Parents are civilly liable for the actions of their children.  If your kid breaks my window it doesn't matter than I don't have a contract ahead of time where you agree to be liable for any damages caused by your kid.    People who are unwilling to accept the liability of having a child should invest in birth control.

I mean if you think about it for a second it would create a massive legal loophole if children couldn't be sued and their parents couldn't either.  Kid burns my house down?  Oops sorry he is immune to lawsuit and so are his parents.  Kid runs a $20,000,000,000 ponzi scheme? Oops sorry the funds can't be recovered because the kid can't be sued and neither can his parents.    

The flip side of civil immunity for children is civil liability for their parents.  You can't have equal protection under the law if one exists without the other.

Very apt analogy.  It isn't investing it is gambling.  Just like all gambling systems you will lose.  There is no economic value is cashing out while you are up (unless you never intend to ever gamble in any form as long as you live).  I cash out when I am ahead in Vegas simply because it is more FUN to leave as a winner.  Still only a compulsive gamblers think that the timing of cashouts has any effect on the house advantage (and thus the amount lost in the long run).

Mr. "Scamming Garbage" Maria you are ignoring me?  I will wear that like a badge of honor.

Silver coins became a medium of exchange because it is difficult to divide Gold beyond a certain amount.   1 gram coins are possible but even one gram coins have significant purchasing power.  How do you pay for a meal which is worth 0.01827 grams of gold?  That is why silver and other lower value coins emerged.  

Bitcoin has no such limitation.  It is just as easy to perform a transaction for 0.01 BTC as it is to perform one for 100,000 BTC.  There is the potential for other crypto-currencies to carve out a niche but LTC being essentially a straight copy of BTC with a different hashing algorithm (one which is more vulnerable to a low cost 51% attack).  In time LTC will die off just like all the other BTC clones.

The sad thing is there is a lot of potential for alternative crypto-currencies which fulfill various needs but a BTC clone has no utility value.  Just like a clone of ebay or amazon will die from the network efect so will a direct clone of BTC.

It sounds like you have drunk the LTC Kool-Aid so I don't expect to convince you but the post may prevent others from buying into the same faulty logic.

+1.  If subforums are expensive I will pledge 1 BTC towards it.

It could be a subform of the off topic subforum.

Off Topic
|----- Bitcoinica

That is the silliest thing I ever heard.

If 1 TEM =  EURO then printing 1 TEM has the same effect on the economy as printing 1 EURO.  So either you print 0 TEMs, or the exchange rate decouples.  If the exchange rate decouples then you will see the inflation in printing TEMs.  If you somehow enforced the exchange rate via force/violence you would simply be adding inflation to TEM/EURO prices jointly.

You seemed to have sidestepped the first point and it makes you look silly.

Insurance doesn't prevent an event.  I never said insurance won't protect the insured.   Buying auto insurance doesn't reduce the chance of me being in a car accident.  If anything it increases it (less direct cost for the person being risky).  Remove all airbags/ seatbelts from cars, put a big metal spike on the steering wheel, make insurance illegal and allow indentured servitude for debt repayment (including passing debt to heirs) and I guarantee you there will be less car accidents.  I am not saying that is a good idea but it would couple the cost to the risk and that makes people act in a less risky manner.

Insurance can't prevent an event.   Your insurance can't prevent a hack.   2 factor authentication can but nobody needs insurance to get 2 factor authentication.  Of course users of Bitcoinica who used 2 factor authentication still lost.  Insurance would help but insurance couldn't have prevented the hack.

Good concept BTW but the FAQ doesn't really address any of the points I made.  hot/cold wallet or having funds invested doesn't preventing you from cashing out and disapearing.  No identity, no registration, nothing linking you to the real world.  Now I don't think you are going to do that but making that claim makes me MORE skeptical not less skeptical because you have no know the protections you outlined in your FAQ aren't worth anything.

Imagine if MyBitcoin offered insured deposits.  Would that have reduced the risk of using MyBitcoin?

This is also the same Maria who despite being an FX pro didn't know that buying lots of coins makes the price go up or that it is less profitable to announce the buy before making it.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40494.0

allten both of your posts are false.  No reason to jump from one fallacy to another.  Can Bitcoin be free forever and for 100% of transactions?  No.  Obviously not the network has a real cost.  The idea that Bitcoin has to be expensive is equally wrong.

Two examples:

PayPal scale network:
The Bitcoin network reaches 50 tps (roughly PayPal sized); that is roughly 1.58 billion transactions per year.  At an avg tx fee of $0.01 USD that would generate ~$16 million in revenue for miners.   Now obviously it will take some time for Bitcoin to grow to this level so the established history means that Bitcoin will be seen as less risky relative to today.  Risk determines return on capital.  Lets assume miners are willing to accept a 10% ROI and that hardware costs makes up 80% of lifetime mining costs.   That puts the network hardware cost at ~$200 million.   Remember it is the cost of the network (not hashrate) that determines security.

VISA scale network:
The Bitcoin network reaches 4000 tps (roughly VISA sized); that is roughly 130 billion transactions per year.  At an avg tx fee of $0.02 USD (higher utility given Bitcoin is now as popular as VISA) that would generate ~$2.5 billion in revenue for miners.   Now obviously it will take some time for Bitcoin to grow to this level so the established history means that Bitcoin will be seen as less risky relative to today.  Risk determines return on capital.  Lets assume miners are willing to accept a 7% ROI and that hardware costs makes up 80% of lifetime mining costs.   That puts the network hardware cost at ~$30 billion.   Remember it is the cost of the network (not hashrate) that determines security.


While $0.01 or $0.02 isn't "free" (remember that was just the hypothetical average cost, some tx would still be free) it is hardly "high cost".  The idea that Bitcoin can only scale under high transaction cost is simply FUD.

Lets compare that to some other payment networks:
Money Order - $0.50 to $1.00
Cashier's Check - $5.00 to $10.00
GreenDot MoneyPak - $5.00 (instant, limited deposit options max of $500)
ACH - ~$0.20 per tx (3-5 days)
Bank Wire - ~$10.00 (4-5 hours)

WU - 4% to 10% (10 to 30 minutes)
Credit Cards - $0.30 + 3% (seconds  chargeback risk for 120 days)
Credit Cards (micropayment) - $0.05 + 5% (seconds  chargeback risk for 120 days)
mPESA - 5% to 15% (instant)

Bitcoin - $0.00 to $0.02 per tx (instant to hours depending on risk profile)

Yup Bitcoin is horribly expensive at $0.00 to $0.02 per tx.

Insurance can't stop events.   Fire insurance doesn't prevent fires.  Auto insurance doesn't prevent accidents.
CPA can't stop the next great hack so not sure what you are trying to say.

Insurance is a great idea though.  Still I am not sure what the value in your insurance is.  Who insures you?  What happens if/when you don't pay out? Generally purchasers of insurance have some protection under the law to compensation.  Now I am not calling you a scammer but there is a reason why insurance is regulated.  It is the PERFECT scam mechanism.  Fake insurance is far better than a fake bank, or fake products, or even fake gold.  Even real insurance rarely needs to pay out.  Thus a scammer can collect premiums until the event occurs and then simply not pay.  

Even if the policies being written are honest, insurance generally requires a large number of unrelated policies to be viable.  A half dozen related policies is simply at risk of overwhelming your ability to pay.  Say GLBSE has a flaw in their login code which allows a thief to hack not one policy holder but all of them.  Can you pay all insured policies simulataneously?

Consumers aren't very good at underwriting risk.   Surety bond issuers are.  Have you considered purchasing a surety bond?  This would permanently bind your assets to the bond.  If you don't pay then policy holders could collect from the surety bond issuer.  Oh and the surety bond issuer is going to get their money even if it means taking everything you own (stocks, bonds, house, car, garnishment of future wages, leins against company assets, etc).  A surety bond provides assurance you will pay because the financial consequences of not paying will be worse.    

I don't know can you?

Do you even have sufficient information to file a suit?  At a minimum you would need his name, legal guardians name, and address.  In most states filings have to be done in person so you unless you luck out and someone lives in state you have that added cost.  

One further complication is that usually you can't represent someone else in small claims court.  You can only file for money owed to you.  So what you (or someone) would need to do if have the other creditors sign over the debt to the person filing the claim.  The plantiff wouldn't need to buy the debt from the creditor(s); a simple contract could be written that the plaintiff is purchasing the debt for a representative share of the proceeds (if any) that come from the lawsuit.  Likely the contract should be worded such that if a lawsuit if dismissed, or not filed that ownership of the debt returns to the creditor.   Essentially the plaintiff then is owed the full amount (of the entities willing to participate) and can file for that amount.   If the plaintiff wins the defendant/debtor would pay the plaintiff and the plaintiff pay each creditor on a representative basis.

Still if that is the way (or someone else) wants to go I will sign over my $240 owed to anyone looking to file a suit.  Honestly I think this would be a good thing for Bitcoin.  While case isn't about Bitcoin it would be useful for the community to see that a debt incurred is a debt incurred.   PayPal freezing the account is irrelevant, TheBitMan owes the funds.  Period.  If PayPal was wrong them TheBitMan may have a case against PayPal but that doesn't change the fact that he still owes the creditors.

If you owe someone money you pay.  If you can't pay you find a way (payment plan, getting a loan, get a second job, etc).  If you don't pay you get sued.  Pretty simple concepts which seem to evaporate as soon as Bitcoin even comes close.


Well there is no guarantee of that.  He may just decide after a couple months to take the money and walk away.  I certainly hope that isn't the case but saying "you WILL all get your money" is a false claim. We "may" get our money.  If you are so certain I would gladly sell you my claim for 85% of the face value right now.  A guaranteed profit since there is absolutely no chance that you won't be repaid right?

BCB is correct on one account.  A judgement could be used to prevent the PayPal funds from being taken although I doubt it would go that far.  His parents likely aren't interested in having a judgement on their credit report and would pay the amount in full and collect from their son when PayPal releases the account.

There are no online vendors of MoneyPaks.  That is the whole point they are purchased with cash in person (and stupidly w/ PIN only debit at a few locations).  Next time please change your title to something like "selling $500 MoneyPak of questionable/unknown origin obtained from a third party".  Of course any Amazon gift codes you attempt to sell have similar taint.

Notes: -1 for epiks on my personal scammer risk list.

10 characters is generally immune to brute force attempts if the passphrase is not weak (not found in any dictionary, leaked password list, or common password database).  4 sentences is probably overkill although I would prefer a single sentence along with some numbers which have meaning to you so it is unlikely to be part of a precomputation database.

I would say "low transaction fees" although remember it is very likely free tx will remain viable for a long time.  It won't be realtime but if you are willing to wait hours or days I am sure someone will include it for free.  Still low/free can be very very low.  If Bitcoin scaled to PayPal sized network (~50tps) that would be roughly 1.5 billions transactions per year.  If avg fee was $0.01 USD it would be the cheapest payment platform by far and would still generate ~$15 mil a year to fund miners and protect the network.

But doesn't have to if multi-sig is used.  Also I would say blockchain.info has limited access to funds.  While they could modify their javascript to steal keys it would be a situaiton similar to our enterprise.  They could at most get away with it for a short period of time and the amount of funds at risk would be limited.

Not interested?  Hmm...

If the business owners are know it shouldn't matter.  Company loses customer funds through employee theft, inside job, scam, hack.  It doesn't matter the company is liable.

One way to reduce the risk is to change the risk vs reward ratio.  You can raise the risk (for the scammer) by dealing with public companies.  You can lower the reward by dealing with companies which don't hold a huge amount of customer assets.  We bought 40,000 BTC this month however we never hold client's funds.  We payout the same day.  If Tangible Cryptography starting stealing customer funds how long do you think we could get away with it.  A day?  two days?  How quickly would sales slow to a tickle when dozens of users reported not getting paid?  The reward goes way down because we are never in a posistion to steal the full 40,000.  We might get away with a couple thousand BTC at most.   Even if the risk was 0% (and it isn't) honestly it is more profitable being legit.

TL/DR
1) Deal with public companies
2) Don't deal with companies which "hang on" to huge amounts of customer funds.

Reload your prepaid phone of course.

CellCoin  Save up to 5% on wireless (cellular) refills

Purchased with cash?  Receipt available?

If so I will take it for MtGox last price + 1%.  Price locks in at the time you send the code..  

Terms:
Ensure I am online before sending.
You send code & bitcoin address by PM first (optional: encrypt with PGP for added security)
I verify/deposit code.  
You email me a scan/photo of receipt with "Tangible Cryptography LLC" (and nothing else) written on it.
I send you $500 worth of BTC @ MtGox last + 1%.

If code was purchased with debit card don't waste my time.

On edit: If you don't have the pak yet and would prefer to do a $1,000 that is fine too.

DUH.  Where do you think the millions came from?  Her successful career as an Indian actress.

http://dailytopcelebrity.blogspot.com/2009/04/aishwarya-rai-hot-pictures.html

Maria I hope your "husband" doesn't get mad at me posting these pics of you.