So could blockchain.info (or any other online wallet), though.

With any online "storage" (wallet, exchange, whatever) you're always at risk because you don't control "your" coins. If you're interested in trading, you'll need to keep some money on an exchange to do so, but I'd caution against piling all your BTC into one exchange - and the same applies with blockchain.info or any other online wallet.

Ignoring faucets (0.5 BTC!), my first (50!) BTC came from CPU mining. I wish I could tell you I was now a Bitcoin millionaire, but sadly I sold most of my stash to pay for electricity (and the GPU I bought when CPU mining became impractical). More recently I've bought BTC to make up for my earlier foolishness...

But keyboards lack other currency symbols already. Australasian keyboards have "$" but nothing else, my UK keyboard has "$", "£" and "€" (but nothing for the Swiss Franc or the Japanese Yen), etc.

I agree in principle, but I think it's going to be tough convincing keyboard manufacturers and regional standards organisations

Totally agree about the key combo, though. There's a post somewhere on bitcointalk about getting Bitcoin into Unicode, and I guess that that would be a necessary first step.

You signed up in the most recent campaign (same as me) - we're showing as being in the 4th September to 11th September campaign, so I think we won't get paid until after the 11th.

Convince you more, surely?!

I believe that's no longer correct. (I think it may have changed fairly recently, to be fair - I seem to remember Australia being fairly hostile to Bitcoin until recently, and it may well have been subject to GST/VAT in the past).

I'm curious about your experience living with totalitarianism because I'm not seeing the link, myself. My experience though is relatively limited, I've spent less than a quarter of my life living in one-party states or states governed by one individual. Could you explain the link between this thread and a dictatorship?

If someone wants to restrict my freedom of speech I think at the very least they can make clear why it's necessary, and right now it's not at all clear to me (but, as I say, I'm fortunate enough to have spent most of my life outside dictatorships).

No experience with Poloniex, but plenty with Bitfinex... here goes...

I don't keep money at Bitfinex on a permanent basis. The rate for BTC swaps (you lend your BTC to a trader who wants to short BTC) is usually pretty low, lower (usually) than the rate for USD swaps (I know nothing about LTC swaps. Hell, I know next to nothing about LTC). Take a look at the second graph on this page - particularly with longer time frames (12 months to "all time"). You can see the "FRR" (the variable rate) occasionally spikes up high, then very quickly falls back about 50%, then slowly continues to decline (to around 0.0055%). (That's a daily rate, by the way - multiply by 365.25 for an approximation of the annual equivalent).

The way I use swaps is to keep my money away most of the time, watch the FRR, and prepare to pile in some (a fraction) of my BTC if the FRR spikes, and get out once the rate falls to around 25% of the peak. Over time I've achieved an average slightly under 10% annual. Which isn't great, but is way better than I could get with fiat in a local bank, and looks comparable to BTC-Jam. In my view the risk is less than BTC-Jam - Bitfinex take on the risk. However, there is still the risk that the exchange itself fails, or takes my money and runs.

FRR is variable - if you loan out money on FRR you'll get higher payments if the rate goes up. I don't advise you do this. Everyone does - and the result is there's a metric shed-load of BTC sitting, un-loaned, at the FRR. Instead I recommend setting your own - fixed rate. Take a look at the top graph on this page and set your rate appropriately. Use low durations at first - two days max. In fact always use low durations unless the rate is exceptional (0.1%+ is my benchmark, but I'm seriously thinking about raising it). Incidentally, that duration isn't guaranteed - borrowers can repay loans early, and will do so, particularly if the FRR is falling and they believe they can get a cheaper loan.

Bitfinex lives and dies on its trading engine - not on swaps, though obviously swaps help with liquidity and keep trading going. However, it does mean that if the trading engine is buggy worry. Their trading engine looks to me to be buggy as hell. Compare BTC/USD rates at Bitfinex with other exchanges, and you'll see a serious disparity during the crash a few weeks back - most exchanges stayed above $200, 'finex went well below. That's probably largely due to margin calls, but while the crash was happening there were multiple reports from traders about trading issues and withdrawal issues (to be fair, I had no problem withdrawing - I think only traders were affected). I started slowly withdrawing all my remaining BTC at that point, missing a large spike in the FRR a few days later - c'est la vie, and at least I still have my BTC. Bitfinex is still in beta (like everything online these days), but they are backed - apparently - by a registered company (mind you, wasn't Enron a registered company?!)

tl;dr: the return isn't great, there is a risk of the exchange failing, and to get the best rates you need to proactively manage your loans. However, you don't need to worry about collateral from the counter-party - Bitfinex do that for you. Is it worth it? I don't know. I kinda suspect I'd have made as much if I'd invested the same amount of time playing with faucets. I strongly suspect that if I'd spent the time earning fiat I could have bought more BTC instead.

Thank you!

On the subject of "their true", how's your true today?!

The thing is, it is. You told us you'd received two 4 BTC withdrawals. You'll recall I've mentioned that I searched back through the transactions at the address you gave us, and failed to find any 4 BTC withdraws. I've mentioned this several times now, but I guess you keep missing my posts.

My day trading is limited to FX (I was very, very bad at it...!), but I've worked within the industry and had a good education in futures and options (and I'm a lot better when I can hedge!) Part of the reason I like BTC (despite being involved since 2010 I've never ventured further than BTC into the crypto world) is that I can trade easily - where I live you need a qualification to trade options, and - not having the qualification - BTC lets me do it without the tedium of sitting an exam!

I must admit (and this is partly based on looking at other cloud mining sites) I assumed scrypt.cc was an exchange! I shall avoid non-exchanges, and thanks for the advice. Currently I use Bitfinex for BTC-proper and Coinut for options (though I'm eagerly waiting for Quedex to open for business) - I'm wary of exchange-risk (which Bitfinex made topical recently...) so I tend to spread trading between exchanges (greater risk, but less exposure).

Anyway, apologies if this has discussion has been heated at times. Despite that, it's been educational and ended on a positive note!

(Edit: and apologies to everyone else for straying off-topic with this last post).

Indeed. There's a post a few up from yours, a current complaint about being unable to withdraw. Regardless - if you read what I posted I spoke about "past problems" with withdrawals, and that that in itself is a red-flag.

I'm fairly certain I don't quote or repeat information (current or otherwise), except where I'm certain. You're quite right that I don't use scrypt.cc - I'm said that before, and I'm happy to acknowledge it. My interest came from being a potential investor (trading GHS looked like commodities trading, and I tend to prefer derivatives and commodities) and being appalled at what I saw - people continuing to invest in a site that raise major red-flags. You could well be right that I've stepped over a line: I've acknowledged before that there are people here with experience of scrypt.cc's problems, who will have a better idea than me whether the problems result from farce or fraud. If those people have concerns about my commenting - I'll stop immediately.

I really don't think "PSAs" urging caution are "scum trolling" - but again, erring on the side of caution is my approach to investments and I'm rapidly learning that not everyone shares that approach (or even regards scrypt.cc as anything other than gambling - in which case, fair enough, to each their own).

(Apologies for the quote tree, not got time to prune and context matters more than brevity).

Numerous people, on numerous threads, in multiple different cultures and languages, have said they've not received requested withdrawals. ThorSWO offered - by way of "proof" - a bitcoin address. Analysis of the address showed that the transactions ThorSWO claimed - two 4 BTC withdrawals - didn't occur in a range of several days either side of ThorSWO's claimed date. Oh, and you've acknowledged withdrawals didn't work for you - and I have no reason to doubt you! To be honest, at this stage, without any credible explanation for past problems with withdrawals (and particularly with autoreinvest) even if withdrawals started going through for everyone, all the time, I'd still regard the past problems as a major red-flag.

Re: scam. Sure, lots of people claim it's a scam. You'll notice that I don't. I simply don't know - but it doesn't matter. Whether the problems people have documented is due to scrypt.cc being a HYIP, a ponzi, or simply a very badly run site - it's far too big a risk.

Re: ambiguity. Fair enough. My view is that anyone who doesn't err on the side of caution when it comes to giving any kind of investment advice is irresponsible. But you're right, that's my view.

Why not? It warns potential investors away from the site - worst case scenario they miss out on an opportunity to make more money, best case scenario they avoid losing money. I can't see how silence helps, apart from scrypt.cc. Unless exposure threatens existing "investors", in which case they're complicit.

Except it probably isn't working. Even ThorSWO has been unable to show they received their alleged pair of 4 BTC withdrawals, and there are plenty of posters here who can testify to cancelled withdrawals. Any inability to withdraw is a serious problem, even if some punters can withdraw some (or even all) of their BTC.

Well, that's good, but you could perhaps be less ambiguous with your warnings. Sticking them at the end of posts is much like the small print at the end of an IPO prospectus.

I don't really understand why anyone would risk their reputation and other peoples' money by promoting scrypt.cc in any way, unless there was something in it for them.

Well, you both seem to acknowledge that there's a problem with the site. It doesn't really matter whether iambitcoin5 is right, and scrypt.cc "hacked" its users, or whether dyask is right and the problem is less malign - there's clearly a problem going on.

Well, if you're finding it repetitive, you can simply ignore this thread - click the "watch" link and you'll get a dialogue asking if you want to watch/unwatch the thread (you watched it automatically when you posted here, so clicking OK will unwatch).

Beyond that, I continue to believe there's value posting here. If people search for scrypt.cc, they're likely to end up here. For that reason it's useful that they see the numerous links to resources about scrypt.cc - otherwise they might end up like many of the poor souls here, unable to withdraw.

I know what you mean about the sections, though - I stumbled across the Russian equivalent of this thread the other day. The only noticeable difference seems to be that they regard scrypt.cc as a HYIP scam rather than a ponzi.

Except that as soon as the thread is locked the shills will spring up somewhere else.

Incidentally, "FUD" is fear, uncertainty and doubt. I don't see Soylent, ThePhwner and Cryptodevil trading much in uncertainty and doubt - they all seem pretty good at evidencing their claims. Read back over the last few pages and see how good the pro-scrypt.cc folk like ThorSWO are at backing up their claims.

Fear? Now fear I can agree with. The more I see of scrypt.cc - the more I see of "cloud mining" in general - the more I see reasons to be wary. I'm really glad that - through luck more than good sense - I missed the boat with cloud mining.

OK, well now I'm confused because that doesn't really have anything to do with what I said!

At least this brings some comedy to the issue...

Is it worth continuing to report these posts, or is once enough?