Bitcoin Forum

Overstock’s Radical Plan to Reinvent the Stock Market With Bitcoin

http://www.wired.com/2014/07/overstock-and-cryptocurrency/

The more I read about this guy the more I like him. The idea isn't new but a company the size of Overstock backing the idea is.
“We want a money that some government mandarin can’t just whisk into existence with a pen stroke,”

 ;D

He sounds pretty angry when you hear him talk about Wall Street and traditional FIAT monetary systems that way. Didn't Overstock have some problems with sales, as well? I mean Amazon is pretty much the market leader anyways!

"unveiled a webpage that explores how a public company could issue a “cryptosecurity” to potential investors"

Anyone have access  or screenshots of this?

Well it's rumored that bitcoin was started to counter a service {Banks} that cheated him. Revenge is a good motivator, when people feel they are being bullied by corporate structures.

Always good to see a bully getting ass whipped.  ;D

the word 'webpage' from the very quote you quoted is a link.. or simply

https://o.info/index.php/How_to_issue_a_cryptosecurity

"...all stock trades would be governed by tools in the hands of the general public rather than by a traditional stock exchange, such as the NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange, and these trades would be mathematically verified and recorded in an online ledger that anyone can view at anytime—something that, Byrne believes, could eliminate some serious flaws in the world of high-stakes trading."

BTC is changing the world!  :)

easy to achieve. i call it Double chains

imagine Alice had um... Wheatcoin(coin representing stock of a farm) and wanted to trade with john for USDCoin(coin backed by US Dollar)

in a usual transaction you would see


(imagine the quotebox is alice signing the transaction)
now imagine the wheat for dollar blockchain and the security-qt.exe program will give them Uaddresses for USD and W addresses for wheat... but there is nothing stopping them also having other addresses and the blockchain able to keep a ledger of more then two values per transaction/block. but anyways this is a simple example of how a signed transaction would look on a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange


so alice made her pledge and signed it. john receives it. makes his pledge then signs it. and then signs the two together. sends this to alice who signs them together also. so they both agree.

then it gets sent to be mined.

the new block will show the swap..

all that needs to be figured out is how to get the security-qt.exe to receive enough node connections (people) to build up a big enough list of 'offers', rather than just having a couple dozen connections that some people normally only get in bitcoin-core.exe at any one time.

i proposed this ages back as a method of decentralizing exchanges, yet it fell on deaf ears

Oh haha. Thanks. Their links are hard for me to see.

There's some extremely creative folks out there

He is angry. He is a very interesting character who is one of the few CEOs that is an outspoken critic of Wall Street. There was a cool article about him a while ago, let me find a link. http://www.wired.com/2014/02/rise-fall-rise-patrick-byrne/

Yes, Amazon is obviously bigger than Overstock, but I've started to use overstock more because not only do they support bitcoin, but they also treat their customers and workers very well. Not to suggest that Amazon doesn't, but Overstock has been very highly rated for employee and customer satisfaction. Here is an example http://investors.overstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=131091&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1503943&highlight=

Knowledge is Power.  :)
I have not been shopping much lately, but will certainly remember to give Overstock.com a try soon, thank for the positive review.

Still no Bitcoin option for UK customers :(

Byrne is a Rockstar.

Have you ever watched his tutorial series on Naked Short Selling? Highly recommended.

This made me laugh:


The aberration that _allows_ for naked short selling is the fact that stocks are supposed to settle within a couple of days after the transaction is made. And sometimes they don't. A Naked Short Sale of several days is indistinguishable from a several day Failure To Settle. This is the very mechanism by which the pinstriped bandits steal the wealth of the populace.

This Angel guy is harping about an hour? What a shill.

This could be interesting.

Which is obviously a good thing. Overstock all the way!

I had the sheer pleasure of talking to PB for 30 minutes at Bitcoin2014 in Amsterdam.....he's a very smart cookie with a serious hatred of the sheer greed, stupidity and incompetence that riddles our current financial system.

Check out his keynote speech, its long but it's worth the time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkf04kQw1YU

I gotta point out that PB is not purely a BTC advocate, but is for crypto in general, even NXT  ;D

Indeed it is rare that you get a bigwig like this, in charge of a big company, who thinks a little outside the box.  Usually people have to sacrifice a lot of independence on their way to the top, it seems.