This all looks fine to me. I talked to camolist, just need confirmation from both on dates.

I generally hold escrow up to 28 days before returning BTC to buyer unless reasonable evidence can be provided by seller to either extend that date or contest what the buyer's claiming. More details can be found @ https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120218

My sheets have been updated @ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ao892S4MOoDZdFFTc0tFbWVxUTZFVzVOMWxzV3pkclE&output=html

Escrow can be held at 1NswwmkJHNjDG2RstuD4Rm7zH79ysaQASh (I should have a updated version of Armory with coin control by then, so users should now expect funds not to move from that receiving address except when escrow is released or refunded).

Cheers.

Bump.

I believe I'm within a group less than 10 people who have done business on BTCTalk in a $100k+ range for over a year without yet receiving a "SCAMMER" tag. 

Last time I'll bump this if nobody new steps up. Offer's open until I get really busy around February for a month or two.

Duh. Suddenly thought of this while pouring some coffee.

BitInstant debit cards in association with Mastercard. CC-reading machines are pretty much everywhere, especially with Square/etc

BTC->BitInstant Account = instant $$$ on Mastercard wherever accepted (so, with a small fee, you CAN now pay your bills "directly" with BTC)

But... $$$->BitInstant Account = instant BTC in user's BitInstant wallet = BitInstant Credit Union? Surprisingly, probably less hassle going that route.

You could "cash out" of either currency should you choose... Idunno how many people will have their wages direct-deposited into their BitInstant CU account for BTC, though. OTOH, if you do small jobs and have a smartphone attachment for credit card reading, you could effectively be paid in Bitcoins, even while the person you did the work for has no idea what the Hell a Bitcoin is.

This would also imply BitInstant would host online wallets. I wonder if they could get 'em insured. I don't really see why not.... and if a company's going to do that, it'd be BitInstant. This all poses problems for the anonymity-oriented, though.... but not everything needs to cater to them. Worth noting, perhaps, that Casascius coins are extremely useful for anonymity. They'd coexist well. It would be a surreal experience to walk into a 7/11 with BitInstant debit card, and use it to purchase Casascius coins from a vending machine.

There's little at stake, so I will be paying straight off the list Nefario sends under the negative equity provision. Nobody needs to file a separate claim for BDK, just file a general claim with GLBSE on their website.

What's currently nice about Bitcoin is the conspicuous absence of competitors in most markets.

Bitcoin connects you to the global economy, is instant, and extremely easy to transact with. Thus - not only is the Bitcoin economy lacking in supply for most markets, but also a currency seemingly tailor-made for impulse buyers. Once familiarized with basics of the client and protocol, you can sell just about anything. There is indeed a fellow around who sells games right off of Steam for a markup of ~10% (though I assume it's higher when he stockpiles games on sale). He sometimes literally does not even keep a stock of product he's selling, thus operating at nearly zero cost liability assuming he follows tax/regulatory laws in his area. - And even with how relatively simple the business is relative to most, it's a very useful, appreciated, and desired service, with hundreds (possibly thousands) of customers since he started selling ~3-4 months ago. He obviously has some decent business and marketing sense, but he wouldn't have needed to go to college to do it, or spend any exorbitant amount of time studying the market.

Should you sell something hand-made, you're looking at a dramatically higher markup. Home-made lasers, duct tape raincoats, Lego art -- if you have any passion, there's probably a way to sell it to anyone in the world, very quickly, with Bitcoin. Furthermore, you have a community here which contains buyers, sellers, and producers, offering a learning experience you can't get in many other places. When you're involved with Bitcoin business, you get to hear from people involved with you on every level who can give completely objective opinions because they're behind a pseudonym on the Internet.

I think, in its current state, Bitcoin is, above all else, a very powerful rebellion against the employee/submission mentality which has (ironically) dominated the USA (likely among many other industrialized nations).

Almost all of us (deposit-takers) dropped the ball in a major way. We did too much other stuff on the side, acted without staff, and kludged crap together. We had lots of ideas which just needed to be implemented. There were rules and guidelines in the primary room of lenders/deposit-takers, but we couldn't often get unanimous approval on anything. We had a collaborative list of defaulters and late payments, but practically, it was useless and time-consuming, eventually totally neglected. For those who didn't act maliciously, it was largely a problem of not taking the task seriously enough. BUT, because of the legal ambiguity, there is some justification. The larger you are, the more scrutinized your activities will be by regulatory authorities. This could be avoided by operating solely as a pseudonym, but then you have the trust problem, which is what a lot of our time focused on. How do we earn trust?

In many cases, there was a massive violation of trust, either by failing to disclose what deposits were going toward (which generally isn't required of banks, but they turn these over to government agencies - so it really should be expected of "unregulated" entities) or blatant deceit. Again, I talked with people about ostracizing and kicking them from the group (which'd potentially cut off intralender loans for them, but mostly be a status thing), but we didn't agree on anything and everyone stayed in the room except one person who was kicked for going nuts (incidentally, someone who railed against a lender-turned-defaulter).

Barring deceit, then, I'd say the biggest issues we had were that we:
*Lacked seriousness. Explained in lower sections.
*Were too small. We couldn't hire specialists -- it was just us individually, and most lacked any experience (certainly including myself). Perhaps most importantly, we couldn't afford lawyers to look through hundreds of near-impossible-to-interpret CFR pages nor was anyone a lawyer (or even accountant).
*SEVERE lack of discipline (deserves its own section). When someone offers 2kBTC or more in a single pop, it's damn hard to turn down. Once we find ourselves with too many deposits and not enough loans, decisions had a tendency (at least for me) to get very, very stupid. "Gosh, I have over 3kBTC sitting around. GLBSE is slow as fuck... I guess I'll make Nefario/CHM an offer." Turned down... "Well, gosh - I really do need a responsive exchange site to be able to grow... may's well use OPM to fund one!" - And then I met JRO, we talked... I talked to related people, then handed the coins over... Oops. When we'd have idle funds, they'd frequently go to on-demand withdrawal programs like Imsa's, you-know-who's, or into securities on GLBSE given the large number of relatively transparent bond issuers with units just waiting to be picked up. Once we realized how easy it was to buy pre-IPO securities in bulk at a steep discount, some went a little crazy. The pre-IPO craze led to JRO and Alberto receiving ridiculous sums of money for crap product and bad ideas, with many deposit-takers burned for "financial adventurism."
*Extreme demands for anonymity by lenders. This shouldn't have been a problem, but as stated before, we severely lacked discipline. Getting burned by pseudonyms whose only reputation came from meager previous sales and successful previous loans led to the "How to Request a Loan" thread with (up until that time) extreme suggestions and the "Confidence Loan Trend" thread. Even still, I was burned by a "mixmastermine" even after I'd made those threads, and on the basis that he'd been a good customer so far and agreed not to deposit with Pirate. A couple months or so ago, he PMs to say that due to Pirate and other defaults (he wasn't supposed to be arbing), he's disappearing. Because I didn't demand documents up-front, I had no effective recourse.
*Lacked unity. PatrickHarnett was the initial person to suggest to me that we form a room in Skype. We did so, and this was the closest we ever came to organization. The room expanded too rapidly, with people largely unrelated to what we do, and then we couldn't talk about certain things... 3 sub-rooms and 90% OT discussion later and little progress was made to
*Lacked time, operated on different schedules. It's really hard to resolve something in a chat room when people are on at different hours, especially when the room constantly went OT (largely my fault). Additionally, almost everyone had other jobs and couldn't spend 2 hours a day just thinking and talking about something which didn't bring in a livable wage and would likely face severe regulatory challenges short-term.
*Lacked competence. I think I've explained this one already, but no BTC lender was a lender by trade, and "real" lenders aren't going to wander into legally gray BTC territory until there's a hell of a market to justify it. Unfortunately, I never found a professional lender to get in the room and tell us the dumber of the shit we were doing. Hand-in-hand with this, we lacked time to implement ideas. Learning as we go along, we'd pick up on things we could be doing better (for example, a "Bitcoin FDIC" which would've had its own wallet and regularly have funds sent to), talked about them, but didn't have the time to really sit down, get serious, agree to something, and implement the idea.


So... I think it'll get better with time. Better underlying infrastructure (I haven't used it, yet, but I haven't heard anything negative about BTCJam), more competent people as the market expands, better track-records for business-grade loans (back then, a BTC business operating for over six months was a shockingly pleasant surprise), and better guidelines/insight available by previous experiences in the Bitcoin lending market.

- And to the implied question... Almost everything we (at least, I) fucked up on could've been avoided with the government regulations imposed on banks... with the caveat that it never would've happened. - But, the restrictions and up-front capital requirements (including a non-refundable $20k fee [last I checked] with application with stringent requirements) would've ensured nobody would've gotten in the business who did not already have years of experience and knew what to do or were unwilling to devote a lot of resources into the venture. I'm not arguing in favor of gov't regulation, though... BTC lending will get better, but it'll probably take a lot of time until someone truly competent exists willing to make cryptocurrency lending their "job," and hopefully their proven procedures will give upstarts something more relevant to reference.

ETA: I think it's also important to note that BTC deposit-takers probably don't have too much of a wildly-higher failure rate than other BTC start-ups. Exchanges, for example, are probably most similar. Exchanges and deposit-takers shutting down take the most heat because OPM is at stake. God only knows how many BTC startups fail within their first year of operation, and I can probably name more failures than successes (definitely with exchanges), but we frequently don't hear about BTC Prostitute Job Board #8 failing because OPM isn't involved -- there's little at stake. So, while BTC lending (rather, alleged lenders who take deposits) and other investment opportunities seem like a massive wasteland of scams (well.. it pretty much is, but...), I think it's probably over-exaggerated relative to the failure rate of other ventures and reflects an unrealistic idealism of the investor who thinks the vast majority of startups aren't going to fail and aren't managed by deceitful assholes. (Alright - I think I've rambled enough, for now)

Probably a good time to remember just how large an operation "Gigamining" is. It's not some guy in his mom's basement looking for weed money, and with the legal ambiguity surrounding what he does - if he isn't paying legal fees now to move Gigamining away from the darkness in legally gray territory, he'll likely pay much, much more later, even if he were to win future cases. Unfortunately, the cost of "going legal" is also pushed onto unit-holders, who didn't sign up for this, and are rightfully pissed. It's a shitty situation. -But, the alternative could be Giga's facilities and house being raided with all electronics confiscated, resulting in a near-worthless operation.

Think of it this way -- Giga's name and locations are (roughly, at least) known. The SEC has been prosecuting and investigating people who've issued some form of security for BTC. Giga's under much more legal scrutiny now than earlier this year, and now the legal shield of GLBSE (which was responsible for complying with many regulations, previously) is no longer in existence - so now all that legal risk's on Gigamining/VPS, which previously operated in a legal minefield even ignoring the legal risks Nefario or another exchange would take on. It's very possible, and probably likely, that Gigamining would be worthless within a year given the operation is high-value and no longer afforded the legal protections of an exchange taking most of the regulatory risk (Giga effectively has to issue some new security or figure out some other way to pay back unit-holders - and he's surely being watched by regulatory agents).

Building on that, I don't see why one person could not theoretically have multiple accounts with different email addresses.

Maybe that person could charge 2BTC per user + 10% of whatever's paid out, not fulfilling a batch of users' proxy claims unless there's at least 50BTC worth of commissions in the pot to justify getting all the legal nonsense and tax nonsense dealt with. That person should have at least thousands of dollars worth of losses this year. ........ ................................

On a related note, I lost >$50k this year paying out losses from BDK. ... Just sayin'.

Giga apparently received asset info from Nef yesterday. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75802.msg1347273#msg1347273

AFAIK, he's the only one so far. I haven't received anything, yet. The claims process will continue, but at least now it looks like there's a fair chance I'll get a list from Nef.

Wow. This rabbit hole goes far deeper than I think any of us would've previously thought. Nefario not only operates GLBSE, but a scrap metal company, education and library board, bridal store, property development firm, and nail salon!

... 

Monday parole meetings will now be done exclusively via email (if you filed a claim which didn't have an email address, please send one to me). I don't have anything else to really report. Am quickly nearing the half-way mark in units being claimed, and the majority are from people I've previously dealt with - so that's good. I directly contacted everyone (I think) who did a BDK->BDK.BND transfer, with one exception because he has me on "ignore." A few people should be paid out within a week, and the remaining unit-holders will be those who I can't immediately pay and need to draft a promissory note for, or those whose claims I can't verify.

INAU got a girlfriend and edd... Idunno what the Hell he's doing, anymore.

Damn. That would've been almost as good as getting the info released from Nef.

Is GLBSE still secure? Has anyone checked?

Someone said something to me in passing and it made me wonder. Maybe Nefario is worried about the legality of releasing data given he's probably been reported to multiple authorities by now. Maybe we will see a leak within a few weeks? Include a BTC address in the leaked information and I'm sure some would show their gratitude.

That's where I had all my Namecoins sent I forgot about until today.

noooo....  

I recall someone mentioning they were still able to retrieve their account history .csv from GLBSE. Does someone remember the link to do so?

Unit-holders need to start pestering their issuers to take claims.

As time increases, chance of recovering funds decreases, both with Nefario and issuers. It's been so long, it's insane to count on Nefario releasing anything at this point. Unit-holders really need to press getting a comprehensive claims process up if you have an issuer without one, especially if they haven't been talking throughout this. Don't let your Issuer just keep withholding dividends and saying he still wants to wait for Nefario -- the time for that ended last month.

Stochastic made a .csv from the Twitter logs GLBSE posted. If users have their own account history in .csv they turn over to Issuers, it's pretty solid evidence of a valid claim. Stochastic's .csv can be found @ https://dl.dropbox.com/s/8f1j19jbsa84ans/_historyGLBSEraw.csv?dl=1 -- It doesn't say who owns what, but it appears Nefario's the only one who could've told us that. Issuers need to still salvage the situation, even though it won't be perfect.

Thanks to stochastic's GLBSE history in .csv format, if you have an up-to-date .csv of your account history to submit with your claim, that can now be verified and considered hard evidence.

The list does not verify who owns what, but allows me to match data in your .csv to what's in stochastic's .csv so I know your .csv hasn't been modified.

No machines, no human interaction.... Maybe just no *new* machines specifically for the venture... Are you going to put them in already-used vending machines?

Wait - I think I've got it! BitInstant is partnering with Pepsi to get "Bitcoin Reward" QR codes printed on the bottom of caps. Win anywhere from .000001-1000BTC, or the grand prize of 100 ASIC units inside an enclosure shaped like a car.

... What about CoinStar?