Holy fuck.  Even a teenager with no income source other than pocket money from their parents should be able to pay back amounts averaging out to $12 a week over the course of a year.  Your ability to pay back short-term pay-day style loans of small amounts (and $1000 is a small loan) does not speak to your ability to pay back large loans over a longer period of time.  

The fact that you need short-term, pay-day style loans in order to meet your living expenses makes you a substantial risk regardless of whether you've paid back in the past.  Either you can't budget properly or your income is grossly inadequate for your needs - and either of those things make you likely to default in the long term.  You likely haven't lived on your own long enough yet to realise that sudden, unexpected expenses happen quite frequently in adult life.  If you can't even meet your basic living expenses without using borrowed money, how on earth are you going to service your debt when some major unexpected expense comes along?  What about when one of your "investments" goes bad?  Conventional loans often have income protection insurance built into the loan and hardship provisions which can be invoked in the event of you suddenly finding yourself without an income.

There's a reason why conventional lenders generally want two years worth of proof of income from self-employed people before they'll consider lending them any significant amount of money - you might want to think about why that's the case.

As a reference point, my daughter was able to get an unsecured personal loan for $10,000 at age 18 with no co-signer.  She was working a shitty, low paying job at the time but what the bank looked at was that she'd been consistently employed since she was 16, even if some of her jobs were crappy , part-time McJobs and could easily afford the repayments.  When she went to buy her first car last year, she didn't even have to take out a car loan - she just took out another personal loan for the car so she owns it outright.  She's also had no trouble getting credit cards approved.

Don't tell me that no-one lends to 18 year olds with no credit history because it's simply not true.  What they want is evidence that you can service the debt.

Late August registration date.  What could possibly go wrong?

Please, the only person who views you as a "deposit-taker" is you.  You're effectively just taking out pay day loans.  No-one's going to lend you any serious money unless you can prove that you have a guaranteed income stream (such as wages or a government benefit), a viable business plan, sufficient assets to secure a loan, a co-signer, or a combination of these things.  The fact that you haven't defaulted on small, short-term loans (in fact you've had to renegotiate the terms at times, and that's a red flag) is not an indicator of your ability to service large, long-term loans.  the fact that you're asking for money for something different on a regular basis also undermines confidence in your ability to stick at anything over the long term - including paying back loans taken out for things which may no longer interest you.

It's not at all odd that more people aren't eager to lend to you.  Their reticence to do so is both predictable and justified.  You've pretty much fucked up any possibility of borrowing large amounts here.  Learn from the mistakes you've made this time around and don't make those same mistakes when you eventually seek funding elsewhere.  And don't link back to your identity here in any way when you pursue funding elsewhere - doing so can only harm your chances of obtaining it.

I find the "How am I ever going to offload my toxic securities onto someone else now that GLBSE is down" laments somewhat amusing.


I think it's vital that operators actually do this instead of accepting just about anything because it brings in money.  They also need to be willing to suspend trading in particular securities far more than they have in the past.

Don't get me wrong, there's a market for toxic assets, but they have the ability to compromise the integrity of an exchange as a whole and they should be avoided by exchanges which want to build a reputation for high quality, well vetted offerings.  It's not enough to simply exclude illegal stuff if you're going to continue allowing things like usagi's house of cards to trade after new information reveals its recursive nature.

The problem is when you have a situation like this one where an exchange lists so many toxic assets that no-one in their right mind would want them migrated to their own exchange.

Let's hope he's not seeking advice from his good friends the Intersango guys.

Actually you originally said that you could get a loan from a bank but that you wanted to give your fellow Bitcoiners a chance to benefit from loaning you the money for your venture.  Of course everyone knew you were bull-shitting at the time, just like they knew you were bull-shitting when you said you'd be able to be able to pay back a loan for a car or a motorcycle within months because you'd be "earning thousands" once you rented your house. 

Do you honestly think that when you pull the "I could but I don't to" line, whether it's in relation to saving for a motorcycle or getting a bank loan, anyone actually believes you?  You might be good at deluding yourself, but you're not good at convincing others to share those delusions.

You failed high school physics, didn't you?

Even if GLBSE got closed down as a result of investigations initiated by US authorities, it doesn't mean they weren't breaking UK law in respect of unregistered securities.  It's highly possible that the existence of GLBSE could be brought to the attention of the UK's FSA and that the FSA would take it from there without US law being involved at all.

I have no idea whether US law prevents unregistered securities being offered to US residents by foreign operators.  Maybe there is some technicality which allows them to go after off-shore, unregulated exchanges even if those exchanges are legal in their local jurisdiction in the same way that they were able to go after the online poker services which were allowing US players on the technicality of transferring funds through US financial services for the purpose of online poker playing.

There are so many things affecting the value of Bitcoin "investments" at the moment that it would not be easy to establish Nefario's role in any decline in value of assets listed on GLBSE.  You'd be looking at an expensive legal case, assuming that it wasn't dismissed out of hand (unlike the US, you can't "sue anyone for anything" in Commonwealth countries and lawyers themselves get sanctioned for bringing frivolous cases before the courts).

You're about 6 months late to the QC discussion.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3008.0

If it tanks due to regulatory compliance measures, then none.  A contract based on him not complying with the law wouldn't be enforceable.

One problem is that scams and sketchy businesses can proliferate at a much faster rate than legitimate ventures because they bypass the groundwork which is required to set up a legitimate, properly capitalised venture with a viable business plan.  You also have the problem of the types of businesses which consumer demand is driving - which is basically high risk financial services.

Time is an illusion which can be bent by force of karma.  Or something..

Better yet, time is cubic and every day is 4 separate days happening simultaneously.

http://www.timecube.com/

Not without the ability to analyse that information they won't.  A lot of the information out there is flat out wrong and the internet exposes more people to wrong information just as it exposes more people to correct information.  Hell, the 24 hour news cycle contains more inaccurate "news" reports than ever before and they're rarely corrected.  More information doesn't guarantee better information.  The more information is dumped on people, the less likely many people are to independently verify that information.  Even when people cite references, the original source material very often doesn't say what's been claimed.

We may have better access to information than ever before in Western nations, but we've also reached a point where the current generation is expected to have a shorter lifespan than their parents in spite of technological and medical advances.  Evolution in action - our behaviour has selected against ever increasing life expectancy.  Our "progress" has happened faster than the ability of our bodies to adapt.

Let's be honest - the reason why people are willing to put blind faith in these operators boils down to greed.  They're "investing" on the slight possibility that the scheme is both legitimate and sustainable.  Intellectually they might know that there's a high risk of failure, but the remote possibility of easy money hooks them emotionally - especially if they're people who unlikely to ever acquire wealth by conventional means. 

What is utterly ridiculous is that people keep investing more than they can afford to lose in these ventures.  Every time a Bitcoin venture fails we get posts about people having lost funds they needed for day to day expenses, or even worse, losing funds they'd borrowed and now can't return.  If you wouldn't bet the amount you're placing in Bitcoin schemes at the casino, then you need to consider how catastrophic the failure of your investment would be to your real life.

It also makes sense to go after the more clear-cut cases first.  There's no doubt the pirate was operating from the US.  While Bitcoinica always offered its services to US customers, it's not clear-cut that it was ever operating from the US.  The US could no doubt exert jurisdiction if it really wanted to, but it makes more sense to establish precedents with the more clear-cut cases first as Bitcoinica doesn't really fit into the categories of "scam" or "ponzi".

I don't think anyone on this board believes that Maria is a natal male with gender identity issues who identifies as female.  The prevailing belief is that the poster behind Maria is batshit crazy and that the Maria persona was created with the express intention of scamming people and giving voice to that poster's delusions of grandeur.  Maria's threats towards others and her over-developed sense of entitlement - along with the pure bullshit she posts - are the primary reason for people's venom towards her.  Even if she was trans, she'd still be a nasty piece of work and attract hostility due to her behaviour rather than gender identity issues.  Disliking someone who is trans because they're a horrible human being is not transphobia.

You'll notice that people are confused about usagi's gender - usagi seems to identify as male sometimes and as female at other times - but their criticisms of usagi are pretty much focused on his/her lies and deceptions regarding his/her investment schemes rather than gender ambiguity.

I don't think anyone on this board believes that Maria is a natal male with gender identity issues who identifies as female.  The prevailing belief is that the poster behind Maria is batshit crazy and that the Maria persona was created with the express intention of scamming people and giving voice to that poster's delusions of grandeur.  Maria's threats towards others and her over-developed sense of entitlement - along with the pure bullshit she posts - are the primary reason for people's venom towards her.  Even if she was trans, she'd still be a nasty piece of work and attract hostility due to her behaviour rather than gender identity issues.

You'll notice that people are confused about usagi's gender - usagi seems to identify as male sometimes and as female at other times - but their criticisms of usagi are pretty much focused on his/her lies and deceptions regarding his/her investment schemes rather than gender ambiguity.

I look forward to the day when Bitcoin users stop crying "scam" every time they lose money.  The majority of real world start-ups fail.  The majority of Bitcoin start-ups are woefully under-capitalised and have nothing resembling a viable business plan.  That does not in and of itself make them scams.  Calling every venture which fails a scam stops us from looking at the factors these failures have in common - it stops us from developing a collective wisdom which can be used to reduce the chance of future ventures failing.

While it's true that there's usually an attempt to claw back large payments (it's usually not cost effective to pursue claw back of smaller ones), that's not usually a rapid process.  Nor would that alone require GLBSE going offline - they'd need information from Nefario about who was operating the PPTs, how much was traded through them and who received payments from them, but that wouldn't require taking GLBSE offline.

I agree with others that the lack of advance notice and the vagueness of the announcement suggests legal issues.  I suspect that if GLBSE comes back online in the near future, those legal issues will be reflected in how it operates from now on and that people probably aren't going to like any changes Nefario makes to keep the service operating.


usagi investing in or endorsing any product is a kiss of death.  One could probably make a decent return by doing the exact opposite of what usagi is doing/promoting.