Regarding the interest from the conversations had with prospective issuers - a lot of these groups are relying on confidentiality so that they can be in control of their own PR, and that’s something we have to respect.  The end result may be that we don’t share good news until the issuer goes public with it, which sometimes ends up with the community wondering what’s going on the in background.  I don’t know of a good way to rectify this, but I can tell you that many of the conversations are exciting (some of the issuers have some pretty cool blockchain-related tech in the works, and we’re honored to be able to assist).  Tether, Factom, LaZooz, CryptoNext and HOPE Gold are the next big ones coming (already publicly announced), followed by a few that blew my mind that will be public in the weeks to come.

I can’t speak to Overstock’s plans, but I’m not too worried about the outcome with a launched Medici.  In the same sense that the Medici project can take whatever it wishes from open source projects (and end up closed source, from what I understand), any benefits or innovations created (and subsequently published on the blockchain) will be quickly inherited by open source platforms as well - assuming they provide some advantage over features already in production.

However, many of the “features” that Medici will likely require to become “fully compliant” (as described by Patrick Byrne in recent interviews) would be likely antithetical to those familiar with many of the benefits of cryptocurrency, such as: arbitrary callability and/or re-issuance (or outright “deletion”) of existing assets (those held in an address not controlled by the issuer), reversibility of transactions, blacklist/whitelist address tagging, etc.  It is too early to say whether these kinds of “features” being added to a cryptographic ledger-based token will be deemed “acceptable” by the current users, but they may be - and only time will tell.

Here’s an example: issuer A creates an asset on the blockchain.  Buyer B purchases the asset, and sells it to bad actor C (not necessarily knowing that C is a bad actor).  Bad actor C sells it to unknowing buyer D (let’s assume all of these exchanges occur fully decentralized).  Regulator steps in and seizes the funds from Actor C, and requires the issuer to revoke the asset from buyer D’s address.  If this is a common occurrence, why would buyers B and D ever purchase something on a decentralized exchange if the possibility of it being revoked outside of their control is possible?

There is a very fine line here - where do we draw the boundary for what an issuer can and cannot do with the assets created?  If I purchase an asset, and then lose the key to my address where it is stored, depending on what securities regulation exists, I should be able to get a new asset from the issuer.  But if I cannot prove I own that address (can’t sign with a key I’ve lost), what guarantees can I give the issuer that the asset was in fact lost?  If the asset issuer could “invalidate” the tokens in that address with a lost key, they must have the ability to invalidate the asset in *any* address.  It might be the guy I just sold it to, and I never lost the key at all.

I saw Patrick’s comments about the relationship with Counterparty, and it left me with some open questions, for sure.  For now, we’re not focusing on the idea of “securities” on the blockchain - we’re focusing on providing the benefits of a cryptographic ledger to the transfer of other-than-bitcoin assets on the Bitcoin blockchain.  We firmly believe that the features available to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies should be leveraged and improved, not watered down.  What’s the point in creating a decentralized algorithmic smart contract platform that does not require trust if you’re just going to allow the issuer to arbitrarily undo or negate those contracts?

Craig