Bitcoin plus - is it owned by a member of this forum? - RANT ALERT!

[BitcoinBabe]

What would you do? Mine until you get to 0.02 and lose 0.01. Or call it quits, step away and know that they are keeping your BTC.
 

Yes, it was a surprise for me too when, on getting 0.001 btc (which is what bitcoin faucent gives away for free), I tried to send a payment and was told the minimum I can send is 0.01. It was another surprise when I realised, on reaching 0.01 that I needed to send at least 0.02 to make it worth my while - except I didn't see how 0.02 would make it worth my while as that would mean that I'd be spending half my btc on fees if I kept sending payments of 0.02 every time.

BTW, from the bitcoin wiki:

Transaction fees are voluntary on the part of the person making the bitcoin transaction, as the person attempting to make a transaction can include any fee or none at all in the transaction. On the other hand, nobody mining new bitcoins necessarily needs to accept the transactions and include them in the new block being created. The transaction fee is therefore an incentive on the part of the bitcoin user to make sure that a particular transaction will get included into the next block which is generated.

I'm assuming that, in this case, "the person making the bitcoin transaction" would be bcp, not its users (i.e. you and I).

And later on:

An advantage for bitcoin users to include a transaction fee is that the likelihood of getting a transaction included into the next block is going to be higher than if a transaction fee is not included. This is a trade off of time vs. money put forward on the transaction fees, as you can be patient with a low or non-existent fee included in a transaction, or you can make sure that the transaction is processed immediately by including a higher fee than is typical.

The rules are far from set in stone, and the network can support many different rules simultaneously. If there are 10 generating nodes that never require a transaction fee and your client is modified to never send any transaction fee, then your transactions will eventually be picked up by one of those free nodes when they generate a block, though it will probably take a very long time. In the far future, different rules about transaction fees among generating nodes will probably create a clear choice between fees and transaction speed. For example, you might choose to spend 2% for a guaranteed spot in the next block or 0.01% for the transaction to be sent in a few hours.

I agree with you that BCP should disclose their transaction fee up-front so that those using, or thinking about using, the service can make an informed decision. However, a little due diligence on the part of any prospective user of a service is always a good idea too. I decided to use it because I'm too lazy (as well as poor and miserly - I pay my own electricity bill and am not about to buy a massive fire hazard of a mining rig) to mine for myself but I do have a blog, which makes BCP seem that bit more appealing for me.

So, in answer to your "what would you do?" question: now that I'm already in it (whether having done the due diligence beforehand or not) I'd exercise patience and wait until I have at least a few multiples of 0.01 before I send a payment so that I'm not spending half my btc in fees on each transaction.

[Eri]

I am not one to flame people, but BCEmporium Clearly does not understand transaction fees and seems to be mixing up network protocol with the client itself. even giving evidence that proves him wrong and claiming it proves him right. I think we should just ignore his posts, hes clearly not going to "See The Light" and we clearly are not going to "understand".

one thing we can do, if you use avast antivirus and have the firefox addon that lets you see a "Rating" of a website that users give, you can just give it the lowest rating possible. while it will only help people using Avast.. its better then nothing.

[BCEmporium]

Mixing the network protocol with the client?!  WTF are you talking about?! 

Dude... no wonder you're mining bit-micro-cents with your CPU!... Hey there's a guy from Nigeria up to give you 5 mil too, want to take the ride? I can forward you some of his emails...

[Eri]

Mixing the network protocol with the client?!  WTF are you talking about?! 

...

lets break it down for you.

from the wiki link you posted in the vary first paragraph on the page. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees

lets have a look~

Transaction fees may be included with any transfer of bitcoins from one address to another. At the moment, many transactions are typically processed in a way where no fee is expected at all, but for transactions which draw coins from many bitcoin addresses and therefore have a large data size, a small transaction fee is usually expected.

May: (used  to  express possibility):

expected: (to suppose or surmise; guess): AKA Not a requirement. but something you Should pay.

required:
-to impose need or occasion for; make necessary or indispensable: The work required infinite patience.
-to demand; impose obligation: to do as the law requires.

Nowhere does it say "required" in that text.

i hope you understand.

[BCEmporium]

Yes, they may be, however, unlike with your bitcoin graphical client who asks you to confirm it when it will request a fee, bitcoind (the one without fancy graphics), doesn't do that, just let you know after you sent 0.018 instead of 0.008.

From the same page on the wiki:

0.01 BTC fee if sending any transaction less than 0.01 BTC. This is to help prevent DoS attacks against the network.

[TheBitMan]

Yesterday I was VERY close to finishing. I accidentally closed out of the page with around 5 seconds left. 

[Eri]

*grumbles* those are Client side, you just said it yourself! i Wish i had read to the next paragraph, it had this Gem (3rd paragraph down)"Transaction fees are voluntary on the part of the person making the bitcoin transaction, as the person attempting to make a transaction can include any fee or none at all in the transaction" it cant get more clear then that.

so to say it again, clients may force a fee but the protocol doesn't, and you can recompile it yourself and have No fee. since the guy running the website has an automatic payout feature when you request payout he has a custom implementation of this therefore he can set whatever fee he likes.

Regardless of whether or not the client charges a fee, the site owner STILL hides the .02 minimum /he/ sets and has yet to switch to the current more reasonable fee. which is what .005? or was .0005?

[BCEmporium]

If a generating node receives a transaction that should include a transaction fee but doesn't, they may refuse to include it in their blocks. It might be included in a later block if someone is willing to accept it.

 

Yes... they can patch and rebuild bitcoind... but then you probably will wait a bit longer prior to see anything hit the blockchain.

[pointbiz]

I dont think bitcoinplus is a scam. It is a very user friendly introduction to mining. If you download a CPU miner you will see that bitcoinplus's java miner is slower. But it's super convenient. Also, I was able to withdraw the first 0.01BTC I mined there. By the time I got around to my second 0.01BTC the fee was introduced. I assume it is the standard network fee imposed by the official client.

If you are patient then the fee will probably get reduced to 0.005 when the site owner gets around to it.

[Eri]

they lie, they say the minimum is .01 BTC. in reality the minimum is .02 BTC yet they don't display this anywhere to users unless they have .01 BTC. they have known about this for awhile yet they have made no change. payouts are only given out in amounts like .01,.02,.03,.04,.05 etc. so they wont give out amounts that overflow and there is *no* reason for this, they are scammers that lie to their users and make it difficult to get your money and/or are simply inept at coding. either way they should be black listed.

i should also mention, because of the difficulty increase it probably takes allot of time to get .02 from them these days.

for a complete understanding read the thread.

[BitcoinBabe]

i should also mention, because of the difficulty increase it probably takes allot of time to get .02 from them these days.

Define a lot (I assume you mean "a lot" as "allot" means something else altogether). It took me about a week.

[Eri]

Its obvious what i meant and I'm not talking about running several PC's 24/7. i was comparing *now* with how long it took back when they had no fee before the difficulty changed.

[stergium]

If you dont know about bitcoin plus its a javascript cpu mining "pool", which obviously pays out small small amounts of BTC. So ive had it running at the office for a few weeks and amassed a fortune of 0.02 btc. Not much, but hey, i like free bitcoins.

Anyhow here comes my rant:

IMHO this is a complete scam, as the owner claims that he needs to discount 0.01 btc for transaction fees. This is absolutely ridiculous given that it takes a solid week to generate 0.01 btc with his software. So basically he just rips everyone off and prolly keeps most if not all bitcoins to himself. Might seem like small amounts, but added up its probably a NICE bounty.

Id like to give the owner a chance to defend his policies and site, so bitcoin plus dude if  youre a member of the community, speak up!

i first would like to state that i'm not by anyway affiliate with bitcoin plus.
the site is not a scam. Think of it of an "entry level" website for people that dont know what bitcoin is.
i concur with previous opinions about wanting results=getting a gpu.
when i first saw bitcoin plus it gave me the idea to  search and  implement one of my own javascript miner. of course just for the fun of it and nothing more as cpu mining is not a good idea.

[Eri]

read the thread, there is more to it then that.

[stergium]

Eri i'm quoting BCEmporium.

That's just lack of information. NOT A SCAM damn it!

Gosh, these folks are doing a lot of noise out of 0,15 cents (at current rate)... are you 9 yo kids or what?!

i scam would be: minimum transaction is 0.5 . you try to tranfer 0.5 and you get the message" for transaction fees we keep 0.5 . you now have 0. try again!"

[-Tom-]

2.) Second transfer attempt:
Now, the proud owner of 0.01x BTC finally wants to transfer the coins to his/her wallet. And BAM:
Now you get informed (FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER AGIAN) that you have to pay a 0.01 BTC transfer fee and that any transaction has to be a multiple of 0.01 BTC (i. e. that you have to "mine" at least 0.02 BTC and losing half of it to transfer fees).

Is this true? Damned, I'm close to my first 0.01 BTC at BCP 

[Eri]

*sigh* stergium, I'm quoting myself, ITS A SCAM. they keep stringing you along so most give up and leave the BTC behind instead opting for the 3 times more efficient cpu mining APP. ive made nearly 2 times as much in 1 week of cpu mining(minus last night they upgraded my internet and it was out for F@#$ing hours) compared to 3 weeks(?) on their website. if thats not a scam then what is it? and let me put it to you another way, if ANY business treated ANYONE that way, they would find themselves out of business VARY quickly. Hidden FEES? its one thing to hide something in a contract but to completely 100% Omit it is just plain BS. you want to know why this is a Great scam? because of people like you who insist their is nothing wrong with it.

[stergium]

*sigh* stergium, I'm quoting myself, ITS A SCAM. they keep stringing you along so most give up and leave the BTC behind instead opting for the 3 times more efficient cpu mining APP. ive made nearly 2 times as much in 1 week of cpu mining(minus last night they upgraded my internet and it was out for F@#$ing hours) compared to 3 weeks(?) on their website. if thats not a scam then what is it? and let me put it to you another way, if ANY business treated ANYONE that way, they would find themselves out of business VARY quickly. Hidden FEES? its one thing to hide something in a contract but to completely 100% Omit it is just plain BS. you want to know why this is a Great scam? because of people like you who insist their is nothing wrong with it.

you do not  know me that well to talk about "people like me" .
i did not suggested this to anyone. i *tried * this site for 25 seconds for fun.
you want/need to do it? do it for all i a care.
In YOUR(and other ppl's) thinking this is  a scam.
In MY(and other ppl's) thinking this is not a scam.
As i wrote before i saw that as an idea of implementing my *own* javascript miner, again for fun.
Because it cannot be a money making (due to difficulty and cpu mining) it cannot be a scam.
whoever wants to try it will realise it soon.
i have left 0.004XXXXX to a mining pool that stopped using. because i stopped and those change left there , they are scammers? .
stay and mine to get them.

[timsmith]

Yesterday I was VERY close to finishing. I accidentally closed out of the page with around 5 seconds left. 

This doesn't matter. BCP, as all miners, is based on probability rather than actual work done. So you could set it running for 5 seconds and earn a shed load (very unlikely), or run it for 5 years and earn nothing (also very unlikely). The indicator bar is purely based around estimated payout to give you an idea. Closing the browser 5 seconds before it reaches the end has absolutely no baring on whether you get any payouts or not; all it does when it gets to the end is go back to the start.

This is all explained very clearly in the site's own FAQ.

[BitCoinBarter]

I agree with you that BCP should disclose their transaction fee up-front so that those using, or thinking about using, the service can make an informed decision.

I think most would also agree with that.

What bothers me is that some (seem to) think that it is OK for BCP to not disclose. So if someone goes to BCP and get scammed, then it is their fault for not knowing better. That is wrong. Without going into much details, please review my posts (and others) to see why this is wrong.

I decided to use it [BCP]... to mine [through my] ...blog, which makes BCP seem that bit more appealing for me.

I edited your above quote. Did I get the central thought correct?

If so, then I have stated that BCP seems like a good fit for people with websites.
When I state that BCP is scamming people, then I am talking about the people who don't have a website.

I also think they are scamming people with a website.  The website owners are not that concerned (my guess) because they are getting others to mine BTC for them. i.e., They (website owners) did not use their own resources (electric, wear and tear on their computers, etc.) to generate BTC, so paying a 0.01 fee is not that much of a deal from them.

Assuming that BCP does disclose and someone goes to BCP for the first time (without knowing anything). I believe that website owners would still use BCP (seems like a great deal for them). Non website owners would not use BCP*.

* To be fair, maybe some non-website owners (my guess a small amount) would use BCP. I can not explain why some people do what they do.