Dude, chill!  What's the hurry?

I've stated it somewhere as described.  In a nutshell, I don't need the money right now, and I want to keep the option open to make a grab for the $5M that my government stole from Karpeles.  Hopefully we can add to that the $5M that Vessenes stole from Karpeles if the USG can claw that back.

I'll probably never get the opportunity, or get around to this project if I do, but there is some chance that I'll need something to do in the leisure time afforded by an early retirement.

One way or another, there is no fucking way I'm going to give Mt. Gox the easy out of cashing me out at today's prices.  If they want to roll back the transaction chain and give me the 50 BTC that results, I'm game.  I made that offer in a semi-formal manner (and documented it.)  Unsurprisingly I've not heard anything back.

It is fair to say that Mt. Gox's support cannot be relied upon.  I know this personally because they mislead me about expectations.  Or tried to at any rate...I pretty much expected that a positive response would be bullshit.  I was disappointed that they gave me a misleadingly positive boilerplate response when I asked about it several months ago.

The sad thing is that I would have been quite understanding if they would have just been straight-up about the problems they were having.  They had no reason to lie to me.  Now it is my contention that they are not a reliable party to do business with.  (My $5k has been in limbo since last summer by the way.)

If I didn't have a fair degree of patience, I would have never made a dime on Bitcoin.  Also some confidence in my analysis of things.

If all I had to my name were Bitcoin I'd hardly sleep at night.

As for gold, I've been in it pretty heavy since the early 2000's.  Not long after it started on it's ascent.  This means that I'm way ahead in spite of the slump, and also that I've had to sit through other slumps which have all been about the same in terms of people losing confidence/patience and bailing out.  I never once considered selling any of my hoard on any of those slumps, and nothing has changed on this one.  Just the opposite in fact.

I suspect that using Bitcoin in the manner that the OP prescribes/demands/dictates/whatever would probably kill it (as a interesting an promising solution adhering to some modicum of decentralization) faster than any realistic attack.

In the mean time, it's proven quite an attractive and lucrative vehicle for high risk speculation.  And doing so (and thus acting as a buffer of sorts for in the highly volatile market space) has at least the potential to facilitate a better distribution.  Happy days!

I suspect 'no' in the scheme of things.  It's not a big trade to me as a relative 'old timer', and is pretty small-time relative to trades on semi-functional exchanges.  It is, however, an amount that I would feel comfortable putting at risk in one transaction albeit with certain realistic safeguards.  But my risk tolerance is low.  As is my tolerance for being screwed which pisses me off more than hurts me (or would if it were to happen.)

Localbitcoins is distinctly unappealing to me due to the hassle factor and relatively low value potentials.  Or was last I looked.  This is in part due to my physical location however.  People willing to do this USD value purchase via cash in the mail did exist when I was looking around some months ago, but wanted a significant premium and wanted me to take the risk.  I ended up going with Coinbase which has been working out for me so far.  I also had good luck with Bitcoin-Brokers.org when I used them.

We need to do a better job of education.  Somewhere along the lines a little physics wouldn't hurt.  Apologies if the OP simply has not gotten that far in highschool yet.

That's what 'bitcoin-brokers.org' does.  I used their service for a while with very good results, but now I just use Coinbase (in part because I've given up all hope of financial privacy using Bitcoin.)  I've followed them since, and so far I've not seen anyone with bad results.

The escrow agent could always decide to pack it in with all current money or get hit by a bus or whatever of course so, as always, it's best to never play with more than a guy can afford to lose.

A while ago the operator stopped taking on sellers when he had to many (and started again as conditions change.)  That was a good sign in terms of gauging his motives, but of course it could also have been a confidence trick.  One way or another if I were running a legitimate escrow, I would not want to be holding more value than necessary.  To actually do it right in terms of security and fail-safe systems and such could take a lot of focus and be a fair amount of work.

I'm guessing that the fun will come to an end if/when it becomes unlawful to deposit cash into a random person's account without some modicum of 'know-your-whatever-ness'.  I'm surprised it's even allowed now to be honest.  Probably it would be implemented by some combination of claw-backs and/or banks just shutting out customers who do this.  My guess.

I'm not an expert, but it does seem to me that throwing some shit up on github, even if it doesn't do much, can demonstrate enough 'prior art' to make it not worth the time and money for a corporate entities to pursue.  Even if they might win in court eventually it would probably be cheaper to either pay a person off or choose a different line of development.

This IP stuff is getting amazingly obscene, wasteful, and debilitating.  I hope to live to see the day when there is a tsunami of a backlash against the abuse.

That is the reason why distributed crypto-currencies captured my interest so intently.  While I've more or less lost hope for Bitcoin proper, it's success in demonstrating the general concept has been remarkable.  The next move from TPTB will have to be better control over freedom of association, and it will be a tricky needle to thread.

As an aside, I'm not as convinced that the threat of MAD is behind us.  With excessive population sizes, and particularly populations which are restive, MAD could have some new-found utility.  I'm just not convinced that the pool from which our leaderships are drawn don't contain sufficient evil to go for it.

Most people lack the combination of interest, time, and understanding to care a whole lot.  And a large fraction of ordinary people are pretty nervous about the concept of individuals not being under some sort of control.  Other individuals for sure, and even themselves to a surprising extent.

I hypothesis that most people are born with a predisposition to consider themselves subjugants of a leader.  A society with 100% leaders and 0% followers will not last very long because they will not be very functional and thus competitive.  So the ratio of humans with a natural inclination to look to higher authorities for guidance about how to live tends to be fairly high.

The key to population management is to recognize this feature of human populations and use it to design policy.  From a monetary perspective, it is sufficient to point out the mischief that some 'free' individuals can achieve in order to foster a more controlled exchange medium.  Natural human brain functions can do the rest of the work.

Thanks heavens I took enough out to do next year's projects rather than waiting to start until the turn of the year to use the capital gains tax scam (perfectly legal, but still a scam imho.)  $1000/BTC this year is equiv to $750/BTC next year if I can fit into the 0% capital gains keyhole.  Roughly.  My last bunch of withdraws were at over $1000/BTC but I usually didn't get near Mt. Gox pricing at Coinbase.  Now I can rest on my heels and see if it looks like this collapse will blow over.  Didn't convert any BTC into PM's as I'd hoped though.

It's a completely valid hypothesis.

I would not read to much into the makeup of the investors though.  TPTB are terrified of the occupy-x type stuff and have been heaving buckets of taxpayer dollars into the surveillance state apparatus.  Just about any two-bit company with a few guys who can surf the web can make gobs of money by doing basically nothing of any particular value.  Shrewd investors have put money into a lot of these, and probably in most cases co-incidentally with the money pumped in by the state through the intelligence community investment wings.  So it is hardly surprising to see a lot of these name co-mingled.  Talk about your 'merger of state and corporate power'!  What a witch's brew.  Interesting times we live in here in the U.S.

Back to Coinbase, yes, it is interesting and potentially telling that they seem to get a free ride.  But then so did Gox...until they didn't.  I've always felt it an interesting hypothesis that Coinlabs were supposed to be the focus point (which Coinbase is accused of being in this thread) but something went wrong.  That something may have been Karpeles figuring things out and getting cold feet.  And subsequently being punished.

For my part it does not matter much.  IMHO, Bitcoin is pretty useless for privacy anyway and probably always will be do to design deficiencies.  Eventually something more promising will probably pop up, but most likely only when driven by a real need.  In the mean time I need a way to capitalize on being an early-ish adopter.  Coinbase is doing me right in this regard.  If the NSA is to thank then...well...Thanks NSA.

Sheesh...I'd hate to see your negative feedback!

While I'm here, I've had several more successful sales and cash was deposited in my account on-time.  I've been lucky over the past several weeks and have hit some peaks.  If Coinbase had a mind to line their pockets by fucking with my nicely timed sales, they deferred to do so in my case.  So far.

I still wish that Coinbase adjusted their prices upward more quickly (less dampening.)  My sales have been significantly under Mt. Gox prices which, admittedly, are influenced by operational conditions.  At the end of the day, though, Coinbase gets me $10k chunks promptly whenever I ask while Mt. Gox still has my $5k which they've been sitting on since last summer.

Looks like random noise and/or the general human performance levels within institutions (accounting for the timing observations given that the last run-up would have jolted most people similarly.)  Or at least that strikes me as a perfectly valid hypothesis, and I see no real evidence that would support the coordination idea.  Nor do I see any real effectiveness at attacking Bitcoin compared to what is possible except arguably in China.  If anything the response has been much more positive and lenient than I would have expected.

I'm still expecting a real response with some teeth.  The one thing which could avoid it is if the analysts in corp/gov decide that Bitcoin proper is on a self-destruct path anyway and a more fruitful use effort would be to try to solve the general problem of distributed crypto-currencies...if not the even more general problem of freedom of association amongst the plebs.

The biggest danger in my mind is that the desire resonates with the governments of a lot of other larger nations simultaneously.  It seems entirely plausible to me that in such a scenerio, otherwise adversarial parties could find some common ground and form cooperative strategies.  Certainly the corporate and quasi-corporate bodies who implement policy in the respective states could be brought on-board in the snap of a finger.  What that would do to the Bitcoin economy and market is anyone's guess.  I could actually see it going several ways depending on the circumstances.

Actually for at least two years now I believe, I've felt that such a scenario (cooperative corp/gov attack) could be Bitcoin's biggest hope since it could be a powerful force in helping solve both the scaling issues, and the Achilles heal of mining and other forms of centralization.  If this happens before the transaction rate (block size) can be unleashed, it would give me new hope.

I've also long felt that Bitcoin will only really take off when there is a genuine need for the solutions (i.e., a more widespread Cyprus-like event.)  I've been surprise (and delighted) to see the recent blip above $1000.

You may add mine if you like:

  $5k - 8/15/2013 - USD, intl wire to WF bank, US - no funds received, status 'confirmed', no vendor generated contact.

Not exactly...at least in my current hazy visualization.

Only 'bitcoins' (actually addresses) that meet a criteria would be 'paracoins'.  Generating slightly special ones with vanity-gen would be an easy way to do this.  The rational would be to keep the circulation reasonable since the entire goal of the project is to focus on being light-weight and thus conducive to extreme decentralization.


I'm negative about the 'advanced features' being developed within Bitcoin (but warming to some of them.)

Remember there would be two distinct phases.  'parasitic' and (maybe) 'stand-alone'.  In 'parasitic', the Bitcoin blockchain is the source of truth.  Addresses which were both certified (e.g., '1para1...') and also legally assigned value within the 'paracoin blockchain' would take that value reading from the Bitcoin blockchain.

In 'parasitic' mode, the 'paracoin miners' would mostly be analyzing the Bitcoin blockchain and rolling with whatever punches the Bitcoin system threw it's way.  'paracoin miners' would be mining in a formal sense as well, but only just for practice and development reasons so they would be ready to switch to 'stand-alone' mode if need be.

I think that sha256 mining is conceptually broken for a true distributed system.  A big goal of the project would be as a platform to explore other forms of mining which are more conducive to decentralization.


No progress.  I've not done jack shit on it.  From the start I mostly I just wanted to throw the idea out there.

Since I cooked up the idea, I've become increasingly paranoid about the trustworthiness of hardware.  I think that a logical first step for a robust solution is to build a foundation on true open-source hardware.  All the way down to the silicon level ideally.

My current interests are hardware related, and not even necessarily driven by crypto-currencies.  My main interest in Bitcoin is in planning a significant exit to be honest.

All,

Please be careful about making escrow'd bets with Josh.

IIRC, Josh once made some bet that some ASIC gear would be available (way after the initial estimates.)  To satisfy the condition, he gave login access to a coder hired to work on mining code.  This coder (lukejr) claimed to be able to log on to the machine.

Bet escrow people are notoriously corrupt.  IIRC, in this instance even the escrow guy couldn't bring himself to claim a victory for Josh (and God knows what Josh paid him) but he did split the pot.

Any financial dealings with Josh in any way put a persons outlay in danger.  The only person's who will deal with him intelligently would be those who plan to scam him, and that happens (successfully) from time to time as well.

I sugest that it would be wise to not only use escrow, but to be very careful with the agent as well.  Josh has huge resources (other sucker's money) to deploy toward corrupting escrow agents...and coders.

I don't know about that, but mostly because I consider the Bitcoin Foundation to be terminally corrupted and broken (and Bitcoin itself in a similar danger.)

If Snowden felt it important enough to weigh in on the risks facing the Bitcoin protocol and related technologies, and schemes which may be effective at dealing with attacks, I'd certainly listen to what he has to say.

At this point I think the most important thing is to retain the general concept that privacy and the ability to communicate freely is a natural human right.  As long as that principle is in place things will be OK.