Probably because the small micro loans are worth so little now it is a waste of time. Who would put in the effort for $1 scams these days?
People have tried to (and sometimes been successful at) scam for as little as .001 before. I believe this was around the time that the price of bitcoin was around the price it is now, but had been going up instead of down. I would say that since the price of bitcoin has been generally decreasing, there is less hype about it so people are going to be less likely to be willing to take risks with their bitcoin which means there are less potential targets that will fall for these scams |
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It would not bother me at all, however, to default on a home mortgage. That money is in no way someones hard earned savings. The bank simply created it from nothing. In effect they are lending me stolen money and I have no problem defaulting on thieves. You are contradicting yourself here. In order for something to be stolen, someone would first have to own it. However if something is created out of thin air then no one could have previously owned it. There is also the fact that fractional reserve banking does not create money out of thin air. When a bank lends out money, they still owe the same amount of money to their depositors. If fractional reserve banking is able to create money out of thin air then why do we need the FDIC? Also why would a bank ever fail? Couldn't the bank just create additional money out of thin air whenever they run into trouble? People are proud to declare bankruptcy because they feel that they are screwing over a bunch of crooks. Truth be told they are largely correct in this judgement.
I would disagree. I would say that people are 'proud' to declare bankruptcy because of the lower moral standards that our country has. |
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That basically depends on the acceptance level of btc. If the public generally sees btc as a store of value, any economic crisis woukd push up the price
The problem is the general public has no idea about Bitcoin or has only vaguely heard about it. Unless they are trained in how to use it prior a real collapse, they will not be quick enough to move their assets into Bitcoin. When cypress was having their banking crisis early last year, people were able to quickly move their money into bitcoin (I would argue as such because of the rate at which the price of bitcoin increased during the crisis). I would also say that people could utilize services like coinbase and exchanges that can temporarily hold a person's bitcoin while they take the time to learn how to properly secure it. Although it would normally not be good to hold a large amount of bitcoin at an exchange, this may be an exception if the value of fiat is rapidly decreasing and/or they cannot safely hold their money in a fiat bank account |
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There's actually no evidence on either side of what happened, but people are quite happy to jump to their own conclusions, the only thing we really have is eyewitness testimony and as Neil DeGrasse Tyson has said that's terrifying that our judicial system is operating on that. Basically, to sum up this whole thing, it's the word of an alive white police officer against a dead black kid who was the only one who really knew what happened.
There is evidence that the police officer was assaulted. There is evidence that brown was very close to the officer when he was shot. People have claimed that brown had his hands up when he was shot, however the forensic evidence evidence says otherwise. There are a number of witnesses who say that brown was surrendering, however no video of this has turned up despite the likely-hood that a fight with a police officer would almost certainly be recorded by someone who would witness such a fight. |
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I'm gunna poke a stick into this beehive and run  If you are a miner at any scale, like most jobs, you must do it better and cheaper than anyone else doing your same job if you want to come out on top. There is no system in the world that guarantees everyone will be a winner. This is accurate. If anyone has the mistaken illusion that home mining is possible at scale, then they are deluded. That said, home mining is a GREAT way to get started. Proof of concept and learning. From there though you MUST have a plan to scale your setup out into larger environments. Its the only way you can ever hope to make any kind of money mining. Industrial mines are ultimatly where things are going. This is not for the lazy or easy money types. It requires work. The only way that home mining is possible to be profitable is if someone were to buy miners on the secondary market from people who are in need of immediate money and are willing to sell at a discount. It would also likely be necessary to buy in places where the temperature tends to be hot and the cost of electricity is relatively high, and to move them to places where the temperature tends to be lower and the cost of electricity would be lower. This would generally allow for someone to buy at somewhat lower prices |
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Coinstar does not charge people 9% for changing USD -> USD, but they rather automate the process of converting large amounts of coins into a "format" that is spendable, as most banks will not accept large amounts of change/coin that is not "wrapped" by denomination.
The fact that a coinstar machine is expensive to produce as this kind of technology is not cheap (to count and sort coins deposited in mass) and needs to be audit-able will make it less likely that there will be a machine that converts change into bitcoin. Any operator would need to cover the costs of the machine plus some margin in converting their fiat into bitcoin Interesting, every bank I have asked in the last several years accepts loose change, but not wrapped change (it has been 10+ years since a bank has accepted wrapped change from me). Most of them have their own coin counting machines and don't charge members to deposit the loose change. One of them even told me they don't have a coin counting machine, but will count my change by hand for no charge (and will not accept wrapped coins, and I was a member). We are only talking about 5+ banks here, but with 100% consistency, they accept loose change and not wrapped change, so either I live in the twilight zone, or Coinstar is for the unbanked and uninformed. I have had the opposite experience. I have worked as a teller for a relatively small bank who would generally not accept large amounts of lose change (especially if it was unsorted), however would accept wrapped coins (we would write the customer's account number on the wrap in the event there was an issue discovered later on). As a customer of a number of large banks, I would see the same policy of not accepting unwrapped change, and when I attempted to deposit unwrapped change, I would be given coin rollers for me to wrap myself. I don't remember the name of the bank but it was a predecessor to capital one, that had a machine similar to coinstar in their branch for coin deposits; it would give you a voucher that you cold cash with a teller for everyone for free up to (I think it was) $15, and any amount over that amount you would need to either be a customer or pay (I think it was) 5% to the bank in exchange for using their machine. How long ago are these experiences? Key to my post was the fact that it has been 10+ years since banks accepted wrapped coins from me. That is to say they used to. Maybe I should have said 5+ years to be conservative, but I think it really has been 10+. Regardless, the same bank that used to give me wrappers for free and accept wrapped coins later on made me unwrap the coins so they could count them. The bank that offered to hand count coins was actually downtown in a 100K+ resident city. They specifically said they would count in their free time and included the caveat that it could take days, but didn't want the coins wrapped. Every other bank I have been to has counted coins for free for members with a machine. Contrary to your experience, I have never seen a coin counting machine with customer access in a bank. That having been said, while I may not have made it perfectly clear when I said "coinstar is for the unbanked," in all cases, I was referring to services for bank customers/members. While it isn't too terribly relevant, I would guess that the bank you are referring to that counted up to $15 for free for non-members stopped doing that a long time ago, too, based on the service decline at most banks large and small. All were within the last 10 years. Doing some research about the banks that Capital One purchased, I believe the coin counting machine was inside a Chevy Chase bank branch. The reason why the customer's account number would be written on the side of a wrapper when they would deposit wrapped coins is to prevent having to use the labor to count the deposited coins right away; in the event that it turns out that a wrapper was short then we could debit their account (I don't think we ever actually had that issue). I would say that the reason why people could have up to $15 counted at the branch for free was to get people to come into the branch, have their coins counted, and then need to speak to a teller so they could attempt to sell them a banking product. You should really understand that $15 is not a lot of change, and if the amount being changed was even a penny more they would need to pay the fee or open an account, which would be another selling point for opening an account. |
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If formatting your PC can destroy your Bitcoin keys, you don't have them properly backed up (off-site and verified). Other things like fire or floods can also destroy your PC.
The OP has said that he uses Electrum, which does not store any private keys locally. @OP you will need to find those "random words", make sure they are the same as when you first setup Electrum and write them down. When you go to reinstall Electrum you will enter these "random" words to recover your funds. If you are unsure about if this will work (it should as long as you have the seed) you could transfer your money to coinbase temporarily and then create a new Electrum wallet once your OS is reinstalled and send the bitcoin from coinbase back to your new wallet |
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I don't think anyone will give up their keys.
You would not need to give up your keys. With multisig vault, there are three keys. One key is controlled exclusively by coinbase, you do not know this key. The second key is known by both you and coinbase and can only be used by coinbase if you correctly enter your password (coinbase will provide it to you upon receipt of your password). The third key is known only to you and coinbase does not have access to it. In the event that coinbase goes out of business or is otherwise compromised, you can sign a TX with the key that is shared by both you and coinbase and the key that is known by only you to an address controlled by you only. If everything goes as planned then you can use coinbase to transfer bitcoin to an address of your choice when you are ready to do so |
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Why? More like How? I understand how shorting works in theory, but has anybody actually tried to short BTC? I'm having a hard time buying it, much less shorting it. Any actual experiences appreciated. Do the exchanges charge interest while you hold the short for example?
Here are 2 exchanges you can use to short Bitcoin- https://www.bitfinex.com/https://icbit.se/I recommend all bears and Bitcoin haters to short the hell out of bitcoin while the rest of us buy. Remember, Bitcoin is going to 0  so be very aggressive with your shorts. Do they allow naked shorts? I bet not. Meaning you must put up collateral of some sort, and they will give a margin call if the collateral drops below a certain margin? Otherwise the exchanges are fools. You put up bitcoins as collateral. If the price falls below the margin you lose your bitcoins. Bitfinex has been around for several years. I have loaned bitcoins to people shorting, it is one of the few ways to make interest on your bitcoins with very little risk. I would say that this setup would involve you having a EV positive return, however there is still a chance of you losing money if the price moves too quickly against the parties that are borrowing your bitcoin too quickly, as you could potentially lose a good amount of the amount borrowed. |
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Coinstar does not charge people 9% for changing USD -> USD, but they rather automate the process of converting large amounts of coins into a "format" that is spendable, as most banks will not accept large amounts of change/coin that is not "wrapped" by denomination.
The fact that a coinstar machine is expensive to produce as this kind of technology is not cheap (to count and sort coins deposited in mass) and needs to be audit-able will make it less likely that there will be a machine that converts change into bitcoin. Any operator would need to cover the costs of the machine plus some margin in converting their fiat into bitcoin Interesting, every bank I have asked in the last several years accepts loose change, but not wrapped change (it has been 10+ years since a bank has accepted wrapped change from me). Most of them have their own coin counting machines and don't charge members to deposit the loose change. One of them even told me they don't have a coin counting machine, but will count my change by hand for no charge (and will not accept wrapped coins, and I was a member). We are only talking about 5+ banks here, but with 100% consistency, they accept loose change and not wrapped change, so either I live in the twilight zone, or Coinstar is for the unbanked and uninformed. I have had the opposite experience. I have worked as a teller for a relatively small bank who would generally not accept large amounts of lose change (especially if it was unsorted), however would accept wrapped coins (we would write the customer's account number on the wrap in the event there was an issue discovered later on). As a customer of a number of large banks, I would see the same policy of not accepting unwrapped change, and when I attempted to deposit unwrapped change, I would be given coin rollers for me to wrap myself. I don't remember the name of the bank but it was a predecessor to capital one, that had a machine similar to coinstar in their branch for coin deposits; it would give you a voucher that you cold cash with a teller for everyone for free up to (I think it was) $15, and any amount over that amount you would need to either be a customer or pay (I think it was) 5% to the bank in exchange for using their machine. |
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*for sure, many people send/receive/store their private keys unencrypted, e.g. when generating paper wallets online
This usually happens locally on your browser except if you are creating your private keys through a malicious web page... You have to worry about the code the web page is serving you and not about your isp... Generate paper wallets disconnected from the internet is the general consensus..... To OP: Private keys should only be stored locally, on your own computer, encrypted. They should never be send over any network and Bitcoin does not send private keys when broadcasting a transaction. There are a number of websites that will allow you to generate a new bitcoin address locally, on your computer (to be more specific, on your browser). I would argue that it would appear, to someone with little technical understanding of bitcoin, that the UI makes it look like that the private key is generated by the website and then sent to the user. |
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I would be interested in know how the IRS defines a "security". I would say there is still an argument that the IRS could consider bitcoin to be a security. They gave examples of securities as being stocks, bonds, treasuries. One thing I did not see was commodities like gold, and oil (which I would think would also fall under the wash sale rule - at least using logic). Obviously he needs to work out the difference in gain rates, but without any specifics it's why he should seek advice as whether claim the losses this year or next. His "significant capital gains" are all relative, and may be wholly in the 0% rate for all we know.
I would personally not consider any capital gain that would keep my income low enough to still be able to pay 0% taxes on it to be "significant" but I do agree that every person's situation is different and this may be a possibility |
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This is a small update, and is reflected on the website. There is already interest being shown by multiple parties, at least two of which appear to be seriously interested, in purchasing BTC Guild.
While I absolutely recommend users prepare to switch pools, it *may* not be needed. If the pool is sold prior to November 30th, or is in the final stages of negotiation, then the pool will continue to operate, hopefully without any downtime in the transition to new management.
Out of curiosity, how much would you want for BTCguild? Are you willing to make any of the pool financials public to a potential buyer? |
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many coins transfer in one or two minutes.
Like Bitcoin. The only way to transfer bitcoin within two minutes is to hand over your whole computer. Not true.. I could hand you the private key to my wallet. Also not true. You could simply send a TX to someone with a proper fee and two minutes later the recipient will have been reasonably certain that the TX will confirm for ~1 minute 55 seconds. |
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They are essentially a one way exchange in that anyone can open a merchant services account with bitpay, the customer can price something at the amount of bitcoin they wish to sell, then use their own bitcoin to pay for the sale. This would be very similar to how a merchant could potentially swipe their own credit card at their own CC terminal
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I have never try install a wallet on my smart phone.
The safety of phone always bothers me.
By "safety" do you mean the possibility of the phone being lost or stolen? If that's the concern, make sure you lock the wallet with a PIN. When you discover the phone missing, restore your wallet from the paper backup and transfer the bitcoin to a new wallet, with a new private key. Or are you concerned about the possibility of the phone being hacked? If you have a 4-digit PIN to "protect" your wallet then there are only 10,000 possible combinations that an attacker would need to try (at most) before finding your PIN. All an attacker would need to do is make a clone of your phone in airplane mode and try all combinations until they figure out which one is correct. This would logically not take very long considering how fast even CPU mining is. This would not give you very much time to secure your funds in the manor you describe |
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Your profits will depend on how much hash power you have at your pool and how lucky you are. Slush's pool mined an average of 5.2 blocks in the past 5 days and charges a 2% fee. (5.2 * 25 BTC) * 0.02 = 2.6 BTC. That's 0.52 BTC/day. Keep in mind it will be very difficult to attract miners to your pool unless you have a good amount of hash power already there. You also will need to take the costs associated with running the pool into consideration. You will need to have stratum servers that the miners connect to (which will need to be geographically diverse), if your pool become large enough you will want "private" stratum servers for larger miners to connect to (so they can continue mining on your pool for when your pool will eventually get DDoS'ed. You will need servers to handle both the UI interface (where miners go to sign up and monitor their earnings and performance) and the backend (when payouts are processed). anyone of you know a good hosting provider? You could ask luke-jr or eleuthria (who run eligius and btcguild), however I would think that a cloud provider like amazon ec2 would likely be ideal as they are easily scalable and you can rent geographically diverse servers |
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You don't really need a CC just use a debit card with the visa/mastercard logo.. they act just like a cc and coinbase will never know. No, they know and they know immediately. Already tried that. Of course they know, (not sure why that guy thought different). In any case, your best bet will probably be a secured credit card. I obviously don't know how bad your credit is but it probably isn't all that good based on what you said. Anyone can get a secured card though. They tend to be very expensive but it may be your only option if you simply have to have a CC. I don't know of any that carry the visa logo off the top of my head but google it. Many major banks issue secured credit cards, but do not market them as heavily to most consumers as they are very expensive, they generally suggest them to people who get denied credit from their traditional credit cards |
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You don't spot scammers, you spot everyone. Scammers are included in everyone. Around 20% of what you say is true. The rest is bullshit.
I can't wait until you get d0xed and swatted until you learn your lessons.
You want him to get swatted? You do realize that he is at least trying to help the community right? He may or may not be accurate in calling out scams (I tend to agree with him saying when something is a scam) however he does have good intentions. |
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Just ignore 99% 100% of alts and just buy Huntercoin. bitcoin
Makes life much simpler.
FIFY All alts have zero long term value. To date I have seen no alt that can give any real feature that bitcoin does not provide |
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