My bank account's got robbed by European Commission. Over 700k is lost.

[honorem]

It could be worse....

[1715324552]

1715324552

[1715324552]

1715324552

[1715324552]

1715324552

[BitchicksHusband]

A couple corrections:

* Yes, zeroday DID lose over 500k of his account.  Permanently.  Gone.
* Despite the outrage on zerohedge.com, ukraine appears to be doing what other countries do and tax all wealth above a certain dollar amount at 1.5% per year.  This is usually in lieu of capital gains taxes. This is currently being done (at similar rates) in France, Spain, Iceland, India, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland.  So it is more realistic to call this Switzerland 2.0 than Cyprus 2.0, but it doesn't have the same alarm to it.
* Bitcoin was $86.98 (including Bitfloor fees) on the day he started this thread, because I bought some that day.

[Razick]

I completely agree with what you are trying to say, cr1776.  But I think the Amorous Cow-Herder is confused by the word "own."  What does it actually mean to "own" something?

I think it is more accurate to say:

"If you aren't the sole controller of your private keys, you don't have any bitcoins."

It is obvious to a 5 year old what it means to have something.  It is still confusing to me in my 30s what it means to own something.

Ownership has been well defined in legal terms for a long time ... you need to have

- knowledge of the existence of the thing
- possession of the thing
- control of the thing

of a thing to legally own it.

Without all these three things you do not "own" something.

I'm pretty sure that you can entrust something you own to someone else without giving up legal ownership...

[TheMinex]

Only for explain current situation in Italy:

We pay 0,2% per year over 5K deposit / investment net positions. No matter your condition, if you are jobless with a 100K deposit you pay. If you are invested with low interests rates (assume low risk interest is now very very low near 1,5% gross, and is falling !) you pay. Capital Gains are taxed of course by 26% ( 12,5% only for Italian debt BUT they introduce "CAC" witch sintetically means that debt can be remodel as they want). CG works like said above, you pay no matter your condition. They invented "tobin tax", much or less 0,1% of the net variation of your position in stock market. Add all the trading costs and you will see that here all private money in bank system is under ultra heavy but silent attak.
I mean, not only wealth above any limit, but all wealth !!!

[Charlie Prime]

Dominica/Belize/Panama are winning.

Now there is one LESS business in Cyprus creating jobs, buying supplies, and providing value.

Keep up the Good Work ZeroDay!

[devphp]

More 'cypruses' on the way.

[gts476]

OP, I'm sorry bro, this is not legit.

Everyone else, here is your argument for the opportunity cost of not having bitcoin equating to intrinsic value.

[Razick]

IMHO the 700k is blocked as the 128k plus-some are the part that won't be touched.
you will not lose all the 700k, "only" couple of percent.

stop cryin, that's just TAX EVASION catching up to you.

Nitpick: tax avoidance, not evasion. Evasion is illegal, avoidance is just (arguably) unethical.

Whilst I don't generally cry a river for people with huge sums of money who end up somehow having slightly less huge sums of money, I do have much sympathy for the OP in this case. That was a business account - a bunch of people putting their time and talent into providing goods and services for a larger bunch of people. Who are now all fucked.

One thing though: how much of that is really 'blocked' blocked? That amount looks like a helluva lot more %-wise than all the newspapers I've been reading suggested.  Just read "Cyprus Finance Minister: Uninsured Laiki Depositors Could Face 80% Haircut". Well fuck that!

I was earlier going to express my disappointment with the tastelessness and over-the-top-ness of the OP's avatar. But now I can see where they're coming from, so quite frankly, Merkel can suck it.

Arguably, the insanely high taxes most people in the world pay are unethical.

[Razick]

Paul Krugman can keep arguing that debt doesn't matter, but I'll stick to real world economics and keep an eye on US debt lest this happen to me.

[Este Nuno]

Paul Krugman can keep arguing that debt doesn't matter, but I'll stick to real world economics and keep an eye on US debt lest this happen to me.

It's a bit different. This would never happen in the US in my opinion.

[gts476]

Paul Krugman can keep arguing that debt doesn't matter, but I'll stick to real world economics and keep an eye on US debt lest this happen to me.

It's a bit different. This would never happen in the US in my opinion.

http://www.examiner.com/article/does-dodd-frank-set-up-bail-for-u-s-banks-to-follow-cyprus

were all fucked.

[Ron~Popeil]

This is exactly why I intend to convert a larger and larger amount of our income to bit coin each month. I don't even trust that our privately held IRA and annuity accounts will be safe from the looters.

[BCEmporium]

Indeed, Bitcoin is the ultimate weapon against looters. It requires you to study a bit and be informed to not get hacked, but it's the perfect money as you can even store it without any physical shred of it, like passphrase generated addresses.

[Razick]

Paul Krugman can keep arguing that debt doesn't matter, but I'll stick to real world economics and keep an eye on US debt lest this happen to me.

It's a bit different. This would never happen in the US in my opinion.

It probably wouldn't happen, but you get my point.

[Charlie Prime]

This would never happen in the US in my opinion.

If this were true, you would be able to point us toward some fiat currency used during the last 5,000 years of history which did not blow up.

[Fabrizio89]

$ or € won't blow up, they will just replace them with another currency just like they did before european union

[Charlie Prime]

When they get "replaced" is the event when anyone holding them gets bent over the kitchen table and azz-raped.

[boltactionz]

Paul Krugman can keep arguing that debt doesn't matter, but I'll stick to real world economics and keep an eye on US debt lest this happen to me.

It's a bit different. This would never happen in the US in my opinion.

Oh how wrong you are!  It's already happened in the US more than once. 

As a matter of fact, some think that the reason John Wilkes Booth shouted "Sic Semper Tyrannis!" (Thus Always To Tyrants!) right before he shot President Lincoln is because of Lincoln's issuance of the original "greenback" (unbacked by gold or anything other than "full faith and credit") that was used to pay the Union Soldiers during the US Civil War.  Try finding and spending one of those greenbacks today and see if you can get it accepted.

Another interesting factoid is, during one of the budget crises back when Timothy Geithner was still head of Treasury a few years back the federal government dipped into the federal employees' retirement system as a way to temporarily solve the crisis at hand at the time.  In other words, they temporarily stole the money from the very employees who were working right alongside them and for them rather than outsiders in order to balance the system . . . claiming to have put it back at some later date.  But even if they did put it back, the very fact that they would take it in the first place implies at the very least a "Cyprus/EU" mentality when it comes to funds on deposit.  Granted, it was ONLY (ha! ha!) federal employee retirement money and not everybody's money at all the banks, but still . . . it was a money-grab from a group of people powerless to stop it just the same.

Another thing.  There was a movement in the US to withdraw money from the so-called "too big to fail" banks by a certain November 5th (Guy Fawkes Day) as a protest against the bailouts sometime back.  There is video footage on Youtube of people being turned away from their local Bank of America branch by police officers even though they had CDs and other proof they were customers.  The banks simply refused to allow the customers to enter the bank to make the withdrawals and account closures under threat of being arrested as an effort to keep the collapse from happening.  There was a guy who originally stated that this action should be done based on what he called "Tank a Bank" as part of a political movement.  Congresscritters called him a financial terrorist because, unlike the B of A plan above, people were originally not supposed to just move the money to a credit union, but to take it home to remove it from the banking system completely.

Bottom line here is this.

These people will do whatever they think is necessary in order to keep the party going for as long as they possibly can, up to and including killing people whenever it suits them.  (Rumor is the reason for the attack on Iraq is because Saddam had demanded to be paid in Euros or gold for his oil instead of US dollars back before Desert Storm 1.0)

[STT]

That last rumour was for Gaddafi I think.    Iraq had no trade for oil for gold or anything at all except where allowed by UN in exchange for goods, they were not able to make demands at that time.   Makes the war kinda pointless since they were largely disarmed.

There were allegations of corruption, bribes for the oil but I dont think this was enough reason to invade

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_for_food

[Ibian]

Saddam wanted to deal in euro, Gaddafi wanted gold based money. Also there is this:



We deliberately went after the most developed country in Africa, by our standards. There are far worse people we could have gone after, like the guy who runs into battle naked and eats children. That's not even a joke or hyperbole.

It's all bullshit.