PPT has broken free of its ETH coupling at last.

VERI still going down with the ship.

BAY looking superb @ 860 sats.

2017 revaluation consolidating into a hard packed level more than 8 times its speculative trading price over the last 2 years.

The power of a super-dedicated, trustless escrow-based trading facility who's sole objective is to facilitate goods exchanges of any kind, anywhere, anytime with greater reliability than eBay and 1% of the cost will be huge.

One of the reasons I like this asset is because its monetary model is so complimentary to its functional model. In particular:

 • it has its own blockchain which means that the monetary base genuinely derives its value from the trading and is not airgapped*. Therefore it's worth investing in, unlike Ethereum tokens

 • the monetary model (rolling peg) compliments the commercial model by presenting traders with a stable exchange rate while the goods exchange takes place

 • goods trading is inherently integrated with the monetary base in a way that securities trading isn't. For example, in times of old, barter took place in the shadow of some notional value denomination so that traders could determine if they were being over or under sold. (e.g. if they knew the price of a fur in gold and also knew the price of an acre of land, they could barter the fur for the land but still use a notional monetary value to facilitate price discovery: Nº of furs for acres of land).

That is Bitbay's market: goods bartering with a price discovery mechanism. The rolling peg is the genius ingredient because it decouples the conflicting priorities of a stable denomination for the goods exchange and a volatile risk asset that enables non-trading participants to support the value of the denominating currency by investing in it directly.

* Why can't this be done simply with a token on the Ethereum blockchain ?

 • because if you're riding the back of a whale and that whale sinks, you sink with it. You therefore can't use an Ethereum token as a monetary base for an escrow-based goods trading platform because of exposure to 3rd markets and consequent loss of price discovery. As an example, look at Populous: its fundamentals have only improved in the last two weeks, yet its price vs BTC or USD has almost halved simply because of its exposure to its monetary base

 • because Ether tokens are airgapped from the mining process. Cryptocurrency (as a monetary base) only works because there is a feedback mechanism from the monetary/commercial function to the mining hashpower. If goods trades take place on the BAY platform, hashpower pressure will build under the market peg. That will force the peg to roll at some imminent point. That in turn will encourage more goods trades as people's property is seen to increase in value. That in turn encourages mining. (e.g BAY will rise to 'most profitable' on coinwarz.com as the market pre-empts the peg movement)

 • because mined currencies are genuinely decentralised and therefore far off the horizon of regulatory surveillance. (It's much easier to regulate a legal entity that creates 100 million tokens out of the blue and holds them as a corporate asset than it is to justify regulating a decentralised, mined blockchain). Bitbay blockchain is therefore consistent with its commercial function

In other words: Bay is looking bootiful, both monetarily and functionally. The more time goes on, the more it is emerging as having carved out a perfect balance between goods markets, an associated monetary base and a genuinely competitive digital asset in decentralised worldwide trading market.

Yes it is.

It's not a question of legality, it's a question of commercial viability.

Mined cryptocurrencies perform a monetary function "out of the box" which is that they implement the archetype of a bearer token or "bearer instrument" on an electronic network. You can verify and make use of that monentary function the moment you purchase it, just as you can verify and make use of a copy of Microsoft Windows the moment you purchase it.

On the other hand, a token that is generated arbitrarily by an interested commercial party, that has no software function in its own right nor any monetary function other than its resale value based on a promotional concept directed at a market of a tiny subset of a single wallet.....is of limited market viability and almost 100% risk as far as new investors are concerned.

But Microsoft is selling you a useful product.

Reggie is not.

The specific definition of "worthless" in this case is "unbacked". i.e. the capital contributed by investors to purchase tokens goes to back the shares of the company that issued them, not the tokens themselves.

Contrary to your assertion, "Reggie" did in fact deploy this capitalisation model.

Why have regulators become interested ?

Because it isn't about the tokens. It's about the companies that issue them. The tokens are worthless. But the issuers are immediately high value corporate assets. How ?

Because, normally when someone invests in your company you have to give them a share in the equity of that company. Token ICOs are a way to circumvent that protocol whereby, the issuer can capitalise a corporate entity while retaining 100% equity.

Also, the argument that tokens are somehow "not a security" is put to bed here by Simon Dixon. He's talking here about Ethereum itself, 6 months ago, but the principle applies even more specifically to ICO meta token issuances by known corporate entities for specific market sectors.

No need for Reggie to comment. It's there in black & white.



Furthermore...



In other words, they think the practice of conjuring up an arbitrary number of worthless tokens and using them to capitalise a corporate entity while retaining 100% of the equity in that entity, may be slightly "dodgy".

See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1887061.msg20324350#msg20324350.

Why not get Dr Pippa Malmgren introduced to Veritasium ?

She seems to:

 • understand blockchain assets and their implications for distruption
 • have a strong background in global finance
 • have a strong presence in advising institutional investors

Then don't quote it.

I reported that post and suggest others do too. It will get deleted by the mods but if you go quoting them you're just making your own post a target for reporting as well.

I think it has more to do with people buying whatever Clif High says they should buy than any "edge predictive linguistics".

Self fulfilling prophecies

Indeed Dorky.

Something that illustrates the various aspects of the business model from the perspective of all stakeholders involved, as well as each of their priorities and risks, i.e.

 • ICO/exchange market investors
 • the interests of the issuing corporate entity
 • potential "institutional investors"

Here's an example to start you off and give you some ideas. This one illustrates the two potential scenarios I outlined in an earlier posts whereby instead of selling the 'reserved' token supply on the open market they are held by a corporate entity instead and shares sold in that corporate entity. As you correctly say, I may have no idea what I'm talking about - it's just that scenario 2 looks far more attractive to me both from the issuer's point of view and from that of prospective 'institutional'. Feel free to respond with a similar document showing why it isn't.

Finally, there is one aspect missing from this analysis of course. That's the thing that everyone has been asserting consistently in this thread which is that VERI is "software" and not a "trading security" (even though it's traded and held as one by every poster I've seen). But to make a proper appraisal of that dimension of the token we'd need to see the applications concerned and be able to quantify its potential revenue earning capacity.

Lets see what Monday brings on that front

Indeed, you believe lots of things I notice. Nevertheless you can take it that I'm not suggesting that VERI itself is a corporate entity but rather that it can manifest as an asset of such a corporate entity.

VERI is a tradeable token and I didn't anywhere suggest it was equity.


Ah yes, the JSE, thanks for the correction. https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@mind-steem/update-from-reggie-middleton-veritaseum-is-taking-jamaica-to-the-next-level


So what is the nature of the MOU  and who are its signatories ? Is the actual text of the MOU in the public domain ?

I wasn't alluding to market supply, I was talking about blockchain supply and how much of it counts towards "commonly reported" marketcap.

They are 2 distinct metrics.


"Institutional investors" (such as large hedgefunds) are generally prohibited from investing in unregulated markets such as Bitcoin. But if you can create a paper company, then create a token (on the Ethereum blockchain) and find a way to have that company "own" a portion of the blockchain value then you've basically packaged the blockchain asset into an "equity wrapper" which could in fact be digestible by "institutional investors".

That equity packaged token can be far more attractive to investors like Bank for Jamaica for multiple reasons:

[1] By investing in the equity of a company which owns 98% of the blockchain value, they still have huge exposure to the token trading price

[2] They bypass laws that don't let them operate in unregulated markets

[3] They potentially gain exposure to all of the intellectual property associated with the token technology (which token holders do not)

[4] The equity "buffer" passes exposure to downside risk from the equity holder to the "naked" token holders since equity holders retain a holding in their original investment capital which token holders do not

There are also advantages for "Reggie's Company"

[1] He can capitalise it from the ICO markets without loosing any equity (which he would do in VC markets)

[2] He needs to find liquidity for 98 million tokens than he could not find in the ICO market

[3] The tiny traded volume delivers him a price with which to negotiate with potential "institutional investors", but not without risk. So to mitigate that risk for the institutional investor he gives them access through the 'wrapper' which means that their investment is insured to some extent even if the token price crashes

[4] In that way he can further capitalise his company (but this time by compromising equity) from the institutional markets. However the huge abundance of tokens in his possession means he has nothing to loose and has passed the entire project risk to the token investor primarily and the institutional investor secondarily

The reason for the low initial offering was to mitigate the risk for small investors at the ICO stage. He had to do this to get some investment in at all costs otherwise there would have been no quotable market price for the tokens as an asset.

Those with most to loose therefore are "naked" token investors who invest now. They will carry the risk on behalf of:

 • Initial investors
 • "Reggies company"
 • Institutional Investors (who invest in the token asset through the "Reggie & Co" Equity wrapper)

Of course I am making assumptions here because we don't really know what the genuine business plan is behind this ICO. But either way, anyone investing in the "2%" market now will be checkmated into holding all the risk by the three groups above as far as I can see.

Ok. I'll be patient.

But let's say JSE/Banks of Jamaica and other "institutional investors" make an investment of $400 Million in VERI (not unreasonable given that they did $47 million yesterday alone in foreign currency purchases).

That puts another 2 million VERI into 'circulation' which will send the commonly quoted marketcap to $0.9 Billion (just below IOTA) without any gain reflected in the value of current investors holdings and with still another 94 million tokens in reserve on the blockchain.

How will the existing market view that ?

As a huge shorting opportunity I would have thought.

That's why the only way I see round this is for Reggie not to sell the actual tokens but to sell equity in his 'company' instead which holds the balance of the blockchain supply. That way he can use the minority 'market traded' supply to support the equity value of his company and play both ends of the market (equity and token). Also, any intellectual property that gets developed as part of this project can be owned by the corporate equity holders, not the token holders, so that gives further incentive for 'institutional investors' to go for the equity rather than the tokens.

Just a thought. But that's how I'd be thinking if I was Bank of Jamaica (or Reggie himself for that matter). i.e. a recipe for a "convergence of will" concluding in a "convergence of wallets"

Maybe the JSE wants to do due diligence and wait for a measurable ROI - understandable.

A "convergence of will" is always important though. For example I'm sure that during the 60's there was a "convergence of will" between airlines that wanted to buy planes that carried passengers supersonically, for a cheaper than a Viscount per seat mile and the manufacturers who wanted to sell them said planes. Unfortunately that "convergence of will wasn't matched by a convergence of wallets due to a slight problem with the oil price and prevailing oil cartels.

However, Reggie isn't selling supersonic transport so we wait and watch wait said address for evidence of an "institutional sale" (as long as it isn't another address of Reggie's in which case it's contents would of course not count as being "in circulation").

The question is, how can Gliss tell the difference ? Does "the company the Reggie works for" give them regular updates or what ?

So when do the JSE's (and other's) tokens move out of this address and into the Bank of Jamaica's address ?

(Or is the Bank of Jamaica buying into a - more lucrative - equity slice of that address instead, which means the tokens don't have to move).

 • Dorky buys a paper company for 10cents and renames it "Dorky VERI Defence League (DVDL) Inc"
 • £1000 of Dorky's hard earned money is exchanged for 1000 shares issued at $1 each, all in Dorky's name
 • DVDL Inc share capital is deposited in bank account in the name of DVLC

Lets now check the balance sheet at opening of trading:

Dorky Balance Sheet:


Assets:
Bank Account (Opening) = +£1000
Bank Account (Closing) = 0.00

Shares Account = +1000 Shares in DVDL

Liabilities: Zero

Net Assets:
===============
+1000 Shares in DVDL

DVDL Inc

Assets:
Bank Account = £1000

Liabilities:
Shareholders Equity (Dorky): £1000


*****************************************************************************
So, in the above example, you still had £1000, even after you'd invested in your shares and before trading had commenced because your shares are backed by the share capital you invested in them. DVDL Inc had £1000 in the bank but since it's all owned by shareholders there's no net assets at the commencement of trading. (How it should be because it didn't do anything to generate any revenue yet).

Compare that with the token offering "Wild West". When you pay money to Reggie for "tokens", you do not get shares in Reggie's company. What happens is:

 • the tokens acquire a market value
 • that in turn assigns an asset value to the other 98 Million that Reggie's company still holds
 • but *all* the investment from the ICO and *all* of the investment by Bank of Jamaica (fiat and crypto) is wholy owned by the issuer, not by the investors so none of it is available to back the token value as it is with the equity example above.

Which is why most of these ICO, made in 20 seconds, hot air token assets are going to....



...while their issuers are home and dry already, sitting on millions of "donated" monetary assets not owed back to their contributors as they would be in an equity issuing scenario.