I'm calling it now: Nefario will pay for this out of his own pocket. Everything will go back to normal.
So many scams going around these days, he could really reap the benefits of being known for truth, honesty, integrity, and having a safe sexchange.
+1
Yes, I think we can all agree that having a safe sexchange is of considerable importance to the bitcoin economy. But back onto the topic at hand.
Really what happened is 7-8 months ago there was a scam on GLBSE that a number of people fell for. This was prior to the time that GLBSE started to vet assets. On a weekend when I was away someone launched an asset called GLBSE, a number of people bought it without checking if it was legit.
Total amount scammed was along the lines of about 30BTC.
The problem we currently have was caused by how I dealt with this. Failing to reserve the asset name GLBSE I felt had enabled it to happen. And I announced that those assets that were sold would be honored, at the time I thought I had the power to make this decision.
Turns out I didn't, GLBSE has bylaws and rules which it operates by (despite what some people think I can't do what I like) and to issue more shares (which is what this would amount to) required a vote of approval from existing shareholders. It also requires a vote of approval to allow someone who is not already a shareholder to become one.
Now several months later we're registering GLBSE as a legitimate company, with registered shareholders, because we want to bring on real companies to list. So this means we have to cross the T's and dot the i's. As a result I can't leave this issue as it currently stands.
What can I say, I messed up several months ago and now it's back to bite me in the ass.
Did I make a mistake while running the first bitcoin stock exchange in the early days, yes and I'm probably going to make other mistakes down the line, I'm human and what we're doing has never been done before, so that seems inevitable.
Did I scam people, intentionally mislead or swindle them? No.
GLBSE and I didn't sell any of those shares and we didn't profit from them, quite the contrary we're buying them back at the price they were originally sold, so thats a direct cost to us.
When I made those statements about honoring the asset, I did so in good faith, based on the assumption that I had the power to do so, that assumption turned out to be wrong.