Looking back at the thread I don't think we have first hand posts from people who have met them.
It's not clear to me whether Andrea C has or not either.
I don't care so much about this - haven't met the owners of btc-e, so has nobody and I have quite some funds with them at all the time. This is how the Bitcoin ecosystem should be, otherwise it would make itself obsolete Hmm. Not sure I agree. I don't need to meet them personally. But the bitcoin protocol is trustless - the whole point is that trust is not necessary! Where trust is required you need some kind of collateral, even if that is just information and reputation. I'm actually pretty open-minded about this. I know arbitrage can be very lucrative (I ran the numbers myself a while back for a very limited scenario, and I can see that if you've got the funds and resources you could make a killing). But I'm not naive either. And the fact that there are two very similar looking companies, one of which I understand has just gone dark, should raise one or two questions about the second. Just doing my due diligence. I imagine that anyone who has invested more than petty cash has done the same. |
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Looking back at the thread I don't think we have first hand posts from people who have met them.
It's not clear to me whether Andrea C has or not either.
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Bump: New hints posted
Thanks Cassius! I am spending some time on this just for the fun of it. I am not a techie, so need to read up on this base32 minikey format. So, your mini private key is 30 alphanumeric characters long, all capitals but left out: 1 (number one) I (capital i) O (capital O) 0 (number zero) Is my understanding correct? If so, my guess "Llyswen > south" is A470 must be wrong!  A few posts back you'll see a discussion about this and the character set used. Enjoy! More hints soon. |
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What's the best way to contact? I'd ideally like to do an interview/article.
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I see on this board many times that they heard people have met the owners. Can anyone confirm that they actually met someone and not just hear say. Anyone please.  Anyone? Also, do we know total funds under management/potential maximum fund size? Daily btc volume is currently around $19 million, so it has to be small enough to be supportable within this. |
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Interesting. You seemed highly sceptical. What changed your mind?
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Are there anyone from first users who used for 120 days and could withdraw initial investment?
I believe so. Though this doesn't prove anything yet, so long as new investment keeps coming in. People do appear to have met the owners, which is positive. I'm assuming some of the bigger investors have seen inside the box, though I'd love to know more. |
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I think extrapolation of the historical chart patterns is a stronger argument than extrapolation of risto's bets.... just launched my bet on bitbet.... $4000 before $400. should be approved tonight  Bold. Size of bet? You consider ~1000% appreciation more likely than ~15% depreciation? |
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Hi,
Sorry man, but i have to say that i noticed that everyone who is posting something like [for hire] here does not get an actual job...not positive thing, but true. You can try at places like freelancer.com or other related sites.
BR,
Gondel
Sorry man. Already did. |
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I'm also set up for NXT as well as bitcoin now, and learning some great stuff in the process. This post has received no attention from ranlo, which I take as a vote of confidence.  |
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This is a great spectator sport and could do with its own thread to keep track of - it will get lost in here over the next 30 days. Since someone is highly likely to lose $50k under the terms of the bet, perhaps you could donate a paltry £1k to charity anyway, even if it's not a draw? I'm sure the winner would be gracious enough to accept $49k. I could suggest a few if you need ideas. Kudos to you both for taking this on (assuming it goes ahead  ) |
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I earn part of my income in bitcoins and live in the UK, which means I get spanked by the banks when I try to withdraw from Stamp. There are currently no worthwhile UK exchanges.
Sites like Bittylicious and Bitbargain typically sell for Stamp +5-15% but you need to sell a certain amount of coins per month to qualify and I'm not sure I have the time or inclination to sit around waiting for a buyer to appear and money to land in my account.
I'd like to find a trustworthy UK partner who I can sell bitcoins to (probably anything from a few hundred to a couple of thousand USD worth a month) and have them sell them on via one of these services. I'd be willing to split the premium over Stamp, or accept a certain agreed rate if you prefer.
You'll need to be:
Based in the UK or have a UK bank account
Be willing to buy smallish amounts of bitcoin from me from time to time
Be trustworthy. Obviously, this point is really important. Ideally you'll have Trust on this forum and be a long-term member, or be able to demonstrate trust elsewhere.
If you happen to run one of these services or similar, so much the better.
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Not completely. There was a thread where they were discussed and most were guessed: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=560045.0I guess I could reveal those now since someone has already figured them out, so if you've got any questions about them let me know. I guess I my answers for "111", "london system" and "50" are wrong. I was guessing: "3", "D4", "L" Edit: nevermind, got the answer. Now to solve the current puzzle... Not bad... should help a bit since a lot of the same principles are re-used. Just an extra layer of abstraction in some cases. |
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Not completely. There was a thread where they were discussed and most were guessed: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=560045.0I guess I could reveal those now since someone has already figured them out, so if you've got any questions about them let me know. |
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No surprises about btc-arbs.
These guys do seem to be relatively public, but the more reassurance the better.
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Check back regularly - there will be hints every couple of days until it goes.
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So, presumably you are coding a brute force app...
When you've done, I'll be interested to find out how many combinations per second it can guess. That might help me calibrate further puzzles, assuming they use the same principles.
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Cash requires an in-person transaction with someone who has BTC. This doesn't scale and risks those involved. We need something else.
coinffeine.com P2P-exchanges are coming online soon. After that, Bitcoin will be very hard to control by TPTB. I hope these kinds of panics will be history after that....maybe not I am am looking forward to some of these decentralized type exchanges, too; however, I think that it will take a little while to get the bugs out of them. Nonetheless, I look forward to thse kinds of developments that may resolve some of the stealing and the manipulation and whatever else they are meant to solve. They look awesome: true bitcoin-style solution to the problems of centralisation. I can't quite work out how the bank transfers will actually happen without the third party. If it does work well, presumably the Chinese will flood in... |
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Your uncle really used the MiniKey standard? So 30 characters in base58 only, with 00-check?
You seem surprised - why? Yes, it's a minikey, but in fact it's base 32: numbers and caps only. (This was explained in the first episode.) This still makes it way to hard to brute force (145 bits of entropy - the original Casascius coins had 123) but easier to remember and less confusion about whether any given clue is upper or lower case. A minikey is base58 and has the 00-check. Base58 means for example that no zero is allowed in the key. Base32 is all capital letters, and the numbers 2 till 7. By mentioning base32 I am now even more confused. Edit: is the 00-?-check still in place? It's a totally standard minikey, so yes the 00 check is still in place. The only difference is that the characterset has been reduced: BASE32 = '23456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ' BASE58 = '23456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz' So it's a base 32, not the 'standard' base 32 (which I understand isn't used that much). Sorry for the ambiguity. If you want to see the code used to generate the minikey, take a look at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mini_private_key_format#Python_CodeAside from using a reduced characterset, the only major difference is that I used a better source of entropy than random. I've used all caps and numbers simply because I didn't want people to have to wonder whether a clue was upper or lower case. Hope that helps! |
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