Just FYI I am doing some research on ethereum ponzis and pyramids, and I calculated the expected payoff for this contract, as a function of what position you were in the deposit line, and what the maximum position was. As Basically, the conclusion is that you will only make money if you are within the first half (or maybe closer to 40%) of deposits.

What evidence do you have of recycling? They may be locking up ETH and selling it, causing the market to go down -- but so does every ICO --- how else are you supposed to raise funds? This is different from recycling which is illegal, and they have third party auditors assuring that they aren't doing it (not saying that means they are 100% guaranteed not doing it, but just that your claims are pure speculation).

And what evidence do you have that its a scam? none. I work at Consensys and am heavily invested in ETH, but don't be a sycophant with a closed ming -- something has to replace ETH eventually.

this was the email sent to me by Andre from btcjam:

"
Hello Paul.

First of all, thank you for you interest in BTCJam api.

From the history of your emails, I am not sure of what kind of api usage you want. But to clarify, you can use BTCJam api in two different ways.

The first one is to poll data simply using your app id and app secret provided to you by BTCJam and calling the endpoints (currently there’s only one, the listings) via an http request. You can even type it in your browser’s address bar https://btcjam.com/api/v1/listings?appid=[APP ID]&secret=[APP Secret]

to test the endpoint calls. This will get you a json with open listings and some info about the borrower. I see you have already tried this method and it apparently works fine for you.

The other api access type utilizes OAuth2 delegation method. With this method you redirect your user to our login page(sending your app_id and app_secret), and after the user has logged in to BTCJam and authorized your app to access its data, the user will be redirected to your web site (via the callback url you configured).

After the user has authorized your web app to access his data, you need an access token to this user, which will be used on the subsequent api calls your web app will be performing on behalf of the BTCJam user. You can then call the Token BTCJam url to request the access and refresh token for this user. You should store those tokens and use the access token for every api call. When this token expires you must request a new access token using the access+refresh token.

With this method of authentication you can use the api request to get the User’s data such as profile, open listing, receivable, payables and also make an investment on behalf of the user.

One thing I noticed in your code is that you are trying to use OAuth – that is, the version of OAuth which is not compatible with Oauth2 and it’s actually more complicated than the version 2.

So my recommendation would be to look for a Java OAuth2 library that can handle the low level part for you, so you only need to specify the parameters you actually need. Also,you probably can find java OAuth2 implementations that communicate with other services (such as Facebook or Twitter), and you might only need to change the app_id/secret and the service URLs, since the OAuth2 protocol works the same for all service providers.

On a side note, we are currently expanding our api, so even if the current api does not expose the information or method you wished to use, we encourage you to tinker and play with the API as it is, since you would only have to extend your code to use the new methods after you have your client up and running.

We are also planning on having a working Java example of OAuth2 application on the website, but we have not yet found the time to do so.

If you need more information or face dead-ends we will be happy to further advise you.

Regards, Demiam"

Hello all,
I have a trade bot that used to trade on the btce API. After the MtGox debacle I shut it down for a few months, and now that the vol is starting to pick up again I am hoping to dust off the old bot. Unfortunately, the part of my bot that connects to the btce api is breaking now, telling me that it can no longer find a valid certificate path ("PKIK path building failed"). I am not really sure how to fix this problem, but I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that BTCE changed its certificate recently (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20ro3r/anyone_know_what_happened_with_btcecom_just_now/).  I tried to ask their technical support if this may have affected my ability to access the api and they said that they don't offer programming help and that they would not even discuss the certificate. Pretty sketchy I think. Has anyone else experienced this problem or know how to fix it? I have tried googling this but I'm not getting anywhere. I didn't have to do anything special with certificates before...

any thoughts? plz halp! If you can help I will send you a copy of my trade bot! It isn't my main strategy anymore anyways.

Thank you in advance for any help!

-Paul

UPDATE: Andre has actually started responding to my emails. I will see how much information I can squeeze out before they go incommunicado again. But all jokes aside, THANK YOU btcjam. If I and other devs are able to make a succesful investment bot, this will show people the way for safe investing and increase the efficiency of your market. perhaps it will even decrease the default rate a little if information spreads enough, and if the devs are like me and don't really care about keeping their strats to themselves.

update on this situation:

I ALMOST got in touch with btcjam, though of course not through the official means of support (Alexis Aionio) but instead through Andre Goldstein. Instead it was because I sent them information that helped prove that a user's account was hacked, so that his creditors could get reimbursed. Andre told me that after the issue got resolved he would finally address my question about the API. Of course, that never happened. Here is a copy of my email, just FYI:

"
Hi Andre,
Thank you for taking care of the xxxxxxx situation and dealing with it appropriately.

I would really appreciate it if you could take the time to have one quick conversation with me about the API! You said you would so I am holding you to it, since Alexis won't respond to anyone's emails ever.

I am sure you are all noticing how your business is being stolen by bitlendingclub, and if you haven't you will soon. It is all over forums and facebook groups. I am trying to help you when I say that this is because of the horrible support you offer. In a related issue (related because this is support's issue), the one edge you have over them is that you have an API. but you still have not completed the docs, and your server is outputting 500 errors instead of giving any description of what went wrong, which is not what a fully fledged api should do.

Having a "reference client" is not a subsitute for complete docs and error handling. You api should be language independent.

If you could cater more to your dev customers like me, they would be able to help ferret out the much higher risk on your site which is the reason for everyone moving to bitlendingclub. It only takes a few customers with api access and an understanding of machine learning to make the entire marketplace more informed and efficient. You may not realize it, but you need the help of devs to save your company, and the only way to do that is by updating your api.

Then again, if you could just help me figure out why I and so many other people are getting 500 internal server errors, I would be fully satisfied. But wouldn't it be easier and better for everyone if you provided the tools to debug our own code in a public place?

I hope the tone in this email isn't off... I am a fan of btcjam and I don't want to move. I want to have a nice conversation with you but forgive me if your lack of communication has made me a bit desperate.

Best,
Paul
"

@ Corktrader, thanks for your input. I believe that renewing access to your account after losing your two factor code is something you must do through support unfortunately. That being said, I think if you email them you will probably get a response at some point since it is a relatively straight forward process. The things they don't like responding to are the harder questions like "why doesn't your API work?" or "what do I do after I have won an arbitration?".

Good luck in regaining access to your account! I hope they start communicating with their customers soon.

-Paul

Thank you for your responses. @Juju, I didn't post it in the technical discussion section because it says it is for "Technical discussion about Satoshi's Bitcoin client and the Bitcoin network in general. No third-party sites/clients..." and I thought the btcjam api would count as a third party site/client. Anyways, The API is still only working for the "listings" request for me. When I try the endpoint
 https://btcjam.com/api/v1/me?appid=xxxx&secret=xxxxx
I am still getting a 500 error. I think you are right that I need some additional verification, but I am still not sure exactly what you mean, as it is not in the docs anywhere. All it says is that I need to append the above endpoint with my appid and secret. I am expecting that there need to be some headers, and probably some sort of hashed signature, but it is unclear exactly how their authentication is supposed to work. From what I understood in the docs and from the one support discussion I had about 3 months ago, oauth is supported but not required for authentication. Even so, I tried using the signpost api for implementing oauth in java, but even using that I still get the 500 error.

I know btcjam is very busy right now with a lot of things, and they probably dont have time to focus on more than the bare minimum functionality of the api. But given that the docs are incomplete, you don't respond to support requests for 3 months, and I know of at least 4 other people also getting 500 errors including 2 people I hired specifically to try to "debug" the api, I would say that this it is still not quite functioning at bare minimum. I think a little bit of time fleshing out the docs could go a long way for your dev customers.

Hello,
I have been using btcjam for a little over half a year now, and I have decided to make it into the basis for my masters thesis in financial mathematics. I have connected and used various bitcoin APIs, such as Bitstamp, Campbx, Blockchain, and Bitcoincharts. However, it seems that the btcjam api is having some problems. According to the api "faq" page (the closest thing to documentation available), there are 5 methods available on their api. including 4 GET requests and 1 POST request:

GET:
user profile
open listings
user receivables
user payables
POST:
invest

However, since I started trying to access the API over a month ago, only the "open listings" method is working, while all of the others are returning an internal server (500) error. In have tried posting in the regular btcjam forum, but I have not gotten any responses there. I have also tried using bitcoinstack exchange to no avail, and their support has not responded to me in over 2 months. I have also hired someone (using oDesk.com) to help me try to debug this issue ASAP (because my thesis deadline is quicvkly approaching!) but he is also experienceing the same problem, and is not able to find a solution. Meanwhile, the btcjam blog has been very active recently, but has not mentioned anything about this (possible) api error)

If any devs our there have any insight on this matter, it would be greatly appreciated. If someone could say that they are currently either a) successfully using all btcjam api listings or b) having the same problem that I am, either of these facts would be very helpful.

Thoughts?

Collecting these statistics and many more specific/useful ones is what I hope to make the basis for my masters thesis on credit rating models, and I will release all of my findings to the community after they are analyzed. Only problem is I still can't get the api to work. Is anyone here currently using the api? If anyone could say they are either using the api or can't use the api, either fact would be a huge help. At this point I have hired someone to help me get it to work and we have still gotten nowhere; still internal server (500) errors whenever I make any calls OTHER than "listings".

-btcjam api errors

on another note, is anyone having any problems with their api? I am able to make the "listings" request just fine, but when I try to make any other request I am getting a 500 "internal server error". Their support took 2 weeks to respond by saying "That's odd, have you tried using a different browser? You can view the progress of the listing in your payment table if have invested", demonstrating that they didn't really read my question, since I am not accessing the server through a browser but rather through their api. I asked them what they meant, that wasw four weeks ago and they still haven't responded. Api halp anyone? hackbyte?

P.S. I started off joining btcjam for investment purposes, but soon I am hoping to use the api for research purposes for my masters thesis.

what no one seems to be realizing in this forum is that fiat currency gets its "initial value" in the same way as any currency, and that regulation and taxation are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain its value. (Of course they aren't, if you put any stake in the idea that bitcoin has value!) There has been a lot of research on this subject for decades, and there are many different theories on what gives fiat it's value, including the state theory to the commodity theory. The commodity theory says that currency such as fiat which has no intrinsic value (this is actually the central concept behind the definition of a fiat currency), is valuable only as an intermediary between other goods, i.e. because it is expected to be tradeable for another asset in the future. Consider an economy of three people: A, B, and C. A has something B wants, B has something C wants, and C has something A wants, so that if they were to trade in a circle, the total utility of the economy would increase. However, assuming that all transactions in the economy must be pairwise (an exchange between two parties), there is no way to actually make the optimal trades in this economy, since there is no coincidence of wants. Now suppose we introduce a fiat currency into the market by giving it to one of the people. This extra degree of freedom allows for the 3 parties to complete their trades in pairwise exchanges, and increase the total utility of the economy. This increase in total utility is exactly the value of currency.

That is really the simplest answer to the OP's question. Of course, that oversimplified explanation has its problems. Most importantly, there is the built in assumption that the other people in the economy will accept the currency. It isn't rational to assume this, so it seems that the commodity theory of currency value, while sufficient to explain the VALUE of currency, is not sufficient to explain its existence, which I think is an important distinction to make. This is where the state theory comes into play.. the regulation and enforcement of this currency provides the requisite trust system that allows for the currency to take hold. However, this idea is also considered a vast oversimplification. There have been other ideas proposed that would allow us to get around this trust problem without the use of regulation and law enforcement.  You see, the main problem in the example with only three people is that after the first two trades have taken place, the third person will not be able to trade the worthless currency with anyone, everyone else has already received what they want, and no longer have interest in the new currency. This disadvantage for being the last guy "holding the bag" is precisely what destroys the viability of the currency, since there is no way of knowing if you will be last. A theory proposed by (Kovenock and De Vries, 2002) gets around this problem by making the number of players in the economy sufficiently large, though still finite.  This theory says that if the economy is large enough, there is a very low probability of being the last person holding the currency, and since you know that all of the other parties know that as well, your expected utility from using the currency outweighs the uncertainty about being the last person holding it. It has been proposed that this type of model is exactly what gives bitcoin currency value despite its lack of regulation or instrinsic value. Or said differently, the thing that gives a currency its "initial value" is simply the fundamental utility argument above, provided a sufficiently large core number of people trading said currency.

To sum up, I think it is kind of ridiculous that in a forum about bitcoins, where people assume that a currency can have aggregate value even if it is instrinsically worthless and has no regulation, almost no one has stopped to think that largely the same forces are at work in fiat currency. Yes, of course government can use force to make you pay your taxes, and that this kind of aggression can alter the value of the currency. But that is not what the OP asked. The OP didn't ask what forces us to use one currency over another (regulation/taxation), or what causes the value of currency to be stable (regulation), or what causes currencies to be homogeneous within a certain nation-state (taxation). As some posters have pointed out, there are many examples, such as the USD, of currencies that started out without strong legal enforcement, and there are countries without taxes, like somalia, which still use currencies. Does it really seem plausible that fiat currency and digital currency like bitcoin really derive their value in completely, fundamentally different ways? Of course not. Yes, bitcoin is radically different, but it is still a currency and the way it derives its value is fundamentally the same as fiat. All of the posters here who claim that the only reason fiat has value is because someone tells you at gunpoint that it does are really just fueling an "us and them" mentality while ignoring the hypocrisy of turning around and saying that bitcoin is valuable without regulation or taxation.

I just tried to withdraw btc from CampBX, but I got the response: cold wallet maintenance... please try again in 5 hours. This message has been there all day. anyone got any idea how long has this been going on? The only announcement was on March 21st, and it said the maintenance would last only 2 hours. I don't think they would have frozen btc withdrawals for that long, or else I would have heard about it. I was hoping CampBX would be able to differentiate themselves from MtGox with more transparency, but I guess not.

I agree, and I am not saying I would EVER do business with them again. I am not trying to make any judgements on how trustworthy they are... I think the bitcoin world has already made that judgement and they are guilty, no matter what. I am merely trying to figure out whether they will open up btc withdrawals. thats all.

@zyk, DISPROOF by counterexample on the other hand... that's a nail in the coffin of your theory.

Honestly, I would say that there is a decent chance they will open back up. Not saying you should trust those lying bastards ever again. But there is a chance.

also,
'The proceeds of this selling were sent off- shore . This is still being hidden as we speak by take-over

nonsense and draft papers and subpoenas and sleeping cats and buying back debts for pennies on the dollar and so and on and on..

Am sad that all of you rather want to be blindsighted by BS and lose your funds and sad for the complete loss of confidence in

bitcoin which will ensue should this heist will be pushed through without punishment for the perpetrators.'


wut? are you saying the subpoenas aren't real? Or that gox buying engaging in insider trading and crashing the market in order to buy back coins for cheap is somehow a cover-up? That's a pretty shitty cover up.

if they really never give our money back, of course I will be sad, of course I will be angry. But I won't be blindsided because I, unlike you, am considering more than one outcome. But opf all of the possible outcomes that end up in me being pissed and sad because I was defrauded, I don't think your theory is very likely.

Zyk... you said you were going to debunk the statement I made, but you didn't. Instead you spread fallacious claims. Did you not read my last post? Karpeles NEVER SAID THAT DOCUMENT WAS AUTHENTIC.

Furthermore, your argument is that you don't need evidence because it is a "fact" that no one sold under 300. Unfortunately, you forget that the very definition of a fact is something that can and has been proven with evidence. A lack of counterexample is not proof.

please srop allowing your anger to distort the truth.

yes, I agree. So it is best to ignore everything related to that document. unfortunately when there is no news for long enough, people just make it up.

The way I see it (and yes I have an optimist's bias) is that document is completely fake, and you ignore the wave of misinformation it has created, the situation is really no different than a couple of weeks ago. Except they are now no longer collecting transaction fees or engaging in insider trading because someone gave them a timeout.

I believe they have already started an investigation: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-26/bitcoin-holders-resigned-to-losses-as-mt-gox-faces-japan-probe.html

So even if that mtgox recovery strategy document was fake, do we believe the numbers of their defecit being 750k bitcoins? It's all over the major news headlines, but I have yet to see any credible sources.

Also, re: the confirmation that the document was true: That report was done by fox news, the news organization with possibly the least credibility of any in the US. Furthermore, Kerpeles did not confirm the authenticity of the document. On the contrary, he flat out denied it. Quoth fox news:
"In the IRC obtained by FOX Business, Karpeles denies the document was produced by Mt. Gox, but confirms that it is “more or less” legitimate. "

Note that the only thing in quotes is "more or less", not even the whole phrase "more or less legitimate". Which means it was probably taken completely out of context in classic fox style. So not only are we getting goxed, we are getting "foxed'.

Can anyone find a source claiming gox owes 750k btc which cites any source other than the two bit idiot?

And why didn't Mtgox sell all of those coins at a much higher price? And don't you think that such a move would be far too obvious? I am sorry zyk but even if you were ultimately right, you have more confidence in your theory than the facts warrant.

I have seen to many conversations on this thread start as meaningful discussions and then devolve into unsubstantiated theories and hyperbole. It's not that I think you are definitely wrong, just that I wish we could go back to having a productive conversation about what is going on here, because some of us still have a significant amount of money there so we don't have the luxury of sensationalizing this story by only thinking in extremes. Also I don't see why people rip on his weight so much... he is an asshole...period.

Things I believe to be true:
1) After speaking with Karpeles, Charlie shrem claimed that we (people stuck on gox) can "expect good news" sometime soon.
2) around the time of the btc withdrawals freezing, there were attacks reported on mtgox as well as on other exchanges
3) it may have been possible to exploit the tx malleability problem in order to steal bitcoins from users' accounts without mtgox even knowing.
4) the US attorney's office in new york is subpoenaing mtgox, and the US and Japanese authorities are carrying out an investigation
5) the document outlining mtgox's recovery strategy has never been confirmed as authentic, and its probably fake.

Could you give some evidence that it is a cover up please? It seems to me that the transaction malleability problem, the hacking problem, the incompetence, the insolvency, they are all a part of the same big shitstorm. Someone was stealing from them by taking advantage of transaction malleability, they were too incompetent to realize it or wrote it off, and now they are insolvent. And yes, they are criminals as well by not doing something earlier. But there doesn't have to be just one big fat criminal in this story; there could be a few. I personally don't think they have the balls to just sell all of our btc, and that idea sounds a little farfetched.