direct channels of communication are very much in place already.