You probably heard that GLBSE went down recently. I am hoping someone out there can code software that uses BTC address signed contracts and allows companies to issue and track their own stock shares instead of relying on a single third party. In short:

1) Company announces a number of shares for sale.
2) Users bid on shares
3) Once bidders win, they pay for shares, and their BTC addresses become the owners/signature for their shares. I.e. shares are tied to a BTC address, not to users.
4) Company issuing the shares stores the ledger that states "Bitcoin address X owns so many shares," and any dividends get paid directly to those addresses
5) If a user wants to sell/transfer their stock, he sends a transaction message signed by the BTC address that owns those shares, telling the company ledger that the sold shares now belong to a different address
6) Company updates their ledger, and pays dividends to the new address.

This way
- you only have to trust the company issuing shares (and if you can't, you wouldn't buy those shares anyway)
- there are no costs associated with registering or trading stocks unless the issuing company takes a fee themselves
- stocks traded on the open market can be traded through third party auction houses similar to and as simple as eBay style bidding, and can be traded privately among users using OTC.
- shares can be sold by any company in any country, without concern about what regulatory jurisdiction a specific exchange falls under.

I wouldn't think something like this would be TOO difficult, since it doesn't even rely on Bitcoin transactions and blockchain, just signed messages and any means to see what address payments came from. Comments/suggestions/improvements?