Bitcoin.�It’s still a thing, apparently.�There have been many�”things”�in the past, like pet rocks or flagpole-sitting, but unlike those “things”, Bitcoin is defying the trend (and haterz) and is gonna live forever! Problem is that it hasn’t really caught on, and the people who do get interested in the ‘Coin lose it very quickly when they realize how batshit insane the community is to deal with. That’s why a lot of the marketing towards attracting new bagholders has been about�how easy Bitcoin is to use.

When looking at Bitcoin’s legendary “ease of use“, no one has cornered the market better than Coinbase. Coinbase is so easy; all you need to do is create an account and link it to your bank. It’s�just that simple!� Or is it?

I first signed up for Coinbase around April of 2013, when it was the only player in town that could let people buy and sell Bitcoin by linking a bank account. Coinbase was one of the first services, if not the first, that let you just buy Bitcoins with a bank account. And, for the most part, it still is � it is still�incredibly difficult for newbies to obtain Bitcoin outside of services like Coinbase or Circle.

So I decided to sign up for another account, just to see what the user experience was like from the start. I’d forgotten how rough it was.

I’ll give them this, they certainly know how to make one hell of a site.

Coinbase has a beautiful website, clean and clearly laid-out,�with the sign-up form right in the middle of the front page.� (There’s also a link to a standalone form in the top menu, presumably for the sake of completeness.) From there, you enter your email address�and�desired password (which, oddly, it only asks for once). Then you verify your email address. Done. That’s all you need to create an account;�now you have a basic wallet. To test mine, I sent 25 cents from a friend’s�old account to the newly-created wallet. I now had enough BTC in my account to buy the first part of an ebook about homemade explosives manufacturing on Silk Road. However, if I wanted to buy Bitcoins from Coinbase to get the second part, I needed to verify my phone. This is mandatory. You cannot get around this step if you want to buy Bitcoins from Coinbase.


If you click “Skip, I’ll do this later”, it just goes back to your wallet. You�have to give them a phone number. Why would it want that? To spam me? To send me dirty pictures deep into the night? No, much worse.

Enter 2-Factor Authentication. On a “2FA”-enabled�site like Coinbase, you first enter your username/email address and your password, then a random string of numbers is texted to your phone, and when you enter that, it lets you access your account. It sounds simple, and, to a degree, it is. But�Bitcoiners are the people who turned buying stuff from Amazon, the site with the “1-Click Checkout” button, into a�middleman-heavy descent into madness, so you know they’re going to fuck something up. This is just the start.

The major flaw with 2FA is that,�if you lose access to your device (whether by losing the phone or by simply switching numbers/computers/accounts/Yubikeys/etc.), you are permanently blocked from your own account. Coinbase,�thankfully, lets you�use Authy to change your phone number (we’ll get to that in a second), but what if you forget your old number? Where is the “Forgot your Password?” option then? There is none. And it’s the same in every scenario with standard 2FA. Forgot�your phone number? Fucked. Friend threw the phone into a lake, trying to be funny? Fucked. Hardware melted in a mining rig-heated bedroom? Fucked. Switched out hard drives,�but had your only key on it and can’t access your account unless you have the key back? Fucked, and on NBC News.

Coinbase has a reset system as Kafkaesque as the FTC trial against BFL, where, yes, a password can be reset, but only if it comes from a known IP address/device. If your phone is gone, and that was the only way to access the account, and the account cannot be opened without the device, then there is a backup,�and that’s asking for help from Coinbase, which logically circumvents all these security features in the first place.

That’s how security here has been designed: one way in, by way of M.C. Escher. And if someone else gets access to your 2FA-registered device, you still lose, because it technically wasn’t a security breach! Someone who wasn’t you used your device, registered to you, to access your account and steal your Bitcoins, and you’re left holding the bag�because there’s no way to differentiate between you and�the thief.�(Except IP addresses, which get logged, but these guys could just use Tor or something.)

Of course, as mentioned earlier, you at least have the option of pairing your account to a new device, but that’s another can of worms.�First, you enter your�old phone number, then the new one. You then wait�2-3�days for Authy�to do… something. Along the way, they will�spam you with emails about the process. I know this�because when I changed my phone number earlier this year, I went through that process. Over�three days, I got�six separate emails telling me the same thing: you requested a phone change, so now we’re going to bug you to death.Those “We’re reviewing your petition” emails? Exact same, each one. Literally no difference except the date. They had to tell me the exact same�message�three times in a row. And, somehow, my spam folder (!) had�three more of the things.

This is assuming you have a phone number, which I didn’t last year after moving from Boise to Boston and ending my service with T-Mobile.�Two weeks after the move, I finally had some free time�to get a new phone number. But during that interim, I was completely�locked out of my account and had no control over my own (Bitcoin) finances. I’m sure if that happened with a real bank, I’d have recourse. But here, none. All roads in Coinbase security lead to delays and waiting, and there’s not a damn thing you or I can do in the meantime.

So after this Authy business, I can finally get back into my account. There, I’m stunned by something:
Coinbase is only encrypted with 128-bit encryption. 256-bit AES is the security standard Satoshi himself set as the Bitcoin algorithm for encryption; it is currently the strongest and�most secure�digital lock and key out there. AES is, if not the highest cryptography standard, at least one of the highest,�approved�by the NSA for protecting the highest of high-level national secrets.�The fact that this Bitcoin “bank account” doesn’t even try for that level of security is odd, especially since I saw this recently�when ordering a Game Informer subscription for my little sister:

GameStop has a top-grade encryption standard for buying magazines, but Coinbase, a�Bitcoin bank that operates in an industry known for being robbed a lot, does not. Heh.

Coinbase then asked me to create a “Vault”.�This article�by Coinbase (which I swear has graphics done in MS Paint) explains that the Coinbase Vault is just another way to store coins, but with more security features than a regular wallet. Those features are mainly a system that sends multiple emails confirming any transaction from the vault, and each of those emails being able to cancel any order. The vault is a�fucking annoyance to the nth degree. This video is their official look at the vault. Besides not describing what in the hell the vault even is, it has this bit:

The vault�basically applies 2FA�to transactions.�You enter the amount you want to send and who you want it sent to. You confirm by email, yes, I want this sent off. You then confirm again, this time by phone, yes, I want this amount sent off. You then wait for 48 hours, during which you can cancel at any time�� in Bitcoin-land, there are no chargebacks (it’s a feature!), so this weird Rube Goldberg time-bomb is the closest you can get if someone else starts spending your Vault coins.

By contrast, with an actual bank vault, I go through a minor security check � “Can I see some ID, and do you have your key on you?” ��get my shit, and�am done. Which leads to the weirdest thing about security on Coinbase: it is really fucking good at confirming my identity.�When I�signed up, it confirmed�my identity by asking me�things like “What street did you live on in Boise?” “What county is your car currently registered in?” “What car do you drive?” What did you do last summer?” Intensely personal shit that tells me they have access to verification materials that far exceeds the basic “Can I see some ID?” security check I’d get at a regular bank vault. I, at that point, had not even mentioned my hometown was Boise, or even hinted at anything related to that kind of information, and yet it knew I was from there. That is advanced security.

In the end, I just named my vault “DA VAULT!” and moved on.

Along with the 48-hour Vault wait, there’s another shitty delay to verify that you’re a big boy and ready for “Level 2�Verification” status, granting you the ability to�buy or sell a massive quantity of ‘Coin at once. To do this,�it tells you,�”Buy some Bitcoin and wait at least 30 days.”

I’ll repeat that.�”Buy some Bitcoin and wait at least 30 days.”

I have no idea how any bank, let alone any currency, could thrive by telling its customers, “Buy something, and then don’t use the account for a month.” So I�decided to ask Coinbase’s tech support about it:

I have no idea how sitting around and waiting for 30 days to be verified makes me a trusted user or protects my account, especially since I’ve already been verified via the world’s pickiest security system, which knows more about my own childhood than I do. Maybe because the account is not being used, there’s no risk I’ll do something stupid (like use it), and possibly get into trouble? Is that the rationale?

Moreover, it’s pointless to try and find out why I need to wait 30 days for this, because even Coinbase’s�staff don’t know. And I’m not trying to beat up poor “Rosey” up there; she’s just doing her job. The problem seems to be that info isn’t being told to staffers. And if they don’t know, how the hell am I supposed to? And if I’m not supposed to, what else am I, the customer, not supposed to know? Is there no Coinbase fraud protection, if (when) that (inevitably) happens (when they get hacked because of their low-grade encryption)? No FDIC-insured deposits, or even something remotely akin to that?

Nope. But they have a referral program!

Coinbase is insured for their losses, not yours, through Aon. If your shit gets stolen, you’re screwed, but if they get robbed, they’re good to go! As for fraud protection, there is nothing. I have heard that they cover up to $100 (!)�in losses, but I cannot verify that. Hell, I can’t even link to anything, because there is nothing to link to. That’s disturbing to me, because to sign up for this account, I had to send in pretty personal details, like my address, my phone number, my SSN, current bank account info, etc. Besides the fact that they don’t have fantastic encryption in an industry where the biggest bank, Mt. Gox, crashed and burned earlier this year, hackers grab shit all the time from these Bitcoin services. And you’re telling me there is nothing to keep me, the customer, safe?

When looking into their fraud protection, I started out by simply Googling “coinbase fraud”. The first thing that popped up? A site called CoinbaseFraud.com, which aggregates complaints about the company from various sources. Not really a big deal, since these kinds of sites pop up all the time from people who think they’ve been “robbed” by “The Man”, but in an industry where 1 out of every 16 Bitcoins have been stolen, those complaints may hold water down the line. Especially since a lot of them weren’t super outrageous crazy-babble like on r/Bitcoin; it was mostly just “I ordered 1 BTC and�never received it.”

At this point, I’d like to point out something slightly unrelated: I have, in the span of about 5-8�minutes of creating and setting up my account, gotten�six emails.When I signed up for a real bank account and a credit card with HUECU, I got two:My fear of being spammed has come true, albeit in a slightly different way. Why do there need to be�six separate emails? What, exactly, does that accomplish? The first email verified my email address. The second asked me to subscribe to “The Coinbase Blog”, which brags about its 197K subscribers, because Bitcoin has apparently become a YouTube-like race for subscribers. The third is an email I get every time I do anything like buy or sell on the site, meaning you will get 2 emails for each transaction going forward. The fourth is a promotional thing that I’ll get to in a bit. The fifth email was when, during the creation of “DA VAULT!”, I needed to�verify my 2FA and then add an email address to my phone number for my username to work. It’s fucking stupid, and I still don’t understand it. The last email just confirms the vault was set up.

What did the real bank’s email do? The first email confirmed I created an account and asked me to confirm my email. When I did, it just sent me to the login, then my account page. This may have had something to do with the fact that I already verified everything the first time. The second email confirmed I had applied for a credit card, linked to the account I just created. It told me I’d get a call in a few days to verify things, and I may need to come into the bank to do so. I didn’t have to, though, because they verified everything on their own since all my info was linked to the main bank account, something Coinbase seemingly cannot do (although, to be fair, Authy was able to see I had�two accounts with�the same�number and linked them).

Back to that fourth Coinbase email: as a promotional deal, I got $1 in BTC for creating an account. Excited to put this towards a future heroin addiction, I waited for it to verify (Coinbase waits for�six confirmations from the blockchain before it deposits funds).

The transfer started at 3:06. Transfers are supposed to only take an “instant” 10 minutes. Yet at 3:22, there was still nothing.

Then I read the text:

Turns out, in order to get my $1, I need to verify my bank account. And, if I don’t do it within 30 days, the money goes back to Coinbase, in the same way that if you don’t collect your tip on Reddit, it goes back to the original tipper. To quote a�fellow shill:

You see, if your tipee doesn�t claim their Bitcoin in 21 days it goes back into your tipping pool. Wouldn�t it be nice that if you tipped that waitress at Denny�s, she doesn�t spend that $20$10$5 $2.80 and instead of her being able to save it for a rainy day, it just found it�s way back to your wallet? That�s how bitcoin works! No chargebacks but we can still have takebacks! (Source)

The bank verification, by the way, is basically the same as PayPal’s. Either you can “Instantly Verify” (which has never worked on this site, I’ve tried on�three separate occasions), where Coinbase logs into your bank account with your real bank’s username and password, or you check your account in 2-3 days and see what amount of pennies were withdrawn and re-deposited.

Five�days after I made the account, I get the time to verify. I’m excited, since this is the first time I get paid for doing anything Buttcoin related, even if it is just a dollar. I’m seeing it more as a dollar-off coupon for some counterfeit art on Silk Road 3. I look at my account, see that the amounts are there, and enter them. I expect my precious $1 to be there. It isn’t. And a week later, it still hasn’t shown up. I don’t know why. The complaints I read from CoinbaseFraud.com immediately popped into my mind.

During the writing of this article, Coinbase announced�”USD Wallets”, which allow users to hold actual money in their accounts and, if they so desire, “instantly” convert them over to Bitcoin. Currently, this has only been released in select states to users who have verified their wallets.

Deciding�to�give them one more shot, I tried their new-fangled USD system. It really reinforced the fact that these people have no idea what the fuck the word “instant” means.

First, some good news: Coinbase’s USD Wallets are FDIC secured. I think. They say on their page:

Customer funds stored in Coinbase USD Wallets are held with an FDIC-insured financial institution.

Yet their user agreement�hasn’t been updated at all to include�anything on USD Wallets, and therefore there isn’t any info on who the institution in question is. Moreover, the fact that they haven’t updated their user agreement is both ridiculous and shady, because it presents no clarity on the legal aspects of using the wallet, nor any sort of restitution should something happen to your actual money. So there is no way to verify whether or not it’s like that $100 insurance rumor from before, or even the amount it’s insured up to. We can assume $250,000, because that’s the FDIC mandate, but can we really be sure if it’s not even on their ToS?

Barring that, how does it work? To use the “USD Wallet”, you must deposit cash from your linked bank account. I didn’t want to put more than $1 into this, but the minimum is $10:

“Your funds will arrive in 4 business days,” it says.� Fine. I can almost�accept that. But accounting for the weekend, four business days ended up being nearly a week:

This implies that they’re doing nothing at all on Tuesday itself, despite the fact that there is no defined cutoff time, and everything is supposed to be automated. If I want my “instant” Internet bucks before my sister gets her Game Informer magazine (ordered at the same time, mind you), I need to order on Sunday or Monday only. Otherwise, I don’t get my funbux until next fucking week. Currency of the fucking future.

I got my Surprise Rubles, and then tried to figure out, on my own, how the fuck to convert them to funbux. I was expecting a button on the USD wallet page that said “Convert USD to BTC” or something, because I keep forgetting this is the same community that gave use the multi-step way to buy stuff on iTunes, Gyft. Turns out in order to convert, I needed to go to the “Buy” tab and enter the amount in my USD wallet I wanted to convert.

It was confirmed and transferred in a little under a minute. Still not instant, but by far the fastest time I’ve dealt with so far with Coinbase.

There were no instructions on how to convert them. The only thing in the FAQ was what USD wallets even were. I had to ask their customer support. (Who, by the way, are pretty great.)

So, in the end, it took me a little under two months�to get my Coinbase account up and running, and a week more to add cash to the account. I started this article started at the beginning of November with the intention of getting this done ASAP. Instantly, if you will.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the Brits�have set up a system that sends money anywhere, anytime, for just a few pennies per transaction. NPR’s Planet Money did a test by having the 50-year-old man who set up the system send his daughter �10 for a beer in New York via text, while he was�in his home�in London. She got it in 15 seconds, an entire ocean away.

The post If Coinbase is the future of Bitcoin, then I want off this ride. appeared first on Buttcoin Foundation.

What’s happened since our last installment in this series?

There, absolute proof that�BFL bought us out.�Not that it was ever ambiguous, but the�defense counsel confirms it, so�it’s officially been legally established: We were shills. Sorry about that.

Here is “Attachment O”, in which the FTC uses this article as evidence against BFL.

They�took screenshots of the entire article�for their records, which was really unnecessary. If they had asked, we would have happily sent them as many copies�as they�wanted,�in whatever format they wished, for just one BFL foam pitchfork.

But now that the most important part of the update is done, lets see what other shit got dredged up recently:

• A look at the FTC’s complaints database between September 22nd-November 18th found 33 new complaints. The complaints had the same “They haven’t shipped” and “I want my money back” stuff you’d expect from a case against a fraudster. Here are just a few choice examples:

It appears people who are spending thousands of dollars in mining hardware cannot be bothered to learn who is doing what in relation to the case. The FTC does not have the power to get the funds back, at least not now. Remember, BFL is in�trial, which includes the possibility that they win out and resume operations. If that happens, you can kiss your funbux goodbye. (Although that probably won’t happen.)

So apparently there are people still buying from Butterfly Labs, despite the warnings everywhere that this company is horrible. The box on the left is the date the complaint was logged, and the box on the right says when the customer made the initial purchase. However, in this instance, there is no date. Maybe they were embarrassed about recently purchasing product from this group?

I don’t mean to kick a guy when he’s down, but even the original, official Bitcoin site says that investing in Bitcoin is risky,�that you�shouldn’t do it unless you really�know what you’re doing (which would seem to preclude investment at all, but whatever). That includes using your tax refund to invest in, essentially, a get-rich-quick scheme. Don’t invest in Bitcoin. Don’t fucking do it! Just stop!

No, they don’t, at least not right now. We’ll get to this later.

• In the evidence above was a transcript of episode 34 of the “Lets Talk Bitcoin!” podcast, where Josh Zerlan, AKA the guy who said that BFL was using mining rigs before shipping them to customers, mentions this:

It’s not anything official from the FTC (apart from the transcript), but I just think it’s odd how he remained vague on ship dates, which was a part of the original FTC complaint against BFL. Was it mandated at BFL HQ that all ship dates be made vague, or is this just some random happenstance where Zerlan really didn’t know? And how exactly did they plan on staying competitive when they barely had any product out there? Was that their main motivation for buying sites out, or was it some kind of unexplainable paranoia? Again, not official, just questions I had reading this.

What�is official, however, is Mr. Zerlan identifying himself as Chief Operating Officer of BFL and detailing the company’s “TestNet”. Why this is in the documents is unclear, but I’m gonna speculate and say “TestNet” is where BFL used the miners before shipping these outdated machines to angry hordes, if they even got shipped.

I’m betting 0.0000001 Satoshi that he just described the size of the pre-mining operation, as well as accidentally disclosing that there was a pre-mining operation.

• Refunds! Ish. Temporary Receiver (TR) Eric L. Johnson, submitted his plan for earning cash back for customer refunds�on October 29th. Around November 4, the plan was ordered and�approved.

Butterfly Labs got a lot of its orders in Bitcoin and used BitPay to process them. The TR’s plan is to use the funds BFL got, send them to a court-held Bitcoin wallet, and eventually convert them to dirty fiat. To do this, the TR�may�hire outside help to do this, since these transactions have a history of getting stolen.

There’s also the fact that all sides MUST cooperate, probably in reference to BFL’s prior behavior that nearly landed them in a separate case because they were harassing everyone.

We did it guys! We got the US Government to take Bitcoins! Victory is ours at last!

You thought I was gonna post the Ron Paul GIF, didn’t you?

Well, anyway, assuming things go the way we all expect them to, the court will find BFL guilty, and then the FTC will start getting refunds back to people. If BFL is not found guilty, they will attempt to resume operations. That will not go well because, at this point, they’ve antagonized and driven off�everyone who would want to buy from them. Either way, BFL is fucked.

(And no court date has been set yet, probably because the trial already happened. They’re in post-trial briefings. Anyone who tells you of an impending trial date is a fucking idiot.)

CORRECTION: I’m a fucking idiot. According to commenter Curt Shaffer, the date linked to above was for their preliminary injunction, not post-trial briefings. Sorry about that. We’ll have more updates on the case later, promise.

The post Your Obligatory Butterfly Labs Case Update appeared first on Buttcoin Foundation.

That tweet, posted�five days after Benthall’s arrest, links to an address that currently has 0.34 BTC donated to it, or roughly 125 bucks. Wondering how a convicted man could get access to his Twitter account behind bars, I asked him for an interview, and provided my email address.

A few days later, Ars Technica and The Daily Dot both reported, via Benthall’s lawyer, that the account had been compromised. The day after these articles came out, a second tweet was posted:

Yesterday, November�21st, “Blake Benthall” finally contacted me. Which was weird.

First, I needed to make sure that this really was the person from Twitter. Two things confirm it:

1. The email used was “[email protected]”, the same email the FBI says he used to register servers for Silk Road 2.0.

2. Here’s the first email I got, with the subject line “Bitcoin Twitter”, from “[email protected]”, with a bit of a private message I sent to Mr. Benthall’s Twitter account:

Since this was a private message, only someone with access to the account could have read it. Therefore, I am completely convinced this is the real account.

As you can see,�this person�asked me for Bitcoins. This will be a running motif. I told him that I don’t pay for interviews and that I knew he wasn’t Blake, both because the lawyer had said so and because the email was in broken English. But even though�I knew he wasn’t Blake,�I still wanted�to know why he took over the account. Was he just trying to scam people for cash? Was he a vendor or buyer on SR with�some vendetta against Blake? Some third thing?

He responded a few hours later:

On top of the broken English, this email now has actual Russian.�The sender, again, asks for Bitcoin, then says he is a friend of Blake’s and offers me “exclusive” stuff ��presumably�from the email account, but maybe this guy got access to Benthall’s computer. Who knows? Either way, I tell him again that�it’s my policy not to pay for interviews. But I did�send him my questions.� And I got this response:

I reiterated again that I wouldn’t pay him. I haven’t heard back from him since.

So there you go. I got an email from the guy who hacked Blake Benthall’s Twitter. �Close enough! Yay!

UPDATE: Apparently, Mr. Benthall got released on November 21st. If he’s reading this, I’d like a reply sometime soon. Maybe we could start over?

UPDATE #2: Benthall deleted his Twitter account. Or someone did. Either way, the tweets above are gone. I’ll get static images up soon. Also, before the deletion, “Blake” asked me for money on Twitter for “Exclusives”. So, technically, he did get back to me.

The post The Time “Blake Benthall” Emailed Me appeared first on Buttcoin Foundation.

About 2 weeks ago I was rummaging around a garage sale (as I often do on the weekends) and found an old Dell laptop that was in fairly good condition and paid $50 for it. I’m fairly into tinkering with old electronics and such so before I reformatted the drive, I decided to go snooping. To my amazement, It had an old version of bitcoin qt on it which contained about 61 btc in an unencrypted wallet. At first i thought i was could good to be true but I was able to transfer the btc into the wallet on my computer with the help of a friend who knows way more about btc than I do. He was shocked as well. Next week I plan on selling about 1/2 of the stash on coinbase and use the money to buy a car. Am I a terrible person because i have no intention of giving any of the bitcoins back?

Now, before we continue, we should point out the following:

• 61 BTC, as of Nov. 18th, is worth $23,040 dollars, at $377.70 per BTC.
• In California, Grand Theft is when property has been taken at over $950. We’re using California as a reference, because Grand Theft law changes from state to state. Legal Match�pegs the average you’d need to steal as somewhere in the $500-$1,000 range.
• A Third Bullet Point!

But, hey! He is generous:

I did give my friend a few bitcoins for helping me out.

• That would make his friend an accomplice. Hey, that could be our third bullet point!

At this point, the Bitcoin community, who, may I remind you, loves “Be Selfish” icon Ayn Rand like no other, gave the following bits of advice:

mustyoshi

Pretty sure you’re fine legally.

But if you’re so concerned about the law, why don’t you return it? I’m sure the person would give you a portion for being a good person.

justanothershibehere

It would be a great thing for the collective if you were to take $1,000 cash, put it in an envelope and go put it in their mailbox. Anonymous $1,000 would brighten their world. Plus you just received $2x,XXX for nothing, don’t be a dick, spread the love.

The post Is It Stealing if the Vendor Doesn’t See You Take It? Part 2 appeared first on Buttcoin Foundation.

Mark the calenders, kids. Remember, remember, the 6th of November. That’s the day that Operation Onymous�arrested 17 people, worldwide, and shut down 414 hidden sites, including Silk Road 2.0, Hydra, Cloud 9, and… that’s all we know. Seriously, those are the three sites being cited by every article. There is no official list of all the sites taken down by this joint-joint-joint-joint-joint operation. There are supposedly 414 sites down, yet no verification as to what exactly these sites are. Forbes is saying that

…the number of actual sites seized appears to be less than 20% of that number. (Source)

How the fuck people came to this number, I don’t know. So I had�set out to get the full list. But then I read something else:

According to FBI spokesperson David Berman, the 400 URLs only amount to a dozen or so sites. �There are many URL�s to particular sites,� he said. �We�re still going through the results of the operation.� (Source)

So the sites themselves had multiple URLs, presumably for different ways to access the site and to throw off law enforcement. That’s a pretty common technique for shady stuff, like money laundering: just take the cash you got from doing crime stuff and put it in legit stuff so you don’t look shady. Neat-o!�Silk Road 2, just before it was shut down for being “too freedom”, had a plan in place to restore the site with backups in “500�locations in 17 different countries” (Ironically enough, law enforcement from 17 different countries took down the alleged 414 sites). If I can recall, Black Market Reloaded had multiple addresses as well.

What the agencies are alleging is that they took down 400+ different sites, or, as Europol put it:

Operation Onymous, coordinated by Europol�s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), the FBI, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement�s (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Eurojust, resulted in 17 arrests of vendors and administrators running these online marketplaces and more than 410 hidden services being taken down. (Source)

Hidden Services, as defined by the Tor Project, are sites that are set up to both hide people’s ID and still let them do internet things:

Tor makes it possible for users to hide their locations while offering various kinds of services, such as web publishing or an instant messaging server. (Source)

So, websites, basically. Things with an interface that people can use to do shit. Doesn’t matter what, it just matters that there is some content. The Operation seems to have only taken down the following sites (in somewhat-alphabetical order):

• Alpaca
• Black Market
• Blue Sky
• Bungee 54
• Cabbabis UK
• Cloud Nine
• Dedope
• Fake Real Plastic
• Farmer1
• Fast Cash!
• Hydra
• Pablo Escobar Drugstore
• Pandora
• Pay Pal Center
• Real Cards Team
• Silk Road 2.0
• Smokeables
• Sol�s Unified USD Counterfeit�s
• Super Note Counter
• The Hidden Market
• Tor Bazaar
• The Green Machine
• Zero Squad

For the mathematically-challenged, that’s 23 different hidden services, far from 414. That list, by the way, comes from Forbes, and there is no link to where they got it from. So either they’ve been in talks with the feds or they did their own digging. But even if there are more sites, there’s no way it got to 414.

There’s also the question of how the feds broke Tor to get all this info, specifically the Silk Road 2.0 server location. No one is exactly sure, because everyone involved is saying the information is “sensitive” and cannot be divulged. However, Forbes has a quote from Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute:

�I am 95% certain that law enforcement did a mass de-anonymization attack on Tor hidden services,��…�He called any link to the earlier research �circumstantial.� But he points out that the work the researchers did was expensive. A �back of the envelope estimate suggests that whoever was running the attack on Tor at the beginning of the year using [Amazon hosting services] spent at least $50,000 in computer time,� says Weaver. That�s not the kind of money an academic can spend on a hobby project. (Source)

Law enforcement may have spent $50K to get these guys. And no one is telling us officially how it was done, how many sites were really taken down, or where Obama was really born, making this the shadiest operation since, ironically, Silk Road 2.0.

Well, it may not matter.�Silk Road 3 just went up.

EDIT (11/11/14): Here is the official list of sites taken down, via the Southern District of New York’s official complaint:

Note that our original list did not mention CStore, Executive Outcomes, Fake ID, Hackintosh & Repaaa’s Hidden Empire, bringing the official number of sites taken down to 27. Also note that the Forbes list above mentions “The Hidden Market” as a site that was supposedly taken down, but it isn’t listed here.

The post Operation Onymous Did Not Take Down 400+ Sites appeared first on Buttcoin Foundation.

The Winklevoss twins, known internationally as the half-CGI duo that Mark Zuckerberg may or may not have stolen that Facespace thing from (he didn’t; they’re idiots), have�various Bitcoin investments:

� A�$1.5 million investment into alleged Silk Road laundering firm�BitInstant.

� $11 million worth of Bitcoins, which at one point was�1% of all Bitcoins and was valued at�up to $64 million before a “flash crash” dropped the price down�to $120 per Bitcoin.

� “Winkdex“, a Bitcoin index that measures�seven different markets in real time to relay the value of the ‘Coin.

� The “Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust“, a highly-anticipated, all-Bitcoin fund that the duo is trying to get�on the NASDAQ stock exchange.�If successful, it will be�the first publicly-traded Bitcoin fund ever. (FYI, the paperwork says each share will be about $20.09, max, so get in while it’s hot!)

Just what the Bitcoin community has always clamored for: government intervention and regulation! You sure do know your audience!

They are also PERFECT for Bitcoin, saying it “potentially could be more impactful” than Facebook, a statement whose grandiosity cements their place in this delusional community. To put that into perspective, Blockchain announced that after�five years Bitcoin has passed 2 million wallets�(not users, mind you),�while Facebook has famously accrued over a billion users in a little over twice that time. Welcome, fellas!

Recently, at the currently ongoing Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas, the duo hit the stage and delivered what is being described as “a history of money”.

It�was shit.

For you sheep who aren’t disrupting the global economy yet, let’s break down�what Money20/20 is, besides being a catchy name that will be as irrelevant as the Microsoft Kin�by 2020 itself:

Money20/20 brings together the worldwide community of innovators who are disrupting the way in which consumers and businesses manage, spend and borrow money, and explores the macro trends that form the underlying common thread of innovation, such as the mobile Internet, platform connectivity and interoperability, and consumer empowerment. (Money20/20)

Disrupting your ass!�Great. So they are basically the annoying bits of Silicon Valley meshed with the douchebags on Wall Street, but with a stripper cage and garnish bar. Everything is in there: “Disrupting”, “Worldwide Community”, “Consumer Empowerment”, “Connectivity”, “Innovation”, “Interoperability” (?). It’s buzzword central! Perfect for the cult!

The conference has become pretty big in recent years, with a nice reputation to follow it. This year, it has attracted American Express, Amazon, Verifone, and more. Bitcoin and its followers are�present, with reporting by Coindesk as well as a few others (more on that later). Vendors like BitPay are there, getting some nice press. Things, overall, have been going smoothly all around. Until the twins arrive.

Now what were these dorks doing at a “Disruptive Innovation�Interoperability” conference? They were trying to talk about Bitcoin to an audience of, according to some sources, about 7,500 people.

The main takeaway from the talk is how disappointed the crowd was that the Winklevii didn’t announce their ETF (Exchange-Transfer Fund, presumably the “Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust”). �Before the ETF was even announced, the guys were failed entrepreneurs no one gave a shit about. But now, with Bitcoin, they were stars! And they were going to make their case for why this was a good idea.� This was something a lot of people were looking forward to, which meant a massive opportunity to get serious cash from serious�investors. The first Bitcoin fund on NASDAQ? That’s an exciting prospect. I’m squirming in my seat just thinking about it!

This was posted just a few days ago in anticipation of the announcement:

And here’s what came right after they reminded everyone they were those guys who bought tickets to space with Internet bucks:

Instead of using the anticipation to market their fund like crazy, like smart people would, they instead aggravated potential investors by aggregating�all the worst�ideas about�economics and libertarianism from Reddit, BitcoinTalk and the Silk Road forums, which�is no small feat. When you have no friends, you have no-one to tell you if something is a bad idea. Here’s a basic list of who was in attendance:

That is Page 2 of�the Money20/20 brochure. Ignoring the fact that all the bullet points are ripped straight from an Amway recruiting flyer, they still have a captive audience of people eager to hear what they have to say, and they could have made great connections, gotten new investors, or�even helped spread the word about Bitcoin to new, powerful people.

Instead,�the Winklevoss twins crapped out�a middle school-level PowerPoint presentation about the�history of cash, why cash sucks, and how Bitcoin is The Currency of the Future, and vomited this crap onto a crowed of legitimate businesspeople, economists, and other professionals, assuming they had never heard this stuff before. It’s best summed up by this:

Just look at this garbage. LOOK AT IT!

It’s also worth noting that one thing you won’t find on any of those slides is the word “Bitcoin”. It wasn’t mentioned at all during the presentation; they referred to digital currency in general and referenced “BTC” a few times.

It could have entertained the crowd for a bit, had it been presented well. But, unfortunately, the twins seem to have a history of not being strong public speakers. That’s fine, since Americans list their #1 fear as public speaking.�But these aren’t average Americans. These are Super-Serious-All-Serious-Business Dudes, and they�are trying to raise millions of dollars for one of the most volatile investments out there.

Take a look these goobers in their “Wonderful Pistachios” ad:

As a member of the 10% of Americans who like public speaking, I can say with utmost confidence that the Winklevii have no confidence ��or even knowledge of�what they’re doing. Notice how flat their tone is, how stiff their use of language is. For a national ad like that, this was the best take. That means that,�somewhere, there�are probably about 50 other takes that are just awful. Luckily, with TV ads, you can do takes and keep doing them until you get it right. Public speaking, however, is live, and rehearsals are mandatory if you want to sell your shit well.

While there is no video of the speech (and trust me, I am looking and will update this article when I find one), there is enough eyewitness testimony out there to make it clear this was a flop:

Here are some of the other things people noted about their talk:

� A Periodic Table of Currency, which was the most-criticized part of their PowerPoint:

� A chart detailing how “money” (again, Bitcoin wasn’t�mentioned by name) has been vastly improved:

� A confusingly remedial setup with no obvious payoff:

� According to this guy, the Twins did the classic bad presenter move of reading everything from the slides:

� Drones, apparently?

� And, finally, the speech was so bad that trading has gone down because of it:

One last thing: according to eyewitnesses (including Miron Lulic’s tweet above), the minute people started fleeing their presentation, the twins were “visibly shocked“. They shouldn’t have been: if you don’t know your shit but pretend that you do, the people who do know it will dump you like you’re�Spaincoin. And once they leave, they’re probably not coming back to learn more. If that doesn’t cement why Bitcoin is doomed to fail ��not because of the technology, but because of the community ��I don’t know what will.

UPDATE (11/13/14): The twins have officially released the PowerPoint slides to their presentation. With a quick glance, I can safely say I fully understand why people walked out at their tedious “Periodic Table” bit.

The post The Winklevoss Twins Bomb at Money20/20 appeared first on Buttcoin Foundation.

On October 28th the FTC released a statement opposing the defendants of the Butterfly Labs case (Darla Drake, Nasser Ghoseiri and Sonny Vleisides) intent�to pay for their attorney fees with frozen funds. If you remember fondly, Butterfly Labs stole that cash from consumers, so the FTC is saying they shouldn’t be allowed�to�use said stolen funds to support/defend themselves. Note that this is just them opposing it, since they aren’t actually ruling on anything. That’s the courts job.

Meanwhile, the Western Missouri District Court just published a new�2 page order saying Butterfly Labs needs to stop acting like a huge asshole or else they’re going to be called into court for�a separate case to talk about their behavior.

So whats been going on? According to the report:

Disclosure: This was between pages 1 and 2, so that line is where the page split. The quote is continuous, just like your mom.

Basically, BFL is being a child, and everyone else is being the adult telling them not to throw their spaghetti at the waitress, then call her fat. There are�no specifics, but we’d like to assume its the same “YOU DON’T KNOW THE TRUTH” stuff, only against “THE MAN”, but without anyone around to point out to them how stupid that tactic is.

Between not being able to pay for their attorneys with stolen funds and possibly having 2 cases against them in the same court, Butterfly Labs�is completely fucked.

Butterfly Labs is currently being operated by a court approved Temporary Receiver (TR). That means that whoever the court places in that role manages the company until the court makes a decision to return control back to the original owners, or something else (in this case, die slowly yet hilariously, like a man falling into an open sewer and suffocating on jenkem fumes). In this case the TR is Eric Johnson of the firm Spencer Fane�and, looking at his bio, is absolutely qualified to do so. The court, if it finds Butterfly Labs innocent (since this is all just a big misunderstanding after all) will give Butterfly Labs back control and resume operations. Presumably then, the orders will be shipped and everyone will be happy until their miners become obsolete in 2 days.

Except that’s not going to happen because Butterfly Labs is clearly guilty. And with the Temporary Receiver and Court being harassed by these idiots, how do you really think this is going to go down? Well, until it goes the way we hope it does, the company cannot do refunds, take calls, or really do much of anything. This affects 20,000 people waiting for orders that will probably not be fulfilled, and with this distraction refunds will be delayed.

And again, to be clear, some of the tasks of a Temporary Receiver is to run the company so that it can make money to get itself out of the hole. This�includes closing entire sections of a business because it costs too much money or finding assets. The FTC is alleging Butterfly Labs stole up to $50 Million in consumer funds and that could mean there might not be enough for refunds.

So the receiver�and the court are�working on a limited time frame here to do their respective jobs, and Butterfly Labs is harassing them, plus the FTC’s lawyers, and potentially stalling this case out so they can take a court ordered “sit in the corner”-type punishment.

So if you do not get your refund, or if its severely delayed, blame Butterfly Labs for acting like gigantic assholes, turning their company into a legal clusterfuck of both existing (but run by a court) and not existing (its probably going to die in court). If Bitcoin is the honey badger, and the honey badger has no fear of anything, maybe its time for Bitcoin to learn some fucking manners and not attack everything simply because it’s “The Currency of the Future”.

The post Butterfly Labs Has Become a Legal Clusterfuck appeared first on Buttcoin Foundation.

I want you to read the following block of text without thinking about how well your day is or isn’t going. This will induce spastic cringes so powerful your sleep apnea will be cured.

The title of this Reddit post is “I just forced a business to accept bitcoin whether they wanted to or not.” The author is unknown, since, as you can see in the picture below, the [deleted] tag is where the name would be (We think its this guy), presumably after the negative shit he got from this post. Here’s the full text:

So today I took my kids to the pumpkin patch. It was a family farm and there were about 100 kids there. So it was nice, kids found their little pumpkins and were happy. Then I go to pay. Well I waited for 15 minutes, but nobody came to take my money. I walked to their house and there was a phone number there to call if nobody was around. Called it twice, left a message. Still nobody came out to take my money. I waited a total of 35 minutes and I don’t believe in stealing, but I’m not about to sit in a car for 30 minute car ride home with a 3 year old and 5 year old screaming at me as to why I left their pumpkins there, so I took them without paying.

Got home, found the farms email address and emailed them payment in bitcoin from coinbase. If they accept bitcoin next year, I’ll go back and buy more pumpkins. If not, fuck them, they will probably be out of business anyway since nobody was manning the register for a full 35 minutes(or longer)

Just in case there was any doubt, here’s the original post.

There are many things fucked up about this story. Here’s a short list, and feel free to add in the comments below if I missed anything:

1. Has this guy never been to a restaurant with a shitty waitress, and, instead of waiting for her to take your card, you just went up to the front desk and paid the guy at the register? There are ways around the problem of no one manning the register. One Redditor commented

brycey06
they didnt have a mailbox you could put your money through?

He could have just left the money there, as well. I don’t think anyone would steal the cash, especially if the guy had left a note saying “You weren’t here, I saw a price list, here’s your money, Love, Dave” or something. But if you think it might have been stolen, he could have left the cash in some odd nook and�cranny, and emailed them to say�”You weren’t there, the cash is behind the rosemary” or whatever. There are multiple ways to be a good person.

2. What the hell were his kids doing this whole time? He said he waited 30 minutes. During that time, were the kids with him? If so, did the kids see Dad here steal the pumpkins? What the fuck kind of example is that?!

pm_me_pasta
Good example to show your children.

“No one’s here so we’ll just steal the pumpkins, kids!”

You could have made this a lesson in ethical behavior that they would have remembered. Oh well.

This guy is right. You could have tried to pay and taught your kids “This is the right thing to do”. I thought that’s what you libertarian and/or Freeman of the Land types were all about: Integrity, respect, honor, pulling yourself by your bootstraps, etc. You threw your battle-hardened ideals out the rear window for some pumpkins? The fuck kind of movement is this?

3. The farm did not accept Bitcoin, yet you paid in Bitcoin. User “pm_me_pasta” summed it best:

pm_me_pasta
Couldn’t agree more. From the farm’s point of view:

“Hey mom and pop pumpkin farm, no one was attending your register so I helped myself to some of your stuff. Don’t worry I’ll pay you later in Japanese yen.”

Assuming this is a working farm, they don’t have time to figure out what a Bitcoin is, let alone get payment for it. I know CoinBase, its where I keep my BTC that I have no idea what to spend it on, but sending and receiving payment are two completely different experiences.

If your sending, say to your bank account, it takes me 3-5 days to get it transferred. If I’m sending it to Silk Road to score some smack, its 10 minutes. If your sending it to that farmer, he has to set up a CoinBase account, then his bank info (With Routing Number, Bank Number, Account Number, etc.), then wait for the bank to be verified, which can take 2 days for them to do that thing where they send you some pennies and you see what the exact amounts were. Then converting it from BTC to USD takes 3-5 days.

That’s 7 days to receive payment. YOU COULD HAVE JUST KNOCKED. Which brings me to my next point.

4. WHY DIDN’T YOU KNOCK? There was 100 other kids there, it was a well kept family farm. You mean to tell me you went to one spot and waited for half an hour, and that’s it? I understand, they should have been there, that is a point against them, but they had to have been somewhere! Its a family farm! Go to their front door, they won’t mind you bothering them! Your giving them money! And even if you are bothering them, like they’re having a family emergency or something, you ask where you can leave the money. Or your just leave the money by the register with a note of what you took. Or you leave without pumpkins, and tell your kids you’ll come back later. But you don’t steal! Why the fuck did you steal the great pumpkins?!�Did Linus put you up to this?

“Did you get the pumpkins, lil’ bitch?”

5. There was a phone number, you called twice and left a message. With all we have established, you could have, from that point onward, been polite enough to say in the message anything we have suggested here. But assuming your a smart guy, which, from what we’ve seen, you aren’t, there is another option: Just leave.

Leaving could have fixed two problems:

1. I wouldn’t have had to have written this!

2. Your kids could have learned a lesson.

But you didn’t want to waste gas! That’s why you stole, because your kids were miserable without the pumpkins!

Your kids went to a farm with “a hundred other kids”, had a blast, and might have a great memory of their dad getting them some pumpkins to carve later. But when they find out�that you stole them, that memory is going to be tainted.

The reason we think user “peilthetraveler” is the original poster is because of this comment:

peilthetraveler
Yeah, probably should have just left the pumpkins, I would’ve had to suffer with 30 minutes of screaming kids, then I would’ve got home and been so pissed that my time was wasted i would’ve got on yelp and dragged their name through the mud, plus since its a small town, got on facebook telling everyone how bad the customer service was, cost that farm hundreds of dollars worth of business(maybe more because once I told everyone there was nobody manning the cash register all the “real” thieves would’ve come out of the woodwork to get the easy pickin’s) and then we all suffer greatly.

At least my way, they got their money, my time and gas wasn’t wasted for nothing and kids are happy. It was the lesser of 2 evils.

This guy makes it sound like he’s in control of everything here: If he does get his way, the kids love him, he didn’t waste his gas, and they have pumpkins, which kids love, cause its like legal stabbing.

If he doesn’t get his way, though, no problem, since he can do a negative review on Yelp and cost them hundreds! Then go on Facebook! And then we all suffer greatly, cause where else am I gonna steal pumpkins next year! I’m such a sadist!

“Bend over.”

Also, he implies that if he had bitched about the farm and its lo 30 minutes+ of unmanned register control, the “Real Thieves” would steal straight from the unmanned register, because that’s a thing that happens.

2 points I want to make here:

1. You stole. You may pass it off as “I paid in Bitcoins, whether they like it or not”, but they don’t accept it. Like I covered earlier, its hard to get that money if you’ve never been set up to accept Bitcoin before. And to any business, revenue is important. So they have lost money on you taking product, ergo, you stole. You had 30 minutes (Or longer, since you weren’t being rushed) to put money down, and you didn’t. You can claim “Bitcoin!” until your blue in the face, but meanwhile the farmers you stole from are�out whatever they charge (Lets say $5 a pumpkin), which does add up, over time. To offset that, they may need to charge extra on a few other units, because that’s how stores offset the costs of stolen merchandise.�You robbed them, and they’re the bad guys?

2. When I said earlier “Just leave the money on the counter with a note”, I mean that. No one is going to steal that money. There’s 100 loudmouth kids there. Assuming they didn’t all get there on their own in a massive horde of toddlers, their parents are there. And the average Joe that would take their kids to a pumpkin patch has enough moral lessons and ethics to see a note on the table or just cash and not take it. The only people who would do that are lowlifes who steal. And, as we have seen in point one, that’s you.

This guy�had no control here. He took the worst possible avenue. And things weren’t going to go that horrible “I’m going to post on Yelp, and I hope they lose $10 billion trillion quadrillion dollars because I had to wait for 30 minutes while they milked cows or something” direction either, because it doesn’t work.

When Amy’s Baking Company was on Kitchen Nightmares, its Yelp rating was one of the things they bitched about the most. Its what got them on the show. Yet look at it now: 3 star rating. Its never been a question of it being a shitty place, its not. It looks nice, the food is decent at worst and fantastic at best. Gordon Ramsey said it was a pleasure to be there when he did his inspection of the place. The problem wasn’t the food, it was the owners shitty attitude and behavior! And yet, despite the beating they got, they’re still open. That is one of the worst examples of Yelp being used to “Take down” someone, and they’re still fucking here. If the whole fucking internet, with all its lethargic muster, couldn’t bring down Amy’s Baking Company, then you can’t bring down “Fuckin’ Pumpkin’ Inc.” because they weren’t there to complete a transaction. And, again, your the asshole here, because your the one that stole.

6. What the hell possessed you long enough to get onto Reddit and brag you ripped off a family farm. Did you seriously think that was going to go well?

In the words of Bill Maher:

“I can’t even think of a suitable analogy for that disconnect. Its like thinking getting a handjob will clean your garage”

Those are just some of the quick thoughts I jotted down. If I missed any, let me know below, so I can steal them and update this article pretending they are my own.

The post Is It Stealing if the Vendor Doesn’t See You Take It? appeared first on Buttcoin Foundation.

There is an incredible thread on r/Bitcoin right now�on how Bitcoin clearly isn’t catching on through its 1 documentary, so the cult�should spread the ‘Coin to fiction. Specifically movies, or, to, be more�specific, heist movies.

THIS IS THE BEST BITCOIN IDEA, EVER. They could do so many “Based on a True Story”-type movies, because Bitcoiners, as a community, have been scammed and stolen from countless times. I don’t even need to list examples like Mt. Gox or MintPal, just Google “Bitcoin Stolen”, and you get a list as long as long as pi.

A user on BitcoinTalk has posted a list of Bitcoin Heists since 2010. It was so big, they had to start a new thread due to character limits. Buisness Insider says based on the evidence presented by these lists (Which we’re going to assume is credible, since we’ve established these people don’t fuck around with their precious ‘Coin), over 818,485.77 BTC was stolen, estimated at $500+ Million Dollars.

By their estimates, that means 1 out of every 16-17 BTC is owned by someone who stole it.

Do you know what an awesome movie that could potentially be? The currency of the future: Stolen. Liam Neeson is: The Collector. Christmas 2014. Awesome.

Or it would have been, had the Ed Wood’s of the web not decided to take the cool factor out of the heist and replaced it with the following�pitches:

procabiak
How about a 300,000 bitcoin BIP38 private key embedded onto a $50,000 diamond?

tenthirtyone1031
Spoiler: They used multisig. The paper wallet was broken in to pieces and held by X number of people around the world. Two different groups are racing to collect the pieces. No one knows how many signatures they need. After three failures the cold wallet locks forever.

escapevelo
So weird that I had this idea today too when I woke up this morning, albeit, with a different script idea. My script was based around a developer that creates an app that allows him to create anonymous bounties to get anything done in the real world. The bad guys are chasing him, but the app allows him to stay one step ahead of them by paying anonymous strangers to do tasks.

So Roger Ver’s new “Bitcoin Bounty Hunter” thing. Or alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbright’s alleged murder plot. Honestly, that’s decent, but not original. Next.

jcoinner
It should be story of some guys who break in and steal the private key for the FBI $130 million address. Months of planning and reconnaissance, daring social engineering, hi-tech gadgetry and zero day exploits. But wait, Jack Bauer is on the scene and all is lost until he is convinced to join the team and thwart the evil FBI agents who are about to sell the key to a Russian hacker for 10% (in unrelated coins). The team gets the key and away but before they have a chance to sweep the coins Jack has divert them to an African charity outfit “and they’re gone”…

What is it with these guys and “Social Engineering”. I swear I’m doing an article someday on how truly awful they are at it. Also, Jack Bauer is a trademarked character. You can’t use him. I know you can understand that. And why would Jack give the coins to an “African Charity Outfit”. And what’s a “Charity Outfit”? And what $130 FBI address? A Bitcoin Address? Their physical address is worth $130 Million?

This is probably the first movie “Best of the Worst” could just read and critique, without even needing to see the movie.

And, to be clear, the plot here is a highly skilled team breaks into the FBI, a highly secure area with the potential of being shot on sight, and steal millions with their hi-tech gear.�Sound familiar?

Next.

The_Evil_Within
If we’re going to crowd-fund this, we should (obviously) raise the funds in Dogecoin. (I hope the meta-humour aspect is obvious…)

Oh yeah! Ha! I get it! Obviously!

I’d say suspense/comedy loosely based on the MtGox story. Except you need a physical break in aspect to the heist, and probably some kind of special government strike force in play at the same time.

A Suspense Comedy? The hell�is that? And based on Mt. Gox? Mt. Gox wasn’t a heist, it was a tragic case of incompetence gone unchecked in the libertarian utopia. A heist movie based on that would not be related to the Mt. Gox tragedy story at all! Its like comparing�Edward Penishands�to Alice in Wonderland: Sure, they have that Tim Burton connection, but one is a porno, and the other is a kids movie! They’re two completely different things, barely hanging by a single thread.

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do…

A “Suspense Comedy” based on Mt. Gox is an oxymoron, like “Jumbo Shrimp” or “Successful Long-Term Bitcoin Investment”. Next.

n1nj4_v5_p1r4t3
Just get me a GoPro and ill make it!

Y’know, I looked up this guy on YouTube, and nothing. Did a Google Video search, and found this pro-marijuana site. Turns out his only video experience is commenting this�on a video:

Do an Image search on his name, and its marijuana everything. In short, he’s a stoner without a camera. Considering Bitcoin’s development history, he’s perfect! Get on it, N1nj4!

Perish_In_a_Fire
Plot twist: At the end, when the police get the paper wallet, the owners transfer their bitcoins to another offline wallet, making the physical paper worthless.
In Hollywood terms, they’d make the balance shrink to zero dramatically with a sound effect.

Problem: Explaining that plot twist to an audience that�has no idea what Bitcoin is�would take so long, the only suspense that would be in the theater is the guy who falls asleep, then wakes up suddenly when the seat in front of him squeaks loudly. PUT SOME WD-40 ON YOUR SEATS, EDWARDS 21 IN BOISE, ID. I WANT TO TAKE A NAP DURING TRANSFORMERS 4.

By the way, the sound effect of “The Balance Shrink” would be this:

Also, this thread explains a lot about the Bitcoiner’s mindset: There is no main plot they are all “Crowdsourcing”. Its just adding “Plot Twist” onto “Plot Twist”. They are just looking for the reward, and not doing the work themselves. Explains a lot, actually.

ilhaguru
The blockchain needs its “THE MATRIX” movie moment.

What the fuck was the Matrix’s “Movie Moment”? When it got inducted into Guinness Book of World Records? When research papers popped up around it? �When it made a Billion globally? When it made $2B globally? When it made $2.5B globally? When Larry (Sorry, Lana) Wachowski became Lana Wachowski? Exactly what and when did “The Matrix” have its “Movie Moment”?

And what good would a “Blockchain” movie be in a post-Matrix world? It’d be seen as a ripoff, and lose all of its money. Next.

yaginuma
I want to see Zack Galifianakis digging for a hard drive in a garbage dump.

Again, there’s just the reward, but no context or set up. There is no work here. Its just a cool reward he’d like to get to, ASAP. In fact, the only�fleshed out plot and Buttcoin Award recipient for weirdest fucking movie pitch so far is from this guy who is seriously violating Poe’s law with his post:

crap_punchline
Hackers 2: Bitcoin Boogaloo

Directed by M. Night. Shywhatever

Soundtrack by Skrillex

Plot: A group of young hackers lead by notorious nude celebrity photo hacker “Dubst3pWarr10r@MP3” (played by Shia LaBeouf) discover Bitcoin and use it to hack the Government Infastructure Business Security Ordnance Network (GIBSON) in order to take down the Fed and reboot the finance system with the currency, but all of their Bitcoins get hacked by a paedophile terrorist called “Reddit0r” (played by Dustin Diamond), so they embark on a mission to infiltrate a costume convention using the youngest member of their hack crew, a 9 year old transgendered video game champion, to lure Reddit0r into a sex sting trap on a show called To Catch A Reddit0r, where he is caught red handed (literally with his hand down a child’s pants) and is forced to surrender the Bitcoins but then they all die in a surprise Coen Brothers inspired twist ending.

Left here, without comment.

In the beginning of the Reddit post, the OP asked for a producer. Well, believe it or not, I worked at, then ran a public access TV studio in Boise, ID for 3 years. And I can say this with 100% certainty: all these pitches are incomplete messes, and the one almost-developed pitch would only work as a porno, because of the level of lame parody in it.

Noted Film Critic�Mike Stoklasa once said

Movies are a blend of art and business.

That basically means movies are half artistic, as in writing, acting, set design, props, directing, lighting, etc., and business, or pitch meetings, budgets, balance sheets, revenue streams, monetization�through merchandise and trademarking, etc.

From the failures I’ve seen, both here and in the Bitcoin community as a whole, no Bitcoin movie will ever come from this. That’s probably why the one forum is “BitcoinTalk”, and not “BitcoinAction”, because all these people do is talk, but never do. The most they will ever get from film or TV is that brief plot point in the cancelled FOX series “Almost Human“:

What a bunch of dickhands.

The post The Greatest (Bitcoin) Movie Never Made appeared first on Buttcoin Foundation.

Because I’ve been doing more digging�for Bitcoin-related stories, I have certain sources�I tend to go back to. One of them is /r/Bitcoin. It has been one of the best spots�for researching anything I have ever come across for a reporter such as myself. It’s like the all scams, misogyny and bad ideas come right to me! (But I look other places as well, because I’m not lazy, like CNN.)

I have no real opinion of Reddit. I actually kind of like it to be honest even though I personally never used it.�It just seemed like some popular link site that had weird groups like the Bitcoin nuts in addition to being the homebase of the Men’s Rights movement. I got turned off by things like that and�Adrien Chen’s article on�Violentacrez�but now, thanks to BTC, I’m back.

Throughout the time I’ve known of /r/Bitcoin I’ve figured it attracts a lot of newbies wanting to learn about the ‘coin. Seems reasonable, right? It is the first source listed in the “Keeping Up to Date” section on everyone’s favorite Bitcoin Starter site, WeUseCoins.com�(now owned by Butterfly Labs).

In life, there are many things we know we don’t know. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. But what we do know is that there are�76% of Americans�don’t have a clue what�a Bitcoin is. Either they don’t know its a thing, or they don’t really care. In the same survey linked above, 80% of people said they’d rather have Gold over Bitcoin, probably because Gold is easy to explain and, economically speaking, proven.

But what about those few who genuinely want to know more? What about the men and women�who are genuinely excited about such a interesting concept? Those who want to dip their toe into “The Currency of the Future”? What does the Reddit Bitcoin community, linked to by many of the most prominent Bitcoin introduction sites, do to help them, the newest of newbies, looking for the most “Up to Date” info?

The answer is just harass them, apparently.

Case in point:

There’s an old business adage that says “No company was ever unionized without deserving it”. This means�things need to change but the guys in charge don’t seem to realize that�things are so bad�that�pretty much 90% of our�site’s content�is devoted to�them and their blatant idiocy. So now its time to force some changes.

First lets just be clear: A member of the Reddit Bitcoin community has decided there has been so much�harassment that there needs to be some basic guidelines on how to handle the newbies. So right off the bat things are less Utopian than they have been proclaimed, and more like if the newbies were Snake Plisskin in “Escape from New York”, with everyone just attacking him just because they’ve never seen him before.

Alright. So what’s going on?

Huh. That’s actually a pretty clear�depiction of what’s going on. Although there are so many other things you could have pointed out, in reference to just /r/Bitcoin.

This is going surprisingly well.

Well, you haven’t managed to run anyone off Reddit with the usual Bitcoin-Related insanity, so let’s listen.

Yes. If this rule was followed, they could have 5 more “Adopters”�a year.

Wow, 2 out of 3 so far. Bravo.

I’d just like to point out that this guy’s name is “secret_bitcoin_login“. It took a guy with the username “secret_bitcoin_login” to be reasonable. Good job, guys!

That “By Request” link, FYI, goes to a comment down in the same thread by a guy named “BigBlackHungGuy“. You guys suck with names.

But names aside, these are 4 legitimate, level-headed and, above all else, reasonable requests. However, given the history of the ‘Coin and its cult-like communities’ past PR disasters being basically a string of hilarious incidents�akin to a train crashing and spilling its cargo of dildos next to a row of churches, one car at a time, this is probably going to hit hard.

Now before we continue let me make one thing clear: No, I did not read the comments on the thread. It restored my faith in some Bitcoin followers and I don’t want that immediately destroyed by someone probably named 13-23. This isn’t like the last article�where there’s a string of comments that show “THESE PEOPLE SHUR ARE STUPID!”-esque rhetoric. I want to really look into what’s going on here. And I think I know a good starting place.

Recently in the Buttcoin subreddit�a man posted his story about trying to explain that there are, in fact, people who know about Bitcoin, but don’t really support�it. The top comment, according to him, was that those people don’t exist, a type of mindset the Cult Education Institute calls “Loading the Language“, where easy, memorable and short catchphrases become constricting, to the point that anything outside the “Language” is absurd.

The idea that 76% of Americans don’t know about Bitcoin is to some a laughable statistic in much the same way anti-vaccination crazies, when shown 4 different stories about how not getting vaccinated hurt or even killed people, just strengthened their belief that vaccinations are terrible.�Asterios Kokkinos�had a great quote on Episode 21 of the podcast “The Biggest Problem in the Universe“:

“I believe all these statistics, obviously, but the people that don’t vaccinate their kid are not gonna be convinced by statistics, so it’s like, what the fuck do we do? …Like, I know that on this program, you don’t necessarily talk about solutions, but, like, seriously. What the fuck do you do? You can yell a million statistics. You can get 1,000 doctors.” (Source)

The answer, it seems, is that you can’t do anything. Whether is be�Bitcoin cheerleaders or Anti-Vaccination nutjobs or 9/11 Truthers, there is no convincing people they are wrong or that there is other information they are refusing to see once the language has been loaded.

Therefore, none of the four great suggestions will ever come to fruition because they don’t really “Work” in the context of the language.

So we could show every single example of how embarrassingly easy it can be to scam these guys or how they get arrested for doing stupid things like starting Silk Road and letting a CAPTCHA expose your IP address every time someone logs on yet sticking to your�guns because Bitcoin is right and anything else is wrong. It’s like in “The Dark Knight Rises”, when Bane tells a really hot guy “You stay in this plane that’s about to crash”, and the guy just goes all blue steel on him, melts my heart, then crashes with the plane (~swoon~). Someone not constricted would go at least go “I wanna get out of the plane!” Then die, because Bane gave that person permission to. But at least make an effort! Don’t just let “The Cause” be the thing that leads you to your slaughter! Have a little fight in you!

But Bitcoin is comforting to them now. Anything that goes against it in turn goes against what makes them comfortable. Questioning Bitcoin, therefore, is a major source of discomfort and needs to be remedied ASAP.

In our coverage of the FTC’s case against Butterfly Labs, we showed you documents from BFL’s motion to dismiss that were so glaringly condescending it made me�dry-heave because I was laughing so hard. It was completely unnecessary but there it was. In a legal document, submitted to a federal court, this was presented with the only edits being certain italicized words to really layer on the sarcasm:

If they REAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALY wanted to know, they’d just let us continue, like the market demands.

It shows a level of condescension and confidence that is not acceptable in any trial, anywhere, especially when it’s you against the feds. It shows said traits on the same levels as, say, serial killer�Ted Bundy as he defended himself in court. We all knew he was guilty but he was so sure he could use his charm to get out of jail because it worked with everyone else, especially his victims. It didn’t work. Even when his 5 court-appointed lawyers told him to let them handle it he demanded to be his own defense, a move one of his lawyers, Polly Nelson, said

“…sabotaged the entire defense effort out of spite, distrust, and grandiose delusion” (Source)

Same with any clip of Charles Manson. You see him saying insane shit all the time, but have you noticed there is a structure to how he will say something in English, then devolve into babbling nonsense? It seems like he is having bits of clarity, followed by�being pulled back into, well, Mansonland. That’s the language constricting him. And with Manson that constriction by language is so tight that the only words that can come out are gems like “You guys are living a thousand illusions, man!”�Between those two quotes, the one from Bundy’s lawyer and Charles Manson, does the Bitcoin Cult not pop up just a little bit? Especially with Nelson’s “Grandiose Delusion” bit?

When people are trying to learn about this cool thing called Bitcoin and are met with hostility, and then the cult wonders why people hate them, it becomes absurdity! Of course people are going to hate the asshole who, when you ask a supposedly simple question like “What’s a gigahash?” or “Where can I find coins?”, instead of being directed to the Newbie forum, you get called a dick for wasting everyone’s precious time that could be spent studying the philosophy of Satoshi’s masterpiece.

The Loaded Language Bitcoiners work with involves phrases like “Currency of the Future”, “Sheeple”, “Early Adopters” and “Decentralized”. Words that, if strung together enough times, create an atmosphere that tells a Bitcoiner “Anyone who doesn’t know what Bitcoin is must be a fool!”, while everyone else looks at that guy and just goes “Fuck this, I’m paying for my Panera Bread with my Credit Card like an adult.”

There are so many other things that people don’t like about that community of nutjobs, like how everything is the most complicated process that cannot be explained, but these people are pretty much harmless fedora-wearing bronies�who hide behind the veil of Libertarianism like it means something to anyone besides Ron and Rand Paul.

A constricting loaded language has led to the cult of the ‘coin. Some of the members of said cult will read this and deny every word I’ve written and attempt to proclaim their currency is the way of the future.

All I will say is this: Visa has VisaNet, their main network�center, located on the eastern side of the US. VisaNet�can handle 24,000 transactions per second. In�that single second, security measures are put in place to stop fraud, stop risks (like overcharges) and help aid in disputes. They also do a 5 day stress test each summer to flood the network with transactions to make sure it can handle an excess number of transactions like at Christmas time, when everyone and their mother is trying to buy something. 2013’s highest capacity was 47,000 transactions per second. And since they can modify their system for maximum efficiency, everyone, everywhere can use Visa and not have to worry their payment won’t go through due to a technical error.

Bitcoin currently accepts 7 transactions per second. I can’t really provide a source though since all the information I wanted to link to is by the cult. And it’s all wrong. You try to get a legit answer from the cult on just this one thing, why the all-digital currency of the future can only handle a minuscule number of transactions compared to a supposedly outdated system, and all you get are lies. Pre-constructed lies at that because, like all cults, the members cannot think on their own.

The post Why People Dislike the Cult of ‘Coin. appeared first on Buttcoin Foundation.