JPEG token is below book value. This damages JPEG’s ability to serve boosters, as boosters have to worry about additional price volatility on their locked JPEG. This also leaves JPEG holders with a price below their ability to realize.
Background
JPEG’d treasury is robust, while the token is being priced below book value. A buyback program would
Benefit Boosters, protecting them against downward price movement of JPEG
Benefit all JPEG holders, growing their equity in the JPEG DAO
An embrace of buybacks is based on traditional treasury management strategy. When companies are undervalued, well-capitalized, and not in need of excess capital (which I believe JPEG is) buybacks can be a great way to boost returns to all long term investors (as they earn a greater cut of the pie).
Valuation
In the below spreadsheet I calculated the book value of JPEG’s treasury, as well as the fair price for JPEG in two situations.
If JPEG in the treasury is counted as part of the Market Cap - $0.0009514 per JPEG
If JPEG in the treasury is not counted as part of the Market Cap - $0.0015123 per JPEG
A CoWSwap TWAP can be utilized to ensure the team is getting a consistent price for JPEG over the course of 14 days. The specifics of the buyback shall be left to the team to ensure the best execution no matter the market environment.
The buyback cost shall be decided by the team, but shall not exceed $10M.
Specification
The team shall use treasury assets to purchase JPEG until it reaches fair book value. This is a consistent process that shall be enabled whenever JPEG’s price falls below book value.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to the JPEG’d team and DAO for reviewing! This proposal is open for suggestions regarding book value, as well as buyback systems and specifications.
Strong disagree. Using the our gold-standard treasury to buyback is just going to benefit whales and loot our ETH. And, the ‘fair value’ calculation for JPEG’d Token should be based on ETH, not USD.
Let’s wait for Pool Lending and Perps before jumping the gun on buybacks. The time isn’t now
The proposal is lacking and not considering several aspects:
It doesn’t show how the proposal would benefit the DAO like any PIP (Protocol Improvement Proposal) should. The listed beneficiaries are only borrowers and token speculators who bought lower than RFV.
It doesn’t show the overall expected cost of the buyback
it doesn’t mention what to do with the tokens bought back nor a clear plan for using them in the future
It doesn’t explain what happens after the TWAP period. Is the DAO supposed to create a floor for the token price?
I strongly disagree with such a proposal.
There have been very few successful token buybacks, if any. They all end up offering an exit pump for short term speculators. I understand the goal is to improve the token price, but a buyback isn’t the best way to go about it and would be an inefficient use of resources.
The volatility in JPEG is an acceptable cost for the extra value it unlocks and it seems it hasn’t stopped most borrowers to use boosts.
As users they are invested in JPEG’d and have skin in the game. I would argue they are expecting upside, or at worst, take it as a borrow cost . The cost of the boosts is very cheap compared to the value it unlocks and keeps borrowing on the platform extremely competitive versus others.
Updated the post to deal with your bulleted concerns.
Buybacks decrease downside volatility and increase upside volatility, as all JPEG holders now own a greater share of the DAO (as they are no longer splitting it with the people who sold into the buyback). Unless the JPEG DAO NEEDS to keep the exact same treasury balance RIGHT NOW, it doesn’t make much sense to me to forfeit valuable equity in JPEG’d to the market.
I’d be interested in knowing from your side what the treasury will be used for for the foreseeable future, including what each of these expenses may cost. I find it hard to believe the DAO needs $48M cash exactly. $48M or $43M seem like totally fine runway for years into the future (and the more spent on buybacks now the greater upside and raise conditions we get later).
It comes at the cost of a moderate amount of the treasury for the short term, but nothing stops the DAO from selling JPEG at a higher price in the future (and building a bigger treasury when necessary!). It’s simple treasury management of buy low sell high, especially when the DAO is as well capitalized as JPEG as.
This is just waiting for the token price to rise before initiating buybacks, which benefits no one. We should be buying at a low price while we can, so all of us have more equity when future products are released.
Thanks for updating your proposal, but you didn’t address many of my questions.
Notably:
how would this benefit the DAO and attract new users?
what would happen after the buyback period?
what is the cost of the buy back?
What you are suggesting is a temporary measure to pump the price and allow you to dump on the DAO.
As for what the assets are doing right now, they are earning yield for the DAO and increasing the treasury (which also acts as a failsafe in unlikely events, like the curve exploit). It is what allowed us to survive and made users still confident in using us.
Generally, I am uneasy seeing new fresh community members focus on speculating on the treasury rather than joining to focus on improving JPEG’d services as an NFT lending platform.
Again, I do not see any good reason at this stage to initiate any buyback, and disagree with your proposal. I would be voting against if it goes to vote.
The guy that directly takes from the treasury via salary and massive bonuses doesnt want to use the treasury for buybacks. Apple did buybacks and doing just fine. Tetranode is a fake, he dumps on us every day via the citadel. He doesnt want to sell because he is using his control to do a slow rug via citadel and having us buy his shitty curve votes.