I doubt anyone would have a claim which doesn't count as a "small claim".  I suspect Andre wouldn't bother turning up so people would win by default, but there's not much point in having a judgement you can't enforce, even if it's been cheap to obtain.  It would trash Andre's credit, but that's about it (and it's probably already trashed given what he posted on Yahoo last year about his mortgage problems).

Unlike the Bitfloor thread, there is agreement between the creditors here on how to proceed.  With no way to contact anyone else who may be owed funds by WBE, that's about as good as you're going to get.  The alternative would be returning the coins to Andre so that he can distribute them and no-one wants to take that risk even if it might be "technically" the appropriate course of action.  If the creditors on here represent a majority of funds owed, you're on pretty safe ground going along with whatever they'd agreed.  if people haven't taken legal action to recover their funds by now, they're not likely to do so over the manner in which those funds are returned.

Andre remains an absolute shit-heel for dumping this on Chris.

I think Gavin's essentially right about the future of software but has over-estimated the time-frame.  People want the same kind if usability on their smartphones and tablets that they have on their laptops and PCs but they want it now, not in 2 or 3 years.  People don't their computing to be tied down by location any more than they want their telephony to require physical proximity.  There may be congestion issues with mobile computing at the moment, but people are still abandoning fixed internet connections in favour of mobile broadband and phone and tablet computing in droves. All many people need to make the switch total is some killer apps, and that will happen sooner rather than later.

+1

It's location dependent.

I get

bitcoin.org

the Bitcoin wiki

MtGox

news items on the Romney thing

/r/bitcoin

weusebitcoins.com

bitcoin.it

news items on the Bitfloor theft

bitcoin.stackexchange.com

and World Bitcoin Exchange on the first page.

LOL.  World Bitcoin Exchange comes up on the first page.

Whatever happened to good old-fashioned Google-bombs?

The story has apparently hit the Fox News ticker  Don't know if Bitcoins are mentioned though.

I once worked for a financial services company - the physical security was incredible.  Even once you were in the building - which required your fingerprint and a security pass for entry - you had to swipe your pass and enter a security code to open doors (and there were multiple doors between sections) and enter lifts.  Your pass determined which doors you could open and what floors the lift would take you to - the security system pretty much knew where you were to within 10 feet whenever you were in the building and that was before you even got near the computers.  Getting someone's financial records from their accountant's computer system would be child's play by comparison, I would imagine.

Square plans to disrupt the retail payments market.  Merchant acceptance is what will bring users onboard.  There's no expensive infrastructue so merchants can adopt it with little risk.  It's becoming a common strategy.

Bitcoin will only ever be a niche currency until it's user-friendly - no matter how sound it is.  It could be being used as a leap frog technology in developing nations right now if it wasn't so cumbersome.  More user-friendly systems requiring only a smartphone already exist - Bitcoin needs to lift its game if it wants to compete in the payments market and not just be a speculative commodity until something shinier comes along.

The devs aren't the only people who can come up with things like ways to compress the blockchain, for instance - there's just not a whole lot of incentive for other people to do it.

It's a legitimate question.  Square has attracted over $200 million dollars in venture capital in the two years since it was launched and is now being used at Starbucks.  Dwolla has also attracted major investors and become a viable alternative to PayPal. 

There are payment systems coming out right and left which are getting serious development funding and merchant adoption, yet there's really no serious money being directed towards solving the issues which create barriers to Bitcoin's acceptance as an alternative, mainstream payment method. People are expected to put time and effort into solving those issues out of idealism, which puts Bitcoin behind the other technologies which are targeting similar markets.

Bitcoin is not "user-friendly" for conventional business at the moment and it's not going to enjoy wide-spread adoption while it's cumbersome to acquire, to store, to spend or to exchange.  It's not going to become user-friendly any time soon unless people are paid to develop solutions.

http://buybitcoin.com/home/

Notice all the insane conditions in the FAQ.  It's intentionally misleading because he tells people the "best" ways to buy Bitcoin but doesn't accept most of those payment methods - and then states that he won't refund payments sent by "unapproved" payment methods.


He's selling at over $17, by the way, so I think he's intentionally seeking out a black market.  The deposits into his accounts have no reference numbers, they're identified by the number of cents in the transaction.

Which of his many different bank accounts did you deposit to, OP?

I didn't want to spawn a thread another Pattaya thread.  This forum gets less traffic, so we can talk about whether we need to do anything to warn people about Bruce with a lot less background noise.  He's obviously aware that people will troll the shit out of his forum given the chance and is keeping a tight rein on registrations for that reason.

Part of me wants to believe that no-one's going to buy Bitcoins from him at $17~ so there's not really any need to do anything.  But Bruce is the king of self-promotion so we can't just assume that people won't fall for his bullshit and all the "conditions" he's placing on service users scream "scam".  At the very least, people should be aware that they're dealing with someone who has an outstanding judgement against them related to a previous scam.  It's not necessary to bring up the Pattaya stuff in order to make people aware of that.

Casual visitors aren't even going to see that stuff if they visit here because it gets moved out of the general Discussion forum and into sub-fora with uninteresting titles.

He's promoted WBE on his Facebook and that ties to his past and present real life activity.  If the bank account he was using was in his name, it was established by someone with sufficient ID to convince the bank they were Andre.  Likewise any business accounts that were used - Australian banks require documentation.

I know Patrick pulled the ASIC records related to High Net Worth Property.  He didn't release information about the other directors, but it would be interesting to see if they're people connected with Progressive Security or on his various social networks.

It tends to happen when there's a drama in progress and people are constantly checking for updates.  The pirate debacle probably drove increased traffic over the last few weeks.  Today's problems are likely people Googling "Bitcoin" as a result of the Romney thing combined with people wanting to know what's happening regarding Bitfloor.

I doubt this is about anyone trying to get money or BTC.  People have been looking for a way to get Bitcoin mainstream media coverage outside of the finance and technology sections and what better way to do it than to tie Bitcoin to the Presidential campaign in some way.  Mr and Mrs average America might never read the finance and technology sections of even the most mainstream media, but they're probably reading the current political coverage and this is the kind of story which might even hit the TV news bulletins.

This is probably going to blow up in the face of whoever pulled the stunt, but it's been effective in drawing mainstream attention to Bitcoin.  Whether that's a good thing remains to be seen.

Imagine the Secret Service fucking up the exchange's shit if they could make the most tenuous connection between the purchase and the extortion threat.

I suspect you could buy up 100,000 BTC over the counter if you really wanted to. 

It was linked to on SomethingAwful.  It probably came from the reddit thread.  It's likely something someone knocked up just for shit and giggles.