And  yet, somehow, the Nordic countries consistently rank high in education, health and life satisfaction studies, despite having rather generous welfare programs.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. I just want to try to find a way to protect people from false accusations to some extent. Clear contracts would help with that. Arbitration might be useful too. I grow tired of reiterating this in so many ways. Here's a test, let's see who fails English comprehension:

I'm talking about trying to improve the trust model we now use. I'm thinking of doing it in three parts:

1: simple contract base people can use if they feel like it, or modify at will. This is just convenience mostly, generally just a simple "I promise not to steal your shit" would suffice.

2. Ways to actually prove whether either party has fulfilled their word or not. This is the biggest one, as if you can prove foul play, you can point to the proof and be justified in denouncing a person publicly.

3. For gray areas, arbitration. Both parties need to agree to it of course. Probably this would not be used very often, but some kind of basic procedure might be nice to have for reference at least.

My motivation here is that reputation is so important in anonymous trading, it feels very risky to have no real protection against simple character assassination. I'd feel better if I could take any serious disputes to a trusted third party and provide them with whatever proof I have that I have, indeed done what I said I would. If my hypothetical accuser refused to do this, it would be telling of their claims.

Testing the marketplace guidelines?

I agree that it would be foolish to ignore "meatspace" laws. Those enforcing them will not ignore you. However, as you say, they can be very difficult to enforce, so perhaps we can do something more relevant to the nature of pseudonymous or anonymous trading, instead. Such safeguards will offer no protection from litigation in meatspace, but may offer increased protection to traders who are unable or unwilling to take matters into courts.

As far as I can tell no-one here is proposing any kind of non-voluntary punitive system. I don't know why so many insisting on seeing it that way.

Anyway, this thread is probably done. A better use of time would be to work on a common contract base, ways to trade securely and, if possible, arbitration. By trading securely, I mean doing business in such a way that all parties can prove whether or not the contract has been fulfilled.That's probably the biggest nut to crack.

Of course this still leaves open how to handle "unsolicited" mistreatment - theft of assets by, say, cracking passwords etc. I can't think of much more except trying to secure your coins as well as possible, keeping good logs of everything  (what, exactly?) and working towards being able to actually prove that a specific person has stolen something. Likely that will not always be possible, some losses will simply have to be accepted. I know if I have to choose between arbitrary denouncements of possibly guilty parties or letting some thieves get away scot free, I'll tend to follow the old adage:

"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

Exchange operators would do well to have TOS stating whether or not they will interfere where foul play is suspected. That way no-one can complain if they get their funds frozen or what have you - that becomes a risk one explicitly, knowingly takes when using services that will interfere. To go one better, operators could provide a more detailed outline of the kinds of actions they will undertake and what recourse, if any an accused party has against such action. Keeping to these guidelines would then become another element the operator's trust hinges on.

I'm not sure that can compete with district heating for price. At least I think you get district heating in a lot of places in Rovaniemi.

I had this a couple of times as well - transfers that showed up in my transaction list but never got confirmed until I forced a rescan of the block chain. I remember one was a send from MyBitcoin, don't remember what the other was. Weird stuff.

It's the perfect cover. Mr. Gates actually invented Bitcoin in 1974 or 1975, and had to build a business empire to build his cover story. And there was that whole no Internet thing, too.

Unless the shoe-shine boy wants the bitcoin so he can pay his rent...

Surely not? The QR code would only be needed to access the BTC in the block chain - when that is done, the printed note becomes invalid.

One thing to keep in mind is this is likely to be highly illegal pretty much anywhere. At the very least any government would want you to register to handle financial transactions. At worst, they'll see this as a paper currency issued by Atlas. CYA.

Another matter is that there are serious limits on what we can do in terms of enforcement, anyway. If you want to use force to enforce compliance of any rules, you'll probably have to do it via the courts in nation states. Some here have denounced such practices, but that doesn't change the fact that recourse to enforced law is available to all of us. If you want to avoid that, you have to maintain strong anonymity at all times. Nothing else can protect you.

"Won't" is nice, but "can't" is better.
That's why, while I think arbitration and clear communication regarding how we expect others to conduct their business with us are important, it is more important to improve the ways we do trade in order to limit risk caused by dishonesty, incompetence, oversights and miscommunication.

I can't speak for kiba, but I would never support such a system. I said before all parties must consent to being bound by arbitration.

No, I haven't noticed, unless you're using a very broad definition of government. I'm talking about drafting a contract base for people to use in their trades and letting them decide for themselves how/if they want to make sure both parties conform. There is no top-down element. In fact, I'd argue this would be less of a government than what we currently have here as it would hopefully reduce the mob rule aspects of dispute resolution in favour of whatever means the people actually involved can agree on.

Please, no more tutorial videos. Text with screenshots is usually much better as you can skip and search at will. With video, you're stuck watching the whole thing until you find the info you were actually looking for.

Who's talking about government?

I don't think anything more is being proposed. But how do you make sure someone is a scammer? In a community where reputation is king, false accusations are a very serious matter. This is why we need arbitration services. Using them must be voluntary, but it would probably help to have a basic contract of sorts written up that people can refer to. Common ground that you can deviate from if all parties agree.

I feel like I'm just repeating what I said on the first page now.

If I might make a request here: Let's please not turn this into a witch hunt. No-one here has enough information to figure out what has really happened, and no-one here has the means to do anything about it anyway. We just have to wait and see how Mt Gox and Baron settle this. Hopefully then we will have enough information to decide for ourselves whether or not we approve of the way things were handled.

So are you in Eastern Europe or Asia somewhere or did you just decide to start drinking early this Friday?

That's like saying you will never do business with people that scam people. The option to turn to the courts (or scamming in my analogy) is always there, ready to be taken. You can't know for sure if others will turn to it, although past behaviour can offer some assurances.

Yes, and there are consequences to whatever he chooses to do. This thread is one. My withdrawing my funds is another, not that it was a significant sum.

Anyway, I'm done speculating here. Mt gox is currently not a place I will use to trade, and will remain so until this is cleared up. I don't see what we can do except wait until Jed is ready to tell us his side of the story.