Armory does that too, although if I remember the code correctly it limits itself to 5 inputs. Since the input addresses are all the same, this does not taint any address more than would have been with the original transaction.

I know his name. And I also know he thinks he is out of touch because he apparently lives somewhere in South Korea. Spain and the USA are hardly comparable in terms of reachability.

On the side note, although Matthew scammed many people with his "bet", he didn't receive one satoshi out of it, so the damages are limited. But discussing this would be clearly off-topic here.

See http://wiki.cacert.org/FAQ/AssuranceByCAP if that helps you understand how it works. You can also follow the links, and see that an assurer must go through a more thorough ID verification than regular people, as he needs to get more points by more assurers.

Go back in the thread, and you'll also find someone who checked his ID in person at a Spanish bitcoin meeting, as well as links to a colloquium where he spoke, with pictures and all. The PGP key he uses is 18 months old and is signed (which implies photo id verification too) by prominent free software developers, faculty staff, etc.

Except by meeting him in real life and checking his id myself, I could not be more convinced than I currently am that Victor is who he says he is!

Did you notice a pattern in what you wrote? Those guys are anonymous, or are trying to be. Victor is not, and has never tried to be, he in fact posted a lot of information about him while making this offer.

He also explained that he is trying to build trust in the bitcoin world. What he is doing (accepting small deposits from a maximum of people in order to build relationships, rather than taking large deposits from a few people, which would be easier to manage) makes perfect sense: he is now trusted by a lot of people who have faith in his ability to keep his word.

He has not disclosed what he is doing with the funds, and I have not asked him. Maybe he spends some of his own money to pay the interests, after all, for 2.5kBTC that would represent about 300€/month, which could be worth a reputation of reliability. Maybe he is taking a measured risk and placed half of the funds in Patrick Harnett's deposit, which pays back 1% a week, in which case he would have to disburse around 200€/month, and could take a hit of 10k€ if Patrick defaulted fully. What I believe is that he will always pay back his investors.

Note a similarity here? Patrick uses his real name too. And so far, everyone seems happy with his way of doing business. As for Victor, I think Patrick takes measured risks only, and would be ready to liquidate some assets should a catastrophic event cause the loss of some of the funds that were sent to him.

What do you think would happen if Victor scammed people, voluntarily or not? Would he take the risk of having his name slandered? His online reputation is based on trust, he is a CAcert.org assurer (disclaimer: I am one too, even though I haven't assured people for years for lack of availability), and CAcert.org is based on trust into assurers that guarantee a person identity after checking state issued photo ids and have to keep a copy of the documents for years in case of a dispute. Victor can be easily located, we know who he works for in real life, he even gave more detailed information after Micon requested it (Micon, did your friend check that Victor is who he claims to be by looking into the internal directory?). The odds of him scamming people or even of not assuming a loss are extremely small.

Maybe someday we will learn that Victor deposited all or parts of the funds into one of the failed deposit, and covered the loss from his own pocket. I hope (for Victor) that this is not the case, but I would not be totally surprised if it happened.

You can call me naive, stupid or blind, but there is nothing in Victor's behaviour that raised any red flag as far as I am concerned.

You know that what you're proposing is a total 0.2% interest for the whole loan duration, right? Far from 2%/month!

Also, you should use real formulas to make your simulations, especially if you want to be able to do an early buyout of your loan. For example, the first month you will generate 2% of 4000 BTC as interests, that is 80 BTC. If you reimburse 210 BTC, 80 of them are interests, while 130 of them will decrease the capital you still owe. The second month will generate 2% of 3870 BTC as interests, that is 77.4 BTC. Our of your 210 BTC, 77.4 will be interests while 132.6 BTC will reduce your debt. And so on.

Come on, this is not going to happen. Look at pirateat40, have you had any report of him being tracked down, or even of any legal documents being filed against a John Doe for theft? Nobody in the US seems to be willing to do anything against scammers.

The next scam will make everyone forget Matthew N. Wright, while himself made people forget about pirateat40.

Your second point is important. From what I could see here, the people worth trusting with your BTC are those whose identity is known. I guess being identifiable and easily reachable (e.g., being in a country well represented on this forum, compared to being in South Korea) filters out dishonest people, who would prefer to stay anonymous for obvious reasons.

It looks like you're challenging people at finding out which companies you work for or are associated with.

This is certainly entertaining

I just got back my principal back along with this week interests, just as expected.

This has been a hassle-free experience, and since I started when the offering was 2%/week, I received all-in-all 13.5% as interests during the course of those 8 weeks. Thanks Victor!

I just received a payout after 30 confirmations only. Is that expected?

Edit: never mind, blockchain.info is lagging 7 blocks behind, false alert

How is the other bar doing? How many customers do they have per night? What is the square footage of their premises? How many employees do they have on the payroll? Does it stay open during the vacation, when students are not on campus?

Since you're posting here, why not write "We will also accept Bitcoin"? A Bitcoin Hookah lounge may be more attractive to lenders or investors.


You should be seeking a USD loan, not a BTC loan. If the USD/BTC rate increases, it may become very difficult to reimburse your loan. Also, the USD lending rates would be much lower.


Are you looking for lenders (who will get their money back + interests) or for investors (who will get dividends as long as they hold the shares)? What access to the business accounting information would they have? If you're looking for investors, will they have any voting rights?

Lenders will probably request much higher interest rates given the risk of this business failing, especially if no property is put as collateral. Investors will be there for the long term, but it means that you would share the profits forever should your venture succeed.


That happened in France, and many hookah bars became fast foods when smoking inside any public place got banned.

No. I am ok with asserting some facts (my loans have been returned so far with the expected added amount, including several loans of 10 BTC), but I will not help people to send money to an unknown person who refuses to indicate who he represents or to give any guarantee that he won't run with the money (that could be done by escrowing some BTC with a trusted public person).

Bitcoin Central utilise maintenant un compte français à la place de cette banque polonaise dont tu parles.

Ce n'est pas plus rapide qu'un virement SEPA, et bien moins sûr. Pourquoi ne pas lui proposer de te faire un virement plutôt que de t'envoyer des billets ?

D'ailleurs, vous ne voudriez pas corriger l'aspect du graphe sur https://bitcoin-central.net/order_book ? Il est comme ça depuis que quelqu'un a déposé un ordre de vente à 75€/BTC (on peut toujours rêver).

In France, for any criminal case (theft is one of them), the district attorney decides whether an investigating magistrate should be designed to supervise the investigations or not (in which case, it means the state is not willing to go after the alleged, known or unknown, perpetrator). However, in case of a negative answer, the victim can choose to go forward anyway. In this case, the district attorney must design an investigating judge, and the judge must do whatever it takes to identify the alleged perpetrator such as asking for connection logs, domain name ownership information, and so on (even if he lives abroad, thanks to treaties between cooperating countries).

At the end of the investigation, the judge decides if the alleged perpetrator (if he has been identified) should be sent to trial or not, according to what has been uncovered. But in any case, the plaintiff and his lawyers will be given access to the investigation results. They may even request that the investigating judge starts some procedures that they deem useful to retrieve the identity of the alleged perpetrator, or to prove that the criminal behavior took place.

If the alleged perpetrator does not attend his trial, he can be sentenced anyway, and a warrant will be issued if he got jail time.

Yes, I've had one matching digit several times, but never two matching ones.

Où es-tu basé ? J'ai décrit les systèmes que j'utilise sur mon blog et aucune des méthodes que j'ai décrites ne met autant de temps, certaines comme localbitcoins.com m'ont permis d'échanger dans la journée (mais je suis à Paris). Je recommande particulièrement Bitmarket pour les achats en ligne, ça ne met jamais plus de deux jours non plus (toujours SEPA).

I have sent various amounts (including 10BTC) repeatedly (thanks Python for that), and so far the money got returned every time

Please stop being awesome, it reflects badly on other funds.