I just skipped through the website, the OP and the coindesk article
http://www.coindesk.com/swarm-take-bitcoin-crowdfunding-new-heights/. As far as I got it it is supposed be a crowd based VC company for "Bitcoin business ideas" (of chain or on chain businesses or both?). They take the money from the investors in swarmcoin and invest it in those businesses.
Correct?
Generally correct, but requiring clarification on two points.
(1) One of the primary values of the Swarm coin is early access to Swarm events and participation in preferred presales of coins launched via the Swarm network.
(2) What we can and can't do will largely depend on the legal jurisdiction. This is a bit sticky since there are a lot of different regulations concerning these things, so we can't make blanket promises regarding our ability to do things as an "investment." For example, a lot of the projects we are looking at now are DAOs that run on top of a non-profit, which is not a "business" in the normal sense of that word.
1) How does the crowd assesment process work? Does the Swarm team make a preselection and all Swarmcoin holders (proportional to their stake size?) then vote on which business to fund?
This is a feature we are planning to unveil at Coinsummit in London in a couple weeks.
3) Why give money to swarm if I can invest it into Andreessen/Horowitz?
Early access to a crypto-YCombinator vs. an established VC fund? Not sure, but generally early access to a promising new model in preferable to the old guard. Also VC funds have a substantial lock period whereas everything Swarm related is extraordinarily liquid (relatively speaking).
4) If a business is funded, do Swarmcoin holders only get a standard fee that is charged or do Swarmcoin holders get a stake in the funded business like an investor in a VC fund would get if a VC company funds a business?
This is also something we are planning to unveil at Coinsummit. The most compelling model looks a lot like YCombinator but more fluid and flexible.
4) I strongly assume the latte is the case. If so: How can I be SURE that all the equity in the company that Swarm gets for their "VC money" they give to the business goes ALL to the Swarm holders? Is there a trustless process of verifying that the Swarm team didn't make a deal with the funded business so they get an extra cut?
I strongly doubt that there is a completely trustless way of verifying this, but if you can design something like this I'm very open. Given that we are very excited by and focused on Blockchain businesses, it is very possible to have a fully auditable chain of transactions.
5) What about the legal issues addressed in the coin desk article? Contingency plan?
I strongly suspect we will be forced to play the jurisdictional thing and register in multiple countries and lock out certain countries from certain types of offers. We were discussing this last night and even in event of a total lockout from the SEC, we could still offer crypto-fundraising for non-profits in the US with voting rights attached to those tokens (not great as an investment, but still a business model as valid as Kickstarter). That's to say that there are a lot of options and we are exploring all of them.
6) How far is the platform away form (full) functionality (in weeks/month not in %
)?
3 months. There are a lot of auxiliary features we want to add (like coin-powered voting), but we would plan to add most if not all of them via externally managed products financed by coins. That's why we are actively taking solicitations now. We are also planning to announce the next couple coins that will be swarmed at CoinSummit.
