Seven hours into 21 December here and the world is showing no signs of ending.  Guess I'll just have to clean the house in preparation for Christmas guests after all.

It's worth pointing out that most Bitcoin businesses are private companies and their exact ownership structure isn't always public - some have investors whose identities aren't public knowledge who may also be involved in other Bitcoin enterprises so it's not just about whether you trust the public faces of a company.

I wouldn't exactly call the idea of a blood bank from which you can only obtain blood if you donate "mainstream".  It's interesting that not one of their board members is a health professional.  Their claim that blood bank shortages are in any way related to "worldwide economic stability" is also rather dubious.

If the privacy policy was violated, it really doesn't matter whether the information was made public.  The fact that it Blockchaininfo's data was accessed and used by a third party (and BitcoinStore is a third party, regardless of Roger's involvement in both ventures) at all is the problem.  Either every other Bitcoin business should be able to access Blockchain info's user data or no other Bitcoin business should be able to access it.  People would be howling blue murder if MtGox decided to start giving out information on it's users to other Bitcoin businesses and rightly so.  People would also be very pissed off if every time they owed a company money in the real world that company could get access to the records of other businesses of which they were a customer.

Personally, I'm glad that Roger did chose to make this public and that Nethead responded publicly because if this matter had been kept private no-one would have been aware of the inappropriate sharing of information.  While Blockchaininfo and Bitcoinstore have addressed this, we have no idea  whether other Bitcoin businesses are also sharing user data without the knowledge of their users.

Apart from making the circumstances under which they'll share information with other businesses very clear in their user agreements, perhaps Bitcoin businesses also need to make clear to their employees and investors what constitutes appropriate use of any personal user information to which they have access.

No.  Breaching a contract is usually a civil matter with civil remedies available.  Theft is a criminal matter with criminal law remedies available - thus Roger would have every right to disclose all of the information his business held on the customer to law enforcement or to seek recovery of the overpayment through civil action if he chose that path.  The issues here are both the obtaining of information from a third party as well as the disclosure of information held by the business involved.  NetHead violating the ToS of BitcoinStore (if you hold that's what he did) did not justify the violation of Blockchain.info's privacy policy.  They are separate entities and the fact that Roger is involved in both of them is irrelevant.

We need to remember that there's a significant amount of cross-ownership of Bitcoin entities and this is a situation which could easily arise again unless all Bitcoin services take appropriate measures to protect user data from being shared with other Bitcoin businesses which may have common employees/investors or they explicitly advise their users that they will share that data with other businesses.

Pretty much every real world company I deal with explicitly says that they will share information with credit reporting agencies if you don't pay them, as well as with the authorities if presented with a valid request.  Some also state that they will share information with other companies within the same group (often you can opt out of that as it's usually a marketing thing).

The point is that they explicitly state the circumstances under which information will be shared and with whom.  If Bitcoin businesses are going to share information with each other, they need to explicitly state that in their terms of service and privacy policies.  They also need to be very mindful of the types of data which they can legally share and what records need to be kept in terms of data-sharing.

Well then let's just have all Bitcoin organisations share their user information and make it public whenever they feel they've been wronged.  We could start with a list of people who had negative balances on Bitcoinica, everyone who's ever tried to defraud MtGox, and people who didn't return Nefario's overpayments.


The privacy statement would need to state that your private information can be released to other companies and made public by them -remember it was blockchaininfo's user information, not BitcoinStore's own information, which was made public - the user information of a different company than that which had the dispute with its own customer.  Kind of ironic given how much people worry about the possibility of Bitcoin businesses releasing user information to the authorities without a warrant.

Really?  Josh is an investor in the new company which runs Bitcoin Magazine.  Would you be fine with him him having access to BM's user records and using that information if there was a dispute with a BFL customer who received an overpayment on a refund?

As I live in the future, the world's going to end here in about 6 and a half hours so I guess I won't be attending either.

So it's pretty much just a private blood bank.


You're going to have a hard time enforcing any kind of trademark to prevent an organisation using "xxx coins".   

The phone which was stolen?

I'm curious about whether Roger has any special access to the user records of other businesses in which he's an investor, such as BitInstant and Coinlab.  As mentioned earlier, there's a lot of "inbreeding" in the Bitcoin economy and the relationships between business owners and other entities in which they've invested really need to be clarified now that this issue has arisen.

Why are you online, dank, when according to your last post you're supposed to be riding to California today?

If he's not an experienced rider, he's going to have trouble keeping a bike upright for hundreds of miles, never mind a couple of thousand miles. Whatever his romantic fantasies might be, it takes considerable physical and mental effort to make a long distance road trip like that on a bike and endurance doesn't seem to be one of dank's strong points.

Well he is planning on riding a donorcycle from the East coast to the West coast in the next few days.  I'd say that the chances of him doing that straight are close to zero.

Surprise, surprise.  He's sought an extension of time to repay squall.  I'm sure dank will have no problem pulling almost $1,000 out of his ass in the next few days.  Hope his friend hasn't given that Rolex to his mother yet - dank might need the proceeds after all.   

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93003.msg1407377#msg1407377

I hope he comes through for you on time, squall, despite recent events suggesting that he's in a financially precarious position.  Repaying you should be his top priority right now, not bike trips to the West Coast.

The Universe is clearly telling dank to stop squandering the planet's resources on material things like cars and iPhones (he's had bad luck with phones lately).

Kind of interesting that he wasn't able to make his rent without help a few days ago but now he can afford to get a bike and travel to California to organise the music festival which was supposed to happen on 21 December (and which he assured us he still had plenty of time to organise).

And how's he planning on organising meeting up with his "contacts" when he arrives in LA (a few days before Christmas, no less) if he's lost their numbers because he's too stupid to back up his phone?

It astonishes me that dank is able to look at what he writes on here and think it sounds even remotely credible.  If you're going to dribble bullshit, at least put some effort into making it sound like it might be plausible.

Actually, you can't deduce that at all.  We've had thieves in the past who've deliberately sent coins to known, "innocent" addresses. And if your hypothetical thief is only stealing a few coins he's as likely to spend them directly as he is to move them to another address he controls.

What BTC investments?  On the whole, BTC investments have had a pretty crappy track record this year. While it's possible that they converted customer payments to BTC and put everything in MtGox hoping to ride the exchange rate wave, it's not especially likely.  Remember that Bitcoin prices weren't that great when ASIC pre-orders opened which is why so many people were investing in HYIPs.  If BFL was converting pre-order revenue into BTC and placing it in HYIPs, I suspect that someone would have broken ranks and leaked that information by now.