Dirk, you may not be too far from the truth, people like to pick existing concepts and clone them for other purposes, this one for example seems to have ties with the Bitcoin model (cloned to BOINC).

The funny thing is everybody dreams of being rich and many jump into stock exchanges but 99% of the people don't make much out of it and most even have losses, but on the other hand the stock exchanges (or those who operate them) are always profiting no matter if the stocks go up or down.

Like I read one time on a website "During the gold rush days, the people who truly got rich were the shovel and pickaxe makers".

But I'm with you Dirk, I don't like it either, I gave it a 3/10 on the voting for this Boinc Stock exchange just because the guy seemed to put some time and effort into the idea.