Raising capital for mining

[grondilu]

Would you like to buy a brand new graphic card for mining ?  Or some other ultra-expensive hardware ?  But you don't have enough money ?

With my new stock exchange plateform, you could do so quite easily.

You just have to walk the following steps :

* Write an IPO document describing what you intend to do, pick a name for your company and chose a number of shares for the capital you want to raise.
* Send me this document (possibly GnuPG signed), along with a bitcoin address that you own.
* Sell your shares pretty much wherever you want :  #bitcoin-otc, marketplace bitcoin forum, biddingpond,...

Personnaly I don't mine, for I don't have enough processing power, nor bandwidth.  But I'd gladly put a few bitcoins in a mining company.

[Anonymous]

I'll have to keep this in mind .

I was wondering just today about how to do a bitcoin ipo for my company.

Now i know. 

[Vinnie]

Such a company will need to communicate accurate and timely financial data to its shareholders. I am halfway done with my masters in accounting and could provide accounting services such as adjusting and closing entries and preparation of financial statements. My resume is available on request! I'm willing to work for a modest amount of bitcoins.

[chaord]

I am not a lawyer, but I am actively engaging lawyers to assist me with some bitcoin related ventures.  Even though most of us here do not agree with the current laws that prevail in the world, the fact of the matter is that the people in costumes/robes, emplying people with guns, are going to hold you accountable for their laws, however messed up they are.

Securities law is particularly tricky especially when it comes to raising capital for a company.  If you are located in the US, I would encourage you to take an extra look at Regulation D.  The rule of thumb is that "if you ever wonder whether what you have started selling to the public/investors is a security or not, it's already too late."

Anyway, I'm all for freely exchangeable shares of bitcoin companies (grondilu's service looks awesome!).  I just figured I would give a quick word of caution, because I would hate to see any of us well intentioned bitcoiners be fined/caged for breaking a "law" that we didn't even know existed.  It is unfortunate that we even have to worry about this stuff, but at this point I think it's important for all of us to start dotting our i's and crossing our t's.  If bitcoin is even half as successful as what we all imagine, we are likely going to be in for a bumpy road.

Frankly, the day that a big law firm steps up and is willing to be the go-to general counsel for bitcoin-related ventures (and get paid in BTC) will be a happy day for bitcoin as a whole.  I look forward to when that happens.

[ColdHardMetal]

I am not a lawyer, but I am actively engaging lawyers to assist me with some bitcoin related ventures.  Even though most of us here do not agree with the current laws that prevail in the world, the fact of the matter is that the people in costumes/robes, emplying people with guns, are going to hold you accountable for their laws, however messed up they are.

Securities law is particularly tricky especially when it comes to raising capital for a company.  If you are located in the US, I would encourage you to take an extra look at Regulation D.  The rule of thumb is that "if you ever wonder whether what you have started selling to the public/investors is a security or not, it's already too late."

Anyway, I'm all for freely exchangeable shares of bitcoin companies (grondilu's service looks awesome!).  I just figured I would give a quick word of caution, because I would hate to see any of us well intentioned bitcoiners be fined/caged for breaking a "law" that we didn't even know existed.  It is unfortunate that we even have to worry about this stuff, but at this point I think it's important for all of us to start dotting our i's and crossing our t's.  If bitcoin is even half as successful as what we all imagine, we are likely going to be in for a bumpy road.

Frankly, the day that a big law firm steps up and is willing to be the go-to general counsel for bitcoin-related ventures (and get paid in BTC) will be a happy day for bitcoin as a whole.  I look forward to when that happens.

Huge +1 to the bolded. I worked for a securities commission in Canada for awhile and they take this stuff super serious.

[Anonymous]

I have recently started this very thing.

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2884.msg39649;topicseen#msg39649

I welcome people to contribute on irc at #bitcoind as we build out the project. This is not a company it is an investment club of individuals.

Grondilu I can host the share market for you if would like to contribute.

[grondilu]

Grondilu I can host the share market for you if would like to contribute.

Ok, thanks.  The code is on http://github.com/grondilu/bitcoin-bash-tools.

Clients will also have to download bc_key.c, a C program to export bitcoin private keys from the wallet into a PEM openssl format.
It's on http://github.com/grondilu/bc_key

Basically the plateform requires the following files :

* base58.sh : a set of bash functions to manipulate bitcoin address (pretty much a translation of base58.c in Satoshi's code).  Normally nobody needs to use that directly.  It is just used by other files.
* bc-sign.sh : a shell script that uses bc_key to sign any document using a bitcoin address  (only clients need that, not the server)
* brokerage.cgi :  the main CGI script, which allow a client to transfer some amount of some asset from a bitcoin address to an other
* brokerage.csv :  the full transaction list (which can easily be aggregated in a spreadsheet to determin current balances)
* brokerage.tar :  an archive which contains public bitcoin keys, signatures for each transaction, and documents describing assets