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The U.S. government is shutting down localbitcoins with sting operations and now it's demanding U.S. based exchanges find out info on large mining operations. What's the next step, all U.S. ISPs must use promiscuous mode packet sniffers to identify Bitcoin nodes? Give them enough time and America can figure out a way to fuck up a wet dream.
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So, people have lost all hope on FriedCat ? Any information found about where is he now ?
He's chinese so I would assume he's somewhere in China laughing at the stupid round-eyes. |
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So BitPay didn't feel like forking over another half million for limited advertising value? Makes sense to me.
Well its good someone kept track of it at least and mentioned it here otherwise I wouldn't have noticed That was short, but he-he Bitpay dropped a sponsorship not Bitcoin but well I guess that was an ok tweet. I'm surprised BitPay ever sponsored a sporting event to advertise Bitcoin. That doesn't seem like the group most likely to use Bitcoin. I know Florida is their home state though and they probably wanted to do something for the local community, which is nice I guess. |
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So BitPay didn't feel like forking over another half million for limited advertising value? Makes sense to me.
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I cannot see any "slowing down" ..... The daily transactions increase, and it stays at the same high levels. The huge price volatility is gone .... something most merchants asked for and are now complaining about. We humans are never satisfied. Merchant adoption increase daily.... and this shows their are interest in the market for Bitcoin.  Things like this are slowing Bitcoin down ever so slightly: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1005634.0 |
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I'm really sorry that this happened to you and your family. You have my deepest sympathy. I'm not sure there is anything you could say to or show a government official to change the situation. There are many legitimate uses for Bitcoin as you can see from all of the great examples given but ever since the Liberty Reserve takedown the U.S. Government seems to have the single minded goal of ending the private use of Bitcoin. I appreciate that you want to do as much for yourself and your family as possible but you need to get a very, very good criminal attorney as soon as possible to do this stuff for you. I won't even trade Bitcoin at licensed exchanges like Coinbase anymore because of the way the government is over reacting.
Richard Weber, head of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service criminal investigation unit, said about cryptocurrency, "If Al Capone were alive today, this is how he would be hiding his money".
Preet Bharara, a US prosecutor that was responsible for putting Charlie Schrem in jail, believes Bitcoin has been linked to crimes including credit card fraud, identity theft, investment fraud, computer hacking, child pornography and narcotics trafficking. He's making it his goal to stop Bitcoin trading.
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One of the problems I think is that there a little immediate rewards for getting interested in crypto. Well, ok, you buy some bitcoins, then lose a bit on gamble, a bit on scammers, a bit for other things mostly because of noobish mistakes and the experience is not that good. Another scenario is that you buy something with bitcoins, but overall you don't save much if at all. I mean if people are not enthusiastic then the rewards are not enough to get interested and give a shit for crypto currencies. Of course somebody will say - but they can become millionaires in future if they hold. But the thing is that to most people these promises looks like a general scam or some shady scheme like those pyramid sales of hygiene shit products.
You really do kind of need to buy into the libertarian propaganda to appreciate the value of Bitcoin. Most of my friends are older (35+) because I am and they don't see the advantages for ordinary everyday use. When I attempt to get them to give Bitcoin a try and do my best pitch they always decline and give one reason that I can't defend against - fraud protection. They tell me they don't mind a few fees or having to wait a day or two if they are guaranteed their money is safe. Then I start hearing the stories about the time some crook charged something on their credit card or debit card and they got all the money back immediately. If some intermediate company solves the fraud protection problem Bitcoin will stand a much better chance of success. Bitcoin (or some blockchain variant) would be great as a hidden system for companies to use to transfer funds around. The company could guarantee and insure the funds transfer. The citizen could transfer funds in any fiat value quickly and cheaply without ever knowing Bitcoin was the system used to do it. |
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After quite turbulent events during the last few years, I somehow feel BTC economy s been slowing down a bit. Maybe people are losing interest after not seeing those price jumps/decreases which we witnessed in the past. I know statistics ll probably dispute my claims but this is just my feeling. How do you feel about it, are people still into BTC?
In what way, shape or form has Bitcoin slowed down when you look at this? *snip old news* Calm down, just because people is dumb and dont see the benefits in BTC yeat, doesnt mean it has slowed down. Yes, I ve seen all this data before but somehow I feel there are less people interested in the concept. Less articles in the news. Maybe it just me. It's not just you. If you invested in everything venture capitalists have invested in you would have lost three life's savings. They make bad investments all the time. I'm not saying Bitcoin is one of them. I just want to see some verified profit and loss statements before I get excited. |
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I still read the boards every now and then but I am out. Completely. Bitcoin solves nothing for me but it was a great way to make extra cash since I discovered it. But the easy money is gone for me personally and I think the people like me will move on to other things. Very neat idea though but just another type of fiat currency in monetary economics. A house built on sand in other words. I highly doubt it will have any value in 20 years as something else will replace it. Internet users are a fickle bunch.
I've witnessed that too. People are moving on. There's a small fraction of the users here now that were here when I first registered. Even the evangelistic born again Bitcoiners are gone now. I always chalked it up to kids graduating, growing up and starting their real lives. Everyone is idealistic in college. Save the whales, save the trees, free (insert current martyr here) slowly becomes feed the kids, pay the mortgage, please the boss. |
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Well, there is the hot asian girls thread. That never gets old.
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Bitcoin made me some money which is never a bad thing. It made me fat but provided priceless entertainment. Back in 2010 and prior I used to take long walks on the panhandle of Golden Gate Park, cruse up and down the haight window shopping, walk embarcadero from pier 1 to 29, bike the marina district all the way to fort point, bike around the presidio. Now I'm a fat lazy piece of crap that spends all of his time looking at this forum. A friend asked me to do Bay to Breakers with him this year and I told him I couldn't because I thought I might pass out from the hills. I can barely walk to the kitchen for a beer anymore.
The upside has been the entertainment value of this forum. I laughed for a week when I found out Bitcoinica was operated by a 16 year old scammer from Guangzhou and another week when Karpeles lost an Empire State Building sized pile of Bitcoin's. LOL Another 16 year old kid, Atlas, used to crack me up every week with his stupidity. Matthew Wright used to attack people over the weirdest shit and start throwing around some of the most interesting banter I've ever witnessed. Bruno would get into debates over the value of being a furry with Rassah. The My little Pony gang was all here pulling some pretty interesting shit. Their leader PinkiePie got everyone to believe she was an abused teen but it was all an elaborate troll. LOL Most recently, Bruno just posted all of his ID cards, social security, drivers license number everything! ROFL
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After quite turbulent events during the last few years, I somehow feel BTC economy s been slowing down a bit. Maybe people are losing interest after not seeing those price jumps/decreases which we witnessed in the past. I know statistics ll probably dispute my claims but this is just my feeling. How do you feel about it, are people still into BTC?
Bitcoin is like the web crawler. It opened a lot of doors, but the Google's of the future are in the alternative currency section of the forum. That's an interesting analogy. Bitcoin the BBS. Which one do you think will be Google?  |
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For all we know he could have been a great and lawful officer for 99.9% of his career but we must remember than everyone has a price and can succumb to greed. Maybe he just saw the opportunity to make some easy and what he thought would be victimless cash. When you're sat at your computer and all it takes is a few clicks to transfer massive amounts of anonymous money from a drug lord greed can always fall over you, but that's obviously not excusing it. In this line of work you need to have some restraint or you'll push yourself down a dark path and he's obviously facing the consequences of those actions now.
Maybe but I still believe that some people can guard a truckload of cash their entire life and never be tempted because it's not in their makeup. People with no integrity and no morals take the first opportunity to prove themselves if they think they can get away with it. Hard to tell. To others they may appear trustworthy but nobody can no for certain if they ever had doubts about stealing the money. I think greed is just part of being human and everyone can succumb to it at some point regardless of how moral you may or try to be. Sometimes situations pop up in your life that alter your morals or behavior too. What if a person becomes in debt or needs it to save a child etc? Desperate measures sometimes call for desperate measures. Just look at how monkeys and apes behave. If you've ever encountered monkeys in the wild you'll know they're incredibly greedy, they'll steel your camera, wallet, whatever they can get without even knowing what those things are. Greed is clearly in our DNA, but that doesn't make it acceptable. That is true, I've seen it myself. I used to live in Oakland. Bro I'm talking about literal monkeys. A monkey stole my friend's camera out of his boat while he was traveling in the Amazon. Snuck up to the boat, grabbed the camera and booked it outta there Yeah, so am I. I lived near the park in downtown Oakland. The Oakland zoo was a short walk from my house and has a free community day once a month. I used to go to the zoo every month and watch them. That was my favorate exhibit. I'd watch the monkeys for hours. |
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Yeah it's a pretty shitty choice, if drugs were legalized like they should be there would be no need for markets like SR. Maybe one day the feds will go after the real criminals [politicians, bankers], can't see it happening anytime soon...
Maybe these darknet markets may force the governments to rethink their policies. Once decentralized markets get going I think it's going to be very difficult for them to police and possibly almost impossible to take down. It's certainly going to be interesting to see how they try tackle them. You are probably right about that. If you told me 30 years ago that marijuana would be legal in Colorado I would never have believed it. With that said, people want to think they're martyrs for running on-line contraband stores. The customers of these places think they're being persecuted when in fact they're just criminals breaking the law because it suits them. Martin Luther King was a martyr that gave his life preaching to the masses to change unjust laws but he lived within the law. Rosa Parks broke the law without profit, with personal sacrifice to change unjust laws. Al Capone was at least partly responsible for ending prohibition laws but he was just a criminal. Ross Ulbricht is not a martyr. He's just a criminal that went to great lengths to hide his involvement and profited from his criminal behavior. It's too bad young people don't see the difference. Doing whatever you want to do isn't the way to change the laws, that's the way to be a criminal. I disagree. Just because something is against the law doesn't make it wrong or immoral. I do think the customers of such darknets are being persecuted because nobody should be punished in the first place for buying drugs and they're forced to flock to the underground due to archaic drug laws, but I don't really buy people like Ross Ulbricht being martyrs, especially when they seem more concerned about doing anything they can whatever the cost to keep their empire running. The real revolutionaries will likely be the people creating the decentralised and free to use ones. I think those are the people who are more likely to bring about change or drug reform laws and nobody can really accuse them of being criminal capitalists if there's no money to be made from fees etc (other than obviously from the dealers themselves but the powers that be know how they can end them and the war on drugs overnight, but the question is that want they want or are willing to do). Then work to change the laws. If a majority agree with you then you will win. Don't just do what ever you want to do and then say, poor me they're attacking me. |
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Ross Ulbricht is not a martyr. He's just a criminal that went to great lengths to hide his involvement and profited from his criminal behavior. It's too bad young people don't see the difference. Doing whatever you want to do isn't the way to change the laws, that's the way to be a criminal.
I still can't get over the irony that is your name. You have a ridiculous penchant for sticking up for The Man yet your name is QuestionAuthority. Everyone makes that mistake. The authority I question are the authorities and leaders on this forum. |
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For all we know he could have been a great and lawful officer for 99.9% of his career but we must remember than everyone has a price and can succumb to greed. Maybe he just saw the opportunity to make some easy and what he thought would be victimless cash. When you're sat at your computer and all it takes is a few clicks to transfer massive amounts of anonymous money from a drug lord greed can always fall over you, but that's obviously not excusing it. In this line of work you need to have some restraint or you'll push yourself down a dark path and he's obviously facing the consequences of those actions now.
Maybe but I still believe that some people can guard a truckload of cash their entire life and never be tempted because it's not in their makeup. People with no integrity and no morals take the first opportunity to prove themselves if they think they can get away with it. Hard to tell. To others they may appear trustworthy but nobody can no for certain if they ever had doubts about stealing the money. I think greed is just part of being human and everyone can succumb to it at some point regardless of how moral you may or try to be. Sometimes situations pop up in your life that alter your morals or behavior too. What if a person becomes in debt or needs it to save a child etc? Desperate measures sometimes call for desperate measures. Just look at how monkeys and apes behave. If you've ever encountered monkeys in the wild you'll know they're incredibly greedy, they'll steel your camera, wallet, whatever they can get without even knowing what those things are. Greed is clearly in our DNA, but that doesn't make it acceptable. That is true, I've seen it myself. I used to live in Oakland. |
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Are you saying they are using Lithium which is closed source? Jive and Lithium are enterprise level platforms which have enterprise level complexities in implementation and cost which is not warranted for a small community forum. Even then Lithium has a starting price at $50k not $1.5m.
But what relevance does that have to anything I said? Yes most of these companies are using Lithium. Yes, Lithium is closed source. Yes, they are using this platform because of the extensive capabilities and massive feature list. You say it's not warranted for a small community forum, you're correct. Yet, this is no small community forum, in fact, it's in the top 25 forums in the world right now in terms of user activity. Probably much higher than that even. Notice my reply was directed at the quote by "hilariousandco" which stated that he thinks that possibly in the future businesses who require these massive sites for their support infrastructure will turn to open source software. I was merely stating that isn't likely to be the case because no open source software is ever going to come close to what a licensed software can do. Ah, sorry I misunderstood what you were talking about. |
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Why not? Bitcoin is centered around open source software. Should satoshi have charged people to use bitcoin? Not everything has to have capitalistic motives as well, though if theymos wanted to make more money surely he would have planned to charge people to use the software?
You're correct. Open source software is great. However Satoshi didn't pay a development team $1,500,000 to create the bitcoin network & software. There's a big difference in those comparisons. Capitalistic motives aren't necessary, why not keep the software unique to this forum & don't allow others the chance to reap the rewards of a one and a half million dollar software package? I don't know why anyone would pay this much to use forum software. Maybe in the future companies or organizations wont have to pay anything because of open source software like this one. That's the true beauty of it.
Because they are companies and need massive control and functionality on their websites, and Lithium is the only software on the market right now that offers the extensive functionality that these companies require. People think vBulletin is functional and customizable... well I suggest you take a look at some of the moderation and administration tools on Lithium... simply flawless! Are you saying they are using Lithium which is closed source? Jive and Lithium are enterprise level platforms which have enterprise level complexities in implementation and cost which is not warranted for a small community forum. Even then Lithium has a starting price at $50k not $1.5m. |
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Yeah it's a pretty shitty choice, if drugs were legalized like they should be there would be no need for markets like SR. Maybe one day the feds will go after the real criminals [politicians, bankers], can't see it happening anytime soon...
Maybe these darknet markets may force the governments to rethink their policies. Once decentralized markets get going I think it's going to be very difficult for them to police and possibly almost impossible to take down. It's certainly going to be interesting to see how they try tackle them. You are probably right about that. If you told me 30 years ago that marijuana would be legal in Colorado I would never have believed it. With that said, people want to think they're martyrs for running on-line contraband stores. The customers of these places think they're being persecuted when in fact they're just criminals breaking the law because it suits them. Martin Luther King was a martyr that gave his life preaching to the masses to change unjust laws but he lived within the law. Rosa Parks broke the law without profit, with personal sacrifice to change unjust laws. Al Capone was at least partly responsible for ending prohibition laws but he was just a criminal. Ross Ulbricht is not a martyr. He's just a criminal that went to great lengths to hide his involvement and profited from his criminal behavior. It's too bad young people don't see the difference. Doing whatever you want to do isn't the way to change the laws, that's the way to be a criminal. |
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Well this thread got ugly fast. I can't believe you're arguing about what prostitutes like to be called. I can settle this for you. In Clark County, which is where Las Vegas is located, prostitution is illegal. Because it's illegal they like to be called "escorts" and most charge between $300 and $500 an hour for things "on the menu". Off menu items can increase the price to as high as $10,000 an hour. You have to drive about 60 miles outside of Las Vegas to Nye County before prostitution is legal. In Nye County they're called prostitutes and have health and work permits.
"Escorts" is a different thing. They are "High Quality Companions" in their way of setting things (which is not bad) Apart from that, calling them escorts is not bad... try calling them hookers and see what happens  Considering what they allow in their "off menu items" I doubt there is anything you could call them, spit at them, or spray on them that would upset them much. At least, that's what I hear from friends. |
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