Pretty please? 

Roughly three weeks ago, I sent a very long email to Eversim, suggesting they accept Bitcoin (or Bit-Pay, at least) for payments. I have not heard back from them, but wonder if it was because the first few sentences were praising Bitcoin, and I came off as a salesman.

Eversim develops outlandishly complicated political simulators, such as "Geopolitical Simulator." They currently do not accept BTC, even though they are based in France, and I suspect have to pay quite a bit for Paypal conversion & transaction fees.

If anyone else would like to request the same, I contacted business@eversim.com -- but since I didn't get a reply, you may wish to write to a different email address. purchase@eversim.com might be a good one.

Cheers!

Create a fork.

For selecting send from address, I believe Multibit has this functionality -- it allows you to both set preferred send from addresses (assuming you have enough coins in there), and allow you to freeze addresses you don't want to send coins from. There was a patch from coderrr which patched bitcoind to select send from address, but I'm not sure if it's been updated in a while. Cheers!

Pneumatic hammers, I would be interested in. Cordless with a powerful LiPo battery pack - ideally a battery pack which is widely-adopted enough to be considered "universal."

They sent me a notice that they auto-enrolled me in overdraft coverage (which I thought was illegal) before even sending me an account number. 

Will hopefully have account info tomorrow. If not, and I still don't get a letter on Monday, I'll go to a physical branch.

india.gov.in

Oh -- Just remembered.

I am the one who wiped out the bid depth on BDK.BND yesterday. Were I looking more closely, I would have made sure not to wipe all "real" (within 50% of FMV) bids.

Sent a deposit to GLBSE to fund a bid wall until bid depth starts reappearing. It should be up within a couple hours. My apologies.

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. I do not have a particularly high demand for new funds, but if someone wants to buy 1k+ bonds (no more than 5k) at face value, I would be interested. Otherwise, asks will remain at ~2.5% over face value on GLBSE until I have significant demand for new funds, again. Dividends will be paid and resume normal weekly pay schedule on 8/6. Sorry again for any inconvenience caused by the hack last week.

A proposal I've submitted is to have depositors pay a relatively insignificant fee if the lender is in a "trusted circle." In return, another lender (or group of lenders) co-sign the deposit.

For instance, if someone had a 1kBTC deposit in my program, they could pay .2% of principal per month to have Patrick co-sign. I would be willing to co-sign loans ("deposits") to Patrick at a rate of .1% principal per month.

We do not necessarily need to exchange BTC each time one of these co-signs happen, but we should keep a type of unified book showing who owes what to who, and only pay out insurance debts each month. This eliminates a lot of the hassle if, for example, I co-sign 10 of Patrick's deposits, and he co-signs 10 of mine. If they're roughly the same total value, we wouldn't have to pay anything to each other.


The evolution path is obvious. The lending cartel can form an insurance agency similar to the NCUA/FDIC, with insurance fees going directly to a wallet with multi-sig implemented (something similar could also be implemented). In event of a bank failure, each lender of the cartel must approve to pay out depositors of a failed deposit-taker. Fees would not be equal for everyone, but based on credit ratings assigned by various lenders. The average would be submitted, agreed-upon by other lenders in the lending insurance cartel, passed on to the deposit-taker seeking insurance, and then they have the option of accepting or rejecting. The deposit-taker could then either charge depositors the fee, or include it for everyone and pay fees himself.


Thus, there is no need for a fund or additional hassle for depositors, depositors will be insured at a minimal but subjective rate, and hassle for deposit-takers will be minimal.

I've submitted crude mockups to tosaki of BitMit with regards to how I'd like to see charitable giving implemented so charities actually USE BTC instead of cashing out for USD. Will update if I hear anything.

Cheers,
Ben

If nothing else, a very interesting experiment.

Why would this model be superior to Kickstarter, or the BTC Kickstarter - or the similar sites? Instead of ransoming already-made content, they ransom yet-to-be-made content. Armory dev, for example, did a fundraiser seeking funds to do more dev-work, not have previous dev-work paid for. I'd be interested in seeing how consumers react to that.

I suppose, though, you get the immediate content, and nothing's left up in the air. Once the ransom reaches a certain point, the content's released. It would be exceptionally interesting to see some great artist hold his content ransom to see if he could get 2x what his label or related other distributor would give him over the next five years. Once the content's released, I'd assume it's public domain?

OTOH, it's kind of a pain in the ass for consumers, but maybe fun for people with too much time. Instead of just going to the store and buying the latest Batman-franchised item, you are faced with the world needing to raise $800m for the film to be released. Instead of paying distributors for marketing, etc, etc, the studio keeps the entirety (with a small share to the website), and instead of corporate publishing, the community seeking the film to be released ends up acting as your employees, going around trying to find investors to pay for the film. This also allows the rich to pay dramatically more than the poor, allowing prices to be based a bit more on relative wealth of the purchaser. If implemented for all IP, this could result in normalization of the standard of living, assuming the poor wouldn't just pirate what they can't afford.

There could be milestones, where bonus content is released, increasing hype - or tracks could be released one-by-one until an entire album is released, maybe releasing 5 tracks once the whole ransom has been paid to encourage people to see fundraising through to the end...

Maybe it should be concerning that NSA had an unprecedented presence at Def Con, which also had large Bitcoin-user attendance, and AFAIK, the only USG agency to ask for Gavin was the CIA. Doesn't sound like particularly welcoming behavior.

Mining has quietly changed over to BitMinter. One of the Icarus boards have been refusing to work with CGMiner for nearly two weeks for reason I still don't understand. Surprised by how "Plug & Play" BitMinter is, though I was very skeptical about running a Java miner... web stats are updated "live" and the GUI's pretty slick when enabled.

I looked into renting the land out to farmers. That appears to be pretty common, and what the neighbors do. Per acre, unimproved agricultural land value is estimated at roughly $2,473 where we are (data from 2011). Annual average rent of farmland in our section of the state is roughly $91/acre. 91*15=$1,365/yr, which is about annual property taxes. Unexciting, but a welcome possibility.

I'm really surprised that in the US, farmers are prized for being some of the hardest-working individuals, but they need either 200+ acres or a full-time job on top of what's portrayed as a particularly taxing job. They sound extremely undervalued, but I've never worked on a farm, so Idunno what all's actually involved.

A bit OT... Anyone know how to export watch-only addresses from Armory, and get them into Blockchain.info or the Bitcoin Wallet Watcher app for Android? With Blockchain.info, I am able to import addresses one at a time, but I don't have a week to spend copy/pasting addresses one-by-one, and can't find a bulk import option, less "Import Backup," which I can't figure out how to paste a load of of watch-only addresses into. I've tried just the address strings, just public keys, and strings with public keys -- pasting any of those into Blockchain.info returns "Cannot Decode Import Data," and the Android app returns "0<=size"

Those who are aware of what's going on and who's involved probably don't wish to violate others' privacy. Most BTC-related Skype groups I'm aware of, for example, have a gentlemen's NDA in effect, and when info about Pirate's leaked, there's often an explicit "nothing leaves this room" notice given. Every group I'm aware of being in has this in effect, from the DCAO rooms, to the lenders' room, to specific business rooms. Whenever something's leaked which shouldn't be, a bit of a witch-hunt forms, and trust breaks down.

It sounds like a game and elitism, but I think it's actually showing how seriously people take each other. If Pirate doesn't disclose something himself publicly, I don't think people privy to the information would be keen on doing such a thing without asking his consent. Pirate in particular seems a bit secretive, making everyone else a bit less interested in releasing information on someone who probably holds thousands of their coins and may not appreciate non-public information being leaked.

Moreover, there's not much to gain by leaking information from those assuming BS&T isn't a Ponzi. Information may bring in many new investors, but that isn't essential to Pirate paying out. There's really not much reason for investors to defend Pirate (still assuming Pirate isn't a ponzi), except when people go out of their way to call investors and "enablers" scammy idiots who should have their eyes pecked out - or something along those lines.

ETA: Backpeddling a bit thinking about it more, PPT operators obviously have incentive to defend Pirate, given they profit off arb.

What a complete clusterfuck of a month. I finished adding up losses from GLBSE. I was avoiding adding in losses from securities dumped on the BTC account which amounted to roughly 160BTC extra I did not previously include (though, fwiw, it's a bit of a guess as to the FMV, and how much value the securities lost due to a sudden dump on the market). In total the hack cost ~709BTC in damages between actual BTC withdrawn, the cost to forcibly buyback dumped BDK-related bonds, and the securities dumped way below FMV in the BTC account. More of a hit, losses from selling YABMC bonds during a major price crush resulted in losses of ~1235BTC. Additionally, 100BTC worth of loans were written off. In total, monthly G/L was -฿ 1,549.58. All things considered, TBH, that's not too bad, though it should be noted that relief funds sent from other lenders and associates totaled a whopping 245BTC, for which I am extremely grateful. Note that while IBB & BTC100 donation amounts do not look correct because they're negative - they are, in fact, correct, and BDK did "profit" off these charities due to massive losses this month, where the negative balance will rollover until positive, at which point I'll begin paying monthly, again (BTC100 being an exception, where I pay as new charities demand it).

An extraordinary gratuity dividend was paid to bondholders on 7/31 in the amount of 0.00035184BTC/bond.

IMPORTANT: Because of exceptional losses in addition to the YABMC loss, I have decided to extend the dividend blackout until August 27th, at which point, bondholders' dividend will start from 0, instead of being fully liable for losses (in the form of losses rolling over and dividends never being paid until the rolling balance becomes positive). Due to extreme circumstances, I will be permitting BDK-holders to exchange their BDK bonds for BDK.BND bonds in a 1-for-1 swap from now through the end of 8/8/12. BDK.BND has the advantage of paying 1% per week, guaranteed, and is not at nearly as much danger of price swings, though this comes with obvious disadvantages, too. The contract's a Hell of a lot simpler, too. I strongly encourage BDK-holders to swap for BDK.BND units. Keep in mind this is completely voluntary -- nothing about this offering is changing less the contract change going into effect on September 4th which I've already talked about at great length. You can read more about BDK.BND by clicking the link in my sig.

July 2012 Summary

Monthly Profit - --฿1,549.58
Income - ฿671.133

• Loan interest - ฿218.45
• Gratuities - ฿0
• Securities Dividends - ฿117.69
• Equities sold at a gain - ฿0
• Misc - ฿90
• Hack Relief Fund - ฿245.00

Outgo - ฿2,220.72

• CD/BDK.BND dividends - ฿168.42
• Loan Write-Offs - ฿100.00
• Misc - ฿8.00
• Securities Sold At Loss - ฿1,235.33
• Losses From Hack - ฿708.97

Other Info
Assets - ฿ 7,800.00 ($73,944.04) (yes, it literally was 7.8kBTC exactly)

• Loans (excl. default)   - ฿2,959.98
• Loans in Default (100BTC of this has been written off) - ฿ 172.50
• Securities - ฿4,418.83
• Cash-on-Hand - ฿120.00
• Reserved USD - ฿128.69

Liabilities - ฿3,880.888 ($36,790.79)

• BTC100 Pledge - ฿1.65
• IBB Pledge - -฿7.96
• BTC Deposits - ฿2,966.90
• USD Deposits - ฿0
• Shareholder Div. - -฿ 123.68
• BDK.BND - ฿ 1,111.70
• Op Performance Pay - -฿ 73.12(Consider this a loan from BDK to me. It will be repaid out of future Op Pay.)

Equity - ฿3,919.12 ($37,153.25)
Operator Personal Expenditure - ฿95.12
Shareholder Dividends - ฿3.86
BDK Growth for Month of March (profit - shareholder dividends - operator personal expenditure) - -฿1,648.56

Quick note -- numbers may not add up this month. A few calculations were fucked up by negative numbers, and I'm not sure I've totally corrected them.

ETA: Noticed a flaw. I sold more BDK.BND this month which I didn't account for, all the proceeds of which unfortunately went to the attacker. This has been corrected in my sheets and this post. The I/O report for the month has now been "finalized" and August is up.[/list]

Still not entirely certain what went wrong with the buyback process. I guess there are now ~60-120 bonds existing outside of what's listed in "securities issued," so they were issued by GLBSE to.... someone, or something. Idunno -- public GLBSE data + info on my portfolio page show an extra 58 bonds existing which shouldn't, but Nef told me there were 124 extra bonds. This anomaly occurred some time during the buyback process, so I'm guessing someone sold bond units they bought after the dump, which mucked up the process. I'll pay dividends as my books show I should, then pay the extra BTC as the GLBSE dividends table says I should. If someone could tell me how many bonds they hold and exactly what they were paid in dividends when I paid them yesterday, I'd appreciate it. ETA: I've received confirmation that a bond-holder received dividends in line with what GLSBE reports. If anyone has contrary information, please report it to me. Thanks!

5k bond units posted on the bid side. Intent is not to sell, but make sure price doesn't deviate too far from .1/bond. ... Though, I certainly wouldn't mind selling bonds @ ~.103 each


Cheers,
Ben

1kBTC in an uninsured pass-through.

Add me to the list. Additionally, on GLBSE are BDK and BDK.BND which should be added.