We already had that with BTC-e. Do you recall how that ended? But yes, people (including myself) are always interested in anonymous ways to cash out. However, we're also skeptical of services that aren't known or reputable.

By the way, you should probably move this thread to Service Discussion or Exchanges.

From a trademark perspective, Blockchain.com can't do anything. They did file a lawsuit against Blockchain.io, but that was based on supposed infringement of their logo. Apparently, they have no legal basis to go after anyone for use of the word "blockchain" because it's a generic term not protected under trademark law:

I'd rather call myself a pennyaire.

Don't forget about the Vladimir Club. Back in the day, the goal used to be 2,100 BTC!


I don't think so. The "21 Million Club" (owning 1 bitcoin) seems to be a more common goal.

The narrative that he is (or might be) Satoshi is a much bigger headline. All the media cares about anymore is getting clicks. If he's just cast as a common conman, nobody would be interested in the story. With Onecoin, they can point to a Ponzi scheme worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Chairman of the parent company, John Tengström, is apparently a lawyer. Whether he's a good one, I don't know.

Nova Exchange does appear to be controlled by Goobit AB, who is actively registered with the Finansinspektionen. You might consider contacting them and filing a complaint.

Are they not accepting your documents, or is the automated process failing and they aren't responsive?

People who are invested in the platform -- OB1 and its investors, vendors who depend on the platform for sales, maybe even a few buyers who want to support the network -- would run the client.

I'm not sure exactly how OpenBazaar's P2P networking works but in theory, a lite browser-based version that pings nodes should be possible. They should consider something to make it more accessible.

I noticed there's always a huge spike in transactions during daytime in the US too. Apparently this is due to BitMEX's "comically unoptimized" once-daily withdrawal system.

If you can wait until evening or overnight (US time) for confirmation, it's consistently cheaper. Getting 1 satoshi/byte transactions confirmed within a day has been consistently easy for the past couple months.

That doesn't sound accurate. According to this thread, customers still didn't need to verify as of late February.

I assume people are tripping out because KYC is required to withdraw and some people can't get verified after months of trying.

The block interval follows a Poisson distribution. That's why on rare occasion, no blocks will be found at all for a couple hours. The distribution evens out over time, tending back towards the 10-minute target interval.

A single 24-hour period can follow the same dynamic, with the distribution being smoothed out over the 2016-block difficulty adjustment period. Focusing too much on the short term can lead to some pretty drastic miscalculations.

Cash isn't spendable electronically, over the internet. That was one of the primary purposes of Bitcoin according to the whitepaper.

Privacy coins can accomplish that while obfuscating transaction data, but there are drawbacks as well -- as Zcash or Monero users will tell you. In terms of auditing the fixed supply, Bitcoin's transparency is a feature.

All that buyer protection comes at a cost. Endless eBay sellers have been screwed over by fraudulent buyers over the years. That's the main reason why I'd never sell anything on there. eBay just assumes every buyer is honest. OB is much better for sellers in that sense.

What would you prefer, a network secured by CPU miners? Bitcoin is orders of magnitude more secure than that. We're only dependent on the rational mining incentive baked into the protocol. Miners want fees; we pay them to secure our transactions. The fee market is basic proof that it works.


What's your basis for comparison? Bank accounts? Credit cards? And what about CoinJoin?

A mixer that blacklists or steals "tainted" outputs could never be trusted. The only honest way to run a mixer is to treat bitcoins as fully fungible. I think once you start injecting your own ethics like that, you're entering muddy waters.

From a rational viewpoint, law enforcement has made far more busts in the DNM sector -- Silk Road, Alphabay, Hansa, Wall Street Market, Valhalla, the list goes on. They even went after Deep Dot Web earlier this year. For that reason, I reckon mixers willing to serve dark web customers are willing to serve anybody.

I can't imagine the likes of the US government caring about Binance losing 7,000 bitcoins either. There were no US victims so they have absolutely no reason to lift a finger.

Bitcoin is money -- that's the bottom line. Some forms of money are better than others at specific functions, but all fit both categories (store of value and medium of exchange) to varying degrees.

Bitcoin's divisibility, portability, durability, fungibility and the difficulty of counterfeiting all make it an excellent medium of exchange. It just hasn't been widely adopted as that. Even the Federal Reserve banks can acknowledge it is a medium of exchange, though:


The store of value discussion is a bit more complex. On one hand, Bitcoin has historically retained its purchasing power extraordinarily well -- one of the best performing assets of our time. On the other hand, it clearly lacks the stability that some people feel is necessary to qualify it as an SOV. This should be expected in the bootstrapping phase.

When the IRS originally issued the summons for Coinbase user data, they were looking for everyone "active between 2013 and 2015." To me, that gives a pretty clear indication that 2013 is the limit of what they're planning to investigate.


Link? I feel like the IRS wouldn't say that because their whole MO is to scare people into voluntary compliance.

It's not only Coinbase -- they're just the biggest. Gemini and Kraken treat tax reporting the same way, with Form 1099-K. For tax year 2019, there will probably be more exchanges joining their ranks too.


I've completed thousands of tax returns and I have to say, dealing with cryptocurrency transactions is somewhat onerous, especially when compared to stock brokers who send clients a 1099-B with reported cost basis.

Once you start mixing in spending on goods and services, altcoin trades and several different exchanges -- some of whom don't provide adequate records or if they do, in really bad formatting -- it can become overwhelming. Coinbase actually has one of the better formats for filled order history that I've seen.

I see nothing in the article about Bitmixer -- what are you guys talking about? Coincidentally, they mysteriously shut down just two days before BTC-e went down. I don't think they were directly related, though -- just two of the largest pieces in the darknet market puzzle at that time.


Association with darknet markets seems to get a lot more attention. Something also tells me that mixers aren't doing the sort of taint analysis that Chainalysis or Ciphertrace does.

They don't "control all the income." The only power miners have is to decide which transactions to publish. They are rationally incentivized by block rewards to do so honestly rather than to censor or reorg out transactions.

That's how Bitcoin is supposed to work, and that's how it still works today.

Satoshi's lack of foresight about the proliferation of ASICs and mining pools ≠ adequate reason to change Bitcoin's design. It's not broken; don't try to fix it.

That's exactly the rationale people are afraid of -- that any instrument being used by the Maduro regime to circumvent sanctions might end up being targeted. It doesn't make sense though because the same rationale could be applied to any asset, from gold to the US dollar.

The real issue here is the Petro is centrally issued and redeemed by the Maduro regime. That obviously doesn't apply to decentralized assets like bitcoins.

If huge exchanges like Bittrex can't meet the requirements, it suggests the regulations are pretty onerous. DFS publicly responded regarding that denial, and bizarrely cited KYC lapses in 2017 as a reason to deny the license in 2019.

Regulations should be expected to create some barriers to entry -- that's just a fact -- but New York is strangling the industry. I would feel robbed by the state if I lived there. New York residents are treated like pariahs by cryptocurrency services.