ECOBANK - "Virtual Positioning"

This is part 2 of the ECOBANK 2024 Q3 Update - you can see part 1 here where we talked about our on the ground situation and the assets we hold.

But of course we do also hold some digital property, including coins and a unique legal structure, these are the topic of todays post.

Over the course of our adventure, re-readable fully at peakd.com/@ecobanker, we have also accumulated a few tokens into our wallet. Some of this is from beneficiary rewards, but a lot of it is "interest" over managing the funds we raised while we made the payments on the property. I have managed these funds, and I think pretty well, as you can see the account has over 8900 HP on it right now.

We also have a few holdings still on hive-engine, mainly 165 INCOME tokens and 1000 ARMERO tokens. Having spotted INCOME above it's ABV seemed like a good time to swap it, I wouldn't mind keeping 50 but if we have the opportunity to sell above ABV then we will sell as many as we can and power it all up.

I am less sure what to do about the ARMERO, but it is paying dividends and the ABV is pretty incredibly high right now, so we will likely hold it under the same conditions as the INCOME.

And speaking of Hive-Engine, we did make the first official dividends for Ecobank members. They were tiny, in fact they were actually 10x less than I thought I was announcing, but we have the capacity and should be able to continue with divs, and soon with more information!

Dividends or Member Benefits?

I have been thinking a lot about this. Words mean things, legally speaking.

We have created a completely legal structure, a complete utility for a token, inside of a company. We basically have the option now, about how we want to present it to the world

The issue is not legality, its the increased paperwork and scrutiny. I'll give you an example, from an unexpected source: Binance.

Our original binance registration was held up because our website seemed to indicate we were more than a fund than a tourist company. Binance doesn't care if we are a mediocre tourist company, but there is 10x the paperwork if we are a fund, or if they even think we are a fund based on how we present ourselves.

So I think our anonymous, non-preferred shares of ECOBANK token can be treated as and celebrated as Member Benefits, including the discounts and the distributions. Member Benefits are also easy to classify as marketing expenses, while official dividends again require more paperwork and yields less tax benefits.