Timeline of events related to the peg break 2016

NuBits
#21

@ConfusedObserver while I admit I don’t have proof, the circumstantial evidence is strong and there is a consensus that you are @masterOfDisaster, who not only blatantly stole 13 BTC from NuShare holders, but caused millions of dollars of damage with other illegal acts against shareholders.

Your posts seem to be motivated by a sense of injustice about how shareholders fired you and ejected you from the team. There was no injustice, and you would do well to grow up, begin to face the serious crimes you’ve committed here, and make amends to the degree possible. This means sending 13 BTC to @jooize, a proper shareholder representative. That is all we want from you. We aren’t interested in your vindictive posts trying to destroy Nu, just because you are hurt it rejected you. It will reject anyone who broke the law as you have.

I’m not willing to discuss anything with you except the return of stolen funds.

#22

It’s interesting how you don’t have any proof, but nevertheless address me as someone else.
But hey, you have circumstantial evidence!
One might call that baseless accusation.
You try to create a narrative here, right?
And sooner or later people will remember what they did read, but not that it only was without proof, proclaimed circumstantial evidence and purported consensus. They might remember what you want them to remember.

I have circumstantial evidence that you don’t answer questions, which are uncomfortable :wink:
They should remember that as well :slight_smile:
I have no BTC for you. I have not broken any law. Please spare me with your allegations.
And I have no desire to destroy Nu. I’ll leave that to you. It’s broken by design and you fight against fixing it.

Once I was interested in a reworked Nu with revenue. I’d have become shareholder in that case.
I’ve learned the lesson that Nu doesn’t want to be a business and only appear as one instead.

Have fun with your Ponzi scheme and better not get caught!
This warning goes especially to @jooize, who isn’t as anonymous as the puppet master @Phoenix.

#23

I do not see much difference between Bitcoin.
Miners sell bitcoins to survive.
So miners survive because people buy bitcoins.
So miners survive there are other people that are ready to sustain the value of the bitcoins you have.
If Nu is a ponzi then bitcoin is a ponzi.
Nu sell nushares to sustain itself. No more no less.
The value of my nushares are sustained because there is someone out there that buy nushares after me.

2 Likes
#24

Allow me to intersperse some education.

[quote]
Ponzi was paying early investors using the investments of later investors. While this swindle predated Ponzi by several years, it became so identified with him that it now bears his name. His scheme ran for over a year before it collapsed, costing his “investors” $20 million[/quote]
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi
Remark: $20 million was in 1920 a lot of money.

The problem at Nu:
not only NSR holders will suffer from the collapse, but NBT holders as well.
So it will not only hit “investors”, but “customers”, too.

If you still don’t understand the problem, I’m unable to explain it to you.

#25

Yes.

A Ponzi scheme creates nothing of economic value - it only redistributes revenues from new participants to previous participants. When no new participants can be found it collapses.

Nu doesn’t redistribute money from new entrants to old entrants dressed up as returns.

Nu offers pegged crypto assets that are designed to hold their value against fiat currencies.

Nu generates revenue on the spread between buy / sell side of its pegged assets and from transaction fees.

Nu can stabilise and continue to operate indefinitely given a sufficient pool of customers buying & selling Nu pegged assets.

Given that Nu provides a useful product, generates revenue, can reach sustainability, and doesn’t provide returns based on the redistribution of income from new entrants to old entrants, it is not a Ponzi scheme.

There’s nothing wrong with criticising the Nu business model where there are weaknesses, or pointing out risks, but calling it a Ponzi scheme is wrong, dishonest, and misleading.

1 Like
#26

When Nu can’t find people who buy NSR, the system collapses.

If there’s enough money in the cash register, it will be used for buybacks:

Nu sells NSR to new participants and distributes the funds to old participants through buybacks.

And to achieve that, Nu needs to find new participants who buy NSR.
If Nu fails to find new participants, Nu collapses.
Nu would have collapsed already, if it couldn’t have milked B&C Exchange, which sadly got it’s fate tied to Nu’s. I fear for B&C.

Regarding transaction fees: in the first 1.5 years Nu made a total of 254 NBT from fees. That’s close to nothing.
Any calculation for the revenue from trading? And please don’t start a calculation based on the spread.
While Nu might make tiny revenue from spread, it’s the net asset value that worries me and should worry you as well, because NBT are valued in USD, but Nu only trades in NBT/BTC.
The fluctuating BTC/USD rate combined with the customer trend to sell NBT when BTC rises and buy NBT when BTC falls endangers the NAV in Nu’s books.
Oh, right, Nu has no books. No need to worry here.

First you have to find out whether the NAV increases by trading the pegged assets.If it doesn’t, Nu can only survive by selling NSR. That’s why I call it Ponzi scheme unless someone shows me reliable accounting information that prove Nu’s sustainability without NSR sales.
A pity, no books, no proof.

Nu provides a useful product. I agree.
But I dispute the (net) revenue and sustainability. Without NSR sale Nu collapses. There’s no significant revenue from fees and the NAV is likely declining by trading. Catching falling knives is rarely a good idea. That’s a major part of Nu’s business. Sigh.
As you find in the beginning of this post, Nu is designed to redistribute money from new entrants to old participants.
That’s why it’s a Ponzi scheme.

You find my explanation why calling Nu a Ponzi scheme is not wrong above.
It’s not dishonest. Saying Nu makes revenue without having accounting to show it is dishonest.
Claiming that Nu can survive without selling NSR is misleading.

NSR holders as well as NBT holders are in danger.
If you can’t or don’t want to see it, I can stop wasting my time.
There’s plenty of information in the forum and there are plenty of warnings by now.

Have fun!

#27

Perhaps Nu can be interpreted as a non-fraudulent Ponzi-like operation until revenue surpasses operating costs.

The beginning stages of Nu makes it like customers are the ‘new investors’ who pay ‘returns’ to Nu’s investors. Nu is the operator that offers high short-term returns via park rates in order to incentivize customers be part of bootstrapping the economy.

Typically, well above-average returns are promised on the original investment […]

Promoters also try to minimize withdrawals by offering new plans to investors, often where money is frozen for a longer period of time, in exchange for higher returns.

With that in mind, it’s easy to understand red flags popping up when learning about Nu.

A cryptocoin like Bitcoin is prone to economic bubbles, but is not a Ponzi scheme. NuBits has real revenue potential and does not hide its economic health, so is not a Ponzi scheme.

2 Likes
#28

Money flow in Nu and investment rationale

NuShares are valued at a price with some market cap.

Customers buy NuBits for Bitcoins which all in excess of reserve ratio are placed in the NuShare market cap with NuShare buybacks that raise its value and perhaps most importantly incentivizes NuShare liquidity in the form of buyers who want part of the money and sellers who either believe they can buy lower later, are taking profit, or want out.

Investors today speculate on short-term movements by other speculators, NuBit demand, and future revenue of any sort. Investors may replace each other over time, similar to how VC funding kickstarts a company that later IPOs paying off the VC firm. Investors that believe in us may well provide enough time, funding, and as a result opportunity to further the business into making money.

The systemic sell pressures of NuShares consist of Nu’s own operating costs, and NuBit demand declines which only need to be covered by NuShare buyers until demand increases again or stabilizes after refilling the Tier 1–4 reserves with NuShare sales (Tier 6).

Approaching the point of a Tier 1–4 depletion, investors should still believe in Nu and pay the price to cover exiting NuBits in order to protect the NuShare market cap and customer trust in NuBits. Until demand stabilizes there will be turmoil in investors’ thoughts regarding how large of a decline in demand this will be and how long. Some will sell their NuShares for various reasons, increasing downward pressure. Buyers must balance the risks of a falling NuShare with potential gain from cheaper NuShares.

The lower the NuShare value drops, the larger part of future NuBit sales proceeds an investor is likely to be able to acquire. That’s a reward for making NuBits work, the incentive to buy NuShares in a sustained NuBit bear market.

Shareholders must find a curve for immediate reserve ratio scaling from none to infinite NuBits in circulation that reduces volatility loss from the reserve asset and stimulates NuShare liquidity. A lower reserve ratio has more powerful direct effect on the NuShare in both directions of NuBit demand.

The goal of Tier 1–4 is to cover NuBit holders’ immediate needs to sell back for Bitcoins. Large holders must understand the system’s limits of throughput and the risks of high exit pressure.

In the other direction, NuShare buybacks push up the NuShare at the rate of 50 cent or more per NuBit sold with current reserve ratio curve.

Nu is currently costly, but with developments it can be made truly autonomous. In synergy with B&C Exchange there is a lot of potential to automate, scale, and profit on NuBits.

3 Likes
#29

If NSR are required to be sold to build reserves (not to pay earlier investors), then it puts downward pressure on the NSR price in the market. If there aren’t any takers for NSR at a certain price, the price falls until buyers are found.

If there were no demand for NSR and the system lacked reserves & liquidity, then yes it would fail, but that would not make it a Ponzi, just a failed business. Unlike in a Ponzi, early holders will have lost, not gained.

The NSR supply needs to be able to increase when more reserves are required, and people who invest in the NSR to provide reserves and liquidity must be rewarded for providing this capital. NSR buybacks are a sensible way of doing this that is aligned with the shareholder and NBT holder incentives. It only happens if the network is in a good position and reserves are sufficient (or at least considered sufficient by those currently running Nu). Again, this can occur in a sustainable situation, so is not like a Ponzi.

Nu doesn’t need new participants once it is in balance - it only needs a critical mass of customers / users. Obviously a lack of new customers would be worrying to any business, so hopefully there’ll always be new participants, however an absence of new participants would be a sign of poor direction, not the bottom falling out of a Ponzi.

NBT market is tiny. USDT today has a volume of over $19m, and circulation of over $50m. This kind of scale has to be the goal for Nu, at which point the business model from transactions and trading may look very good. But for now, a model needs to be found that is trustworthy and robust to justify people using it.

I must admit that I have never seen a business plan / financial model for Nu to show exactly how it is intended to generate revenue and balance out / make a profit, and I think it would be good for this to be available.

I agree that it’s a shame there has not been any transparency on this, and while I don’t think that proves it to be a Ponzi, in order to build the degree of confidence needed to compete with USDT, people will need to see that the business model is robust.

It would be great to clarify revenue and sustainability I agree, though I don’t find it hard to imagine ways of a widely used Nu pegged asset making a profit through trading and transaction fees (I’ll try to run some numbers when I have time).

If on average, NBT are sold for $1.0025 and bought for $0.9975 and volumes are decent, why will trading be losing value?

Claiming that the network might be able to reach a point of sustainability, where constant NSR sales are not needed isn’t misleading, though nor has it yet been demonstrated.

Any crypto holders are involved in a high risk area, and in my view Nu is at the risky end of the Crypto spectrum, purely because it’s trying to achieve something that hasn’t been done before, and that involves uncertainties and challenges.

I’ve seen people’s warnings, and I am fully aware that Nu could fail & is experimental, but I see real potential in the model. I don’t see reason to dismiss it unless fatal flaws are exposed (e.g. a financial model that demonstrates Nu won’t work, followed by no action to improve / correct the model).

2 Likes
#30

I agree with this sentiment, and I’d love to see some models that explore what the costs and revenues might look like with $50m NBT out there and high transaction volumes.

Do you know if any are available, or have you had a play with numbers yourself?

1 Like
#31

I have seen a number of people say this, and my guess is that it is because they have not taken the time to take a look at our complete, public transaction logs. I am suggesting Nu’s financial details aren’t transparent to them personally because they haven’t examined these public records. The Liquidity Operations team has always publicly released every single transaction we have engaged in. That has always been our policy.

We spend a lot of time crunching the raw numbers to produce various regular financial reports, which we make available on this forum. There is a lot of additional analysis we would like to perform and make publicly available, but this is a matter of funding and development.

Nu is quite possibly the most transparent financial institution ever. I can’t think of any organization that is more transparent. It is true that the identity of NuShare holders is private, but everything they do is public. Similarly everything done on the blockchain is completely public. Everything Liquidity Operations does is completely public.

Said another way, all NuBit transactions are public, all NuShare transactions are public, all shareholder votes are public, every NuBit bought or sold at any time by Liquidity Operations is public and spending on contractors and other expenses is all public.

There isn’t anything left to reveal really. Nu is likely the most transparent financial institution ever to exist.

1 Like
#32

I think we’re talking about different things. Nu is indeed very transparent financially as you say - it’s all on the blockchain and records of actions are posted in the forum. This is brilliant.

What I haven’t seen is financial modelling and projections for Nu’s business model at various scales, with anticipated costs, revenues, reserves etc. A bit like what you’d find in a business plan.

Are there any financial projections like this available?

2 Likes
#33

I’m playing with the idea of creating charts in Numbers/Excel to see what could be, but have other priorities.

Transaction fees of 0.01 US-NBT at 10,000 transactions per day would net $3,000 a month. Bitcoin saw 160,000–350,000 per day the last 12 months for reference. Daily trading volume of all cryptocoins has been between a hundred million to one billion USD in 2017. I feel optimistic about the volume a decentralized native exchange would see.

I agree that we should create such projections. Both for us and as marketing to investors. Do you happen to know your way around doing that? Perhaps you can provide starting point ideas for what they should contain.

1 Like
#34

I can’t speak to the sustainability of Jordan’s liquidity engine model. I understand some still stick around here because they believe the model was not able to be fully tested and allowed to fail on its own, so they hold out hope that scaling up the NuBit supply would make it possible to generate revenue. I have already detailed my thoughts on how this liquidity engine model is supposed to work and I did so with the best of intentions, to bring about a better understanding of the model for shareholders.

However I was ignored by @Phoenix the first time I posted it and when I brought it back up later I was told by him that he didn’t have the time and that he would get back to it later. I find this avoidance of the subject suspicious. It makes no sense to me that he would not want everyone here to understand exactly what he is trying to accomplish.

Detailing his model for everyone and answering important questions is one of the most important things he could do to regain the trust of shareholders and bring about a greater understanding of how the network is supposed to work in a sustainable way. It makes no sense that he would want to avoid this subject because it is the source of all the arguments about Nu’s financial sustainability. Clearing up misunderstandings about the model is a no brainer to get people on the path of moving forward once again, yet he avoids the subject like the plague. I can only think of a couple different reasons…

  • He doesn’t want to reveal Nu’s trade secrets and would rather keep this vital information to himself and away from competitors and is just trying to get us all to go along with it in a “you’ll see eventually” attitude.

  • He’s a liar and a scammer and avoids the subject because attempting to answer questions about the model would just draw attention to this fact. He places a full understanding of the model out of reach on purpose in order to draw in new investors that think he’s got all the answers.

Because of the following things, I’m inclined to believe it’s the latter…

  • He switched identities from Jordan Lee to Phoenix without explanation and has also created other temporarily used identities that he used to praise himself and his actions. He ignores all questions about it.

  • It has been proven that he owns the majority of the network, yet everyone here thinks it’s ok that he votes to reward himself with large amounts of NuShares which just makes the distribution even worse.

  • Instead of putting forward valid arguments and using logic when rebutting someone, he instead attacks the person or their character, calling people who disagree with him trolls, saying that they care more about community than building a sustainable money making business, claiming they’re emotional because shareholders rejected them for unprofessionalism (what proof?) and engaging in conspiracy theories without evidence about the identity of one of his harshest critics so he can slander them. These are all signs of someone who is hiding something. Instead of arguing with facts he tries to personally attack and slander his opponents, calling them rebels and traitors.

  • He has ignored very important questions about the handling of money and unauthorized transactions that were not approved by any motion passed by shareholders and may have broken NuLaw. These questions have been repeatedly asked by shareholders, yet Phoenix has chosen to repeatedly ignore them and give no answers. This is the most suspicious behavior listed here.

I personally can’t understand why any of you would continue to follow and place faith in this person given all of the above, especially the ignoring of major questions where he is suspected of wrongdoing. The first priority any of you should have before moving forward with any of his plans is demanding answers to these unanswered questions.

If there is no wrongdoing on his part then he should be able to easily answer them and defend himself. If he still refuses to answer them though, then you should know something is not quite right. No honest person would continue to straight avoid questions like these. It is more than suspicious! And more importantly, why wouldn’t you want to know these answers before committing to support such a person and his plans? Why risk your financial fate by tying yourself to a person who has a bunch of secrets like this about his actions handling large amounts of investor funds? How can you trust him to be acting in Nu’s interest rather than his own?

I challenge all of you here to call on Phoenix to answer these questions right now! Don’t let him get away with avoiding it anymore. If he can’t or won’t listen to calls for the truth, then you should know that this is a huge red flag to STAY AWAY!

3 Likes
Actively Maintained Data Feeds
#35

I have the trust of shareholders. They passed my last large grant for liquidity operations funds with landslide support of around 65%. I am a politician with a constituency of NuShare holders, or NuCitizens, in our democratic simulation. You have mentioned publicly that you no longer control, or animate, any NuCitizens. That makes you a foreigner. Just as a French politician is not very concerned with the opinions and values of British people, I am not very concerned about yours.

#36

No, you passed that grant all by yourself. Some voted with you, but it was your shares that overwhelmingly made it cross the finish line. You couldn’t have done it without owning such a massive stake. You are an elitist jackass that thinks you are above everyone just because you can outvote everyone. That doesn’t mean you have the support of shareholders. It just means that you can vote for yourself.

If you did nothing wrong then answer honestly why you have avoided answering the questions I listed for MONTHS now. If have done no wrong, then you have nothing to fear.

#37

I understand your reaction.
But in the blockchain, empathy has no meaning, unfortunately.
Only financial incentives.

#38

Sure, but everyone here has a financial incentive to demand the truth from Phoenix on those events I linked to above. Without it, none of you will know for sure if Phoenix is just taking you all for another ride. Letting him avoid the issue is admitting defeat and hoping you aren’t scammed. If you find inconsistencies like these, you do an investigation to determine the truth. That is what needs to be done here.

2 Likes
#39

That is not a great look for sure and I do hope to find some answers and transparency on that eventually. The most logical thing was to do those transactions and handling of B&C money to save Nu. They were highly contentious actions and still are and they probably wouldn’t have passed easily. Not passing a motion for that is in my interpretation breaking NuLaw and B&C law which is a very bad look and doesn’t provide trust. It is the same as driving a red light. Always a breach of the law, but in exceptional circumstances you might be able to get away with it.

In that train of thought I want to believe the idea is/was to increase the value of NSR and with that Nu and the B&C funds. This still needs to be proven valid. It would be one of a few reasons I can think of why he is still around and driving Nu. Real scammers would be gone by now. Possibility is to scam the remaining few and the new ones again, but that would be pretty bold. I’m prepared to take that risk given his behaviour and I’m a bit of believer which is probably a very bad investment driver. I might be proven wrong eventually, maybe not. Take your bets or not.

1 Like
#40

I’m actually more concerned about what @Dhume brought up in his thread.