And precisely what would such arbitrageurs outside of China do with the Yuan they purchase with their bitcoins? Normally, the arbitrageur would need to wire/convert the Yuan back into USD and then buy back more bitcoins than they originally sold. But China has strict controls on such transfers and exchange. The problems that people in China have with spending their Yuan outside China are exactly the same problems that will impede such arbitrage. Hence the need to create a domestic exchange of bitcoins for Yuan.
Correct, there needs to be a domestic exchange... |
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The maker/taker fee model is broken
[...]
PS: A fee structure that might improve liquidity is volume discounts, like Mtgox. Market makers are likely to have large volumes, so this could help incentivize them.
+1 |
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Kudos to Gavin and the other developers and testers for this release.
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I am no securities lawyer, but I did work a number of years in the financial industry in both USA and UK as a registered representative, and I know that taking money from the public as an "investment" and offering "securities" in return is a highly regulated activity in pretty much every legal jurisdiction.
In the USA, JOBS Act that relaxes these requirements significantly, both WRT investor requirements and in solicitations you may make. IMNSHO, USA just legalized GLBSE on April 5, 2012. Now, I suppose that it can be argued that all these Bitcoins are just funny money,
Irrelevant. and these securities being issued in Bitcoins are just virtual and therefore don't count because they only exist in the cyberworld.
No, the GLBSE securities are not "issued in bitcoin." A security is a thing, a unique and independent legal entity. That GLBSE makes it easy to buy and sell with bitcoins is incidental; GLBSE could just as easily use USD or EUR or gold or bananas. If GLBSE tightens up its boilerplate and some requirements (i.e. investor limit), it is quite possible that an IPO on GLBSE could be a fully legal security in the US. In general, even excluding securities law, GLBSE could create contracts between all market participants, where everyone has a click-through agreement (==contract) describing basic rules. |
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3) We have learned that many surety bond issuers can issue a multi-state bond. So if you need to be licensed in 8 states and the largest requires a 200K bond you can find an issuer who can issue a bond covering your obligation in all 8 states. It will be more than the cost of a single state bond but it won't be 8x the cost of a single state bond. Cost is still pretty significant though. Oh to just have an extra $200K in cash (to post a security deposit in lieu of a bond).
This is very interesting, and potentially very impactful on startup business plans. |
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In continution of this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80114.0 For those who have not read it, www.scribd.com/doc/92797476/FBI-Bitcoin-Report-April-2012 I want to point out 7th page 'Third-Party Bitcoin Services' as it discusses area where Bitinstant holds its legal footing. It seems like from this report and using this report as legal precedence, that Bitcoin businesses need the following 1- Register as a federal MSB with FinCEN 2- Become state licensed in 40 US States 3- Develop a reasonable effort to deter money-laundering with an AML Manual and Program. #2 scares me the most, because it is physically impossible for me or any of us to do that without spending $5m+ According to my research (dated ~6 months), operating in the US implies getting licensed in ~47 states. Only a few states, such as NY or CA, have a law that requires out of state businesses dealing with NY/CA residents to be licensed in NY/CA. As you probably know, that implies a surety bond and background check in ~47 states  I would have opened a US exchange over a year ago, if not for the state licensing requirements. I talked to State of North Carolina banking/securities people as well as lawyers... |
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What a waste of 3 pages of forum threads.
We should be dissecting this report and going over it, not debating its legitimacy.
In fact, its extreme accuracy speaks for itself, I think its real.
I'll do that in the Legal subforum.
That begs to ask the question-- why would one dissect it if it's not legitimate? Honestly Matt, have you really read through it? The report does not introduce any new laws, just clarifies old ones in more detail. In fact, it is 100% on par with the clarifications I spent thousands of dollars on from lawyers. Wether or not its legit or not, the material is accurate. The material also matches my own legal research in large part. |
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Seems awfully specific.
Usually subforums split off after they reach certain traffic levels.
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So the customer is charged with x BTC, then gets the option to pay with BTC/PayPal/CC whatever, and no matter how he pays, the seller gets BTC.
Would be nice... but you still have to deal with chargeback issues not present in bitcoin. That requires some sort of middleman handling fraud issues (and taking a cut of the action). |
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I don't really get this BIP16... Have it turned "pay to password" script into some special case of script?
If so, then why the linked above transaction was spent by providing password "22355"? Does BIP16 has some "turn on" switch?
BIP16 means any script matching that hash is considered valid to spend. It doesn't matter whether it is a simple password or a complex script that matches the hash. |
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Clicking on any category link gets a database error.
Another thing I'd like to see is some level of answering the question "who runs this?"
It takes a while for a new business to earn the trust of its customers, and one way new bitcoin businesses have of bootstrapping that trust is publishing information on their corporate structure -- who runs the biz, where is the biz incorporated, etc.
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The universe of Bitcoin is certainly disorganized and sites like yours are needed.
+1 |
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Personally, all this seems far too focused on a centralized website ( http://bitcoin.org/), and presents far too many choices at once to the user. On bitcoin.org (registered by Satoshi), I would rather see the Satoshi reference client and perhaps an "other clients" link on the wiki. Modern websites are working hard to reduce the number of download links, not increase them. See, e.g. http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora or http://www.mozilla.org/ where a single download choice is presented, and then an "other options" link is below the great big download button. You don't see people calling for Mozilla to link to other browsers. Rather than fighting over what a particular bitcoin.org page should look like, why not maintain an independently managed BitcoinClients.org website? Or GetBitcoinClient.org or somesuch. Most of all, solve this problem in a distributed fashion, rather than stuffing it all onto bitcoin.org. Bitcoin.org, IMO, is the home of the "reference project" not the entire bitcoin community. Emphasizing that months ago was why the forum was moved to bitcointalk.org. |
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I like this the best. It's similar to Wikipedia "Comparison of x" articles, which is a format people are already familiar with. It'd need some explanatory text at the top and ideally info about every feature, though. it probably needs more explanation than all the other texts combined. strongly vote against this one. Indeed... IMO new users will just be bewildered by all that info. |
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Let's not list other clients until we are assured they can (a) properly handle a block chain reorg and (b) properly handle BIP16 transactions, and do not have otherwise glaring usability or security issues that prevent mainstream endorsement and use.
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Link: http://www.csoonline.com/article/705316/how-online-black-markets-workHow online black markets work
Corporate investigator Brandon Gregg looks at how bitcoins and Tor make anonymous black markets tick
By Brandon Gregg, CPP
The internet is no stranger to crime. From counterfeit and stolen products, to illegal drugs, stolen identities and weapons, nearly anything can be purchased online with a few clicks of the mouse. The online black market not only can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection, but the whole process of ordering illicit goods and services is alarmingly easy and anonymous, with multiple marketplaces to buy or sell anything you want.
Understanding how the market thrives—unregulated and untraceable—can give you a better sense of the threats (or resources) that affect you and your business.
[...]
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