We've all heard about the attempts to
create a corporate stock market in EVE, none have succeeded. The closest thing in the game right now is the BSAC exchange run by Block Ukx and it's closing. During it's operation I understand it to have functioned as a commodities speculation market, not a corporate stock exchange though. So lets talk about the reasons why
a true corporate stock exchange has never sprung up in eve.
The biggest reason is that corporation shares have no method of secure transfer, after that we have concerns over valuation and assumptions that there is no need for a corporate stock exchange in EVE.
As it stands today in EVE, shares
themselves are a very odd item. They reside solely in the wallet, a
corporate share does not sit in a hangar, it cannot be put on market,
traded or auctioned via contracts. All corporations start out with
one thousand shares, these shares may be given to other players or
corporations. It is possible to hold a vote to create new shares,
expel a member, lock/unlock BPOs, select a new CEO and cast a
general vote, which are similar to free form contacts of old. This
distinct lack of secure transfer capacity makes the share system
useless despite it's other strengths.
While judging a corporation's value can
be difficult, there are several ways to weed out those that would be
of no benefit. In EVE, corporation's can be founded by anyone with
the skill “Corporation Management” trained to level one.
Corporations can generally be defined as one of three types, alt
corps, casual corps and hardcore corps.
An alt corp is a corp comprised of alts
for griefing, spying, POS gunning, war dec'ing, or any number of
other activities. They were used heavily for war dec'ing back when
wars were cheap and for POS gunning back when POSes determined
sovereignty.
A casual corp is a corporation usually
comprised of friends or individuals with loosely the same interests.
Casual corps are quite prevalent in high sec and are usually spread
out with little cliques of active players flying together. Casual
corps can be broadly defined as corporations that lack dedicated
organization and highly motivated leadership.
A hardcore corp is a separate beast
entirely. Hardcore corps can be found primarily in nullsec and
lowsec, though there are some highly organized incursion and war dec
corps in high sec. Hardcore corps are often lead by motivated
individuals with a skill for 'herding cats'. They're highly
organized, sometimes to their own detriment and are usually well
centralized. They're the ones who measure their mining ops by millions of m3, project super capitals across regions and shift markets with
their wealth. Hardcore corps can be broadly defined as the movers and
shakers of EVE.
Two out of three of these groups would
likely not be of any value simply due to the nature of their
operations. Hardcore corporations on the other hand would be of
tremendous value to investors as they possess the potential to
accomplish great things.
While one could argue that there is no
demand for a stock exchange simply by the fact none currently exists
within the game, one must remember what drove the creation of stock
exchanges to begin with; A need for capital. You need only look at
the Market Discussions section of the EVE Online Forums to see this
need for capital. On any given day in Market Discussions you will see
bond offerings. Some are collateralized with a trusted third party
such as Somer, others are banking solely on their past ventures.
Average bonds range between five and ten billion isk, though on some
days you will see bonds as high as fifty or even a hundred billion
isk.
These bonds can range from
individuals looking to expand market operations to those trying to
start capital production projects. They commonly offer between five and
fifteen percent interest and prices anywhere from a hundred
million isk to two billion isk per bond. A strong etiquette and
culture of disclosure has sprung up around these bonds with scrupulous and enterprising individuals able to obtain huge amounts of capital over
night. This is all possible despite the risks inherent in entrusting
huge volumes of isk to individuals with no possible repercussions
beyond perhaps a large bounty should the isk go unrepaid.
The very existence of these large scale
public bond measures, and the culture that has sprung up around them
invalidates the notion that a stock exchange would go unused within
EVE. All that is missing is a secure transfer method.
Special thanks to monolithdigital of reddit for providing the prompt for this post.
Special thanks to monolithdigital of reddit for providing the prompt for this post.
The main issue I see with corporation shares is that most corporations are either too small to be worth investing in, or too large for most of the playerbase to invest in. Which makes the number of people this would be useful to very small.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally larger corporations already have the infrastructure to provide income so why bother issuing stocks and passing revenue out of the corporation into the hands of others.
Which would mean that a stock exchange would only viably be used to fund individual ventures as bonds do now, except in a more restrictive and possibly less secure way.