Nobody was born a good airplane pilot either but it is not unreasonable to expect someone flying passengers to know how to fly and not unreasonable to complain when they crash.

Same with online financial transactions.

He may not have started out a scammer, but he is in a position now where he actually has to give people their stuff back or become a scammer by default.

What exactly do you mean by "crying to the police"?  Do the police in Poland shut down a website doing financial trading because of "crying" or were they worried about a law being broken? 

So you met him a few times and he is an idealist.  But he put up a site that did financial transactions and was in over his head.  His lawyers are obviously not putting on pressure, because if they had been any good at all and if he had any juice at all before he got in this game his lawyers would have found a way to prevent "crying", so his lawyers, if they exist at all are not very talented.  Maybe his lawyers do the lights at his DJ gigs.

"Trust No One" is really just secret code for "Trust a Spikey Haired DJ Who Uses Name Cheap and OVH Whois Obsfuscation For Financial Transactions Then Blames Poland And Asks People To Wait"

OVH should have his old contact information.  The number I thought I had was from the OVH Whois Obsfuscator  +33.899498765 so that alone will not get you anywhere but with enough people OVH might be willing to give up his billing information.

Lots of bitcoin transaction websites are going titsup and blaming it on circumstances related to customer use and not packing up hard currency and leaving.

Did any of you research Simon Hausdorf before and realize you were giving money not to someone who set up live monetary transaction systems for a living but instead was a spikey gel haired DJ?  I mean he went from DJ to currency exchange in an instant and no one noticed?

That is the dodgy thing about bitcoin, is that hardly any of the movers and traders had anything to do with financial systems before setting up shop.  Mark Karpeles was a php programmer who bought a "Magic: The Gathering" trading card site and turned it into the outlet of the a currency that is supposed to take over the world.

Its like a Michael Lewis book that writes itself.

I formed a dating site built around dollars and I was shut down for promoting prostitution.

(I didn't do this at all)

Anyway, good luck with your website.

I don't buy their DDoS By Popularity excuse.  They have AWS resources and even Prolexic DDoS mitigation  (wonder what Prolexic has to say about their claims?)  so they should be able to handle it.  Its not like financial systems and the people who set them up are not available for hire.  Its not like this system has not been done before either, so they are either really irresponsible or they are trying to throttle trading to their own benefit.

The company to contact in the US is MutumSigillium in Delaware, that is their "soft spot" for US based trading.

Something tells me he has packed up and left with whatever he can carry.  This should stall people for time..."Ahh...I still have my money its just that it is safe.  But, transactions are happening...eventually...It is not the website's fault but the Polish Banking Shutting Down Authority....and his lawyers are working on it.  Yep, I can wait before any real, meaningful inquiry.

Those of you who pressure him directly are more likely to get a refund as he stalls before Johnny Law, or Jarek Lawski since he is in Poland, catch up with him.

I have a phone number for him but I have no idea if it works.  PM me if you want it.

Simon is a pretty well known DJ, so he should be able to manage a high volume, monetary transaction website with little or no problems huh?  Just like spinning records and listening to only half of a headphone while bobbling your head rhythmically hoping for the fog machine to kick in.

This glitch must just be the fog machine not kicking in, since that is the same problem that online trading companies run into all the time.

Quite right.  They are using AWS for hosting behind Prolexic for DDoS prevention.

I think their delays are due to them wanting to halt trading to preserve bitcoin value, which to me shows it is valuable only when compared to other currency.  Mtgox and the company they keep are the founders / early adopters of bitcoin and to me this is fishy.  Which sucks because I have invested a good deal of money in acquiring bitcoins.

Did you offer your product online for full payment in advance before you even had a prototype?  Asside from that aspect of their business model I agree...being really late is really right on schedule for this sort of product but taking payment for things that don't exist is very fishy.

The simplest scam in the world is to offer either something that does not exist or that makes money without doing much of anything, and BFLs products cover both quite well.

each product "available" is less than $5k.  In the USA, over $5k means it can be taken up in civil court, not small claims.  Small claims court means footwork for the claiment  in the jusidiction of the company.  I bet they refund the $30k to the folks who paid for the big rig to avoid a real hassle.  Then the people who win judgements plus interest still have to collect the money themselves and I bet every identifiable person in BFL claims to not own the company or claims to have just been acting as a "consultant".

bitcoin-24.com is incorporated in the UK, uses an "office" in France, is hosted by ovh and has its name registered with namecheap (as a rule I never do business with anyone registered with namecheap) and run by a German who apparently uses this as his e-mail b9t1t9a1wr4yqt3ovom1@u.o-w-o.info.

Seems legit.  I would not worry at all.

And it would be true, but that is the flaw of bitcoin.  People see it as being valuable as only compared to "real" currency.  However its strength will save it and that is that it is p2p and works best p2p. 

No worry about the market being cornered in an obvious way like the Hunt brothers tried to corner silver years ago.  Bitcoin has value because it is scarce and it is easy to exchange and private.  A cornering of bitcoins would keep them rare but would take away the other value of ease of exchange so blatent hording would increase scarcity but drive down the price because bitcoins are useless unless they are used as currency, unlike gold and silver which would still have value even if they were never used for money or for investments.  Any hording would have to be done in secret or blamed on things like technical problems, server upgrades or "hacks".

Lucky for people who trade, mtgox is not associated with a tight cabal of French / Anglo friends based in Japan who were in on bitcoin from the beginning.  Oh, wait....

Their $30k bitcoin miner is "out of stock".  I guess they ran out of fans and Android tablets, or they said "holy crap...if we are gonna screw people over we better only screw them over for less than $3k"

I am shocked that a bunch of French/ Anglo RPG geeks cannot handle high volume, real time financial transactions on ever growing accounts.  You would think being an Anime / Magic: The Gathering enthusiast would help one greatly in this world.

It seems like AWS is handling their servers behind Prolexic DDoS mitigation services, so I cannot figure out why it would take so long considering AWS has massive computing power, unless they:

1. Had no clue as to how to set up high availability computing.

2. Are being sketchy.

Really, either one could be the case.

10% is a very low rate considering the risk involved.  That rate is comparable to getting a small loan from a bank where you already have an account and they know what you make, what you deposit and what your history is.  I think 30% would be more reasonable with the equipment you buy offered as collateral.

But I have no interest in doing this myself.  I got enough computer equipment.

What is dodgy about Instawallet dying (I had nothing in there) is that they get hacked, and they say "We are done but we have a Byzantine Refund policy for you to follow" with little or no details of the hack that brought them down or how a hack that could bring them down so permanently.

Of course the refunds will be given in bitcoin.  But I wonder how long it will take for those with less than 50 BTC in an instawallet?  We know it will take longer for more than 50 BTC.

Researching Paymium, the company that owns Instawallet, shows they also own Paytunia, which supports transactions in Europs over the bitcoin network and also offers a wallet service, they too are down but trying to get back up, and it should be noted that they are trying to get back up because they deal in Eur, GBP and USD as well as BTC, so I think there is some banking regulation that requires them to not shut down and to make conditions for past trades.

https://paytunia.com/

Try thinking of another use for the space.  Music will always be around but quality recordings are not as in demand as we think they are, and if they are needed there are established studios that can do that.  Your project would try to tap into the DIY market most likely and it won't work because you will be competing with cheaper and more powerful technology that can be run from people's home computers.

My advice is to not be discouraged but to go look at the space again and start thinking about something other than a recording studio and see if that would work.

I can totally understand people being skeptical about bitcoin and thinking that something computer generated that rises in value like it has may not be as valuable as the prices state.  That is why I hedge bitcoins with other currencies (actually just dollars now).  That way if there is a drop in price I can buy again and that way if it totally crashes I am not screwed.  Also in case the dollar totally crashes I will not be completely screwed either and maybe I can even buy dollars lower than I am now.

Let them hate, and it actually makes sense to listen to critics.  I am personally skeptical of the MTGOX group and their association with early adopters and handling most currency to bitcoin transactions on earth, but Microsoft had a PC monopoly for years and still does and we all lived.

The Dollar will collapse just fine on its own.

But, that will increase, or has increased the value of bitcoin.  We owe some gratitude to the policies of Central Bankers around the globe and lots of thanks should go out to the EU and the Governments of Europe (Thanks Germany.  Thanks for screwing Cyprus to bail out Greece!)

Bitcoin:  How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love The Fed.