I'm looking for feedback on the idea of of creating a Distributed Autonomous Organization ala Steem. I think it may be possible to offer shares on the steem shop. The shares would be sold in Steem Dollars(SBD). Investors would send SBD to the steem escrow account, followed by the company emailing a shares certificate that names the investor account as the owner. Once the money is transferred from escrow to the company account, profits are then sent to the investor account as SBD. To sell your shares, you just put them on the steem shop and initiate an escrow and tell the company to transfer your shares to the other person's account; when that person gets the email they release the funds.
Once the initial offering is finished, the shareholders would elect people to execute their will: typically a treasurer, CEO, etc. This could just be a post on steem that calls for volunteers and nominees and then in the replies people accept their nomination and the shareholders vote for the person they want. We can filter out votes by non-shareholders and weight them appropriately to get an exact count. The same goes for bylaws and anything else that requires voting.
The rest is just business as usual. I like this idea because it's different from The DAO in that it is all human powered, hands-on, etc. There isn't one centralized smart-contract that can be hacked. The initial offering account can be taken offline and held in a bank(or not). Nobody can steal your shares as long as you control your steem account and if you got hacked a human could intervene and set things right by changing the steem account to pay profits to. This is also all done in public so there is accountability built right in.
Some problems I see are the SEC has claimed that "issuers of distributed ledger or blockchain technology-based securities must register offers and sales of such securities unless a valid exemption applies. Additionally, securities exchanges providing for trading in these securities must register unless they are exempt. The purpose of the registration provisions of the federal securities laws is to ensure that investors are sold investments that include all the proper disclosures and are subject to regulatory scrutiny for investors' protection." They then go on to say the law "require the notice to be filed within 15 days after the first sale of securities in the offering". So I looked at this Form D and it's no big deal and there is no fee to file.
I then saw that there is some crowd-funding provision that allows a business to raise capital from non-accredited investors up to 10% of their income. Also, if you go for $50million, you can register as a Tier 2 offering so long as you "provide audited financial statements and also provide periodic reports", which is no big deal because DAOs are inherently public and digital so a small shell script can handle that. The Tier 2 comes with an exemption from registering with the State securities exchanges ;)
What I find hilarious is how all the investment brokers lie about how hard it is, how much it costs, etc. It really is simple to make a DAO and comply with the law. The only reason someone would choose not to is because they plan to scam people or are ignorant.
