What is with BTC economy and so many scams? I guess the world is not ready for decentralization and anonymity yet. I have not seen any other economy with so many scams involved anywhere.
Decentralization is a good thing for daily users. The main problem with BTC for company or (-ish) things is that they shouldnt be decentralised. They should be regulated and accountable for what they do. I dont mean BTC should be regulated but BTC nominated companies should work according to -at least- some local laws . They should be punished when they dont make their responsibilities or break their laws.
However , to happen these , every goverment should make some extra efforts to let and work with BTC nominated stocks. If which country makes first steps and completed the legal structure of it , then I guess that country makes a big advantage and BTC is much closer to mainstream.
It is possible to promote voluntary regulation in a decentralized ecosystem. NXT attempted it with their NXTinspect auditing service, for example.
I know of Havelock and NXT, but what are some of the other popular stock platforms available.
XCP ,MSC , HZ and may be NEM are other options.
NEM's asset exchange isn't live yet and probably won't be until a few more weeks at least. And I wouldn't exactly call HZ a "popular" stock platform. It's a NXT clone and most NXT clones (e.g. FIMK, BURST) have asset exchanges which are hardly used. Qora has an asset exchange too although nobody uses it.
Also, BitShares has support for user-issued assets. Again, I don't think it's widely used. NXT is definitely the most popular one with XCP and MSC probably being the second and third most popular platforms, respectively.
For a more comprehensive analysis of decentralized cryptosecurity issuance platforms, check out Overstock's wiki:
http://o.info/index.php/How_to_issue_a_cryptosecurityHere is a list of guides for each platform in case you want to issue your own cryptosecurity:
http://o.info/index.php/Category:CryptocurrencyWhat does BTC compatible mean on the list in first link?
I didn't write it so I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean. It does seem very strange that NEM is listed as being BTC compatible but NXT isn't. At first, I assumed it might have something to do with being based on Bitcoin's blockchain but there is another column which describes that. Hmm... Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that dividends can be paid out in BTC as opposed to the native currency? That's the only explanation I can think of.
Thanks for the link, i searched for something like that since some days. I think decentralisation is much needed in times when exchanges go scam or simply having a single point of attack could lead to risks for shareholders in case governments go after unregistered securities.
Unfortunately, it's not quite as simple as that. Note that all the exchanges listed on that page are pretty much closed ecosystems and don't really interact with any other cryptocurrencies except for themselves. You can't really buy bitcoins, litecoins, or USD on the NXT asset exchange (or any other distributed asset exchange for that matter) because the assets listed there are really just bitcoin, litecoin, or USD IOUs. This is a big and very complex problem that we are only just beginning to solve. Check out automated transactions and atomic cross-chain trading for the beginnings of what a future decentralized altcoin exchange might look like.
Though on the other hand... anonymous securities werent the best idea most of its time. Im not sure how to solve it and how to be sure that its not only a long lasting scam that collects more coins on the way.
This is indeed a very real danger. ReserveShare for an example was a scam asset that was supposed to represent shares in a new altcoin but actually represented nothing. There are other similar scammy assets on the NXT asset exchange as well. The lack of regulation means that anyone can create their own asset with a misleading name and description. Hence the reason why you might see assets for Facebook, Apple, Gold, or a fake copy of an existing genuine asset, despite none of these assets representing anything.
Fortunately, NXT did implement a few measures to counteract this problem such as removing the ability to search assets by name, not listing assets by default, only displaying assets by inputting the asset's ID, and also by imposing a 1,000 NXT fee for asset creation. Even so, it's not foolproof. The best way to avoid scammy assets is to do your research and check out the asset in question before buying and also to read what other people have said about it on forums such as these.
EDIT: I'm only using NXT as an example because it's the platform that I'm most familiar with. Similar measures could probably be applied for any other crypto asset platform out there.