MPEx securities discussion thread

[jimmothy]

GPG is a gimmick? What, you can crack encrypted messages now?

No. GPG is very useful for some applications.

It is completely unnecessary for a trust system and a stock exchange.

Why do you think no real stock exchanges use gpg?

What problem is it solving?

[hdbuck]

GPG is a gimmick? What, you can crack encrypted messages now?

No. GPG is very useful for some applications.

It is completely unnecessary for a trust system and a stock exchange.

Why do you think no real stock exchanges use gpg?

What problem is it solving?

You never know, it might all change one day. the same way bitcoin is going to change the financial world, PGP could be a useful tool for it in the future too. What's with this pretention of knowing what will or wont be a success? They guy is experimenting a new kind of exchange, let him be, it's worth the experience I think.

[jimmothy]

GPG is a gimmick? What, you can crack encrypted messages now?

No. GPG is very useful for some applications.

It is completely unnecessary for a trust system and a stock exchange.

Why do you think no real stock exchanges use gpg?

What problem is it solving?

You never know, it might all change one day. the same way bitcoin is going to change the financial world, PGP could be a useful tool for it in the future too. What's with this pretention of knowing what will or wont be a success? They guy is experimenting a new kind of exchange, let him be, it's worth the experience I think.

You're right pgp could be useful in the future but as of now everyone seems to be doing fine without it.

[fluffypony]

GPG is a gimmick? What, you can crack encrypted messages now?

No. GPG is very useful for some applications.

It is completely unnecessary for a trust system and a stock exchange.

Why do you think no real stock exchanges use gpg?

What problem is it solving?

You never know, it might all change one day. the same way bitcoin is going to change the financial world, PGP could be a useful tool for it in the future too. What's with this pretention of knowing what will or wont be a success? They guy is experimenting a new kind of exchange, let him be, it's worth the experience I think.

You're right pgp could be useful in the future but as of now everyone seems to be doing fine without it.

You miss the point of PGP / GPG. First: it probably won't be useful in the future, cryptography moves and advances. Nonetheless, GPG as it is used today is NOT use primarily as a means of encryption. There are plenty of tools that are more performant, more efficient, and arguably more cryptographically secure. GPG's primary purpose is a means of confirming one's identity.

A similar role is served by sites employing DNSSEC to confirm the validity of an A record: it is a means of confirming that that (barring some sort of exceptionally advanced or esoteric attack) you are indeed talking to the server for whatever.domain.you.specified.com. It's a way of confirming the identity for that FQDN.

Traditional stock exchanges, such as the NYSE, have evolved from ancient analog systems, so a lot of this infrastructure (whereby the authenticity of orders is confirmed) is based on the equipment of those brokerages / seat holders being close to the NYSE's tin. An exchange such as MPEX is not evolving from pen-and-paper, so it has instead chosen to take advantage of the system that is one of the most secure and renowned for identity verification over the Internet. It's not perfect, it has nuances and failings of its own, but it's just as cryptographically sound as the NYSE's "please put your box next to ours and run a fibre cable into the jack at the back" solution.

PS. You seem to be a fan of hyperbole, especially with your NYSE comparison. Ironically you fail to take the effect of time into your puerile vitriol. By comparison: if a competitor to Facebook sprung up 2 years ago, would it have 1.32 billion active monthly users by now? Historicity leads to a network effect which creates the companies and organisations we know today. Comparing an organisation with nearly 2 centuries of history with one that has been around for only a few is silly and beyond idiotic, especially since the global paradigms they are operating within are so vastly different. I used to think you were more intelligent than you have proven yourself to be, Jimbo.

[jimmothy]

You miss the point of PGP / GPG. First: it probably won't be useful in the future, cryptography moves and advances. Nonetheless, GPG as it is used today is NOT use primarily as a means of encryption. There are plenty of tools that are more performant, more efficient, and arguably more cryptographically secure. GPG's primary purpose is a means of confirming one's identity.

That's what I thought it did. Is there currently a problem with people forging/using fake identities that I'm not aware of?

PS. You seem to be a fan of hyperbole, especially with your NYSE comparison.

Where is the hyperbole? An mpex trading license is literally 30 million times more expensive than the NYSE.

Ironically you fail to take the effect of time into your puerile vitriol. By comparison: if a competitor to Facebook sprung up 2 years ago, would it have 1.32 billion active monthly users by now?

You mean like google+? 3 years old and already half a billion users.

How long do you think it will take before a legitimate company lists on mpex? (Not talking about one man operations or MP co-owned companies)

Comparing an organisation with nearly 2 centuries of history with one that has been around for only a few is silly and beyond idiotic, especially since the global paradigms they are operating within are so vastly different.

How do you explain the fact that mpex is asking half of what the NYSE is asking for a trading license yet is several million times smaller in both market cap and trading volume?

Why can't mpex pretend to be like the NYSE without a referral scheme and with less exorbitant trading license fees?

[fluffypony]

That's what I thought it did. Is there currently a problem with people forging/using fake identities that I'm not aware of?

PGP/GPG has a WoT where you can sign someone's key with yours, indicating trust.

eg. mine is here: http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0x7455C5E3C0CDCEB9

Peter Todd's is a more extreme example: http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0x7FAB114267E4FA04

So that destroys many of the regular Sybil attack vectors. The bigger issue is that initialisation, where you and the person you're dealing with need to securely exchange keys. So a simple method may be to email your key fingerprint or your entire ASCII-armored public key, and then phone/Skype/IRC/whatever to confirm the fingerprint of the received key. A lot of key exchanges nowadays are done in real life, which then serves as a protection for all future communication between those two parties.

Where is the hyperbole? An mpex trading license is literally 30 million times more expensive than the NYSE.

The NYSE only recently (2006) switched to annual licenses, a different model from the "trading seat" model they had previously. Because seats were forever (as with MPEX), there was a vigorous and small market where seats could be bought from brokerages that were getting out. In 2005, seats sold for $1 million - $5 million. The NYSE press release that details the shift to annual licenses is a good read if you want to learn about the history of it. I couldn't find an inflation adjustment calculator that could go back to the 1860s (when seats sold for $4 000), but in the early 1900s they were selling for $80 000, which is $2 million when adjusted for inflation. This makes the NYSE's seat cost at any point in its history 55x - 277x more expensive than MPEX.

Even now that the NYSE has switched to an annual license model, their fee is $40 000 per year (as confirmed on their trading license application form). This is still more than double MPEX's lifetime seat cost, and every year you'd have to renew it, widening that gap and making the NYSE's trading license more and more relatively expensive. I also think that this makes rational sense as it is, as MPEX doesn't have the historicity and caliber that the NYSE does, nor does it have listings that are anywhere close to the size of those listed on the NYSE. But this is perfectly fine - by the time Bitcoin is worth ~$33 300, MPEX's seat fee will be around $1 million, and we should expect that the listings will be somewhere around the caliber and size of listings the NYSE had in the early 1900s. In other words, the seat fee right now is commensurate with the size of the exchange, and that's perfectly fine.

You mean like google+? 3 years old and already half a billion users.

How long do you think it will take before a legitimate company lists on mpex? (Not talking about one man operations or MP co-owned companies)

It's hard to say - MPEX only appeals to startups involved in the Bitcoin space. Traditional startups have traditional VC funding routes, and larger companies have larger domestic exchanges they can use. A more likely scenario than a "legitimate" company listing on MPEX is that something like Van Ads or MiniGames is a rousing success, and that is a catalyst for other "legitimate" companies.

How do you explain the fact that mpex is asking half of what the NYSE is asking for a trading license yet is several million times smaller in both market cap and trading volume?

Why can't mpex pretend to be like the NYSE without a referral scheme and with less exorbitant trading license fees?

Well as demonstrated above that is provably incorrect, they have an incredibly low seat fee, one that is commensurate with their small size and volume.

[jimmothy]

Where is the hyperbole? An mpex trading license is literally 30 million times more expensive than the NYSE.

The NYSE only recently (2006) switched to annual licenses, a different model from the "trading seat" model they had previously. Because seats were forever (as with MPEX), there was a vigorous and small market where seats could be bought from brokerages that were getting out. In 2005, seats sold for $1 million - $5 million. The NYSE press release that details the shift to annual licenses is a good read if you want to learn about the history of it. I couldn't find an inflation adjustment calculator that could go back to the 1860s (when seats sold for $4 000), but in the early 1900s they were selling for $80 000, which is $2 million when adjusted for inflation. This makes the NYSE's seat cost at any point in its history 55x - 277x more expensive than MPEX.

Even now that the NYSE has switched to an annual license model, their fee is $40 000 per year (as confirmed on their trading license application form). This is still more than double MPEX's lifetime seat cost, and every year you'd have to renew it, widening that gap and making the NYSE's trading license more and more relatively expensive. I also think that this makes rational sense as it is, as MPEX doesn't have the historicity and caliber that the NYSE does, nor does it have listings that are anywhere close to the size of those listed on the NYSE. But this is perfectly fine - by the time Bitcoin is worth ~$33 300, MPEX's seat fee will be around $1 million, and we should expect that the listings will be somewhere around the caliber and size of listings the NYSE had in the early 1900s. In other words, the seat fee right now is commensurate with the size of the exchange, and that's perfectly fine.

A seat would mean there are a limited amount and you can sell your own seat. On mpex you can buy a "seat" and sell unlimited seats to other naive investonomers.

Because mpex is 60 million times smaller* than NYSE, shouldn't an NYSE trading license be $1.2 trillion? Even a 100 year trading license would be $12 billion.

Why is it that mpoe is the only bitcoin asset that does not depreciate when bitcoin appreciates? I could understand if they held a significant amount of BTC, but they don't. MPOE doesn't hold anywhere near 800k btc.

*not including MP co-owned companies.

You mean like google+? 3 years old and already half a billion users.

How long do you think it will take before a legitimate company lists on mpex? (Not talking about one man operations or MP co-owned companies)

It's hard to say - MPEX only appeals to startups involved in the Bitcoin space. Traditional startups have traditional VC funding routes, and larger companies have larger domestic exchanges they can use. A more likely scenario than a "legitimate" company listing on MPEX is that something like Van Ads or MiniGames is a rousing success, and that is a catalyst for other "legitimate" companies.

Sure one of MP's companies could be a success, but we have yet to see a single shred of evidence suggesting he can run a company and/or turn a profit. Sure, we know he can collect massive trading license fees and create a decent options robot to take money from shitty gamblers but running an actual company has yet to be seen.

So far we've seen:

S.MG, a videogame company which looks like a 1 man operation + MP with ~$5,000,000 and none of it has been spent on developing the game. The game looks like a pre-alpha version of runescape classic at best. Unless they completely stop what they are doing and hire a competent game development team I don't see how this game can be a success.

S.NSA is another 1 man +MP operation with a bunch of money but nothing to show for a years worth of work.

VanAds looks to be yet another 1 man + MP operation which is basically a clone of adbit.co.

S.WoL is the 5000th gambling site to be invented and for some reason needed 500btc to run their site, but I do have to give them credit for not being co-owned by MP.

How do you explain the fact that mpex is asking half of what the NYSE is asking for a trading license yet is several million times smaller in both market cap and trading volume?

Why can't mpex pretend to be like the NYSE without a referral scheme and with less exorbitant trading license fees?

Well as demonstrated above that is provably incorrect, they have an incredibly low seat fee, one that is commensurate with their small size and volume.

Your argument is basically "if BTC increases and mpex becomes the most popular/successful exchange THEN it's underpriced". Yes and if neobee springs back to life and offers an incredible service I'm sure there is a possibility that they earn billions.

Fact is that MPOEs revenue completely dropped off when they removed the options market/bot but according to the share price nobody cares that dividends (which were already small to begin with) are now a tiny fraction of what they used to be.

I don't know how you can say with a straight face that it's not absurd for an exchange to charge 7% of their noninflated market cap for a trading license. 94% of the mpoe's revenue for the past 6 months came from recruiting new investonomers.

It is painfully obvious that the "seats" are nothing more than a moneymaking scheme. It's a combination of a ponzi and pyramid scheme. I think they should call it the popescu scheme.

[pummle]

It's hard to say - MPEX only appeals to startups involved in the Bitcoin space. Traditional startups have traditional VC funding routes, and larger companies have larger domestic exchanges they can use. A more likely scenario than a "legitimate" company listing on MPEX is that something like Van Ads or MiniGames is a rousing success, and that is a catalyst for other "legitimate" companies.

Sure one of MP's companies could be a success, but we have yet to see a single shred of evidence suggesting he can run a company and/or turn a profit. Sure, we know he can collect massive trading license fees and create a decent options robot to take money from shitty gamblers but running an actual company has yet to be seen.

So far we've seen:

S.MG, a videogame company which looks like a 1 man operation + MP with ~$5,000,000 and none of it has been spent on developing the game. The game looks like a pre-alpha version of runescape classic at best. Unless they completely stop what they are doing and hire a competent game development team I don't see how this game can be a success.

S.NSA is another 1 man +MP operation with a bunch of money but nothing to show for a years worth of work.

VanAds looks to be yet another 1 man + MP operation which is basically a clone of adbit.co.

S.WoL is the 5000th gambling site to be invented and for some reason needed 500btc to run their site, but I do have to give them credit for not being co-owned by MP.

S.WoL is co-owned by MP.

You didn't mention BitBet (also co-owned by MP), they have a functioning website which does thousands of bitcoins of traffic and turns a profit most months.

[desired_username]

You didn't mention BitBet (also co-owned by MP), they have a functioning website which does thousands of bitcoins of traffic and turns a profit most months.

There are numerous reports saying bitbet scammed users.

Also, gambling is a low profile business preying on people with mental issues. I'm not sure how can it be mentioned as some kind of achievement.

[NotLambchop]

...
Also, gambling Bitcoin securities is a low profile business preying on people with mental issues...

FTFY

[kako_number3]

There are numerous reports saying bitbet scammed users.

Sore losers are always going to complain. You will find such 'reports' of no value for any gambling site that does actual traffic.

Also.

[jimmothy]

There are numerous reports saying bitbet scammed users.

Sore losers are always going to complain. You will find such 'reports' of no value for any gambling site that does actual traffic.

Just because you included a rule that says you can steal peoples money doesn't make it legal. If a bet is not confirmed in time it has to be returned. You (having invented such a ridiculous rule) may see nothing wrong with it but most people agree that it's BS: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=339544.0

[kako_number3]

Just because you included a rule that says you can steal peoples money doesn't make it legal.

Just because you can post to this forum doesn't mean it carries any weight.

If a bet is not confirmed in time it has to be returned.

Sez who? Jimtardo Nobody?

people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LXD72i-1M

[EternalWingsofGod]

now he pays to see tities

PFFT
That is something else but 0.1 BTC for a pair of them should just find girlsforbitcoins
F** mean thanks for sharing lol.

Sharing tits from all over the world.
Great company though

The point is not to see some tits, the point is to attract girls into #bitcoin-assets, and force them to start using bitcoin and gpg and IRC and such.

It can be both after all
Mircea makes a good politician ^_^

___
But you know if they can do all that they can make more than just showing their tits lol.

[Atruk]

now he pays to see tities

PFFT
That is something else but 0.1 BTC for a pair of them should just find girlsforbitcoins
F** mean thanks for sharing lol.

Sharing tits from all over the world.
Great company though

The point is not to see some tits, the point is to attract girls into #bitcoin-assets, and force them to start using bitcoin and gpg and IRC and such.

It can be both after all
Mircea makes a good politician ^_^

___
But you know if they can do all that they can make more than just showing their tits lol.

Ah, but for some people showing tits is just another profession

http://sexysaffron.com/ << That's the subject of that article on bespoke porn for Bitcoin floating around.

[hdbuck]

Actually i have to say i have much respect for MP and his fellas. They seem not to give a shit about "political correctness" and that's exactly why they deserve my attention.

Plus they seems to know a great deal about bitcoin's various problematics and other political/economical/technological matters. Just pop up in their IRC channel and ask for anything, they are quite open actually - altought a little bit teasing but eh that's the fun part of the game. I am not trading on MPex tho because this playground isnt for me as for now but I'd be glad to see it blooming in the coming years. I dont believe it will fade and i really enjoy reading their blogs, which puts bitcoin under some less mainstream garbage. So long live the cynical pervs!

It is a shame MPOE-PR has been perma-banned from this forum. She/he was right about a lot of things (TBF, Gox, etc etc..), her/his inputs were highly valuable, and it was fun looking at her/him getting into arguments with "non-receptive" members

Latest post made me luled a lot: http://trilema.com/2014/the-finfisherfinspy-story-for-posterity/

edit: and i get it that their ego or crudeness must have had annoyed some people around. But it is the price that comes with visionnaires i guess. They know, you dont.

[jimmothy]

Actually i have to say i have much respect for MP and his fellows. They seem not to give a shit about "political correct" and that exactly why they deserve my attention.

I cant tell if you've drank too much koolaid or if your entire post is satire.

I am not trading on MPex tho because this playground isnt for me as for now but I'd be glad to see it expand in the coming years. I dont believe it will fade and i really enjoy reading their blogs, which puts bitcoin under some less mainstream garbage. Long live the cynical pervs!

Why would you like to see the expansion of a sketchy/scammy exchange run by a romanian egomaniac whose every action is questionable? Why do you not want a legit SEC regulated exchange or a decentralized blockchain exchange? Nevermind this ponzi-pyramid scheme is a great addition to bitcoin!

It is a shame MPOE-PR has been perma-banned from this forum. She/he was right about a lot of things, her/his inputs were highly valuable, and it was fun looking at her/his getting into arguments with "non-receptive" members

Have you actually read any number MPOE-PR's posts? This person was paid 12btc per month to spam/troll the forum with anything that could possibly link/bring traffic back to mpex.

If you look back at MPOE-PR's history you will find 75% trolling/slandering mpex competition, 23% incorrect predictions, 1% correct predictions, and 1% constructive criticism.

And MP's blog is the same shit. 99% of his blog posts can be summarized as: "HERE is why you should be giving me money". Funny how mpex is the only exchange/stock which is constantly giving investing advice. I wonder why? Maybe because without being spoon-fed nonsense, even fewer naive investonomers receptive thinkers would use mpex?

edit: but i get it that their ego must have annoyed some people around. but it is the price that comes with visionnaires i guess.

I don't think the inflated egos are the reason. I think it has more to do with the cult touting that mpex has been a significant contribution to the bitcoin ecosystem which is a blatantly false. The only thing mpex has contributed is money to MP's wallet. Mpex is nothing more than a sketchy/scammy exchange that anyone with real world financial experience would avoid touching with a 50 foot pole.

Sure MP is a visionary but only in the same way as Bernie Madoff. I have to hand it to him, he has created an incredibly efficient/effective scheme but he will have to expand beyond the irc chatroom full of bitcoin outcasts if he wants some serious cash.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

Is mpex.co down? What happend?

[jimmothy]

Is mpex.co down? What happend?

It's now mpex.ws

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

Is mpex.co down? What happend?

It's now mpex.ws

Oh, I missed that.

Thank you.