I didnt suggest to scam the shareholders, only to save the money and give it out as dividend later. I only know that there are people that fear 51% attacks regardless if it would make sense to attack or not. And i only wrote this to fight these fears because i trust friedcat and his team very much. He proved that they are trustworthy so i wouldnt fear any loss if he would handle it this way to circumvent the fear of some people.
But ok, one could feel unease about this. Bitfountain most probably wont ever get to this point.
You came very close if you did not. This is Business Ethics 101, don't lie to your customers/shareholders, even if it is "for their own good."
You implied (and came very close to stating) that it would be OK for ASICMINER to build up more than 50% (after all, it's an "over 50% attack, not a 51% required) of the network without telling anyone if they just keep the proceeds until the >50% danger is over. This would do absolutely nothing to prevent ASICMINER from acting badly with their network majority, AND would ensure that stockholders and the public are uninformed that there is a potential attack on the network. We would all find out later that there WAS a >50% situation, and the resultant panic (IMHO) would not be that different that that which would happen if the public/shareholders were informed of the situation.
As a mining company, there is a moral (and contractual in most cases) obligation to tell your shareholders the truth about the amount of ore coming out of the ground (as well as the quality) and if they try to hide a pile of good ore in the tailings (in case of hard times) then they are defrauding their shareholders and the management should be replaced.
I realize you made the suggestion in good faith, but the implications of it fail the business ethics sniff test.
Personally I would much rather see reliable and accurate updates that can be matched against the public record (so we can validate the ongoing honesty of the operation) and then if ASICMINER starts to approach 50% they should either delay implementing new hardware (actively attempting to avoid >50%) and announce the delay, or sell hardware to another party in sufficient quantity to ensure that they cannot gain >50% share.
Either way, you are correct that the planning for this scenario is important, so that the resultant policy can be shared and used as (a critical) part of the valuation of the company. Similar plans for fire/flood/power outage and other disasters should happen at some point too, but I'm willing to wait 3-6 months for them to hit their stride with "production" hardware before I start insisting on answers to these and other issues. After all, the company needs to survive before it can protect itself or us.
Having two exchanges do it is great for us - as it forces them to compete both on terms and on price: they both want to attract users more than make a profit on ASICMINER, so we get pass-throughs at no cost (BitFunder) or very small cost (BTC.CO).
Better yet, don't pick one exchange, diversify across both and you will reduce your risk in the case of another GLBSE-style event.
