[Cryptography] Why Nasdaq Is Betting On Bitcoin’s Blockchain

[Lodewijk andré de la porte]

We have a distributed global ledger; please; ledge!

Technically it's absolutely pie to track stock on the Bitcoin blockchain.
If you can't roll it yourself, you can even use Prism and Colored Coins.
When issuing stock you'd instead issue Colored Coins. For security, make
people /also/ set up a "stock check" according to the following protocol:

1. The parties agree upon and commit to a transaction
2. The parties sign the "intention to transfer ownership"
3. The parties perform the Colored Coin transaction
4. The parties amend the "intention to transfer ownership" with the raw
(hexidecimal) transaction as it is included in the blockchain.

The advantage of this dual administration is that if something goes wrong
with the colored coin system, you still have a paper trail by which to
decide "true" ownership of the colored coins.

If you do not use the protocol but instead only perform step 3 - that's
still good enough. Bonus points if you create two documents, one for saying
"these coin will henceforth change ownership according to the bitcoin
system " and one for "these coins will henceforth change ownership using
the Dual Administration system", so you can state when you interrupt and
when you restart the paper administration. These documents are signed first
by the *coin owner, and then by the company/registration affiliate company
after a time period if the *coin owner is then still the coin owner. This
last step is important - over time a Bitcoin transaction grows in certainty.

To emit currency to shareholders, or perform votes:

1. Shareholder creates document requesting currency to be paid to
Bitcoin/Altcoin address (hell, make it an IBAN number for all I care)
2. Shareholder signs document with the same public/private key that
accesses the Colored Coins (or other proof of ownership)
3. Shareholder submits signed document to company/registration affiliate

Technically it's possible to emit continuously (daily, hourly,
per-profit-unit, whatever) by sending to the "last known address" of the
colored coin's owner. Privacy is preserved as a colored coin can be held by
pseudonyms, and so can the payment addresses.

So, technically and libertarian-free-society-with-contracts-wise it's all
cookies and dough.

The question is, who wants this? And, more limiting, what is the legal
interpretation?
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