Cronyism and Securities

[Coincomm]

Cronyism is when you get a powerful few picking and choosing what businesses can and cannot be successful. Cronyism is what makes today's financial world through big businesses that do not serve their customers or employees but only the financial interests and governments that fund them.

I hope we eventually get several securities exchanges so we don't get the elitism and plutocracy we have in the real world today, through its centralization (e.g. NASDAQ, NYSE). Smaller exchanges in the real world are reduced in scope and kept down financially and legally by regulations because some people don't think you should be able to completely choose how to invest your money.

What kind of world are we going to get when we only have two to three exchanges picking who can and cannot be successful? We need constant accountability through constant competition. That's what will separate Bitcoin from everyone else: Ruthless competition and choice.

What are our choices today? Cryptostocks, MPeX, GLBSE, LitcoinExchange (?) Which ones are the most powerful? GLBSE and MPeX.

I will do my best to include an extra choice. Everyone can do their part by only putting their money in places with values they agree with.

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[markm]

The sheer security-holes-hell of using the web is a huge barrier to entry, I can understand MPEx's approach of only using the web as a way for people to paste PGP-encrypted instructions because of that.

I am hoping though that Open Transactions will lower the barrier significantly, since asset issuers do not even have to trust the server operator and the actual assets, be they bitcoins or bars of gold or whatever, do not even have to ever be anywhere near the server that is used to trade in them.

As I have already been operating an Open Transactions server for quite a while now, and have server machines sitting idle waiting for a time when they can pay for the electricity they will consume when powered up, I am basically ready to fire up Open Transactions servers at any time; I simply have not been motivated, by actual offers of actual bitcoins for doing so, to do so.

When I first went looking for software to run stock exchanges the plan was that eventually every stock exchange city-improvement any player built on any planet of the Freeciv Galactic Milieu could be actually implemented for actual trading, so I had all along been heading toward a proliferation of exchanges; I had been thinking that it would be players of the game paying to host an actual exchange to make their city more interesting to other players who would pay the hosting/bandwidth costs of running them, but hey, if anyone else is interested in proliferating exchanges that is fine too...

-MarkM-

[Bitcoin Oz]

GLBSE wont be using the government to prevent competition. Its more likely if GLBSE gets to a decent size that the existing government stock exchanges will attack it rather than GLBSE attacking other bitcoin exchanges. In the same way Mt Gox takes the heat because it is blazing a trail as the biggest exchange it is good to have a strong free market competitor to government protected monopoly.

Letting people issue whatever security they want without any accountability is also a bad thing as shown by glbse 1.0

[MPOE-PR]

GLBSE wont be using the government to prevent competition. Its more likely if GLBSE gets to a decent size that the existing government stock exchanges will attack it rather than GLBSE attacking other bitcoin exchanges. In the same way Mt Gox takes the heat because it is blazing a trail as the biggest exchange it is good to have a strong free market competitor to government protected monopoly.

Letting people issue whatever security they want without any accountability is also a bad thing as shown by glbse 1.0

Necrothreadphile, I am it.

[repentance]

GLBSE wont be using the government to prevent competition. Its more likely if GLBSE gets to a decent size that the existing government stock exchanges will attack it rather than GLBSE attacking other bitcoin exchanges. In the same way Mt Gox takes the heat because it is blazing a trail as the biggest exchange it is good to have a strong free market competitor to government protected monopoly.

Letting people issue whatever security they want without any accountability is also a bad thing as shown by glbse 1.0

Necrothreadphile, I am it.

Lulz.

More in keeping with the spirit of the OP, it's also true that outside the exchanges a fairly small number of people have enormous influence over which Bitcoin enterprises succeed.  It's a pretty incestuous little community when all is said and done.

[MPOE-PR]

Lulz.

More in keeping with the spirit of the OP, it's also true that outside the exchanges a fairly small number of people have enormous influence over which Bitcoin enterprises succeed.  It's a pretty incestuous little community when all is said and done.

If that were actually true, MPEx wouldn't be.

It would like to think it is incestuous, and a large number of fairly irrelevant people like to think they are part of a small number of people with enormous influence, but it really doesn't work that way.

[Peter Lambert]

Lulz.

More in keeping with the spirit of the OP, it's also true that outside the exchanges a fairly small number of people have enormous influence over which Bitcoin enterprises succeed.  It's a pretty incestuous little community when all is said and done.

If that were actually true, MPEx wouldn't be.

It would like to think it is incestuous, and a large number of fairly irrelevant people like to think they are part of a small number of people with enormous influence, but it really doesn't work that way.

There are a large number of people (like me) who hang out on this forum and think they are important. It may seem like this small group controls what is going on, but in reality it is the people who have the resources (money, skill, determination, etc.) who control what gets done.

If the popularity of an idea on this forum mattered, MPEx would have disappeared long ago. But since MP apparently knows what he is doing, and controls who gets listed on his exchange (which is apparently used by some large investors), MP does have influence.

Most of the people doing the controlling are quiet about it, we might not even know who they are.

[coqui33]

What is "MPEx"?

[Peter Lambert]

What is "MPEx"?

It is a stock exchange for bitcoin businesses.

[coqui33]

What is "MPEx"?

It is a stock exchange for bitcoin businesses.

Interesting. Do you know if they have website? Web search turns up unrelated acronyms.

[repentance]

Lulz.

More in keeping with the spirit of the OP, it's also true that outside the exchanges a fairly small number of people have enormous influence over which Bitcoin enterprises succeed.  It's a pretty incestuous little community when all is said and done.

If that were actually true, MPEx wouldn't be.

It would like to think it is incestuous, and a large number of fairly irrelevant people like to think they are part of a small number of people with enormous influence, but it really doesn't work that way.

You're somewhat different to most start-ups around here in having significant resources of your own.  You aren't desperate for outside funds to keep operating and to fund growth.  You're really the exception rather than the rule in that regard - not only are many other Bitcoin enterprises vulnerable to predation, they virtually beg predators to come through the door.

Of course there are much bigger sharks outside the Bitcoin economy than within it and it will be a very interesting time if someone with serious money decides it's "game on".

[Peter Lambert]

What is "MPEx"?

It is a stock exchange for bitcoin businesses.

Interesting. Do you know if they have website? Web search turns up unrelated acronyms.

try doing a forum search.

http://polimedia.us/bitcoin/

Before looking any farther, you should first learn all about pgp.

[Monster Tent]

Lulz.

More in keeping with the spirit of the OP, it's also true that outside the exchanges a fairly small number of people have enormous influence over which Bitcoin enterprises succeed.  It's a pretty incestuous little community when all is said and done.

If that were actually true, MPEx wouldn't be.

It would like to think it is incestuous, and a large number of fairly irrelevant people like to think they are part of a small number of people with enormous influence, but it really doesn't work that way.

There are a large number of scammers (like me) who hang out on this forum and think they are important. It may seem like this small group controls what is going on, but in reality it is the people who have the resources (money, skill, determination, etc.) who control what gets done.

If the popularity of an idea on this forum mattered, MPEx would have disappeared long ago. But since MP apparently knows what he is doing, and controls who gets listed on his exchange (which is apparently used by some large investors), MP does have influence.

Most of the people doing the controlling are quiet about it, we might not even know who they are.

FTFY

[MPOE-PR]

You're somewhat different to most start-ups around here in having significant resources of your own.  You aren't desperate for outside funds to keep operating and to fund growth.  You're really the exception rather than the rule in that regard - not only are many other Bitcoin enterprises vulnerable to predation, they virtually beg predators to come through the door.

This is actually a very good point I've foolishly overlooked. Yes it'd seem from reading logs of blown up business ventures that pretty much everyone is stretched out to the maximum, like melted cheese, and a ten bitcoin mispayment is the difference between "business as usual" and complete financial collapse.

Still, I wonder if the extreme vulnerability of most participants actually means the (relatively) invulnerable exercise any degree of control. It'd seem to me that it's not the case that "a fairly small number of people have enormous influence over which Bitcoin enterprises succeed" but moreover that "a fairly large number of people have disproportionate influence over how soon their Bitcoin enterprises fail".