Bitcoin Forum

There will be a press conference on Saturday 19th of January in his New Zealand mansion to celebrate the launch of Kim's new endeavour: http://mega.co.nz

The public launch is also scheduled for Saturday, while press representatives will have the opportunity to glimpse at the new site 48 hours early.
See: http://mega.co.nz/press/

How do we get some of the attendees or early testers to ask for the available payment options, especially for Bitcoin??

Is there a list of or intelligence on the attendees available somewhere?
In that case, a bunch of emails would probably do the job in placing our most wanted question among those raised at the conference.

I've planned this very moment from 2 months ago, I'm quite sure that the new Mega will support Bitcoin and that will launch Bitcoin into the hands of hundreds of millions of users a day.
It will be an epic moment.

If i'm right.

Every day Dotcom paints another circle onto the target on his back. He's got cojones, that's for sure.

damn i hoped hes in jail forever, ah well atleast im allowed to dream :) justice would have been done if so ;)

O.K., back on topic: What can we do to get our questions into the conference??

There has been absolutely no indication that you are right.

I've said it before, but I'm super skeptical that mega-whatever will accept BTC.  AFAIK, there has been zero evidence that it will and with as many info hounds as are on this forum I imagine something would have come up.

Of course, I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong on this.  

As for how we get those at the conference to ask questions about bitcoin, I assume we don't. Either they already will or they have other questions that they think will be more important. The chances are that people who are going will already be asking these sorts of questions as they are the most obvious to ask. Plus, I don't believe anyone would get a few emails asking about bitcoins from strangers on the Internet and think to themselves, "Oh boy, I better change my questions and ask this one!"

Yes, apart from my previsions. I would do that if i was in him.

Time will tell, we are only days apart.

Hmmmm,

I am not far from dotcom Mansion, perhaps I should register and see what they think, I do a fair bit of coverage for bitcoin, if bitcoin is too be included in the new mega.co.nz I would be very interested to find out.

i saw pictures where he proudly presents his servers

so it's a centralized service after all, that can be taken down?

I see Bitcoin as the best choice but Mr. Dotcom has other options.  He can continue to use standard credit cards as this is a new company and wait until he is shut down (this risk is lowered by his not having encryption keys to the customer data). He can set up his own payment network or currency.  Both of those choices have more problems then simply using Bitcoin. 

I'm expecting the new system to have absolutely nothing to do with Bitcoin.

Seems to me Kim just doesn't get it.
If he did comprehend Bitcoin - he'd have been too excited about the potential to not drop hints.

Also - in his recruitment of server operators, it would make sense to target people who already value Bitcoin if that were the intended payment mechanism.

I'm just skeptical that he could convince a bunch of high-capacity server operators to accept a 'new form of money'.  
If so - he's a better evangelist than I give him credit for and a master of secrecy.

I strongly suspect that he's just decentralized (or 'indirected' anyway) the monetization aspect of the system using boring old-skool money... and so advertisers & users will be paying various server operators rather than paying Dotcom directly.

can i request a executement job for BTC lol

Kim-Koin is a much more likely scenario. If you know any tiny bit of this guy's history you will know what I am saying.

a more likely scenario is that accepting Bitcoin won't come to his attention until it becomes as common knowledge to accept like how Paypal is today.

Pls try! You can be the star of the conference;D !!!

Some points why he would accept Bitcoin:

# Its cost efficient
# He hates VISA, Master Card and Paypal for freezing his assets for a looong time
# He detests the US government, as he cheerfully likes to perpetuate on his tweet
# He likes to think of himself as an internet liberties activist
# He retweeted Bitcoin# already (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92682.0)
# Bitcoin suits his business and customers with anonymity written all over it
# "Hackers" offered him back his domain of choice: "http://me.ga" for a million dollar ransom (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=122842.0) payable in Bitcoin (coincidence? staged?)
# He was tried once for insider trading*, for buying large into a small company incognito, then launching news of his engagement and investment plans of it, only to sell his shares at the peak IIRC. Thus, he must have thought of doing the same thing with Bitcoin, this time legally.

* (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_dot_com#Criminal_investigations)"In 2001, Schmitz purchased €375,000 worth of shares of the nearly bankrupt company LetsBuyIt.com and subsequently announced his intention to invest €50 million in the company.[31] The announcement caused the share value of LetsBuyIt.com to jump[32] and Schmitz cashed out, making a profit of €1.5 million. One commentator suggested that Schmitz may have been ignorant of the legal ramifications of what he had done since insider trading was not made a crime in Germany until 1995,[30] and until 2002 prosecutors also had to prove the accused had criminal intent.[33]"

It's very clear that he should use BTC, but I question this guys ability to use common sense or make intelligent decisions to any degree.

Because the costs of Bitcoin are so low, setting up Kim-Koin would cost him more with little benefit.  There are already places to get Bitcoin all over the world.  Is he going to set up a Kim-Koin acceptance network in the USA?  Doubtful. 

He could try to stay within the standard Visa/Mastercard network as I have said before.  He does not need to find a US partner, he can use an overseas one.  They may be told by Visa/Mastercard later to turn him off, but that would take time. 

Actually the best choice for HIM would be to accept as many things as possible including Bitcoin.

Maybe he is quite smart and still buying.

OK, since you have asked so nicely I have put in an application.  I would have to take time off work but I think I should be able to swing it if I get a press pass. Should I set up a donation address for bribes? :p

One more thing...

The new Mega is going to start free and stay free for long enough to generate buzz and users.  Even if they pick BTC, the users wont be scrambling for it for a while. 

Is that your personal assumption or can you base it on some source?

http://mega.co.nz/#/investors (http://mega.co.nz/#/investors)

If Mr. Dotcom took an interest in Bitcoin I highly doubt that he'd be stupid enough to say anything about it.

Were I anyone with money and wished to take a decent BTC position, I'd outsource the effort to traders who knew what they were doing.  The steady increase in BTC prices tells _me_ that money is flowing into the economy at a rate which is approaching non-trivial.  The smartest way for people with some bucks to get in would be to combine forces behind a single trading specialist who could manage the accumulation over time.  Several relatively big players could really damage one another and it would end up being a net negative for all of them.

Well.. this is something I'd be happy to be wrong about.
I'm looking forward to seeing whether Mr Dotcom is visionary or just, as I suspect, reactionary.

If it's the later - I expect he'll still adopt it eventually...  once other businesses have built up the Bitcoin ecosystem to the point where he can't ignore it.

Paypal is out of the question.  They would shut him down right away as they are quite beholden to the power of the music industry.  Just this week Mr Dotcom's PAID radio ads where canceled by the music industry.  Think about that....  Advertising which is almost always a win to sell and pure profit above cost and they are being coerced that effectively not to accept that money. 

Visa/MC is only possible (for a short period) because there are so many payment processors and many of them are not located in the USA.  Visa/MC has a lot more rules and contracts so decisions to terminate a customer can not just suddenly be made.  Lawsuits are much more possible for canceling Visa/MC where they are not with Paypal. 

was that all? ice cream?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/8191214/Kim-Dotcoms-delicious-PR

He also gave away 10 tickets to the opening party for mega.co.nz on Sunday at the DotCom Mansion.  I have applied for a ticket as a "bitcoin representative" to see if I can hit him up for bitcoin support on the new mega but apparently they have had over overwhelming response from the press.

I live/work about 300 km from the guy (186.411 miles for the metricly impaired) so I don't mind trying.

Still hoping anyway.

My guess is he will NOT accept bitcoin and I doubt he will even mention it during this conference.

My guess is that you will be correct, but I figure there is no harm in trying.

there are two large similar (?) services on the bitcoin ladder:
http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2011/12/bitcoin-bounty-ladder.html

so I guess it is possible

According to this article in the International Business Times the big press launch at his mansion is not until Sunday 20th

http://www.ibtimes.com/kim-dotcom-launch-mega-secure-follow-megaupload-saturday-1021130 (http://www.ibtimes.com/kim-dotcom-launch-mega-secure-follow-megaupload-saturday-1021130)



He posted this screen shot of the new mega account page in his twitter feed. Since he is still using "billing cycle" terminology it looks like he is going down the credit card route  :-\

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BAfeLTnCUAA-1r6.jpg:large

(partially) a good point.

If i was in .com i would use a dual stack payment system. And yet i would use that terminology. A billing cycle could be paid via BTC.

twitter posts just in:

9 min ago


19 min ago


25 min ago
https://twitter.com/kimdotcom


Which indicates that there may be free AND premium membership accounts from the start.

I thought there would be some news coming out since it's less than 48 hours now... guess we'll just have to wait for launch to find out... I can't imagine mega.co.nz will be accepting paypal though.

Most probably they will accept some external cc provider. There is no need for paypal.

What I look forward to the most is when this guy gets shut down/assets frozen AGAIN and he goes on twitter and says "Man, if only I there was some sort of digital currency that could be used anonymously and is immune to the whims of major companies! IF ONLY!"

He's counting on it. By that time he'll have amassed a horde of bitcoins, and THEN he'll announce that due to the "shut down/assets frozen" his new music store service will deal exclusively in BTC.

Exchange skyrockets, he laughs all the way to the buffet.

Is bitcoin breaking 15$ today a conincidence?

I must say that i have my doubts. Maybe the market is pricing in this already and in case bitcoin will not be supported there will be a crash.

+1

I don't believe it will take a crash if btc isnt supported, there have been many reasons why the price has increased. In the case that mega does take btc, i believe the price will easily double.

It is very possible.  Likely even.

In order for this to happen though, a certain amount of BTC will have to go on the market.  The trouble is that there has been a fairly steady upward trend for a year now (with some exceptions.)  If this trend continues then anyone who steps off the train with the intent of getting back in at a lower price could easily be left behind.  Most of those who have done so in the last year are probably no longer on the train or took a beating if they are and may not want to re-live the experience.

Put another way: "Do you feel lucky punk?  Well, do ya?"

I think they could possibly accept bitcoin as a method of payment in the future, however at launch mega will be free for customers.

http://mega.co.nz/#/investors


glassuser - Maybe if bitcoin was the only payment option, but that would be incredibly stupid considering you lose access to say 98%(and that figure is low) of your old customer base not being able to pay with cc etc who have not even heard of bitcoin.

You're right about that, at least those who want to remain anonymous would def consider bitcoin over fiat.

fixed

Well, the site says "crypto" all over it ;-). Perhaps some service provider could ask for bitcoins as payment and /or some investor send bitcoins as investment!

I don't think that there is any reason for anyone to base Bitcoin market decisions on the new Mega. There has been absolutely 0 indication or even a hint that there will be anything Bitcoin related in that service. Of course I hope the service accepts bitcoins for premium membership etc but there is no expectation on this. Current market activity likely has nothing to do with this, unless it's Kim himself buying bitcoins before the announcement. I'd think he would have done that much earlier though.

dude.....what if he accepts LTC as payment??

He'll make a killing as he dumps it for BTC

The new megaupload will use the exact same business model as the old one. Maybe they will accept BTC for premium accounts but I doubt that would happen in the near future.

And please don't forget that we already have a nice BTC only service: http://www.coinuploads.com/

First time I hear about coinuploads.com. Seems nice.

The problem with taking in as much revenue as he would through Bitcoin is cashing it out. Totally impossible today, even if you utilized all the on and off-exchange markets...including Coinabul.

If I remember right, he tweeted 1/2 times about Bitcoin ...

Early access:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2013/01/18/kim-dotcoms-mega-opens-site-to-early-users-reveals-roadmap-with-mobile-access-office-style-features-and-more/

I don't think that's an accurate assumption. You forget that with the increased demand in order to pay for his service there would likely be an increased volume of trading..

Nothing about Bitcoin or payment options in it, only mentions the price tiers.

What happened yesterday at the ice cream store..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4_zGo0oLnI&feature=player_embedded

I will be attending the conference with several staff, We are also considering putting in a few nodes to contribute towards such an interesting project.

Quantum Kiwi - CEO - Logan

Awesome, can't wait to hear what his answer will be if you get the chance to ask him about Bitcoin. Good luck!

YAY!! Where can I follow you??
Have you got some twitter, facebook, etc. account?

Im excited ;D

No Spekulatius, you just want to speculate :)

http://kim.com/mega/press/

22 hours left.

Mega advance viewing has pricing for extras in Euros  >:(

Mega;s not gonna be doing bitcoins I don't think, unless he hooks up with BitPay or etc later on maybe?

Ha, we have the next Nathan Mayer Rothschild in our midst  :D

And I tell you right now: BITCOIN IS DOOMED TO FAIL!

Care to sell those worthless coins for some shiny consols? I make a good price ;)

Right, but it would take some time to acclimate to cashing out such huge amounts. People already have issues with Mt.Gox paying them in a reasonable amount of time...

Theoretically, if Kim could get suppliers of hosting and bandwidth to take bitcoins, he wouldn't have to cash out anything. Incidentally, this is how the system will work when we grow past the edge-exchanges being relevant.

Reasonable though hosting costs should not be too big of a part of his budget.

If Mega customers are buying bitcoins to pay for their subscription and Kim will have no trouble at all selling his.

If mega were to accept BTC there would be serious hints out by now.
It's a 100% rumour without any basis in reality.

I expect a huge crash on the 20th

I don't believe this is causing buying so I don't think it will drop price much if any.

There are many other people adopting Bitcoin along with all of the coins slowly leaving weaker hands.

Frankly, only complete idiots would buy BTC in expectation of an announcement based on an unfounded rumour from a 3rd party which they have no relationship to.

This community has done some stupid things in the past, but I don't hink it's that stupid.

I'm quoting this. Just in case.  ;D

Kim has to bear in mind not only in the inmediate advantages of accepting Bitcoin. If he is really a enterpreneur minded person, has to think a step forward over his future rivals.

Imagine if Mega starts running the cloud crypto service and all the supporters or collaborators start getting in trouble with paypal, with their banks, in order to get their work paid. If only a next rival starts a similar service, and offers payments in bitcoins, all the "cloud" will change to the new service to avoid problems.

I think it's necessary. More than that, it's a must if he wants to mantain superiority over competitors, and of course, to avoid getting his funds seized again.

so get Kim a link to this thread

He meant to say he expects a huge "bubble" on the 20th. Bubbles are everywhere, you see, every time bitcoin fluctuates :) (Even just a little bit!)

Bubble up, bubble down, bubble sideways. (Nah, not really.)

One more of the early testers reveil their experience:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/mega-arrives-ars-goes-hands-on-with-kim-dotcoms-cloud-storage-site/


Here is the much quoted interview with (the guardian??) in video:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jan/18/kim-dotcom-fight-internet-freedom?CMP=twt_fd


No mention of payment options, nor Bitcoin though :(

Seriously though, you guys are our inside men! How can we keep updated on your adventures?

exactly

That suspicious, it is typical announcing payment systems available ::)

As I said before in another thread, it's just not in Kim's best interest to accept BTC when releasing the service.

If it is accepted immediately at release it would not generate additional publicity since that is already saturated as it is.
Should he decide however to use it at a later date it would give the service additional publicity.

Kim Dotcom would be charged of money laundering if he accepted bitcoin ...it is likely that at least, until he solve his problems, he wont accept bitcoin.

That's my bet.

I don't see how money laundering should be illegal unless there's a legal requirement to show all sources of money for anyone. is that required?

And the last $20 from my paycheck I gave to this bum named ralph down the corner...

Look up the history of it...

i assume after prohibition where they had to pick a new bad guy = drugs. they used the term money laundering more and more often

Actually it started in 70s and took off in the 80s, I'm no historian about it so I would welcome deeper insights than what I have read on the internet. You can get anything I know from googling. It was eye opening to realize this "crime" was not considered so for most of human history.

What time exactly Mega will start today?

About 6 hours from now

THX

http://mega.co.nz/ is down.

Dunno.
Loaded okay for me just now.

Probably just too many people eager to try it.

Doesn't work for me right now.

Does anyone know if there's a live stream of the mega press conference this evening?

hahahaha really nice

https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/292668394199715841

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr1feJDCjPo

LOL

OK, it is 19th going to end slowly (all world around)
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/

Where is revolution? :)

Should arrive in 10 minutes

https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/292685148527419392

This is some sick stuff.

I hope Kim at least mentions bitcoin.. mega.co.nz has writen crypto all over it.

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/megaupload-nachfolger-mega-im-test-a-878539.html

They did not mention btc...

Sit back watch it crumble, see the drowning watch the fall.
I feel just terrible about it, that’s sarcasm, let it burn! (http://"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G3dzddZ6WE")

Bitcoin is the secret weapon ;)

Who wants to be the Bitcoin Reseller ? ;)

https://mega.co.nz/ Is online.

Sorry for the unfounded rumor guys.

Site is getting hit hard.

No mention of bitcoin because it is all in jibberish.

Can't get a confirmation email. Has anyone successfully signed up?

Yes. There is no bitcoin at all.

However, the website dosent sell the premium directly. There is a list of voucher resellers. Uploading a pic from my iPhone, sorry, in having fun with other things.


https://i.imgur.com/DxGDsEa.jpg

I might be stupid but I still think that we will see bitcoin payments there soon.

I signed up just fine... it seems that he isn't actually selling anything on his site, but is using resellers, kind of like how e-gold was using exchangers to put a layer between them and payments. Nice one, maybe bitpay or someone could become a reseller providing bitcoin payments :)

Me

Welcome to MEGA!

Your 2048-bit RSA public / private key pair is now being created.

To strengthen the key, we have collected entropy from your mouse movements and keystroke timings.




very cool

I checked all the resellers on https://mega.co.nz/#resellers
all they accept are credit cards (Visa, Master, Discover, Diner, some other) and Paypal. No mention of Bitcoin :(

LIVE STREAM of the press conference set to happen in 13 hours on techcrunch
:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/19/mega-launches-its-cloud-storage-and-file-sharing-service-as-the-privacy-company-amid-a-huge-surge-of-interest/

Well, couldn't somebody who accepts bitcoins become a reseller?  8)

Well, it does teach commoners what Public/Private keys are and how important it is to remember your password as there is no recovery, just like in Blockchain and other Bitcoin wallets.

cool

Yes, please!

Sounds like a job for our #1 payment processor.

Somehow I am a bit disappointed of Kim. After all his talk about getting rid of US dictated monopolies, like credit cards and Paypal, I at least would have expected SOME other option than that. Maybe direct bank wires or cash in mail or ANYTHING, but Paypal, Visa and Master all over again?

The going scheme seems to be that domain sellers offer subscriptions only (https://mega.co.nz/#resellers).
Maybe some of those guys would be right:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Domain_Name_and_DNS_Hosting

I'm starting to think more and more that Kim is just a stupid guy who happened to get lucky with his service. I mean he knows how to provide that service but other than that he is a moron.

Fail, kim. Page is not loading and The URL says mobile undefined even on my iPad ...

It works for me but when I try to sign up it hangs and if I reload and try again the same thing happens.

kalyhost.com maybe...

they are hosting mtgox

Well, I kind of like mega (But I love our own little baby more ;) ), but honestly, I don't understand why there's no bitcoin support right away. I mean, it's not like not supporting bitcoin would win Kim any favors from the nice gentlemen in the FBI...

Now, I am currently in the process of carefully reading the site, and as far as I can tell, there is no indication of anything that might resemble something like an uploader reward program a-la the great old Megaupload days. If that's true, it would be sorely disappointing...

Now that is just unfair. Even without uploader rewards, it's still neato.

The more crypto-enhanced file hosting services there are, the merrier.

;)

I found the secure connection site worked but open connection not ... i.e. use
https://mega.co.nz (https://mega.co.nz)

EDIT: oooh, looks like an API https://mega.co.nz/#developers (https://mega.co.nz/#developers) and lots of back-end info is being made available also ... maybe not be too hard for 3rd party to bolt on a bitcoin-enabled service anyway ??

https://mega.co.nz/#resellerintro  ;D

Yeah interesting he has chosen to use a voucher system for the resellers, like Mt Gox does. I can imagine those Mega vouchers will become a currency in their own right and could be traded for bitcoins on some exchanges somewhere anyway, maybe in the deep web if need be ...

... Kim could have called the vouchers MegaBucks   :D

That's my intention. :)

Eventually Mega will accept Bitcoin, it's inevitable!

Since I did not get an invite to the party :( I am at home playing with it now.

Can anyone upload anything or is it just me stuck at 0%?

Same here ... seems there is no more upload just Mega.

MEGA

It is far more likely that a Mega reseller will sell Mega vouchers for BTC. The result from a retail preservative will be as if Mega accepted BTC.

so he has no blame! booya fbi

That would be kick-ass actually.  Just as good, or better, than using Bitcoin directly.  As long as Mr. Dotcom does not require that I provide him with an identity theft kit (like Mt. Gox, for instance) I might even make use of their service.  Or would if it was useful to me.

IMHO, the thing that would 'save' Bitcoin would be that it becomes 'high powered money' and used relatively lightly for big-ticket and/or important things.  Then there is a potential that 'peers' in the so-called P2P system will be more than a handful of mining pool operators due to uncontrolled growth.

This reflects my thoughts exactly.

Same here ^^  :(

Actually as far as I can see this is a very smart design. Mega itself does not deal with the retail sales but leaves this to the resellers who can use any payment method they choose including of course Bitcoin. These resellers can be anywhere in the world so even if some one pays with say a credit card or PayPal, Mega itself does not get the payment information, and the end user can literally shop around for the jurisdiction with the strictest privacy laws when choosing a reseller.  This also means that Mega itself collects minimal information a name (with no verification), email address and an IP address (TOR anyone?). The design also calls for distributed hosting with backups of each file in different at least two different jurisdictions.

The files are encrypted and Mega itself does not have the private keys. So the only way a copyright holder will even know that there is infringing content is if the person who uploaded the content leaks the key directly or indirectly to the copyright holder. At this point I am sure Mega will honour a takedown notice provided that the copyright holder has dotted all the legal i's and crossed all the legal t's. Now user side encryption has many perfectly legal and legitimate uses such as the cloud backup of sensitive data.

This whole thing looks like it has been designed by an army of lawyers in order to create a mega legal headache for the entertainment industry while at the same time being in strict compliance with the law.

+1.  The more I think about this, the more I agree.  Both with all of your points, and with the mode of operation which mega.co.nz looks like they may have taken.

After many time-outs, I got on enough to get a test account.  After many time-outs on the e-mailed link, I got signed in.  Now I'm playing with it a bit, but my test upload has not gone through.  Understandable if this really is the most successful 'start-up' of all time, and I would not rule it out.

I needed only provide a working e-mail and it didn't give a shit about my 'name' being just a short small-case username.  So, it is only one step behind 'instawallet' in terms of respecting my privacy.  I like that a lot!  I just read through all of the 'help' items and I like what I see.  So far it's looking a lot like "Kim Dotcom (and company) FTW!"

I would go so far as to say that at the end of the day, the model for the service that Mega is providing may rank up there in importance with Zimmerman's PGP work, and he Kim (and his minions) just may have the muscle, money, and smarts to make it stick.

---

Oh ya.  Hey Hazek.  Don't be so butt-hurt that the guy didn't choose to pump our pet currency.  Very few 'stupid' people get as far as Mr. Dotcom and I would be shocked if he were one of them.  Think about it a little and you might conclude that by (seemingly) ignoring Bitcoin things may well work out a lot better for both us and for Mega.  They are not going to need any extra entaglements, and it'll be lucky if Kim's mansion does not end up being the location of the first drone strike in New Zealand.

edit: name clarity

Ok, after 10 hours trying to upload on and off, still nothing ... has anybody been able to upload even 1 file?

I have my doubts as to whether it is working at all.

Nothing here... PENDING....
Only one file started to upload, but I canceled, too slow

unsubbing this thread; someone PM me if anything big happens

Actually, a guy just recently linked this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5084261 in the reddit thread about us (or rather, he linked to his reddit thread with this link, but you get what I mean)...

...from the looks of it, Mega's encryption seems to provide far less data privacy assurance than people seem to think (and I kind of understand Kim here, Dropbox-like convergent encryption, and thus deduplication, saves a lot of money and pain, and who cares if it provides the means for preemptive screening of uploaded data and could potentially enable various shenanigans by third parties who already have file plaintexts and would like to know which accounts are involved with storing those files...)

Not a peep about bitcoin at the press conference.

I was a little careful to use the terminology 'model for' because I've not reviewed the Mega implementation in detail (or more accurately, not read the critiques of qualified persons which I am not.)  What I meant by this terminology is that the service provider will not be, because they cannot be, scanning through and cataloging one's personal data and more importantly it will provide some limitation on how practical that is for governments as well.

I actually doubt the Alice/Bob [abc]/[cde] example in the aforementioned thread is valid in Mega's initial implementation, and even if it is it should be easy enough to rectify if there is demand.

I might point out that I may be a bit unusual in that I don't give two shits about music or movies so traditional IP and pirating issues are secondary to me.  The only vid stuff I care at all about is porn and there is so much of that kicking around which is not encumbered that that is not really a big problem.  I make significant use of cloud storage for many other types of documents, drawings, lists, etc.  While these are (currently) of a completely benign nature I still do not want any aspect of my existence to be housed in any data warehouse and gone through by anybody for any reason.  It's more philosophical than anything else.

CIYAM Open has been "open" for well over a week (it does encryption over plain HTTP using Javascript - although its approach does require an initial GPG message so a little more tricky to use) - I guess 2013 was destined to be the year for this kind of crypto.

:)

+1

VIDEO
Press Conference (FULL) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=e2HwRM9eBCs)

This is not true.  Consider that for every puchase on his site via Bitcoin, there had to be a corresponding acquisition of coins prior to that. In other words, every coin that Kim sells on the market was first bought on the market to send to him.

So the only way his site's massive volume would substantially harm the price is if people with coins just decided to get rid of them via his service and never acquire more.

The guy is crazy.
I love him.

Well.. this is something I'd be happy to be wrong about.
I'm looking forward to seeing whether Mr Dotcom is visionary or just, as I suspect, reactionary.

If it's the later - I expect he'll still adopt it eventually...  once other businesses have built up the Bitcoin ecosystem to the point where he can't ignore it.

Update on Mega:  Tonight, from my satellite connection (and BSD box with chrome built from source) I got logged in after about 1/2 and hour.  This time I managed to get a 44 byte file uploaded.  Took about a minute at 1 byte per second.  So, it's 'working'.  Sorta.

If this thing:

 - starts to work better after the initial teething and sizing problems
 - proves secure on competent analysis
 - python or C API's are forthcoming (filesystem mounts that work) so I can shit-can the browser
 - nothing demonstratable better (in philosophical terms) comes around

I imagine I'll be mostly ditching my current user-level cloud solution and switching to it.  I may even pay, but it would be mostly as a token of my appreciation since I can hardly imagine needing the capacity in my use-case.  If I can use BTC for payment or donation, all the better.

---

If Dotcom really did have a paradigm shift after being spied on (in addition to the other obscene abuse) and shifts some focus away from video games and cars and toward humanitarian efforts I might develop a man-crush on the guy.  This whole thing reminds me a bit of Larry Flynt getting sued and shot.  He kept on making porn, but also put a lot of money and effort into making society a generally better place by standing up for our (the US's) first amendment rights...and fingering the hypocrites in our political circles.

While I don't like all the hubris, I must say the guy has the right view on things and is moving some shit.

I must say I'm reversing my perception of him..

what do you guys think about him accepting bitcoins only after this?

http://torrentfreak.com/dotcoms-mega-anti-piracy-group-moves-to-cut-off-finances-130121/

BTW, Kim was on BBC world today in a little "at home" special.

Amazing.  The owner of the group stopfilelockers is already trying to cut off the companies that do payment processing for mega.  And stopfilelockers wants all file locker sites to intrude on customers and do file fingerprinting to check for infringing files.  With Kim's mega that would be impossible since only the customer can decode the files.

I'm so glad that Mucus called the "crash" for this weekend.

We seem to have CRASHED UPWARD. Well done, please, predict another one!

16.75 ... NICE.

Test/Update.  Things are working better today.  A long way from usable, but better.

If anyone is interested, here is a URL to an image with the key embeded.  Optionally, up to the bang could be given and the remainder (the decryption key part) could be sent via e-mail (or, say, single sideband radio for instance.)

https://mega.co.nz/#!Z8tQgbpC!Nv3Hlnxlh6p7tl3jGPU5Rlgsw4w7Cl4OOPdsMnkjDOQ

At the risk of (further) spamming the forum, I just want to see if I could make this an image:

https://mega.co.nz/#!Z8tQgbpC!Nv3Hlnxlh6p7tl3jGPU5Rlgsw4w7Cl4OOPdsMnkjDOQ

edit: another test:

https://mega.co.nz/#!Z8tQgbpC!Nv3Hlnxlh6p7tl3jGPU5Rlgsw4w7Cl4OOPdsMnkjDOQ (https://mega.co.nz/#!Z8tQgbpC!Nv3Hlnxlh6p7tl3jGPU5Rlgsw4w7Cl4OOPdsMnkjDOQ)

Encryption is the new gun.

Not really all that new though.  The magic will (hopefully) be making it easy, solid, and most importantly, default.  There was something of a push to try to get people to encrypt their mail and such when the big PGP brew-ha was going in the 90's.  It was to cumbersome and only a few people do it.  Alas, although encryption did take hold a long time later (and fairly recently) it did so in a way that was not protecting uses fully...and the US government is spending many billions of my tax dollars to exploit the situation.

I am really excited by the mega.co.nz thing insofar as it seems to be a model for how encryption should work...in a general sense.  If they can prove that it is workable it may be difficult for the competition to not follow suite.  I think that more and more people are getting a little bit fed up and suspicious about just how much they are being spied on these days and are starting to ask questions about why, exactly, it is so goddamned important to the powers that be that they are so anxious to be able to do this.

+1, good analysis. I agree.

Maybe gmail could incorporate encryption.

Another big area is chat/videocall (skype). We need to move off this piece of shit, but the lock-in is tight. I can't help but think that M$ buying skype has had some gov. agency backing/pressure behind it.

EDIT: this goes in the right direction https://silentcircle.com/, but how to achieve widespread use?

EDIT2:

• Freedom of economic interaction
• Freedom of speech

I don't know which is more important.

Is there a right to encrypt? If not: we need that.

gmail offering encryption goes against their business model.

you can use redphone for calls and text already.

silent suite looks good, tho - but i dont think a pay-solution will catch on.

Researchers Warn: Mega's New Encrypted Cloud Doesn't Keep Its Megasecurity Promises (http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/01/21/researchers-warn-megas-new-encrypted-cloud-cant-keep-its-megasecurity-promises/)

just not do-able with javascript alone still these days i guess

This is essentially the same problem blockchain or any other javascript-based wallet suffers from.

I'm guessing third-party plugins will pop up that verify the mega javascript code.

The critiques I've seen so far strike me as mainly FUD and bunk.  If someone hacks into Mega's servers they can do a lot less damage than to almost anyone else's systems.  If people can attack https via mitm attacks and such, a lot of institutions have some big problems.  As for delivering javascript, seems to me that if this turns into a big problem Mega will be able to publish certified checksums or have some trusted third party do it which will make such an attack that much more difficult.

I personally am looking forward to accessing the service sans browser and javascript at all and as best I can deduce so far, this should be quite doable.  IOW, I think (hope) that delivery of the javascript in real-time is more of a convenience thing than a necessary function and the code could be implemented in a more simple, static, and auditable form.  I never had any confidence in browser plugins (for no particularly well researched reason though.)

Test/Update.  Things are working better today.  A long way from usable, but better.

If anyone is interested, here is a URL to an image with the key embeded.  Optionally, up to the bang could be given and the remainder (the decryption key part) could be sent via e-mail (or, say, single sideband radio for instance.)

https://mega.co.nz/#!Z8tQgbpC!Nv3Hlnxlh6p7tl3jGPU5Rlgsw4w7Cl4OOPdsMnkjDOQ

At the risk of (further) spamming the forum, I just want to see if I could make this an image:

https://mega.co.nz/#!Z8tQgbpC!Nv3Hlnxlh6p7tl3jGPU5Rlgsw4w7Cl4OOPdsMnkjDOQ

edit: another test:

https://mega.co.nz/#!Z8tQgbpC!Nv3Hlnxlh6p7tl3jGPU5Rlgsw4w7Cl4OOPdsMnkjDOQ (https://mega.co.nz/#!Z8tQgbpC!Nv3Hlnxlh6p7tl3jGPU5Rlgsw4w7Cl4OOPdsMnkjDOQ)


[/quote]

Why it doesn't ask me the key for decrypting? If the key is embedded in the link, how mega could act as it doesn't know the key?

Not going to happen.

Just look at hushmail.com and how they were dealt with. As far as I know they did in fact offer actual embedded encryption meaning a user didn't need to do anything outside of merely logging in and sending an email to another hushmail user in order to have his correspondence encrypted. And while this still holds true for the contents of an email account they were since forced by LEAs (I believe at least that this is the case) to add algos that spy on emails in the moment before they are encrypted and sent out.

The only way this will become an industry standard is if some rouge companies around the world like Mega, not in anyway connected with the US, decide to take on and resist huge pressure by various states grasping for power and engage in a constant legal battle of survival and you can call me a pessimist but I don't see many people lining up to voluntarily seek a beating like Kim Dotcom is even though I sincerely wish there were..

Are plugins once peer reviewed actually secure?

Of course there will always be problems even with this (and am going to be using the same approach as blockchain.info for CIYAM Open) but it is a starting point that can be worked on for improvement (setting up a whole new system of *trust* is not going to be anything easily solved).

I'm not an expert, but I think that when you share a link of your file, you are basically giving the recipient your public key , and he will decrypt the file using his own private key.

You don't have to share the decrypt key in the link. You can provide just the link, and it will ask for the decrypt key (for that file). It is not publc/private keypair.

Good clarification.

I would also add that Mega did not send the link.  I did.  The decryption key (again, NOT public/private keypair or 'asymetric' crypto) was generated by me on my own computer using javascript code which Mega delivered to me when I logged on.  Part of the input that this code needed was my password.  Mega could not have generated that key because they don't know my password.

So far, I have not been able to even download the file.  I either get the temporarily unavailable message, or things seemingly start and never complete.

I have played with things enough to figure out how folder sharing seems to work.  It seems that in order to share a hierarchy of files, one needs to input the recipient's e-mail addy (which, presumably, means the recipient needs a Mega account.)  I had hoped that there was some magic by which this was not necessary (like, say, encrypting all files within with a 'folder key' or something along those lines.)  Oh well.

---

I do share Hazek's pessimism that these guys will be attacked on all fronts by the state(s) who will and always have gone to great lengths to make sure that they at least can monitor all of their subjects.  The US has bumped 'can' up to the level of 'do' much much more than I am compfortable with.

I find it noteworthy that Mega has chosen as a centerpiece of their efforts a universal statement of human rights, and one that I believe in fiercely.

Cribbed from Mega's web page:  'Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12'

  "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference."

Bitcoin would do well to lean on this more than they already do IMHO.  Bitcoin, and crypto-currencies generally, are as much a moral thing to me as anything else.  To be honest, I was almost completely unaware of this 'universal declaration' thing until the Mega goings-on brought it to my attention but generally it is one of those things that one can just sense in their bones is 'right'.  Or at least it is to me.

Thanks, now i have understood!

I might mention to anyone thinking about creating a Mega account to put more thought than normal into the password.  It is not just a typical web-site access thing (like bitcointalk.org, for instance.)

The password one chooses becomes an integral part of how access to all files that one stores.  I read somewhere that there is some protection against guessing attacks, but I don't know how it works and I am pretty sure that if one choose 'test123' that would render one's files readable by many many parties.

Currently the ability to change passwords is not implemented.  What one chooses one is stuck with.  I usually default to a non-trivial and unique password for anything I sign up for and did in this case, but had I realized how critical it was I would have been much more careful in choosing the Mega one.

That said, until the service becomes vaguely usable it's a bit of a moot point (unless one is silly enough to upload critical or important data in this early period where there are so many questions swirling around.)

maybe that's the point  :)

"You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink" so they say.

If Mega were terribly interested in subverting their advertised inability to access user's files, or were in cahoots with other parties who had such an interest, a) this is not the most reliable way to do it, and b) we've got other more significant things to worry about.

That said, the appropriate way to deal with any security issue is always to assume the worst as a starting point.  It well could be that Dotcom has copped a plea to get him off the hook on his past indiscretions and has agreed to run a monster honey-pot or something of that nature.  Again, that should be assumed to be the case by anyone playing with the service.  As time goes by, evidence supporting or going against this hypothesis will crop up.

Hmm, so now uploading small files works but uploading blk0001.dat kind of has issues. It got to 50% at 1.2MB/s before but now I checked and it is at 43% again. This is not good for their servers if they have to receive many bytes double.

Edit: Now I definitely saw it reach 100% for the blk file and I couldn't wait for anything to happen, so I coded. Next time I checked it was at 42% again and my machine is at its limits all the time.

Managed to get a 'somewhat' large file uploaded at about 319KB/s into a hack about account.  If anyone wants to have a go at downloading it here is the link;-

MinePeon-2013-01-22.zip (317.2 MB)
https://mega.co.nz/#!cNYxgRLb!PGTQEXIFiwVc9Im118YSYQqxCDw1hpFjLtbLPKEVadA (https://mega.co.nz/#!cNYxgRLb!PGTQEXIFiwVc9Im118YSYQqxCDw1hpFjLtbLPKEVadA)

I promice the file is safe, it is a Raspberry PI image with cgminer installed on it that I am playing with getting ready for ASIC's. ( http://mineforeman.com/minepeon/ (http://mineforeman.com/minepeon/) )

You da man!  I am dying to see what Avalon used for a chipset and am quite interested in a fully auditable OS and flexible mining image in case I (or someone more competent) wish to undertake work along these lines.

I guess I should look at your link real quick...yup, looking good.

Your making me blush, I only released it yesterday though so it is still very alpha go over to mining ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137934.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137934.0) ) if you want to help testing.

Anyway, back on topic, did you manage to use the mega download link?

I did. 5MB/s for the first 10%, then pause and finished with an average of 3.8MB/s.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/01/cracking-tool-milks-weakness-to-reveal-some-mega-passwords/ (http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/01/cracking-tool-milks-weakness-to-reveal-some-mega-passwords/)

Encryption 4 lyfe  ;D

Thx for the pointer.  I'll be keeping my eye on this work!

I don't have any RasPI stuff.  I've got a boatload of old Soekris 4801's that I got off e-bay some time ago with some vague intent of using them for Bitcoin related work.  I used to run bitcoind off my router and it worked beautifully but that was back in the old days when it was still a P2P solution.  Suffice it to say, I've given up on hoping for a peer to be much less than a state-of-the-art server class piece of equipment as time goes by.  Probably even IF blockchain pruning proves to be workable. </snark>


I've never been able to download my sub-MB .png after multiple attempts.

I started downloading your image, then went outdoors to do some other stuff.  When I got back the download screen reports 100% and 581.2 Kbps, but I cannot find the file anywhere on my system.

I am on Viasat/Exede satellite which may have something to do with my generally poor results.  High latency connections tend to be poorly tested by developers and network engineers and put extra strain on load balancers and that sort of thing.  My other option is a modem.  I'm pretty used to sucking hind teat out here in the boonies.  Just thankful that I can work at all in the rare instances when I feel inclined to do so.

Another hypothesis is that the evil government is fucking with my network connection.  Fun to ponder, but I kinda doubt it.

Wow!  Trivial passwords are easy to crack.  Who'd ah thunk it???

The author of this Ars (who I generally respect) article didn't really delve into why the hashed password might or might not need to be in the initial e-mail, but did seem to blithely compare Mega to other services where the vendor has all of the user's data in clear text without analyzing whether that might be a factor.  Kinda questionable.

To paraphrase the old guy in the first star wars movie, 'The FUD is strong with this one.'  That observation itself lends strength to my gut feeling that Mega may have started work on a trail to something pretty big.  We can hope.

This is a "peek" at the "sign up" page I will be adding to CIYAM Open very soon (perhaps just a few hours away after I've finished testing).

http://ciyam.org/sign_up_example.png

Send me one and I will make a build target for you :p .

If you have the bandwidth to do x86 stuff and think you can make something worthwhile of it, I'd be happy to send you one (other than the fact that I hate screwing with mail.)  It would be just the board.  No case.  I missed a shot at getting a lot of cases for the boards unfortunately since they came up before I got the boards.  Anyway, if pentium-class and 128MB is sufficient, they are nice because they use about as much energy as a night-light and have 3 NICs.  PM me.

Downloaded at 4.6 Mb/s steady.

http://stopfilelockers.com/mega-piracy-its-just-the-beginning/#more-1051

Lololol

http://torrentfreak.com/mega-resellers-take-down-paypal-payment-option-130127/

I would not argue against that.  I finally got a friend of mine to mess around with it.  Even at this early stage, one needs a pretty decent computer...at least for the initial block download which he gave up on after a few days.  How it would be in steady-state, I don't know.

There was really not much choice but to either forget about Bitcoin or just go ahead and have someone else hold his wallet which is, I feel, a much less reliable way of holding value than just using a mainstream bank and USD (currently.)  On top of that, getting BTC in the first place is kind of an expensive hassle which opens one up to massive surveillance unless one is very careful and knowledgeable.

To me Bitcoin is a hugely interesting and important experiment, but it's not real applicable as an every day currency.  The only practical way to obtain them is in bulk due to overhead, but then one must trust other parties with significant value and/or deal with huge volatility.

I feel as strongly as ever that Bitcoin's main hope in terms gaining traction for general use is for it's competition to fail which would make it more compelling in a relative sense.

Never heard about lightweight client? Seriously why the hell did you tell to your friend to use the qt client? Tell him to use Multibit or Electrum, you start it and it's ready to use!

It was a good opportunity to find out whether or not Bitcoin was still workable as P2P.  As I expected: Nope.  Armory seemed to have a decent feature set if it had turned out to be practical to be a peer, and he would have liked to help support the network if possible.  Electrum looks like SWIFT without legal protection (and possibly the opposite at some point) to me.

We just used instawallet to get him a few coins to play around with.  This isn't your granddad's Bitcoin.  I anticipated the scenerio, but I imagine that some of those who bought the P2P hype a year ago might be down-faced about things.

Not at all. The P2P network exists and will continue to exist without every new user running a full node.

I know people who downloaded the default client and run it without ever investing or mining. They just wanted to support the idea.

Do you know that they are working on a new database system wich make the blockchain download much much much faster? I'm trying it since some days and it is really much faster. In like 6 hours or so a decent computer get the whole chain.
Yes, it is still a lot and that's why unless you want to run a full node, you should use a lightweight client (especially since lightweight clients have a much better interface!)

Electrum and Multibit are like the normal client but without the blockchain. They aren't online wallet lol

Of course.  Indeed, the modern banking system is also 'peer to peer'.  To become a 'peer', you just need to plunk down some capital on account at the central bank and get a license.  Easy as pie.

The "high-performance servers that handle the most complicated parts of the Bitcoin system" that Electrum brags about fail to impress me a lot.  Wells Fargo undoubtedly has gear which would put to shame whatever the Electrum branch of philosophical thought has cobbled together.  One way or another, that's exactly the opposite of what attracted me to Bitcoin in the first place.


Interesting that already we are at a phase where it is occasionally the case that a forum member 'knows people' who undertakes such a novel and unusual thing as to run a client just to 'support the idea.'  Time is definitely on high speed in Bitcoin-land.

I don't understand why you post here at all.

I wish Satoshi would have entertained the (not completely unheard-of) concept of sharding as a possible way to address the inevitable scaling issues back when his brain was churning things.  I'm not impressed with how his theoretical work on Merkle pruning is coming along.  Even if someone adapts the most astonishing database technology imaginable to the problem, it's only going to go so far.  If Bitcoin takes off, that is.


Do the clients take part in strengthening the network...aside from (or as opposed to) paying up whatever is requested to the infrastructure operators?  (That is actually a fair question since I do not know the answer to it at this point, BTW.)

Are you being sarcastic? Have you heard of a little project called 'Tor'? Or 'SETI'? Or 'Folding@home?'
If you think it's so incredible that a forum member here knows other people who participate in novel and unusual computing projects even without the promise of huge returns, you should get out of the house more.

I guess it is largely because so far Theymos has not seen fit to restrict the forum to unquestioning fan-boys.

I was being sarcastic, but in a way which seemed to have escaped you completely.

Congratulations on your failure to communicate. Bye.

To be more precise, my failure to communicate with you.  Adios.

Well one of the Mega resellers http://www.hosting.co.uk/mega.php (http://www.hosting.co.uk/mega.php) is no longer accepting PayPal and is now accepting Bitcoin. I guess we should thank the folks over at http://stopfilelockers.com/ (http://stopfilelockers.com/) for their part in this.  ;)

Wow, now that is really cool. I didn't think this was going to happen so fast.

Awesome!

Now this is good news!

Lets hope the others will follow.

Bitcoins are being accepted at hosting.co.uk for All products and services not just mega.

This is very good news!

Love watching these press conferences.

For anyone interested, I found this on Dotcom's twitter:

--------
Max Keiser ‏@maxkeiser
Bitcoin is to central banks what mega is to Hollywood: the solution. CB's and H'wood are both poison. Encryption is the cure.
--------

I could not agree more with Max.  Also, it seems to lend some strength to my suspicion that Dotcom is at the very least, keenly aware of Bitcoin though it remains a mystery what his exact feeling and plans are.

You know, I'd laugh my ass off if he has just been soaking up supply to kick off bitcoin oriented business plans. I have to admit that the appreciation has stunned even me.

Kim, as we know in Germany, is some kind of impostor.

He was portrayed in the media as hacker or cracker that he never was.

It was always people around him.

He seems to be somewhat a good marketeer and have talent at executing though. So nothing wrong with that.

But I guess his technical fellows would have to be convinced first then. If they fall for the usual misconceptions and veto, he won't include Bitcoin.

good interview
Kim Dotcom: 'I want to encrypt half of Internet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mphBRtr030s)
I think this war between Hollywood,CB's will not end well
Pentagon Looks to Beef Up Cybersecurity Force (http://mashable.com/2013/01/28/pentagon-beefs-up-cybersecurity-force)

max u can thank me later  :D

Remember when the Pentagon, like any other government agency, says they have some new initiative what they mean is some contractor has given them a good reason to ask for more money.

Nobody at the Pentagon cares about "cybersecurity", they care about getting a high-paying job in the "private" sector once they retire from the military. It's all about funnelling money into the right hands.

Wow ... he waited until after the hoopla had died down to release the torpedos ... this is significant.

What an amazing coincidence. It looks like a new bitcoin payment processor just started up in New Zealand:

https://zipbit.co/about-us (https://zipbit.co/about-us)

lol, yeah amazing coincidence ;)

How about this bit of viral marketing tucked in there .... 10% bitcoin rake for affiliate referrals, just slip in your btc address into the link.

https://bitvoucher.co/help/affiliates/ (https://bitvoucher.co/help/affiliates/)

Dotcom seems to me to be, so far, playing a perfect game.  The strongest evidence that he is not on the 'good' side is that he has executed with uncanny perfection in the time I've been paying attention (only since 'mega' started.)

I do fear that the 'bad' side has the ability to use whatever force escalation is required to win, but only at the expense of radically changing landscape and possibly in a way that would be to negative for them to stomach.  But the situation and balance of arms is not going to get any better for us as time goes by.  Our best chance is probably to release the hounds sooner than later.  Satoshi and Dotcom seem to be doing so, and they have my support and respect at this point.

edit: syntax.

The fallout and subsequent endgame appear unfavorable to the general public, and yet inevitable.

The best hope is to prolong  the period of time until then. Aggravating  the "bad side" into action serves only to expedite the process.

I basically dis-agree.

For one, it is still the case that many people (in the West at least) have an innate sense that 'liberty' (at risk of using a loaded term) is a good thing and something to be in favor of.  That sentiment can be squashed with the proper regime of propaganda.  I feel that this propaganda is very much underway and is being fairly successful, but it still takes a fair amount of time.  When the populations are prepared to accept totalitarianism in terms of freedoms of action, it will be unlikely that such things as Bitcoin and general privacy will be able to survive.  But we are not there yet by my estimation, but well on the way.

Secondly, there is an element of mutually assured destruction as I alluded to which relates to totalitarian regulation information exchange.  It will be unpleasant and costly for even those who have access to the reigns of power, and more critically, to their friends/benefactors.  Actually implementing a program of fascist control of the global internet is probably not something which anyone looks forward to.  Even those who could pull it off.  But as time goes by it becomes more tenable rather than less.  Thus, the cost of cracking down on us plebs will increasingly look like the lesser of to evils (the other option being loss of control and extractive operations against us.)

We could possibly win this war, or at least sue for tolerable peace terms at this point.  I feel that our chances diminish from here forward.  I could be wrong.

I actually believe this is an unlosable war. It's just the timescale that could be a bitch ...

And now.. a tweet from Vikram Kumar the new Mega boss:

"Wondering why there hasn't been more media interest in zipbit https://zipbit.co/  NZ's very own Bitcoin merchant platform"

https://twitter.com/vikram_nz/status/300786385026183170


 :o

!!! MEGA Vouchers for Bitcoins!!! (https://bitvoucher.co/affl/1BGtmK9iYqv25wuAYLLcjdihYTX1ei3gEc/)

bring it!  :D

The amazing coincidences just keep piling up, don't they? Mega is announced with great fanfare, then just as the the first set of affiliates start to get their PayPal accounts frozen all of a sudden a new bitcoin payment processor nobody's ever heard of before opens for business and partners with a new voucher affiliate just in time.

Lol, that is really exciting to hear.

You know what they say;  Nearly half of those who enter a war exit it with and unexpected lose.

No no no, this link here (https://bitvoucher.co/affl/1Hma1xsb9FKwtUNyF7NaB7QoBpzLJYz5fC/) is, uhhh... newer.  ;)

and it looks like kim dot com is still winning the fight...

Accepting bitcoins is great.  It can be a huge PITA paying for premium accounts sometimes.

i always wonder why nobody killed this scum/scam-bag yet...
seems hes very good @ fooling the usual humans.

It would be a pretty elaborate hoax if the grief heaped on Dotcom and his friends were faked.  That lends strength to the hypothesis that they are, at least at this time, the real deal.

I, for one, greatly appreciate the architectural lines that Mega is developing along.  It is the 'right' way to do cloud stuff, and it surprises me that most businesses could even legally accept doing business in the way that most cloud services offer.  That is, allowing data access to the cloud service provider.  When I used S3, I had to roll-my-own along the lines of what Mega does natively, and it was an expensive hassle which was mostly suitable for highly automated data storage and transfer needs.

If/when Mega gets e-mail and shared documents integrated I will be very keen to use their service and happy to pay them.  That I can do so with Bitcoin is an added bonus.

im talking about the past of him, you should inform yourself what he did ;) anyway thats the wrong thread, you can contact me if you wanna talk about it more.

Yeah he has done some dodgy shit in the past, however the way that NZ police got bent over by the FBI to raid him illegally is considerably funny haha

I fail to see the funniness in the world bending to US pressure.

You fail to be a US citizen.

I hope he remembers to encrypt his emails this time, instead of using US servers and asking his employees where he can find the latest pie-rat DVDrip in cleartext

Are you saying that that is what they are trying to extradite Dotcom on?  Something that probably 50% of the internet using public is guilty of themselves?  If so, it's small wonder that the US is in no hurry to produce their evidence of his evildoing and the extradition is dragging on.

OTOH, it would hardly be the first time that someone was singled out for a petty indiscretion and subject to absurd hardship for political reasons.  Some people commit suicide like Aaron Swartz and some people stand and fight back like Kim Dotcom.

Bringing things back to monetary science terms, fiat is backed by force of law (in my definition of it.)  And the system of laws and justice is falling apart insofar as it is increasingly working well for certain groups and increasingly poorly for others.  That is why I have little faith in the ability of our modern financial systems to survive.  The backing is simply falling apart.   This in turn has me especially interested in alternative which are backed by other things such as mathematics and quantum electrodynamics.

Basically that is their "proof", they seized megauploads US servers and inside were a bunch of juicy employee emails where they discussed where to find pirate uploaded movies and music instead of taking them down. It is of course, pretty flimsy which leads me to believe they simply raided megaupload out of existence solely on the insistence of movie/music industry lobbyists and don't really have any plans to actually extradite him and are instead playing the delaying game, where a country with endless resources can keep throwing BS charges and delaying court proceedings until you give up because all your money went to lawyers.

If megaupload made so much money why aren't they copying his business model instead of trying to put him in jail. Instead we get terrible geo-IP restricted videos riddled with forced ads which is the industry answer to piracy. It's like when South Park decided to stream their own episodes for free to combat piracy, but with so many greedy middlemen and cable companies it's impossible if you're in Canada or somewhere else to watch the episodes without jumping through hoops so people still pirate them, because it's easier.

Greed at its best

I hope that from here forward the Kiwi's can find the testosterone needed to tell the media corporate (and their US state-level hired muscle) where to stick it.  It would go some distance toward healing the wound of being outed as the pathetic lick-spittle.

I dearly hope that one day nation-states such as Iceland, Ecuador, and (hopefully) New Zealand are paid back with more than simply a nod of respect for their willingness to stand up to power.  It seems not outside the realm of possibility in an increasing globalized world where capital flows can be at least in some part influenced by individuals.

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By happenstance, I find myself in need of sending funds to a mom-n-pop class manufacturer in New Zealand at this time.  What an incredible hassle!

It is an ironic state of affairs that I prefer to use my credit card to in many transactions which are possible using Bitcoin because the Bitcoin ecosystem is so rife with shady flakes.  Standard businesses who I trust and would love to use Bitcoin to patronize (because of the sad state of our heavily controlled and exploited mainstream payment methods) have never heard of the Bitcoin solution.