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No insurance was purchased (it was expensive, and the buyer declined).
The coin still has not arrived. It's been 25 days now...
Is there any sort of customs office it could be stuck at? How do you find out who to call in such a case?
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This is what he claimed happened to it all a while back. I believe this was his last post in this thread. Well, here goes a long spiel. Probably the last that anyone had heard from me before a few days ago was dated September, 2011 according to my profile stats. So it has been a long time of me just lurking around from time to time. I can't remember exactly when, but some story broke on the Internet about my bitcoin collection and shortly afterwards things got crazy. The first thing that happened was my inbox here at the forum exploded with people asking for a loan of anywhere from 10k to 100k bitcoins to start the next big market place. I had a few people message me here that they had been burned by a hacker or some website that had their wallet information and asked for anywhere from 100 to 1k bitcoins as a way to help them recover their loss. I always wanted to help people, but there is no well to tell if these were sincere request or just someone out to make a quick bitcoin scam. Some of those I did help people I did help just to be nice, but word must have gotten around quick. I had to step back from the forums for a while as it was a good place for people to chase me down. All the questions of what I would do with it or how did I get it, was I the one that hacked XYZ website and that's why I have so many, etc. Somewhere in this topic I think, is a another long explanation of how I came into possession of it all. Long story short, I was in bitcoin early when the network was small and basically used a lot of Amazon processing power to load up a ton of bitcoin miners all at once in their clusters (Amazon) using a custom compiled version of the CentOS bitcoind source files. Amazon had a big price difference between running a lot of windows sessions and running a lot of Linux sessions. Turns out, the Linux sessions were running kind of an old version of CentOS as well as I couldn't even get the compiled binaries to run. Well, a lot of money was spent to generate that chunk of bitcoins, but not so I could posses it all, there were plans to use it as a backing for re-loadable credit cards like service that had bitcoin powering it in the background. Needless to say, that project fell out due to (at least in hindsight) very inept investors. The project floundered and then finally as a way to get out, they (investors) wanted to see what they could sell everything for. It had cost a lot of real money to produce that pile of bitcoins, so I ended up buying it for dirt cheap (at least in terms that bitcoins really had no value to them). Maybe after the 7 year NDS I signed expires, the world will know who it was, but for now I can't name anyone or business. Once the market value was shooting up to space, the pile of bitcoins was worth a small fortune in theory at least. A lot of bitcoins were spread around the community to help people at first, but it kind of got out of hand. Ultimately, a large portion ended up being donated to wikileaks.org, so I'm certainly not the person sitting up top a large pile of bitcoins anymore. The rest went to paying off small debts and the very last of it was just recently donated to wikileaks.org again. I never had any intention of trying to crash the bitcoin market with a large sell-off as many theorized I would do. So sleep safe that there is one less person like me in the bitcoin kingdom.  So, no matter what legend has built up, nothing amazing or exciting has happened to the bitcoins I once had. No buying a Country or purchasing Islands of the sort. Just trying to help out where I could instead. The only thing I have left is old screenshots and empty wallet files now. A large portion of my past time has actually been invested in the creation of an alternate digital currency for the last few years because I always thought there was a better way to do it. So that's where I spend all my time now, at timekoin.orgI was great to catch up with everyone though, hopefully the story wasn't too boring. Maybe not as exciting as some had hoped. He says a large portion of it was donated to wikileaks, but if you look at this article on wikileaks ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/08/20/wikileaks-bypasses-financial-blockade-with-bitcoin/), it shows that wikileaks had only taken in $32,000 in TOTAL donations up to that point. In August 2012, $32,000 of Bitcoin would have been less than 10,000 Bitcoins. That's a far cry from 371,000. Anyway, I'm not going to bug him about it. He's probably still got a lot of coins, and that's fine - he deserves it for being an early adopter of this technology. He also deserves to not be pestered by people trying to beg money off him. |
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Well, no one told me we were looking at profitability with regards to BTC.  That's a whole different ballgame, and all bets are off if you look at it that way! If the price drops drastically, you could see a net profit in BTC quite easily while maintaining a net loss in USD, but if the price increasing drastically, you'd likely never see a profit on your investment vs just investing in BTC directly, while your USD profit would be through the roof. Consider the following question: If you spend 11 BTC to buy a device that will produce 10 BTC in its lifetime, will you make any profit? Or, you could look at it another way: Is there any exchange rate by which you will profit more by spending 11 BTC to get 10 BTC than you would by just keeping the 11 BTC? Consider the following counter-question: If you spend 11 BTC ($1,200) to buy a device that will produce 1,000 BTC ($100 after a huge market crash), will you make any profit? That's why I assume no change in exchange rate, and why I look at profit in terms of USD and not BTC. Anyway, assuming no change in value, I don't see how a BFL ASIC ordered now would NOT turn a net profit eventually (in both BTC and USD), unless there are additional delays beyond their projection of shipping all current preorders by September. But I wouldn't buy one right now, BECAUSE of the potential for additional delays. And because I already have too much investing in BTC and BTC-related investments already. I need to diversify more. But, back to the profit. Let's say that you are correct, that difficulty is 60,000,000 by the time you receive your shiny new 50GH/s BFL miner. You spent 24 BTC on it. The miner, at 60,000,000 difficulty, makes 12.74 BTC/month. Also have to assume that difficulty is continuing to rise, and I'm not going to do the calculus, but just assume that difficulty went up 25% and you manage to pull out 10 BTC of the first month. Next month, same thing - difficulty went up 25% over the course of the month, and you get another 8 BTC. Etc, etc, making 6.5 BTC, 5 BTC, 4.5 BTC in the following months. After just the first 3 months, you've already recovered your original BTC amount. The only reason difficulty would continue to go up is if people continued to buy miners. The only way people would continue to buy miners is if they deem it to return a reasonable profit. Do you think 4.5 BTC/month (and potentially declining) on a 24 BTC purchase is a reasonable profit? I do, but many people certainly don't - not in the volatile world of Bitcoin, anyway. So people like would start dropping out of purchases of miners when the singles start only making 6 BTC a month, or 4.5 BTC a month, or whatever number you want to use. But that still leaves the people who did buy them a net profit after 6 months or less, and it means difficulty would largely stagnate and stop increasing. I would even wager on a bet that a BFL SC Single would eventually pay itself off in either USD or BTC, electric costs included, if purchased today. |
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You're wrong.
People will stop buying new miners when new miners stop being profitable. But as I calculate it right now, it would take 818,325 of BFL's SC Singles to be in use before mining becomes unprofitable at $0.08/kwh, not taking into account any unit depreciation. Given that BFL only had 75,000 chips produced in their first run, and that those 75,000 chips would only be enough to produce 4,687 SC Singles, I'd say that we're quite far from that happening even when taking all the other ASIC vendors into account.
Sure, we're moving away from the prospect of making ridiculous daily amounts of Bitcoin from one device, but we are still very far above the level of a reasonably sane return on investment.
An SC Single need only generate 1.5BTC per year to break even on electricity costs, but that is not why people would stop buying it. If an SC Single can't generate more Bitcoin than you could buy with the money you spend on the SC single, then people will stop buying the Singles. If second generation ASICs coming online that do 300+ GH/s actually deliver, the hash rate is going to grow rapidly for the next 6 months. 100M+ difficulty makes an SC Single unprofitable (vs buying bitcoins). If you ordered one today, you would not receive it until late September (after 100TH/s of Avalon Klondikes have hit the market, and 200TH/s of BFL product has been delivered). That puts the difficulty over 60M before you even get your SC Single. That is a small window and it is getting smaller. If KNCminer or Bitfury actually deliver... Sure, I agree with you - people will only continue to buy them while they produce a reasonable amount of profit. But my point still stands - people will stop buying them when they produce an unreasonable profit. Which means they will always make a reasonable profit, notwithstanding improvements in the technology that give lower costs or more efficient mining. Even with newer technologies, these older ASICs would likely still be profitable, just not reasonably profitable. To earn a profit, mining equipment must first earn back the sunk capital costs involved in buying the equipment. BFL equipment ordered today will be delivered in mid September (according to Josh). All of BFL's current order book will be mining before you get your unit. Potentially all of Avalon's chip sales will be mining. Potentially all of Bitfury's first batch will be mining. ASICMiner will add some unknown amount of hash rate. Potentially even some of KNCMiners products will be mining You will start mining somewhere north of 60,000,000 difficulty. At that rate, there is a real risk that BFL products ordered today will never earn back in BTC what one could buy from MT Gox for the same price. That makes them unprofitable. Well, no one told me we were looking at profitability with regards to BTC. That's a whole different ballgame, and all bets are off if you look at it that way! If the price drops drastically, you could see a net profit in BTC quite easily while maintaining a net loss in USD, but if the price increasing drastically, you'd likely never see a profit on your investment vs just investing in BTC directly, while your USD profit would be through the roof. |
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It was confirmed that Avalon was pre-mining with customer units... could this be them?
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You're wrong.
People will stop buying new miners when new miners stop being profitable. But as I calculate it right now, it would take 818,325 of BFL's SC Singles to be in use before mining becomes unprofitable at $0.08/kwh, not taking into account any unit depreciation. Given that BFL only had 75,000 chips produced in their first run, and that those 75,000 chips would only be enough to produce 4,687 SC Singles, I'd say that we're quite far from that happening even when taking all the other ASIC vendors into account.
Sure, we're moving away from the prospect of making ridiculous daily amounts of Bitcoin from one device, but we are still very far above the level of a reasonably sane return on investment.
An SC Single need only generate 1.5BTC per year to break even on electricity costs, but that is not why people would stop buying it. If an SC Single can't generate more Bitcoin than you could buy with the money you spend on the SC single, then people will stop buying the Singles. If second generation ASICs coming online that do 300+ GH/s actually deliver, the hash rate is going to grow rapidly for the next 6 months. 100M+ difficulty makes an SC Single unprofitable (vs buying bitcoins). If you ordered one today, you would not receive it until late September (after 100TH/s of Avalon Klondikes have hit the market, and 200TH/s of BFL product has been delivered). That puts the difficulty over 60M before you even get your SC Single. That is a small window and it is getting smaller. If KNCminer or Bitfury actually deliver... Sure, I agree with you - people will only continue to buy them while they produce a reasonable amount of profit. But my point still stands - people will stop buying them when they produce an unreasonable profit. Which means they will always make a reasonable profit, notwithstanding improvements in the technology that give lower costs or more efficient mining. Even with newer technologies, these older ASICs would likely still be profitable, just not reasonably profitable. |
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Did you sell them @ $5/ea, or did you have to drop your price?
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Mine is, sadly, still "processing".
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Are you a gun owner that is looking for a place to securely purchase live ammunition online using Bitcoins? Well today just may be your lucky day. http://bitmunitions.com is exactly that: A secure re-seller of live ammunition for rifles, handguns, and shotguns that only accepts Bitcoins. Our deliveries require an adult signature unless you specifically request a signature free delivery*. We have a great stock on all products and are willing to put together a custom order for customers at no extra cost**. So swing on buy Bitmunitions today and put your Bitcoins to good use! Thank you! * Age verification required through email for signature free delivery ** Please allow 2-3 weeks processing time for large custom orders. ordered a couple thousand rounds of .223 federal last week. took over 8 days but finally got a tracking number. appears to be shipped ups from denver but the address if different than the one the sites listing. idk will updated later or try to find holes in the site if not legit. Introducing... the sockpuppet, whose purpose is to lure additional people into the scam! |
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You're wrong.
People will stop buying new miners when new miners stop being profitable. But as I calculate it right now, it would take 818,325 of BFL's SC Singles to be in use before mining becomes unprofitable at $0.08/kwh, not taking into account any unit depreciation. Given that BFL only had 75,000 chips produced in their first run, and that those 75,000 chips would only be enough to produce 4,687 SC Singles, I'd say that we're quite far from that happening even when taking all the other ASIC vendors into account.
Sure, we're moving away from the prospect of making ridiculous daily amounts of Bitcoin from one device, but we are still very far above the level of a reasonably sane return on investment.
That's BS. Plenty of people have bought stuff for mining and either never cared about making a profit or were incredibly naive but you need to redo your calculations in any case Why do I need to redo my calculations? If there's something wrong with them, please point it out. |
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Win 1 BTC Promotion - Promotion ended, thanks for joining in!
I am holding a 1 BTC drawing! Simply register an account at firstbitsrepo.com, fill in your bitcointalk.org username in the Account Information page at firstbitsrepo.com, and then post in this thread stating that you registered (no need to post any information about your account here). The drawing will be in two weeks, on May 5th. Good luck! Who Won the 1 BTC Promotion ? simonk83 ended up winning it.  |
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Why do you call this a test order? |
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if aution still on or done?
This auction is over. |
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fyi, shill bidding is a felony in the United states, so there again, whether or not it was a real scam is subject to conjecture/opinion.
sources: My uncle runs an auction house in Little Rock, Arkansas.
It's also a felony to resist the government's violent thugs, and the US is fine with bombing innocent people, so I don't put much stock in the US's view on ethics. But is there a reason that shilling and dupe accounts are not prohibited by the TOS? Is that an ideological choice? It seems to me that you either promote fair dealing or you don't, and while I agree that auction shilling isn't anywhere near pirate level, felonious behavior, it certainly isn't fair dealing. You can't get a little bit pregnant. I agree 100%. In my opinion, a scammer is anyone who goes back on their word in any kind of trade or deal and is unable or refuses to compensate the victim in a manner acceptable to the victim. |
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The article is flawed because it mixes 2 very different issues. The first one is about money laundering and the second is about the underground economy. Bitcoin and large bank notes are good for the second, but not for the first. Excuse-me, but if you go to any bank in the world with a suitcase full of cash, you will look very suspicious.
Isn't the key about money laundering that you DON'T go straight to a bank? I.e, you give it to your car-wash owning friend to handle, who then slowly trades them for the notes that the customers bring in, and deposit the 100's as revenues while giving the smaller untainted notes back to the one wanting the laundry done? |
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TIL a person can be a scammer on bitcointalk without actually being labeled as one.
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You're wrong.
People will stop buying new miners when new miners stop being profitable. But as I calculate it right now, it would take 818,325 of BFL's SC Singles to be in use before mining becomes unprofitable at $0.08/kwh, not taking into account any unit depreciation. Given that BFL only had 75,000 chips produced in their first run, and that those 75,000 chips would only be enough to produce 4,687 SC Singles, I'd say that we're quite far from that happening even when taking all the other ASIC vendors into account.
Sure, we're moving away from the prospect of making ridiculous daily amounts of Bitcoin from one device, but we are still very far above the level of a reasonably sane return on investment.
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I've heard that you need to download special drivers for BFL ASICs to work with cgminer, but that they work out of the box with BFGMiner and BitMinter. You might give one of those a try.
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Isn't everything that goes through bitmit automatically escrowed?
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want 1scammer
The website is currently down for ordering (new server hosting, SSL information is in process of being changed), but I can certainly do this if you are serious. Please PM me and we can work out the details. |
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