Bitcoin Forum

...is my ownership of various individual bonds safe? How are the bond issuers to know who holds their securities & who is due dividends?

I'm trying to invest wisely, diversify & spread my risk - but it occurred to me that the single point of failure could be the GLBSE itself.

(I'm sure this has been discussed before, but a search doesn't return quite what I'm looking for)

Thank you in advance to anyone pointing me toward any information that would increase my understanding of the exposure.

If GLBSE vanishes overnight and is never heard from again, there is a problem since there's no way to know who owns bonds.

But if GLBSE goes out of business for any reason, while its owner(s) are still alive and honest, they can share the information with issuers. What they do next is up to the issuer - the bond offerings assume GLBSE is working, so it might not be 100% business as usual but you will not lose your principal entirely.

Nefario has a "key man" policy in place he has shared with the glbse shareholders. These shareholders are some long time bitcoiners who wont let glbse "disappear" without a fight.

Cant say much more as its up to Nefario what he chooses to share with users.

All of the access information required to keep GLBSE running has been encrypted and provided to a number of individuals. X of Y members of that group are needed to come to a consensus and provide pieces of the encryption key needed to access that data. This ensures continuity, while at the same time preventing any one individual from going rogue and messing things up so to speak.

It does seem like it might be useful for there to be a mechanism for asset issuers to maintain their own records of who holds their asset, but then we run into privacy concerns where asset owners might not want that information known to anyone. Where's the balance? I really don't know.

From all I have read I don't believe GLBSE would just disappear overnight.  What worries me is some individual(s) pulling a Maldoff.

GLBSE only hosts accounts for investor's balances (which the bitcoin funds can be used to buy shares or withdrawn).  Once there is an IPO, the issuer gets those bitcoin funds.

In expressing your concern were you referring to GLBSE itself or an action by an asset issuer?

GLBSE cant control greed.

No true, the whole Maldoff thing didn't really reflect badly on wall street either.  But I am going way of topic...

Asset issuers, I understand how GLBSE works and that they don't control what an issuer does. Nor could they ever.

bitcoin would plummet in value 30% in two days

No biggie, we used to have 50% price swings everyday.