I'm assuming you mean a worse situation than this?

I don't really believe a total collapse is possible. The reason is the world is just waaaay to damn big. If the USA, Canada, Europe, and China collapsed, we still have India, Africa, and all of South America who will gradly buy up their now much cheaper products.
But, even if there was a catastrophic world-wide collapse, would anyone even be interested in gold? And would bitcoin fare any better?

Pretty sure the second of those statements is unneeded.

If there's 1000 shares then a 40% quorum requirement means 400 need to vote for any result to count.

If the other 60% do nothing it doesn't matter.  You CAN'T remoe them from the quorum requirement (40%/400 votes) as that would give a negative number (-20%/-200 Votes).

So wording should be more along the lines of:

At least 40% of outstanding shares must register a vote (Yes/No/Abstain)
Of those that express an opinion (Yes/No) at least 70% must vote Yes for the motion to pass.
Motions will always be worded such that a Yes vote is required to make any change to the contract.

Last point is needed otherwise some tricky operator could make a motion to leave the contract the same - and the motion failing would mean it changed

So if there were 1000 shares outstanding, 300 voted Yes, 50 voted No, 100 Abstained then:

45% would have voted - so quorum was achieved (at least 40% of shares voted in the motion).
300/350 = 85.7% voted Yes
And motion would pass.

Had the 100 who abstained done nothign then the motion would fail as only 35% showed any awareness of there being motion.

In principle I'm not keen on minority changes to a contract - but with a 2 week period minimum and the fairly low level activity of many investors, what you propose seems a reasonable compromise.

Members of Congress Introduce Historic Bills to Regulate and Tax Marijuana Like Alcohol at the Federal Level

http://www.bobtuskin.com/2013/02/06/members-of-congress-introduce-historic-bills-to-regulate-and-tax-marijuana-like-alcohol-at-the-federal-level/

I highlighted the sentence that I am basing the following on:

I believe we should set it up as similarly as possible to the original contract. So here's what I propose:

Quorum: 40% (because of the rather learge amount of shares that are owned by those who do not check this forum or btc-tc frequently enough to see that a motion has been set in motion )
Motion passes: 70%
Poll duration: 2 week minimum
and again, undeclared shares: removed from the quorum requirement

I will post a motion where we will change the voting strategy to this. For that motion, we will use the GLBSE style voting, which is calculated by: YES shares divided by total voting shares.

I will also raise the motion for offering the forwards contracts, and for the growth fund. How the outcome is calculated for these will depend on the outcome of the motion regarding the outcome of future motions. Now that's a mouthful.

In addition to these, I would like to open a Cognitive passthrough on https://www.litecoinglobal.com/ , which is owned and maintained by the same guy as our current exchange. This would allow for an additional gateway for investing in Cognitive, which ultimately leads to higher share prices. If there are no objections to this, I plan on listing the passthrough this weekend.

Cheers,
Garrett

Then why not the US?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2013/02/06/paul-krugman-says-it-again-japans-stagnation-is-a-myth/


And why is this?  What does Japan have that the US (no longer) has?  A closed system.  Strict immigration controls.  Trade protectionism.

It turns out that responsible monetary policy actually leads to economic improvement under those conditions.  Who knew.


Yet more empirical evidence that Keynesianism only makes sense under the un-physical fantasy-land assumption of infinite growth.

I don't really understand how inflation is going to happen if people already have too many loans?

Central banks printing money is one thing, but for that money to go into circulation it's quite another,
since there are not that many people able to take new loans and hence, help the newly printed money
go into circulation and ultimately cause inflation. I'd say that for the time being, it is only banks
that are being helped to remain afloat.

But then, I'm no expert and I am always willing to learn from more knowledgeable people.

You sold 8619 shares @ 0.63. So you collected a total of 5343.78BTC.
Cognitivemining.com lists equipment worth only ~500BTC. What happened to the remaining 4700BTC?
Did I miss something?

Can you use the x6500s to mine litecoins when asics hit bitcoin? Or what is the plan?

Hey all,

First of all, I'd like to apologize for my absence for the past two days.

On GLBSE, non-voting shares were treated the same way abstaining shares are treated on BTC-TC: They are discarded from the total vote tally. In the past, this was always how Cogintive had done its voting. However, because of the amount of people asking for a specification here, I propose we set some definitions for voting.

There are a few fair methods of doing this. Personally, I would prefer that we set a minimum motion duration plus an email going out to all shareholders at the beginning of the motion, then we treat all non-voting shares as a BTC-TC style abstain vote.

Another option that I consider fair would be stochastic's suggestion:

I believe that with the whole exchange migration, there still might be a considerable amount of idle shares, even though the login info etc has been successfully sent to shareholders. I'm sure burnside could investigate this and come back with a number of shares whose dividends have not been withdrawn, or some other gauge.

So although I believe that this particular vote passed with 92% voting for (as it would have on GLBSE), I think that we should cast a revote using one of the above methods. Of course, I'm open to alternatives as well. So, shareholders, what do you propose?

Also, 100% of revenue for the past week will go out as a dividend today. I want to get this sorted out before executing a change!

Happy superbowl day!
--Garrett

“Devaluing a currency is like peeing in bed,” a Federal Reserve official told The Journal. “It feels good at first, but pretty soon it becomes a real mess.”

IMO many, many more mods need to be added to the r/bitcoin Reddit.  it is too important, and I realize the same power structure that exists on these boards also exists there.

Decentralize the bitcoin media - as much as we can IMO

IMO:

1)  r/bitcoin is extremely important.  It should have many top bitcoin community members as mods. 

2)  Current Mods: theymos hugolp

3)  I believed there to be some /bitcoin manipulation on Reddit recently.  I was going to report it to the moderators, but frankly what's the point - I believe this forum administration to make very pro-Butterfly Labs moves in all areas, in all ways.  the recent splitting of the BFL thread and labeling it a "troll museum" when the founder is an indicted mail fraudster seems to be without any merit. 

4) I know many in this community "don't want to make trouble" and "want everyone to get along" but as my new friend TJ the Juggler recently told me, "sometimes doing nothing is an action" which certainly applies to things like freedom of speech and the ability to be an outspoken critic without being silenced. 

Let's start with the Reddit IMO.  add 5 or so moderators?  have voting?  bitcoin foundation members? Gavin to start? Bitinstant memebers, bitpay guys, coinbase guys, mtgox guys, get the big boy bitcoin businesses to each have a rep.  I do not want to be a moderator of the /bitcoin reddit and refuse to accept the position, as I have enough bitcoin-media channels that I already control and am likely too controversial to be generally accepted, so this is not a push to get me in there - this is wanting the reddit to be fair.

You don't need to trade the actual gold to have a currency based on gold (or silver or any other hard asset).

The alternative would be certificates that represent gold, and I don't mean the fractional reserve type that lead to bank runs either. I mean you have a right to the actual metal.

Peter Schiff has already started something like this, though it is not available in the USA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goI8rAAJKtE#t=9m33s

Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, Anne M. Tompkins, described the Liberty Dollar as "a unique form of domestic terrorism" that is trying "to undermine the legitimate currency of this country".[28] The Justice Department press release quotes her as saying: "While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as insidious and represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country.

I've already released everything necessary. Look at my collection agency thread. I don't have a criminal record and I pay for nearly everything in cash or pre-paid cards. In fact if I had a criminal record like yourself, then I wouldn't have access to the tools available to me.  Btw, I never released your credit history or information in a public forum, just to those that claimed they were scammed by you.

But when I start scamming people, I will release my information here. And I highly doubt that even if I released all that information, you would quit bitching. I investigate about 200 people a day. With everyone single one of them, I had a legal request made to me to do so. You don't seem to have this great reputation to back you up from what I've seen, but that's just my opinion.

Bad things can come from my service, but also good things. Like people that have been scammed can get a little (legal) justice where they otherwise could not have.  Anyway, I'm done arguing this point.

BTCJam allows people to make p2p bitcoin loans. They do some sort of identity verification on the people taking out the loans, I think the suggestion is that you could contact BTCJam and offer your services to make the identity verification more thorough and in depth?

Nope it's not  reasonable to assume that - as I said, I'm pretty sure the motion would have got sufficient votes to pass ahd it lasted longer.  But it's a vote to make a very major change - so no assumptions should be made either way on how people vote: the vote should last long enough that all investors get their say.

For the record, I held (on behalf of my fund) Cognitive shares at time of the vote (still do) and voted Yes - my concern isn't this motion specifically passing but the principle of setting a precedent that contract changes can be made where only a minority of shareholders even vote (likely, in my view, to the voting period being too short for a majority to even become aware of its existence).

There's some things which, even in BTC land, can't be accelerated too much.

I should note that, in apparent contradiction to my stance here, my own fund HAS made contract changes twice with only 24 hour votes - but both times:

1.  The proposal was explained in detail some time before a vote went up - with no arguments raised against it (some questions, which I answered of course).
2.  Over 75% of all outstanding units voted yes with zero No votes and zero Abstains.
3.  I hold just under 50% myself - but only vote Yes if there's no significant No votes (I won't push through a contract change if there's any significant objection to it - obviously a 1 unit investor voting No wouldn't deter me).
4.  If I make a contract change I also offer to buy back any units at just above current value (this is necessary as mine's a fund - so shouldn't really change contract at all with outstanding units - this allows anyone who objects to get back more than if I closed the fund and restarted it with new contract).

So me passing motions in 1 day isn't really comparable - as there's factors making it very different in practice.

Unless you can be confident an overwhelming majority of shareholders KNEW about the vote I don't see anything less than 50% of outstanding shares (discounting anyone who abstained) being acceptable.  Contract changes shouldn't occur based on how many investors even knew there was  a vote - they should occur because a majority (of ALL investors weighted by shares) took an affirmative action to pass it (either voting yes or abstaining to reduce the majority needed).  You just can't have 30% of shareholders imposing a contract change on the other 70% because most of the other 70% didn't realise there was even a vote (That wasn't the numbers here - just making the point).

I try to provide lots of numbers in terms of how people voted, but I don't really interpret the results.  It's up to the asset issuer and/or shareholders to determine what is the pass/fail scenario.

You're also correct that when you abstain, rather than counting as a NO, it removes your shares from consideration on the final approval percentages.  I figured if you want to say no, you can just say no. 

Based on what Garr stated, I'd call this one a fail.  And I agree, a week would probably be my minimum run on something trying to get 70%, with a notification and reminder post on the forums a few days before it closes to remind everyone.  (a notification emails everyone.)

Cheers.

vote should be considered as failed; such a contract change needs more shareholders to participate

Vote is over and 4043 voted for and 351 voted no and 5 abstained seems like more than 70 percent to me?

If this motion passes with a 70% majority,