American courts don't have jurisdiction over a website run from Ukraine or Russia.

Website operator was from Russia apparently. You report him to the Russian authorities for scamming a bunch of Americans and Europeans and they'll throw him a parade.

The picture isn't fake, that's actually the image that appears when this agency seizes a domain. It's just that the government didn't put it up, the website operator did to make it look like the government seized his domain. He's faking the seizure so he doesn't have to pay anyone back.

Yeah, I realized pretty quickly after I posted this that this "seizure" by the government was faked. But your information about the registration information is very useful. Can the US authorities even seize a domain hosted in Russia?

Is doublebot the same type of scammy site? Bitcoin Factory is another one I'm aware of, but at least that one makes some income off ads. I'm curious, if doublebot is another ponzi-like site, and you are aware of this, why do you bother with them in the first place? Is it just the thrill of getting in early and trying to milk some btc out of them before they fold up?

Thanks for the link to that thread. I agree, the "shut down" looks totally fake. Can't say I have sympathy for anyone who lost money. It was an obvious scam.

If this was a legitimate take down, gov. wouldn't return money this quickly though. The notice would be the notice of the website take down, but no reimbursements could be done until a conviction or plea deal. There still needs to be due process.

http://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr

There's no mention on the press page in the southern district of NY for this seizure. I would think there should be uv they really seized it. The attorney's office likes to make splashy announcements to deter other bad actors.

Good point actually. I wonder if they were really seized or the owner just ran and put up a fake page.

Ore-mine.org's domain has been seized by the government.

www.ore-mine.org

It was an obvious Ponzi, but they seemed so small scale that they might evade detection. Nope!

There are a couple other sites out there running similar Ponzi-style shenanigans. Take heed, you're not fooling anyone.

That's pretty ballsy to purport to speak for 95% of the people in the world.


Are you trying to make the point that bitcoin is not a virtual asset but an ETF is? What is a "real" bitcoin anyway, and in your mind, how is it different from a gold-backed security?

I understand your point on a philosophical level, but I draw a hard distinction between your right to your money and your control of it. I only view a "right" as something that originates under the rule of law, but control is simply the ability to move it. You can cede control over money without sacrificing any legal ownership claim to it. I think both of the points we were making actually work in tandem.

Oil dominates the discussion right now because it moves a lot faster than the Fed. The Fed still gets plenty of mentions in the media here, it just doesn't dominate the headlines like oil does because oil is what is creating the sense of panic right now. Whenever the Fed has a meeting, it gets plenty of play. It just so happens to be right now that the consensus is that with oil reeling, the Fed will not raise rates further, and until this notion changes, there's little reason to spend much time talking about the Fed.

Confidence for sure is a major component, but we're not simply mirroring China's market. Sometimes China's losses spook investors in the US (on the confidence point) but on the whole, China's stock market is a giant sham propped up by their government, and it will see many bad days ahead while the US market will continue to trade on data more relevant to US investors.

And just how in 2008 when $30 oil was unimaginable, now we have the reverse where $130 oil is unimaginable. People have short memories and have the tendency to think that the current situation is going to last forever, but oil is cyclical. One thing I would bet on is that oil is not going to stay this low forever.

Gold has a long history of being valuable. Bitcoin has only existed for less than 5 years, and it's entire existence has been defined by risk and volatility. If we enter anything resembling a depression, bitcoin is not going to fare well.

No, it was on the WSJ blog. When a major bank says something like this, it tends to grab headlines.

I wonder if circumstances like this will give rise to off-chain privately run blockchains, where basically a main few aggregators of transactions run private ledgers that are cheaper to operate, and then sync to the BTC blockchain every so often, like once every couple days or so, to cut down on the amount it costs in transaction fees per transaction. I imagine they would charge a fraction of what it costs to conduct an on-chain transaction, then keep the difference between what they charge and what it actually costs to sync to the blockchain. Although we're a far way off from transaction fees making up the bulk of block rewards, it's interesting to think about how the system will have to adapt in order to keep transaction costs from becoming prohibitively expensive for small transactions.

Where supply comes from is irrelevant. It doesn't matter that those coins were seized. It only matters that they suddenly became part of the active supply. 

As for your example, if bitcoins weren't dumped, and only traded for goods/services, the active supply would be less and the price would be higher. That's still supply-side, not demand.

Indeed, it seems I did. But "not allowed" is still not accurate. They're allowed, they just have paperwork to file if they do. The BSA is a pretty invasive law.

I lost this conversation quite awhile ago and have made my way back to it.

If you want to call it control, that's fine. Then yes, you have to give up control of the money when you deposit it in the bank. That's inherent in the action and plainly obvious, the same as when you put down any object you were previously holding, you have given up control over it until you pick it back up. Originally, you were talking about "rights." Giving up control (if that's how you want to distinguish it) and giving up rights are not the same. I only took issue with the concept that you give up your right to your money by putting it in the bank. You don't. You do give up control until you withdraw it.