I'm reading Ukyo's response to the question he was asked in this thread and found it's very applicable:
Thanks everyone for the kind words and support.
Quick update:
Graphs now show a "D"ividend market with payout information.
EskimoBob:
In my honest opinion, I do not believe that making a claim that the site is 'virtual currency' and that
'No assets on the site are to be considered real.' would convince any U.S. Federal Judge (esp. when
a U.S. Citizen goes out of their way to put it in a server in Belize when they operate their own hosting
service in the U.S) that the service is not guilty of something already and deny an FBI warrant request.
The U.S. Government does not care where your services are hosted, or how you claim ownership is
divided up, and especially if you are a U.S. citizen that appears to be in control (and sometimes if you
are real lucky, they do not even care if you are a U.S. Citizen to begin with), if they want to make an
example out of you they will. (see. KimDotCom)
If you get on the list of "Notorious Markets", it really does not matter where you are, who you are,
your citizenship, your servers location, or if you have a legitimate business that has acted properly to
comply under all rules and regulations, if you are targeted, you will have to deal with it.
Here is the older December 20th, 2011 '"Notorious Markets" report from the office of the president of
the United States.
http://www.ustr.gov/webfm_send/3215You will notice that many of these items state that they could be used for fully legal actions, but
include misuse, therefore on the list. Under "Cyberlockers" you will notice that "Megaupload" who
provided the same type of service as DropBox, and many other large named corporations is on that
list. I think most of us know the KimDotCom story. If you do not, a quick summery is, MegaUpload
was protected under the U.S. DMCA act, in which direct contact information is publicly available
for all to see, and is to be the direct point of contact for any persons claiming their site to be
hosting copyrighted materials. (I know, I am on the list due to my hosting business.) There had
been no actual complaints or suites filed against the company, and they had a working relationship
with the MPAA/RIAA for them to be able to remove any content they wanted at the click of a button.
Was the service illegal or not? The general answer is probably "legal", however, that is to be decided
after the site has been shut down, and fully investigated in this case. If it is not clearly legal (which
even those things get questioned), and is at worst case something that falls into a shade of grey that
is already being noticed by an entity, such as the SEC or FBI (who has published at least one report on
Bitcoin to my knowledge), then no matter what you do, or say, and try to be to protect yourself
the following applies.
A. It will never be enough to keep them from trying if you get targeted.
B. It will only make you look more guilty the more you try to "hide" things in other countries, etc.
If any entity targets you, the big question is what will happen to all of the users of the site and their data?
With the voluntary shutdown of GLBSE all data was retained, and is eventually being distributed. In the
previously mentioned worst case scenario, there would be no such luxury.
BitFunder has learned from this incident and has the users best interests in mind.
When a user signs up for BitFunder they are asked to provide a bitcoin address that will be listed publicly.
BitFunder publicly lists all data by coinaddress,asset,shares live on the site at all times without violating
any users privacy and allows them to proove ownership should the need arise.
You can view the public asset list at
https://bitfunder.com/assetlist.
As of this point, re-checking their websites, and to the best of my knowledge, I can not find on either
btct.co or cryptostocks, a plan of action provided to the public that would stop such a terrifying loss
to the users and community, be it from "three letter agencies" to server and data failures, hackers, or
some other reason.
James (Nefario) was correct that the best course of action would be to become a legally supervised
entity. At least this somewhat lowers the chance.
I currently own and operate an AUD/CAD/USD exchange (
https://WeExchange.co), and am
presently pursuing licensing in multiple countries & states for it. While in the process of this, I have
also been working out a method to potentially further legalize BitFunder in a respectable country.
I would hate to see this thread change to the subject of whats legal or not, options, etc.
If you want to continue the discussion I am more than happy to on another thread, or on IRC.
Again, this is only my opinion on the matter, which it may very well be wrong, but I allowed to have it.
I am always open to new ideas, concepts, etc and generally want to hear them.
(That is, after all the proper way to form an opinion of your own, not by shutting down others responses.)
Also, this opinion is not attempting to insult anyone in any way, if it has done so, I apologize ahead of time.
