It's an interesting article and experiment, but there are certainly some pretty big flaws in his arguments.

This is nonsense. With Amazon Prime and 10 bucks, I can have a floppy disk drive delivered to my door within 24 hours. With a car and a local computer store, I can get one within the hour. And this is a technology with is 50 years old and from a time when some houses had a single computer, maybe. We now live in time where every person, let alone every house, has multiple devices using USB - computers and all their peripherals, TVs, games consoles and peripherals, mobile phones, chargers, power banks, cars, etc. There is no way you are going to have any problem using a USB device in 20 years' time.

Again, although wallets may move on from BIP44 or BIP84, support for these will always exist. There is no way in 20 years people will have to manually derive these keys. There are far too many sites, repositories, programs, etc. out there. Only a complete failure of the internet would make every single one of these inaccessible.

If storing coins for 20 years I would also choose something like steel engraving, but rather because I wouldn't want to trust that the digital hardware wasn't going to degrade in that time rather than the reasons above.

Yes. Most recently in July 2014, GHash.IO exceeded 51% of the hashrate. It didn't perform a 51% attack, however, and quickly voluntarily reduced its mining power, vowing to stay below 40% in the future.

It's worth noting that in July 2014, the hashrate of the entire network was around 100,000 TH/s, meaning GHash.IO controlled around 50,000 TH/s. Current hashrates are around 1000x higher at 100,000,000 TH/s, so the amount of power GHash.IO controlled back in 2014 is currently equivalent to 0.05% of the hashrate. Performing a 51% attack now would require enormous amounts of hash power at a huge cost.

Prior to this, when the overall hashrate was even smaller (and so obtaining 51% of it easier), mining pools Deepbit in July 2011 (thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=26656) and BTCGuild in March 2013 (thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152296.0), also crossed the threshold.

Read my posts above. I've provided links to the relevant pages where you can donate bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies if you wish.

Again, please read my posts above. They have indeed already given out the first cryptocurrency grants to three companies which are involved in blockchain development. Atix Labs, which is developing a blockchain platform to match start ups to investors, Prescrypto, which is developing a blockchain platform for medical prescriptions, and Utopixar, which is developing a blockchain platform for rewarding community engagement. Each company has received just short of $100,000 in unspecified cryptocurrency.

I personally think it's pretty cool they are using cryptocurrency donations to fund cryptocurrency based projects aimed at building infrastructure in developing nations.

Earned merits?

Again, as with your initial error from "electrum.hodlister.co", "btc.cihar.com" is the name of one of the servers Electrum is trying to connect to. If you click on Tools -> Network -> Servers, you will find both "electrum.hodlister.co" and "btc.cihar.com" listed in there. You can try selecting different servers, but you may well get the same error with any server.

Provided you have downloaded Electrum only from electrum.org, and have followed the instructions nc50lc has posted above regarding how to verify your download, then there is nothing to worry about. They are false positives.

Have you had any further correspondence from them since the last message from "Diana" that you quoted in your original post? Their forum account still hasn't been online since you opened your first thread. Do we even know if they are aware there is a current scam accusation opened against them?

I'd hold off throwing insults and threatening retaliation until we have at least heard from them. It won't help your case.

Ooft. That's an illustrious list of names to be (undeservedly?) included in. Thanks for the kind words.

I think that's fair, and I happen to think you have a strong case for some sort of compensation. As I said in my previous post, it is far too easy to switch between test credits and BTC, and something like this would eventually have happened to another user (and may still again) if it hadn't happened to you.

This is essentially my point. I believe this to be negligence and poor website design rather than outright maliciousness or an intentional scam. It's essentially Hanlon's razor. Additionally, if they were going to intentionally scam someone, it looks like they've had significantly larger opportunities over the years than your $200.

The national committees of New Zealand and France are both currently accepting bitcoin donations:
https://www.unicef.org.nz/donate-in-crypto
https://lp.unicef.fr/donate-in-cryptocurrencies/

You can also donate directly to UNICEF's Innovation Fund by following the link on the UNICEF NZ page linked above, or here: https://commerce.coinbase.com/charges/36MWGBA2

UNICEF USA certainly used to accept bitcoin donations, but I can't seem to find the link on their website anymore. Not sure why they removed it.

Yeah. Their initial press release about it was back in October. You can read it here: https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unicef-launches-cryptocurrency-fund

UNICEF have 36 national committees, several of which have accepted bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as donations for a number of years, but usually via a payment processor and would sell the currency immediately for fiat. This new Cryptocurrency Fund is using crypto rather than just selling it, providing funding to start-ups and other companies directly in cryptocurrency.

You can read about the first three companies they are providing crypto funding to here: https://www.unicef.org/innovation/stories/Fundblockchain6months. They are Atix Labs, Prescrypto, and Utopixar.

Any update on this HCP?

guigui371 was also running the same experiment. It seems he had a similar period of inactivity before the bot woke up again on Christmas Eve and made another poor trade for another large loss. I assume you have therefore suffered similar losses.

Furthermore, CryptoSparks' last post was 2 weeks ago, and he locked his thread to prevent any more criticism of his bot.

So having reviewed your posts and screenshots, as well as visiting and trying out the site myself, I don't believe you have been intentionally scammed.

You were playing with test credits when your bitcoin was deposited to your account, and you have inadvertently made a large single bet using that BTC. I fully agree that the site should have a much better distinction between test credits and real BTC, since (from what I can tell) you don't even have to change to a new page or flick a switch to swap between them, it just seems to happen automatically when the transaction is confirmed. There is a pop-up, however, which you said in an earlier post you did see.

This seems to be a combination of a poorly designed website and carelessness on your part. It would be nice for them to respond, perhaps even refund you some BTC as a gesture of goodwill, but there is no requirement for them to do so. If you had inadvertently doubled your money, they would be required to pay and I'm sure you wouldn't be complaining.

Yes, there are a lot of poor reviews against them, but they have also been operating for 7 years without (as far as I can tell) a proven scam accusation on this forum. They also seem to have paid out thousands of dollars in tournament and giveaways (in addition to usual casino winnings), so I would be very surprised for them to scam you for $200.

But similarly, just as if a convenience store owner has to provide clear evidence of something being stolen, so do you. You have provided screenshots which show a bet being placed and lost. Your claim is you never made that bet, but an independent third party (i.e. all of us on the forum), have no way to verify that. We need input from both sides here.

Risky? Sure. Illegal? Probably not.

I'm certainly not saying you are lying, but as I said before I wouldn't be willing to support a flag until we have more conclusive evidence.

I think some input from user BitcoinVideoPoker, which seems to be Bitcoin Video Casino's forum account according to their thread in the Gambling section, would be worthwhile prior to opening a flag against them. I've messaged them to draw their attention to this thread. They were last active yesterday.

Here is the evidence we have so far, based on blockchain records and screenshots of OP's account:
A 0.03 BTC deposit was made to OP's account
His account states a 0.03 BTC bet was made (and lost) shortly after (but this could easily be manipulated by the website owner)

At the moment, nothing else is verifiable. OP's claim is that he never made that 0.03 BTC bet, but he does state that the website was "glitchy", and he was betting using "demo" coins at the time.

As far as I can see, there are four possible scenarios here:

• OP made a mistake or the website glitched, resulting in him placing a bet he didn't intend to
• OP made the bet intentionally, but is trying to claim he didn't
• BitcoinVideoCasino has scammed him
• Someone else has access to his account

We are going to need some more input from the website's representative before we can support any flag raised.

You are not the first OP, and you won't be the last. Any service such as PayPal which allows chargebacks or otherwise reversible means of payment is favored by scammers because it is trivially easy for them to reverse their payment once you have sent the bitcoin. Furthermore, selling bitcoin is viewed as "exchanging currency" by PayPal, which is against their Acceptable Usage Policy. As such, they are unlikely to offer much support at all to anyone who is scammed while selling bitcoin on their platform. You should only use PayPal to trade with someone you personally trust or who has a high amount of verified positive trust.

There is a stickied thread on the Marketplace forum explaining this: Beware of PayPal and other reversible transfer services

Do you think we all made a subconscious decision upon joining the Foxclub to send less merit to each other to counter any potential claims of actual merit cycling?

God yeah, my name is annoying as hell. oeleo or even just Leo is fine. I've considered asking theymos to change it, but I do like how easy it is to spot in lists or large paragraphs of text.

I was actually referring to gentlemand's original question of whether we would "keep on trucking elsewhere", but I feel your answer is applicable nonetheless.

Just drop the "link=" and the URL will become clickable.

Alternatively, you can drop most of the code and just use the following:

You can also make the website name itself clickable using the following code:

Which gives this result:

Check out https://spending-bitcoin.com/ for over 1000 sites around the world which accept bitcoin. Their forum thread is here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5198903.0

You can also get a good list of gift card providers here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5208530.0

Although it's great to spend bitcoin directly, with the option to buy prepaid Mastercards and Visa cards, you can shop anywhere at all using bitcoin, even if they don't accept it and you can't find a voucher for it.

There's always Cryptotalk...