Topic: Plans to reinstate BTC-TC: Don't panic! - page 2. (Read 6460 times)

You say that you don't wanna go the tor route, because you might be able operate legally in the UK.
Yet you state here that there seems to be some regulations stopping US investors to actually invest and use the site?

That would be a major deal breaker for me. There must be a ton of other countries out there with similar regulations as the US.

A hasty bit of research suggests my country (Australia) doesn't treat BTC as currency either as it isn't "backed" by anything, though I doubt this has been tested in a court yet.

It will be interesting to see how long the status quo remains if legal persons exploit the lack of regulation by attempting to pay for expenses in BTC, effectively using pre-tax income wherever possible.

Good luck with all of this! I am unfortunately not one that is going to wait. I am not willing to watch my coins sit in limbo while people try to figure out a place to trade. I hope this does work out and maybe at a later date I will join and trade again, but until then I have to bow out.

The source isn't mine to reveal (as I'm not the one who paid for it) - but is credible (i.e. advice from professionals not some forum user's personal opinion).  My intention was just to give some idea of what was being considered - not to give a conclusive answer on specific points.

On a more general note, my belief is that answering questions about plans - when we don't have any firm plans - is counter-productive.  But you can take it as fact that a group of us with access to funds, technical expertise, experience in BTC securities and a data centre are giving it serious consideration including spending money on legal advice.  And I'm sure if/when anything concrete develops it will be announced.

Is this just for payments that would count as income/revenue if paid in fiat, or for everything? If for everything, is this a new development? Everything I've read on this in the last few months suggested or outright stated that HMRC would treat trading profits denominated in bitcoin as capital gains.

Source?

Not going to happen.

I'm one of the parties involved in discussions.  Nothing is actually agreed yet - and certainly nothing would be agreed by me personally unless a bunch of different elements line up.  One of those elements being that the exchange can legally operate in the UK.

Broadly speaking there are three legal obstacles which have to be addressed:

1.  That holding BTC on behalf of investors/users and transferring it to other users doesn't subject the operators to financial supervision OR to a need to obtain AML/KYC details from users.  This one we're already basically certain we're fine on - due to legal advice received and precedent already set.
2.  Whether, regardless of BTC being used, the 'securities' themselves are illegal and/or subject to regulation.  This is the key one - but there IS a very interesting case to be made that they're fine because of the way HMRC treat Bitcoins.  Legal advice is currently being sought on this.
3.  That having US investors (with the rules in the US being VERY different) is OK.  This one is interesting - but the answer is almost certainly that a UK-based exchange could NOT accept US-based investors as - even if fine to operate in the UK, it would break agreements between the UK and the US.  So there's a very real likelihood that any new exchange would not take US investors - the situation with US companies is less clear.

For those confused how the situation could possibly be so different in the UK to the US, the answer lies in their totally different approach to treating Bitcoins.

The US is moving very much towards them being treated as though they were (similar to) currency for the purpose of regulation.

The UK, in contrast, is saying that they have no face or intrinsic value and thus can't be referred to in accounts and aren't subject to regulation.  They're explicit, in particular, that any conversion from BTC to fiat has to be treated as income tax (for individuals) and revenue (for companies) and can never be claimed as capital gains or investment return.  This actually has very BAD consequences for businesses raising funds in BTC then converting them to fiat to (for example) buy mining hardware - but has very GOOD consequences for those looking to run something like an exchange.

I'm not going to lay out the argument that follows from this - but I believe there IS a strong one and am personally obtaining advice on it in the next week or so (even if I don't end up participating in an exchange it would be very useful information in respect of any BTC securities I operate).

So no - Tor isn't on the table (not as far as I'm concerned - and noone else involved in the discussions has expressed an interest in it).  All of those talking want something openly run in a jurisdiction where there's no likelihood of interference from the authorities - and the UK might be that place.

I believe the OP was made prematurely - and the title is misleading.  As MPOE-PR pointed out, there's no plan yet - though the intentions aren't actually entirely vague (just not detailed in the OP). And noone should read this as BTC-TC coming back with all securities and user-accounts etc - if burnside's code is purchased it's certain the data won't come and that it would be rebranded.  Burnside's code is NOT the only option under consideration - but it would be far preferable to a newly written system because of already having been heavily tested in a live environment.

Don't expect updates from me in the near future - but I felt I should at least confirm that when Kate says various issuers/others are involved then it definitely is the case : and statements of available investment have been made, though not committed to (i.e. I and others have said "I have X BTC I'd consider using for this" not "I have X BTX that is definitely going to be used for this").

glad to hear taht！！！how about our cipermine shares??

thanks kate,
sounds like you are trying to do the right thing and be a real leader

You might want to build it on tor network.

observing...

I just want to point out that the legal aspect of establishing an operation like this in the UK should take special care due to the former history of GLBSE which was also operated within the UK.

Well observing

Good news! hope this goes well

They are more than vague intentions. We are highly organised and between us are investing a significant amount in this gambit (>>$100k). I am currently getting advice from my lawyers and accountants re. avoiding a similar fate to Burnside.

I would share more but I am extraordinarily busy right now, in no small part because I'm getting married a week today.

However, this is not guaranteed to work. It appears that Burnside is still favoring the auction approach. We are trying to convince him that as a significant representitive portion of LTC-GLOBAL shareholders (~30% of the shares in public hands) as well as many of the major issuers on Litecoin Global and BTC Trading Co, that he should give us first refusal.

If it looks like we are not going to be able to purchase the code and user base from him at a sane price then Plan B is to use our collective resources to build a new, better exchange which can cater to the collective needs.

In either case I must warn you that we will not be able to simply reconstitute all shareholdings out of the box; there will be work for issuers to do. This is because for legal reasons the database cannot be part of a deal. However, we can programatically re-create securities including shareholdings from the shareholder reports; we would gather all issuers who wish to do this ahead of launching the new exchange(s).


In hand; see above. We are based in the UK which helps, but we have other plans to further insulate us.

I'll request that they do so.


We won't be able to complete a purchase until after the exchanges close at the end of October. This does mean that there would have to be a hiatus, but that's not a big problem in my view; we will provide a simple tool to allow issuers to pay dividends using the shareholder reports .csv files in the interim while the new site(s) are brought online. This does mean that the securities would become illiquid for a time. My hope is that we could get it online for the start of December (ie. only one month of "hiatus").

Kate.

Edit:

It's https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,6156.0.html.

Except these aren't plans, they're vague intentions. Why not actually plan something, then post?

Kate,
Does this mean that CIPHERMINE.B1 will remain on BTC-TC? And what will this mean for CIPHERMINE and .B1?

Wow, this is great but there are many concerns after all the recent events.

1) Steps to be taken to prevent further shut down?
2) Are the those "interested parties" willing to reveal themselves?
3) Timeframe for this to occur? Will BTC-TC go on hiatus?

Best of luck

Burnside, can you confirm??

Dear Investors and Security Issuers,

As some of you may be aware a collective of security issuers and interested parties have banded together to attempt to purchase Burnside's code so that we can continue to operate the exchange, although perhaps under a different name and likely with some restrictions. If you are a security issuer please join the conversation on the recovery board (in the litecoin forum).

I am urging all security issuers not to make rushed decisions to move to a new exchange right now! Unfortunately some of you have gone to CryptoStocks.com already, which from what I can see is technically inferior and has near-zero liquidity (there are also some oddities like why VirCurEx has not paid dividends there for ages).

At CipherMine we are developing a simple tool to allow an issuer to import the .csv from a shareholder report and use that to distribute a dividend payment manually (ie. you just enter the amount and it sends that much to the shareholders). We intend to give this away to all of you for free.

BTC Trading Co does not shut down entirely for a month yet. You will be able to use the mechanisms there to distribute dividends in the mean time, and then you will still be able to with our tool or something similar.

It is the hope of our collective that we can have something operational within the next couple of months, so hopefully there would only be a short period of time where your securities were illiquid (barring manual trades of course).

To Shareholders, I cannot speak for all but most of us issuers intend to do the Right Thing and are making efforts, including committing significant personal resources, to try to look after you all.

In the mean time, please everyone hang in there and don't make panicked decisions! We will keep you posted as to developments.

Kate.