I would not think so (but could be wrong.)  In this case, nobody was delivered something which did not exist.


Exactly this.  In this case they adjust your account balance to make it look like you have something when in fact you do not.  In my book, that is fraud.

As a matter of principle I keep almost all my BTC in my own wallet on my own machine and in my own house (with off-site backups.)  I keep at the exchange only what I need for trading and can afford to lose if they disappear.  That is quite practical to do with BTC, and if a trading house is reluctant to allow me to transfer my BTC with ease and at will, that would be a bit red-flag to me.  It _should_ be no skin off their ass and relatively little effort to allow me do what I want with my BTC.

I also make a point of keeping my stock certs in a safe deposit box, but that is much less practical than with BTC.  Possibly by design.

I expect this is a joke, but as a mea-culpa...

Been there, done that.  I did it at the same time I _should_ have been reading the info that SA dug up about Bruce and co.

I think it is more likely than not that my contribution went toward blow and y-chromosome prostitutes in Thailand.  One way or another, I don't see any accounting of where my coins went, and block explorer shows relatively little activity on Memorydealer's address.

I can only hope that somehow some of the value I contributed goes toward some of the people Bruce scammed in his-n-Ed's  'Bold Funding' exploits if justice is ever served in that case.

At the end of the day, I have a clear concience in knowing that I use Bitcoin primarily for charity...or try to.  And at this time, that is about all it is good for.  Earlier I had some naive hope that Bitcoin would serve to better mankind in some way.  I still hope that it will and think it is possible, but am not holding my breath.  My interest is not far more directed to seeing if I can enrich myself personally from it thanks to the lead of most of the active players in the space.

Ya, ya, of course you were.  -snicker-

You clearly have no idea what 'naked shorting' is...which is a good reason not to play around with it (or any form of leverage.)

 - Shorting is borrowing something, then selling it.

 - 'Naked shorting' is simply selling that something without bothering to own it or borrow it in the first place.

The idea is to buy it back later at a better price and return it to where you got it, and pocket the difference in the price.  That difference is in your favor if the value of the item goes down.  That is why 'shorting' is 'betting against'.

So, if you can sell BTC to someone without having any to sell, go for it.  I am sure that some people can do just that.  I doubt that _you_ will ever be able to.

To the guy who PM'd me...er...'thanks'.  Don't worry about being a dick.  I certainly don't.  And I employ sarcasm liberally...

No kidding.  Next thing you know, he'll be accusing Bruce Wagner of having a record of fraud or something.  What a waste of time to listen to such people.

Sorry the guy lost you.  I'll try to be helpful again.

You want to short with someone elses liquidity?  Go to Bitcoinica.

You want to _naked_ short (and be on the winning side)?

 a) find an exchange who will work with you on the ponzi scam. *

or

 b) set up your own.

* If the Bitcoin network goes down before you run out of participants who will take something you are asserting is a bitcoin, it's not technically a ponzi operation...just good business.  If you can induce the Bitcoin network to go down by virtue of or as a side effect of your naked short operations, congratulations, you've won.  Good luck with that.

To quote Nelson from The Simpsons:  "Ha ha".

I am looking forward to macbook-air coming back here and whining like a baby.

That's the best news I've heard in a while.  I'll likely be bumping up my hoarding operation and taking the acquisition part of it to the next level (once I study his comments for myself at least.)

The under capitalized ones at least.  Hopefully some of these (if there are any) will man up and post so we not-yet-bitcoinica guys can get some lulz.

Got any insights or guesses about where we are on that path, and/or what the curve looks like (that you wish to share on this public forum?)

I just watched his hour long show on alpaca socks.  Or parts of it.  He's pumping a new on-line wallet service believe it or not!  One of the SA guys pointed out on a different thread that he is due in court in a few days, presumably as fallout from his mortgage scamming operation.  Wonder if _that_ will slow him down.  The SA guys claims that the records show him to have skipped his last few court appearances, but I could not see that conclusively in the records the guy pointed to.

I'm still waiting for the footage from 'inside Mt Gox'.  They, the bonus guys, and the 'upscale Chipotele' guy, still seem to have a cozy relationship with Bruce judging by the sponserships.  When I got interested in BitCoin Bruce seemed to have big wood for Tradehill and even seemed to deprecate Mt Gox to some extent.  Now it seems like Tradehill is non-grata on his shows for some reason.  Sometimes I wish I were a fly on various walls.

Watched it.  I must say that the questions from Matthew were decent and the pace was favorable compared to certain other hosts.   If the Q&A was not scripted, great job Matthew L. 'clown of the earth' Wright and Zhou Tong.  If it was scripted, good job anyway.  Maybe I'll fiddle with the Bitcoinica at some point (assuming I can do so using API's.)

Seems to me that there is a mix-up between 'love' and 'hate'.  Why would they come here if they 'hated' it?  When I was into trolling I 'loved' the gun loons usenet groups even though I had no particular interest in guns pro or con.  It was just very easy to stir the hive into an amusing state.

That would be terrific.  I was only going to get 100 BTC, but I screwed up and got to many and couldn't find anything else I wanted to dump USD into either.  If they get that low and the network itself remains sound, I'll add a zero to my initial target.  And pick up a couple hundred extra to lose while trying my hand at trading or blow on overpriced trinkets available from the Bitcoin entrepreneurs.  Ya, I'm in the red so far (on my BTC speculations that is) and it seems very possible that that will be the end state.  I hope not, but if so I'll survive.

I like it!

Bruce can do the accounting and Mark can do security.

We probably should have Yubi keys (see image) so that the 99% of people who don't use them can be blamed for any problems.

So, did my and FAtlas's comments earn a spot in the memory hole because:

 - carping about my e-mail addy being released due to bitcoingtalk.org incompetence was considered not properly on-topic (on the 'Forum hack user data' thread)  or

 - did I not show the proper level of righteous indignation at the antics of the SA '13 year olds'?

Not that it matters greatly.  It is just another in a long list of amusing things associated with Bitcoin and the people involved.  Maybe I am remembering the wrong thread anyway.

They stop entire categories of attacks which not everyone is especially prone to.  SSO is a nice to have and very worthwhile in a lot of cases, but it introduce yet another layer of expense and complexity.  I don't use one at my exchange but I am quite careful about my username, password, access methods, etc.

Most importantly, I do consider the funds I have at my exchange to be disposable.  I consider the risk from incompetence, dishonesty, and government intervention to put the assets I have at my exchange at risk more than my authentication being compromised.  A good number of people would be well advised to NOT follow suite here.

I must say, it would take balls of steel to fuck with people who have stolen a large amount of money and wish to capitalize.  If one does not have a pretty good sense of their dispositions and means at least.  That would be a much bigger commitment to Bitcoin than I could ever muster.

Seems to me that...

Naked short selling relies on selling someone something which does not exist.  This is possible with stocks because the DTCC allows it to some extent and because the DTCC is out of the loop in ex-clearing situations.  The buyer _thinks_ they have bought shares, and that is what shows up in their Scottrade accounts, but in reality what they have is an IOU.

So, as long as you can give a buyer something which they can be convinced is a BTC, knock yourself out.  If you work with an exchange or develop your own app which shows a BTC balance of your choosing, you can probably get away with it for some time.