I hope I'm not breaking the rules by starting a thread criticizing Seals.  In fact, I think we need one.  I will note I usually defend Seals from fucking retards who criticize it as rigged and other bullshit.  In any event, I do not believe this thread violates rules.  It is not a thread promoting Seals, but a thread for criticism.

If anything, consider this a "quarantine thread" where attacking Seals is on-topic in this thread only, and idiots attacking Seals for no good reason can be banished here.

DDoS is nothing new for Seals.  Seals has repeatedly dealt with this shit in the past.  And almost always made it up to the players.

Anyway, this post is basically my suggestion that Seals deserves a "Seals sucks" thread to quarantine this crap from the thread about the actual site.

Why the fuck not?

This is sort of prompted by the existence of this thread on a specific service called the Islamic Bank of Bitcoin but probably deserves its own thread.

Islam, depending on how you count, is either the largest or the second-largest religion in the world, following Christianity, and indubitably the largest expanding religion in the world.

Islam has a number of interesting rules relating to money (actually somewhat resembling rules Christianity used to follow).  Essentially, interest and gambling are haram (forbidden).  However, the loan service in the thread I linked loans out Bitcoin, and receives payment back in the form of an identical amount of Bitcoin.  This, at least on its surface, avoids the Islamic rule against interest, even though generally, Bitcoin is going to be worth a lot more when you get it back then it was when you loaned it.

This strikes me as potentially violating the rule that gambling is also haram.  However, if this rule were interpreted as strictly as this, it would forbid investing in stocks, bonds, pretty much anything that might increase or decrease in value.  Since many Muslims do these things, and as far as I know, no prominent cleric has denounced them, it seems this is, at least possibly, entirely consistent with Islamic law.

So, my idea, to get to it, is this.  The Islamic world is one of the biggest in the world.  Countries where Islam is the primary religion sometimes have exactly the kind of fiat currency problems that Bitcoin addresses.  A few fatwas (simply statements from a cleric about a religious question) that Bitcoin isn't haram would really open up these markets.

As far as I can tell, the use of Bitcoin is actually entirely consistent with Islam.  It's a bigger market than China.

Anyway, I'll just leave this here.

If you happen to know a prominent Islamic cleric, or know someone who knows one, consider posing this question to them and inviting a fatwa.  Note:  Islam is not hierarchical in structure, as such, and there is no "Pope" of Islam.  Therefore, an opinion would really only be binding or even of interest to followers of that particular school.  

This motherfucker.  

What would he think about it and why?

This story discusses the pirateat40/Trendon Shavers scam and the SEC's lawsuit against him, which is surprisingly little discussed here considering its importance.

The Bitcoin is a phenomenon of far-reaching economic libertarianism, which its proponents claim to be a currency, a purely digital one that is not backed or issued by any national government. Last week, it obtained significant recognition as a currency, though not in the most favourable context.

Apparently for the first time, a court has concluded, persuasively, that the Bitcoin is indeed money – but in a prosecution for fraud.

In 2011, Trendon T. Shavers of McKinney, Tex., who has used the Internet moniker pirateat40, started a company called First Pirate Savings and Trust, later changed to the less provocative name Bitcoin Savings and Trust. He promised an extraordinarily high interest rate – up to 1 per cent per day – and attracted 66 investors from across the United States. Their holdings were in Bitcoin units.

A year ago, BTCST defaulted. The Securities and Exchange Commission commenced a civil lawsuit alleging fraud – more particularly, that Mr. Shavers had set up a Ponzi scheme, paying the investors their interest from the proceeds of new investments in the company.

In a preliminary motion, Mr. Shavers argued that he could not have committed securities fraud. There was no “investment of money” to fit him into the terms of the Securities Act, he said, because Bitcoin units are not money.

More at the link.

I'm deleting my OP in this thread.  I'll just change what I said to being the previous thread is locked, but the subject is going to come up again and so there should be a thread about it.

Created in the Newbies forum because, well, I CAN.  Also to see if some humorless fuck of a nadless, neckbeard mod in his mom's basement (whose dick is orange from jerking it with Cheeto fingers) deletes it for no goddamn reason at all.

Hypothesis:  the grumpiness of posts in this forum increases as a linear function of the decrease of the price of Bitcoin, especially when there is no readily obvious reason for the latter.

Must have WOT rating or trusted escrow.

Introduced in this thread and this thread.

I probably should have given it a little more time, but decided to take a gamble since I hadn't seen one of these sites offer $50 MPs before.  Sent to the address given with this transaction.  The transaction before that to the same address is by user bithanz, who purchased hours before me.

Considering it's the very day the site "opened" and the site simply pockets the BTC, never confirms receiving it, doesn't respond to email asking what's up, and most importantly, doesn't send the MP, it looks like this one is a scam right out of the gate.

Evidence this thread:  Bitcoin stealing software! Finally released

This thread will probably be removed very fast so do yourself a favor and act fast! I will NOT be re-uploading this again.

Read the following BEFORE downloading our software. ( DO NOT ABUSE PLEASE )
 
Newest from our developers. This is for educational purposes only! SO DO NOT ABUSE! IT IS MEANT FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO DOUBLE THEIR BITCOIN, ONLY WORKS ONCE PER ADRESS! PLEASE WE ARE NOT HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DAMAGE YOU CAUSE AGAINST THE PERSON YOU STEAL BITCOINS FROM!
  
Now, after you've read the above, you can download the software.
  
Remember, it's meant for educational purposes only. Not for you to earn alot of bitcoins!!

Pretty much a scam whether it's really Bitcoin stealing software or, more likely, some kind of malware to be downloaded by suckers.

I'd say so.  Note:  other exchanges, including the one I use, Coinbase, have exactly the problem that Gox has.

Coinbase is not licensed as a money transmitter in any state, nor is it registered as a money services business with the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. I applaud the company for dispensing with these formalities because, since it is only selling a cryptographic token and not a financial instrument, such registration and licensure is not legally required.

From this February 19, 2013 article by Jon Matonis.

Does anyone know which exchanges have actually licensed as money transmitters?  It appears that this will be a necessary step for exchanges that do not want to end up with their assets seized or whose principals do not want to end up in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

EDIT:  Unsurprisingly, the confirms did eventually show up, but I'm still curious as to why the Bitcoin-Qt client behaves as described in the post.  Anyone here have a clue why it does?

This question pertains to this transaction (txid 002fa752ba66602fa3cfa8b60b2d1094e057a99011e46881b196a2b75cda864f):

Code:

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

It's a 2.5 BTC transaction between addresses 12Mhqv7s1W6yCD1fGQCZ8URGG2urv4xL29 and 1JHvM69LhkJPUFjDipfdtWMxEEpHUmqTLbj with a .00008192 transaction fee (a wallet and a Coinbase account).  I made the transaction, then sold the Bitcoins for ACH earlier today.  

The reason for the unusual transaction fee size is I was testing the free transaction relay policy earlier, and it was seemingly not working.  I'd added the node for the policy by using the commandline flag -addnode=173.242.112.53, and changed the default transaction fee to .00008192 BTC which is the fee for that server.

Now, I should have changed it back at that point, but instead, I gave up on it and went on to other things and forgot about it.  I didn't think about it again until, prompted by the price of Bitcoin lately, I did a small cashout to Coinbase and sold the BTC for USD.  I noticed it was a bit odd it didn't prompt me for a transaction fee, as it usually does.  However, the transaction seemed to be taking longer than usual to confirm, so I checked the details, and was surprised to notice the transaction as 2.500008192.

Sure enough, it had finally used that transaction fee, despite having refused to use it for every other transaction I had tried.  I also noticed it was relayed by 184.152.8.228, and seems to have propagated through the network.

To make sure, I used Blockchain's pushtx page and pasted the raw transaction into it, and got the "Error Pushing Transaction Error Pushing. Transaction already exists" message that indicates the transaction already went through.

So now, the questions.

1)  Why did Bitcoin-Qt not use the free transaction relay, or the default transaction fee I set in the Preferences menu, until this transaction?
2)  Why does it not seem to have used 173.242.112.53, the free transaction relay node, for the transaction?
3)  When is it likely to confirm, given these circumstances?  (I'd assume after some possibly substantial delay, but this question might answer itself before anyone answers.)

I sent another 2.5 BTC to Coinbase to cover the sale in the interim while I wait, but it's rather curious (and inconvenient) that using this transaction system didn't work when I was testing it, but then suddenly decided to "work" the moment it would inconvenience me.  It Bitcoin-Qt broken?

I'd kind of like to actually use the free transaction relay policy for micro-transactions that I don't care when they get there, but am more willing to pay the recommended fee for "real money."

It seems the site is understandably reluctant to name someone as a scammer without evidence of intentional fraud.  That's reasonable, since it could be defamatory to call someone a scammer without proof.

However, people investing in something are probably more interested in whether or not a certain individual or business pays, not necessarily whether they're a scammer.

Why not have a value-neutral term just for people who have defaulted for whatever reason?  There seem to be plenty of people who just stupidly got involved in blatant scams like pirate, and I'd avoid doing business with people that naive and incompetent even if they have the purest of motives.

DEFAULT would be a nice tag, and all it represents is that they owe money and are not paying it back in a satisfactory manner.  Also, the DEFAULT tag could go away if the debts are satisfied, unlike a SCAMMER tag, which is forever.

EDIT:  apologies in advance if this is already a recurring subject or if I'm discussing it on the wrong subforum.