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802
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Economy / Service Discussion / Re: Coin2Pal?
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on: September 09, 2013, 11:08:59 AM
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I think the problem is PayPal to Bitcoin, not the other way around.
It's always PayPal to bitcoin, and vice versa, when bitcoins are sold for PayPal USD. Anyhow... I don't mean to be a dick here, they may well be an entirely honourable trader. The problem is, honourable people have tried this before and PayPal has, AFAIK, always shut them down. As for why, you'd have to ask them. Again, AFAIK, the best anyone has gotten out of them is a vague TOS violation as reason for termination. Paypal have a lot of discretion in what kind of business they allow people to conduct using their system, and they have used that discretion. |
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803
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Bitcoin / Press / Re: 2013-09-05 Bitcoins: How We Got Busted Buying Drugs On Silk Road's Black Market
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on: September 06, 2013, 08:21:45 PM
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Sensationalist headline... They didn't get busted. The researcher they contacted was able to tell they'd sent funds to Silk Road, but that doesn't mean they could tell whether or not those funds were used for anything illegal. They could have just withdrawn the funds, essentially using SR as a mixing service, for all the researcher knew. AFAIK that's not illegal, although I guess that may be a gray area.
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804
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Economy / Service Discussion / Re: Coin2Pal?
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on: August 29, 2013, 01:34:59 PM
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FAQ says nothing about about why Paypal won't shut them down, like it did the other bitcoin -> Paypal services.
They do assure you they won't be initiating any chargebacks though, so there's that!
Bottom line: It's either a scam or it will get shut down very soon, or both.
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805
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer - MtGoxUSD wall movement tracker - Hardcore
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on: August 19, 2013, 11:13:04 AM
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If price rises in Gox, all or part of it can be attributed to Gox crap situation (and dismissed as evidence).
However, if price rises in other exchanges, that can only be because of bitcoin demand exceeding supply. You cannot twist it anywhere.
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, the Gox price rise is mainly caused by their withdrawal issues creating increased intra-gox demand for bitcoins. So much of the fuzzy "market sentiment" is still driven by that Gox ticker, it's not hard for me to imagine a scenario where all the exchanges keep creeping up on the hype of the Gox price going up, even if it did in the end turn out to be a sort of bank run fueling the Gox rocket. If that were to happen, we could also see a pretty drastic drop down when the Gox uncertainty get resolved, one way or the other. |
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806
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer - MtGoxUSD wall movement tracker - Hardcore
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on: August 16, 2013, 01:47:27 PM
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In regards to the Fox news story;
When the US Government gets involved and starts regulating BTC to the point it is very hard to get, or it is easier to just use the USD Bitcoin will tank and fast. If the US government wants to shut down BTC they will do it just like they did with the poker sites and stop the flow of money.
What, exactly will they regulate out of existence? Trade in: -Bitcoin specifically? That's a nice game of whack-a-mole they'd be setting themselves up for. -Virtual currencies in general? There are a lot of them, I'd rather not even try to figure out where the unintended consequences of such a move would lead. Say goodbye to your MMOs, for one, if this comes to pass. The argument I'm trying to make was made much better here: http://www.finextra.com/Community/fullblog.aspx?blogid=8019Regulators can’t have it both ways. Bitcoin is either a currency or it isn’t. If it is, then the SEC can prosecute Shavers as operating a Ponzi scheme, but then trade in that currency is (by precedent) now legal, unless you want to write laws to specifically exclude Bitcoin from trade (or issue sanctions such as those imposed on Iranian Rial). If you outlaw Bitcoin explicitly by name, however, then if the name is changed or someone starts up Bitcoin v2 you have to outlaw the next virtual currency explicitly. Given the time it takes to change laws around this, that cycle could never be ‘won’. So then why not outlaw all virtual currencies?
The problem with that is if you want to outlaw all virtual currencies you have to make the laws broad enough to encompass any new configuration of a virtual currency that might arise. If you make it broad enough to accomplish that goal then you could very well end up inadvertently outlawing all non-local currencies, because at a broad level Bitcoin is indistinguishable from a real-world currency (as Judge Mazzant rightly pointed out). However, you would also make illegal more ‘legitimate’ virtual currencies such as Mint Chip, which is being incubated by the Canadian Mint currently. You’d probably end up making airline miles, zynga coins, and other such variations on the currency theme also illegal. The upshot is that Bitcoin and all other virtual currencies or pseudo currencies cannot be made broadly illegal simply by virtue of the fact they are virtual, and current laws that define currency as a physical commodity or a financial instrument as written are hopelessly out of date and are essentially aiding the proliferation of Bitcoin. |
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807
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer - MtGoxUSD wall movement tracker - Hardcore
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on: August 15, 2013, 10:12:25 PM
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Wouldn't know which, but they talk about how the government will obviously get involved, even "shut it down", but don't mention any way that could actually be done. They just assume since government has power in their own domain, they have as much power elsewhere. I wonder how long it'll take for this bunch to start talking about that. |
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808
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Economy / Service Discussion / Re: Bitzino review
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on: August 15, 2013, 10:02:55 PM
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These betting sites... The odds they give you? That tells you directly how much you will lose, statistically. You can't expect to win if you do the math.
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809
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: All kinds of stuff for sale with BTC. we need to be careful
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on: August 15, 2013, 10:00:09 PM
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OP: I'm not sure what, if anything, you're proposing. There's a long history of people coming up with policing measures like address blacklists etc., which I think you may find some readers here will assume you're talking about as well. It's not a popular idea, and anything even whiffing of reduced freedom on a protocol level gets people really agitated.
Maybe you're just making the point it pays to be prudent. That's entirely true, and worth keeping in mind, but I think it's kind of assumed any serious business will have enough self-preservation instincts to keep their names from being linked to anything illegal. The ones that don't, won't be around long.
As for keeping Bitcoin's image clean, ultimately there's not much any one here can do to stop illegal activity, so a better course of action is to work on building benign businesses.
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810
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Other / Off-topic / Re: Lavabit.com and Tormail Email Alternatives...
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on: August 14, 2013, 07:07:46 PM
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Bitmessage or something similar, built from the ground up for privacy, seems like the only answer for anyone not wanting to be snooped on. I don't see any solution that lets you both guard your privacy and be able to send messages to your non-tech-savvy mom. It doesn't matter how secure your mail provider is if your mom uses Gmail - the NSA and whoever else has access will scrape all correspondence between the two of you from your mother's end.
If you actually want to remain anonymous it's even harder - you can use proxies and convince all your contacts to use PGP all you like, but as soon as one of the people you mailed leaks your identity one way or the other, your mail address is linked to you. So you'll have to use a myriad different, rotating addresses, keeping everyone up to date on what address you're using currently... It's not reasonable. The net is broken from a privacy point of view, and a real fix is going to be very difficult to push through.
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813
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Economy / Speculation / Re: How bitcoin 2 will affect the price?
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on: July 26, 2013, 11:37:34 AM
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Well, on the face of it the most controversial feature would be the redistribution of inactive coins. It would force everyone to periodically transfer their coins to avoid losing them, with the payoff of reducing the uncertainty about how much wealth is waiting to be spent. The 1 million (IIRC) coins attributed to early mining by Satoshi, for example, are a bit of a problem. Even at the endgame, that will still be 1/21 of the total bitcoin supply potentially in the hands of a single individual, if it remains unspent. I'm not sure forcing people to remember to move their coins is a proper solution, but the concern is valid.
I'm not sure if the OP thought they intended to implement KYC scoring - they do not, that was one of the threats their model is supposed to protect against.
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814
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Economy / Speculation / Re: How bitcoin 2 will affect the price?
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on: July 26, 2013, 11:28:17 AM
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I would pull out my coins or convert the value of my bitcoins to some other alt coins until things settle out with bitcoin.
I don't get it - why would you sell your bitcoins in order to avoid exposure to an altcoin called Bitcoin2? Changes on the level they're proposing would be either an entirely new coin or a hard fork of the existing blockchain. They would not and could not apply to Bitcoin. You would have to choose to use whatever mechanism they'd implement to transfer bitcoins to the Bitcoin2 blockchain, no-one could force you to do so. |
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816
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Bitcoin / Project Development / Re: Bitmessage for Mac!
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on: July 23, 2013, 10:24:34 PM
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I'll wait til I can get it to compile myself... This doesn't seem like the kind of thing I'd want to use some untrusted - no offense - third party's binaries for.
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817
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Anonymous BitCoin transactions with BitMessage
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on: July 08, 2013, 12:52:44 PM
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But Bob will have to trust Alice not to spend the bitcoins in A2 and A3, right? And anyone taking receipt of the either wallet from Bob will have to trust both Bob and Alice?
You are right, we end up having a web of trust. Do you have any other suggestion for anonymous spending? No, not personally. That doesn't make trust-based schemes any more workable, though. Anonymity and trust simply don't go together very well, IMO. |
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819
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Bitcoin / Press / POST FORMAT: YYYY-MM-DD SITE - HEADLINE
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on: June 30, 2013, 12:15:49 PM
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Please use the title formatting described when posting new links here. Adapt if needed, use your own judgement. Please always include date and source.
Maybe someone can sticky this, I don't think people read the posting guidelines...
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820
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Germany 0% Bitcoin taxes brings more value to casascius coins
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on: June 29, 2013, 12:14:11 PM
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1.- A more than a year settlement of Bitcoins in the same address of the block chain.
2.- The relatively high confidence that the private key can only be used by the owner of the coin.
Is there any indication the German authorities want to see block chain records? I'd expect they want to see bank transfer receipts etc. In any case, any cold storage wallet will satisfy 1, and offer better confidence only the owner can use the funds. Don't get me wrong, Casascius seems like one of the most trustworthy people here, but I still think it's bad protocol to trust anyone with your private keys if you don't want them to have the ability to spend your coins. |
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