Terrible idea. BTCJam has a much lower ROI than other peer-to-peer lending platforms I see that use a fiat currency, e.g. LendingClub which can give a pretty fair ROI even on higher-risk notes. Unless you're very good with peer-to-peer lending and know what to look out for, I'd avoid it.

Besides, investing in BTCJam isn't going to give you much of a Bitcoin business. @OP, you can't do much with 1 BTC.

Question is in the title. My curiosity was triggered by a few posts by various people suggesting the addition of extra Global Mods due to a new influx of spammers (although I raise the question of how long that influx will last in the slightly longer-term).

As a note, I'm not going to create any discourse in this thread on who should become a Global Mod and I recommend others shouldn't as well. I do encourage discourse on whether there should be a new Global Mod, just not who should be promoted. Debates such as that often degenerate into either vouching for the person you like most or making guesses with no real evidence to back your guess up, as you can not see who handles things in the mod log (unless you have access to the Mod CP I assume, in which case, you probably have a better place to suggest Global Mod promotions).

No idea if either theymos or BadBear specifically handles promotions now or if they both do it jointly, so I'll just address to both.

Your wife (and you by extension) is (are) essentially extorting the forum. That's a fact. I understand this is (partially) not your fault but it is still extortion. And while I do feel a bit of sympathy as those posts are completely over-the-top, holding ~$12000 in Bitcoin hostage is not something a mature adult should consider nor do. It reeks of childishness.

On the other hand, why are we calling people's wives "absolute cunts" now? Hold it for a second, some bad stuff happened, why are we resorting to statements that bad already? I am not bothered who said it, I'm not bothered if they are staff either (and I'm not in the camp who think staff need to be morally above the median, although they shouldn't be extremely below it), but for anyone - especially regulars - in a community to respond to an issue like this with something like that almost immediately is over-the-top.

P.S.: hilariousandco, you're cool usually, but what...?

Can we just blacklist the hashminer (dot) net domain? It seems like that'd kill the spammers pretty quickly...well, at least until they create a new website. But otherwise it doesn't seem like this hacking is going to stop, as it seems like it'll exponentially grow (I am willing to bet >1 person gets hacked clicking the links each time a hacked account spams the board up).


You are mistaken. I reported every single hacked post made by EmpoEX (and probably other people did too), and I never saw a domain for EmpoEX.

I see. I agree with you there. It seems a lot of people seem to think putting important sections/quantities of their savings (i.e. their investment money) into Bitcoin is a safe bet though - and while I love Bitcoin, that's a really bad idea.


Yeah, I have heard that before (and indeed, the page of the brochure that interests us i.e. page 5, echoes the sentiment), but I find it extremely unlikely that the economy would go into a depression for that long. The governments of the world do have economic tools to prevent that and if the worst comes to worst they can create new ones with legislation - we wouldn't like it, but they could easily do it. Over a long time period, it is likely you will realize a gain. Productivity is always increasing in the world, the only real way for you to lose money over a long period in an index fund is for the world's productivity to start dropping. That'd be bad. Very bad.


Of course. The longer time period does mean that it averages out to about 7%, and there are going to be fluctuations (though it is likely that with a higher % in bonds and a lower % in equity, these will be smaller) up and down rather than a solid curve upwards. Obviously, for someone following the FIRE path, these time period will be very long - beginning once they start FIRE plans, and ending when they die because once they retire their income is still coming from this. They might not make profit from it in a year, but that could be offset the next year. It is essentially gambling, but larger numbers result in less variance.

Perhaps. I hold a small quantity of private Bitcoin, but not enough to break the bank if Bitcoin was to hit $0 as I do not consider it reliable.

Perhaps. Considering that I couldn't find any references on Google to the site this hacked account and the last one were advertising - though I did find one with the same domain but an .eu TLD, so perhaps this site tries to rip-off the trustworthiness of that - I have a feeling that there is no actual referring going on at all, and that this is indeed simply an attempt to scam people.

Yeah. I reported all the posts of the previous guy who seemed to be hacked, and this one (this one about an hour ago I think). There's a looot, I think I've reported at least 50 of these hacked account spambot posts in total now. It's crazy.

Edit: Oh my God I love your personal text hilariousandco

Okay then, that's your choice. My negative feedback will be staying on until you actually verify your cold storage, as by now it just reeks of untrustworthiness. There is absolutely zero reason you should still be withholding it when all you have to do is sign a message, the website being down does not prevent you from doing that. Unless you're extremely lazy.

Please keep all discussions actually relevant and do not stray to the "Bitcoin is God, going to $1000000 a coin by 2016" argument. This is a serious argument about investing in Bitcoin vs. Index Funds (and due to the nature of FIRE, over large time periods).

A good Vanguard index fund - let's say, at least in the UK, the Vanguard (and Vanguard is much more prominent in the US with index funds, with very similar returns AFAIK) LifeStrategy 40 fund, which holds 40% equity 60% bonds, has retrieved an average return of 7.1%/year based on this LifeStrategy pdf. Going up to 80% equity 20% bonds, that becomes 8.4%/year, and at 100% equity that is 8.9%/year.

The market, has on average, always gone up in the long run even if in a short-run financial crisis it has dropped. As an index fund quite literally attempts to equally divest across the market - e.g. the S&P 500 or the FTSE 100, the market going up will result in profits. Let's say that we have a lower risk appetite than most (even though a younger person should invest more in equity than bonds, going to safe(r) funds like this in older age) and we invest in VLS 40. So we're getting a return of 7.1%/year, in the long run, planning for our retirement (something very important). Let's assume an inflation rate of 3%, which is quite high as a lot of countries target inflation rates of 2% themselves, which gives you a real ROI of 4%/year.

That's nice. Yes, there is risk, but there are always busts. We will probably have another bust in the next 10-20 years. In the long run, the booms lead to a higher growth than is lost in the busts.

So, based on this, what is better to invest in - Bitcoin, or Index Funds? Do you believe Bitcoin can manage to appreciate a solid 7%/year against the dollar at least, 4%/year in real terms? Is it too volatile?

Let's discuss. Personally, I love Bitcoin - but I would have to opt with an index fund (probably Accumulation-based) vs. investing directly into Bitcoin. Especially as someone who regularly reads subreddits such as /r/financialindependence and the "Mr. Money Mustache" blog, where being able to get 4%/year real-terms ROI is critical to the plan of Early Retirement. For those unintiated in the FIRE (Financial Independence/Retiring Early) ways, basically you have to get 25x your annual expenses saved and invested. Once you do that, an invest in usually a good index fund, 4%/year real-terms ROI will result in you being able to retrieve your annual expenses annually, hence you can retire early. Requires a lot of frugality and usually a decent degree (say, Computer Science), but the concept is quite nice. I question very much if that'd be possible with Bitcoin, though.

I guess my question also boils down to: Is Bitcoin too volatile to trust with plans like that? In my honest opinion - yes. Does anyone have a differing opinion?

Unfortunately, I don't even believe you need to go to that extent (extracting, sweeping and sending a wallet.dat file) to be able to give the illusion that the account was never sold. Simply extracting your private key (using dumpprivkey on Bitcoin-QT or just a few clicks on some web wallets) for a verified address and then sending it as you sell the account gives them enough to be able to feign your identity. It's unfortunately quite a sour situation but no-one can do much about it.

Okay, so what about the cold storage verification you were supposed to provide? You've still failed to provide any proof of that and you're currently just under a week late on it. Even if your website is down, you should still be able to provide proof of your cold storage - so what is causing the delay, may I ask?

Sorry, but when you devolve into using hashtags to insult staff and falling back onto the default "abuse of power" argument, your entire argument against being banned loses the vast majority of its credibility. These threads come around way, way too often, and replies like that don't particularly help your case. You have a better chance of being unbanned actually accepting what you did and appealing properly.

Yeah, most likely a staff-only section except if theymos has decided to start posting in the Trashcan.

I wouldn't get too bothered over activity. If it is truly wrong then the system will fix it anyway, and considering how the new system apparently works a returning poster is unlikely to even notice any problems.

Perhaps, though as a resident of the United Kingdom I'm acutely aware that us leaving the EU is suicidal and the only reason this is coming up as a referendum is UKIP and the amount of chavs living in council houses who constantly spout about immigrants coming into the country while living off the state, in a council house, and leeching child benefits and the NHS with their family of 12. I don't think we'll truly leave.

Like I said, there's two denomination values. I don't use Bitbond myself, I just had a quick look and it seems people can choose what "Base Currency" for their loan to be denominated in. Someone who doesn't mind risk probably won't care about denominating their loan in Bitcoin. Someone who knows they have a fair salary and wants to avoid risk can equally opt to have the loan be denominated in USD.

If you've denominated it in BTC, then I would assume, yes, you are pretty screwed. But as far as I'm aware there's also an option on Bitbond to denominate it in USD so you pay back the USD value. Obviously that also means you lose out if the price of Bitcoin drops and you have the loan denominated in USD, but if you're really susceptible to changes in Bitcoin price that might be worth it.

I'm sure. But you don't even state what the investments are? Probably because you're not actually investing or trading anything, right? I'm sorry but these "investment programs" are just getting more and more mundane and boring by the day. At least Bitcoin Savings & Trust actually tried to convince people. This seems like some 30-second attempt of a thread.

Those are the same globals that are...y'know, globals, though, right? They have to deal with reports from all the sections (well, probably excluding some more difficult ones from the Local boards) so I'd imagine that they are unable to focus on just a couple boards. Point is you would probably appreciate the help, right?

Oh yeah, I forgot you were a fellow Englander. That build up of reports is probably from people from the US posting as you sleep, i.e. the pain of British moderators everywhere. (No offense Americans there's just a lot of you)

Yeah, I just noticed tysat was no longer staff and checked Meta to see if there was a new discussion about it...I do feel bad for hilariousandco in all honesty I have no idea who is active in the Bitcoin Discussion section so I'm not going to make any input on who should become a mod there but he probably should get a little bit more help there. Maybe a Patroller could step up to help there, or an English-speaking local mod like Mitchell (is he a Patroller as well? Not sure).

Do remember that this is quite important, however. If you are logging into an FTP account you created then this could be a potentially very easy fix that no-one will even have to give you specific advice over - just start logging on with your main FTP account instead of one manually created in cPanel.