Blue Star Capital Share Discussion Threads

[tonyfabrizi] 08/7/2021 12:12

stoxx, correct re your first question. In terms of timing on Pendulum, I am in the dark like you, however, I seem to recall hearing that they are marketing and i would expect this to take 6 to 8 weeks so working backwards I would hope for news by end July, but it might take longer. If Pendulum is successfully launched and they raise a sensible amount through the token raise say $3m+ then I would hope this would be seen as a big step forward. What impact this has on Blue's share price I have no idea but surely it must be positive!

[888icb] 08/7/2021 11:47

Just look at yesterday’s £8 Billion listing of Wise to see how large the market is for international money transfers at a fraction of the cost charged by Banks. This is exactly the market Dtransfer is in so let’s hope they are about to crack it with the help of Pendulum.

[stoxx67] 08/7/2021 11:26

your first paragraph makes it very clear, if my assumptions are correct, as to why Dtransfer has not been able to gain traction, it is limitation on Stellar, thus the bridge to open up to other exchanges?

i believe you mentioned in a previous post, but is it still a reasonable guesstimate that Pendulum should be up and going, if it is to be, by the en dof this month.

how quickly would we see a reflection in BLU share price, your guesstimate ?

thanks tony.

[tonyfabrizi] 08/7/2021 11:22

stoxx, I will try to answer your question but to be clear I have not been involved with the Pendulum initiative so this is my best guess. If you compare say Ethereum to Stellar you will find that Ethereum is far more established which means its far easier to carry out transactions in scale and complexity. There are numerous utility tokens connected with the Ethereum blockchain which makes it easy to use. Stellar in comparison is worth 2% of Ethereum and the infrastructure around the Stellar network is far less developed. This means its significantly more difficult to undertake transactions such as money transfer using Stellar. It's possible but the scale and scope is far more limited than for say Ethereum.

My understanding is that Pendulum will make the Stellar blockchain far easier to use. As part of this process they launch their own utility token which will become an integral part of the Stellar ecosystem (ie SatoshiPay become an important part of the Stellar blockchain). The funds raised by Pendulum will be available to SatoshiPay for building this part of the business. In addition by building Pendulum the chances of Dtransfer becoming successful are also increased.

I hope this helps?

[blueblood] 08/7/2021 08:42

Sold out and bought directly into Guild as the massive number of shares not helping here imo

[fairenough11] 08/7/2021 08:40

Playing the e-sports growth story
Michael Taylor senses a potential trading opportunity at a company which is establishing itself in the fast growing world of e-sports.
July 7, 2021
By Michael Taylor
I’m writing this from my hotel balcony in Mallorca. Having paid a few hundred pounds for a ‘fit to fly’ Covid test, I was delighted (and surprised) that somebody actually checked them. Trading is one of the few jobs where it is truly difficult to take entire days off. What if there is news on any of my holdings, or a significant RNS announcement from a company on my watchlist? Spending an hour on the RNS announcements at 7am is always a worthy investment of time – if only to keep track of company results and updates. One day the facts on a company you track may change for the better, and if you’re in a position to buy quicker than the next person then you get the cheaper stock.

Such a thing happened this week. A technology company I have been tracking announced an 80 percent increase in its royalty income (pure cash), which over a 10-year period will cover most of the company’s current market cap. Of course, we do have to discount this cash back to its Present Value – because cash in the future is not as useful as cash today. But even then, this assumes no further growth in the royalty income and doesn’t count the company’s two other business units. I’ll be waiting for the next set of results to get some more colour on the company and will share more then.

One company that I have built a position in – and intend to add to further should the story and chart continue to be good – is Guild Esports (LSE: GILD), a company which has teams or 'clans' of top esports players on its roster and is partly owned by David Beckham. This company is fast approaching its first year of being listed having come to the market in October 2020. Sadly, for those who participated in the IPO this was a complete flop with the price collapsing to 5p. We have talked about ‘lock-ins’ before and this was a prime example of sellers unloading on the bell because the book was not cleaned up properly. You would think that this would be something a broker would focus on because a bad IPO reflects badly on the broker. But for whatever reason, this appears to not have been the case and the price went from 9p to 5p within weeks.

GILD:LSE
Guild Esports PLC

1mth
Today change
0.65%Price (GBP)
7.70
Looking at Chart 1, we can see the how the stock hit 5p and bounced, then came back to test this level with a further bounce. The stock has traded in a range as 7p failed to be broken twice – marking these two prices as significant. Whenever a stock fails to break below or above a certain level, that level becomes worth watching. Rangebound stocks can trade sideways for months or even years, but it’s when they come out of the range that the brakes can come off.


Since listing, the company has won several sponsorship contracts with some serious names, who are looking to target the elusive gaming niche. E-sports is one of (if not the) fastest growing sports in the world, and what was once derided now sees players earning fortunes in prize money. It’s a big business, with managers, coaching teams, psychologists and nutritionists. Guild is hoping to tap into the lucrative sponsorship field and with a multi-million pound contract with Subway announced followed by a partnership and sponsorship deal with Samsung, I believe there will be more to come.

[888icb] 08/7/2021 08:34

GILD is doing well this morning probably because Investors Chronicle has done an article on it which is available on their website.

[doodlebug4] 07/7/2021 21:52

Doesn't seem to working too well at the moment! Perhaps they need to work a bit harder.:-)

[888icb] 07/7/2021 21:27

I remember Derek saying he and his team were working with Satoshipay in an interview.

[doodlebug4] 07/7/2021 18:57

I agree with your points comparing FFWD with BLU. At least FFWD has shown that the company can monetise some investments and reinvest their gains whereas BLU, as yet,has been unable to do that. The communication and newsflow from FFWD is also superior to that of BLU and at least gives the impression that the CEO has his finger on the pulse. I remember when Lorne Abony was CEO of FFWD he said he would communicate with the Investee Companies at least once a week - offering help and guidance when required. I wonder if Derek Lew takes such an active role with BLU's Investee Companies.

[888icb] 07/7/2021 18:39

As you say the buck stops with Derek Lew. However I feel the nature of the company as essentially an investment trust for early stage companies is either not understood or not liked by the market. I say this because of how another company you are familiar with FFWD has performed in a very similar way over a similar time period. Just compare the graphs for the 2 companies this year BLU spiked to 26p then declined to 15.FFWD 15p to 8p. FFWD has good investments that are performing well, they have realised cash from investments and have 3 IPO’s due imminently one of which should bring in very serious money. They have made 3 investments in the cannabis space in the last 3 days.
My point is the CEO of FFWD has been very active in increasing value but only last week he again commented on his frustration that the share price remains at a large discount to NAV. It is not a problem that is unique to BLU and once you have made an investment their is a limited amount you can do. In current markets many investors on AIM are just chasing instant success and don’t want to invest for the longer term as VC investments often take 3 years to mature. Personally I would suggest that when they make large gains from an investment they should declare a special dividend of part of the gain.
Anyway this week has seen the first small rises at FFWD so perhaps interest will return to BLU which had 65 million volume today.

[doodlebug4] 07/7/2021 16:54

Hopefully the BoD will be looking at the decline in the share price over the last six months and asking some questions of the Investee Companies which are underperforming - or not performing at all. At the end of the day the buck stops with Derek Lew.

[blueblood] 07/7/2021 14:53

Absolute dog and by far worst performing share in portfolio. What do the BoD actually do?

[okspookie] 07/7/2021 14:50

some sizeable sells gone through already today

depressingly familiar fall in the sp

sigh

[888icb] 06/7/2021 21:47

Sorry I repeated the 1st post it should have been this
stoxx67, no problem in disagreeing. My point about Stellar funding SatoshiPay is that SatoshiPay shareholders are not being asked to fund this phase of development. Most private businesses fail because they run out of money or the original shareholders are diluted out of sight while the business finds its true path to growth. While SatoshiPay is developing, it's incredibly helpful to have SDF's funding support most recently with no dilution for Blue shareholders.

I believe Pendulum will be pivotal to SatoshiPay's success and once successfully launched SatoshiPay will become far more attractive to potential buyers.

[888icb] 06/7/2021 21:39

They still persisted so Tony gave them both barrels
stoxx rest assured I had many difficult conversations with Meinhard and his team. I would like to have seen them work harder and there were numerous missed deadlines etc. However, I am also experienced enough to know what they are trying to achieve is difficult and many of the delays have been outside their control. Pendulum is the closest fit by far to their core competencies and its relevance to the Stellar Lumens ecosystem is key. Like you I sound like a broken record when I keep repeating that I believe there is value in SatoshiPay, less than I had originally hoped but far more than most on this board believe and more than the current value in Blue's NAV today. Time will tell who is right and as a long term shareholder in Blue I am sure you will be happy if you are proven wrong!

So there we have it Tony believes it is worth more than the current value in BLU’s NAV which is £4.9 million.

[888icb] 06/7/2021 21:27

Tony Fabrizi was asked to comment on River Otter and he responded.
thanks for adding the link to RiverOtter analysis, very insightful. You have asked for my views so:

1. the 5 other esports investments should have been covered in greater detail in the latest interims. Derek Lew is very close to Jonathan Bixby and should be able to obtain an up to date view. For the moment without greater disclosure we can only assume they are worthless.

2. Guild, quoted so we can all see its current value which is about £2.3m to Blue. Blue can sell its shares in Guild in a few months if it wishes.

3. Dynasty: I believe the story is better than RiverOtter is suggesting. The last round was heavily oversubscribed. I would not be surprised if Dynasty alone equalled Blue's current market cap in 3-6 months time.

4. Sthaler: So far raised almost £15m and last valuation puts Blues shareholding around £400k. I could put forward reasons why this might be worth £1m or zero so for the moment I think the £400k is reasonable. Blue only invested £50k.

5. NFT and Leaf: Small holdings lets say £300k combined.

6. SatoshiPay: It's a red herring to talk about Pioneer's lack of shareholding in SatoshiPay implying they dont like SatoshiPay; they became shareholders at the time of esports investments and have never had an opportunity to invest in SatoshiPay or Sthaler. RiverOtter is uncertain of SatoshiPay's value, join the club! I have recently stated that in my opinion SatoshiPay needs Pendulum to work if its to make real progress. They have strong backing from Stellar and while certain posters mock this as being a negative its actually very helpful as Stellar could easily fund SatoshiPay indefinitely if they believe this is in the interests of the foundation. Meinhard gets on very well with the SDF CEO. Personally, I dont believe this will be necessary as I expect them to complete their utility token raise and this will provide all the funding needed for SatoshiPay moving forward. Does this mean Blue can exit SatoshiPay? Possibly, that will depend upon a number of factors on which we can only speculate. A bull market for crypto and SatoshiPay may look very attractive to a number of fintechs looking for a way into blockchain and crypto.

In summary, on my calculations we have SatoshiPay £5m, Guild £2.3m, Dynasty £4.5m, others including cash £1m. Total assets of £12.8m which is around 0.25p per share. If you assume zero for SatoshiPay you have net assets per share of circa 0.15p.

[stoxx67] 06/7/2021 18:10

tony

would you explain to all on this board how ,in your words, Pendulum, Dtransfer (B2B) and the possibility of a Satoshipay Coin are linked and how they might function in terms of revenue generation for Satoshipay thus , at some stage, proving positive for BLU share price.

had thought B2B payments to be the "holy grail"

i have said many times i will be delighted to be proven wrong on Satoshipay, maybe my constructive criticism has become a little wayward, i'll reflect on that once they have achieved revenue :) !!

[tonyfabrizi] 06/7/2021 18:01

stoxx rest assured I had many difficult conversations with Meinhard and his team. I would like to have seen them work harder and there were numerous missed deadlines etc. However, I am also experienced enough to know what they are trying to achieve is difficult and many of the delays have been outside their control. Pendulum is the closest fit by far to their core competencies and its relevance to the Stellar Lumens ecosystem is key. Like you I sound like a broken record when I keep repeating that I believe there is value in SatoshiPay, less than I had originally hoped but far more than most on this board believe and more than the current value in Blue's NAV today. Time will tell who is right and as a long term shareholder in Blue I am sure you will be happy if you are proven wrong!

[okspookie] 06/7/2021 17:55

just for the record 888

im not a SatoshiPay hater

as a shareholder in blu

i think im entitled to ask ?s

related to any of BLU's investments

the fact that u continue to gloss over the facts

& post misleading comments on this bulletin board beggars belief

[stoxx67] 06/7/2021 17:48

thanks tony

i believe development to be the operative word, to my mind we , as shareholders, can only asses or see development through revenue or through figures offered to us in annual accounts proving progress / development , as such.

i am confident that Satoshipay was a frustration for you at times, however, now as a mere shareholder ;) , you can see things totally from our angle.

i would not mind if things were more transparent, in the world of fintech and NDA's and official secrets i of course realise full transparency will never be, however, shareholders do need something to allow them to gauge progress.

i do realise i am like a broken record, but i have seen zero progress over the past 4 years in Satoshipay or my BLU shareholding.

BLU is a diversified investment company, with superb potential in the majority of the investees, however it is now imperative we see signs of life, Dynasty will give us that within 6 months, but i do want to see Satoshipay reward us in a proportional way for the Years of disappointment and i would be happy to congratulate them if they finally got a project off the ground and adopted mainstream. we would all be many thousands of pounds wealthier then.

i've always said last chance saloon for Satoshipay, but as you state...... Satoshipay could be funded forever by Stellar, but of course if this is to be the case then they should be a part of stellar. as if they merely act like an "odd job man" for Stellar , we as BLU shareholders are never likely to see any return from it.

i would ask you again if you see any scenario for a Satoshipay IPO or other way for BLU to realise its investment.?

maybe pendulum will be that catalyst, England in a semi final ....... anything could happen this Year !!

atb

[888icb] 06/7/2021 17:34

Tony thank you once again for your very helpful comments and insights. I am sure you have realised already but there are a number of posters on here who are essentially irrational Satoshipay haters. You have not agreed with their view so they will attack you as well. I think you must have as much insight into Satoshipay as anyone but it’s wasted on them.

[tonyfabrizi] 06/7/2021 16:54

stoxx67, no problem in disagreeing. My point about Stellar funding SatoshiPay is that SatoshiPay shareholders are not being asked to fund this phase of development. Most private businesses fail because they run out of money or the original shareholders are diluted out of sight while the business finds its true path to growth. While SatoshiPay is developing, it's incredibly helpful to have SDF's funding support most recently with no dilution for Blue shareholders.

I believe Pendulum will be pivotal to SatoshiPay's success and once successfully launched SatoshiPay will become far more attractive to potential buyers.

[kernel_pult1] 06/7/2021 16:50

Hi Tony,

Again, many thanks for your insight.

Re: Satoshipay, we need to bear in mind that the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) are a non-profit organisation, so they are likely to be working in their 'non-profit' interests, but what about the interests of Satoshipay itself and Blue Star Capital.

For me, there is a huge divergence on the whole setup here, with SDF on one side, and BLU on the other (Satoshipay being in the middle). Are they working for profit or are they doing non-profit stuff? The last 2-3 years history tells us that they are doing non-profit stuff and leaning heavily towards (SDF).

I agree with Stoxx - we've had a huge crypto bull market come and go, I'd like to say a high tide raises all ships and all that but unfortunately not in this case.

Stellar lumens went 10x in price over the past 6-9 months, how do you compare that to the performance of the BLU share price in the same period?

On a seperate note


Does anyone know any brokers who offer trading on AQSE stocks? In particular for Pioneer?

I've enquired with Interactive Investor however they advised that Pioneer (PNER) is not tradeble with them as they do not have a KID document