Where are the coins for Winkelvoss Trust & 2nd Market Bitcoin Investment Fund?

[User705]

Recent history is littered with worthless derivatives and financial shenanigans.  Bitcoin promises a solution but ...  Winklevoss trust and Second Market Bitcoin Investment Fund promise safety and security but where are the coins?  None of their paperwork seem to show it.  If anyone has a public address for their coins please post it.  Otherwise these "Trusts" are nothing more then empty paper.

[wachtwoord]

Recent history is littered with worthless derivatives and financial shenanigans.  Bitcoin promises a solution but ...  Winklevoss trust and Second Market Bitcoin Investment Fund promise safety and security but where are the coins?  None of their paperwork seem to show it.  If anyone has a public address for their coins please post it.  Otherwise these "Trusts" are nothing more then empty paper.

you are right. investing in the trust is not holding btc.

it is like investing in a gold etf, you dont hold gold...

It's not like it, it's the exact same thing. That is what makes this so great. (it's unlikely I'll ever hold any ETF myself)

[theonewhowaskazu]

Recent history is littered with worthless derivatives and financial shenanigans.  Bitcoin promises a solution but ...  Winklevoss trust and Second Market Bitcoin Investment Fund promise safety and security but where are the coins?  None of their paperwork seem to show it.  If anyone has a public address for their coins please post it.  Otherwise these "Trusts" are nothing more then empty paper.

Its likely not in a single address.

Its got to be backed, its an ETF, rather than an ETN.

[bobdude17]

Both the SecondMarket Trust and the ETF(will be) are audited. By 3rd parties.

These are non-concerns.

[User705]

It's hard to verify gold holdings because of security concerns and metal authenticity testing.  Bitcoin holdings are easy to verify.  Sign a message from the address.  Wouldn't surprise me if these "Trusts" throw out some BS "security" "auditing" excuse for not revealing the actual address.  I read the winkelvoss prospectus.  No address in there that I could find.  http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579346/000119312513393903/d562329ds1a.htm

[User705]

Both the SecondMarket Trust and the ETF(will be) are audited. By 3rd parties.

These are non-concerns.

Why would you need to PAY an auditor to verify coins in a bitcoin address? 

[windjc]

Both the SecondMarket Trust and the ETF(will be) are audited. By 3rd parties.

These are non-concerns.

Everytime you post I expect it to end with "Biiiaaatch."

[calian]

Both the SecondMarket Trust and the ETF(will be) are audited. By 3rd parties.

These are non-concerns.

Remember the last time third party auditors without the necessary level of paranoia for crypto did their thing?

It appears that someone who performs audits on our system and had read-only access to our database had their computer compromised. This allowed for someone to pull our database. The site was not compromised with a SQL injection as many are reporting, so in effect the site was not hacked.

https://support.mtgox.com/entries/20208066-huge-bitcoin-sell-off-due-to-a-compromised-account-rollback

from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=19908.0

[theonewhowaskazu]

Both the SecondMarket Trust and the ETF(will be) are audited. By 3rd parties.

These are non-concerns.

Why would you need to PAY an auditor to verify coins in a bitcoin address?  

Because FINRA says you do.

[windjc]

Both the SecondMarket Trust and the ETF(will be) are audited. By 3rd parties.

These are non-concerns.

Remember the last time third party auditors without the necessary level of paranoia for crypto did their thing?

It appears that someone who performs audits on our system and had read-only access to our database had their computer compromised. This allowed for someone to pull our database. The site was not compromised with a SQL injection as many are reporting, so in effect the site was not hacked.

https://support.mtgox.com/entries/20208066-huge-bitcoin-sell-off-due-to-a-compromised-account-rollback

from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=19908.0

Thats not the same kind of audit. Lol. We are talking about the PriceWaterhouseCooper kind of audit.

[bobdude17]

Both the SecondMarket Trust and the ETF(will be) are audited. By 3rd parties.

These are non-concerns.

Why would you need to PAY an auditor to verify coins in a bitcoin address?  

Are you serious? Why would you PAY an auditor to verify an SEC approved ETF that will share the same the same space as SPDR? I don't even know where to begin with that...
Like they would hold all the coins in one publicly viewable address?!

Anyway,
The Bitcoin Investment Trust is audited by Ersnt & Young.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_&_Young
Do at least some research.

[User705]

I think you are somewhat slow.  Do you think winkelvoss trust or bitcoin investment fund don't pay their auditors?  You think Ernst and Young do it for free.  Oh and btw all addresses are publicly viewable.  That's the point of bitcoin.

[bobdude17]

I think you are somewhat slow.  Do you think winkelvoss trust or bitcoin investment fund don't pay their auditors?  You think Ernst and Young do it for free.

Which means what? They are going to pay off E&Y?

You make me laugh.

[User705]

Yeah you are right Ernst and Young are a good firm and would never ...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/18/us-lehmanbros-investors-idUSBRE99H12W20131018

[bobdude17]

Obviously not referring to morality, as that doesn't matter in the financial world.

They don't have enough money to bribe E&Y, who have over 175,000 employees.
And if they were caught they would have so much to lose and so little to gain. What would be the endgame?
Barry Silbert stands to make so much more money by running the Trust honestly.

Why the fuck would you run around trying to bribe E&Y with your pocket change, to have them tell the world that you have the coins when you really don't, when you are trying to gain bitcoin acceptance in legitimate markets?
E&Y wouldn't risk their reputation for such child's play, SecondMarket would never risk theirs, as they have so much more possible money to make keeping it on the up & up. Bitcoin is in the limelight right now, they are trying to make it as professional as possible.

[Peter Todd]

Recent history is littered with worthless derivatives and financial shenanigans.  Bitcoin promises a solution but ...  Winklevoss trust and Second Market Bitcoin Investment Fund promise safety and security but where are the coins?  None of their paperwork seem to show it.  If anyone has a public address for their coins please post it.  Otherwise these "Trusts" are nothing more then empty paper.

FWIW There's a number of cryptographic techniques such as merkle sum trees and pay-to-contract that you can use with crypto-currencies to make it easy for anyone holding Bitcoin's on behalf of someone else to prove to their owners that the account balances are 100% backed by actual Bitcoins.

If the Winklevoss fund or any similar venture wants to use these technologies I'd be happy to discuss the matter further with them. This kind of proof could be a strong competitive advantage over competitors that don't have it; customers should demand cryptographic proof that each and every balance is backed 100% by actual Bitcoins.

[User705]

Either bitcoin stays small and it doesn't much matter if Ernst and Young audits anything or bitcoin is huge then there certainly will be enough money to "bribe" Ernst and Young.  Bribes in the current market world are very subtle.  Read the Lehman stuff and all the trusts offering paperwork.  They are responsible for nothing.  They can make all kinds of repo, and other purchase agreements and then oops we never got the bitcoins or oops we lost the private key, oops some other country outlawed bitcoins, oops the coins were tainted and we have to turn them over to cops.  Insiders will know first and sell shares first.

[bobdude17]

Either bitcoin stays small and it doesn't much matter if Ernst and Young audits anything or bitcoin is huge then there certainly will be enough money to "bribe" Ernst and Young.  Bribes in the current market world are very subtle.  Read the Lehman stuff and all the trusts offering paperwork.  They are responsible for nothing.  They can make all kinds of repo, and other purchase agreements and then oops we never got the bitcoins or oops we lost the private key, oops some other country outlawed bitcoins, oops the coins were tainted and we have to turn them over to cops.  Insiders will know first and sell shares first.

And if it gets big they will be multi billionaires. Why risk going to prison when they would insanely rich legally? Why risk their reputation? Again, the incentives just aren't there. They have much more incentive to play above the table, and so does E&Y.

Look, I understand that is much safer to just own your coins, fucking obviously.

But saying that the proposed ETF and and the SecondMarket Trust are frauds because they didn't post their address so you could check it on blockchain.info is absolutely ludicrous.
These investment vehicles are in a different class. People want a regulated trust they can throw their hedge funds and IRAs at and have somebody for their lawyers to sue if something goes wrong with that trust.

[theonewhowaskazu]

If Bitcoin got really big, chances are they'd just tell people what their ETF holdings are. After all, people always can just ask for their Bitcoins (there is a minimum amount which is fairly large, I forget the exact requirement) from the fund. If somebody came up to you and said "either give me my BTC & I won't pay you my 5% yearly, or I'll continue to pay you your 5% yearly and you can keep my BTC but you have to tell me where that BTC is" obviously they'd just tell people where the BTC is.

[User705]

How would they be multi billionaires if they sold the coins in the trust?  The buyers would be rich how does that make them rich?  Also I never claimed they are frauds but there are many different frauds.  They may have gotten the investment first then went to buy coins.  Also how do you know the coins aren't hypothecated to many other trusts?  You can have plenty of trusts and show the same coins to many different auditors.  Again why wouldn't the trusts show their coins?