Guys, this is an old thread that Roger Ver opened back then, when this was still applicable. I think most of the investigations are done now and some victims of this are going to get back a small percentage of their money. We might never know who was really behind all of this, but I guess pseudo anonymity has proven that it is working for both the criminals and the legitimate users.

Would have been nice to know if this was a inside job or a independent Black hat or a government sanctioned hack.   

The PoS and PoW thing has been discussed to death already and most people prefer PoW over PoS.    I think the most important reason why most people use Bitcoin is because of the privacy aspect of it, so we should never make sacrifices on privacy to satisfy these governments need for control.

If they do change this in the future, people would move back to PoW based coins and this would have accomplished nothing.   

I base this on the feedback that are received on the bigger Freeroll prizes that are won, with the faucet. <See other thread> The people there are almost going through the roof with excitement over $20 and I would have thought if someone have won bigger prizes in the Lottery, they would have gone crazy.

We are dealing with almost 1600 winners in +/- 3 years, so it is strange that we not seeing people raving about Lottery prizes too. It is after all ranging from $10 to $12 000, weekly. 

I noticed lately that a lot of sites are popping up that offers investors the option to deposit fiat and then they buy and sell the Alt coins on behalf of the investor. So they manage the wallets and security and the portfolio for the investor and the investor just decides when they want to withdraw their capital.

There are some obvious dangers involved with this, but I would like to know what your opinion is.

~ Hard forks
~ Signing Addresses
~ Security concerns <Exploits in code>
~ Centralized decision making
~ Fiat not backed by actual coins
~ Extra Fees

So, let's see what you think about this?

There is no problem to accept Bitcoin tx's with zero confirmations for very small purchases. <like someone paying for a cup of coffee>, but the ideal scenario would be to get a confirmation almost immediately after you made the purchase. Fortunately for us, the Core developers have recognized that need and they developed the Lightning Network, as described above by other posters.

Most of the smaller micro transactions will move to the second layer <LN> and the on-chain transactions via SegWit will be much faster. 

Well, give or take 3 years. It is still a lot of weeks and you have to multiply that with like 10x for the amount of participants for every Lottery. <Yes, the first 3 or so draws had only 3 spots> 

I have argumented these numbers for years, but the standard answer is always " Not every user of Freebitco.in is registered on this forum " , so we are not going to get more than that. 

I know I will be the first one that runs to this forum, if I ever win anything here and I will make a public apology for doubting the fairness of the Lottery all these years. <I have been playing this from the first draw and never won anything> 

I think you are too quick to judge. Some of these people do not want to risk going out and having sex with prostitutes and they do not have a partner. So they are human too and they want some excitement, so they turn to the internet video streaming sites. The unfortunate side of this is that many of these sessions are recorded without the consent of the parties involved and placed on the internet or used for bribes in this case.

Loneliness and hornyness can get you into trouble. 

I think a lot of people thought that Bitcoin would replace the Fiat system and be a revolutionary technology, but it has not turned out that way...yet. The Masters of the world have managed to mitigate that risk, by creating their own versions of this technology and by using that technology against itself. <Private Blockchains>

Most of these are still in development, but it is going to be used as a counter for disruption. 

You obviously have not watched the live social video streaming sites like, Periscope where people have 1on1 private wanking sessions in front of each other or where they broadcast that to people all over the world. You get pretty messed up people out there or they are just horny enough to do that in public.

It is one thing, giving your consent to do this, but blackmailing someone with stolen videos is a criminal offence.   

Yea, you can with the Brick n Mortar sites, but these unregulated online gambling sites are all the same. You just close your eyes and hope for the best.  < So pointing fingers to Freebitco.in would be unfair, because most of them are doing it this way > 

When I declare my income with the tax authorities or when they do a audit, they want some kind of paper trail and with sites like this, it is not possible. Some of the investment sites I deal with, have "reports" that I use in PDF format for tax purposes. 

You right. I probably are sucking this out of my ass. 

Would still be great if we could place a human or humans behind the face of this project. It would just make the decision easier to dump a lot of money into the "investment" side of the site, if you knew that you not dealing with a site that might turn out to be a criminal front or some money laundering racket.

I would have dumped a lot more coins into Freebitco.in if I knew what I was dealing with and if I could have explained that income to my local tax authorities. 

If they used that as a guideline, then we must assume that Satoshi's 1 000 000+ coins are lost too.    Some of the early adopters have loads of coins that was mined in the early days and those coins are stored in cold storage. 

A lot of people lose coins on a daily basis, but they are too scared and embarrassed to announce it on a public forum. <Sending coins to wrong Bitcoin addresses or forgetting their passwords or passphrases for their wallets> 

I think the percentage is higher. <30%+>

Personal income generated in another country, does not exempt you from paying taxes in your country of origin. They might use the Virgin Islands as a tax haven, but they can still be held liable for the tax income and the penalties, if they are caught. As TheQuin said, most unregistered gambling sites do this, but at one stage they grow too big and then people start knocking at your door. 

Freebitco is currently operating as a Bank / Gambling site / Unregistered Business and I bet you, they not paying any taxes. They might want to legitimize this operation now, by re-branding the site. 

Wrong, their main aim is to make a profit.    This is also one of the reason why more than 90% of them fail. They start out as a project with very ambitious goals to change the world, but that is quickly forgotten, when the money starts rolling in. Many of them are blatantly scamming people and the whole, changing the world thing is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. 

Let's just face it... only a very small percentage of them will change the world. 

You left out one:

Government Approval - Now, some people might differ from me on this statement, but the reality is, no unregulated "currency" will survive for long, without some kind of regulation by government. Yes, people might use it as a barter system, if it is not regulated, but you need proper regulations for it to succeed in the formal sector of the financial sector.

These companies need to deal with tax issues and auditing and they cannot use a currency that are not regulated. 

The transaction is possible, but it is not profitable for the miner to continue mining IF everyone is doing this. The Block rewards and the Miners fees are the only incentive for these miners to continue mining and if we remove this, then all miners will stop their mining activities. You have to remember that with every Halving, the Block reward is smaller and at one stage in the future, the miners will only be mining for the Miners fees, so this has to continue for this experiment to succeed. 

Dropping a few cents towards Miners fees, is an investment in the future of Bitcoin. 

So it never crossed their minds to consider another charity that did accept bitcoins or to ask people if they had suggestions for another charity? This site have the potential to do a lot of good and to stand out from the rest of the sites that are offering a similar service.

Unfortunately you cannot face the fire for decisions that are made by "management", so I will not direct my frustration with this decision, towards you.

I think it is a bad decision to abandon the "FREE" concept, linked to this site. The foundation of this site was built on that concept and one of the reasons why it succeed this long.  

Edit : Donating via this site was a One-Stop solution. It just made it easier for people who did not know about this.

The end result is the same, because you are turning fiat cash into Crypto currencies. The problem is in the way that this is done and what the long-term impact of this is going to be. The original Bitcoin <<BTC>> have been building a technology that would sustain large scale adoption, with the introduction of the second layer solutions. <Lightning Network>

Bitcoin Cash is not sustainable, because increasing "Block" sizes have limitations. So Roger Ver is not supporting a technology that will last for long. In my opinion, they do not care about this, because they have short term plans for it. <Get Free fork coins --> Hype the technology --> Sell Free coins at the highest price --> move to next fork or Alt coin> 

Governments have a lot to gain, when the price are on a constant decline. It will slow down adoption and it will also get under the skin of the current hoarders. Most people are only interested in this technology, because they want to make a lot of profit. <speculators>

I will also not be surprised if large Banks and government sanctioned hackers are involved in these orchestrated hacks on exchanges. Some of these governments can even channel the proceeds of these hacks into military funding or to be used to manipulate the price. <pushing it down with organized dumps> 

Some people put some statistics out there that transactions out of China has declined to only 1% in recent days. Most of their Bitcoin exchanges have been closed down. So they are trying their best to stop "Capital Flight" in their country. 

On the other hand, Tesla are busy with a massive Tesla manufacturing facility in China as a counter to the influence of the trade wars against the USA. 

It is all about control for them and they know they cannot control Bitcoin, so they target the centralized onramp services that are under their control.