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Uhhhh....Bitcoin is money...hence, it's a Ponzi scheme. It's a little different in that those benefitting from the scheme are all those who hold BTC rather than the printer of fiat. But, I mean, duh -- it's as much a Ponzi scheme as the US dollar or GBP.
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It sounds like he is BTC broke or wants people to think he is...and really, what's the difference? Maybe the threat of one person unloading would be different if his stash were spread around many people....but that's about it. I'm inclined to forget about it all...other than the clever use of amazon...sometimes it's the simple ideas that really pay off!
We shall see how this alternate crypto currency goes...I was hoping he'd stick around and help Bitcoin grow...oh well. Souns like they've got an interesting solution to the transaction spam "problem." Maybe we can learn from that.
Addendum: missed a few posts. How do we know the search warrant is real?
Anyhow, I think something fishy is goin on.
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Not me.
What is in your sig? Are you selling ASIC hardware? I'm guessing there is more to be made in scam preorders than actually building the hardware...I hope I'm wrong and can't wait for proof that I am. |
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I'm not seeing any reason laws couldn't be passed to make Bitcoin or some aspect of its technical underpinnings illegal in the US. There's a clever fella in here who has the tagline "Democracy is the original 51% attack" (or something to that effect) under his avatar...there are a lot of things that can be made illegal by passing laws that would be tough to argue are unconstitutional.
It is not that simple. Remember SOPA a year ago? Hehe...I do. I presented at our radiology residents conference and I made my last slide the take down notice used when domains were seized and I made a brief comment about Wikipedia going offline and SOPA and mentioned EFF...oh, and I had a form letter to our state senators for people to fill out. |
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I have harddrive encryption ASIC in one of my computers. If I launch CPU miner on that Pentium4 computer will it count as ASIC mining?
The real ASIC for Bitcoin mining is not here. The BFL is scam.
Thank you, sir! |
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US is not whole world. The Bitcoin usage will go trough Tor, VPN or anything else and be completely hidden from law. Childporn is illegal but pedos are sharing CP all over darknet. Drug dealing is illegal but Silk Road and similar places exist and are blooming. Political dissent is illegal but dissidents are writing using Tor. You see the trend? Bitcoin is another weapon in this arms race of freedom that gives us great advantage!
I get your points...but I wouldn't exactly call child pornography main stream  |
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I'm not exactly up to date with the whole ASIC thing, but I see a lot of pre-order links and stuff on signatures. Are ASIC rigs being used to mine? Are they for sale? Or are these just a scam?
Pardon my uninformed state!
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I'm not seeing any reason laws couldn't be passed to make Bitcoin or some aspect of its technical underpinnings illegal in the US. There's a clever fella in here who has the tagline "Democracy is the original 51% attack" (or something to that effect) under his avatar...there are a lot of things that can be made illegal by passing laws that would be tough to argue are unconstitutional.
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I think the old radical has a very significant point. I wasn't alive at the time, but we all held gold in the form of USD (we meaning the US and many WWII allied nations) because our dollar was backed by gold and many nations currencies were pegged to the dollar ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system). Nixon nixed that. Suddenly, a large fraction of the world began an experiment in fiat currency. Fiat unseated gold....right out from under the feet of many sovereign nations. If countries like the UK and France couldn't stop the devaluation of their currencies, why do we think bitcoin will succeed? While it may be technically challenging to completely stop Bitcoin, it probably won't be too hard to make it inconvenient enough that very few people want to use it. If bitcoin does keep growing, there will be a battle....perhaps a bit more literally than one might think...I'm not as hard core as the old radical and I would probably fold quickly. Heck, I might fold while the folding is good....but I'm folding into gold. |
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I just noticed the "Bitcoin" text on the booth...it looks like the same design as from the new logo contest thread...
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Hey All, BitInstant is sponsoring the 3 day Money2020 conference in Las Vegas this week. I'm also doing a panel on Virtual Currency and Payment Monday evening. Erik made sure we got placed next to Paypal   L to R: Roger Ver, Charlie Shrem, Erik Voorhees Well played boys! |
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Would it be even remotely possible to force the change in sha256 bitcoin algorith to something else that asic and fpga devices couldnt compute?
We started off with a bitcoin that anyone could use and now were forced to buy stuff we dont really want.
I realise that there are some ppl that allready invested in asic and fpga, but ton off ppl are unsatisfied with this.
Do U think btc should move away from sha256 and let "normal" people the chance ?
If the only point of the change is to make it easier to compute hashes....then no, I think it's a bad idea. I think the protocol can be modified in the future to support yet to be invented encryption techniques though... |
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On a side note, Casascius, you are one of my bitcoin heroes because of the physical bitcoin implementations you have followed through with.
Aww, thanks. I just want to get Bitcoin in the hands of the computer illiterate and non-computer-enthusiastic, and I see this as the way to do it. My hero too. I remember when the first round of Casascius coins went out with a typographical error...the response of some of the less useful among us really ticked me off... Well done again sir. Well done. |
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This is a good idea, just print the pattern on one side, pop it in the printer again and print the bills
Check out this printable back pattern I made: https://casascius.com/billback.pdfVery cool. Do you know who runs blockchain.info? |
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I am Latvian.
It still doesn't give an answer regarding the language. Latvia is an ex-USSR country, so it can be Russian or Latvian. Latvians speak in latvian language. Russians speak in russian language. Almost no russian living in Latvia identifies himself as a latvian. The cultural, linguistic and mental differences are huge and largely incompatible. Russians were migrated in Latvia after WW2 as a USSR planed to destroy ethnic latvians and make a Latvia a permanent part of Russia. Probably no nation lost more people by percentage of population in 20th century wars than latvians did. We have one of best climates in world, plenty of usable land and strategic military and trade seaports, it is no surprise russians and others are after us. This sounds like a very interesting country. Perhaps a vacation trip would be fun...someday...any recommendations? ...wow...that's really off topic. |
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Next time you should position your camera in such a way that when you're looking at the interviewer you're also looking at the camera.
Whats funny is I didn't know I was being videoed until halfway thru. I almost picked my nose! I thought you were blind! I didn't watch the whole interview, but way to go in spreading the word. |
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No, I was going to sell coins for CHF, not buy them. The amount in question was 100 CHF, which is about the same in dollars. It's not enough to do much of anything.
The fact that a supposed drug seller was wanting to acquire Bitcoins is one of the inconsistencies I mentioned. Presumably the problem people like that would have is selling Bitcoins for fiat.
That’s what I thought you were talking about. With due respect to your answers about image Mike C my question still remains. Does anyone know what the legal responsibility is or if there have ever been any cases internationally where a money exchanger not affiliated with a bank was convicted because he knew what the exchanged currency would be used for? Does the exchanger have any liability? They have busted exchangers that dealt with online fraud rings like the guy who owns VFS an exchanger ratings site. They also went after people who accepted cash from cartels who then later wrote cheques for as little as $500 to a front in Mexico to launder it. Do you have a link? If that’s true then the community should support the elimination of all in person currency exchange because there is no way for you to ever know what will be purchased with the exchanged money. It’s probably not even safe to give panhandlers money on the street because they could be buying heroine with it. The government is going to want people to think that it is illegal to sell bitcoins just like it's illegal to sell drugs. It's no different than giving the panhandler money, however, the truth will be difficult for most people to tell apart. |
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It is illegal to aid and abet a criminal. Selling bitcoins claims to a known drug dealer would be a form of aiding and hence criminal. I sincerely doubt that the person was a true drug dealer, and I highly suspect that this was a law enforcement officer. They will have significant difficulty in going after silk Road directly, however, they can take out the secondary market for bitcoins by prosecuting relatively innocent people under this obscure law... And no one will object to this method of trying to stop bitcoin because it just sounds so bad when an otherwise law-abiding citizen does something like help drug dealers.
I predict within the next year we will see the first bitcoin related criminal prosecution, and I doubt it's going to be anyone who did something really all that wrong.
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I was looking at starting up a site that would sell bitcoins through credit card transactions as a US based business. Not wanting to run into immediate regulatory problems I gave FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) a call. It took them a couple of weeks to get back to me but the answer was yes that business would be required to register as a Money Service Business.
Yes, that is expected. BitInstant is a register MSB, AFAIK. A couple other exchanges based in the US are registered, or in the process of registering. According to my research (WARNING: not a lawyer, seek your own professional advice) online bitcoin exchanges in the US would need to register in ~47 of 50 states, as well as registering as an MSB with the federal government. (or limit the users accessing the website to a select few states) There is a multi-state surety bond and registration process, making multi-state compliance a bit easier, but it is definitely a lot of paperwork and background checks required. Heh, and thats the easy part! You also need to do the following, just off the top of my head: - Quarterly audits that you pay for - Every 6 weeks you need a verified and updated AML Program - Attend BSA training twice a year - Bend over backwards and get anally raped every day.... I'm sorry to hear about all the contortion and....uhhh....transrectal violation...thanks for going through all that! |
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Well written and worth the read.
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