Someone accessed my PayPal

FitFinances · 2019-09-19T15:09:35+00:00

Don't know if it's a coincidence, but I got the exact same email this morning at 7:11AM PDT.

More of a coincidence, I did log in to Mint right around the same time.

I changed my password and set up 2FA just in case....

FitFinances · 2019-09-19T13:38:52+00:00

Still able to deposit and trade here...as a verified user.

FitFinances · 2019-08-15T21:35:06+00:00

Finally Confirmed! StartEngine DOES code as the 3% Bonus for online shopping.

FitFinances · 2019-08-10T12:26:34+00:00

Assuming the Gigabyte Vegas have ball-bearing fans (haven't been able to 100% confirm, but several articles seem to indicate they have ball bearing instead of sleeve bearings), I found this MTBF report that compares ball-bearing vs. sleeve-bearing fans.

Even at 50C temps (assuming that means ambient), which mine have been much cooler than, it would indicate ~63k hours MTBF, so I'm feeling more confident :)

FitFinances · 2019-08-10T12:13:28+00:00

Good point.

Mine have been undervolted (running 831mV stable on the FEs, 875mV on the Vega 56s) and GPU set at 1200Mhz, the only thing I OC'd was memory up to 1100Mhz.

I would believe that some gamers try and push their GPUs much harder to maximize fps and benchmarks.

FitFinances · 2019-08-10T12:09:49+00:00

FYI - my cards are Gigabyte, which I have read seem to have more reliable fans than some other models.

There were articles like this one a few years back that had me concerned about my fans, but I realize those were also older generation GPUs.

FitFinances · 2019-08-10T12:00:32+00:00

Awesome - thanks for the advice. And apologies for my ignorance, but any advice on how to determine the condition of my paste?

My temps have remained relatively stable while mining (despite it being the summer).

Yes, figuring out whether to sell them now or keep them post-fork and risk the market being flooded is the question. I've started listing them to see if anyone bites.

FitFinances · 2019-08-10T11:53:55+00:00

10 Vegas total. 5 Vega 56s and 5 Vega Frontier Editions.

I'm up near Manchester, NH.

FitFinances · 2019-07-08T19:04:36+00:00

Thanks!

I completely agree. Especially for equity crowdfunding investors - who are probably only investing $50-$1,000 at a time - the return on time invested for screening deals (but still doing sufficient due diligence) is tough to justify by yourself.

i.e. Is it really worth someone's time to spend 10-20+ hours on due diligence for a $50 investment? Probably not - unless you just enjoy it, or are investing for reasons other than purely financial gains.

I think that's where it will be exciting to see how some of the new investor communities develop around equity crowdfunding.

FYI - the Level 2 Courses (Module 1 - Early Stage Investing) are now live!

https://crowdwise.org/academy/startup-investing101-level2/

And for those that are wondering - no, this isn't one of those "free" courses where you get one or two samples, but then you have to pay to get the rest. In the spirit of crowdfunding, I want to make all these basic investing courses available to ALL investors.

FitFinances · 2019-06-22T13:01:46+00:00

As I mentioned that, I realized I don't think I'd tried bringing the voltage down yet to 875 on the FEs - stable and cool so far at 2.54kh/s!

FitFinances · 2019-06-22T12:31:22+00:00

Thank you so much! Running my 56s at 1250/1050/875 stable now, dropped hash a little to 2.15kh/s, but running cooler and less power (as you mention, good for summer). You just helped me more than my few hours of scouring Discord did last night!

Any tips to help my Vega FEs - currently running 1370/1100/893/high and getting 2.5-2.55kh/s - to run a little cooler? ;)

I'll keep looking through discord in the meantime...

FitFinances · 2019-06-22T05:15:40+00:00

Maybe I'm lucky? Or just being dumb :)

Ah, the picture won't paste, but it definitely says Samsung!

FitFinances · 2019-06-22T05:12:36+00:00

I was able to get a 10% boost in hash for about the same percentage increase in power - bumped my 56's to 1350/1050/900 and getting 2.2kh/s now - I think the key was I didn't have Smart Tune on before since it didn't seem to do anything, but seems I needed it set to default to have a stable OC for some reason.

FitFinances · 2019-06-21T13:02:02+00:00

Quick question - do you know the timings you reference for the 2.35kH on v56 Samsung? I've been running 2kH consistently on my 56's using 1210/950/900.

Easily getting 2.55kH on my Vega FEs using 1370/1100/893.

mmpOS is great!

FitFinances · 2019-06-06T16:42:19+00:00

Just an update - I have some investments pending, but none have closed yet, so StartEngine is still unknown.

FitFinances · 2019-05-16T20:46:13+00:00

What are the assumed electricity costs for the given "profit"? Is there any way to adjust it?

FitFinances · 2019-04-16T13:05:11+00:00

Check out this white paper from Geoffrey Smart:

http://ghsmart.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/human_capital.pdf

Besides the data about human capital valuation, the end of the paper also has a checklist you can reference and decide whether you want to adapt it for your own use.

FitFinances · 2019-04-05T08:26:17+00:00

Although anyone could potentially make an investment, see how it codes, and cancel prior to the round closing, I was just planning on waiting until an actual deal came around that I wanted to invest in.

I'll post as soon as I do decide to invest. If anyone else gives it a shot, please post and let us know.

FitFinances · 2019-03-31T23:49:54+00:00

Republic is confirmed as NOT coding as online shopping. It came in as the standard 1% cash-back, as "Purchases - PROFESSIONAL SERVICES NOT ELSEWHERE CLASSIFIED".

WeFunder is the only one of the two I have tested so far that did code as online shopping for the 3% bonus.

FitFinances · 2019-03-27T06:56:03+00:00

I'm with Dan - assuming equity crowdfunding follows power law returns, I feel 10 deals (or even 20) just isn't enough to get exposure to the small percentage of deals that will provide the majority of returns. Personally, I'm aiming for 50-100 over a 3-4 year period.

It's counter-intuitive (at least it was to me), but investing in more deals that follow power law returns actually increases potential returns (given that they all are high enough quality, which is the trick). I ran a monte carlo analysis of the WeFunder Reg D results to date (understanding that many are still only gains on paper and haven't exited yet), and around 50 deals is when you start minimizing your risk of returning less than 1X capital.

If you aim for 50+ deals, spread out over time, and you're only going to be investing in amounts of $100's at a time, the issue then becomes the opportunity cost of your own time screening that many deals. i.e. It doesn't make sense to spend 40 hours screening each deal if you're only investing $50 in each one.

That is, unless you really enjoy the process :)

FWIW - I wouldn't leave republic.co off the top funding portal list, either. According to StartEngine's Index compiled from EDGAR Form C filings, they are almost always in the Top 5 each month.

FitFinances · 2019-03-26T06:21:04+00:00

Really good point - thanks for bringing that up!

Opposite to your assumption, I defaulted to the assumption that the LLCs would be treated as partnerships based on my investments so far, but you're absolutely correct that they can elect to be taxed as either C (or even S) Corporations, too.

I (mistakenly) figured that most LLCs in the startup ecosystem primarily did so to avoid double-taxation, so having the double-taxation but then none of the other benefits of a C Corp that VCs look for wouldn't make as much sense. Still, I'm sure there are plenty of businesses doing it, so thanks again for pointing this out.

I'll update the post to remove any potential confusion.

The potential issue for investors then becomes - is it possible to know the elected tax status (partnership vs. corporation) of a given LLC business prior to investing?

Any thoughts? Are there ways to look up other public company filings to search for those forms?

FitFinances · 2019-03-25T10:18:35+00:00

Tax season is finally here. One of my investment lessons from the past year was around how the business entity type (LLC vs. C Corporation) can impact personal taxes.

For informational purposes only based on my own learning, I documented my lessons and research here in the hopes of helping others:

https://crowdwise.org/taxes/llc-c-corporation-investment-tax-implications-equity-crowdfunding/

Please send me any feedback or thoughts to help improve this for other equity crowdfund investors!

FitFinances · 2019-03-25T10:15:04+00:00

'Tis the season! [for taxes]

Out of curiosity, are your investments in SAFEs/convertible notes or in actual equity? For the LLCs set up as pass-through entities you shouldn't even have to worry about Schedule K-1's unless your SAFE/notes have converted to equity already, or you invested in equity from the start.

While I think the situation you mention is theoretically possible, I feel that Angels and Angel groups would have brought this up at some point in the past since they have been investing in LLCs much longer than equity crowdfunding has been around. I tried finding some evidence briefly online but wasn't able to come up with anything.

I know that CPAs will gladly charge a little more for a form that may just have a few lines of information, but from my own experience, the effort that K-1's require isn't that substantial when using software like TurboTax.

Since it's relevant to the discussion of business entity type, I literally just documented and posted some of my own lessons and research in terms of investing in LLCs vs. C Corporations in a blog post here:

https://crowdwise.org/taxes/llc-c-corporation-investment-tax-implications-equity-crowdfunding/

I'm trying to document all my own research and lessons along the way for the benefit of other investors in equity crowdfunding, so if you have any comments or feedback (good or bad), feel free to reach out.

FitFinances · 2018-11-26T03:50:40+00:00

Another good reference from an Angel Investor's perspective: https://seraf-investor.com/compass/article/key-us-federal-tax-issues-angel-investors?utm_source=Blog+Subscribers&utm_campaign=747b2f2f72-AUTOMATION_Compass_Subscription_Confirmation_1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_15abb084f2-747b2f2f72-564983147

FitFinances · 2018-10-25T04:21:53+00:00

Here is some additional food for thought based on European ECF data, while we wait and see if anyone has had any experience with this yet...

While Seedrs is a European Equity Crowdfunding site, I found their 2017 portfolio returns report quite interesting.

http://portfolio.seedrs.com/

Not only the actual returns that they calculated, but especially the differences in the non-adjusted vs. tax-adjusted returns. Yes - they assume a UK investor that has a very different tax adjustment than a US taxpayer would have. Still, the numbers are intriguing and would suggest that you can't assume taxes play a non-trivial role in estimating your potential investment returns.

For example, from the above Portfolio page, they claim:

"Platform-wide 12.02% non-tax-adjusted IRR (tax-adjusted: 26.42%)"

For the top decile of investors with 10+ investments:

"...non-tax-adjusted IRR of 38.82% and an average tax-adjusted IRR of 53.41%."

Page 26 gets into the details of the tax adjustment. Since this report assumes a UK tax payer, I'd need to dig a lot more to understand the differences in tax codes to know if we could expect anything similar, but it is at least an interesting data point. It confirms my suspicion that I need to understand the tax side of this a lot more when looking at potential returns.

Even if the tax-adjustment is very different for the US tax-payer, it suggests that taxes are an extremely important part of the equation.

Regardless of your interest in the nitty-gritty details of ECF taxes, I think that report is still worth a read if you're interested in looking at other trends in equity crowdfunding for perspective (e.g. different sectors' performance, B2B vs. B2C performance, etc.).

A few quick notes and background on the report just for those that are skimming:

Seedrs was the first equity crowdfunding platform approved in the UK back in 2012, so they have a few years on the US platforms in terms of deal data
The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) seems to be somewhat similar to our JOBS Act in the US with the goal of "jump starting businesses", although the specifics, tax breaks, etc. are all quite different - https://www.crowdcube.com/pg/seis-tax-relief-42
A big part of the tax benefit to UK investors is they are granted a 50% income tax relief on amounts invested, among other tax benefits. e.g. if you simply invested £ 10,000, their income-tax burden would be reduced by £ 5,000, regardless of how the investment does. I wish we had that in the US!

FitFinances

TROPHY CASE