?

Intel is one of the largest fab operators:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sites#Fab_sites

tektronics just makes test equipment and has nothing to do with this. Perhaps you meant ASML, which is a big supplier of fab equipment to just about any fab, but that doesnt change the fact intel owns and operates its own fabs.


Growing silicon? No one is talking about the production of raw wafers here. And you got every one of your "facts" wrong. ATI was a fabless design house that used (and still uses) TSMC for wafer processing and production. AMD used to have its own fabs in Desden, but spun them off in to a separate company called Globalfoundries.

Interesting. Perhaps you want to calculate it per internet user though, instead of per capita:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users

So to be clear; you intend to honor your contractual obligations to Nyan.A bondholders by buying back all Nyan.A bonds at 1 BTC? You intend to honor CPA's contractual obligation to BMF shareholders that their shares have a NAV of at least 1 BTC? If so, why did you delete the asset lists and contracts?

BTW, my memory is bad, but I can read, and I have screenshots that help me remember.

So you think you can just keep all your clients and investors coins?
AFAIR, CPA "insurance" contracts had no clause that let you off the hook if GLBSE stopped trading.  Bit it did have a clause that you would reimburse your customers shareholders in the event they defaulted, which is quite likely to happen to more than a few now.

Usagi just deleted all his posts and his website.

Make sure you counsel looks in to the newly voted crowd sourcing law H.R.2930:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c112:4:./temp/~c112dITQd0::

Its not going to make everyone happy since bonds would no longer be tradable directly among investors and its not clear to me if investors could remain anonymous, but it could provide a legal framework to operate within.

Thanks for bumping Nef's post, I missed it before. Of course its nonsense to think that GLBSE would fall under the crowdsourcing act. Just a quick glance:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c112:4:./temp/~c112y9xMho::

Shows GLBSE complies with almost none of the requirements.
It is however at first glance  potentially viable to make something like GLBSE that is lawful under this act.

I suspect theft of bitcoins will be hard to demonstrate, although most jurisdictions do have a concept of intangible property, and unless china does not, I dont see why it wouldnt have applied to that game sword.

In most cases however, assuming you willingly sent your coins, so the "theft" isnt a result from someone hacking your PC (in which case other laws would apply), then fraud would likely be easier to prove. From wiki:

In the United States, common law recognizes nine elements constituting fraud:[8][9]

a representation of an existing fact;
its materiality;
its falsity;
the speaker's knowledge of its falsity;
the speaker's intent that it shall be acted upon by the plaintiff;
the plaintiff's ignorance of its falsity;
the plaintiff's reliance on the truth of the representation;
the plaintiff's right to rely upon it; and
consequent damages suffered by the plaintiff.

A bitcoin asic is probably about as "simple" as any asic would get. Almost no IO, and very simple, easy to validate logic, incomparable to say cpu's or gpu's
That doesnt change the fact that building any asic is pretty expensive, particularly on a relatively modern process, mostly because of the maskset.
 I see no reason why BFL wouldnt be able to pull it off though. Aside from the money and tools, all it takes for the design is one or two experienced guys and a couple of weeks/months. The production you simply outsource to some taiwanese or chinese foundry.

This is being discussed in a dozen other threads. The legal issue is actually not  related to bitcoins. The issue is that GLBSE was trading unregistered securities. Whether these were traded for dollars, or bitcoins or anything else (including swaps with other securities) doesnt even matter, as long as you accept they were traded for something of value, which bitcoin undeniably is.

It doesnt matter what bitcoins are or what you think they represent, as long they have value. It doesnt matter if those assets traded for apple juice or bitcoin, they were publicly traded securities that represented debt, profit sharing agreement or a shares in a company, ie they were securities. It doesnt matter if that debt, or the profit was generated as apple juice or bitcoins.

It really doesnt get any more clear cut than this, your attempt to argue against it is as silly as defending yourself in a murder case by stating you didnt really kill the person, you merely shook hands with a pistol, the victim was still alive for several milliseconds after you touched the trigger, its all the fault of the bullet and physics and no one knows what death means anyway, oh, and your Honor, you cant prove the victim isnt still alive in a parallel universe.

Guess what, it wont stick. Prove me wrong by getting a no action letter.

No one is saying bitcoins are securities. This is about bonds and shares on GLBSE. Those ARE unregistered securities and that you trade them for bitcoins instead of dollars is irrelevant. What is relevant is that they traded for value. Capiche?

Did you actually see the contract?

Even regardless of what it says, law always supersedes contractual obligations. If Nefario had to close GLBSE to comply with common law, then tough luck for his shareholders, it was a known business risk, had they done their due diligence and applied common sense, they should have known what they bought would sooner or later become worthless. Maybe they gambled on it being "later" and getting a ROI before then (like, after selling their shares), but it was their risk and at least Theymos can not claim he wasnt aware of it.

So is your argument that Nefario was not legaly obliged to close GLBSE  in its current form, or that he refused to break the law to abide to his shareholder contract?

please stop pretending word games can change the law. You have judges who interpret the law. You think there is a snowball chance in hell you will convince ANY judge bitcoins have no value?


Indeed, although legal interpretations are  more narrow than that, trading securities for basically anything constitutes a sale. Glad you noticed.

Yes, but taking risks isnt illegal or scamming, nor is selling shares in a business that operates with significant legal risks, as mostly every business does. An investor prices that risk in his valuation. For instance, SatoshiDice is most likely a huge legal liability, but if it gets closed down by some government, Im not sure Id call a Erik a scammer for selling shares in SD, unless he knowingly withheld information about that to his shareholders.


I have to disagree here. Incompetence!=fraud

The issue here is the requirement for sophisticated investors. In the US that means a net worth of >$2.5 million  $1M excluding your residence:
http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm
You wont find too many of those on these forums.

Based on that, wouldnt you have to hand out scammer tags to all asset issuers that dont reimburse their investors in full? If Nefario had to do his due diligence before accepting investor money, then why not asset issuers?

Also, I think a point can be made that GLBSE closing down due to legal pressure was a business risk that investors should have been aware off. It might have been different if Nefario knew it was illegal and his investors were somehow misled to believe the opposite, but if anything, it seems the opposite, and Nefario thought it was legal, whereas Theymos wanted and still wants it to be an illegal black market. Before passing judgment, I would like to see what the shareholder agreement said about that.

What DnT said.  Im not too familiar with SL and I havent read what you linked; but while you can put anything in your TOS, that doesnt mean it will stand up in court when challenged. Calling something a game and using a token as proxy for money doesnt magically make it legal if the token has actual market value If it were, you'd have no legal problems opening a casino or play poker games for "tokens" ie, poker chips, instead of money.
Try it, and see what happens.

Isnt there? So if you loan me your car, and I dont return it, all is good? Its not money, so I wouldnt owe you anything, right?
And since no law would describe your exact brand and type of car, Im sure no law covers it anyway.

Lets clear up some terms.
An ASIC is a Application Specific Integrated Circuit. Most chips could be considered ASICs, although the "application" might be something very vague or wide, like running x86 code in the case of an x86 CPU. Technically it could be called an ASIC. A  bitcoin ASIC by all reasonable definitions would be a chip designed specifically for bitcoin mining, and as such its a "custom" chip. By contrast an FPGA is a field programmable gate array, its a chip that can be programmed to act as whatever you want by just loading a different bitstream.

"Full custom" has little meaning, but usually when a company says it does a full custom asic, it means they not only design the chip, but also design individual custom transistors, rather than relying on standard cell libraries provided by the foundry. More typical for asic's is to use those libraries. Think of the difference as between using C++ instead of assembler. In both cases you end up with custom code (or hardware) specific for your application, but one is a lot harder and lower level than the other but might yield slightly better results because you can optimize more. I imagine AMD and Intel will usually do "full custom" in that sense, but they are exceptions. Very few companies do it, because its terribly expensive, complicated and usually pointless. So its extremely unlikely BFL is doing a full custom design in this sense.

When BFL says they are doing full custom asic, what they most likely mean is a chip designed specifically for bitcoin, and the custom part refers to the chip design, not the transistor design.

As for whats needed; well, a lot obviously. But you dont need to have it all in house. Very few companies have all the expertise and equipment to develop a chip from scratch to working silicon. Intel is one of very few (only?) company that does that. Even AMD no longer operates its own FABs, it only designs its chips, and outsources the rest. SO these companies rely on foundries like TSMC to do the manufacturing, and you can outsource any stage of the design, development, production, testing and assembly you want. So at the other end of the spectrum, you could write an FPGA bitstream and tell altera to make chips based on that, and you need hardly anything at all, just a single developer with the right software (both of which you could even hire if you wanted) and few $100K.