Bitcoin Forum

So anybody who wants to invest in long-term BTC assets has to deal with these 3rd parties.

From doing some research it seems like the operator of MPEx is not exactly the most upstanding character (please excuse me if I missed something there or am wrong about this).

Just wanted to get your opinion on anybody who has trusted these exchanges in the past & purchased assets through them (it seems at least some people have), and why. Especially given what happened with GLBSE. How can investors be sure that's not going to happen again? (in particular, GLBSE was unable to comply with AML & legal regulations. Surely the same is going to occur in due course with MPEx). What's the risk?

The dividend yield on SDICE may be 40% but tbh the real issue seems to be whether an investor's capital will still be preserved after a full year of investment (my intuition from looking at posts on these forums combined with the controversial legal position occupied by bitcoin is 'no').

Is this a serious proposition?

Although I understand there are 'pass through' funds that allow investment without going through MPEx directly, it seems the whole ecosystem depends on MPEx - if that fails it would still lead to a wipeout.

it's risky risky business indeed and we all learn it at one point.
I have yet to do it, but paper wallet remains the safest and the way to go.
Overall, I have had more success dealing person to person and develop a relationship, and help in your area to do promotion and local deals.
Looking back on some disastrous mistakes are these situations where there are multiple intermediaries and that is just asking for trouble..

Colored coins (http://www.bitcoinx.org/) allow issuing assets without having to rely on 3rd parties.

This is why exchanges with public asset lists are important (for example, BitFunder). Even if BitFunder suddenly shuts down, asset issuers will be able to know who owned what.

MPEx's PR person is a "skidmark" on bitcoins underwear that just won't come out.
I emailed the guys at bitfunder got a email, sent one back and never heard from them again. I understand they are busy but still, I would be nice to have please hold on while I look into the issue or something like that... now that it has been over 7 days i'm sure I just gave up. I will find another business that will suit my needs.

The eco system does not fall on MPEx, don't let them bloat your head with that crap. They do have a large dealing only because of S.Dice if S.Dice ever pulls out they will loose the only client that saves them face.

Pass through is great if you do not want to deal with MPEx personally.

@BitcoinINV: Unless you were planning to list a really crappy security, try sending an email again or go on IRC.

Was not listing nothing was getting info about what they would and would not allow, some legal questions and other things. IRC is empty tried that for 2 days going in there for 15 minutes at a time asking "anyone in here who can tell me about securities requirments."

This is not good enough answer for me lol


terms

We (BitFunder) do not accept responsibility for anything.
WARNING: Use at your own risk.
You must agree to 1 and 2.

Honestly, with the btc community and how btc works, anything other than that, is a lie in our opinion.
We do promise to list all holdings by the shareholders by providing a public btcaddress/asset/shares list live 24/7. (Click Here)
This leaves our liabilities down to just BTC held in accounts with us.
We will do everything in our power to keep things as easy, painless, accurate and as fair as possible.
We promise to deliver the services of this site as accurately as possible and to the best of our ability to the users and to continue to try to grow with the community.

Once you dispense with need for superficial "niceness" and "profesionality" and consider things rationally, you may find out there's a strong reason behind how MPEx does things.  Both Bitfunder and BTCT I perceive are doing their utmost to be nice,to cater to  everyone...and I fear they'll spread thin and it will be their undoing. Or maybe not I hope, they are nice folks.

Oh and MPEx was reaching 50k/mo volume long before satoshidice, due to their in-house BTCUSD options trader-MPOE. Many ignore MPOE at their detriment.

Edit: MPEx publishes its database,too, in encrypted form. Just releasing a GPG key will be sufficient to decrypt it.

When will the MPOE monthly results for February 2013 be released? thx

Options for this month expire last Friday in the month at midnight UTC (today), monthly results will be released few hours after that, at most.

Oh goodness, it seems you've been listening to MPOE-PR a bit too much.
MPEx hosts, like, 3 stocks...one for MPEx, one of SDICE, and one for S.BBET. Haven't been on there in a while so I might be missing one...but in any case if MPEx goes down Erik (the owner of SDICE) will probably just move to another exchange.

They only think they're the best because they host SDICE, which has quite the trading volume.

If bitfunder "suddenly shuts down" the list is not available because it's on their website.  Though there's always this: https://btct.co/history-bitfunder/ (don't use IE, I don't mirror the superfluous content so it breaks)

The list also does not include any way to contact the shareholders.  (Another Edit/Add: Bitfunder did in fact add this option, just found it in my account preferences!  I can share my email with the issuers!)   :D

btct.co makes shares/email/bitcoin address lists available to issuers on the site (html), via the api (json), and by emailing all issuers complete lists at 12 hour intervals.




https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85829.msg1531827#msg1531827

Unfortunately most of these places (btct.co included) are one or two man shops.  There's not a lot of income to support much more, so when something happens at home, things get backed up.  Hopefully he's back soon and things are ok.

Edit/add: Heh, I forgot to mention the times when you're just super-focused on an awesome new feature!  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=146009.msg1550069#msg1550069 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=146009.msg1550069#msg1550069)


We definitely try hard at BTC-TC.  Too hard at times.  But we're still an early startup, (~6 months in biz) so that is to be expected.  I've had a few discussions with some community members and they've had some great ideas for tightening controls on new listings, so we'll be implementing that soon.  We also have some of the strictest controls out there on funds, which I believe were one of the major causes of the GLBSE price crashes right before the operational collapse.

Cheers.

Amusingly enough, I show no ticket updates.
I see a ticket, a ticket response, but nothing more.
Are you sure you posted the update to the ticket?

Yea I understand that I do a 1 man show myself besides the help of a great programmer that helps me with coding and stuff. But I still answer emails in a 48hrs or l otherwise have "gone fishing" sign up JK. But I let people know there will be a delay.


Edit:

Kowalczewski, Daniel <drkowalczewski@mailccc.net>
Feb 13 (9 days ago)

to BitFunder
Its not for a GLSBE stock its for a new one, and I wanted to make you aware it is a real company with real stock. I want to be sure this will not put you in some sort of legal fix. Bitcoin-.com is our site,
http://www.business.govt.nz/fsp/app/ui/fsp/version/searchSummaryCompanyFSP/FSP270025/1.do?noReturn=true
Registration with the NZ gov as a Limited Company and a Financial Services Provider.
Feel free to make a account in the xxxx section.

Thanks for the backup. I would love to offer users the same for btct, except that doesn't sound possible. :)

Ahh theres the issue, you replied to the email, not the ticket.
I added a note to support responses making sure people know not to reply to the email. Was thinking it was already there, I guess not. ;)

Yea I understand, that why I did not go off making some post about shitty service like you see people doing all the time lol.

Don't really need a backup of a partial list (which is all you can get on Bitfunder) when, as an asset issuer, I can get a full list of my investors on BTC.CO any time I want.

My view is that making a partial list public does more harm than good (it gives out information that shouldn't be in the public domain - allowing correlation between various holdings and also determination of the holdings in an asset by someone buying or selling).  Investors have to trust the asset issuer anyway if they want their investments honoured - so why not trust them to hold the list in the first place?

Publishing an incomplete list is the worst of both worlds - it doesn't give the information necessary to continue operations whilst giving out information to everyone that they have no right to be given.

No, probably not.  I wasn't comfortable with publishing the BTC addresses.

Someone could start up a backup service though that issuers could use.  Eg, they open an account, plug in the api endpoint (w/ api key), and the backup service could archive the lists at regular intervals.  This service would be good for backing up more than just the asset lists.  Regular users could use it to back up their portfolio contents, etc.


I think the public list is complete.  If I understand it correctly, there's a separate private list (which includes email addresses) which is also complete, with the exception of your email address if you have not opted into sharing it.

Public list isn't complete as it only contains entries for those who have entered a BTC address to be published.  So, e.g., if an asset is imported from GLBSE and shares assigned to email addresses with no existing account then there won't be any BTC address published for them (as there isn't one to publish).

Unless that's somehow changed recently - last time I checked listed shares for assets were (in some cases significantly) below those shown as outstanding.

Using BTC addresses rather than email addresses gives some degree of anonymity - but at the cost of ease of use and (more importantly) completeness.

No mention of Crypto::Stocks (https://cryptostocks.com/)?

Because it has about two assets with any value in them.

How is that different to MPEX ?

Dude, seriously already. MPEx mkt cap is something like 1.x mn Bitcoins. This is more than everything else by orders of magnitude. It's more than most countries' actual fiat stock exchange. MOST COUNTRIES. Lay the crap to rest already, it's not doing you any favors.

Different because MPEx does not also have a bunch of worthless cruft cluttering it.
Different because MPEx has other stuff besides stocks (like options).

Cryptostocks also has options.

Ah yes, thank you for this link.

But I guess you also have to rely on the asset issuers themselves honouring the contracts made on any individual stock exchanges - ultimately they could just neglect to pay a dividend for 1 month. How would you enforce that? And without any formal contracts or if a stock exchange went down, how would you trade out of the stock at a future date?

They shouldnt be called stock exchanges at all but renamed to Gambling. Because thats essentially what happens.

Asset issuers can default at any time without needing the exchange to go down.  In GLBSE's case the lack of any provision of investors' details provided a convenient window for issuers to vanish/claim ignorance (or do a Gigavps and charge a hefty fee for recognition of your claim - pricing smaller non-US investors out of their holdings).  That excuse has gone with BTC.CO and (to an extent) Bitfunder (the asset list there is incomplete - as it only includes investors who opted in by providing a BTC address or ticking a box  to allow sharing of their email address) but the capability for issuers to vanish is ALWAYS present and, without enforcement of contracts, can't be seriously mitigated.

All the time there are issuers there will be issuers who default.  The rate of default/failure has to be factored in when deciding what rate of return is acceptable for investments (over-simplifying, if 10% of assets default/fail per 3 months then you have to make 11% profit per 3 months on the 90% just to break even - so anything paying less than ~ 4% per month should be ignored unless you have good reason to believe it's in the 90% not the 10%.  Those numbers are illustrative not intended to be taken as fact - actual default/failure rate may be lower or higher: my money's on higher, dependent on how you define default/failure.)

https://btcjam.com/listings/2053  this is one cool feature introduced by btc.co I havent seen elsewhere.

This of course runs into the problem of the interest vicious circle (as expected returns go up to compensate for rate of failure actual businesses are selected against, actual scams are selected for).


"To have" does not mean "there is the word written on a web page".

That is pretty darn cool.

Only because you're not on MPEx. Among actual traders it has been going on for over a year by now. Sucks to be irrelevant, I guess.

Says the secretary

No, actually, I'm the forum PR person.

MPEX also has a socket connection / Sierra chart plugin :)

http://bitcoin-assets.com/mpex-socket/

Very cool.  Nice work!

That worked well.

Just imagine how much worse it would have been without the asset lists!

Bitfunder sent asset lists of all shareholders to the issuers when they said they would. If there's a share mitigation issue it's on the issuer's end and not on Bitfunder.

That doesn't excuse ukyo of anything, however as far as the asset lists went they were semi-useful.

*nods*


::)

OHAI! :D