This site currently is one of the busiest bitcoin websites, yet it hamstrings bitcoin by catering to scammers and trolls.

1) It should be a matter of policy that anyone making false/unprovable accusations against another member be banned for trolling. That's all it is and it should never be encouraged. This assumption that everyone is an idiot, and one member decides he is some kind of cape-wearing hero that must save the world only creates a toxic environment that hinders commerce.

2) The ridiculous "trust" system allows anyone to troll anyone, often with fake + and - comments. Examples being that much of the positive trust is left by one user with multiple accounts, while the same users troll competitors with negative feedback.

3) Nobody should be able to "rate" another user without having done business with them directly, and it would not be too difficult to create a system where two or more users agree to a transaction and allow themselves to rate each other. This record could then be publicly displayed.

[New in the box, with all original accessories.]

I have a new 70-200mm f/2.8g professional lens for sale that includes Nikon USA warranty card. This lens is great for sports, weddings, wildlife, etc. Very fast auto-focus and super sharp image quality.

New in the box, with all original accessories.

Recommended for a buyer located within USA. International shipping extra.

Note that Nikon has replaced this model with an updated and more expensive version, but it only offers a benefit if used with D5 camera.

Details:
http://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/camera-lenses/2185/af-s-nikkor-70-200mm-f%252f2.8g-ed-vr-ii.html

Ask Price: 2.0 BTC

I scan Kindle for freebies and this popped up today, free over the weekend. The title is "Biosingularity" and it's written by Mason Vigil. Definitely a different take on the theory of evolution and life. Many books on this topic are creationists bashing evolution, or evolution proponents saying creationists are idiots. This one actually avoids doing that and offers scientific and philosophical ideas that were new to me. Wish it was a bit longer because it's a very interesting topic.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MUBNQLY

I have high quality US leads that can be used for email marketing (opt-in). Records are 30 days or newer and include first name, last name, email, opt-in time stamp. Data is verified by requiring users to open an email and click a link. They also agree to receive promotional email from third parties.

This is not the junk you get on ebay, it's not co-reg (also junk) and it is not harvested. List is will be scrubbed and de-duped, ensuring the best quality possible.

List price is below, per 1,000 records:

$15.00: 10,000 - 24,999
$10.00: 25,000 - 49,999
$8.50: 50,000 - 99,999
$7.00: 100,000 - 149,999

Minimum buy is 10K records, which is $150. Minimum list increment is 1K. If you need larger quantities of 1M or more we can discuss privately.

You can send email using any number of email services like mailchimp, aweber, amazon smtp, getresponse, and such. With the right promotion you will make back the cost of the list and earn a profit within the first email drop.

If you would like to make a purchase, please contact me by PM.

[get paid 0.50% per month]

Buy into my hard money lending pool with bitcoins and get paid 0.50% per month of the USD value of your principle for as long as you want.

Cash out some or all of your principle any time by requesting a withdrawal and your principle will be returned within 10 business days of your request.

(Please note that there is an initial 30 day period after you deposit where an early withdrawal will result in a 5% penalty. Any time after this 30 day period there is no penalty for withdrawing your principle.)

This is a long term opportunity for people who are interested in having a steady monthly income rather than big one-time gains. If you are looking for big gains in a shorter time, please check out the link in my sig.

What is a hard money loan?

A hard money loan is typically obtained by real estate developers to fund the construction and short-term costs of a new project. The funds you contribute are secured by commercial real estate. I make loans for 6 to 12 months depending on the project, and the loan rates are usually high and include fees.

Is there a minimum deposit?

Yes, the minimum is currently 10 BTC. There is no maximum deposit amount.

How are monthly payments calculated?

If you decide to deposit into my lending pool, once the bitcoin transaction is confirmed I will convert them to USD and inform you of the exchange rate. It's around $460 now, so if you did 10 bitcoins at $460 that means $4,600 is your principle, and you will be paid (4600 * 0.5%) = $23 per month for as long as you keep your principle in the lending pool.

How are monthly payments made?

Payments will be made via bitcoin at whatever the current BTC-USD exchange rate happens to be every last Friday in the month.

Payment Schedule:

05/27/2016
06/24/2016
07/29/2016
etc...

Your initial payment after you first deposit will be made on the following payment cycle. Current month deposits would receive first payment on next month's pay date, but that first payment will include a pro-rated amount for the previous month.

For example if you deposited on 05/13/2016 you have 14 days to the payment date, so your initial payment would include an extra 0.23% along with the 0.50% for the 06/24/2016 payment, a total of 0.73% for the initial payment.

How risky is this?

This is a low-risk way earn a steady monthly income from extra bitcoins you have laying around because the loans are secured by real estate and default is highly unlikely. Your money is at greater risk sitting in a bank because inflation erodes your buying power by about 3-5% per year (in USA).

This is Nikon's best DX lens and the only professional DX lens available. It is designed for cameras like the D3300, D5500, D7200. You can use it on FX cameras like the D800 but it will be cropped to DX.

Brand new in box with warranty card. Nikon USA model which is serviceable in the USA. Grey market imports from china cannot be serviced or repaired by Nikon USA, so if they break you are SOL.

Price: 4.0 BTC shipped within USA.

Will bitcoins ever sell for $1,000 USD or more again? Possibly, but it's not likely to happen as a reaction to halving. The supply of bitcoins in circulation is not changing, and if miners jump ship that is a strike against bitcoins not something that would warrant a price increase.

The only thing that halving the reward to btc miners will do is make mining half as appealing. In fact, if you think about it, it's not a very good system because the more people using bitcoin, the more you need miners...but the miners get paid less and less as time progresses.

At the very least, as compensation from mining decreases, a minimum network transaction fee should be imposed and it should increase proportionally to difficulty to ensure that all miners receive a predictable and steady flow of bitcoins for the resources they provide.

Regulations within the USA are responsible for a systematic degradation of America as a country, mainly from an economic perspective but also from others.

Understand that America's overall government structure contains three distinct branches, each with equal authority - legislative (congress/senate), judicial (federal courts/ supreme court), and executive (president and presidential cabinet).

The US Constitution states what powers each of the three branches of government have, and that's a hard limit. One branch cannot take on the power of another branch...but the vile and corrupt politicians have found an exploit that they've been relying on for decades to circumvent the constitutional delegation of governing authority - regulatory agencies.

Normally when the federal government wants to pass a new law, it must go through a legislative process initiated in congress, voted on in the senate and then signed into effect by the president. The legislative process ensures that all citizens who are represented within the government have a chance to weigh in on any new law that will have a national scope, but due to the nature of partisan politics, passing laws is not nearly as simple as the 3-step overview makes it seem.

Congress circumvents the legislative process by delegating some of its powers to regulatory agencies. These government agencies are autonomous, not part of any of the 3 branches, and have the power to not only create regulations that have the force of law, but also the authority to enforce the regulations they create.

This is a HUGE conflict of interest, as now the agency can invent a regulation AND enforce it. Congress can exert some influence by tweaking the amount of money they are budgeted, but often times these regulatory agencies get to act with impunity.

Regulations are often "bought" by big companies or wealthy individuals that lobby for a certain regulation to be passed. The reason they do this is to lock out competitors or to make it expensive for smaller startups to compete. This is a form of cronyism, and it is highly toxic to a country's economy. A big, bloated government bureaucracy is what enables cronyism, and as more regulatory agencies pop-up the quid pro quo continues.

Regulations and the anonymous, unelected employees of said agencies are wielding a power they have no right to...and likely in EU countries a similar problem exists. Laws that make sense and are necessary can and should be passed properly through the legislative process - ALL regulations are unconstitutional, and ALL regulations should be outlawed. Doing this will allow individual prosperity to return.

Economic theory is often full of supposition and seemingly profound ideas that turn out to be wrong, and this is one of the leading reasons that there are so many misconceptions about what a currency is and is not.

Firstly, bitcoins are not a currency. Bitcoins, precious metals and other items with little or no intrinsic value but high prices are currency derivatives. They derive their value from actual currencies, and require a market to price them against said currencies.

Currencies are debt notes which are guaranteed by the issuing country's treasury (as opposed to the person who spent the currency). One US dollar has a value based upon the productivity of the USA and its people, and the assurance that the US treasury will honor the relative buying power that 1 USD represents in the marketplace. This "middleman" guarantor of value, the treasury, is what allows currency to have value, to be spent and for the gears of an economy to turn.

Without the guarantee of the treasury, every single currency transaction would depend upon the spender honoring the debt that they incur when they present the note, and the seller would not be able to liquidate the note with a 3rd party...the seller would be completely at the mercy of the buyer to repay the debt.

There is no exchange that sets the value for USD or other currencies like there is for bitcoins and gold. You might say forex, but forex is simply exchanging currencies at their intrinsic values; the discrepancies in currency values is a function of the country that issued said currency.

Bitcoins are not issued by any entity, neither are precious metals. They have almost no intrinsic value, that is, a value other than monetary. Oil, for example, has a high intrinsic value because it is a fuel as well as a critical chemical for all petroleum products like plastics. If the CBOE vanished, oil would still have a high value without a market price to index against.

Compare that to bitcoins, precious metals or any other currency derivative, all of which require a market to price their value. Without it, every transaction happens in a vacuum. Some guy may sell 1 oz for $1,000 while another may sell the same amount for $400. Neither is right nor wrong, it's entirely arbitrary.

With USD being the "world's currency", most currency derivatives are priced in USD...and here is the thing that people gloss over. If the USD were to collapse due to a catastrophic economic meltdown, any item whose value is indexed against the USD will also become worthless.

If we were to graph this event with gold, currently around $1200 / 1 oz, the market value of gold would sharply rise, almost vertically on the graph, then suddenly plateau and fall to zero. It wouldn't matter if you sold at the peak, because both the currency and the asset that was indexed against the currency are both at or near zero.

It's important to understand that there is no such thing as a decentralized currency, because for a currency to have its own intrinsic value, it needs a credible authority to provide a legal framework - the rule of law - against which standards for commerce are established. There also needs to be mechanisms for enforcement of said laws.

[Who are you?]

Who are you?

My name is Joe, and I am both an entrepreneur and investor currently residing in New York. I earn my personal income via the stock market as well as businesses that I own.

What is the investing opportunity?

I wanted to find a better, smarter way of investing rather than just hoping stock reports were accurate, so I created an algo signal system by myself using my own ideas about trading that have proven to work as I implemented them manually. The opportunity to the investor is to pool their BTC together with mine to earn a high passive return in a relatively short period of time.

Is this risky or safe?

It's a moderate risk, high reward investment. More details on potential risks are outlined below.

How does it work?

My algo trading system scans a defined set of equities and derivatives for potential trades, but it does not buy or sell automatically. I review the findings and manually decide whether or not to open a position based on my reading of the market's current condition.

How can I invest?

To keep things simple for you and for me, I am offering investors the option to buy slots in fixed return investments of various term lengths. The list below shows what is currently being offered:

Term / Interest / Max Slots / Cost per Slot
-------------------------------------------------
03 mo / 11% / 100 / 5 BTC
06 mo / 23% / 100 / 5 BTC
12 mo / 47% / 100 / 5 BTC

Each slot purchased will result in one lump sump of principle + interest at the end of the term you choose. You can buy as many slots as you want, or mix and match.

All investments are subject to early repayment at my discretion, meaning that I may repay you the full amount before the term is completed.

Investment Details

Technical:

• Working Currency = USD
• ROI calculated on USD Cost Basis value NOT BTC
• Term length is 3-12 months
• No early withdrawal
• Lump sum repayment of interest+principle at end of term

Start of Term:
The start of the investment term will be the first business day following the confirmation of bitcoins received. I will respond to you privately with the conversion rate of BTC to USD for your deposit, because all trades occur in USD. This same conversion rate will be used when determining how many BTC you are repaid.

Calculation of Return on Investment Principle:

(Term Interest Rate * USD Cost Basis) + USD Cost Basis = Repayment Amount

Example:

For 1 investment slot at on 6 month term BTC basis of $450:

Initial Investment Calculation:
5 BTC * $450 = $2,250 USD Cost Basis

Repayment Calculation:
(23% * $2,250) + $2,250 = $2,767.50

Profit: $517.50

Slot Availability:
I cannot accept more investment than the slots presented because I am using my own bitcoins to cover any potential losses. This way I can ensure that investors are paid as agreed.

*** Early withdrawals will not be available. You must commit the full term length to participate. ***

Repayment:
Upon maturity, you will be repaid the equivalent in bitcoins according to the calculation above at the repayment address you provide. The payment is made in one lump sum and will include your principle + interest. Just to reiterate - the ROI is NOT calculated based on the BTC you deposit, it is calculated based on the USD value of the BTC at the time of your deposit.

Primary Risks

In terms of investing, risk refers to the maximum amount that you stand to lose in a worst-case scenario. My investments are always risk-managed and well-defined, which means that it is not possible for any single trade to simply take you from 100% to 0%. Most trades risk up to 20% in order to deliver the type of returns being offered.

I am also covering the investments with my own BTC reserves, but even so, this is not a zero-risk investment. Here are some risks to consider...

Bitcoin Price Rise:
Because the deposit will be converted to and traded in USD, people who participate will have their cost basis set at the current spot price for bitcoins at the time of their deposit. If the price of BTC goes up during the term of this investment, you'd miss out on potential gains that could exceed the return you'll be getting from this investment. On the flipside, you are protected if the BTC price drops, and in fact, you'll amplify your gains as you'll end up with a lot more bitcoins at the end of the term should the price of BTC drop during the term.

Catastrophic Stock Market Event:
What happened in 2008-2009 can certainly happen again, and there's no way of knowing when the market may crash. If it does, you may only receive your principle as repayment (i.e. break even).

Unforeseen Risks:
Usually it's the things we don't think of that screw us, which is why I want to keep this arrangement as simple and as straight-forward as possible. I do not feel like there are any risks that I am not considering.


Common Concerns

- How do I know you won't take my money and run?

You don't, but I've been around since the early days of bitcoin and I have no intention of leaving. I've been a registered member of this forum since 2011 and I have no desire to bad-rep my only account on here.

- Will you share all kinds of personal info with me about you?

No, I will not, because if I did that then you'd have to provide me with the same information about yourself. Once we go down that road, we'd have to do this whole thing a lot more formally to be compliant with any relevant investing regulations. This would exclude most people on here from participation.

- What assurance do I have that you will pay as agreed?

This is a mutually beneficial arrangement for all involved. If I don't follow the agreement, I'll blow my credibility and give up a tremendous opportunity. That is why I am limiting deposits to that which I have the ability to cover with my own funds.

- Most bitcoin "opportunities" are ponzi scams. Yours is too.

Well, the first part of that is entirely true...but the second part is not.

All deposits will be invested legitimately in the US stock market. I've been relying on this for my own personal income for over a year now so there is no change to my routine. This is what I do "full time"...but regardless of what I say, this goes back to the trust thing.

- Is 3 months the shortest term?

Yes. I thought about offering shorter terms but it would require me to take irresponsibly risky positions that do not meet my basic risk management criteria. Investing is more about long term growth rather than short spurts of profit, so I recommend considering longer terms. They also pay better.

Any other questions, please feel free to ask, either by replying to this thread or by contacting me on here privately. I usually respond within 24 hours.

Selling off a brand new, tested mining rig that averages 2.2 GHashes / sec or 1.3 BTC per day (24 hours) on Deepbit. The total power consumption is roughly 550W per unit and there are 3 units. It is safe to run them off a single electrical circuit.

Unit Specs:

- Black 4U Case
- 2 x 120mm front fans
- 2 x 80mm Rear fans
- 2 x MSI Radeon 6950 (flashed to 6970)
- 630W Power Supply (80 Plus)
- 2 GB RAM
- AMD Sempron 140 CPU
- MSI "Military Class" Motherboard

- DOES NOT INCLUDE HARD DRIVE OR OPTICAL DRIVE
- It is recommended to use a USB drive for the OS.
- The individual unit will average around 730 MH/s, more if you overclock the core.
- GPU temps hover around 85 degrees C

Tested with Windows 7, Latest AMD Driver, MSI Aferburner (set GPU core and voltage to 6970 defaults; memory at 800 Mhz), GUI Miner

Price for one unit:
$900.00

Price for entire rig (3 units):
$2,550.00

Price includes shipping within USA.
Paypal is accepted and preferred.

Selling off a brand new, tested mining rig that averages 2.2 GHashes / sec or 1.3 BTC per day (24 hours) on Deepbit. The total power consumption is roughly 550W per unit and there are 3 units. It is safe to run them off a single electrical circuit.

Unit Specs:

- Black 4U Case
- 2 x 120mm front fans
- 2 x 80mm Rear fans
- 2 x MSI Radeon 6950 (flashed to 6970)
- 630W Power Supply (80 Plus)
- 2 GB RAM
- AMD Sempron 140 CPU
- MSI "Military Class" Motherboard

- DOES NOT INCLUDE HARD DRIVE OR OPTICAL DRIVE
- It is recommended to use a USB drive for the OS.
- The individual unit will average around 730 MH/s
- GPU temps hover around 85 degrees C

Tested with Windows 7, Latest AMD Driver, MSI Aferburner (set GPU and voltage to 6970 defaults; memory at 800 Mhz), GUI Miner

Price for one unit:
$900.00

Price for entire rig (3 units):
$2,550.00

Price includes shipping within USA.
Paypal is accepted and preferred.

Here's what I did, and I know I'm not the first to do this but since I can only post here I thought I'd share:

1) Put your bitcoin data folder and client on a USB key. It doesn't really need to be encrypted, but you can encrypt the filesystem of the USB key if you're really paranoid.

u:\bitcoin - put client in here
u:\bitcoin\data - put your wallet data in here

2) Use an archiver like RAR to compress your local copy of the data folder into a backup file, and set a password on the archive for some extra protection. Keep this file on your computer in case you ever lose the USB key.

3) Create a simple script (for windows) to make your bitcoin client portable. Copy and paste this into a text file:

Code:

@echo off
start /B bitcoin.exe -datadir=./data

Save the text file as "start btc.cmd" and always use that to start bitcoin, so the client uses the directory on your USB key for data. Make sure that your system is not hiding file extensions for known types or you will end up with "start btc.cmd.txt". You may need to disable hiding of file extensions within "Folder Options" in WIndows Explorer.


That's all you need to do. You can now access your wallet on any computer, although I would avoid running this on unsecured public computers.
Don't run the bitcoin client unless you need to...i.e. to check your balance or to send money.

Simply put: online gambling. Ever since the USA banned online gambling with real money the industry has been biding its time, waiting for a new way to get people playing again. Bitcoins are the perfect currency for online gambling and with people using BTC as poker chips, they'd convert regular currency to BTC and leave it and rather than cash it out. The "casinos" would operate most optimally if they stick to a pure BTC economy, rather than attempting to sell their earnings. Being "bitcoin rich" could actually be a good thing.