I was reviewing my tip history today and noticed something:  now that bitcoins have risen drastically in value, substantially increasing the wealth of most bitcoin holders, the amount of tips I receive has actually decreased rather than increased.  I don't mean in quantity of bitcoins, I mean in number of tips sent.  Before the rise I had received 15-20 tips in various amounts over the past few months, but since bitcoins passed 1 USD for the second time I've only received one regular tip and one tip for the Introduction to BitCoin post.  It's possible that I simply haven't been writing worthwhile posts, or that it's just random, but then I was noticing that I've been more tightfisted myself now that my coins are worth more.  It's almost like I feel that they're going to increase by the same percentage again, so it would be foolish to just give them away.

What do you think?  Has the rising value made you more tightfisted?  If so, I'm wondering if this might be something to guard against as somewhat counterproductive for a fledgling bitcoin economy.  I'm not really a believer in the whole "deflationary spiral" scenario, but the psychological impacts of rising btc values are worth thinking about.

The reason this came to mind today is that I'm launching a new website, bitSyndicated.com, where I hope to create quality content based around the tipping model, and especially using tips as a more effective form of feedback than merely site stats.  The first post is a comic where users can "vote" with their tips to decide which illustrator gets to share in the donations, and also support the Wikipedia translation bounties at the same time.  Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think about the idea!  To make this kind of model scalable, number of tips is going to be much more important than the value of the individual tip, which led me to notice that instead of simply reducing the size of my tips I've actually slowed them altogether.  It would be so cool in my mind if we could create a practical way to fund web content without advertising, and without any one person giving very much at all!



edit:  someone must have known I was typing this, because while I was posting I received another tip to the address in my signature.  What are the odds of that?  Crazy!

Go for it!

I think the reason this is the default is simply for bandwidth reasons, but I could be wrong.

I think that since there are so few native speakers of Esperanto, and even fewer people who would be unable to learn of BitCoin unless there were an Esperanto article, that it's probably not in keeping with what this bounty is designed for.  The point is to make sure as many people as possible have access to information about BitCoin.

It would still be really cool to have one, though!  Maybe I should try and get one done up for Lojban.  Don't forget, people, you can also chip in for a specific language if you really want to see an article for it.

Ahh, I probably missed it.  I just remember being highly surprised to discover these details after the picture I had built of the case from forum comments.

Something that nobody seems to ever mention here when bringing up the Liberty Dollar case is the fact that Von NotHaus called them "dollars" without always being careful to differentiate them from FRN's, sold them at different rates to different people in what was arguably a multi-level marketing scheme, encouraged people to "spend them at a profit" from the price they paid, and encouraged businesses to slip them in with unsuspecting customer's change (worth knowing if, like me, you are hearing about the Liberty Dollar case for the first time from these forums).

The terrorism phrase is totally ridiculous (just like most other places it gets tossed around) but bitcoins are a completely different situation from Liberty Dollars.  There's no need to turn someone into an "adversary" for merely being a ridiculous politician.

Great work people, but keep in mind that as the OP says continuing bounties can't be guaranteed until we get more donations--there are already enough claims to exhaust the fund if they are all granted.  Translations made after I've taken over will likely fall under the purview of a new bounty formula based on increased bitcoin value, and some bounty winners may elect to re-contribute a little bit since bitcoins have gone up so much.  If you want to help accelerate this process, help me find people to review Finnish, Italian, etc.

Feedback seems to be that Bulgarian needs a little bit more work.  The purpose of this bounty is to encourage quality translations, so I definitely appreciate your work on this Smothier, but we need to keep the bar high.  If you can get it to the level where fluent Bulgarian speakers give it a solid review you are still in line for a bounty.  Perhaps you can find someone who will help you and then split it with you?

Thanks Dusty and and evoorhees!

Forum locked as suspicious.  Rudolo can pm me to contest.

lol, calm down nster.  He already called a ceasefire.

Alright, I've had the chance to look at this with fresh eyes and I think I can identify the place where the situation diverged.  The lightbulb statement for me was this line:

As you waded through your gobs of email I believe you confused the first half of my initial email, which asked about the two missing letters; with the second half which talked about three trades made immediately before emailing (weekend trades and email sent on Sunday).  To clarify I've inserted bolded comments below:


I apologise for the unwarranted speculation in my original post, which I have removed (although it exists for the record as quoted).  If I believed this was the second time this had occurred, I would have been suspicious too.  My original post is a good example of the paranoia that can arise when you are worried someone is trying to scam you, so I get it.

To recap without wasting anyone's valuable time, the only two letters of mine that have been late are the same two I have been communicating about with you from the beginning:

booked Feb 10
booked March 6th

while the expresspost I was asking permission to send on March 20 was for these three trades:

booked Friday March 18
booked Sunday March 20
booked Sunday March 20

After you authorised the expresspost on March 24th the money was on your doorstep within 10 business days, as all my trades have been.

When our conversation about the missing trades abruptly decayed I was extremely confused, but if you were operating under the assumption that I had previously been late with other trades, it finally makes sense to me.  Hopefully we can get this all resolved now.

You are welcome to try and sell whatever you like after you have earned the trust of the community.  You don't need to "warn" people here about S3052--most people here are well aware of the risks of trying to predict the future of anything, especially markets.  I don't think anyone has the impression that S3052 is some sort of magic genie:  you need to relax a little bit.

What are you talking about?  There have been no trades except for the ones detailed in my post, and everything there (except for the missing letters which are still m.i.a.) has arrived within 10 business days.

Email conversations have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and I will not be accused of violating someone's privacy except as a last resort.  If you prefer to do it differently, I am happy to have you publish the entire exchange yourself.  Stop playing these bantering games and let's just lay everything out.  I couldn't care less if either of our egos are bruised--let's just get this thing resolved to the satisfaction of the entire community here, and for goodness' sake double-check your records before getting all personal.  If this whole anonymous business thing is going to work, transparency and community response are going to have to take the place of courts and mediators in resolving disputes.  Too tired to respond more tonight, will reply to the whole thing after I can get some rest and clear out a growing backlog in my business.


p.s. edited the OP's thread title as I also feel "fraud" is too strong of a word and the discussion is largely focussing on my situation now.  If he has a problem with that he can edit it back.

Definitely:  to clarify, I intend to transfer the full amounts for qualifying translations, but I greatly thank you and any others who voluntarily choose to re-contribute given the massive rise in bitcoin value.

This is the most offensive thing to me about this situation--not the monetary loss, but the fact that the Madhatter has first implicitly and then explicitly accused me of trying to defraud him.  Some of the claims in the above post appear improperly researched, and others are outright false.  With your permission, Madhatter, I will post our entire (digitally signed) email exchange here, to compliment the complete information I have available to me in other forms.

If I was trying to scam the Madhatter I would have to be the most foolish criminal in the world, and I think it's pretty clear from my participation in the community here that I am neither foolish nor a criminal.  He runs an anonymous service, so only an idiot would attach both his real-world and (well-established) online identity to the trades in question during the precise period the Madhatter claims I was trying to knowingly scam him.  Yet this is exactly what I did when seeking to honour my own obligations at worse rates to me than the market of the day, and I will provide ample evidence to prove it.  The recent surge appears to be the only reason my trades aren't being honoured.


Continuing:
You should all understand that the underlying context for the situation here is persistent and rampant problems in the Canada Post postal system.  My sister-in-law, for example, recently had a package going from my city to the same province as the Madhatter which was lost for several months before turning up.  Some useful references:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2010/11/23/mb-letter-carriers-sorting-dispute-winnipeg.html  (I live in Winnipeg, the "testbed" for Canada Post's new system they are developing)
http://savemoneyinwinnipeg.blog.ca/2011/02/22/problems-with-the-mail-10660686/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2010/11/15/mb-canada-post-complaints-mail-neville-winnipeg.html
http://www.leaderpost.com/mail+moves+slowly/4681185/story.html
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/canada-posts-little-secret-121374374.html
http://winnipeg.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110413/wpg_strike_vote_110413/20110413/?hub=WinnipegHome
http://postandparcel.info/39044/news/canadian-postal-union-talks-pick-up-pace-under-strike-threat/
etc.

I did not mail you letters "for locked in trades from months ago."  I mailed them on time months ago, and have been in regular communication with you since then wondering why they are taking so long and asking you whether I should consider them lost or stolen.  You have repeatedly assured me there was no problem, and never once mentioned that you planned to cancel the trades.  Had you requested it or warned me at all of the impending cancellations, I would have immediately re-sent additional money.

I do not have a history of untimely mailings.  The postal service has a history of untimely mailings.  Case in point--my first three trades:

1GHrztccFjTVnrzpk1QmR8XeVmniH2fEqP  transaction 536-927 booked on January 7
14e9e8uWGpgZUwarcWDNGmpQbcFKbarrds  transaction 205-192 booked on January 13
1CV2TbssjiDwHwExvBn4CLR6QXJELdKCwv  transaction 399-754 booked on January 14 (mybitcoin to mybitcoin trade so no record in blockchain but I am happy to allow a trusted member to log into my mybitcoin account and verify it)

These trades were all mailed shortly after booking, yet as you can see they were processed in a clump on January 24th.  If the Madhatter had only bothered to look at the postmarks he could have verified for himself that Canada Post, and not me, was the cause of the delay.  Yet despite this the letters still arrived within a maximum period of 10 business days.  It was long enough to make me uncomfortable since they only had to travel two provinces over, but it's well within the time you later quoted me as typical for your trades.


This statement is patently false.  The only way I can think that you would make it is if you were conflating my expresspost for a separate trade with these two letters which are still missing; or if you have somehow confused me with someone else.  The latter is perhaps the only reason I can think of that you would turn on a trusted customer and community member so abruptly.  The following is the entire history of my trades with you, continuing from the above three:

On February 10th I booked my fourth trade with you for 100 CAD, and sent the letter shortly thereafter.  Although I was prepared from my previous experience to expect a certain amount of delay, I didn't expect this to be a problem.  These coins are for people who plan to hold them for a long time.

On March 6th, still taking the previous trade on faith, I booked my fifth trade with you for 100 CAD.  These are the two trades which are in dispute, and they are for a combined total of 214.45 btc, plus 21.44 btc in deposits that have been promised back but which have not yet been returned.  Neither letter has shown up so far, but since they were mailed at different times I find it exceedingly unlikely that both are lost or stolen.

By the time I booked additional trades on the weekend of March 18th-20th (50 CAD, 500 CAD, and 100 CAD) I was getting worried that I still had not had either the February 10th or March 6th trades processed.  Therefore I emailed you wondering if you had had problems with delayed mail, to which you responded that although one letter had once taken 3 months I didn't need to worry.  I also asked if you would accept a registered mailing for the new trades (the website said not to send these).  You said this would be okay in your email of March 24th, which I read a couple of days later.  Going on your description of what constituted normal timing for your trades, I waited a couple more days to offset the cost of the expresspost by including another trade on April 4th (20 CAD) and then mailing right away.  At the time of mailing, everything except the 20 CAD had been done at worse rates for me than the current market rate, as can be verified by examining that period in bitcoin charts.  But since I am in BitCoin for the long term I didn't mind, and also took away from the experience that even if my two missing letters took a long time to arrive they would still be honoured.  Nothing was mentioned about anything being cancelled after a certain amount of time.

This delay in mailing of approximately one week is the longest I have ever delayed in mailing a trade, and since I sent it by expresspost the trades still arrived within 10 business days of when you authorised me to send them by that method.  The quoted statement is false.  It should also be noted that when I inquired about the two missing letters I identified myself as eMansipater and signed my real name to the email, which no scammer would do if they were trying to defraud you via those trades.  All my trades have also included my email address and return address.  But most significantly, as I have already drawn your attention to in an email, the two trades in question were at a disadvantage to me when I began inquiring after them, and remained so for nearly a month afterward.  I am clearly not a scammer.  Your accusation that I was somehow trying to defraud you is both baseless and extremely onerous to me.


Continuing:
On April 30th, with exchange rates now rising, I logged into the tracking option and was surprised to see that my February 10th trade was marked "cancelled."  Since neither the website nor any of the Madhatter's emails had ever warned of cancellation, I was extremely concerned and emailed him immediately, telling him if there was any problem I could simply re-send the cash or even transfer Mt. Gox dollars.  On May 3rd, he emailed me back and told me for the first time ever that he had configured his system to cancel trades at 60 days and that he did not plan to honour the trades past then despite still telling me it was "probably too soon" to write off the missing letters.  The trade from March 6th had still not reached 60 days and after another email exchange patiently attempting to find a "win-win solution", I quickly mailed an expresspost with additional (repeat) payment for the not-yet-expired trade, and also included repeat money for the February 10th trade since I expected the situation would be resolved amicably upon a review of our correspondence and my trading history, which he seemed initially confused about.  I even offered that the repeated money could be held as collateral (or the bitcoins escrowed with clearcoin) until the original two letters show up.  But he became obstinate, cancelled the second trade, and refused delivery of my expresspost despite having the tracking information in hand that showed it had been mailed before the second cancellation.  He implicitly accused me of attempted fraud with phrases like "How convenient. I wasn't born yesterday."  His treatment of me despite my forbearance and patient seeking of win-win solutions has gotten me somewhat riled up about this--which should be significant for anyone who has read my posts here.

I intended to wait until receiving the refused expresspost back before posting here on the forums, but when "Bobby" posted I felt it was important to mention my own experience at the same time.  I emailed the Madhatter to let him know about this thread, and have today received back the refused expresspost (An indication of how slow Canada Post continues to be).  Although he has my information he has not yet returned my deposits, which he promised to do when he began insisting the trades had to be cancelled.  I refuse to email him a request to do so since that would be a tacit acceptance of the cancellations which were never mentioned either on the website nor in our extensive correspondence (which included an anecdote by him of mail taking 3 months to arrive).

I have gone to great lengths to resolve this amicably, but the current situation is unacceptable.  Without warning of the cancellations I had no way to mitigate the risk they exposed me to, and the cancellation of the second trade after I had already sent a repeat payment for it is totally inappropriate.  But most of all, the accusation that I have attempted to defraud him is libellous and abhorrent to me.  I expect better from someone who so many people have trusted, and most of all I expect an in-depth explanation for how on earth he has himself been exposed to any risk by my proposed solutions.  What will he do when the two delayed letters arrive?  I already held all the risk in this relationship from the beginning, and now he has accused me of trying to scam him.  This has to be thoroughly and carefully resolved in complete transparency.

Vlad has put it very concisely.  If the time-limited nature of the trade had been made clear from the beginning, it would be equivalent to a call option.  I did not intend, however, to contract for a call option.  I considered the trade made and the coins reserved, with my deposit as the Madhatter's hedge against non-payment.  Despite this I have been very open to re-sending payment if warned and given time to, escrowing, etc. since I understand neither of us can control delays in the mail.  All I want to know is how any of these options expose the Madhatter to risk, rather than simply affording him an opportunity to profit off the increased value of already reserved bitcoins.  I also demand that he change his website to declare that trades will expire, and when.  When I made the trades all it said was:

Sorry for the delay folks--I have been trying to track down some contacts who can review the other languages.  Expect the launch of the new thread soon.

In the meantime, what would those potentially eligible for the bounty think about gifting back a portion of their winnings to continue the fund?  I am thinking with the rise in value I should change the formula to increase the number of bounties we can award, and am curious to hear both the answer to this question as well as comments on the idea from the other contributors.

I'd happily underbid you at 50btc if Bit_Happy is looking for a chance to demonstrate his or her commitment to this project.  I have to say, even a little punctuation would go a long way to improving readability.

Only if he did not purchase a similar amount of coins at the time of the lock-in (or even previously when the rate was lower, or generate them, etc.); or if he was already relying on being able to sell those coins in the event of a rise (in which case why call them "locked in" or "reserved"?).  This type of risk management is critical to running an exchange business at all.

To clarify, I mean the expression of extreme sentiments against a wide range of institutions, governments, government-in-general, etc.

With regard to numbers, that's not really practical unless I had been keeping some sort of database or tally.  But a quick search of only the main "Discussion" board reveals some good examples of extreme sentiments which, while individuals are entitled to express them, are sometimes becoming attached to BitCoin-the-protocol in the public's eye:

This post (or rather, the progression it quotes, but the starred comment reflects the larger sentiment I'm expressing)
This post
This post
This post
This post
etc.

These posts are, of course, only personal sentiments and are often made in humour, sarcastically, etc. yet they form a statistically significant pattern.  Imo, that's a nontrivial factor in sentiments like this among the general public.

I agree completely on both accounts.  However this particular type of line-crossing is predictably common here, to the point that the brand of BitCoin is highly impacted.

Unless he offers this service for hire, he's not currently breaking the rules of the forum.  Instead I have deliberately exercised my right of free speech in parallel, and would encourage others to do the same.  This discussion is, however, off-topic, so I am splitting the posts which have nothing to do with "press hits and notable sources."