You cannot break the law (including obstruction of justice) by carrying out a duty (or a right) specifically named in the constitution. Trump has the explicit authority under the constitution to hire (upon the advice and consent of the senate) and fire any cabinet member he so chooses. You can review article II, section 2 of the constitution if you have any questions about this.

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Although Sessions has been effective in carrying out much of Trump's agenda, he has allowed multiple politically motivated (against Trump) investigations/prosecutions to take place, and he has not overruled very clearly politically motivated decisions (such as not seriously investigating Clinton) of the Obama DOJ.

The likely reason he has not fired Sessions is because he apparently does not have sufficient votes to confirm a new AG before the election, according to reports. If trump cannot replace his AG, then Rosenstein would become acting AG, which would be worse than the current situation.

Senator McCain spent his entire professional career in service to his country one way or another. When he was a POW, according to reports by other POWs, he chose to get beaten by the Vietnamese over getting released and feeding their propaganda machine (the "rule" among POWs was FIFO).

McCain often tried to work across the isle, was very well respected among his peers, and I believe he always voted what he felt was right for the country (some disagree with his conclusions).

I don’t particularly want some big company telling me what I can and cannot read about or listen to.

I suspect if this was one of the many mainstream groups on the left who activity pursue violence and harassment, you would feel very different.

The investigation is finding a lot of criminal activity, although much of the found criminal activity was previously known to investigators and it was decided to not pursue charges, meaning the charges were political in nature. 

This should be chilling. News organizations have 1st amendment exemptions to campaign finance laws, they are able to endorse candidates and otherwise provide favorable/unfavorable coverage to candidates (which is very valuable) without having to report the value of such on campaign reporting forms. It is also very common for a news outlet to investigate a story (regarding a candidate), only to not report said story because it is not credible (remember that anything a news outlet publishes will affect it's reputation). I would also point out that major news outlets frequently refrain from reporting favorable information about the current state of the economy and the county, even though they spend money obtaining this information -- none of this is reported on any campaign finance disclosure form.

It is not entirely uncommon for defendants to plea guilty to a crime in exchange for some of the charges to be dropped. My understanding is that prosecutors were ready to charge Cohen with 20 counts of various crimes, and that the plea deal will prevent additional related charges from being brought.

The facts surrounding the bank fraud charges are likely illegal (the bringing of said charges are still political though), however the underlying facts around the campaign finance violations are almost certainly not illegal however. The test of if something is a campaign expense is to ask if someone would have incurred an expense if they were not running a campaign, and if they would have, it is not a campaign expense. For example, if you have a debate on Tuesday, you might get a massage on Monday to be relaxed for the debate, or get a haircut so you look sharp during the debate, however neither of these are campaign expenditures. Further, all campaign expenditures are paid out of the "campaign" so if one were to argue the campaign should have paid off Trump's former girlfriend for her silence, then the argument is that political donors (via the campaign) should be paying for this, which of course is hogwash. Even if one reason for the payment was to help his election chances, Trump would have made this payment if he was not running for office to protect his reputation and marriage, which makes this a personal expense.

In regards to Cohens tax fraud charges, it is more common for someone to get audited, and as a result of the audit, for the IRS to find shady business, charge the back taxes, and penalties, and to move on. My understanding is that the filing of an amended return (that results from an audit, although also otherwise) with correct information will prevent prosecutors from filing tax fraud charges.

In regards to all of the charges, I suspect that if Cohen had agreed to corporate to provide evidence against Trump, he likely would not have received any jail time, any fine, and the prosecutors likely would not have forced Cohen to file amended tax returns with corrected information (pay back taxes). See the deal that Gates got.

I think manafort should be pardoned. He should wait until the Mueller investigation is complete, or at least until Manafort is sentenced and it is clear he is unwilling (or much more likely, unable) to corporate.


Manafort owns a condo in Trump tower in NY, and has likely known Trump for some time before his candidacy. Manafort was previously investigated and the FBI declined to pursue charges.

I don't think there is anything Manafort can say that would be harmful to Trump, however he can obviously make things up. If Manafort does makes things up, he is risking Trump allowing him to spend the rest of his life in jail, essentially for no reason.

Except that US prisons do not force inmates to preform labor that have a net benefit to the state -- inmates across the US have a net cost to taxpayers, and for the most part, people are not tried/jailed for political reasons. The prison system also does not actively kill people, except those who are sentenced to death, and takes active steps to protect inmates from being killed by others.

Gulags on the other hand, were essentially forced labor that provided a benefit to the state, people were often there for political reasons, and many were actively killed by the state. Some people believe the majority of people in Gulags were killed.

That is one way to look at it.

Cobra is a specific person in the Bitcoin community who was around as of when satoshi left. However it is unknown who this person is, as the first time he appears is in 2014. My question is, who was this guy in 2009/10?

Given the very small number of people actively involved in the Bitcoin community at the time, I would say the chances of cobra being satoshi are at least 1%.

There is absolutely no way this kind of transaction will end in tears. /s

You want $6.7 million in paypal? lamo

Is your concern that he might make more money than others while contributing to conversations in the forum?

Feel free to respond to the scam accusation thread. There are multiple people who have concerns about the money they entrusted you to protect.

I am only saying you should be removed until the dispute is resolved (assuming there are no shenanigans going on). I am sure your response with actual information will be a sigh of relief for many people who invested in the project.

If anything, Cobra brings much needed balance to the forum, more of which is needed.

In April, I speculated that Cobra is either theymos or satoshi, and theymos promptly denied being cobra but did not address him potentially being satoshi.

It appears there is in excess of 900BTC missing/unaccounted for. The bitcoin held was moved out of the stated escrow address, and although the blockchain can reasonably confirm where it is now, none of your team has publicly confirmed the location of the bitcoin being held, nor that the funds are accessible, nor has addressed questions in regards to why the bitcoin was moved.

I don't think it is unreasonable to assume something is amiss when no one has answered questions, addressed concerns or given any kind of accounting for the funds after multiple calls to do so, and well over a week has passed since a scam accusation has been opened.

LTC Low - 0.0177 High - 0.0216 Value - 138.194 - 168.643
DASH Low - 0.06548 High - 0.087383 Value - 125.459 - 167.48
DOGE Low - 90SAT High 103 SAT - Value - 21.219 - 24.28
WAVES
XRP Low - 0.00003496 High - 0.00005027 Value - 46.33 - 66.62
ETH Low - 0.0741 High - 0.085 Value 479.95 - 550.55
ETC - Low - 0.0034117 High 0.003994 Value - 14.04 - 16.43
Total: 895.79 - 994.00 BTC

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Above is the low and high prices of the various alts within 7 days of the above stated dates the alts were transferred to an exchange.

A review of the blockchain reveals the BTC likely ended up in this address: 36Uh2ine6UzWGPTDYdENqS6pj6Rzx4Q67R from 3AiGej11G8jUXvEBPvQKPLiHXC7ruUCp1Z originally. There are small amounts of bitcoin beyond what can be traced directly from the original 1590 BTC raised, however they are nowhere near any of the amounts any of the alts would reasonably have been sold for.

So I guess the question becomes, where exactly is the money raised from the altcoins? The deposits appear to be fairly well staggered, so if there was some problem with withdrawals, the deposits would logically have stopped. Further, there appears to be a withdrawal that can account for a portion of the bitcoin cash, although some of this money is also still missing.

None of the escrows have publicly confirmed any information, and have given what is essentially non-answers to questions regarding this situation.

I believe the underlying reason for the lack of transparency is the missing funds from the sale of altcoins. I can somewhat account for the difference between the 1590 in BTC raised and the current 1169 held in 36Uh2ine6UzWGPTDYdENqS6pj6Rzx4Q67R as payments to the founders, as the ICO terms said they would get a certain percentage after the ICO was over, although I would want more evidence and information before saying no bitcoin has been misappropriated.

You should post the dates of the transfers to an exchange and if you can find it, the /btc price so we can try to calculate the total amount of bitcoin and eventually the amount of missing money.

All information should be made public so anyone interested can review everything themselves.

Think of it this way, there is currently possibly 70 btc missing from the bch sale, and much more in dispute, possibly several hundred btc. What would you do if you were offered 10 btc to simply say everything is okay without doing any real due diligence, especially considering you likely won’t be asked to do something similar in the future? What if you were asked to say ‘after reviewing all the information provided you were not able to find anything wrong’ but were provided little information?

There is also the risk that the person who “volunteers” to do the audit is actually a shill, which is very well possible considering laudas history of offering to buy accounts.

There is absolutely no reason to make it so only one person audits the amount of money held. This is just asking for corruption.

There is a scam accusation that has been open for a week or so that has blazed’s name in the title that he has not responded to and the issue has been apparently going on for a while now.

He is free to respond now, but I don’t think it is appropriate to wait additional time for his response, especially considering the amount in dispute.

The 10 BTC amount is a lower bound amount. Looking at market data and based upon the fact that exchanges were requiring many confirmations at the time, I I think it is more likely that the proceeds were 10-20% higher, making the missing money be closer to 20-30 btc.

Considering that alts were already being handed and converted into bitcoin, the additional work to claim the bitcoin cash was minimal and certainly not worth a hundred grand. There were/are many guides to help people claim their coins and it would really not be equitable to be charging 10% for this, especially considering it wouldn’t be possible to use an alternate service provider. The overwhelming majority of bitcoin companies that were holding customer money provided access without charge.

Probably most importantly, this fee was not disclosed prior to receiving the service and did not have the opportunity to reject the charge.

I believe several people who invested have posted here, including the OP, however they may have abandoned the thread after lauda essentially said to fuck off.

My question is why were these coins moved? And more importantly, why is there a refusal to say the coins are in fact held in this address?

Each of the escrows also provided signed messages saying the bitcoin would be held in a "2-of-3 multisig" address. I am also curious to know if each of the three escrow agents solely controlled each one of the three keys required to unlock the funds, and if this continues to be the case. The wording of the signed messages certainly implies this is the case, however some statements in the ANN thread makes me be not so sure.

First of all, information regarding the alts needs to be made immidiately public. We need to know the addresses they were received to, when they were sent to an exchange, what exchange rate they were sold for, and where the bitcoin was withdrawn to after the coins were sold.

I calculate the alts to be worth just over 502 BTC at current depressed prices that are significantly lower than what they were when the ICO sale ended. Plus the additional 104 BTC from the sale of BCH, and the 1590 BTC raised in the ICO, and the total BTC comes to about 2200 BTC. All of these numbers are lower bound amounts.

It is unclear as to how the fact that the issues with converting were due to "investors lack of due diligence" as I have no idea how one could lead to another.

I am not sure why several hundred BTC was moved to exchanges. Something appears to be out of order here.

You need to use good judgment when reviewing blockchain links.

I assume you are referring to people sending ERC20 tokens to a central address. When you have one account sending tokens to an address associated with another account in a single instance, this is very clearly insufficient evidence to support they two accounts are alts of eachother. If one account sends every ERC20 token they ever receive to another account, this is probably still insufficient evidence alone to support the two are alts, although when used in conjunction with other evidence, a connection may be made; however this will show the two accounts likely live in the same time zone, and may know eachother IRL. I would speculate that when you have a very small number of accounts consistently making A --> B transactions, most of the time they probably are friends IRL, and one of them is simply cashing out their earnings. Even if there is one person with two or three accounts "abusing" bounty campaigns, in the grand scheme of things, they probably are not doing very much damage, and are probably not really hurting anyone.

However when you have many accounts, perhaps more than 15 or so, and they are all sending tokens to a single address that does not clearly belong to one of them, this is decent evidence they are part of a single farm. Again, you need to use good judgment when reviewing this, and should try to rule things out such as that the coins are being sent to an exchange, and that the accounts are not receiving any kind of coin shortly after sending their tokens to the central ETH address. I think there are a lot of instances in which there are many more than 15 accounts involved, some people have posted about there being hundreds of accounts, and I would speculate in many cases they are being run by bots of some sort.

I don't think trying to hunt for the above farms is a good use of resources though. I speculate there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of these mass farmed accounts. I also speculate they are often "hired" by those ultimately behind ICOs as a way to increase social media chatter regarding their ICO, and that in many cases, calling these accounts out (including tagging them) will have little/no impact on their ability to continue doing what they have been doing. There was a NY times article a few months ago that talked about how some people were buying up twitter followers in order to improve their twitter presence, and one company they bought from would often buy up twitter accounts from other "suppliers"; the article talked about how it would be possible to spot someone who had purchased many twitter followers by looking at registration data of a person's followers. I would not be surprised if similar shady business is going on around here in regards to ICOs. I think the solution is both remove incentives to farm accounts via shit posts, and to create incentives to not farm accounts via shit posts -- a big part of this would be for theymos to monetize the forum much more than he is currently.