Author Topic: Compliance Work  (Read 10764 times)

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Offline bitcrab

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generally speaking I agree with the principles addressed by @xeroc

firstly, we need discuss this issue based on realism, not idealism.

BTS need to be listed on more primary exchanges,  then BTS can have more solid price support, and the shorters will have more safe space to avoid big risks and provide enough smartcoins.   we need this happen ASAP.

for smartcoins like bitCNY, bitUSD there is another thing, frankly speaking, just listing bitUSD/bitCNY in one exchange make no sense, we have proved this in poloniex, bittrex and yunbi long time ago. what we need is to convince some exchange to open the bitUSD/bitCNY market, just as what poloniex and Bitfinex  do with USDT.

this is not easy, but I saw some possibilities, in China now many exchanges are going abroad and using BTC/USDT as the trading currency, AFAIK, in the coming month, 3-5 exchanges of this type will (re)list BTS. some of them are investing the possibility of using bitCNY as trading currency, what they worry most is that the supply of bitCNY cannot satisfy their demand.

if we believe that listing on more exchanges is one of the most important factor in BTS' growth, then we need to handle the compliance thing carefully.

Getting listed on centralized exchanges is *ALL ABOUT COMPLIANCE*. They
need to make sure they act according to law and regulations, otherwise
they may see trouble from officials.

now in China many blockchain team make their project go through Howey test to ensure that the token is not identified as security.

but regarding bittrex which has hurt BTS community a lot, I don't think we should pay to relist BTS. we need public explanation and apology from them! if they do not want to relist BTS, up to them.

for other exchanges, I think "list BTS and keep BTS daily volume > $200k in the next 30 days" is a good term for $50k offer. 






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Offline Thom

This is confused - there is very little about 'compliance' ie TXSRB/STOKENs that Michael/Stan are working on, and a lot on getting listed on exchanges.

I would suggest dropping the compliance and focus just on getting listed.

The TXSRB is a joke that so far has only served to degrade the image of Bitshares.

I think you're all being naive in your thinking about the amount of harm governments and regulatory bodies can do to Bitshares, even Satoshi was worried about that and we're not Bitcoin.. In my opinion we need this worker desperately.

I think the naivete is with those who believe we can "appease" gov. regulators by being "compliant". The danger they pose is great, no doubt. It's even greater if you don't recognize theirs is an unquenchable lust for power that won't stop until they have you under their thumb.

You open the door and let regulators in and it's all over. You just gave them your consent to become "regulated" and unfree / less free.

Why do you say the TXSRB has degraded BitShares' image?
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere - MLK |  Verbaltech2 Witness Reports: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23902.0.html

Offline fav

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when you say "compliant token service" built in bitshares you mean a service like OL to run IOU assets in a compliant way right?

yes and no. any company could run a KYC token on bitshares via whitelisting. the features are all present

Offline mf-tzo

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when you say "compliant token service" built in bitshares you mean a service like OL to run IOU assets in a compliant way right?
However, theoretically one can fork bitshares, keep bitshares and bitassets creation exactly the same way as currently but in order for people to obtain the new "bts" token they should be KYC within the blockchain. IDs etc will be registered within the blockchain and available for everyone to see and not held from a 3rd party service provider. Full transparency for the whole world to see. I don't know how many people will be comfortable with this but then no one can never no compliance..
Again I haven't thought this through, just pupping ideas out of my head since I am at worked and bored...lol..

chryspano

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I think you're all being naive in your thinking about the amount of harm governments and regulatory bodies can do to Bitshares, even Satoshi was worried about that and we're not Bitcoin.. In my opinion we need this worker desperately.

^^^ This!  +5% +5% +5%
« Last Edit: October 19, 2017, 08:47:39 am by chryspano »

Offline fav

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I haven't decided about this worker proposal but I recognize the importance to be fully compliant if we want bts to become the dominant decentralized exchange.

What I don't understand is why not someone copy the whole bitshares code and create "bitshares Compliant" . The "bitshare compliant" can sharedrop on a 1:1 basis the "BTS compliant token" to "BTS" to those who register and disclose their ID and do all KYC necessary and can prove ownership that they are the owners of the bts address they register within the new "bitshares compliant" network.

This way we will have BTS which operate as usual and  "bts compliant" that operate under full KYC and compliance.

BTS shareholder that chose to disclose their ID will benefit since they will receive free "bts compliant token". The market will then decide the price of each bts and "bts compliant". It is a win win for everyone.

Maybe I am talking nonsense just thinking out loud here..

you don't need a 2nd chain in theory to run a compliant token service. it's already built in bitshares.

however, I think some of the current actors would do good to just fork off.

Offline mf-tzo

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I haven't decided about this worker proposal but I recognize the importance to be fully compliant if we want bts to become the dominant decentralized exchange.

What I don't understand is why not someone copy the whole bitshares code and create "bitshares Compliant" . The "bitshare compliant" can sharedrop on a 1:1 basis the "BTS compliant token" to "BTS" to those who register and disclose their ID and do all KYC necessary and can prove ownership that they are the owners of the bts address they register within the new "bitshares compliant" network.

This way we will have BTS which operate as usual and  "bts compliant" that operate under full KYC and compliance.

BTS shareholder that chose to disclose their ID will benefit since they will receive free "bts compliant token". The market will then decide the price of each bts and "bts compliant". It is a win win for everyone.

Maybe I am talking nonsense just thinking out loud here..

Offline svk

This is confused - there is very little about 'compliance' ie TXSRB/STOKENs that Michael/Stan are working on, and a lot on getting listed on exchanges.

I would suggest dropping the compliance and focus just on getting listed.

The TXSRB is a joke that so far has only served to degrade the image of Bitshares.

I think you're all being naive in your thinking about the amount of harm governments and regulatory bodies can do to Bitshares, even Satoshi was worried about that and we're not Bitcoin.. In my opinion we need this worker desperately.
Worker: dev.bitsharesblocks

Offline George_Bitspark

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Pretty sure you know my position based on the lengthy Telegram discussion but here is my thoughts on this for the community who did not read through the hundreds of comments. A rigorous debate is essential for Bitshares to grow and improve.

1. This is a bad idea. No regulator cares about anything that a foundation for a blockchain (in their eyes some magical internet money people) has to say. A regulators' job is not to investigate the technicalities of a blockchain, thats irrelevant to their decisionmaking. What is relevant are businesses in their jurisdiction who would come under their regulatory oversight. Regulators engage with actual business on/off ramps into crypto, not the blockchains themselves which therefore means this worker is a non-starter to begin. Regulators regulate businesses.

2. This is a BTS shareholder subsidy for businesses. It is not the job of BTS shareholders to subsidise the costs of some business who elect to operate in a regulated exchange in their jurisdiction. Why not subside gateways in Russia? Thailand? Colombia? Each jurisdiction has different regulation and the only person that can speak to them about opening a regulated entity is the entity itself. The onus is on the business/gateway to seek regulatory permission, not the blockchain holders themselves.

3. This has no real objectives. If a random company called Bittrex USA decides to delist Bitshares thats a decision for them, why again must BTS holders subsidise decisions of a company? Its irrelevant if the reasoning is because of regulatory uncertainty,  maybe Bittrex shouldnt be in USA, its not my problem or anyone elses they find it hard to do business there. The objectives around 'responding to regulators' is also fairly vague, I can tell you that regulators in asia are not even going to return the emails of a blockchain foundation nor care about what they have to say because it's irrelevant to their decisionmaking. Telling them Bitshares is not a security because of X and Y is also not useful, its the gateway that is regulated not the blockchain, so even if they agree with you it wont impact any decisions. A gateway accepts fiat? Ok they're regulated and need license X, whatever blockchains they're using doesnt matter.

4. People would really get behind a worker for marketing if someone is willing to step up and do that 'on behalf of bitshares' but a regulatory representation is an entirely different thing, especially from a few people who are unknown to the community.
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Offline Brekyrself

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Echoing Thom's words above, your comment about being under NDA from Bittrex comes across in all the wrong ways.  Asking for 25k without talking with the community to get BTS re-listed?  Why should the BitShares shareholders pay 25k for a company to not publicly disclose their reasoning behind delisting BTS?

At this point, why not put 50k into OpenLedger who has been a big asset to BitShares since day 1?  At least they are open and honest!

Offline Thom

What really disturbs me about your proposal is the unknown names vested with significant power to guide the direction of the ecosystem, all under the banner of increasing "compliance".

Regulatory COMPLIANCE Uhg! So contrary to Satoshi's original vision. I am concerned that "making the platform compliant" will gut the advantages of the platform for freedom. Freedom is contrary to what regulators want. They want control. If they get it what we're left with will not look like freedom to those who know what freedom is. There are just soooo many socialists and slaves that think they're free now and just want more convenience and an "easy way" to make $

This proposal and effort will be scrutinzed VERY carefully. I will lobby heavily for frequent reports from these people so the community will be informed all along the way, not only after this team of yours works out some battery of changes that the ecosystem must adopt to become compliant.

My skeptiscm might be less significant if the majority of this team of yours were longtime BitShares holders or were at least known by this community.

It seems to me you're asking for a high degree of "faith" these people are trustworthy.

I am particularly uneasy about how quickly this proposal gained acceptance. It definitely speaks to the lack of decentralization present in our ecosystem, an accusation often made against BitShares. This only serves to prove those claims are indeed valid.

Just not getting a good feeling things are moving in the direction of more freedom. It feels like just the opposite is taking place.

The centralization issue should be addressed. We've discussed vote decay at length which would help as well as resolve dead accounts. This needs to be elevated in priority and scheduled to be implemented by Alfredo / core workers.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2017, 03:52:56 pm by Thom »
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere - MLK |  Verbaltech2 Witness Reports: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23902.0.html

Offline Thom

Would you please provide more info, a bio or brief work history for the other members besides yourself you listed in your proposal?

Thanks.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere - MLK |  Verbaltech2 Witness Reports: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23902.0.html

Offline xeroc

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This is confused - there is very little about 'compliance' ie TXSRB/STOKENs that Michael/Stan are working on, and a lot on getting listed on exchanges.

Getting listed on centralized exchanges is *ALL ABOUT COMPLIANCE*. They
need to make sure they act according to law and regulations, otherwise
they may see trouble from officials.

I would suggest dropping the compliance and focus just on getting listed.
I would love to live in a world that works as easy as you describe it.
Have you see what you need to do in order to be listed on Bittrex to
begin with? You essencially need to fill in a form that looks much like
the Howey test. Why would they ask for that? Simply because they need to
make sure they don't trade securities. Making sure the regulatory bodies
don't see BTS as security is what is called "compliance".

But don't try and get BTS listed. Been there done that, the exchanges that don't have BTS don't have it for a reason - we compete with their core business.
BTS does not compete with their core business. BTS is token much like
ETH. Most exchange do know that there is a decentralized exchange on
Ethereum too. Do they mind? No.
The core competence of centralized exchange is to be a gateway from FIAT
into crypto and if they wanted to add another potentially profitable
pair, they would add a bitUSD:FIAT pair. Why aren't they doing it?
Because BitShares does not have an Ethereum foundation that has tons of
money to do the legal leg work and B2B relations. Even if they wanted to
list BTS, they couldn't because they cannot even reach a single person
to tell them more about it. I don't expect them to read through tons of
bitsharestalk threads just to get the picture of what BTS is - let alone
complicated stuff like bitassets.

What may be worthwhile is getting the exchanges to list bitUSD and bitCNY.
Totally.

I would support a bounty worker that pays $50k USD for each exchange that lists bitUSD and bitCNY... but... the exchange has to do >$100M USD 24 hr volume. Bithumb, Bitfinex, Bittrex, Polo, Coinone, HitBTC, Korbit, Kraken, GDAX.
Well, exchanges don DO volume. They offer markets for other people to
provide the volume. Easy as that.

It would be much better to create global demand for bitUSD and bitCNY than to try and beat a dead horse. If major exchanges start using bitUSD instead of USDT the amount of BTS locked away as collateral will cause BTS to moon very quickly. There is freaking half a billion dollars of USDT floating around right now, even 10% of that action would move BTS substantially.
It's the other way round, actually. If you wanted to create half of that
in bitUSD, you'd need the BTS price to go up, otherwise, you cannot
short that amount of bitUSD into existence!

I would like to see a worker (or third party business), which will help me to file my tax form (for a fee of course).
Me too :D  but that's out of the scope of this worker

I don't see this as needed or feasible. companies should protect their service in their own jurisdiction.

and since I don't see an american lawyer on the team, the SEC argument is pretty much invalid
If you were in my shoes, you'd probably see it differently. That's all I
can say to that .. sorry

You seem to indicate compliance is why exchanges such as Bittrex dropped BTS.  Have they made an official statement this is the case or was it some other technical issue they were having with the blockchain itself etc...?
Nothing official, no. But we did talk to bittrex and know more insights,
however, we signed an NDA with them so cannot share details. Hope you
understand that.

Blockchain compliance is such a grey area at the moment where different jurisdictions will always have different requirements. 
It's **NOT** about blockchain compliance. It is about the BTS token to
be compliant in terms of securities law - which (fortunately) is less
rigorous in non-U.S. countries.

Can you list any current compliance issues that need to be addressed?
I can at least address one that has been fixed last week (unfunded work,
btw):
* BitAssets are not CFDs - https://steemit.com/bitshares/@xeroc/bitshares-clarification-on-recent-fears-uncertainty-and-doubt

How are those currently effecting the Bitshares ecosystem?  (are businesses trying to utilize BitShares but are turned down by the local .gov that we don't know about?)
Major problem is that most businesses don't want to take the time learn
all about BitShares that we here already know - they have better
business to deal with. So, if the SEC approaches them and ask them to
show proof for compliance, what would they do? Kick out those that they
are not sure about and have no means of obtaining factual insights.

I don't see this as necessary, if witnesses/committee members find themselves in regulatory hot water then they can be replaced with users outside the affected areas.
Only gateways should have compliance concerns, of which that's their business not BTS'.
I replied to this on the other thread

$50k for getting Bittrex to re-integrate BTS/bitUSD is a bit of a joke, we could get added to multiple exchanges for that much. Besides, DEX > CEX & Bittrex loss has been factored into the price already.
I don't care much about the price but about the future of BitShares. If
we do not tackle compliance now, we will see major issues **VERY** soon.

And $50k for every additional exchange that lists a BTS asset? That's mental, most exchanges which charge a fee only ask for a few thousand, let centralized exchanges come to Bitshares than fork out this way.
I wish I could say I understand what you are saying, but I cannot.

Offline R

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I don't see this as necessary, if witnesses/committee members find themselves in regulatory hot water then they can be replaced with users outside the affected areas.
Only gateways should have compliance concerns, of which that's their business not BTS'.
$50k for getting Bittrex to re-integrate BTS/bitUSD is a bit of a joke, we could get added to multiple exchanges for that much. Besides, DEX > CEX & Bittrex loss has been factored into the price already.
And $50k for every additional exchange that lists a BTS asset? That's mental, most exchanges which charge a fee only ask for a few thousand, let centralized exchanges come to Bitshares than fork out this way.

Offline Brekyrself

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You seem to indicate compliance is why exchanges such as Bittrex dropped BTS.  Have they made an official statement this is the case or was it some other technical issue they were having with the blockchain itself etc...?

Blockchain compliance is such a grey area at the moment where different jurisdictions will always have different requirements. 

Can you list any current compliance issues that need to be addressed?
How are those currently effecting the Bitshares ecosystem?  (are businesses trying to utilize BitShares but are turned down by the local .gov that we don't know about?)

Your milestone bounties sound great.  Having BitAsset on/off ramps would be well worth the cost.