I'm not a particularly avid gambler (at least anymore) but I cannot help but notice a conflict of interest here. I'm not sure about you, but personally I feel that the position your claiming at the moment about the ratings having no bearing upon the paid advertisers you have is untenable. Assuming you try to be fair (and let's say a book is pretty shitty with a dodgy interface and high vig) and this book in question pays you for advertising, do you honestly think that the book will still advertise with you if you give it a poor but honest assessment? This is a conflict of interest; where money and honesty are involved my bet would be on the money. While I accept everyone wants to make a buck you cannot claim that your views are not biased at least to some small degree.

What does it matter. I really don't see any real effect aside from some possible asinine commentary by the media. Let's assume someone tries it, and for some ridiculous reason they actually get the patent in the US what will it do. First off for anyone not in the US, they are not going to care at all - after all it's a patent in the US and not the whole world. For anyone in the US, its simply not viable for the patent owner to go after every single user and uncover their details (given that Bitcoin is meant to be anonymous by default) and then take them to court.

Like all donations, the incentive would be the fact you believe yourself to be doing something good for someone else/society. It's like asking what incentive people have to donate to charity - it's called charity for a reason. Next, you would realise that sad as it is, all innovation comes about from a desire for further revenue - if IBM and various other PC manufacturers didn't want money (yeah like that's going to happen) then they'd have no incentive to produce anything and you would probably not have a computer nor would you have Bitcoin.

Yeah a laptop without a wireless card is a perfectly fine solution. Formatting the machine and installing a Linux derivative would be best given that malware is rarer on Linux and Linux is generally friendlier with older machines whose specs aren't as good. Plus nearly all the cold storage software (Armory/Electrum) is compatible with most forms of Linux.

I can see one other problem. Given that people using credit cards can chargeback up to 180 days later with Paypal and possibly later depending in their card company how would you deal with people who try and develop a long term relationship with your business if they could chargeback once a string of smaller transactions are complete?

As stated there are really only two options if you want to backup your key but forgot to do it initially when the secret/QR code was offered. The first would be to disable your 2FA and then re-enable it noting down the new key associated with it. If for some reason you don't want do that and your using a phone based authenticator you might be able to extract the key from the phone data (easier on Andriod then on iOS). The first option is probably easier and more secure but if you want to do the second one there should be some guide - just google them out.

Let me get this straight. You want to offer escrow services as a newbie with no prior history or trust... All it looks like is an attempt to scam people in a less blatantly obvious (but still obvious way). Even of you were legit - there are a crap ton of more trusted escrows who also charge no fees, so you'd in all likelihood get no customers. My advice is that you spend the next year or so getting acquainted and doing some actual trades before you bother with an escrow service.

How exactly does it put him in more jeopardy then previously. If he's retaining them, people need to know so try know who to go to if they have withdrawal problems. If he's passing them onto some other escrow the. It'll also be publicly known for the same reasons.

Last time I checked the wording for the law/statute is always in place and fixed (subject to amendments b parliament) so they don't exactly change before the bill is officially enacted. The law should be pretty clear on what it's stating and generally relatively easy to understand.

How do you avoid the chargeback that will probably occur following the exchange - unless you're only operating in a BTC ---> PayPal fashion. Even worse, seeing as your borrower the BTC you're selling how would you manage to repay if that happened or the price suddenly spiked?

I can see a couple of problems. First off, you need to make sure that you keep them in safe but physically isolated locations as if something like a fire happens in your house and all your copies are there you are screwed. Next, you might want to have encrypted it with BIP38 just in case someone managed to break into your house or wherever you are storing it and just copied then private key and stole your coins (possibly not needed if you have it in a safe/bank safe deposit box - although you might not trust the banking staff).

Because, from what I've read from speculators, it would create a perception that the coins *should* be valued at that price point as well as some degree of fear that Draper could sell them off now for a quick profit. Clearly, if it was the case Draper wouldn't want to devalue his own holdings by stating something that he doesn't have to. Personally, I'm not sure whether I agree with the reasoning, but then again humanity isn't exactly that logical, so reasoning doesn't always explain pricing fluctuations.

I'm going to assume your right about this, seeing as I haven't had a good look at the new law myself yet.

@doog: Given this, I'm curious how are you going to manage the funds which are still owned by those people who have not yet claimed. I'm doubtful every single person will claim their coins before the bill comes into effect (unless it has already - can't find any sources to say when the law is in effect).

I haven't been lending that much so far, but from what I've seen on this board and personal experience, you can make anywhere from 10% to 30% with little risk. The number of loans you have out at once is simply a function of how much you want and have available to loan.

Now to your point about risk - as I've stated you can significantly minimise your risk if you simply only take loans where the borrower offers collateral (either in digital form such as altcoins or physical shippable goods). If these are held by an escrow then unless your escrow runs off, you're pretty much set. In effect you act like a bank, in general banks only make only if you have sufficient assets that they may seize and sell to repay the debt. However, in this case the assets are given to an escrow to ensure that they are available to be sold should defaulting occur whereas a bank would take your assets through the legal system.

Haha, sadly not. I didn't buy very much till late last year, so I'm pretty much in the same boat as nearly everyone else. I was interested in it early on, but didn't really think it would get very far so I didn't buy any or mine that much. Then I took a hiatus and came back last year and the rest is history.

Yeah, most of them who managed to mine a crap ton will be sitting pretty right now. I swear they were already pretty pleased when we hit $30 and $100 respectively.

Wait, what exact legal ramifications does doog have as an effective sole trader who is simply closing his accounts (albeit in BTC)? I don't exactly see how likely they'd be to come after doog for freezing site and trying to disperse the funds to their legal owners...

Yeah, given that Bitstamp itself deals with 17,000+ BTC a day, it shouldn't be too hard to buy a thousand a day at market price over the course of the month. Given that your giving your details to the government anyway with the US marshal's auction, I don't see how that would be much different than giving the necessary documentation to an exchange for AML/KYC purposes. Unless of course you don't trust the exchange...

Unless legally there is a problem with doog being entrusted with the coins until their rightful owners come and claim I don't see why he can't just keep hold of it. First of all, you don't have a right to spend other people's money (even if it is on an escrow) without their consent. Secondly, there aren't exactly a lot of people who could be trusted with the money or who wouldn't possibly abuse the position they'd be put in. Whose to say they wouldn't take a cut for themselves and pretend that someone claimed it.

I'd straight out have a tendency to disagree. I would assert that most of the price is driven by speculation - the rest is simply some small driving factors that have little influence whatsoever. While I have stated that increased infrastructure should lead to higher prices, there is no definite price region anyone can predict simply because the whole thing is too grey. Not to mention, what justifies a price at $640 where we are now and $700 or $500 in the future...

Even their 'factors' are simply just the infrastructure and supply and demand really.

Not true at all. Correlation =/= Causation.

Some of the biggest scams have been schemes which were elaborate and took time and good con skills to get set up (ie Madoff ponzi). Madoff spent a lot of time trying to get new investors and hyping up his company which is hard work.

The reality is that scamming simply requires a broken moral compass. That's all the prerequisite is.

It is because last time I checked, you don't run Crysis on max (even if you have the graphics to support it) for extended periods of time (like 24/7). First off, laptops generally have really crappy cooling, you WILL overheat and damage your stuff if you do it for too long. Secondly, the return is far too poor for the cost. You would be getting like 800kH/s, which means you'd make nothing on BTC or any other coin is significant value for the enhanced possibility of bricking some of your parts.

If you want to get into mining, you'll need ASICs to make any kind of real money (beyond like a couple of dollars).