Bitcoin Forum

I am selling 17500 shares of BitcoinGlobal, the owner of GLBSE. There are currently 77500 total GLBSE shares, so this represents a 23% share in GLBSE.

My reason for selling:

Some big legitimate Bitcoin businesses have expressed interest in listing on GLBSE, but they can't do so because GLBSE might be illegal. Nefario would like to change this by making GLBSE a legal company and following all relevant regulations. This could potentially increase profits, but I don't like the idea of abandoning small and "dubious" businesses, I don't like lawyers and regulations getting in the way of business, and I certainly don't want to be officially/legally listed as a shareholder (and especially not treasurer).

Here are the bylaws:
http://theymos.com/bylaws.pdf

- In order to buy the shares, you must be approved by half of the current shareholders. I don't foresee this being difficult for most people. You don't need to be well-known in the community or anything.
- The shareholders do not want to bring in too many other shareholders. They will probably not approve a transfer of less than ~500 shares, so offers to buy fewer than 500 shares will probably not be accepted.
- Nefario wants GLBSE to move toward becoming a legitimate corporation. You must agree to be legally and publicly listed by name as a shareholder/partner/whatever in legal documents if this becomes required in the future.
- Shareholders have an above-average level of involvement in management. There are regular meetings on IRC.
- Financials are private. Within the next few days, there may be a way for you to view financial data if you sign a NDA.
- Nefario would like to restructure the company and possibly create more shares. It is unlikely that he will be able to legally do this without the 23% of shares sold here (66% is required to change the bylaws), so you will have a say in how this turns out.

I will not sell shares at a price below 0.3 BTC per share, and I expect the final selling price to be much higher. PM me your offers. I can answer some questions here, but some info is confidential.

Do these shares currently produce dividends? I do not want the amount, just simple yes or no.

They do, though not on any fixed schedule.

Seems pretty pricey. What'd you buy them at?

Your lowest price is 5250 BTC or $63,000?

Dang...too rich for my blood.

theymos , as a insider, your selling share is not a good signal. the shareholder can easily hide his identity by register an off-shore company and transfer his share to that offshore company, whose shareholder name is confidential and the GLBSE can only see the off-shore company as its shareholder. have you ever considered about this?

Each share was originally priced at 0.05 BTC.


I can't release such info.

theymos, will you be building your own stock exchange? thanks.

I have no plans to do this.

Equivalent of a pump and dump.

You expect at least 600% returns? Not including the fact that bitcoin price has at least doubled since you bought. So that would amount of at least 1200%.

Do the math guys. IMO a total rip off on the minimum price.

I can't publicly release any info about revenue, profit, or dividend payments. I understand that you would like to see detailed financial info, and I believe this will be possible (after you sign a NDA) within the next few days.

We agree to disagree. I prefer to hold bitcoins than shares of GLBSE.

Why do you think he is selling? He is accepting BTC for payment it looks like.

Have at it USAGI.

The original price of something is pretty much irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether his price is fair TODAY.  Just on a surface level, owning a quarter of GLBSE for ~$65k sounds absolutely reasonable.  And Theymos should be praised for his wisdom in acquiring an asset that appreciated 1200%, not vilified.

Let's remember that BTC itself appreciated 1,700% in 2011 (even after the crash)... so if GLBSE shares are a "pump and dump" because they appreciated so much and Theymos wants to sell, then BTC must be even more a pump and dump, no? :)

Glbse has counter party risk. Bitcoin doesn't. So what was your point again? lol

What about this:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112438.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112438.0)

My point is that just because a large gain was made, and the investor is looking to exit the position, it doesn't mean it can rightly be called a "pump and dump."  People throw that term around too loosely.

This action (of theymos to sell his stake in GLBSE) is the result of a shareholder meeting that happened on Friday night/Saturday morning.

GLBSE is registering as a company in the UK, theymos has decided he doesn't want to be a part of this process.

Nefario.

I have a few problems with this:
- You're selling shares for 6x the purchase price and I cannot see currently good reasons to price them so high
- You want to exit and have to sell but still set the price to whatever you want.
- According to GLBSE current trading volume, if there was absolutely zero operating costs and trading stayed at this level, it would take 10 years to recoup the 0.30 you are asking for (10% per year). With the expenses accounted for (Dedicated servers are far from being free), I suspect this amount to be a small fraction of that.
- For an investment as risky investment as a start-up such as GLBSE, I expect far bigger returns than what established multinationals pay on their stocks.
- The biggest and riskiest part is ahead, not behind. There will be high costs and a lot of work required for bringing GLBSE on a legal stance. This is putting a lot of failure risk along with substantial expenses going forward.
- Even if it's a success and it becomes fully regulated, it would require afterward probably at least 3 - 5 time the trading volume for getting 10% a year on 0.3, which I would still find low on something still as small and risky as GLBSE. With the financial data, I could get a better picture at the operating costs and how much more trading volume GLBSE needs to achieve to have an acceptable level of returns compared to risk.

Until GLBSE becomes registered and the majority of the costs and risk related is behind, I don't believe those shares to have appreciated that much in value. As far as I'm concerned, if you want to sell for 0.30 BTC per share, you might want to stay and sell the shares once GLBSE is regulated, even if you would be listed as a shareholder for some time.

No.

Shit, if you don't want to buy the shares, don't make an offer.  Why does everyone feel the need to run their mouth all the time?

I'll bid 50 for 1000 shares.

It'd take ~30 years to "recoup" an investment in MSFT... It's strange to think in such terms when dealing with stocks.

No. As far as I know, the SEC is not investigating GLBSE.

Confirmed with @nefario on IRC that an NDA would be required of anyone that picks up theymos' shares. That's not standard for investors, and a deal-breaker for me :(

Headwind is the currency risk. If you expect bitcoin to rise to $100/coin over the next few years, it will be difficult to justify a purchase of 5000 btc today.

MSFT is completly at the other end of the risk spectrum. One cannot expect to invest in a high risk venture at 3% per year when they can get the same returns on a highly stable, established multinational corporation such as MSFT.

I clearly stated that this 10% per year (Assuming there was no operating costs, I suspect actual returns to be closer to 2-5% per year) is far too low for something with so much risk. Not that it isn't acceptable for established and stable businesses.

+17,500

Well I still believe they're good, but not that good...

Would you consider selling them in lots of at least 500 shares in the same fashion as the forum's ads auction thread?

Everyone could bid a certain price for a certain amount with a starting price of 0.05 and minimum increments of 0.001

Once you find your buyers, you can propose them to current GLBSE shareholders and see if they are accepted. You would have a list of people to propose in order of highest bid proposed first and could go downward from there from all the bids until all shares are sold as accepted by current shareholders.

issue an asset: 35 shares, each representing 500 GLBSE

put yer asks where ya wants them.
open trading for XYZ days, sell rest into bids

voila

Eh, all new shareholders have to be approved by all shareholders so that would not work. There's no certainty being the highest bidder guarantees you can actually purchase the shares.

have bidders be pre-approved by the cartel (or whatever it is).

Dunno. I might help them catch/prosecute pirateat40, though I'd prefer to cooperate with an agency other than the SEC.

I think the recent "emails from the SEC" are fake.


That's essentially what I'm doing now, but privately. I might make it public if I'm not happy with the private bids.

I wish to say that I face-palm hard every time I use GLBSE,  The UI is really bad, Placing an order send you to portfolio ? , 

The orderbook doesn't load half the time, I end up seeing a "Trade (Buy/Sell) click here" and by "click here" I mean unclickable = does nothing.
The order at the same price aren't combined as one.
The graph volume graph is still useless.

All of this is nothing compared to having to wait ~10-20 second for every page load.

If this thing is making money I think it's time you hire some developers or invest into some hosting.

I would expect it to be faster if it ran on a netbook with a 800kbps DSL.


I don't know how anyone manage to trust the whole thing as secure with so much fail.

Is the 0.3 BTC limit per share absolute? (i.e. Should I not even bother bidding if my bid would be below that?)

You can bid, but I think it's very unlikely the price will go that low.

cry more? People can ask questions. If you don't like it keep crying.

With all the scams recently, legitimate questions do the community a service by helping the readers to activate the other side of their brain and look beyond the money figure.

This. 5000btc is waaay over priced IMO.

That's also called opportunity cost. And here we go again with one of the major critic points about bitcoin: it's deflationary characteristics make investors reluctant to spend their BTC on investments. Even promising ones.

Agreed.

And how are the latest shenanigans helping you to sell your slice of this pie?
Few more fuck ups and this overpriced pie starts to look like a pavement pizza.
A Slice? Anyone?

The rats are jumping off the ship

MPEX is renowned for its sock puppets :P

Theymos, did you have previous knowledge of the action taken against Goat's assets (being kicked off the exchange) when you decided to sell?

I did not. I am very irritated about it.

I talked to the SEC lawyer.  He asked me about my GLBSE account.  So they are investigating GLBSE.

It's good to see there's a voice of sanity, even if it is the one looking to sell.

Good to hear. Death to GLBSE!

Put your digital pitchfork and torches away and stay calm please. :)

The thing people dont realise is if GLBSE gets taken down by the SEC then all the other bitcoin stock exchanges will follow shortly afterwards because they all sell shares direct to the public. If GLBSE is registered and has qualified financial brokers then selling bitcoin denominated securities is perfectly legal. Someone needs to take this step to bridge bitcoin to the greater economy.

The pink sheets otc market is run exactly like this.

As stated elsewhere, GLBSE is not located in the U.S. The SEC can not shut down GLBSE any more than they can shut down the London Stock Exchange. They cannot also shut down MtGox as others have suggested.

if you sell securities to US citizens the SEC can in fact investigate and issue a bench warrant if need be. In that case they could extradite you from any country that has extradition treaties with the US. It's the same reason Julian Assange didnt want to go to Sweden.

This guy probably thought the same: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/13/us-filesharing-extradition-idUSTRE80C15C20120113

I personally feel the choice of UK as a place to register GLBSE was maybe not the best. UK is known to be very subordinate to the US government. I'd feel more comfortable if they had chosen a country like Switzerland, Iceland, or even a micro-country like Liechtenstein or Singapore. But well, what do I know, IANAL.

GLBSE just needs to be structured differently and hire an accredited share broker. The SEC doesnt like you selling shares direct to the public they require some kind of stock broker.

The church also doesn't like you praying directly to your god. The pope wants to tell you first, what is best for you. Just like almost any monopoly, having a monopoly on interpretation is a dangerous thing. The most stupid thing: claiming ownership on ideas (hello apple).
 Maybe the US world domination plan just needs to be structured differently more toward cooperation :P
To some extend, regulation can be a good thing. Since the conditions of a free market, that all participants are informed equally, are almost never existing, a balancing set of rules is better than nothing. But acting like an arrogant bumpkin around the world, is only killing people and innovation.

The FSA does not allow anyone to sell shares to retail investors (i.e. non accredited investors) without a license. They also do not allow an 'exchange' to facilitate said share offerings/sales

Which means the SEC will not come to shut down GLBSE but they can simply ask the FSA to  look into it.

Regulation in this area is almost the same in the USA as it is in Europe.

As Nefario is already in the process of getting GLBSE FSA regulated they presumably already know about GLBSE. The downside of trying to get regulated is of course that when they say NO... they will shut you down. And if Nefario transfers GLBSE to another jurisdiction they can still go after him as they explicitly told him he's not allowed to do it.

If they say yes... then it opens up a lot of possibilities to bring Bitcoin into the mainstream, but it will mean KYC/AML etc...so it certainly won't be anonymous, not for the issuers and not for the investors

nefario said that bitcoins are no money and that he wants to do a simple company registration.
i dont know what his current plans are - but i am (still) interested in the outcome.

Are you saying UK has the habit of forbidding people to do stuff anywhere in the world?
I don't understand why changing jurisdiction would not be possible.


Is this the case everywhere in the world? There's absolutely no country where investors may buy shares anonymously?
I know there are countries where there's no capital gain taxes. Why would these governments care whether you identify yourself before buying shares?

If the UK authorities have told you that you are doing something 'illegal' in their eyes. You can yourself move outside of their jurisdiction to a place where it is allowed. If however you yourself stay within the UK but only place the exchange in another jurisdiction then they can still go after you.

As for KYC/AML: no capital gain taxes is different from money laundering rules and terrorism funding. These days governments are more concerned with those aspects than capital gains. Most countries (even Switzerland) give bank account information to any country that asks for it. And most off-shore banks ask for information/source of funds received to cover their own ass else they won't accept your business.

Oh come on, everybody knows KYC laws exist to fight tax evasion.

But yeah, it might be possible that governments that don't care whether you identify yourself before buying shares force you to do it anyway, due to pressure from strong, income-taxing governments.

For the record, this is bullshit. You wanna trade fiat, go trade fiat.

Why trade fiat when there's a nice proven group of suckers here?

+1

Seems that way sometimes...there seems to be a solid group of intelligent people here, but then they go and dump their savings into Pirate and expect magic  :-\

in reference to:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=103708.msg1188128#msg1188128
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ma4ysl7cn21qdkipyo1_500.jpg

HAHA! I totally forgot about that thread...nice for a good laugh this afternoon

Considering bids under 0.3 now?

You still want 0.3...?
Maybe GLBSE does not exist anymore after the weekend ?!
Looking forward to Nefarios announcement... :o

Yes.

As a major stockholder can you at least tell us that you do know what is going on (Nefario has told you exactly what is going on)?

Not asking you to divulge what is going on, just to tell us you do know what it is.

I believe he already indicated that he found out about this via a thread on this forum.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=115430.msg1244912#msg1244912

That was on October 04, 2012 at 03:36:00 PM.

Maybe (as a major stockholder) he has been able to have a little chat with Nefario since then?

The announcement strategy of Nefario is very irritating. Last topic was something about Yubi-Keys, so he may just refactor the site. However, this is a very unprofessional behavior. This provides a very low incentive to engage into business with the guy.

I don't know what's going on. There is a shareholder meeting later today, and Nefario had better have a damn good excuse for doing this and keeping shareholders in the dark or he's unlikely to be CEO any longer.

Important question:

Do you or any of the other shareholders have access to any of the backups of GLBSE's database?
In the event it gets shut down (by law enforcement or by anything else) we need some way to ensure that stocks can be migrated...

Everything is backed up already.

The shareholders can work together (using Shamir's secret sharing) to access GLBSE's wallet, but I don't know if we have access to database backups. I never downloaded any database backups. And Nefario could disable all of this if ordered to do so by a court.

Then what is the disaster backup plan? what's the difference between the suddenly death of Nefario and an order from the court preventing Nefario release the Database?

Wait just a cotton pickin minute here...

Someone besides Nefario has a copy of the database at all times, right?

If big brother is closing in this whole thing should be moving to a server in another jurisdiction automatically, right?

Hmmm...  Maybe that is what is happening right now (?)

Please tell me someone besides Nefario has a copy of the database...
Please?

How have you guys not seen this as a potential major problem?

Having access to the database doesn't necessarily mean you'd be able to migrate stocks if GLBSE becomes legally restrained from doing business, but it's critical that someone other than Nefario be able to access the database in the event of a catastrophe and it's worrying that you guys don't seem to have planned for that possibility.  Have any of you taken legal advice regarding your own liability in respect of GLBSE?  

theymos post this 4 hour ago. it must be 16:30 in England now. Looking forward to the any tinny updates from GLBSE official announcement or words from shareholders like theymos.

Great, now it looks like Theymos had inside knowledge and was trying to dump the shares. Thanks Nefario.

theymos, any updates from the shareholder meeting?

GLBSE can continue if Nefario is just hit by a bus or something. The secret-sharing-protected data includes passwords for the server.

I believe that BitcoinGlobal is legally a non-entity and each individual is liable only for his own actions. No one signed the bylaws or any partnership contract.


Hasn't happened yet.

I recall that scammer Trendon Shavers form Texas had also a dead mans switch to return all the coin and what not... LOL

Gettin ugly.

You might want to get advice on that.  It sounds like you're functioning as a partnership and that has liability implications whether there's a written agreement or not.

In fact I wish everyone would get legal and accounting advice before they launch or become involved in the operation of Bitcoin ventures instead of just assuming that they know the legal implications of their venture.  It's inexcusable for services which will be responsible for other people's funds to not obtain such advice before launch.

If the shareholders meeting today decides to remove Nefario as CEO, exactly who is familiar enough with the inner workings of GBLSE to step into that role immediately?

Wow - that's some unexpected news.

So you, the "Hero Member Administrator", who was only about "following the forum rules" while censoring my GLBSE related posts on this forum - now you are saying that you had 23% of the interest in the GLBSE scum at that point?
Shame on you!!!

Now I can only wonder how many shares of BitcoinGlobal does Goat own...

A bunch of fucking crooks - that's all you are! You, Goat, Nefario... and god knows who else... and I hope you will all end up in jail, because that is a place which the kind of crooks you are should be in. Financial fraud on a massive scale with a conspiracy, secret shares behind, and abusing a public forum to force private interests... it's just fucking unbelievable!

This ^ +1.

What's to say Theymos doesn't know anything?

I find that hard to believe that this was merely a coincidence of him selling all his shares (or attempting to).

It seems Bitcoin enters more and more into the real world.

Now it seems we could have a case of insider knowledge...I m really curious what will come out of this mess. ???

Insider trading isn't simply someone having knowledge not available to the general public.  It doesn't really apply to private companies because the public has no inherent right to information about a private company.  Failure to disclose to a purchaser material information affecting the value of shares in a private company veers more into the territory of obtaining financial advantage by deception and other forms of fraud.  That said, the risk of an entity offering unregistered securities being shut down by a regulator is so obvious that it shouldn't require explicit disclosure.

Woah now.. I never said *I* have backups.

BitVPS offers remote backup services with a company in NY. I tried to sell it to nefario, he already had the same service from some one else... That's how I know there are backups.

rg

Back to square one then.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112438.msg1218455#msg1218455

Does anyone know which particular threads detail these "disaster plans"?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to read the writing on the wall.

Plenty of other non-insider folks on these forums saw this coming and pulled their assets out in time.  I just wish I had been one of them.  Now I don't know if I'll ever see my 50 BTC again.