Finally, a decent thread in this forum.  Looks like you've put some thought into how to mitigate your risk which is great to see.   Maybe add a minimum registration period to the minimum post requirement - lots of people rack up 150 posts in their first week or two.

Good luck with this venture.

Check in the custom hardware subforum.  There's a BFL thread there.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87934.0

Or check the BFL forums.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/forum.php

You don't learn, do you?

OK, I'll play before the mods remove your posts for spamming.  Explain your "trading system".  How - exactly - are you going to guarantee people's deposits?  How quickly will you return people's deposits when they wish to withdraw them?


I think he's aspiring to be dank rather than pirate.

I realise this debt has been inflated by shitty interest rates, but it still horrifies me that someone owes more than the value of their home (on which they also owe money) on loans they took out to buy mining hardware.  It's even worse when I do a comparison and realise that it's like someone here who still owes $200,000 on their $300,000 home (a cheap home in my area) borrowing half a million dollars to spend on mining hardware.  That's the insane level of risk involved in this venture, which I assume was driven by sheer desperation.

Even worse is that it sounds like food is expensive there relative to home prices.


It's not all that simple to get small amounts to someone in Russia.  I do wonder how the OP is managing to cash out small amounts of BTC in order to buy food and pay bills, though.

http://gigaom.com/2012/03/30/eastern-promise-paypals-ambitious-plans-for-russia/

Generally speaking, unless you live in a country where your right to a bank account is legally guaranteed, your only option is to try another bank.  All banks are going to make a risk assessment of your business (they're required to do so both initially and on a continuing basis) but some may have a higher risk tolerance than others.  Banks don't really want customers who require a lot of maintenance (including enhanced due diligence) unless they're extremely profitable customers for the bank.  For the most part, general banks want high-value, low-maintenance customers rather than "every customer they can get".  Remember that to their idea of a "big" customer and yours are likely very different.

Don't lie to them about the nature of your business - it's not worth the possible repercussions and you'll probably end up under all sorts of AML-type scrutiny which you don't need.

It might be worth paying a financial advisor to recommend boutique banks which are less risk averse if you find yourself getting rejected by "name" banks.

"Swindled" in what way?  I haven't seen a lot of customers of any of the companies express the belief that they'll never receive their ASICs.  I have seen plenty of people say that if they'd known delivery times would slip this much they would not have pre-ordered, though (because they could have bought more conventional hardware and been mining with it until ASICs were delivered as there's not going to be any massive advantage to having the first ASICs now like there would have been before the block reward halved - BFL, in particular, should be able to fill it's existing pre-orders and go to shipping on order very quickly).  I think that people who weren't relying on ASICs to give them a significant, albeit limited term, advantage are less likely to feel "swindled".

Nope.  She's an American who's been living in Romania for the last few years (which doesn't preclude Romanian ancestry, but her home country is the US).

It's worth pointing out that MPEx openly admit they use this strategy as a means of selecting their customer-base.  It's actually not unusual in the world of conventional financial services to target certain customers and exclude others from dealing with you directly by imposing minimum investment requirements, offering your product only to sophisticated investors, etc.

This is essentially the same scam which is being promoted on Craigslist, so a heap of people are going to try pulling it in different places including here.  Funny that he picked a username which should scream "scam", though.

Why would people make serious and helpful posts in a thread which was clearly intended to be neither?

Pretty much everything serious and helpful which can be said about ASICs has already been said at this point.  People are just posting for the sake of hearing their own voices for the most part and that's likely to get worse if BFL doesn't advise people to start returning their FPGAs within the next few days (because if they don't, then they won't be shipping mid-January and people are over them announcing delays at the last moment).

The fact that he was first relying on a friend selling their car/Rolex in order to pay his rent and is now relying on selling Christmas/birthday presents to pay squall suggests that dank's parents aren't aware their precious snowflake has dug himself into a financial hole (otherwise, why didn't he ask for money instead of gift cards for presents or ask them to pay what he owed instead of giving him gifts for Christmas/his birthday).  God knows what other real world debts he's managed to run up during his experiment with "independence".

And how does he figure that $200 worth of giftcards is going to buy him "lot" of Bitcoins?  Even if he can get face value for the cards (which he hasn't advertised for sale in Marketplace), it's still only going to buy him less than a third of the BTC he still owes squall (who's honestly one of the kindest, most patient lenders out there when it comes to giving people a break and has already gone above and beyond by ceasing to charge interest on the outstanding balance).

For what it's worth, I don't think dank borrowed funds intending not to repay them.  I just think he made the mistake which many teenagers (including my own) have made of assuming that financial independence is easy (it isn't, even when you have a stable source of income, let alone when you don't) and basing his budget on unrealistic "best-case" scenarios.

Don't try to make sense of it - your sanity is at risk if you read too many usagi-related threads.

Hope you get enough cash/gift cards for your birthday to get out of debt.

Did you acquire your soul from dank as collateral for a loan?

Um, Phin - Josh's surname is public knowledge.  It's been published in Bitcoin Magazine more than once, as well as other places.

On what basis was Matthew going to give Tecshare "instructions" (which never actually happened) if it was not on the basis that Matthew became the client when he paid Tecshare?  You did not query Matthew's right to "instruct" Tecshare in any way at the time and in fact you seem to be relying on it now while simultaneously arguing that Matthew had no right to give any "instructions" in relation to the work.

He seems to have no trouble getting accessing the forums.  He was online 40 minutes ago. 

You're a bit late I'm afraid - the show's already over.

LOL at advertising on scammerhavenlist.

I agree this would be best.  Certainly it's silly to maintain that anyone other than the person who actually paid for the work would be entitled to refund.  As Matthew has logged into the forum, I presume he'll discuss this directly with the parties involved.