Yep. Cheat on your taxes like "everyone does" for a couple grand here and there, and even if you get caught, they might waggle their finger at you and say "Oh you." And, of course, collect the delinquent taxes plus a nice fat penalty and interest. Do it for a few million, though, and you're looking at serious time.
People who get caught at that level often haven't been tracked down by any extraordinary means or any genius investigation. The IRS just gets interested in you for whatever reason and notices you claim to do tech support for a buck above minimum wage and yet you showed up at the audit driving a Rolls, live in a million dollar house, and wear a Rolex.
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Someone who actually got ripped off should start a thread in the Scam Accusation subforum and make sure to post the url of the new thread here. This thread is basically a scam accusation at this point, and should be turned into a formal request for a scammer tag.
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Perhaps they could have some truth in advertising and call it bitwhenever.
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Disincentivize brute-force spamming of the order system by making it costly and people will stop doing it, or else go broke and the same result will happen. Assuming this is just bad bot design and not a deliberate DDoS of some sort.
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It's a tactic carried over from Josh's Bullshido days.
Now isn't that amazing. Know who else was deeply entrenched in rec.martial-arts and bullshido back in the day? Oliver "usagi" Richman. I suppose it isn't that surprising BFL and its associates are basically a bunch of trolls, assholes and Internet Tough Guys.
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I'm sure the people standing in line at Jonestown for their cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid had similar hopes.
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I was greedy, then fearful, and I'm now calm. Iv'e accepted the fact I'm fucked You got it in the wrong order.
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There wasn't ever a serious question about which way this would go...right?
The Speculation forum is still full of people who believe in $300+ bitcoin lol It'll happen. The next bubble will be even higher than that. Maybe the next bubble hits a grand before crashing.
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You still have income taxes from bartering.
They can be a trifle more difficult to collect, like tip income. The IRS still lays claim to them. And, amazingly, tax evasion is still illegal in the land of the U.S. dollar. Who knew it before Karl Denninger told us?
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Imagine, people into a new form of money are in it for the money!
Quelle horreur!
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Down to $50-$70 on smaller exchanges, $76 on Gox.... all falling fast. Looks like the bears win! I hope they win even more. I'd like to buy back in at a better bottom.
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This whole discussion of pyramid vs not is useless. Obviously not. More explicitly, is the USD a pyramid scheme? one that you've worked all your life to achieve? By the "definitions" used by people who make these claims, anything that appreciates in value is a pyramid/Ponzi/whatever derogatory word they want to use. Please, people. Words have meanings.
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So, Phil, do yourself a favour and ask the IRS directly (start by reading their website linked above).
No, do NOT ask the IRS directly. They will generally tend to give a self-serving answer and not one that is necessarily the law. See, for example, the recent IRS opinion that they are allowed to spy on American email despite a direct court ruling telling them they are wrong. Yes, it is a Fox News article, but it correctly states the law. The relevant case is United States v. Warshak. The point is the IRS cannot be trusted to state the law accurately when they stand to make a lot of money (or as they call it revenue) from your ignorance of the law. I would say speak to an accountant, but if the money is substantial enough to trigger an audit, a specialist in tax law may be even better. Do not consult sovereign citizen non-lawyer nutjobs who lose cases and get their suckers sent to prison.
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Is fractional reserve banking (i.e. lending based on a fractional reserve) incompatible with BTC?
I suppose not inherently, but it is not only rather against the philosophy of BTC and many of those who hold it, who would therefore probably never adopt such a system, but it is also against the current characteristics of the currency, which might make it very difficult suddenly to acquire BTC if there were a sudden demand. So I'd say yes, it is incompatible with BTC and can be expected to be so for at least the short and mid-term future, and perhaps for the rest of its existence. I would never keep BTC with an entity that did not have access to its full complement of deposited BTC, though I would prefer some large percentage of that store of BTC be kept in cold storage of some kind in case of hacks, even if that sometimes led to inconvenience. Actually, I generally would not keep BTC with any entity other than myself for any length of time, if I could avoid it.
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It's easy to think, after the fact, that you would have bought and sold at the right times. But there's no bell that goes off to let you know the market has hit the top or the bottom. It's a lot harder when you can only see the chart to the left and not the chart to the right.
As for trying to manipulate the market, you lose money when you do. You can only manipulate the market by buying high or selling low. And then everyone has the same opportunity to take advantage of the manipulated price, not just you. So you bear 100% of the costs of manipulation and get maybe 5% of the profits if you're lucky. Yep, and you assume nobody else out there is smarter or more nimble than you are, because when you buck a market trend, someone else out there is going to bet against you. And if you're unlucky, maybe you get no profits at all and instead lose your shirt.
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It appears to be a common habit for morons and noobs to declare anything a Ponzi they don't understand or somehow lost money on (usually through their own stupidity).
It is annoying because it acts as if words don't have meanings. A Ponzi is a very specific kind of investment scam or (more recently) a kind of gambling game open about its intentions. BTC is simply not a Ponzi by any rational definition of the term (although arguably BTC is somewhat prone to being used in Ponzis but pretty much any currency or commodity could in theory be used in a Ponzi).
No, Bitcoin can reasonably be classified as a pyramid scheme though. Not really, although whereas unlike a Ponzi, which Bitcoin is nothing like, it is merely almost, but not entirely unlike a pyramid scheme. And again, BTC can be used in a pyramid scheme, like bitcoinpyramid, but that is entirely different from being a pyramid scheme.
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It appears to be a common habit for morons and noobs to declare anything a Ponzi they don't understand or somehow lost money on (usually through their own stupidity).
It is annoying because it acts as if words don't have meanings. A Ponzi is a very specific kind of investment scam or (more recently) a kind of gambling game open about its intentions. BTC is simply not a Ponzi by any rational definition of the term (although arguably BTC is somewhat prone to being used in Ponzis but pretty much any currency or commodity could in theory be used in a Ponzi).
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I tend to live somewhat "dangerously" as well, but to allow Java to run, unbidden, from any web browser is foolhardy in the extreme. I now no longer allow Java to run at all, except when I issue it from a shell command line (not as root) and with known software from a known source, just like allowing any other application to run.
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Put it up as a bet on bets of bitcoin!!!! :p
Then they'll just personally serve a page to "Luke-Jr" and nobody else, and declare the bet a push.
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The more you know about large scale business implementations, the more doubtful the words coming from MtGox actually sound. The less you know, the more their story sounds legitimate. Get educated about scaling and you'll quickly know that any problem that can be encountered can be readily solved.
That MTGox is still unable to fix it after this many days just goes to show that priority is being put elsewhere. (IMO) Frankly, their apparent inability to fix what should be the core of their business during a high time of volume almost inevitably suggests that they have some motivation for not doing it. Since the other reason is pure incompetence, neither bodes well for their future or their trustworthiness.
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