Fundraiser for Alan - Update and Thank You!

Quote from Cydonia

Dear Shane D. why you expected this next ICCF should be so special ?

i can understand on US side especially in California it could exist more opportunities for business for investment.

However for that, according to myself maybe 2 or 3 teams/projects could be relevant no more ?

Weren't you trapped by this delirious optimism specific to the period before each ICCF ?

These always looking as a cake that swells well one or two months before, then quickly collapses once the event has passed ?

Or as you are geographically closer than me, you have information that I do not have ?

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For one thing, it is a new venue or location. That is always good for attracting attention from people who have not been exposed to LENR. Then there is the fact that Silicon Valley is probably the innovation capital of the world. Plenty of smart people running around the area, and it will be hard for them not to be aware of the ICCF taking place near by. It may make them take a first, or second look at this "pseudoscience" that refuses to disappear.

It also has a high concentration of top notch universities, and government research labs. The valley is not a very large area, and anything happening involving new tech, money, are hard to miss. Then there is the potential to attract investment money, and there are few, if any places in the world with more available venture capital.

Speaking of money, another thing that has caught our intention is crypto, and the possibility of tapping into it to fund LENR. With LF being the middle-man, connecting those seeking funding with the experts in the crypto world. We already had a very nice presentation from such a person at our weekly staff meeting.

Along those lines, we are trying to get the okay to set up a poster (past the deadline) at the ICCF showing the natural synergies between the two worlds. Some think crypto is the future in finance, we think LENR is the future for energy, and we feel bringing the two together may be a marriage made in heaven. Still at the exploration stage though, so we shall see how things develop.

Quote from Alan Smith

https://gofund.me/9edfb747

Thank you for the bump Cydonia , its certainly going well so far. I am rather moved by the fact that members care.

Well yes,

the counter remained hopelessly blocked today.

I think there are many of our regular visitors who could put in even 20 coins at least.

What does it do?

3 beers in Brussels ?? Or 1 year of American coffee, yes yes the one made with colored water hahahaha

Tarasenko we also give you the opportunity to think even to others...

Quote from Alan Smith

https://gofund.me/9edfb747

I heard a team was already mining in Russia with LENR heat.

My sources are not Russian but European.

Many have this ambition but very few master this technology.

Especially since it's necessary to take into account the Carnot cycle, therefore a yield of 25%.

It's necessary to count the investment of the graphics cards (often used because powerful) but also the heat conversion into electricity. A turbine being extremely expensive, the other option allowing a gradual investment remains the Stirling engine.

Quote from Shane D.

For one thing, it is a new venue or location. That is always good for attracting attention from people who have not been exposed to LENR. Then there is the fact that Silicon Valley is probably the innovation capital of the world. Plenty of smart people running around the area, and it will be hard for them not to be aware of the ICCF taking place near by. It may make them take a first, or second look at this "pseudoscience" that refuses to disappear.

It also has a high concentration of top notch universities, and government research labs. The valley is not a very large area, and anything happening involving new tech, money, are hard to miss. Then there is the potential to attract investment money, and there are few, if any places in the world with more available venture capital.

Speaking of money, another thing that has caught our intention is crypto, and the possibility of tapping into it to fund LENR. With LF being the middle-man, connecting those seeking funding with the experts in the crypto world. We already had a very nice presentation from such a person at our weekly staff meeting.

Along those lines, we are trying to get the okay to set up a poster (past the deadline) at the ICCF showing the natural synergies between the two worlds. Some think crypto is the future in finance, we think LENR is the future for energy, and we feel bringing the two together may be a marriage made in heaven. Still at the exploration stage though, so we shall see how things develop.

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.

Nice with support

Without Alan Smith, LENR Forum would not be where it is today. Thanks for what you do !!

Quote from David Nygren

Without Alan Smith, LENR Forum would not be where it is today. Thanks for what you do !!

Spare my blushes David, we are a team! And teams are how you make stuff happen.

Yesterday I was gifted a direct donation via paypal. Many thanks to the sender!

https://gofund.me/9edfb747

ETA - I posted it the GFM list

Quote from Shane D.

Speaking of money, another thing that has caught our intention is crypto, and the possibility of tapping into it to fund LENR. With LF being the middle-man, connecting those seeking funding with the experts in the crypto world. We already had a very nice presentation from such a person at our weekly staff meeting.

Along those lines, we are trying to get the okay to set up a poster (past the deadline) at the ICCF showing the natural synergies between the two worlds. Some think crypto is the future in finance, we think LENR is the future for energy, and we feel bringing the two together may be a marriage made in heaven. Still at the exploration stage though, so we shall see how things develop.

At the risk of inviting opprobrium; to play devil’s advocate for a moment:

There are plenty of people who’d argue that crypto isn’t the future of finance.

I think that it’s important to understand the context of the moment we’re in. Over 2020 and 2021, financial markets have been in a state of retail driven mania and this phenomena has worked its way inexorably through the crypto space.

It’s not hyperbole to say that we haven’t seen the kind of environment that we saw in 2020 and 2021 (and to a lesser extent this year) since the dot com bubble.

Part and parcel of an environment like that are grand pronouncements about nascent or speculative technologies. It happened in the 60s with the ‘tronics boom, it happened in the 90s with the internet, and it happened again more recently with venture capital, tech and crypto.

One could reasonably argue that Bitcoin hasn’t lived up to the hype, nor solved any real world problem, and after more than a decade is still a clunky and problematic payment mechanism. For anybody with a familiarity with how modern payment systems work, it’s always been clear that an immutable ledger was going to be DOA as a payment mechanism.

Proponents have pivoted away from ‘bitcoin as a payment mechanism’ or ‘bitcoin as a currency’ towards ‘bitcoin as a store of value’, but it hasn’t really proved itself out as one in any substantive way. It’s simply too volatile.

Moreover, DeFi has yet to have substantive real world utility. I saw somebody quip recently that DeFi has succeeded in reinventing all the worst excesses of gilded age stock markets (and by extension, thus proved the need for regulatory oversight and centralisation), and that’s absolutely true. The space is rife with hacking, theft, fraud, and manipulation. A recent interview on Bloomberg with Sam Bankman-Fried (1) is notable for its having said the quiet part out loud.

A cynic might suggest that while there might not be many useful tokens being created, there are plenty of Joseph Kennedy’s being minted in the dark corners of the crypto world.

To be blunt, there are many people who view an association with crypto as a mark of, at best, unseriousness or naivety, and at worst, malicious intent. An association with crypto could well be a net negative for the forum’s reputation, and a net negative for the teams who get involved.

Few serious investors would choose to invest through a tokenised form if other options were available. The traditional capital structure - of common stock, preferred stock, and debt - offers so much flexibility. For any investor worth their salt, deal structure will always be front of mind and crypto is limiting in this respect.

Perhaps it’s a controversial thing to say these days, but I don’t think there’s anything that crypto can do that traditional finance can’t do better. Why is crypto preferable to a scientist simply starting an LLC?

But again, to put it in blunt terms: ‘hypey, faddy, fraud ridden crypto’ + ‘dubious physics with no place to go’ is the way a lot of smart people would read this. You could run the risk of the former sealing the fate of the latter.

And what kind of investor base is a LENR company going to end up with if it pursues a path like this? The composition of the shareholder base is very important for early stage companies. Early stage companies need stable shareholder bases that are populated by professional investors who can offer advice, provide connections and introductions, mentor the company and make ongoing growth investments as milestones are met.

The regulatory landscape is also changing pretty quickly, and it’s not inconceivable that you end up with some kind of regulatory liability on your hands. Not to mention the angst that might accrue when the forum team underwrites a lemon that goes sour for forum members / retail investors. Such possibilities are not to be minimised.

Unsophisticated investors do monumentally imprudent things with their money, and I can assure you that you don’t want to be on the other end of the line when you find out that somebody put their life savings into Rossi Coin.

Indeed, I’d argue that LENR investments aren’t the type of investment that should be made available to a retail audience under any circumstances.

There also aren’t very many viable investment candidates in the LENR space. To my understanding, most of the money needed is for R&D, rather than development of commercial products. As uncomfortable as it is to say out loud, the ROI on R&D is not encouraging in this space, and the noble ambition to corral funding for a terminally underfunded scientific endeavour shouldn’t let us lose sight of the fact that the person on the other end of those transactions is risking their money and expects a return. Or said differently, needs one, if you’re going to sustainably fund the LENR space through a crypto conduit.

If one can’t credibly be offered then this isn’t really a space that retail money should be invited into. More harm than good could be done.

Perhaps another route would be to write a digestible, professionally formatted primer that renders the history and current status of the space legible to professional investors. A balanced scientific and historical overview with links to, and synopses of, the various credible teams currently approaching commercial viability. Such a document could address common questions, misunderstandings and controversies head on. This could then be used to begin an outreach program to venture capitalists, foundations, journalists, industrial concerns with clean energy vc arms etc.

I realise this is very off topic to the point of this thread, so please of course move this / delete it. I'll limit my comments to this post so as not to drag the thread any further off course.

(1) https://www.bloomberg.com/news…-left-matt-levine-stunned

Quote from orsova

At the risk of inviting opprobrium; to play devil’s advocate for a moment:

There are plenty of people who’d argue that crypto isn’t the future of finance.

I do not understand crypto. It looks like tuplipmania to me. I am not going to comment on whether it is the future. However -- sticking to the subject matter of this forum -- let me point out that bitcoin uses a tremendous amount of energy compared to all other forms of monetary exchange. It uses energy during the "mining" phase and again during transactions.

Every Bitcoin transaction consumes over $100 in electricity

Estimates highlight the incredible energy toll of the world's biggest cryptocurrency.

fortune.com

$100 worth of electricity to transact the purchase of a cup of coffee is obscene. It is the worst data processing in the history of computers.

I believe that other forms of crypto currency use less energy.

Quote from orsova

Why is crypto preferable to a scientist simply starting an LLC?

Because with crypto you can avoid a lot of the securities and investment laws that prevent the naive being taken advantage of.

(Disclaimer: I own a lot of Bitcoin)

Quote from orsova

At the risk of inviting opprobrium; to play devil’s advocate for a moment:

There are plenty of people who’d argue that crypto isn’t the future of finance.

I think that it’s important to understand the context of the moment we’re in. Over 2020 and 2021, financial markets have been in a state of retail driven mania and this phenomena has worked its way inexorably through the crypto space.

It’s not hyperbole to say that we haven’t seen the kind of environment that we saw in 2020 and 2021 (and to a lesser extent this year) since the dot com bubble.

Part and parcel of an environment like that are grand pronouncements about nascent or speculative technologies. It happened in the 60s with the ‘tronics boom, it happened in the 90s with the internet, and it happened again more recently with venture capital, tech and crypto.

One could reasonably argue that Bitcoin hasn’t lived up to the hype, nor solved any real world problem, and after more than a decade is still a clunky and problematic payment mechanism. For anybody with a familiarity with how modern payment systems work, it’s always been clear that an immutable ledger was going to be DOA as a payment mechanism.

Proponents have pivoted away from ‘bitcoin as a payment mechanism’ or ‘bitcoin as a currency’ towards ‘bitcoin as a store of value’, but it hasn’t really proved itself out as one in any substantive way. It’s simply too volatile.

Moreover, DeFi has yet to have substantive real world utility. I saw somebody quip recently that DeFi has succeeded in reinventing all the worst excesses of gilded age stock markets (and by extension, thus proved the need for regulatory oversight and centralisation), and that’s absolutely true. The space is rife with hacking, theft, fraud, and manipulation. A recent interview on Bloomberg with Sam Bankman-Fried (1) is notable for its having said the quiet part out loud.

A cynic might suggest that while there might not be many useful tokens being created, there are plenty of Joseph Kennedy’s being minted in the dark corners of the crypto world.

To be blunt, there are many people who view an association with crypto as a mark of, at best, unseriousness or naivety, and at worst, malicious intent. An association with crypto could well be a net negative for the forum’s reputation, and a net negative for the teams who get involved.

Few serious investors would choose to invest through a tokenised form if other options were available. The traditional capital structure - of common stock, preferred stock, and debt - offers so much flexibility. For any investor worth their salt, deal structure will always be front of mind and crypto is limiting in this respect.

Perhaps it’s a controversial thing to say these days, but I don’t think there’s anything that crypto can do that traditional finance can’t do better. Why is crypto preferable to a scientist simply starting an LLC?

But again, to put it in blunt terms: ‘hypey, faddy, fraud ridden crypto’ + ‘dubious physics with no place to go’ is the way a lot of smart people would read this. You could run the risk of the former sealing the fate of the latter.

And what kind of investor base is a LENR company going to end up with if it pursues a path like this? The composition of the shareholder base is very important for early stage companies. Early stage companies need stable shareholder bases that are populated by professional investors who can offer advice, provide connections and introductions, mentor the company and make ongoing growth investments as milestones are met.

The regulatory landscape is also changing pretty quickly, and it’s not inconceivable that you end up with some kind of regulatory liability on your hands. Not to mention the angst that might accrue when the forum team underwrites a lemon that goes sour for forum members / retail investors. Such possibilities are not to be minimised.

Unsophisticated investors do monumentally imprudent things with their money, and I can assure you that you don’t want to be on the other end of the line when you find out that somebody put their life savings into Rossi Coin.

Indeed, I’d argue that LENR investments aren’t the type of investment that should be made available to a retail audience under any circumstances.

There also aren’t very many viable investment candidates in the LENR space. To my understanding, most of the money needed is for R&D, rather than development of commercial products. As uncomfortable as it is to say out loud, the ROI on R&D is not encouraging in this space, and the noble ambition to corral funding for a terminally underfunded scientific endeavour shouldn’t let us lose sight of the fact that the person on the other end of those transactions is risking their money and expects a return. Or said differently, needs one, if you’re going to sustainably fund the LENR space through a crypto conduit.

If one can’t credibly be offered then this isn’t really a space that retail money should be invited into. More harm than good could be done.

Perhaps another route would be to write a digestible, professionally formatted primer that renders the history and current status of the space legible to professional investors. A balanced scientific and historical overview with links to, and synopses of, the various credible teams currently approaching commercial viability. Such a document could address common questions, misunderstandings and controversies head on. This could then be used to begin an outreach program to venture capitalists, foundations, journalists, industrial concerns with clean energy vc arms etc.

I realise this is very off topic to the point of this thread, so please of course move this / delete it. I'll limit my comments to this post so as not to drag the thread any further off course.

(1) https://www.bloomberg.com/news…-left-matt-levine-stunned

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Well said as always, and food for thought. The reason I put this out there is for feedback from members. Like I said, this is still in the conceptual phase, so no telling where it will go from here, or how it will end.

Personally, I do not understand crypto. Probably no one over the age of 40 does. But at this point, my philosophy is that if there are willing crypto investors, and willing researchers comfortable with its pros/cons, then LF being a conduit between the two sides may be an option.

And the new crop of LENR enthusiasts/researchers are generally younger, and their generation may be more accepting of this new way to finance. We shall see.

As this idea matures, we can dig more into it. Thanks.

Thanks to all who have donated to https://gofund.me/9edfb747 , I booked my place, since it's the end of the early-bird discount period. Now I just need a plane ticket and a room....

HI ALAN, YOU ARE GOING TO

ICCF-24 at Solid State Energy Summit (July 25 - 28, from 9AM PT)

Jul 25, 04:00 pm → Jul 29, 08:00 am GMT+1

POWER TO THE PEOPLE -AND POWER FROM THE PEOPLE!

I HAVE BEEN GIVEN A 15% OFF PROMO CODE FOR MEMBERS - SADLY AFTER I BOOKED MY TICKET. IF YOU WANT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS PLEASE EMAIL ME VIA THE FORUM> CLICK ON MY PROFILE TO DO THAT. CODE VALID TILL MAY 5th, BUT EARLY BUT EXPIRES MIDNIGHT TOMORROW

My tickets, can I do something or not...

Not sure what you are asking for Gennadiy?

Such tickets will go or not... 15% is also good...

The discount is just for admission to the conference- not for hotels or travel.

Good to hear, 15% is a good discount!

Alan is going to the ICCF to work, and the fundraiser is for his expenses only. Everything else he is doing gratis.

The cost of travel has gone up tremendously, and the cheapest rooms in the Silicon Valley are 4-$500 night. Restaurant prices are outrageous, and in the US you have to add in a tip. Crazy. To cut costs many of the attendees are sharing a room...including Alan.

For all he will be doing, we are getting a bargain.