However, you'd have made more of a profit simply by purchasing BTC.  So given a choice between purchasing BTC which will appreciate in value, or purchasing the future potential of fewer BTC by mining for the same amount of fiat currency, choosing mining is obviously the inferior choice.

Offering shares of a business for sale in return for a share of future profits is going to be considered a stock offer or some other form of security in almost any jurisdiction in the world.  In this case, it will be unregistered and unlicensed.  As the pirateat40 case shows, at least in the United States, the SEC will consider this to be under its jurisdiction, and they almost certainly do have jurisdiction over such offers.  It probably isn't illegal to purchase such entities, but to offer them for sale probably breaks the law.

The other alternative is worse, though.  That is that the investors have inadvertently joined a partnership with the illegal business and would be personally on the hook for any legal liabilities the company racks up.  I think the former is more likely to be the case, though.

This character seems to be more trouble to deal with than he's worth.  Seemingly incapable of a simple, concise statement of his gripe, he generates an endless stream of rambling, incoherent diatribes querulously complaining about everything under the sun.  I don't blame BCP for not wanting to waste any more time with this gibberish.

From this post by Maged in another forum.

LOL.  From zero to scammer in barely longer than it takes to get out of the noob cage.  Wonder how he managed that.

There are both 64 and 32 bit versions for both Windows and Linux versions, but only a 64 bit version for Mac.  The 64 bit version works fine on my Mac Mini, but unfortunately, that's shared so I can't always use that.  My poker machine is as old a MacBook as you can get, or else a crappy laptop running Mint Linux, which I assume will be able to handle the 32 bit Linux client.

It might be as simple as they just didn't compile a 32 bit version for some reason, and might be as simple to fix as just compiling one.  There might be some reason they can't. 

No 32 bit version?

With regard to the first issue, I am pretty sure Bitcoin would not be considered "foreign currency" even if it is considered "currency" at all.  Arguably, it does constitute "seized cash."  However, even if it does, the exception for use as evidence would apply at least until there is no chance of it being used as evidence.  If it is not cash, however, it could be treated as the feds treat any other seized commodity, and sold at auction at some indefinite future date, subject to internal rules and regulations of the agency.  Even then, of course, it could be subject to the "evidence" rule and kept indefinitely.

The disposition of the DPR case might not resolve the issue, as it may still be "evidence" in other cases.  If the feds were actually seeking to maximize the value of their holdings (which they often don't do much to do such as by selling properties often on the cheap at auction), they'd find any excuse to hold onto it as long as possible before liquidating.

There might also be some procedure for anyone whose business through SR was entirely legitimate to make a claim on any seized funds.  That, of course, assumes there are any such people who would be willing to expose their identities.

Why not sell it as a service?  In return for $X, the company promises to run a miner or miners at whatever hashrate, and any results of that accrue to the purchaser, or the mining pool of their choice.  Any agreement between the purchaser and the mining pool is between those two entities, and all the company is promising to do is run a program for some period of time, guaranteeing no results.

Dwolla is a joke anyway.  The only reason I even considered using it was Bitcoin.  It could cease to exist entirely for all I care.

Not to mention all the new trolls, now that the guy has publicly admitted being a sucker who gives in to bratty whining.

Since the lifetime of any mining unit bought today is going to be measured in the short term, that is the only timeframe worth considering for whether to purchase a mining unit now.  There may be some future time when it is again profitable to mine, but without being able to shove off the externalities (electricity) on some other party, that time isn't now for most people.

Bot or not, that short stack strategy is only profitable if you are the only one (or maybe one of two) players at a full table doing it, because it relies on you being all-in early with the hopes that big stacks play against each other badly.

However, it's no fun to play against that kind of shit, if it is going on, whether or not it's bots or just real people deliberately playing maggot stacks.

One solution would be to have fixed buyin tables.  Another would be either invite-only or friends-only tables, and get together a guild of all the real, established players.  New accounts not allowed.

Hint:  the vast majority of laws in the United States are NOT federal law.  They are state laws.  There are fifty sets of them.  I'd certainly welcome anyone addressing legality in all 50 states as well as D.C., the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, etc.  Or if anyone is willing to act as a Polish mine detector, I'd watch their progress with great interest.

darkmule daily

If 51% of miners did something, their blockchain would then be the "real" one.  It would take active measures to abandon their chain in favor of another.  People would have to do something to abandon it.

"We" can't, even if "we" wanted to.  But 51% of miners could, at least especially right after a transaction they wanted to nullify.  However, they have very good incentives not to do that.  It would basically amount to nuking their own assets.

People already did, largely because of Silk Road.  While I am by no means on the "oh noooo, drugs, horror!" bandwagon, that kind of thing is definitely an impediment to mainstream acceptance.  I think the fact that Bitcoin itself basically responded with a collective "meh" to shutting down Silk Road shows pretty clearly that Bitcoin and the drug trade are two separate things.

If the shutdown increased the perception that Bitcoin=drugs, there would have been a long-lasting decline in price as investors and users fled for the hills.  Nothing of the sort happened.

If Bitcoin being seen as related to drugs is a problem (though I think it is more neutral), then Silk Road actually being in operation contributed to that a lot more than it being shut down.

I don't think SR being shut down is a fantastic thing.  It disrupted a lot of economic activity, even if that activity was illegal.  It also, apparently, has taken about 5% of existing BTC out of circulation for the foreseeable future, and maybe forever (though this reduction in supply might have helped stabilize the price).  But it is hardly a disaster, even for the Bitcoin drug trade.

If anything, I've seen a slight uptick in interest.  For that matter, even to get "Silk Road" as a "suggested" search term, I have to add an "s" after Bitcoin, and then it appears near the bottom.

These weren't definitions, but examples of usage, generally from well-regarded sources, i.e. people who could be expected to use words correctly.

The actual definition is neutral, as they usually are.


Of course, even here, it is defined using words which themselves generally have negative connotations, such as "lawlessness" and "disorder."  I would argue the first to attempt to carry out anarchistic political action, identifying it as such, would be certain of the French Revolutionaries, and the first serious attempt to put an intellectual foundation to it and explicitly endorse the term would be Bakunin (although other thinkers had of course contemplated the issue).

My point, and I am surprised it is even arousing any controversy whatsoever, is that through the vast majority of the history of the word, it has carried almost exclusively negative connotations, and even to this day, the majority of usage of the word is intended to refer to something negative.  The difference is that at least since Bakunin, there have always serious philosophical proponents of the concept, as distinguished from, say, teenage punk rockers using the anarchy symbol for shock value (not to say that punks have never had serious ideas).