The Open Transactions server thread fellowtraveler mentioned is at
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53329.0I know this current thread I am posting to is old, but I deliberately went searching for threads about distributed stock exchanges to make sure that what seems to have turned out to be a major problem for various steps in such directions has been mentioned.
I see that it did receive one small mention toward the end of the thread, but hopefully it can bear more thought.
The problem is that even with the implementation of merged mining to make adding more blockchains to one's mix when mining relatively cheap, the reactions encountered by various chains have taught us that even with merged mining the miners demand an impractical percentage of the entire market cap of the issued securities / coins / tokens. In short, they want to own them all, one hundred percent of all issued assets! That is totally prohibitive and makes the entire concept of using blockchains for issues belonging to anyone other than miners pretty much ruled out from the get-go.
Then too, even beyond demanding 100% of the total worth of any blockchains they touch, miners also have shown a willingness, even a desire, to conspire to attack blockchains or, failing directly contributing themselves to the attack, at least a desire to have others perform such attacks so they can gleefully sit back and laugh. And let us be clear here, this is not how they treat chains that fail to hand over to them 100% of the chain's assets, oh no, this is how they treat even chains that do hand over 100% of their assets to the miners!
At least two corps (General Mining Corp and General Retirement Corp) issued what amounted to "preferred shares" in blockchain form, but, along with several other assets that once upon a time were implemented using blockchains, they have been forced to scrap the blockchain approach for now in favour of using Open Transactions.
Coins on a blockchain amount in practice pretty much to some form of share of the total economy of that asset. So far DeVCoin is the only blockchain predicated upon not giving 100% of its assets to miners that is still running in blockchain form instead of having switched over to using Open Transactions.
Really think about this. It is comically imbecilic, it would sound like fiction, so ridiculous as not to be believable, to anyone not familiar with the history of blockchain based assets that even when 100% of the assets were to be seized by the miners at the very moment and by the very method of their issuance, miners prefer to destroy all possible value of such assets. I am not sure if that is more worthy of Kafka or Monty Python or some Dadaist or what.
SInce the initial move of several assets that had been implemented as blockchains over to Open Transactions format and to trading on the
Digitalis Open Transactions server, new assets have basically given up on the blockchain concept for now and have been starting out from inception on the Open Transactions server.
-MarkM-
