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ProBank and the Economic Age

Signal Cartel

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David Matterall
April 16, 2018
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Talking in Stations
Talking in Stations
ProBank and the Economic Age
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Multi-Trillionaire Probag Bear sells his T3 assembly factories to raise 600 billion ISK, which he will use to open ProBank, a lending and Futures bank. In a separate segment, we talk to Aryth, head of Finance for the Imperium Empire talks about their 8 phase plan to conquer EVE and how to their economic plan is working out. A fascinating look into the age of economic power in EVE.

On the show:

  • Matterall
  • Tiberius

Guests:

  • Probag Bear (Market Trader)
  • Aryth [Financial Cabal, Goonswarm/Imperium]

Show Notes:

 

  • Probag Bear
  • Probank
    • (Official Forum Thread)
    • Make loans to other investors
    • Futures Bank
    • How do you trust in EVE?
    • “Reputation Grind”
    • Public vs Private investing (GSF style versus)
    • Being part of an investment cabal
    • Futures Market – how it works

I sell you a promise. In 3 months (so let’s say, Aug 1st) I will buy 1 PLEX from you at 4mil.

 

  • So let’s say you pay 0.5mil for this promise. If PLEX is sitting at 3mil on Aug 1st, you just made 0.5mil. If PLEX is sitting at 3.6mil, you just lost 0.1mil.
  • You don’t have to buy the PLEX itself to profit. In that example, if you win 0.5mil, you do it off an initial investment of only 0.5mil. 100% return there.
  • So if you have 50bil, you can buy 50 / 3 = 16k PLEX, or you can buy vastly more futures. Less isk tied up.
  • If you want to cash out, you sell your promise to either other players, or back to me. So if you get angsty about the plex price you just cash out before the and of the 3 months period and you’re good
  • shorts and longs both hopefully
  • you can bet on both it falling and rising
  • also i’m going to give out loans and stuff because
  • if you have 500bil and loan it to someone, you can reasonably expect a 2% interest rate per month
  • but if you lend out only 10bil you can expect 5%
  • soooo if I find 50 small-timers and loan them each 10bil, I make 5% instead of 2%

 

    2. EVE’s mechanics do not support good financial gameplay
      1. Idea – Ghost fitting for market games
      2. EVE had an Economist watching over the trade markets
      3. ESI endpoints for public contracts
        • Help spot RMTers (real money traders) who use fake contracts.
  2. Goonswarm ESI fixes to their tools
    • May 8th deadline to migrate legacy apps to new ESI
    • Lots of work converting will mean financial tools will go dark for a while
    • New ESI API is throwing lots of errors
    • EVE Community will lose some 3rd party apps
    • ESI only recently has XML parity – leaves little time to convert apps over to new ESI

 

  • T3 Production sale 200+ Bil — (Official Forum Thread)
    • Selling because he’s not into it anymore
    • Cornered the T3 market – 5 billion per day
    • Networth
      1. Aryth – Double-digit Trillions.  (Made 1.2 Trillion in 4 days)
      2. Probag Bear – 2.5 Trillion
    • Buyer
      1. Total: 550-600 Billion for the assembly line, characters, software, and components
    • Software script Tutorial – https://vimeo.com/263296894  (probag tutorial on managing production line)
      1. The main point of that video is that one script (that takes ~30 seconds to run) analyzes the entire T3 market, figures out what I should make, dumps out the material requirements and everything so that all I have to do is log in and hit “Install Job” 240 times. That 30-second script takes most other people 2 hours to do by hand.   
      2. Also, I have a really really spiffy custom Eve launcher that lets me multi-box super easily. I just hit CTRL + ALT + L, type in “set 2”, and it launches “set 2” of my characters. Characters, not accounts. It logs into characters directly :). Gotta love the API.
    • Using profits to open Probank
  • The nature of loaning money – the “paperwork”  is too much effort

 

  • Empire Building Wealth
    • CCP Monthly Economic Report (MER) is a scoreboard that Imperium win
    • CCP Quant leaves – CCP Larrikin will do the MER in the future
    • Changes in Moon Mining benefit larger groups
      1. Organization
      2. Pacification – Rorqual saves
      3. Lots of people mining
    • Imperium leadership was prepared for the changes long before they hit
    • Imperium is in first place for wealth building and attacking second place Guardians of the Galaxy coalition
    • Phases of an economic plan – 5-year plan with 8 phases
      1. Phase 0 – Pacifying the area
      2. Phase 1 – Establish a market
      3. Phase 2 – Sourcing raw materials
      4. Phase 3 – Filling the market initially
      5. Phase 4 – Private ownership of wealth owning assets – people making the ships and items
      6. Phase 5 – 8 are opsec
    • Wealth attracts more people
      1. High profile flips – corporations joining Imperium
      2. Consolidation of populations
      3. History – half the Imperium left after Casino War
        • Ages of EVE
          • Diplomacy Age
          • Fleet commander Age
          • Economic Empire Age
        • Casino War – Why Imperium lost
          • Unlimited money (ISK) from Casino’s
          • Mass numbers (bought by ISK)
          • Mechanics changes
        • Imperium learned lessons – get ISK, get people, spammed structures
        • Snuff criticised Goons after Casino War, then Joined them
    • How to stop Imperium
      1. Imperium can win war of attrition
        • They have structural redundancy
          • 20+ Keepstars, Fortizars in every Delve system, and many in Fountain and Quarious
          • All owned by Goonswarm
        • After fortifying Delve they go on the offensive
          • Judge killed Co2
          • Now attacking Guardians of the Galaxy coalition – It was a strategy
          • Horde moved to Tribute to avoid camps
          • Revenge for Casino war
            1. CO2 enemy #1
            2. NC enemy #2
            3. PL enemy #3
            4. TEST enemy #5
      2. “Finance” is more powerful than ever
      3. Fozzie graph allowed GSOL (Logistics wing for Imperium) to new how many citadels were anchored around EVE
      4. Goon Census
        • Many Trillionaires
        • The middle class is around 100 billion
        • The poor are 20-50 billion
        • Imperium has double the EVE average of multi-account holders   
      5. No one will attack Imperium in Delve
      6. Internal strife or CCP are Imperium’s biggest fear
        • If the game loses top players it will get lonely
    • Manipulating moon minerals
      1. Aryth is absorbing Jita moon minerals – area of denial + economic disruption (GotG)
      2. Worried about stockpiles running out
        • R64’s are going higher
        • Price Rise + Demand Destruction + Number of Miners/mining
        • Selling/churning as the prices go up, instead of waiting until the high point and selling then
        • Aryth tested the market by dumping hundreds of billions in buy orders – it didn’t drop the price
        • “Panic the Pubbies”
        • Aryth’s mark on the market is “44444444444” as a way of saying “fofofofofofofo”
    • New Abyssal Space content
      1. CSM made sure players could intercept mission runners
    • Back to “How to Destroy Goons” – exploit the culture (matterall)
      1. Not true Goons anymore so culture is not as toxic
      2. Leadership eliminates schism threats fast
      3. CSM Election ballot
      4. Only weakness is old bad reputation
      5. Few alternatives to Imperium for non-elite PVPers
      6. Citadel Keepstars as an alternative
        • 1 corp to blue the superpowers, or 1 league to assemble independent owners of keepstars
        • NRDS from Keepstar
        • Takes more than a Keepstar to build ecosystem

Conclusion:

Soundtrack: Instrumental – But Not Tonight (Depeche Mode)

 

Used in the show / further reading:

Author

David Matterall

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