(On OS X)

No errors building the database - but doesn't find any transactions and all wallet balances are 0.0

EDIT: Ah, OK, database appears to build OK judging by progress, but then scanning transactions seems to complete almost instantly (so evidently it actually failed - but didn't give an error).

roy

Actually they could, of course, because they own the copyright to the code so they don't require a license.  But I know what you mean...

This seems like a rather surprising position to take.  It would, for instance, prohibit using an off-the-shelf commercial firewall between Armory and the Internet.

And generally people with lots of money fall into two categories:  those who have the interest and skills to manage their investments themselves, and those who pay professionals to do it for them.

Either way, they're fine.  The set of people who have lots of money but have always kept it in the bank and never invested it unitil Bitcoin came along is surely vanishingly small.

roy

Yes, I figured as much.  Thanks for confirming it.

EDIT: There are alternatives to locking outputs, though.  You could track the transactions created and then prefer outputs that haven't ever been used in this way, and if that's not possible, prefer outputs that were used in older transactions to those used in newer transactions - and in the case where you do have to reuse outputs, issue a warning ("WARNING: This transactions conflicts with transaction xxx created on xx/xx/xxxx; you will not be able to broadcast both.")

That would mean that if you create several transactions then EITHER everything will just work OR you will be told that it's not going to work.

roy

If you really think Bitcoin has no value, why have you been wasting your time on here for the last year?

No indeed, why would they buy an undervalued asset?

Buy high, sell low!

The accredited investors that BIT has hitherto been limited to will either (a) have little difficulty understanding the structure or (b) engage the services of an investment professional to explain it to them them.

Also, bear in mind that these are regulatory legal documents you're reading - I'm sure the customer facing communications that investors receive from SecondMarket and/or Grayscale are rather more user-friendly!

roy

They don't have to understand the structure,  they can simply sell their shares on the OTC via any broker (provided they've held them for at least 12 months).

Or to put it another way - sure, the Authorized Participants (or 'hierarchy of brokers', as you put it) are responsible for buying BTC to create shares.  But SecondMarket is a registered broker-dealer - and who's to say it isn't still the only broker participating in this way?

Well, presumably any Authorized Participant which has signed a Participant Agreement can create new shares, and the Authorized Participants might change from time to time.  I don't know how to find out who the current Authorized Participants are, so sure, SecondMarket may or may not be an Authorized Participant at this point in time.

AIUI no one can redeem shares atm.  They had to suspend redemption because of a technicality in the SEC rules - I think it's because you're not allowed to be simultaneously offering new shares and at the same time offering to redeem old shares.

Bottom of p32 of the Interim Financial Report (linked from http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/GBTC/filings ) says

I think you're correct.  Although at that time (and probably still now) the only broker acting to create shares in Bitcoin Investment Trust would have been SecondMarket.  (Remember that legally, BIT and SecondMarket are separate entities.)  Over time other brokers may get involved, so perhaps in future not all new money will have to flow through SecondMarket.

roy

Am I right in thinking that when I create an (unsigned) transaction from a watching-only wallet, Armory doesn't keep track of the fact that the relevant outputs were used by that transaction?

And that therefore, if I want to create two (or more) transactions from a watching-only wallet, such that both are spendable without conflicting with each other, then it's my responsibility to use coin control to ensure they spend from different addresses?

Thanks

roy

Well, it means 1 BTC cost the author of that page $0.0007 to mine.  I'm not sure it says a whole lot more than that.

I'm not sure the New Liberty Standard so-called "exchange rate" really counts as it seems that it was really just a mining cost index, and not related to actual trades (if indeed anyone was actually trading BTC back then).

http://newlibertystandard.wikifoundry.com/page/2009+Exchange+Rate

Unless anyone knows different?

Someone (Gavin I think) has a Google Docs spreadsheet of Bitcoin Market trades.  I don't have the link to hand, but the earliest trade in that spreadsheet was for $0.003 (i.e. 0.3c) on on 25 April 2010.

Having skimmed the recently released interim financial report ( http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/GBTC/filings ) the answers to the question about redemptions appears to be:

* The trust intended to (and started to) allow redemptions by authorized participants; however they had to suspend redemptions due to an SEC ruling.  This appears to be due to a technicality (I get the impression that the rules under which the trust is operating weren't really designed with ETF-style trusts in mind).  It appears the trust desires to resume redemptions but it's not clear if or when the legal situation will be resolved.

* A winding up resolution requires shareholders representing 75% of shares to vote in favour

Well, majority of holders rather than all holders, but yes, that's probably how I'd expect it to work (at least that's how investment trusts usually work).   It's generally only with ETFs (a much more recent type of financial structure) that shares can be redeemed - and this isn't an ETF.

That said, I'm just guessing here - I haven't read the prospectus.

Also, another option typically available to managers of an investment trust trading at a discount is a share buyback (but I don't know if this option is open to BIT under FINRA rules).

In this scenario, when an investment trust is trading at a substantial discount for a prolonged period of time, the managers sell some of the assets (in this case bitcoins) and use the money to buy back shares in the trust.  The shares they buy are cancelled (i.e. they cease to exist).  So the trust now owns fewer bitcoins, but it also has fewer shares - so the number of bitcoins per share stays roughly the same.  Actually, because they got a good price on the shares they bought back (they were trading at a discount, remember) the number of bitcoins per share actually goes up slightly.  But more importantly, they're creating buying pressure in the market - and they can keep doing this until the discount is eliminated.

Investment trusts have been around since 1868 and they do generally work - this isn't some kind of whacky new financial instrument.  EDIT: Don't expect it to track the bitcoin price perfectly, though.  Discounts or premiums of +/-10% are not unusual for investment trusts, depending on market conditions.