I agree it is about time to start popping the Mt. Gox bubble. If you have funds stuck there I hate it for you. The main reason it is still used is because the silk road uses it to determine the price. Someone needs to ask Dread Pirate Roberts how he feels about competing currencies and fair market rates?
Agreed, though people can still use GoxLast in currency exchanges. It's starting to get a bit scammy now Gox has well under half exchange market share and it's almost impossible to get USD out of there. It's not very hard to get GoxLast for BTC when trading with individuals, though, so I don't think there's much issue in having things priced in GoxUSD right at this exact moment. It's quickly changing as Gox becomes increasingly less relevant (it shouldn't be the #1 exchange in terms of volume for more than a couple more months without processing USD withdrawals, I'd think)... BitMit recently changed over to BitStamp, I think it was. Probably very close to time for everyone who used Gox for pricing to switch. I think once Gox does actually stop doing the most volume, the switch will be pretty quick. The irony of it all, is having Gox die due to not having US partnerships, while they'll probably lose millions (possibly tens of millions) in the CoinLab lawsuit brought about because Gox apparently failed to actually pull the trigger on the very deal which would've saved them from this. |
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Moderation is not that hard, unless you have personal issues. What's wrong with this?
I'm sure every drug addict never decided to be an addict to begin with. These people were messed up to begin with. Or uneducated (ie taking too much) That sounds like an uneducated comment. It's not hard to moderate dosage and frequency when it comes to drugs. With all the info of the internet I guess it'd depend on which drug we're talking about -though obviously, I don't give a shit what you do. Go ahead and break out the moderately-sized case of needles. I'd be surprised if there were any cases of people regularly altering their mood/mind with drugs who didn't have severe internal conflict, though. I'd guess the real concern, if it were a party I'm concerned with, would be whether or not they're happy, since regularly altering their mood would seem to indicate they aren't. It'd be particularly concerning if it were an addictive drug where a tolerance can be built up with "moderate" use. |
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Ah one of the two partners. Is it confirmed they're actually his partners? Also, why just Zach and not Mike Thalasinos? I don't think anyone knew/knows what role Mike had in this. AFAIK, it was never confirmed Zach knew of wrongdoing. Could definitely be wrong, though... |
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Some of these threads are scaring me a bit.. But then someone has to be trusted at one point. Are group buys safer?
I'd simply suggest to use escrow from a very high-trust person like John K, who I think will even do m-of-n escrow transactions to almost eliminate third-party-risk. Another great security is to ensure you do business with people relatively local in case you need to collect through the legal system or appeal to relatives of the person -- at the very least, people within the same jurisdiction as you (and confirming ID is great -- a rather ghetto way of doing this, without relying on scanned gov't IDs, as example, would be to send a postcard with a code on it to the person's alleged address and have them relay the code to you when they receive it). There are plenty of places to gather an idea of someone's trustworthiness, from WoT to the forum's rep system. Bitcoin (as an "ecosystem") has tons of functionality for determining trustworthiness and doing low-trust or no-trust transactions, but you need to be diligent. Even the largest-by-volume exchange, MtGox, has a terrible habit of fiat withdrawal blackouts of weeks, or in the current case, over a month - so certainly any company or individual can fail to meet advertisements, and that's why it's a great idea to get paranoid. I've used John K but I've not understood this forums huge drive towards escrowing everything with him. It seems like the easy way out of doing any sort of due diligence. Seems to be the exact opposite of what bitcoin is all about. It's like John K became PayPal of this bitcoin forum. Unlike Paypal, John doesn't have a history of abuse, doesn't blanket ban transaction types, and you deal with the same level-headed guy every time. Until there's reason to doubt him, I'd never suggest someone not use someone who's had the opportunity to steal millions of $ in BTC and never takes it. There are plenty of alternatives, but when introducing third-party risk, you want them to have a long and spotless history -- nobody fills that as well as John (speaking as someone who offers free escrow). With all that - John IS an easy choice, so there aren't going to be many alternatives. Competition's always good, but nobody can out-compete him AFAIK, largely because he has such an established history, and asking less in fees than him is practically impossible. So while it's not decentralized - if you're serious about securing contracts, you can't do better than having the PM page for John bookmarked. It's for the same reason I wouldn't recommend someone use a new wallet from a team nobody's ever heard of over the established and reviewed wallet software which's been out for years. Trust and reputation's worth a fortune when conventional legal systems are too cumbersome. |
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It's not safe (I'd guess they just check against blockchain and queue to verify it is probably not a double-spend). It's convenient. Sometimes, it's better to provide a convenient service with low rates of fraud than a relatively inconvenient service where fraud is nonexistent.
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Hey, guys.
NSA here. Need to form some generalizations, so needing more replies. Thanks.
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what happened to old bitcoin forum? remember when nice rich men on here gave away bitcoins to a person who only said "i want this, pay back by this day" i miss those nice rich men, they die?
are you all in debt?
The community grew to the point where a forum member is equal to a random stranger on the street communicating remotely and telling you to leave the money in a box, so the privilege was abused. This isn't a community anymore. |
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*results differ
I've been watching. So far, you've told potential investors there's no risk, some risk, they'll double their BTC in a week, but that results will differ. So... Where have I said that there is some risk? They certainly can double their BTC in a week if they invest early enough. If the website is compromised (which is highly unlikely since we follow the highest standards of security) then you lose your investment, it obviously DOES have risks like any other investments out there so people need to be adults about this.
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*results differ
I've been watching. So far, you've told potential investors there's no risk, some risk, they'll double their BTC in a week, but that results will differ. So... you will always profit in the long run despite any momentary negative balances because of our house edge.
you will get a great return on investment without taking any of the risks of lending to new members, managing collateral or buying into some shady securities.
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Is there a transcript of that? I sure don't hear of many Bitcoin businesses taking in hundreds of millions. There are ways around dumping money into bonds and fees for state-by-state MSB licensing -- you could partner with an already-licensed company, but that has its own costs (tangible and otherwise). Another idea I've heard floating around is to open a credit union to get around MSB licensing.
There might be a transcript, but I don't know where. LTB makes its content available in an open source way, and I thought they mentioned someone making transcripts once... Yes, you're correct about partnering with a licensed company as a cost effective option. That was one of the things discussed. There are a lot of cost saving considerations to be compliant which is what surprised me most. Like you I had the ballpark 1M dollar figure as the starting point. Actually, registering at the federal level is not so costly. From there a business would also need licensing for the 50 states, but there is more to that. For example, whether or not a state requires a license if a business is not physically located there can be different. Some states, at least two, if I can remember being Montana and New Mexico I think, don't require additional license. Montana & SC. New Mexico is sorta-kinda free of extra MSB registrations unless there's a "negotiable instrument" involved. I'm not sure how many states still don't consider online doing businesses in their state to be regulated by their laws - but that's probably substantial, too. Still, unless you're going to discriminate by state (which is totally valid), the costs for getting all states' MSB licensing is quite a few million. Just for my little state of MI, it's >$500k in bonds and fees, >$500k for CA, and it's probably similar in other states. |
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I guess this explains why BitInstant has sort of stopped providing their services?
I'm not sure how US businesses can go forward without limiting the number of states they deal with, or cutting off service to the US altogether. It's a big fucking deal when a Bitcoin-oriented service snags a couple million in VC funds. For a "MSB" to be fully compliant and serve all the states, they need many multitudes more than that -- at no gain, except to have permission to operate. It's basically taking an enormous pile of money, dumping it in a pit, and having the company execs say "THAT'S how committed we are to this business." Compliance will snag a whole lot of business from people and companies which otherwise may not even consider buying BTC due to how risky using exchanges are right now. I think there's going to be a bit of a blackout in the US from major service providers for years, but once funding and proper licensing is secured, we can get back off LocalBitcoins and sites too small to regulate, and enjoy safe trading from behind our desks again. While we're trading in a decentralized p2p way, though, the USG and states are almost certainly enabling money laundering and tax cheats -- so their priority shouldn't be in threatening service providers, but in establishing a path forward. If regulators would just hold off and let these businesses grow to the point where they CAN fully comply, I think everyone'd be better off. Suggesting something like a five-year grace period would really be better for everyone involved than to start off a "conversation" talking publicly about enabling terrorism, child porn, and money laundering. Just reading your post I can tell you haven't listened to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin: http://letstalkbitcoin.com/post/57717761405/the-regulatory-question-inside-bitcoins-conferenceThe talk features a panel discussion from the recent Bitcoin Conference in New York, which included actual professionals in the regulatory space including from the U.S. GAO. It's a big fucking deal when a Bitcoin-oriented service snags a couple million in VC funds. For a "MSB" to be fully compliant and serve all the states, they need many multitudes more than that -- at no gain, except to have permission to operate. Not true. Again you need to listen to the talk. Also, not every Bitcoin related business is categorized as a money transmitter. If you want to sell fruit from your orchard, offer singing lessons, or babysitting services, for bitcoin you need no license, for example. Is there a transcript of that? I sure don't hear of many Bitcoin businesses taking in hundreds of millions. There are ways around dumping money into bonds and fees for state-by-state MSB licensing -- you could partner with an already-licensed company, but that has its own costs (tangible and otherwise). Another idea I've heard floating around is to open a credit union to get around MSB licensing. |
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I guess this explains why BitInstant has sort of stopped providing their services?
I'm not sure how US businesses can go forward without limiting the number of states they deal with, or cutting off service to the US altogether. It's a big fucking deal when a Bitcoin-oriented service snags a couple million in VC funds. For a "MSB" to be fully compliant and serve all the states, they need many multitudes more than that -- at no gain, except to have permission to operate. It's basically taking an enormous pile of money, dumping it in a pit, and having the company execs say "THAT'S how committed we are to this business." Compliance will snag a whole lot of business from people and companies which otherwise may not even consider buying BTC due to how risky using exchanges are right now. I think there's going to be a bit of a blackout in the US from major service providers for years, but once funding and proper licensing is secured, we can get back off LocalBitcoins and sites too small to regulate, and enjoy safe trading from behind our desks again. While we're trading in a decentralized p2p way, though, the USG and states are almost certainly enabling money laundering and tax cheats -- so their priority shouldn't be in threatening service providers, but in establishing a path forward. If regulators would just hold off and let these businesses grow to the point where they CAN fully comply, I think everyone'd be better off. Suggesting something like a five-year grace period would really be better for everyone involved than to start off a "conversation" talking publicly about enabling terrorism, child porn, and money laundering. |
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I'm trying both Ubuntu and Windows 7. On Windows 7, I get the pop up saying it's downloading but will not move past 0%; and on Ubuntu, no pop up even opens up.
What is UAC? Sorry I'm a newbie in the truest sense =/
User Access Controls. It's the Win security feature which makes default setups deal with an intrusive popup box every time you try to open a program asking if you trust it. Javaws might require admin privileges to download and install software. If a popup box comes up when you try to run the .jnlp file, you'd want to click allow... probably not the problem. Are you downloading at work or some other place which might have firewalls up? It sounds like the Ubuntu installation doesn't have Java with Java Web Start on it. Try downloading an installing https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/lucid/openjdk-6-jre/ (might need to reboot after installing) - then try launching the .jnlp downloaded from Bitminter. Out of ideas after that. /passes on to someone else |
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All Firewall has been turned off, and I've updated Java to the most updated version. Still at 0% unfortunately.
Which OS are you using? If UAC's enabled, Javaws may not have admin privileges. |
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So I recently learned about bitcoins and mining and was looking to start mining with the pool, but for some reason the BitMinter client will not start/download. I clicked the "Engine Start" button to download the client onto my desktop, but now when I click it, I am stuck on a pop up that just says the application is starting/downloading, but the progress bar remains at 0%.
Does anyone know why I can't start using the client??
Thanks!
Firewall/Peerblock/etc blocking Java? If Java's out of date, that may also be a factor. |
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Yeah right, Iran always says this mumbo jumbo bullshit always saying that they're planning an attack on the U.S but nothing ever happens. Bunch of pussies  When did they say such a thing? It seems to me it's quite the opposite: The Yankees – you Yankees? – are saying they're planning an attack – hey, man, read the topic! – and nothing has happened, yet. Also, the Yankees – you Yankees? – haven't attacked any country recently. Are you getting soft or something?  We shoot chunks out of Libyans while we wipe our eyes after waking up. We start to stretch, and a dozen more Iraqi children have been born with lethal deformities from depleted uranium munitions. By the time we're done with our stretches, we've already killed a dozen Pakastani children by dropping wooden boxes full of Coalition propaganda without functional parachutes. We head to the bathroom, and we shit out the dead Pakastani children onto Kim Il Whatever's face. We take our shower and piss on the Afghanis. We dry ourselves off just so it hurts more when we skull-fuck the Sudanese. We have battalions ready to shit down your throat whether you live in India, Colombia, Georgia, Poland, France, or Saudi Arabia before we sit down to our first fucking bowl of cereal! You think we're soft?! We'll grind your fucking bones up, mix it in with HFCS, and force-feed it to your mourning family at your fucking funeral before we rape and murder the lot of them! So if you would kindly shut the fuck up, MAYBE... we'll be able... to calm the fuck down. |
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Do some Googling on Lawsky. He's a semi-famous, very aggressive regulator.
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Have you thought about posting a reply instead? Maybe something along the lines of "Your post made me laugh"?
For maximum creepiness, PM that response to them. |
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