Author Topic: Jeb McCaleb Against the World: A Crypto Romance  (Read 5362 times)

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Offline werneo

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Do you think we should have something on the website similar to Ripple?

It would be useful to have a section on the bitshares wiki about regulatory compliance:
http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/Main_Page

Bitshare-istas express libertarian ideals and describe regulation as a yoke of government meddling. As a libertarian, I applaud this philosophy. But as a pragmatist, I worry it could paint bitshares into a PR corner---while bitcoin and ripple become established as the mature alternatives to the legacy financial system.
« Last Edit: February 09, 2015, 11:26:33 pm by werneo »

Offline hpenvy2

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Really? No regulatory strategy?

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12050.msg161883#msg161883

"Legal Compliance

Any company that takes deposits from customers and facilitates transfers among customers is heavily regulated in most countries.   These regulations include license requirements, bonds, insurance, know your customer laws, and anti-money-laundering compliance among others.   The BitShares block chain provides gateways with all of the tools necessary to comply with these regulations.

If you are in this business you are already maintaining a database tracking user deposits and your database is probably logging every single transaction and balance change.    Your database knows exactly who is owed what at any point in time.   You also have the power to seize or freeze user balances at the demand of law enforcement.    BitShares provides you with all of these features as well including:

  1) Ability to white list public keys that may control a balance of your asset.
  2) Ability to freeze all funds and stop all trading of your assets
  3) Ability to transfer any balance of your asset from any user to any other user
 
In other words, if you are operating a legally complaint crypto currency exchange, then you can easily expand your business to becoming a BitShares gateway.  "

That's good to hear. Unfortunately the latest information is buried under a mountain of forum posts. But I am glad it's there anyway.

Do you think we should have something on the website similar to Ripple?

Offline werneo

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Really? No regulatory strategy?

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12050.msg161883#msg161883

"Legal Compliance

Any company that takes deposits from customers and facilitates transfers among customers is heavily regulated in most countries.   These regulations include license requirements, bonds, insurance, know your customer laws, and anti-money-laundering compliance among others.   The BitShares block chain provides gateways with all of the tools necessary to comply with these regulations.

If you are in this business you are already maintaining a database tracking user deposits and your database is probably logging every single transaction and balance change.    Your database knows exactly who is owed what at any point in time.   You also have the power to seize or freeze user balances at the demand of law enforcement.    BitShares provides you with all of these features as well including:

  1) Ability to white list public keys that may control a balance of your asset.
  2) Ability to freeze all funds and stop all trading of your assets
  3) Ability to transfer any balance of your asset from any user to any other user
 
In other words, if you are operating a legally complaint crypto currency exchange, then you can easily expand your business to becoming a BitShares gateway.  "

That's good to hear. Unfortunately the latest information is buried under a mountain of forum posts. But I am glad it's there anyway.

Offline hpenvy2

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"Bitshares does the same thing: it's designed from ideology not pragmatism. That's a weakness imo."

If you read the Origin of Bitshares (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=14019.0;topicseen) and take a look at what has been developed in the BTS domain I see nothing but ideology and pragmatism working together beautifully.........imo.

The author, who's billed as a securities attorney, makes a critical point worth repeating:

"It would be naïve to think the federal government will stand idly by when its control over currency and financial transactions is threatened."

Dan has certainly written a lot about the ideology behind bitshares. But there is little to no evidence of pragmatic thinking when it comes to the question of how bitshares will handle regulatory compliance when the time comes.

Just saying.

In today's coindesk article, Dan said, “I suspect that by the end of 2015, there’s going to be three major players, bitcoin, Ripple and us...,”
http://www.coindesk.com/bitshares-decentralized-exchange-crypto-2-0/

Bitcoin has the Bitcoin Foundation and lots of legal help dedicated to keeping bitcoin on the regulation reservation.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/bitcoin-foundation-seeks-more-time-to-address-virtual-currency-rules/?_r=0

Ripple bends over backwards for regulatory compliance.
https://wiki.ripple.com/Compliance_Resources

What is bitshares regulatory strategy?
Answer: there isn't one.

Really? No regulatory strategy?

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12050.msg161883#msg161883

"Legal Compliance

Any company that takes deposits from customers and facilitates transfers among customers is heavily regulated in most countries.   These regulations include license requirements, bonds, insurance, know your customer laws, and anti-money-laundering compliance among others.   The BitShares block chain provides gateways with all of the tools necessary to comply with these regulations.

If you are in this business you are already maintaining a database tracking user deposits and your database is probably logging every single transaction and balance change.    Your database knows exactly who is owed what at any point in time.   You also have the power to seize or freeze user balances at the demand of law enforcement.    BitShares provides you with all of these features as well including:

  1) Ability to white list public keys that may control a balance of your asset.
  2) Ability to freeze all funds and stop all trading of your assets
  3) Ability to transfer any balance of your asset from any user to any other user
 
In other words, if you are operating a legally complaint crypto currency exchange, then you can easily expand your business to becoming a BitShares gateway.  "

Offline werneo

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"Bitshares does the same thing: it's designed from ideology not pragmatism. That's a weakness imo."

If you read the Origin of Bitshares (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=14019.0;topicseen) and take a look at what has been developed in the BTS domain I see nothing but ideology and pragmatism working together beautifully.........imo.

The author, who's billed as a securities attorney, makes a critical point worth repeating:

"It would be naïve to think the federal government will stand idly by when its control over currency and financial transactions is threatened."

Dan has certainly written a lot about the ideology behind bitshares. But there is little to no evidence of pragmatic thinking when it comes to the question of how bitshares will handle regulatory compliance when the time comes.

Just saying.

In today's coindesk article, Dan said, “I suspect that by the end of 2015, there’s going to be three major players, bitcoin, Ripple and us...,”
http://www.coindesk.com/bitshares-decentralized-exchange-crypto-2-0/

Bitcoin has the Bitcoin Foundation and lots of legal help dedicated to keeping bitcoin safe from the regulatory hammer.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/bitcoin-foundation-seeks-more-time-to-address-virtual-currency-rules/?_r=0

Ripple bends over backwards for regulatory compliance.
https://wiki.ripple.com/Compliance_Resources

What is bitshares regulatory strategy?
Answer: there isn't one.




« Last Edit: February 06, 2015, 06:18:01 pm by werneo »

Offline Catchfire

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"Bitshares does the same thing: it's designed from ideology not pragmatism. That's a weakness imo."

If you read the Origin of Bitshares (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=14019.0;topicseen) and take a look at what has been developed in the BTS domain I see nothing but ideology and pragmatism working together beautifully.........imo. 

Offline werneo

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coindesk is on it:

Quote
The New York Observer has published a near 15,000-word story that takes a detailed look at the alleged historical "bad blood" between decentralized payment network startups Ripple Labs and Stellar, and the impact of this relationship on events in the wider bitcoin ecosystem.

http://www.coindesk.com/history-ripple-stellar-tell-all-report/

Offline triox

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Putting the validity of the article aside, this is a fantasticaly well executed hatchet job. There must be some important shit going on behind the scenes to warrant this level of expensive black PR.

BTW,  this is what we should expect once Bitshares starts being noticed. Devs should expect to have their previous work and family relationships being dragged into the open in the coming crypto-banking wars.


Offline klosure

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his is an epic PR disaster that not only ruins Stellar's credibility but also seriously affect Stripe's image and could jeopardize their relationship with Wells Fargo. Let us hope that this scandal won't give cold feet to crypto-friendly established businesses and have advert consequences on the entire crypto industry.

Offline Ander

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Wow what a story.

It felt like very good PR for Ripple and bad for Stellar to me.
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Offline Vizzini

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Dude seems to like Asian/Korean chicks. Just don't tell him there are more Stellar-looking specimens out there than those two.
Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

Offline donkeypong

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The part you singled out is a big indictment of Stellar. Aside from that, yea, it's a long interesting tale of scum.

Offline wrzkll

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Great read...typical Silicon Valley scum.

Offline werneo

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This is a very long but EXTREMELY INTERESTING article in the NY Observer about Jeb McCaleb, his wife, his kids, his girlfriend, Mt Gox, Ripple, Stellar, Wells Fargo's credibility, and the tragedy of coinpunk babies.

http://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-bitcoin

"Stellar’s credibility depends on exploiting the fundamentalist strain of libertarianism that animates the coder community."

Bitshares does the same thing: it's designed from ideology not pragmatism. That's a weakness imo.

More pull quotes for tldr:

"One of the things Stellar has been doing to distinguish itself from Ripple Labs is to remove the protections that Ripple Labs had built to accommodate the “know your customer” and anti-laundering needs of its banker partners."

"It would be naïve to think the federal government will stand idly by when its control over currency and financial transactions is threatened. Mr. Shrem’s experience was just one example."

“This is clearly the end of the line for Stellar. I mean, they’re not admitting that, but I mean, my God, you might as well be running a currency on an Excel spreadsheet. Stellar is now counterparty to a currency. And it’s a very weak counterparty. If Stellar Development Corp goes out of business, holders have nothing. Compare that to ripple or Bitcoin—if there was no Ripple Labs, ripple the currency would still exist, just like Bitcoin. The new proposed Stellar protocol defeats the whole purpose of distributing protocol and they’ve had to stop that because their consensus was broken. They’re trying to pin this on Ripple but from where I sit, Ripple has never been more stable. They’ve never been doing more transactions and have something like 90 people on the team. I suspect Jed probably broke something about a month ago, but make no mistake—this is a catastrophe for them. This idea that Jed is gonna invent a new consensus system in a couple of months and their phony 4 million accounts will just sit there and wait …”

The insider trails off and collects his thoughts. “At its core, Stellar is no longer a cryptocurrency. It’s a token form counterparty, and what is the risk of that counterparty? They don’t disclose how much money they make. I mean that’s why the SEC exists, right? So not only can you not rely on transactions of any kind going through because, as the sole validator, Stellar is the entire arbitrator of that, you’re holding assets that used to be a digital asset that is now a digital liability. That’s a fundamental change, especially ironic coming from Jed, the purist libertarian. Now he runs a sort of unregistered central issuer of liability. It’s really stunning.”
« Last Edit: February 06, 2015, 02:33:37 am by werneo »