GLBSE IPO Handling and Interaccount Transfers Discussion Thread.

[glbse]

It's evident there are some concerns with how some IPOs are potentially going to be handled on the GLBSE, and potential problems with allowing or disallowing the ability to directly transfer assets between accounts without use of the trading mechanism.

There are a lot of good ideas floating around, and it looks like it will be useful to consolidate that discussion into one thread.

Please let us know how you feel this process should be handled and we can hopefully establish some best practices that everyone can be satisfied working with.

[mila]

most important comment first:

do not change the rules in the middle of things. this way the changes seem retroactive because they impact agreements already made.

[occulta]

will this impact on gigamining pre-sales or not? alot of money has already changed hands.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Asset transfers between accounts have multiple use cases and need to be allowed. I can't stress that enough.

The simplest solution would probably be to charge a fee on transferring assets between users (within a user should be free) based on the last traded price, or the lowest ask.

After more critical issues are fixed, you can develop better ways to handle this.

[jamesg]

Asset transfers between accounts have multiple use cases and need to be allowed. I can't stress that enough.

The simplest solution would probably be to charge a fee on transferring assets between users (within a user should be free) based on the last traded price, or the lowest ask.

After more critical issues are fixed, you can develop better ways to handle this.

I agree with Meni. I will be more than happy to pay the normal fee on the pre-sale transfers.

I am sending Nefario and glbse and PM to get this straightened out.

[JWU42]

Glad to see everyone is working on a solution.  The ToS (posted in another thread) is helpful as well.

[MPOE-PR]

I agree with Meni. I will be more than happy to pay the normal fee on the pre-sale transfers.

As a significant shareholder, Mr. Popescu would prefer you skip the glbse listing altogether, never deliver any shares there and just keep spreadsheets.
You have probably a couple dozen people invested, how hard can it be to make a couple dozen payments once a month? Surely less hassle than dealing with this sort of thing on a continuing basis.

[OgNasty]

Personally I don't see any reason why asset transfers would be wanted by anyone doing legitimate business.  The exchange exists for a reason and all trades/transfers should be made publicly on the exchange.  Allowing these asset transfers goes against transparency and seems to contradict the principles of Bitcoin.  If people want to circumvent the exchange using the exchange, why not create a competing exchange instead of trying to use loopholes in the GLBSE?

[copumpkin]

Personally I don't see any reason why asset transfers would be wanted by anyone doing legitimate business.  The exchange exists for a reason and all trades/transfers should be made publicly on the exchange.  Allowing these asset transfers goes against transparency and seems to contradict the principles of Bitcoin.

What? Because people are free to sell their property however they see fit. This isn't about transferring assets "under the radar" but about simply allowing OTC trades. gigavps is well connected and trusted in the bitcoin community, and he can get people with deep pockets who might otherwise not use glbse interested in his offering. If he decides he wants to appeal to them by offering his bonds to them at a slightly lower rate (I don't think this actually happened, but it has happened elsewhere), that's his prerogative, and glbse doesn't have a mechanism for that. And why should it? An exchange exists for two primary reasons: to pair up buyers with sellers and to act as a trusted third party so that counterparties don't need to trust each other. In gigavps's case, he needs neither of those for his IPO, because he is already well connected and well trusted (so nobody's worried about sending him coins and then receiving shares later).

From that perspective, there's no real reason for gigavps to go through glbse for his initial offering at all. For smaller companies, the IPO listings page might actually get them exposure that they would not otherwise get, and they don't have the unquestioning trust that gigavps has so glbse provides a useful service for them.

Now, I'm not arguing that gigavps should not use glbse at all. Holding shares on an exchange adds liquidity to the shares, which is inherently valuable. The speed at which gigavps's offering sold out suggests people think it's underpriced, which probably means there'll be some pretty active trading of gigamining on glbse, possibly generating even more fees than the initial sale would have (at higher prices).

Note also that these are bonds, and not shares.

[mila]

Personally I don't see any reason why asset transfers would be wanted by anyone doing legitimate business.  The exchange exists for a reason and all trades/transfers should be made publicly on the exchange.  Allowing these asset transfers goes against transparency and seems to contradict the principles of Bitcoin.

which of the principles of bitcoin is preventing transfers of bitcoins between addresses?

what about the example you create a company that has a part of the funds coming from other sources and you just need to transfers shares to them?
or simply do not want to hold all your assets in the same account?

let the transfers be visible if you wish, but do not prevent them
and also which principle of bitcoin is it to have 1 central node you must trust that binds them all?

I'd love to see bearer bonds or bearer shares, kind of crypto strings or armored ascii files recognizable by the exchange that would be fully tradeable outside the exchange just like bitcoin. something like a throw away email with strong password used only for an account here, funded with shares or bitcoins and encapsulated for anyone to use. redeemable code for shares would be easier to use but i see no demand for this atm.

[rdponticelli]

Personally I don't see any reason why asset transfers would be wanted by anyone doing legitimate business.  The exchange exists for a reason and all trades/transfers should be made publicly on the exchange.  Allowing these asset transfers goes against transparency and seems to contradict the principles of Bitcoin.

Any individual investing in the company may, at their discretion, transfer 200 BFLS shares to the operator in exchange for a physical BFL Single being shipped (CONUS only. Additional charge for international shipping.) to the individual. When a BFLS is redeemed, a new unit will replace the redeemed unit, and 170 BFLS shares will be offered at current market rate.

This is an excellent reason why asset transfers would be useful. And this great offer could be impossible with the change in TOS. I hope you glbse guys can work it out. Maybe taking fees in transfers is the way to go, as already has been pointed some times, but transferences should be possible.

[OgNasty]

First off, I am not picking on gigavps.  He has done nothing on these forums to make me think he is anything less than honorable.  I am just saying that if people are offering shares on the GLBSE, they should be traded on the GLBSE and a public record should exist showing the price the shares were traded.  If gigavps wanted to offer private shares that aren't connected to the GLBSE, there is no problem with that and I don't see why he would need to GLBSE to allow asset transfers in order for him to do this.  He could offer a % of his company on the GLBSE and a % of his company outside of the GLBSE.

Any individual investing in the company may, at their discretion, transfer 200 BFLS shares to the operator in exchange for a physical BFL Single being shipped (CONUS only. Additional charge for international shipping.) to the individual. When a BFLS is redeemed, a new unit will replace the redeemed unit, and 170 BFLS shares will be offered at current market rate.

Perhaps this is a legitimate reason for asset transfers.  I like this idea, but I think allowing ideas such as this opens the door for other asset issuers to engage in less than honorable behavior.  I don't know what abuses have occurred with asset transfers in the past, but it sounds like it has been a problem.

which of the principles of bitcoin is preventing transfers of bitcoins between addresses?

Huh?  I didn't say anything about Bitcoin transfers.  Pretty sure the GLBSE isn't proposing stopping anyone from sending their BTC whenever they want.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Personally I don't see any reason why asset transfers would be wanted by anyone doing legitimate business.  The exchange exists for a reason and all trades/transfers should be made publicly on the exchange.  Allowing these asset transfers goes against transparency and seems to contradict the principles of Bitcoin.

Because asset transferring has many, many use cases. It's not just a way to trade assets for bitcoins outside the exchange. rdponticelli has given one great example; another one is borrowing assets (useful for shorting) or gifting them; I have an asset I plan which will simply be impossible to issue at all without transfers (I'm keeping it under wraps for now); many other uses which nobody has yet thought of, and mundane stuff like internal bookkeeping.

I agree with Meni. I will be more than happy to pay the normal fee on the pre-sale transfers.

As a significant shareholder, Mr. Popescu would prefer you skip the glbse listing altogether, never deliver any shares there and just keep spreadsheets.
You have probably a couple dozen people invested, how hard can it be to make a couple dozen payments once a month? Surely less hassle than dealing with this sort of thing on a continuing basis.

If gigavps is content with big players who don't care much about liquidity, sure. But if he wants to also deliver to the many people wanting to invest 1 BTC, he is not going to pay them each individually.

1) Learn from your mistakes
2) Don't be jerks - by that I mean don't be such knee jerks
3) Develop a process for changes to the ToS, I suggest:

a) Someone finds an issues
b) You all get together and discuss it, think about what you want to change, think of the impact on users
c) You privately contact some of the larger users that would be affected - get their feedback, discuss it with them
d) Float the idea in a post but instead of "We have taken this totally knee jerk reactionary measure to totally fuck with you, what do you think" instead try something like "We are considering doing X, how would this affect you all?  What do you think?  Should we do this?  Why and Why not? etc."
e) Make the changes to the ToS
f) Post the changes, get more feedback
g) If the feedback is negative go back to b)
h) NOW: Make the actual changes to the web site.

The above process would have averted both the Goat shit storm and this one.

+1.

I'm not sure I completely understand the Goat incident but I'm under the impression there were potential security issues, making it too time-critical for this procedure. But there's no excuse to handling the transfer disabling this way.

Because of this, it would be a good idea to offer an official apology for not having followed this procedure.

[OgNasty]

Because asset transferring has many, many use cases. It's not just a way to trade assets for bitcoins outside the exchange. rdponticelli has given one great example; another one is borrowing assets (useful for shorting) or gifting them; I have an asset I plan which will simply be impossible to issue at all without transfers (I'm keeping it under wraps for now); many other uses which nobody has yet thought of, and mundane stuff like internal bookkeeping.

Perhaps I am stuck thinking "inside the box."  At the very least I think asset transfers should be made public somewhere (maybe a separate "Asset Transfers" page?).  Not even necessarily who got what, but the amount of shares transferred and whether they were transferred to or from the issuer, so shareholders can decide for themselves if that is a red flag.

[Nefario]

Great thread

I just want to restate what our support account said, that is that transfers are suspended temporarily, and will be back up in action before the gigavps IPO, which will not in any way be impeded.

Trading (buying/selling shares) is as normal, and has NOT been stopped.

There are NO LIMITATIONS on transfering bitcoin between accounts.

I also want to apologize for the miss-communication and any unease it may have caused.

Many of you are aware that I've been rather busy as of late, and have not had time to keep track of the details of most shares and IPO's as they come onto the market.

I only became aware yesterday that GigaVPS was doing a pre-sale of shares, and not only that but doing everything manually. Clearly this is something that we will have to bake right into GLBSE IPO's, the ability to do pre-sales (so the whole process is transparent and automated).

It's a great idea with many obvious advantage and uses.

As to why would GigaVPS bother to use GLBSE (as opposed to doing everything by hand), we'll I'm sure he's busy making his shareholders profit, it also allows him to take advantage of the voting functionality on GLBSE. The biggest advantage is not to GigaVPS himself, but to his shareholders. Being listed on GLBSE allows his shareholders to cashout into a ready and waiting market that is growing extremely fast.

As was stated, there are legitimate uses for have account to account transfers of assets. We will allow unrestricted transfers between users personal accounts and asset issuer accounts.

The question that still needs to be answered is how to allow transfers of assets, while at the same time being fair to GLBSE.

We would very much like your input on this issue.

Nefario

[Nefario]

Personally I don't see any reason why asset transfers would be wanted by anyone doing legitimate business.  The exchange exists for a reason and all trades/transfers should be made publicly on the exchange.  Allowing these asset transfers goes against transparency and seems to contradict the principles of Bitcoin.

You're absolutely right.
Why foster competition between trading platforms ?
Why fight centralization of the market ?
Why not ensure that everything is controlled by a few folks ?
Are you out of your effing mind ?

Now now, lets keep this thread on topic, how do we implement asset transfers (transfers, not trades, trades work just fine) in a way that is fair to all?

[jamesg]

How do we implement asset transfers (transfers, not trades, trades work just fine) in a way that is fair to all?

Transfers should have a fee.

The fee should be based on the last trading price or initial offering price and should be the normal .5%.

This would solve all of the problems (any sales outside the system) and still getting you guys paid for host the trading and IPO.

I feel this is the simplest solution and accounts for most if not all transfers.

[Nefario]

How do we implement asset transfers (transfers, not trades, trades work just fine) in a way that is fair to all?

Transfers should have a fee.

The fee should be based on the last trading price or initial offering price and should be the normal .5%.

This would solve all of the problems (any sales outside the system) and still getting you guys paid for host the trading and IPO.

I feel this is the simplest solution and accounts for most if not all transfers.

If everyone is OK with this option, then this is how we'll go about it.
A transfer fee for asset/share transfers, 0.5% of a 5 day average trade price

Is this acceptable?

[copumpkin]

How do we implement asset transfers (transfers, not trades, trades work just fine) in a way that is fair to all?

Transfers should have a fee.

The fee should be based on the last trading price or initial offering price and should be the normal .5%.

This would solve all of the problems (any sales outside the system) and still getting you guys paid for host the trading and IPO.

I feel this is the simplest solution and accounts for most if not all transfers.

Gah, the forum ate my last post:

The difficulty with a percentage on transfers is that transfers are of securities, which aren't arbitrarily divisible. How do you, the site owner, get 0.5% of the 1 share I send to my dog?

You could require paying a fee in bitcoin to transfer shares, but would that be a percentage of last trading price? That might be easy to manipulate. If it's a fixed amount per transfer, that disincentivizes small transfers.

This may be radical, but I think that it might be time to move away from the "discrete" shares/bonds model. It's mostly a historical artifact arising from the fact that there were paper certificates representing ownership of a security, anyway. There could be a few book-keeping gotchas with allowing fractional shares, but not only would it allow a meaningful fee on asset transfers, but it'd also allow us to get rid of the weird asymmetry on trading fees that we see right now.

Edit: I didn't think this through. We probably don't want the exchange to own shares.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

If everyone is OK with this option, then this is how we'll go about it.
A transfer fee for asset/share transfers, 0.5% of a 5 day average trade price

Is this acceptable?

Sounds ok. Though I think the fee for transfer should be less than for a trade.

On that note, I think the fee for trades can be increased. The weak point of GLBSE isn't the fees, it's development/support. If raising the fees can help getting more work done (which I hope it will), I doubt anyone will object. So maybe 1% for trades, 0.5% for transfers?

This may be radical, but I think that it might be time to move away from the "discrete" shares/bonds model. It's mostly a historical artifact arising from the fact that there were paper certificates representing ownership of a security, anyway. There could be a few book-keeping gotchas with allowing fractional shares, but not only would it allow a meaningful fee on asset transfers, but it'd also allow us to get rid of the weird asymmetry on trading fees that we see right now.

I agree, except for the part where it's radical. It should have been continuous (allowing maybe 8 decimal places like Bitcoin) from the start, and I don't think it's too late to change that. (Edit: Fees should probably still be in bitcoins. There's no problem with making the trade fees symmetrical in the current system, they can be taken from the buyer's balance based on the trade price.)