Bitcoin Forum

Note:
This listing will only become effective if at least 10,000 shares are sold. If the 10,000 shares are not sold by 28th February 2013 then all shares will be purchased back at the face value of 0.25 BTC per share and this contract will be null and void.

Overview
Vircurex is a privately owned trading platform for virtual currencies, it supports buying and selling of Bitcoins and many of its derivatives. The platform offers:
 - trading (buying/selling)
 - underwriting options
 - coupons
 - full trading API

Virtual currencies can be purchased using Euro or USD. Additional currencies are planned.

Objectives of the listing
To facilitate the further development of the platform, ensure ongoing operation as well as constantly enhance the functionality we decided to raise capital by selling 30% of our equity.

Some plans - but not limited to - are:
 - incorporation of Vircurex,
 - integrating other payment processors
 - advertisement campaigns
 - infrastructure upgrades

The Listing
A total of 45,000 shares at a face value of 0.25BTC each will be issued. 30% of these will be made publicly available.
If all shares are sold, 3,375 BTC will be divided into
   1,500 BTC onetime payment to license the platform and transfer the ownership of the complete infrastructure from its current owner
        300 BTC for advertisement costs over the next 3 years
   1,575 BTC to cover all operational costs over the next 3 years

Investment / Assets / Licenses
The listed security (and subsequently the legally incorporated entity) will
- own the source code, its customer base as well as wallet balances
- own the domain name

Operation costs / Revenue / Profit
Current monthly revenue from trading activities as well as advertisements is ~11 BTC.
The security listings proceedings will cover all operational expenses for the period of 3 years, hence all revenues will be net profit and paid out as dividends during that period.

Dividend
The monthly net profit will be paid out as dividend, typically in the first week of the month. All issued shares are entitled to the dividend payment.

Currency Exchange Risks
All expenses are paid in USD, thus to limit the possible risk of currency fluctuations, all proceedings from the listing will be converted to USD immediately. The funds will be held in a bank account and will not be used for anything other than paying the operational costs of the platform.

Share Buyback
The security issuer has the right to buy back the shares at 25% above the 30 day average trading price.

Special conditions
The security issuer will not be entitled to dividends for a period of 12 months after the listing.

Forward Looking Statement
Next 12 Months
Assuming a current 11 BTC monthly revenue and a quarter on quarter growth rate of 10% then the security will offer a 4% to 5% dividend yield. We believe a 10% growth quarter on quarter is a conservative number, in addition, most operational costs are fixed costs, hence any further growth will reflect in an over proportional increase of the dividend yield.

After 3 years
The trading platform will have to generate sufficient revenue to for it to continue its operation beyond 3 years. With the average monthly operations costs of 50BTC and the current trading fee of 0.5%, the exchange will require a daily trading volume of ~170BTC to break even.

Communication and Publications
All important announcements will be made on
 - the exchange that Vircurex will be listed on
 - bitcointalk.org

The list is subject to change depending on the development of the various forums.

Risks
You must consider this investment a high risk investment with a high probability that the expected returns will not materialize or even a total loss if the investment. Operating a virtual currency trading platform incurs the risks of:
- double spend attacks on weak virtual currencies
- security breaches (e.g. 0 Day vulnerabilities)
- legal actions by governments against our service offering
- availability of key personnel to operate the platform
- continuation of the virtual currency networks (blockchains)

Each potential investor need to consult with their financial advisor as to whether or not this investment is suitable for their specific risk profile.

Link to the listing on Cryptostocks.com:  https://cryptostocks.com/securities/34

Interesting stuff!


Is that current owner you or some other arrangement?


What happens to the other 70%?

I think you may be confusing things. Are you doing an MPEx style IPO where the owner sells some of his own shares (in which case you're not required to say what you'll do with your own money, and also it's not natural or sensible to spend it on the company)? As it is phrased this sounds a lot like the GLBSE style IPO.


What happens if fixed costs increase significantly during that 3 year timeframe?


So tentatively 0.1% return per month, if indeed operation was costless. If operation costs 1,575 BTC over 3 years that comes to ~45 BTC a month, which would mean this is currently bleeding. Along those lines, much more detailed discussion of how you plan to turn around the enterprise may be a good idea (or why you even think there's any chance of such (http://polimedia.us/trilema/2012/and-another-one-bites-the-dust-bitmarketeu/), for that matter).

Some clarifications on the questions:

1500BTC license / business transfer:
The onetime fee/investment of the business to acquire a license to use Vircurex as well as handover the platform with all data, and yes, Vircurex is currently privtely owned by myself. This listing is about transforming this venture to the next level.

30% /  70%  Share Ownership:
I am selling 30% of the shares to the public, thus 70% remain my property which I intend to keep. Not sure what the reference to GLBSE is about, but this is a common approach for many startups, you issue shares for a fraction of your enterprise, while retaining control by holding the majority of the shares. With myself being a major shareholder, I will naturally take all decisions in the best interest of the company.

Costs:
The states costs of 1575BTC over 3 years is the upper limit I foresee, assuming that the Exchange develops within the foreseen parameters. Should it go beyond our expectations then the increased revenue will be managed to pay for the increase hosting costs. A large scale of the costs are fixed costs (server hosting, yearly fee for up-keeping a legal entity, SSL certificates, eMail service, remote site backup service, etc.).  The calculations were made based on a BTC price of 20USD.

Business development:
Obviously the 11BTC will not suffice to run a full blown legal entity, hence various plans are in the working:
a) Incorporating Vircurex: We cannot deal with payment processors (e.g. BitInstant) as of today because their prerequisite is a legal entity.
b) Expanding funding options beyond our current options (e.g. Liberty Reserve, BitInstant, etc.)
c) Marketing /Ads, thus the budget for that
d) Expanding the supported currencies, again here a) is important
These are just to name a few.

As stated, a breakeven is at ~170 BTC trading volume per day, I believe that to be a reachable target long before the 3 years.

The only thing that's not either common or ever heard of is for the seller to then use the proceeds of his sale to buy the company presents.

Either it's a sale by the owner, in which case the resulting 45k x 0.25 x .3 = 3,375 BTC is yours to keep and does not get piped back into Vircurex, or it's a mutual subscription thing, in which case however many shares sell constitute 100% of the company and if you want 70% you'd better bring 7,875 BTC - in cash. In this latter case the share sale proceeds, whatever they may be, are to be used by Vircurex and only by Vircurex.

The Global Scam Exchange reference is due to the apparent confusion between those two distinct and immiscible modes of operation. On GLBSE people did a blend of both, resulting in such splendor as DMC etc.

In any event, the only point that still needs addressing is, to quote the link before,


So, short sweet and to the point: why do you think you can compete with MtGox and Bitcoin-central on an ongoing basis? Note that you wanting to compete is not a good enough reason, and neither is competition being in general a good thing much of a reason - this is business. Absent an excellent answer to that question, it would probably be wiser to close the thing now while it's relatively painless to do rather than close it in six to sixteen months and leave behind a shitstorm. No matter how attractive a coupla k BTC may seem in the present tense.

Quite.

If the 1500 BTC is to buy the licences/software/right to run the exchange etc - then what are your 70% of shares in return for?  70% of profits AND equity seems a lot for a management fee.

Also, where are the historical accounts?  Your post makes reference to current growth - but you appear to have forgotten to add the link to the records demonstrating that growth.

I assume the current assets/liabilities are also detailed at the link you forgot to add.

It seems like you want other people to come up with 100% of the funds and you take 70% for free.

Are you putting in any money at all ????

he already did?!

The chain of arguments is getting too complicated, lets me "streamline it":
I am forming a company (Vircurex Ltx?) which will acquire the current trading platform and its business from its current owner (for 1500BTC). I am offering to sell 30% of the company shares to the public (Face value being sold 3375BTC). 70% I will be holding. For the first one year, I will not be collecting any dividends, all of those go to the 30% shareholders.

As for the valuation 30%/70%/3375BTC:  As with any startup, the valuation of the company depends very much on its the outlook of its future business. And that is something each and every investor needs to judge by himself.


Each exchange is focusing on different services, both quoted exchanges are primarily focusing on BTC trading which of course Vircurex is providing too in addition to the other virtual currencies (currently only Bitcoin deviates, but I am also looking into Lindens) which in its depth is unique on the market.


On the asset side we have:
 - Domain name
 - License for the platform
 - 4700 registered users, 2020 who have logged on in the last 3 months, 1060 who have logged on in the last 4 weeks, 880 who have a BTC balance on their account.

Let me reiterate, the vision is to create a fully transparent community driven exchange supporting Bitcoins, the Alts and possibly other virtual currencies. I'll be publishing all details of the monthly expenses and revenues on the Vircurex's page.

But like with any other investment, don't invest what you can't afford to loose.  If you are not planning to invest (yet) then support the continuous Alt-Chain exchange platform buying a share or two.

If the 1500 BTC buys the current trading platform and business, what are YOU putting in for your 70% of shares?

If the 30% are worth 3375 BTC then your 70% are worth 7875 BTC.

As the existing business is being bought for 1500 I'm not seeing what you're personally bringing to the table to justify you getting 7875 BTC-worth of shares immediately.  Is ALL shareholders get in return for your 70% you running the business?

Though as you're forming a new company maybe I'm just misreading it - and you're putting in 7875 BTC yourself at the same face-value as the shares being sold to the public?  If so then it's an unusual way to do things but acceptable - though why you'd need 10k+ BTC to run an exchange I'm not sure: your post doesn't explain what that cash would be used for.

Emboldening is mine.

If you convert immediately but then don't sell 10,000 shares are you personally making up the difference if BTC rises vs USD in the interim? (Or keeping the profit  if it falls vs USD)?

Or does "immediately" actually mean "immediately - but not until after at least 10,000 shares have been sold"?

With immediately I mean, once we have sold the shares, right after that I will convert it (BTC-E, MTGox, Vircurex, whereever to get it converted). To make this clear, all profits (or be it cost savings) wherever they might come from will be made public and will come to the benefit of VCX.

Same thing here:
If you will even convert all your expenses ans income to USD, why list on an BTC-only marketplace?

Also, I strongly recommend anyone thinking to "invest" (= throwing money at the OP) how much of an incentive the OP even has, if ALL money he needs for 3(!) years is coming from the 30% share and he won't see any return on that for 12 months. Also he dictates the initial prices, if you think he's worth less, there's no way for you to take part in this.

This is just another "I have a great idea, give me money/developers/time/human ressources/a botnet/... and I'll make it happen - and you who had all the risk and invested all the ressources even get 30% of the profit!" scheme.

Only the expenses will be converted, as most of the services that we require cannot be purchased (yet) in Bitcoin, e.g. incorporation.  The income will of course be paid out in BTC.
Selected members of this community seem to have the impression that running an online Bitcoin Exchange is a fully automated platform where all I need to do is collect my income once a month. The shocking truth is that this is not the case. It is a very time consuming business, daily monitoring of security logs, backup validation, user inquiries, account reviews, AML/KYC activities, further code developments and improvements, marketing, etc.
Yes, whilst the 30% of the shareholder bring in the cash for the initial period, the operators of the platform bring in amounts of time and personal committment that can't even be expressed in $. The operators have the utmost interest to make this a success, as they will be looking back at months and years of invested time. For the typical average investor, the risk is limited to the Bitcoins he decided to invest.
As quoted in other posts, if this investment is too risky for the average investor, buy only one or two shares for 0.25BTC to support the Alt-Chain Exchange.

Does the Company have any Unpaid debts or Liabilities?

What is the current average operating costs?

Does the Company have any assets?

Doing some very simple math I'm seeing a possible .0144 BTC dividend payments over 12 months given no growth.

I'll give some good growth for the company and say .02 dividend payments over 12 months.

After 12 months that dividend payment is going to cut because instead of paying 13,500 possible shares its going to be paying 45,000.

After 12 months the dividend payment would put the ROI @10-20 years? Unless you are going to be seeing 25-50% growth.

Please don't take this as a flame, I'm just trying to crunch some numbers and understand how you are setting the value.

Also I understand USD/BTC rate plays a big role in this since operating costs would be in USD

No worries, full disclosure and transparency.
No.
The current costs are not comparable with the planned setup after the listing. First of all, there will be the incorporation which will cost money to establish and maintain, then we have the various development activities that are required afterwords to incorporate payment processors. Also support for Linden Dollars is planned, that as well will require efforts and funds.
The systems are run on a VPS, thus no server infrastructure is required. All development infrastructure will be provided by myself, no assets required either.
The assets owned are primarily intangible assets (domain name, license for the platform).
This is understandably most difficult to predict. Yes, assuming a quarter on quarter growth of merely 10% you get 4% yield. The 10% growth is my expected bottom line, with the incorporation and thus access to more financial services as well as selected marketing activities and a more agressive referral system we should be able to grow way beyond that rate. If we are to make a dividend yield of 4% to 8% then we are very well within the parameters of a mature market.
Yes, and thats why we intent to convert all BTC right away after the listing into USD to eliminate any future currency fluctuations.

Hi Kumala,

When are you going to work full time on this project, under what kind of conditions? thanks.

Haha, this is a full time job, just answering the threads already takes up 50% of my time. The other half, well I'll be putting up a "Developer's log" so you guys can see whats going on and whats going to happen.

All in all you need ~60-70k USD for buying licenses + operating the exchange for a few years. Why do you need to sell a part of this company (if you are even legally allowed to - I didn't yet see under which jurisdiction this will run) just to get a sum that is not THAT impressive. Why go through all that hassle if you could just walk to the next bank, deposit your firstborn or so and get a credit with probably even better rates than what you intend to give to your "investors" (= 100% money providers) here? If you didn't go to banks, why? If you did, what did they say to reject your idea? Please also show us the materials you showed (or would show) to a bank to get a loan of ~75k USD.

Update on the listing.

We have two positive news for the listing of Vircurex.

1. The license fee costs for the platform has been reduced by 200BTC.
2. The cost of BTC/USD has changed in a favourable way, i.e. we will require to raise less BTCs.

Assuming the BTC/USD remains at its current level, we'll adjust he listing as follows:

   Total number of shares issued:   31,000 shares
   Total publicly listed/traded shares:    9,300 shares

So how do you plan to pay yourself for this full time job?  Will it come out of the revenue before dividend payments or is it coming from the cash raised from this sale?

The cash from the listing will be used for the operations costs (hosting, legal entity, etc) only.  My efforts will be compensated from the dividends of the shares I hold and the increase in share value over time, thus I have the utmost interest to make this a success.

Bump.

One more week to end of IPO. We still have a number of shares to sell.

If you want 70% of the company AND >1000BTC in profit, then you need to be putting 7850 BTC in the company. At the current state, this is going to pale out VERY badly unless you're Kumala.

Why should investors fund 100% of costs in return for only 30% of the total shares ? Seems a bit overbalanced.

IPO coming to a closing end of Feb 28th.  Based on the current BTC price of 32.50 USD I have adjusted the required share numbers:

  Total issued: 29500
  Free Float: 8550

As of now we have 8538 shares sold, thus I'll make up for the difference if we don't reach the 8550.   Thus I'll leave the IPO running till end of Sunday to offer a last minute opportunity for share purchases.

I was wondering about that...as I purchased some shares, and nothing happened on 28th....you should put announcements on the Listing/book build page

also as soon as I saw VCX was listed I though what about crypto surley it should list on itself????

SLL trading comes with its own significant risks, not the least of which is, the LL ToS which states that SLL is a virtual currency with no real world value, and may be taken back by LL at any time.

Then there is also the risks of people buying SLL through stolen credit cards and stolen accounts, that LL claws back, leaving the exchange eating the loss (which has happened many times already. speak to the guys running TheRock and VirWoX)

-- Smoov

Announcement?  Good point, done.

Listing CS? Something I might follow up on in some time, once all the promised changes for VCX have been done (incorporation, various new features, new fiat currency support, etc.)

You have built a CS platform (took your work)  and it integrates with VCX that you have raised funds for, it would only be fair (to you) to be able to get a proper value from it, your work!!!!

also any appreciation can be sent to

16hijiSkt9NCpoUWCyiM57Y1VSWWpHcaRB
rBpEVy5sSkq4KPgP12TQxQwxVbp31xRbsF

Hi just wondering when you're planning to improve the GUI on the site? I see a lot of comments around the internet that seem to suggest if the site was more intuitive they would be much more interested in using it. Wouldn't mind updates as to what's happening with the upgrades every two weeks or so just to keep us in the loop :)

Optional UI... I like the UI as it is now, all the info I want or need...

Tho I can understand why some would want a different interface. Not everyone day-trades every possible pair like I like to do. :)

-- Smoov

A few changes will be published this week (mainly technically, hence not directly visible to the users but help with the overall performance):
 - Yubikey integration
 - Apache replaced with Nginx
 - Asynchronous emails which will provide a much faster trading experience (for trades that affect multiple transactions)

As for the UI, a very tricky topic, balancing simplicity with wealth of information is easier said than done. I am trying to prototype a UI based on Bootstrap but it isn't going as fast (or as effective) as I wish.

Sounds great. It would be nice if you could announce your downtime in advance though...

(Hoping current downtime is related to this)

No unfortunately the current downtime is unplanned and the datacenter service provider is investigating why the node went down.   

I like the UI to

easy to read lots of data fast, each page is compact bu has everything

also hard to screw up a miss button press because of the release system and that it is a bit away from the sell/buy buttons

the only thing I would like is a perhaps nicer graph, with volumes
and more historical data, which would come with the graph

but I do really like the UI
read well tick
easy to use tick
hard to make mistakes tick
compact/displays lot of data tick
IT works tick

what more do you want???

money spent here may not improve the return for you or me as a share holder....but I could be wrong its you business!!!!!

Sucks for the people who bought this IPO (not that I think anyone actually did, but anyway).

To say the least.

Is there any new info regarding Cryptostocks being hacked?

+1

Here's why those people posting in this thread are confused with what you're saying.  In one line you say (Vircurex Ltx?) will acquire the business from the current owner(for 1500BTC), which would mean that at this point you no longer own it, so you would not get to sell 30%.  What it should say is that you're forming (Vircurex Ltx?), then selling a 30% stake in it.  Simple enough.

~ 3 weeks and no response to this thread.

Although there is a report Kumala just published to their site indicating that investors will be taking the hit for the losses in the form of no dividends for months to come.

I don't get why people voted for that nan or whatever increase

I don't understand how these sites keep getting hacked, I mean, if you set it up right, and the guy raise 8K BTC in the IPO plus dividends to himslef for the larger part of the shares, he can afford some decent security and IT help.


Then he take is out of dividends to shareholders, well that's a complete lack of discipline to him to run it.

Where did you get this info?

You can read here https://vircurex.com/Reports/2013-05.pdf
It's mentined in this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=226366.0 to.
The minority shareholders(30%), will pay the full loss in the form of no dividend(in breach of whats stated in the vircurex contract on cryptostocks) has kumala decided.
The first 12 months Vircurex majority shareholder kumala(70%) was not entitled to dividend. Now he has decided that those owning the public 30% of the shares should be the ones paying 100% of the loss in the form of no dividend for the next 9 months or so....

There is no breach in contract, the dividend payment is inline with the result of request for vote #16.

Kumala

why is the host provider not sharing the cost of this loss for there errors?

Kumala

How could it not be a breach of the contract even after the passing of vote #16 for whatever reason some people voted yes on that proposal ?

Vote ID #16 at cryptostocks the vote in Vircurex you mention Kumala:
"Change current process of paying out complete revenue as dividend to paying out 70% of the net profit as dividends and retain 30% of the net profits to increase the NAV until NAV reaches the value of 0.25."

Profit for May one think should have been in the neighborhood of the same as April(an up-going trend that was temporary stopped by the security breach and a few days with service not working 100%) if you diden't temporary lower the fees(to 0,1% was it ?), that might be a good thing in the long perspective(to keep customers that otherwise may go trade there coins at another exchange where that was possible) to do, but was probably negative(at least for that month) to the minority(public 30%) shareholders, so such thing you should probably have taken a vote on before doing.

Well anyway, profit was 130.65 BTC according to the May 2013 Report for the month May, if one considers full profit(0,5% fee) for 1/3 of the months volume and 1/5(0,1% fee) on the volume for 2/3 of the month then Vircurex actually trades pretty good volumes in May, volume up 11% even thou the problems you had that month.

Dividend that should be paid out according to the contract should then be 130.65 and if you had not reduced the fees probably up to around 280 BTC

Dividend according to the vote you mention, if that vote's result is a legally binding reason to change the dividend rules set in the original contract. 130,65*0,7= 91,455 BTC and around 280*0,7= 196 BTC if you had not reduced the fees for May.
The retained BTC to raise the NAV then becomes 39,195 BTC or around 84 BTC if you had not reduced the fees for May.

The shareholders(30% public shares) that effectively have voted to give away 8162*0,25=2040,5 BTC (if the vote is reason to change the original contracts rules) of there dividend for the first 12 months period when the majority owner is not entitled to any dividend to build up NAV value, effectively giving away 2040,5*0,7= 1428,35 BTC to the majority owner, you Kumala,
Those shareholders you have decided that you should punish and take another 91,455 to 280 BTC from this month and around 2300-2400BTC in total(1454 BTC 23 400 LTC and 225 263 TRC) the coming months without any support for the actions you have taken in either the contract or the votes you mention.

Would you care to answer the other questions in this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=226366.0

+1 +1

this, your shifting wealth while it doesn't effect you, to you!

Where can we find the JUN 2013 monthly report?  Interested in how much of the deficit has been paid off thus far.

Watching.. 

Still cannot find any of these documents at https://vircurex.com/welcome/investors....

JUN 2013
JUL 2013
AUG 2013 <- Quarterly statement

Interested in how much of the deficit has been paid off thus far.

Kumula,
  I have used your exchange and like it.  But this is a terrible deal for shareholders.  It is not fair, common or reasonable to charge a large licensing fee and keep the majority of the equity.  The licensing fee to yourself is a scam and you know it.  It one or the other - when you do an IPO, your payout is two parts:
1. You can now draw a management fee
2. The equity you still hold is now easy to sell - you have liquidity
 
    If you are serious, scrap the IPO and remake the prospectus. 

So, I happened to notice that the AUG 2013 report is now available.

https://vircurex.com/welcome/investors

What does it mean for depositors (user's accounts) that the exchange is reporting a book value of -931.95 BTC ?

nothing id say, otherwise problems would already have arised. its just sad he put his own failures (the hacks) to us investors... this was probably one of my worst investments :S

Well, since vircurex and cryptostocks are related a bit, I'll try to link my question about transaction history (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88036.msg3331486#msg3331486) on cryptostocks in another thread. Hope someone can help. Thanks for your time!

Kumala, is there an envisaged date when dividends will resume? The NAV seems to be approaching the threshold of 0.25.

Vircurex showes a number of -0,0324 btc in there august report those number dosent make much sence thou. Do you have any other information about the real number that is higher than that and that vircurex reported numbers is faked then ?

Vircurex should have been paying dividend every month, they break there contract with the shareholders.

At the moment he refuses to follow the contract and lets the minority sharehloders (33%) pay the 2500 btc+20 000 usd and he(67% shareolder) pays nothing of this himself.
He also hasent showed any evidence that vircurex actually lost any btc, other digital currency or the 20 000 usd, so at the moment it looks like vircurex themself is behind it.

The way it's looking now kumala will never pay any dividend to the minority shareholders unless people take him to court.

I think vircurex and cryptostocks are just one big scam (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=311875.msg3472838#msg3472838).