I would not call it a scam either, but I draw a distinction between a 'scam' and 'seeming scammy'.

If tracking the status of exchanges is to much work, or if they simply don't want to help people sell bitcoins period, they could just change the name of the link from 'exchange' to 'acquire' or something like that.

If they want to outsource the workload to another web site, they could use two links.  One going to the buy-centric domain and the other going to the appropriate Wiki page or whatever.

One way or another I think it important that the owners of bitcoin.org bend over backwards to be as neutral as possible and provide either balanced and accurate information or none at all.  This because the domain is so important for legacy reasons.

I always thought you were a hard-core Libertarian.  Or maybe there was another person with a very similar username some time back who was.  Or I'm just remembering things wrong...there are a lot of Libertarians here to try to keep track of.

Or maybe (shudder) you are one of the very unusual people (and almost unheard of for Libertarians) who can analyze their own ideological system and recognize 'faults' and generally amusing properties of it and those who share it.

If Roger is cleaning up on this, that is good!  He's been ass-raped by just about every high-end huckster who has passed through the ecosystem in the couple of years that I've been observing things.  At least that it what it looks like to me.  They guy has done a lot for the system and whether it has turned out on balance to be a positive or negative, his heart seems to be in the right place.

Ah!  I suppose I had hit the enter key and that had the same effect as the submit button.  I was scratching my head a bit on how the transaction ID showed up prior to submitting the transfer and thought it must be a part of an internal hot-wallet transfer or something.  But I didn't think that much about it.  blockchain.info beeped about 0.25 seconds after I hit the submit button.  I guess that was just happenstance but it threw me off as it seemed related due to the timing.

I'd say that not only should the button go away, but the text associated with an error of transferring 0.0 BTC to a null address should be different.  Neither potential problem given in the error message is appropriate for this issue.

Just an update in fairness to Mt. Gox:

They again rejected my documentation, but when I pointed out in a rather frustrated note that the docs complied with all of their requirements, they sent positive response.  My best guess is that they mostly overlooked the fact that all my documentation actually did contain a street address and my suspicion that they were actively avoiding taking on new US customers is probably not the case.

The correspondence I've had with Mt. Gox's AML team has vastly exceeded my expectations in terms of how quickly they have gotten back to be with both rejections, and with the eventual acceptance.

Less charitably, in my view Libertarians have a tendency toward a very self-centered conception of the world.  This is in fact a clinical marker for autism and it is interesting to observe people like Rand Paul who display other characteristics of the malady.  The point is that many Libertarians seem to completely lack the native ability to see the nuances and limitations of 'freedom' since they cannot put themselves into another parties frame of mind.

Libertarians often have the right sort of basic intuitions about a lot of things such as liberty, freedom, war, etc, but to a large degree these are no-brainers to run-of-the-mill left wing progressives like myself.  These things are good, but nothing special.  I distrust a lot of Libertarians because I bet that if/when the shit hits the fan they would find some way to justify any role they wish to play.  Many of them do seem to convert into totalitarianism quite rapidly (and amusingly) when given power over things.  OTOH, so would a lot of progressives, and a fair number of Libertarians would probably stick to their philosophical principles in their actions as well.  So maybe it's a wash.  Hopefully we'll not find out for a while.

Hey Kris, thanks for the info.

I doubt that I will find counter-parties interested in the volumes I want on localbitcoins anyway so I probably won't even diagnose things further.

Chromium is a more limited browser than Chrome and leaves out some non open-source stuff compiled into Chrome (which is some of the reason I'm more comfortable using it for more sensitive work in fact.)  This could be at the root of the issue I'm seeing, or it could be some session defect.  Or it could be a genuine MITM type thing I suppose.  Who knows.  I'll just log it away as a point of interest.

Ya.  It is.  I only recently became interested in cashing some fraction of my holdings so I tried to get verified.  Mt Gox rejected my verification on some pretty bogus reason (my ID contained a P.O. Box IN ADDITION to my physical address as is common in my area.)  They either overlooked something or are making excuses to limit withdraws or avoid US customers or something.

But anyway, looking at the divergence in spot on the different exchanges for the first time in a while, I have to conclude that with the price so much higher on Mt. Gox, people are paying a premium to use other services for obtaining fiat.  So the problems may be significant.  Whatever the case I thought it prudent to withdraw some of the BTC I had with them while I wait for a response to my verification issue and look around for other options.  Here's what happened:

I received a transfer ID before I hit the submit button.  When I did, I got a red error message saying: "Limit reached or not enough bitcoins in your account."  Non-the-less the entire amount (around 50BTC) did to to my working blockchain.info wallet.  The 'beep' from blockchain.info happened immediately and it's labeld 'unconfirmed' at the moment (about 10 minutes after the fact.)  I had selected to pay a transaction fee.  I did not select 'green address', and blockchain.info shows 4 addressed from which the payout originated.

I would have thought that Mt. Gox would have some of these UI bugs by this time which is what this looks like to me.  Oh well.

...that when one wishes to sell BTC and tries to use 'bitcoin.org' as a reference, the 'exchange' link takes one to 'howtobuybitcoins.info'?  Seems to me that way.  I mean the word 'exchange' implies a bi-directional interaction.

'howtobuybitcoins.info' seems heavily geared toward exactly what it says;  Buying bitcoins.  It has very limited information on what exchanges currently exist, and since that is my current interest it is notable and annoying.

I would hope that 'bitcoin.org' would be a reliable source of information about all aspects of Bitcoin, but it looks outwardly more and more like a feeder system to suck fiat into the system.  That is not very heartening to me and ultimately I believe detrimental to the Bitcoin ecosystem at large.  I don't think Bitcoin itself is a scam at it's core, but it certainly could be painted as such and questionable marketing tactics on 'bitcoin.org' do not help IMHO.

I've never had any troubles buying trinkets with fiat except for a BE-USB which (refreshingly) was only available via Bitcoin when I bought it.  So, Bitcoin is just not a compelling solution for this market space and I doubt that it ever will be.

I only run into issues when I want to buy something of significant value, and I just bought piece of construction equipement prompting an interest in my shuffling some financial assets.  Such items are simply not available in exchange for Bitcoin, and again, I doubt they ever will be.  Now I wish to replenish my fiat stash by cashing out some of my Bitcoin which has been a damn good speculative investment so far.  And that is where the trouble lies.

I have never done anything illegal and I intend to pay full capital gains taxes so I have no need to launder any money at all.  In spite of this I am rejected by Mt. Gox because my driver's license has a P.O. Box in addition to a physical address...like many people who live in my rural neighborhood.

Now this is not a Bitcoin problem per-se and is more associated with corp/government provoked hassles (or possible Mt. Gox solvency issues I suppose) but it's a reality which has been impacting Bitcoin in the past and is only getting worse.  I don't see that the situation turning around, and indeed I think that the government has a lot of room to maneuver in making things orders of magnitude worse if/when they choose to do so.  And there isn't jack-shit that the community can do about it.

Even when things are chipping along well, there is still significant fees doing damn near anything with BTC<->fiat.  That has been the case since I've been involved and here again I don't see it changing.  I am currently so far ahead that these fees will be negligible, but I'm 'lucky' compared to someone who just wants to buy Skittles or pot what-not, or convert the proceeds of their mining into something they want.

--

Oh ya...'ease of use' is not a concern for me and I vastly prefer simple command-line utilities for anything remotely sensitive.  I don't even use my Android or Window machine for e-mail any more, much less any financial and especially Bitcoin related work.  I stopped doing so even before the Snowden revelations.  I would not touch anything from Oracle (like Java) with a 10 foot pole.  The only way I'll feel truly comfortable doing any computer stuff from here forward is if/when there is a completely open-source effort to build hardware, firmware, and all operating software to make a secure platform.

For the fun of it, I sometimes attempt to infer things based on my various understandings rather than doing extensive research and regurgitation.  Sometimes I'm right and sometimes not.

In this case I appear to be mostly right.  Most, if not all, DU rounds with armor piercing design (which would be plain old most) use either multiple metal designs in which tungsten often appears, or an alloy to impart the desired fragmentation properties onto DU.

Also, accd to the Wikipedia info, the carcinogenic nature of expended DU ammunition is almost certainly much more strongly associated with the atomization of other elements of the round or target than it is with the depleted uranium itself.

As for the 'tinfoil hat' claim, which part causes you such animation?

 - The fact that corporations make a lot of money running nuke plants?

 - Refining out the fisile material?

 - Make a lot selling the waste of the waste to the military to expend in the middle east?

 - The chain of profit was not a complete accident of fate but actually a product of a reasoned business strategy?

I've felt from early in my involvement with Bitcoin that it is inconvenient, expensive, and dangerous [lost/stolen data] to actually use for real world things.  Also that the risks such as loss of privacy, regulatory and legal hassles, etc, are severe.

Also, to your point, that the infrastructure is currently highly subsidized by speculative investment in hardware, increased utilization of otherwise wasted resources (especially bandwidth) and that sort of thing.  The actual cost of a transaction at todays use rates are probably vastly in excess of what the user pays in transaction fees, and probably always will be unless and until the infrastructure of the solution is monopolized by corporate interests.

I've never really felt it likely in the real world that these issues would be overcome even though it would be great in some fantasy-land.

Bitcoin was always, to me, a highly speculative bet with a big potential pay-out, and a political statement, and that remains as strong today as it ever was.  Stronger in fact.  It could be more, and could be a solid foundation of value which is sorely needed in today's political climate, but only if most participants in the ecosystem drop the fantasies about it's useful role and address the real weak links in it's real potential as a robust and defensively protected reserve value store.  This seem as unlikely as ever.  But there is still the potential to make gobs of money screwing with it as long as one is willing to undergo a hell of a lot of inconvenience and accept significant risk.

Obviously I'm prone to being on the sacrilegious end of the spectrum and my views on this have never been well received.  Oh well.  I've been saying this for years, and it's as difficult as ever to deal with Bitcoin...I'm trying to pull some fiat out now which is a nightmare...and putting me in a bad mood.

I actually developed a lot more confidence in Mt. Gox when they were notably hassled, and would be happy to see them remain a strong player if they can pull it off.

Just recently I decided to cash out a small fraction of my BTC and decided to bite the bullet and trust them with my identity documentation.  Unfortunately since my drivers license contains a P.O. box in addition to my physical address (common in my rural area where people use the local post office due to mail theft and vandalism) Mt. Gox rejected my verification.

I'm not sure if Mt. Gox overlooked my that my physical address existed accidentally or purposely wish to have excuses for rejecting verification.  In any event if they cannot help me I will have little choice but to take my business elsewhere.

I feel for Mt. Gox and the heaps of trouble foisted upon them by the powers that be, but whatever their actual disposition, the fact that they are under pressure makes it dangerous to keep either fiat or BTC on account with them.  Nothing personal, but one must watch their own asses in this business.

I only submitted documentation last night and got a rejection response in a timely manner which I appreciated.  I've asked them to look again and it is not realistic to bitch about a delay and poor communications yet.  I've seen a lot of complaints about delays from Mt. Gox (and others) and there are only some many weeks in a year so it does not make much sense to defer taking action on looking around for alternatives.  If indeed Mt. Gox is not anxious to verify people and thus allow them to proceed with actual fiat withdraws it is not a good sign.

---

BTW, anyone who wants to buy BTC in the 100-200 range (for now), see my post in currency-exchange section.  I planned to do it person-2-person if I can find a counter-party, but with appropriate escrow it could work to go with a remote transaction of some sort.  I'm in no giant hurry and can accept transaction latency as long as it is theoretically impossible for there to be theft or fraud.

I thought I'd get an account with 'localbitcoins.com' even though transactions of the size I'm interested in don't seem that common.  Upon trying to set up an account, I get the following error:

  ---
  Forbidden (403)
  CSRF verification failed. Request aborted.
  More information is available with DEBUG=True.
  ---

In a search of bitcointalk.org, I only see one reference in the newbies section from someone else noticing the phenomenon, and no response.

Before I research the potential issues (if I even bother), I just wondered if others might have noticed the same behavior.

I am running on one of my more secure machines.  FreeBSD with Chromium built from source: Version 25.0.1364.97 (183676)  I am also on a satellite connection.  I am not interested in setting security ignore overrides unless and until I understand fairly completely why such behavior occurs, and this is particularly true of security certificate related issues in Bitcoin-land.

I was dog sick for weeks one time (in the military) and saw several doctors who prescribed some IVs to re-hydrate.  Eventually no doctor was around, but an LPN (or some such) was seeing patients.  They guy touched the back of my head and said "Mono.  Test him."  It took him less than 5 seconds to correctly diagnose the condition.  By that time I was just about over it so on my month of sick leave I was fine and had a great time.  I also lost 20 lbs and was able to max out the next PT test on the 2-mile run for that reason.

All else equal, I'd prefer an MD to someone without the formal education, and would prefer an engineer with a PhD to one without for software development, but experience is highly important which would weigh heavily.  Almost everyone I've ever worked with and undergrad from MIT or IIT have been outstanding engineers.  I would favor people from top rated institutions over probably any other factor for work that the institution specialized in.

Some of the best engineers I've worked with have had no degree at all or one in Anthropology or some such.  These people are often more creative and effective, but also often lack commitment and have short attention spans.  I think that possibly the biggest positive in having a degree is that it demonstrates that an individual has commitment and can be a reliable work-horse for the long haul.

I did half of my former transaction through Bitcoin-Brokers and half the Mt. Gox.  Bitcoin-Brokers worked fine and I'll use them again if I get no bites here and if they are still taking sellers.  Mt. Gox USD cash-outs seem to be simply not possible in any form at this time so I want to fill my cash-flow needs.  I've got a $5k wire in process, but I don't expect to get it for a long time.  If ever.  This offer is for between $5,000 and $10,000 if prices remain in the $150/BTC range.

New pricing:  The mean between spot at Mt. Gox, Bitstamp, and BTCChina at the time of the transaction.

New escrow idea:

 - Each party escrows 10 BTC.
 - Buyer (of BTC) proves to escrow agent that he/she has met their commitment by taking a series of pictures of {n} USD bills near the seller's hand.
 - Seller (of BTC) proves that they have transferred BTC by sending the total and signing a message from the sending account.
 - Escrow agent (I prefer John K if he'll do it for a reasonable fee) decides how to resolve any dispute.  Escrow fee split 50/50.

I'll probably be in the Portland Metro area (or at least a few hours from it) in the next week timeframe.

If I don't get any bites within a few days I'll close this thread again.

The rest of the details are outlined below and are still more or less valid.


=== OLD ===

Mt Gox rejected my AML because my documentation includes a P.O. Box in addition to a physical address.  Mail theft and vandalism is common in my rural area so many of us use the community post office for snail mail.  That is hard for organizations to conceptualize.

Anyway, this is how I want things to go down:

  1)  I and a buying party decide on a location in the Pacific Northwest where there is either a US Bank or Wells Fargo.  The closer to SW Oregon, the better for me, but $10k is enough to warrant some time and travel and doing a person-to-person transaction saves the transaction and wire fees.

  2)  We meet in the bank lobby and the transaction occurs there.  I prefer Wells Fargo where I have a PMA account and am thus treated as a VIP to some extent.

  3)  The transaction may occur in parts.  That is, we make a partial trade and I deposit funds, then rinse and repeat.  I will not subject myself to significant losses should the buyer take off mid-way through the process.  Nor will I be exiting the bank with a lot of money.

Price would be spot at Mt. Gox at the time of the transfer(s).  If a buyer wants to sweeten the deal for me that would be fine.

All of my coins came through Tradehill in mid to late 2011.  I can produce an entire wallet file containing 100 BTC if that is desirable, though I think it more likely that I would use bitcoin.info in order to perform a transfer in parts.  Again, I will not be going highly negative without backing.  I have 100 BTC sitting at Mt. Gox, and it is from this pool that my first sale would occur.  These coins were transferred into Mt. Gox rather than having been traded there.

I don't have a history of transactions for the simple reason that I have made very few.  Bitcoin has always been a highly speculative opportunity for me.  I do have a long history on this forum however.

I intend to repeat the process in the coming years as I wish cash flow.  It would be worthwhile to me to form a relationship with a trustworthy buyer.  I doubt that I will myself be a purchaser of Bitcoin in the future as I obtained many more than I ever thought I would during my buying phase.

I would just use Mt. Gox and probably will if/when the verify me.  They were pretty quick to send out a rejection on the basis of my drivers licence containing a P.O. box in addition to a physical address (which they may not have noticed), but I anticipate a protracted period of reconciling the issues.  I'm not in a big hurry on this.

I've found it relatively easy to purchase BTC through exchanges (at least it was several years ago) so I assume that a counter-party in this transaction would have a reason for wishing to partake in such a transaction.  For this reason I must assume a highly defensive posture.

I am open to using a form of escrow if an agent can be retained.  Here's an idea:  The buyer and I each supply, say, 10BTC to an escrow agent.  If both parties do not supply information of success to the escrow agent, then both parties funds are forfeited to the agent (or a charity or some such.)  In this case, the transaction would proceed in parts of 10 BTC.

All details of the anticipated transaction would be documented and signed so there are no misunderstandings.  No non-business correspondence is desired until after the transaction is complete if at all.

I do not believe that legacy hoard sell-only operations will subject me to MSB issues, but I will want to research this if I find a serious counter-party.  I would entertain the thought of trading for other items I appreciate having (especially precious metals) but my immediate goal is to float my fiat bank accounts at a desired level so I do not wish to incur the spread and other fees associated with such transactions and I have no need to launder funds since nothing I've done is legally questionable and intend to pay capital gains tax.  So, for this transaction a non-USD intermediate will require a good deal on my part and appropriate adjustment in the mechanism by which I protect myself from fraud or theft.

I'd love to have a DU coin, or any chunk of the stuff to add to my collection of interesting items.  I doubt that DU has particularly special mechanical properties aside from being extraordinarily dense and thus good at carrying kinetic energy over space.  I'll bet you'll find tungsten as a component of most of these weapons to exploit it's unusual mechanical properties.  But I don't know either of these conjectures to be true.

U.S. Business interests have had a rich history of developing and exploiting revenue streams and for about a century have had a reputation for being adept at it.  Firstly they obtain vast sums of money extracting fissile material from nuclear waste, then fire the waste from that process at foreigners at probably hundreds of USD per round, and at thousands of round per minute.  You gotta admit that it is brilliant.  Disturbing yes, but also brilliant.

I saw at least part of the documentary recently, probably on youtube.  It almost certainly had something to do with my comments.

I have chatted a bit with Japanese friends about things, and one time in particular while I was in Japan.  Although only one datapoint, I detect some sensitivity to the issue.  Unsurprisingly.  She said mostly that 'it was a terrible weapon' and left it at that.  It would have been rude to continue the conversation with some of my arguments, and I tend to be more rude on bitcointalk.org than in real life unless I know someone extremely well.  Anyway, I bet I would hold a very similar viewpoint even if I were a Japanese, but not very many people are as brutally analytically as I.  I do recall an interview with a high ranking Japanese officer or official prior to his death and he said that of course Japan would have used atomic weapons against the US if it had the ability.  In a general way this is not a justification for anything, and in part because I want to see the US being 'better' than others and feel that we fail when we are not, but my point is that nuking Japan in 1945 was a logical decision that almost anyone would have made at the time.

As for DU, uranium itself in it's natural mix of isotopes is not very radioactive although it would stand to reason that it is contaminated with other radioactive materials as a result of the production and refining process.  It's also a heavy metal which, when used in weapons, is highly atomized and does the same to anything it hits as a target.  It would not surprise me in the least if it created environmental issues.  Nor would it surprise me if some of the issues are overblown by the anti-war folks (my side) for propaganda reasons.  One way or another, the fact that we are shooting the stuff at people half way around the world at all is deeply wrong irrespective of the environmental damage.

We use DU because it makes war profiteers rich to be sure, but it would not surprise me if it were a form of genocide planned by our strategists.  Like what Israel does on the West Bank.  A) disable sewage treatment B) arrange lack of protein by controlling imports C) allow fishing only within a near zone where the fish are contaminated and shoot fishermen who stray beyond.  I can see no way that this is not planned and that it constitutes anything other than straight-up ethnic cleansing.  The Palestinians who survive will be ones with particularly strong immune systems which will be interesting to evaluate from a scientific perspective at least.

This is an issue where I take an unusual step (for me) of defending the US.  It was a different time in history, and nuclear weapons were not well understood as evidenced by some of the domestic actions of our nuclear program.  The American/Japanese war in the Pacific was one of histories most brutal and we were understandably war-weary.  Coupled with this, the fact that the Japanese were tenacious and it was difficult to predict their response.  It was also not lost on people that the means that the Japanese employed to control their empire were themselves extra-ordinarily inhumane so there was an understandable attitude of 'they had it coming'.  Lastly, the destruction in both life and property of the atomic bombs were significantly less than the firebombings of Tokyo.

I do wish we had targeted differently.  We had only two weapons to make an impression which was a distinct factor, but I think we could have taken our time and continued to nuke less populated and civilian dominated targets as fissile material became available, and it was a sure thing that we'd be producing such material at as high a rate as possible.

Ultimately I doubt that there was any country who would have deferred on the use of atomic weapons if they were in anything remotely resembling our situation at that time in history.  Least the Japanese themselves.

The main lesson to be learned comes from the Japanese and it is to be ever vigilant against a militant leadership who has aspirations to build and maintain an empire.  They will deliver a bucket of tears to their people eventually.  Always do.  Unfortunately this lesson needs to be re-learned by the masses from time to time, and the US is in the mid-life of such a cycle as I read the tea leaves.

My comments were directed toward presenting a potential explanation to the 'mystery' of how 'public services' provided by corporate entities come to be.

Many of us never really saw the storage aspect of the block chain as much as a problem, and I'm pretty sure we've been through that before.  Access to the data both locally for functional purposes and for WAN transmission catch-up operations are somewhat more salient concerns, but they are surmountable.  The defining issue here is real-time and near real-time economic activity on the network, and how core Bitcoin is going to evolve to support this.  If it does so natively, I argue that it is almost certain to fall victim to abusive surveillance practices and be under constant threat of technical and legal attacks if it challenges other solutions.

That said, it is a perfectly valid point of view that most potential users don't really care about the privacy issues and the service providers are right to make a dime from their efforts anyway, and also that the solution does not necessarily need to present a challenge to other solutions if implemented 'correctly'.  It's not my point of view, but I can accept it as valid.