Well I was going to just pay it out as dividends.

I was working with a number of guys at the time on getting this rolling but that was at the time I had my accident. It's still a great project but unless someone else takes it up I won't be able to get anything done with it until the new year at best.

Nefario.

I think optimal deserves full credit for delivery on his promises.

Nefario.

This is great news.

I haven't heard from WiseOldOwl for some time. From what I remember he sent about 40btc to me to payback to shareholders. I still have this bitcoin, he did say it was going to be the first of a number of payments but there were no more.

What do people want to be done with this asset and the bitcoin for it?

Nefario.

Thank you for the suggestions and interest. It's clear that there is still demand for the crypto side of things.

So I'll keep the current system available as is while bringing out the new one, with the goal of having a hybrid system.

Sadly I wont be able to continue development of the in-browser client (the current web client) as it's beyond my Javascript ability, and I've not been able to find someone else who can move it along. So I'm going to have to either find someone else to do so or find a way around it.

The techniques used ARE secure as far as the cryptographic tools being used themselves are. But usability is terrible and development is considerably more difficult than a more classical system.

Also under the current system, when I'm paying attention a lot of my time is taken up with support for quite basic issues. I don't know how many people have gone and locked themselves out of their accounts (lots is the correct answer) but it's prone to mucking up across a number of steps. Often users don't even know their account numbers so I spend hours trying to get bits of information from them to use to identify their accounts.

So my focus is on a very easy to use system, this will take care of the non-crypto experts. Following that when I've covered basic needs and GLBSE is able to operate without me having to watch over EVERYTHING then I'll start on the crypto side.

I will certainly attempt to improve a whole host of elements and aspects including share issuer/ holder communication.

With regards to people being rewarded for buying fake shares of GLBSE, that is partially my own fault as I had not reserved the ticker symbol, it was a social engineering attack that worked. At the end of the day it's social engineering that is the easiest and often (not always) most effective form of attack which can bypass the best crypto.

Please bear in mind that roughly only 20btc worth of shares had been sold, and that GLBSE will be made available to the public early in the new year.

The problem was that a ratings agency was supposed to spring up, and do all the checking on new assets on the exchange but that never materialised, there was a blog that did reviews but I don't know how popular that became. It's probably because GLBSE hasn't hit critical mass because it's difficult to use.

Here we come to the problem of the architecture of GLBSE along with the timing of my absence. Contracts never could be changed,  I had intended to add that functionality and told senbonzakura this WAS going to be the case. Of course I went missing at that time.

So anyway, the new version of GLBSE will not include any of the encryption tools and techniques of the old one, simply put it's going to be a stock exchange with ease of use being the number one priority, with the second being security.

So a way to settle this contract changing business is to state what percentage of a vote(or shareholders) is required to change the terms of the contract. This then becomes a part of the contract terms so that buyers can know before buying that a contracts terms can be changed (to something they don't like) if it states so.

With the exception of 100% approval being required for a change this is always going to be the case.

The current version of GLBSE is incredibly inflexible, and I'm racing to get it replaced.

Nefario.
 

So just to chime in on this, I've "reset"optimals account by transfering to a new one, and it seems he's having issues with his password. So I'm doing that again.

Having his assets switched to a new account does not copy transaction records to the new account, only all the assets, so he doesn't have access to previous transactions.

PS. I've begun development of the next version of GLBSE, I'm aiming for a testing release before new years.

Nefario

A good number of the locked accounts support issues have now been taken care of. There are a couple still outstanding.

I will provide a way to include user verification with share listings, it will be made optional but clearly labelled as missing verification.

Hey Ripper,
On the issue of me being anonymous, I'm not. If you check the people page of GLBSE.com my real names there( hint it starts with J, and ends with ames McCarthy). Later this month I'll be heading to Birmingham to meet up with Vladimir (runs bitcoin.org.uk) and he'll be able to identify me to the community. It's been out there for some time. Besides I think I've managed not to run off up to this point so far 

On GLBSE development it had stalled for two reasons:
1) My own personal issues
2) My main developer was gone and I couldn't push it forward using the current methods(JavaScript development)

So, personal issues are now aside and once I've taken care of the main support issues (locked accounts and constant downtime) I'll start bringing it forward once again but in a different development direction.

I'll ensure that support is not going to be a problem again. I've already taken care of a good few ones (including the OP's issues).

I'll take a co-founder if I can find one. I'll also start bringing more funding onboard to make things happen.

Nefario.

 

Hey buddies.

So my 2c is that this is not a technical problem.

Bitcoin is already the decentralised medium of exchange and works great for that.

The reason GLBSE has been kind of crappy is not because it's centralised but because it's just crappy. I made a much more in dept post as to where I went wrong and where I'll be improving GLBSE here.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52310.msg628049#msg628049

Bitcoin has come along and is the first working non-centralised solution to an already existing very centralised world (banking and money).

Markets ALL markets are by their very definition centralised, that's the whole point, everyone comes to the one place to trade, that way they will find a buy for their sell and vice versa.

The problems here are to do with size, as in the small size of the market (small markets don't thrive).
Enforcing contracts
Anonymity

They are not technical, at least not yet.

Nefario

Hello everyone, I'm back, back in the west and back to my old self again.

It's pretty late right now and I'll be up in a few hours, I'm heading to Manchester today which is where I'll be from now on(well I'll be back in Ireland for Christmas and the new year). Please forgive spelling mistakes or any lack of clarity.

In regards to my "lack of presence" these last few months the best I was capable of was to keep GLBSE just about running, and even at times I'd not managed that too well. But it's the best I could do, I'm not going to go into details as it's personal. But that doesn't matter. I'm sorry for not doing better.

Now onto GLBSE.

Communication: I'll try to be as in touch as possible, including frequenting this forum, irc, and any other communication channel I can.

I believe GLBSE to be something of a slight failure, but one that is not unsalvageable.

In my attempt to provide a web application that was as secure as possible (mission achieved, no breakins) I have learned some hard lessons.

Sometimes security is not the most important, the public/private key methods of authentication are very secure, but very difficult to use. It put all the responsibility to look after those keys on the user, which has proven to be something of a mistake. Bruce Schneier has said that key management is the real barrier to mass adoption of cryptography and he's right, it's really hard. And that's what that issue was, key management.

After choosing this authentication method I had to improve usability (who still uses the command line client? How much easier is the web based one?). But I'm not a Javascript expert, I can play a little but building something this complicated (cryptography in JavaScript) was well above my level of ability(we had to implement some of the most basic cryptographic building blocks to get this working). So I managed to find an excellent developer in the states, paid him very well, and he built the web interface that you now know.

Then he stopped, was no longer interested in getting paid it seemed and stopped developing, eventually stopped answering me. I tried but failed to find an alternative developer. As a result client side development on GLBSE came to a standstill. It was during this time that I tried to go to the states(you all know the result of that). Not long after returning my personal issues got in the way.

I was the lead dev on this project, and I brought development in a direction that I could not personally do, relying on another developer that was hard to replace, and eventually let me down. Essentially I lead this project down an evolutionary dead-end.

The next big mistake was to have EVERYTHING as anonymous, normal users fine but even having people who issue shares be anonymous has turned out to be a recipe for disaster. There were a number of reasons for this choice though. First was privacy, which I believed everyone should have, and still do(with exceptions, I'll get to that later). The second was simply logistical, we were trying to run a market, not spend our time verifying whether someone is who they say they are.

The combination of the new authentication method (which has proven secure but hard to use) and total; pure anonymity, combined with bad timing for events in my personal life was GLBSE's downfall.

With regards the fraudulent GLBSE listing, I'll find out just what was lost and attempt to re-imburse investors who had bought shares with my own funds (it really depends on how much, I'm pretty skint/poor at the moment).


The future of GLBSE

Does GLBSE have a future? The sad answer to that questions is no, certainly not in it's current form, and not in this direction of development. So it's here that I'm going to outline where we're going.

I'm not sure whether to drop webkeys and the whole public/private key authentication system entirely or just build a normal web-based front end onto it (what do you think? opinions below). I don't want to throw away something that others have built on.

Whatever  the choice we will have:
A traditional web based interface with full market functionality
Normal username/password + traditional account recovery methods for authentication
Simple json over https web service for people using the market
Privately developed charts specifically developed for GLBSE
Streaming quotes over websockets

Identity authentication for anyone who wants to list (i.e. they'll need to prove they are who they say they are), I understand that the bitcoin police are already working/finished this, if not then I'll ensure it's developed.

I will be GLBSE's first full time employee.

In terms of funding GLBSE has at it's disposal over 1000BTC, which is OK but not much for a startup. But from reading many of the posts on here it seems that many many others want to, not so much invest but want to be a part of this and make it something great.

I will push to make GLBSE (as ticker symbol BG, I'll take back the symbol GLBSE from the fraudsters)  a publicly held share on the market, so that everyone can own it, invest in it, profit from it, and have a say over it. This will take a little time.

I also need help:
Developers (Ruby)
Marketing, Design
Support, Documentation
Servers/Bandwidth
Funding

With the exception of ColdHardMetal who's been doing a great job on accounts I've been doing all the above. This is not charity, I won't ask for help for nothing, you'll get a share in the company so that your success is tied up with it's success.

This is great news for people looking to get into bitcoin.

GLBSE is going to be down for Saturday.

Our hosting is physically moving servers so we'll be down for a good part of Saturday.

I have recieved 38.865BTC from WiseOldOwl
Holding for the next day or so(kind of busy).

GLBSE will be down this Saturday.

GLBSE will be down this Saturday.

Tested it out, got it working (after a few changes), still needs a bit of work but I can do that. Payment sent.

Project compeleted.