How does one list on MPEx ?

I've answered variations of this question maybe half a dozen times the past week and done a bad job of it every time, so I guess it's time to write it down properly once and for all.

I. If you are listing a revenue producing business such as SatoshiDice or BitVPS you will need :

1. A business plan. If you don't have a business plan, or it is a "secret" business plan and so forth you can never list on MPEx.
2. Credible WOT presence. If you're not in the WOT you're not in BTC, and have no business doing finance. This problem could in principle be fixed if you bona fide know and are trusted by sufficient people with WOT ratings, but if it can't be fixed you can't list on MPEx.
3. Familiarity and ease with GPG contracts. If you don't know how to clearsign, verify signatures and so forth you're not yet ready for prime-time. This problem could be easily fixed for instance through reading madboa's quickstart guide.
4. Clear BTC revenue streams. If you don't take in principally BTC, listing you as a BTC denominated asset makes absolutely zero sense, for a number of reasons. One is that investing in you would be de facto a divestment from BTC, and people in BTC don't want to divest. Another would be that BTC/USD volatility would induce share price and P/E ratio volatility in your asset, making it unsuitable for rational investing.
5. Published monthly revenue for the past three months. It's an excellent idea to publish your monthly results for your business whether you intend to ever list it or not. The principal value of Bitcoin is the community still, and the community can help you a lot if you're open enough to allow itⁱ.

While it's not our policy to refuse listings on the basis of projected market cap alone, you'd be well advised to consider that nobody really wants a business that's small now and will stay small forever.

II. If you are listing a financial, such as a bond, fund etc. you are likely deluding yourself. You need a lot of experience, proven track record and aggregated trust to be allowed to do something like this. Gone - forever - are the days of Kludge the Banker, Diablo the Portofolio Manager, Usagi the Insurer and Goat the Bond Issuer. There's maybe a handful of people I'd allow to list financials, they all know me, we'd likely discuss this privately. Listing financial instruments on MPEx is not open to the public, nor should it ever be open to the public. Ever. Anywhere.

That about sums it up I think. Discussion continues below.

1. Don't worry about "people stealing your ideas" : clever people solve new problems, not-so-clever people reimplement bad solutions for already solved problems. The clever people know this already, and so if you're doing things right they're not going to drop what they're doing and reimplement your stuff. Looking at it from the other angle, after S.DICE went public about 8 different clones hit the market. None of them has amounted to anything yet, and none of them likely will. Same is true of Facebook, Groupon, Myspace or whatever other IT project : once it IPOs not-so-clever start cloning it, but they never get anywhere. Bob has more on this subject. [↩]