Posted - 2008.03.02 15:23:00 - [3]

 

5. EBANK FEATURE UPDATES
We have been saying for the past month and a half, that we have some very big announcements up our sleeve. Some of you guessed, and a few of you heard some rumors, Hexxx even let it slip in conversation once or twice, so lets set the record straight:

EBANK Stock Exchange (EBSE)
Firstly, EBANK is designing a stock exchange. But that's probably not the main surprise. In doing so, EBANK is planning a whole stock market framework that goes beyond the current concept of an IPO. These are RIPOs, or Regulated IPOs. In essence, these are fully virtualized IPOs held within EBANK. Shares in RIPOs will be able to be split, frozen, and traded with options or as direct day trades, but most importantly investments in RIPOs will be insured by EBANK. Yes, EBANK will take its first foray in being a proper central bank, and actually insure against RIPO scams - at least partly covering investor cash. So in the event of a scam, at least investors will at least get something. There are many, many details that need to be worked out and a lot of code to still be written, but this is the direction that we're moving in on this.

Affiliates
Secondly EBANK will allow fully arbitrated 3rd party transactions through affiliates. In other words, EBANK will become a bit like PayPal, and allow you to create ISK shopping carts and the like on your site. What's this arbitration? Well, for traditional goods and services, sellers won't actually get the ISK until 5 days after the transaction, at which point customers can dispute the transaction. EBANK tellers will get involved and arbitrate the dispute (for a fee of course) and can reverse the transaction. Alternatively vendors can get their cash quicker if they manage to convince the customer that the service is of high standard and provide a positive eBay-style feedback. This will have the effect of bringing 'closure' on the transaction.

Vendors can optionally turn off the arbitration feature for a transaction (but the fees for the transaction will be higher, and vendors have to be vetted before being allowed to do so). This means we can allow direct transactions to and from your EBANK accounts and vendors can collectively use EBANK to actually bank with. The reason for this is not all trades are for goods and services where the arbitration mechanism really plays a hand; for example, with the Hold'Em tables.

Additional Features

We here at EBANK have many ideas and plans of different sorts. This is our drawing board of sorts. Some listed changes that are on our to-do list (but may be subject to change) include:
• Fully Functional & Automated Stock Exchange
• Loan Application Forms
• Credit Ratings System (viewable on request once authorized by loanee)
• Blacklists/Defaults Page
• Fixed Term Loan options
• Live Chat Option
• EBANK Account integration into EBANK Forums
• Special Offers provided to our clients from within their EBANK accounts
• Rewards and referral scheme’s
• EBANK RSS Feed

Posted - 2008.03.02 15:27:00 - [5]

 

Edited by: Hexxx on 02/03/2008 15:27:07
8.FORECASTS
At this point in time, EBANK believes that the Trinity introductions are now beginning to show their settled trends, and invention is suitably mature as a market to appear vaguely predictable and although margins are much tighter, they do still provide some room for maneuvering.

Over the coming months up until the next Trinity 1.1 patch EBANK believes the invention market to continue with thin margins, the T2 moon materials to find their profit centers in the moons suddenly changed come patch day, and the cost and abundance of the materials reduced and boosted respectively by quite a heavy degree.

Depending on the maturity of inventors, this will further reduce the cost of T2 ships and parts or increase the profitability. EBANK believes the former will prevail.

Beyond that, given the unpredictable state of affairs in the south and west 0.0 space, EBANK predicts that the high ends will cycle to a high price but given the cyclical nature of the mineral market, we will see the low ends eventually rise in price as well.

With the release of Trinity we have also witnessed a glut of new faction gear that has been traded heavily, and this will only increase.

With the upcoming boost to Amarr, we do expect a short term spike that will rise for about 1 month after patch day on Amarr prices, but again will settle due to a rush of inventors again trying to capitalize on the ships. Yet again however, EBANK also predicts a lot of people to burn their fingers in lieu of this just like with the T2 Ships.

Finally, Jump Freighters may see some degree of increased volume in the market, but the sheer cost outlay of 6b+ is about 2x as much as most people can easily afford, as such the price of the JF will still stall its introduction. Which is also why the Rorqual falls into this brilliant price/performance bracket and will continue to do so, provided CCP does not nerf them.

The heavily unpopular change to the Deimos, especially after such a recent and hard-hitting nerf to the Eos, leaves Gallente producers with only 3 main ship profit centers, all 3 heavily contested: Megathron, Dominix and the now ubiquitous Hulk. Given the Amarr boost and the prevalent high demand for Minmatar ships, we expect to see a lot more production from those 2 races as a result.

Last but not least, with the changes to Ice fields, we will see demand for Ice soar to levels not seen before. This can only be fixed by CCP introducing more slots in NPC stations, as there are now too few slots in NPC stations and too many POS's congesting space around the galaxy. Until this change is effected, EBANK predicts Ice prices to be as high as ever.

9. CONCLUSION
The Board hopes you understand that what EBANK is doing is actually a heck of a lot more than what is led to believe in our recent activity on MD. EBANK is here to stay, to help you, and to help everyone make the secondary market really rock and be rock steady.

Posted - 2008.03.02 19:01:00 - [7]

 

Originally by: Hexxx

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EBANK Stock Exchange (EBSE)
Firstly, EBANK is designing a stock exchange. But that's probably not the main surprise. In doing so, EBANK is planning a whole stock market framework that goes beyond the current concept of an IPO. These are RIPOs, or Regulated IPOs. In essence, these are fully virtualized IPOs held within EBANK. Shares in RIPOs will be able to be split, frozen, and traded with options or as direct day trades, but most importantly investments in RIPOs will be insured by EBANK. Yes, EBANK will take its first foray in being a proper central bank, and actually insure against RIPO scams - at least partly covering investor cash. So in the event of a scam, at least investors will at least get something. There are many, many details that need to be worked out and a lot of code to still be written, but this is the direction that we're moving in on this.

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Will EBSE only support stocks based on RIPOs, or will non-RIPO stock be tradable at EBSE as well?

Somehow, 'EBSE' just doesn't sound right to me. It's also very similar to EGSE. How about VEBX - Virtualized EBANK Exchange?

Posted - 2008.03.02 19:10:00 - [9]

 

Originally by: YouGotRipped

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Looks like you people have been far more busy then you've let on. Congratulations, I suppose I speak for all when I say we're very anxious to see how the promised improvements will shape up.

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If it helps put things in perspective, the post count for our Board of Directors forums (exclusively accessed by ONLY EBANK Directors and Developers) has over 2,100+ posts.

In addition to that, I have dozens of e-mails in my inbox and I chat with Ricdic (literally) almost every single day.

Trust me when I say; we are very busy.

Posted - 2008.03.03 00:28:00 - [11]

 

Originally by: Hexxx

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The heavily unpopular change to the Deimos, especially after such a recent and hard-hitting nerf to the Eos, leaves Gallente producers with only 3 main ship profit centers, all 3 heavily contested: Megathron, Dominix and the now ubiquitous Hulk. Given the Amarr boost and the prevalent high demand for Minmatar ships, we expect to see a lot more production from those 2 races as a result.

Last but not least, with the changes to Ice fields, we will see demand for Ice soar to levels not seen before. This can only be fixed by CCP introducing more slots in NPC stations, as there are now too few slots in NPC stations and too many POS's congesting space around the galaxy. Until this change is effected, EBANK predicts Ice prices to be as high as ever.

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Deimos Changes aren't going to go live apparently now. And also what ice changes exactly?

Posted - 2008.03.03 03:58:00 - [13]

 

I don't know if anyone here is going to tell you about the ICE changes simply because it's a heavy rumor, no patch notes or Dev blogs I've read have anything to say about it.

After hearing the rumor myself it goes in line with CCPs thinking and more importantly it's direction. CCP want let "stuff" in empire to make the databases smaller, the less the servers need to track the better. They also want to cut down on the Macro Miners, the rumor seems to be a counter for both of these.

Like Hexxx said if the rumor is indeed fact then CCP will defiantly be required to increase slots in stations or they will simply destroy Empire economy. Until the slot change ICE will simply be stupidly high. It would be an artificial increase in a good number of items.

Posted - 2008.03.03 04:30:00 - [15]

 

Originally by: EBANK Ricdic

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The rumor, was that CCP were removing Ice from empire.

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linkage to said rumor, pls....

Posted - 2008.03.03 09:14:00 - [17]

 

Edited by: Feng Schui on 03/03/2008 09:15:24

I would like to mention, that my (however minuscule amount it was in the grand scheme of ebank) withdrawals from my accounts, was due to me not expecting to go completely broke due to placing market orders / trading, and pvp'ing.

I quite literally, needed the cash When I get myself situated with the new corporation and occupation though, hopefully my accounts will go back up 10 fold of what they were

quick edit to add:

I would like to mention, that if I did not have these funds in ebank, it would not have been as easy for me to "get back on my feet," as I would have spent it all, lol

Posted - 2008.03.03 17:24:00 - [19]

 

Nice. As an account holder i hope to see more of these. I have already copied it to word format and have printed it out for a more detailed study than current circumstances allow.

Posted - 2008.03.03 23:40:00 - [21]

 

Originally by: Block Ukx

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I would like to hear more about your proposed stock exchange. Are you considering Options in its design?

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We haven't had any serious discussion of options and they are not in our current designs.

Personally, I'm not sure the secondary market is robust enough to warrent spending the time on this paticular feature.

Posted - 2008.03.04 05:57:00 - [23]

 

Originally by: Trivas

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I'm really interested in the stock exchange. Will there be a tool for outside companies to build a "Mutual Fund" within the exchange? Perhaps not at first, but I can see, just as in real life, lots of people wanting to invest their money, but not really wanting to spend the time to do all the research. Perhaps a partnership type of arrangement could be established with companies that wish to do mutual funds and EBANK, such that you endorse the trust of said company.

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EBANK already has shared accounts with role based permissions. In fact, every single account at EBANK has role based access (checking, sweep, and savings all default to "owner" and those roles can't be changed).

What's more, the way the Bonds are handeled....holding stocks is an account "add-on" that is linked to any paticular account (sweep by default) so that in theory...you could have a shared account holding multiple stocks. Sort of like a mutual fund managed by a Corp.

Posted - 2008.03.04 21:26:00 - [25]

 

Originally by: SiJira

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is there anything ebank plans to do to make more people that dont read the md accept it as a safe service to use?

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Basically to keep running things as we are now.

I anticipate EBANK actually having more problems with "trust" the closer we get to 1 trillion isk. Ironically, the fractional-reserve Banking model mitigates alot of the capital exposure to any single person. In other words, no one can really scam 1 trillion isk.

Not sure if that really answers the question because I'm not entirely sure what the answer is.

Posted - 2008.03.05 04:28:00 - [27]

 

Originally by: Kwint Sommer

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I've just had a revelation as to what Ebank really needs, credit.

I'm in the process of drastically changing over my entire POS network so that it can be taken down and shipped wholesale off 0.0 when that thing with Bunnz finally goes live. I found myself staring at my assets and seeing billions in stuff that needed to be liquidated and billions in stuff needed to replace that being liquidated and yet a mere 2B in my wallet. The problem is that my current options are to either have a week of downtime as I transition (and thus a week's lost profit) or sell off everything to buy orders at 80% of what I might have made.

I was thinking of where I might squeeze an extra two or so billion out of assets as I would only need it for a few days. Obviously a loan came to mind. Ebank has trusted me with such amounts of unsecured capital so why not get it from them? Because getting a loan takes a few days and has administrative costs to administer. Hence, for short-term on-the-spot needs a traditional loan satisfies neither the lendi (too slow) nor the lender (too little profit given the administrative costs). However, pre-approved credit such as with a modern credit card would do both. A lendi applies for credit, the bank sets a limit and a rate and the lendi can borrow funds at any point and they are automatically disbursed as he has been pre-approved.

So why don't the banks in EVE issue credit such as that which is widely available in the real world? Because there is no Federal Reserve or banking network from which they can draw cash in the event of a run on the bank. Thus every time they offer credit to someone they have to consider the full value of that credit to be on loan as far their cash reserves are concerned. This would rapidly deplete their truly available capital while only a small portion of that credit would actually be earning interest.

One solution is to charge obscene interest on the capital borrowed but that will just make it's user base extremely limited. The real solution would be to charge a 3% interest rate on the credit line and interest rates comparable to what a loan would be on the borrowed capital. Then people would only maintain a credit line when they need and the bank would essentially be neutral (no loss or gain) on that capital while it's tied up in this. I for one would have happily taken out a 2 or 3 billion line of credit for this month if I had the option.

The only remaining flaw I see is that all sending of funds still has to be done by a teller. Hopefully CCP will finally allow for the transfer of ISK via API-key or some other automated process.

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I believe this already exists but I'll wait for an ebank representative to comment.

Posted - 2008.03.05 04:49:00 - [29]

 

Edited by: Treelox on 05/03/2008 04:51:34

Originally by: Kwint Sommer

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Originally by: Amarr Citizen 155

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I believe this already exists but I'll wait for an ebank representative to comment.

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How the heck did I miss that? Is it still in trial mode or something?

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basically a Line of Credit, and they do it. At least that is what I had given to me back in December. While I applied for 5bil, and was issued 5bil, I only ever had out around 3bil. Only paid intrest on whatever the daily outstanding balance was. At any time if I needed or wanted to, I could have withdrawn the total line of credit out to 5bil.

Essentially its just a loan, but the way their software works it, in practice you can use it like a line of credit.

As long as you dont zero out your balance, the books keep the Line of Credit open. I found out much to my unhappy surprise that it has to be more than a whole isk to keep it open. When I repaid back mine, I thought I was being tricky and not paying back 0.05isk would keep it open for me but alas it closed it. If I had been smart and paid everything back except maybe 1isk, then I would still have had the 5bil Line of Credit availble to me if and when needed.

---edit
added last paragraph