My understanding is that AMC and VMC are two separate companies, with contractual agreements between each other.
Eh, I do not see how it can be accurate to call them separate companies. I'll post the same info here that I posted in the main AMC thread.
AMC is described as a wholly-owned subsidiary of VMC in the listing that they themselves prepared for both both Bitfunder and BTCT.
From the "Details" tab on BTCT for the passthrough shares:
Active Mining Corporation (AMC) is a Belize International Business Company DBA Active Mining Cooperative and
is a wholly owned subsidiary of Virtual Mining Corporation (VMC) a Delaware Corporation.
And from the "Private Placement Memorandum" on Bitfunder (
https://bitfunder.com/asset/AMC#pane_profile, which is only presented as a jpg, so I have to retype the content):
PPM, page 2: "AMC is a business unit of VMC"
PPM, page 6: "Shares of AMC on Bitfunder do not represent real world shares of the company. The shares are solely a distribution mechanism for rights to profits."
That makes the shares essentially a PT issued by Ken connecting the "BTC-TC Virtual Exchange Game" and his real world company. I'm not sure how else you can connect a real world company based in the US. I don't think you can buy real, direct, legal shares in one on an exchange outside the US. You have to connect up the virtual company in the game to the performance of the real company in a way that emulates it's successes and failures. This is not unlike how EA scales and emulates the stats of the various players and teams in it's annual releases of Madden Football or how many of the NYSE/NASDAQ stock trading games out there emulate the successes and failures of the real underlying companies.
BitFunder may have a different take on things, but BTC-TC does not trade real shares of real US companies. Period. This is part of the risk you assume and you agreed to when you registered on BTC-TC.
Cheers.