Investors

Conning the Crowd

Capital Markets, Investors, Issuers , , ,

Equity crowdfunding allows companies to sell their stock or debt offerings directly to investors by placing the offerings on a website platform. No stockbroker or stockbrokerage firm is needed.

An industry of crowdfunding platforms, experts and attorneys has emerged to help these companies raise the capital they seek.  Some do it better than others.  There are several that I would recommend without reservation.  But at the same time, some people do it so poorly that they make a mockery of the whole idea.

Some of those who do it poorly are now suggesting that that equity crowdfunding is a failure.  In reality, those people were never equipped to do it correctly in the first place and never really understood what selling stock to investors entails.

The one idea that these people and others in the crowdfunding industry never embraced was that “no one wins unless the investors win”.  There will never be a shortage of companies looking for capital.  Connecting those companies with people willing to invest takes more than the passive approach that many of the crowdfunding platforms have adopted. If a platform says “we list any company” I would recommend that you find another platform.

There are a small number of platforms that are licensed brokerage firms or run by people who have experience in the mainstream brokerage industry. They seem to appreciate what it takes to make equity crowdfunding work. These platforms offer demonstrably better investments.

The better platforms take the time to carefully consider each company that comes to them seeking capital.  They will not just allow any company to list their offering on their website.  Funding only companies that have a chance of success and providing investors with a return on their investment is the key to success for any crowdfunding platform.

One of the assumptions that people who lobbied for the JOBS Act put forward was the idea that a crowd of investors has the ability to review the offering materials being put out by a new company, evaluate that information and make intelligent decisions about which companies to invest in and which to pass on by.  The crowd never had that ability. Unless you have a working knowledge of accounting, analyzing the balance sheet and income statements of any investment will always be difficult.

When I first looked at crowdfunding I wrote two separate articles about Reg. A+ offerings that I thought were deficient in a number of ways. My primary argument in each case was that the numbers just did not add up. I thought that each company was promising more than it likely could deliver to the investors.  If I owned the platform where these two offerings were listed, I would not have allowed either to list because if they smell like they may be scamming investors, they probably are.

Both of those companies, Elio Motors and Med-X were subsequently the defendants in regulatory actions.  There have not been that many Reg. A+ offerings to date and the fact that there have been several other regulatory actions concerning Reg. A+ offerings should raise the eyebrows of any serious people in the crowdfunding industry.  I have looked at a few other offerings that were clearly suspect as well, but which the regulators have not yet publicly questioned. For the most part, many in the crowdfunding industry just do not care if investors get a fair shake.

A great many people who own and operate crowdfunding platforms simply do not know what they are doing.  If the platforms do not reject these scams, how will they ever build the long term trust of the investors that the industry cannot live without?

Finally there was an idea that websites would develop where the crowd could share its evaluations of various offerings and where the issuers could respond to comments and clarify what they were offering to investors. A true give and take of information so that investors might make informed decisions.

In most cases this has not really happened.  For all the talk about the wisdom of the crowd, there are people who are so foolish that they will not listen when someone makes a cogent analysis of an offering that would lead anyone with an ounce of common sense to invest in something else.

Case in point.

Both Elio Motors and Med-X were listed on a crowdfunding platform called StartEngine.  As I said, neither should have been allowed to come to market because it was pretty obvious that neither was giving investors the whole story.

StartEngine (SE) is currently offering its own shares to public investors under Reg. A+. I wrote an article about StartEngine’s offering as well. I questioned why it was not making a profit in an industry that should be enormously profitable.  As with all my articles, I asked some hard questions, but I always try to be polite. That cannot be said for everyone.

In the name of transparency, StartEngine posts the comments people make about its offering right on its webpage.  Several people sent me this comment which was posted on the StartEngine offering page which I re-publish here verbatim:

-StartEngine is paying its founders $400k apiece per year. This is INSANITY.
-StartEngine is paying all of its EXECUTIVES over $1,000,000 per year!! This is also insanity.
-Half of that pay was in cash bonuses. This needs to be addressed by their CEO especially as they have not made any profits and are taking investor capital.
-Investors are being offered Common Stock NOT Preferred Stock as they should be offered.
-What does that mean? That means that the founders have significant liquidation preferences over the investors.
-You are asking your investors to assign their voting rights to the CEO. This may not even be completely legal.
-The valuation of the company is unheard of,especially for a company that has continually lost money without any profit.
-There is no road map or path to reaching a revenue breakeven point where you can even sustain operations without SIGNIFICANT additional capital commitments.
-Investors will be HEAVILY diluted after this raise or worse there will VERY likely be a down round.
-The fund raise leaves the company with VERY little cash reserves. Guaranteeing the need for more cash.
-StartEngine has to be in the process of registering as a  full broker dealer for what it needs to accomplish the goals stated.
-The language of the offering circular makes it appear that SE is doing everything it can to shield investors from knowledge of its current and actual future plans as well as prevent them from having any ability to have a voice in the company.
-Over $5,446,367 has been spent to date in deficit without any profits.
-StartEngine does not include any listing or sufficient breakdown on its technology
-There is a significant lack of data and information that you would find in a standard pitch deck of a seed stage startup
-There is no timeframe for the ending of this campaign.
-There is no coverage of an exit strategy or potential for one.
-StartEngine does rolling closings and does not disclose when or how it will go about these, directly in conflict with the traditional “crowdfunding” model of get to your goal or get your  money back.
-StartEngine does not cover much on its competitors or the competing models or market.
                Please address these issues.

Certainly this list includes some issues that the company would do well to address. This commentator is no idiot and he is one person of whom it can be said that there are people who can read and assess a crowdfunded offering. He is exactly the type of investor that the crowdfunding industry needs if it is going to succeed.

So did the company respond with a point by point explanation?  It did not.  This is the company’s response which I also republish verbatim:

Thank you for your comment. We believe our offering describes our business effectively, and clearly shows our goals for the future. In fact, your critique of the offering is only possible because we chose to be so transparent.  If you have a specific question about StartEngine that will help you to decide whether or not to invest, please ask. We’d like to provide all the information we can.

Personally, I never would have let a client of mine publish that response.  It strikes me as arrogant and treats a potential investor who asked intelligent questions as someone who can be ignored. To me it smacks of the Wizard of OZ saying “don’t look behind the curtain.”  I would have counseled a carefully worded point by point response that demonstrated respect for the potential investor.

In truth I would never have suggested that StartEngine prepare a Reg A + offering or seek public investors.  As the anonymous commentator points out for any number of reasons investors are going to have a difficult time making a profit on this investment. This is not a charity. The executives are taking out a substantial amount of money ever year.  Because the company is not profitable, some of the money they are taking home is likely to be the investors’ money.

Despite this, the same web page notes that StartEngine has over 400 new shareholders as a result of this offering.  If an active crowdfunding platform can successfully make this offering despite its flaws, why would it care if any of the offerings that were listing on its platform had any value or could possibly offer a return to the people who are investing in them?

In my mind Elio and Med-X were strikes one and two against StartEngine and this offering is strike three. I would not advise a client to list on their platform and I certainly would not advise a client to invest in any company that does. In my opinion, investors deserve and should demand better.

As I said, this offering and the commentary was sent to me by an acquaintance who has toiled in the crowdfunding industry and the commentary was also mentioned to me by others.  They privately say tsk-tsk but do not want to publicly say what needs to be said.

I look at it this way, not every stockbroker is honest or competent. When they do bad things investors lose money. No one hates to see a stockbroker taken away from his office in handcuffs more than the honest stockbroker working across the street.  Bad actors and stupid people just demean the reputation of the whole industry and make it more difficult for honest people to make a living. That is true in crowdfunding as well.

In the past two years I have spoken with a lot of hard working people in the crowdfunding industry who are trying to help small companies find investors by giving investors a solid chance to make a return commensurate with the risk they are taking. You know who you are. Keep up the good work.

 

 

 

Investment Advisor Litigation When the Market Corrects

Investors, Law , , , ,

When the stock market finally corrects it will be the eighth major correction since I first started working on Wall Street back in the 1970s. It may happen next week or next year but it will certainly happen.  When the market does correct investors will certainly experience some losses.

Everyone understands that the stock market goes up and down. That does not mean that investors should expect to lose a significant amount of the money they made during the bull market when the correction does happen.

At every correction investors who lose more money than they anticipated bring claims for compensation against their stockbrokers and advisors.  For a stockbroker registered at FINRA most of the claims will be handled by FINRA in an arbitration proceeding. As soon as the claim is filed it shows up on the stockbroker’s Brokercheck report.

Many of the investment advisors who are registered with the SEC or with a state agency but not FINRA also have arbitration clauses in their customer agreements. They too are supposed to amend their disclosure filings to report customer claims, but few do.  I know of investment advisors who have had multiple customer claims but still show a clean record.

Investment advisors are always considered to be fiduciaries to their clients. As such they required to fulfill all of the duties of a fiduciary.  A fiduciary’s first duty is to protect the assets that are entrusted to them.

You cannot protect the assets in an investment portfolio unless you are prepared to sell them when the market turns down.  For advisors who are paid based upon the amount of money in the portfolio this creates a conflict of interest that no one wants to talk about.

Too much cash in the portfolio invites the customer to withdraw the cash and invest in something else, like real estate.  Good advisors will offer a large variety of investments so that they can always find one poised to increase in value or provide a steady income.

This will be the first market downturn where a significant amount of assets are being held by robo-investment advisors.  When the next correction comes, robo-investment advisors are going to be likely and easy targets for the plaintiff’s bar.  Robo-investment advisors are not programmed to sell positions when the market begins to turn down and are likely to stay invested while losses pile up.

Robo- investment advisors select their portfolios using algorithms that are fed with historical market data.  Everyone knows that past performance is no indicator of future results but the SEC allows this sham to continue. For a robo-investment advisor to have any value it would need to be able to assess what is happening in the real world economy and what is likely to happen as a result.

Robo-investment advisors claim to use asset allocation to select their portfolios and to protect their customers from losses. The simple truth is that most robo-advisors (and many human investment advisors) have no idea how asset allocation is done correctly.

The idea behind asset allocation is that you can create a portfolio of non-correlated assets that will reduce the risk if some macro-economic event rocks the markets.  Most robo-investment advisors give lip service to the idea of a diverse portfolio but few actually construct their portfolios correctly.

Many human and robo-investment advisors construct portfolios with asset classes such as “large cap stocks”, “mid-cap stocks” “small cap stocks” and “international stocks”.  As regards most macro-economic events such as a spike in the price of oil or an increase in interest rates, these asset classes are perfectly correlated with each other, not the opposite as they should be.

Asset allocation is designed to deal with the constant yin-yang between stocks and bonds triggered by interest rate fluctuations. For a long term portfolio, you would accumulate bonds at par when interest rates were high. As interest rates peak and began to come down, you would expect stocks to begin to appreciate, so you would sell bonds at a premium and begin buying good stocks in different, non-correlated industries.

Asset allocation works because its portfolio re-balancing system is based upon the premise that you will buy-low and sell-high. Robo-investment advisors re-balance their portfolio based upon a pre-determined formula that simply ignores what is likely to go up and what is likely to come down.  Many human advisors do not do the kind of research necessary to intelligently re-balance a portfolio either.

I worked on a lot of claims against stockbrokers and investment advisors after the market crashes in 2001 and 2008.  They always put up the same, weak defenses.

First, they argue that no one can predict the top of the market.  That is absolutely true and totally irrelevant. The great bulk of intelligent, prudent investors only invest in stocks that they think will appreciate in value. If your robo (or human) investment advisor told you to buy APPL or a mutual fund or ETF of “international stocks” it is fair that assume that they did so after some analysis that concluded the position would appreciate. Otherwise the advisor brings no value to the relationship.

If the advisor is actually doing that analysis and it includes more than just consulting a Ouija board, sooner or later that analysis will say “sell” or at least indicate that the share price will not appreciate much more.  The most common indicator is price/earnings ratio which economists tell us will usually fluctuate within an established range. When prices get out of the range on the high side, they will usually decline and revert to established norms.

Next, brokers and advisors defend these claims by arguing that clients should stay fully invested at all times because the market always comes back. That is another insipid defense.  It is akin to suggesting that you should keep your hand on a hot stove because it will eventually cool down.

As we approach the end of this long bull market every investor should be happy with the gains that they made in their portfolio. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has more than doubled since the end of 2008.  Even if your portfolio had a smaller gain, why would anyone want to give those gains back when the market declines?

Next, advisors offer lame excuses as to why they did not hedge the portfolio against a market downturn. There are a number of ways to accomplish this but very few advisers have a system to do so effectively.  I have asked many advisors why they do not hedge their portfolios or include stop loss orders to protect against a serious loss. They usually tell me that they were afraid to sell positions because the market would resume its climb and they would miss further gains.

That particular defense only works if the advisor has some research that suggests the market will go higher still. Many of the advisors that I cross-examined over the years had nothing more than their own gut feeling.

Where advisors tend to really screw up is when they get into the habit of adding speculative “alternative” investments to a portfolio to “juice” the returns. This may be acceptable for people who understand the risks and who are willing to accept the losses if things do not turn out as planned.  That does not describe a lot of people who are sold these investments thinking that they are hedging against losses in other investments.

Real estate investments are commonplace as an alternative and many advisors will add an exchange traded REIT to a client’s portfolios. These are very different than non-traded REITs which are usually private placements. The risk is much greater if the investment cannot be sold and at least some of the value retained.  Non-traded REITS have been the subject of thousands of claims against brokers and advisors in the last 10 years.

At the end of the day most of an advisor’s clients turn over the management of their portfolio because they want the portfolio to grow. That should not be that difficult for any good advisor but like anything else, you have to know what you are doing and you have to put in the hours to do it right.

Giving good professional investment advice takes skill and it takes effort, but it is also a people business. The number one complaint that I heard over and over, year after year, from people who contacted me asking about suing their broker or advisor was always the same, “He stopped returning my phone calls”.

When the market takes a sharp downturn, people want advice. That is another reason why robo-investment advisors are likely to see more litigation when the down-turn comes. They are never going to hold your hand.

 

Equity Crowdfunding 2018

Capital Markets, Investors, Issuers , , , , ,

I received year end 2017 reports from quite a few equity crowdfunding platforms and consultants. All were glowing with their accomplishments.  Several reported the number of offerings that had successfully raised money. None spoke of the offerings that paid the listing fees and failed to get funding.

Overall the equity crowdfunding industry continues to grow and become more popular with both issuers and investors.  Still, no one wants to look at the significant problems that still plague this industry.

There is absolutely no reason why any company that lists on a crowdfunding platform should not raise the money that it seeks.  There is no reason that investors should be offered the opportunity to invest in scams or in businesses that are unlikely to succeed.  The amount of effort that the crowdfunding industry expends to protect investors from scams and losses is virtually nil. The crowdfunding industry cannot expect to succeed if it does not get its act together and begin to address these issues.

Equity crowdfunding allows a company to sell its shares, bonds or notes directly to investors through a website rather than through a licensed stockbroker. That can save a company a lot of money. It also allows start-ups and companies that are too small for most stockbrokers to handle efficiently to raise capital.

A stockbrokerage firm provides two specific and necessary tasks to any stock offering. First it provides investment banking services to the company to assist properly structuring the offering so that it will be accepted by investors.  Second, the brokerage firm provides the sales and marketing efforts that attract the investors, close the sales, and raise the money.  Both tasks are necessary. Offering a new issue of securities without either being done well is like changing a tire without a jack.

The platforms are remarkably passive as regards the structure and sales of any offering. They are content to accept listing fees from any company that wants to list. They do not care if the offering is successful. They do not care if the company is a good investment or if the investors will make a profit.  These are the crowdfunding industry’s biggest mistakes. For the crowdfunding industry to succeed it must reduce the risks to its investors.

The largest beneficiary from equity crowdfunding has certainly been the real estate industry. There are established real estate syndicators in this market offering investors participation in single properties and in public and private REITs.  Several have set up their own proprietary platforms to showcase their own offerings; others use public platforms where their offerings compete with other properties.

Many of these syndicators have always used private placements as a source of equity funding. Crowdfunding has enabled real estate syndicators to save the 10% -15% that stockbrokerage firms charge to fund their projects.  This lower cost usually provides more cash flow for investors.

Most of the platforms are using Regulation D private placements because there is no reason for an income producing property to be “public.”  Real estate is easy for investors to understand. Investors trust real estate not just as an asset class, but as an investment.

Start-ups have a more difficult time raising funds on crowdfunding platforms.  And before you say that is to be expected, when you compare most start-up offerings with real estate offerings it should become obvious that most of the deficiencies with start-ups are correctable.

If you are investing in the equity of a commercial real estate offering there is usually a bank that has done an appraisal of the property and a physical inspection.  With start-ups the valuations are often off the charts. Rarely has anyone actually tested the product to see if it is viable or conducted a patent search to determine if the product infringes on someone else’s patent.

With a commercial real estate offering there is usually a seasoned property manager to handle the day to day business affairs.  With many start-ups the management is often less experienced than it should be.  Asking for investors to fund your business if you have never run a business, or do not have good managers or advisors in place becomes an up-hill fight.

Real estate offerings are most often structured to provide income to investors. Simply stating that the property will be sold after 7-10 years is all the exit strategy most investors need.  Many start-ups would have a much easier time raising funds if they structured the offering as preferred shares or provided income through revenue sharing or royalty payments.

When I advise a start-up seeking to raise capital I always offer my sense of what they should do prior to the offering to strengthen the company. I advise them how they should structure their offering to increase the chance of success.  This is the advice that the crowdfunding platforms should offer to every start-up that is paying for the privilege of listing, but do not.

My hope for 2018 is that the crowdfunding platforms get on board and do the same.  The platforms handling start-ups just need to become more proactive. There is no reason that every offering that lists on a crowdfunding platform should not be funded.

When the JOBS Act was passed there was a lot of discussion about small investors being able to invest. Millennials, especially, were arguing that they were being denied the opportunity to invest in the next Facebook.   So at the end of 2015, the SEC promulgated changes in Regulation A allowing a slimmed down registration process for smaller offerings of up to $50 million.  By any standards Reg. A has been an abject failure.

It takes a lot more money and a lot more time to prepare and complete a Reg. A offering than a Reg. D offering. I will advise any company seeking funding to use the latter instead of the former.  A company that spends an additional 6 months and $200,000 to reach small investors is usually telegraphing that the more sophisticated accredited investors do not want to invest.

Reg. A has been used to raise a fair amount of money, but the issuers themselves have not prospered. Several of the most hyped offerings, such as Elio Motors, have crashed and burned taking the investors with them. The share price of most of the other companies that used Reg. A to raise capital have not been able to maintain the original offering price. And this is in the middle of an historic bull market.

The Reg.A platforms and advisors do not support the price, after the shares have been issued,the way a stockbrokerage firm would.  Again, my hope for 2018 is that they get their act together and provide all the services that a company issuing shares to the public needs, both before and after the offering.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the crowdfunding market has been the lack of attention to the Reg. CF portals. These handle the smallest offerings of up to $1,000,000 that cater start-ups in need of seed capital.  They represent the very essence of what crowdfunding should be about; small investors helping small companies.

Unfortunately, only about 35 Reg. CF portals are operating.  Those that are operating also take a passive role. They fail to assist the companies with the structuring of the offering. They fail to assist with marketing.  The simple fact is that if you are going to raise $1,000,000 by taking one or two hundred dollars from a lot of small investors, then you need to reach out to tens of thousands of investors before you find enough who are willing to invest.  That takes both marketing money and muscle.

It is pretty clear that most start-ups will fail within 24 months and these investors will lose their money. It is these small start-ups that need the most help and these small investors who need the most protection from loss.  But again, the crowdfunding industry has just not provided that help in any meaningful way.

I hope to make a contribution to the crowdfunding industry in 2018.  I am working with a group that wants to provide a measure of protection to small investors that are investing in these small offerings.  They are discussing starting a new Reg. CF portal where small companies can raise $500,000-$1,000,000.

They intend to offer a program to buy back any shares of any offering that lists on their Reg. CF portal if the company fails within 24 months.  You know that they can only do this if they offer only companies that they think will survive and succeed.

This type of vetting is missing in the crowdfunding industry and I am pleased to be part of the team that is putting this together. Besides me the team includes people with years of investment and commercial banking experience and a young, dynamic marketing team.  The goal is to select only the best companies to offer to investors, help those companies get the funding they need and help them succeed thereafter.

Right now, the group is seeking a very small number of investors to help fund the platform itself.  It is using a revenue sharing model so these investors can expect their investment returned quickly with significant return thereafter. If you have an interest in participating with an investment, contact me and I will put you in touch with the CEO.

 

The Future of Investment Advice

Investors , , ,

In order to understand the future of investment advice I think it is essential to understand how the industry has developed to where it is today.

When I started in the financial services industry back in the 1970’s retail customers got advice about what to buy and sell from their stockbrokers.  At the larger brokerage firms that usually meant that your broker would call you and tell that they or the firm’s research department had identified a stock that was a “buying opportunity”. This was often accompanied by a recommendation of what you should sell to pay for your new purchase so your broker would make not one, but two commissions from the recommendation.

When the stock market suddenly crashed in 1987 a lot of customers asked their stock broker why the broker had not seen the crash coming. The brokers really had no good answer. The crash took a lot of money out of the market and caused a lot of customers to lose faith in their broker’s ability to select investments for them.

Partially to placate those customers with something new and partially to make more money the industry introduced wrap accounts. A wrap account places the customer’s account into the hands of a professional money manager for an annual fee which is shared with the introducing stockbroker.

Wrap accounts introduced the idea that the individual brokers would be compensated on the customer assets under management (AUM) rather than the commissions that their accounts generated. This let the brokers do what they do best (sell) and let the professional money managers manage the accounts.

It also created a conflict of interest. Managers kept investors fully invested because that is what they had been hired to do. If the managers started to accumulate large cash positions in customers’ accounts, the customers might withdraw the cash. That would be counter-productive to the brokers who were being paid to bring in more and more new assets.

By the mid-1990s the market had recovered nicely and people started asking how long the boom would last.  At the end of 1996 Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan attributed the sharp run up in stock prices to “irrational exuberance”.  Neither the brokers nor the money managers advised the customers to sell when they had large profits and maintain a cash position

Much of the run-up in the 1990s was attributed to new tech companies that not everyone understood. Consequently, the firms hired highly qualified research analysts to parse through the various issues and recommend what they considered to be the best.

At the same time, the brokerage firms were making a lot of money by underwriting new issues of these tech stocks. In many cases the research analysts were working to support the efforts of the firms’ investment bankers. They only wrote reports describing why their firm’s banking client’s offerings were a “buying opportunity”.

That also created conflicts of interest.  When the market finally crashed it was revealed that some analysts had never suggested that the price of any of the stocks they covered would not go higher. Some analysts never recommended a “sell” on any stock they followed even when fundamental analysis told them that they should be selling.

Again, when the market crashed in 2001 a lot of people asked their broker why they did not see the crash coming or take some defensive action to protect their profits.  And again, the brokers did not have a good answer other than “no one can really predict the market” which, of course, is exactly the skill that the stockbrokers and money managers had been espousing to customers all along.

The brokers themselves got more than a little frustrated with the large wire houses and many jumped ship. Sometook their clients and set up shop as independent investment advisors.

The accounts were still housed at a brokerage firm that got paid a commission on each trade but the advisors now kept all of the annual account management fees. This was a better deal for the advisor even if they now needed to pay their own rent and overhead. The idea that no one can really predict the market suited these independent advisors well because they were more interested in acquiring new customers and assets than picking good investments.

That led to a concept that as long as a portfolio was diversified it really did not matter which stocks were in it. By diversifying the stock portion of the portfolio into different asset classes the advisors were trying to avoid what had happened in the tech wreck. The theory was that if you bought stocks in different asset classes, the collapse of one sector, like tech, would not hurt you too badly.

This did not help investors when the market crashed in 2008. This crash was caused by a bubble in real estate and foolish lending in the financial sector. Most companies are affected by what occurs with banks and real estate as both effect business and consumer spending. Diversification only mitigates certain risks. This crash involved a systemic risk, not an asset sector risk, a fact that many brokers never understood.

It should not surprise anyone that investors again asked their advisors why they did not get them out of the market before it crashed.  Again the response was “no one can predict the market”.

Since 2008 the advisor industry has seen the rise of robo-advisors.  These are popular with millennial investors who do not trust the Wall Street professionals after 2008.  Robo-advisors select portfolios based upon algorithms. This makes as much sense as throwing darts at a list of stocks and bonds even if you are a champion dart thrower.

Robo-advisors are not even attempting to predict the market and they are not programmed to ever sell the portfolio if the market starts to crash, which we all know, it will. They are just selling diversification at a lower price. They achieve “diversification” by buying mutual funds or ETFs. These contain so many stocks that mathematically, there is no actual diversification.

Robo-advisors advertise that people pay too much for investment advice. I would argue that most customers pay too little.  My current advisor spends countless hours poring over financial statements and research reports to pick individual stocks.  He gets the same 1% of AUM as advisors who put all of their clients into pre-selected diversified portfolios of various funds and ETFs without really knowing a lot about them or how they might be expected to perform. With investment advice, like everything else in life, the rule should be that you get what you pay for.

What I think may be an intelligent alternative going forward is for people to just put their investment advisor on a fixed monthly or yearly retainer.  It would cost more for a larger portfolio than a smaller one because all portfolios need to be constantly monitored and larger portfolios require more time. Advisors would keep their customers and get referrals by keeping their customers happy.

And what makes customers happy?  They want to have more money in their accounts at the end of the year than they had at the beginning of the year. That is true even if the market crashes because there is nothing more foolish than staying in the market when the market is going down.

The customers will never truly be happy and get the results they truly want until advisors thoroughly analyze and review the stocks they recommend and purchase and hold only those that they believe are likely to appreciate. They will never get there if advisors refuse to take profits and move to cash when the market indicates that they should. They will never get there if advisors diversify to mitigate some risks, but not all.

People actually do predict the future performance of individual stocks and the market in general. I doubt that you would be surprised if I told you that the ones who do it well get paid a lot of money by investment banks, mutual funds and large institutions.

The advisor industry needs to understand that parroting the phrase “no one can predict the market” every time the market corrects is the fastest way to be demonstrate that you do not know what you are doing. Providing beneficial investment advice takes time and effort. Advisors are entitled to be paid for their efforts. But first they have to actually do the work and that work is accurately predicting the future price of individual securities and the market in general.

 

 

Behind the Crowdfunding Curtain- StartEngine Goes Public

Capital Markets, Investors, Issuers , , ,

StartEngine, one of the first and most active crowdfunding platforms has filed the paperwork to offer stock under Regulation A. They are raising $5 million, offering 1,000,000 shares to the public at $5 per share.

If you follow my blog, you know that I have written about several other Reg. A offerings; Elio Motors, Med-X, Ziyen, etc. which I thought were essentially scams run by people with questionable intentions.  I have my issues with StartEngine, but I never thought the owners were dishonest or trying to scam investors. Nothing of that sort should be inferred here.

The fact is that crowdfunding platforms, like most businesses, are not public. This offering is the first I have come across where a company that is actually active in this marketplace has published audited financial statements and made disclosures about its business and the risks inherent in that business. For someone like me, who is working in crowdfunding with some of StartEngine’s competitors, looking through this information was irresistible.

First and foremost, StartEngine itself is a start-up and is losing money funding other start-ups.The company lost $1 million in 2015, almost $3 million in 2016 and another $1 million during the first 6 months of 2017. The company had initially raised a little over $5 million in venture capital and has essentially burned through it. It now wants another $5 million to continue.

StartEngine’s business is basically a website and has 13 full time employees. It has no cost for goods sold and the bulk of its expenses are for administrative purposes and marketing.

The core premise of equity crowdfunding is that it facilitates the sale of new issue securities without the commissioned salespeople who perform this function at traditional stock brokerage firms. The commission savings are passed on to the companies who list their offerings on the platforms and ultimately to the investors. It is certainly fair to expect that because the offerings do not have a commission expense more of the funds that are raised will go to the company that is funding its business.

The JOBS Act permits three types of offerings to be funded on a website. StartEngine offers all three; Regulation A, Regulation Crowdfunding (CF) and Regulation D offerings.  At the end of August StartEngine announced that it also intends to offer crypto-currency offerings(ICOs) on its platform. With a full menu, StartEngine can offer more flexibility to a company seeking funds and a larger selection of investments for potential investors.

Under Reg. D a company can raise an unlimited amount of money from wealthier, accredited investors, under Reg. A up to $50 million and under Reg. CF up about $1 million. Reg. A and Reg. CF offerings can be sold to any investor albeit in limited amounts.

StartEngine was one of the first movers in the Reg. A market. The offering document notes that they have hosted the Reg.A offerings of ten companies.  StartEngine’s first offering, Elio Motors, eventually raised $16,917,576 from 6,345 investors.

Regulation CF went into effect on May 16, 2016. StartEngine has acted as intermediary for offerings by 58 companies; raising $7,383,960. According to Crowdfund Capital Advisors, of the 26 platforms registered with FINRA, StartEngine was second in terms of the number of Reg. CF offerings. Overall, in two years of operations, the StartEngine platform has raised about $40 million for issuers from over 17,000 investors.

For a little perspective I write the legal paperwork for crowdfunded offerings being made under Reg. D that are listed on various competing platforms.  I am on target to write the paperwork for $50 million worth of offerings during calendar 2017 and probably more next year. I work part time, out of my home on a 5-year old laptop.

My advertising budget is zero dollars. I get all my business through referrals or because someone reads one of my blog articles and thinks that I have some common sense. I take the time to speak with a lot of people who are starting new businesses and are seeking capital. I have referred a few to appropriate crowdfunding platforms, even if someone else writes the paperwork.

With a six figure per year advertising budget StartEngine should easily be able to host and sell $100 million worth of offerings per year or more.  If they did, the company would be profitable.  So what is the problem?

There are three parties to every transaction, the company seeking investment, the investors and the platform that introduces the other two. The intent should be that all three will ultimately make money from each offering. If the investors make money they will be happy, come back again to make additional investments and recommend the platform to friends.

Roughly 1/3 of StartEngine’s entire customer base invested in Elio Motors. I questioned Elio at the time that StartEngine put Elio’s offering on its platform.  It was obvious to me that Elio was not likely to ever put out its vehicle or turn a profit and I wrote just that.  If that was obvious to me, it should have been obvious to StartEngine as well.

StartEngine’s offering document mentions that it may be liable if a company that lists on its platform gets sued for securities fraud.  It states that even if StartEngine is a party to the suit and prevails, being a party to these suits might cause “reputational harm that would negatively impact our business” in addition to the costs of its defense.

Regulators have just begun to catch up with Elio. Elio was recently fined roughly $550,000 by the State of Louisiana for taking deposits for its non-existent vehicle without a proper license to do so. The lack of a proper license should have come up in the pre-offering due diligence investigation conducted by StartEngine.

Even if Elio is never alleged to have committed securities fraud, the company is insolvent and is unlikely to ever produce a vehicle or operate profitably.  Investors will lose the money that they invested.

Reputational damage for a company like StartEngine also comes from listing any piece of crap that comes along. Why should investors be expected to come back to StartEngine a second time, or a third, if the companies that StartEngine lists on its platform are not likely to succeed?

StartEngine defines its mission as: “To help entrepreneurs fuel the American Dream.” Its long term objective for 2025 is to “facilitate funding for the startup and growth of 5,000 companies every year.”

Assuming that each of those companies raises only $500,000 StartEngine is projecting that it can bring in $2.5 billion in new money every year.  Given that most or all of that money will be lost, I think that is a fantasy. StartEngine is likely to become known as a place where investors flush their money down the toilet long before 2025.

Had I been asked to write this mission statement I would have said something like “the company’s objective is to match investors with worthy companies that offer new technology and new products.”  The key word is “worthy”.

There is no way to sugar-coat the fact that 90% of start-ups fail and that many fail very quickly, usually within the first two years.  No one who I have met in crowdfunding denies that fact and most just accept it as a fact of life, even if they really do not want to talk about it.

An intermediary like StartEngine should be able to discern which companies are more likely to be part of the 90% that will fail and which have a chance of being part of the 10% that will succeed. That is what broker/dealers and investment bankers do every day and have done for decades.

The mainstream stockbrokerage industry has no difficulty identifying or funding new technologies. Stock brokers raised money for Apple and Microsoft when very few people owned personal computers. They raised money for Genentech at a time when no investor had ever heard the words “genetically engineered pharmaceuticals” before.

The offering suggests that StartEngine intends to harness the power and wisdom of “the Crowd”. To be blunt, no one has ever suggested that the crowd has any wisdom sufficient to discern which companies are worthy of investment and which are not. If they did, I doubt anyone would invest in StartEngine.

The lawyers who prepared the StartEngine offering included this statement as a risk factor: “none of our officers or our chairman has previous experience in securities markets or regulations or has passed any related examinations or holds any accreditations.” That, in one sentence, is StartEngine’s entire problem.

StartEngine’s customers are the investors, not the companies raising money. StartEngine has no idea how to give investors what investors want, a fighting chance at making money from the investments that they make.

Some of the other crowdfunding platforms understand this. MicroVentures has a reputation for turning away potential issuers that do not meet its standards.  I have worked with WealthForge which crowdfunds offerings to institutional investors. They would not consider offering those institutions any company that lacked the substance to succeed. Both were founded by or employ people with backgrounds in mainstream brokerage or investment banking.

Running a crowdfunding platform and funding companies without someone trained in investment banking is like running an animal shelter without a veterinarian on staff.  You can round up the animals, but you may not really be able to help them.  People who adopt the animals will never know if the animal is sick or healthy and that is something that they want to know.

Investing in start-ups is risky. You can run your platform like  newspaper want ads taking any ad that comes along or you can use some judgment and refuse ads for bottled water that claims to cure cancer because you know that your readers will not be happy. It is incumbent upon any crowdfunding platform to mitigate the risk for the investors that look at the offerings it lists.

I have personally resisted the idea of working for one of the crowdfunding platforms although I have advised a few. If you seriously want to invest in a crowdfunding platform, I could assemble a team and improve upon what StartEngine has to offer, without the baggage of offerings like Elio Motors, for a lot less than $5 million, probably around $500,000 (maybe even less if I do not replace my laptop).  I could operate the platform profitably and offer a return on your investment probably within a year. Interested? You know where to find me.

 

Cannabis and Crypto-Currency-The Blind Leading the Blind

Capital Markets, Investors, Issuers , , ,

A few weeks back I wrote a blog article where I stated that I was not interested in preparing the legal paperwork for any company that was raising funds for a cannabis related company. In the same article I said that I would also decline the opportunity to prepare the paperwork for an initial coin offering (ICO).  Either would be lucrative for me but in both cases I saw significant problems for the investors.

I might have predicted that people would start sending me the paperwork for ICOs that were looking to fund cannabis businesses seeking my thoughts and comments. Two stick out as examples of how not to raise money for your cannabis business.

In July, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a report on ICOs. Crypto-currency is all the rage this year with some offerings raising millions of dollars in a matter of minutes and coins when issued quickly appreciating in price. Bitcoins for example have been appreciated significantly this year and some people think that Bitcoins are a legitimate investment, an assertion that is questionable at best.

The SEC correctly concluded that most crypto-currency offerings would fall within the definition of a security and thus its jurisdiction.  There was really no surprise as the SEC initiated about a dozen enforcement actions against crypto-currency issuers before it wrote its report.

Because an ICO is the offering of securities it is required by law to either 1) register with the SEC or 2) be exempt from registration assuming that an exemption is available. In either case, the issuer of the coins is required to give potential investors all the facts that would be material to making an investment decision.

If investors who purchased the coins got a discount on an ounce or two of marijuana the coins might not be securities. These two cannabis ICO offerings are clearly offering securities.  In both of these cases, investors profit if the underlying business profits which is more than enough for these to be securities and the SEC to have jurisdiction.

There are some facts which the SEC and any securities lawyer would consider to be material. This would include who is running the company; how much money is being raised and what will it be used for; the basic structure of the company’s ownership; how investors get paid and how much they might expect; an idea of the size of the market in which the company intends to compete and the names of the companies that are its major competitors.

Nothing really earth shattering,but the SEC has been reviewing offerings and ruling on how these facts are disclosed for decades. Making the disclosures correctly requires a fairly good idea of what the SEC expects and an equally good idea of the operation of the business offering the securities which is why securities lawyers who prepare offerings really have to know what we are doing.

The first cannabis ICO I looked at was for a company called Growers International.  Like all ICOs it uses a “White Paper” (which it prefers to call a “Green Paper”) instead of a traditional prospectus.  I doubt that it was prepared by a securities attorney. (I would suggest that you might add the words “Like, cool” or Yeah, man” between the sentences and it would read like the script of an old Cheech and Chong movie but I do not want to insult Cheech or Chong.)

From the Green Paper: “Q: Why should I trust the team? How do I know this isn’t a Pump & Dump situation?  A: We ask that all investors do their research on the people behind Growers International. Our lead developer has found success in both the cryptocurrency arena as well as in the cannabis industry. If there is any question regarding the legitimacy of the project, we encourage investors to reach out to Ryan (Lead Dev) personally on slack.”

It is always a good idea to research the people who are running any company into which you are making an investment.  In this case the “Green Paper” discloses the management to be: “Lead Developer: Ryan Wright (34, California / Taipei); Blockchain Programmer: Eddie E. (48, New Zealand); Web / API Developer: Michael J. (32, Maidenhead, England); Social Media Director: Devvie @Devnullius (40, Sweden); Community Coordinator: Jeremy Toman @MadHatt (37, Canada) who prefers the name ‘Tyler Dirden’ or ‘MadHatt’;Graphic Designer & Cryptocurrency Consultant: Chris S. @Elypse (26, Detroit); Community Manager: @DayVidd and Bitcointalk Manager & Financial Consultant: Dr. Charles @drcharles (26, USA).”

I suspect that if you contact Mr.Wright as suggested he will vouch for them all if he bothered to ask their last names. Do not bother to ask about Members of the Board of Directors as they have apparently not yet been appointed, so one Director might turn out to be Pablo@Escobar.

The other cannabis related ICO I reviewed is prepared more professionally but still, in my opinion, misses the mark by a good country mile. The company is called Paragon Coin, Inc. It is in the process of raising $100 million through the ICO. Just to be clear Paragon supports the cannabis industry, it does not appear that it intends to grow or distribute cannabis itself.

Paragon intends to bring block chain to the cannabis industry.  It intends to use a distributed ledger to bring order to this fragmented industry. According to the White Paper the company intends to “offer payment for industry related services and supplies through ParagonCoin; establish niche co-working spaces via ParagonSpace; organize and unite global legalization efforts through ParagonOnline; bring standardization of licensing, lab testing, transactions, supply chain and ID verification through apps built in ParagonAccelerator.”

All that is fair enough and the names and pictures of the operating personnel are included. Their education and work histories going back 10 years which I would have expected to see are not present.

The White Paper clearly notes that cannabis is not legal at the federal level and asserts that it will only operate in states where it is legal. This is the prime oxymoron of the cannabis industry.  Illegal at the federal level is illegal everywhere. Marijuana is a Schedule I drug and possession or sale is a felony in all 50 states. That is a fact about which that the cannabis industry does not want to think and largely ignores.

The Paragon White Paper describes one of the Risks of investing in its coin offering as follows:

CERTAIN ACTIVITIES INVOLVING MARIJUANA REMAIN ILLEGAL UNDER US FEDERAL

LAWS. SUCH ACTIVITIES INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO: (A) DISTRIBUTION OF MARIJUANA TO MINORS, (B) TRANSPORTING MARIJUANA FROM STATES WHERE IT IS LEGAL TO OTHER STATES, (C) DRUGGED DRIVING AND OTHER ADVERSE PUBLIC HEALTH CONSEQUENCES, (D) GROWING MARIJUANA ON PUBLIC LANDS, (E) MARIJUANA POSSESSION OR USE ON FEDERAL PROPERTY, AND

(F) OTHER CRIMINAL ACTIVITY OR VIOLENCE ASSOCIATED WITH THE SALE OF MARIJUANA. TO THE EXTENT THE COMPANY AND/OR PARAGON COIN, INC. MAY NOT PREVENT CERTAIN OF ITS USERS FROM USING PRG TOKENS IN VIOLATION OF US FEDERAL LAW, IT MAY SUBJECT THE COMPANY AND/OR PARAGON COIN, INC. TO CIVIL AND/OR CRIMINAL LIABILITY AND THE UTILITY, LIQUIDITY, AND/OR TRADING PRICE OF PRG TOKENS WILL BE ADVERSELY AFFECTED OR PRG TOKENS MAY CEASE TO BE TRADED.

This derives verbatim from the Cole Memorandum which was written in 2013 as a direction from the US Department of Justice to Federal prosecutors as to how they should allocate their resources when they decide who to prosecute and for what. It never made cannabis legal anywhere.

More importantly, the Cole Memo it is not an Act of Congress or Federal regulation and not binding on the current administration in any way. Any suggestion that it will continue to be followed under the current administration is wishful thinking given the Attorney General has repeatedly stated that it will not.

Medical marijuana has been legal in California for more than a decade. That did not stop the federal government from raiding and closing down a large medical dispensary in Oakland, CA in 2012. Parenthetically, Paragon’s initial co-working space is slated to open in Oakland, California.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this offering is that it intends to fund the use of block chain, a relatively unsecure distributed ledger to link the many growers and suppliers in the cannabis industry. If successful it may well deal a serious blow to the cannabis industry it is trying to support.

One of the leading ICO platforms, Coinbase, has been engaged in a two year battle with the Internal Revenue Service which wants a list of all the people who use its platform to trade Bitcoins. The IRS alleges that people are trading the coins profitably and not reporting the gains and paying the taxes. The US government has also alleged that drug cartels and other bad actors use crypto-currency to launder money.

If you are in the cannabis industry you have certainly heard stories of how the DEA would obtain the customer lists of hardware stores that sold supplies for hydroponic growing. Everyone who was a customer did not use these supplies to grow cannabis but the government used those lists to identify and prosecute people who did.

If you have a “decentralized” list of a large group of people who are on the list only because they are affirmatively in the cannabis business as Paragon wants to create, how long do you think it will take for the US Government to obtain it? Think that will be difficult because Paragon never touches any marijuana or sells it?

The CEO of Paragon, Jessica VerSteeg, is also CEO of AuBox which the White Paper describes as “an upscale marijuana delivery service in the SF Bay area”. That is more than enough “probable cause”for the DOJ to get its hands on Paragon’s distributed ledger and the names of every company that uses it. The icing on the cake will be when they tell the judge that the cannabis industry is full of drug cartels and money launders which, of course, it is.

When you write the risk factors for a securities offering, it is important to disclose all of the things that might reasonably occur.  Assuming that this ICO raises the $100 million that it seeks, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that the Attorney General might just seize that money under the federal asset forfeiture provisions. The people behind this offering somehow refuse to accept that there was an election last November and that there is a new sheriff in town.

What I took away from these two offerings was a sense that they were prepared by amateurs who were attempting to do something that was way over their head. In this current administration, raising money for a cannabis company waves a red flag in front of the US government. Compounding that fact by raising money through an ICO just increases the size of that red flag, exponentially.

I personally do not think that there is any hope for Green International but Paragon did not demonstrate that it needed $100 million and could have certainly raised a lesser, more reasonable amount in a more traditional fashion which is what I would have advised them to do if they had asked me.

 

 

Ziyen Inc- Another Reg. A+ Question Mark

Investors, Issuers, Law , , ,

I have written several articles about specific Reg. A+ offerings. These offerings are targeted at small investors who are ill-equipped to judge their value as an investment, let alone, the accuracy of the disclosures.

I recently got a call from a colleague who works at a reputable brokerage firm.  He suggested that I look at the Reg. A+ offering of a company called Ziyen Inc.  He thought that it might be the grist for a blog article. He was not wrong.

Ziyen Inc. was incorporated in April 2016 to provide a suite of “cutting edge digital business intelligence, marketing and software services.”  By business intelligence it means information about available government procurement contracts, initially in Iraq and eventually globally.

The offering circular states: “Ziyen currently operates the B2B Procurement Portals “Rebuilding Iraq.net” and “Cable Contracts.net”.  “Rebuilding Iraq is our first B2B Procurement Portal, and the flagship service for the company. We are currently the number one international source for information on tenders, contracts, news and marketing services in Iraq.”

As far as I can tell, Rebuilding Iraq.net lists tenders for contracts that might be found elsewhere and does not charge for the information. It claims that 200,000 people visit the site every month.  When I checked Cable Contracts.net, which does charge for usage on a monthly subscription basis, I did not find any tenders listed. According to the financial statements in the offering circular the company has no revenue and roughly $7000 in the bank.

The company is selling up to 64,000,000 shares at $.25 per share. It is self-underwriting, meaning that there is no brokerage firm involved or even an established crowdfunding platform.  The offering circular mentions two crowdfunding platforms by name and the subscription agreement mentions a third, but I could not find this offering on any of them.

It appears that shares are being sold directly from the company website. The website actually uses shopping carts into which you can put a bundle of shares and check out using a credit card. And before you say that the shares are only $.25 a piece, the bundles go up to $25,000 so this is a serious offering of securities.

The subscription agreement also mentions an escrow agent where investors can deposit their funds, except that no escrow agent is being used.  According to the offering circular, “Subscription amounts received by the Company will be deposited in the Company’s general bank account, and upon acceptance of the subscription by the Company, the funds will be available for the Company’s use.”

No competent securities attorney would permit these types of inconsistencies. In truth, it appears that no competent securities attorney was involved in the preparation of this offering.  None is disclosed and no funds are allocated to pay an attorney to prepare the offering or deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporate Finance which reviewed it.

It appears the offering was prepared by the company’s principal, Alastair Caithness, a Scottish-American businessman.  You can tell he wrote the offering circular because he refers to himself in the first person – “I was Head of Sales in a company in the UK” although he never discloses the name of that company.

The offering circular also obliquely refers to other employees and a Board of Directors, none of whom are named. The Company does business in Iraq and for all you know the Company might have people on its Board of Directors whom the US government might not look upon favorably.

I did find six other Board members on the Company’s website, but their backgrounds were short on the type of detail I would have expected to see in an offering circular. The disclosures give incomplete employment histories and several fail to disclose where they were educated.  Nothing negative was disclosed about any of them and I am not suggesting that there was anything negative to disclose. I am only questioning whether Mr. Caithness would have known what disclosures the rules required.

For a little perspective, back in the late 1970s when I was writing registration statements I took some flak from the Division of Corporate Finance because one of the executives at an issuer had claimed to have a Bachelor’s degree and did not. It seems he got his draft notice right before his senior year final exams and decided that graduating was not that important. When he took the job at the company years later his resume said that he had graduated and no one had ever checked. The Division of Corporate Finance told me at the time that was a misstatement of a material fact.

I must have missed the memo where they subsequently decided that not disclosing the names of the members of the Board of Directors in an offering circular was not an omission of a material fact.  Nowhere in the offering circular does it suggest that investors should review every page of the company’s website or every subsequent press release.

The offering circular is dated mid-October of 2016. In mid-April 2017, the Company announced separately that it had established a “new investment division in the company to focus on financing unfunded construction projects in Iraq”.  It claimed to have “the capabilities to provide the finance for long-term projects.”  Financing for long-term projects?  According to the offering circular the company has $7000 in cash in the bank.

In June 2017, the Company announced that Ziyen Energy, a division of Ziyen Inc., had just secured over $36 million dollars of oil reserves in Indiana in the United States.  The deal includes 7 existing oil producing wells worth over $6 million dollars of proven reserves along with a support water injection well and a water producing well for injection purposes with a further potential for 20 new oil producers on undeveloped reserves on the site worth over $30 million.

That would certainly be big news, except the offering circular does not mention Ziyen Energy nor any intention to be in the oil production business, much less in the oil production business in the US. If you were to download and review the offering circular today you would have no idea you were investing in an oil company. Even if you tracked down the press release, it does not disclose how much the company paid for these reserves, whether they were financed, how much the wells are producing or if contracts are in place to sell the production.

As I was researching this article I was prepared to give Mr. Caithness the benefit of the doubt. I thought he was just a businessman trying to raise some money for his own company on the cheap, i.e. without hiring a competent securities attorney.

Then I found this offering on a crowdfunding platform that specializes in Reg. A+ offerings called Wall Street Capital Investment. It is owned by Mr. Caithness who holds himself as an expert and offers to help raise money for others.

Ziyen Inc. is actually the second offering on that platform. The first is a company called Novea Inc. which shares the same address in Cheyenne, Wyoming as Ziyen. (Mr. Caithness is actually in California and presumably operates Ziyen from there. I have no reason to believe that Novea is actually in Cheyenne either.) The offering circulars for the two are remarkably similar and no attorney was apparently paid to prepare the Novea offering either.

Novea Inc. also has neither revenue nor cash in the bank and is in the business of offering warranties that “disrupt” the warranty industry.  One of its largest shareholders is Mr. Carlos Arreola who is Mr. Caithness’ partner in Wall Street Capital Investment. As an aside, the advertising for both companies feature the same actor and the marketing plan and press releases are also very similar.

I also suspect that this is about more than just saving some money on legal fees. Had Mr. Caithness come to me I would have suggested that he raise his funds through a Reg. D offering to accredited investors. He would have spent about the same as he anticipated (the offering budgets $20,000 for crowdfunding and related expenses) whereas the average cost of a Reg. A+ offering is in the neighborhood of $150,000 and much of that is for the lawyers.

Personally I think this offering might have been difficult to sell to accredited investors given that its business plan is weak. But if its Rebuilding Iraq.net website gets 200,000 views per month there would be a steady stream of non-accredited potential investors who are pre-disposed to the idea that Iraq needs rebuilding and might put a few shares in their shopping cart, even though they would actually be investing in a US domestic oil producer.

And that is really the point. Since there is neither a competent securities attorney nor broker/ dealer involved with this offering it is up to the individual investors to investigate this offering and make their own decision. No one has vetted this offering and no one can say whether every material fact is disclosed or accurate. The crowdfunding industry needs to stop deluding itself into thinking that small investors can actually perform due diligence.

Given the internal inconsistencies and inaccuracies, the failure to disclose the names of the Board of Directors and the fact that this was a DIY Reg. A+ offering I would have expected a little more scrutiny by the SEC’s Division of Corporate Finance before it was approved. But that no longer matters.

I know that about two dozen senior staffers at the SEC receive this blog through Linked-in, as do people at FINRA and the offices of state securities administrators in more than a dozen states. I know that people in a few Congressional offices that have oversight on the SEC and crowdfunding receive it as well. This one is a no-brainer.

From the company’s own press releases it is obvious that the information being disseminated to prospective investors in the offering circular does not reflect the current state of the company’s affairs. If a cease, desist and disclose order is not appropriate here, I cannot imagine that it will ever be appropriate anywhere.

I am older than most of my readers. I was around and litigated matters involving Stratton Oakmont and before them Blinder, Robinson and First Jersey Securities, so I think I have a pretty good idea of what a micro-cap fraud looks like. I was not certain that I was looking at one here until I got to the press release about the potential for 20 new producing oil wells. There have been quite a few micro-cap frauds involving oil stocks over the years. Mr. Caithness and his partner are registering a lot of their own stock. My gut tells me that there will be an enforcement action here sooner or later.

I am not a whistle blower. I know a lot of lawyers and others who are trying to navigate the Reg. A+ waters specifically because they believe that more companies need access to capital and that smaller offerings should be open to smaller investors. Their hard work will go for naught if the investors are drawn into scam after scam.

I am not the world’s biggest fan of government regulators. But if you want the fire department to show up and put out a fire, you need to scream FIRE at the top of your lungs. That is really all that I am trying to do.  I am optimistic that some securities regulator will hear me. There have already been far too many examples of fraudulent Reg. A+ offerings that the crowdfunding industry does not want to talk about.  Here is an opportunity for the SEC to re-enforce the need for compliance with the rules. Investors should be able to look at an offering circular and at the very least get accurate disclosures of all of the facts.

 

Classifying Crypto-Currency

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Is a Bitcoin a currency or a security?

This is a question that may interest only a small number of geeks and lawyers, but there is a lot of money already in the crypto-currency market and a lot more on the sidelines waiting to jump in if this question is answered satisfactorily.

The key concern is regulation especially if crypto-currencies are ruled to be securities. The securities markets are regulated in virtually every country and the penalties for issuing securities without following those regulations can be severe.

The history of crypto-currencies traces back to Bitcoins which were introduced in Japan in 2009. The coder who introduced them wanted Bitcoins to be considered to be a currency and used as such, hence the name “coins”.  Had he called them “Bitcode” many of the questions about what they are might never have been asked. At the same time much the market for Bitcoins might not have developed.

Part of the allure of crypto-currencies is the fact that some people see them as part of an alternative financial universe. These people seem to believe that crypto-currencies are part of a trend to replace traditional banks and banking.

Bitcoins store value and are a medium to exchange value,which are two prime attributes of currencies.  But having attributes of currencies does not make them currencies.  That point seems lost on many of the people who are insistent that Bitcoins and similar crypto-currencies are currencies. They are not.

Historically, most people who hated fiat currency preferred to use precious metals such as gold or silver for trade, although other commodities, most notably salt have been used over the centuries. But the simple fact is that fiat currencies work because they are almost universally accepted.

Proponents of crypto-currencies argue that they are becoming more and more accepted and that acceptance will increase.  But accepting crypto-currencies as an exchange of value will not make them currencies in the strictest sense. Salt, after all is just salt, no matter how it is used.

If we accept the fact that Bitcoins were mislabeled to give them the appearance that they were currency that is “mined” and kept in electronic “wallets” strictly is a marketing ploy we can free our thoughts for the real issue; are crypto-currencies a security?

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued several Investor Alerts warning people to avoid investments and especially Ponzi Schemes that are funded by or which purchase Bitcoins and other crypto-currencies.  But the SEC has not come out and said the coins themselves are securities and that is significant.

The SEC has statutory jurisdiction over securities and the securities markets but not all investments are securities. Your home, for example, or other real estate can be a good investment, but is not a security. The same is true of gold bars or bullion; works of art or collectables and all commodities that trade on commodity exchanges.  All are investments, just not securities or the SEC’s problem.

I wrote a blog article about Bitcoins a few weeks back that got a lot more views than most of my articles because crypto-currency is a very hot topic. Several people forwarded legal opinions to me that specifically addressed the issue of whether or not crypto-currencies were a security.  Several of those legal opinions were written by excellent lawyers at excellent law firms. I was not really surprised to see that they reached opposite conclusions; some thought the coins were securities; some thought they were not.

Each of the opinions was interpreting one US Supreme Court case, SEC v. Howey, which basically defines a security as the “investment of money in a common enterprise with an expectation of profits predominantly from the efforts of others.” Law school students studying securities law spend a considerable amount of time with this case and later cases that applied it.  Any legal opinion asking the question “is this a security” will certainly review Howey and apply its reasoning to the facts at hand.

Personally, I do not think that the Howey test applies to crypto-currencies at all.

Let me take a step back and re-frame the question. If a crypto-currency is not a security, what is it?  I think that if a crypto-currency is clearly something other than a security, especially if it is something already regulated under different statutes, it should go a long way to settling the question. So what, exactly, are we dealing with?

Any crypto-currency is nothing more or less than multiple lines of computer code; a long string of ones and zeros.  Computer code is recognized by law as intellectual property which can be copyrighted and is covered by a substantial body of law both in the US and internationally. No one classifies computer code as a security.

The shares of Microsoft Corp. are a security, not the operating system that it sells. That distinction is why I believe that the coins themselves are not a security.

The last time that I heard so many securities lawyers asking the question “is this investment a security” was in the late 1970s.   At that time the marginal tax rate on the highest earners in the US was 50%-70%. If you earned over a certain amount you would pay one-half of the overage to the IRS.  Perhaps not surprisingly, there seemed to be a lot of doctors, business owners and entertainers with this problem.

An industry grew up to provide this group with a series of “tax sheltered” investments.  These transactions were intended to take advantage of IRS rules that provided tax credits and accelerated depreciation when certain physical items were purchased in a business context.  To qualify for the favorable tax treatment, the item purchased had to have a business purpose, be placed in service during the calendar year and not be a security.

In many cases leverage was employed. A doctor would put down $20,000 and sign an $80,000 non-recourse note for the item.  If the tax credit was 50% of the purchase price, then the doctor would save $50,000 from his tax bill for his $20,000 investment; more in subsequent years when he depreciated the value of his $100,000 item over time.

One of the more famous of these tax shelters was a company that sold lithographic masters of artwork from famous artists.  If you bought the master that had been created by an artist such as Andy Warhol, you might make 500 prints from the master before it wore out. If you could sell the lithographs for $200 a piece you could pay back your note, recoup your $20,000 down payment and still save $50,000 on your taxes.

If you sold those lithographs over a period of years, the price might fluctuate. A Warhol lithograph would likely at least retain its value and it could be exchanged for other works of art if you dealt with the right gallery or broker. That did not make the lithographs into a currency even though they had these key attributes of a currency.

Most of these investment programs came with an opinion letter written by a securities attorney that attested to the fact that selling a physical “item” did not involve the sale of securities because the sale did not satisfy the Howey test.  I wrote a few of those opinion letters back in the day because the law was pretty clear that a “thing” was not a security. As far as I can remember the SEC never brought a regulatory action against one of these investment programs taking the position that the items were securities.

The IRS did, however, take issue with a number of these tax sheltered investment programs. They disallowed the credits and deductions that the programs offered and ultimately changed its rules to close the loopholes.  The IRS is not bound to legal opinions and frequently judges the tax treatment of any investment long after the investment is made.

A key issue was whether you were buying a thing or a business. The same is true today. A coin offering might be a security if the coin owner receives a portion of the profits of that company when they purchase the coin.

The SEC is not bound by a legal opinion on the question “is this a security “.  As I said I read several opinions regarding crypto-currencies that went both ways, albeit on slightly different facts. What I did find surprising is that none of the opinion letters that I read, mentioned the fact that the IRS categorized crypto-currency tokens as “property”, not a “security” back in 2014.

The IRS’s classification is also not binding on the SEC.  But given the fact that the IRS had made this determination that the sale of a crypto-currency would be treated as property for tax purposes and the US Copyright Office will issue a copyright on computer code (but not on a stock certificate) I think any legal opinion regarding the classification of a crypto-currency under securities law should mention both.

Several of these opinions were rendered in connection with specific Initial Coin Offerings (ICO). Again this term is intended to create the look and feel of an initial public stock offering (IPO).  This is marketing and it is intended to create the impression (falsely) that an ICO is just like the offering of a security. Of course, if the SEC should assert that these ICOs were actually selling securities because they had the look and feel of securities and attempt to sanction the people behind them, these same people would be screaming that they did no such thing.

In most of the offerings that I reviewed, buying a coin in the ICO neither conferred ownership of the project nor did it promise any payments, so it would not be difficult to opine that all you were getting was a digital coin, not a security. If coin purchasers receive anything other than just the digital coin, then the issue gets murky.  Given that there have already been close to 1000 coin offerings, some very different from others, it can get very murky.

Just to be clear, this article is my opinion of a fairly new legal issue. It is not intended to be specific legal advice as regards one coin offering or another.

If someone came to me with a proposed ICO and sought my opinion I would probably counsel them as follows, just to keep them out of potential legal difficulty.

1) If you intend to use the proceeds of your coin offering to fund your new business then call the coins what they are: “Great New Tech Company Start-up Commemorative Digital Medallions”. This is just truth in packaging. Why call them coins or currency when they are not?

2) Account for the sale proceeds on your books as if you were selling any intellectual property.  If you wrote and sold a book about writing computer code and used the proceeds to fund your code writing business, you would not enter the sale proceeds on your books as an investment.

3) Go about your business and stay under the radar. There are certainly regulators who believe that the whole idea of crypto-currency is a scam.  At the same time, it does not seem to be difficult to raise money using these digital coins. There are multiple reports of multi-million dollar raises being accomplished within hours.  I can see no reason why anyone trying to raise money in this market would write numerous articles or give interviews bashing banks or Wall Street firms or proclaiming crypto-currencies as the new form of unregulated capitalism.  The best way to attract regulators is often to publicize how much money you are making in an “unregulated” business.

If you do want a formal legal opinion letter that your ICO is not the offering of securities, I would be happy to review the facts and prepare one for you. I probably charge a little less than the big Wall Street law firms.  I know that you will understand that I will need to be paid in US dollars not whatever coin you are issuing.  I cannot use your coins at the market, gas station or movies and it is probably going to be a long, long time before I can.

 

 

ShiftPixy – A Reg. A+ Question Mark?

Investors, Issuers , ,

 I frequently get into discussions with proponents of Regulation A+ who believe small investors should be encouraged to invest in start-ups.  The proponents argue that small investors are being deprived of the opportunity to invest in new companies that may turn into the next Facebook.  Why, these proponents ask, should these “opportunities” only be available to Wall Street fat cats and the wealthiest 1% of the population?

The proponents of Reg. A+ shine the spotlight on those companies that have made successful offerings. That is a function of the sales and marketing effort. They fail to discuss the fact that just because an offering is successful does not mean that the company itself is a good investment.

Proponents of Reg. A+ and especially those who suggest that start-ups are suitable investments for small investors have convinced themselves that these small investors have the skills necessary to evaluate investments.  They constantly tell me that small investors can judge a company and separate the good investments from the not-so-good ones.

In the mainstream markets the task of judging the potential for success of a private company that is about to go public is left to very highly paid investment bankers and research analysts.  It takes a great many hours of hard work and in the end these highly paid professionals do not always get it right.

Simply put, evaluating a new company as an investment is a lot like sizing up a doughnut.  You are attracted to the sweet frosting which is the reward, but you really need to focus on the hole. The hole is what is left out. No company can succeed if key components are absent.

Whenever you evaluate a start-up as an investment the essential question is always the same; given the information presented, can the management make it happen?  Can they execute their business plan with the talent on their team and the money that they are going to raise?

This brings us to a company called ShiftPixy, Inc. which is currently making a Reg. A+ offering of 2 million shares that will be priced at between $6 and $8 per share.  Although the company is only 2 years old, it shows sales of $65 million in the last six months and may have gross sales of $125 million in 2017. There is even a research report from Zacks which suggests that the shares could be worth $12.60 in 2018. Not bad for a start-up. There is a lot of tasty frosting on this doughnut.

According to the registration statement the company is “a leading provider of employment law compliance solutions for businesses and workers in an environment in which shift or other part-time/temporary positions, commonly called ‘gigs’ are performed.”

Essentially, the company provides shift workers, currently in the restaurant and hospitality industries.  Customers move their workers over to be employed by ShiftPixy which then acts as a staffing agency for the customer. By pooling the employees of many smaller companies, ShiftPixy can administrate the human resource management function with economies of scale.

“In return for providing insurance, payroll processing, benefits, and compliance services these enterprises pay ShiftPixy a fee based on their payroll that is much less than the cost of doing these functions in house.”

The registration statement says: “A significant problem for employers in the Gig Economy involves compliance with regulations imposed by federal, state and local governments, including requirements associated with worker’s compensation insurance, and other traditional employment compliance issues, including the employer mandate provisions of the Affordable Care Act.”

I agree that this is a significant problem and any company that can solve a significant problem is worthy of attention.  Government regulations and the attendant paperwork can be expensive and strict compliance is a requirement at every level. A company that can provide employees to other companies while retaining the burden of benefits and paperwork would seem to have a good chance of success.

But can they?  The move to the “gig” economy is being fueled by the employer’s desire to reduce the cost of employees.  According the financial reports in the registration statement, ShiftPixy had deployed fewer than 1800 employees to other companies through the end of February 2017.  How much of an extra fee per employee do they charge?  How much of an extra fee will employers be willing to pay?

The financial reports in the registration statement are not audited. This is not a requirement for a Tier 1 Reg. A+ offering and it is one of my pet peeves.  I have seen too many questionable financial statements over the years.  Proponents of selling Reg. A+ shares to smaller investors necessarily assume that those investors are adept at reading and analyzing a financial statement even as accounting and MBA students struggle to learn how to do it properly.

How does ShiftPixy’s gross margin of compare with competing firms?  Do the smaller investors in this offering know enough to ask that question? Do they know how to find the answer?

For this offering, let’s stick with the more simplistic: can the management make it happen?

In this case the company has two founders; Scott Absher and J. Stephen Holmes. Mr. Absher is the current CEO. The only other executive officer is a newly appointed CFO.  There is a single outside director from another industry.  Since February 2010 Mr. Absher has also been President of Struxurety, a business insurance advisory company.  Neither Mr. Absher, the CFO, outside director or anyone else at the company seems to have any connection to the staffing industry.

There are several well known staffing companies from whom an executive or two might have been acquired. That does not seem to be a priority and it is the primary reason why I have trouble answering the question “can management make it happen?” in the affirmative.

The other founder, Mr. Holmes is not an officer or employee of the company. He is an independent contractor focusing upon building a sales network and providing consulting in relation to worker’s compensation programs as well as Affordable Care Act health insurance programs that the company will offer.  The registration statement notes that he is not involved in any part of the accounting or taxpaying and IRS return filing areas of ShiftPixy’s operations.

I suspect the reason for that disclosure is Mr. Holmes was convicted “for acts related to making false statements in relation to two quarterly IRS Form 941 Employer Federal Quarterly tax returns, one in 1996 and the second 1997, for a company for which he was an officer at the time.” That disclosure is in the registration statement. It does not disclose that Mr. Holmes was sentenced to 15 months of incarceration and apparently served at least part of it.

In order to find out the actual disposition of the case, I had to do some additional research. If you are evaluating any investment, you always need to look at facts outside of the offering paperwork in order to give what you are reading proper context.  That is what is meant by looking at the hole in the doughnut.

I am not here to sling mud. I, for one, think everyone who serves their time is entitled to a second chance. Mr. Holmes, because he owns over 12 million shares of the company will remain a “control person” of the company. He is going to be building up the sales force, not dealing with the paperwork involving taxes or employees. Being able to do that paperwork is this company’s critical task.

That brings us back to Mr. Absher, the CEO, who apparently has also had some issues with government required paperwork.  The registration statement discloses that: “On June 25, 2013, the Alabama Securities Commission issued a Cease and Desist Order (the “Order”) against Scott W. Absher and other named persons and entities, requiring that they cease and desist from further offers or sales of any security in the State of Alabama. The Order asserts, regarding Mr. Absher, that he was the president of a Company that issued unregistered securities to certain Alabama residents, that he was the owner of a company that was seeking investments, and that in March 2011 he spoke to an Alabama resident who was an investor in one of the named entities. The Order concludes that Mr. Absher and others caused the offer or sale of unregistered securities through unregistered agents.

Per the registration statement: “While Mr. Absher disputes many of the factual statements and specifically that he was an owner or officer of any of the entities involved in the sale of the unregistered securities to Alabama residents or that he authorized any person to solicit investments for his company, in the interest of allowing the matter to become resolved, he did not provide a response.”

If Mr. Absher was not an owner or officer of the company in question, he likely could have contested it by filing an affidavit with the State of Alabama.  In my experience, intentionally taking a default, usually indicates that the allegations are true and not worth the effort of fighting. By allowing this order to be entered these facts are deemed to be true.  Saying that he disputes them now has no legal effect and, to me, raises a “red flag”.

There is no prohibition against selling unregistered securities in Alabama (or anywhere else) as long as you file a form with the state, pay the filing fee and make the proper disclosures.  Given that the state of Alabama says that some of that did not happen, it seems difficult for me to imagine that Mr. Absher is well suited for the difficult world of employment law compliance.

I claim no expertise in employment law. I do know that it can be complex and that some aspects of it vary location to location. San Francisco, for example, prohibits employment discrimination and harassment based on the employee’s height and weight. That cannot be the law everywhere.

I would have expected to find an experienced employment lawyer, or more than one on the payroll of this company.  They do not disclose that they have one, nor do they seem intent on hiring one after the offering although “employment law compliance solutions” is what they sell.

Much of the current focus of ShiftPixy is in the restaurant and hospitality industry. Reporting and collecting taxes on tips paid to employees in those industries is another burden.  The IRS requires that an employer must ensure that the total tip income reported by employees during any pay period is, at a minimum, equal to 8% of the total receipts for that period.

ShiftPixy has responsibility to file the paperwork because they are the employer but they have no access to the cash register to see if the information they are reporting is correct or in line with that requirement.  The financial reports also note that there has already been a $280,000 reversal of a charge for workman’s compensation expenses that were “misclassified”. So to me this company has not demonstrated that it can solve the problem that it claims to solve.

ShiftPixy is a staffing/HR company that seems to lack any employees with significant expertise in this often complex field. I would have expected to have seen several people with this expertise in senior management and there is no mention of the need or intent to hire any at the culmination of the offering.

The company sells employment law compliance without employment lawyers and accounting services where everyone important to the company has prior problems with government paperwork.  There are other staffing companies and there is nothing here that screams “we are better.”

Any start-up that is going to compete in an established industry needs to distinguish itself.  To me, this company distinguishes itself by the size of the hole in the doughnut. I think that it specifically lacks the people who can get the job done.

It would seem to have been in Mr. Asher and Mr. Holmes’ best interest to fill this company with knowledgeable employees.  Each of the two founders owns in excess of 12 million shares. If the offering is completed at $7 per share it will increase their net worth by $90 million each. If the share price goes to over $12 in a year as Zacks suggests, by over $150 million each.  With that much on the table I find it surprising that the company seems to be so careless about hiring people with appropriate skills.

Finally, I noted that the attorney who prepared the registration statement was given rights to buy 200,000 founder’s shares at par value $.0001. No other legal fees were charged.

There is nothing illegal about this. Some securities lawyers accept stock in lieu of cash; personally I do not.  I think that it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest.

In a money center like New York or San Francisco, a lawyer preparing a Reg. A+ offering might charge $150,000.  If this lawyer’s gamble pays off and the share value does top $12 per share, he might walk off with more than $2.5 million.  He will be on his yacht while I am still writing blog articles.

Of course if the disclosures later prove to be somehow deficient and a regulator comes in and investigates, an allegation that the lawyer cut corners to get the offering sold may be hard to avoid.

In my opinion what this company lacks is the internal talent to perform the complex tasks that it is selling. It is talent that its more established competitors certainly have and without which I do not think this company can succeed.

The talent at this company is so thin and the payday so concentrated, there is certainly enough here for me to have considered that this offering may be nothing more or less than two people with checkered pasts trying to put one over on unsuspecting investors.  I am more skeptical than most people, but skepticism is what people who evaluate start-ups are supposed to have.

 

 

The Bitcoin Bubble

Capital Markets, Investors ,

In the normal course, I do not do requests for this blog.

I have a job writing articles for a reputable publication. I write the articles that my editor assigns to me.  For the blog, I generally write about something that interests me. Usually, it is based on something that I have read or a conversation that I have had.

In the last few weeks, several people have asked me for my opinion regarding Bitcoins. The truth is I really do not have one. I think that they are a fad. They may be around for a while but ultimately I do not see that they will become a legitimate part of mainstream finance.

More and more people are investing in Bitcoins and more and more businesses are accepting them for payment. The recent run-up in their price has generated a lot of interest. Note that I said price, not value. Bitcoins have no inherent value.

A lot of people seem to confuse Bitcoins with blockchain. Blockchain or distributive ledger technology is just that ledgers; bookkeeping records of transactions that are created by parties to the transactions. Blockchain ledgers are public and every transaction is broadcast to everyone to reduce cheating.  Both FINRA and the US Federal Reserve have looked at blockchain and essentially yawned.

There is nothing inherently wrong with keeping various parts of transactional ledgers disbursed but I fail to see the benefit. The idea is to replace the institutional intermediaries like banks with digital ledgers where a lot of people enter their own transactions. This assumes that everybody in the system is honest.

Using blockchain, it is possible to effect transactions instantaneously everywhere in the world.  If I make an on-line purchase from a merchant they may not get my payment for a day or more.  The transaction is in fact, instantaneous, but the bank or banks in between slow it down so that they can have use of that money overnight.  With a large bank that can result in an enormous profit.

It would seem logical that a blockchain is only as secure as its weakest link and more susceptible to hacking and data breaches than any of the large banks or the US Federal Reserve.  And no matter where and how the ledgers are kept, every bank and public company that uses the blockchain system will still have to be audited once a year.

This brings us to Bitcoins which is essentially a string of computer code and which touts itself as a cryptocurrency. Bitcoins are not the only cryptocurrency. There appear to be more than 100 but Bitcoins seem to have the lion’s share of the market and are subject to the most hype.

I have some experience trading currencies in the foreign exchange market and teaching about them. When I was very much younger, I bought and sold currencies on the black market in Mexico and Italy.  So I think that I am qualified to peel back the curtain and take a reasonable look at Bitcoins and to size them up against other currencies.

When I did, what I found was essentially nothing.

Perhaps a unique aspect of Bitcoins is where they come from.  Bitcoins exist only on a distributed ledger and are the brainchild of an unknown computer programmer who first published the idea in 2008 and then the software to create the system in 2009.

The number of Bitcoins in the world increases every time someone, usually a cryptographer I suspect, solves a complicated mathematical puzzle. If you perform any task and receive a reward for doing it, I suspect that the IRS will consider that to be a taxable event.  I have yet to see IRS guidance on the subject, but I have no doubt that the IRS will catch up to this.

If you looked at this from the outside and said that a group of sophisticated cryptographers was going to create a code and that code would be accepted as money, you would be right to be skeptical.  Who, besides another cryptographer would want it?

Records of Bitcoin transactions are kept on blockchain ledgers and a lot of the trading is anonymous. A lot of people seem to think that most Bitcoin transactions are being made by criminals seeking anonymity. That may or may not be true, but the anonymity that comes with Bitcoin transactions would certainly attract a criminal element.

People who swear that Bitcoins will soon become the currency of choice usually make several arguments. When you examine them, it is obvious that none hold any water.

Bitcoin advocates argue that Bitcoins are no worse than any fiat currency. If the government can just keep printing money without anything behind it, why should not the marketplace be able to do the same?  As a member of the generation that first coined the phrase “question authority,” I think I am qualified to respond.

There was a lot of debate when President Richard Nixon took the US off of the gold standard in 1971.  Most of the people who favor Bitcoins today were not yet born and know nothing of the debate that took place then.  While it is true that the US no longer exchanges currency for gold at a fixed rate of $35 per ounce there is still a lot of gold stored at Fort Knox and elsewhere.  Most of it was purchased at $30 an ounce or less and at current prices would still back some portion of outstanding US currency.

Gold itself is a monetary fiction.  People have sought it and accepted it as an exchange for other items of value going back into antiquity. In reality, it is a rock. Once or twice every year someone walks along the bank of California’s Sacramento River and picks up a sizeable nugget. Any monetary system needs a hitching post and for centuries gold has been it.

Gold and all currencies are based on our willingness to accept them for things we consider to be valuable.  All currency is about perception.

In addition to gold, and perhaps more importantly, the largest asset held by the US government is land. Land has had value going back to feudal estates because they were places where you could grow crops and later build factories. Land adjacent to a river or shoreline has always had extra value.

The US government owns millions of acres of valuable land.  You might speculate about how much it would get if it sold the 98% of Alaska that it still owns but it is easier to add up the value of the someplace like Camp Pendleton, California with its miles of Pacific shoreline just waiting to be turned into high-rise condos, theme parks, and golf courses.

What is behind Bitcoins? Nothing. All fiat currencies are not created equal.

Currencies must be accepted in exchange for other goods and services. While more and more merchants are accepting Bitcoins, in most cases average wage earners in the US are required to pay their rent or mortgage in dollars and also their health and car insurance, groceries, cable, and phone bills.  There is not a lot left over for Bitcoin transactions.

I can get a meal from most street vendors in almost every country in the world with a US $20 bill.  In the aggregate street vendors sell a lot more meals every day than does McDonalds and McDonalds does not accept Bitcoins either.

Currencies function as a place to store value.  The recent run-up in the price of Bitcoins is an example of how poorly they perform that function.  There has been no countervailing deflation of the dollar to justify the increase in Bitcoin prices nor underlying economic events to explain it. The price of Bitcoins has run up based purely on speculation. The hype has created demand and the run-up has fed off of itself.

If the price of Bitcoins can increase that quickly, certainly the price can decrease that quickly. Would you want to contract to perform a service for one Bitcoin, perform that service today, send an invoice at the end of the month and be paid 30 days later?  The purchasing power of that one Bitcoin 30 or 60 days from today could be substantially less. Without stability Bitcoins are essentially useless as currency.

That is why many articles about Bitcoins refer to the tulip bubble in the 1600s. In both cases, prices were based upon what economists call the greater fool theory.  Everyone believed that the price would increase and bid the price up until there were no more buyers.  The bubble burst and the last fool got left holding the bag. I do not care if Bitcoins continue to go up until they reach $10,000 each or higher.  At the end of the day, someone will get left holding the bag.

A more recent twist on Bitcoins is their use in venture capital. Several companies have claimed to have raised millions of dollars by selling stock for Bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies.  They call them initial coin offerings (ICOs). Several companies profess that they have raised millions in a matter of hours. That may be because holders of Bitcoins cannot spend their coins in very many other places.

I could not locate a prospectus for one of these offerings. I do not believe that any were registered with the SEC. I would particularly like to see how the attorneys who wrote the disclosures handle the “risk factors” relating to the Bitcoins that the company received for its shares. Call it professional curiosity.

If I took anything away from my look at Bitcoins it is that there is a lot more hype than substance.  A lot of people seem to think that it is possible to create wealth by solving a mathematical puzzle. But Money for Nothing is a song by Dire Straits, not an economic reality.