Enforcing Transparency and Accountability through Cryptocurrencies

[btcbug]

I was just thinking about the problems of transparency and accountability in crowd funding and or p2p lending. Not sure if this has been discussed before.

If an individual chooses to support a crowd funding campaign (equity based or pledge) or they want to invest using p2p lending to earn interest (debt based), the investor can conduct their prior due diligence and later see the end result, but there is still the big problem of seeing where/how their money is being spent between point A and B.

They may make money or lose money on their investment, but they had little to no knowledge of what was taking place behind the scenes. This is of course also probably the biggest issue with taxes! Your money goes into a black hole and you never even see a detailed breakdown. We all know that government is never gonna spearhead anything like this!

I think it would be an amazing innovation for BTC if somebody developed another layer that could be used to identify accounts (put names to BTC addresses). Then when setting up a crowdfunding campaign you'd put up your BTC address and all contributors would be able to see the cash flow between different people you did business with. Anything unidentified would be questioned. Of course I understand that this requires a sort of new level of network effect, but it has to start somewhere.

BTC allows people to by pass the old system completely and something like this could probably be done much easier than if you had to develop it for compatibility with existing fiat systems.

I don't want to hear about how this is an invasion of privacy, etc. I'm not saying this needs to be legislated. That's why it would be another layer or perhaps another alt-coin and it would be for things (investments, government, etc) where transparency doesn't currently exist, but should, and anyone in such a position of power would only be seen as trustworthy if they were willing to open their books.

[MingLee]

You have a good idea and having a way to maintain accountability for use of investments from cryptos would be a net gain overall for investing using crpytocurrencies, since it would increase overall security and confidence. The thing is, though, the type of accountability we have right now is essentially the same for any other kind of startup or investment using fiat. At best developers are going to have status updates and other kinds of information, but there is no real look at the internals.
Anyone willing to open their books is relatively trustworthy, as long as they do it often and have proof of spending going somewhere.

[jorneyflair]

In my opinion the very important thing about bitcoin that concerns the goverments, is that it is very hard to collect taxes from bitcoin users.
The only way to do that, is when the citizens of specified country are going to declare their profits made on the cryptocurrencies. But that may not be a good idea for authorities, im sure that many people will not say anything about that: because the bitcoin provides the anonymousness, you are not going to be tracked on blockchain probably.

But the funds that you want to sell, are pretty much something illegal because you haven't payed a tax. If the IRS will find out, they are going to sentence you with a punishment, and this is a really bad system in my opinion. The goverments need to find out something better than this.

[btcbug]

The thing is, though, the type of accountability we have right now is essentially the same for any other kind of startup or investment using fiat. At best developers are going to have status updates and other kinds of information, but there is no real look at the internals.
Anyone willing to open their books is relatively trustworthy, as long as they do it often and have proof of spending going somewhere.

Well my point was that by funding a company with Crypto rather than fiat, it is then possible that we could have a very high level of transparency. You'd be able to see more than just status updates because essentially you'd be viewing their bank account (BTC address) and the outflows from that account.

Imagine if there were a simple banking app that would tie into the crowd funding platform, so that the business could grant view-only access to their bank account. All investors could log in and see exactly where the cash is being spent from that account. Currently I don't think that exists for fiat banking, but would probably be relatively easy to create for crytpo.

[MingLee]

The thing is, though, the type of accountability we have right now is essentially the same for any other kind of startup or investment using fiat. At best developers are going to have status updates and other kinds of information, but there is no real look at the internals.
Anyone willing to open their books is relatively trustworthy, as long as they do it often and have proof of spending going somewhere.

Well my point was that by funding a company with Crypto rather than fiat, it is then possible that we could have a very high level of transparency. You'd be able to see more than just status updates because essentially you'd be viewing their bank account (BTC address) and the outflows from that account.

Imagine if there were a simple banking app that would tie into the crowd funding platform, so that the business could grant view-only access to their bank account. All investors could log in and see exactly where the cash is being spent from that account. Currently I don't think that exists for fiat banking, but would probably be relatively easy to create for crytpo.

I see what you mean now, and that's actually a pretty good idea to be honest. A lot better than some of the things being made off of kickstarter and it would have a lot more confidence given to the developers.
This would be interesting to see if it was also applied to loan markets, since it would allow for a little bit more tracking of where everything is going. It wouldn't be perfect, especially since there are a lot of fiat components to loans, but it might be useful for loans that exist explicitly within the blockchain.

[btcbug]

The thing is, though, the type of accountability we have right now is essentially the same for any other kind of startup or investment using fiat. At best developers are going to have status updates and other kinds of information, but there is no real look at the internals.
Anyone willing to open their books is relatively trustworthy, as long as they do it often and have proof of spending going somewhere.

Well my point was that by funding a company with Crypto rather than fiat, it is then possible that we could have a very high level of transparency. You'd be able to see more than just status updates because essentially you'd be viewing their bank account (BTC address) and the outflows from that account.

Imagine if there were a simple banking app that would tie into the crowd funding platform, so that the business could grant view-only access to their bank account. All investors could log in and see exactly where the cash is being spent from that account. Currently I don't think that exists for fiat banking, but would probably be relatively easy to create for crytpo.

I see what you mean now, and that's actually a pretty good idea to be honest. A lot better than some of the things being made off of kickstarter and it would have a lot more confidence given to the developers.
This would be interesting to see if it was also applied to loan markets, since it would allow for a little bit more tracking of where everything is going. It wouldn't be perfect, especially since there are a lot of fiat components to loans, but it might be useful for loans that exist explicitly within the blockchain.

For loans it would require that the borrower account be funded with BTC and that every transaction they make would need to be with a business that also accepted BTC. Reason being of course that by using the transparency layer, the transactions between BTC addresses would then be tied to the names of the businesses or individuals.

Right now this really would be almost useless because few people even use BTC, but like with the value of Crypto in general, once it has network effect it would be amazing.

[Iranus]

A good thing about Bitcoin isn't privacy but variation of privacy, so you have a point.  If I verify my identity with someone and then, from that verified service, sign a message with a Bitcoin address, I could prove exactly what other companies I deal with, what transactions I do and all of those companies can be public entities because they associate themselves with the pseudonyms which are already publicly available on the blockchain.

It's a similar reason to why some people are interested in the concept of blockchain-based charities - accountability.

[btcbug]

A good thing about Bitcoin isn't privacy but variation of privacy, so you have a point.  If I verify my identity with someone and then, from that verified service, sign a message with a Bitcoin address, I could prove exactly what other companies I deal with, what transactions I do and all of those companies can be public entities because they associate themselves with the pseudonyms which are already publicly available on the blockchain.

It's a similar reason to why some people are interested in the concept of blockchain-based charities - accountability.

Thanks for the link!

[wxa7115]

Not going to happen, while this seems like a good idea the truth is this kind of control is one of the reasons bitcoin was created on the first place so any project that try to do that will not be very well received, for example if a bitcoin casino tried to do something like that, that casino will go bankrupt in just a few months.

[Qartada]

Not going to happen, while this seems like a good idea the truth is this kind of control is one of the reasons bitcoin was created on the first place so any project that try to do that will not be very well received, for example if a bitcoin casino tried to do something like that, that casino will go bankrupt in just a few months.

That's not true at all.  Bitcoin is available publicly on the blockchain - bank transactions are not publicly available in the same way.

It also leaves the possibility of associating the transactions with the charity without even associating them with a person - this is a whole new level of flexibility and intelligence for a company or charity.  It removes the need to trust an individual - hence why Bitcoin is regarded as a trustless system.

[NUFCrichard]

I like the idea of wages being paid in Bitcoin.  That would improve the transparency of wage structures in companies.
People could also see if others are saving, or if they are broke. 

It would be a very different society if that happened, but I personally think it would be a good thing for the greater good.

You could always hide you wealth in different wallets, but the wages part would be good to know and see. Transparency isn't to be feared.

[Zicadis]

I was just thinking about the problems of transparency and accountability in crowd funding and or p2p lending. Not sure if this has been discussed before.

If an individual chooses to support a crowd funding campaign (equity based or pledge) or they want to invest using p2p lending to earn interest (debt based), the investor can conduct their prior due diligence and later see the end result, but there is still the big problem of seeing where/how their money is being spent between point A and B.

there is actually a cryptocurrency(altcoin) that is built on enforcing transparency and accountability through what its calling an innovative cryptographic Audit technology. Which will enforce transparency through proof of reserves protocols and Auditable exchange accounts and i honestly think this could work as it also aims at protecting investors in the process
Read more about >>TaaS<< here

[Hydrogen]

Its very difficult to authenticate identities over the internet and keep track of transactions.

There are websites that sell decent fake ID's which aren't hard to find. I would have to think it would be near to impossible to authenticate without meeting with people to confirm their identity.

[Kakmakr]

That level of authenticity will require more data and it will bloat the Blockchain, causing even more problems. Why not use some off-chain service to manage that? You could also change the way money is being transferred between the services or people that are being paid.

Assign Bitcoin addresses to each role player in this project and then send this information out to the public. These people can use mixer services to transfer their payment to their own addresses to protect their financial privacy. This way, you see how much money goes towards what entity in the project. ^smile^