SLCapEx Back Up, WSE Live Still Dead, Ancapex Missing In Action, ISE still up and VSTEX Hardening Rules
While I was away, the SLCapEx site was down - I instant messaged Bogart Beck on it prior to the site coming back up (It is back up). I'd heard of an attempt to crack the site - less technical readers would inaccurately write 'hack' - and Bogart didn't say anything about that. What he did say was that they were plugging some holes to avoid future problems.
The World Stock Exchange (WSE) is still down after the perpetual month of upgrades that has lasted 3 months and 5 days so far. All of LukeConnell Vandeverre's live announcements have not breathed enough hot air into the site to get it up and running again.
Ancapex.net? No clue. Ancapex.com is still up and running, but as we all should know by now - that site has a new owner.
International Stock Exchange seems up and running.
VSTEX has continued making their rules for listing more robust - a work in progress that has occupied their time while I was away, from what I understand. There have been 5 updates to Terms of Service and other aspects of VSTEX since April 1st, 2008. Their rules are quickly becoming something I would consider to be worthwhile for future stock exchanges - VSTEX does seem to be leading the charge toward more responsible virtual stock exchanges. And I must note that the Italian site is quickly getting more English verbage than the English counterparts!
So, this is where I'm picking back up on things.
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VSTEX rules amendments
I would like to point out that we're not done yet.
When we first started, back in August 2007, we had a very simple "listing rules" page which I just archived.
We invite everyone to compare that page to the current version of our listing rules. Our approach to exchange rules is:
For us that means, rules are something that must be improved and/or adapted over the time. We started amending our rules slowly and that wasn't common knowledge, since there were no public announcements about those changes (which is a bad thing).
On November 13, 2007 we published our Code of Ethics, which was followed by our Public Disclosure Policy (November 23, 2007) and our Insider Trading Policy (December 25, 2007 - Yes, Christmas).
On February 25, 2008 we finally started announcing amendments to our rules and the day after we begun detailing the changes at the time of each amendment.
Starting from and including February 25, 2008 we made 8 amendments to our listing rules (4 of them this month alone), 1 amendment to our TOS and we started a new set of rules which is going to cover the individuals (everyone with a VSTEX account) and not listed companies, specifically.
One may say that our current method of amending rules is confusing (frequent, sometime daily updates); one may say we could just wait, lay down a foolproof set of rules and be done with it. That is a way to approach the problem. Right now we prefer to evaluate a problem/issue, regulate it and come up with an amendment right away.
We believe that this should not pose a threat or inconvenience to listed companies. We try to be fair, at all times. For example, quarterly single-step income statements due now for the first time, were announced back in 2007.
We also believe that rules should state what to do, what to do not, how and when. Rules should also serve educational purposes, for example this quote:
should be a nice example of the aforementioned educational purposes.
It must be noted, while an amendment strategy like ours may be confusing, a good set of rules avoids confusion since everyone knows where he stands and where he will stand. We reckon that there is no perfect set of rules, but we'll try to get as close as possible.
Samantha Goldflake - Director
VSTEX Communication and Public Relations
http://www.vstex.net
Ancapex WARNING (Insecure); IntLibber Brautigan rogue trader.
Dear reader,
(Its important to point out that this post is in no way related to the recent 2 week outage - which is only further proof of my comments)
Ancapex has (or had); a major design flaw - it literally had no transaction security. As a result anyone can use anyone elses account to buy and sell shares - this is shocking for a service that claims to be secure. Since its opening, anyone has been able to change the account number on the transaction confirmation page (using notepad e.t.c.) and sell your shares. It requires no hacking of any kind (before accusations are made) and allows the complete emptying of you account or false inflation of a share price.
This is compounded by the unscrupulous behaviour of their CEO - IntLibber Brautigan. I offered to keep quiet about this outrage - which he agreed to and he offered to pay me silence money. He then immediately contacted LL and disabled my Second Life account. In my opinion this sort of underhand behaviour is not fitting of a CEO, or any person.
I now have no way of resolving this other than advise everyone withdraw any form of investment they have with ACE or BNT - they seem to be potential troublemakers which take your cash without bothering to secure it and will use their LL influence to burn you if you threaten to expose them.