Sure, I can AFFORD to lose everything I had invested, and everything that I have in other wallets and storage and it would not collapse my personal economy. What I lament is the loss of integrity, and reputation that yet another bitcoin venture going down the path of non-communication and theft of our value that will be the result of this.
I don't need to be encouraged to use coins, I've been negotiating for the past six months to get them adopted as a payment method for an international office products supplier. Guess what their reaction will be later today when I meet with the marketing team? Oh, another untold hundreds of thousands of dollars lost because some simple minded fuck in London decided to wipe out his precious little exchange so that he could fund his lawyer bills with stolen money? Right. And you really want to suggest we accept this "trustworthy" form of payment? That's the door right over there, don't let it hit you in the ass.
Ah, but wait, we can use it to balance out international exchange rates, right? Oh, except 99% of the business is tied up in a single exchange that has already suffered three notorious hacks, and has a troubling history of freezing assets on a whim, and cannot handle the most basic paperwork requirements without constant reminders.
So I'm crying for an Argentina (thanks Eva!) that goes way beyond my few coins. This latest rape of the community by James McCarthy and the rest of the investors that owned his venture and did nothing to keep it honest or functioning, could very well be the death knell for bitcoin. How many more failures, criminals and rip-offs are we going to be willing to overlook? How many more millions of dollars and euros and rupees in value is the world going to sacrifice on the altar of cutting edge technology that can change the way we transfer value, when 90% of it ends up getting lost, stolen, hacked, frozen. diverted, shifted, and hidden in business ventures that can't get the principles to agree on what day of the week it is, much less anything honest, like following through on the service or product they offered.
And they we all hold these self-same criminals up as the paragons of the community. Nefario and Amir were glorious speakers in London, their journey there being paid for with YOUR stolen money. Their glad-handing and welcoming smiles, and hollow words all paid for with somebody else's wealth, stolen and diverted to them, and explained away with a simple shrug and a "too bad, we were hacked and we don't know what we could possibly do."
I am nauseated by the acceptance of this kind of garbage business practice. I welcome pirate being investigated by the SEC, and I look forward to offering testimony and my copious conversation records with McCarthy when he is next to be taken down by the SEC. I truly hope the New Zealand receiver who is sorting out bitcoinica finds criminal intent and suggests the whole intersango group of thugs be charged. I hope the bitcoinica lawsuit results in Amir and Patrick and the rest being broken and destroyed financially, and that they are forced into real homelessness. Until we all stand together to block the actions of these scammy little thieves, we shall all surely fall together as they distort bitcoin into their own personal whorehouse.
As depressing and cynical as this statement proves to be, there is a fair amount of truth here. There are so many ideas people want to see flourish, yet we can't find a safe place to fund and work on them. I often rag on people for being so paranoid about scammers around every corner and everything's a conspiracy... And it seems lately they've been right more often than not  |
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In 6-12 months those ASIC devices will be replaced with better equipment.
During that time they will not lower their Price and here is why.
Reason 1. Have a product to offer that is better then your competitor makes you money.
Reason 2. During the time of development they will have to fund that research.
Reason 3. If you lower the price of the devices your existing customers bottom line will be effected.
Solution 1. Reveal a 2nd generation device before your competitor.
Solution 2. If it makes business sense offer full value trade-in on first gen pre-order devices.
Solution 3. If you happen to lower your prices. Offer trade-in options will less credit towards 2nd generation pre-order devices.
IMHO To have a successful business and or project you should adopt a policy that will never burn your bridges with your customers.... Ever...
Succinctly put and overall quite right. I actually remember a quote from one of my business classes later in college, and it comes from Sam Walton: " There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." In other words, keep your customers happy and they'll keep coming back to you. BFL had some trouble with this to start, but given they have a fair amount of competition this time around I don't see why they wouldn't want to make us happy. Otherwise I'll go buy from bASIC  Oh, and: LOL yay for vastly overestimating quantities! |
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I'm expecting a 20-30x difficulty rating, no meaningful increase in BTC/USD price, a halving of the block reward, and a ROI of around 6-8 months... Agree that people expecting to get all their $$$ back in a week are crazy but over the long term the BFL power consumption means it will continue to be paying for itself well into 2013.
Will
Not going to happen. There's one key aspect everyone misses when they predict their massive difficulty increases...and that's profitability. With a Jalapeno at 4.5GH/s, a 20x difficulty increase with NO increase in BTC/USD price would mean you're making 1.1 BTC per month. That's not even worth anyone's time for a $160 investment as it would take over 12 months to equal out (how you managed to calculate out 6 months I have no idea). And if you still think things will be the same in 12 months, chances are you're quite mistaken (look how far we've come as is...). To compensate, either the value of BTC would need to drastically increase or the cost of ASIC devices would need to decrease. EDIT: Missed this as I posted: I hate to break it to you but that doesn't add up. I myself am expecting a 16x difficulty rating but that was before I found out just how many BFL pre-orders were fake. I agree with a lack of increase in BTC/USD price and obviously the halving of the block reward but even my estimate puts the ROI at 9+ months, and that only adapted for 2x the original number of preorders in additional orders after they release the products. a 20-30x difficult would mean closer to 1.5 year for a 100% ROI.
Much more likely. Inaba already noted well under 10x for BFL alone, so I can't imagine getting near 20x for quite some time even with all the other ASIC companies' preorders added in. |
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With Litecoin Global it's a lot easier to establish it as a game/learning experience. LTC is a totally different ballgame when it has 1/240th the value, is all speculative, and you can't really buy (much of) anything else with it. As an educational site, I don't think it'd be wise to do away with the stocks/bonds/funds names. That's a large part of the education side.  Though I agree with that, Litecoins can still be exchanged for worldly currencies. From a legal perspective, it doesn't matter if litecoins are a billionth the value of a bitcoin. As long as you convert USD to LTC, park those LTC somewhere and make a return (or loss), it's considered investing. On the other side of that, if we replace LTC with BTC in your sentence and modify it a bit we can make the same argument "BTC is a totally different ballgame when it has 12x the value of a Dollar, is all speculative, and you can't really buy (much of) anything with it [compared to government backed currencies]." |
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So...the ideas that everyone has provided thus far are great for legitimacy in the eyes of the government. But isn't that what GLBSE was all about as well? Look what happened to him.
@Burnside - You're currently running the litecoin security exchange "underground" I'm assuming? Why can't we continue the same exchange plan under BTC instead of LTC? The only difference between LTC and BTC is popularity...
Guys, is there any security exchange that is currently meeting regulation standards for their government?
There's a reason we invest with bitcoins, litecoins, and the like...it's because we don't have to follow the same governmental rules and regulations that tie us down in the first place. We're free to do and create whatever we want, yet everyone is going back to the consensus that we need government regulation.
I understand that regulations help to hamper scams...I understand that regulations helps established businesses...but that's not why I wanted to work with Bitcoin security exchanges. I came here because I don't have to fight over a mountain of governmental paperwork to create a business. I don't have to work with my bank to figure out funding. I can get creative and build my own business and get funding on the exchanges for a tenth the amount of work and hassle required by the government. Establishing a bitcoin mining business is 100% possible with what we've got going on here...the moment any one of you is able to go into your local bank, say you want a $30,000 loan to purchase ASIC mining equipment, and receive that loan, tell me so I can make a visit to your bank.
Look at what was started by the various community members under GLBSE or MPEx. Do you think half of their ideas could have flourished if they had to spend the amount of time, effort, and money to work through regulations?
I agree that scams are a problem, and some are vastly more obvious than others. I must be a better way to locally regulate the securities without the intervention of SEC, FSA, etc.
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Just posted an update to my thread, noting: October 6th, 2012
With the news of GLBSE's insolvency due to severe mismanagement and legal implications, I will be looking to move my IPO to a new exchange. There are a number of possibilities, but the top two choices thus far are MPEx and #Assets-OTC (both of which I'm signed up for).
I am, however, hoping a number developers and investors work with Burnsides to create a "BTC-Global" exchange to mimic the current "LTC-Global" litecoin exchange. The code seems solid, and it's a lot easier to navigate and work with compared to MPEx.
I will update this thread's comments asking for suggestions.
END
Obviously this has been the shittiest news I've heard all week, but instead of dwelling on it and screaming at Nefario for being an asshole and terrible businessman, I'm looking to make progress...or at least create a plan of sorts. I'm looking from input from users and potential investors: Are there any security exchanges you feel comfortable investing on?I'm not too keen on MPEx, but if it'll help this get off the ground and gather momentum then I'll do what I can. I've also setup myself on #Assets-OTC. There isn't any trading, which would mean you could "buy shares" via #Bitcoin-OTC instead. Through this method, however, I could much more easily account for bondholders since I'd have their username, bitcoin address, email (if provided), and number of Bonds purchased. The problem here, unfortunately, is generating investors. Other than that, I'm giving my full support to Burnsides to create a BTC alternative to his Litecoin securities exchange. Hopefully something will come of that! |
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Or, more likely they'll all ignore it and go on their merry way.
That is 100% what I intend to do.  |
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The real issue, as far as I can see, is that for someone to be trusted to handle a customer database and a huge quantity of funds, they should be known and identifiable.
BUT being known and identifiable means that they'll face immense legal pressure almost immediately.
Do we have anyone in a suitable location where such things would be legal?
Could go the piratebay route and put servers in tons of different countries to avoid centralization. Anyway, I'm happy to support this venture in any way I can. Though I can't offer any web designing or programming skills, I will happily invest in the project. Let's have a solid plan in place and try not to end up like GLBSE |
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More funny people on this forum ... govs backed by bankers to buy hardware to combat Bitcoin, LOL, I can't stop laughing!
It seems many of you here are unaware of diversity of "weapons" which lie at disposal of obvious enemies of Bitcoin. It's very
possible Bitcoin is already overtaken by those entities.
[sarcasm] Oh my god, you're so right! Bitcoin has grown so incredibly vast and powerful, it will definitely be targeted by major countries around the world. [/sarcasm] Bitcoin has a total economy value of, what, a bit over $100 million? The world's GDP is around $70 trillion, which puts bitcoin's worldly influence at .000143% ...it would mean absolutely nothing if Bitcoin grew two-fold or disappeared tomorrow. Side note: Sorry guys, I didn't mean to feed the troll. Sometimes I just like their reactions though  |
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Broke hungry college kid.
You were close.
Don't worry, soon you'll be a Broke hungry graduate like me |
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I mainly kick ass and chew bubblegum.
That's a pretty good euphemism for a hungry, homeless brawler. |
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You guys realize you can actually go to the IP address right?...you don't have to rely on DNS for everything... Given the speculation thus far, my guess is that by actually going to 82.130.102.160 you'll be surprised by what you find.. |
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This is why ventures need proper business plans and growth needs to happen in a controlled manner - and why so many ventures fail because of their own initial success. All of the things you listed should not be happening at one time and one person should not be responsible for managing them all. Businesses are extremely vulnerable during growth and that vulnerability needs to be planned for. That applies in the conventional world just as much as in the Bitcoin world. What is slightly different is that in the Bitcoin world we're often seeing start-ups quickly become responsible for large amounts of other people's funds - because the primary "product" being demanded and offered is financial services. This means the consequences of failure during expansion often involve the loss of other people's funds and not just those of the principals.
And yes, not just your first but every business you run has a learning curve - that's no excuse for failing to do your homework and due diligence both prior to launch and on an ongoing basis, though.
Well stated, and I agree for the most part. Sometimes, however, even the best business plans can fall victim to random events and changes, all resulting in chaos. Sometimes the biggest challenge, and staple of a successful venture, is being able to get through it in one piece |
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Either
1) BFL is gonna ship soon or
2) it's all fabricated
I'm undecided.
I don't understand how you fabricate that. Is there any way that it isn't real hash power? Or are my calculations wrong? It is real hash power, but it could be fabricated by using a large gpu/fpga farm or services such as GPUMAX. Why would someone pay to redirect GPUMAX to a testnet where they'll get no return? To prove everyone that ASIC is right there, by having someone noticing it and posting it on the forum. If that was so the company would want to take ownership or have that poster claim ownership. There is none of that here. No, the company has no interest in doing so. There already are only a few companies, only one of those is worried about making their clients sure that they didn't gave money to a scammer. Wow...just...wow... Cedivad, don't forget your tinfoil hat!  |
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I'd love to see someone take the reins on this one and pull it through. Having another reasonable BTC Exchange option would be wonderful |
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...those who hold equity have not only a right but a positive duty to be aware of what is happening with GLBSE as they are jointly and severally liable for its actions.
Precisely, and unfortunately Nefario seems have severely mishandled the situation. I do think this all could have been handled a bit better, but I also understand the situation he's in. Imagine if you were in his shoes. You're there with a handful of other members, managing them, new IPOs, finances, scam accusations, renovations to the site and existing infrastructure, and all the while working with legal and governmental agencies to establish real world legitimacy. That's an extremely stressful and overwhelming scenario, and it doesn't help when it's your first time running a fast growing business and you're learning along the way. Hopefully tomorrow we see some good news. |
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IMHO, the problem with these companies is less the question of scamming, it's more their announcement strategies. E.g. GLBSE: I simple: "We doing a major security upgrade to the site. More information available on saturday" would be an improvement. The lack of information reminds me of the information politics used during legal activities.
Couldn't agree with you more. |
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I didn't realize I missed so many conference videos. Just finished getting caught up on just about all the videos and everything makes a lot more sense now. GLBSE is working with lawyers / legality / regulations (hence no communication for a week so far). BFL devices are real and being tested. GLBSE and BFL are working together since the majority of income for them is a result of the security exchanges and miner stocks/bonds. People have a lot of good ideas in the community that'd I like to see come to fruition. The conference was a good indicator of that. Ok, now that I've said this I've got to A) make note of this post for a later "I told you so" moment, and B) brace myself for the fury of tin-foil hat wearing paranoids who think everything and everyone is scamming them. |
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Thanks for the link. Haven't watched the conference yet, so might as well do it now! |
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