I guess Burnside could offer a list with the adresses of the SELLING holders at shutdown of BTC-TC. Everybody who is able to sign his adress would be able to redeem his Cipherbond stake. That would of course only be possible if Ciphermine is willing to dispossess the bonds owned by Deprived...

Hmmm, condescend much?


Many folks with investment experience out in the fiat world would likely reply that exchanges have no business whatsoever offering either "guidance" or "due diligence" or anything remotely related -- and that they should, instead, make it their business to provide the smoothly functioning underlying mechanics that everyone else needs to be able to count on. Admittedly, exchanges which make that their business will also likely enforce sane listing criteria as part of ensuring the underlying mechanics really can work smoothly. But those criteria have little or nothing to do with trustworthiness or -- more importantly -- with whether something is a good investment or a poor investment. Rather, those criteria centre on accountability.


Nor, however, is trust a magic bullet to protect people: on the contrary, "trust" as reflected by crude mechanisms like the WoT has almost nothing to do with separating good investments from bad. It is only the presence of bona fide and well validated negative trust which reveals anything whatsoever of relevance to the job of separating good investments from bad; the presence or absence of positive trust tells us virtually nothing about the competence of an individual as a manager, entrepreneur or investor, or about the merits of any particular investment associated with them.

(The WoT is better understood as an attempt to solve the problems created by conflating privacy and anonymity than as any direct indicator of investment quality.)

From the perspective of "smart money" investment capital flowing into Bitcoin, the WoT is singularly irrelevant. When VCs and angel investors fund projects, that capital comes into the Bitcoin economy because of the efforts of real, identifiable people, with known identities and real world accountability, people whose levels of competence can be directly assessed by the investors. That capital does not flow into a project because a pseudonymous and ultimately unaccountable would-be entrepreneur has 999 positive ratings on the WoT.


IMHO, not in the least (for the last of those three questions). But even if it could, "trust" as reflected by something like the WoT will never cut it from the perspective of an investor.

Suggesting otherwise might seem neat and tidy at first glance, but it's actually confusing the relatively easier job of ensuring mechanical compliance with a set of requirements -- foremost among them, not running off with someone's coins -- with the ultimately much harder job of separating the wheat from the chaff in a field of investment candidates.

With the relatively rare spectacular exception, the fiat world has the mechanical compliance part down pat. Very few people worry, for example, that the underwriters for this or that latest IPO are going to run off to Bermuda with everybody's money. And yet, people do in fact lose their shirts and their Bermuda shorts every single day as a result of making bad investments. If there were the sort of connection between the "trust" part and the "good investment" part that some might like you to believe in, we'd all be fiat zillionaires by now.

Performance builds trust. The (digitally signed) name remains constant. Knowing who is providing the performance is irrelevant. I don't trust people any way. People are very unreliable, even your wife can be unreliable.

I trust math and code. They are reproducible and deterministic in so far as what has been proved and unit tested.

This is much more forgiving, because people can start again if they screw up one reputation, e.g. AnonyMint can be reborn as a nice guy.

My dream is to make all attorneys unemployed. I have always preferred paradigm shift over never-ending morass (especially the legal variety).

Why not run MPEX as a completely anonymous service, then the SEC can send their legal communications to the ether.

MPEX is a perfect example, because it can be 100% anonymous as there is no storefront, no shipped goods, and no fiat accounts involved. It is a perfect example of the Knowledge Age economy I am writing about.

That is essentially my entire point over the past several months (as well as a few other points such as cpu-only mining to make decentralization work).

But we can't do that today. Bitcoin does not have this capability.

It is trolling to want to make it possible to completely ignore the SEC and never hear from them? Come on seriouscoin, you are not serious.

Please do stop quoting my entire posts, in case I want to delete them all someday.

Reading MPEx's response to SEC inquiries about SD has got me thinking more about decentralized securities platforms.
Even if all the crypto securities exchanges are eventually shut down or brought into compliance, how will a decentralized
platform for securities issuance and trading give us more liberty to invest what we want, when we want, and with whom
we choose? Won't the SEC just track down and shutdown the issuers themselves?

I mean, before I would want to invest in a crypto security, I'd want to know the details of the offering! This would include
most certainly the identification of the issuing companies' lead personnel. If that is a basic tenet of securities investment,
then how will a decentralized platform help the situation? Won't the governing authorities just go after the security
issuers directly?

I'm just not seeing how a grand decentralization plan for securities is going to make a real difference in my freedom to
invest in crypto securities. Any insights from the professionals around here? Thanks in advance!

I havent posted in this thread for awhile, so I just wanted to go ahead and quote this for posterity and humor.

It was too good to pass up. I would love to add to the chaos, but watching this mayhem unfold has been entertaining enough.

Do the staunch believers realize yet why myself and others kept pushing for answers and accountability? I mean seriously...there isnt even a proper mining center for hardware that was/is 3 months late.

I take it kako's seizures from fervent laughter prevents him from boasting currently. Cmon I know you can't help yourself.

I agree. The forum mods are either unwilling or unable to kick off the mentalists, so I'd accept a modded thread as a compromise.

Edit: Even better would be a moderated thread on LMB, but I wouldn't want any developer effort beyond 1 hour to be sidetracked from rolling out the business for this. 

Whats the amount of bitcoins owed for ukyo loan? Did the loan run under ukyo personally alone or was a company involved? And do you think that the stock-like thing of selling shares will have an impact legally?