How would newcomers tell how trustworthy an escrow was? How long someone has been around is very relevant especially when you factor all the other different parameters you propose to get rid of. Age or number of posts etc doesn't equal trust by itself but when you factor in other things like the trust system it gives you a pretty good idea of who you can and cannot trust. If everyone was on a level playing field from newcomers to long-time trusted Legendary members it would be a nightmare.

This would be counterproductive and have the opposite effect. Scams would go up considerably if we were all 'equal'. Age of account, activity and trust etc are all helpful when dealing or trusting a user but that doesn't mean you should blindly trust everyone who has a certain amount of those things but they are all valuable informations to help you make your mind up about an account. Should long-time and trusted members like tomatocage and vod etc be the same as some random newb? No.

Of course it matters, nobody likes to lose their money in value, it's like stock market all over again. Unless you have billions of BTC in wallet, you would mind about the value.

Trolls are low-life losers also.

Or Bitcoin gets overtaken by an altcoin in the next few years and it will be game over. Whatever it will be: don't assume that you are entitled to another rally above 1000 dollars. Hell, I first want to see if Bitcoin can have 3 months of growth before we start talking about trains or the moon again.

This type of blissful ignorance is why many people out there get burned. 'In the past it rose to 1000 dollars, so it MUST go higher now'. If the past would be a guarantee for the future, that type of thinking would indeed work out. Only it doesn't.

Wake up and smell the coffee.

^
The point is it ain't happening

Why bother scamming for dust? SMH. Scammers are low-life losers.

This should really be stopped or done only within trusted members network. It's very much ok that way than selling senior member account or full member account to some newbies

LET'S GET THIS STRAIGHT: WHEN YOU INVEST OR AND OPEN UP A BUSINESS THERE IS ONE FIRST RULE: YOU ARE GAMBLING AND THINGS COULD GO WRONG.
NOW IT COMES THE SECOND RULE: YOU DO NOT ASK YOUR CLIENTS FOR MONEY TO RECOVER THE LOSS OF YOUR BUSINESS, REGARDLESS WHAT YOUR SITUATION WAS(NOT ENOUGH CLIENTS, WRONG LOCATION, GOT SCAMMED, ETC..)
FERDOUS INVESTED IN MINTPAL TO MAKE MONEY, AND IT WENT WRONG, AND I DON'T CARE WHAT THE SITUATION WAS.
AS MUCH AS I FEEL SORRY FOR THE MINTPAL SITUATION I THINK IS COMPLETELY OUT OF PLACE TO ASK US FOR MONEY FOR A LAWYER.

BUT HEY, EVERYONE IS FREE TO DO WHATEVER THEY WANT, IF YOU ALL FEEL LIKE IS RIGHT TO SEND BTC'S TO GET HIM A LAWYER THEN GO AHEAD I GUESS.
I AM NOT SENDING ANYTHING.

MAN MAKES THE MONEY, MONEY NEVER MAKES THE MAN.

It is over(376)

close the topic

You could easily set up and auction for Bitcoin the U.S marshalls do it everytime they seize them from one of those underground websites lol Just ask them how to do it

How would you auction Bitcoin? 

Bad investment 

Home was worth $400K and he only got 648 BTC which is only worth $259K at todays prices

He basically gave his house away super cheap and should be sick about it 

It is refreshing to see a healthy amount of skepticism in the bitcoin community. I am new to bitcointalk.org however for over a year now my primary source of income has come to me in the form of bitcoins.

I strongly believe in an individual's right to freedom from needless and in many cases dangerous government intrusion into personal finance. This is doubly important for me, because my income comes from my participation in activities that my government deems to be illegal.

It is vital that I maintain my anonymity. Bitcoin alone certainly does not provide any degree of anonymity, so to provide for this I utilize among other tools, bitcoin blender. I was a user of bitcoinfog until march or april of this year when I began to notice significant delays with the service, particularly with the processing and availability of deposits and withdrawals. Since then I have processed between 80 and 100BTC through blender. My typical experience is excellent. I deposit coins and with three network confirmations the coins are available for withdrawal and taint analysis indicates no connection between my source and destination addresses (same for bitcoin fog). I was one of the unfortunate subset of people who had coins sitting in their account when the service was hacked last month. Having been around the block of "bitcoin+hiddenservice = mysterious theft of bitcoin" scenarios I figured I was out a few thousand and time to move back to old (un)reliable, bitcoinfog. The reason I am here registering on a clearnet forum and spending my time writing a review is because I was struck by the integrity of the service operator of bitcoin blender. In this situation, they could have shut down the service and cut their losses, keeping the profit from the past many months of operation and moving on to their next venture leaving me and others at a loss and they could have done this with no fear of reprisal or repercussion. The service operators chose to do the right thing by their users and fix the vulnerability (a race condition in their withdraw functionality in this case) and inform them of said vulnerability, properly record their losses and then inject their own money to the service to keep it going and get their users repaid.

Long story short I have been repaid a goodly portion of the balance in my account prior to the theft, and thankfully for me (not for blender) I am being paid as coins are on an upward swing. Most importantly, the service has always been available and always worked as advertised. The operators have consistently added functionality and security measures to combat problems that plague the world of hidden service bitcoin commerce (password phishing, dummy sites, etc) including PGP TFA, PGP authentication of deposit addresses, etc.

I may be ridiculed for having a new account and posting a review, but let me state it to you this way simply: I created this account and paid a fee so that I could post simply because I do not feel this service gets proper reviews. Most people who use it are like me and prefer to keep their business their business, or private.

If privacy and anonymity is important to anyone reading this then  they would be remiss if they did not try this service.

Thank you for reading.

Freedomfromfiat

I would say this was likely because they wanted to expand the number of listings on their site, along with the associated increased level of potential sales (and related commissions the site would receive)

skys the limit