I was thinking about the whole business activity, not just as far as money is concern.  Sales, acquisition of material, expenses, salaries, etc...  All this can not be reduced in terms of monetary transactions.

As I understand it, whether I got this from books or web or whatever, capitalism is a vision of economy based on the possibility of ownership of means of production.

And beyond that, it's also the idea that this property can be divided into shares.  Those shares can be exchanged as any property, and they are used to divide the power of decision concerning the capital, amongst which is the distribution of profits via dividends.

But relying on a regulation authority only moves the problem from one point to an other.

Anyway, a bitcoin-like system is no solution for this, for no cryptographic currency will check the accounts books of the company, nor will it make sure the voting process during the assembly is honnest, and so on...

You can use regulation authorities if you want, but they have to be private and based only on their reputation.  And companies can chose to hire one, or to be their own.

When you buy a share of a company, you are already supposed to have some confindence into this company.  Otherwise you would just not buy any of its shares.

Therefore there is no point looking for a third trust party.  The trust party IS the company itself.

PS.  By the way :  companies ARE oversight, by shareholders.  During general assembly, they are shown the books of the company, and any shareholder can ask any question he wants, even if he owns only one share.  If shareholders want even more control, they can decide it.  The company is their property, there is almost nothing they can not do.

brocktice leads at 200 BTC

I'm sorry but I keep thinking it does make sense to keep a centralised model for equities.

Equities are issued by a precise entity : the concerned entreprise.  Therefore it does make sense thazt this enterprise is responsible of issuing and managing its shares.  Using a decentralzed model such as bitcoin would make the system more colmplex with very few benefit.

Yeah I've been thinking about that for a long time, but finally I concluded that it is not appropriate.

1.  this means you will have a different block chain for each stock.  With CPU power used for each of these chains.  Doesn't look good ;
2.  You need to trust someone anyway : the person who is holding the "real" stocks, or ultimately the enterprise.  Therefore there is no point using a decentralised network.

There is also the problem of the vote right.  But this is easy, since when I receive a convocation for a general assembly, I am always given the possibility to be represented by someone else.

So I could easily give the name of my buyer if he wants to attend the assembly and use his vote right.

Hurry up guys, gold is rising !

(cf. attached file)

I personnaly own several hundreds lines of european stocks.

I could sell them for bitcoins.  Basically this will mean that I will agree to convert all dividends into bitcoins and to tranfer them to my buyer.

Only problem is taxation.  Because I'll have to declare those dividends as my personnal income.  So it's not that easy but hopefully I won't pay any income tax anyway...

I've just posted a topic with more or less the same concern.

Indeed the issue is much more political than technical.  It would, indeed, be illegal in almost all countries.

Still, I don't care if it is illegal.  This should exist, and I hope it will.

But such a black equity market would have to be extremely cautious, in order not to get caught.

Transactions should be negociated via encrypted communications, but even in that case there is the risk the network gets infiltrated by a government agent.

Therefore, it is tricky.

That THE thing I would like to see :  a trust network for buying or selling stockshares with bitcoins.

Here is how it would work.

People would own conventionnal stockholding accounts on conventionnal banks.

But those people would not be the real owners of these stocks.   Real ownership will be managed on a encrypted network, whether it is centralized or not.

When a dividend is detached, the conventionnal account holder is supposed to transfer the corresponding amount, after conversion into bitcoin, to the "real" owner, who is identified only by a bitcoin address.

The amounts between conventionnal accounts should be adjusted (using conventionnal bank transfer), so that the amount per owner is as low as possible, in order to avoid excessive taxation.

Utlimately, the number of participants would be large enough so that the amount for each account would be small enough not to induce any taxation on income.

fergalish leads at 190 btc

300 blocks to go.

brocktice still leads with 180 BTC.

Anyone for 190 ?

Actually when I think about it, the focus should be put on the halving of reward every 4 years instead of continuity to the current scheme.

This means that :

(1-A)^210000 = 0.5

And thus :

A = 1 - exp(-log(2)/210000) =  3.3e-6


Which means that the initial reward would have been of 69.314603663439556  instead of 50.

A reward of 50 would have occured at block n where :

A * (1-A)^n * 21000000 = 50

n = 98958.561684339962

I guess we could round it to block number 99000

Anyway : it's not too late !!

PS.  I'm not very serious here because I agree with you that it's a bit more complex and it may not worth it.  Still, I think it's quite elegant.

Indeed.  That was silly of me.  I just have difficulties to realize how easy it is to create a Visa with this stuff.

You're kidding ?  Of course it would be nice.  Although I'm not sure I could use them in Europe.  But that would worth a try.

Lol.  I'm french and I thought that was common knowledge.  But indeed I realise now that it is not obvious for non french people.

I kind of fear the 210,000 block.  As you know at this time the reward will half from 50 to 25.  I'm not sure the behavior of miners is predictable.  I wonder if weird things could happen at this moment.

Anyway, why not just use a more continous formula ?  I mean if we want to simulate extraction of a commodity, all we need is a geometric progression, right ?

So, say N(i) is the remaining number of btc to be extracted at block number i.

The reward is then r(i) = N(i) - N(i+1)

We then need A such that :  r(i) = A * N(i)

Of course, we have N(0) = 21,000,000 = \sum r(i)  and N(i+1) = (1-A)* N(i)

We need to chose A so that we can switch smoothly from the current situation (r(i) = 50 BTC) to the coninuous sytem.

Let's say we do the change at block 100,000.   At this point 5 million bitcoins will have been extracted.     That leaves 16 millions.

N(1e5) = 16e6

So :   A = 50/16e6 = 3.125e-6

Then r(100,000 + i) = 3.125e-6 * (1-3.125e-6)^i * 16,000,000


So the generation is a continuous function of the block number.

Very true.  Fixed aggregate money system have this in common.  There is no point hoarding the money if you never spend it, and when you do spend it, then you share it with other people, which solves the initial problem.

But I think that's something most socialo-anarchist don't seem to understand, and that's why they dislike gold, and probably they will dislike bitcoins too.