First off, not up for trolling in this thread, keep it related to the topic at hand, leave your Mathew, Pirate, GLBSE etc discussions some place else. Seriously. I ask moderation in advance to enforce local rules in the thread and I ask participants to call for moderation of the trolls. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't post strong opinions for or against the concept, those are learning tools. Just stay on topic. Please. Thank you.
I think the community has changed a bit recently and while many are still attracted to the wild west ways of BTC finances I think it's gotten to the point where
some people would give up their "total quasi anonymity" (yeah I know) for a safe, secure suite of BTC related financial services issued under one roof. To this end, I've been doing some groundwork on what might be involved in establishing a Credit Union for Bitcoin users.
Why a Credit Union and not a bank? Well it comes down to how and what a Credit Union is and who it's controlled by.
From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_unionA credit union is a member-owned financial cooperative, democratically controlled by its members, and operated for the purpose of promoting thrift, providing credit at competitive rates, and providing other financial services to its members.[1][2][3]
Many credit unions also provide services intended to support community development[4] or sustainable international development on a local level,[5] and could be considered community development financial institutions.
Worldwide, credit union systems vary significantly in terms of total system assets and average institution asset size,[6] ranging from volunteer operations with a handful of members to institutions with several billion dollars in assets and hundreds of thousands of members.[7]
Generally a Credit Union can be legitimately governed by a board elected by members. Each member gets one vote, period, whether they are a large or small depositor. Everyone buys one voting share.
Basically, I'm a retired CxO type IT guy from the financial services sector here in Canada. I've worked as VP and SVP at merchant banking organizations that moved and loaned billions of dollars annually in Canada, the US and UK. That isn't the entire world and yes I'm aware of my blind spots. This is why these discussions need to be open to an entire community , a pool of minds. So far I've called in as favours discussions with Chartered Accountants , CPAs and lawyers from my previous business contacts in the US and Canada who specialize in the financial services sector (merchant banking and personal banking) . These have been fruitful and I've had many "AHA" moments. I've also realized as a result this isn't a small undertaking.
Essentially what I propose is that we start building an Open Source documentation set that can be used in development of Credit Unions for the BTC community. To this end I'm looking for volunteers to form a steering committee that can start flushing out a project plan for getting the first Unions established in Canada and the US as true legal entities.
So, I'm looking for people with backgrounds in finance and systems relating to personal banking who are willing to put in the kind of effort it would take to build a transparent and open source documentation set for the foundation of a Credit Union.
When things are set up and rolling with people in place on the steering committee (and a reliable non thieving treasurer - in fact I have a Chartered Accountant who would do this job for the fun of it and has no issue disclosing their contact details, this is what they do) I'd like to head to out to the community and see if we can get some interest in donations to get WRITTEN opinions regarding legality and accounting that can be published on a wiki for all to see. Written opinions by professional firms are expensive but in my opinion needed so that we may have something from which to refer when building this Credit Union structure.
Post what you know, your level of interest, how much time you could give to a venture like this and bit about what qualifications you bring to the table. My hope is then when we're finished "steering" we could turn this over to a new committee of "builders" and get it done. This is the ugly part of the process, like setting up a dance committee but let's get it done. If it can't be done within the community as it now exists, this too can be published so that anyone in the future can see a better time for launching something like this.
Any coins garnered to this cause (when the time is right) will be accounted for by a real public accountant with full open records. Documents and meeting minutes will be published. This whole thing needs to be super transparent to capture as much knowledge as possible. I really hope we can build a template that can be used in most jurisdictions for building BTC Credit Unions.
Let's make a little history that doesn't have "hacked" or "scammed" built into it.
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