Roger Verr,

I hope that wasn't you!

(see how shady actions link you to shady deals...)

Ahhh just another day in the oh so very reputable bitcoin community. 

Ponzi schemes don't do that to people.  

GREED does that to people. And praying on your investors GREED is exactly how Ponzi schemes have and will continue to exist.

So I think the lesson in the wild west of bitcoin land is that a guy like Pirate sets up a Ponzi clearly with the intention of defrauding his investors, where as the dupped PPT's and Patrick Harnett, and Goat et al were just clueless lemmings along for the ride and then just disappear into the woodwork when the shit hits the fan.

After the Bitcoinica disaster, Amir seems to have going off the deep end.  Donald Newman has all but disappeared and Patrick Strateman is still plugging away insulting his clients in the intersango thread.

Zhou Toug has taken his ill gotten gains and started nameterrific.com and is living large as he continues his education.

A guy like Roman Shtylman suffers a devastating hack (or maybe he just blew all the money on that extended london trip) and continues his busniess as he attempts to recover.

Then there is M4v3R of bitmarket.eu who decides to invest (gamble) all his client fund in bitcoinica and lost and now he's trying to recover.

All the while PREYING on their investors/clients HOPE that maybe, just maybe, by some miracle the lost fund will be recovered  (yea at 0.05% of 30 years!) and they will all be made whole.  And you know what. I just might put a little more money back in to help them out.  Whaaaaattttttttttt!!!?

So I guess anyone in bitcoin land with little to no financial knowledge or experience and a little web design/computer skills (and a download of bootstrap) can open a bitcoin business, call themselves an "investment manager", a "exchange" a "pass through" or whatever, collect funds and then either knowingly or when things go south just close up shop claim a hack/scam/scandal and just walk away.

And so far it seem there will always be plenty of naive, clueless or just plan trusting investors/depositors to play along.

I love this place!

Is M4v3R allowing selective withdrawals to quite the more vocal creditors? 

All creditors should have equal claim to funds due.

Sound like the financial shenanigans continue. 

M4v3R.  Could you or have you posted a current financial statement of funds currently on deposit and funds due to creditors?

Or if your potential investor/buyer could state here that they have looked at your books and have a plan in place for recovery of creditors funds.

Somethings is fishy....

So I was in American East Coast Time (UTC/GMT -5 hours).   The BangkokGuy was in Thailand  (UTC/GMT +7 hours).

Those time stamps in the chat logs are USA EST. (UTC/GMT -5 hours)

Accounting for Daylight savings time, did  anyone confirm if the actual Bangkok times jive with the guys story.  Or as some mention do they jive with McKinney Texas times.  

Remember, someone with access to Trendon Shavers pirateat40 Bitcointalk.org nic logged into his account around that same time as well.

Yes Mike, Great analysis but what does that have to do with bitcoin?  My point in citing the article is that the bitcoin community has to create "talking points" when bitcoin is called out as the "secret anonymous internet money used to buy drugs on the silk road."  We'll yea that's a fact but not nearly at the same volume as the very public and easily accessible world currency the Federal Reserve Note.

In the HSBC situation it was clearly  a case of creating plausible deniability.  If you read the very lengthy congressional report, especially the interviews with HSBC leadership and management it is clear what they were doing. HSBC is s global corporation with a ceo and management that oversee other divisions on almost every continent or at least every region of the world.   Each of those regions has a regional head and management teams that over see money laundering staff. 

When the shit hit the fan everyone started pointing fingers and while it was nearly impossible to implicate an one individual (look at the Corizine case) it was clear that there was a systemic failure to manage and respond to money laundering issues.  So a few mid-level managers in the regional divisions lose there jobs.  Everyone else moves up that ladder and the bank pay a fraction of the total profits in the effort in fines.  Ahhh to be a multi-billion dollar global conglomerate. 

But the real issue here is the US Patriot Act which spawned very stringent additions and changes to anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations with which the US Government is now strong-arming the rest of the world to put into place as a means of gaining financial control and access to additional  information of the world's population.

An this is why, in my option, we'll see the powers that be attempt to crush this movement before it reaches any plausible, wide spread adoption.

We'll see indictments of bitcoin business on money laundering charges and aiding in terrorism.  Income tax audits  and other additional scrutiny.   

But the bottom line is we as a community most continue to hone our message.  I'm not sure if the bitcoin foundation has figured out what's its purpose it yet.  Charlie Shrem of Bitinstant is certainly one of our most vocal advocates.  Eric Vhorees is also a very articulate although at time over enthusiastic bitcoin advocate.  But you really have to hear Anthony Gallippi, CEO of BitPay speak or be interviewed.  I think his knowledgeable, confident approach currently appeals best to a general population audience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH4rH6wu25U

Look Guys.

I like Charlie.  He started a terrific and one of the more successful bitcoin business that is obviously helpful to lots of users (if he could only work out all the little bugs!).   We all make mistakes.  I am certain I would do a lot worse in a similar interview.   Charlie is also one of bitcoins most vocal advocates/evangelists and I certainly appreciate that.   And as such he and any other bitcoin advocate does need to prepare talking points so he gets his facts straight.  There is already enough skepticism and confusion in the general media (christ even in the bitcoin world) about what exactly bitcoin is and can be use for.  And there has been enough negative press and unfortunate press interviews that I think it only appropriated to call Charlie to task when he is essentially representing us all.

Keep up the good work Charlie!

I'm not surprised.  It happens every day.  Take MF global for example.  While a congressional inquery found that the failure of the company and the massive loss of customer fund fell squarely on the shoulders of John Corizine, they stopped short of formal accusations of wrong doing.  Pirate had nothing on this guy.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/14/news/companies/corzine-mf-global/index.html
http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2011/12/08/n_mf_global_corzine_testimony.cnnmoney/

The point is that when politicians and others vilify bitcoin as online form of money laundering used to buy and sell drugs (and totally ignore the game-changing technology and implication of the protocol) we need to remind them there there are far greater - government sanctioned - travesties being carried out in the name of crony capitalism.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213

This was posted elsewhere under a less sensational subject but this article must be read by everyone.

Next time Charles Schumer jumps on his silk road/ bitcoin soap box.  Just pull a few quotes from this to fire back at him!

"I give up!"

++1

No problem!

Maybe I'll wait and try that. 

Thanks for the effort!

Dude,

You are killing me!

Gavin was Satoshi's successor (NOT predecessor!)

Also,

Bitcoin was created by a cryptographer or a group of cryptographers who took on the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamato. 

Don't just say Satoshi  disappeared.  It sounds like someone killed him!  How could they kill him when he never really existed.

After launching the bitcoin project Satoshi passed the torch on to his successor Gavin Andressen who is currently the lead developer of the bitcoin open source project.

Have you butty vorhees write this stuff down for you.  Seriously.

People listen to this shit!

Trying it for the third time!

Hey I'll pass on the bounty!   

Just want to see if I can get this working

Thanks!

Charlie,  You 've been practicing!

You started off so well. 

But you said Bitcoin was NOT a currency in the beginning the  2 minutes later you say it is a currency.

You're on the phone.  Write this shit down!

love

BCB

I'm copying http://susestudio.com/a/kp8B3G/ciyam-safe to a 4GB drive using Image Writer and I'm not able to get it to boot??

Am I missing a step?

Thx.

Interesting.  But did anyone have a better rep then Patrick Harnett before Kracken?  Just seems odd.

When did this happen?

Unfortunatly there are a lot of scammer in #bitcoin-otc and the mod don't seem to do much about it.

swc1

Get well soon!

Tony and Bitpay Congrats!  

This is great news.

And thank you! thank you! thank you!  for providing, intelligent, compelling and adult quotes for the article!


Good luck at CES.  It looks like you and BFL are the only two bitcoin businesses there to represent.

Listener

I am in US Eastern Standard Time Zone. UTC−05:00.

There is one more chat coming...