Don't worry, this is just as time consuming for me. I've thought about the downsides of account selling for about 3 years now, this isn't a new topic and you aren't blowing my mind with your arguments. You keep trying to compare account selling to crimes and using that as your points, which is 100% completely wrong. Would the forums ban account selling if it was enforcable (which it is not) I dont know, maybe. However we aren't in that position, so for the time being Account Selling is Legal. we have already addressed the downsides as non issues, and you try to justify your points by drawing unequivical parallels between real world crimes that harm people, murder, theft, damage of property, and rape, to selling someone's account. This conversation isn't going anywhere unless you point out Exactly what you percieve as embarrassing or bad about account selling. Because every time I try to adress something that you haven't specifically said, you refute that what I'm saying was ever one of your intentions.

So regarding your post that I've quoted above. Why is it an embarrassment, what credibility does the forum claim to have, and why is it removed because you can sell or buy an account? Account selling and buying is  unenforcable on all accounts, not based on my performance, based on the technology available on the internet. How am I going to catch someone who is buying or selling an account through IRC? What technology exists where I can identify one user or another any better than you can? Banning something that you can't enforce doesn't eliminate it, it just drives it underground to a place where no one can see it taking place. If I banned Quickseller for selling accounts, would he leave the forums forever, or would he make a new account and be sneakier about his business? And again, what is the problem with accounts being actively purchased or sold?

We have addressed scams, we have addressed spam, you have yet to provide another reason why account selling is good/bad/embarrassing that is a real reason. I appreciate you taking the time to have this discussion, but if you actually want to voice your concerns you have to do so in a way that can be read and interpreted.

*edit*


See now you are just forgoing logic to try and win the argument. Scammers scam because they want to, not for the money? Come on. Again you keep trying to compare account buyers/sellers to rapists or thieves. Giving people a false sense of security by saying, don't worry you are safe, that account couldn't have been sold because its against the rules is what creates easy marks. Right now, people of Bitcointalk are probably the hardest people to steal from in the world. It still happens, but people here are taught quickly that anyone and everyone will take their money if given a chance. If we provide a safety net that would allow disallusioned people to let their guards down, they they are easy to steal from.

You don't seem to really get it. Account selling is unenforceable, that is a matter of fact. You can stop trying to relate it to murder because that is completely different. A better analogy would be between banning account selling and the war on drugs (but we don't have police officers). Trying to enforce something that you can't causes additional issues which in this case are worse than the act of account selling.

My mention of pseudonmity is why alternate accounts are allowed, and as long as alternate accounts are allowed, you can't stop account selling. Pay to spam advertising is another issue entirely, and as I've said two or three times now, something that is being worked on.

My focus on the grand scam, is because that is the only downside to account selling. Not being able to verify that the person you are trading with is the person you are trading with, which can be remedied by use of PGP or a little caution. TAT's last post being strange does not prove that account selling had anything to do with it. My point being that in five years account selling has been a non issue, so why make it one?

I sometimes summarize my points because I'm used to people not reading them. Sue me  

Laws that can be enforced, like laws against murders that yield punishment dissuade people from killing. We could ban people that we catch, which would be a mild inconvience for them, then they just create another account and try not to get caught when they start selling accounts again.

I'm not sure if 75% would be enough. I'm not sure if 99% would be enough. As we have agreed, its hard to point out a single case where a purchased trusted account has been used to scam. All it would take is 1 person to sell a trusted account against the forum rules, people convinced that its the original owner because account selling isn't allowed get scammed, and we then have our case. The fact that the policy has been in place for 5 years now, and we are still talking hypotheticals with regards to sold accounts being used to scam says something.

There is a pretty simple remedy, just use PGP or sign a message from a Bitcoin address that is known to be held by the original owner of the account. But again, account selling isn't banned not just for scam prevention reasons, its not banned for pseudonymity's sake. This forum is about conversation and discussion of technology over the marketplace section. The marketplace is a secondary concern, rules wont change that effect the forum's primary objective to help better a secondary feature. Imagine if Gavin Andresen wanted to get into a fight with some people over some political issue. If he did that from his Gavin Andresen account, that could negatively effect other work he is doing. Account selling isn't banned

A) Because it would be unenforcable
B) There are places where having multiple accounts allows people to speak their mind without fear of backlash from others.

Ok, what is your argument then? I keep making points and you claim you never stated otherwise, so what are your points so I can adress them?

Its a bad analogy, you can't compare killing someone to making alt accounts.

There we go, you have a chip on your shoulder about Quickseller, ok. While you state it as fact, who said that I ban accounts? Let alone for unknown transgressions. Yep there aren't steadfast rules, because then people could abuse loopholes. Rather than unforgiving rules, we have a group of people decide on bans and ample warnings are given. Common sense and well thought out policies are what the forum runs by.

I've already addressed why having multiple accounts isn't against the rules, but I'm waiting for you to address specific points that I can then address since I'm not allowed to make examples or address anything that you haven't specifically said.

Ok, hypothetically, we forbid having multiple accounts. What happens then? People then sell accounts through IRC, Ebay, ecrypted messages via PM, etc and the practice continues. We can't really disuade people from selling accounts, not in any reasonable manner.

Saying a rule is retarded but not explaining why you think so, even though I've given multiple valid reasons for why it isn't retarded isn't really helping. I could explain very throughly why you can't draw comparisons between murder and account creation, but I wouldn't want to put words in your mouth, so I'll wait for you to ask.

I dont have a magic search button to search through thousands of specified threads, I've got the same tools as anyone else. Forum policy was influenced very heavily by Satoshi since he created the original forum policy, I dont really wish to get into semantics, as you have addressed a single problem, account selling, and I wish to address that. As I said, please provide a single example of where a hero account that was purchased netted hundreds if not thousands of Bitcoins?

Equating alt accounts to killing people is assanine. If someone kills another person, there is physical evidence and police forces with resources at their disposal. This is a forum, we aren't going to track people down who make new accounts and put them in prision. Not that there is any intention to end account selling, but if we were looking for a solution, what would be your proposal to end account selling? How could you possibly stop people from making an account on a website? IP bans? Banning Proxies/Tor? There is absolutely no way to ban account selling, and its not a big deal. If we banned account selling, 95% of the forum users that knew how to avoid getting caught would then be able to cause more damage by creating new accounts. As it is, people trade with caution with anyone.

So if you care about the topic, why not talk to me and get answers rather than being an ass? If you want me to talk to you like an adult, I expect the same curtosy. I have no problem with those who disagree with policies, but if you are going to use unnecessary insults, why should I take the time to answer you? There are plenty of people who speak out against issues that they see the forum having, but they don't get banned. You don't get banned for not liking what we do here, you get banned for being disruptive. Far too many people try to make a point by getting themselves banned for behavior that is completely unnecessary, and then they cry abuse. You don't own the forums, Theymos does, moderators just try to help the forums by keeping the boards clean of off topic crap and things that will get the forum operators in trouble with the law, IE death threats, people selling drugs, etc. I explained why account selling is allowed, but I will do so in more detail, you are welcome to refute points, but this time if you want to be treated like an adult, act like one.

1) We can't stop it. There is no way to stop account selling. If we ban account selling, what will people do? They will sell their accounts not in the public. They will sell them off site through IM or what ever, and people will use Tor or Proxies or whatever to avoid getting caught. Allowing it, people can trade accounts openly so others know that it is going on.

2) The good outweighs the bad. Everyone knows that scams happen, so people are already on their toes. People always fear that a trusted user is going to sell their account and someone will scam with it, yet no one has pointed out any case where that has ever happened. Just like you are using an alt account to avoid people going after your main account, that is a good reason to have alt accounts. If you have an unpopular idea and don't want that associated with a personal or professional account, you can voice your opinions with an alt account. That was what Satoshi mentioned in passing, I'd quote that for you, but that would require hours of sifting through old threads, so I mentioned I believe that is the case, but I can't site it for you at the moment.

Paid advertising signatures are annoying, of all people I agree with you there. I spend hours per day dealing with it. That is another issue that is being worked on. We don't want to remove paid advertising signatures all together, but something will be done to limit the spam. But to my point that you called stupid. If I can make .3 BTC per month with a hero account with a paid advertising signature, that increases the value of accounts. If you can make 1 BTC with an account in 3 months, the account is going to be worth more than it was without paid advertising signatures. Scammers will then have to pay more for older accounts, and if they fail to scam, their account gets marked with negative trust, and they are out 1+ BTC or whatever accounts are selling for.

So if I'm gauging this right, you don't actually care about your OP, and you are trying to get yourself banned so you can call abuse and be a martyr. You know most people are smart enough to see through the bullshit. If you actually care about account selling, try responding again without the unnecessary language. I've been here for years, I'm not stupid enough to get into a flame war with a newbie account that is trying to make a point.

I sent you a pm. The biggest problem I'm facing, is that the buyer wont have access to where the first private key would be located, so they can't include half of it themselves, unless they put it on the outside, which would be a vulnerability. In order to get to the keypair that I'd include, you have to physically destroy the piece. That is the security, and the reason why no stickers are needed.

Account selling isn't against the rules, and its not something that we plan on changing. First off, the idea of allowing alt accounts was a principal created by Satoshi when he created the forum I'm quite sure. Anonymity doesn't exist, but pseudonymity does. Just like you aren't using your main account for fear of backlash for acting like an idiot, there are valid reasons for having multiple accounts. Second, it isn't something that the staff or admins can control, people are going to buy/sell accounts regardless, so why make a rule against something you can't enforce? Paid advertising signatures are indeed an annoyance, and thats another issue that is being worked on, but you said at the best that is what accounts are purchased for. Have you considered that paid advertising signatures give value to accounts that makes scamming more expensive for scammers to attempt?

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, I'm reading over them all again to think about them more critically.


As to the video taping process, I wouldn't do it with every single piece produced, however I do plan on video taping at least one to allow anyone to watch the production methods and hopefully let me know if they see any flaws. As of now, I have about 2/3rds if not 3/4ths of the security measures figured out. As this point, counterfeiting would be possible, but so unbelievably hard to do well, it would end up costing more to counterfeit than they will be worth. The private keys should be safe from attack at this point of development, but what I percieve as an inevitable handling of the keys by myself if I wish to assure a secondary market is the biggest security flaw.

Showing each step for each piece produced would be neat, but also hugely time intensive, and if I'm blurring out the private key, couldn't I be shredding/destroying a keypair that just says, "hehe suckers"?



What I'm producing isn't a coin, and it wont have any hologram, it will be a completely new concept. But I think the majority of people in the market will be impressed. The one thing I wont be doing, is the stupid "error" thing that for some reason every coin has produced. Im thinking the chances that every coin out there has made a 1st batch error coin has more to do with getting people to buy them based on Casascius history than actually making an error. The productions, especially the first should be pretty low runs, I dont have a number in mind, but if they take me 6 hours to make, I wont be making 1000 of them. The entire production process will be done by myself with machinery that I have, so I will have the flexibility to change up designs and such on a whim to keep things fresh. I'm a very talented metalurgist so I'll be mixing things up on that front as well.

Once again I want to thank everyone for being so incredibly helpful with their suggestions.

I really appreciate that you took the time to give me such a well thought out response. I might be able to adopt a system like that, but as proposed there would be a few issues. I've reworded this post five times now, as I don't want to give too much away, yet I feel like people can't really suggest things properly if I don't tell them what it is I'm doing.

I'm doing away with the tamper proof stickers, but thats not a huge issue. As invisioned at the moment, after leaving my hands, the owner wont be able to get to the original private key. You are talking about a multisig system though correct?

Hey guys, so I've dabbled with the idea of making my own physical Bitcoins before, trying to remedy the issues that I percieve there to be with current coins. I have what I believe to be an incredibly interesting idea, but I have one major question so far unanswered. What is the prefered way to handle private keys.

There are two prevalent business models in existance. The Centrally issued and the Buyer Funded models. All regulation issues asside, as that isn't my concern at the moment, what do you, as physical Bitcoin users prefer? There are two major differences each with up sides and down sides and I'm wondering if anyone has any input on the matter.

Centrally issued: Ex. Casascius Coins

The producer of the coin generates the keypairs, attaches them to the piece, and disposes of the keypairs. The obvious downside is that the central issuer has had access to the keys, so there is always a doubt that the producer didn't dispose of the keys. There has yet to be an incident of Casascius/Smoothie abusing the flaw in this method, however a system that doesn't require trust in the first place in my opinion would be prefered. The alluring benefit to this type of system is there is then a secondary market. A 1 BTC Casascius coin can be resold repeatedly. If you buy it for 1.5 BTC, it can be sold later on for whatever premium the coins are fetching at the moment. You aren't stuck with just the 1 BTC that is loaded on the coin plus a piece of metal not worth the premium you paid.

Buyer Funded Model: Ex. Silver Wallets etc

You are shipped a physical product, and then the buyer applies the keypairs themselves. That way no one but yourself knows the keys. The problem with this method is as I said above, there is no secondary market. If the buyer pays 1.5 BTC in total for a Silver Wallet + 1 BTC to load onto it, there is no secondary market. You can't sell it for 1.5 BTC, you can redeem the 1 BTC you loaded onto it, and get $20 for the 1oz silver wallet. In this regard physical wallets like this are just a deterrent for the user not to spend the coins that they have loaded onto it.

I believe I have found a solution to eliminate the tacky tamperproof sticker, move away from the coin paradigm in itself, and provide a means of storing private keys in a way that also yields a display piece far more interesting than a metal round. I'm just conflicted as to whether people would rather I shipped the piece in itself and gave them the means to print their own private keys, increasing their keypair safety. Or, would they elect to trust me with properly disposing of the printed keypairs in order to create a secondary resale market for the pieces.

I've considered split key generation as well as printing encrypted keys sent by the buyer, however in the end either I or the buyer know the private key. Someone has to know the printed private key, so I'm curious as to the community's feelings on the matter. If you know of a way to fix the problem, that would be even better, but my hopes aren't especially high for that, so I guess I'm gauging which direction the community would wish I go.

I appreciate your feedback, thanks guys.

bump

Well first thing, the mods dont have any more say in the trust system than anyone else, though we probably have a more open line of communication with Theymos should we figure out the solutions to the trust system issues.


I agree with a decent portion of this, thanks for actually addressing specific points and making suggestions rather than just complaining. Im just going to mention my thoughts on each point.



1) people on default-trust <=2 aren't able to use their trust in a normal way
Why can't they use Neutral trust? If someone seems shady but you don't want to instantly mark them with a negative, leave them neutral feedback saying why.

a) everyone who doesn't dig into the "meta" of this forum reads their ratings as ground truth
Agreed, but this is a psychology question, how do you get people to read relevant information? How many people have actually gone in depth and read everything in their trust settings? Where would people go to find information about the trust system? There are stickies on other topics all around the forums, and people still post new threads even if there are 3 related to their questions on the front pages.

b) they have to defend the righteousnes of what should be simply their opinion
Agreed again, my solution would be to remove the red/yellow/green and all numbers involved in trust settings and just have a list of feedback. However that too has issues that I dont know how to solve.

2) people who have a negative experience with someone on a default trust list have no real recourse
Posting about it in meta has yielded many results in the past, so I dont necessarily agree with this point. Everyone is going to disagree with their negative feedback whether they are a scammer or not, posting in meta  gets public attention allowing people to read into it themselves and give their opinions. If person B is on Person A's trustlist, and it is proven that Person B does not belong in a position of trust, Person A can remove them, or risk losing their trustworthiness.

 a) mutual negative trust is asymmetric (one person ends up with a GIANT RED WARNING, the other with a gripe buried somewhere in the "untrusted feedback section)
I partially agree, you can still go to Meta and post about it if it isn't fair. If it is fair though, and the retaliatory feedback is unwarranted, then its for the best its in the untrusted section.

3) some people on default trust even make a hobby of marking red on people who haven't ever traded with them but with whom they simply disagree (see, for example, Vod vs MSCorp Key Sellers; or Quickseller vs. people who refuse to do business with him (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1023038.0, inter alia))
This goes back to your first point. I actually see Vod's point of view with the MSkey sellers but I agree that perhaps negative feedback isn't necessary, but perhaps neutral isn't strong enough either. People who abuse the trust system are removed, but what about those people who partially abused it, as they had no better options. I think additional options are necessary, but at the same time, adding 50 different types of feedback would make the system even more confusing and water down their meanings.

As for your suggestions, your third is the only one I agree with. I think the red letters saying TRADE WITH CAUTION have become a safety net that people rely on too heavily. People should be reading who gave feedback, why, and the proof to decide if the claim is valid. As far as default trust, default tends to mean its the automatic opt in, and people opt out from there. Think Internet Explorer, when you have a fresh copy of windows, IE is the default browser, maybe it works fine for someone, but most change their browsers to their prefered setup, why can't it work the same way with Default trust? Sure it will get you on the internet, but there are better options, so change when you have figured out which you like better. Default trust works just fine for newbies, but its not suitable for everyone. Without default trust, newbies wouldn't opt in, nor create their own trust lists, so we would be back to where we were years ago. Trimming the list is the opposite of what should happen, the theory is that by branching out to depth 5,6,20 etc eventually non staff/admins/old trusted members will be the ones moderating default trust, and issues will be solved between individuals as sort of a pseudo decentralized system. While there are still central entities, they become less and less involved.

I mean, this has always sort of been a policy, just probably due to recent events its worth reminding everyone. The difference between Doxing someone, and posting information such as a SSN, is that information gathered in a Dox is public info. If you go through phone books, Google, etc and find out info about someone, the fact that it was already out there and available means its not private. In that case you are just putting a compliation of info together. SSNs/Credit Card info, etc is not something you are going to find in any public record, and it can be assumed that it was gathered unlawfully.

Its not, excessive unneccessary colorful language does make your post more likely to be deleted though. If you want to call someone an asshole, you are welcome to do so, if you want to call someone and their family a string of words that would make a sailor faint, it still isn't necessarily against the rules, but it can be deleted if its so distracting that its going to drag everything off topic.

People have their own forms of expression, if you dont like how many obscenities someone sprinkles into their posts, you are free to ignore them. We aren't going to tell people to talk differently, the amount of 10 year olds on this forum who can't handle the language is at a minimum. If you are someone with delicate sensibilies, you can click the ignore button.

We are talking about years from now, so I didn't mean to imply that it would have any effect on the price now if I did. Who would have thought there would be asics at all back in the CPU/GPU mining days. We could either get far more efficent/powerful Asics, or we could find a technology that surpasses Asics.


As far as mining for the individual goes, it has been "unwise" for idividuals to mine since 2012, but people still do it. There was a point in the summer of 2012 where I was GPU mining around 1 BTC per day with a AMD 6950 and I was losing money. As luck would have it, the 6950 was discontinued shortly after I purchased it, and it was found out that they were incredibly good for Scrypt mining, so I ended up selling the GPU used for more than I bought it for. Mining is always a bad idea in the present, but sometimes it pays off in the future.

Paypal just sucks in general, I definitely wouldn't trust them to be of any help with a crypto transaction. I sold a tangible thing on Ebay, have tracking info, a written statement from Ebay, and the person's Ebay feedback for me stated how happy they were with my packaging. Just found out they filed a chargeback, though I didn't recieve a notification of it, and paypal just processed it. So I've now been on the phone for quite a while trying to get my money back.

If thats what you can expect if you have physical evidence + the support of Ebay backing you up, imagine how unpleasant trying to explain a Bitcoin transaction would be. (looks at phone been on hold for 1 hour and 6 minutes now)

*edit* off the phone, expecting a refund in the next 75 days. Hopefully they refund the additional $20 resolution charge.


TLDR: Sold something for $75 on Ebay, took $95 from my account to hold without notifying me, have all of the evidence in the world. If I win, I get my money back in the next 75 days. We will see if I get $75 back, or the entire $95. *cough* and that is with a verified Business account.

Based on what happened when the block halving from 50 to 25 happened, I'd say the price will increase months before the halving, so there wont be any jump in price when it happens. As far as mining is concerned, look at the last two years and the Asics that have been produced, I dont think moore's law is accurate in this case, as if you compare a BFL Single 60GHash that used 850ish watts to a 1 THash miner with the same energy draw, you will see that doubling is probably a gross underestimate of the progress that will be made in two years.

All of that said, my only point to be made, is based on history, I've noticed that no one has had any sort of success using standard models to predict the different aspects of Bitcoin. The best we can do is wait two years and see how it do.

While I'm sure the core dev team gets more than a few donations for their work, they also operate by an economic model that I've used in the past which is pretty effective. It goes without saying that they hold Bitcoins, if their contributions help the network, by most accounts that increases the value of Bitcoin, increasing the value of the Bitcoins that they hold, in effect paying themselves without taking money from anyone.

That said, I'm sure they don't mind it when people send them thanks for their work, but I dont know how on board miners would be sending them their tx fees. That would probably end up being the big pool's call, and in order for them to feasibly do that, they would need all of the other pools to do it as well, as miners flock to the pool with the best payouts. If one is offering to pay TX fees while all the others don't, the core devs won't be getting those miner's business regardless.