It sounds like you did need their support, given that you don't have a fixed income stream and that you had lenders due for repayment.  Without the mystery cheque and the money from your parents, it sounds like you would have been screwed.  Those things might buy you some time, but the $4200 you now have on hand won't last forever so you need to use it wisely.

Don't be too proud to go back home if things don't work out as you hope they will.  It's better than accumulating a whole lot of debt for unpaid rent, unpaid utilities, etc.  Plenty of people take a few attempts at independence before they can fully stand on their own two feet - you learn something from every attempt.

Honestly, I do find this a bit "iffy" but I don't think it rises to the level of outright scam.  Whether intentionally or not, theymos created the impression that he was selling his shares in GBLSE for essentially ideological reasons.  While this was true, it wasn't the whole truth.  Some of the shares he was selling belonged to other shareholders and I think that was material information which should have been disclosed as it was a measure of the level of internal disagreement and would likely have influenced people's impression of GBLSE's internal stability.

When Nefario referenced theymos selling his shares because he didn't want his name on official documents, I don't recall him disclosing the fact that it wasn't only theymos who wanted to bail out, either.

While I'm actually for this proposal, I can see it being problematic.  Anyone with half a brain can present a plausible business model but be lying through their teeth about what they're actually doing with user funds.  We need some way of forcing more transparency, but I don't really have many ideas about ways to do that which the community would find acceptable given the "Bitcoin is supposed to be anonymous" sentiment which prevails here.

dank, for my peace of mind as a parent, can you take a good look at that mystery cheque you received and make sure that it's not one of those loan company cheques?  They're illegal where I live, but I read a lot of reports about young people in the US getting scammed by them.

Why were your parents reluctant to give you money and what changed their mind?  Were you in danger of not being able to pay the rent or not being able to eat if they didn't give you money?  If you needed money from them now, are you going to need to rely on money from them in the future?

When you start relying on "technicalities", you appear like you're being intentionally deceptive.  Given that you're constantly rambling on about your honesty and integrity - and it's the only "collateral" you're offering - that's not a good thing.

Nobody would bat an eyelid if you said that your parents help support you.  That's absolutely normal when young adults move out of home for the first time.  But that's totally different from someone giving you a "donation" towards a project and you lose credibility if you try to portray it as such, just as you lose credibility if you maintain that you're doing fine from Dank Bank and your investments but you actually need your parents to help you out in order to keep your head above water.

When your parents give you money to help you out and expect no repayment, it's not a "donation".

I do tend to agree with you that a lot of people go to university straight out of school "just because" and don't really gain anything from the experience.  That shouldn't be an excuse for sitting around navel-gazing though.

So there's a way for people to donate to you in fiat (must be if said donations aren't in BTC yet)?  You need to start promoting that elsewhere.  This is a small community and a lot of people who'd love the idea of donating towards putting on a music festival aren't going to bother if they have to go to the hassle of obtaining BTC first.  You need to make donating as easy as possible for as many people as possible.

The problem with a positive ratings system is that most of the colossal failures in Bitcoin have happened very suddenly.  There have been a few cases where people have become less and less reliable over time, but those have often involved small players and affected only a few users.  What's tended to happen with the bigger services with whom many users interact is that they'll go from being reliable one week to gone the next.  In such situations, those people/services have a very high level of trust right up until the moment they fail, so trust ratings are pretty useless.

Too late I'm afraid.  dank's decided that opening a hookah lounge would take too much time away from his guitar practice.  He's currently seeking donations to organise the world's biggest music festival.

I was going to say crimes against intelligence.

Fortunately, the internet never forgets because this isn't the only place usagi has been deleting stuff.  I've helpfully screen-capped stuff just in case usagi ever wants to restore it.

And a good thing you did too, given that dank believes time is only an illusion.

The height restriction limit announcement is clearly visible in the screen shot the OP posted.

If he doesn't know who may have sent "that last donation" referred to above, then presumably it was sent to the address in his sig and should show up in the history for that address.  I'm not willing to believe anything dank says about how much he's received in donations unless he gives the transaction details because pretending you already have financial support in order to get other people on board is one of the oldest cons in the book.

Wait a minute.  Are you paying back #0004's loan from donations you received for the music festival?  I think you should open a donation address purely for the music festival fund so that people can direct their donations for that specific purpose rather than having to wonder whether you're going to spend festival funds on personal expenses.

At this rate you'll have $375,000 by the end of the year assuming you don't touch that money for anything other than festival expenses.

There's a lot more to AML compliance than just transaction thresholds.  It's a pain in the ass because you can't just "set and forget" - you have to evaluate everything on an ongoing basis and have systems in place to flag anything which might be reportable and then you have to carry out enhanced measures in respect of anything flagged.

As far as anyone knows, there is no active investigation into GLBSE and the shut-down is purely pre-emptive because Nefario and some of the share-holders feel that continuing the business in its current form is too risky from an AML viewpoint.  They may be right or they may be wrong about the level of that risk, but they're the only ones who can decide the level of risk they're willing to assume.  

It could have been handled differently, but we weren't the ones making the decision so it gets handled the way those making the decision decide to handle it.  Hell, I would have suspended trading in everything with known exposure to pirate the minute pirate defaulted, but the GLBSE operators clearly didn't think that was necessary.

Honestly, they should have had an orderly disaster plan in place to implement in the event of them shutting down due to legal concerns.  That they don't yet have a claims process in place suggests that they didn't have such a plan and that is pretty inexcusable when you're dealing with such a large amount of other people's funds.

Bitcointalk is a fan site, nothing more, nothing less.  It's in no way official and if "legitimate" businesses think that being associated with Bitcointalk damages their credibility then they'll stop coming here and someone will set up a more "professional" Bitcoin forum which enforces different standards.

There's no reason whatsoever why Bitcointalk should not exist.  There's every reason why a different forum with a different purpose should be established by those who want to "professionalise" Bitcoin, though. 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=115669.msg1254986#msg1254986

Let's see if there's any further information goes up about claiming funds in the next 12 hours or so.