My feelings

When I ordered gold in the US for my bitcoins, I felt some mental discomfort. Defense against any unfair conduct accross the ocean, in a foreign language, in a foreign environment and in different time zone can be very difficult. I wanted to spend my bitcoins for gold when the bitcoin first time exceeded $ 30 per bitcoin. I had no time, bitcoin fall very quickly.

So I ordered my Krugerrand as planned from Coinabul now. Coinabul was recommended me by my previous supplier. That's why I was not looking for anyone in Europe.

Communication with Coinabul proved to be very slow. Any information I received only when I requested it and the answer sometimes took several days. After three weeks it was said me that the Krugerrand will not be send to me. I did not understand Coinabul's reasons and reply to my request to return bitcoins was very confusing. At that moment I began to believe that I become a victim of fraud which further strengthened the refund offer far below the amount sent to the US and five day delay in response to my last mail.

The situation was calmed down by a guy here in Czech Republic which called to Coinabul and to me and explained whole situation. Thank you.

Why Coinabul did not send the Krugerrand

The financial system of the world is sick. Fiat money rules the world and any attempt to change the monopoly on the production of the commodity called "money" is percived as dangerous and suspicious. Bitcoin and gold are precisely those commodities that played the money's role whole ages, or aspire to this role. Any manipulation with them thus attracts the attention of the rulers of the current system and automaticly raises suspicion. Therefore, once the Coinabul had some doubt that everything is legal, they stopped whole action and refused to send me the gold. It is evident in all their mails that they want to have everything in order and the effort could be funny from the outsider point of view. But keep in mind that Coinabul is located in a state which showed how easy could be to destroy their job:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

Why the bitcoins was not returned to me

The reason is simple - the did not returned bitcoins because they may not. As I said, current financial system of the world is sick. The only bearer of value are money. It does not matter how the two parties agree - once the relationship is affected by state (courts, financila office, etc.) all the value has to be quoted in money. Someone crashes your car - the court will assign you money compensation, rather than a new car. If someone kill your apple tree, the court will assign you a money, not a bag of apples each of the next twenty years. Coinabul has in terms that they refunds in US dollars. In the doubt, everything is counted in money by the state. Common sense - I put bitcoin, I get bitcoin - is completely unnecessary. This procedure, of course, may damage any part of the trade. And because the rules are determined by the seller, it is the seller which is the stronger part. If the rule "I put bitcoin, I get bitcoin" was valid, the Coinabul's terms would be completely different and the Coinabul would hedge against bitcoin market moves. The hedging is simple - keep  bitcoins until the trade is settled.

Recommended reading:

Murray N. Rothbard: What Has Government Done to Our Money?

Conclusion

I get enough from Coinabul to buy Krugerrand in Europe. From this perspective I'm satisfied. I do not feel to be damaged. However, I have feeling that the things started to move when I made a public circus and that a lot of other people would get from the Coinabul really just the spot gold price and the premium, shipping and insurance paid would keep the Coinabul. At the same time remains in me a sense of disgust at the methods that I can use in the fight for my demands.

Recommendation
If you are outside from US, do not buy in US. When byuing in US, you should be always warned that you are responsible for your local taxes and local laws. If you buy gold in US, there is a chance that the gold is never sent to you.

Final note
It is very hard to write such text in foreign language. Sori from me english :-)

Cyprus bailout effect
   
Dear Customer,

As you have probably already learned from the news, the Cypriot government is planning to introduce a one-time tax on all customer accounts held with Cypriot financial institution. In order to secure the collection of this tax, many customers have had funds blocked against their accounts held in Cyprus-based banking institutions.

UWC Financial Services Ltd issued a statement confirming that Cyprus bailout will have no effect on the funds held in our customers accounts, as these funds are kept outside Cyprus. For our UWCFS Quick Cards it is regrettable that customers that are holders of the CSC24Seven issued cards will have probably noticed that an unrecognised transaction has been issued on their cards over the weekend 16th-17th March 2013.

CSC24Seven the card issuing bank has originated these transactions under instruction from the government of Cyprus to ensure the collection of this tax from all account holders. While it is still unclear whether the tax will affect all accounts or just savings accounts, bank accounts or specific other types of accounts remains to be confirmed but until the final decision (expected Tuesday 19th March 2013) is announced, the funds blocked on UWCFS Quick Cards are under the control and disposal of the card issuing bank (CSC24Seven).

CSC24Seven has assured UWC Financial Services Ltd, if in the event that e-money (pre-paid card) accounts are granted exclusion from the bailout scheme, the blocked funds will be reversed back to pre-pard card accounts.

UWC Financial Services Ltd are in continued communication with CSC24Seven and we are continually monitoring the situation and endeavour to keep our customers updated on any further development.

You can find more information on the situation in Cyprus in our daily market reviews from Mayzus Investment Company Ltd http://www.mayzus.com/en/market-reviews/marketreview-3444.html

Kind regards,
Nikolay Rozhok
CEO
UWC Financial Services Ltd

Can you link me to an example transaction that the fee should be higher.

Davout, in Portuguese there's a proverb that translated is something like "Don't spit up, it may fall back on your face".

France is not that immune from these kind of heists... nobody in the Eurozone is, actually.

...

What are you trying to say?

You! I have just written a post about the subdomains of the Wiki https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=153986.0

+bitcointip 1 internets

ahhhhhh

Because Satoshi is not a human, but
 Purple alien.

This (*coin project) special operation was
 called "Nakamoto" by Purples.

The goal of the "Nakamoto"-plan - to enslave Earth and humans.

The first step : create *coin(s) and
 suck into them all wealth on the planet.

The second step : destroy all *coins.

The final step : invade Earth
< after 1) and 2) it'll be relatively easy. >

Give those primitive creatures a tool that preserves wealth, incentivezes saving and frees them of "leeches" = Check

Wait for the moment their IQ is over 100 and start inventing real defense systems, like star-ships and laser cannons, and be fair with them.
We then can invade Earth = Waiting for it...

Un caballero me devolveria los que me saco a 37!

Al revés, mis entrañas dicen que esta pequeña, fué la última bajada antes del 50.
Compren ahora!

Ja ja ja ja ja  
Buenísimo!

Una empresa de software de Finlandia permitirá a sus empleados cobrar en moneda virtual

El sistema elegido ha sido Bitcoin, una moneda virtual creada en 2009 por el desarrollador japonés Satoshi Nakamoto, y que cada día adoptan más negocios en internet y actualmente tiene en su cartera de clientes a importantes webs como...

March 11th Payout Errors Detail
This was posted on the official forum thread at Bitcointalk previously. Those who have already heard about it, this is just a summary/recap, not a repeat event.

On March 11th, an upgrade was being done to move the Merged Mining server to bitcoind 0.8. Previously, upgrading the bitcoind software on a pool server was safe to do live. Simply stopping the old binary, copying over the new one, and restarting it, would keep the pool up and running, and prevent miners from disconnecting.

These updates were done live in the past because the ~30 seconds of "downtime" (a block can't be solved during this brief downtime) was worth the cost of miners disconnecting and possibly being stuck offline/on a backup pool. However, something went very wrong with the upgrade to bitcoind 0.8. The main reason to upgrade to 0.8 was the drastically improved speed of the bitcoin client, which reduces stales and reduced the chance of orphan blocks. This was accomplished with a new database backend, LevelDB. Unfortunately, when upgrading to 0.8, it does not automatically update your old blockchain information. It resync's the blockchain from scratch.

The problem on March 11th was this brief period where the server was resync'ing the blockchain. It was not caught instantly, it took about 45 seconds to notice. During this time, the pool server recorded work at the network difficulty from very early blocks, a difficulty of 1. Users were being awarded 25 BTC per share.

These increased rewards being logged were not caught immediately, and a total of 16 users were able to withdraw 1,254 BTC (the balance of the hot wallet) that they should not have earned. All rewards from this period have since been revoked, but only one of the 16 users has returned any funds (a total of 47 BTC).

This news post was made to keep the incident transparent. The pool suffered approximately 1,400 BTC in losses this week. 1,254 from the error in payouts, and somewhere between 150 and 250 coins from the hard fork event. My plan is to simply absorb these losses, and continue moving forward.

The pool is accepting donations from users as a result of these events. Miners can direct a spare worker or load balance backup to the worker: btcguild_donate . Direct donations are also accepted through the address: 1GuiLdvH3YjJyEExyTmcd7X2nwX7pZvV7a
March 15th, 2013

I don't even see why this belongs anywhere. Where is the info about the alleged scam other than in the title of this thread?  
What is the link to the BTC guild home page supposed to tell us?