Bitcoin Forum

Full reserve is not a requirement

If I was one of the donators I'd be very interested in knowing the rationale for that part.

Fascinating! But, would not a better idea would be some type of split-key trust?

I am holding too much money for the forum. This is contrary to the forum's otherwise decentralized structure. I'd like to get some extremely trustworthy people to hold smaller chunks of the forum's money (maybe 250-500 BTC per person).

- You probably need to have been active in the Bitcoin community for at least a year.
- You probably need a very high OTC rating.
- You need to have dealt with far more BTC at one time than what you'll be holding for the forum.
- The list of "treasurers" and how much money they're holding will be public.
- The contract will be quite complex (I haven't finished writing it yet), as this is the forum's money, not mine, so you'll have to know what "the forum" is and in exactly which circumstances you can release the money.
- Full reserve is not a requirement, but you will be responsible for returning the money within a few weeks of a legitimate request no matter what.

If you're interested, post here with how much you would charge for this service and what your reserve policy would be.

I would be willing to help with this but would prefer to orchestrate a scheme where I don't have any access to take the money, but rather, have a partial key that I am trusted to release under some certain condition(s).  The ideal scheme allows one or more of the participants to disappear without impacting access to the funds.

Why not do a 2-of-3 scheme where you, someone like me, and one other person has a keypart, and two people need to cooperate in order to release the funds.  I have an escrow utility that does that now, it's based on EC multiplication.  Any similar facility such as in Armory would be equally acceptable (especially if interested in m-of-n where m,n != 2,3).

I would not charge a fee, unless charging a fee were an essential element to make it kosher, in which case it would be 1 BTC/year.

What if one of the members die? the funds are just lost?

I am holding too much money for the forum. This is contrary to the forum's otherwise decentralized structure. I'd like to get some extremely trustworthy people to hold smaller chunks of the forum's money (maybe 250-500 BTC per person).

- You probably need to have been active in the Bitcoin community for at least a year.
- You probably need a very high OTC rating.
- You need to have dealt with far more BTC at one time than what you'll be holding for the forum.
- The list of "treasurers" and how much money they're holding will be public.
- The contract will be quite complex (I haven't finished writing it yet), as this is the forum's money, not mine, so you'll have to know what "the forum" is and in exactly which circumstances you can release the money.
- Full reserve is not a requirement, but you will be responsible for returning the money within a few weeks of a legitimate request no matter what.

If you're interested, post here with how much you would charge for this service and what your reserve policy would be.

If you deposit 1000 BTC you get a[n extremely rare] free MPEx account, whatever gpg you wish to use for it (yours, forum's, w/e). You can either keep it in there (in which case it'll just sit around and wait) or trade on it, in which case your risks are whatever you make them.

Withdrawals are processed within 48 hours (tho usually it's instant if you ping MP).

This is the problem with a non-100% reserve system though. Had someone done something similar with GLBSE or, heaven forbid, Pirate, the forum might not get its money back. This would be an ugly situation for all concerned. The same could apply if someone suffered unexpected large trading losses.

Always the usual idiot, eh Katz? All MPEx user funds and a lot more atop that is always available for immediate withdrawal, what the hell are you smoking this week?

I am holding too much money for the forum. This is contrary to the forum's otherwise decentralized structure. I'd like to get some extremely trustworthy people to hold smaller chunks of the forum's money (maybe 250-500 BTC per person).

- You probably need to have been active in the Bitcoin community for at least a year.
- You probably need a very high OTC rating.
- You need to have dealt with far more BTC at one time than what you'll be holding for the forum.
- The list of "treasurers" and how much money they're holding will be public.
- The contract will be quite complex (I haven't finished writing it yet), as this is the forum's money, not mine, so you'll have to know what "the forum" is and in exactly which circumstances you can release the money.
- Full reserve is not a requirement, but you will be responsible for returning the money within a few weeks of a legitimate request no matter what.

If you're interested, post here with how much you would charge for this service and what your reserve policy would be.

I think you should try for a 100% reserve scheme where the holding addresses are publicly known. Only switch to a different scheme if you can't find enough people willing to help run a 100% reserve system. Using a 2-of-3 or similar key splitting scheme is a good idea too.

Always the usual idiot, eh Katz? All MPEx user funds and a lot more atop that is always available for immediate withdrawal, what the hell are you smoking this week?

This.  I see no reason for it to be done any other way.  While I am sure there are trusted members in the community,  the spirit of Bitcoin is to remove third party trust.

Using an n of m setup and a verifiable holding address provides transparent accountability.  Really there is no reason not to do that.  I think even a 5 of 7 key structure would be workable if the funds are being used more like a savings account than a checking account with small amount held by forum admin for day to day operations.  

I approve this post. No reason not to have 100% funds available into a public address. Multi factor is also a necessity, we don't need another Bitcoin fiasco that would keep donators away.

I would be willing to help with this but would prefer to orchestrate a scheme where I don't have any access to take the money, but rather, have a partial key that I am trusted to release under some certain condition(s).  The ideal scheme allows one or more of the participants to disappear without impacting access to the funds.

Why not do a 2-of-3 scheme where you, someone like me, and one other person has a keypart, and two people need to cooperate in order to release the funds.  I have an escrow utility that does that now, it's based on EC multiplication.  Any similar facility such as in Armory would be equally acceptable (especially if interested in m-of-n where m,n != 2,3).

I would not charge a fee, unless charging a fee were an essential element to make it kosher, in which case it would be 1 BTC/year.

I know you two hate each other, but from my interpretation he didn't really suggest that there was a risk inherent in your exchange, only that using the forum's funds for anything other than a strait 100% return puts said funds at risk of a loss.

I would be more than happy to help theymos.

I'm not really sure how much a service like this is worth, but 1 BTC/month sounds fine to me. Full reserve.

I would be willing to help with this

I could help! No problem with handling in my personal information. I'm trusted local trader. Prefer handling an access as cassasius prompted with a partial key, kept in an offline safe (bank). No charges unless needed.

I would be willing to hold a partial key.  Honestly I think this is almost a textbook perfect example of where either on protocol multi-sig or off protocol key sharing should be used. 

Write me down for the same exact thing.

I am willing to hold a partial key.

+1. I can do so for the same, and prefer the partial key solution.

I'd be willing to hold BTC in cold storage (full reserve) for 0.2% per month (so, for 250 BTC, 0.5 BTC per month).

I would be willing to hold 1,000 BTC for a 1% fee (1% additional fee per year).
Fees go to 2% if less than 1,000 BTC.
I would like a new forum title. Treasurer perhaps.
Funds would be available within 24 hours (unless I'm on vacation).

Willing and able to help.
reasonable otc-rating (bitcoinsinberlin), running a reasonably successful BTC company (bitcoincommodities).
holding a couple 100 BTC safe (two-factor brainwallet? paper wallet in safety deposit box?) should not be a problem for me.

Sure I will hold 500 btc in storage with out a full reserve requirement. I think you need 100% reserve but can be held in any accepted currencies in predetermined ratios. 

I would be willing to do this, just so to strengthen my ratings over here and to show I am serious about the Bitcoin business for Asia side.
If you need a watertight agreement, my lawyer will be willing to do this for a token sum. PM me.

If you deposit 1000 BTC you get a[n extremely rare] free MPEx account, whatever gpg you wish to use for it (yours, forum's, w/e). You can either keep it in there (in which case it'll just sit around and wait) or trade on it, in which case your risks are whatever you make them.

Withdrawals are processed within 48 hours (tho usually it's instant if you ping MP).

I hate to be the only one asking, why can't be the money invested into better hardware/software? There are daily outages!

Also, the current server seems fairly powerful. It don't know why it's so slow. I feel like it's a configuration problem somewhere.

I would be willing to help with this but would prefer to orchestrate a scheme where I don't have any access to take the money, but rather, have a partial key that I am trusted to release under some certain condition(s).  The ideal scheme allows one or more of the participants to disappear without impacting access to the funds.

Why not do a 2-of-3 scheme where you, someone like me, and one other person has a keypart, and two people need to cooperate in order to release the funds.  I have an escrow utility that does that now, it's based on EC multiplication.  Any similar facility such as in Armory would be equally acceptable (especially if interested in m-of-n where m,n != 2,3).

I would not charge a fee, unless charging a fee were an essential element to make it kosher, in which case it would be 1 BTC/year.

Thanks, but I'm not confident in the security/stability of MPEx.

Leaving aside that MPEx hasn't been down in its entire lifetime as long as the forum was down this week, I guess that's a thought.

Does MPEx have a thousand active users each pulling hundreds of db queries and executing php commands on the site at the same time?

Also, I think that wasn't a purely *technical* concern.   ::)

I could help! No problem with handling in my personal information. I'm trusted local trader. Prefer handling an access as cassasius prompted with a partial key, kept in an offline safe (bank). No charges unless needed.

Hand out 20 keys to well known members (with 10 real, 10 fakes). Don't announce who holds any keys. This prevents collusion, as if forum members start asking around if they hold a key, alarm bells may go off and report back to theymos.

I dont want to be picked you would have to be stupid to want to hold that money, unless you are going to use it for something? Just making suggestions about how to store the money in a safe and transparent manor.

Rather than a 2 of 3 scheme, maybe a 5 of 10 scheme. Hand out 20 keys to well known members (with 10 real, 10 fakes). Don't announce who holds any keys. This prevents collusion, as if forum members start asking around if they hold a key, alarm bells may go off and report back to theymos.

If something were to happen to theymos, everyone can turn in their keys to whatever authority is present at the time.

I am holding too much money for the forum. This is contrary to the forum's otherwise decentralized structure. I'd like to get some extremely trustworthy people to hold smaller chunks of the forum's money (maybe 250-500 BTC per person).

- You probably need to have been active in the Bitcoin community for at least a year.
- You probably need a very high OTC rating.
- You need to have dealt with far more BTC at one time than what you'll be holding for the forum.
- The list of "treasurers" and how much money they're holding will be public.
- The contract will be quite complex (I haven't finished writing it yet), as this is the forum's money, not mine, so you'll have to know what "the forum" is and in exactly which circumstances you can release the money.
- Full reserve is not a requirement, but you will be responsible for returning the money within a few weeks of a legitimate request no matter what.

If you're interested, post here with how much you would charge for this service and what your reserve policy would be.

Rather than a 2 of 3 scheme, maybe a 5 of 10 scheme. Hand out 20 keys to well known members (with 10 real, 10 fakes). Don't announce who holds any keys. This prevents collusion, as if forum members start asking around if they hold a key, alarm bells may go off and report back to theymos.

If something were to happen to theymos, everyone can turn in their keys to whatever authority is present at the time.

This is an odd request.

No one like this? You are all talking about how much fees you will take ( this is donated right?) This would be the most decentralized solution and the fund would grow not shrink. If you are worried about trust this is the best way to hedge against lost and theft. With no risk. If you only lend what has been paid in if someone walks they can only take what they put in.

- Full reserve is not a requirement, but you will be responsible for returning the money within a few weeks of a legitimate request no matter what.

Really, I am the one looking scammy. I dont want the coins, others have been drooling over the idea. I dont care. Why wouldnt he want to lend the coins out to the people who donated the coin in the first place. Why wouldnt he want to make money off the fund not lose it to you crooks. Trying to charge fees to hold the peoples donated money and i am the crook.

Why not just spend it on its intended purpose?

How would you wisely and not frivolously spend 5000 BTC (http://blockexplorer.com/address/1M4yNbSCwSMFLF9BaLqzoo2to1WHtZrPke) on "Donated funds will be used mostly to pay for development of the forum software."? That could buy the highest license for every forum software out there for decades, and you'd still not have the ideal forum.

I am holding too much money for the forum. This is contrary to the forum's otherwise decentralized structure. I'd like to get some extremely trustworthy people to hold smaller chunks of the forum's money (maybe 250-500 BTC per person).

You're probably the guy who posted the more in that thread and you really, really don't fit the profile theymos is looking for. What are you looking to gain here?

i don't think you need to settle for any less than 100% public reserve, with no fees.

For that price the intended customizations could be payed for as well, including the possibility of something from scratch.

$100,000 on forum software are you guys insane?

What an asinine waste of money.  Sure the forum needs better software, maybe a dedicated server, possibly better database backend etc.  Hopefully SOME of the funds will be used for that in an intelligent and planned fashion over the coming year (not yeah we are rich lets buy a bunch of random expensive crap).  Still you can't possible think this forum needs $100,000 in hardware and software upgrades.  So regardless there is some portion of those funds which the forum couldn't possibly use this year and probably would be based to store securely for the long run.  theymos said something about cold storage of ~2,000 BTC.  Not lock up every penny and never spend anything to improve anything.  

I mean how can that seem like a bad idea to you?

Actually this is a very interesting question. This might set future model for bitcoin security banks. Banks not in the sense of an enterprise taking deposits and giving loans for profit but banks for distributed cooperative security where there is no single point of failure. Of course 100% reserve requirement is a must!

Give the money back to the donors at 1% they can sell the coins at 4% and make money it would give the forum liquidity and a easy source of fiat to spend on the site. Loans could be called back in at anytime if unexpected expenses arise. It would be completely decentralized and the members who donated could pledge the coins to be owned by the forum. The donaters could make money off the coins they hold for the forum and the forum could grow the pool of coins and cash. If the people who donated the coins get them back they are just holding coins that were theirs to begin with. If they pledge the coins to the forum and then wont return them as funds are needed then they could be blocked from the forum. This is a good idea just needs some refinement. I want to know what the big guy thinks? theymos what do you think?     

OK, your avatar has to go. I tried to squish the bug. Seriously.

it doesn't cost anything to keep coins offline.

This absolutely no reason to take the risk with anything less.

Why do you think keeping the money with trustees is risky, and keeping it with theymos is not? Utmost respect to theymos, but he could embezzle or lose the funds too and I'm sure there are other people just as reliable.

I think you misunderstood.  I believe the funds SHOULD be decentralized I just think there are more than enough people that there is no need to take a risk of <100% reserve, give anyone direct control of the funds, or payout excessive holding fees.

100% reserve in publicly verifiable address.
n of m multisig.
No dubious fee structures (plenty of trusted entities willing to do it to help the forum)*

* Sorry I am all for charging a fair wage but some of the proposals top out at 3% a year.  $3,000 a year just to keep one private key of an n of m multisig address safe?  Of course if theymos wants to payout fees well I got no problem with it. Decentralized and paying fees is better than centralized and $100K disappears if theymos gets hit by a bus.

I think you misunderstood.  I believe the funds SHOULD be decentralized I just think there are more than enough people that there is no need to take a risk of <100% reserve, give anyone direct control of the funds, or payout excessive holding fees.

100% reserve in publicly verifiable address.
n of m multisig.
No dubious fee structures (plenty of trusted entities willing to do it to help the forum)*

* Sorry I am all for charging a fair wage but some of the proposals top out at 3% a year.  $3,000 a year just to keep one private key of an n of m multisig address safe?  Of course if theymos wants to payout fees well I got no problem with it. Decentralized and paying fees is better than centralized and $100K disappears if theymos gets hit by a bus.

There are of course plenty of people that are both invested in the success of Bitcoin as well as those that simply believe in what Bitcoin stands for that will do this for free. Theymos has a list of willing candidates and their terms. Is anyone suggesting that with such a list, that Theymos is not a smart enough person to review the offers and pick someone that would hold them for free, have public accountability of the coins, and is well known both with their avatar and in real life over someone who wants to charge a fee and wants to play SD with the forums money? Come on. If you think he would choose the latter, maybe you should start your own Bitcoin forum because if you don't trust him with that you should absolutely have a suspicion that he is reading your private messages and reporting your IP address to three letter government agencies for being a threat.

I see lots of things for 'free' but bitcoin managing isn't one of them. There are risks even in FREE, and taking provisions for those risks are NOT FREE. So who shall pay?  I already donated so I've shown my support. Now, you want free?

I'm not really looking for this, he posted. I didn't request. I provided an option, he might not like it. So, don't take it.

TBH, it's a headache of responsibility that I normally wouldn't care to hold for a length of time. I assume, he has the same headache and is trying to spread the pain. I offered my aspirin but FREE would be a migraine.

Let the people who donated the coins hold their excess donations, you have a list of the transactions just send them back the coins when you need them ask for them. Nice and f@#$ simple no need to scam on it, no need to pay fees, no need for complicated key systems, no risk of theft,no trust issues, no people begging to hold the coins.  My suggestion is the only one that makes sense.   I will not donate to the fund if these funds are given to insiders.     

I'm willing to hold it, with 100% reserve in cold storage, free of charge (I am hoping I would get improved reputation and more trust out of this). I've been around for quite a while, held that amount for Bitcoin100 with no problems, and like to think I'm fairly trusted. I would store it in my Armory cold storage wallet (offline signature transactions, so zero chance of hacks), and would prefer to make the address public so that others can see there's nothing funny happening with the money, as well as that any requests to send it back are verifiable. I would also prefer to have an address that a paper backup in a sealed envelope can be automatically sent to should anything happen to me.

P.S. I also have a few thousand BTC in my personal accounts, so I've "dealt with far more BTC at one time than what I'll be holding for the forum."

Rather than a 2 of 3 scheme, maybe a 5 of 10 scheme. Hand out 20 keys to well known members (with 10 real, 10 fakes). Don't announce who holds any keys. This prevents collusion, as if forum members start asking around if they hold a key, alarm bells may go off and report back to theymos.

If something were to happen to theymos, everyone can turn in their keys to whatever authority is present at the time.

I would:

Encrypt the BTC wallet/keypairs containing X BTC with scrypt using keccak and chacha20, N=8096, r=1, p=1 using a 1024-bit keyfile.

Divide the keyfiles such that they are distributed in 256-bit slices between 4 trusted members of the forum and each full key corresponds to a wallet containing 1000 BTC.

Post the encrypted wallet files publicly and redundantly, along with the addresses of the coins.

Have us be signatories to a contract that requires our personal identification through several means, including passport photocopy, professional reference, and driver's license photocopy.  Also require next of kin and any relevant contact information.

Now if you have 5000 BTC, you've scattered it among 20 people who all have portions of keys but have no idea which key fragment belongs with which other key fragments and in what order.  Ownership is decentralized but is regulated by you, who knows which individuals have which portions of the key pairs.  The odds of any four individuals colluding and having the correct key fragments to access their funds are very low.  Collusion of further numbers of persons increases the likelihood of solving any given key, with the collusion of all 20 resulting in all keys being solved and the money being able to be spent.

This is a special form of Shamir's Secret Sharing in which collusion of any 4 members is the minimum required to possibly spend coins in any single wallet, and in which the probability of being able to spend this money (and the amount of money) increases with every additional person who colludes.  This is a truly decentralized solution that democratically decides the quantity of money should be spendable and how it is spent.

This is actually a pretty smart idea.

This is a truly decentralized solution that democratically decides the quantity of money should be spendable and how it is spent.

No, it's not.

If I understood you, this begins with the assumption that theymos generates all the keys. If in some way his procedure is compromised, all funds can be stolen regardless of how well everyone else did. If theymos chooses to embezzle (or to just force a dictatorship), he could keep a copy of the keys and steal the funds whenever he wants.

If we do assume the issuer is a benevolent, we don't need the complex cryptography - everyone can just tell the leader what they want and he will do the right thing.

Also: With the method as described, huge risk of loss. If each person has 1% chance of loss, the average loss with "normal" storage is 1%. With your method average loss is 4%.

Why does the forum need a lot of money?

Just spend it for some new servers or somethin else.

If theymos deletes the keys himself, then it is decentralized and ability to spend will be based upon fractional collusion.

Loss can be mitigated by reducing the fragmentation of a key; for instance, halving the number of coins in each wallet and fragmenting the key to 2 fragments.

The nice thing is that you need a minimum collusion number of 4 in order to even possibly be able to spend any of the coins as I had implemented.  I guess it's a tradeoff.

It's also guaranteed that with 100% of the currency will be spendable upon the agreement of all key fragment holders, too.

Anyway this is getting completely orthogonal to the original purpose of securing funds.

This is a real problem that deserves a real solution. How about specifying the parameters of a useful solution and offering a reasonable bounty for an open source solution to this problem. Then you could use that solution to store the funds securely, plus the project will have contributed a secure way to store funds to the community.

Not sure if there's a point to overcomplicating this thing with multi-sig, multiple people owning split keys, etc. You get a bit more security for a lot more headache, versus just having very few very trusted people hold the keys and send only the amounts you request.
Consider that if you have an n-of-m multisig address with $10,000 in it, you might only have the option to send the entire $10,000 at a time, and then store the unused portion in another m-of-n setup, going through all the requirements again.

This is a real problem that deserves a real solution. How about specifying the parameters of a useful solution and offering a reasonable bounty for an open source solution to this problem. Then you could use that solution to store the funds securely, plus the project will have contributed a secure way to store funds to the community.

The reserve policy: the funds will be used

if you read the whole thread, you'll see it's already been established that there are plenty of people (probably even more than needed) who will keep a 100% untouched reserve

I did and I get what the rationale is.

But it would also be an opportunity for businesses to increase their working capital so they are able to improve the bitcoin economy as a whole.

This Forum should create a user voting and donate 10,000$ to the winner of the voting.

Options should be something like

red cross
unicef
greenpeace
etc.



But  the winner will ONLY get the coins if he provides a bitcoin adress.

That would be a nice promotion for bitcoins.

What do you think folks?

Well, just to prevent another bitmarket from happening, I don't think using the storage funds to invest is a smart move.

Not sure if there's a point to overcomplicating this thing with multi-sig, multiple people owning split keys, etc. You get a bit more security for a lot more headache, versus just having very few very trusted people hold the keys and send only the amounts you request.
Consider that if you have an n-of-m multisig address with $10,000 in it, you might only have the option to send the entire $10,000 at a time, and then store the unused portion in another m-of-n setup, going through all the requirements again.

This is a real problem that deserves a real solution. How about specifying the parameters of a useful solution and offering a reasonable bounty for an open source solution to this problem. Then you could use that solution to store the funds securely, plus the project will have contributed a secure way to store funds to the community.

After some more thought, i dont want to be part of any m of n. Last thing i need is for a large amount of btc to go missing, and i own a private key. Put me down as someone who would just take responsibility for a small amount of coins.

Ack, that's a good point. If you have an m-of-n, and some money is transferred, you can't usually tell who revealed the key parts. You would just know that it's some m of those n people. That might provide enough cover and plausible deniability for some of them to conspire. Nice catch.

Why not just directly invest a portion of the funds in legitimate 3rd party investments directly.  This has a double advantage in that the investments can be made public such that you are not trusting someone to hold the funds on reserve etc. just that the investments themselves are not a scam but allows all to see where the forum money is sitting when they donate and secondly the returns on investment can help secure a consistant future income to sustain forum operation over the long term future.

Obviously you would need to secure investment across a wide range of investments and varying levels of liquidity in order to mitigate risks.

Nothing I am not in this for me. I just want the money used properly not given to people who happen to have coins under their name. The money should be used for the improvement of the community. I was thinking of donating, but not if that is where it is going to friends the forum host. If I donate it is to grow the community not to line the pockets of an insiders club.  

I'm pretty sure you'd know exactly which keys signed it. Each member would need to provide their public key in order to create the multisig addresses right?

After some more thought, i dont want to be part of any m of n. Last thing i need is for a large amount of btc to go missing, and i own a private key. Put me down as someone who would just take responsibility for a small amount of coins.

There are two types of schemes. One where each holds part of a single key and one where each holds a key and multiple keys are needed. The accountability problem is a problem with schemes of the former type.

Not all companies gamble with funds they don't own...

The funds would be kept in a way that it could easily be checked by the public.

Ack, that's a good point. If you have an m-of-n, and some money is transferred, you can't usually tell who revealed the key parts. You would just know that it's some m of those n people. That might provide enough cover and plausible deniability for some of them to conspire. Nice catch.

Not all companies gamble with funds they don't own...

Yes, and the only way would be to placing the funds in a public Bitcoin address where the contents would be publicly verifiable.

...This is contrary to the forum's otherwise decentralized structure...

...this is the forum's money, not mine, so you'll have to know what "the forum" is and in exactly which circumstances you can release the money...

I'm still writing the contract. I don't have a lot of time to work on it.

people such as pirateat40 also donated to the forum

do you want theymos to send 50 BTC to him and ask him to pledge those coins for forum use 'when needed' ?

you mean 700% a week lol

What about doing something as stupid and simple as the following
Generate address each lets say 50BTC in it.Then you export all the privite keys and split them all using this website http://passguardian.com/
Then you distribute parts of the key to 255 differnt users. You then delete the privite keys off your computer and send away the parts.

Whats good about this is noone really has any money just parts of the money that if put together gets you some of the money. Also by keeping who exactly got peices quite none really knows who to talk to or ask to try to steal the money so to speak. Also another plus of this would be that you can set how many peices you need to reconstruct the whole thing. So you could set it at 51% meaning the majority has to agree.

I have a suggestion that the forum uses some of the money to hire private investigators to go after some of the scammers that use the forum to rip people off. Now thats something I would donate to see.

Could use polls to decide who the next investigation will be.

I have a suggestion that the forum uses some of the money to hire private investigators to go after some of the scammers that use the forum to rip people off. Now thats something I would donate to see.

Could use polls to decide who the next investigation will be.

That really isnt a bad idea. Yes it isnt the forums fault for the scammers but it would be a nice gesture to hire an investigator to track down a popular scammer and get something done

...

As far as giving real life info if we are gonna keep the forum decentralized i think its best we just keep the trust we have with out any more info. giving out our names and address or encourage someone to say wow he has 1000btc let me go to his house and take them.

Let me ask this. BCB just got 2,000 dollars stole from him. What if it was 20,000? what would prevent him from taking the donations to cover his losses?

This is a good ol boys club, A bunch of insiders looking after themselves with donated money. Let me ask how people would react if the salvation army.
Started holding all the funds in the personal accounts of the board members?

Here's the first draft of the treasurer contract that I came up with. I'm trying to make a contract without using laws. Therefore, "The Forum" can't exist as a corporate entity and its existence needs to be defined in the contract. We'll see if this sort of structure ends up working well. If it does, maybe other Bitcoin organizations can use it as a model.

What defects does this agreement have?

This includes a list of "community council" members, but note that I didn't actually ask these people if they want to be members yet. I'll do that before this contract is actually used.

Are community council members treasurers?

The agreement is without law? Without law or force? So if a treasurer takes the money... we will ask them nicely to do the right thing?

If this is where you are going with the agreement, just send it out as you wish. If there are no legal responsibilities on either side, why an "agreement" Just tell them what rules they can abide by if they wish, and if they don't want to it's cool.

Sounds a little silly to me.

Are community council members treasurers?

The agreement is without law? Without law or force? So if a treasurer takes the money... we will ask them nicely to do the right thing?

Not necessarily.


If a treasurer breaks the agreement, no one will trust him again because it will be absolutely clear that he broke the agreement. This is a pretty high cost. The purpose of the agreement is to make it clear to everyone what the treasurer is obligated to do so that everyone in the community will know without a doubt that the treasurer can no longer be trusted if the contract is broken.

Laws = violence. I'm uneasy about using violence in response to a non-violent breach of contract. I also want to avoid relying on or dealing with governments.

I thought about including a paragraph saying that the treasurer will be "outlawed" if he breaks the contract, and everyone with similar non-legal contracts would be able to ignore their own obligations to the treasurer in question. But maybe this is taking things too far.

This IS a good old boys club. This "contract" has ZERO force of law. Legally they could all just walk away with the forum donations. Just because you want to handle it in the community doesn't mean you should write a contract with no teeth and eliminate your OPTION for legal action. Also they get paid monthly fees, WTF is that? Plenty of people are willing to do it without charge. This looks to me like a jerking of the circular variety.

I think that theymos and the rest need to be added to the pending scammer list. I think I might put a poll about this and see how others feel.

Sure I will hold 500 btc in storage with out a full reserve requirement. I think you need 100% reserve but can be held in any accepted currencies in predetermined ratios. 

I dont want it and anyone that does is suspect.

way to take me out of context what kind of bullshit is that? 

I have never offered to hold the forums money. I dont want it and anyone that does is suspect.

I am holding too much money for the forum. This is contrary to the forum's otherwise decentralized structure. I'd like to get some extremely trustworthy people to hold smaller chunks of the forum's money (maybe 250-500 BTC per person).
...
If you're interested, post here with how much you would charge for this service and what your reserve policy would be.

Sure I will hold 500 btc in storage with out a full reserve requirement. I think you need 100% reserve but can be held in any accepted currencies in predetermined ratios. 

...

Laws = violence. I'm uneasy about using violence in response to a non-violent breach of contract. I also want to avoid relying on or dealing with governments.

I thought about including a paragraph saying that the treasurer will be "outlawed" if he breaks the contract, and everyone with similar non-legal contracts would be able to ignore their own obligations to the treasurer in question. But maybe this is taking things too far.

I understand what you are trying to accomplish. But really, the agreement would be, you take the funds, you're banned. Maybe that should be part of the agreement. Stripped of any forum title and one that says stole forum funds added.

Is it not a possibility to have funds stored at a specific address so that community members could verify the balances?

Taken out of context? The thread is titled "Looking for people to store some of the forum's money". The OP states:


The eleventh reply, made by you states:

Were you not offering to hold 500 btc in storage without a full reserve requirement? If not, my apologies for the confusion. It appeared to me as though you were offering to hold 500 btc in storage without a full reserve requirement in response to a thread created to find people to hold btc in storage without a full reserve requirement.

While we're here, full reserve means holding 100% of something someone gives you. If person A gives the bank $1, and the bank decides to purchase a pack of gum, holding the pack of gum and change as the deposit, the bank is not holding person A's deposit in full reserve.

Similarly, If a forum member is given BTC500 to hold in full reserve and buys $500, keeping the remainder BTC along with the $, they are not holding the original deposit in full reserve.

So when you say you think the forum should hold all funds in 100% reserve but held in any accepted currencies are you suggesting they leave the deposit in BTC form, or hedge the deposit by purchasing another accepted form of currency?

No I was not offering to hold the forums funds and i am aware of what a reserve ratio is. I was pointing out that people where offering to hold the forums money and to not even keep all of it on hand for a fee
Shit is so sketch

No I was not offering to hold the forums funds...

...i am aware of what a reserve ratio is...

I think you need 100% reserve but can be held in any accepted currencies in predetermined ratios.

I was pointing out that people where offering to hold the forums money and to not even keep all of it on hand for a fee

"Exception: 1 trustee or 3 members of the community council may order the treasurer to temporarily stop all payments. After such an order, the treasurer must not obey administrator transaction requests until the order is reversed by those same trustees or community council members, or until the trustees or community council members are removed."

There are 19 council members. If 3 say "stop" but 16 others say "continue", there is an imbalance. Perhaps, a 51% clause here would be better. It would also further guard against collusion amongst a small minority of council members.

Lots of butthurt from sublime5447 in this thread.

I think they should get paid. They should be given a standard amount to reduce the risk of bailing. Maybe in a escrow or they get a small amount at a time.  They are providing a service right? They should get paid. It doesn't have to be big just something to keep there thoughts at bay.  :P

Are community council members treasurers?

The agreement is without law? Without law or force? So if a treasurer takes the money... we will ask them nicely to do the right thing?

If this is where you are going with the agreement, just send it out as you wish. If there are no legal responsibilities on either side, why an "agreement" Just tell them what rules they can abide by if they wish, and if they don't want to it's cool.

Sounds a little silly to me.

I am holding too much money for the forum. This is contrary to the forum's otherwise decentralized structure. I'd like to get some extremely trustworthy people to hold smaller chunks of the forum's money (maybe 250-500 BTC per person).

- You probably need to have been active in the Bitcoin community for at least a year.
- You probably need a very high OTC rating.
- You need to have dealt with far more BTC at one time than what you'll be holding for the forum.
- The list of "treasurers" and how much money they're holding will be public.
- The contract will be quite complex (I haven't finished writing it yet), as this is the forum's money, not mine, so you'll have to know what "the forum" is and in exactly which circumstances you can release the money.
- Full reserve is not a requirement, but you will be responsible for returning the money within a few weeks of a legitimate request no matter what.

If you're interested, post here with how much you would charge for this service and what your reserve policy would be.

suggest you diversify into other, similar assets with alloidial title like gold and silver

I am holding too much money for the forum. This is contrary to the forum's otherwise decentralized structure. I'd like to get some extremely trustworthy people to hold smaller chunks of the forum's money (maybe 250-500 BTC per person).

- You probably need to have been active in the Bitcoin community for at least a year.
- You probably need a very high OTC rating.
- You need to have dealt with far more BTC at one time than what you'll be holding for the forum.
- The list of "treasurers" and how much money they're holding will be public.
- The contract will be quite complex (I haven't finished writing it yet), as this is the forum's money, not mine, so you'll have to know what "the forum" is and in exactly which circumstances you can release the money.
- Full reserve is not a requirement, but you will be responsible for returning the money within a few weeks of a legitimate request no matter what.

If you're interested, post here with how much you would charge for this service and what your reserve policy would be.

I'm going to start sending BTC to the treasurers. Here are the treasurers I've chosen and the BTC amount that I'm willing to store with them:

1000 casascius
1000 John
750 Meni Rosenfeld
750 Rassah
750 eleuthria
500 DeathAndTaxes
500 OgNasty
250 CIYAM Open
250 Ryland R. Taylor-Almanza
250 paraipan
250 Garr255

This accounts for more BTC than the forum currently has, so if all treasurers are still interested in holding the BTC, not all of them will have to do so right away.

Here is the final contract. I added an "outlawry" sentence. The initial list of community council members is too small, but that's something I'll have to fix later.

---

This is a non-legal agreement between The Bitcoin Forum ("Forum") and ___ ("Treasurer"). This agreement is intended to be enforced in a non-violent, non-legal way by the community.

Held Amount: ___
Monthly Fee: ___
Deposit address: ___

TREASURER OBLIGATIONS

After the treasurer receives the Held Amount of bitcoins, the treasurer owes the Forum the held bitcoins and must keep the entire amount safe at a particular address, never transferring them except:

  Transactions

After the head administrator requests that the treasurer send the held bitcoins somewhere, the treasurer must send the bitcoins as directed within 14 days.

Exception: 1 trustee or 3 members of the community council may order the treasurer to temporarily stop all payments. After such an order, the treasurer must not obey administrator transaction requests until the order is reversed by those same trustees or community council members, or until the trustees or community council members are removed.

The treasurer *should* delay transactions as long as possible if the administrator is believed to be compromised, under duress, or acting against the best interests of the Forum.

  Treasurer wrap-up

The treasurer may always send the entire held bitcoins amount to any trustee in order to end his obligations in this agreement. He then must also return any fees that were paid in advance.

FORUM OBLIGATIONS

The forum must pay the Monthly Fee by the first of every month when it is due. These fees may be paid in advance. If the forum is late in paying, the treasurer may take fees out of the held amount. If the held amount is not enough to cover the monthly fee, the contract is ended and neither party has any more obligations or debts.

The forum cannot incur any debt. Under no circumstances will the forum's staff members, trustees, or community council members be liable for anything whatsoever.

DISPUTES

Because this contract does not define any obligations for the forum except monthly fees, and since that issue is completely handled in the previous section, it is not possible for anyone to have a dispute with the Forum under this contract.

A dispute may be raised by the Forum (represented by the head administrator) against the treasurer.

In case of a dispute, both parties may agree on an entity to act as arbitrator.

Only if the parties cannot agree on an arbitrator: the arbitrator will be the first person in the list of community council members excluding trustees and the head administrator, assuming that the person is willing to arbitrate for free and the person is not involved in the dispute.

If a party is non-responsive at any point in this process for more than 7 days, that party loses the dispute.

The arbitrator can only decide whether the treasurer is in violation of this agreement or not. The arbitrator cannot award damages, order either party to do anything, or decide that the Forum is in violation of the agreement.

If the treasurer is in violation of this agreement, he has an absolute moral obligation to correct the violation as soon as possible. If he does not correct his violation within 7 days, he agrees to be ostracised by the Bitcoin community. Additionally, anyone who has obligations to the treasurer is no longer required to follow those obligations in order to be considered to be acting in good faith by this community. The Forum can forgive the violation at any time.

THE BITCOIN FORUM

Trustees and community council members are added, removed, and reordered by the head administrator. Any change in the list of trustees takes place 60 days after a public announcement. Any change in the list of community council members takes place 30 days after a public announcement.

The head administrator can be replaced in any of five ways:

  Method 1

The head administrator resigns and assigns someone to be head administrator.

  Method 2

1. One of the trustees publicly and formally states his desire to replace the head administrator.
2. 7 days pass.
3. Any trustee higher on the trustee list except the head administrator can cancel this process.
4. The trustee becomes head administrator if one half of community council members agree.

  Method 3

1. One half of trustees and two thirds of community council members vote to remove the head administrator.
2. The head administrator is considered to be removed.
3. A plurality vote determines the new head administrator.

  Method 4

1. One third of community council members agree that the head administrator should be replaced.
2. This is announced as publicly as possible so that no interested party is likely to miss the announcement.
3. 7 days pass.
4. Any trustee, including the head administrator, can cancel this process.
5. A plurality vote determines the new head administrator.

  Method 5
 
If it is absolutely clear that the head administrator is inactive and there are not enough active community council members and/or trustees to replace him, the treasurer should consider the head administrator to be whoever seems most capable of continuing the Forum.

  Voting

Above, a fractional number of voters means the fraction of voters rounded down, but at least one.

Votes should be delivered to the treasurers once there are enough votes. Treasurers must take appropriate measures to verify the identities of the voters.

When a plurality vote is called for, the treasurer should contact all voters. 7 days from this contact, all votes received should be tallied and the person who received the most votes wins. In case of a tie, the vote is repeated.

Initial roster with PGP fingerprints / addresses:

Head administrator:
- Michael Marquardt (theymos) - 5E6B3F3BA961193C5C9B4435C6555693DAB591E7

Trustees:
- The head administrator
- Stefan Thomas (justmoon) - D16E7B0442B9F02E0660C094C9473700A4B08BF3
- Malmi Martti (Sirius) - E526A9B27841593BC2439EB2E904B7FE1BBA4244

Community council members:
- All of the trustees
- psy 7FB4272D4D2285DCEA2503EC8957CE7E0ECB3344
- John 42B6DC513D9DFDEC4C287CD78353E637B3AAEEB0
- hazek 0475D4C3B9C988B8B396BB6D4FD343B39E8803E7
- FreeMoney 1Kwbu2Am9L2zbpUTUQ4c6PzhT6bD5CYqC4
- BCB D8249B78EB762933E1402A477ABE99DB1179678E
- Maged F7F974C4D111E276FF243A8D59A6076B32733620
- nanotube D8B11AAC59A873B0F38D475CE7F938BEC95594B2

Contract signed and returned to theymos. For the record, the public holding address is 1Kf1nT7jQnFC7N3tSdgg5qKGTV4MucfpBg .

Contract signed and returned to theymos. For the record, the public holding address is 1Kf1nT7jQnFC7N3tSdgg5qKGTV4MucfpBg .

Shouldn't that be public holding addresses?

I'm assuming that each of these 'treasures' have gpg signed an address for where they will be holding the forum's money for the community to monitor and watch.

$100,000 on forum software are you guys insane?

What an asinine waste of money.  Sure the forum needs better software, maybe a dedicated server, possibly better database backend etc.  Hopefully SOME of the funds will be used for that in an intelligent and planned fashion over the coming year (not yeah we are rich lets buy a bunch of random expensive crap).  Still you can't possible think this forum needs $100,000 in hardware and software upgrades.  So regardless there is some portion of those funds which the forum couldn't possibly use this year and probably would be based to store securely for the long run.  theymos said something about cold storage of ~2,000 BTC.  Not lock up every penny and never spend anything to improve anything. 

I mean how can that seem like a bad idea to you?

What the hell? This forum is NOT on a dedicated server?

Is it in AWS or other "cloud" hosting?

MtGox hosts last I heard.

Salvation Army is a charity. The money they receive is not their profits, and is not theirs to keep. This forum is a privately owned business of sorts. Whatever donations the owners of the forum get are their to keep and do whatever they want with, "gool ol boys" or not. You are also free to whine and not participate, or to join that club yourself.

I find this thread interesting. I have a small forum that I run and have asked for donations to pay for the hosting fees. Once I accumulated  enough for the year I asked to cease donations. Is this forum just stashing money away from donations to pay for hosting services of course and for what else? If you guys have so much bitcoin and you are looking to divide it up because you have so much you really don't need to continue to take donations anymore, do you? Unless you are personally profiting your pockets with the donations. And this site also had advertisements on top of that. Looks like this forum is a money making machine here.

I find this thread interesting. I have a small forum that I run and have asked for donations to pay for the hosting fees. Once I accumulated  enough for the year I asked to cease donations. Is this forum just stashing money away from donations to pay for hosting services of course and for what else? If you guys have so much bitcoin and you are looking to divide it up because you have so much you really don't need to continue to take donations anymore, do you? Unless you are personally profiting your pockets with the donations. And this site also had advertisements on top of that. Looks like this forum is a money making machine here.

Looks like this forum is a money making machine here.

And that would be bad how ?

To receive money from donations to keep the site up and running is fine, even a little extra on top for the time doing it but making money off donations when everything is paid for and for the sake of just making money to me is unethical on a "free" forum. I just find it a little greedy, that's all. If users are blind and continue to donate then I guess no one can be blamed. Just something I don't fully agree with that's all. I would even donate myself IF the site needed it, but they have so much extra funds available they need multiple people to hold on to it.

To receive money from donations to keep the site up and running is fine, even a little extra on top for the time doing it but making money off donations when everything is paid for and for the sake of just making money to me is unethical on a "free" forum. I just find it a little greedy, that's all. If users are blind and continue to donate then I guess no one can be blamed. Just something I don't fully agree with that's all. I would even donate myself IF the site needed it, but they have so much extra funds available they need multiple people to hold on to it.

Besides, that's the whole point of capitalism.  If you have a problem with greed...well...sorry.  Muricuh.

I dont have a problem with the forum making money I have a problem with calling it a donation. It is not a fing donation. It is a bribe for favoritism or a payment for services, who knows what service that might be? When you operate in secrecy it is not possible to know your intentions. I want you guys to make money, john k, thymos, and the other senior members you guys paved the way and should get paid, but do it honest.
If you are going to charge for vip membership just say you are charging dont disguise it as a communal fund.   

Man, I'm actually losing money to help the forum store the funds as I'm the one paying the lawyer and deposit box. The only amount spent by the forum so far was to renew the bitcointalk.org address via Namecheap. Please don't assume we're making any amount of money out of this.

No I understand John but that is kinda the point. What I am saying is lets call a spade a spade. They are not donations they are payments for vip status. If it was structured like that it would be nobodies business who did what with it. You could charge thymos to hold some of his funds or he could spend it any way he likes. The forum either needs money for improvement or it doesnt. Sell Vip memberships and take donations for maintenance and improvement.
That is all I am going to say about it.   

Seriously - why the fuck do you need a lawyer and a deposit box, that's about the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my entire life.

Just to be safe if I get hit by a truck or anything stupid happens to my home's safety box. I'm not wealthy enough to be risking ~$70,000 of some other entity's money, and I store my long term BTC holdings there too.

I don't see how you should pay a lawyer out of your own pocket for this. Why not rather just use a trusted friend in that case. Besides, 70K is a shitload of money.  I don't know how Theymos has arranged it, but surely distributing it a little it not a bad idea, I hope he doesn't get burned.

If 'trusted' friends were a viable and secure way of storing assets, I don't think theymos needs to distribute the funds out for storage already. I'm already having a lawyer to act as a failsafe for my other BTC assets as he's the family lawyer, so naturally I would use this existing avenue to minimize the risk as much as possible.

How can your lawyer act as a failsafe ? If the coins somehow goes missing or is moved without your approval, will the lawyer pay this back out of his own pocket ? Seems like insurance is what you need. And I guess insurance would not come for free, not with storing bitcoins.

And in regards to friends. What are you if not a friend of Theymos ?

In regards to the second part, I have never met theymos nor chatted/communicated with him extensively apart from the occasional PM.  I guess I should go and meet him someday.  ;D

Haha - yes, if he trusted you with 70K USD, you should meet him someday and thank him for the trust. :) I hope he did some background checking on you. ;)

Out of curiosity, what did the lawyer think about bitcoin, you just gave him a paper and told him the code on the paper needs to be kept safe as it's worth 70K USD ? *s*

https://bitcointalk.org/donate.html

I am a donator of 10 BTC at a time when I had barely any BTC and was actually considering that my opinions of theymos and this forum might have been shortsighted. I worked hard at that time to get 10 BTC just for the purpose of donating it. I had also planned (at that time) to up it to 50 BTC. I was even looking for ways to facilitate the development of the forum software (I eventually gave that up when I realized every offer was being turned down from people much more trusted and skilled than myself).

What depresses me is that that donation was intended for one reason and one reason only: the development of the forum. To hear that it's being handed off to strangers (yes, strangers, we're in the bitcoin wild west, remember?) and not employees of the forum, is a bit ridiculous. I'm not going to harp on this subject for pages and pages, I just wanted to permanently state for the public record that not only do I disagree with what has happened here (despite the fact that many of the people holding the funds for the forum are actual friends of mine), I feel cheated. Similar to how Bitcoin 100 is now trying to make a video (not a needy charity, just a promotional video) with funds intended for orphanages, starving children, paraplegics, etc.).

Please fix the forum software with the millions of dollars currently in your possession. Please stop giving *my* money and everyone elses to people we never consented to. When you need someone more capable to hold the funds, hire someone to work for the forum officially.

https://bitcointalk.org/donate.html

I am a donator of 10 BTC at a time when I had barely any BTC and was actually considering that my opinions of theymos and this forum might have been shortsighted. I worked hard at that time to get 10 BTC just for the purpose of donating it. I had also planned (at that time) to up it to 50 BTC. I was even looking for ways to facilitate the development of the forum software (I eventually gave that up when I realized every offer was being turned down from people much more trusted and skilled than myself).

What depresses me is that that donation was intended for one reason and one reason only: the development of the forum. To hear that it's being handed off to strangers (yes, strangers, we're in the bitcoin wild west, remember?) and not employees of the forum, is a bit ridiculous. I'm not going to harp on this subject for pages and pages, I just wanted to permanently state for the public record that not only do I disagree with what has happened here (despite the fact that many of the people holding the funds for the forum are actual friends of mine), I feel cheated. Similar to how Bitcoin 100 is now trying to make a video (not a needy charity, just a promotional video) with funds intended for orphanages, starving children, paraplegics, etc.).

Please fix the forum software with the millions of dollars currently in your possession. Please stop giving *my* money and everyone elses to people we never consented to. When you need someone more capable to hold the funds, hire someone to work for the forum officially.

I find this thread interesting. I have a small forum that I run and have asked for donations to pay for the hosting fees. Once I accumulated  enough for the year I asked to cease donations. Is this forum just stashing money away from donations to pay for hosting services of course and for what else? If you guys have so much bitcoin and you are looking to divide it up because you have so much you really don't need to continue to take donations anymore, do you? Unless you are personally profiting your pockets with the donations. And this site also had advertisements on top of that. Looks like this forum is a money making machine here.

^^ Don't forget that all this "excess cash" really want worth all that much just a few month ago. It just got lucky from the huge spikes in BTC value.

I am holding too much money for the forum. This is contrary to the forum's otherwise decentralized structure. I'd like to get some extremely trustworthy people to hold smaller chunks of the forum's money (maybe 250-500 BTC per person).

- You probably need to have been active in the Bitcoin community for at least a year.
- You probably need a very high OTC rating.
- You need to have dealt with far more BTC at one time than what you'll be holding for the forum.
- The list of "treasurers" and how much money they're holding will be public.
- The contract will be quite complex (I haven't finished writing it yet), as this is the forum's money, not mine, so you'll have to know what "the forum" is and in exactly which circumstances you can release the money.
- Full reserve is not a requirement, but you will be responsible for returning the money within a few weeks of a legitimate request no matter what.

If you're interested, post here with how much you would charge for this service and what your reserve policy would be.

Are treasures going to publicly announce anywhere anytime there is an expenditure to be made

Sure, but why send it out to random people to look after?  That makes no sense to me.  Spend it on the thing you've been wanting fixing for a year or two...

If the forum is still looking for people to store the money, I'm available. Let me know what you need from me. I can provide the following:

Scans of:
1. Driver's License
2. Passport
3. Military ID
4. Firearm License
5. Permit to Carry Firearm Outside of Residence
6. Active Duty Training Orders (Military)
7. Appointment Orders (Military)
8. Barangay Clearance
9. Local Police Clearance
10. Mayor's Clearance
11. NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) Clearance
12. Regional Trial Court Clearance
13. Municipal Court Clearance
14. Prosecutor's Clearance
15. Awards and Decorations Certificates and Orders (Military)
16. College Diploma / Transcript of Records
17. Contact information of my lawyer should something happen to me. He will have a sealed copy of the private key.

Wow, is your name Chuck Norris ?

Theymos,

I have carefully considered your request for offers and must respectfully decline to participate.

While I understand the need of the forum and community at large for a collection of individuals to act as a holding  company for the forum, I am not prepared to accept that level of risk to my personal finances.

I realize I probably was not on your short list of candidates in any case.

I would like to suggest you consider having some portion of the forum holdings set up as a BTC lending group.  How exactly this would be done is worth discussion but I have confidence the forum "elders" can figure it out.  Public disclosure of all loans (amount, forum ID,  duration,  terms) would deter default.  Collateral could be simply holding proof of identify of the borrower. In case of full default publishing all identification details and debt owed should be enough to remove the individual from the community.

In the longer term, the public listing of loans with satisfactory repayments fills a community need for establishing a reputation in an ever growing community.

- Full reserve is not a requirement, but you will be responsible for returning the money within a few weeks of a legitimate request no matter what.

So you're LENDING the money.

Of course not, but that's not how MPOE-PR answers questions. The distraction answer is always better while throwing a tissy fit.

Lol.  Yea, i think MPOE-PR is a good example of how not to do pr.

So how much coin was Garr holding?

250BTC I think

250BTC I think

Priceless

*sigh* Sometimes I feel as if I'm missing out on this "scamming" thing everyone seems to be into around here  :-\

It's not exactly the same thing, but I was really disappointed today when I saw that even John K. has jumped onto the gaudy signature advertising bandwagon.

What? ???
That ad has been in my profile since Feb/January if I'm not wrong. I originally had that in after being a bit short on my monthly bitcoin purchase, and it's grown on me ever since.

It could be that I just never noticed the colors in your signature before. I honestly never paid much attention to signatures at all until about the last week or so when the coloured background, large font paid advertisements really started to take off.

Now it's getting annoying to the point at which I've started to ignore some people for no reason other than their signatures makes the page look ugly and unreadable.

I guess the other possibility is that something nefarious is going on. How long have you been advertising for PLAYTIN Casino?

https://i.imgur.com/4b8uRJF.png

*sigh* Sometimes I feel as if I'm missing out on this "scamming" thing everyone seems to be into around here  :-\

Send the forum's money to just-dice.com

It is operated by dooglus, and so far it has about 7000 BTC "invested" in it. The more players gamble and lose, the higher the returns to the "investors". The site is up about 200 BTC with over 2 million bets already, about less than half of S.Dice within it's first week of operation.

This way, the forum's money can "grow".

Actually, theymos can do this himself if he is holding the funds. Create an account there, activate 2 factor authentication using google authenticator, and it's safe.

What are the treasurers charging for this service?

More info: I want to stop holding any money for the forum at all. So I need to get treasurers for 3293+ BTC. I prefer candidates who:
- Have been in the community for a long time. (This is difficult/expensive to replace.)
- Run a profitable service, especially one that requires a lot of trust.
- Have previously been entrusted with more money than what they'll hold for the forum.

It may be somewhat helpful for you to give me your personal info. If you do, we could perhaps do a legal contract in addition to the standard non-legal contract. However, I prefer to rely mainly on incentives and reputation. A completely anonymous treasurer would be OK in some cases. Dread Pirate Roberts would be perfect. :)

Between 0 and 1% yearly.

Your signature doesn't work for me.

Assuming you were completely anonymous (though you may not be), what would you have to lose by stealing the forum's money? I've seen you around a lot, and you're a long-term member, but you don't seem to be operating any high-trust, profitable services.

More treasurers are needed.

More treasurers are needed.

Fyi, someone tried to *compromise* my treasurer address today. Not sure how they planed to pull it off, considering it's in an offline wallet in a secure location, but they claimed they did. They did find my Social Security number (which is semi-public anyway), compromised an old email of mine I forgot I had, which I deleted, and tried to change my Yahoo and Amazon passwords, which they failed to completely take over (change password confirmation emails went to a different address), but the coins are still safe. Next I'll be worried about my extremeties  :-[

I run CoinLenders which currently has 3000 BTC less than what BTC it had during it's peak. BTCINVEST's performance speaks for itself.

Full reserve would be 0.5% yearly.

"This is a non-legal agreement between The Bitcoin Forum ("Forum") and Alex B. (aka. paraipan) ("Treasurer"). This agreement is intended to be enforced in a non-violent, non-legal way by the community."

"all parties agree they will not resort to any court, tribunal or sovereign jurisdiction to resolve or enforce any term of the agreement"

"agreement is intended to be enforced in a non-violent way by the community and without resorting to law."  

"all parties agree they will not resort to any court, Tribunal or sovereign jurisdiction to resolve or enforce any term of this agreement. This agreement shall be enforced only in a non-violent way by the community and without resorting to law."

I run CoinLenders which currently has 3000 BTC less than what BTC it had during it's peak. BTCINVEST's performance speaks for itself.

Full reserve would be 0.5% yearly.

I run CoinLenders which currently has 3000 BTC less than what BTC it had during it's peak. BTCINVEST's performance speaks for itself.

Full reserve would be 0.5% yearly.

This is why it is fallacy to allow random people to hold your money, just because they have some positive rating and run some service that holds some good amount of coins.

Obviously I didn't base my decision-making solely on reputation, or I would have accepted TF's offer.

I plan to switch to multisig in the next few months. I didn't do it initially because Bitcoin-Qt didn't support it natively, but it does now. If you're interested in being a treasurer, post here.

What will the multisig treasurer set up look like?

I know that I don't meet all the requirements but I can give out some personal info like address and phone number. I can store any amount and will charge 1% (upfront) per year. I will be safely creating 10 paper wallets each with 10% and put it in a bank vault. I know this isn't the best deal out there, but pm me if your interested.

No!

I know that I don't meet all the requirements but

- You probably need to have been active in the Bitcoin community for at least a year.
- You probably need a very high OTC rating.
- You need to have dealt with far more BTC at one time than what you'll be holding for the forum.

I think that the treasurers will be split into several multisig setups with 4 or 6 treasurers each, and each such multisig will require 50% agreement in order to make spends. (I'm more worried about treasurers disappearing than trying to steal the money.)

I'm still here! Is this an attendance thread?

Although I am responsible for what was then valued at a few thousand bitcoins worth (in fiat) some time ago, because of the BTC price increase the past couple of days, the bitcoin equivalent has naturally lowered to a few hundreds worth.

In my view, bitcoins are bitcoins, regardless of value, so you can still entrust me with whatever you or the forum deems a comfortable amount. And if we end up using multi-sig, there should be either clear instructions, or an app that can do this (open source, of course) to make it easy.

I'm known by at least one wallet developer (hive) and the founder of one relatively large cryptocurrency related business in the country (tagbond / tagcoins, who put up $5M USD as capital), and I also regularly receive donations meant for the victims of the recent Super Typhoon Haiyan.

The other stuff I do, I think I already posted in this thread earlier this year.

Obviously I didn't base my decision-making solely on reputation, or I would have accepted TF's offer.

I plan to switch to multisig in the next few months. I didn't do it initially because Bitcoin-Qt didn't support it natively, but it does now. If you're interested in being a treasurer, post here.

LMAO like theymos would actually trust you LOL

Please adjust your detection monitors.  There is something you're missing :)

No he is trying to be funny, by saying I don't want to sign anything and remain anonymous, but he is actually just wasting his time, and if anyone did a search on him and saw this post would probably do no business. Hence why people like him will always be at the same level and never move up in life.

If you're interested in being a treasurer, post here.

And what is that? You are a Jr. Member that just started.

I can hold a part of the key in france if you want

No special reference, but I would do it to help for donation or nothing

This is actually a very good idea. This way you would have partial key holders around the globe. Would be quite secure if you ask me.

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I would be willing to hold 1,000 BTC for a 1% fee (1% additional fee per year).
Fees go to 2% if less than 1,000 BTC.
I would like a new forum title. Treasurer perhaps.
Funds would be available within 24 hours (unless I'm on vacation).
Funds would never be touched until withdrawn.
Wallet would be backed up on a flash drive placed in a fireproof safe.

My receiving address has nearly 15,000 BTC received all from legitimate dealings. I've held tens of thousands of dollars in deposits previously and have a flawless OTC rating as well as nothing but positive forum feedback.

I'd also be willing to hold a partial key of whatever amount for 1BTC/month and a new forum title.