Mmm, not really. I think it was created just for profit. The operator is serving a double lifetime, but the verdict was highly controversial and very unfair.
You can find more details here:
https://freeross.org/


There's a problem here, if he stole (or however we want to call that) bitcoins from users, then it would be expected for authorities to make at least some attempt to identify original owners and try to reimburse them instead of just selling their assets and keeping the profits.
But if he stole from SilkRoad-owned stash, then the feds could seize that as proceeds from illegal activities.


I think that's broadly in line with the legal definition in most countries, but the "to gain unauthorised access" is the key here. From what I read, it was not really the case.
Possibly, with a help of a good lawyer, he could possibly get away without serving any time, but since all his money got seized, he's unlikely to afford one. A little prison time probably will do him good.

Why reply to a post from 2019 if you could just bump your own thread ?
But good to see coinmap is still alive, I completely forgot about it but had this thread on watchlist.

Quick question, how do you add new businesses? All I see is this info:


But I can't see any option to do it?

Correct. $11,200 to be precise, as the payout was actually 1.008 not 1.01.


Personally, I don't think he was very experienced, if he was he would probably know that you can get badly burned by betting on massive favorites, but I'd be guessing he had done that few times before (probably with smaller amounts), was successful and got carried away. It's way easier to stop gambling after a big loss than after a series of wins.

And I suspect he might have gambled with money that wasn't quite his or that he held for some purpose (business funds etc), for the reasons I stated in the previous post (he saw $11,000 as a reward worth the risk).

Which kind of begs a question - is stealing from an illegal site illegal itself? I don't think there's any identified victim in this case. If there were - bitcoins should've been returned to them. I don't think the "no victim - no crime" would be applicable here, but the whole situation is still kind of weird, especially considering he didn't hack the site, just took advantage of the glitch:

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The article says they have sold the first batch and will be selling 4 more during the calendar year. So it's not like they're dumping it all at once.

Dlatego napisałem że wszystko się rozchodzi o to ile taki pojedynczy inwestor posiada i jaki taka kwota może mieć wpływ na rynek.
Nie mam pojęcia ile wynosi sumaryczna kwota "normalnego" dumpu, ale nie spodziewałbym się że sprzedaż 140k btc w krótkim czasie miałaby jedynie minimalny wpływ na cenę. Te 140k nie zostanie zdumpowane zamiast bitcoinów które są codziennnie rzucane na sprzedaż tylko zostaną do nich dorzucone potęgując efekt. Do tego - jeżeli MSTR bedzie zmuszone sprzedać, to prawdopodobnie bedzie to spowodowane niskim kursem BTC, czyli dumpujacych będzie dużo jeszcze zanim MSTR zacznie sprzedawać.

Tak czy inaczej, jednostka posiadająca znaczną ilość btc nie jest dobrą wiadomością dla pozostałych inwestorów, no chyba że wiemy na 100% że nie zostaną zdumpowane. No i możemy dywagować kiedy suma staje się "znacząca".



Głośno myślałem i trochę głupoty mi wyszły (zmęczenie robi swoje). Ale w skrócie, nie bardzo ogarniam logiki emitowania udziałów i kupowania bitcoinów z przychodów z ich sprzedaży. Przykład:
Jeżeli jesteś jedynym udziałowcem spółki, która jedyne co robi to trzyma bitcoiny, załóżmy że spółka ma 9 akcji (100%) i trzyma 9 bitcoinów. Każda akcja jest warta tyle co 1 bitcoin, powiedzmy $30k.
Emitujesz dodatkowo 1 akcję i sprzedajesz na rynku za $30k, z przychodu kupujesz 1 bitcoina.
Spółka ma teraz 10 btc, ale ty masz teraz 90% (a nie 100%) więc wartość twoich udziałów to dalej 9btc (albo $270k) więc nic się dla ciebie nie zmieniło.

No chyba że sprzedajesz akcje po lepszej cenie niż wartość księgowa (np kupujący płaci extra za możliwość zainwestowania w btc).

I know. I didn't make the headline.


Bitcoin was trading much lower back then when he stole it.
But shame on him for not destroying that popcorn tin before cops got their hands on it...


Because the site was highly illegal and its operator (Ross Ulbricht) is serving a double life time.

Oczywiście że ma znaczenie. Ryzyko że tysiące indiwidualnych inwestorów nagle, w tym samym czasie, postanowi sprzedać jest od groma mniejsze niż że zrobi to pojedynczy podmiot. Więc wszystko się rozchodzi o to jak dużo btc taki pojedynczy inwestor posiada i jak taki dump może wpłynąć na rynek.



Artykuł jest jest z 2021, czyli z czasów gdy MSTR radził sobie lepiej jeśli chodzi o swoje podstawowe operacje i autor jest trochę mało obiektywny (sam przyznaje "I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of MSTR..."). Ale wspomina że "MSTR issued $500 million in new debt to purchase an additional 13,005 BTC", czyli robili zakupy fundowane emisją długu, zakupy z emisji akcji były bardziej w planach.

O ile dobrze rozumiem koncept zakupów bitcoina z nowo emitowanych akcji, to z punktu widzenia obecnych inwestorów i zakładając że cena rynkowa akcji skorelowana jest z cena Bitcoina - to miałoby to sens tylko wtedy kiedy cena akcji/bitcoina stoją wyżej od ceny za która my kupiliśmy akcje MSTR. Czyli byłoby to ekwiwalentem sprzedawania Bitcoina na górce.
Dokupowanie bitcoina z emisji akcji kiedy bitcoin jest w dołku, wiązałoby się ze stratą dla obecnych inwestorów.

Co do akcji MSTR jako produktu zastępczego dla Bitcoinowych ETFów - to będzie działać tylko wtedy kiedy aktywa Bitcoinowe będą mieć odpowiednio wysoką proporcję w porównaniu do innych aktywów i kiedy ich podstawowe operacje (business software) będą stabilne i nie będą przynosić strat. Bo co z tego że Bitcoin będzie szedł w górę jeżeli zyski bedą zjadane przez nierentowne operacje i brak płynności finansowej.

Swoją drogą ciekawe co by sie stało gdyby MSTR zlikwidował większośc operacji, zostawiając tylko jakieś symboliczne i stał sie jedynie wehikułem do trzymania Bitcoina. Czy SEC zapukałby do ich drzwi  

There was no way he could lounder a huge amount like $3 billions, especially when he's autistic with no social calibration. Per article, he cashed out $700k just to have a pile of cash "like in movies". He was doomed to fail.

Funnily enough, he was involved in Bitcoin since early days, so if he just bought some (with the money he was spending on coke and booze) and hold, he could be rich and his wealth would be legit.

Anyhow, since this story is pretty interesting and Press board is not really meant for discussions, here's the topic on the main board: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5449502.0

I posted this yesterday in "Press", but this story surely deserves a topic on the main board.

Geeky crypto thief, 32, jailed for hiding $3billion in Bitcoin in popcorn tin admitted to trying to use the cash to score women - as government offloads stolen gains on Coinbase
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11985885/Bitcoin-scammer-admits-using-money-stolen-gains-impress-women-hes-sentenced-year.html


In short, an autist has been sitting for 10 years on a bitcoin stash worth over $3 billion, cashing out parts of it to try to impress hoes. That's a pathetic story and shows how miserable life without a higher purpose is even if you have tonnes of money. But there's also other interesting mention there:


Hmm, could it be that this has something to do with Bitcoin struggling to keep above the $30k?

Men, in general, are more interested in things (so, by an extent, in technology) and women are more interested in people. That's why we've seen tech degrees dominated by men and psychological degrees by women. At least that was the case before forced gender parities.

That means that even know there are some women genuinely interested in tech and good at what they do, the very top of the field would consist of men in the vast majority. This means that if we ever live to a time when most Bitcoin developers are female, we should be at least a little bit concerned.

No. We need to curb feminism and restore the natural order of patriarchy. We shouldn't be happy that men and women are becoming indistinguishable. Women, when given real choice would rather stick to feminine roles, but emasculated and castrated "men" are not reliable in their roles and doing their part. So women have to step up and do the manly tasks as well, which distorts natural gender dynamics and will contribute to the collapse of western civilisation.

The beauty of Bitcoin and other open source projects is that you can't really discriminate anyone even if you wanted to. Anyone is free to get onboard without anyone's permission.


You must have very low opinion of women's performance in the crypto space if you think their "survival" is dependent on what others think of them.

If you're convinced that Bitcoin is here to stay and that it'll keep outperforming other assets, then it makes sense to convert any spare cash into bitcoins. The problem starts when you buy bitcoins with borrowed money and when you're making losses on your principal business operations.
I don't know the exact number, but I think Microstrategy would be forced to sell long before bitcoin would hit as low as $5k.

Apparently, they only sold that to get some tax benefit and bought another 810 btc two days later.

The problem is, the "fun" part of gambling is the expectation of winning. Sure, there are some other factors, such as drinks or social interactions in brick-and-mortar casinos, but I can't imagine many people would bother stepping into a casino (or logging in) if they knew for sure that they will end up losing.
So gambling is not quite like other forms of entertainment and you can't really separate the "fun" part from the money.

And, what's funny, most people would probably feel much better if they drank away $200 in a bar with their mates, than if they lost $100 in a casino. Because losing always has some negative emotional load.

If you were rich enough to not care about losing $1.4 million, then why would you even care about trying to win a lousy $14k? Doesn't make much sense, does it?
And if you got rich on your own, especially if you got there with your hard work - you'd probably have much more respect for money not to splash it out in such a way.

That being said, the guy had an access to a liquid $1.4m, so he was not an average Joe either. So who knows...

Yup, claiming physical rewards, especially something like an expensive car, is highly impractical. That's why I think it's all more of a marketing play and that freebitco.in are probably not even prepared for anyone opting for anything other than bitcoins.


Why are almost all people here afraid of the taxman by default 
There's nothing illicit in winning a lottery, at least not in most western countries, so if the tax is due (some jurisdictions won't even tax you on such winnings), you just pay it and you should still have a nice amount left to enjoy without fear.

Hiding winnings in bitcoins makes no sense, unless you literally don't intend to cash them out in your life.

That's a bold and wild claim sir  Any source to substantiate this?


That's probably it. The thing about risk-taking is that it doesn't always pay off, but to earn big, you have to accept the exposure to losing big.
So, in terms of men Vs. women trading performance, it could be similar to the IQ distribution: There are much more men (then women) that are very successful at trading, and there are much more men that are highly unsuccessful in trading. But the averaged scores could be at similar levels for both genders, with women being more concentrated in the middle of the profitability axis.

OP does not seem to be interested too much in his own topic. It's been ten days, over 200 replies and he didn't post anything here since nor has given any update.
So I wouldn't worry too much about the whole scam or not-scam thing, as the whole story is probably just a product of OP's imagination with the purpose of sparking the discussion.

Congrats to the winner and sorry to those who had their dreams crushed 

I wonder has any of the winners ever opted to get the actual lambo rather than the bitcoin equivalent, same goes for the expensive WoF rewards. Sounds like it would be a lot of hassle for both sides (legal issues, delivery, insurance etc). I reckon the purpose of those physical rewards is to stimulate imagination and increase appetite for action.