Overstock.com Assembles Coders to Create a Bitcoin-Like Stock Market

[donkeypong]

Reminds me of the dot.com era when people made presentations like that and got funded blindly. You'd look at their website and read all their stuff and at the end you'd be left with the question: So, what the hell do you do?

[jsidhu]

Essentially they are non technical and dont want you to see through their bs so their talks are reviewed to death and have an agenda.. some ppl can pick it up right away and sometimes in the market it pays to read them for their truth asap.

[Riverhead]

but even with all this, things still seem to be very unclear, lots of details left out, not explicitly stated, most people not yet fully understanding all the details, so I'd love to know what everyone else thinks is going on with the details, and what all this really means.

Brent Allsop
Founder http://Canonizer.com

I find this typical of the speeches by CEO's of large companies. Their presentation is sharp, on point, and impactful. It's not until hours or days later you start to realize you're left with more questions than answers and couldn't really pin him down to anything other than a strong interest in a crypto securities market and the willingness to spend millions on it.

[CoinHoarder]

Very curious to see how they will react to decentralized online poker

I suppose I just needed to vent given today's rumors about the SEC cracking down on various crypto issued securities. The timing of it really strikes me as not being coincidental if it is true though. I will hold off on further comments until something actually happens, as for all we know at this point it is only FUD.

[roadscape]

Very curious to see how they will react to decentralized online poker

[CoinHoarder]

[conspiracy theory soaked in realism]
1. The government wants their cut of anything that they are not getting their cut of, cryptocurrency issued equities being one of them.
2. Overstock realizes this and the potential of creating a "legal" crypto security market by the letter of the law and regulations.
3. Overstock puts in motion the creation of this "legal" crypto security market and calls upon the government to regulate all of the prior "illegal" securities.
4. Several days later rumors start flying around about the government puts the fear of God into people whom would want to issue crypto securities "illegally" by coming down hard on prior "illegal" securities. (I would not be surprised if this becomes true.)
5. Overstock's existing competition is crushed and newcomers are too scared to even try to issue an "illegal" security, and Overstock has the only remaining "legal" option to creating crypto securities. It will take a budget the size of Overstock to enter the market "legally" just like it costs a boatload for cryptocurrency to FIAT exchanges to operate "legally," and the government gets their cut through taxes, business partnerships/investments, and campaign contributions.
[/conspiracy theory soaked in realism]

I've seen this all before... in the online poker industry.
1. The government kills the competitors in the name of the law
2. "Black Friday" came... the DOJ shut down PokerStars/FTP in the USA
3. USA Corporations subsequently profit from them killing the competition.
4. The Casinos in Nevada and New Jersey subsequently decided (all the sudden right after PS/FTP were shut down): "Hey, we can start our own online poker networks legally.. see this loophole."
5. The American casinos and government profit off of killing the overseas competitors to gain a foothold on the industry.

Don't forget Fincen and the USA cryptocurrency exchanges and Bitcoin ATM operators either... kill the small guys by making it stupidly expensive to conform to the regulations and laws, and give the jobs to the rich and the corporations. Oh and by the way.. the politicians just happen to be rich, the corporations just happen to pay for their campaigns, and the politicians just happen to be investors in the corporations... bureaucracy at its finest. I'm sure the politicians are buying up Overstock equity as I type.

/rant

In other news, it's time to step away from the keyboard. 

[Brent.Allsop]

I think I am finally starting to better understand what Patrick Byrne with Overstock might be trying to do and what he want to "own".  This coin telegraph article helped me a lot:

http://cointelegraph.com/news/112699/overstockcom-plans-new-bitcoin-blockchain-based-stock-market

but even with all this, things still seem to be very unclear, lots of details left out, not explicitly stated, most people not yet fully understanding all the details, so I'd love to know what everyone else thinks is going on with the details, and what all this really means.

Maybe Byrne does not want to own counterparty, or the currency, or the open source code base of such.  Maybe he just wants to own a legalized exchange for such and that such an exchange need not be open source?  In other words, He just wants to own the exchange which will become the interface or onramps between real USD and crypto version of shares of overstock.com.  He doesn't want to own counterparty, and the crypto stock market it will be running, he wants to become the first regulated and government approved MtGox for it?

So if this is his strategy, he is not competing with BitsharesX, at all.  Since BitsharesX will be easily plug and playable with counterparty in whatever legalized on/off ramp they build for it?

What does everyone else think?

Brent Allsop
Founder http://Canonizer.com

[ticklebiscuit]

Thanks for your responses.  @JoeyD. Why do you think bitshares is where you landed?

[fuzzy]

Slow turtles...are slow. 

[tonyk]

The Revolution Always Eats Its Own... Even if they are turtles...

Hmm, is Patrick making turtle soup?

No, he just makes sure that his own turtle is a true turtle and cannot move  fast enough...

[Riverhead]

The Revolution Always Eats Its Own... Even if they are turtles...

Hmm, is Patrick making turtle soup?

[tonyk]

The Revolution Always Eats Its Own... Even if they are turtles...

[JoeyD]

Very creative ticklebiscuit and not far from how I came to see the ethereum-ipo back when I never even heard of bitshares before.  Don't tell anyone, but I ony discovered bitshares because I was excited about Ethereum and doing research on it.

One of my bigger gripes with Ethereum, apart from the POW and single blockchain, is that the proposed plan was for the IPO to pay for bounties for yet unsolved problems that the project needs solved. When I read that I was like  , oookaaay. Ticklebiscuits analogy is pretty close to the actual proposed roadmap.

I might be biased though, seeing how I use a javascript blocking plugin for my webbrowsers. Had the project not been pow based, single blockchain and coated with less Microsoftian Applesque Walledgardenism Middleman-(bordering-parasite)-syndrome rhetoric, I might still have retained some of my earlier excitement about it.

Back to bitshares-toolkit and dpos, you'd think the database on a blockchain implementation complete with extended database operations would garner some attention. Looking at internet analogies, because many in crypto love those, database operations are not the smallest building block on the internet so having that capability on a blockchain could prove quite useful.

[jsidhu]

This is what PhantomPhreak (Adam Krellenstein) wrote here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395761.msg9115341#msg9115341 :

Everybody, there is an enormous amount of misinformation going around in the press. We're working to fix that ASAP. In the meantime, please help us correct errors as you see them!

For the record:

1) Overstock.com and Counterparty are partnering to build a platform (Medici) for trading stocks on Counterparty and using Counterparty's decentralized exchange.

2) I, along with Ouziel (JahPowerBit), will continue working on the Counterparty protocol full-time. Robby and Evan will continue to work on Counterparty full-time because Medici is a front-end for Counterparty.

The Wired and Coindesk articles make it sound as though we are abandoning this project. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Thank you,
Adam

I think this is good news for our community, as Bytemaster pointed out in this thread, Counterparty platform is too slow and transactions cost is too high to be a real competitor for BitSharesX. The work on the legal side they are going to do should benefit entire crypto finance industry.

is there anything keeping them from "upgrading" counterparty's tech in some way that xcp is no longer really counterparty...and then keeping the name for brand recognition?

My only fear is that they figure out how to use Open Transaction federated servers to track the Counterparty Open Assets. That way the Assets would be verifiably on the BTC blockchain and could be traded even faster than BTSX assets. Various issues such as BTC blockchain bloat and Open Transactions centralization might remain an issue even in that scenario.

OT is supppsed to come out in December, so who knows what happens.

The irony of course is that BTSX delegates might become the most trusted OT servers.

Did they finally get that OT for grandma client out... wasnt there supposed to be like a 500btc bounty for that lol.. i doubt its still valid.

[itnom]

This is what PhantomPhreak (Adam Krellenstein) wrote here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395761.msg9115341#msg9115341 :

Everybody, there is an enormous amount of misinformation going around in the press. We're working to fix that ASAP. In the meantime, please help us correct errors as you see them!

For the record:

1) Overstock.com and Counterparty are partnering to build a platform (Medici) for trading stocks on Counterparty and using Counterparty's decentralized exchange.

2) I, along with Ouziel (JahPowerBit), will continue working on the Counterparty protocol full-time. Robby and Evan will continue to work on Counterparty full-time because Medici is a front-end for Counterparty.

The Wired and Coindesk articles make it sound as though we are abandoning this project. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Thank you,
Adam

I think this is good news for our community, as Bytemaster pointed out in this thread, Counterparty platform is too slow and transactions cost is too high to be a real competitor for BitSharesX. The work on the legal side they are going to do should benefit entire crypto finance industry.

is there anything keeping them from "upgrading" counterparty's tech in some way that xcp is no longer really counterparty...and then keeping the name for brand recognition?

My only fear is that they figure out how to use Open Transaction federated servers to track the Counterparty Open Assets. That way the Assets would be verifiably on the BTC blockchain and could be traded even faster than BTSX assets. Various issues such as BTC blockchain bloat and Open Transactions centralization might remain an issue even in that scenario.

OT is supppsed to come out in December, so who knows what happens.

The irony of course is that BTSX delegates might become the most trusted OT servers.