Quote from: casascius on October 16, 2012, 05:45:11 AM

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Being aware of this, right here, is the shortest way to explain why I stayed miles away from "investing" in any Bitcoin "stocks". Here at Bitcointalk, we seem keen on showing contempt for the status quo legal framework - the one that lets securities function in any way beyond scamcoins that work on the honor system - and finding brilliant ways to invent our way out of it, without realizing that doing so is about as brilliant as a goldfish inventing its way out of a bowl.

A distributed exchange benefits only scammers. If one can use distributed technology to evade accountability from the law, one can also use it to evade accountability from their shareholders, effectively negating any and all value inherent in owning shares. It's a software-based screen-door submarine, it just doesn't work.

Shhh, keep this a secret, the scammers will be upset if everyone figures this out!

The most amaizing thing about GLBSE was that it actually worked. Practicaly, we wittnessed only one case of dodgy investment instrument. It was under several pass-through labels, but it was the same entity. Vast mayority of people were actually honest (or even plain generous as it came out in case of race horse owners).

If you can recall, Enron went down despite all checks and balances, internal and external audits, etc. All these overheads costed huge amounts of money and in the end it still boiled down to honesty of few individuals.