What he's doing is almost certainly illegal.
He is selling an investment instrument without complying with any of the regulations. See this article:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2045083/sec-charges-texas-man-with-running-bitcoin-ponzi-scheme.htmlEven if you disagree with that assessment he's proposing at minimum to sell a virtual currency directly to consumers without doing any know your customer regulation compliance. See:
http://www.paritynews.com/2013/05/26/libertyreservecom-shuttered-founder-arrested-in-spain/He claims to be based within the US yet follows none of the applicable laws. Even if he doesn't run with the money and actually releases some source code he's going to get a nasty visit from the law eventually.
If he's really released his true identity, I think he's screwed. He still hasn't proved he is who he says he is. Maybe he could take a picture holding a sign saying "Mastercoin is totally not a scam guys"?
Definitely stay away from this one and don't give him any money. Since even if he succeeded at his project he'd be violating the law I think it's far more likely he'll run with the money instead.
I believe all applicable laws deal with transfers into and out of U.S. Dollars, which I am not doing.
Also, my LinkedIn profile links to the MasterCoin spec, and I spoke about it on video at the bitcoin conference, so I really doubt anybody is seriously questioning my identity.
You posted a video of someone at a conference. You also posted a LinkedIn profile. That doesn't prove that your forum identity is in any way linked to that real identity.
As far as the applicability of the laws, the first link I posted the guy collected only Bitcoin just as in your proposal.
The creator of Liberty Reserve got taken down by the US govt and you will too. Decentralization and open source are the only thing keeping Bitcoin from being shutdown. Since your project has neither it will be shut down if it ever ends up existing in the first place.
(PS: Again, you can't profit from maintaining an artificial peg so the economics of your system make it a failure before it's even begun. Taking people's Bitcoins and promising them Mastercoin is certainly just as illegal as what the guy from Texas did in the first link. So whether you deliver or not you're still violating multiple US laws.)