Regarding the potential for face to face sales I'd like those who are interested to contact me and let me know what they'd be interested in and what kind of deal.

(And, I ask, in a tongue in cheek manner, that I not be required to respond immediately)

I am still trying to figure what kind of interest there is, and what kind of logistics I'll need, and what steps I'll need to take in order to ensure I'm not creating personal security risks for myself or buyers.  It's difficult, because it doesn't take very many funded coins to make a routine of transacting them in person very dangerous.  Switching to unfunded coins wipes all of that out, and after deliberation, it's quite possible I may just offer only that.

To be fair, there's a difference between an unfunded coin that I intend to fund with the original buyer's funds on hand but just haven't done so yet, and an unfunded coin that I explicitly have no intention to fund.

All else equal, one's likely to be considered worth 1BTC more than the other.

There are some advantages to the latter.  For example, I don't have to force users to use expensive shipping options to keep a grip on unfunded coins making it into the wild.  If self-fund coins get lost, the loss is limited to the physical coins that got lost, and not any BTC.

Aren't there unit tests that would catch this?  Or are they only run when explicitly requested? (imagine unit testing this would be slow, so it's understandable to not be automatic)

I hope someone else can do this.  I might do the same, but only if I'm offering a 2-factor version.  I don't like making wallets that purport to invite people to store limitless amounts of wealth on them without offering some sort of credible protection like 2-factor.  Instead, I anticipate printing multiple denominations as they're functionally identical, amount to nothing more than a cosmetic difference, and trivial to make if I"m doing them in quantity.

The coins I plan to offer unfunded will have the following two distinctive features:

1. Quotation marks around the denomination: "1 BITCOIN" instead of 1 BITCOIN
2. The hologram won't say ONE BTC (etc.) but instead will say SELF FUNDED or something with similar effect.
3. Year >= 2014 (not a distinctive feature in and of itself, but will not make any earlier year coins with those features)

I got the same thing, it also called me David, which I thought was weird, since I wonder how someone would get my e-mail address but not my name with it.  I mean it's not like I make a secret of it!

I do wish that BitAddress entropy were improved in a verifiable way by offering to accept a "keyboard mash" string from the user and then incorporating that entropy in an auditable way*, but on the other hand, I do at least believe that it takes more than an initial mouse position as entropy so long as mouse move events are being sent to the page.

It is something I'd like to know was studied more, especially since people could be not moving their mouse, or be on a touch screen and not be able to really provide the sort of input the program was written to expect.

* example of auditable way: collect a string (minimum 80 characters, ask user to type gibberish) from the user, and then use something like SHA256(rng_generated_random_string + user_entered_random_string + n + constant salt) to generate private keys

I have the sentiment that I wish the problems I point out with Ripple didn't exist and that it is just my imagination / overskepticism / whatever.  I sincerely hope someone proves me wrong.  I believe that the problem Ripple sets out to solve is really one worth solving, I'm just not convinced Ripple fits.

I suppose a lot of people say the same thing about Bitcoin, and relative to the same argument, I'm on the other side of the camp.  (though wouldn't be opposed to a better bitcoin with some new breakthrough as groundbreaking as the block chain)

With all due respect, I think you're really misbehaving here.  I firmly believe you should walk away from this topic and leave it alone.  If you have evidence of crime, turn it over to his local law enforcement and let them decide what to do with it.  If we as the community are not the victim, and doesn't materially concern us, then any legal trouble he may or may not be in is his own personal matter and is truly none of our business.  Be done with it.

If he is involved in criminal activity it's none of our business to be "buying" and "selling" evidence.  That evidence, if any, is already irreparably tainted with these offers that if Maxwell has indeed committed a crime and law enforcement doesn't put him away for it on their own, then just consider he's gotten away with it free and clear, because it's going to be worthless for prosecuting him.  The world can wait for some future crime for him to commit and worry about it then, and let him be caught and convicted for it on the merits without the specter of sold evidence.

I would not hold it against Goat to rescind / not honor that original offer.  And I would personally encourage it to be held as null and void.

At the time it appears to have been made, it was for a trivial amount that was probably not conceived as one that would grow to a value so as to be motivating in and of itself to encourage professional fabrication of evidence. Now it is worth so much that any claim on it would be disturbingly suspicious.  In fact in the event of any prosecution, the defense of "that evidence was made up, someone was after an unintended $150k reward and staged this all" would be very convincing and would practically secure exoneration.

Alternately, I propose that the standard of evidence that should be held to be satisfactory in the face of such a large "offer" is so high that, absent blatant obvious smoking gun video, no submission prior to the offer's formal recission is satisfactory enough to earn it.

It doesn't look like an accusation to me.  It looks like a hypothetical question.  I think it's reasonable for someone ask about motives of someone who appears to be conducting business at an obvious financial loss.  I don't think very many people here, if anyone, see that as an accusation.

This is an excellent question!

The definition of possession of a Bitcoin is very concrete and there is nothing subjective about it: it's algorithmically determined entirely by computers.  You either possess the private key or you do not.  Nobody can change the way that works (other than perhaps the community as a whole), that's why it's so revolutionary.

The definition of a debt, it's a sort of claim against another person you can enforce using some societal framework made of people who have used their subjectivity to define what a debt is, and to create a framework to help make future decisions as to what constitutes a debt.  That framework is a legal system based on a combination of human judgment and written law.

Ripple correctly points out that simple social capital is great for enforcing lunch money debts - the sort of thing you won't miss if someone jerks out on you.  They pretend that this sort of courtesy scales up to bigger communities and bigger amounts when it simply doesn't.  That's why in the real world, any time there's a big deal or a big project, involving legal counsel to dot the i's and cross the t's is routine business.

A court of law can't stop a bitcoin from going to person A to person B, but absolutely can refuse to force person A to repay a claimed debt to person B if that court does not believe the debt to be valid or exist in the first place according to its own rules.

Sure, meanwhile, I've never been scammed selling BTC for PayPal, but would never recommend people learn this for themselves by trying.

I agree Ripple is technologically marvelous and works when everyone's honest and making good on their agreements to pay and nobody's saying they're getting hacked.  It's just that I expect it to fail spectacularly when any of these change, because none of these common real-life scenarios seem to be considered anywhere in the design.  Ripple's core flaw isn't a technological one, it's a societal/legal one.

It's informed conjecture.  A court of law may well decide that a Ripple IOU is not an enforceable contract, for reasons well established in law.  The burden of proof is on the person attempting to the contract, and "the ripple ledger says so" is not going to overcome an alleged debtor's claim they've been hacked and never entered into any contract in the first place.  As soon as Ripple has its first "allinvain" moment, and the ripple community asserts that that moment is an "irreversible" one, the legal community will quickly disagree and the world will understand why "the ripple ledger says so" means pretty much nothing legally, and that's when everyone will realize the screen door submarine is capable of no other destination than the seabed.

Then you have the benefit of legal recourse against Casascius who has made public representations guaranteeing he has not kept the keys which you relied upon before accepting a Casascius Coin, and any sweep like that would be evidence to the contrary which would be a tortious and likely criminal fraud that caused you a loss.  There is also a big difference - for me to commit a theft like this (assuming I still had keys and actually could), this would require affirmative steps taken to commit the theft, unlike a Ripple counterparty who merely needs to do nothing to default on someone.  Since I've made clear my real life identity and plenty of people have confirmed it, and have publicly stated my intentions to remain subject to the law, I think it's not apt as a comparison.

Ripple, on the other hand, can fail spectacularly with as few as three people.  Alice "owes" Bob and Bob "sells" that debt to Charlie, as Charlie trusts Alice.  Despite that trust, Alice doesn't feel like paying Charlie, or claims that she never actually owed "Bob", but rather, a hacker made the original transfer and so the debt never existed in the first place.  Charlie is pretty much SOL and can't sue to recover from Alice because legally Alice doesn't owe Charlie anything.  His sole remedy is to let Bob know what a jerk of a friend he has.  This is no big deal if we're talking lunch money, but when it's $10k or $50k, we're talking bigger amounts than most people's social capital really makes sense to leverage.

Meanwhile, Ripple aside, if Alice "owes" Bob and they have a written agreement, and Bob "assigns" that debt to Charlie with a written assignment agreement... the whole thing is magically enforceable in a court of law (happens every day with debt collectors).  Amazingly, a mere piece of paper (or equivalent signed electronic communication) has just trumped all of Ripple in terms of enforceability, and even works with larger amounts like $50k.  (Now for lunch money, Ripple's probably got it beat for convenience...but then again...so has cash, paypal, or your favorite bank payment app)

Thanks for continuing to run this site!

For privacy, will not be publishing ownership history of the item.  I warrant that I have the authority to conduct the sale.


Sorry nope.


As I understand it, the remitting of funds is straight from PayPal to EFF after a delay to allow for returns and such.  Also I understand eBay and PayPal forego their cut and remit 100% without fees as EFF is a charity they've approved for their "eBay Giving Works" program.  This is the first time I've ever done this so I'm going by what I've read (besides getting assistance from EFF to ensure the auction was properly registered as benefiting them), if anyone knows differently feel free to chime in.

To benefit the Electronic Frontier Foundation

http://www.ebay.com/itm/171207044206

What happens if I "receive" something in Ripple and I want to exchange it for the real asset but the person who owes it to me (from the view of Ripple) doesn't want, or isn't able, to pay?  This is what I see as Ripple's achilles heel.

Ripple is an ill-conceived system useful for trading unenforceable promises.  Its success depends on people mistakenly believing that a Ripple promise denominated as 1 USD is the same thing as 1 USD.

Ripple serves to insulate its users from the world's legal systems, the very same systems the users would depend upon to enforce any promises on the network.  It's broken by design - like a screendoor submarine.