GLBSE is private property, generally private property is "controlled".  There is a competing exchange and maybe you can start a third one.  Not sure where you get the idea that Bitcoin doesn't support rights for private property owners.  

Bunch of strawmen and false claims.  Next time respond to what I actually wrote.

Let me know when you find an insurance company willing to replace lost/stolen BTC.  Bankruptcy is always an option.

While a judge "may" rule against USD account holders that doesn't prevent bitfloor from entering bankruptcy or being liquidated.  I would also point out no court has (at least to date) recognized BTC owed as a legal claim.  So it is a huge longshot for BTC creditors to seek compensation in bankruptcy.  They would need a judge to both find their claim valid AND clawback USD balances paid out.  Baring that you can't get blood from a stone, my understanding is Bitfloor has no significant assets.

IMHO (and I don't speak for Roman or bitfloor) the only plausible scenario where bitfloor returns to operation and creditors receive compensation is a capital injection.  At this point without knowing what requirements new investors may have Roman can only hurt the chances of that happening by blabbing on some forum.

It is entirely possible bitfloor will go bankrupt.  It needs new investors (and new capital) to restart.  Those investors may (almost certainly will) have requirements and conditions.  Making promises (even open ended and vague) is counter productive. 


It is never that simple.  bitfloor, Inc doesn't have the funds to make right.  Period.  To make it right requires attracting new capital. Making promises before you have the ability to execute them is just false hope.  I am fairly confident that bitfloor will attract the capital it needs.  I have even indicated I am willing to provide some of that capital however "fixing" a loss like this is tricky.  The deal has to make sense for current creditors, it has to make sense for Roman, it has to make sense from a business perspective (being competitive, properly capitalized), and it has to make sense for investors.

Roman is doing the right thing IMHO.  That doesn't mean creditors will get paid, it must means blabbing on the forum makes it LESS LIKELY creditors will get paid.

FYPFY

dupe, victim, patsy, fool, chump, or stooge would also have been acceptable.

Coins only have value if they are safe.  Miners have a vested interest in ensuring Bitcoin fulfills its role of secure transactions.   As mining becomes more specalized, niche the margins are going to be continually squeezed.  The 1000% annual ROI days are never coming back.  The 100% ROI days are probably never coming back.  As the profits get extended over time mining becomes a marathon not a sprint.  Making 1% more by crippling the network and than tanking your ROI over the next year won't make economic sense.  Some miners will but I imagine they will be a minority.

Still that is just a theory.  Like most of Bitcoin it hasn't been tested.  We will find out.

No nothing even comes close (like within 20% of Bitcoin).   That also applies to centralized projects too (grid computing, super computers, cloud networks, etc).  Absolutely nothing is even in the same magnitude.  

There is some controversy though.  The Bitcoin network uses integer operations.  So technically the Teraflops (floating point ops) of the network is always 0.0 and always will be 0.0.  Given almost every measurement of computing power measuring floating point the Bitoin floating point estimate exists simply to allow some kind of comparison to other projects.  That being said there is no way to calculate the TFLOPS the Bitcoin network WOULD be capable of (if it ran floating point computations).  The estimate should be seen as a "best guess" only.  That being said Bitcoin is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo far ahead of anything else the crude estimate is likely "good enough".

There is nothing wrong with the process but calling it a protocol is kinda silly.  You are accepting cash and sending BTC.  There is really no way to get that wrong (baring doing something stupid).  If you know the guy well the risk is even less (robbery, counterfeits, etc).

I don't think BitInstant allows $5,000 tx though.  Not particularly cool to help your friend out to a 10% rip-off but as long as your friend has a secure wallet, he gives you the cash and you reasonably believe it to be safe/legit there isn't much that can go wrong.  For that kind of coin it would be a good idea to recommend that he make a backup first and send him a bitcent or two to make sure his wallet is working prior to the deal.

Thanks for the Dox. I had a feeling his story was "off".   As a 12 year veteran I couldn't imagine any medically disabled vet calling his disability pay "unemployment insurance" and someone receiving a qualified medical discharge for a service related disability would receive it for life not the rest of their enlistment.  Still didn't really have enough to call out a potential disabled vet.

Glad someone doxxed that dirtbag though.

Wonder why he wouldn't informed the developers here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=24826

I doubt the date corresponds to a court date.  Even if there was a court case on Oct 12th it isn't like they would be handing out certified checks and bags of cash on the courthouse steps.  Most likely it is a stab in the dark.  He hopes he will have at least some of the money by Oct 12th.  Oct 12th likely is as far of a "deadline" as he could offer without too much backlash (I mean just imagine if he said May 2013).   The reality is nobody is going to get anything from Zeek Rewards for at least 180 days (and if really unlucky 18-36 months).

Of course it is kinda funny that none of Pirates victims have asked about ..... "the other clients".  So Pirate can't repay because some client is holding the funds/coins.  What about the rest of the funds/coins?  I mean say this "big client" (isn't always the unamed big one who takes the money) was 30% of all the funds.  That means Pirate has already returned 70% right?  Oh wait he hasn't returned anything (other than a single token small account which was designed to delay and obfuscate).

No generally that would be stupid.  Pirate would also need to spend lawyers fees potentially tens of thousands of dollars in lawyers fees to defend against multiple lawsuits.   So rather than pay "X" to the people suing he would not pay them, spend $10,000 potentially lose the suit, pay X, plus any other fees and penalties the court throws at him for being a world class scumbag.   People who are sane settle up with those filing a suit first.  What are the people not suing going to do?  Sue?

Pay =  Nothing to sue about.  
Don't pay = could cost you thousands extra.

Then again Mr. Trevors is just scamming lowlife garbage.  Anyone who had a legal counsel would have been advised to not say anything.  Not a single word.  It would be his lawyer who made the statement.  Generally that is what lawyers do.  You can also bet his lawyer wouldn't be stupid enough to document attempted extortion and fraudulent conveyance against the creditors that he admits owning funds.  Mr. Trevors has legal counsel like I have Satoshi's private keys.


Funny how desperate people fall all over themselves to connect the dots in the most implausible way possible to show themselves "it could be true".  October will come and go.  Then there will be another excuse.  Maybe he blames it on the lawsuits.  One of the people suing got a court order freezing the bank account so he can't pay until he can fight that and get it lifted.  Oct into Dec.  One of his investors got cold feet because of all the suits.  Dec into Feb.  Next September some on the forum will still be holding out hope that "soon" they will get paid.

Matt could have stopped trolling years ago.  He can't.  Just like how in hindsight he realized that not paying a 80K bet would have consequences but he didn't think ahead enough so that he never offered it.  There was no possible way that bet would lead to a good outcome but he couldn't stay away.  If Matt tried what you suggested the new comer we would see would be flamboyant, trolling, not taking anything serious, attention seeking drama queen (who also happens to have a creepy obsession with  underage asian girls).  

Correct.  The optimal structure is then a C-Corp (LLC which has elected to be taxed as a C-Corp).  The withholding would then only be on dividends not retained profits.  The trust could file a non-resident tax return each year and get some of that withheld taxes back.  I would also point out that the GLBSE "standard" of 1 day old "companies" throwing off 20% dividend yield is somewhat unrealistic.  I am not sure how investors would approach a startup where the intent is to have share price apreciation.  The more profits the parent company retains the more tax efficient the structure then becomes. 



Correct however in my limited research I haven't found anything.  Belize at one time had "bearer" corporations where the shares were issued as bearer bonds however there are now significant restrictions and it looks like that structure will be pushed out in favor of nominated shareholders.  Granted I don't want to say my research is anything approaching complete but even in areas with no taxation and financial privacy there is no company structure which allows changing anonymous owners.  The use of a trust is a legal workaround.  The trust is simply structured that its obligation to GLBSE is perpetual and irrevocable.  Each quarter the trust receives a dividend from the parent company, subtracts its operating costs and then passes the balance to GLBSE contract holders.

GLBSE is a useful trading platform but it isn't viable for US based companies.  I don't mean "company" (xyz mining company) in the casual usage of the word but rather legally formed constructs under the law (LLC, Corporation, partnership, etc).  The regulatory and taxation reporting requirements simply make it impossible to issue equity to unknown entities.  Furthermore SEC rules of investments for private companies make it impossible to even seek investors who aren't "qualified".  

Speaking with a friend who is a lawyer I think I may have come across a "workaround".  Say there is a company in the US which wishes to indirectly raise equity on GLBSE.   Instead of offering an equity stake in the company which, it would be possible to form an offshore trust and give that trust an equity stake.   The trust could be structured such that all the net revenue (minus operating expenses of the trust) received is exchanged for BTC and distributed to GLBSE shareholders.  By creating an assets on GLBSE which represents a stake in an offshore trust (that has a partial equity stake in the US company) the offshore-trust acts like a pass-through and keeps the ownership structure of the parent company "clean".


In this example the US based company is a registered LLC.  It has multiple owners and is seeking additional capital.  While having a foreign trust as a partial owner it has been determined that it is inadvisable for the company to issue contracts on GLBSE in order to keep it's ownership, and reporting compliant.  The example company has an appraised value of $600,000 and is seeking to acquire $100,000 in additional capital.

Step 1: Formation. A trust is formed in an off-shore location.  It would be best if the trustee of the trust had no ownership in the US company.  This to my understanding isn't a legal requirement but it does create a clean separation of ownership so it may be desirable.  The trust issues a GLBSE asset with 100K shares @ 0.1 BTC.  95K shares are sold in an IPO.  The trust retains 5% (to provide liquidity) and IPO the remained for 0.1 BTC ea.  This raises 9,500 BTC.  The trust has some upfront and ongoing costs.  At a minimum the trust would need an off-shore bank account, bitcoin exchange accounts, and verification of GLBSE.  It is very important that all these accounts exist in the name of the trust not the name of the US company or any individual.

Potentially unresolved issues:
Do any exchanges allows opening of an account in the new of a trust?
What does would GLBSE require for verification of a trust?

Trust capital structure
Assets:
9,500 BTC
5,000 GLBSE contract shares

Ownership:
GLBSE 100K shares (95K issued).  Each share represents 1/100,000th ownership of the trust and all its assets.



Step 2: Trust raises capital for equity stake. The trust sells BTC for USD.  The trust will retain some of the issued shares, and acquired BTC (to improve liquidity acts a a self market maker). This example ignores any formation costs of the trust as well as exchange fees.  They would reduce the net capital raised.  If a specific target is desired the IPO would need to raise enough capital to cover the ownership stake, any formation and trading fees, and any slippage in BTC exchange.

Trust capital structure
Assets:
500 BTC
5,000 GLBSE contract shares
$100,000 (if sold @ $11.20 per BTC)

Ownership:
GLBSE 100K shares (95K issued).  Each share represents 1/100,000th ownership of the trust and all its assets.


Step 3: Trust acquires owership stake in US based company.  The trust provides capital to the US based company and the company grants an equity stake in the company.  The trust (not the GLBSE shareholders) is the shareholder (for C-Corp) or member (for LLC) of the US based company. In our example scenario here the US based company would gain $100,000 in capital and issue $100,000 in equity.  This dilutes the equity % of existing owners although the nominal value of all owners stake remains the same.  The company now has a value of $700,000 and an additional equity owner. The exact mechanism of this equity offering would depend on the company structure but the end result is the same.  

Trust capital structure
Assets:
500 BTC
5,000 GLBSE contract shares
Equity stake in Company "X" valued at $100,000.

Ownership:
GLBSE 100K shares (95K issued).  Each share represents 1/100,000th ownership of the trust and all its assets.


US based S-Corps can not have foreign entities as shareholders so this mechanism wouldn't be possible.  In most states it should be possible to form an LLC instead and then elect taxation as an S-Corp by filing with the IRS.  

US LLC and C-Corps will be required to withhold 30% taxes on the profits of foreign owners.  For an LLC the default  tax structure is a partnership.  All profit (even those not passed to the partner is taxed).  A C-Corp would only need to withhold taxes on profits disbursed as dividends (not retained profits).  An LLC could elect to be taxed as C-Corp.  The trust would also file as a non-resident and recover any excess taxes withheld (withholding beyond actual tax liabilities).  None of this should be construed as tax or financial advice.

Startup costs would be roughly $1,000 to $2,000 (trust formation, trustee fees, offshore bank account, etc) and ongoing costs probably in the range of $500 to $1,000.  So this type of structure really only makes sense for a larger offering as the costs are relatively fixed and become more efficient handling more equity.  In theory the trust could acquire equity in multiple US companies and become a sort of mutual fund like offering although that greatly increases the complexity and is beyond the scope of this draft.

This setup (or a similar setup) may be possible countries other than the US. The example refers to "US company" to represent a company in a country where there are significant ownership restrictions.  This would apply to most developed nations. This type of pass through structure may be possible in other similar countries but given the law varies significantly by country it would require independent legal analysis.

I suggest CHASE because people will be chasing you when you steal all their coins.

Anyone who falls for you scam is an idiot but if you # are correct you are thinking to small.  How about aproach some venture capitalists get tens of millions and retire in a few years.

The best debt collection companies recover maybe 10 cents on the dollar.   This is with full legal recourse (SSN, signed contracts, credit reporting, judgements, wage garnishments, colleciton calls, etc).   You have the highest of the high risk clients and only 3% to 5% default.  You don know how silly that sounds right?  The default rate for mortgages in the US traditionally was ~3%.  Currently in closer to 10%.  Among your loans which default 90% result in no loss.  That is litterally the best in the world.  Hell most banks would be happy to have only 20% of defaulted loans result in no loss.

Another way to look at it is if only 4% of loans default and you only lose funds on 10% that do your debtors are so credit worthy that the loans are 99.6% risk free.  Hell people with an 800 FICO aren't that low risk.  So you found the world's lowest risk population of debtors who just happen to not mind paying 137,641% APR?  Awesome!

APR = "Annualized Return".  The length of the loan doesn't matter.  You are paying depositors 107% to 7,678% APR.  Obviously you must get more interest than that from your debtors or you are losing money.  The fact that your debtors borrow for only a day is immaterial.   You are paying depositors continually so as you need 365 single day loans a year to avoid unutilized capital.  I loan for 365 days @ 2% per day or 365 individual loans for 1 day each @ 2%.  Either way it is 137,641% APR.  

From your own link.


13 GH/s to 20 GH/s on 10K nodes.  or ~1.65 MH/s per node.  Thanks for confirming what I wrote.

Does the address produced correspond to any address in your wallet?

If so it may mean the private keys are still valid.  You could export them all and import them using RPC (probably by batch) into a new wallet.dat running on a new client.

That doesn't require a large number of nodes in Russia.  

Still you aren't the first to bring up botnets, however the influence of botnets is small and waning.  Each generation has made botnets less suitable for Bitcoin mining (CPU -> GPU -> FPGA -> ASIC).  The average botnet node is a much older Windows XP box.  While top of the line CPU can push 20MH/s significantly older CPU can't.  For example an Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (an impressive CPU in its day) gets only 2MH/s and a 8 year old single core Celeron a fraction of a MH/s.  So even a 100,000 node botnet @ 100% load 24/7 would be maybe 100GH/s.  When you consider the average node may only be on 30% of the time and load needs to be throttled to avoid detection real world it might be more like 16 GH/s per 100,000 nodes.   FPGA would have killed botnets eventually but ASICs will do it much faster.  In 2013 difficulty will probably be 10x to 20x as high as now.  That combined with the subsidy cut means revenue per GH/s is going to fall to pennies a day. 

I would point out LiteCoin is particularly susceptible to botnets and while it can be mined with a GPU the ratio between CPU throughput and GPU throughput is relatively low thus it takes a smaller number of nodes to equal the entire hashing power of the LiteCoin network.  As Bitcoin becomes increasingly toxic to botnet they will migrate to LiteCoin and represent a larger and large portion of hashing power.