Question about the GLBSE

[redbeans2012]

I thought I saw somewhere that the Glbse was hosted in the US.  Wouldn't this be the last place one would want to host something like this?

I'm just wondering if it were ever seized, would there be a way to get our bitcoins back to us?

That is all. 
If I'm wrong about this discard this message and continue with your regularly scheduled bitcoining.

[publio]

I think this is a valid concern.  It looks like it's hosted in Portugal, and the owner is in China.

Now if it were to shut down, lost value of shares would probably be larger than any bitcoin deposits.

[tgmarks]

I figure with anything else that is seized in the US, you should probably kiss it good bye.  Although, like he said, I don't believe it is in the US in this case.

[Stephen Gornick]

Just today the operator of the exchange was looking to acquire the domain for GLBSE.bit
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77009

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/GLBSE

As far as "owner", there are others with investment towards it, apparently.  There is not an LLC or other corporate entity called GLBSE though.
 

[Sukrim]

Bitcoins are stored in the block chain, not in a physical location - so as long as the owners of GLBSE have backups of their private keys the world police can seize whatever they want. As long as they don't immediately send the coins from GLBSE elsewhere it should be fine anyways.

Also Nefario stated he has cold + hot storage, meaning not all money transferred to GLBSE is immediately available for payouts but a big part is probably stored away on paper wallets or offline wallets.

[Nefario]

Interesting thread.

Firstly, GLBSE is not a registered business anywhere, we don't make any claims to be.

It is run by me, and owned by a group of several shareholders of which I am one.

I live in the UK, near Manchester in the north of England(I used to live in China), and my identity is publicly known (James McCarthy).       

Regarding our hosting, we use a number of servers in various locations. glbse.com is a server based in Portugal, our main server is based in the US.

Encrypted backups are kept of all GLBSE data which includes user data and bitcoin wallets.

GLBSE uses a combination of two wallets, a hot wallet which is on the GLBSE server, the amount kept in this wallet is very small and monitored constantly.

The other wallet is kept offline, excess funds from the hot wallet are sent to it, when the hot wallet is running low funds are sent from the offline wallet.

Both wallets have multiple encrypted backups. In the unlikely event of one of our servers being seized no funds would be lost, the worst to happen would be that GLBSE would be down for a day or two as we get a new server and set everything up.

We are introducing measures that would allow GLBSE to continue to function in the event of me being hit by a bus, and to be able to operate safely in the event of myself being arrested, through the clever use of cryptography I would be unable to divulge any information regarding GLBSE or it's users.

We are also taking steps to ensure that GLBSE will remain operational under a number of circumstances including the unlikely event of it being banned or declared illegal by US or UK governments. We expect these measures to be in place in about 3 weeks.

[tgmarks]

Good to know. Does glbse have any plans of incorporating to become a legal entity?

[Nefario]

Good to know. Does glbse have any plans of incorporating to become a legal entity?

Short term no, medium/long term we would like to, but this requires quite a bit of money and time (would have to talk to lawyers), none of which we can spare at the moment (especially time).

[redbeans2012]

Thanks for the info nefario.