muyuu obviously valuation may change if some capital is injected into bitfloor by outside investors.

With something like a brain wallet that is possible because the entropy is low.  If the private key is simply a random number in theory it is possible but the odds are so astonishingly small you can consider it zero.  There are some threads with analysis but it is essential zero.

The simple answer:
The receiving wallet doesn't need to be online.
There is no risk of "not getting" coins and they can't bounce.
The only way to "lose" coins is to lose (stolen, deleted, corrupted) the private key in the wallet for the address coins were sent to.

The real answer ... "there is no spoon".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzm8kTIj_0M

You don't actually receive bitcoins and the sender doesn't actually send them to you.  

The blockchain is public ledger.  Anyone can look up the current "balances" (technically unspent outputs but lets say balances for now) of addresses.  When a sender "sends" coins they are simply transferring ownership of the coins in the public ledger.  They sign that transfer with their private key.  The network verifies that signed transaction and that ensures only the owner of the private key could have made this ownership change.  The record is then updated.

At any point in time your client knows how many coins you "own" by looking at the current balance in the blockchain for each of your addresses.  The coins never "move".  They never need to get sent to you.

So you could extract the private keys from your wallet, write them down on a piece of paper, die, and 20 years from now someone find the paper import it into whatever wallet currently exists and gain control of those coins.

Small claims court has no jurisdictional authority to pierce the corporate veil, at least not in VA and seriously doubt it can be done in NY. Filing against Roman personally would simply get it dismissed off the bat.  You certainly could file suit against Bitfloor but then any damages are owed by Bitfloor, Inc.  Bitfloor, Inc already owes you so you haven't accomplished a lot. Just my opinion but the probability of getting awarded damages is very low.  No court in the country has awarded damages based on Bitcoin losses, debts, or claims.  It is somewhat unlikely a small claims judge wants to be the first based on the incomplete evidence and lack of counsel which is common in small claims court. 

If Roman used a personal bank account for company business it "could" be used to pierce the corporate veil.  I don't recall getting any ACHs from Roman I did get ACHs from Bitfloor, Inc.  Still even with technical violations like incorrect accounts, or missed corporate meetings the court usually considers intent.  Was it a technical violation or is there evidence that the intent was to run personal finances through a sham corporations?  Depending on the evidence you *may* get the damages transfered to the owners but it would hardly be "simple".  More like a legal longshot and it isn't going to happen without retaining counsel.


The person offering 25% can likely get as much debt as he can possibly afford for less than 25%.  Good thing for him you rejected him out of hand.

The number of decimal places is arbitrary it can be expended to 12 or 20,000 if necessary.

The infinity sign was a nice way of saying your wrong.  There is no "predicted and calculated EOL".  Bitcoin may fail tomorrow or still be around in 20,000 years but there is no termination date built into the protocol.

TL/DR:
Yes.

Um because Pirate said 10.65% instead of 10.50% that means what exactly?

Maybe Pirate had the interest rate wrong, or maybe he padded it to make his margin look more impressive, or maybe he simply lied so much for so long he started getting the lies and reality mixed up.  

I don't really know what the quote of a lying two-bit criminal and scumbag is really "proof" of.

Not sure what you are asking.

Bitfloor in liquidation (with no outside capitalization) is worth $105,000+?  Essentially the only assets are the code and brand.  While the fair mark value might be a hundred grand generally in liquidation assets go for $0.20 on the dollar or less.  Soft assets (like code, databases, customers lists, etc) go for even less.

So that would put the fair market value on Bitfloor software and brand at roughly $500K to $1M.   Pretty high valuation.  Also you have no chance of piercing the corporate veil unless you can prove criminal negligence occurred.  Also how are you going to get this judgement?  By hiring legal counsel, proving your deposit exists, proving that Bitcoins are worth damages in legal tender that the court can award, and proving criminal negligence to pierce the corporate veil?

The value of your claim is ~$1000 gross once you subtract legal fees out you will have roughly nothing even if you could accomplish all that.  25% is likely overvalued at this point.

You don't.

Even if you could (which you can't) Intel integrated graphics has such low IntOp performance that we are talking about a couple bitcents a day (and spending more than that in power).

We already accept OKPay you can fund your OKPay account however you like and transfer funds to us.  I am not sure what you are asking.

Yeah I had to use ignore also, I was part of the group stating Roman had no claim over USD deposits and should return them.  Icebreaker's rants were just pages and pages of wasted space and helped to TOTALLY derail this thread.


Exactly.  The law is never absolute. If all lawyers agreed 100% on everything well you wouldn't need courts.  Your lawyer and my lawyer would simply reach a consensus, have a handshake, and resolve the situation.  

Generally when you have an insolvent debtor all unsecured creditors are treated equally.  The exception would be if deposits were put in "protected and segregated accounts" and that usually requires a trust and third party administrator (casino deposits are an example).  While all unsecured creditors recognized under the law are generally considered equal and paid on a fractional basis in Bankrutpcy, Bitcoin doesn't yet have any standing under the law.  It is questionable if a judge would take that leap and give the BTC creditors equal standing.  That would be a huge decision for a judge to make but it certainly ins't impossible.  Right now many aspects of Bitcoin are simply is undecided law.  

As I pointed out while the standing of BTC depositors may be undecided the standing of USD depositors is certainly not undecided.  In a case of undecided law it simply comes down to risk manangement.  There is no "risk free option".  It is unlikely any retained lawyer would provide absolutes on undecided law.   Still if your lawyer told you the risk of holding the deposits is significantly greater than the risk of allowing them to be returned what would you do?

I think after ever incident "we" as a community of service providers can learn.  These are IMHO very good questions and ones that we have been discussing inside our own company.  Far too often this forum is used as the sole communication mechanism to the customer base.  Some ideas we have been brainstorming, a good starting point for a discussion I think (feel free to add details and more bullet points).

In a hack (or failed hack or suspected hack in progress):

• The service should be halted.  This includes immediate deletion of all hot wallets and in the case of encrypted databases immediate destruction of host encryption key.  Obviously both of these should be available in offline form.
• If there is no loss of control of the server the site should be replaced with a static page indicating in general terms the issue and warning users not to deposit coins.  This page likely should be pre-created and have an offline backup as time is of the essence in any hack or attack.
• If there is a loss of control of the server, the server should be taken completely offline (hard power switch at datacenter if necessary). One idea would be to have a status.domainname.com site on another server (probably a low powered VPS in a different hosting provider).  It would at least provide partial communication.  Nameserver change could redirect traffic to the status server although that change will take time to propogate.
• If the service uses social media those could be used to communicate with users.
• All registered users should receive an email with similar information.  User email list should be stored off site in a fast accessible form in the event that access to server or database is lost.  The mass email should be tested before needed to ensure it won't get caught by spam filters.
• If cellphone numbers are available users should receive a text notification & warning.
• Moderators of bitcointalk should be notified so an "Important News" thread can be created.

I would point out that the scenario you described above is exactly why a cold wallet should be used.  If hot wallet is also used "incoming client addresses" should always be directed to the cold wallet.  The hot wallet is then only filled from the cold wallet. 

Let it go iCEBREAKER.

One option:

Use an offline computer.
Expand the keypool to a large enough number to ensure you won't need to make a new backup in the near future.
Make a copy of your wallet.dat.
On the COPY: change the encryption password to a 256 bit random number.  Don't record the password anywhere.

Put this copy with unknown passphrase on the server and you essentially have full bitcoind access except for functions which require the wallet to be unlocked.  Technically the private key is in the wallet but since it can't be unlocked that copy of the private key is lost forever.

Wanna bet? (Escrow only).

Matt's bet requires that Pirate repay according to terms outlined in his thread which stated interest would be paid up to the minute of repayment. Pirate has already indicated he will NOT be repaying under those terms (interest down the the minute of repayment).  So unless every single creditor voluntarily accepts less he will lose.

Now Pirate probably isn't paying anything but hypothetically if Pirate owed 500K BTC at the time the ponzi went bust and somehow managed to repay 500K BTC in the next three days Matt would still lose.  Pirate would need to not only pay the 500K BTC he doesn't have but throw in a bonus 130,897 BTC in accrued interest over the last three weeks (shows how idiotic 7% per week is) in order for Matt to win.  

So I got ~$1.4 million reasons why Matt will lose the bet.

I am not sure what advantages a time locked address has over an offline address?  I am just not seeing it.

However there are encryption algorithms which are time lock encryption.

Generate a private key & address.
Record the address.
Encrypt the private key with a time lock algorithm which requires x time.
Erase the private key.

The above 4 steps should likely be done on an offline non-persistent environment (i.e. live LINUX).

Start solving the time lock encryption problem.
You will have the private key after x time.*

* It isn't possible to specify the exact time as it will depend on hardware but time lock encryption algorithms are designed to make parallel work impossible (i.e. 2x GPU provides no more speed than 1x GPU).  The single processor may get more powerful over time so if x is very long you may need to compensate for Moore's law. 

Which is why Bitcoin won't eliminate banks.  The role of banks may change but some people want a trusted, bonded, and insured third party to secure their wealth for them.  Long before fiat and FDIC there were banks. 

All tx can go in the same block. 10 minutes later coins are in the last address.

I have no idea if the zeek link is true or not but I find the meta to be awesome.

The PPT operators weren't PPT operators they were ZPTOPPT (Zeek Pass Through Operated By Pirate Pass Through).  LOLZ.  Then Matt ruined his rep for life by making bets he will never pay because it wasn't a ponzi and if true not only was it a ponzi it was a ponzi of a ponzi!