Bitcoin Forum

I am pleased to announce the start of another bitcoin stock Exchange, PicoStocks, http://picostocks.com.

The exchange is based on a different model than GLBSE or MPEx. The main concept of the new model is that PicoStocks is the legal owner of all assets. Users trading the assets can benefit from profits or buy and sell the assets to other users. PicoStocks is a legal person established under the jurisdiction of Marshall Islands. When floating assets on the platform PicoStocks will enter into share purchase agreement with the issuer or owner. In other words PicoStocks will share responsibility for the authenticity and validity of the offered shares. Of course the users are responsible for the evaluation of the assets.

We hope that the different legal model will help in floating “real world” startups on the platform, not necessarily related to the bitcoin economy. Having such assets on a bitcoin based exchange platform should be beneficial for the bitcoin community and for the issuers who, due to their small size, can not enter other regulated exchanges.

We have started the platform with the IPO* (Initial PicoStocks Offering) of 20% of all shares of PicoStocks. The business plan is available on the platform. We plan to float in few weeks a high tech SME dealing with the application of bacteriophages in agriculture. We will also float an ASIC mining project. Floating is intentionally relative expensive (50BTC), because want to focus on more mature operations. Floating can be done online, but the purchase agreement that contains the number of listed shares and the reward in BTC must be signed between the owner (seller) and PicoStocks before the trading of the shares starts on the platform. Both parameters (number of shares and raised capital) will be determined during the IPO* process.

I've been wondering how long before someone takes this approach.  More overview of Marshall Islands:
 - http://www.healyconsultants.com/company-incorporation/marshall-islands-company-formation.html

The FAQ gives additional useful info:
 - http://picostocks.com/pages/faq

There is one more important innovation. All transactions and all user accounts are public. It is possible to monitor the action of "best" traders and review their market position.
Several forex trading companies offer something like this as a paid service but here transparency is an important aspect of our mission. We believe more transparency will help the investors (private or public) and entrepreneurs.

The main objective for the beginning is to attract as many as possible interesting small high-tech startups. It is enough to list small fractions of their shares (even less than 1%) to promote the startups and the bitcoin community. We would like to encourage anybody ho has some shares of small high tech companies to float a part of the shares he/she owns on PicoStocks.

BTW: the business plan of PicoStocks is here: http://picostocks.com/businessplan/15 ... sorry for ignoring MPEx there. We will try to describe the differences between the two exchanges on some page in the near future.

Exciting news, I hope it works out. It's tempting to get in early, but with you valuing your exchange at ~ 1.3M Euros for the ipo, I'll stick to the sidelines on that one. Can't wait to watch this thing take off.

The minimum price is 0.05 BTC. I think this will be also the final price tag. This would be a valuation at 50k BTC (~500k EUR) at current exchange rates.
You are probably right, we should start with a smaller valuation at the beginning, but we actually don't need any funds for the exchange and I still believe that even at this valuation the asset will generate reasonable return on investment in 12 months. I hope we will be able to report much better results than predicted after 12 months.

Can I pitch in.?

1. create an account for You bitcoin account on http://picostocks.com
2. wait few seconds for the system to create a dedicated PicoStocks bitcoin account
3. send 1BTC to the newly created account and wait 1h [5 confirmations]
4. login there again, select [pico] from the list of IPO* assets and press the buy button [right top]
5. put in the price: 0.05 and the number of shares You want to buy: 20 and press the "Buy shares" button

After this You will probably have to wait few days. I think I will close the IPO* next week.
After that the trading can start.

Interesting concept, watching closely.   

For a start, an observation that leads to a question:
Quote from your Webpage:
    The IPO office is operated by BioInfoBank

Punching BioInfoBank into Google, I come across the page: http://bioinfo.pl/   which says: BioInfoBank Institute is a non-for-profit research and development organization ...  The main scientific focus of the institute is Bioinformatics .....

How does that all fit together? Care to elaborate because most of us, when we read "Bank" as part of an organizations name, think about a "real" bank with banking license, etc.
 

-bank does not always mean the entity deals with money , see for example bio-bank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biobank) or data-bank. BioInfoBank Institute has mainly the bio and info component. The financial component is located mainly in the venture fund BIB Seed Capital SA (seed.bioinfo.pl, Polish  :( ). In fact the fund invested in an asset that I wanted to float on PicoStocks next: proteonpharma.com (the phage company).

But, to answer Your question, we have no banking license :-) A banking license could be useful for BTC/forex exchange but I don't think we will consider this for the stock exchange. In fact using a banking license would place us in a European jurisdiction and tax area ... we don't want to deal with this right now.

While I can appreciate that bootstrap seems to have been defeated in the market and the MPEx look and feel prevails, the question that stands before you is how can you show this isn't just another stock generation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_Generation) rehash? Because on the face that's what we have here.

Please give us 2 days. We will launch another serious asset on Friday the latest. The asset is a bitcoin mine but I hope it will be large enough to attract interest. After this we will start floating "real world" companies. I have to admit this is a challenge because investments have to compete with the BTC deflation and the expected dividend threshold is much higher here than anywhere else. It is pointless to try to float a not convincing venture here but it can be still interesting from the tax point of view.

An equity whose revenues are in fiat can act as a hedge though, so their values go up as the bitcoin exchange rate goes down, possibly at an even faster rate (especially if it has earnings).  At least in theory, ... there's been a fourteen-month bitcoin rally going on so there haven't been many opportunities to see if this is true in practice as well.

I guess in crisis You would run for the most liquid asset. This would be the fiat money itself. Also the forex (btc exchange) markets will always remain the most liquid bitcoin based markets facilitating fast departure from BTC.
Nevertheless a large number of listed fiat assets will add stability to the BTC exchange rates. ... until their valuation exceeds the number of bitcoins in circulation and then a default of a large listed fiat asset would provide turbulence for btc exchange rates :-) this is of course all theory.

I'm in no rush, you can have two weeks or two months as far as I'm concerned.

Here it is ... a large mine: http://picostocks.com/stocks/view/17 ... probably the largest mine in few months, but not any more the largest few months later :-)

Except Tom wasn't even going to sell 1,000 bASICs to begin with, and his original offering is all bought out, by people who are not you. So no, this isn't an example that serves your intention, this is an example that goes exactly the other way.

Clearly you have no business here. Please start here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=124441.0) like everyone else.

Why don't You ask Tom about it :-)

There may be problems to get any response from Tom now :-) https://www.btcfpga.com/forum/index.php?topic=954.0.
We have frozen this IPO* until the situation is resolved. In the meantime we will try to float less risky ventures :-)

Oh my.  Someone didn't do their due diligence.

We did not invest in Toms company. We only ordered chips. There is little due diligence You can do in the chip business right now :-) [you can choose between transparency or advanced tech node :-)], but You are right, we could have asked for more facts. The decision was made based on few assumptions:

1. we have also worked on mining chips so we know it is absolutely possible to deliver what Tom promised
2. there is a clear market for the chips, a project like bASIC could easily make $10M in 1-2 years, so there is no reason to believe anybody would choose to take $1M ("and run", which Tom apparently did not do) instead of completing the project using collected funds ($500k-600k, mask costs $400k, the rest is not important and can be easily paid with loans / preorders ... bASIC has desided to offer only boards so the design is simple ... the simplest on the market)
3. Tom had a proved track record of delivering mining hardware , he only needed to order ASIC chips
=> the chances of success are quite large
We don't actually know what happened. If this is as described: Tom could not stand another delay; then this is just a management issue that needs to be solved :-)

Our risks were also not that big because we did not pay the whole amount, just a prepayment, so the current potential losses are of course not $1M. If we get more info about the current status of bASIC development maybe we can save the project.

So wait, you ordered 1,000 units, paid about a million dollars and now are screwed?

Not yet :-) Maybe we can save bASIC somehow ... we still work on that :-) I hope in 1 week we will know how we stand in this project.

Why one week and not, for instance, two months (http://bitbet.us/bet/75/)?

ASIC development is a fast business :-) We can not wait. We need to restructure the bASIC project within days.
We will setup a new management structure, change the information policy (boost transparency), review the technology status and the financial situation.
Only after proposing and implementing changes we will have an idea about the chances of success (potential future profitability of bASIC / BTCFPGA, LLC) and the timing of the first delivery. According to what I know since yesterday the March deadline is feasible ... but we will never claim that this is the ultimate deadline :-)

Bitcoin ASICs maybe, but ASICs in general... What is the node size on the latest discrete sound processor...

To really trounce what avalon has and BFL might, you won't just need die shrinks. Those will be BFL's saving grace if they come to pass. You will need serious hardware engineering prowess...


And the more salient point.

Mining investments are depreciating assets. Much like going long on bitcoin, if you want to go long on mining it is best to take delivery and have real equity in your investment.

1. the node is <65nm [let's assume 55nm for simplicity]
2. you get power saving if you don't operate the chip for highest hashrate but for lowest power dissipation [much less frequency / voltage than possible]
3. truly custom hashing core with huge emphasis on short connections (possible only in rolled designs) ... avalon and bfl have unrolled design
these 3 things ad up.

I will try to convince BitFury to comment on that. He will probably write a long letter with simulation results when he is ready (in 1 week maybe).

Can anyone actually show 1 "mining company" that has made any profit for "investors" ?

It would be very bad for PicoStocks also if this mine would fail to return profits (after returning investments). We will make sure this will not happen, but of course we can only prove this before the end of this year.

inb4 every two bit scammer starts their own "stock exchange" which allows them to manipulate the stock price ala stock generation.

Herpderp strikes again.

I doubt that there is one. I never meant mining "companies" or "securities" as the sort of deliverable investment being referred to. The point I attempted to make was that if someone wants to invest in mining, they probably ought to be buying some equipment.

We have an order for 50TH/s in chips, but only few people can use this "equipment". The remaining equipment is also not that easy to handle. It is more expensive to create hardware that anybody can use and has an attractive look as well :-) I also believe that there are some people who don't want to worry about power/network stability and prefer to have others manage the mining equipment. But for larger investors we offer hardware instead of mining shares. I still believe the shares are a better investment because of simplified exit.

There are still people who buy ThinkPads for the aesthetics.

Is it legal under Polish law to onsell shares in a Polish stock?
As picostocks is the legal owner of shares such as Proteon Pharmaceuticals - and when you google 'proteon pharmaceuticals stock", the picostocks site is the first hit - this surely won't go unnoticed.

I don't see that the Marshal Islands incorporation gives any protection as if the Polish regulators don't like this activity, they need only go to Proteon Pharmaceuticals - (or where-ever the underlying stocks are traded) and seize/freeze the holdings that PicoStocks has.
So.. do you have any comment on the legality and consequent risks of this?

Also - where can we see the underlying price that normal shareholders of Proteon Pharmaceuticals are trading at?

PicoStocks does not trade stocks of a company but shares in profits. If You buy Proteon shares on the PicoStocks platform, You will not automatically become Proteon Shareholder. => no shares change owner.
It is more a tax problem than a legal problem. But we don't operate in Poland and we don't sell shares.
We will work on promotion later , when the BTC price settles. Right now listing assets from outside of BTC economy is a problem due to BTC instability.
There is no legal basis for that :-) Poland welcomes foreign direct investments :-) This is what PicoStocks is providing.
You can not. You can contact Proteon and ask if You can buy shares from them. They have just closed a financing round but are looking for more funds and will continue looking untill they finish the registration procedure of their current main product.

The main problem of PicoStocks is the BTC value. This unfortunately kills any investment. Proteon increased the valuation of its stocks substantially in the period between purchase of shares by PicoStocks and the last closed round of financing. But this increase is still much smaller than the increase of BTC value so the short term PicoStocks investors would not make any BTC profit. This is the main reason why we don't have any new 'external' assets yet :-(

We are thinking how to deal with this in the long run. One option is an alternative crypto currency that does not deflate that much, but this is at least a 6 month project.

I don't like the model personally.  If I buy stock I want to be able to vote my shares.

They're listed in Boiler Room (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181984/). It's a Ben Affleck flick.

In this case You should contact the company directly.
I assume that the majority of PisoStocks asset holders will not want to participate in management. This is why we did not implement any internal voting system. Also there are confidentiality issues that can not be solved easily.

Hi,

Is there an API to be able to access basic price data from the assets? Or any plans to implement one?

No yet :-( the transaction fee is too high for high frequency trading and API access would increase load on the service. We will maybe think about this when we increase liquidity and throughput.

I see that you recognize the trading fee is a bit high...as well as poor liquidity. Any reason for keeping the trading fee @ 1%?

We would like to encourage long term investments. We want to focus on small startups not on high trading volume assets like BTC/USD.

PicoStocks is down for 1 day. A hacker obtained the password of a big shareholder of Proteon and started executing trades that led to a drop of the price of this asset. The hacker was able to transfer around 1300 BTC from PicoStocks to this account: https://blockchain.info/address/1PoYfqyTnxKdCpv5ydzEGepW5GLsRRHgBb
We will fix the damage today and the trading should continue tomorrow. We will reset the status of Proteon shares to previous state. Other shares were not affected.

wow. was there actually that much liquidity or did the victim have a lot of coin in his account?

it's somewhat disconcerting seeing coin from my deposit address being transfered out to the hacker's account. can you confirm that this was solely a user's password that was compromised and the server(s) itself were not compromised (there may be indications of attack in the logs).

would appreciate 2FA

Strange?
Shareholder's password got compromised and you graciously refund the loss. Why is that?
Was the password compromised on your fault? That's great deal of money

We will refund the loss because we are operating the account for some of our bigger customers that don't know much about bitcoins and we had the same password on few accounts which was just extremely stupid. This is clearly our fault. The system seems fine. This is clearly a human error.
We will now try to find out how the intruder discovered the passwords.

You deposit address is there because these are the funds that went to the hot wallet.

A PicoStocks account is supposed to be permanently tied to a specific Bitcoin address. How was the attacker able to withdraw to a seemingly arbitrary address?

He/She obtained access to 2 accounts that had the same password. One had shares of proph and the other had funds. He bought shares of "proph" for nothing [sold from the firs stolen account] and sold it to the account that had BTC. The transfer was from his account.

$145k heist with no repercussions.  Amazing and sad world we live in.

The plot thickens.

Looking forward to seeing which will be the third completely imaginary, multi-million dollar mining "investment" this guy makes, after having lost that much on bASIC and seeing how BitFury isn't going to be delivering (or at least, not on the originally promised schedule).

We have identified and fixed the problem. CakePHP does not set the id of the record correctly when saving data (http://book.cakephp.org/1.2/en/The-Manual/Developing-with-CakePHP/Models.html):
... // Update: id is set to a numerical value
$this->Recipe->id = 2;
$this->Recipe->save($this->request->data);
...
this does not work properly as Recipe->id is overwritten by data;
The intruder was able to overwrite the passwords of other users (and no other fields in any of the tables).
The intruder used this page for the attack: https://mullvad.net/en/about.php ... we have notified the owners.

Tomorrow we will clean the damage and revert the state of the shares of the "proph" asset. Other assets were not affected.

ugh, so a user/attacker that POSTs a request with an "id" parameter is able to overwrite another user's data?

this bit of code:
$this->Recipe->save($this->request->data);

looks awfully scary...if it happens in one place, it's likely to happen in other parts of the code. i'm not an expert with cake, but i do know it does a lot of automagical things, so passing a user controlled data structure (request->data) to a magical DB storage method just feels wrong.

In this place only the password, but after that other things as well except the btc accounts.
Yes
We have reviewed the whole code. This was the only place where this construct was used.
The code was like this:
$this->User->id=$this->Auth->user('id');
if ($this->User->save($this->data,array('fieldList'=>array('pass','pass2')))) ...
Only 2 elements should be saved, but apparently data[User][id] overwrites User->id.
We try to limit application of 3rd part software to a minimum.

We will add more security by notifying the user via email of any changes to the account, withdraw attempts and many other things that happen on the system.
Modifications will freeze the account for some period of time so that the user can react.
The admin will be also notified of strange trading orders.

Nope, not even close. Tytus just likes to tell stories about imaginary bazillions.

Consider also sending confirmation links for doing these things via e-mail / SMS.

Yes. We will add mandatory email confirmation and probably withdraw confirmations but confirming each trade by email is not convenient.
The page is up again. Proteon assets are restored.
I will continue adding security / notifications tomorrow.

Sorry for the inconvenience !!!

i think there is a slight bug with the login. i've had to login twice the last few times i've accessed the site.

Yes, if You click on the login info before redirection something strange happens and the session is lost. I will look at this today or tomorrow. I am too busy with the 100th chips order to move forward with the server as fast as I wanted :-(

What's witholding the automatic payout of PicoStocks dividends? Transaction volume due to the compromised accounts in June.

Could you also do any reporting of some simple key figures on PicoStocks?

Just some like:
- total trade volume on PicoStocks for the last month
- gross revenue
- total of costs
- short balance with PicoStocks' assets (cash on hand & total (im)material assets) with the liabilities on the other hand (equity, upcoming dividend payment & total of other debt)

In total 8 figures of which any venture should have at least 6 at hand, at least tentatively.

Nice and clean. Tnx.

My conclusions as I expected: floating assets is the core business for now and a while to come. The main shareholder(s) of PicoStocks seems paying for hosting & development I assume? Wait, I'll go reread the business plan.

Still can't find the overview through the hyperlink structure on the PicoStocks site (my compliments for the clean graphical design).

Are you mentally retarded (but my compliments for the well thought out post that makes sense and is not self-contradictory or anything)?

Guess so, since I definitely need a screen shot of the PicoStocks site pointing the link out for me to find it.

I hold your stocks.And I love your website too.

I want to create a btc  stocks platform.

Then can you give me a clone?I can give you dollar or btc for exchange.

Else,can you give me  a low lever versions?

Else ,can you give me some  suggests?

I come from china , and here the market is large .

Welcome to china .

Is there any way to find password? I think I lost it...

Poor guy.

down for now 3 days

Yes its bad.

Why cant i register? It tells me Invalid Bitcoin Address but the address is copied right from electrum. Its correctly shown on picostocks but it claims its invalid...

What's wrong with the Volume? https://picostocks.com/stocks


And here: https://picostocks.com/profits/ Profits and Dividends paid by PicoStocks to shareholders on PicoStocks
Last update is 2013-09-02 01:00:01.
It used to update everyday/everyhours,or everyminutes.
And now,not any more.

There must be something wrong.

I don't recall where I've generated my picostock receiving address, It's not in my main wallets,

I might have been overly secure with this one, Who can I change it ?

I think it should be possible to change it to the address I send the BTC from,

I'd also suggest that a password change should require the existing password - this is fairly standard security practice.

Sorry, I wasn't being specific. After logging in to a session on picostocks, the web app allows for a new password to be set without knowing the current password - this isn't ideal if someone happens to gain very brief access to your phone/tablet/computer and resets your picostocks password without an email notification or knowing the current password.

I get no arming email after login. Worked for me until now. Has anyone else the same problem?

Never worked for me.

There are at least 2 bugs in the handling of mails on picostocks :

• They strip the "+" character in email addresses. "+" is often used as a delimiter to multiplex several addresses with the same prefix on the same mailbox.
• They don't respect the SMTP protocol: the EHLO doesn't use a fully qualified and resolvable domain name, just a hostname ("s1").

If you have a + in you email address the mails are essentially sent to /dev/null.

If your email provider uses basic Anti-SPAM rules they will reject or mark any incoming emails as SPAM.

The last days arming works perfect for me and i got emails from picostocks. Today i got no arming email and no reminder email. maybe their email daemon died?

minor feature request. can you print the current server time somewhere on the stock view pages?

Thanks for the quick response! However, the format is currently year-day-month.

i seemed to have stopped getting "arming" emails, so i can't withdraw or trade...is it just me or is it happening for others too?

hmm...still not getting emails from picostocks. i don't think it's in my spam folder either and i don't see any indication of rejection on my end.

Told you so.

You're exactly the scumbag thief I said you were, back in Spring.

PS. Hey muppet community? This is the story of your loss (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=348977.0).

Please don't worry.
We will get more by mine.

We won't get more if they get stolen again.

Let's stop trying to run an exchange and move to direct shares.

Any project of this size should have security audits done by professionals who can be fired/sued for negligence.

Inputs.io 2.0?

I agree with this statement.

Direct payouts instead of hot/ cold wallet would be ideal.  I had over 13btc in picostocks...and .75 btc in my balance...just when I was starting to have more faith in it (and trying to be optimistic) some more crap happens.  Suffice to say in this game there will always be greed and crap happen.  Self mining and self holding for oneself seems to be the best way.  It was a great idea, however from here on out I think I am going to stop investing in picostocks unless we can have this issue rectified immediately.

Security professionals do not take on that liability. There is no such thing as 100% security and contracts are drawn up to reflect that. That said, it is proper due diligence for a decent sized company to hire external security people to assess a company's code, network, policies and procedures.

Any updates?

Security firms can most certainly be (and often are) sued for malpractice/negligence/incompetence.

Because of this liability, they pay a lot of money to insurance companies for coverage.

The lack of 2FA and offline (actually cold) cold wallets are their two most glaring fuck-ups.

Back up for me and all working!

This is not the place for cheering on stuff that you don't grasp.

I grasp it's back up, and it's working. What is your problem?

Are you ever positive about anything which isn't MPOE?

Define working.

And yes, I am. Your lack of reading ability and experience do not determine anything about me. They determine something about you.

You confuse ability with will. From the few posts I've read of yours, it's a common pattern.

Nah, refusing to read the seminal stuff (http://trilema.com/category/bitcoin/) of that which you profess to be interested in ultimately comes down to ability. I'd recommend getting over it; bitcoin isn't one of those fields where you can play pretend and end up unscathed.

It's now Wednesday. Is there an update?

hi..
i invest a lot of coins ipicostocks.
and i have a little problem..
is there any possibility to change my stored bitcoin address?

greetz
lan

who need pico shares @0.0455 BTC???
now on picostocks!!

How about the coint??

I got same question, especially now: http://www.coindesk.com/cointerra-acquires-bitcoin-software-developer-bits-proof/
How this affect on coint shares?

Is the exchange regulated or unregulated? Do we need ID and full docs to sign up and trade or no?

What is with https certyficate? I have error.

Any plans on reviving the portal?

Wiesz, że Propharma wchodzi na Nasdaq? :) Dwie spółki z "notowanych" na Pico są zarejestrowane w KRS i tam można nieco ciekawych rzeczy się dowiedzieć.

Z drugiej zaś strony niezależnie od miejsca zarejestrowania Pico (tak a propos to jest błąd w adresie biura. Przypadek?) jego założyciele i udziałowcy są obywatelami polskimi i za ewentualne przekręty będą odpowiadać przed polskimi sądami. Biorąc pod uwagę wzrost kursu BTC tym samym waga ewentualnych przekrętów znacznie rośnie i na ich miejscu jednak postarałbym się załatwić pewne sprawy w białych rękawiczkach, jeżeli mają zamiar wyprowadzić majątek z Pico i zwinąć biznes.

https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-bit-evil-in-negotiations-with-pico-idUSFWN1KP0GX

Aug 3 (Reuters) - BIT EVIL SA

* HAS STARTED NEGOTIATIONS WITH ‍PICOSTOCKS INCORPORATED ON ADSHARES TOKEN SERVICE SUPPORT ON BRAND SABBATH​ Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)

https://adshares.net/ico

problem with withdrawal email.

No problem getting the picostocks session started email and arm session but noting with withdrawal email.

Please advise?

user 4198

Following up with the ETH withdrawal not working.

Well, never got any response from support, got to sell back my ETH to BST then withdraw to another exchange to trade to ETH.

Never again!

Obviously, nobody is monitoring or doing support for this exchange??? I hear crickets!