Quote from: BitThink on February 04, 2014, 01:29:55 AM

Quote from: ThickAsThieves on February 03, 2014, 11:46:10 PM

Quote from: Bitye West on February 03, 2014, 10:20:20 PM

Quote from: JahPowerBit on February 03, 2014, 06:57:45 PM

AM does not need to do so himself. Any big trusted shareholder can issue AM assets with Counterparty.

This is true. It would be awesome to see an Asicminer-direct-share-backed asset issued on Counterparty.

Maybe ThickasThieves would be up for the task?

This would be the first "Bitcoin blue chip" asset on a decentralized exchange. One small step for TAT, one giant leap for Bitcoin securities.

In case any of you missed it in my old rants, I don't actually believe decentralized exchanges are a good thing. Even AM's own exchange, which they began creating last year, has many inconveniences, and, is ultimately centralized anyway.

I don't even believe decentralized exchanges are sustainable in any way that provides valuable purpose. Most amount to moving trust from one place to another, or breaking trust into a few parts. Trust is always required, efficiency is always required, resources are always required. These things all converge as order in chaos. That order is centralization.

I'm not a part of the "decentralize everything!" parade, but I do believe in the concept of "empires to ashes". Eventually a thing becomes so central and powerful it collapses, whether it be by its own lack of agility, or by a paradigm shift. For many people, Bitcoin is the first time they experienced a paradigm shift in a very long time. It's exciting to have your world rocked, but Bitcoin is not a casting call for paradigm-shifters. Way too many people think we now have the power to break apart anything we can get our hands on, and turn into little pieces that somehow work better. Decentralization is not your hammer, and stock exchanges are not your nail.

I can appreciate people trying new things, but an economy is more than protocol, sorry. I'm not saying the theory of a Colored Coin exchange is impossible, I'm saying the usefulness of it is. Any fruits of Colored Coin, Master Coin, etc, will do nothing more than appear decentralized in concept, and behave centralized in practice.

Even Bitcoin itself only thrives through where it is efficiently "centralized": mining pools, exchanges, venture capital, this forum, etc, etc, etc.

Having to trust 3 people instead of 1 is not decentralization. Having to trust that system instead of this one, is not decentralization. Do you REALLY want every business under the sun "IPO"ing? Is every random business truly qualified to run its own security? So what if you can trust the decentralized exchange, none of the issuers will be easy to trust, now will they? How do you trust what you are buying and whom you buy it from?

If you really want to mitigate trust issues in this world, why aren't you all fighting to get people to use a/the Web of Trust (http://bitcoin-otc.com/trust.php)? Why are people finding ways to pervert bitcoin with burns, when they should be making a decentralized web of trust that is more friendly and easy to use? Doesn't anyone realize how big "digital identity" will be going forward?

We don't need more tinkering with reinventing Bitcoin, we need an agile identity/trust service. Think about it. Sure we have the current WoT, sure we have +Trust in this forum. But the WoT is not easy to use for beginners, nor is it a convenient means of auth/trust for online services. And, the forum's +Trust feature is much too centralized, weak, and narrow in focus.

Finally, everyone, please don't be an idiot and go "burning" coins, or locking them into some silly meta protocol forever. Anyone that's been around for more than a couple months should know by now to just hold onto your damn bitcoins. That's all you have to do.

Your reasons (if any) seem not so convincing to me. Let's put general case aside, and just focus on AM shares. If AM is listed on a decentralized exchange such as Counterparty, is it helpful?

1) trust. We just need to trust a) the issurer (of course we trust) b) the protocol and the client (it's open source). No need to trust any buyer/seller or operator. The trades and dividends are all guaranteed by the protocol. There's no one running the exchange. The system is there as long as everyone has the client and BTC blockchain is there.

2) convenience. The issurer just issue an asset and put an initial order with IPO price, then sending dividend is just one command. For existing stocks like AM, just transfer shares to existing holders with a simple script. No need to keep all the holder list, it's embedded in the blockchain and will never be lost.

3) latency. Yes, you may need 10 minutes to match an order and waiting longer to confirm. That's acceptable to most investors, even day traders. How many people flip more than once per hour?

At last, as a main fund manager, telling others to just hold bitcoins seems interesting. If everyone just holds the bitcoin, there will be no stocks, funds, and bonds. What's the difference between burning some bitcoin to get some shares of a decentralized exchange and sending some BTC to you to get some shares of certain stocks?

+1

The current setup for a lot of investors is:

Asicminer -> TAT (centralized, requires trust) -> Havelock (centralized, requires trust) -> Investor

With Counterparty the setup would look like this:

Asicminer -> Counterparty (de-centralized, trustless, open-source) -> Investor

TAT really does sound like he's afraid Asicminer will list on a decentralized exchange like Counterparty and eliminate the middle-men (TAT, Havelock)

http://i.imgur.com/W8Go0ko.png

Why not just embrace the newer, better system? Centralized exchanges have been a massive problem for Crypto securities.