Bitcoin Forum

On September 24th theymos falsely announced that he was selling a package of 23% of Bitcoin Global stock. At the time the company was solvent and operational. Asking price was ~5k BTC for the entire block, with the caveat new shareholders would have to be approved by current shareholders. Also on September the 24th theymos declared in support of this sale that the SEC is not investigating GLBSE and further that he personally thinks the SEC emails are fake (they are not, have been in fact verified by multiple trusted members of the community, including by calling the signatory at his phone number as published on the SEC website).

On September 25th Nefario, at that time CEO of Bitcoin Global delisted without warning and without explanation about 1/3 of the GLBSE listed stocks, by historical volume. When questioned, theymos declared that he had no previous knowledge of this action carried out by the CEO of a company he was representing himself as 1/4 owner.

On October 5th theymos himself admitted to having lied in his previous representations, in that the block of shares he was selling were not entirely his, but he was acting as representative/broker for a number of other parties, among which was bitcoin.me and others. Also on this occasion he disclosed his previously undisclosed position as board member of the company. Also on this occasion he disclosed that apparently the actions of the CEO did have the Bitcoin Global board's majority support.

Barely a week after his original offer, the company he was purporting to sell shares into is in default (as in, not repaying customer BTC held) and may or may not be reogranizing (no actual plan was announced, operations suspended for days).

This paints an ugly enough picture as it is. In any event theymos no longer holds the claim to personal integrity required for being the administrator of this forum, or a principal in any other respectable bitcoin venture. A scammer tag may be warranted even if nobody took his bait and so luckily no bitcoin was actually lost: the offer was made in bad faith in any event.

Nope.

But you did finally convince me to put your scamming ass on ignore.

In each situation where you can't live with the actions of the forum admin it is best to leave.

I suggest you do that.

Yay, finally MPEX will be gone !

Nice going folks. Let's stick to the facts, if possible.

Fact: theymos will not give himself a scammer tag.
Again: GTFO

A fact can never be something in the future tense, ninny.

Yeah whatever.

You are certainly one entertaining fella. What was that again of you being an eastern european pornstar?
Where can I find your work?  :D

The question is should all owners of a suddenly shut down biz with no announced good reason where customers had their funds withheld from them get a scammer tag?
I say yes. Only if people are made whole should it not be applied.

Saying nefario holds all responsibility is using him as a scapegoat. Trying to dump shares for btc right before the collapse is highly suspicious as the seller was an insider.

One has to apply this scammer tag equally or it has lost its meaning as it is only used for people not in the right clique.

Especially considering that contrary to all theymos' representations, the shareholders did not actually vote to oust Nefario.

This is when it becomes extremely silly.

*eats popcorn*

In my book, no one with an orange ignore button gets to suggest a scammer tag for someone else - the community has spoken about how seriously the OP should be taken.

I don't have enough info about the GLBSE shutdown to weigh in on the matter itself, and I would suggest that in truth no one does yet. Let things play themselves out and when all the facts are in the community is free to make their own judgement, but not yet and not led by these douchebags.

The reason theymos & the other shareholders were selling their share was because Nefario was about to make the GLBSE compliant with the SEC, and those shareholders were not in favour of this move.

Obviously things went wrong when Nefario started the process to get the GLBSE regulated, which is why its now offline etc etc.

I don't see how this warrants a scammer tag.

Well as the operator he can't be a scrapegoat for his own actions, and changing the nature of the agreement afterwards (requirement of an ID) is reason enough.

About the rest: Good luck with that, as long as you can't prove it you loose.
For example the bitcoinica fellas aren't labeled as scammers to date.


Bought a carton of microwave one today, I think I'm addicted to the stuff  ;D

They conveniently omitted to say "hey, I'm selling these shares into this company which I firmly believe is going to shit."

This is not a matter of trying to build a clique. Get your head out of that ass. Things are what they are, this isn't a popularity contest.

No, but they did outline the reason for selling, that the GLBSE was about to start the process of getting properly regulated, and they didn't want to be a part of this process.

If you have a brain you would know that getting regulated is an extremely risky, costly & long process.

I can not fkn believe what I am doing... huh.. this is hard... but I have to agree with mircea popescu (or his really awful PR person).

This is truly ugly, when forum moderator/owner looks for a way to dump his worthless shares of GLBSE on someone who trusts him (probably only because he runs the forum?). Sure, find a poor sap who has probably seen Nefarios masterful perfomance in London event. (youtube) 

If the forum owner is a starts to pull scams, no wonder this shit keeps happening in BTC community over and over again.
 
Theymos, do you have balls to say you are sorry and actually start helping this community to fight the scammers?

How is this false?  Was he not really offering the shares for sale?


He never said the shares were his, he just said he was selling them.  He also disclosed his position as Treasurer right in the OP.   Here it is (in part):


As for the SEC business.  He just offered his opinion that the emails were fake.

Never suggested it was a popularity contest. What the orange ignore button indicates to me is that a lot of people have said "wow this person is full of shit" and that this should probably be my default reaction. If enough people think you're so full of shit that they never want to hear from you again, your button turns orange and you lose a hell of a lot of clout.

Matter of fact, this is exactly the sort of thing someone like you would do that might result in a "wow this person is full of shit" reaction - demanding that the administrator of a forum give himself a scammer tag (which we all know won't happen) based on crazy allegations that no one has any ability to prove at this point.

The real point is, we haven't heard anything from Nefario or any outside agents who are likely to actually know what's going on with GLBSE. We literally have no proof that anything shady is happening right now though there is certainly enough going on to merit suspicion or worry. Scammer tags are for scammers and let's be honest, we don't even know there's a scam yet. Speak to your suspicions all you want, but only proven scammers deserve the tag and it's way too early to start throwing this around.

What the hell is going on? Are people actually being brain-washed by this?

Short version of what happened:

Nefario wanted to start risky process of regulating GLBSE.
Theymos and others thought it was a bad idea and wanted out & CLEARLY SPECIFIED that it was entirely because of Nefario's decision to get GLBSE regulated.
Things didn't go so well for Nefario when he tried to get the exchange regulated & GLBSE is now offline.

Things could've went the other way, if GLBSE had managed to get properly regulated then the shares would've skyrocketed in value.

As a proud owner of an orange ignore button I protest   ;D

The rest is alright.  :D

They were not really his. The simple test to distinguish fraudulent behaviour from innocent behaviour is this: should the situation have been explained correctly rather than as it was explained, would the market position of the proponent have been weaker? In point of fact the silent parties only hid behind theymos because they imagined they will be accruing some benefit from this. So, yes, fraudulent.


No, he merely said that "he does not want to be listed, especially not as treasurer". You might judge this as sufficient, obviously.

Further, the quote you cite does not support your general position. Talk of big businesses buying in and vague privacy concerns does not adequately convey the situation.

What is happening is that the few adults around are shocked and appalled at the horror of this, whereas the general clueless population fails to see the problem through lack of exposure to the real world and its workings.

I'm lol'ing so hard at this thread.

No offense, MPOE-PR, but I think this thread is really stupid.

Did you try to purchase part of GLBSE?

You can either be the Romanian Moot or you can be an adult. You can't be both.

Not since May (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77343.msg930030#msg930030).

MPOE-PR, just out of curiosity.

What do you expect to archive by this?

Do you think this will be successful and theymos gives himself a scammer tag? --> probably not, you aren't that stupid.

Do you think this will attract new customers to your exchange? --> I fail to see how that should work.

Do you just enjoy trolling have the feeling to be the sole fighter for whatever? --> That's what I would put my money on (not literally).

As from you previous reactions it seems I also have to say this:

I'm not trying to offend you, I just don't understand your motivations.

Gotta call it as I see it:

1) I've always appreciated how both Theymos and Mt. Gox have managed this forum.  I've had my complaints, but they could do much much worse and their performance speaks well of them (imo.)

2)  Theymos's attempted sale of the shares (in my limited observation of it) seemed pretty unsightly and even more so as the organization disintegrated not long after.  Scammy?  Very possibly, again in my limited observation.  There was not a snowball's chance in hell that I would have had anything to do with the shares, but if I had bought them I certainly would have felt highly scammed.

Real integrity on the part of any stake-holders would have been to take their lumps and losses on the GLBSE thing.  After all everyone knows that nobody should do anything with Bitcoin that they cannot afford to walk away from, and further, the initial outlay (in money terms) was probably much less then the hoped for sale value.  Also, it should have been clear to any participant that GLBSE (and many Bitcoin related enterprises) are very similar to walking out as far onto the thin ice as possible and probably in part for the sheer thrill of it...which is even more of a reason to take the fall rather than to try to get someone else to do it.

Seems that at least one person entertained some thought of buying the theymos+ stake.  I do believe that consideration of the scammer tag should be taken seriously and discussed seriously, and any participants in the (aborted?) sale should provide their valuable input.  I do hope that consensus (of those honestly weighing things) comes out negative.

Possibly OT, but how is Mt. Gox affiliated with forum management?  I was unaware of a connection.

MT.Gox pays for hosting, I think.

MtGox *does* the hosting, in other words, they can read your PMs.

At this point, it would be more far more economical to find someone worth of a "honest dude" tag around here.


That's reassuring. Insider trading is the minimum that can happen then (if they can read, they could even write).

Anyone who thinks an unencrypted private message on a forum is actually private or secure in any way almost deserves to have their messages read and used against them.

this

this

but not proven

Honestly, I do find this a bit "iffy" but I don't think it rises to the level of outright scam.  Whether intentionally or not, theymos created the impression that he was selling his shares in GBLSE for essentially ideological reasons.  While this was true, it wasn't the whole truth.  Some of the shares he was selling belonged to other shareholders and I think that was material information which should have been disclosed as it was a measure of the level of internal disagreement and would likely have influenced people's impression of GBLSE's internal stability.

When Nefario referenced theymos selling his shares because he didn't want his name on official documents, I don't recall him disclosing the fact that it wasn't only theymos who wanted to bail out, either.

If it was regulated banks and others would lobby hard to impose excessively strict and harsh guidelines upon it the same way they lobby to impose excessively strict and harsh guidelines on paypal that makes it a horrible service to use at times.

Banks don't approve of paypal diluting their market share and being a business competitor.

They wouldn't approve of investment competition by GLBSE & would've channeled a lot of time and energy into ruining it.

Regulation doesn't necessarily mean much considering it typically fails to detect the enrons and madoffs of the world.

Who regulates the regulators. 

Silly thread is silly  ;)

I think it is more than hosting, doesn't MtGox OWN this forum?

As far as I know the forum is owned by Sirius.  It doesn't look like the domain name has changed hands since it was first registered last year.

You just described one of the biggest reasons why anyone would sell anything. That's besides the fact that he very clearly said why he thought it was going to go to shit.

Not to mention, nobody ever actually got "scammed" because of the sale, since the sale was never completed.

This thread is silly. But for the wrong reasons.  

The fact is admins are active participates in what bitcoin people think of as the bitcoin economy.

I don't know if there is disclosure/conflict of interest requirement for bitcointalk.org admins.  If there is not, there should be.  

I know this web board is not a newspaper, but admins participating in bitcoin enterprises should be at least disclosed just because they wield so much power in this monopoly of a bitcoin communication tool.

I would consider this a "it's not fair" cry.  But, on the other hand, I think that is because everyone in the Economy side of the board is greedy.  Money can corrupt the admins just like anyone else.  Or at least give them folks the impression after the fact.  It would have been better for the admins to stay out of the bitcoin economy.  So, either pay the admins to stay out of the bitcoin "economy" or they should disclose.  And disclosure could mean a couple of things: attach a banner tag link to what they own, run, have an inside track, have a family member, are thinking of buying etc.

So live, learn, and make changes to fix things, so it doesn't happen again.  Or suffer the slow death, as we learn not to trust this board.

Mmmm Popcorn.  Think I'll pop me up a big bowl and watch The Avengers again...

I forgot the part where GLBSE wasnt a private partnership and had no duty to disclose anything about its workings to every dumb shit and fat pornstar wannabe pedo spammer on a public forum.

When the time came to make a deal with whoever made an offer to buy the GLBSE shares it is between the two parties alone and if you dont like it I dont really give a toss.

GLBSE has always been upfront about who the operator is and the supposed proprieter of MPEX doesnt even have his own forum account and hides behind a female like scammers always do. Nefario has massive alpaca balls while you are a snivelling coward shovelling crap and hiding behind an avatar of some woman.

You dont even have the guts to back your own words with a forum account linked to a real person. When the shit hits the road you will run like the cowardly dog you really are.



tl;dr youre a fucking poser.

Dave,
28 latrobe Rd, Morwell, Australia.

Come at me bro.

Cute car.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
upset. could not dump his shares in time.
determining if he has to pay his shafted customers or not.

The unregulated stock market was illegal.  If a group of individuals wanted to sell out shares in their illegal business because one brave man was about to go to the federal regulators, that sounds like a scam to me. 

It's not like this is the first time Theymos has been involved in extremely shady business either.  He admitted profiting off the Pirate ponzi IIRC and felt he did nothing morally wrong in the process.

I guess those massive alpaca balls are big enough for Nefario to scam everyone, but not quite big enough for him to address peoples concern on the forum thread dedicated to him being a scammer....  small balls are small

Every so often, something makes me sad to be alive. Normally they are new apple products, and people's responses to them. This time, its this thread. So lets start with the obvious, addressing whether or not Theymos is a scammer. He said he wanted to sell his shares of GLBSE because he didn't like what was going on. He said he didn't want to be legally listed as the treasurer, probably in case something went wrong down the line, he didn't want to be held accountable. Second, if Theymos was really a scammer, why would he play with 800 measly BTC? Sure, $10k is a lot, but with his reputations, and access to everything Bitcoin, he could probably get more BTC than pirate, and then run off. Third, assuming Theymos really was a scammer, you can't honestly believe that he would give himself a tag, so that leaves me the assumption that this thread was made, not seriously, but just to piss people off, which you have almost succeeded?

I really hope Theymos doesn't dignify this with a response....

I bet I've lost more bitcoins than you  :)

I believe that he would. And if he refused, Justmoon (a.k.a. Stefan Thomas) would apply it to theymos, himself. That's part of why we always have two administrators.

That being said, this is still absolutely ridiculous.

I think we should start an investigatory company that vets all these securities to make sure they're on the up & up, and prescribe a common set of guidelines for them to follow, so that they're not likely to disappear overnight with their investor's money and accusations of insider trading.

There must be something similar in the unstable American Dollar economy (which is bound to collapse any day now), some government leech organization that hassles legitimate small business owners to comply with regulations (that harm their profits).

What should we call it?  The Commission for Exchanges and Securities?  Exchange and Securities Commission?

A self regulatory body is a good thing. Micro companies cant afford the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars that it costs to IPO on a fiat stock exchange.

Wow. I hadn't noticed the way the "ignore" button changes colors before.  That is going to really come in handy now that I know about it.  I agree, my default reaction on seeing an orange "ignore" button will be to click on it in the future. Thanks for pointing it out.

Srsly tho, this doesn't sound like such a bad idea.  They could also insure the vetted companies' clients and shareholders against this kind of failure.

Of course there's still the problem of watching the watchers.

So if MtGox gets shutdown, the Bitcoin community will lose its main exchange as well its main source of communication?

That's kind of ironic for a decentralized protocol.

Not to mention that they are both on US ICE-vulnerable GTLDs.

Did anyone even make a serious offer to purchase the GLBSE shares?  I know in the thread about it most people thought the asking price was overvalued.  To me the initial post was just an information post and that offers were to be made privately through PM or by email.  It is in those negotiations that other information would come up, especially that Theymos was not only selling his own shares but also acting as a broker to sell other shares held by other people.

Unless an actual person that wanted to purchase the shares comes forward, I think this scammer accusation is not valid.

Also, anyone that did not see the end coming is not looking far enough down the road and needs to rethink their prowess in estimating how much a business is worth.

1.  Theymos wants to sell
2.  Theymos states that GLBSE wants to be legitimate
3.  GLBSE removes any asset associated with Goat without the approval of the board.
4.  SEC investigator contacts many people and asks about GLBSE.
5.  Nefario stating that he is talking to lawyers.

I also think anyone that talked to Nefario privately for the last 2 weeks could see his frustration in managing GLBSE.  I am sure he would agree that coding GLBSE is much easier than dealing with the legal and people aspect of it.

The premiums would be out of reach of most small businesses, members.  Just think of how much such an organisation would have had to pay out from the failures which have happened this year alone.  Its in the millions. 

The idea being that the vetting process itself would protect the insurer against having to pay out, and more importantly, keep the company on the up-and-up so that it does not fail in this way.

Time to start using Retroshare. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113835.0)

So what do you call it when someone is trying to sell shares of an illegitimate business?

Enron.

A love business up for auction.

Someone selling shares in their BFL single is surely going to pay 5 million a year to submit the correct paperwork.  ::)

What a delightful collection of deep orange ignore brothers and sisters I find here! Far from being the mark of shame that anyone is embarrassed about, or a guide for the discerning reader to know who had the respect of the community or not, I personally find the brighter the orange, the most interesting a person's post will be. All the orange means is that the fragile little porcelain egos that hide behind a desire to have someone else do their thinking for them have gotten frightened or offended by what they have seen, and rather than engaging in healthy conversation, they have a lovely automatic function do their thinking for them.

Cowardly and weak in the extreme.

But, I digress, let's consider theymos as scammer, shall we?

He tried to bail out of the sinking ship as he saw it headed towards the regulatory rocks.
An interesting ethical choice at best.

He used insider knowledge to assemble a 25% stake, and offered a significant ownership block for a healthy price.
Shrewd business move, and without the benefit of hindsight, a smart investment move for somebody who believes in bitcoin and markets.

He washed his hands of all responsibility the moment that nefario (I spit and use hand gestures to ward off evil when I type that name!) decided to move unilaterally in a new direction with the company.
Weak, very weak, and not absolving of responsibility in the slightest.

Scammer tag? In the real world- absolutely yes. In the extremely warped world of bitcoin ethics? Probably not.

Still has significant legal and financial responsibility to the people who have suffered severe losses due to the mismanagement of the company of which he controls a 25% interest? Without question. Although the criminal bastards behind bitcoinica have tried to create a precedent that clicking your heels three times and saying out loud "I am no longer responsible" somehow magically releases you from all obligation, it doesn't. Every asset creator and every shareholder has complete grounds to bring claims against theymos, nefario and all other "owners" of GLBSE jointly and severally for all the on-going damage and losses they are causing by their refusal to take action, for their irresponsible communications that lead to near-failure of the market before the no-notice shutdown, and for the criminal retention of all sums sent to be used in the market where the exchange THEY OWN took those funds in trust for the trading activities of the various entities involved. It is not their money to hold, nor is it their money to invest in lawyers for the benefit of nefario alone, or to pay for regulatory games being played by anyone.

But the call has been made- let's let the authorities who review these things do their work.

Maged- what say you? Does he get a scammer tag for his involvement in this? Do the other owners of GBLSE get the scammer tag for the exact same reasons as nefario?

Sounds worthy of a scammer tag to me.  Bitcoin will never get anywhere as long as the chief reason prominent members of the community want to exit a business is because it won't be illegal anymore.

Yes, but for at most a few hours of downtime and with up to 24 hours of posts lost. We have a backup system that is completely independent of MtGox's backup system. The system mirrors backups globally within an hour of the backup, which is done daily.

Just a small correction - GLBSE didnt issue any securities the asset owners did. GLBSE was similar to a ledger.

It does seem incongruous that the other owners of glbse dont have tags just as it does that the passthrough operators dont have them either.

Nefario registered the glbse domain and servers using his credit card so in the eyes of the legal system no other "owners" exist and how would you work out "damages" in either case ?

I highlighted the magic phrase for you.  Each of you is responsible for full recompense.  You can either pay it all yourself and rest easy, or hope that people pay according to their share.  At the end of the day, n things must be distributed, and if  < n have actually been distributed, everyone gets their asses handed to them.

Since it's multi jurisdictional, the weight falls heaviest on those local to the plaintiff.

Thats not the only reason people were selling. Personally I decided to sell after nefario unilaterally deciding to screw asset issuers by booting them off glbse.

Before he did that I was quite willing to become a legal registered shareholder and I believe the IRC logs of bitcoinglobal bear this out.

I think the better option would have been to keep the current glbse site but run it underground and start a new, legal company to begin the process of setting up a compliant entity and I said this numerous times to people involved.

Im not responsible for the actions of anyone else in the partnership. Just as Im not responsible for paying their tax  :P

It still doesn't answer how you come to a damages figure in the first place.

But even so its a case of getting blood from a stone  :(

Good to hear. Thanks for the info. What's the contingency plan in case of domain interference by regulatory entities, as mentioned by another poster earlier in the thread?

Luckily it is not a tax. It is about receiving value in trust and then destroying the value of it. If I take fiat wealth to a bank and deposit it to my account and the bank manager burns up all the records and says "tough shit, no money for you!" the ownership of that bank, all of the ownership of that bank remains liable for my deposit.

You are exactly responsible for all actions taken by your business partners in connection with the business that you own with them. That's why they have different forms of business operation. If you wanted to operate as a limited liability organization, then you should have organized as such. If you wanted to have a managing partner who controls all actions of the partnership, you should have formed the partnership with that understanding.

You didn't. In either of those cases.

Anyone reading the shareholder rules for GLBSE will see that this was a closely held entity, with very specific and stated shared responsibilities. You were enjoined from selling share without majority agreement, you were prevented from taking action without majority agreement, you had set schedules and rules for everything, and now lalala it magic, none of the rules apply? You even had formal partnership meetings- where the owners, all of the owners, considered such business as came before them.

If nefario fucked all of you owners by his actions, the correct action is not to say "I'm out, I didn't do it." The correct thing to do is to take action against the partner who is fucking you, and your shared partnership. There is no jurisdiction in the world that will accept your statement of not being responsible because you didn't agree. You are responsible. Just as responsible as nefario if you are an owner. And when claims are made, and prevail in court, you will not be liable in proportion to the ratio of your shares, each of you will be responsible in full until all claims are satisfied. That's the other side of business ownership, its a little thing called responsibility. Pretty much a missing concept around here, but a reality none the less.

In that case you'll have to wait till the partners sue nefario for destroying all the value of glbse. Because for damn sure it wasn't us who shut it down and confiscated everyones bitcoins.

First you say to calm down and that all our coins are safe and to be returned imminently.  Now you say we'll have to wait on a lawsuit.  Which is it then?

The answer is, "Only Nefario has a say in the matter, at this point".

I was replying to Loup bringing up further damages.

The customers coins have got nothing to do with it.

Well fuck me, I agree with LG... for once! Hats off to you sir. This whole thing is compromised. Where do we congregate the next BTC community?

Who's going to make the forum?

Will BitVPN host it?

One should examine what is broken about this one before repeating the same mistakes.

Is it this forum, is it the leadership of this forum, is it a personality type, is it ...because bitcoin?

Again, I am a big fan of federated autonomous units.  With PGP auth, one can have the same account on multiple forum sites.  No need for SSO, OAuth, OpenID, etc.

If you're fans of Ted Nelson's ideas with Xanadu, you'll understand where I'm coming from.  I'd be happy to host sites on "fuck you, that's why," hardware innovation (although I think the per-vendor sites are a smart move), compliance (tax and legal), ideology and propaganda, and meta-forum-platform development, but I don't want to touch buying and selling, "exchanges," "securities," and all that other mess.  I'm sure someone who is interested in those topics and willing to accept the risks would pick those up.

And I'm not saying,"these belong to me," with that list.  I'm hoping that several people with both development (whether product management, execution, testing, design) ability and hosting capability will be able to step up and contribute to their area(s) of interest.

Think stackexchange, with a more suitable structure, and not owned by the same entity.  But bitcoin.

Let a million fora boom.

Well, give us a link and we'll check it out. But the problem with starting a new forum is getting a returning user base that contributes. It's the same network effect that is now giving bitcoin its strength. Because of the permutations of the participants, the power of a network is proportional to the square of the nodes, and right now bitcointalk has the most power in that regard, with /r/bitcoin probably in second place.

Setting up the software for a forum is the easy part. Getting the community is an art.

http://www.bitcointrading.com/  :)  come one come all :D

You could easily set up a forum where you pay $10 to join, where the mods will drop the hammer if they even smell a whiff of scams, ponzis, cargo cult securities, furries, Atlas or dank.  Then you could have a solid community of people actually trying to make bitcoin into something useful, instead of the infinite loop of scams and scam accusations.

Or make it into a massive brain trust that makes the biggest ponzi in bitcoin history.

That, or commit to moving to the first forum that has the features that are outlined here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50617.0

Well, if you're looking for a forum run by actual human beings and one that will see upgrades and enhancements on a regular basis, not just new limitations, you should be considering us at www.bitcointrading.com!  Now running on a dedicated server, 861 members and counting!

I remember that thread.


I guess $3,000 wasn't enough to get the new forum up and running. I'll assume it's still in escrow somewhere.

~Bruno~

More like $35,000

Note to self: Never do math on this laptop when reading this forum after waking up from a wet dream to take an early morning long shit.

I just checked to see how I erred and realized there was no math involved. It was during the quote/snip stage where I saw all those s's in the strikethrough tags and must have envisioned them as the dollar sign. I can't wait to finish this shit to get back to my wet dream.

Fine! $35K then. I can't wait to join.

~Bruno~

If the forum is dependent on features and not content, then it is not worthwhile.  You might as well go to Iggy Planet and set up shop there.

If you make excuses not to improve your life, you will always make the safe choice, and that path leads down to stagnation.

There is a bitcoin stackexchange beta, and as mentioned, /r/bitcoin.  The advantage of these over SMF is that you can smash people's arguments into invisibility by voting them down.

You seem to be mistaken about why Nefario got the scammer tag, it's not at all comparable.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=115669.msg1258773#msg1258773

The owners are partners with him and knew damn well it was illegal, they even apparently were trying to sell out because Nefario wanted to come clean to the regulators.  

It sounds like you are judging one partner in the scam a scammer based on what you have been told of the internal politics of their illegal operation while ignoring that the partners in this illegal business are not the victims here.  You aren't moderators of their privately run criminal enterprise, you are moderators of this forum.  

The scam is GLBSE as an organization.

We didnt know it was illegal at all. I didnt ask a lawyer before using bitcoin either.

I don't know if it's illegal or not, like you said I'm just a mod. That's not the issue here. I care that he breached his contract multiple times and defrauded investors.

And I wasn't told anything, I was provided chat logs and everything else I asked for, and verified that Nefario was acting on his own, against the will of the shareholders, without so much as asking for their opinion, much less a shareholder vote.

You can believe what you want though, doesn't much matter to me. Just setting the record straight.

Some clearly did, such as Theymos who was upset that Nefario would go to the authorities in relation to the criminal actions.  Regardless, ignorance of the law is not an excuse.  You are still responsible for the actions of the organization you were involved with.

Its closer to entrapment than anything. Its not like hes a fucking whistleblower.

You are expert enough to adjudicate breach of contract when it comes time to brand one side in the internal GLBSE dispute as a scammer but suddenly confused and "just a moderator" when it comes to others.  Including Theymos who is a partner in GLBSE and admitted it was an unregulated black market and therefore illegal and then knowingly took action to sell shares in a product that was worthless due to the illegality right here on these forums.

You should moderate the actions of people who knowingly sell junk a investment on these forums, not go combing through the IRC logs of private illegal businesses to take sides in an internal dispute.  

 Nefario clearly misrepresented what was a sole owner operator as an actual company the shareholders got a vote in. Because when it came to the crunch it clearly wasnt. If we were actually owners Nefario couldnt do what he wanted. Meaning he lied the entire time since any motions we took in the end were simply ignored.

Normally a ceo cant just do whatever he wants so he wasnt ceo he was the sole owner operator. Its like sending bitcoins to a 401 nigerian scammer and him saying you own his company and get to vote. No, you dont own the company and he will take your money in the end.

I do not care about the politics of your internal dispute with your partner.  Settle your own disputes, this thread is about settling the actions of your business with the victims here of the meltdown.  

Theymos announced he was selling an investment product for a company that was operating outside the law.  He argued that the company should continue to refuse to comply with the law.


Trying to sell an illegal investment product is a scam.  He did this in your name.  You should be just as upset as anyone. 

No, it's merely illegal.

Case in point, I want to sell you shares in my heroin business. You purchase the shares and I give you my profits equal to your shares.

What about that is a scam?

Also, GLBSE is simply, "not legal" as far as anyone knows. No one has any clue who has jurisdiction over it or the investments in it, because they are international in scope and deal with something no government is willing to admit is money.

Just because something is not authorized by the government doesn't mean it is necessarily a scam or has devious intent. It's just illegal. In fact, those selling were selling precisely because Nefario was going to take the exchange legal, and they knew there would be criminal implications in doing so, therefore they washed their hands of it.

I used to think Bitcoiners were smart enough to know that illegal != immoral, but a handful here seem to be proving me wrong. I'm more concerned about the morality of actions rather than the legality of actions when I research scammers, I figured most of you would be too.

MPOE-PR didn't even link to the appropriate links which means he only put in a modicum of effort on this. I wrote a lengthy reply last night trying to be neutral on this, because I do think that if there was proof those implicated knew there was a bonafide SEC investigation prior to the Sept 24th meeting, then a scammer tag may be warranted, but it sounds like they all basically found out at the same time as the rest of us.

MPOE-PR, please clarify exactly what your accusations are and please link to your evidence (taking screenshots if you think there is a high likelihood of edits/modifications). Otherwise this is pointless.

I like you people. IF you decided to sell after Nefario decided to give people the boot this would prove you knew at the time you were selling, which is the time theymos claimed to be selling, which is before Nefario actually gave people the boot, which is something theymos claimed not knowing anything about.

So which one of you two is the liar?

Because the imminent criminal implications made the product they were selling worthless as an investment.  Selling worthless investments is scamming.  Anyone who tried to represent heroin as a smart investment rather than a dangerous addictive poison likely to land you in jail is indeed scamming too. 

I think the reason why you guys are getting so many people ignoring you isn't because you're something awful forum goons (yes, I have a very old SA account and contribute there frequently as well), it's because you actually do not have any experience in this matter and regularly change your accusations. I've been watching every single one of you and while I'd like to think your intentions are good, you've failed to draw actual evidence of malfeasance. Your implications are that these users actually had ill intent and actually believe GLBSE shares were worthless prior to selling them. The evidence gained so far indicates they become worthless only because Nefario was taking the exchange legit, which is why he has the scammer tag and everyone else is the victim. Everyone already knew what Nefario's actions were, they saw what was happening to previous asset holders.

I updated the heroin analogy to be more relevant.


bitcoin.me decided to sell after Nefario booted a previous asset holder. Your accusations are changing constantly, can you make them more clear?

You are asking ME to make them more clear? Theymos "booted a previous shareholder"? Dude, seriously. You're a bunch of lying, despicable pricks and you have the gall to ask ME to be clear? You be fucking clear.

Come the fuck clean on all this scammy mess you've made, and make some apologies already.

I can't help it if you have decided to ignore what Theymos wrote on the forums.  He knew the business was illegal, and he knew the jig would be up when it was brought to the authorities.  Unless he is a complete moron unable to tie his own shoes or brush his teeth, of course, but he is clearly not so low functioning.


Which was an imminent action insiders were aware of.  It was listed as a reason for the sale.  It cannot be more clear, do not pretend to be looking for evidence when you are simply trying to play some game to obfuscate it.  

I've never invested in GLBSE nor do I own any assets. Are you seriously accusing me of being a party to this? You're being irrational. If you had any idea of who I actually was you'd know I am not a theymos fan and I regularly provide actual evidence to get scammers thrown off the forum. If you could make a clear and concise explanation or accusation, I'd love to see it. I think you'd be surprised at what I could actually do with it, especially if it has actual criminal implications.

I think the salient point here is did any of these people know that Nefario was going to shut down GLBSE and hold on to company funds at the time they put the stock up for sale. Personally, I don't think they did know this, and think this whole thread is pointless.

They knew legal involvement was the end of the business, whether Nefario stopped the scamming immediately or waited.  Why should he have waited just so they could harvest new suckers to hold the bag on the forums?  This entire dispute and Nefario's tag is because he didn't give Theymos the time to get away with the scam to dump the shares on the forum.

Checking back today, I don't yet see anyone who felt victimized by Theymos's sale/brokering of the highly damaged assets.

I also note that the price projected was high enough to suggest that a buyer would be doing due dilligence and taking some time understanding the nature, structure, and personalities involved in the endeavor, and this would take some time.  (...though it's hardly a certainty given that this is Bitcoin related... :( )  Point is, the sale was unlikely to be successful if GLBSE collapsed as it did suggesting that Theymos didn't see it coming in the rapid form that it took.

Scam?  I still don't know.  Would I be extra cautious buying something from or doing business with Theymos?  Damn straight!

The problem is that with the bits and pieces of mostly lies / not entirely true statements the participants make, it's outright impossible to clarify anything. That's the role of a prosecutor IRL, get each of them into a separate little room, beat the shit out of them (metaphorically, of course, which is like a simile) and then paste the real story together.

Is that a historically ordered story?

This is anecdotical, but I don't think GLBSE ever acted as the underwriter of any security (they would have had to buy [usually at a discount] all the yet-unsold shares after an IPO, which they didn't).

Illegal implies it was against the law, and presently we still do not know if GLBSE was against the law in any jurisdiction. It would appear Nefario was in the process of attempting to make GLBSE a sort of AML-certified legal exchange which he didn't have approval to do by his shareholders. To date, the legality of GLBSE is still under question, even if criminal charges by the SEC are eventually filed against Nefario. An SEC investigation by itself does not make an exchange illegal, indeed they may not even have jurisdiction over GLBSE. MPOE even has a post on here about how he would argue that Bitcoin securities cannot be regulated by the SEC:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=116835.0

Again, I don't see the logic in the accusations; theymos (et al) were very straightforward with what was being sold and why they were selling it.


So you admit that anyone intending to buy knew what they were going to be purchasing. Thanks. If you are going to argue that these were illegal, you'd be better served calling and assisting the SEC in their investigations, scammer tags on the forums are not evidence of illegality, it's evidence of immorality. While the two are definitely not mutually-exclusive, they aren't always inclusive, either.


Again, you're talking about the legality here, not the morality.

A scammer tag does not seem to be warranted at this time, perhaps later. To wit, and as others have indicated, no one affected by the sale of these shares has come forward asking for one and we have no evidence that these individuals had prior knowledge of what exactly Nefario was doing.


Thank you for the summation Reeses. It sounds like a good summary of the events.

The two parts that seem to be in conflict in it are:
"Nefario goes rogue" and "despite the fact that it was a partnership"

If he was taking steps that were not in agreement, then the partnership was dissolved and the remaining parties aren't likely guilty of anything (in a legal context, anyway). I also agree highly with your assessment that anyone having anything to do with GLBSE would be better served to remain quiet on the issue, anyway.

At this point it seems pre-emptive to argue for a scammer tag when we presently don't know the legalities surrounding the situation or who knew what and when. This forum has never given scammer tags out indiscriminately. Whenever I've argued for one I've always had to provide overwhelming evidence, and I'd be downright upset if circumstantial evidence alone were sufficient enough for one. At least BadBear and Maged would understand my concerns with this.

Of course, this is all aside from the legalities of the situation, which I may actually agree with the detractors on.

Technically speaking underwriting is what you'd anecdotally call "vetting". Ie, the process of assessing eligibility.

There is no legal weight to the argument that Bitcoins = Get Out of Jail Free.  The securities themselves are regulated regardless of what they are traded for. 


No, they were not. 


No, folks here do not realize what Theymos did, that the illegality made the shares worthless.  You yourself, in fact, just acknowledged you do not accept that fact.  Theymos does, which is why he dumped the shares on the rubes and knew to get out as soon as the authorities were involved. 

They felt this, but nobody knew. Don't abuse language to try to bolster an opinion.

They knew.  Theymos was intimately involved and was arguing to continue to operate outside the law.  There is no grey area here, as much as you try to lie and spin one up.   

From the original post, bolded for your convenience:

Relavent:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3370.msg54804#msg54804
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3548.0

I believe we have another name to add to the list of people who should get scammer tags "chrisrico".  I was not 100% in agreement with Theymos getting a scammer tag and being completly crooked until this bullshit...  These people are knowningly transferring stolen funds and then refusing to tell people who they were transferred to.

This forum is a fucking joke, Theymos you've destroyed your forum with this curroption.

This is a credit rating and bail bond system. Also, you're posting something that was clearly public knowledge, not really good "evidence" for malfeasance, there. I still don't get where the "lied" and "falsely" part comes in.


This I'd maybe be more inclined to agree with, but it took you 5 or 6 accusations to get there.

Nope, it's exactly in the first post.

The thread may be titled such, but in Nef's post it's pretty clear he's talking about the launch of GLBSE.


I'm not trying to point out evidence for malfeasance or whatever.  Just showing that it has long been known (or knowable by reading that thread) who the Officers of GLBSE are (were?)

Okay, your Honor, I stipulate that there is a difference in the precedent that obviates my original query. So, let's try this:

BadBear- what say you? Does material ownership of a now-locked up asset full of other people's bitcoins, a lack of control over the lunatic who is consistently not being accurate about what is happening with their jointly owned company, the allegations about ownership and attempted dumping of an asset, and the horrible communications surrounding theymos' involvement in GLBSE, along with that of the other owners of GLBSE warrant a scammer tag?

So let me see if I got this straight, the current reasons I see for why theymos was not being straightforward with the sale of the GLBSE shares are:
1) He wasn't clear that he was selling shares for other people as well.
2) He didn't specify that he was the treasurer (I can't remember if this was true or not).

Anything else? Also, what reasons for selling were withheld? Could you also please explain why any one of the points you make or made actually matters with respect to misrepresenting what and why he was selling?

Neither of those are my claims, the bias here from Theymos and his lackeys is absurd.  The scam was attempting to dump stock that was worthless because unregulated markets of this kind are illegal and the imminent legal action his insider status made him well aware of would obviously shutter the business.  

Selling something that you adjudge to be worthless isn't a scam.  They're called garage sales.  "One man's junk is another man's treasure."  Misrepresentation, if it occurred, is a whole different ballgame.

How are they worthless ? Are shares in silk road worthless because its possibly illegal ?

Any shares in a criminal organization are worthless because the government may confiscate them at any time.  In this situation however the funds were particularly worthless because the insider trader knew of the imminent legal action that would shut down the illegal operation. 

There was no legal action besides nefario supposedly speaking to a lawyer.

There is still no proof at all that any authorities have even spoken to Nefario and none of the shareholders have been contacted either.

Of course there is proof.  We have Nefario's testimony and the extreme reaction of his partners in crime who have tried to extort and scam their way out of holding the bag at the last moment.  The SEC will not act in haste or scream about what they are doing.  They handle these matters patiently. 

My official statement to the SEC
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz7s8plvOZ1qj0qlso1_500.jpg

That's conjecture, not fact as stated.  In fairness though it is not completely outside the range of reason.

I would expect someone who was a party to the sale to come forward with information about how disingenuous and deceptive ~theymos was if that were the case.  Still waiting so it well could be the case that potential serious buyers (if any) were completely comfortable with the legal status of the asset and any negotiations were considered straight by the effected parties.  Even if not, I've tended to consider the scammer tag to apply to people who invent schemes with pre-formed intentions of ripping people of, this event probably would not qualify as such.  For that matter it's debatable whether ~nefario's various exploits do either.

I still think there should be a tag for general plonkers who clearly cost people money even if it is not totally clear whether they are full-on scammers or just incompetent boobs.  Bitcoin Consultancy, fr'instance.

This will not occur, as Nefario's brave whistleblowing actions made the sale moot. 

Then ignore my bias. It doesn't matter what I, individually, think. Your goal should be to convince everyone else. Of course, that doesn't make my questions any less valid.

Also, those reasons came from a quick skim of the thread, so I am legitimately curious to see if I missed anything.
This is not a matter of whether or not the shares were worthless. Potential buyers can decide the shares' value themselves. The question is, did Theymos misrepresent any information that could have prevented someone from assigning a fair value to those shares?

Maged,

I believe if I don't get claim codes (or whatever they are) for the assets I hold, then shareholders of BitcoinGlobal should all get scammer tags.  What do you think?

Yes, he misrepresented the shares as having worth.  

I disagree. However, I would agree that the ones that are preventing BitcoinGlobal from relieving Nefario of the database would deserve the tag, assuming they have accounts here. Of course, that would be after giving Nefario a reasonable amount of time to send claim codes, himself.

Nefario is requesting personal information from former GLBSE users to close their accounts and get any bitcoins/assets back.  Are you suggesting I send personal information to someone listed as a scammer by bitcointalk moderators?

Theymos stated that the bylaws of BitcoinGlobal are enforceable on bitcointalk forums, but they can't be enforced unless the shareholders of BitcoinGlobal are released.  Also, the shareholders will not oust Nefario from CEO of BitcoinGlobal unless they are pressured to do so with the threat of ostracization from the bitcoin community.  If the BitcoinGlobal shareholders deserve a scammer tag for not voting to get him to give up the database, by extension Theymos deserves a scammer tag for not releasing the shareholders names as he is aiding their scamming.

Maged, I do think that the knowledge that more than one shareholder was trying to sell their stake in GLBSE would likely have affected people's confidence in the exchange.  When people thought that theymos was the only one selling his stake and that he was doing so for ideological reasons, it was reasonable to assume that there was a unity of purpose among the remaining shareholders.  People may well have made different decisions about doing business with GBLSE if that theymos was not the only shareholder looking to bail out.

While I know that the "private company" line has been trotted out, more information about the shareholders would have been publicly available if GBLSE was in fact a private company.  People could have pulled the Company House documents and confirmed for themselves who the office-holders are, who the office-holders are, the paid up capital, etc - people have done exactly that in respect of Intersango (an actual privately owned company) in the past.

I do think that not informing people that other share-holders were looking to divest their equity in GLBSE may have led to users retaining a level of confidence in GLBSE which was unwarranted and that the loss of confidence which would likely have followed disclosure of full truth would have been reflected in prices of not just GLBSE's stock but also the stock of its asset-issuers.

The information that BitcoinGlobal is not even a legal company and shareholders do not have no authority is very damning.

Of course not, he's a known scammer. In fact, I doubt that he can even make the release of user's information to asset issuers contingent on AML verification, since there is no longer a contract between issuers and GLBSE. Issuers may need to perform their own AML verifications on their asset holders, but GLBSE is no longer responsible for that. Of course, I don't know if that is what the law actually is, but I would assume that unless told otherwise.

You're absolutely right. However, they have been released, so he's fine. They don't need to be released publicly for us to take any action, though.

We tried voting him out as ceo but some people refused to vote.

Finally! This is the kind of stuff I've been looking for! What do people think about this?

GLBSE was a partnership not a registered company.

I meant with regards to how people might value the shares differently if they knew that more than one person was selling.

First, the minutes have not been release backing up this fact.  Two, the few lines to back it up have been recorded as "shareholder 1"/ "shareholder2".  People need to be properly identified if you are going to make this assertion.

There is really no evidence proving who voted for what.  So in all actuallity it could be all the shareholders that want to keep nefario as CEO.

Also, if people are not present for the vote, their vote does is counted.  Motions do not pass with 51 or 67% of all shareholders, it only passes with 51 or 67% of shareholders present at the meeting.

If you tell me nefario wrote the bylaws for BitcoinGlobal I would not be surprised.  It is like a constitution from a university club.

Actually, this depends on the foundation document.  Quorum requirements often state that a certain number of shareholders or shareholders representing a certain percentage of the enterprise must be present for the meeting to even be valid.  Likewise, whether the passing of a motion requires the majority of people present at the meeting or the majority of all interests is usually also spelled out.  Most ventures with a small number of voters don't leave themselves open to the possibility of a few people with a minority interest being able to pass a motion which binds the majority - which is possible under your scenario.

There are all sorts of procedural issues which are also usually stated in the foundation documents, such as notice of special resolutions (and a meeting to shut down the company would fall under this) and the numbers needed to pass a special resolution (generally higher than what is needed to pass an ordinary motion).

No. But they'd be worthless if it ceased to be functional.

Maged: you're really making a fool of yourself with the straw man arguments. Drop it, it's embarrassing to watch.

1. Theymos purported to sell his own shares. They were not his own shares he was selling.

2. Theymos said he had no idea about the goat kickoff; his confederate bitcoin.me said that his reason to sell (in a bulk with theymos) was that he knew Nefario was going to kick off goat. One of the two's lying (and from experience with this mess, probably both).

3. Theymos said there's no SEC investigation and tried to downplay the email SEC actually sent. It's unlikely he didn't know this, as it was public knowledge at the time. (In any case would have been trivial to verify by, for instance, calling the SEC guy up, as a number of people did).

4. Theymos failed to disclose his board position. Theymos represented the acceptance of the new buyer as "something not to be concerned about"; turns out the board can't even agree on the most basic of issues.

In short, the guy lied about pretty much every aspect of the sale he was proposing. What do you mean "Potential buyers can decide the shares' value themselves"? Every single thing theymos said was a lie. Not a single thing he said was the actual, complete and honest truth. How are they to "decide for themselves"? And you're fronting for this? What is this, used car salesman camp?!

Loses tension my foot. You think Taaki, Strateman, McCarthy are names that'll ever show up on anything respectable or with even a vague shot at BTC related success? Never.

I never said I was selling my own shares. I just said that I was "selling shares".

Buyers would have needed to have been informed about the other sellers before the sale was complete, if only because the share transfer contract would need to indemnify the other sellers as well as myself. In fact, buyers would probably want this info (which looks bad) to not be public if they would finally decide to buy.

All of the buyers in my original 23% were leaving primarily due to the legalization thing, so it's not like investors were jumping from a clearly-sinking ship. My opinion was that Nefario was generally incompetent, and legalization would end up bankrupting GLBSE just because following regulations is so expensive and banning small, "dubious" assets represents a substantial loss in revenue. I'm clearly not going to post such a negative opinion publicly when I'm trying to sell my shares. If anyone would have seriously sought to buy, they would have had all facts and more of my opinions that what I made public. I never imagined that Nefario would be so stupid as to close GLBSE like this.

In any case, I'm not obligated to inform non-buyers of internal info. Keep in mind that my sales thread was only an advertisement for private bids and discussion, not a complete statement about the asset.


1. bitcoin.me was not part of the 23% I was selling.
2. A long time after I posted my thread, and after the TYGRR thing, bitcoin.me also decided to sell. I offered to try and sell his shares after the original 23% I was selling was sold.
3. I doubt he really said that he knew about TYGRR beforehand.
4. bitcoin.me is frequently confused and should generally not be considered reliable.

I did not know about TYGRR beforehand.


I said that I did not know of any SEC investigation, which I didn't and still don't. The whole SEC thing could still be a fake, though the increased number of witnesses nowadays makes that seem less likely. Nefario has not said that the SEC is investigating him, and I doubt it is. (Maybe the FSA is, but I doubt this as well.)


I briefly mentioned it in the sales thread. I didn't say it more explicitly because the fact that I am treasurer was already public (though maybe obscure) knowledge. It was part of the original PGP contract for BitcoinGlobal shares, which was public. Nefario mentioned it in that old forum thread. I've mentioned it on Stack Exchange and Reddit previously.

Acceptance of a buyer was nothing to be worried about because I already solidly had 4 (and later 6) of the 7 votes needed, and the others would be easy. The vote to accept a new shareholder is based on number of shareholders, not number of shares.

I'm not going to keep responding to these ridiculous accusations based on rumors and assumptions.

Sounds like you just admitted to them all, just with the caveat that you were going to stop the lies and lies of omissions later if you got a sucker on the hook.  Sure you would have.  Sure!

I'm happy with this. Far as we're concerned the matter may rest.

Specific to point #3, I can confirm from personal knowledge that there is an SEC investigation underway at the present time, and I can specifically confirm that GLBSE/BitcoinGlobal is a subject of that investigation. I will also confirm that this investigation is more than just a couple of weeks old, that it predates the pirate/BS&T investigation letter that was released to this community, and that there has been specific instances where legal force was used to compel information in the investigation.

I don't suppose you can explain how you can confirm all that?

As stated: I can confirm this from personal knowledge. Personal knowledge gained from direct personal experience with the events described. Beyond that clarification I will not offer any further details in order to preserve my own rights and options in any future legal action.

No, I said I was going to sell after goat was kicked off. I was not selling when theymos did and the shares he was talking about did not involve mine. In fact we were still discussing whether I was going to sell when Nefario shut glbse down and we hadnt even had  a chance to add my shares to the ones to be sold yet.

I am not trying to offer lines to be read between. What I have knowledge of has nothing to do with AML. And if we look at the brief exposure to the AML-themed version of data collection from GLBSE, it was not created with ANY compliance awareness involved. Whoever put that language on the GLBSE shut down website knows nothing about AML data gathering requirements, it was not compliant, it was not legal, it was not presented in a format that could be reported to the authorities, it had none of the required disclosures, and did not ask for the specific requirements.

So, short answer, no.

My best guess is that nefario is negotiating with Russian or Nigerian online scammers to make a little money selling nice ID packages that can be used by criminals, and was looking to harvest from the GLBSE user base as a lovely parting gift. Nothing about that data gathering exercise was official or designed by anyone who had even the most basic understanding of what official is.

It was also illegal in at least Germany.

That seems a bit unlikely, IMHO. One hears that in the underbelly of the underground Bitcoin markets (e.g., BMR) this kind of illicit information is selling for about $20-30 per 100 stolen passport scans. Given the sheer volume of user funds that Nefario reportedly already controls, it just does not seem as though he could gain all that much extra runaway money from selling ID scans...

Black Market Reloaded, aka BMR, is to Silk Road what Silk Road is to Bitmit.

That is, one hears that while SR has a self-imposed ethical code for what type of items are permitted to be listed (prohibiting anything immoral by the agorist ethos, e.g. stolen goods or photos of child abuse), BMR has no ethical code whatsoever (anything goes).

LOL.
You shove your exchange in everyones face at every opportunity you think you can manage and you say you're NOT running a popularity contest?
Bravo on the comic note.

How, dear Goat, is it trolling in your mind to give you a very straightforward answer to a direct question you posed referencing a post I made? That would in fact be the antithesis of trolling, it is core on-topic advancement of the conversation.

Really, you need to learn how to think before you hit post. You are just making yourself sound that much more stupid.

Loupgaroux you are a troll. Not as good as me. But it's funny because you and Goat are the ones on this side of the "scam" now.

Must feel great eh?  :P

Yeah, well when the Titanic sank there were all kinds of different people on board too. Think of me as the band leader that kept them at Waltzing Matilda as the icy waters lapped around me feet, attempting to keep the dead people walking entertained as the end drew near, while Goat was the Sno-cone vendor shouting "Ice Cones, get your unsecured Ice Cones, we love Ice Cones, who needs a tasty Ice Cone?" as he kept knocking holes in the boat.

Relevant:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=118154.0

I was the guy who fell overboard because I thought the iceberg was New York.

Who is going to pose nude for Jack Dawson?

Pretty much all of the customers of the GLBSE service, because we are all going to end up being the ones screwed by them.

English motherfucker, do you speak it?

"feel"
"nefario's"
"cheerleader"
"ass,"
"fucks... and leaves"
"fucked... and has left"
"used"
"it."

Thirty four words and you managed to work 8 glaring errors into your two line post! You have got to be just about the stupidest dipshit in your entire hemisphere. There are first grade Thai children with severe learning disabilities who can communicate in the English language better than you can. Do the world a favor and just be quiet, your mouth-breathing does nothing to advance any discussion.

Can Google get the scammer tag for lying to me?

http://www.4to40.com/images/newsat4/2010/6/Wolf_and_Goat.jpg

M Garoux,
I would love your permission to use this quote in the future.

If only Chaang Noi displayed the level of candor in his business dealings as he has shown in disclosing other's identities.

FTFY.... :-*

FTFY

Strunk & White would disagree with you on the numbering applications, although my usage is considered archaic in most English speaking countries. Hardly a concern as I am anachronistically motivated in the first place. Thirty four must be capitalized because it starts the sentence, and then the case of 8, although normally written out being less than ten, works far better visually in numerical form, as a repetitive series of numbers written out makes for a very boring sentence.  The stupidest/most stupid is purely a regional thing. "The stupidest" is more mainstream, while your well intentioned "most stupid" is for effete Northeastern snobs. It would be akin to "dumbest" or "most dumb".  Which would have made my post sound a lot more dumb is I had gone that way.