zhoutong

Because First Citizens Bank acquired all of the deposits and loans but none of the securities, presumably the only way for the FDIC to complete the deal is to pay First Citizens Bank the difference in cash, which is roughly $63.5 billion (napkin maths: the $119B in deposits are assumed one-to-one, and $72B loans are acquired at $16.5B discount, resulting in a cash outlay of -$63.5B for the acquirer for a bundle of net assets worth -$47B on paper).

If depositors start withdrawing money from the new bank, they at least have access to this amount of extra liquidity from the acquisition.

Upon further reading I found that the Viability Event (which is also a Write-down Event) is probably the applicable one in this case:

(b) customary measures to improve CSG’s capital adequacy being at the time inadequate or unfeasible, CSG has received an irrevocable commitment of extraordinary support from the Public Sector (beyond customary transactions and arrangements in the ordinary course) that has, or imminently will have, the effect of improving CSG’s capital adequacy and without which, in the determination of the Regulator, CSG would have become insolvent, bankrupt, unable to pay a material part of its debts as they fall due or unable to carry on its business.

Clearly this deal required non-customary, extraordinary support from the Public Sector, so if the regulator determines that without such a transaction CSG would have liquidity issues, then this event would occur.

However I think my point stands that the terms of these CS AT1 notes should be understood as materially different from similar securities. For example, this note from ING (https://www.ing.com/MediaEditPage/XS2122174415-ING-Groep-N.V...) has a single Trigger Event that will cause mandatory conversion into ordinary shares, and a more general provision for Statutory Loss Absorption which may be a conversion or a write-down. The terms of CS AT1 notes do not seem to provide for any automatic or discretionary conversion, only automatic write-down.

I completely agree that in situations like this, the regulators have a lot of discretion on these bail-in securities, but I consider this "automatic permanent write-down" feature to be of a materially higher risk than "automatic mandatory conversion" variant because it could be a difference between getting back something (or everything) vs nothing. What the regulators do are, by definition, not "automatic", and an automatic write-down should be a much lower hurdle than an explicit regulatory action.

I was initially surprised about this because AT1 notes are supposed to rank higher than equity. It seems that almost no one saw this coming (CS AT1 bonds traded higher this weekend before the write-down announcement), and traders presumed that bondholders should be made whole if equity holders get something.

However then I looked at the information memorandum of these AT1 bonds (e.g. https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/about-us/docs/inv...). Credit Suisse titled their issues as "Perpetual Tier 1 Contingent Write-down Capital Notes". Note that it's "contingent write-down" rather than the more typical "contingent convertible". The IM also doesn't contain an explicit conversion price or conditions.

Almost everyone would call this a "CoCo bond", even though its terms are exceedingly clear -- if CET1 falls below 7%, a Contingency Event, which is a Write-down Event, occurs, and "the full principal amount of the Notes will automatically and permanently be written-down to zero on the Write-down Date." In other IM issued by other banks I've seen, usually such event is followed by a mandatory conversion to ordinary shares rather than an immediate write-down. I wonder if this nuance was fully considered and priced in the trading of such instruments.

Effectively there are two banks (Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, N.A. and Signature Bridge Bank, N.A.) with de facto unlimited FDIC insurance, as there's explicit guarantee for all existing and new deposits.

In fact, in a monopolistic market, perfect price discrimination (every consumer pays exactly their individual marginal utility) results in allocative efficiency.

The consumer surplus is zero, but the producer surplus is the maximum possible value.

In other words, the monopolistic supplier would otherwise charge a higher price for everyone if it is unable to price discriminate. If price discrimination is successful, more consumers can afford the product.

Except in this case it's the Hong Kong stock exchange with the lower share price. Almost all A-H dual-listed companies are relatively overvalued in A-share market and undervalued in H-share market, and it has been the case for the last 10 years.

There's no effectively way to arbitrage this other than waiting for "all future cash flows" to be realised and discounted to present. It's the same share in the same company, with equal voting and distribution rights, but you just can't take one share bought in Hong Kong to Shenzhen to sell.

Among the Chinese investors, it's commonly accepted that A-share has a price premium because its price is likely to go up more in a bullish market. Given the largely speculative nature of the Shanghai/Shenzhen markets (compared to the more "rational" western-style Hong Kong market), having the same voting and distribution rights is far from enough to cause a convergence in share price.

At least in Mandarin, given enough context, each Chinese character has one correct pronunciation. It's frequently the "context" that trips up non-native speakers.

The capitalization was lost in translation because in German all nouns are capitalized, whereas in English only proper nouns are capitalized. Perhaps Google Translate assumes "Seafile" to not be a proper noun, so it was downcased in English.

It gives every shareholder the ability to sell 2/3 of shares without any change to their percentage control of the company.

Alt-3 instead of Shift-3

Yes, and it's exactly what's happening. There's no market inefficiency here. During the few days when IPOs are available, the overnight interbank interest rates usually increase significantly compared to other days. On average you can expect to make about 10% p.a. almost-risk-free from IPOs, similar to gearing A-grade corporate bonds.

This stock is listed on ChiNext, which is currently not available to foreign investors.

Not contradictory at all. Because IPO is such a lucrative investment, each round of IPOs can draw as much as several trillion CNY. This amount of money would have to be withdrawn from the stock market to "cool it down".

Because if it tanks, it will likely go to -10% instantly, making it really hard to sell. The thing about price restrictions is that you can never be sure what the real market price is because no one has the information, especially in a bubble.

Most of the volume happens around market opening, because at that time no one is sure whether the stock will end the +10% strike that day.

If you want to sell at an all-time-high, you would have to risk losing out to sell at one of the +10% days.

No. There is off-market bulk settlement, but it's under the same pricing restrictions.

Because the IPO prices in China are heavily regulated. Tech companies often raise little money in an IPO because it will always be significantly underpriced (generally 100%-300%).

The authorities will make sure your IPO is oversubscribed by at least 50 times to protect the investors, or they will not approve the IPO.

It's a hugely underpriced IPO in a bubble (Tech stocks average P/E is over 100). +/- 10% is the price limit in Chinese stock markets.

So rather than having a price jump, this stock continues going up with little volume, until the "real market price" is reached.

Edit: It's oversubscribed by almost 300 times. http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSL3N0WI22B20150316?irpc...

We've had the same issues at CoinJar, and we used SSH agent forwarding to solve it. This is how it can work:

Every new instance of application server is provisioned automatically by a trusted server (which holds the key to a credentials server). During orchestration/deployment, the application server has a temporary permission to fetch the secrets it needed, through SSH agent forwarding. Once the deployment is done, the session will end and the application server can never read new secrets until the next deployment.

This way we don't really need a solution like Vault. SSH is mature enough to provide authentication, and encryption is easy once you've figured out how to distribute keys automatically.

Or just use a UNIQUE INDEX.

Definition of "custodial or depository service": http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca2001172/...

There's nothing remotely similar. The Bitcoin payment is not an arrangement nor a financial product. It's not held in trust either.

IANAL but applying your implied criteria it seems that every online store should hold AFSL because they take money from consumers. A "financial product" has been clearly defined in CA.

I can't see how Bitbillpay is remotely a custodial or depository service. No dollar ever changes hands (I pay your bills with my credit card, and you pay me in Bitcoin). Australia Post also explicitly allows "third party bill payments" in their terms of service.

To fairly judge my background, you should really only look at Bitcoinica between Sep 2011 and Jan 2012, when I actually had a management role in the business. The subsequent mis-management was entirely out of my control. I owned exactly zero percent of the company before, during and after any of the three hacks. I sold all assets related to Bitcoinica in November 2011 (~4 months before the first "Linode hack").

I honestly want Bitcoin to be successful, and that's why I joined CoinJar and started the journey all over again.

"Digital currencies potentially allow individuals and entities to conduct quick and complex international funds transfers outside the regulatory requirements of the traditional financial system. Digital currencies that are not backed, either directly or indirectly, by precious metal or bullion are not regulated by the AML/CTF Act."[0]

It's quite surprising that the law is written that way, but CoinJar is pretty proactive to positively shape the Bitcoin economy and establish legitimacy before regulation comes in. At CoinJar we have already merged the AML/CTF 100-point check into our ID verification for fraud prevention. Currently cash deposits are not regulated but bank branches have the right to require depositors to show ID.

[0] http://www.austrac.gov.au/files/typ_rprt12_full.pdf

It is absolutely a proof-of-concept. At the same time it's just one of the many tools I wish Bitcoin can have. I don't expect it to be profitable (unless you count credit card points) but I will keep it running to allow 694 billers in Australia to accept Bitcoin indirectly.

Maybe someday they will see the value in CoinJar Checkout API and integrate directly. I'll even give them the source code I've written if they're too lazy to browse API docs. :-D

Whoops. Thanks for pointing out. Edited original post.

AUSTRAC has explicitly mentioned that Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are currently out of scope of AML/CTF.

Bitbillpay doesn't accept fiat currencies. It's not a money transmitter. You can't use the service to get cash.

CoinJar is backed by AngelCube[0]. [0]: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/coinjar

Thanks. Actually you can use this service to pay all kinds of bills. There are almost 700 billers in Australia that accept POSTbillpay. It's just that the BPAY® trade mark is a lot more reputable and familiar to Aussies.

Actually that's exactly the point of this project. I run a startup called CoinJar (the first VC-backed Bitcoin startup in Australia) and Bitbillpay consumes CoinJar Checkout API.

I will open source the project once it has gained some initial traction. But before that, I will probably write a few tutorial-like blog posts to demonstrate how to integrate the seamless and unbranded Bitcoin checkout solution into any online business.

But of course, Bitbillpay is actually easier and faster to use than POSTbillpay. For one thing, you don't have to enter your credit number, and you can automatically receive an email with the receipt. (Australia Post will ask you to "print out".)