Investors for bitcoin stock market and credit rating agrency, dev started!

[Nefario]

Good morning everyone.

This is a follow on from this thread, I think it deserves it's own topic.
Credit rating agency
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3370.msg54804#msg54804
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3370.0

First I would like to thank you all for your interest in this project, I think it's a great idea, and so do many of you, great enough for us all to put our money into it.

However we have encountered a problem, that the person who put themselves up as the developer (daveout) is not being responsive at all, and it is safe to assume that he will not be building this for us at any price. This is a disappointment, for me and I am sure for some of you. After having looked at some of Dave's code it is clear that he would be quite capable in doing this, and was therefor our number one choice(not to mention his reputation as the builder of bitcoin-central).

This chain of events has forced us to change plan, I have talked to my management team and they are behind me on this.

We will still build the credit rating agency application, but it will take longer than I had originally expected. I am now putting the development time at around 4 months.

This is quite a long time in the bitcoin world, and a lot can happen in such a time.

So I am very pleased to announce that we are launching the development of the Bticoin Stock Market immediately, with the goal of opening for business in 2 months, and testing(that is you can play around with it) for everyone in 1 month!

I have been working for a time on this tool, and we will be using my code and efforts as a starting point. This, and due to the nature of the application is why development will be so quick. The stock market platform (from here on called "the market") steals a number of ideas from OpenTransactions. We will be developing both projects side by side, and where possible share code to reduce the workload, cost and development time.

Features

• Dividend payments, allows issuer of shares to make dividend payments to share owners
• Share voting, allows motions to be put forward(by owners and issuers), and voted on by share owners
• Based on Ricardian contracts allowing for very flexible shares and terms
• Public/Private key based order and verification system, this is a no password system
• Easy to use console client for windows, or any unix platform
• Tripple Entry Accounting and digitally signed receipts for each and every transaction for a cryptographically verifiable audit trail
• Digitally signed everything, making it impossible for orders, receipts,withdrawals to be faked by either a single client or the server itself
• Open Source client and publicly available trading API allowing users/traders/developers to build their own tools or customize what is already available
• Availability over i2p and Tor!

And more.

It has become clear that the bitcoin economy is in need of a stock market, not so that users can play around at buying and selling shares (which they can) but to allow investors to pool their resources and build something that a single person cannot. It is to allow the market to allocate limited resources and capital in as efficient manner as possible.

We have already seen the development of a bitcoin based company(ours being the second one), with the launching of the market, it will significantly ease in the creating of new bitcoin companies(causing an explosion of them), allowing great ideas to get funding, and successful ones to reward their investors. This will launch the bitcoin economies growth into overdrive.

And the first company to trade shares on this system will be ours!

Our management team is as follows:
CEO:nefario (ME HAHA)
Treasurer:theymos
First Secretary:ColdHardMetal
Second Secretary:BitCoinPurse

We will have two primary costs, hosting and development, with the larger(and most unpredictable cost) being development.

More details on costs, company bylaws etc. as events change.
We will be having a QA session on IRC in the near future so look out for this.
Want to invest? get in contact with ColdHardMetal ASAP, tell him how much.

For those who have already invested(that is sent payment)pm me to let me know how you want to proceed, if you want your investment back that's no problem.

Notice, this project and it's development has already begun, call for Ruby devs!

We need 2-3 ruby developers to get in on this project(ruby, not rails, but rails experience is OK). This will be BTC paid work! Or if you prefer you can get equity.

More experience is better, but if your fresh that's OK too, this is your chance to get some experience and make a place for yourself in bitcoin History(with a capital H). Whats important is that you work hard and are willing to learn.

See here for more
Those interested PM me ASAP

EDIT
Just to make clear, these 2 projects both belong to the one company(I am giving my stock market app to the company in return for equity), when you invest it is invested in the company. Shareholders own the company.

EDIT2

Developers found.

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[1713979112]

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[1713979112]

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[1713979112]

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[BitCoinPurse]

Yes, this will be great milestone in the History of BitCoin!

[moneta]

This is very good news.
I think a stock market is something that is very much needed to bootstrap the bitcoin economy.

One more question: how much capital are you planning to raise and how much equity is being given to managers and developers? Or, to put it another way, how big a share is 1 BTC buying?

Want to invest? get in contact with ColdHardMetal ASAP, tell him how much.

PM sent.

[Nefario]

This is very good news.
I think a stock market is something that is very much needed to bootstrap the bitcoin economy.

One more question: how much capital are you planning to raise and how much equity is being given to managers and developers? Or, to put it another way, how big a share is 1 BTC buying?

Want to invest? get in contact with ColdHardMetal ASAP, tell him how much.

PM sent.

Were looking for 2500 capital, investors will be taken on a first come first server basis. Ive already put in 500. how much equity management will get will be decided by the shareholders in the first geneeral meeting. developers currently only looking for btc payment not equity so theyre not getting any yet.

So long story short, your investment is 1 share per btc invested, and then more shares will be issued as decided by first sharreholders in the first general meeting.

If you want to invest contact ColdHardMetal.

[ColdHardMetal]

Thank you all for your response. We should have enough investment interest at this point to be able to move forward without requiring additional investors at this time.

[genjix]

Doesn't a stock system require truthful reporting of a company's profits? How would such system work based on trust?

Or if I sell shares in a company then decide to ignore what the shareholders demand?

[BCEmporium]

Opposing! Or say, 50% opposing!

One idea seams OK, the stock market.
The other gives me the creeps! Credit ratings means credit on Bitcoins, taken credit is nothing but the biggest cancer of the regular economics, that would contaminate bitcoin for good!

Bitcoin, like gold, dues part of its value on the simple fact that can't be produced at will. If you start to make credits, you'll need to print more money than the one already existing; promissories, the "birth" of "Bitnotes". Unlike bitcoins, bitnotes could then be produced at will with any value whatsoever printed on it. A total slippery-slope and basically the importation of the current "huge Ponzi scheme economics" we live on "real market" today (up to break sooner or later) to the BTC world!

[grondilu]

Bitcoin, like gold, dues part of its value on the simple fact that can't be produced at will. If you start to make credits, you'll need to print more money than the one already existing; promissories, the "birth" of "Bitnotes". Unlike bitcoins, bitnotes could then be produced at will with any value whatsoever printed on it. A total slippery-slope and basically the importation of the current "huge Ponzi scheme economics" we live on "real market" today (up to break sooner or later) to the BTC world!

I'm not a huge fan of credit either, and yet I don't see any reason why it should be prohibited.  Moreover, there is no chance a credit based money can be confused with bitcoin.

You don't like credit?  Fine, just don't buy nor sell any of it.

[BioMike]

I wonder if it would be possible to put the "credit" in an other chain. One that doesn't allow any other miners then the people handing them out (and doing the whole validation of transactions), but with the normal cap that the genesis chain has and allowing people to check the chain.

[Nefario]

BCEmporium, I've read some of your comments on the mtgox/barron thread, you certainly are prone to fly off the handle. But I believe you have missunderstood.

Credit rating agency was the working title of our original project, simply because we had not thought of another more appropriate one. Had you actually read the related thread you would understand that the project had nothing to do with any form of credit whatsoever.

That is was a means to rate the risk of a user ripping off another in a trade. It's not a purely reputational system as it takes into account a number of things. Credit rating sgency would be the closest thing in the non bitcoin world to resemble this. Not because it gives credit, but because it rates a persons risk of ripping off the lender(ripping off,not paying back).

Please do take the time to learn about the basic details of something before you launch a crusade against it.

[BCEmporium]

«you certainly are prone to fly off the handle.»

Guess you're wrong here! I normally don't.  

Anyway, OK then. Nice effort then. Thus you've already a name for what you're doing, it's Web of Trust (WOT), Credit ratings deals more with liquidity and assets, who may pay back, who doesn't... in part sort of what you intend to do, on most however not.

[Anonymous]

«you certainly are prone to fly off the handle.»

Guess you're wrong here! I normally don't.  

Anyway, OK then. Nice effort then. Thus you've already a name for what you're doing, it's Web of Trust (WOT), Credit ratings deals more with liquidity and assets, who may pay back, who doesn't... in part sort of what you intend to do, on most however not.

Your reputation is your credit in the bitcoin world.

[grondilu]

Your reputation is your credit in the bitcoin world.

As it should be in any commercial relationship.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=credit

[S3052]

Just one question for clarification:

Is this stockmarket for investing bitcoins into bitcoin companies or/ and also for buying existing non- bitcoin related companies?

[Nefario]

Just one question for clarification:

Is this stockmarket for investing bitcoins into bitcoin companies or/ and also for buying existing non- bitcoin related companies?

For investing bitcoin into bitcoin companies. Although our platform would be really, really flexible so somene could set up meta-trading on it if they wanted.

[Complexes]

When you launch it, it would probably need some companies to start. So how about you run a contest, where entry teams are given a start investment, and then must compete for the highest share price after a certain period of time. I guess that would be enough to start things flowing.

Although, I am extremely impressed by this idea, and I think it will be of much importance to the future of bitcoin. Onto another question, have you though about scammers. I fear people will make companies, take in all the investments and then run of with the bitcoins. If this become regular, it could scare people away from investing and stop new businesses from forming because people are not willing to invest because they believe it to be a scam.

[Nefario]

With regards to scammers, you can be sure that when we open the market doors we will have rules in place, and that these rules will change over time. These would be rules to meet to get listed, and operating rules to stay listed. Things like having a ceo, treasurer, and a secretary; like publicising it's accounts quarterly, and even having audits annually or bi-annually by an external auditor.

Thinking of mtgox and what has recently happened we would take action if a company that is listing is acting fraudulently, exactly what action we would take at this moment I'm unsure, that is something we will have worked out closer to launch.

But as always, it is up to the buyer to investigate that company theywish to invest in, and decide what their risk is. Remember enron fooled a lot of people.

[kiba]

Although, I am extremely impressed by this idea, and I think it will be of much importance to the future of bitcoin. Onto another question, have you though about scammers. I fear people will make companies, take in all the investments and then run of with the bitcoins. If this become regular, it could scare people away from investing and stop new businesses from forming because people are not willing to invest because they believe it to be a scam.

This is why you only invest in companies whom founders you can trust based on reputation.

[So_Cynical]

First post so take it easy on me, i only found out about bitcoin's about 8 hours ago while surfing quirky financial/stock market blogs...also please excuse my poor grammar and punctuation as i never got to finish high school due to circumstances beyond my control. Over the last 4 years i have been a reasonably active investor on the Australian stock exchange and while reading over this forum and many other bitcoin related sites today, i came to the conclusion that the bitcoin economy really is in need of a stock market and some other financial instruments....and then i found this thread.

While i know diddly squat about programming and writing code, i do know a little about how stock markets work and would like to suggest that you guys have a look at www.asx.com.au for a great example of how a brilliant market site looks and works, also some questions...will the market list only common stock or will other types of stocks all be allow to list, stocks like preference shares and convertible notes? will a clearing house be established? how will new company's list, will there be rules for the issuing of prospectuses? will there be a regulatory body with powers to keep company managements open and honest...hold them accountable, protect the rights of shareholders?

I suppose its all a work in progress and will improve over time.

[grondilu]

will a clearing house be established? how will new company's list, will there be rules for the issuing of prospectuses? will there be a regulatory body with powers to keep company managements open and honest...hold them accountable, protect the rights of shareholders?

As I see it, there will be nothing like this whatsoever.  It will be much more "wild", for everything will be reputation based.