That's what I'm doing, too. I'm hoping IAFCU will get the transaction fees when I use my debit card to buy stuff, but I don't know if they collect the fees or if their corporate credit union gets them.

From my 12-August-2013 email update to Bitfloor users.

Today, I started receiving reports from Bitfloor users who are seeing their sub-$3,000 refunds posting to their non-IAFCU bank accounts. Some users reported the specific balances they had refunded, and they ranged in size from $250 to $2,000. The $5 processing fee from IAFCU (which Bitfloor announced on its website) was subtracted from the refund amount, according to several users.

If you are one of the people who just received a refund, I hope you will consider donating to the IAFCU (a small non-profit credit union) to help them cover the costs they've incurred by helping Bitfloor to provide refunds to users. Instructions for how to donate can be found here:

http://audenx.tumblr.com/post/56531148533/26-july-2013-bitfloor-update-and-a-note-for-those

I hope that this is the beginning of a wave of USD refunds and that all of you who have been waiting will see your funds very soon. If you still have not seen your USD refund by this Friday, please drop me a line and let me know so I can track who is still waiting on refunds.

I will continue to track the status of the following customer support issues. If you are affected by one of these issues and have had the issue resolved already, please email or PM me to let me know.

• Users unable to withdraw BTC balances
• International users unable to enter SWIFT codes
• Wire transfers sent to Bitfloor around the date of the shutdown not showing up in users' reported USD balance
• Incorrect bank account numbers entered by users on refund forms
• Users not seeing the refund request form at all when they log in to Bitfloor.com, or "Internal server error" messages when attempting to submit the form

Many of you have suggested that I post a BTC address where you can send me thank-you tips after you receive your Bitfloor refunds. For those of you who were thinking of doing this, I would really appreciate it if you showed your gratitude by tipping IAFCU. Please read on for details of how to do this.

(If you already tipped me on reddit or elsewhere — thanks! I'll be forwarding your tip on to IAFCU.)

When I spoke to Jordan Modell recently, I learned that IAFCU incurred a lot of expenses (legal, software, and personnel) beyond what they were expecting as they worked to set up Bitfloor users' new accounts and process refunds. They will continue to incur expenses as Bitfloor users start transferring their money to other financial institutions.

I asked Jordan if he could provide me a rough breakdown of the expenses they've incurred so far. He checked his records and emailed me the following:

• New software to handle Office of Foreign Assets Control checks for those without accounts: $3,500
• Call center: $1,000 and climbing
• New hires: $1,500
• Manpower: $4,000 - $5,000 (Their whole team worked double shifts on weekends, and no one took a day off in 16 days and counting.)

Because IAFCU is a small non-profit, these expenses are significant for them. I'd really love to see them at least break even for all the help they've given us (and hopefully even better than break even).

I am hoping we can raise $15,000 for IAFCU from within the Bitcoin community as a show of goodwill. I spoke to Jordan about whether they can receive donations, and he said that they can. The best way to do it is by making a contribution to the Internet Archive.

Here's what I'm proposing we do to make the fundraiser a bit public:

• If you'd like to participate, visit http://archive.org/donate/index.php and select your donation method of choice (they welcome BTC, but other USD payment options are there, too)
• (This is important) send an email to donations@archive.org. In it, include the amount you donated and request that your donation be used to cover IAFCU expenses. Brewster Kahle's assistant will be on the lookout for these messages to make sure the funds get where you want them to go.
• If you'd like me to count your contribution in a public tally showing how much we've raised for IAFCU, BCC me on your email to donations@archive.org so I know how much you gave.

And thanks!

My full refund (over $3,000) posted to my IAFCU account today. At least two other users, to my knowledge, have reported receiving their refunds, too.

That is a great update! Thanks for capturing all those details. Makes writing my update email easier

Here's a bit about Internet Archive Federal Credit Union (IAFCU) from my June 7th email update, which explains why they're interested in helping Bitcoin users and Bitcoin businesses affected by bank antagonism:

"Some of you might be interested in watching the talk Brewster and Jordan gave at Bitcoin 2013 in which they laid out the value proposition of credit unions and explained their interest in helping Bitcoin businesses. The portion of the talk that’s Bitcoin-specific starts at minute 4:15, and the most pertinent part of the talk to our situation is from about 10:50 to 19:00."

For those who haven't seen it, Roman just posted the update we've all been waiting for on bitfloor.com:

"We are pleased to announce that we are ready to start returning USD funds. Please follow the instructions on the withdraw page. If your account balance is over 3000 USD, you must first open an account with IAFCU and then provide your IAFCU account number."

!!

Bitfloor update email for 10-June-2013

Good news at last!

I spoke today with Jordan Modell from Internet Credit Union. He was able to confirm that Roman has been in touch with ICU for a few weeks and has been working with them to set up a way to return USD funds to customers. Here are the key points:

• After conferring with their counsel, ICU confirmed that they can legally open an account for Bitfloor. They have done so. Bitfloor's account with ICU is now open.
• ICU and Bitfloor are setting up ACH transfer capabilities for the account. Jordan should be able to confirm by Friday this week whether ACH into and ACH out of the account is set up and working.
• The main delay at this point is that ICU has to wait to hear back from their counsel whether they need to follow "Know Your Customer" guidelines for each of Bitfloor's depositors. Jordan said it might take as long as until the end of next week (6/21) to hear back from their counsel on this issue.

To elaborate on point #3: Even though Roman knows who most of us are (because anyone who requested ACH verification from Bitfloor already submitted photo ID), ICU is trying to find out if they need to separately request and review identity verification information for all of us, too. Ideally, ICU would like to avoid collecting this information about Bitfloor's customers, if that's legal. However, if their counsel advises them to collect this information, it shouldn't amount to much more than some additional paperwork or a brief phone call for each of us — not too much of a hassle, in my opinion, given how long we have waited already for refunds.

Overall, Jordan sounds very motivated to help with this situation. He asked me to follow up with him later this week so he could give me an update.

I share your total frustration with whatever bank is involved. Just to be clear, though, there hasn't been official confirmation that the bank who closed Bitfloor's account is Capital One. Capital One's name comes up a lot through user speculation in reddit and bitcointalk, but so do two other banks' names. All that I can tell from user comments is that it seems that different users encountered different banks' names associated with Bitfloor in the course of getting money on and off the exchanges, depending on the transfer methods they used. I don't know why that's the case. Could be that Bitfloor was using Capital One P2P payments for some purposes, but holding its main balance in another bank. (But again — that's pure speculation.)

Just so there's no misunderstanding, and in case someone reading this didn't read my full email update — my opinion right now based on all the available, credible information and the lawyers I've been in touch with is that it is still reasonable to be cautiously optimistic. We would be wise to avoid starting any legal proceedings prematurely. If any ONE of us decides to start a class action lawsuit and it turns out that Bitfloor was close to recovering and returning the funds, that will shoot us ALL in the collective foot and lose us all a lot of money unnecessarily.

So please don't consider me to be rabble-rousing. I do NOT want a lawsuit. I'm just trying to be organized, considering that so many people are affected, and all I want is to see everyone's funds returned, mine included.

I'm working on tracking the few available facts for all the people who sent me their email addresses through bitcointalk and reddit. In case you're not on the list, here's the first of those emails.

Same here. I've also never received any email response to the 3 support emails I've sent to Bitfloor in the last 3 weeks.

Hi everyone,

First, let me say that taking expensive legal action is the last thing I want to do. I want to give Roman and Bitfloor the benefit of the doubt that they're working as hard as possible to return USD funds to affected customers.

However, given the worrying scarcity of communication from Bitfloor about the status of USD balance withdrawals, I'm trying to get organized. If a class action lawsuit becomes the only option for recovering any portion of USD funds owed, someone needs to figure out who has been affected and how much is at stake.

I started a reddit thread to this effect, and as of this morning 102 redditors have reported to me that they're waiting on a total of $337,000. I have collected email addresses from as many of these people as have felt comfortable providing an address, and I am in touch with a few lawyers to figure out what options we all may have if we need to take legal action. I will be providing updates via BCC'ed email to those who have provided me with an address.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1dqz4v/i_have_pmed_15_other_redditors_with_bitfloor/

If you would like to share your current USD balance owed and your email address, I will add you to my list. You can contact me via PM on reddit or PM me here. The more people respond, the more easily we'll be able to attract a good lawyer, because the potential upside for them from the case will be higher.

Again, legal action is NOT what I want to take. Every bit of that legal expense will eat into the amount we hope to recover. But I want to be prepared if that ends up being our only option.

Good luck to everyone hoping to recover funds.

Edit: Arstechnica piece quotes a Bitfloor spokesman as follows:


Later, the article was amended and identified the spokesman as Bitfloor attorney John Snyder, who wrote in an email statement:

May be of interest to those of a certain attitude toward politics, personal freedom, and seafaring: /r/xnation

How do I take advantage of the sale? The default bid price on the "buy visits" form is 0.00013 BTC/visitor, so if I try to buy 100,000 visitors, the site prompts me to pay 13 BTC, not 1 BTC.

Sorry to see you go, and thanks so much for your input! I'll PM you when I'm a bit further along.

Regarding the issue of scoring — my untested instinct is that flexibility in the scoring will be useful to users. There are plenty of types of highly structured or very simple trades that I can imagine where -1/0/+1 scoring would be totally appropriate. But for other types of trades that have multiple elements of trust (do I trust this person's ability to deliver on time? to deliver to spec? to communicate clearly? to be courteous in interactions?), more flexible scoring could allow for more nuanced interpretation.

If the protocol can support both, I imagine it will allow more widespread usage than if it rigidly supports a single scoring methodology.

This doesn't prevent any specific user or community — say CIYAM Open's community — from only considering +1/0/-1 scores for the purposes of its own, community-specific trust criteria.

Another untested instinct I have is that interpreting the trust data in the blockchain should be considered a separate process from getting that data into the blockchain (I put something to this effect in the FAQ section on my pitch). For users concerned about specific patterns of scoring that "game the system" (like your example of getting 10 +5 fake ratings versus 50 +1 fake ratings), those users can define what types of scoring data carry weight for their personal decision-making. Scoring histories that are acceptably trustworthy to some users might not be trustworthy to others. I think users should be expected to consider what algorithm/criteria they use to interpret the trust data; it keeps them responsible, rather than encouraging blind trust in a single number.

Correct. I haven't yet written a detailed protocol specification. Just to reiterate: this thread is for the purpose of brainstorming an idea with the benefit of other Bitcoin users' and developers' feedback. My goal in this thread is to gain insight that can help me start experimenting with some different protocol specifications.


No, I don't expect lots of people to simply recognize and adhere to a new standard for scoring trust. I do hope, however, that in time I can build a proof of concept, gather a few alpha users, etc., and then try to grow it from there.


Agreed. Again, this idea is currently in the early concept phase. Version 0.01. Or 0.00000001, if you prefer ;-)

Yes!

Ideally, I'd like to see the AudenX.com website develop into a showcase of how such an open protocol can work, and of how easy to use it could be. Whether the protocol that ultimately emerges requires users to send outputs to a certain address or not, I imagine there will still be a place in that ecosystem where users will need products (web, mobile, etc.) that give them easy interfaces to the trust info on blockchain. Long-term, I'm hoping AudenX can offer products like that. Near-term, AudenX could just be a testing ground to get the wheels turning in peoples' heads. There are already a ton of ideas I have that presuppose the existence of this trust data — but the protocol needs to exist first, and I need to find a group of people interested in using it.

Ahah! Proof. Thanks.