Back on topic: Then we discussed pleading guilty to a misdemeanor - I said no. You must have balls of steal. Regardless of guilt or innocence, I think the vast majority of people would have plead guilty to a misdemeanor (especially if the deal involved no jail time) if they were facing the charges you were facing. I can't claim to have tungsten testicles but the deal involved them keeping all my Bitcoins and a lot of other conditions so that made it easier to say no. Sometimes it is a good idea to take a small loss in order to avoid the prospect of many years behind bars. I am not saying this is a good feature of our country's judicial system (I don't think it is), however it is an unfortunate fact of life.
Agreed. Live to fight another day... They offered to drop all charges for a forfeiture of, if I remember correctly, $160,000.
I countered, they countered, we countered, etc. and finally settled on a payment of $80,000 half in cash and half in Bitcoin.
In other words, they were extorting you for $160,000 but let you go for $80,000? If it looks like extortion and it smell like extortion and it sounds like... I really don't see how it could possibly be legal for them to be negotiating with you to drop the charges in exchange for you to drop the claim against your property which would allow them to keep a portion of your property.
It is legal because I agreed to it. Conceptually, legally, at least in theory, I could have always chosen to take the criminal and all the civil cases to trial, right? If the DA AUSA (Assistant United States Attorney - remember this is all Federal) believes you are guilty, and believes they can prove it then they should take you to trial; if they do not then they should drop the charges.
The AUSA and my attorney both agreed that the criminal case was a "coin toss" if sent to a jury. We had a few pre-trial motions to try and assume they all failed the only thing left would have been: Was what I was doing, trading Bitcoins on localbitcoins.com a business or not? They claimed it was, we claimed it was not. Since those wet noodles over at FinCEN did not define what constitutes a business as far a volume of transactions and/or volumes of trades and left it specifically ambiguous as "a matter of fact and circumstance" it would have been up to a jury to decide who was/is right. BTW by not taking my case to trial this question has still not been decided. I don't see what how much of your property the government gets to keep has to do with your guilt or innocence. If the conversation really was something along the lines of that the government would drop the charges on the condition that you would not oppose the seizure of $80,000, then I cannot see how that can be anything other then extortion.
Extortion certainly is one way to look at it. But guilt or innocence of the charge, operating a money transmittal business without a licence, was not decided in my case. In essence we agreed to disagree on the definition of what constitutes a business. I believe that discussions regarding if charges should/would be dropped should be something along the lines of that there is strong evidence the defendant is innocent, and/or there is little enough evidence that a defendant is guilty so that a guilty verdict is highly unlikely and the above is not based on some technicality (e.g. incrementing evidence is thrown out, evidence is not allowed because of an inadvertent mistake in collecting such evidence, etc.).
Since I never disputed the fact, and still do not dispute the fact, that I did trade Bitcoins using the localbitcoins.com platform this case really never was about the evidence. It was about the definition of what constitute a business. edit: I also believe that discussions regarding pleading to a lower charge should involve something along the lines of the fact that you are honest enough about your crimes to admit to them so you get a lesser punishment as a result and/or the government has sufficient evidence to convict you of your charges, however it would be very expensive to bring your case to trial, so in exchange for avoiding a trial you get a lesser punishment and/or there is sufficient evidence to convict you, however bringing your case to trial would cause one (or more) witnesses to have to go through significant trauma/pain in testifying against you and in exchange for allowing them to avoid this you get a lesser punishment.
/edit
The entire process of the plea bargain is always sold as a time and money saver. However, at its core, the process destroys the entire system and here is why: If the cops and procecutors knew that every single person they arrested would be given an (expensive) fair trail before an (expensive) jury using qualified (expensive) attorneys on both sides then they would never in a million years be able to arrest, charge and jail as many people as they think they need to. In other words they would be a lot more picky about who and what they did with their limited resources. The plea bargain system allows them to churn more people through the system. I am curious to see/know what evidence they has presented to be used against you, especially forum posts. (Hopefully you can get a chuckle out of this) Did you at least get tickets to the police ball? Yes, that was another funny, sad, infuriating, cop doing the wrong thing but thinking he actually is doing the guy a big favor video. Well at least he did not shoot him. |
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BurtW,
Don't waste your time responding to people that are participating in a sig ad campaign. They generally don't read the content of the thread, and make a minimal effort to even guess what the thread is even about. Then they drop in an "opinion" so that it looks like they are making an actual contribution to conversation so that they can collect their pay from the ad campaign manager.
They don't really care what the thread is about, nor do they have any interest in any facts or details. Responding to them just gives them an opportunity to blindly respond to your response to get additional posts in and make it look like they are participating in a conversation.
You're more likely to get well thought out logical discussions from a Colorado District Attorney than you are from someone participating in a signature ad campaign.
Yes, I know. But sometime I, we all, get frustrated when we spend a large amount of time telling people what is and it gets buried under the whole signature campaign thing. not sure if you will see this or not, but as a participant in a sig campaign I think bulk blocking all sig campaign participants is a little extreme.
I posted for a long time before finding one to join, and will continue posting after the campaign ends.
I legitimately try to post strictly to the topic at hand, as I have here (aside from this). I see what you say about a lot of low quality posting going on, but mass blocking doesn;t seem conducive to actual conversation.
Yes, of course, not everyone abuses the sig campaigns. I actually used to have one, Bitmixer if I recall, and maybe SWC back in the day. I choose now to use that space for my own agenda but might someday use it again to raise some funds. |
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I think most people don't want to be on the wrong side of the law, myself included. I'm not religious or philosophical about cryptos. I would no more risk prison for that than I would for a gizmo such as my cell phone if it were made illegal.
Have you, or anyone else reading this, ever read anything on here that looked like it might be shady or illegal? Did you immediately report it to the authorities? NO? Then you are on the "wrong side" of this law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/4 |
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i wonder if u got proofs that NSA/CIA/FBI/Cartoon-networks/... are watching bitcointalk's members will U still use it!
Thank u.
i don't see why not!! since i am not doing any criminal activity and not planning on doing any criminal activity, so i don't care. let them watch me  Did you read anything I have said in this thread? Or did you just come in here and drop your steaming pile of opinion on us? Try this one, just one of many I am sure: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/4I especially like the "as soon as possible" part. What you took time to get to a safe location first? GUILTY. PAY UP or it will be three years for you buddy. |
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Someone with less resources, would have had to plead guilty... because they would not have been in a position to pay for expensive respresentation.
I was arrested in a big inter-agency (HSI, DEA, US Marshals, USPS, BATF, etc.) task force operation called "Operation Avalanche". Several others were arrested that same weekend. I believe that all the others arrested either had public defenders or possibly less qualified attorneys. It is not an "apples to apples comparison because other cases involved drugs - mine did not and other cases involved money laundering - mine did not. I don't know the current up to date disposition of their cases but here is the status of their cases as of July 15: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=934268.msg11890239#msg11890239Don't even get me started on the whole public defender thing. Here is a taste: Follow the money, who pays them? So, who do they actually work for? Who are they beholden to? Who can or can't they afford to offend? What is their actual job? Hint: actually defending the accused against the accusation is not it. |
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Thanks Burt for warning us to the dangers. Did they seize bank accounts too?
In my case no. During their investigation they had asked for and received the last four years of statements from every bank account they could tie to me, my wife and my businesses. All of this generated hundreds of pages in their evidence file against me. They went through every transaction in all accounts and pulled out a few transactions they thought interesting as "evidence". However I am not rich and that shows in my bank account balances they had right there in evidence so they did not think it worth seizing. What they did assume from my low bank account balances was that "he must have a very large stash of cash and Bitcoins somewhere", hence the tracker on my car (to help them locate my secret stash) and the huge raid on my home and corporate offices to find and seize the assumed millions in Bitcoins and cash. My daughter laughs about it some saying "they came looking for lots of money and lots of drugs but all they found was lots of my toys" |
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i have nothing to hide and from my point of view we are not doing nothing bad here, so i fell really safe  If you doing something illegal, you should be worried... Bitcointalk does not protect your privacy and it's not a platform to commit crimes.... We discuss Bitcoin matters here.
What if there is a law out there, a Federal felony that carries up to five years in Federal prison and a $250,000 fine, that you do not know you are violating? What if this law is so esoteric that when you are arrested your top notch $500 per hour Federal criminal attorney has to look it up because he has never heard of it? What if said law was modified by Marshal Law (the "Patriot" act) to allow Civil Asset Forfeiture to apply in your case. What if said law is one of the handful of Federal felonies that has no requirement of intent on the part of the defendant? In other words not intending to break said law is not a defense.What if you and your family are investigated by Homeland Security for 18 months, whatever "evidence" they collect, concoct, or flat out lie about is taken to a grand jury? Said testimony is forever sealed so that neither you or your attorney ever get to see it (unless you go to trial) - thus allowing them to concoct or flat out lie with impunity? As an example what if one of the lead investigators/experts that testifies states that it is his belief that "there are little or no legitimate uses for Bitcoins", hypothetically of course. What is said secret sealed indictment is then used to generate a secret sealed search warrant for your home and business? What if the Feds then execute said secret sealed search warrant and take all of your cash, bitcoins, computers, all of your personal financial records and all of your corporate financial records and anything else they can get their hands on? Now, all of the stuff they take is assumed to be guilty of a crime and it is up to you to hire an attorney to prove that your stuff is innocent of any crimes - or they get to keep it all? No, I guess you are right, you have nothing to worry about since you have read and fully understand all Federal, State and local laws. Good for you. |
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For per transaction there is 10000 satoshi ...... so if BTB price be $500,000 you must pay $50 for per transaction ....
So your calculation is wrong at base ......
You do know that the fee gets adjusted periodically right? If the price of BTC goes up considerably then the fee will get reduced. No ... i didn't know ... so explain more ...... Who will reduced it ? Is btc network intelligent ? I don't think so ......... I am paying 10000 satoshi fee for years .... when the price was $1115 till today that price is $220 Fees are set by economic and time considerations by the users of the network. I think this explains everything you would ever want to know about fees, and more: http://fc15.ifca.ai/preproceedings/bitcoin/paper_8.pdfLook at the chart on page 9, it shows how the amount of fees paid by the users have changed over time. This is not a trivial subject as you can see by reading the paper. |
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I really like my signature so you would have to pay me pretty well to change it.
PM me with your offer.
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In other news, my dear old friend cypherdoc seems to have gone dark, at least here on trolltalk. Do you suppose he retained the same attorney who provided you with what sounds it was probably sage advice about keeping one's mouth shut? That's got to be a tough row to hoe for a guy like Dr. Lowelife.
Anyone with an active case will go dark. I worry about DeathAndTaxes, he has been dark for a long time. |
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If you dont mind me asking BurtW how much money were they after you for?
Well it turns out the "justice" system is more about "let's make a deal" than anything to do with justice. From the moment I was arrested until they dropped the charges it felt more like a real estate deal than anything else. First we discussed a me pleading to a "lessor felony" - I said no. Then we discussed pleading guilty to a misdemeanor - I said no. At this point I did not like the direction of my attorney and the law firm and they didn't know a Bitcoin from a hole in the ground. I had already spent $25,000 - a lot of it explaining to them what Bitcoins are how they work etc. So, my wife found me a new law firm that knew what Bitcoins are and more importantly is in California. Why does that matter? I am glad you asked. In order to get any kind of adversarial activity from your attorney you must get one that does not deal with the same prosecutor day in and day out. An attorney from a law firm in Denver can't be too adversarial with the prosecutor because they know that they will be dealing with the same prosecutor next month, next year and they need to be able to maintain rapport in order to cut the deals for their (guilty) clients that is their bread and butter. Things went better with my new attorney: They offered to drop all charges for a forfeiture of, if I remember correctly, $160,000. I countered, they countered, we countered, etc. and finally settled on a payment of $80,000 half in cash and half in Bitcoin. For this they dropped both the criminal case against me and the civil cases against all the property they seized from me. This was a bargain since it was estimated that going to trial on the criminal case was going to cost me between $75,000 and $100,000 and going to trail on the civil case against my stuff was going to cost me a minimum of $50,000. And, of course, it was not a forgone conclusion that I would win either or both of the cases. So they dropped the charges and I got everything else (computers, phones, boxes of financial records, the rest of my Bitcoins, etc.) back. |
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I got nothing to hide. I don't do anything illegal with bitcoin. They watch everything anyway. If they want to know what kind of porn I watch I can save them the trouble. Lesbians.
They don't give a crap about porn unless you do kiddie and you have assets to seize. It's assets, assets, assets. I'm sure there are many departments that are monitoring this forum, reddit, and other bitcoin related activites as well. Some of those departments might communicate with others, some may not. While the NSA, CIA, and FBI did not feel a need to get involved directly in your case, they very well may be monitoring things.
There was quite a lot of paperwork involved in getting the warrant to put the tracker on my car. I expect there is even more paperwork to bring in something from the NSA or CIA into a case like mine and they get almost everything they need directly from the companies under their thumb with a lot less paperwork. For example, my cell phone carrier (Sprint, but that does not matter they will all do it) coughed up every phone number in and out of my phone and every text sent and received even the texts that I deleted. So I expect that unless there is a very good reason they don't bother with the extra effort needed to bring in the recordings we all know they keep of every phone conversation etc. By the way, if you ever happen to be in the Chicago area, let me know. Maybe we can get together for a drink or a meal. I'd love to have a chance to sit and talk with you a bit.
Likewise if you are ever in Boulder let's get together. BTW I will be giving a talk entitled "BurtW - Arrested for Trading Bitcoins" in the Denver/Boulder area. Here is my current speaking schedule: Libertarian Lunch Thursday, September 10, 2015 12:30 PM Carelli's Restaurant, 645 30th Street, BoulderLibertarian Party of Boulder CountyColorado Bitcoin Society Monthly Meetup Monday, September 14, 2015 6:00 PM Southern Hospitality, 1433 17th Street, DenverColorado Bitcoin SocietyRepublican Breakfast Wednesday, October 7, 2015 7:00 AM The Plaza Conference Center, 1850 Industrial Cir, LongmontReservations: Rebekah Vicknair |
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Homeland Security is watching this site and they have homeland security agents, confidential informants and cooperating witnesses monitoring and posting to this site. That is a fact. Many of my posts and many posts in discussions I had on this forum were placed into evidence against me before I was arrested. I couldn't give a fuck if they do or not. I'm not doing anything wrong either way, they can knock on my door anytime they want.
Big talk. Be careful what you wish for. It's not and I am. I'm a normal working class person with an interest in cryptocurrency.
So was I. About $300,000 later I know first hand how they treat "working class person with an interest in cryptocurrency" if they think you have assets they think they can get away with seizing. Same here buddy I'm not doing anything wrong either same as most on here. I'll make them a nice cup of tea if they knock on my door.
Several agents approached me outside my office, immediately took my phone, cuffed me and then took me to a waiting vehicle. I did not have time to ask them in for tea at my office. They then took me to my house where about 35 agents were tearing it apart looking for assets to seize. I tried to make them tea at my home but it was too difficult to do in handcuffs. I have always assumed that NSA, CIA, FBI, are watching bitcointalk members.
I still use it, and I'm happy to announce to any of them exactly who I am and where to find me.
The NSA, CIA and FBI were not involved in my case. It is Homeland Security, the US postal service, the US marshals service and a few others you need to be concerned about. The NSA is watching everything and everyone lol.. I really wouldn't care because I'm not doing anything illegal here (or anywhere). If they wanna watch me watch porn, then they can knock themselves out  I also used to believe in the tooth fairy but a couple nights in solitary confinement in a Federal detention center help me see reality. i wonder if u got proofs that NSA/CIA/FBI/Cartoon-networks/... are watching bitcointalk's members will U still use it!
Thank u.
I know they are watching me and I am here. For more information see: http://www.jmwagner.com/http://www.burtw.com/ |
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I will be giving a talk entitled "BurtW - Arrested for Trading Bitcoins" in the Denver/Boulder area. Here is my current speaking schedule: Libertarian Lunch Thursday, September 10, 2015 12:30 PM Carelli's Restaurant, 645 30th Street, BoulderLibertarian Party of Boulder CountyColorado Bitcoin Society Monthly Meetup Monday, September 14, 2015 6:00 PM Southern Hospitality, 1433 17th Street, DenverColorado Bitcoin SocietyRepublican Breakfast Wednesday, October 7, 2015 7:00 AM The Plaza Conference Center, 1850 Industrial Cir, LongmontReservations: Rebekah Vicknair |
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Efficiency isn't a factor if everybody has access to the same tech. If you have a computer and the rest of the world has a typewriter then you have an advantage, but if everyone has the same tools then it is irrelevant.
Efficiency is a factor for everyone when it comes to profit or loss. If you have a computer (ASIC miner) and the rest of the world is using typewriters (GPU mining) then you will make a boatload more profit. On the other hand if everyone else has computers (ASIC miners) and you only have a typewriter (GPU miner) then you will lose money hand over fist and will be forced to shut down your mining operation (unless you like flushing money down the toilet). What I'm curious about is the stuff like Tesla battery/solar units, and if they're successful (I think even the first gen will be), then power consumption isn't a drain on the planets currently finite electricity. If it is the case that the price miners need to make to not want to sell is important whilst waiting for fees to replace coin generation, then the Tesla type stuff could change the formula. Perhaps someone will invent a new capacitor/battery to sink lightning for storage, who knows. There is a lot we don't know.
How much electricity costs on average for all miners is in the equation for sure [see the equation]. How much a specific miner pays for their electricity will heavily affect their personal profit. If they pay less for their electricity then they will make more profit if they pay more they will either make less profit or, if their electricity is too expensive, they will lose money. What miners will naturally do is purchase the cheapest electricity possible. "Stuff like Tesla battery/solar units" are the most expensive possible electricity so no miner in their right (economic) mind will use that electrical source. Scarcity and adoption would be more important imho.
Whatever drives the price up will also drive up the energy consumption - that is the point. For per transaction there is 10000 satoshi ...... so if BTB price be $500,000 you must pay $50 for per transaction ....
So your calculation is wrong at base ......
You do know that the fee gets adjusted periodically right? If the price of BTC goes up considerably then the fee will get reduced. |
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Boulder, Coloraodo: 86.4018% MALE USER
9163 USERS
Very cool map.
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I use to sell in person until someone tried to rob me at knife point. The sad thing is I limited myself to only 1 BTC sells at a time to avoid someone stealing large amount of coin. I thought at a lower amount, a person wouldn't bother trying to do something like that. Sadly that situation has led me to no longer sell face to face.
I used to sell in person until homeland security robbed me for a large amount of cash and bitcoins at gun point. The sad thing is I was just doing it as a hobby to support Bitcoin. I thought homeland security had more important things to do than bother someone promoting Bitcoin as a hobby. Sadly the threat of five years in prison has led me to no longer sell face to face. |
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