PicoStocks, bitcoin stock exchange

[tytus]

I am pleased to announce the start of another bitcoin stock Exchange, PicoStocks, http://picostocks.com.

The exchange is based on a different model than GLBSE or MPEx. The main concept of the new model is that PicoStocks is the legal owner of all assets. Users trading the assets can benefit from profits or buy and sell the assets to other users. PicoStocks is a legal person established under the jurisdiction of Marshall Islands. When floating assets on the platform PicoStocks will enter into share purchase agreement with the issuer or owner. In other words PicoStocks will share responsibility for the authenticity and validity of the offered shares. Of course the users are responsible for the evaluation of the assets.

We hope that the different legal model will help in floating “real world” startups on the platform, not necessarily related to the bitcoin economy. Having such assets on a bitcoin based exchange platform should be beneficial for the bitcoin community and for the issuers who, due to their small size, can not enter other regulated exchanges.

We have started the platform with the IPO* (Initial PicoStocks Offering) of 20% of all shares of PicoStocks. The business plan is available on the platform. We plan to float in few weeks a high tech SME dealing with the application of bacteriophages in agriculture. We will also float an ASIC mining project. Floating is intentionally relative expensive (50BTC), because want to focus on more mature operations. Floating can be done online, but the purchase agreement that contains the number of listed shares and the reward in BTC must be signed between the owner (seller) and PicoStocks before the trading of the shares starts on the platform. Both parameters (number of shares and raised capital) will be determined during the IPO* process.

[Stephen Gornick]

The main concept of the new model is that PicoStocks is the legal owner of all assets.
[...]
PicoStocks is a legal person established under the jurisdiction of Marshall Islands.

I've been wondering how long before someone takes this approach.  More overview of Marshall Islands:
 - http://www.healyconsultants.com/company-incorporation/marshall-islands-company-formation.html

The FAQ gives additional useful info:
 - http://picostocks.com/pages/faq

[tytus]

There is one more important innovation. All transactions and all user accounts are public. It is possible to monitor the action of "best" traders and review their market position.
Several forex trading companies offer something like this as a paid service but here transparency is an important aspect of our mission. We believe more transparency will help the investors (private or public) and entrepreneurs.

The main objective for the beginning is to attract as many as possible interesting small high-tech startups. It is enough to list small fractions of their shares (even less than 1%) to promote the startups and the bitcoin community. We would like to encourage anybody ho has some shares of small high tech companies to float a part of the shares he/she owns on PicoStocks.

BTW: the business plan of PicoStocks is here: http://picostocks.com/businessplan/15 ... sorry for ignoring MPEx there. We will try to describe the differences between the two exchanges on some page in the near future.

[JordanL]

Exciting news, I hope it works out. It's tempting to get in early, but with you valuing your exchange at ~ 1.3M Euros for the ipo, I'll stick to the sidelines on that one. Can't wait to watch this thing take off.

[tytus]

The minimum price is 0.05 BTC. I think this will be also the final price tag. This would be a valuation at 50k BTC (~500k EUR) at current exchange rates.
You are probably right, we should start with a smaller valuation at the beginning, but we actually don't need any funds for the exchange and I still believe that even at this valuation the asset will generate reasonable return on investment in 12 months. I hope we will be able to report much better results than predicted after 12 months.

[Third Way]

Can I pitch in.?

[tytus]

1. create an account for You bitcoin account on http://picostocks.com
2. wait few seconds for the system to create a dedicated PicoStocks bitcoin account
3. send 1BTC to the newly created account and wait 1h [5 confirmations]
4. login there again, select [pico] from the list of IPO* assets and press the buy button [right top]
5. put in the price: 0.05 and the number of shares You want to buy: 20 and press the "Buy shares" button

After this You will probably have to wait few days. I think I will close the IPO* next week.
After that the trading can start.

[Kumala]

Interesting concept, watching closely.   

For a start, an observation that leads to a question:
Quote from your Webpage:
    The IPO office is operated by BioInfoBank

Punching BioInfoBank into Google, I come across the page: http://bioinfo.pl/   which says: BioInfoBank Institute is a non-for-profit research and development organization ...  The main scientific focus of the institute is Bioinformatics .....

How does that all fit together? Care to elaborate because most of us, when we read "Bank" as part of an organizations name, think about a "real" bank with banking license, etc.
 

[tytus]

-bank does not always mean the entity deals with money , see for example bio-bank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biobank) or data-bank. BioInfoBank Institute has mainly the bio and info component. The financial component is located mainly in the venture fund BIB Seed Capital SA (seed.bioinfo.pl, Polish  ). In fact the fund invested in an asset that I wanted to float on PicoStocks next: proteonpharma.com (the phage company).

But, to answer Your question, we have no banking license :-) A banking license could be useful for BTC/forex exchange but I don't think we will consider this for the stock exchange. In fact using a banking license would place us in a European jurisdiction and tax area ... we don't want to deal with this right now.

[MPOE-PR]

While I can appreciate that bootstrap seems to have been defeated in the market and the MPEx look and feel prevails, the question that stands before you is how can you show this isn't just another stock generation rehash? Because on the face that's what we have here.

[tytus]

Please give us 2 days. We will launch another serious asset on Friday the latest. The asset is a bitcoin mine but I hope it will be large enough to attract interest. After this we will start floating "real world" companies. I have to admit this is a challenge because investments have to compete with the BTC deflation and the expected dividend threshold is much higher here than anywhere else. It is pointless to try to float a not convincing venture here but it can be still interesting from the tax point of view.

[Stephen Gornick]

investments have to compete with the BTC deflation and the expected dividend threshold is much higher here than anywhere else. It is pointless to try to float a not convincing venture here but it can be still interesting from the tax point of view.

An equity whose revenues are in fiat can act as a hedge though, so their values go up as the bitcoin exchange rate goes down, possibly at an even faster rate (especially if it has earnings).  At least in theory, ... there's been a fourteen-month bitcoin rally going on so there haven't been many opportunities to see if this is true in practice as well.

[tytus]

An equity whose revenues are in fiat can act as a hedge though, so their values go up as the bitcoin exchange rate goes down, possibly at an even faster rate (especially if it has earnings).  At least in theory, ... there's been a fourteen-month bitcoin rally going on so there haven't been many opportunities to see if this is true in practice as well.

I guess in crisis You would run for the most liquid asset. This would be the fiat money itself. Also the forex (btc exchange) markets will always remain the most liquid bitcoin based markets facilitating fast departure from BTC.
Nevertheless a large number of listed fiat assets will add stability to the BTC exchange rates. ... until their valuation exceeds the number of bitcoins in circulation and then a default of a large listed fiat asset would provide turbulence for btc exchange rates :-) this is of course all theory.

[MPOE-PR]

Please give us 2 days. We will launch another serious asset on Friday the latest. The asset is a bitcoin mine but I hope it will be large enough to attract interest. After this we will start floating "real world" companies. I have to admit this is a challenge because investments have to compete with the BTC deflation and the expected dividend threshold is much higher here than anywhere else. It is pointless to try to float a not convincing venture here but it can be still interesting from the tax point of view.

I'm in no rush, you can have two weeks or two months as far as I'm concerned.

[tytus]

Here it is ... a large mine: http://picostocks.com/stocks/view/17 ... probably the largest mine in few months, but not any more the largest few months later :-)

[MPOE-PR]

Except Tom wasn't even going to sell 1,000 bASICs to begin with, and his original offering is all bought out, by people who are not you. So no, this isn't an example that serves your intention, this is an example that goes exactly the other way.

Clearly you have no business here. Please start here like everyone else.

[tytus]

Why don't You ask Tom about it :-)

[tytus]

There may be problems to get any response from Tom now :-) https://www.btcfpga.com/forum/index.php?topic=954.0.
We have frozen this IPO* until the situation is resolved. In the meantime we will try to float less risky ventures :-)

[repentance]

Oh my.  Someone didn't do their due diligence.

[tytus]

We did not invest in Toms company. We only ordered chips. There is little due diligence You can do in the chip business right now :-) [you can choose between transparency or advanced tech node :-)], but You are right, we could have asked for more facts. The decision was made based on few assumptions:

1. we have also worked on mining chips so we know it is absolutely possible to deliver what Tom promised
2. there is a clear market for the chips, a project like bASIC could easily make $10M in 1-2 years, so there is no reason to believe anybody would choose to take $1M ("and run", which Tom apparently did not do) instead of completing the project using collected funds ($500k-600k, mask costs $400k, the rest is not important and can be easily paid with loans / preorders ... bASIC has desided to offer only boards so the design is simple ... the simplest on the market)
3. Tom had a proved track record of delivering mining hardware , he only needed to order ASIC chips
=> the chances of success are quite large
We don't actually know what happened. If this is as described: Tom could not stand another delay; then this is just a management issue that needs to be solved :-)

Our risks were also not that big because we did not pay the whole amount, just a prepayment, so the current potential losses are of course not $1M. If we get more info about the current status of bASIC development maybe we can save the project.