I learned Nigerian scammers always mention 'Nigeria' in their emails. Why?
Because exchanging emails with someone who knows what a Nigeria scam is just wastes their time. If they say "Nigeria" and you still respond to them, clearly you don't. Remember, they're sending out tens of thousands of emails and have to personally respond to everyone who responds to them asking for more information. |
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By whom? Or more clearly, how are clock error in participants reduced, does the network agree what time it is somehow?
Each block is timestamp by the entity that mined it. The block is accepted if the timestamp is roughly correct. Every 2,016 blocks, difficulty is adjusted based on the timestamps of the blocks to keep the average block mining rate at one per ten minutes. There's a slight oversimplification in the algorithm that results in the block discovery rate being a little higher than this if network hash rate is increasing. |
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If it influences difficulty, and is based on how long previous blocks took to uncover, then how is this orchestrated through the network - how does everyone agree how long a block took?
The blocks are timestamped. |
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Mostly due to bad planning on my part as well as a large flow of coins at once and the rising difficulty rate, I was unable to continue my mining project and ended up liquidating most of it. Around July 18th, I had completely liquidated all of the mining hardware that belonged to the Deposits Service. I kept a bit over 2000$ worth of hardware for myself (which were my personal assets), to continue generating coins with. My funds remained dormant until August 6th, when I decided that the magnitude of the payouts was too great for the coins to be sitting around for. For this reason, I chose to place all the funds with pirate and continue to payout weekly interest until terms were over. As terms ended, I would not offer term renewals, and would return all of the coins to the depositors. However, in a sequence of unfortunate events, I was unable to withdraw coins from pirate, but continued to payout using the reserve fund, as mentioned (35%). I am at a personal loss now of over 2000 coins, but have liquidated my assets and will begin paying out respectively. I need everyone to understand that this will not be a matter of a few weeks or months, but rather, will be closer to a few years. At this point I cannot give a definite date that I will have returned all principals back by. However, my priority will be to return the principals. Once everyone has their principal amount deposited, I will attempt to pay the remaining interest. Just one question: Did you know, or reasonably suspect, that Pirate was operating a Ponzi scheme when you decided to place your investors' funds, and the "personal" funds you were using to guarantee those funds, in his care? |
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I know someone who wanted to put up something worth investing in on GLBSE...I've never looked into it closely. (I believe they are still in the process of doing so.) Could you briefly touch on the obvious reasons?
One would be the uncertain legal ramifications of offering a security denominated in bitcoins on an unlicensed, unregulated, "sort of" stock exchange. |
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It looks like your client was cleverly using a transaction it was making anyway as a free opportunity to consolidate a bunch of small inputs it had lying around into a single, larger output, thus reducing the cost of your future transactions. |
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Hashking: When you placed money with Pirate, did you know (or reasonably suspect) that he was running a Ponzi scheme?
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1) Such a society may have difficulty organizing in the face of an external threat.
Every problem in an AnCap society is an opportunity for someone to find a solution to that problem. And even every solution is an opportunity for someone to come up with a cheaper solution. If you think an AnCap society wouldn't be able to organize to expend real resources on preparation for a threat that might not materialize, I would just point out that no known society is immune to that problem. But the general solution is to get as rich, prosperous, and technologically advanced as possible and hope that will make any problems, expected or not, easier to solve. If you look at the relationship of governments to each other in our world, it's somewhat like an AnCap society. There isn't really any "super government" that rules them. And the UN and similar organizations are voluntary associations among those countries that can be abandoned by their members at any time. There isn't really any socially-accepted world policeman with any kind of monopoly and countries use both their economic and military might, both through threats and actions, to 'persuade' each other. The analogy isn't perfect, but it does give you an idea of how these kinds of things might go both wrong and right in an AnCap society. |
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On the side note, although Matthew scammed many people with his "bet", he didn't receive one satoshi out of it, so the damages are limited. But discussing this would be clearly off-topic here. I didn't receive one Satoshi from Pirate's scam, does it follow that the damages are limited? Yes, Matthew made no profit from the damage he did. How does that show the damages are limited? |
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Sorry, I should've said "initially." At first his whole point was that people screaming Ponzi should shut up or back their claims with money. If that was all who bet, this probably would've turned out OK. But it all went tragic as soon as he allowed others to hedge their losses.
Even before that, it encouraged some people not to sell their Pirate debt at a reduced loss because they believed that Matthew knew something they didn't. |
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Is mybitcointrade really a ponzi? I mean its a stock market like glbse and it looks like they were able to attract some well known names to runs securities with them. bitcoin-24 for example. So youre sure its a scam? All these websites are owned by one scammer or the owners are scammed somehow to use this instead glbse? Or do you think they only are attracted to give the website a legit view?
If so... wouldnt it be good to buy shares and contact the website owner whose shares you own so that he knows who you are even when the website turns scam or something so that dividends can be paid even then?
I dont see the ponzi. Even the security of mybitcointrade.com itself has dividends that are as low that i dont think of a ponzi at first thought.
It perfectly matches the Stock Generation style of Ponzi scheme. Where do you think the funds to pay off investors are coming from? There's no evidence of any legitimate investments. And when the price of a security they offer decreases, what evidence is there that this price decrease came from a legitimate investment loss as opposed to them just deciding to pay less? (A Stock Generation style Ponzi scheme is one in which made up "funds" are sold to investors. The operator periodically raises the price of the "funds" as if they were actual stocks representing companies doing well. They pay "dividends" too, out of the money gained from people buying the "funds" on a schedule picked by the operator solely to encourage investment and not based on any actual investment profits. Then one day, the operator just drops the price of the "funds" and keeps people's money. Any operation whose terms specifically permit the operator to run this scheme using "funds" whose prices are set by the operator and whose gains and losses don't reflect any demonstrated actual change in the actual value of anything can reasonably be assumed to be this scheme. There is no actual investment. Generally, these are claimed to be gambling and not investment to try to avoid legal consequences. The operator will generally claim that he never said there was any actual investment and that he fully held up his side of the bargain as he had promised.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_Generation |
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And yet no-one lost a single Bitcoin in this one.
Say I promise to buy 1,000 pounds of shrimp from you on a particular date at $10/pound. You turn down other deals on that same day. You take out a loan to buy the shrimp. You buy the shrimp. You rent a truck to deliver the shrimp to me. Then when you get there, I say "Sorry, I don't want the shrimp." But you gave up other jobs, took out a loan, bought 1,000 pounds of shrimp and rented a truck. How can I say "You didn't lose any funds"? Matthew's bet pushed up the price of Pirate debt. This caused some people to acquire Pirate debt at inflated prices to hedge against the risk that Matthew would win his bet. It caused people acquiring Pirate debt to pay more than they should have. And it caused some people not to sell Pirate debt when they should have, believing that Matthew knew something they didn't. Effectively, it manipulated the secondary Pirate debt market at a time when a number of Pirate victims were trying to mitigate their losses. It may even have enriched Pirate directly, at the expense of his victims, by allowing him to sell off his own debt longer and at higher prices. |
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I would point out that it is useful information to look at the persons defending Matt and their arguments. It provides an insight into their thought processes and a good reason to avoid doing business with them. Those defending him are saying it is ok to lie, cheat, and break agreements as long as funds don't change hands. Those aren't the kind of people I would want to be involved in a trade with.
+3 |
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Wow. Are their really people willing to acquire pirate debt? That's making a market in empty promises if ever there was.
I firmly believe that Matthew's bet distorted the secondary market in Pirate debt and caused some people to defer selling Pirate debt that would have reduced their losses, some people bought Pirate debt at a much higher price than it was worth (either to hedge against the risk that Matthew would win or because they thought Matthew knew something they didn't), and possibly even allowed Pirate to sell his own debt for longer at higher prices and thereby steal additional funds from the community. |
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No funds changed hands.
That is false. Lots of funds changed hands, just not with Matthew. Say I promise to buy 1,000 pounds of shrimp from you on a particular date at $10/pound. You turn down other deals on that same day. You take out a loan to buy the shrimp. You buy the shrimp. You rent a truck to deliver the shrimp to me. Then when you get there, I say "Sorry, I don't want the shrimp." But you gave up other jobs, took out a loan, bought 1,000 pounds of shrimp and rented a truck. How can I say "No funds changed hands"? |
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no one lost money.
Actually, people did lose money. Matthew's bet pushed the price of Pirate debt up. And some people acquired Pirate debt to hedge against the risk that Matthew would win his bet. |
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His answer seemed like a no answer to me. An "I don't know". Whether I think it will achieve that goal is, of course, another matter. Maybe you guys can't think of a good answer right now. I can wait. I am honestly curious as to what answer you will give me.
Well, you don't really have a question. You're now basically down to "convince me that AnCap will actually work". That's, of course, a pretty tall order. If you agree on the principles though, then the next question is what system best furthers those principles, and you should be able to at least agree that current governments are many times larger than they should be. If not, you still don't agree with the goals of AnCap and there's not much point in arguing over whether it will achieve them. I'm not fully convinced AnCap will actually work. That's why I advocate moving in that direction and seeing what happens. As we see what works and what doesn't work, we can see how far we get. If we stop at a minarchy, I'll still be totally thrilled. |
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Anyone who promises that AnCap will produce total non-violence is, of course, kidding themselves. The idea is to build a system where it is as difficult as possible to use violence or coercion to obtain power without enshrining the use of violence or coercion in the system in the first place.
What kind of system makes it difficult as possible to use violence or coercion to obtain power without enshrining the use of violence or coercion in the system in the first place? That's the crux of AnCap. Whether you think it will achieve that goal is, of course, another matter. |
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This lecture coming from a porn website operator is to be very well received by the community.
They got any Siamese amputee midget lesbian porn? If so, can I get a free login? |
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whats going on how come on the site it says "Weekly interest rate: 0%" and my last interest is been Pending for 3DAYS NOW since the 6th and NOW is saying 0% Whats going on and still locked till "Locked in until: 2012-10-04".
if you cant keep up return my initial payment!
my user name is: mr.someone
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