Not again!  Poor goat.

The CFTC regulating Bitcoin?  Bitch, please! 

This nearly impotent body can't even regulate what it's supposed to regulate.  While I'd be worried about FinCEN or something like that going after Bitcoin, I'd be more worried about being mugged by a troop of Girl Scouts than these bozos.

11 post sockpuppet troll account detected. 

The ignore button is nice.

How will they maintain their lifestyle without that pre-order money coming in?  They even announced "shipping" recently to milk the pre-order cash cow some more.  

It's also heavily biased and plagued with edit warring by, among others, Puke-Jr.

For example:  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Litecoin


So after a bold-faced subject heading, the article cites "According to some," classic weasel words completely inappropriate for a reference work, especially for a serious accusation.

Then, after accusing it of being a pump and dump scam, the article goes on:


So it's not a pump and dump scheme, but we're going to call it that anyway in an article with a bold-faced subject heading "Pump and Dump Scheme."

"These critics," of course, are the authors of the very text where they're citing themselves as sources.  Including Puke-Jr.  Try to change it and they'll go to edit war on you.

In my opinion, Luke-Jr is a scammer himself, who only "accepted" the "Luke Unit" in a deliberate attempt to shill for BFL and rig the bet.  The "Luke Unit" was not one of the three units the bet specified, so even if they had "shipped" it, it didn't qualify.  Like any other case in which an insider is also taking action on the wager, it's a scam.  I don't really care so long as there is at least something in the list to indicate there's an issue the better should consider.

Only a fool would hire an assassin who, for all he knows, is a fed.  If you read cases about people hiring hit men, they almost always turn out to be undercover cops trolling for this kind of idiot.  The kind of people who actually use hit men know them professionally through personal contacts.  The kind of people who try to hire someone they know nothing about to commit a murder are idiots.

If either of them wins the case, the contract basically no longer exists.  What I think might be justice in this case is if they find that both sides breached the contract, then enforce the liquidated damages clause against both of these chumps, so that the awards cancel each other out, and say both sides get to pay their own costs and fees.  That would serve them both right.

My advice?  Unless you're going to get a refund, if you have a gripe with this issue, wait until you get the box.  These scumbags at BFL are clearly not above retaliating against anyone who complains about their scummy and illegal practices.

People who don't edit Wikipedia and know its rules and behaviors should not make entering an edit war their first participation.  The inclusion of Bitcoin on this list as a Ponzi is simply incorrect by Wikipedia's rules and not justified, in particular by WP:RS, the Reliable Source policy.  The list is a list of Ponzis, not a list of things anyone anywhere has ever accused of being a scam.

In any event, someone has already reverted that edit.  I'm sure there are Wikipedians here who will stay on top of it.

The very fact there has been a Ponzi scam involving Bitcoin shows that Bitcoin, itself, is not a Ponzi scam, any more than a tire is a car.  It, like dollars or gold or anything else that could be used in a Ponzi scam, is a commodity.  It's like claiming the dollar is a Ponzi scam because Charles Ponzi stole dollars using a Ponzi scam.  Or the dollar is bank robbery because Willie Sutton robbed banks of dollars.  It's insane troll logic.

So long as there's something indicating they did this thing and people can look it up for themselves, I think it's an okay solution.

The fact they didn't pay out on a winning bet is what's important, not whether or not they're "scammers."  I think they are, but that they did not pay out is unquestionable.

While there are conceivable situations in which that bet might have been difficult to resolve, what actually happened is not one of those situations.  They didn't ship anything whatsoever.  It never even left their offices.  It certainly didn't leave by the date specified in the bet.

If so, they would have been smarter simply to include an arbitration clause in the contract. 

It still wouldn't surprise me if this is some kind of attempt to take over Mt. Gox.  Alternately, they might be willing to settle for a piece of Gox rather than the liquidated damages.

It also wouldn't surprise me if Gox decided they could make more money sticking with the U.S. and Canadian market than they'd lose by carrying through.

It's all pretty opaque at this point.  I was frankly skeptical of this whole plan from the beginning.  It just didn't look like it was actually going to happen.

They may actually be under some obligation to do so.  If part of the damages they are claiming will end up involving the loss of opportunity to participate in the BTC market, and they have already put money toward getting "legal," they have an obligation to mitigate their damages by finding another partner.  This might be tricky, as depending on how reasonable/unreasonable their claims in this case are, any potential partner may wonder if they're just going to get sued in a couple months after signing a contract.

However, they can't just let their investment go to waste and complain about what victims they are and expect to get that investment fully paid by Gox.  That's not going to happen unless they do something to move into the market they claim they want to move into.  It's sort of like a large scale version of a typical mitigation case, where someone reneges on a lease and moves out and stops paying rent.  You don't just get to sit there and sue them and get the whole amount of the lost rent (unless the agreement provides for that).  You have to try to fill that space.  If you don't, you get either a reduced amount or perhaps even nothing.

Free douchenozzle with every purchase!

If you're good at it, yes.  But for every time someone takes candy from a baby, there's the baby getting the candy taken.  Those are the Greater Fools who bought in at $250, who suck at short-term trading.

Don't be the baby in the equation.

No, there's another charge for that.  And if you want Josh to personally piss in your face, that's extra too.

Then we're agreed on that part.  Also, the number of lawyers with experience in enforcing judgments internationally is limited.  They don't come cheap and if you have to fly them to where you are, they're flying first class.

I also don't believe they're going to get anything like assets frozen before getting a judgment, unless they do something dumb like try to hide them and get caught.  No court in its right mind would basically destroy a business based on a breach of contract case the other side might not even win.  For one thing, seizing Gox assets would basically instantly destroy the value of the company and render it unable to pay any judgment.


But not this part.  Generally, as a matter of international comity, and pursuant to treaties to which both Japan and the United States are party, courts from one country do not act as appeals courts for those of another.  So long as the proper procedure is followed, the United States and Japan will enforce a breach of contract judgment from a court in the other country.

Japan, just as the United States, enforces choice of law and choice of forum provisions, and this contract has an unambiguous agreement to jurisdiction and which law applies.  Neither a Japanese nor an American court are going to tell the court of another country that they got their own law wrong.  I'm not going to say something like this would never happen or that courts never play favorites with a local company, but it's very unlikely in this case.

You might see something like this where one party gets a default judgment against the other, with the other having basically contended there was no jurisdiction the whole time and then collaterally attacking it only when the other side tries to domesticate the default judgment.  But you're really not going to see a Japanese court say a U.S. court doesn't understand its own law.

The U.S. and Japan have deep and lasting business relations, and you don't want to sour that by making contracts between companies unenforceable, because people will stop doing business. 

From the "Important Announcements" thread.


Now if that isn't just seven shades of happy horseshit.

Being involved in this lawsuit and being on the so-called "Bitcoin Foundation" board is as clear a conflict of interest as you find.

I'm in a generous mood.  I'll save Josh the trouble of his inevitable response.


See?  I'm even speedier at providing standard BFL customer support than they are.

You're welcome.