Yep.  If they want to try burying us under a gigantic pile of money, I guess I'll just manage to survive somehow, despite my broken heart.

Are you even embarrassed to be such a shameless lying sack of shit? 

Fractional chips are the way to go.  Revaluing chips would confuse people and someone would lose their shirt somehow.

It really doesn't even matter whether or not there was bad intention.  I'm not into mind-reading.  What matters is that the only thing a betting escrow site like BoB has that makes it worth using is a reputation for honesty and integrity, and this involves paying out winning bets, every time. 

If the site doesn't do that and instead steals from the winners and gives to the losers, who cares why it does that?  Nobody with any sense will ever take such a site seriously after such a scam result, even if the site operators are some kind of saintly retards who just don't know why they do what they do.

While the author is clearly aware of previous BTC-analogues, there is one serious error in this article, and that is in failing to distinguish between corporate scrip, which has no intrinsic value, and BTC, which does.  Simply because BTC has some characteristics in common with things like Linden dollars does not mean they're identical. 

Unlike such corporate scrip, BTC has cryptographic integrity.  No corporation or central authority can ever devalue it just on their say-so or by suddenly issuing more.  Your BTC are your own, period, and nobody can take that away.

Even in Roman days, when coins were minted in gold, silver, copper, etc. and even bronze, the value of the coins generally exceeded the value of the precious metals.  People didn't melt down the coins and just sell bullion, because the coins, themselves, were worth more than their value as precious metals.

There was an element of fiat even then.  Part of the value of the coins, rather like the U.S. dollar, was that someone would come and whip your ass if you didn't accept it.  The ability to unleash violence is largely why fiat money has any value.

THIS!

I'm amazed it hasn't been done already.  You should also just be able to tweak the client based on how important it is to you to get your transaction shipped quickly.  It is incredibly annoying how the reference client just ignores your preferences in the preferences menu and either puts an arbitrary fee on or, bizarrely, transmits without a fee.  I tried to start a thread about this, but everyone basically fucking ignored it.  Maybe nobody knows.

It's somewhat frustrating that either nobody knows, or that the people who do know just ignore threads like this.  WTF is this bullshit?  Does nobody even know how the reference client works on basic issues like transaction fees?

I was on the cypherpunks list in 1992 when you were doing excellent work in setting up the remailer network.  That was such a fantastic time.

I'm incredibly impressed with your current activities. 

One of the slogans of the day was "Cypherpunks write code."  I'm glad that is still the case to this day.

Thank you for this excellent series of posts.  You are one of the true pioneers.

I agree in some general (very general) respects with the OP, but some of the generalizations are outright absurd.  

I agree in general that BTC has a lot of the attributes of a commodity, but it SPENDS like currency.  I disagree that it is like gold, because one generally can't convert gold instantly into fiat.  It has a lot more in common with gold-backed currency, but lacks some of the attributes traditionally associated with currency.  People do tend to hoard it, just like they did old-fashioned gold-backed currency, but they also spend it, just like they also spent old-fashioned gold-backed currency.

I find the constant messianic bullshit about BTC imminently replacing fiat currency annoying.  But I also find the dismissive bullshit that BTC is basically play money even more annoying.  Obviously BTC has value.  I can and have been selling off some of mine as the price continues shooting up.  Why?  I need money and am broke, but have BTC that is suddenly worth a fuckton more than it was when I got it.

I also don't buy BTC to hoard.  I win them gambling, mostly poker but also via a few other opportunities that present themselves, which I obviously won't discuss.  Added fun comes from the fact that not only do I win BTC, but the BTC I already have appreciates in value while I have it.  It's like gambling on two things at once.  Gambler crack!  "Yo Dawg, I heard you like gambling, so I put a gamble in your gamble, so you can gamble while you gamble."  It's nice to make money on a monthly basis even when you lose.

Also, to be a little more serious, most of the gambling-related businesses out there routinely cash out BTC to fiat to cover their cost of operation, putting it back into circulation.  Since their income is almost entirely BTC, and they need to keep their business operating, including by doing things like getting DDoS mitigation and other net services, that money is always going to be flowing.

Finally, the idea that currency has to be at equilibrium to be currency is nonsense.  Ask the Germans in WW II who had to roll up a grocery cart full of Reichsmarks to buy a loaf of bread how stable their currency was.  BTC is volatile, and definitely more volatile than "solid" currencies like the U.S. Dollar, but much less volatile than some of the worst currencies in the world that are subject to hyperinflation.  In those countries, BTC may be a real alternative to their so-called "real" currency.

So I don't believe BTC is going to become an index currency like the dollar, but it will provide a lot of competitive pressure to force governments to behave themselves, because if they rob their citizens too much and render their own currencies increasingly worthless, people will have incentives to switch to BTC.  

I don't buy the messianic bullshit that BTC, or crypto in general, is going to "overthrow" governments.  However, what it does do, and what is almost more subversive, is that it makes badly behaving governments IRRELEVANT.  You don't overthrow the government, you just treat its ill-informed activities as damage, and bypass them.

By its very nature, Bitcoin is going to tend to be volatile in value.  This isn't a bad or a good thing, it's just a thing.  It's just an attribute of the currency, by the very characteristics with which Satoshi infused it.  It's not a bug, it's a feature.

If the banks want to "destroy" BTC by making it worth $200 a pop and beyond, I wish them the best of luck.  I intend to enjoy the ride in the meantime and enjoy taking profit from it.

Agreed.  It is absolutely clear that this site took bets with no intention of paying the winners, while principals of the site had a stake in the outcome.  This can no longer be trusted as a betting site, and should be removed and/or listed as a scam site. 

While I hate to recommend reading a lengthy and contentious thread, here it is in the Scam Accusation sub-forum.  Frankly, I think the best evidence of scamming is in the posts from betsofbitco.in principals, whose lies are utterly outrageous.

Essentially, they took a huge amount of action on BFL shipping product.  BFL unambiguously did not ship anything to anyone.  Despite this, the scammers declared a push and stole the winners' money and gave it back to the losers.

This site cannot be trusted to pay off winning bets.  Whether this is just bad judgment or the site is actively scamming, gamblers should be warned away from it.  The people running this site are either too incompetent to understand the ethics of betting, or are actively scammers.  In either event, the site does not belong on this list, as it does not pay off winning bets in at least one incredibly egregious case.

Nuff said.

I believe that law, at least in the absence of any evidence of an actual crime, is in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights and would not survive a challenge at the ECHR.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Another blatant lie from a blatant liar.

They could admit they welshed on the bet, stole the winners' money, and gave the winners' money to the losers.  That's what they actually did.  They stole the money from the winners, and gave it to the losers.

Apparently because Puke Jr. is a scamming BFL whore who rigged the bet.

FIFY.

Okay.  Don't steal.  Stealing is bad.  Not saying you're doing that, but if this lab belongs to someone other than you, and/or you don't have permission, you shouldn't be doing this.  If you are completely legit doing this, then others have offered good advice on the specifics, and again, I'm not accusing you.  I'm just saying I've heard things that sound like this before that were not legit.

Not to mention that if the number is particularly large, even if you aren't facing kidnapping for ransom or similar situations, loose lips could incline some bastard to rat you out to the IRS just to screw with you.  Even if you are honest on your taxes and pay what you think is appropriate, what is the proper metric for taxes for BTC that appreciate in value?  Do you owe the taxes at the time you convert to fiat or at the time you earn it?  Are they short-term capital gains taxes or something else? 

I don't really have that much in BTC as I am more or less broke, but I recently realized when the price of BTC spiked that the BTC I just kept around to gamble with is suddenly actually worth real money.  I now have more BTC than fiat.

What a complete bullshit artist.  You can bet people will be staying away from this scam site in droves.

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