The pitch:I will be offering the ability to acquire bitcoins simply, cheaply and without the need to interface with the banking system. The following will be all one need do in order to acquire bitcoin via my service: Purchase a 1/10th ounce coin or bar from your local coin shop; Use this thread to fill a buy order; Wait for confirmation that the buyer has delivered the requisite bitcoin into my escrow account; Send the 1/10th ounce coin standard post to my po-box; Wait for the bitcoins to be released to the address of your choice. Gold is so value dense that postage will be a mere 49 cents. Unfortunately there is the extra step of driving down to the coin shop but one must do what one must in-order avoid men in black masks crashing through their windows at night. The details:I will run a public order-book on a google drive spreadsheet. Interested parties may place bids, asks or market orders for 1/10th of an ounce of 999 fine gold. Orders will be placed via replies in this thread and processed in the order they are received. When an order is matched payment will be requested from the bitcoin seller. If bitcoin payment is delivered than the gold seller will be notified and asked to send a letter to my po box containing details of his order and a 1/10th ounce gold coin or bar. When the gold arrives at my po box I will forward it to the bitcoin seller and release the bitcoins to the gold seller. If the gold seller does not uphold his end of the arrangement, the bitcoins will be returned, and you may place another order as you see fit. The violator will be banned from using the service until they make restitution to the other party for the time they wasted. Low reputation individuals may be required to post a small bond. Probably just a couple of dollars worth of bitcoin. This is basically an anti spam measure and wont be enacted unless fake bids and asks become a problem. As for my fee, that will come in time but not until after the project has been successfully bootstrapped. Gold senders will be required to take a few basic precautions against theft from postal employees. To do this, take a stack of several sheets of paper, fold the stack in thirds, and tape the gold well to the inside of the bundle. Place this bundle inside of the envelope rather than leaving the gold loose and tumbling around. The thicker the stack the better. You may begin placing orders or alternatively discussion will be welcome in this thread as well. Things you would like to see. Problems you may anticipate. Even just a post to let me know if this is the sort of thing you would be interested in. All non troll comments welcome. If you are interested in seeing this project succeed than this thread will require many bumps  . My reputation thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=381041The orderbook: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f2yoPzfcluSlBD3HSSTWg3x_8bthAFq0C5oDM9TmmDo/edit?usp=sharingFAQ:What about fake gold? - I have a pretty good amount of experience dealing in gold and silver. I am unaware of any 1/10th ounce fake gold products. Nevertheless I will be using digital calipers and a scale to ensure that the dimensions and weight conform to specifications. The risk of receiving a fake product at this point approaches 0.
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Maybe this will incentivize more developers to come out of the woodwork. I mean clearly there are opportunities for work here, and they by no means have to keep their monero in monero. Maybe we need some sort of small initiative to advertise the fact that our community is hiring.
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Hey I just realized something. I'm happy to accept gold or silver instead. If you wanted to buy bitcoins without interfacing with the banking system you can just go down to your local coin shop, pick up a 1/10th ounce gold coin, throw it in an envelope and send away. Its an extra step but maybe not too much inconvenience. Almost everyone has a coin shop near them.
As long as no cash is involved im 99% sure the government wouldn't go bananas. They may come knock on my door and tell me to stop, but they wouldnt come to my house with a paramilitary detail and drag me off to one of their dungeons.
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Yea even if its not illegal, being on these guys radar alone is dangerous enough. Perhaps too risky.
...and for anyone sending cash, get ready to hit negative feedback / trust when the "I didn't receive your cash in the mail, the mailman must have stolen it." Ruse is used. ...and for Anon136 - messing with your head time - every note you receive in the mail will be marked by the CIA / FBI / KGB / CI5 / MI6 / CONTROL / KAOS / RU12 and the little old lady with the flower shop down the road.Enjoy.  It would have been tenable I think pre 911 I think  But then everyone had to go insane over a small fraction of as many people dying as in car crashes in a single year. |
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But the game has existed for ~48 weeks already!!
That is remarkable. Congratulations on the upcoming first birthday! When the game was 2 months old, the Long Bond auction (now item_id "LB1615") showed the interest rate of 300% for a realyear. Clearly that was realistic for a project just started, and projecting 6 times longer to the future than it had existed! Now whether we settle at 72% or go to 60% or 50%, the next year there will be laugh anyway. Either to how easy it was to get free money, or how silly people were that it could be paid back. But personally I am too busy in developing the game to have any thought that it might fail... Once it's at release version you have to get someone like totalbiscuit to review it. You can actually pay him to review it (ideally you wouldn't have to but as a contingency) but he is explicit about being paid when he does paid reviews and it doesn't appear to cause any bias. It would probably be well worth the investment if you are confident that he will be impressed, hes a harsh critic if he isn't. Exposure like that will be key to its success because a game like this is probably going to be quite dependent upon a strong network (of users, not like servers). Another reason is that video game journalists are notoriously extreme radical left. And the left hates free markets. So you will be very unlikely to get publicity from them. I just started a website with PC games micro-reviews, I have virtually no, or close to, no visitors. Not even I, who I am invested in Monero, from what I see from the sidelines, I wouldn't give CK a good review. I doubt that CK will get to be an actual fun game instead of an investment mechanism, and doubt that it can be both. Maybe (hopefully) I'll be proved wrong, but this is how I see things being right now regarding CK. Best of luck to everybody! that is unfortunate |
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But the game has existed for ~48 weeks already!!
That is remarkable. Congratulations on the upcoming first birthday! When the game was 2 months old, the Long Bond auction (now item_id "LB1615") showed the interest rate of 300% for a realyear. Clearly that was realistic for a project just started, and projecting 6 times longer to the future than it had existed! Now whether we settle at 72% or go to 60% or 50%, the next year there will be laugh anyway. Either to how easy it was to get free money, or how silly people were that it could be paid back. But personally I am too busy in developing the game to have any thought that it might fail... Once it's at release version you have to get someone like totalbiscuit to review it. You can actually pay him to review it (ideally you wouldn't have to but as a contingency) but he is explicit about being paid when he does paid reviews and it doesn't appear to cause any bias. It would probably be well worth the investment if you are confident that he will be impressed, hes a harsh critic if he isn't. Exposure like that will be key to its success because a game like this is probably going to be quite dependent upon a strong network (of users, not like servers). Another reason is that video game journalists are notoriously extreme radical left. And the left hates free markets. So you will be very unlikely to get publicity from them. |
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After a shitty day at work I come to see some good news. Just donated! I suggest anyone who can contribute do so. This is a project Monero supporters need to get behind. I really like how this project will help future developers. This is the stuff I love about this community. I have watched it grow so much and it keeps getting better. Mad respect to all those doing the work whether paid or unpaid. 3200/3600 xmr already. Close to goal! Only 5% left to go now |
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Yea even if its not illegal, being on these guys radar alone is dangerous enough. Perhaps too risky.
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Please continue discussion here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1179847So I've been trying to think of a way to leverage my strong reputation here on the forums. Trying to think of a niche that could be filled. And I had this idea.
I thought maybe I could run an orderbook where people could place bids, asks or market orders and when ever an order was matched one party could send me bitcoins and the other cash in an envelope in the mail. I would subtract my fee and forward the funds two the respective parties. It would be a 0 hassle way to buy or sell bitcoins without being involved in the banking system and without fear of being scammed.
Also does anyone have any input on the legality of such an arrangement? Would I be considered a "money transmitter" and require a "money transmitters license"? It doesn't seem like it should since its just cash in the mail. That would make gradma sending her grandson a birthday card a money transmitter. |
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This funding system we have built into the forum is great. We really ought to be leveraging this more. We need more developers to realize that we have employment opportunities.
Also is there a way to set it up so that we can get our money back if the funding goal isn't reached? That would make me a lot more comfortable donating.
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When all trading happens on a central computer on Wall Street, the way to get an advantage is to build extremely fast connections to this computer and pay for the highest tier of access.
When all trading happens on a decentralized network where any given node might become the most important for a brief time, the only way to get an advantage is to build up faster and faster throughput across the entire network, which just happens to be global.
Its possible that crypto-profits might also drive us to new heights of global bandwidth as well.
You are just assuming away the whole problem. When addressing the question of will bitcoin remain decentralized you cant start with the premise that it will. Two big mining operations who worked in buildings adjacent to each-other with their own dedicated fiber connecting each other together would each have an advantage over all other miners in the world who did not have a similar arrangement. And the bigger the block size the greater that advantage would be. The question is under varying amounts pressure to what extent would the decentralization be compromised. |
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...
It's not scalable,
There'll be a solution to the blocksize issue that lets bitcoin scale, one way or another. It's also worth observing that Bitcoin is currently the only crypto-currency operating at *any* sort of scale. ... I am not so sure. It is not that simple to come up with an adaptive blocksize limit, that also allows for a fee market to develop in the absence of a block reward. I am not convinced it is even possible. The Cryptonote adaptive blocksize limit formula works in Monero only because there is a tail emission. Take away the tail emission, as in for example Bytecoin, and the blocksize can grow to infinity with no penalty once the emission runs out. This prevents a fee market from developing, and could cause the difficulty and security to plummet. It is this kind of issue that gives credence to those in the Bitcoin community that oppose growing the blocksize. In any case I will believe a scaling solution in Bitcoin only when I see it, not before. I think the idea that development of a fee market *requires* a limit to blocksize is bogus. That suggests that miners are irrational and would price their service under their operational cost... Or, it assumes that there's zero cost penalty to a miner for creating a larger block. But there is indeed a real cost for creating larger and larger blocks (orphan risk), so a net-rational mining-fee market would price blockspace against that risk, thereby creating a fee-market in a much more free-market manner than people picking a magic number (or magic adaptive algorithm) and hard coding it in. This is not the concern. The concern is the advantage that actors who live in areas with high bandwidth would have over those who live in areas with low bandwidth. Thus casing mining resources to be more heavily concentrated in high bandwidth areas than low. Even potentially to the point of all of the major miners moving to the same city and building their own dedicated infrastructure. The point is less block restrictions equals more centralization. Don't confuse this with me saying that arbitrarily picking a number is a good solution either. Its just that this is a very thorny public goods problem. There is an advantage to decentralization but that benefit is a public good with no mechanism of internalizing that benefit yet discovered. Limiting the block size is a bad but to some degree effective way of atleast some what addressing this. |
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I believe they are dead. Just go to schiffgold imo. Super reputable, great customer service, and they price match any competitors. |
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They are taking their insanity so far that they are beginning to look like hyperbole satire of themselves. With any luck it will backfire. |
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does anyone know why it was delisted at bitfinex?
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Darkcoin has been removed from Bitcoinwisdom  woah why for? |
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It does sort of read like a hyperbole of techno babble satire.
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What is this 0MQ? I haven't really been following crypto for quite a few months now.
basically, its the best way ever developed for code to talk to other code. you can read all about it here http://zguide.zeromq.org/page:allit replaces or lives alongside of all of the RPC stuff in monero core. this was detailed in some long ago missive when fluffypony and I talked like the micromachines guy. Sounds useful for adapting monero to plug into solutions for the other half of privacy, the IP transport part. |
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