Warning regarding Iconic's misguided "Wall Street" plan:
The investment industry sees this type of thing he's planning (ie- hiring pretty, but likely clueless, women who really don't know what the hell they're peddling) as very gimmicky and
very juvenile.
The investment industry in reality these days is not "Wolf of Wall Street" and is
boring and cares only about two things: returns and playing by the SEC's rules. Investment professionals do due diligence using these simple 1-pagers (
http://www.harborfunds.com/docs/international_fund_fact_sheet.pdf and this thing called a prospectus
http://hosted.rightprospectus.com/HarborFunds/Fund.aspx?dt=SP&ts=HIINX.
SecondMarket realizes this and will have their public Bitcoin ETF up and running later this year after convincing investors and the SEC that Bitcoin not some gigantic, scammy, ponzi-scheme.
Secondmarket knows that the best way to legitimize Bitcoin for the general investment world is to get the regulators to okay it first and then market it as a returns-achieving security that is safe to hold in a high-risk portfolio.
With Iconic's plan you'll likely get another pump, followed by another dump, and overall nothing will have been achieved.
A better plan would be to send those donated BC's to the Blackcoin development team, with the intention of them starting Blackcoin on the path of ETF-creation or a BlackCoinPool Mining Investment Fund. This would be a huge endeavor and would require many expensive securities lawyers and potentially years of work and patience, however it would help the coin in the long-term versus Iconic's plan.
Hell, I would bet every Blackcoin I own that if the Blackcoin Developers made a simple news release that they were going to hire a securities law-firm to help them start on this long process of legitimizing Blackcoin for the investment industry, the price of Blackcoin would spike up higher than this plan of Iconic's, and, unlike Iconic's plan, the price would
stay up because it is so unique and ballsy and would add ridiculous value to Blackcoin in the long-term.
Just my 2-cents.
Source: I work in the investment industry and read thousands of prospectuses, fact sheets, 10Q's, 10K's and annual reports, and I need to file a 13h and 13f.
JL
Jesse,
you are right in stating that the financial industry is getting more "boring" by the minute. And if you think you've been hit hard by regulators in the US, come over to the EU and see how we've been smacked down by ours...
While what you wrote above makes a lot of sense (legitimizing Blackcoin for the investment industry, BC mutual funds, ETFs etc...), I have been in the industry around long enough to know this will not sell a single coin... unless you make people want to buy it.
How many times, have structurers come out with the best of the bestest ideas for products - I won't tell you which firm I work for but a couple of years ago, there was a huge internal push to sell that new product... it was a CTA ETF if that matters - only to sell absolutely zilch. Nothing. Nada. A global investment bank goes all out and manages to get... less than $1 million.
You know, I'm a salestrader in structured products. I've had my fair share of product launches, successes, failures... All I can say is this:
1) no awareness of the product = no product gets sold
2) The Wolf Of Wall Street still lives among traders... they are the first ones to be sorry about the current state
3) Retail and Institutional clients aren't the same. One does not prevent the other from thriving. You can push on both fronts independently
Iconic's Wall Street initiative is potentially very good: it creates interest in retail investor space and amuses institutionals. In either case it's publicity. And any publicity is good publicity.