The fact that he has paid out a ton of BTC to settle balances leads me to believe it's not a scam.
I don't think it's a scam either. But as is known in the traditional world and as we've seen in Bitcoin, scammers also pay out some amount.
I believe he's either incompetent
I haven't spoken much publicly but for a long time I've been very critical of GLBSE, both with the concept of having it as a centralized service and with how specifically it was run by Nefario. Which is why I'm involved in the colored coins project (plug: I've completed so far 2 chapters on
a paper about the subject.)
and it really is taking him this long to code it all, or he's under pressure from an outside entity to delay things.
I'm sure code has nothing to do with it, if his intentions are basically good it's being held up on the legal front.
After he's been given ample time (3 months? 6 months?)
Are people really willing to wait that long? This isn't rhetorical, if more people agree with your proposal I'd like to hear it. (A lawsuit will also take an undetermined amount of time in the months or years)
All the asset issuers should file a class action lawsuit against Nefario and we'd wait until that was completed
...
Think about what a real company would do that had real shares in the wild if say, the NYSE shutdown and refused to give up the info...
A real company would need upwards of $10M of valuation and a battery of lawyers before making an IPO. If something bad happened they'd have the resources and infrastructure to handle it (and I doubt the solution will look anything like collecting shareholder data and paying them directly). GLBSE was supposed to be a more lightweight platform and we all signed up for something which allows more entrepreneurship but is devoid of some of the comfort of the traditional system.
The first step would be to find a lawyer who can look at you with a straight face when explaining the case, and even after that's done I for one can't afford the $$$ (possibly more than the market cap of PureMining) to pay lawyers to work on it. If a class action were to happen I would however support it.
before giving up and screwing everyone over that doesn't have a bitcointalk account.
PureMining has two manifestations - this forum thread and
http://bitcoinpuremining.com/. Both solicit claims. Someone who bought PureMining bonds without knowing about either of these has quite frankly screwed himself by not having a clue what he's investing in. Likewise if he didn't care enough about his holdings to bother to check these places when the GLBSE problems unfolded.
Sure, you can argue that this is all happening very quickly (in traditional terms) and someone may not be in the loop of what's happening. In a perfect world someone could "buy and forget" and be sure that he would need no further action to take what is his. But this is not a perfect world, you have to draw the line somewhere - I don't like it and I don't think it's right, but it's the least wrong thing we can do with the hand we were dealt.
Keep in mind that unclaimed bonds will be donated one way or another - while it is not ideal to "volunteer" someone to donating, most people could use being a bit more charitable anyway, so this is not a total loss.
I believe this approach is supported by the Halakha. If someone loses something and has given up the search and the hope of finding it, it is considered "Hefker" (abandoned) and can be kept by its finder. This appears to describe people who haven't filed claims for their bonds.
You really think they'd fall back to a first come, first served claim system?
I'm not doing a first come, first served claim system. Any reasonable claim is credited. Of course, as time goes by the claims become inherently less reasonable. In case the claims surpass outstanding bonds, I'll probably scale it down. But the actual situation is that so far the amount of claimed bonds is significantly less than the number outstanding.
In the meantime, all these assets should be continuing business as usual.
Bonds aren't defined by their "business" but by their coupon payments. The contingent fact that I do hedge these bonds with a still-running mining arrangement is irrelevant. Nothing is usual while coupons are not being paid.
I can't think of much else that would stop any of the issuers from just piling up dividends for a few months?
While coupons are piled up people are not being paid what they were promised. Also, the longer I wait the greater the chance that the coins will be lost or stolen, which I will have to pay out of pocket.
Heck, even after GLBSE releases the lists, I'm still going to have to pile up dividends for any unclaimed shares, just in case they're late to the game and realize 6 months down the road that GLBSE went poof. It's called fiduciary duty.
I'm open to input but in the end you'll do what you think is right, and I'll do mine. To me it is clear that traditional duties may or may not apply; I am not convinced that holding on to funds indefinitely is the one true pretender to the fiduciary duty throne.
The PureMining OP is quite long, and one of the reasons is that I wanted to address several contingencies. I should have spent much more time thinking and writing about those contingency plans; unfortunately, I considered a GLBSE shutdown distant enough to only warrant the following provision:
If GLBSE where the asset is traded ceases operation, an effort will be made to either call the bonds or replace them with a privately issued equivalent.
Strictly speaking, I could do whatever I see fit and still abide by the letter of contract. Of course, not everything would abide by the spirit of the contract; and I believe my proposal best captures the spirit.
Not targeting you specifically, I'm seeing a lot of assets doing this claim system thing...
If there are several things I hate, one of them is being caught in the crossfire. On one front I have people complaining about issuers doing nothing, and on the other about issuers "doing this claim system thing". You can't please everyone.
Any issuer that actually goes through with the claims system process is just going to open themselves up to a shareholder/bondholder lawsuit later. I'm worried about you guys!
Thank you for your concern but I very much doubt someone who didn't bother to file a claim would bother filing a lawsuit. If such a lawsuit would go through there is something very wrong indeed with the world.
