Wowowowo so are you telling me bitcointalk has UIDs? *evil laugh*
*lol* I see what you think vividly...  Well, see how this turns out... though you might not even hear the result at all to protect the new owner like OP stated. |
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In an attempt to stop more scams, including scammy account trades or scams with accounts as collateral, I wanted to post a checklist. It is an useful list of checks for bitcointalk users on here, that want to buy an account or take one as collateral. I compiled a list of checks I do when I escrow an account trade. If you want to buy an account OR if you want to take one in as collateral and you don't want to get scammed then consider checking these things and only proceed when all points are cleared to your satisfaction.
FTFY Thanks for fixing the grammar... i didn't even know I has to be written big all the time. * Account Bans should be mentioned in the Profile on the top of the Trustpage of an account.
No it doesn't, its pass change you are talking about. I know pass change shows up there but i was pretty sure that a warning appears there too when that account is banned. Or did it show up directly in the profile page instead? I doubt it only would show up when you are logged into that account, right? Would be too much of a risk for buyers then. The google search might not show up anything when the previous account holder does not complain. * Check google with site:bitcointalk.org loan "Username here" and see if something shows up though that search is no full insurance since loans can be given outside of posts.
Also a link to "TheLedger" is helpful, its a list where (almost)all publicly known loans are listed. Three month old posted addresses are not really safe.
Don't see how you got to that conclusion, three month old addresses are fine . Although its better to have a look at post history to see if there was a change in post style after the address was posted/staked. Three months are the timeframe account traders often use when holding an account. When they buy an account that does not have a signature then they post an address and they have a three month old address after they leveled that account up to a potential something or leveled the account up really. So personally I would not take such account. I had one case where an account was exchanged and the real owner only was informed of the account being active after that time was over. So the older the posted address the more safe it is that the account is getting sold by the real owner. A hacker can't fake such signature really. Well, guess I missed an important point... the trust... Adding it now and sorting by importance. You see I changed my ways of writing in small of myself. Though that is only true for I, Iam and I'm or other words like myself too? |
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I was of the impression that other users can see this on the trust page, at the same space where the change of the password is announced. Is that not the case or is that only true for those that are logged into that account?
Or is it only shown in seclog or modlog?
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I was asked by -XXIII-, the lottery organizer, to provide an Escrow address that is used to collect the funds for his Lottery. Who am i?Iam SebastianJu, iam escrow on Bitcointalk since years. Iam not connected to the threadstarter. Iam an independent third party who acts as an escrow in an attempt to make the ICO more secure. See my Servicethread for reviews: [ANN] SebastianJu - Free Legendary Escrow Service - Escrowed over 8150 BTC. Safety from EscrowOnce the lottery ends i will release the coins to the specified targets. In case of public organizations as targets i will make sure that the bitcon address is theirs. Please note that the safety i can provide only reaches up to the point where i released the bitcoins. Don't send to a quoted escrow address. ALWAYS only check out my post directly and send to that address! And please check regularly if the escrow link or address was changed in the first post of thread. Inform me fast by pm, post in the thread about it and give red trust if possible to warn others fast then. If you sent me a pm then i will know about it and can act by giving red trust to the issuer to prevent damage.Only send Bitcoins from an address you can sign a private message from or at least where you are able to get the private key for that address! This is important since in case of REFUND you can't proof otherwise that you sent bitcoins when you, for example, sent the bitcoins directly from an Exchange. In that case better send them first to your wallet and then from there to the escrow address. For information about what you need to sign a message you can check out this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=990345Another alternative to proof your ownership of a payment would be to send me the last 4 numbers of your user id as satoshies in your transaction. Move your mouse over my username, see my profile id is 18640. You can see yours when you are in your profile and hover the mouse of the links on the left menu. Something like u=18640 in the links show your User-ID. The last 4 digits are 8640. When you add these 4 numbers as satoshies to your payment then it is pretty sure it's your payment too. For example you want to send 2 bitcoins and your profile id would be 18640 then you send 2.00008640 Bitcoin. Escrow AddressThe lottery escrow address is: 13uvvM26awmnJpeRz8fAE98trjNZyXPRWL
Before payment i would suggest you take a look at http://www.cointape.com/ to check out if the network gets spammed again. Below the graph there is shown what amount of fee is needed to get instant confirmation. Checking that page could prevent that transactions are stuck for hours or days because they dont get a confirmation. Refunds possible?Refunds may be issued if a reason to cancel the complete lottery is found. Users are responsible for paying the transaction fee on refunds. Refunds can only be done instantly when you can prove ownership of the investment, by signing a message from the sending bitcoin address. As long as you did not verify your investment transaction in some way i will see your investment as unverified. Otherwise it could mean a random person could claim an investment as his investment and steal it from a shareholder. Refunds can only be done instantly when you can proof ownership of the investment. Either by signing a message from the sending bitcoin address or by your investment amount matching your forum user id. See description above. -----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----
20160212 This is the escrow address for the lottery of -XXIII- and the escrow address is 13uvvM26awmnJpeRz8fAE98trjNZyXPRWL
-----BEGIN SIGNATURE-----
1K2UFGCKyNQNx4h2m5ZRCaw9BWHTBcCZAA
G0NXBZEFHxUuA5koH5ZuyvDTD5vgaaGqH3jlC/IYH+gRC6Vhp72NSR/JLB2ctdgHzWiRF0ydlCLy+Ok2C5mFq3E=
-----END BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Message signed with an old address of mine, that i posted may 2013 on bitcointalk. See my Servicethread: [ANN] SebastianJu - Free Legendary Escrow Service - Escrowed over 8150 BTC. You can check a signed message very easy. The fastest way is to visit http://wallet-2sx53n.sakurity.com/#verify. Good luck everyone with this lottery!  |
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Great, i heard rumours about escrow.ms being arrested but i didn't check it out since i did not even remember that escrow.ms was it that put me on default trust. I checked my pm's and yes it was in march the 12th 2014.  So now i lose default trust. It probably doesn't affect me but those i gave trust to. I think... I can't believe what happened. Being on here so long and for a stupid couple of months he did that? And when he only pushed around $60k then what was his share? That was so very unneeded, in fact i thought first he only was scammed by carders, like it might happen easily. But then he admits? How is the police in india? I wonder if confessions are always true or maybe sometimes coming from violence. Don't take it against me when india police is better, i simply don't know. And he funneled the bitcoins to some anonymous sheikh? Well, if this incident at all isn't bad enough for bitcoin, when they find out that this sheikh in fact collected money for the IS then bitcoin will take a real hit for sure. Not to speak about the second big escrow being caught redhanded. But now even even was on default trust level 1. Great. The trust in escrows might go down even more. And alot of big escrows stopped escrowing in the last time after master-P happened. Devthedev(devscrow), Blazed and bitpop left and Tomatocage might close his too probably. Great... being an escrow and having such users having the same title feels actually not really great. :/ |
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He means that this problem will solve from itself once the block halving happened often enough. Then the fees for a block will be a bigger part of the reward for finding a block and no pool can include no transactions anymore.
When the internet speed is very fast for all the miners, the benefit of smaller bock (fast block relay speed) will diminish. All of them will include more transactions. It's not only the internet speed. The network, which means all of the miners, have to verify blocks and the bigger the blocks the higher the time needed to verify them. Which means bigger blocks need more time to confirm. I thinke the best way to solve this is more transactions, so higher fee and dropping block reward. Does it mean we have to have fast CPU or powerful computer to do that? Is that required for ordinary Core wallet holders? Even if you would run a full node, 2 MB are far away from any need to upgrade your cpu or something. It's one block in average each 10 minutes. That can be very easily handle by practically every computer nowadays. |
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Hm, i wonder how far this information given policy can reach. I mean it would not work to announce a move to another server and if not all users claimed their coins till then then they are waived and taken by the exchange.
...
Of course not. But it's completely different case, as it would be an internal decision made by the exchange, so they'd have to take full responsibility for that (pretty sure some jurisdictions have specified timeframes on when funds can be waived if not claimed, ie unclaimed bank balances of deceased people). And HF would be an external condition, to which exchange have to react, so not quite the same. Not the best example, but it's a bit like bank deciding on their own to convert your balance to Euro Vs. bank converting your balace to Euro because the whole country is switching to Euro. To stay with your example... when the whole country switches ok, but if an exchange would make the error to switch to the losing chain then i'm really not sure about the liability. I mean if i imagine an escrow switches to the chain he thinks will win and it loses at the end, i'm pretty sure people would go after him because they gave him a certain value and he had not been give the right to exchange it to something less valuable. Similar to a bank exchanging to pesetas because they think they will go up. they go down and people will sue. They only gave the bank the order to hold their fiat in the way they gave it to them. |
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Though only theoretically since the 10 minutes are not hard set but dynamically created by the diff adjustment, judging from the amount of hashpower. And the hashpower will be way less in a losing chain.
And therefore mining the losing chain will pay more if the price is the same. Since most exchanges haven't signaled any support for a blocksize increase, and merchants seem to be with the majority of users and developers who want to scale by other means, standard Bitcoins are going to have higher value than the altcoin, and what happens then? The Bitcoin blockchain will overtake the altcoin again after the first difficulty adjustment. Now i see what you mean. Less miners will find blocks faster. But the problem is until that comes through you will have to go through a hard time since this only will take effect once the difficulty updated. Only then blocks can be found faster. Until then every miner would find the same amount of blocks which means less blocks are found in the same timeframe in that chain. Until diff update. Or do you think the chains bitcoin will suddenly rise to a 4 times value? I really doubt. The more likely outcome, when classic really could fork because they reached 75%, would be that bitcoiners either switch to the winning chain, giving this bitcoin it's real value. But more likely is that both bitcoins lose value until they are halved or are similar to the hashrate. Since it would be not possible that somehow alot of value was created that would give bitcoin a bigger market cap. Though this is up for debate since it is a thing that never happened. I think segwit is a very good thing, because it solves a lot of problems without a hard fork. I think adoption will be quicker than many people think. Most libraries which are used by wallets have it implemented already. A hard fork won't be usable at all until everyone have switched.
I think so too. I think segwit is a good step for now. I did not find real disadvantages yet. If classic forks before that then they likely will lose. If they fork after segwit came to the end of it's wisdom but before lightning network becomes needed because segwit blocks are too small still or again then they probably will succeed. |
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In an attempt to stop more scams, including scammy account trades or scams with accounts as collateral, I wanted to post a checklist. It is an useful list of checks for bitcointalk users on here, that want to buy an account or take one as collateral. I compiled a list of checks I do when I escrow an account trade. If you want to buy an account OR if you want to take one in as collateral and you don't want to get scammed then consider checking these things and only proceed when all points are cleared to your satisfaction.
Check the following things: - Most important check for a valid signature. You don't want to buy a hacked account. Don't ever take an account in without a valid signature that matches your safety criteria. The older the signing address the better since it can prove that the account is not hacked. The signature should be signed with an address that the traded account posted in an old post of his. The post should have not been edited. Or when it was edited then the last edit time counts. Check if the signature is valid, for example here: http://wallet-2sx53n.sakurity.com/#verify If the signature verifies and it is from an old posted address then the more sure you can be that it is no hacked account. Three month old posted addresses are not really safe.
- Check the trust ratings of the account. In the profile page on the lower end is a Trust-Link. See the feedback that account received. There is a link to untrusted feedback too. You might check that out too to see if the account behaved badly. Though untrusted feedback will not change the trust numbers you see under each forum users avatar. Though even then you never know when a member giving red trust becomes a default trust member and that trust he gave turns your account red.
Very important is to check out the Trust Settings at the top too. If users are in there then it might look like default trust members positive feedback though it is only untrusted feedback. Of course that means that the acccount you check the trust with does not have a changed default trust list. - Account Bans should be mentioned in the Profilepage of an account. Though unfortunately that can only be seen when logged into the account. So it might only be possible when a person, trusted by both the buyer and seller, is allowed to log in.
- Check google with site:bitcointalk.org loan "Username here" and see if something shows up. You can check on this thread on top: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1207414 and see if you find something. Though these checks are no full insurance since loans can be given outside of posts.
- Check google with site:bitcointalk.org scam "Username here" and see if something shows up.
- Check google with site:bitcointalk.org (ban|banned) "Username here" and see if something shows up for previous account bans or signature campaign bans.
- Check posts and activity. If both have the same value check potential activity too. You can use the free script on https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1148181 or, if you don't care that another user might know you check it, you can use the same script someone else hosted for free on his webspace. Some are mentioned in the thread. Take one that is free. In fact practically all potential activity counters are based on that script.
- Check post quality maybe when you want to get accepted into a signature campaign. If the quality is not good then you might make a couple of 20 times posts so sig campaign runners can check this out.
Don't await that this is 100% proof since loans could be given behind the lines too. Or a hacker might have been clever. There is no 100% safety with this.
Probably you know now why account escrows are time consuming.  I already think of raising my worth limit again from which i accept a trade. Anyway... Good luck with your new safe and scamfree account then. As a tip for loaner... please don't let yourself be used as a quick account buyer. Don't take accounts as collateral too easy. Often enough loaner overvalue accounts alot too. And if you really want to take the account then take the checklist to heart. @Mods... I did not know if I should post it in a subforum so please feel free to push it where you think it would be more appropriate. |
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Yes and no. Is not like that and not so simple in a complex system like bitcoin. Bitcoin nodes work with their own view of bitcoin rules. If a miner or other nodes break this rules then they simple reject to relay block and transactions to the network.
Let me explain more. Now we have active 5888 nodes and about 576 only Classic nodes. If miner decide to trigger the hard fork then they will use only nodes that support Classic fork. If they try to transmit a block to other nodes then they will simple reject it. The situation is worst in lightweight wallet. If that kind of wallet that support Classic try to transmit transactions to a not Classic node then they will reject this.
Everyone can understand what chaos will be in the bitcoin network in that situation.
I see what you mean now. I agree though only to a certain degree. Nodes really would be able to hinder propagation. But only against miners of the other chain that do not know how to properly propagate. When miners only use the standard node with standard connection to the network then likely, your described situation will happen. But miners are smart nowadays. SPV-Mining (hope i didn't mix a shortcut) is one way to propagate fast but there is a network, i believe matt's network, that showed long ago that they can outperform 1 transaction block propagation very easily. They do this by propagating found blocks to big nodes in the network. They can get a block over 50% in, i believe less than a second in average. Not fully sure now. So clever miners would simply connect to other miners they would know are real miners and that they support their chain. Or use matt's network to try to overwhelm the network and find those miners fast. In theory, miners that use this technique would not have to fear something. Or am i missing something? |
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I think it's a necessary feature for future payment channels?
I think it is. As far as i read it is one of the steps needed for every deposit in a payment channel. Just in case the other party vanishes. Though it's interesting to hear that it is not ready yet. I guess that means that the lightning network can't come online as long as it isn't available. Maybe the devs work on segwit, which in fact would be the more important step for now. |
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Just-dice appears to be down, hopefully it gets back up soon I have a lot invested in the bankroll.
*lol* Did you check out the post exactly above yours? Anyway, the just-dice server had an hardware problem so dooglus is setting up a new server and is migrating just-dice to it. No coins lost. |
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This is a question to other escrows, regarding the risks of being escrow while an intentional fork is happening.
What are your thoughts about?
Use Core. Don't intermingle your coins with coins held in escrow. That is the determination of someone who believes firmly in core. Though there is the possibility that miners chose to support a bitcoin client that creates 2 mb blocks. Which could turn into a mess when you still run core and suddenly your coins become worthless because a fork wins the majority and the old chains coins lose their value. I'm really not ready to take such a risk. I mean it would be my error, at least if the users are not fully aware of me using a certain chain, and in worst case i had to refund a lot of bitcoins. If you don't move the coin(s) during the fork, you will not lose nothing ... Yes, that is for sure. But iam an escrow so i meet similar problems an exchange would meet on a much larger base. As long as i don't want to stop my escrow service once a fork started and only resume it once one chain completely lost, i would need to find a solution to still be able to act as an escrow while avoiding the risks of a forking blockchain. |
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Not a big deal, but since the homepage is currently at https://electrum.org, maybe the OP should be edited to reflect that? If electrum.org indeed is the official site then that should be linked in the OP here an nothing else. You can't expect users to use electrum.org when OP links electrum-desktop or some other site. OP also says latest release is 1.0. OP needs to be updated. Maybe also with checksums of latest releases. Who own this newbie "Electrum" account that owns the thread anyways? You mean the 4 year old OP whose account holder hasn't logged in in over 3 years? lol. Domain got squatted, simple 'nuff. Didn't think the old domain might be squatted. I hope we don't see fake electrum version on there at some point. It could destroy electrum completely in a short timeframe. |
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I did not check it out yet but i really like the thought behind and when i have time i will check it out.
The only thing i'm not so sure about yet is that i would have to enter my api into the extension most probably. And i not really know if it's safe, was the code reviewed by someone already?
The code is public for everyone to see. When we first launched, a few people in the TV chats looked it over and all gave it the go ahead. If you go to your extensions page and enable developer mode, you'll get access to a "background page" for the extension. On this page you can see all communication between the extension and the exchanges. Chrome is pretty good about security, you need to give the extension permission to communicate with 3rd party sites, keeping you in control. If there is anyone, or you know of anyone that could do another review of the code and post their analysis here, that'd be great. I checked this extension for not-so-nice code and can report that it comes out clean. Nice job Op! I take security very seriously and audit a lot of code on here, especially extensions like this. It's always good when people make nice things with no ulterior motives. <obligatory plug for tips goes here> Thanks for checking the code. I hope i will soon find the time to check this application out. I always was asking me why i can create such nice triggers and indicators and not use them for automated trading. Guess the solution might be there now. |
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This is a question to other escrows, regarding the risks of being escrow while an intentional fork is happening.
What are your thoughts about?
Use Core. Don't intermingle your coins with coins held in escrow. That is the determination of someone who believes firmly in core. Though there is the possibility that miners chose to support a bitcoin client that creates 2 mb blocks. Which could turn into a mess when you still run core and suddenly your coins become worthless because a fork wins the majority and the old chains coins lose their value. I'm really not ready to take such a risk. I mean it would be my error, at least if the users are not fully aware of me using a certain chain, and in worst case i had to refund a lot of bitcoins. |
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I did not check it out yet but i really like the thought behind and when i have time i will check it out.
The only thing i'm not so sure about yet is that i would have to enter my api into the extension most probably. And i not really know if it's safe, was the code reviewed by someone already?
The code is public for everyone to see. When we first launched, a few people in the TV chats looked it over and all gave it the go ahead. If you go to your extensions page and enable developer mode, you'll get access to a "background page" for the extension. On this page you can see all communication between the extension and the exchanges. Chrome is pretty good about security, you need to give the extension permission to communicate with 3rd party sites, keeping you in control. If there is anyone, or you know of anyone that could do another review of the code and post their analysis here, that'd be great. The thing i'm a bit worried about is that my private API could be leaked. I DON'T say that you are that kind of person but i simply was way too often experiencing disappointments. Latest was master-P who looked like a nice guy and escrow to me and was only a f... scammer at the end. He was able to fool many unfortunately. Anyway... i'm eager to try it out, it would be great if bots could be created simply from tradingview strategies. |
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This is a question to other escrows, regarding the risks of being escrow while an intentional fork is happening.
How will you behave? I mean every exchangee or escrow is running into the risk of receiving coins on a chain that will turn out to be the losing chain. In worst case the other chain wins and you will stay with a bitcoin address on the other chain that is unfunded. So if there is no solution to that risk i would need to close my escrow service since i could not risk losing bitcoins on the wrong chain.
My thoughts about this so far are that i should be able to eradicate this risk by A) chosing the chain that i think will win, and run my wallet on that. And B) run a wallet on the other chain too AND import all the escrow addresses from Wallet A to Wallet B. Then once i receive a payment then i will check if i receive the coins on both addresses. Which would be true when the coins on the input address were there before the fork already.
If one chain's escrow address, doesn't matter which, did NOT receive the coins then i either refund the coins or i offer to send the same amount of bitcoins to the escrow address on the other chain. Only when i hold the bitcoins on both chains i can be safe. There would be no risk then anymore when the chain i have the bitcoins on will lose. Because i have the bitcoins on the other chain too.
What are your thoughts about?
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I think this might need more thoughts put into though.
Yes, much thought has been and will continue to pour into this. For now, 2-of-3 works fine, at least multisig is an option. Keep me updated on the development. In the past the cryptotech has surprised so often that i would not be astonished too much if there once a cryptech exist that can completely eradicate risks. |
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...
I dealt with alot of cases where i had to inform users taking part in a project or shareholders in an investment. It is practically impossible to reach everyone. Often after months you still have many open cases.
So in theory, an exchange who only does this, might be in real trouble since the user could claim he trusted that they hold his bitcoins and they didn't. Or something like that. At least when they switch to another chain. Though then the bitcoins on the other chain should still lay in their wallet. No one could take them except the exchange. So in fact it would only apply to new deposits i guess. And that is something people have to check before.
From the legal point of view, it doesn't really matter whether you reach everyone or not. What matters is that you tried and took all the steps you reasonably could have taken to communicate with your customers. In terms of online exchange it's pretty straight forward: send emails to all, put disclaimer on log-in page, pop-up warnings while depositing/withdrawing + announcements on your official social media channels. Do all that in reasonable time-frame and you're safe. The thing is, you cannot really escape the risk no matter what you do. You risk when moving to the new fork, you risk by staying on old one and you risk when temporarily closing (especially when BTC price crashes after the fork and people can't sell due to their funds being locked). Hm, i wonder how far this information given policy can reach. I mean it would not work to announce a move to another server and if not all users claimed their coins till then then they are waived and taken by the exchange. The exchange has a liability to the user. So chosing to let go of the coins that, at the end, proofed being the right coins, might be problematic. Oh and regarding that exchanges cannot escape the risk... i'm an escrow and i will face similar risks as exchanges will do. My solution so far is that i will receive coins on the escrow address. My wallet will run on the chain that i chose to be the winning one. BUT i will have a wallet running on the other chain too. And i will import all privkeys from one chain into the other chain. That way i can know what happened in the other chain. As long as the bitcoins were lying on the output address on both chans i will receive the bitcoins on both chains too. Then the escrow trade can start. If not, if i receive them only on one chain, then i will either return them or i will ask to fund the escrow address on the other chain too. Since everything else would mean a risk that i could not take. I would rather stop being escrow then otherwise. But i think with this setup i can completely eliminate the risk. I have the coins on both chains. No risk anymore. |
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