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Bitcoin / Press / [2014-02-24] Alabama regulator to issue warning re Bitcoin exchanges
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on: February 24, 2014, 08:30:02 PM
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http://www.marketwatch.com/story/regulator-to-sound-alarm-on-bitcoin-2014-02-24?mod=wsj_share_tweetJoseph Borg, state securities administrator in Alabama and a past president of the North American State Securities Administrators Association, says he plans to issue a consumer alert Tuesday, suggesting that if consumers and investors have trouble redeeming bitcoins or cashing out of their accounts, they stop trading—or adding to their holdings on account—until issues are resolved.
Borg has been involved in a wide range of high-profile cases in his 20 years on the Alabama Securities Commission perhaps most notably pushing for the formation of the multi-state task force that ultimately shut down Stratton Oakmont, the investment firm that was the basis for the recent movie “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
That’s particularly bad news for Mt. Gox, the largest bitcoin exchange, as Borg says his move was prompted by seeing a string of correspondence showing the frustrations some Gox customers have had in trying to get their money out.
After exchanging emails or chatting with about 60 crypto-currency traders (some have already moved away from BTC), it’s clear to me that issues related to making withdrawals from one’s accounts are all too common, with some describing the money being held in “Mt. Gox jail.”
Investors describe repeatedly being asked to provide information that any reputable financial company should not have had to request, such as linked bank account numbers, amounts on account with the exchange—both in bitcoins and in dollars—and more. Expedited requests—where customers were willing to pay fees of 5% to have withdrawals processed “manually”—wound up taking weeks and were going unfilled; Borg noted that, in this day and age, any suggestion that “manual processing” is faster is alarming.
Borg says he’ll cite recent reports from a survey from CoinDesk, a leading bitcoin news/information site, showing that nearly two-thirds of Mt. Gox users were still awaiting funds; some had waited as long as three months. He mentioned numerous examples—again, in some cases after looking at emails Mt. Gox users shared with MarketWatch—in saying, “If it was an investment we were talking about, we’d be moving to shut somebody down or to make them step up and take care of business properly.…If it took you a month or two or three to get your money out of a brand-name brokerage firm, you’d be worried that something bad is going on, and that’s with a firm where you really aren’t worried that your money is gone…Their experiences, honestly, look very bad.”
More than a dozen regulators I spoke with for this column said they saw issues exactly in line with Borg’s concerns, but felt that bitcoin exchanges were out of their purview, even if the customers—the theoretical victims if an exchange were to collapse—were in their state or region. It’s largely out of the regulators’ purview because most of the operators are located offshore.
“Dealing with these exchanges should be no different than dealing with your bank or your financial institution,” Borg said, “and we would tell you that you never do business with a bank that does not know you have money on account, or that is asking for your passwords or that doesn’t seem to remember the account links you established when you started the account. Now we are saying that you should never do business with a bitcoin exchange that has the same problems, or that has to ask you how much bitcoin you’ve got.”
Borg noted that the visible issues some investors have had with certain exchanges might have investors wondering if the entire crypto-currency world is a rip-off. But he stopped far short of that kind of warning, and said it’s entirely possible that investors’ experiences could vary entirely based on how they trade bitcoin, the same way stock investors would have different experiences using a respected brokerage firm and a boiler-room shop. Gox is arguably the biggest name, but it’s clear from my discussions with traders that it is also the operation that gets the least respect, particularly among veteran traders. Mt. Gox did not respond to a request for comment.
Borg did say—and suggest that his published warning will say—that the validity of any crypto-currency “is a matter of perception.”
The big issue is not the value of the currency so much as “execution” and “settlement” of transactions.
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6
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Economy / Service Discussion / CoinLab suing MtGox for $75 milliion?
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on: May 03, 2013, 12:44:18 AM
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It didn't work out that way, according to a lawsuit filed today by Coinlab's attorneys in Washington State. Coinlab alleges that Mt. Gox has breached a contract clause which was supposed to give Coinlab exclusive access to the North American market. "Defendants have breached the exclusivity provisions of the Agreement by directly servicing customers in the United States and Canada since the Agreement took effect," the lawsuit states.
Coinlab also says Mt. Gox hasn't allowed them to transition existing U.S. and Canadian customers from Mt. Gox to Coinlab, as agreed in the contract. "Despite repeated requests to do so, Mt. Gox has failed to deliver all passwords, Yubikeys, administrative logins and any other security information required so that CoinLab may assume operation of the Bitcoin exchange services for customers in the United States and Canada."
Coinlab is demanding $75 million in damages, and even that, it says, "likely underestimates the actual damages." http://gawker.com/massive-bitcoin-business-partnership-devolves-into-75-487857656?rev=1367540238This is gonna be interesting given that there are very high profile Bitcoin people on both sides of this lawsuit (Roger Ver is a CoinLab investor). |
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9
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Bitcoin / Hardware / BFL update-29 March 2013
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on: March 29, 2013, 05:16:22 AM
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I had planned on updating everyone with a video of a board hashing here in KC tonight, but I haven't been able to get that together yet, so I'm probably going to have to push it off until tomorrow. We are targeting a start of shipment next week, but I'm not quite ready to commit to that at the moment, given our past estimates. It's imminent, though. We may miss our power targets, that's been part of the hold up... we think there's a problem with the power consumption and we're trying to figure out where it's having an issue. However, in the interests of time, we are going to be shipping what we have and going back and fixing while we are shipping.
The power is still far less than any other unit, so it's not like it's something crazy or anything, but it's not 1w/GH and we're trying to locate the source of the power drain. the rest of the 6 wafers, we have been holding off on the last 5 layers for the rest of the chips to be sure we don't need to make a tweak in the metal layer due to the power issue. I think we've pretty much settled that the power issue is NOT in the chip. If the cooling becomes an issue, like I said, we'd scale it back and ship multiple units. Worst case is 195w, but the power systems aren't rated to handle that, so we'd back off the hashrate before we'd let it get that high. We will ship the purchased hashrate regardless of what it ends up costing us. https://twitter.com/BFL_NewsObviously if they have to ship multiple units to meet the hashrate, fewer Batch 1 orders will be filled from the first 5,000 chips. And some charity's going to be 1000 BTC better off. https://forums.butterflylabs.com/content/123-bfl-offers-1000-btc-charity-if-they-miss-their-power-targets.html#comments |
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12
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Other / Meta / WTF mods? Blocking users from other users.
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on: December 30, 2012, 08:19:24 AM
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As some of you may know, there's a dispute going on between AfricanHunter and johnniewalker over a silver deal which didn't quite work out. It's pretty tedious, but what is really concerning is this claim by johnniewalker. Mods have agreed to block him from my future posts. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=131841.msg1425897#msg1425897I'd like to hear the justification for such an action by the mods given that johnniewalker could have placed AfricanHunter on ignore or the mods could have given AfricanHunter a time-out if they felt he was derailing threads in which his deal with johnniewalker wasn't relevant. Is this going to become a regular means of silencing criticism around here? |
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14
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Other / Meta / Of scammer tags, special titles and other things
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on: September 09, 2012, 11:05:45 PM
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I'd like to start by stating that I have no objections to the forum actions which have been taken against Matthew.
I would like to propose that we develop and official policy of what kind of sanctions will be taken against "scammers".
Some things to consider.
1. At what point should a "scammer" tag be applied to people who owe members of this community money and who are clearly making no effort to ensure the money owed is paid?
2. Should we have a separate tag which advises people to be cautious in dealing with people who owe money but who don't yet meet the benchmarks for applying the scammer tag?
3. Should people be stripped of any special titles - especially titles like "VIP member" which imply credibility even though they are bought - while their obligations to their users are unmet?
4. Should we disallow the promotion of other services by people who have already failed to meet their obligations in respect of one service?
I notice that people are calling for Matthew to be banned so I'll add
5. Should we ban people to whom the scammer tag has been applied?
I believe that our current system of applying scammer tags is inadequate. Some people in this community who have totally walked away from their obligations to pay their users are still without the scammer tag and still using this forum to promote other services. If the scammer tag can be applied to Matthew and pirate quickly (and I'm not suggesting that it should not have been), then there is simply no excuse for it not being applied to those who operated Bitcoinica and who continue to operate Intersango. World Bitcoin Exchange should also be wearing a scammer tag, even though Andre doesn't seek to promote his new (non-Bitcoin) ventures here.
I'm sure other people have examples of services/people who should be given the scammer tag now that we've apparently abandoned the old model for applying it.
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15
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Romney's tax returns - first Bitcoin extortion?
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on: September 05, 2012, 05:58:53 AM
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An anonymous individual or group is alleging that they have gained "all available 1040 tax forms" of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney by accessing computers in the Franklin office of the professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. "All major news media outlets are going to be sent an encrypted copy of the most recent tax years that your company had on file since you did not have them all in a convenient electronic form. The years before 2010 will be of great interest to many. If the parties interested do not want the encrypted key released to the public to unlock these documents on September 28 of this year then payment will be necessary.
The deal is quite simple. Convert $1,000,000 USD to Bitcoins (Google if if you need a lesson on what Bitcoin is) using the various markets available out in the world for buying. Transfer the Bitcoins gathered to the Bitcoin address listed below. It does not matter if small amounts or one large amount is transferred, as long as the final value of the Bitcoins is equal to $1,000,000 USD at the time when it is finished. The keys to unlock the data will be purged and what ever is inside the documents will remain a secret forever. http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/anonymous-group-allegedly-hacked-romney-tax-records-franklin-firmWhile the claim of possessing Romney's tax records may well be bullshit, I'm guessing that any extortion threat towards a Presidential candidate is going to attract serious investigation - including an attempt to identify the owner of the Bitcoin address in question. This could get interesting. |
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16
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Other / Off-topic / Does Bruce have a deal for you...
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on: September 05, 2012, 02:48:19 AM
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Wanna buy Bitcoins at USD 17.81 each? He's your man. http://buybitcoin.com/home/price/But wait, there's more. What are the best ways to buy Bitcoins?
Cash Bank Deposit (Inside the USA only)
Fedex, UPS, DHL, or Postal Mail Cash (Worldwide)
Credit Card, Debit Card, or Gift Card (Worldwide)
PayPal or other Payment Service (Worldwide)
Western Union or MoneyGram (Worldwide) But...If you send a payment by any method that is not authorized by us — as explained clearly on this FAQ page — your payment will NOT be processed.
If you attempt to deposit anything other than green paper US currency as US dollars, or…
If you attempt to make any other sort of direct account transfer to any of our accounts, or…
If you mail any sort of payment, or…
If you use any other form of payment method or system that is not explicitly permitted on this page, or…
If you send less that our required minimum purchase amount, or more than our allowed maximum purchase amount,
Your payment will NOT be processed. and…
You will NOT receive Bitcoins, nor any refund.
Our “receiving” the payment, whether it was made by mail, bank transfer, deposit, or any other method, is NOT an acknowledgment of any agreement to process your purchase order. Currently, the only approved payment methods are listed here:
Cash Bank Deposit (Inside the USA only)
Fedex, UPS, DHL, or Postal Mail Cash (Worldwide) See what he did there? The list of "best payment methods" is significantly different to the list of payment methods he accepts - and he won't refund you if you send him payment by an "unapproved" method. I just know that you'll want to check out his forum, too and learn about his other new business ventures. http://brucewagner.com/forum/ |
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Other / Meta / Long-term Offers Ponzi warning
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on: September 03, 2012, 09:44:15 PM
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I notice that Theymos has posted a warning about Ponzis at the top of the Long-term Offers forum. Can we have this extended to the other forums where people promote or discuss HYIPs or even to the whole board?
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18
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / BTC-E hacked - still unfolding
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on: July 31, 2012, 03:52:12 AM
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This is still in progress and is being discussed in the Speculation forum. I'm just posting this here because I know that many users avoid the Speculation forum and will thus be unaware that this has even happened. Essentially, someone pumped a whole heap of fake USD onto BTC-E and then started buying up the BTC (the price spiked at over $90). It is thought that those who sold their BTC will find there are no funds backing the sale. The rapid price movement also encouraged people to move BTC and real USD onto the exchange in the hope of profiting from the volatility. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=96802.0https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=96803.0 |
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / [UPDATE] World Bitcoin Exchange
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on: May 24, 2012, 10:41:08 PM
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Cross-posting from Trading for the benefit of those who'd given up on hearing anything further. Hi All
I no longer have full control over the exchange site, a update on the recovery of all exchange member funds, recent correspondence with our banks and the banking ombudsman is the bank is entitled to hold all exchange funds as they were fraudulently taken from bank accounts across the country and deposited into my exchange account, the source of the fraud activity came from Germany a i can't tell you much more than that.
This being said Chris has the only funds (assets) of the exchange, they will need to be returned to the exchange members. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=65867.msg920163#msg920163 |
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20
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Other / Meta / What caused the outage?
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on: January 02, 2012, 10:51:00 AM
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Both this forum and MtGox were down for about half an hour and have just come back online. Was Mark doing scheduled maintenance on the servers or something?
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