Bitcoin Forum

We need some exchanges that are run by a real company. If that happens, they will become "the bitcoin exchange" and the problem would be fixed... The problem of no rock solid safe exchanges.

Why doesn't blockchain add an exchange? they are funded by rich people like Richard Branson (My guess at his name spelling :) )


They have the investors to make it the spot to trade and buy bitcoin.

I don't know how you've been here this long and missed this.... the responsibility for your own bitcoins, is in your own hands.

It's not up to the whole of the internet or the bitcoin community to lead you by the hand, wipe your arse, and help you cross the street, if you can't put on your big boy pants and man up to your own mistakes then tough shit, life is continually going to suck for you. At the moment you think it's bitcoin making it suck, but I'm afraid you'll get out of bitcoin, and things start to suck in your other ventures, what is the common factor there? Oh, it's you.

Consider it a response to the general amount of whining you've been doing lately.

I said bitcoin as a technology has so much advantages in its premise.  It's just fallen into the wrong hands.

Is that we are dealing with faceless entities over the internet and entrusting them with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of our hard earned money.

Has anyone ever stopped to think how ridiculous it is that we actually put our faith and send money blindly to a most likely foreign operation ran by members known merely by an internet screenname?  I mean how damn professional is it knowing that a good majority of these exchanges are owned by teens and mid to late 20's Russians simply known as 'XxShadowRoguexX' or 'SysOp69_4u.'  With no physical company building or readily verifiable business location.  Well.  Let me rephrase that.  Even having a physical location such as Mt. Gox didn't stop Mr. Karpeles from cleaning out shop.

Step back for a second and think about this.  Do you think a company such as Apple or Samsung could just get away with being ran by anonymous CEO's that simply go by an internet screenname?

Bottom line is there's zero sense of accountability.  Which is precisely the reason why they're able to scam...and keep scamming.  Because they can make up any bullshit excuse they want and follow the crowd by saying they were 'hacked'...and there's nothing we can do about it.

And this is precisely the reason why I believe bitcoin will ultimate fade into the sunset of obscurity along with failed techs like tablet pc's and palm pilots.   Could another, better tech supplant it in the future? Possibly.  But as of now, it is nothing more than a haven for scammers, and has fell into the wrong hands.  Assuredly the same exact hands Mr. Nakamoto feared.

Dude. [eta - or dudette - don't mean to offend the fairer sex] You're so far from the shores that your dried bones are bleaching.

The only thing in your rant that has ended up in the wrong hands is the bitcoins that the gullible have eagerly forwarded. It has absolutely zero to do with the technology. It is a basic failure to think things through to their logical conclusion.

Flashman has it exactly right. Act like a grownup and take responsibility for your own poor decisions.

And please enlighten me: how exactly is bitcoin supposed to flourish and grow when every single one of its exchanges goes belly up?  Is everyone just supposed to do peer to peer transactions doing FS/Wanted trade threads on forums?

You're multiple post rebuttal was basically agreeing with me.  Exchanges have no verifiable identities.

Now.  The greater question: how do YOU suppose bitcoin should be transacted/traded? I mean, if none of these exchanges are trustworthy, what other alternatives are there?  Or is that not an option whatsoever?

This is a fundamental flaw in the bitcoin banking system.  The anarchists will claim 'BUT HAVING REAL NAMES AND REAL PEOPLE GOES AGAINST THE TRANSPARENCY OF CRYPTOS!'  No.  You can't have it both ways.  Either you have accountability or you get taken to the cleaners.  The 'blind trust' system never works on the internet.  Never has.  Never will.

It could be done, but it'd involve every bitcoiner start using PGP to build a collective web of trust. Now that'd be a nice thing to see, but it ain't gonna happen. It's too much hassle and complexity for the avg Joe, just like generating high-entropy private keys or signing offline transactions.

Is that we are dealing with faceless entities over the internet and entrusting them with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of our hard earned money.

I feel that this statement is accurate, but you are missing the real problem: ignorance. There is nothing wrong with having faceless entities on the internet, but the people that trust them with their money are stupid.

Jbreher: I agree with some of your points, though to me (may not be the same for all) it seems like you're trying to downplay the greater issue by staking blame of risk vs. reward at the end user when most have been essentially robbed blind without recourse.  Or are we all to just 'expect the worst' in the crypto community when entrusting our bitcoins in transactions?

p2p? I've combed over that multiple times in other posts.  It's no different.  You're still putting your trust in another faceless entity over the internet with no verifiable name/address/location.  Go through an escrow? Lol.  What if the escrow packs of shop once they've hit personal economic hardship?

You keep saying I'm blaming the technology.  No, I'm not.  

And this is precisely the reason why I believe bitcoin will ultimate fade into the sunset of obscurity along with failed techs like tablet pc's and palm pilots.

What good is fiat without banks?  Or are we all to just hoard coins in our personal computers and let them collect dust while maintaining a 'wait and see/trust no one' approach?  I'm sure that's the entire point of bitcoin, right? To just hoard and remain stagnant.  

There are already decentralized answers like XCP and although many argue it is too centralized Ripple also solves this problem.

So basically the problem is already solved.

Next!

Plus there are other solutions in Bitcoin itself like multi-sig transactions. OP I think you need to learn a bit more about how BTC works ;)

Well, if the inevitable result of entrusting exchanges is getting ripped off, then yes - I suppose we each should expect the worst. It seems to me no different than any other part of life. If you are going to trust the untrustworthy, you're gonna get screwed. I'm not saying that the thievery is justified. I'm saying that we should regard it as inevitable that enabling scammers is going to result in scams occurring.


I guess this one is on me for not clarifying. How 'bout I say f2f - as in face-to-face. I've had a 100% track record so far with this. As have all of which I am aware.


I must have misunderstood you then. Perhaps due to an earlier quote from your OP:



I have no idea what you are indicating by "What good is fiat without banks?".

I don't think there is any particular 'supposed to do'. Crypto is a technology, not a director of human activity. Maybe start by asking what it is that you want it to do for you? Hoarding is a possibility, sure. If more of the planet comes onboard, you're likely to accumulate purchasing power by simply holding a fixed amount of it. Of course, with no activity, the world may not hop onboard. You can use it to purchase things.... the list of vendors is large and growing larger by the day. I personally feel that remittances (a multi-billion USD market with astronomical profit margins) will be the first real 'killer app', but I expect that it is dependent upon several more years' worth of infrastructure buildout.

Despite the cynicism I display in the opening sentences of this post, I am hopeful that crypto continues to grow, to the point where it overtakes fiat in gross global economic activity. I see this as more likely than not (your analysis may differ). A wonderous world awaits humanity if we can wrest monetary control from the hands of self-rewarding parasitic warmonger vampire-squids. (That last sentence should be a clue that I suspect that you and I likely could have an extended discussion on the merits or demerits of the fiat monetary system - but that should likely wait for another thread).

The problem is...how are people supposed to exchange bitcoin if we are not to trust exchanges...at all?  

F2F is of course the most foolproof method...but that's essentially destroying the entire point of crypto currency.  

I'm not saying to not trust them at all. I'm saying trust them only in a prudent fashion commensurate with the risk they present.

hmmm... You say this is a solved problem? Maybe I need to learn more.

Assume I have a fistful of US Dollars, and I want ... oh ... Bitcoin. There is someone else on the other side of the planet that has Bitcoins he wants to dump for USD. Pick your favorite system -- be it XCP, Ripple, or something else -- and walk me through the capital and information flows, including all third parties, that this system uses to execute such a trade. Please.

In that case just find your nearest Bitcoin ATM.

But that's not how gambling addicts think. A few bad apples make all the headlines. Bitcoin needs to be child-proof.

Do you think a company such as Apple or Samsung could just get away with being ran by anonymous CEO's that simply go by an internet screenname?

Bitcoin was not designed to be child proof. It was designed for the "novice" user to have an advanced understanding of how bitcoin works.

The problem is that even now the Bitcoin protocol has not gotten any more child proof however various applications have been designed so that they are more user friendly which is causing more people to end up loosing their money

The public internet didn't exist when Apple was founded, but other than that, let's think about your question. When Apple built and sold its first personal computer, nobody knew who Steve Wozniak was and by all accounts I've heard Steve Jobs was some college kid who used a lot of LSD and made his money building and selling devices to defraud the phone company. They didn't start out as a multi-billion dollar international corporation with a huge corporate headquarters. They were two almost completely anonymous guys in a garage. If the public internet were around and as popular as it is today, Apple's achievement obviously wouldn't have been as big a deal as it was, but I wouldn't be too surprised if Woz and Jobs ended up announcing their new product on some online forum, where they may or may not be using their real names.

I don't know much about Samsung's backstory, but I'd be willing to bet almost any amount of money that they also didn't start out as a multi-billion dollar international corporation with a huge corporate headquarters.

The world just doesn't work like that, and Bitcoin doesn't change that fact. Most likely it was a couple guys in a garage or a university dorm room (same can be said for Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Dell).

The public internet didn't exist when Apple was founded, but other than that, let's think about your question. When Apple built and sold its first personal computer, nobody knew who Steve Wozniak was and by all accounts I've heard Steve Jobs was some college kid who used a lot of LSD and made his money building and selling devices to defraud the phone company. They didn't start out as a multi-billion dollar international corporation with a huge corporate headquarters. They were two almost completely anonymous guys in a garage. If the public internet were around and as popular as it is today, Apple's achievement obviously wouldn't have been as big a deal as it was, but I wouldn't be too surprised if Woz and Jobs ended up announcing their new product on some online forum, where they may or may not be using their real names.

I don't know much about Samsung's backstory, but I'd be willing to bet almost any amount of money that they also didn't start out as a multi-billion dollar international corporation with a huge corporate headquarters. The world just doesn't work like that, and Bitcoin doesn't change that fact. Most likely it was a couple guys in a garage or a university dorm room (same can be said for Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Dell).

Once you become a big company like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Facebook, Google or Dell it becomes a lot harder to hide your identity.. but I seriously doubt anyone with the possible exception of a few investors had ever heard of the founders or CEOs of those companies before they became big household names.

internet screenname

Hello, AOL? We have an escapee from your walled garden... yes, if you'd send the goons with the batons and strait jackets that would be good, thanks.

Quite an uneducated post OP, nobody is forcing you to leave your coins with an exchange.

In fact it's highly recommended you do the opposite.

The most of these exchangers are ran by amateurs, hipters, scammers, kids, who think about their self that they are GODS.

That's why these things are happening. Look to their behavior. They think that they are a corporation; I am not sure why the most of these so called exchangers are posing as having large offices like Apple, Microsoft, Bank of America when it is not a shame to be modest.

You can run this business from a small and cozy office if you really want that. It's perfectly normal to do that because you don't need hundreds of employees.

You need someone(1-2 people) to reply to tickets (if you are a big exangers), checking the incoming and outgoing transactions (by bank wire) and a part time programmer if your platform is safe.He just have to take a look over it daily.

Mtgox or Moolah are only two examples of arrogance.

Look here : http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e63_1404777061

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob9Ak1t09Ao

This is a common behavior for almost all these "exchangers". They are "busy" people, full of the word's problems. Nobody can understand what  "burden" they carry but in essence they are some kids who saw a lot of money in their hands.

They are full of vanity....they know better than anyone how the "things" are in the financial industry even they have 25 years old.

They create FINANCIAL "scripts" on  knees and saying "it's the best"  even they only tested for 1-2 weeks. A financial software costs from few hundreds of thousands to millions of USD.

 That's why the banks and the real forex companies are paying fortunes for their software security and even so, you cannot be sure.

It is SO fucking funny when you see : "We are fully rebuilding our systems from the ground up so that customers can use Bitstamp with full confidence and trust (in 48 hours)"

https://twitter.com/nejc_kodric/status/552091195795845120

How can someone check and fix a hacking problem in days when it's about a financial platform?

Thousands of code lines must be checked and rechecked + the server configuration. It is impossible in 48 hours;not even in a week.

That's why all the hacks are happening. The greed and vanity will bring down all these so called exchangers.

Unfortunately, their clients will pay the bill.

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/story/news/local/2014/12/22/lake-city-man-child-porn/20776261/

This is Robert Keith Christopher Jr., better known as DeviantTwo. I worked with him for some time between November and April of 2013-2014 at Hackshard. When he quit Hackshard he became a developer/owner of Cryptorush, which subsequently failed and lost hundreds of bitcoins. I think it's possible that some disgruntled customers who lost money on Cryptorush being hacked planted CP on his computer. The news article says the police received an anonymous tip.

How do I know this is the same person? Well he had the same name, lived in the same city, and was about that age and overweight, just like the guy in the picture. I also haven't been able to contact him since December 17th, 5 days before the arrest on the article.

Agreed.  This is a vital requirement or these scams will continue happening.  Guaranteed.

Why do you think actual fiat banks around the world are able to work?  Because they are physical entities with verifiable employees/assets.  Additionally, most are FDIC insured.  Meaning, should the absolute worst case happen, they are backed by the federal government and all your funds would be replenished should they go bottom up or robbed.

This is a fundamental flaw in the bitcoin banking system.  The anarchists will claim 'BUT HAVING REAL NAMES AND REAL PEOPLE GOES AGAINST THE TRANSPARENCY OF CRYPTOS!'  No.  You can't have it both ways.  Either you have accountability or you get taken to the cleaners.  The 'blind trust' system never works on the internet.  Never has.  Never will.

All of this is necessary and to be expected. If we are to have truly reliable BTC exchanges they must necessarily emerge in response to spectacular fuckups. Market process, they call it.

Hopefully projects like coinffeine will change the landscape soon. A decentralized solution is the most fitting.

Hopefully projects like coinffeine will change the landscape soon. A decentralized solution is the most fitting.

...

Yeah... youknow.... I'm just looking for a scenario diagram or somesuch showing the flows of value and information between all parties involved in a single example trade. Do _no_ design teams working on 'distributed exchanges' actually do any design?

Have there been any updates at all regarding coinffeine? It sounded promising but I never heard if the project had expanded or not.

The main reason Bitcoin was invented was to solve the issue of blind trust.  The funny thing is you can actually trust Bitcoin, it actually works.  Just most things built on top of it are still failing the blind trust problem.  I am wondering if maybe someday the blockchain advancements will solve this. 

Supposedly this is one of the great leaps of smart contracts, is that now, you can force third-parties to trust you via smart contracts. 

Reading is fundamental, and apparently you suck at it.

Please re-read my OP.  I said bitcoin as a technology has so much advantages in its premise.  It's just fallen into the wrong hands.


And please enlighten me: how exactly is bitcoin supposed to flourish and grow when every single one of its exchanges goes belly up?  Is everyone just supposed to do peer to peer transactions doing FS/Wanted trade threads on forums?

http://cdn.overclock.net/4/47/47e8dbce_Point_over_your_head1.jpeg

Is that we are dealing with faceless entities over the internet and entrusting them with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of our hard earned money.

Has anyone ever stopped to think how ridiculous it is that we actually put our faith and send money blindly to a most likely foreign operation ran by members known merely by an internet screenname?  I mean how damn professional is it knowing that a good majority of these exchanges are owned by teens and mid to late 20's Russians simply known as 'XxShadowRoguexX' or 'SysOp69_4u.'  With no physical company building or readily verifiable business location.  Well.  Let me rephrase that.  Even having a physical location such as Mt. Gox didn't stop Mr. Karpeles from cleaning out shop.

Step back for a second and think about this.  Do you think a company such as Apple or Samsung could just get away with being ran by anonymous CEO's that simply go by an internet screenname?

Bottom line is there's zero sense of accountability.  Which is precisely the reason why they're able to scam...and keep scamming.  Because they can make up any bullshit excuse they want and follow the crowd by saying they were 'hacked'...and there's nothing we can do about it.

And this is precisely the reason why I believe bitcoin will ultimate fade into the sunset of obscurity along with failed techs like tablet pc's and palm pilots.   Could another, better tech supplant it in the future? Possibly.  But as of now, it is nothing more than a haven for scammers, and has fell into the wrong hands.  Assuredly the same exact hands Mr. Nakamoto feared.

is there anyone out there at this point who has used bitcoin and not been scammed / stolen from ? (aside from the folks who did the stealing of course)  :P

is there anyone out there at this point who has used bitcoin and not been scammed / stolen from ? (aside from the folks who did the stealing of course)  :P

People get conned out of money every single day... no matter what the platform. What's your point?

People getting scammed in real life usually can report the scammer and let authority and the court system deal with him locally.

Bitcoin enable scammers from another part of the world to conduct scam where there is no global authority can deal with them.

People getting scammed in real life usually can report the scammer and let authority and the court system deal with him locally.

Bitcoin enable scammers from another part of the world to conduct scam where there is no global authority can deal with them.

This is one drawback to using bitcoin, however the pros to using Bitcoin vastly outweigh the cons to using it.

When you deal with an established exchange, the exchange has a good reason to continue to operate honestly because they will generate long-term trading commissions. With a person to person trader on the other hand they can more easily pull off their scam again under a new identity

There is a disincentive to scam, but nothing prevents exchanges from getting hacked.