Any chance exchanges starting to demand regular financial reporting from issuers? Seriously, this will help everyone. (I have asked this several times in last year or so)
I think that "They will choose another exchange" excuse has become irrelevant. Why? Because BTCT has the highest volume and best interface, with all the bells and whistles issuer or investor can ask for.
I think it'd be awesome to do an SEC style requirement that assets upload financials to the site at regular intervals. (quarterly?)
It's quite a bit of work unfortunately to make sure that uploaded files don't become vectors for virus infections or other attacks.
Weak or non-existent financial reporting is merely a symptom of a much bigger underlying problem which the exchange has created for itself. Tackling the syptom will do utterly nothing to address the real problem, which is the listing of assets with ludicrously weak, incoherent, factually erroneous, almost embarrassing contracts. (And not to put too fine a point on it, but taking an asset with a ludicrous contract and slapping on some financials is not going to make the asset any better whatsoever.)
First, about tackling the symptom rather than the problem...
It might sound easy just to "demand regular financial reporting from issuers", and on the face of it maybe it even seems "awesome to do an SEC style requirement" and start playing the role of a financial regulator. However, each move toward playing financial regulator on the part of an exchange arguably creates liability for the exchange in the form of shared responsibility when something goes wrong: to be worth anything, the exchange must either accept or reject every submission, indicating that it either satisfies or does not satisfy a thorough and relevant set of clearly delineated requirements.
And if the exchange did sincerely wish to disregard the learning that has occurred during the last century or so regarding how to create an effective exchange system and chose to begin playing at being the SEC in spite of it all, then it would be important to get it right: set the relevant standards for the different asset types (including the clearly distinct requirements for bonds, depositary receipts, loans, managed funds, so-called 'futures', PMBs, revenue share contracts, and real companies), and ensure that you retain sufficient legal and accounting staff to guarantee that when the exchange stands up to be counted and puts its stamp of approval on each submitted document to affirm that it satisfies the requirements which the exchange has set, it doesn't foul it up. (Oh, and be sure to understand why the SEC exempts huge swaths of businesses from this type of regulation in the first place.)
Note that this is never, never,
never how it works out in the real world of fiat finance: an exchange
never plays the role of the SEC, and for extremely good reasons. (I'll come back to this in a second, with a note on how this does work in the fiat world.)
Back to tackling the real problem rather than putting a Band-Aid over it by playing financial regulator...
The underlying problem which I think grates on so many people is not the absence of robust financial reporting
per se; it is the failure of asset issuers to do what they've said they're going to do, the failure of asset issuers to provide the information they've said they're going to provide, and the willingness of asset issuers to start doing
other things than what they've said they're going to do. In some cases, it's even the willingness of asset issuers to change the terms of their contracts in the middle of an IPO.
If you get the contracts right, the rest will take care of itself. If a contract does not indicate what financial detail will be reported and when, then it should not be approved in the first place. If a contract does indicate what will be reported, and the issuer does not deliver, then it should be suspended and if necessary delisted.So if you want financial reporting, great: simply require every asset to set out, in detail, exactly what it's going to report and when. And if it fails to do so, issue a notice that the asset will be suspended. (You could announce this requirement tomorrow if you wanted: everyone has 30 days to add financial reporting plans to their contracts, or they're out.)
That's how it works in the real world: exchanges may suspend listings for failing to submit appropriate financial reports to government bodies such as the SEC, but it is not their job --
and it should never be their job -- to play the role of a financial regulator determining what those reports should look like. (There is a reason for the very clear separation of responsibility between government bodies such as the SEC and commercial bodies such as stock exchanges.)
IMHO, the exchange has come to be where it is now as a result of outsourcing the job of financial and contract review to anyone willing to cough up a few dozen BTC to become an LTC Global moderator.
The current junk is listed because LTC Global/BTC Trading shareholders chose to list it. An exchange with an annual run rate of over 1 million BTC in trading volume should consider taking a more serious approach to quality control and put aside forever the populist approach of simply listing whatever its shareholders vote to list.
And don't get me started on the crazy conflicts of interest already baked into that system, let alone all the additional problems the exchange would create for itself if it decided it should play SEC, too...