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Post by ablrate on May 19, 2020 17:02:07 GMT
ablrate Is there a new timeframe when this is going to go live? We are hopeful that it will be end of this month / beginning of next, but we will give plenty of notice of a live date and the details etc.
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number5
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Post by number5 on May 19, 2020 17:05:53 GMT
ablrate Is there a new timeframe when this is going to go live? We are hopeful that it will be end of this month / beginning of next, but we will give plenty of notice of a live date and the details etc. So is liquidity expected to be fluid from the launch or will it take time for other platforms to enroll etc?
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Post by ablrate on May 19, 2020 17:14:43 GMT
We are hopeful that it will be end of this month / beginning of next, but we will give plenty of notice of a live date and the details etc. So is liquidity expected to be fluid from the launch or will it take time for other platforms to enroll etc? Great question.. nothing will change (i.e no charges etc) initially and it will only be our lender base. We have several parties interested in signing up as liquidity providers and we were on with a fund's lawyers today to finalize agreements, so it will probably take us a month or so to bed everything down and begin increasing access and liquidity. There are some legal and regulatory procedures to work through before any other platform is able to integrate, so the progress will be steady but over the rest of the year liquidity will increase substantially.
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number5
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Post by number5 on May 19, 2020 17:26:12 GMT
So is liquidity expected to be fluid from the launch or will it take time for other platforms to enroll etc? Great question.. nothing will change (i.e no charges etc) initially and it will only be our lender base. We have several parties interested in signing up as liquidity providers and we were on with a fund's lawyers today to finalize agreements, so it will probably take us a month or so to bed everything down and begin increasing access and liquidity. There are some legal and regulatory procedures to work through before any other platform is able to integrate, so the progress will be steady but over the rest of the year liquidity will increase substantially. Ok great...so it will give us a some time to get used to the the new version of the current SM, before other platforms are introduced and it becomes this liquidity monster!
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sapphire
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Post by sapphire on May 19, 2020 17:31:20 GMT
Investing via P2P clearly entails a number of risks (borrower risk, security risk, platform risk etc.) even using existing technology which has been running live for a number of years. It is reasonable to expect IT risk to increase as a result of moving to a new sub-system (ASMX), especially one based on recent technology (Blockchain). Yes, I expect ASMX to be tested before it goes live, but having been closely involved with financial systems software development for a significant time, I am well aware that it is not practically feasible to test typical financial systems 100% (i.e. test every possible logic path) before it is goes live. Even if ASMX was offered for free, personally I would prefer to wait for sometime until the sub-system & technology have been demonstrated to be running smoothly and issue free, live, for a reasonable period, before deciding if I was comfortable using it. If I had been told that I would be forced to move to ASMX for a loan I was considering investing in, I would not have invested in it until I was comfortable that the ASMX implementation had been proven to work, live, issue free. Forcing me to move to ASMX now for an additional fee, having invested in the loan, makes me very uncomfortable, especially having regard to the overall increased risks in the post-COVID environment. Having been on a profitable journey on the ablrate bus for 3+ years now, after entrusting it with a life changing sum of money, I am afraid my intuition is now telling me to exit at the earliest stop having regard to the approach now planned & being forced upon me. ASMX is being built by the guys who built technology for the LSE, at IG Group they were responsible for all global exchanges, market access and Forex IT. At Cantor, one of the developers was head of their IT department and has a degree in Control Theory. They are probably the best developers I have ever come across in knowledge and innovation and I would suggest there are few better in financial exchanges. If you are in financial systems development I suspect you will have come across them in senior positions at some point and worked with their code. So if it is stability of the code you are worried about, we've got you covered. There has been a bot trading on the technology for 6 months+ and it has done literally thousand of trades and errors are logged by a dedicated QA and fixed. I believe your major risk in Covid-19 is liquidity. In any status of a loan (apart from complete right off, and perhaps even then) if you have a liquid market, with many players, there will be a price that someone will buy. If you have a closed market, with limited liquidity you will have price problems, i.e you will have to discount too much to gain that liquidity because or you will have to restrict your market participants from withdrawing money (as you are not getting enough in). One of our lenders suggested that a £60k investment is now paying down at £5 per day... that is not a liquid market. As you point out above, technology gets old and needs updating. ASMX is the update of the SM and then we will be completely rebuilding Ablrate over the next 6 months. The platform will be focused on better data mining, better risk management more diversification options and more accessibility. I would say that when we launched the SM we were given plenty of... err.....'free advice'. Mainly it was a 'flippers paradise', 'against the ethos of P2P', 'too complicated'... and those were the nicer comments! Everytime we have made a change there have been complaints and we fully expect this to be the same but there has been a substantial amount of money invested in this project with some very clever people involved, so before you cash in your chips do have a play with it when its live. But if you do decide to cash in your chips, you will be able to do it quicker and more efficiently. Even where capable & experienced IT managers/architects/designers/developers are contributing to an IT project, history provides numerous examples of IT implementations, particularly those involving newer technology, stumbling badly & sometimes completely failing, with huge consequential impact, financial and otherwise, to the parent organisation. I mentioned the limitations of software testing to highlight the risks of dormant bugs in software code. New IT implementations are exposed to a significant number of risks, not just in the area of software code, too numerous to cover in a forum post. (Interested readers may wish to look at books & literature on this topic and Google on the various IT/technology risks e.g. "blockchain risks" / "blockchain implementation risks".) I am conscious of the limitations of the current ablrate SM by it being 'closed' & restricted to ablrate investors only. Having regard to my loan profile and the post-COVID experience on the SM, I would prefer to continue with it, and discount as is needed to achieve liquidity. I do not consider the *possibility* of additional liquidity and a lower discount on the ASMX (the benefit of which would be diluted by the impact of the new fees), sufficient to compensate for the additional risks I will be exposed to. You mention "...before you cash in your chips do have a play with it when its live...". Whilst I am conscious of the various potential risks my current P2P investments in ablrate are exposed to, on a balanced view, I do not consider that, as things stand, I am playing with chips on a gambling table. However, If I do continue to invest in ablrate & 'play' with ASMX as you suggest, I do believe that having regard to the additional risks entailed, this is likely to tip the balance towards gambling. I consider my hard earned savings too precious to treat them as 'chips' on a gambling table.
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Post by Badly Drawn Stickman on May 19, 2020 18:20:38 GMT
Realising now that I was costing the platform money by adding funds, I am riddled with guilt. Alas I will now have to endure the further turmoil of costing them money by withdrawing. Its an emotional nightmare. Not that anything much is paying anything currently, so I will have time to reflect. It has been obvious for a while that they are looking to move beyond the current base, and a casual comment in a video suggests he has low regard for this forum. Fun while it lasted, but I am ready to get off when my current position unwinds. I doubt the additional paid for benefit I was perfectly happy without has coloured that much either way. A 'low regard for this forum'. Happy for you to criticise the business, the model or me but to suggest we don't value the forum, when we have consistently engaged for for 6 years (some years before yourself) is a little off... Well we don't need to concern ourselves with that, everybody can form their own opinion from your videos. What is very odd is that is the bit you elected to respond to. (You normally totally ignore my input) I would have thought the bit about you moving away from your current base was the real bait.
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blender
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Post by blender on May 19, 2020 20:56:11 GMT
It's best to answer the easy criticisms and forget the difficult ones, if you can. Having said that, it is not so much platforms moving away from their base, but rather p2p becoming more difficult to match to retail lenders, first through the new FCA scary rules and rituals, then swiftly followed by the current viral unpleasantness. Both combine to create a crisis of liquidity which forces platforms to change the relationship with the retail base. We saw it immediately with Assetz, with almost zero liquidity on the access accounts allowing a new platform fee levied on trapped funds. Charging for the provision of liquidity, by platform or its agents, is another manifestation of an increasing need and opportunity to take more of the retail lenders' cash. This new charge is small beer, but much of Ablrate's income comes from the borrowers' monthly repayments. The way things are going, in the short term at least, that will create a hole in revenue which might force a further apparent distancing from the base.
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Post by Badly Drawn Stickman on May 19, 2020 21:23:00 GMT
It's best to answer the easy criticisms and forget the difficult ones, if you can. Having said that, it is not so much platforms moving away from their base, but rather p2p becoming more difficult to match to retail lenders, first through the new FCA scary rules and rituals, then swiftly followed by the current viral unpleasantness. Both combine to create a crisis of liquidity which forces platforms to change the relationship with the retail base. We saw it immediately with Assetz, with almost zero liquidity on the access accounts allowing a new platform fee levied on trapped funds. Charging for the provision of liquidity, by platform or its agents, is another manifestation of an increasing need and opportunity to take more of the retail lenders' cash. This new charge is small beer, but much of Ablrate's income comes from the borrowers' monthly repayments. The way things are going, in the short term at least, that will create a hole in revenue which might force a further apparent distancing from the base. Oddly I didn't offer it as criticism just observation. Now I know length of service on the forum is the argument winner, I will be more respectful. Yes you are quite right the dynamics have changed and for platforms to survive some of the niceties have to be sacrificed and hard choices made. Not surprisingly that will make villains out of former heroes.
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blender
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Post by blender on May 19, 2020 21:46:15 GMT
Time served on other forums should be taken into account. I'm so old that I can remember being told off by ablrateandy - what became of him?
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Post by Badly Drawn Stickman on May 19, 2020 22:01:05 GMT
Time served on other forums should be taken into account. I'm so old that I can remember being told off by ablrateandy - what became of him? Indeed it should, might even mean I won the argument. I doubt FC would give me much of a reference somehow. They come and they go, each gently mocked in turn. We have to anticipate the odd grumpy response.
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hazellend
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Post by hazellend on May 19, 2020 22:07:42 GMT
I’m getting old and worried ASMX will be beyond me. I remember talk about blockchain and bitcoin and don’t understand (or want to) any of that.
ABLrate have been the best platform by far in my view. Definitely the most innovative and the only ones who had a proper secondary “market”.
I’m pretty keen to see what’s next. I wish ABLrate the best and hope that they are one of the few P2P survivors
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blender
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Post by blender on May 20, 2020 7:50:43 GMT
I’m getting old and worried ASMX will be beyond me. I remember talk about blockchain and bitcoin and don’t understand (or want to) any of that. ABLrate have been the best platform by far in my view. Definitely the most innovative and the only ones who had a proper secondary “market”. I’m pretty keen to see what’s next. I wish ABLrate the best and hope that they are one of the few P2P survivors Well said. In these difficult times a bit of understanding and empathy is needed on both sides. Consider loan 129 as an example of unforced commitment to preserving lenders' capital. Loans 67&68 were on life support last year due to multiple failures on the borrower side (to put it politely). Rather than switching the machine off, which most platforms would do, loan 129 was raised as a saviour and impossible timescales were met with an opening of the pub before Xmas. Now it is prevented from trading, by law, and 129 has also missed its first quarterly payment. It must seem that you do what you think is right by lenders, rather than what is perhaps financially prudent for platform, and sh*t happens which you can do nothing about. Lenders are a tough audience - maybe because it's all about the future returns expected and nothing much else. At least I could get most of my cash out through the SM when I needed it, and the discount did not make much of a dent in the overall returns to date.
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Post by ablrate on May 20, 2020 8:40:15 GMT
A 'low regard for this forum'. Happy for you to criticise the business, the model or me but to suggest we don't value the forum, when we have consistently engaged for for 6 years (some years before yourself) is a little off... Well we don't need to concern ourselves with that, everybody can form their own opinion from your videos. What is very odd is that is the bit you elected to respond to. (You normally totally ignore my input) I would have thought the bit about you moving away from your current base was the real bait. Forgive me if you have been ignored, we are not afraid of criticism, we just see it as feedback. Generally if its opinion then there is little we can respond to with crossing the line of giving advice. I think people will be able to form their opinion from the 6 and years and goodness knows how many thousands of posts we have made. 'Moving away from our current base' would suggest we are more interested in institutional business. While we are happy to fill loans with institutional and professional money, and it would be relatively easy to change everything to an institutional platform and forget about retail (FC, etc ) there are no plans to make that a strategy. As a matter of fact we started this platform out of a frustration with institutions and with a goal of changing the landscape for private debt investors. Our conclusions over this period of 6 years is that liquidity is the key to doing that and we have invested in that conclusion.
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Post by ablrate on May 20, 2020 9:42:56 GMT
I’m getting old and worried ASMX will be beyond me. I remember talk about blockchain and bitcoin and don’t understand (or want to) any of that. ABLrate have been the best platform by far in my view. Definitely the most innovative and the only ones who had a proper secondary “market”. I’m pretty keen to see what’s next. I wish ABLrate the best and hope that they are one of the few P2P survivors You will be just fine. The new SM has been aimed at making this as similar to what it is now even with some of the suggestions that have been made on hear (auto matching for example) You don't have to understand anything about blockchain just like you don't have to understand Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (the HTTP bit) or any other protocol or coding language used to deliver the platform. There will be tons of videos on how to use it and believe me, it really isn't that different.
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Post by Badly Drawn Stickman on May 20, 2020 9:50:14 GMT
Well we don't need to concern ourselves with that, everybody can form their own opinion from your videos. What is very odd is that is the bit you elected to respond to. (You normally totally ignore my input) I would have thought the bit about you moving away from your current base was the real bait. Forgive me if you have been ignored, we are not afraid of criticism, we just see it as feedback. Generally if its opinion then there is little we can respond to with crossing the line of giving advice. I think people will be able to form their opinion from the 6 and years and goodness knows how many thousands of posts we have made. 'Moving away from our current base' would suggest we are more interested in institutional business. While we are happy to fill loans with institutional and professional money, and it would be relatively easy to change everything to an institutional platform and forget about retail (FC, etc ) there are no plans to make that a strategy. As a matter of fact we started this platform out of a frustration with institutions and with a goal of changing the landscape for private debt investors. Our conclusions over this period of 6 years is that liquidity is the key to doing that and we have invested in that conclusion. I am perfectly comfortable with being ignored, it is always easier to score when the goalkeeper is chatting to the crowd. I am sure you have responded (and probably helped your business) to the forum in your personal 1612 posts, spread as you seem keen to illustrate over 6 years, which yes as you seem to feel is relevant is longer than I have been registered (turns out you can read the forum without being registered). Clearly I accidentally hit an exposed nerve with my observation. I called it bait, and you still took it.
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