Transferring to Havelock is just pushing the problem back a few weeks. They will only have to do the same thing. If you'd can't see that then you have your head in the sand quite frankly. It was quite obvious this would happen back in July and I said as much at the time having looked into the legal situ. Ukyo claimed he shouldn't need to block US citizens but that was never going to hold water.

The only way out is to get out of the shares completely until a legit exchange is online or to have direct shares with someone managing the transfers and paid a fee for doing so.

Either way, their value isn't going to hold up until this is sorted. Nothing negative about the company, this is about the trading environment. The shares could well step downwards and downwards until the situ is sorted or high dividends are paid (which is some time away).

And yes, it's very annoying.

The following formats correct?

Bitfunder User Name: fwzd
Number Of Shares:2000
Havelock Users Name:fwzd.org@gmail.com

Centralized exchanges are, obviously, the weakest points, in many ways.

It is possible to construct rating agencies (we call them this way now) in such a way that it's pretty much impossible to attack them. You can operate one fully anonymously, simply signing messages like "After performing checks X, Y and Z, I believe that company ABC is trustworthy". How can they shut you down?

Of course, it is always possible to go after individual business. Ultimately, it will be the weakest part.

But if we remove these other weak parts (which were actually unnecessary), it's possible to focus on the actual problem: making it possible for companies to raise capital without violating laws.

It might be possible either through registering companies in jurisdictions which allow that, or using proxies/intermediaries. However, IANAL.

So, I'm able to cancel my transfer from BTCT to BitFunder and request transfer from BTCT to Havelock by writing email to you, right?

I haven't received my BTCT.co shares yet. Have you completed migration from BTCT.co or is it still in progress?

I believe there is a demand for a secure trading platform which doesn't try to be an investment bank.

You probably know that Goat was delisted from GLBSE. Maybe he shouldn't have been there in the first place, but now this delisting creates problem for Goat and for people who bought something from him.

Or imagine a situation where GLBSE will suffer from catastrophic data failure, it it will be hacked. Do people have a backup plan?

Suppose they even have a list of owners (this features is offered by MPex), can they continue trading after being delisted or after some problem with exchange?

With a trading platform based on colored coins ownership data is encoded in a blockchain, it cannot be lost, it cannot be hacked in realistic scenarios. You cannot be delisted. You will be able to trade no matter what.

Maybe this problem is not interesting to you because you haven't considered catastrophic failure scenarios yet.

But things like that happened to currency exchanges and wallet services, why do you think stock exchange would be immune?

Anyway, I'm a programmer, not a lawyer. I cannot help you with non-trustworthy exchanges, but I can help to develop a secure trading platform.

By the way, it might help with trustworthiness checks indirectly: since smartcoin based trading platform won't do any checks at all, this would create a market for trustworthiness checks.

GLBSE wants to be everything at once, they offer some verification, sort of, but it is really half-assed, and its bundled with their trading platform. So people have no choice but to use it, and they don't think that 3rd party rating agency is needed.

But when trading platform is open to anybody, amount of bullshit assets will be so high that companies will have no option but to go to 3rd party rating agency. As many such agencies can co-exist, there will be a market, and so they'll compete to provide best services. I.e. you'll be able to check rating agency's track record.

The best way to solve social problem is to provide economic incentive, I think.

All a shareholder registry needs is a robot/service that receives and verifies digitally-signed messages, updating a ledger of share accounts.  This can be automated today using GPG tools, if PGP is used, or bitcoind, if ECDSA is used.

Other parties -- as shown in the past -- will create pass-through entities for the various exchanges that exist.


Frankly, I would not trust a third party to 100% manage my company's shareholder list.  But that's a business decision.  Plenty of Fortune 500 companies hire a 3rd party platform to manage their shareholder registry.

Centralization is easy, decentralization is hard. That's why people flock to centralized solutions. So, although it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that the systems "defend" your argument (they don't, they are just not good enough), I partially agree with you. But we should keep things in perspective and calculate the trade-off's. I remember Nefario making the same argument about a centralized stock exchange.

Companies can keep track of shareholders easily in an automated manner. And accredited investors can run centralized pass-throughs. This is very doable without resorting to future tech. So, let's discuss the downsides.

Convenience: Agreed. Shareholders would have to keep track of issuing companies and relevant escrows. A proper decentralized system that doesn't need an escrow and can harvest a list of issuers will solve this completely and would be even more convenient than having accounts in multiple exchanges. However, in the current atmosphere, it is even less convenient to invest through a centralized exchange, so to me the issue is moot. Will we have risk-free legal exchanges sooner than the proposed decentralized solution? I doubt it.

Popularity: Not sure about this one. Any solution can become popular. If all companies kept their own list of shareholders using the same protocol, there would still be centralized directories and easy to use tools to trade their shares. This isn't as hard a problem as creating a completely decentralized exchange system.

Trust: Disagreed. Is the trust to current exchanges satisfactory? My trust to friedcat is higher than friedcat+exchangeoperator+PToperator. This should be obvious. Although, until we have some system that works without an escrow, there is that.

Efficiency: Agreed. Centralized solutions will always be more efficient. No doubt about that.

Bitcoin actually is a good example.


We are certainly talking about Bitcoin as a solution to currency. The protocol, the commodity and the currency are all alternatives to centralized systems, so it fits perfectly. It also fits to your above criteria. Central solutions are far more efficient. Transactions are instant, and they can implement any solution to any problem that may arise almost immediately without having to invent a new technology. The protocol is extremely resilient, because you don't need to implement Byzantine fault tolerance. So on and so forth.

Yet, Bitcoin thrives. I have no doubt that people will always prefer a decentralized stock exchange whenever a proper one is developed. Until then, all companies should have a relationship with the shareholders directly. Legal downsides of this is up for discussion, however.

The reasoning behind using a platform and not direct handling of shares for ourselves is down to the man hours required to operate on such a basis, we are operating in the real world, we have multiple aspects of the business that need constant oversight and attention, for myself to assign someone for the task is achievable however it comes at a cost to the business, we as a business do not specialize in the trading of shares or have a platform capable of doing so (at the moment) so the best solution is to operate using the platforms available to us. Do things need to change surrounding these platforms? YES they do, whilst we are investigating the matter in great detail we cannot provide a solution overnight.

No I mean this one, sorry should have quoted it before.



I believe Burnside's plan, which he has already begun implementing, is to convert all AM-PT to direct shares. Nothing more.

I pull my bid out. I know it is an asshole move but it is better than not being able to pay and delaying the auction even more.

Please forgive me. The funds did not go through. Weak hands from a couple of investors.

With the recent update does this change ?

I'd put this another way: there are always opportunists with a penchant for being control freaks seeking to consolidate their own wealth/power at the expense of everyone else. These personalities have their uses but they're also generally the most dangerous people in society and always have been historically.

I think the trend in decentralization over the next few generations will finally be allow us to fence these personalities in to some degree and make it more difficult for them to seize control of networks, projects and governments. Bitcoin is the first step in this direction and we can already see centralizing influences in Bitcoin looking to weaken the decentralized model. It won't work in the longrun, imo.

With the introduction of a concept like colored coins, a certain colored coin that represented shares in a company would, by definition, be grouped in a similar definition as bitcoin itself, no? Simply substitute "shares of Company X" in for "currency" above. I think this is what many people are getting at when referring to decentralized exchanges.

Could the same argument not be made for bitcoin itself? Specifically the proposed inevitable centralization of mining?

I'm aware that there is a contingency plan in place, just unsure of specifics. That said, I'm not worried for this security as I have substantial trust in the operator.

If we're talking about this as a philosophical issue, I'd personally like to see a decentralized exchange as I'm a proponent of this kind of innovation. To my knowledge, nothing like a decentralized exchange has been done before in any real capacity, so that gets my vote. Whether that's what's best for Neo & Bee at this stage is unknown, but on a broader level, I think it'd be a step in the right direction.

There is another part of that law set to phase in which will allow unaccredited investors to invest but I agree the law is set up poorly. It does allow anyone to invest eventually though.


I disagree entirely. You cannot expect to have liberty, human rights, or fair systems of governance if it's too centralized. Decentralization is the result of the erosion of trust in large centralized institutions who have abused their power. Decentralized governance, finance, and markets are the answer if the goal is to limit corruption and produce opportunities for innovation and success.

I think you're just plain wrong. But I understand it's in your economic self interest to say that.