From that article:

Methinks Coindesk is confused here.  If a Chinese citizen buys bitcoins from another Chinese citizen at OKCoin with yuan (=RMB,CNY), moves them to Bitstamp, and sells them to a Westerner for dollars, there is no yuan outflow.  The yuan stay in China.  The net effect, as far as the PBoC is concerned, is that some dollars in some Western bank become property of a Chinese citizen.  That is good for China.

What the PBoC does not like is Chinese citizens taking too many yuan out China and exchanging them for dollars.  That would allow foreign banks to accumulate yuan, and then presumably do bad things to Chinese economy, somehow.

(In the former scenario there is an outflow of bitcoins, but for the PBoC they are worthless nothings; if foreigners are willing to pay dollars for them, it is the Western governments' problem, not theirs.)

Does Skype/Microsoft keep those logs?  Can the FTC request them? Or is that possible only in criminal cases?

It depends on how long the machines were retained for "testing" and what did they do with the mined coins.  Considering that the machines have a useful life of a year or so (from what I read), "testing" them for several months, without giving the mined coins to the clients, should be viewed as significant damage to the customers, shouldn't it?

Not even questioned?

Quite impressive, considering that Bitcoin is only 5 years old...

Can a Circle client "see" his bitcoins somehow (e.g. as an exclusive blockchain address)?  If not, does Circle promise to hold the clients' bitcoins as bitcoins, or do they only promise to honor bitcoin withdrawals when they are requested?

Did I understand correctly, that now people can buy BTC at Circle, paying with their credit cards, so that they can pay with BTC at Dell, Newegg etc. without using their credit cards?

Wouldn't you do it just to gain everlasting fame?

Right, and there is no dollar inflation either.  There are only 1,234,567,890,123,456,789,012 dollars in existence. It is just that not all of them have been issued yet.


I have a dream of a future where the 10 billion people on the planet own one satoshi each, which grows 1000% in value every year, and no one works any more.

It could be something like a dummy username that serves as a placeholder in the HTML page, and is to be overwritten by the javascript after the page is loaded.

That would be a good question to ask the FTC.

My guess: they will say "no, it is the original buyer who is entitled to the refund; you may have a claim against him, if he led you to believe that the equipment would be delivered by such-and-such date."

But I may be completely wrong...

However, consumers get more from credit cards than just a payment instrument: things like short-term credit, safety against card loss or theft, cancellation of payment if merchant defaults...  And good merchants know that "the client is always right".


It has been decades since the last time I saw a merchant offering discount to clients who pay in cash rather than CC.  I wonder why they don't do it. (Greater risk of robbery or theft? Pressure from CC companies?) But, whatever the reason, it will probably apply to bitcoin, too.

But I think they must receive all the claims and get hold of all their assets, before paying anyone, right?


Right, I forgot about the clients who did get their equipment, but too late to be useful.  Assessing those claims is going to be complicated.

If there are more than a few of them, perhaps the FTC will propose some arbitrary but uniform rule, like "a client is entitled to a refund of X% on the order value, up to 100%, for each day of delay beyond the announced delivery date˜.

On the scoreboards at Sumo tournaments, the names of the players are traditionally written in larger-than-normal kanji, with very fat brush strokes.

Isn't that just British spelling?

There is a small chance that it will change its name or format, but is is almost certain that something doing its function will exist.

If there will be no FED in 20 years, it must be because the USA will no longer exist by then.  Some bitcoiners seem to be praying for such a general collapse of society, hoping that it will make bitcoin immensely valuable.  Kind of like praying for your mom to die so that you would have an excuse to skip the quiz at school tomorrow.

... but not so much on bitcoin itself; rather into enterprises like exchanges, bitcoin payment processors, and fund management companies -- that are sure to make some profit, at the expense of people who buy bitcoins, even if the bitcoin price were to crash in the medium term.


Indeed, at this point you would be investing in the mood of thousands of Chinese day traders. 

I have seen only a couple of interviews with Chinese bitcoin investors. One was a bitcoin millionaire who claimed to own  a six-figure BTC amount, another was described as the heir of a meat packing company who had a six-figure USD amount invested in it.  I would guess that most of the BTC in China is held by the latter type of investor; but it is just a guess.


That is not surprising at all, it is basic economics: if supply is relatively fixed, the price falls when and because people want it less.

I don't think that every client has to hire a lawyer.  On the other hand, I suppose that, if they are taking control and liquidate the company, they need first to gather all client and creditor claims (with receipts and such, to avoid false claims) and take hold of all BFL assets, so that they can split the latter proportionally to the former. (I think it is quite unlikely that there will be enough assets to pay all refunds.)

Your position here is similar to that of MtGOX's former clients, but the case is infinitely simpler, since there may be only 1/10 as many clients, and there is little question of how much each client is due.  The main uncertainty, I believe, is how to compute the dollar value of the bitcoins that each client paid.  (Did BFL accept dollar payments, in addition to bitcoins?)

On the other hand, gathering the BFL assets may be more complicated than gatherng those of MtGOX.  Do you know what the FTC will do about the houses and cars that the BFL officers bought with "loaned" company money? And about the BTC that they mined?  Will there have to be a criminal process to get them?

Er, brother of Hum, son of Duh and Well, don't you know?