I used a service, now defunct, called etchablock.com.  You can see all of their transactions here:

https://blockchain.info/address/1EtchrGAQGeVbqDRssTTLeYJxWSeYAyaiw

You do not deserve a legendary account at any price until you learn to spell legendary and fix the title of this thread.

That might happen but it would have to be a purely politically motivated punitive decision, not an economic one.

I say this because normally the more energy you use the less you pay for electricity.  Today, industrial consumers of electricity pay less than residential consumers for the same amount of energy and huge industrial users often negotiate an even smaller price due to their massive consumption.

Now what power generation systems really hate is someone who uses huge amount of power on an intermittent basis - like an electric furnace to produce steel.  This is because their peak demands affect the amount of base power generation needed and cause them to have to produce a lot of power that never gets used.  Power generation can not be simply "switched on and off".  Coal and especially nuclear plants have to be left running even when there is low demand and they are overproducing power.  Natural gas generation has a relatively quick "warm up" cycle time so they can be switched on for higher demand seasons like summer air conditioning and turned off during lower demand.  (Note that this pushes a demand cycle back into the natural gas production and delivery system that has to be taken into account there.)

What power generation companies love is a consumer that uses a ton of energy at a very steady rate, someone who can say I need X MW 24/7/365 - like Bitcoin mining for example.  This increases base demand 24/7 so it is a very efficient consumer.  Therefore, economically speaking, very large Bitcoin mining operations should in theory be able to negotiate and receive the very best rates for their power - better than just about any other consumer.

Everan426,

I am confused.  Did you join Richfund?  Are you now working there?  If you now work there why don't you have an email address there?


Whatever happened to JEON?  Last post April 12, 2016, 08:40:42 AM:

Is he now your boss?  If so you should ask him for an email account at the company.

Then a thank you is in order.  So, thanks.

Yes, legendary status is handed out randomly after you meet the minimum threshold so Spoetnik could be legendary any day now.

Except of course for the fact that he is being ground down under the bootheals of "the man"

Read every post in this thread.  Do your own research.  Assume it is a scam until you can prove it otherwise.

Yes, that is what I said.  I was appalled by the entire corporate run human warehousing system from top to bottom.  It was much larger and nefarious than I could have imagined without having experienced it - yes for just four day thank God.  We are in agreement here.  Point of fact, as you stated: they tried to round up all the indicted "Bitcoin criminals" from their "operation avalanche" on Friday so that they could force them to spend the entire weekend in lockup before they could be brought before a judge.  I just happened to be out of town on that Friday so they could not arrest me until Monday at my client's office after I got back.  This irritated them no end.

Homeland Security investigated me and my family for 18 months.  At the end of all that investigative effort they still did not know that my wife is an attorney and exactly what my business of 30 years does.  Both of these things are very easy to determine.  After 18 months of investigation, 4 years of bank records, every text I ever received or sent (including all deleted texts) the best they could come up with for the indictment was 18-1960.  I was never charged with money laundering.  After 18 months of investigation, undercover operations, placing a tracker on my car, etc. the lead investigator and the AUSA assumed they could add a money laundering charge after they were able to confiscate the millions of dollars in Bitcoins they promised to find during the raid on my house and business.  They did not find the millions they promised or the evidence they promised because there wasn't any.  The fact there was no money laundering and no huge payoff for their coffers made them hopping mad the day of the raid.

Except for the $40,000 in cash and $40,000 in Bitcoins everything else was returned.

There have been a few high profile members that have just disappeared never to return.  The case that worries me the most is DeathAndTaxes (16028 posts, 1218 activity, Donator status, Date Registered: September 04, 2011, Last Active: April 22, 2015)  This is a very suspicious disappearance of a great guy who I really respected.  I have tried a few times to contact him but to no avail.

So it was not a Federal felony case and you were too poor to afford an attorney.  Therefore you had no assets worth seizing.  You were not charged with a paperwork "crime" where civil asset forfeiture attached and did not have all your personal and corporate property seized in a separate civil asset forfeiture case.  You were not the target of a case centered on taking assets because you had none.  You were not charged as and treated as a terrorist under the patriot act.

Therefore my original comment was correct:  you have not faced anything like my situation.

The day I was arrested they did not have to and would not tell me why I was being arrested because I was arrested under a sealed arrest warrant under the anti-terrorism AML part of the patriot act.  They did tell me they were going to search my house and sent 22 cars full of agents to my house to execute an all day search.  When I asked them what they were searching for they told me they did not have to tell me what they were searching for because they had a sealed search warrant.  Since they did not find what they were looking for at my home they asked for and were granted a separate sealed search for my corporate offices over the phone that day.

After 24 hours in Denver county jail I was brought before the judge and was finally told what I was charged with and why I was arrested (18-1960 operating a MTB without a license).  So did you spend 24 hours in jail not knowing why you were there?  Did you spend 12 hours just in the intake room because the jailers could not figure out why you were there and could not admit you into the jail until they figured out why you were arrested?

This brings me to the point you raised about poor != brave.  I agree with you.  You have a very good point.  When I was brought in front of the judge after spending 24 hours in jail I was not the only one there for processing that day.  There were about 20 or so people in the box that had been arrested on federal charges (mostly drugs and some weapons charges).

The judge started with the first guy on the list and here is how the entire interaction went with everyone except me:


Out of the 20 people arrested that day I was the only one with representation.  My interaction went something like this:


You are correct.  Poor people are arrested in droves.  I felt sorry for them for a lot of reasons but at that time my get wrenching realization, having spent just one night in jail, was that all those people, and many more before them and many more after them, were going to have to go back to jail until they found an attorney for them and as we all know that could take days.   Days in jail just waiting to get an attorney assigned and get the process started.  

I felt very blessed to have savings, a wife that was able to back me up while I was in jail, a bank that was able to get the IRA cashed out in that short of a time period and on and on.  If fact this entire experience has taught me just how blessed I am and had made me more grateful than ever for my friends and family.

Greg,  

This guy does not bother me at all, just an amateur troll probably increasing his post count so he can sell the account.  He is a great foil for the discussion and is very supportive in avidly bumping my thread for me so all is good.

I really appreciate your support.  You are one of the people here that I respect the most so your post really meant a lot to me.

Thanks.  

Welcome to the club.

I see.  I misunderstood you.  So, you used a public defender in a complex Federal felony case?  I assumed the charges were for DUI or something like that - my bad.  At any rate anyone who would use a public defender in a Federal felony case is much braver than I am.  I don't have the stones to trust my life to someone who basically works for the prosecution and can't be truly adversarial on my behalf without risking all future deals with the prosecution.

My hat's off to you o brave one.  You showed me.

You are also, obviously, more principled than me due to your hard stance on never pleading or dealing when you were totally innocent.  I love your "I am innocent and willing to pay whatever it takes to prove it" stance.  Good for you.  

I tip my hat to you o principled one.  You showed me.

Interesting.  So Bitcoin is "green" after all the hand wringing.

So you have never faced a situation even remotely similar to mine.  Fair enough.

First, I did not plead out.  Yes, they pretty much immediately offered a lesser felony if I admitted guilt.  I did not.  Eventually they offered a small misdemeanor if only I would admit guilt.  I refuse their offer.  After many months and almost $200,000 in legal fees they decided to drop the case against me and against all the seized property if I agreed to let them keep part of the seized property (basically to save face on their part).  This was not a plea deal.  In a plea deal you must admit guilt.  I did not.  This was a straight payoff to avoid the huge costs of fighting something like this.  You may be sitting on $400,000 in liquid assets you would be willing to spend on justice by a committee of people who are not smart enough to get out of jury duty, don't want to be there, take what the judge says as gospel, and wouldn't know a Bitcoin from a hole in the ground - that may be your situation - it is not mine.  In the end we decided for our family's sake the cost and risk was not worth it.

Maybe you don't realize this but even if I won all the cases they do not pay your legal fees and there is no recourse to get your legal fees reimbursed.  And to add insult to injury even if you win, legal costs are generally not tax deductible.  Add that to your calculations there Mr. "you should take it to trial if you are innocent".

So, someone must risk going to jail and total financial ruin in front of a jury in order to impress you?  Have you personally had to face five years in prison on a coin flip?  Even if you have and even if you did take it to trail so what?  My wife and I did struggle with the whole thing over many months.  We went back and forth on it.  Sometimes thinking we should get our day in court to prove beyond doubt that they were wrong and risk the five years in prison.  You can sit there behind you keyboard in your easy chair anonymously spouting your shit but your opinion simply does not matter.

Let's hear your story of bravery and bravado Mr. "proved my innocence at all cost" against a similar situation.

Cooking meth is against the law.  Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.  If you cook meth you should be arrested and put in jail because you have broken the law.  End of story.  My case was not a matter of law - it was a matter of opinion on whether it was a business or not.  There is no opinion whether cooking meth is against the law or not - it is.

Read my post above.

Wow that thread took a turn.  Legal?  Illegal?  Not even close.

I was trading Bitcoins.  I was operating under the assumption that what I was doing was not a business.  They claimed it was.  The regulations are very "clear" on this point:  if it is not a business I did not need a business license, if it was a business I needed a business license.

Now who decides if it is a business or not?  Regulations clearly state "whether is is a business or not is a matter of fact and circumstance".  OK, fine.  Then who is the decider of "fact and circumstance"?  In the US system the decider of "fact and circumstance" is the jury.

I claimed it was not a business, they claimed it was.  It is not illegal to claim it is not a business and technically they did nothing wrong in claiming it was a business.  Both my attorney and the prosecutor stated that "this is a toss up".  They both knew and stated that it could go either way.  My claim might have been declared correct by the jury and I would have been acquitted of all criminal charges against me.  Of course their claim might have been declared correct and then I could have been sentenced to up to 5 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine.

Now realize that even if my claim is declared correct by the jury this does not settle all the civil suits that have been filed against the property seized.  So even if the jury decided with my side (a 50/50 proposition according to both sides) I would still be facing up to an additional $100,000 in attorny's fees to prove my property was innocent in a totally separate civil court.

Faced with the option of taking this to trail and flipping a coin followed by additional expenses to clear my property on the one hand and just donating $40,000 in cash and $40,000 in Bitcoin to the federal asset forfeiture slush fund what would you do?

This had nothing to do with legal versus illegal.  Only an opinion of whether what I was doing was a business or not.

What should they have and would they have done if they did not think they could just walk away with the loot?

Send me a cease and desist letter explaining that they thought what I was doing might be a business and to get a fucking free license if I wanted to continue doing it.

It is inevitable that one Bitcoin will be worth $1,000,000 some day because by design $1,000,000 some day in the future will eventually have the purchasing power of $500 today.  Bitcoin has the opposite design and one Bitcoin should increase in purchasing power over time.  Eventually the rising purchasing power of Bitcoin will intersect with the falling purchasing power of the dollar and one BTC will be worth $1,000,000.

When this will happen is the real question.

I knew I had found one of the Royal Knights at one point.  Found him again, Royal Knight #13:


It is a major accomplishment, not easy to do, and I am sure he is very proud of it.

http://www.bernalillocountysheriff.com/cmdstaff.html

Not only that but they give out awards to their students and LEO will use these awards on their resumes.

https://www.desertsnow.com/pages/view/6

Now most of the stuff they have to do and seize to get the award could be argued as "a good thing" but this requirement:


is a little bit shady.

Yes, they will look at the time of the move relative to the seizure.

They (Homeland Security) are not as bright as they are made out to be on TV but not quite as stupid as you might want them to be.