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KBLB does not publish exact details of the physical properties of each new strain of product.
However they have been infinitely more open and explicit about physical properties than any of the "Goo" companies.
The reason for this is that if the goo companies published their products properties it would be very embarrassing for them.
Mike L.
Hi QFS, 2 points:
1) I was not commenting on whether or not KBLB was being heavily shorted but rather on the possibility and motivations for shorting a stock.
I have no reliable info on actual shorting of KBLB.
2) While your response to the first paragraph of my post is correct, you failed to mention or debate the rest of my post, ie.
It is VERY difficult for individual retail investors such as we to short an OTC stock.
It is extremely risky as to short a 0.20 PPS stock you must tie up more than ten times the funds used to short.
However, for "professional" short sellers such as hedge fund managers and large well funded speculators it is indeed possible and relatively easy.
These entities have many tens of millions of dollars at their disposal and close relationships with brokers if they are not brokers themselves.
In the OTC some of the most likely shorters are the "Market Makers" themselves.
They have the ability to short without using any "real" money.
The sins of the MMs are legendary and far too numerous to be discussed here.
It is easy and attractive for them to short a penny stock because a million shares do not cost a million dollars.
The other likely shorters are competitors and the VCs that funded them.
Such players may be willing to lose a million dollars shorting stock 'K' because they see it as protecting their 10 or 50 million dollar investment in stock 'B' or stock 'S'.
Just imagine that you are a major investor in one of the "fake" spider silk companies and you see that another company is about to produce and market "Real" spider silk!
To short sell 66% of a 5 million share day of a company trading at less than 20 cents costs far less than 1 million dollars.
If I had 50 million at risk behind a competitor that would be a wise move.
Of course the numbers reported are inaccurate, but they are likely 10% or 25% inaccurate, not 110% inaccurate.
Mike L.
why it went about a month and a half later than your latest estimate of Jan. 12 for us to finally see this?
YES, because I am also a victim of over optimism, just not quite as badly as the average here.
More specifically, what I did not take into consideration at that time was that they specifically said that the first generation would be used for expansion! Thus we needed to add another 60 days for one full egg to egg generation. This, plus necessary travel time (he said DELIVERED to the US) would bring the current date to just about the middle estimate.
Mike L.
The Realities of production timing.
Many on this board are the victims of their own over anticipation.
When the first shipment of eggs reached Vietnam in October some predicted tons of finished product in 4 weeks.
Reality is that silkworms need time to grow and spin and the cocoons need time to be harvested and reeled and spun.
I stated back then that it would be 2 to 3 months before any fiber was produced.
I was optimistic by about 1 month rather than 3!
A reasonable assumption given the very unequal food demands of growing silkworms is that they will be produced in cohorts started every week rather than in non-overlapping batches.
Additionally many hectares of Mulberry must be planted and grown to production maturity to feed the worms.
It was stated that the first batches would be dedicated to egg multiplication rather than to silk fiber production.
Thus, after ~2 months the first expanded cohorts would just be starting.
Even the second phase batches are likely still being used partially for expansion rather than fiber production.
Remember that the final goal is many billions of eggs per month!
It is therefore to be expected that the first shipments would be 10% or less of the second generation cohorts, 10 or 100 Kilos rather than tons.
A second shipment should be expected when the next cohort is complete, sometime between 5 and 30 days depending on Prodigy's initial cohort timing.
It will also be small as egg production is still paramount.
The first ton++ shipment should occur when the third generation is completed, in about another 60 days.
The important take away from this announcement is that the pipeline has been established, and barring natural disasters or new pandemics the commercial production stream should grow in volume over time.
THIS is the news I have been waiting for for 12 + years!
- Mike L.
OK, the first shoe has dropped:
January 26, 20217:05 am ET Kraig Biocraft Laboratories and MtheMovement by Kings Group sign Exclusive Purchase and Sales Agreement for up to potentially $40 millionGlobe Newswire
Now hopefully the second shoe (production and delivery) will drop before the echoes die down.
-Mike L.
The actual transaction that took the PPS down from 14.n to 13.0 was for 5K shares, about $600 or $700. Quite obviously a paint in the last 1/2 hour of a slow day.
There was then a struggle up and down between traders/painters which produced about 1/3 of the day's volume.
The stock ended at the high for the day.
The reason people fight over the closing price is that is the only number the MMs are required to report in the OTC.
Mike L.
We are in general agreement.
Your limits are 30 to 58 days egg to cocoon.
The generally accepted average is 45 days.
KBLB has beaten that time in the past coming in at about 40 days.
I have recently been informed that the actual arrival date of the eggs was 10/24.
So by your absolute minimum times cocoon production would commence on 11/23.
Giving it 2 or 3 days for spinning and hardening, cocoons could be harvested starting on 11/25 and done by 11/28.
Adding about a week for reeling would make the earliest possible date of an announcement roughly 12/4.
But this is an unlikely-to-be-achieved optimal.
More likely is 40 days that KBLB has already achieved once, which would put the announcement at about 12/15.
Note that by your longest time spans the announcement could come as late as 1/12/2021 without any failures.
MIke L.
Hi Guys, Just to insert a small note of sanity into these musings, the eggs were delivered on 10/28/2020 or not so much before that date.
Therefore, as it takes 45 days on average to raise silkworms from egg to cocoon, (though KMLB's recent worms seem to be beating that time by as much as 5 days) we will not see news of silk production until mid to late December, depending on exact growth time, reeling time, and reporting delay.
So those who are ready to ask where the silk is and imagine multiple failings and disasters need to be a little bit more patient.
The first harvest will not be late until the end of the year at least.
Mike L.
Correct!
Yes, of course the most successful virus is not the one that kills the most people it is the one that spreads the farthest.
Damaging your host is not the best strategy.
Ebola is a good example of a failed virus due to its fast host damage.
So the winner in a group of viruses that all confer cross-immunity is the one that does not get noticed.
But we all help the less damaging virus to win by limiting the spread of the more damaging variants
Mike L.
SIGH!
One more Goo Company with one more sportswear advertising tie-in.
Hopelessly off-topic BUT:
You guys are missing the point!
The latest novel coronavirus is basically just another "Common cold" virus.
These are all respiratory infections that are insanely contagious (thus the "common" and to which the human race has developed widespread immunity (thus "cold").
All of influenzas, SARS, MERS, etc. can be classified as such.
SARS-2/Covid-19 is just the newest winner of the genetic lottery that is ongoing among these. Therefore humans don't have good immunity - Yet.
There are two extremes in how we deal with such things.
Eventually all of the worlds population will be exposed to this new variant and the survivors will develop immunity to it.
A) We let it sweep the world unhindered growing at an exponential rate.
This ends the crisis fastest and with the least disruption to human
industry and our economy. But a lot of people die because health
systems are overwhelmed for a time.
B) We do our best to SLOW (not stop, it is inevitable) the spread of the
new variant.
This causes widespread disruption to industry and the world economy
and makes the crisis last much longer. But many fewer people die
because the health systems are not as overloaded.
The choice of A or B is a CHOICE based upon the value your society places on individual human lives vs the discomfort and economic damage of the whole of society.
Different societies may choose differently. Sweden has chosen a path somewhat closer to A and accepted the higher death toll involved.
They are not "right" or "wrong" they have the right to choose.
Personally, I want to be the LAST person to be infected.
Mike L.
Hi imelcooler,
you asked: "what thoughts you may have specifically in the area of science
and as it relates to Knock in Knock out in relation to past methods
in particular "CRISPER Cas9"?"
KBLB had its first big "knock-out / Knock-in success several years ago using Zinc Fingers CompoZr (see: "The Platform Worm").
But the problem with Zinc Fingers is that it is Expensive, requiring the purchase of each different vector-selector from a third party (Sigma Aldritch-Sangamo). This also slowed and stifled ingenuity. The advantage of the closely held generator technology was that we had exclusive rights in our field.
CRISPER Cas9 has been the darling prodigal son for the last couple of years but I expect that is mostly because it is Cheap and Easy.
It was developed in a College lab and essentially given to the world.
Most college labs can duplicate and use it. But it is not, to my knowledge any better at selectivity than Zinc Fingers, and we lost our IP exclusivity! There is another new splicing tech out there called TALENS but at this time it seems to be an "Also ran".
This newest press conference announcement seems to imply that KBLB has perfected its own highly successful proprietary splicing technology.
This in itself could be a very valuable Intellectual Property.
"Pure Spider Silk" is a nonsensical currently popular buzz-word.
There is no such thing.
What the press conference was describing though was success in creating arbitrary genetic mixtures of integrated silk components, a goal long sought after by KBLB.
The original chimeric silk described in the landmark PNAS paper was only about 5 to 10% spidroin tightly integrated into the structure of silkworm silk.
The breakthrough was that it WAS tightly integrated into the structure of the silk. This allowed that small percentage to almost double the tensile strength of the silk.
BTW, we owe that breakthrough to the genius level insight into silk genetics of Dr. Davis, one of KBLB's early contributors.
He designed the synthetic precursor sequence that allowed that integration.
THAT was what distinguished KBLB's process from many failed predecessors.
The 2020 press conference announcement was that we could now incorporate much higher levels of spidroin, presumably leading to much stronger silks and to silks with tailored properties as we desired.
Mike L.
Hi qazart,
Thanks for the info, I did not know that!
While this may* delay first production it should not greatly impact total production in 2020 as the eggs will be coming from the US and a later shipment will just mean more eggs in the shipment as US egg production continues.
Mike L.
*politicians/governments are always very good at making exceptions to the rules for their own benefit. the classic example of this is the US congress having its own private health and retirement plans and not being subject to social security or medicare.
Hi Guys,
I had a "social distance" visit with my friend Bob last night and he
asked me to post something here.
1) no, no one is paying Bob, if there was someone who would pay him
they should be paying ME instead!
2) the recent PR announcing the resumption of business at Prodigy in Vietnam is what I have been waiting for.
2 a) of course the PPS went down, any PR that is not announcing current
income/profit will only make the price go down because people have been
waiting for first profit for a long time and that is all they want to hear.
2 a 1)ditto for the recent science PR, not what people want to hear.
3) below is a speculative time line for KBLB's progress from this point forward.
3 a) I am not an employee of KBLB; no one is paying me anything;
I am no longer a major stockholder of KBLB having been forced by illness
and financial burdens to sell most of my shares;
I have no inside information. This is purely speculation based upon general
knowledge, past KBLB history and intelligent extrapolation;
there are no guarantees against epidemic, earthquake, fire, flood, etc. that
might change these estimates as things were just changed by the spread of the SARS-2 virus.
Life is Uncertain, Live With It!
3 b) I am assuming that Vietnam operations are at a standstill,
most of the KBLB-transgenic worm population there has been destroyed and a
total Bio-Restart is needed.
3 b 1) Note that the physical infrastructure built up in Vietnam is still
intact and the Vietnam employee base is also intact and now more loyal and
motivated than before due to the support they received during this crisis
from KBLB and Prodigy and Kim Thompson and the head of Prodigy.
4) Speculative Timeline:
A) Within the next 10 days (abt 5/20/2020)
John Rice will travel to Vietnam with 1 million new frozen eggs.
(OOM 100K< N < 10M)
A 1) Assumptions: KT, JR, etc. are not stupid. They knew this had to
happen so have been producing and storing eggs in their US
facilities from the start.
A similar # will remain in the US for breeding here.
(ie never put all your eggs in one basket)
B) The eggs will be hatched and the next generation of
KBLB-transgenic worms will begin abt 5/25/2020
C) more eggs will be sent from the US and eventually produced in
Vietnam such that a process pipeline will be established with
a new cohort of worms launched ever week or 2 weeks.
C 1) This is needed because of the feeding rates of the growing worms
In the first week the tiny worms eat very little, most of the
food is consumed by the worms in the last week before spinning.
D) The first cohort of worms will reach spinning cocoon stage in
abt. 45 days (7/10/2020)
First silk will be available for delivery abt. 7/17-23/2020
Those of the first cohort allowed to pupate and mate and lay
will produce eggs in about 60 days (7/25/2020) but I expect this
to be a small fraction.
Eggs for the first few cohorts will likely come mostly from the US.
D 1) I expect the first batch to be relatively small, a few hundred
pounds, but this will be enough to initiate the first customer
contract. Remember that wholesale supply contracts are usually
for future delivery over time, so a contract for delivery of
10 tons of silk over the next year can easily be initiated
with a first delivery of 500 pounds.
E) THIS IS A PIPELINE PROCESS!
If the first delivery is 500 lbs on 8/1/2020 then the next 500 lbs
will be delivered 8/8/2020, then 8/15/2020 and so on.
F) A purposefully conservative estimate of KBLB silk production by
Prodigy Textiles (Vietnam) for the remainder of the calendar year
2020.
8/1/2020 300 lbs first delivery
Aug. 2020 total 300 lbs, 300 lbs, 500 lbs, 500 lbs, 500 lbs.
Aug. 2020 Total = 1 ton
Sept. 2020 Total = 1.5 ton
Oct. 2020 Total = 2 tons
Nov. 2020 Total = 2 tons
Dec. 2020 Total = 3 tons
---------------------------
Year 2020 Total = 9 tons (Year 2021 Total possibly 30 tons)
G) It is obviously very difficult and uncertain for me to estimate
the total factory production capacity of the Prodigy Vietnam silk
works or the rate of expansion of that capacity.
The population growth rate of silkworms is easy, the industrial
capacity expansion rate is difficult.
Another factor that must enter these calculations at some point
is the limits of growth, the world market capacity.
I believe that these limits are comparatively very high.
I would guess that the world market for KBLB's silks will exceed
100 Tons / Year as a near term minimum.
Thanks, Mike Lukacs
Another unsupportable falsehood!
Sorry WebSlinger, but it DID happen and it WAS publicized.
In a PR released on June 21st of 2018.
There was even a picture of the "roll".
It was about 2 feet in diameter and I believe someone said that it was 2 or 3 feet wide.
This was supposedly a standard roll size for shipment.
It is from this picture and description that I estimated "about 100 lbs".
(see the first few lines of the PR below or read it in its entirety on the KBLB website and many other places,
KRAIG BIOCRAFT LABORATORIES PRODUCES FIRST ROLL OF PURE DRAGON SILK FABRIC FOR U.S. ARMY
ANN ARBOR, Mich., – June 21, 2018 – Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. (OTCQB: KBLB) (“Company”), the leading developer of spider silk based fibers announces today that it has just finished the production of its first roll of pure Dragon Silk fabric, marking the first time that the Company’s proprietary recombinant spider silk fibers were used to create a 100% pure woven silk fabric.
Hi Guys,
Banana is always urging me to post more but I don't often have anything meaningful to say.
My last post was about the PR that said we would be seeing the first production batch in a week or so.
I was very positive about that as it was the most definite and short term forward looking statement KBLB had ever issued.
That unfortunately was a great disappointment, but s--t happens and at least we had lots more eggs for a restart so this was a setback but not a failure.
I was very surprised that the recent "announcement-of-an-announcement" has caused such a rise in the PPS. I would have thought that after the last failure to meet a forward looking statement no one would buy the stock until an actual delivery happened.
I suspect that other factors are at work here, people are beginning to realize that production and sales WILL happen even if still delayed.
Going from the dates of PRs I expect that the first production batch should be ready near the end of March.
I do wonder where that batch of poisoned mulberry came from? There is at least one powerful man in Lam Dong who really wants to see KBLB fail.
Some have said that they believe KBLB Cannot produce. This is nonsensical as KBLB already has produced about 100 lbs of finished reeled woven dragon silk for the army last year.
There is no difference between 100 lbs and 10,000 lbs, just more worms!
We will see what the great announcement is when it comes.
From the wording of the last PR it would seem to be about further strengthening of the silk, but another possibility is the announcement of the "Platform Worm" being put to work producing Human insulin or HGH or some other expensive pharmaceutical.
Of course another possibility is that this was just done to support the share price until the first harvest.
If so it has worked better than I would have expected and we can expect news of that first harvest on or about the 19th.
I don't expect any pre-success PRs this time. I expect Kim to wait until the silk is on its way to Polartec or the Army or whomever the first recipients will be.
Of course someone could shoot down the plane, burn the warehouse or whatever but that is probably just my paranoia talking
Yours in future prosperity, Mike L.
DS-2 Silk Entering the PIPELINE.
I am assuming that KBLB/Prodigy is using the same scheduling strategy as most other silk producers.
This has been hinted at in KBLB PRs in the past and there are many reasons to expect this to be true.
That strategy is for one cohort of silkworms to reach maturity each week as opposed to rearing one larger batch each 40->60 days.
The major reason for doing things this way is that the worms consume 90% of their total lifetime food supply in the last 7 to 10 days.
It would therefore be much more difficult to supply them with food and clean out the feces that last period than earlier in their life cycle.
If the worms are staged with a new cohort started each week only ~ 1/8 are in that final high consumption stage at one time so that the food and labor costs are much more consistent from week to week.
What this means for us, for delivery timing, is that if the first batch is shipped next week then the second equal sized batch is shipped one week later (to reelers, thread weavers, finished product manufacturers, etc.
This would mean that next week we start filling the PIPELINE.
However long it takes for that pipeline to start outputting finished product it will continue to deliver that product every week thereafter in similar quantities with volume gradually increasing as the input quantity of cocoons rises.
I see many people here talking about this as if it is going to be a single event, it is not, it is the Start of a continuing production process!
Mike L.
Hi Guys, Bananarama has been bugging me to post here once more so here it goes.
First, "the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated" - Mark Twain
I just got busy with other things
Now, The KBLB stuff:
Recently the company has been putting out PRs much more often than in prior times, 11 in the past 3 months!, So why hasn't the stock skyrocketed?
Because almost all of these PRs have been forward looking and revenueless.
So those who expected a soaring rise to a $1 PPS have been disappointed.
Lets inject a bit of reality into this.
The traditional life cycle of a silkworm (from various publications on the rearing of silkworms) is 45 days from egg to cocoon.
Add to that an additional 15 days for the silkworm to pupate, emerge from the cocoon, mate, and lay eggs.
So the generation time is (traditionally) 60 days egg to egg and just 45 days from egg to harvestable silk cocoon.
Now if you examine the timing of those PRs you will see that the delivery of eggs to Vietnam was first announced on October 8th
It was announced that on November 2nd the silkworms had finished spinning their cocoons. This is just 25 days instead of 45!
On November 18th they announced that the first generation had finished egg laying. This is just 42 days egg to egg instead of the traditional 60!
On December 3rd they announced the 2nd hatching and on December 17 they announced that the second generation would finish spinning by ~ 12/24.
This is 35 days after the announced hatching (instead of 45)
and 77 days from egg to egg to cocoon (2 generations)(instead of the traditional 105 days).
So what does all this mean?
First, it means that those who expected the first shipment of KBLB/Prodigy silk
to happen 2 or 3 weeks after the start of production were being unrealistic.
By traditional timing, and given one egg-to-egg expansion generation and one production generation we should not have expected the first deliveries of finished silk until the end of January or the beginning of February 2020.
Instead we are being all but promised a first delivery in early January, a full month ahead of the expected schedule!
Those waiting for the stock to rise should be overjoyed as an actual delivery is the first event that might drive such a rise.
Note that we are not talking tons for this first delivery, full production should take an additional 6 months at least, but this will be an "IT HAS HAPPENED" PR not a forward looking statement.
And there are forward looking statements and forward looking statements!
I do not believe that KBLB has ever before issued a forward looking statement for an event happening in about ONE WEEK!
Beyond that happy news there is something else that is also happy.
How to explain the compressed timing?
To a certain extent I can see KBLB delaying PRs until they are absolutely certain of the success of an event such as a hatching or life cycle, they have been strongly criticized in the past for making predictions that did not come true in a timely manner.
But I cant see them delaying the announcement of the first delivery of eggs by almost a month!
So we are left with the news that KBLBs worms work harder and grow faster than traditional silkworms!
This could be ascribed to better genetics, or to exceptionally good feeding and rearing conditions.
I expect that it is some combination of the two.
It means that KBLB will be able to produce 25% more silk per year per worker and factory space than traditional farmers.
End of long winded discussion.
Thanks, First Mike
I recall... ... ...lol
but according to you, no one CAN patent it.
Hopefully the likes of KBLB will be included in the discussion in the foreseeable future.
PS.
what matters even less is any patents you may have or how many times you were a defendant in court or...
OK, One last attempt at education!
unfortunately, none of that applies at all to dr davis since he didn't make any attempt to patent anything..lol
employees of company A will be saying they did it first and employees of company B will be saying they did it first...
"I respectfully submit that you might benefit from a basic course of study in Intellectual Property law."
a little common sense goes a long way...sometimes when you try to make yourself an expert on something by googling, you just confuse yourself...
its similar to a car accident where the passenger is the wife of the driver..technically she is a witness and her statement is taken...but seriously, how much weight do you give it when her statement is exactly the same as her driver/husband?...
See my post #148343
Mike L.
so you would have employees of the same company you worked for and stood to benefit and had all the same bosses, verify that you invented something on a certain date?....i mean, only people with something to gain can attest to the veracity of the claim?...
oh yea...take that to court...lol
according to you, there is no documented timeline..
it’s all about who made the discovery first, not who used it first...
no...it’s more like davis won the lottery and someone stole his winning ticket...if davis didn’t show it to anyone, didn’t tell anyone he won, didn’t turn it in, then it belongs to whoever steals it...
...but if they started today, with enough money, they could probably make up those 12 yrs in about 6 months...
"Mostly it is fascinating to see how poor the peer review process is for PNAS!"
that's what I said about the pnas process when kblb went through it...but you argued it was the most intensive professional review process in the world...
of course, now they suck...lol
"You also need intimate knowledge of silkworm and spider genetics and silk production systems."
gosh...what would that take nowadays?..a week for them to attain or a couple of phone calls to find a guy?...
Owning / Knowing CRISPR (or TALENS) gene editing techniques is not enough.
You also need intimate knowledge of silkworm and spider genetics and silk production systems.
Your first and third references have almost nothing to do with spider silk production by silkworms.
Your second reference:
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-gene-technique-silkworms-spider-silk.html
message_id=137658270 however is Fascinating!
Mostly it is fascinating to see how poor the peer review process is for PNAS!
It is amazing that these guys could get an article published in PNAS for supposedly original work without referencing another article published in PNAS (THE SAME JOURNAL!) a few years ago describing the successful accomplishment of the same goals which these researchers FAILED to accomplish.
This recent article talks mostly about the methods (TALENS) and procedures used in an attempt to de-emphasize the fact that they Totally Failed to meet their goals.
Some quotes from the article:
"The presence of the MaSp1 peptide significantly changed the mechanical characteristics of the silk fiber, especially the extensibility."
"The transformed silk fiber showed lower strength but higher extensibility than that of wild-type silkworm silk fibers."
....posterior silk gland (PSG) (31), we further investigated PSG development in the PJET-DsRed-MaSp1 animals. PSGs of both heterozygous (MaSp1+/-) and homozygous (MaSp1+/) animals at the fourth day of the fifth instar larval stage showed a significant reduction in weight and length compared with the WT animals (Fig. 2 A–C). Paraffin-embedded sections and subsequent hematoxylin–eosin staining revealed that PSG in the WT animals was dense and filled with proteins. However, MaSp1+/- and MaSp1+/+ PSGs displayed atrophic secretion, accompanied by small cavities (Fig. 2D). This result indicated that the total protein amounts significantly decreased in MaSp1+/- and MaSp1+/+ PSGs, probably due to the low molecular weight of MaSp1 (67 kDa) compared with the high molecular weight of FibH (350 kDa).
CONGRATULATIONS BOB!
Your speculations of the last week have been proven true, and your years of prediction have been vindicated!
From the look of the worms' size in the pictures I would guess that they are about 2 weeks old now, which (assuming they were sent as eggs) means that the eggs arrived in Vietnam around the 20th of December.
Kim T. was right to be cautious after all the missed target dates in the recent past.
The eggs might have been damaged in transit or some other factor might have made them non-viable or made the worms weak or stunted.
He obviously waited until the end of the first instar (shedding) to publish these pictures of happy healthy silkworms eating fresh mulberry leaves.
The spider worms are not just in Vietnam but are doing well there!
Mike L.