BitShares Forum

Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: clout on October 31, 2014, 10:12:54 pm

Title: Fractional Ownership of Account Balances
Post by: clout on October 31, 2014, 10:12:54 pm
Is it possible to modify the blockchain to allow an account to issue shares in its balance? In this way, as an account accumulates revenue, shareholders in a specific account can claim their portion of the revenue and subsequently destroy those shares. These new assets wouldn't require any market to determine their value. Instead holders of these shares can cash out as they please with out regard for market liquidity. On the other hand, if there is enough enthusiasm for a particular market, those shares may trade above the value of accumulated earnings and allow for shareholders to cash out more from the market than they can from the account.

The advantage of this approach is that these shares don't require a liquid market to realize gains and traders in that market have a set price floor, established by the actually revenue that this account has accrued.

These accounts can be used for the sale of intellectual property in the same way that peertracks will facilitate the sale of music through its platform.

Is this a better approach or at all technically possible?
Title: Re: Fractional Ownership of Account Balances
Post by: bytemaster on October 31, 2014, 10:16:55 pm
Technically possible... auto-redemption of a user issued asset.  The issuer could dilute and/or spend the funds in the account.   It is kind of like a company that allows shareholders to at anytime cash out by either selling their shares or taking their cut of the assets.

The fact is that it almost always better to sell your shares on the market because they will always trade for *MORE* than the assets on hand in any useful application.
Title: Re: Fractional Ownership of Account Balances
Post by: clout on November 01, 2014, 08:48:11 pm
Technically possible... auto-redemption of a user issued asset.  The issuer could dilute and/or spend the funds in the account.   It is kind of like a company that allows shareholders to at anytime cash out by either selling their shares or taking their cut of the assets.

The fact is that it almost always better to sell your shares on the market because they will always trade for *MORE* than the assets on hand in any useful application.

This would be a separate type of account and UIA. Upon registering the account, shares would be created and could not be diluted.
This issuer would not be able to spend the funds from the account. The sole purpose of the account is to receive funds and allow shareholder to redeem those funds by destroying their shares.

The practical issue at hand is that most UIAs will not have liquid markets or even have a market at all. The peertracks approach doesn't seem to directly tie the value of those assets to earnings. This alternative approach would make the market less speculative and provides a metric for valuing those shares.
Title: Re: Fractional Ownership of Account Balances
Post by: toast on November 01, 2014, 08:51:22 pm
Technically possible... auto-redemption of a user issued asset.  The issuer could dilute and/or spend the funds in the account.   It is kind of like a company that allows shareholders to at anytime cash out by either selling their shares or taking their cut of the assets.

The fact is that it almost always better to sell your shares on the market because they will always trade for *MORE* than the assets on hand in any useful application.

This would be a separate type of account and UIA. Upon registering the account, shares would be created and could not be diluted.
This issuer would not be able to spend the funds from the account. The sole purpose of the account is to receive funds and allow shareholder to redeem those funds by destroying their shares.

The practical issue at hand is that most UIAs will not have liquid markets or even have a market at all. The peertracks approach doesn't seem to directly tie the value of those assets to earnings. This alternative approach would make the market less speculative and provides a metric for valuing those shares.

You can implement this by letting an issue put in a buy order he can't cancel. I like it.
Title: Re: Fractional Ownership of Account Balances
Post by: arhag on November 02, 2014, 01:57:23 am
This discussion sparked an idea.

Imagine a market for UIA vs BitUSD similar to the BitAsset vs BTS markets with shorting. The difference is that the UIA issuer (which could be a multisig account) is the only one that is allowed to "short" except it really isn't shorting but rather issuing. The lowest price (in BitUSD) that the issuer could issue/sell the new UIA at would be the one-hour average price. If there is no market and thus no one-hour price (say during the initial distribution of the UIA) the issuer can issue UIA at any price as long as there is a matching bid. Details can of course be adjusted. Any BitUSD used to buy newly issued UIA would directly go into a locked fund that the issuer cannot directly access. So through this process new UIA can be issued and all payments for this UIA goes into a locked fund.

The market would have an extra tweak however. There would always be a UIA buy order at the price of (BitUSD held in fund)/(outstanding UIA). This order would always be there as long as there was BitUSD in the fund and the quantity of the order would be for all of the BitUSD held in the fund. Any UIA that is sold and matched with this special order would be destroyed. As bytemaster mentioned, the market price would likely always be above this price floor because people would be speculating about the future value of this UIA (to be discussed shortly) otherwise they wouldn't bother locking up their BitUSD in the first place. However, should all of this speculative value of the UIA disappear, UIA holders can at least be assured that they can sell their UIA at any time at this price floor and get some of the value back as BitUSD.

So why would anyone put BitUSD into this fund? The idea would be to provide some entity/organization (the issuer) with money to invest in various opportunities and then return the profits back to the investors. So this UIA would essentially be a mutual fund. For the issuer to be able to invest the BitUSD, however, they would need access to it, which they cannot get as long as it is in the locked fund. The issuer would be able to make a proposal to withdraw a certain amount of BitUSD from the locked fund into their own account from which they can spend the BitUSD. If enough UIA holders approve of the proposal, the blockchain will automatically move the specified amount of BitUSD from the locked fund to the issuer's account. The issuer can then invest this money and make a return. The issuer would then be able to deposit at anytime a larger amount of BitUSD back into the locked fund to grow its value and inspire investors to put more money into the fund. I would also like to see the ability for a UIA holder to propose (for a medium-sized fee) a change of the issuer of the UIA. If the majority of UIA votes in approval of this proposal, the issuer would change and the proposal submitter would get back the fee they paid to submit the proposal.

The voting mechanism means that UIA holders do not need to trust the issuer with all of the BitUSD they have invested. They can just approve of a fraction of the funds to be accessible to the issuer at any given time so that they can do the investing necessary. But for this to really be useful, I would like to eventually see things like collateralized loans and other smart contracts that have value also be stored in the locked fund. This way the issuer could be trusted to give out the loans to individuals and businesses with decent credit, but they wouldn't actually control ownership of the valuable loan contracts for more than a short period of time. The gradual repayment of these loans could go directly into the locked fund. If someone defaults on a collateralized loan (say collateralized by some digital asset like a .p2p domain or cryptostocks / other UIA), then the blockchain could automatically liquidate those funds by say selling the cryptostocks in the open decentralized exchange or launching an open auction to sell the .p2p domain to the highest bidder and move the proceeds from that auction into the locked funds directly.

Finally, with some additional smart contracts this system can be tweaked to act as an assurance contract or dominant assurance contract for crowdfunding. To act as an assurance contract a smart contract could be set up which will automatically move all the BitUSD in the locked fund to the issuer if the amount of BitUSD in the fund is above some threshold by a certain date. A dominant assurance contract can be achieved by modifying that smart contract slightly. The issuer would put some amount of BitUSD held in reserve with the smart contract. The smart contract would again move BitUSD in the locked fund to the issuer if the threshold criterion was met by the deadline. On the other hand, if that criterion was not met by the deadline, the smart contract would automatically deposit the BitUSD held in its reserve into the locked fund. The UIA holders (the crowdfunders) would then be able to withdraw their donations with interest if the crowdfunding failed.

Title: Re: Fractional Ownership of Account Balances
Post by: clout on November 04, 2014, 01:10:32 am
Technically possible... auto-redemption of a user issued asset.  The issuer could dilute and/or spend the funds in the account.   It is kind of like a company that allows shareholders to at anytime cash out by either selling their shares or taking their cut of the assets.

The fact is that it almost always better to sell your shares on the market because they will always trade for *MORE* than the assets on hand in any useful application.

This would be a separate type of account and UIA. Upon registering the account, shares would be created and could not be diluted.
This issuer would not be able to spend the funds from the account. The sole purpose of the account is to receive funds and allow shareholder to redeem those funds by destroying their shares.

The practical issue at hand is that most UIAs will not have liquid markets or even have a market at all. The peertracks approach doesn't seem to directly tie the value of those assets to earnings. This alternative approach would make the market less speculative and provides a metric for valuing those shares.

You can implement this by letting an issue put in a buy order he can't cancel. I like it.

Ok let me see if I understand how that plays out.

I issue 100 shares. For the first week of purchases I accrue 100 bitUSD, so I place a bid for 100 shares @ 1 bitUSD each. The second week I get 100 more bitUSD. I place an order for 50 shares @ 2 bitUSD each. I would need to change my first order to 50 shares @ 2 bitUSD also in order for your alternative implementation to be tantamount to my proposal.

Is it possible to place an order that can't be cancelled but can be swapped with a higher volume order?