that's not "clear" nate... that's opaque.

Thanks! I hope to get more into the futures trading once a good exchange is setup...

clear as the mud on my boots...

I have been trading for a few months and just encountered my first scammer (luke-jr - Luke Dashjr luke@dashjr.org). Beware, he's also operating a mining pool which is setup as a front to scam miners out of their profits. This guy will try every devious method to lie, cheat, and steal.

That is not a defense. All the quotes are in the public record. You made the deal, and now you reneged.

I'm charging you 7% interest on your debt starting today. The longer you refuse to pay, the greater your debt will be.

I find it hilarious you are now attempting to run a mining pool called "Eligius" (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Eligius). That looks like another crazy Luke Dashjr scam.

A pool depends entirely on trusting the admin to accurately report the amount of work produced by the pool and distribute payouts fairly. Why would anyone trust you to deal fairly when you won't live up to your obligations?

Given that your pool ignores transactions that most other miners accept and the complicated payout / fee structure you've created, it looks a way to scam miners into doing free work for your own benefit.

00:15    luke-jr    I certainly expect that it will go near $1.25
00:15    luke-jr    just not over
00:15    blarzong    luke-jr: i will take that bet
00:17    luke-jr    blarzong: make it $1.15 and I might bite
00:17    blarzong    ok $1.15


When you make a deal with luke dashjr, he won't pay what he owes. Plain and simple.

Fine with me I guess...

It's not distorted at all - his refusal to pay what he owes doesn't suddenly throw everything into disarray. There's in fact 4 pages of documentation proving in detail that the terms were clear to everyone. Contract law is clear - he owes and is a deadbeat.

I would have no problem letting him take as much time as he wanted to pay the ~1 btc, or using any payment method, or paying in alpaca socks. Doesn't matter to me.

I've saved (some of) the best quotes for last:

02:30    luke-jr    maybe we need a trusted 3rd party to hold the escrows and evaluate the market

Why on earth would we need a trusted party to "evaluate the market" unless the final market price determined the winner of the bet?

That would make no sense at all under his current claim that this whole thing was somehow independent of the market price. You only need to an independent party to evaluate the market when you're settling based on the actual market value at the end of the contract (there's no other reason) - which is how the vast majority of deals are done - something he now refuses to do.

Rather than contradicting the previous 4 pages, his last statement that he will buy 25 @ $1.15 on April 13, simply confirms the discussed terms - that he will take the buy/long position and settle based on the April 13 price. It is entirely consistent with the many previous statements. Rather than throw out the previous 4 pages to make it seem like the delivery method we discussed somehow disappeared, it merely confirms it.

(As an aside, the problem with escrow is that there's no way to escrow usd, so there's no way to determine the size of the escrow on the buyer's side, unless you put a limit on the gains).

You obviously didn't read the link you're replying to. Anyone can check a major market like Nasdaq:

"Description: U.S. dollar-settled Australian dollar currency futures are quoted in terms of U.S. dollars per unit of the underlying currency (Australian dollar)."

"The cash settlement amount on the Final Settlement Date shall be the final mark to market amount against the final settlement price multiplied by 10,000."

"Final Settlement Price: The Final Settlement Price for the foreign currency futures contracts shall be the spot rate at 12:00:00 Eastern Time (noon) on the Last trading Day."

The last trading day in our trade was obviously before 4/13 (since the deal expired at 4/13 midnight). The settlement price is therefore $0.86.

http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Micro.aspx?id=PBOTproducts

Luke Dashjr welched on a bet with clearly defined terms, and no amount of weaseling and wannabe-lawyering will get him out of paying up. Trying to re-write the contract by selectively quoting various fragments to make it seem as if he only had to pay if we managed to find each other on IRC is silly.

Obviously the contract like any other futures contract, and both parties agreed it was a bet on the future value of btc, not some bogus deal where luke dashjr decides if and when he will pay up.

His failure to pay obviously has clearly defined damages. There is no doubt that the terms were clear, he confirmed them in a 4-page public log, and he reneged when it became clear his bet was a losing one. His excuses here have ranged from trying to haggle over the settlement price, to claiming too much time has gone by (4 weeks omg!!) so his debt should be extinguished, and that I don't spend a lot of time on IRC. All of which are irrelevant.

In the end, the only fair thing is to settle the trade using the same standards every other market uses for forwards, which is exactly what we agreed to. Luke Dashjr wants special treatment because he lost.

02:23    luke-jr    if BTC goes to $1.80, you owe me 14.13043478 BTC; if BTC drops to $0.50, I owe you 14.13043478 BTC

That was his own definition of how the trade would be concluded with concrete examples (confirming that it's a standard futures contract) which is in the contract.

He admits he will "owe" me if btc is *below* his strike price. There's no wiggle room to rewrite the terms now, though trolls and scammers may be desperate to try.

Take a look at: http://www.theifm.org/tutorial/contracts2.htm

The vast majority of futures contracts are terminated by offset or a final cash payment rather than by delivery

Markets have abstracted all this into standard cash-based trades which are the norm of how nearly every contract is done. He agreed to the bet and cash settlement obviously.

So the way it works is:

He agrees to buy 25 units @ $1.15 on 4/13 ($28.75). But on 4/13, 25 units are only worth $21.50. Therefore his bet that the price would be above $1.15 is on the losing side and he owes the difference (the net value of position is down $7.25).


No, I am not the buyer.


That's his quote and is an example of a cash settlement where he wins if the price goes up (it didn't).

Each side is trying to win by predicting the future value of btc:

00:15    luke-jr    I certainly expect that it will go near $1.25
00:15    luke-jr    just not over
00:15    blarzong    luke-jr: i will take that bet
00:17    luke-jr    blarzong: make it $1.15 and I might bite
00:17    blarzong    hmm
00:17    blarzong    ok $1.15
00:17    luke-jr    blarzong: will you use clearcoin?
00:18    blarzong    luke-jr: sure
00:18    lfm    blarzong: and luke-jr you prooly should have an escrow for that

Obviously he bet wrong, but now wishes he had never made a bet in the first place.

I didn't insist on the escrow (and he figured it wasn't worth it either), which it wasn't for such a small amount. But he still lost the bet. This was a bet on price, in principle and in fact, a standard forward contract if there ever was one, and now the weasel wants out because he lost the bet.

No, that's incorrect. He agreed to pay price X on date Y. That is a type of futures contract known as a forward (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_contract).

Luke Dashjr, you're trying desperately to come up with excuses to avoid responsibility for losing a trade. Your response confirms what I said - you clearly can't be trusted and will renege on any trade where you find it inconvenient to pay.

Nonsense, I was on IRC all day, as many others can attest.

You're at your keyboard 24 hours a day? Nice trick. You weren't there when I msg'ed you.

You disappeared shortly after the agreement, and didn't re-appear on IRC until yesterday.

Not a defense. I have *years* to collect (http://www.bcsalliance.com/y_debt_sol.html). And there's no time limit on having ethics. I don't think a few weeks is too long to collect on a gentlement's bet anyway.

My profits did not fade away like a moldy banana. Your obligations do not disappear just because you made no attempt to pay. Try telling your broker you don't have to pay him when your deals go south.

No, I do not agree. If you had been there, the trade would have been executed as planned: you would have gained $28.75 ($5.50 profit over market price) and I would have gained 25 BTC.

Your numbers are wrong. The profit was $7.25. You don't get to cherry pick the settlement price *after* the contract expired (at 4/13 00:00:00). You're assuming prices that occurred *after that date*. No conceivable futures agreement lets one side arbitrarily decide which price to settle at (there are reams of specifications at CBOT where you can read about how closing prices are determined), so you can end that nonsense. The only fair price is the closing price prior to expiration.

No, by demanding the difference from me, you are in effect demanding I not only buy at $1.15, but also sell back to you at $0.8x.

You're extremely confused. You owe me the difference between the strike price you agreed to ($1.15) and the *actual* price ($0.86). This talk of selling things back is nonsense.

In short, you are assuming terms that didn't exist and that violate every conceivable trading norm there is. Why do you think you should be exempt from the risks and standards that every other market trader in the world is bound by?

As I said, I have no way to enforce the deal short of suing you in Ralston small claims court. I can just warn others that you are someone who will desperately try to weasel your way out of obligatory debts.

You should've accepted the risk that your bet could lose money. That you regretted making the bet later doesn't change the fact you lost.

The fact is, you lost $5.50 because you broke the deal and never showed up. I lost $193.75 because you broke the deal. If anything, you owe me since you broke the deal.
 
In your warped universe, you win regardless of the bet's outcome. Up or down you win! Nice try, scammer. Nothing prevented you from going long on bitcoins.

If you really would've paid me the winnings on 4/13, you should have no problem paying me now. The fact that you won't proves my point.

In the real world, nearly all contract are settled with cash based on the trading position at the expiration time. You can read about it here:

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cashsettlement.asp

Which is exactly what was in the log:

00:26    blarzong    in the end, one party will give the other the difference in btc
00:29    molecular    are you doing a trade or a bet?
00:29    Necr0s    A contract to trade at a later time, yes?
00:29    luke-jr    molecular: kindof a bet

And here's another quote from the log which I didn't paste originally, confirming that you knew we were settling in cash:

02:20    blarzong    so at the end you're giving me $28.75 (25 * $1.15). if btc is $1.80 you give me 15.97 btc.. and i give you 25 btc
02:20    blarzong    so i could lose 9.03 btc
02:21    luke-jr    blarzong: what?
02:21    blarzong    im just suggesting we close the transaction in btc rather than usd
02:21    luke-jr    you're talking in USD
02:23    blarzong    yeah
02:23    luke-jr    if BTC goes to $1.80, you owe me 14.13043478 BTC; if BTC drops to $0.50, I owe you 14.13043478 BTC

So obviously you agreed to cash settlement based on the position at the end of the deal, which is how the vast majority of futures are traded.

Instead of making up your own rules, why don't you just follow the same procedures that CBOT or any exchange uses if you were really trying to play fair? I don't care about the money, but it's clear you desperately want to weasel out of a bet you wish you hadn't made.

sgornik, you're a brilliant guy. A Bitcoin master who knows a lot more about it than me. I have a lot of respect for you.

He doesn't dispute the public log, so a signature isn't the issue. In typical exchanges, both parties would have an ISDA contract which could potentially be enforced by a court order (although that's costly, so trust is more important than the threat of enforcement).

Here I can only warn others that luke-jr can't be trusted to abide by trading norms or to engage in fair dealing.

I look forward to the day we have bitcoin exchanges with self-enforcing Ricardian contracts, which neatly takes care of cases when one party "regrets" his trade and wants to back out. GLBSE.com (a btc market) looks pretty cool.

But I accepted the possibility he would reneg and steal my money, so I'm just warning others to watch out for this scammer. I didn't do this deal for financial gain ($7.25 doesn't buy much these days), but on a lark.

vladimir my friend, it is the principle of it  it would be nice when bitcoin is the dominant currency of the Milky Way, to say "the first bitcoin futures contract was entered into on march 13, 2011 and settled for the sum of $7.25". anyway, why should others be potentially scammed by this weasel?

On April 13, the price fluxuated between 0.92 and 0.93 USD.

Leaving aside the fact that "fluxuated" is not a word, this is not a defense. The contract ended at 4/13. The settlement price is therefore the closing price on 4/12 ($0.86). Otherwise you're claiming you can cherry pick any price you want after the contract is already expired. That's not how futures work.

Significant portions of the log are omitted in the paste above

Not a defense. I pasted the link to the rest of the log for anyone who wants to read the 4 pages where we discuss how you're betting on a particular market event and I'm betting on the opposite.

After fumbling around with technical details (escrow topics, etc), we decided to avoid the complexity and

You initially demanded an escrow, then decided it wasn't necessary. I should've insisted on an escrow, because you clearly had no intention of paying up.

We agreed that I would purchase 25 BTC at the price of 1.15 USD from him on April 13th, with our word at stake. He never showed on April 13, up until today, May 17

You lost the bet. I can collect at any time. You didn't try to pay me and I couldn't find you. Once a futures contract expires, one side is up and the other is down. There is no time limit on repaying what you owe.

You agree that if we had found each other you would've lost $7.25, but have decided that you no longer want to pay.

I am still willing to buy 25 BTC at the price of 1.15 USD

How generous, lol! You bet the price would be at or above $1.15 on 4/13. You can't extend the contract another month to some arbitrary point where you would've made a profit. You lost the bet already on 4/13.

I was never under any obligation to sell the 25 BTC back, at any time

You are confused. You are not selling anything. You are paying the difference between $1.15 (the price you bet on) and the actual price at the expiration date. See the log above:

    00:26    blarzong    in the end, one party will give the other the difference in btc

Had he showed on April 13th, I would have completed the sale then, and held onto the 25 BTC until I could sell it at 8.90 USD, making a significant profit

Not a defense. Your failure to go long on btc isn't my fault. You bet on a 1 month contract:

    <luke-jr>    I'm obviously betting that it won't go over $1.25 in the next month

You agree you made the bet, you agree it expired on 4/13, and you agree you would've paid your debt on April 13. But now that a few weeks have gone by, you want to be absolved of your debt. That's not a defense. If you owe your broker, the bank, or anyone else, there is no time limit to repay.

Saying "I will only pay within this 24 hour time period" is not a valid defense and clearly marks you as a person who will try any desperate measure to weasel out of a contract.

You lost the "obvious" bet, but are trying to weasel out of it to save yourself $7.25. I could care less about the money, which is why I didn't insist on an escrow. I just want others to know that you're a scammer.

I don't doubt other trolls and scammers will come to your defense because you spend a lot of time on chat and on the message boards. You think that this somehow frees you from the responsibility to live up to your agreements. It doesn't.

Also, the fact that I "shorted" btc will probably not be a popular position, since most btc holders want to pump up the market. However, I still think btc is awesome and is the best currency available. That said, I didn't think it would cross the $1 barrier again before April 13 and I was right. You bet the opposite and lost. The facts are plain and simple, and you are admitting most of them, except the part where you actually have to live up to your agreement.

You are a scammer and at least admit you lack principles. You made a bet and lost. Now pay up.

Don't do any deals with luke-jr, especially ones that depend on him living up to his word.

On March 14, 2011, we made history by entering into the first Bitcoin futures contract that I know of. The value at the time was $0.92. He thought that the value would exceed $1.15 in a month's time and I took the other side. A month later, the price closed at $0.86 and his position lost. I came to him to settle up, but he responded with a long-winded obfuscation and refused to pay.

At the time the deal was made, luke-jr specified that if either side failed to live up to the deal, he would be "publically shamed."

The contract was documented in the #bitcoin-dev IRC channel (starting with http://bitcoinstats.com/irc/bitcoin-dev/logs/2011/03/14/1).

A contract to buy at a future date (a futures contract) is settled based on the difference between the strike price ($1.15) and the last price before the expiration time (the price at 4/12 23:59:59 which was $0.86 according to bitcoincharts mtgoxUSD).

Since the size of the contract was 25 btc, the value of the deal is therefore:

    (25 * $1.15) - (25 * 0.86)  =  $7.25

In my favor.

I'll quote the main text:

The conversation began with a discussion of bitcoin futures (my nick is blarzong):

00:11    luke-jr    blarzong: I will sell him 1 BTC, for a contract to purchase more at a specific rate.
00:12    blarzong    luke-jr: what rate?
00:12    luke-jr    blarzong: I will pay him 1 BTC, in exchange for an agreement that he will buy 50 BTC from me within the next month at $1.25 USD each
00:12    blarzong    luke-jr: that would be a losing proposition
00:13    luke-jr    blarzong: if you know the future, it might be
00:13    luke-jr    I'm obviously betting that it won't go over $1.25 in the next month
00:14    blarzong    luke-jr: the market doesn't expect it to go anywhere near 1.25.. so your proposal wouldn't be favorable to anybody's risk asessment
00:14    luke-jr    blarzong: where is that market analysis?
00:15    luke-jr    I certainly expect that it will go near $1.25
00:15    luke-jr    just not over
00:15    blarzong    luke-jr: i will take that bet
[...]
00:17    luke-jr    blarzong: make it $1.15 and I might bite
[...]
00:17    blarzong    ok $1.15
00:18    luke-jr    blarzong: this is contract to buy, not option, right?
00:19    blarzong    yeah
[...]
00:19    luke-jr    25 BTC so $28.75
00:19    blarzong    ok
00:20    luke-jr    blarzong: please deposit to clearcoin and send the link to the email I PM you
[...]
00:25    blarzong    how can he ensure i will pay up if im the loser
00:25    blarzong    or he will pay up if hes the loser
00:26    blarzong    in the end, one party will give the other the difference in btc
00:27    blarzong    i think someone on the forum said they were developing a market with ricardian contracts you could transact
[...]
00:29    molecular    are you doing a trade or a bet?
00:29    Necr0s    A contract to trade at a later time, yes?
00:29    luke-jr    molecular: kindof a bet
00:30    molecular    your basically making contract to make a trade @1.15 at a certain point in the future?
00:30    blarzong    this is the first btc futures contract
[...]
00:38    blarzong    luke-jr: until we have ricardian contracts in place it will have to be a gentlemans bet..
[...]
01:01    luke-jr    blarzong: I assert that I should be trusted on my word.
01:02    blarzong    luke-jr: youre a trustworthy guy, so thats fine w/me
[...]
01:16    blarzong    luke-jr is a smart guy.. i think i will probably lose a few btc on this trade
[...]
02:04    luke-jr    blarzong: as of right now, we have no contract. While I assert my word as being trustworthy, that does not extend to taking you at your word. :p
[...]
02:19    luke-jr    Netsniper: why don't we just say max stakes 20 BTC, calculated on the market price in a month?
[...]
02:30    luke-jr    maybe we need a trusted 3rd party to hold the escrows and evaluate the market
[...]
02:44    luke-jr    blarzong: why don't I just plan to buy 25 BTC from you at $1.15 on Apr 13, and if one of us fails to follow through we are publicly shamed?
02:45    blarzong    luke-jr: fine w/me.. thats exactly what you said before, but im for it
02:45    luke-jr    nah, before I was insisting on clearcoin from you :p
02:45    blarzong    aye..