Great, another dipshit promoting race-mixing. I'm barely Jewish enough to get free loans anymore, so you can keep the screwing to your own people, friend.

Happy Matzoshmearwicz, everyone!

Arise!

I keep hearing I need to declare USD value when the conversion happens. What kind of evidence would be sufficient in an audit? Do I just write the date down, GoxLast (which fluctuates $20/hour anymore), and tell them to look up historical price charts? What if Bitcoins are only worth $20 on miou302ponz.info's exchange, but $190 on MtGox? Which do I use? Would the IRS even trust data from Gox?

How do I prove the transaction? "Oh, txID is 19512a921ec4b501faf5b2f56a1cf41129cef65cf46d3fa79b1b2034797793f2, Mr. Has-Me-By-The-Balls -- you can look it up on blockchain.info if you don't believe me and don't keep a copy of the blockchain around."

Miners with a protocol supporting automatic switching by pool request? Only need 10-15% of BTC Guild hashpower running it to make a difference.

Maybe el could work with another pool op, where he maybe splits the normal fee 50/50 when miners need to be re-routed. Offer users a slight bonus when they're switched during "overage" to promote use of miners supporting the protocol. BTC Guild & another pool would need software to communicate when users need to be routed (and which), as well as when they can be safely switched back over. El would have a pooled account set up at the other pool to do this, where instructions on where/how to re-route are provided by the pool with the overage.

This could keep BTCGuild at an "ideal" 40% or lower while not punishing users, not totally ruining el's revenues, and without miners needing to know everything going on. Dunno if it's feasible, just throwing ideas out.  

Anything useful to you on http://bitcoin.in.th/ or http://www.bahtcoin.com/ ? (not recommending either -- have never used. Might want to search for and PM Goat (Chaang Noi).

Same problem with personal checks (regarding confirmations), yet many stores still accept them. Not everyone needs to operate on zero-trust, and that includes commercial operations. Paypal/CCs are reversible, cash can be faked. Bitcoin won't create utopia, but nobody in business thinks everything will be ideal. Shit happens.

Dank wasn't clever. Oh, well... I guess we all have to stop ego-tripping some time. I'll go back to mopping, now....

Like Litecoin? It was released well over a year ago, I think.

Many people use WU to purchase BTC, so, um...

Eris be praised! Come, farfiman. Join us on the side of chaotic neutral, and feel the loving embrace of the nothingness we tirelessly dispute in the MNW Memorial Kabal! Only when we are convinced there is no eschaton can we immanentize it! It is the natural progression from nihilism and rationality, and surely you have never felt more pleasure than you would donning a horse-head while pretending to be a turkey!

GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE!!!

It's a wonderful art, similar to virus infection and execution. It progresses rapidly, as do the AV coders and those susceptible to infection. Jailing the virus writers/distributors would be ineffective - and really, when a clever new way to distribute a virus is found, I'm not thinking "gosh, we better take this guy's computer privileges away," I'm thinking "wow, that's really clever. How else could this be applied?" It inspires new ideas to protect against malware experts as much as it inspires more malware writers to think outside the box. From this chaotic back-and-forth, we're able to apply new ways of thinking to other areas of our lives, and ultimately are all better for it.

We can't grow in knowledge without chaos ("inspiration from necessity"). The back-and-forth between lenders/depositors and scammers will do nothing but inspire (and re-distribute cash - but after essentials, what's cash other than a scoreboard?). If you're really so intent on enforcing your version of "should," don't take chances with government. Go kidnap Pirate and lock him in your basement for a few years. Only then will the Justice Fairy reward you with 40 virgins.

His notorious lying and scamming makes us wiser, so we can avoid being in such situations in the future. If Pirate's allowed to continue operating as-is, he will continue to breed a smarter (though poorer) species... Plundersapiens, sculpted in his image!

If you want to really show would-be scammers you can get in "real" trouble (if you take more than $1m worth), shoot him in the face. Who gives a shit if the SEC might send you to prison in a year if you stay in the same country? He still got away with millions, even if only temporarily. He should be idolized by the scammers, and he's fascinating. Why was he where authorities could find him? Was he that cynical? By the way, isn't it funny that even Bitcoin is reversible if the SEC seizes his assets and returns them to us? Maybe in Gavin's next visit with the FBI, he can announce the new government-only chargeback functionality.

If Pirate's forced into jail (and he would be whether or not he returns money, unless the SEC really sucks with plea deals - he's made many technical law violations outside of not returning money), he's still not taking responsibility. And really - did he do anything "wrong"? We were the idiots who gave him the money. His premise was plausible and he had a solid reputation, but a vague business plan would only appeal to the most undisciplined of investors. His scam was executed pretty well, I think.... certainly way more sophisticated than the usual ones we're exposed to.

That said -- we fucked up, and we should take responsibility for it. We misjudged, so Darwin took our money. We've misjudged a lot of people, but so far, Pirate's the only person who might go to prison. If fairness is the goal, Pirate should be allowed to plunder booty as all the others have been allowed. Or maybe in this case, justice is "too big to fail."

(TBH, my real, much more left-field feelings on the matter: I don't believe society should penalize anyone as a group because it declares "we" think he should be punished, indicating unanimity, which is pretty much never the case. Since I find the very idea of "bureaucrat-determined punishment" horribly offensive, I object to all USG imprisonments, fines, seizures, murders, etc., meaning there is indeed never unanimity. I would much rather see a passionate society where individuals punish individuals. I wouldn't personally imprison Pirate in my basement, so I think it's ridiculous that it should be a more "civilized" idea for a government to, shielding me from having to personally condemn someone who I kind of admire. Normally, I wouldn't have an outburst like this, but I think that since I've lost so much, I am less likely to be thought insincere. Or kill me. [No -- I'd argue rapists should be shot in the face, ideally by the victims, though never on behalf of the victims without their explicit consent to the punishment])

This has always been the case for many, even when you could buy a Bitcoin for a couple bucks.

Don't matter none to me. Bitcoin-related infrastructure's improving rapidly. Use of these services will increase as number of users increase regardless of an increase in tag-along speculators. Bitcoin's getting press from just about everywhere these days, and so long as more people are becoming aware of it, it's good.

That said, I did like when BTC price could be converted to USD price by just adding a zero. 1BTC = $10. We held around there for a long time, and it was good.

Doubt it. I'd like to see Pirate draining gov't funds, but he could do that better on Welfare. Any money he has is useful, but keeping him locked up with white-collar smugglers, launderers, and political prisoners for a few years probably won't help any of us.

I think we all learned a lot from Pirate, and I'd love to have a beer with him. -Or I just have Stockholm Syndrome.   

Cosmic rays probably wouldn't cause four separate crashes unless OP is posting from a spacecraft. OTOH, maybe rays corrupted common resource on RAM (pre-Vista version of Windows?) which remained on RAM even when QT was closed and re-opened. If PC were rebooted or resource purged (and reloaded fresh from HDD when QT was re-opened), maybe that allowed it to operate properly later even though no QT data was changed.

Galactic octopus strikes again?! Foreman, go run the tests!

I'd lean toward that, thinking also PC may have bad RAM or HDD. QT uses HDD and RAM quite a bit compared to normal productivity/browsing apps. Either could cause that kind of behavior. QT sync'ing might also cause heat production in HDD it might not have been able to handle, especially if there's a lot of dust in the case. Possibly also problem with OS which could cause these kinds of "random" crashes.

If you're really concerned about a cyber attack and downloaded the QT client directly from the Bitcoin Foundation's SourceForge page, the malicious individual probably has access to your network, not just your Bitcoin wallet, so requesting an IP address change from ISP followed by a clean install of your OS and fresh download of QT from Bitcoin's SourceForge page would be advisable.

- Or it could be the cosmic rays!! 


(Error message text would help.)

US, contacted them ~6 months ago with personal info, extra details on Pirate, contingencies others wanted before coming forward, and a formal complaint lodged to be forwarded to Philip. I was concerned they never reached out to me before filing. When they didn't respond after filing, I assumed they washed their hands of the case and moved on. Doesn't much matter to me, if there aren't substantial funds left... I would prefer Pirate stay out of prison.

I believe it was Franklin and/or Paine who came up with the "EAT SHIT OR DIE" illustration.

If an existing thread could be converted into a self-moderated topic, there's no point even distinguishing the two. Disallowing conversion allows potential posters to know whether or not the hour of writing they spent could be wasted if OP disagrees with the opinion expressed.

Alright. I got you. I love you all*.

OP was made back when Atlas (or Andrew Ryan or whoever he was being at the time) amused me. MNW's actually done an incredible amount of good lately.

(You forgot dank. I hate dank.)

I want the MD5 every other Wednesday, and there better not be any fucking crumbs in the seats. I hate that.

(SEC never contacted me after filing months ago)