After much deliberation it would seem that most governments will be taking a passive role in guaranteeing investments, certainly until most fiat moves into cryptocurrencies, with that in mind here are a few things to note;
1 Altcoins are owned by stakeholders and not developers!
Unless a coin has been specifically created commercially, by a business, or has an associated trademark in place it is owned by the people that invest in it - it is as simple as that. If a deveoper cannot maintain development of a coin and people have money invested by purchasing or mining coins then I believe it would be the right to sue for losses against developers who cause loss to that investment by failing to maintain a currency. Something to consider. Currencies are supposed to be decentralised and managed by responsible teams, not a single anonymous forum user. Remember if a developer states something different that happens and causes you losses, it would be deemed as misleading.
Much like real life, you cannot declare bankrupt and go about life as normal without paying off stakeholders and creditors, I believe legally this is the same with digital currencies. Anyone who switches off a coin with active stakeholders should feel the full force of the law and be sued for losses. There is real investment particularly by people with little money, so stakeholders should form their own "unions" or groups to lobby people who are unable to carry out work for the community.
So for coin developers who seem to thing altcoins are fun, just pump and dumps, quick money makers, it is likely that you will feel the full force of law and trading standards in future, much like Bufferfly Labs have received for their alleged business practises, if people lose money as a result of scam investments then people will be sued, have no sympathy for developers if they cant accept their responsibility.
2 Rebooting A Coin
A coin is a brand, a trademark. I believe it is poor business practice for someone to relaunch a "dead coin", with the above considered, even "dead coins" have stakeholders and investors who do not have access to continuing the daemon.
I do feel though that, if a developer or team fails in their self appointed duty to maintain and develop the coin for the community, there should be something in place to allow communities to continue the coins or to advance the coin with a 2.0 but ONLY through some medium of dispute with an independent body.
3 Centralising Dying & Dead Coins
Ever since I created GoldBars (GBS) which has now grown into Virtual Gold, the worlds first Transit State Commodity that takes value of gold locked in other stars and planets to enable us to create new wealth to cure extreme poverty I have been concerned with the level of coins made then dropping off, developers dumping coins etc, sure there have been alot of pump and dumps but there are some fantastic coins out there that have been just dropped regardless of stakeholders.
I want to change that by providing a centralised daemon centre, where teams host daemons and a copy of source is centrally stored so that if daemons were hosted elsewhere in the event of failure it can be reinstalled with minimum fuss, re-establishing dead coins that people have invested in and get back all the digital currencies that people introduced and people had invested in. We owe it to people who have invested, those stakeholders to be able to transact coins in the future.
4 Centralised Communities
We need a way in which groups of stakeholders can register themselves, their wallet addresses, contact details (encrypted), and provide proof of stake to a central trusted foundation or organisation so that old and existing coins can easily be managed and rights can be applied to any stakeholder takeover, which I believe would be perfectly legal.
The problem with cryptocurrencies are;
- they are normally founded by one person (some of whom are really bad at consumer rights and customer services) who remain anonymous or uncontactable
- there are two sides to the fence, what the community wants and what the dev wants, leading to disputes, fallout and devaluing investments
- communities take a long time to grow, devs often throw in the towel because its not making them money and without doing community building
- there are around 500 of them and growing, coins have to be established, branded well and have a good community of users and play for the long game
- there is NO BACKUP, independent developers with great brands have no backup plan, hence centralised daemon hosting and copies of latest source stored centrally would be great
Im willing to work with people to make something happen with old and existing coins, i think it is important, just because a coin is not on an exchange doesnt mean it is not of value.
5 Official Stakeholder Groups
We need to establish a way in which stakeholders can form "unions" or Official Stakeholder Groups that represent MORE stake than the original developer. By rights, this would allow community groups legal position to be able to enforce the future of a coin through formal proceedings (i believe so anyway).
For example, after investing over 100,000 in Britcoin, which I believe is a huge community brand for a unique digital currency, im led to believe the developer has made some rather unsavoury comments - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9762594 offending the community at large, for whatever reason, and the responses are of course oh Britcoin is dead etc etc.
It's this which is causing huge concern within communities of investors, I am one of those investors and as such without taking immediate and formal action in such circumstances people lose investment, this is unacceptable which is why I have made some recommendations and want to work with communities for solutions.
I hope that the information here is helpful and helps communities realise they are not just people, you are stakeholders and have rights to investments and maintaining any digital currency, even if the person who created the coin goes bankrupt (and it wasnt done commercially) you have rights to continue the coin asi is.
Any PM is welcome, while each coin competes with each other, it should be in good spirits, in fun, measures of success, we are all in this for the same reason, positive change, lets start to work together.
Anyone wants to know more about Transit State Commodities, grab a look at www.virtualgold.org and see what its about.
Thanks alot lads and ladies.
