Quote from: Logik on July 24, 2013, 02:41:41 AM

So, where are the servers and founders of BitFunder and BTC-TC located?

GL evading the SEC by claiming registration in some random country. All that really matters are the physical location of the humans and servers involved, isn't it?

There have been quite a few references and questions regarding BTC-TC, so I'll address things as best I can.

- One of the fun things that I'd like to know regarding the 1933 securities act is what their definition of profit is. Since I've never cross-connected BTC and Fiat, I'm not sure where the connection gets made. For all I know, a hole in sha256 will be discovered tomorrow and BTC will be shown to have zero value in terms of Fiat. It seems like by the strict letter of the law, playing a game such as Monopoly is illegal, as the little paper moneys have SOME fiat value, no matter how finite.

- Location of the servers is an issue. This is partly why we do the several times a day emails to issuers of the share lists. Addressing the server location issue has been discussed and will be tackled as soon as I can garner some trustworthy help from someone that can bootstrap an installation from bare metal. Biggest issue is that I simply cannot trust a random ISP's platform install. I may even end up having to make the trip myself.

- Humans involved could be nabbed. Three things about this:
1) They'll nab anyone they want for anything they want. We've all done something wrong. (google "three felonies a day.") There's so much vague crap on the books in the US that they can find something on anyone.
2) Things changed very recently with the "Bitcoin is money" approach the feds have taken. Prior to that our legal approach was that Bitcoin is WOW Gold or Linden Dollars and we were a game. (Someone want to explain to me the difference? Why is WOW Gold or Linden Dollars not on the SEC website? Both have exchanges (eg: ebay) and investments going on.) To what extent law breaking occurred depends on a whole lot of things. Probably the easiest way around this is for BTC-TC to stop accepting traffic from US users.
3) I've been looking for overseas investors to take over the majority stake. My personal goal is to get to where I'm the "programmer for hire" and really nothing more. This is why so much of the site is setup to be self sustaining. The site really won't miss me much with the exception of the issues I have been running. Which brings me to:

- Exposure on LTC-MINING and LTC-MINING.LTC... Please sell me back your shares. Wink

Both of these are in closure mode.

- Exposure on ASICMINER-PT... this one I'm not sure there's much exposure on... it'd be hard to pin any losses for example on the PT rather than the underlying issue. Probably I'll have to close it to US participation though as well.

- It'd be interesting to try to pin down -exactly- what distinguishes a game from an investment. To me it's always been about learning the trading ropes in an environment that didn't involve losing "real money". That was why we started on Litecoin. It was a convenient in-game currency. To me it's as cut and dry as it is for WoW. I have no problem telling the difference between the game world and the real world. One I walk around in for real. The other I have to sit at the computer and log in and interact through a computer. Take this same argument to BTC-TC and I have to ask myself, can I interact with BTC-TC in the real world? Or do I HAVE to sit down at a computer and log in to play? The answer so far as I can tell is that no, I cannot use my bitcoin in the real world. I cannot hold them, I cannot buy starbucks with them, I cannot trade them at any shop in town that I am aware of. I cannot call my broker and buy them or buy anything tangible using them. For me and 99.9% of americans they're still an imaginary experiment.

I get back to wondering why all of a sudden the SEC/FinCEN decided out of the blue to recognize them. The only thing I can come up with is so that they can prevent them from ever becoming "real". To prevent people from using them they have to make examples out of people and to make examples out of people they have to first recognize them. A bit of a catch-22 for sure.

I'm also still wrapping my brain around why all of a sudden Bitcoin is money to the US when so many prior incarnations of similar things are not money. The Feds have argued for a century that the only real money is the money they (or another government) print. Time and again rather than allowing commodities that act like money to exist, they have shut them down and denied that they ever were "money" or "currency". It's definitely caught me somewhat by surprise and the site needs to make some changes to co-exist in this new world order.

In any case, there are definitely things that need to be improved for the site. I hate to say this, but barring some kind of loophole, it may come down to excluding US citizens from playing the game. Sad