Picostocks

Picostocks facilitates valuation and fundraising for high tech startup projects and companies and offers valuable services and benefits for both bitcoin investors and entrepreneurs. PicoStocks offers virtual investment into shares of stocks of startup companies and projects. The platform operates just like any stock exchange but the traded stocks remain legal property of PicoStocks and the platform user can remain anonymous.
===== PicoStocks is aimed to provide solutions for two problems ===== 
* assessment of value of small startup companies and similar high risk assets
* access to seed financing for very early stage startup companies or projects
===== Several aspects of PicoStocks are innovative =====
PicoStocks benefits from the innovative character of the bitcoin network and enables instant global access to the platform. Currently the bitcoins in circulation are worth over 100M EUR. Every bitcoin owner can start using the platform within minutes. No type of private information or confirmation thereof is required. Potential users who don’t own bitcoins can obtain them instantly on various exchange platforms if they have other virtual currencies.
PicoStocks offers unprecedented transparency of its operations. All transactions, fees, rewards, dividend payments and bitcoin transfers between users and PicoStocks are public. Transparency will boost the trust in the functionality and safety of the platform.
Facilitated by the bitcoin network PicoStocks offers unprecedented anonymity for the investors. All accounts on PicoStocks are linked only to a bitcoin account and are therefore anonymous. This offers anonymous peer review of projects and companies. Despite the anonymity of account holders evaluations are expected to reflect real market valuation because the evaluators have to use valuable bitcoins they own to place bids for offered assets.
Because the initial valuation process is inexpensive, anonymous and relatively accurate it can be used by funding agencies to evaluate plausibility of grant proposals submitted by the listed companies and assess the effects of projects conducted or completed with public funding support.
===== Benefits for Investors ===== 
* instant access to the platform facilitated by the global bitcoin network
* valuation of assets owned
* option to sell assets to PicoStocks
* long term profits from the sold assets through a share in future dividend payments
* rewards by evaluating assets offered by other investors
* profit from transactions on the PicoStocks platform
* participations in profits from dividends from assets hold on PicoStocks
* benefit from the anonymity of the bitcoin network while transacting
===== Benefits for Entrepreneurs ===== 
* initial valuation of the company even at the project stage (before creation)
* option to raise capital for the company through sales of shares to PicoStocks
* continuous valuation of the company as it grows
* brand promotion and increased visibility
* advantages when applying for loans (objective track record)
===== Benefits for Funding Agencies and private Sponsors ===== 
* assessment of the business maturity of a project funding applications
* close-to-market valuation of the project at proposal stage
* monitoring of the effects of the project on the value of the company
===== Fees ===== 
* There is a minimum admission fee of 50BTC to for launching an IPO* (Initial PicoStocks Offering) process
* There is a 4% fundraising fee from all bitcoins (BTC) collected via the IPO* process
* There is a 2% dividend fee from dividends and income from delisting (sells of the assets by PicoStocks) distributed across shareholder of the asset
* There is a 1% trading fee from all trading transactions on PicoStocks paid only by the seller of the asset
* There is a 0.0005 BTC network fee from all outgoing bitcoin transfers
PicoStocks collects annual listing fees in form of an invoice from the listed companies but this fee is not mandatory. 50% of the funds collected though the admission fee (minimum 25BTC) are forwarded to shareholders as a reward for initial assessment of the company. Dividends and income from delisting are converted into bitcoins (BTC) before rewarding the shareholders. 1% of dividend and delisting income is given to the initial owner of the asset who sold it to PicoStocks through the IPO* process. Another 1% is kept by PicoStocks.
===== History =====
PicoStocks was launched on 2012-12-21.
===== See Also =====
* https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/GLBSE
* http://mpex.co/
===== External Links =====
http://picostocks.com/
Category:InvestingCategory:ExchangesCategory:Stock Exchanges