I will pay 0.3 BTC for an insurance policy against btc-e

[legendster]

This is what insurance companies do all the time.  

I'm afraid though that it is going to be hard to find anyone to take you up on your offer because on the surface it doesn't sound that great, risk 250 BTC for .3 BTC.  

An insurance company might also want some verification that you actually have 250 BTC in btc-e however and that when it is recovered if btc-e goes down the 250 BTC go to them (since they will have already paid you "your" 250 btc).  However, you've explicitly said you wont verify that, so this is just basically a short term option (or high odds bet) on btc-e.

Good Luck!

Also it could be YOU who DDos's the site & claims the escrow. :/

[kezzyp]

He got me cracking up..    I like the thinking malfunctions, we usually say see a doctor if its for real....

[quone17]

There are a million things wrong with this - start that it's on an internet forum and you're asking someone up put up 250 BTC.  Someone with 250 BTC might want to hire a lawyer for this contract.  Who's to say OP won't attack sit ehimself, and who makes the call and shows the proof that the site is down or you can't withdraw?

[greenlion]

The event of btc-e.com being hacked, defaulting, disappearing and so on should be catastrophic enough to be easily determined. Also, I will not have to prove that I actually had 250 BTC in btc-e (I might have more or less at any given time). And no - I don't plan on hacking btc-e myself  

Why is it obvious this is a raging scam?

Because no one with the sense to actually construct a legit scheme like this would ever let 250 BTC accumulate on BTC-e without doing something about it. If 250 BTC was too much for this person to comfortably keep in BTC-e he would've already done something about it, and if 250 BTC is just a small fraction of his total BTC holdings, then he wouldn't be soliciting this kind of arrangement in the first place.

So basically the OP is soliciting funds to perform a transaction that, in the absolute best possible case scenario, is only happening because he's a moron!

[MrPalmer]

This thread has to be shenanigans.  No one is this dense. 

[Eric Muyser]

To the naysayers, I'll say this. Do you have life insurance? A typical life insurance will pay 250K, and for that you pay ~100$ per year. Who wants to risk 250K for 100$ per year? Is this a joke? No, it's called insurance and it's based on probabilities.

Insurance companies don't escrow that 250K though. It comes out of their funds when needed. So a better analogy is an agreement to insure you, but not escrow the bitcoins. That is especially appropriate in an unsafe and unregulated market (unlike with an insurance company).

[Sheldor333]

For simplicity sake lets say 1 BTC=1000$.
Where have you seen an insurance policy that gives you 250k$ for a 300$ insurance?
What doesn't exist in real life should not exist here, because what you are offering is not fair at all.

[twentyseventy]

For simplicity sake lets say 1 BTC=1000$.
Where have you seen an insurance policy that gives you 250k$ for a 300$ insurance?
What doesn't exist in real life should not exist here, because what you are offering is not fair at all.

Not true. What you're referring to is known as a Credit Default Swap (CDS) and they are insurance-type financial instruments that were a bit part of the cause of the 2008 financial crisis.

For instance, if someone owned $10 Million of IBM bonds and wanted to insure those bonds against total loss, they would purchase a credit default swap for IBM Bonds for $10 Million. A highly stable company like IBM would have very low risk of default and, consequently, companies would offer very low premiums for 'insuring' against default of those bonds.

So, the IBM bondholder would pay an amount like $300,000 (3% of $10,000,000) to the CDS seller. The CDS seller (often an institutional investor like CalPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement System) would receive a nice income each year and the IBM Bondholder would sleep soundly knowing that he was A-OK if IBM went belly up overnight.

SO, yes these do exist and are still in use today!

The issue with CDS is that the risk has to be valued appropriately. Many institutional investors were misled about the risk of the underlying assets they were 'insuring'. I wouldn't know how to rate this kind of risk of default, but there is a fair number out there somewhere.

[tubbyjr]

or I am otherwise unable to withdraw my money from it for any reason

Horrible scam, really, horrible. That line practically ensures you get the escrow, because you used the word, ANY. So if you're too lazy to withdraw the 0.2 BTC you likely have in BTC-e, you magically get 250 BTC.

Go scam EVE or something, and stop trying to teach us about life insurance.

[jballs]

Is this where you landed, Jon Corzine? I remember you from the old days.

[byronbb]

So you think Btc-e has a 0.1% chance of going down and you need insurance for this? lol. Want some insurance for walking across the street tomorrow?

[mrkent]

Although everyone is bashing the OP, I agree that such a service would be highly useful for the bitcoin economy. It's stupid that site owners can just run with everyone's money with almost no warning.

[jballs]

Although everyone is bashing the OP, I agree that such a service would be highly useful for the bitcoin economy. It's stupid that site owners can just run with everyone's money with almost no warning.

Call Lloyds of London. They insure damn near everything.

I am not an actuarial but know enough about it that for this particular policy (250 BTC payoff on a default of an anonymous third world overseas website) would cost a whole lot more than .3 and given that all have the same risk of default with no offset I don't suspect there will be much interest in providing it.

But we could establish an OTC swaps market on credit default. I think Ripple and Coinbase are working on such capabilities. Then if you wanted to buy a structured CDS on the exchange you could pay whoever was willing to sell it to you. And also willing to put their BTC into escrow in this case, which is the major difference. Insurance companies net take in proceeds each month, they can invest all of it and they do, that is where a lot of their money comes from. They would never put a policy payout amount in escrow before the event.

[mrkent]

Although everyone is bashing the OP, I agree that such a service would be highly useful for the bitcoin economy. It's stupid that site owners can just run with everyone's money with almost no warning.

Call Lloyds of London. They insure damn near everything.

I am not an actuarial but know enough about it that for this particular policy (250 BTC payoff on a default of an anonymous third world overseas website) would cost a whole lot more than .3 and given that all have the same risk of default with no offset I don't suspect there will be much interest in providing it.

But we could establish an OTC swaps market on credit default. I think Ripple and Coinbase are working on such capabilities. Then if you wanted to buy a structured CDS on the exchange you could pay whoever was willing to sell it to you. And also willing to put their BTC into escrow in this case, which is the major difference. Insurance companies net take in proceeds each month, they can invest all of it and they do, that is where a lot of their money comes from. They would never put a policy payout amount in escrow before the event.

Yes purely insurance would be difficult to do, but CDS's are definitely viable. Furthermore, reliable/confident companies can in fact sell shares protecting against their own default as a way to earn additional revenue and provide customer confidence.

[CaptainBeck]

not sure if brilliantly complex scam

or just plain retarded

So did anyone do this and make the 0.3btc because i believe BTC-E didnt go down or get screwed over during this time!

[twentyseventy]

not sure if brilliantly complex scam

or just plain retarded

So did anyone do this and make the 0.3btc because i believe BTC-E didnt go down or get screwed over during this time!

Doubt that anyone was willing to risk the 250BTC.

[R2Pleasent]

Uhhhh here's an idea... Withdraw 100 BTC to Bitstamp, 50 BTC to a wallet, leave 100 BTC on BTC-e.  You can always grab the 100 BTC off Stamp later, you don't need to sell the BTC.  Once the first 100 BTC is cashed out from BTC-e, move another 100 in.  Free insurance.