Quote from: jbreher on December 18, 2019, 02:58:47 AM

Quote from: bitserve on December 18, 2019, 02:22:03 AM

Quote from: jbreher on December 18, 2019, 02:14:17 AM

Quote from: bitserve on December 18, 2019, 01:52:33 AM

Quote from: jbreher on December 18, 2019, 12:54:41 AM

Right. But I ain't lending. Not to an unknown, certainly. More than that, I ain't lending to nobody since one of my friends got unjustly popped by the feds for ostensibly 'operating an unlicensed money transfer business'. Later all charges dropped, it still cost him like a quarter million bux, at least one client, and untold hours of his life.

May I ask what does that quarter million bux account for if the charges were dropped? Lawyer fees? If that's the case that's a really fucked up system yeah.

Was it bitcoin related or just regular fiat loans that somehow turned wrong?

Extortion, if you ask me. Under color of law. Bitcoin. It's all pretty well documented in old posts on this here forum.

Then I guess you mean that guy (can't remember the nick) that has its website in the sig where he explains it all. Yeah, I remember it. Really fucked up story.

Yup. BurtW. And yes, I count him as a friend. And a cautionary tale about this fucked up world in which we live. Introduced me to Bitcoin, as a matter of fact.

Yup, BurtW that's the guy.

I know what kind of fucked up world I live in. Even though I reckon that most any time in the past was way more fucked up though.

Wanna know how I got started in Bitcoin? I'll tell you anyways:

I never had much income, but enough to save some year after year since I was twentysomething. Again not much, maybe one year 200, other 3000, sometimes more sometimes less... everything added up year after year... for a bunch of years.

Then I thought I needed to have some spare cash at hand, outside the bank. No matter if it wouldn't give me interest but, you know, just an in case I "accidentally killed someone or anything" and had to immediately run out of the country thing. Or something I could have free from seized for whatever reason (be it accidentally or well deserved).

It wasn't much, maybe 10K cash, enough to sustain for a while on the run if that ever happened. Maybe at some point it was more than that, but not much more and that's unimportant.

Then I heard about Bitcoin. So I thought it wouldn't hurt to exchange $3K into it, just in case. At that point a BTC was like 50. I went to localbitcoins and looked at the ads for a local in cash meeting. It would have been around 60 BTC. It turned out none of ads were "real". It was all transfer me the money and I transfer you the BTC, either via bank transfer or paypal. That really turned me off because it was the off-bank money that I wanted to exchange. Haven't you ever heard me saying never mix banking fiat with out-the-system fiat? Well, that's my motto.

But that motto ended me with a lame 2 BTC purchase for 100 via paypal just to test the waters. Instead of the 3000/60BTC I really tried hard to exchange in person to no avail.

Of course one could argue that if buying BTC at that time were easier it would have not been priced so low. That's fair.

Anyways.... the main point of my story is that... I went to Bitcoin because I wanted to have some (no matter how little) money stored "out of the system". Probably that's also the reason I didn't ever sell in the subsequent rises (kept buying instead... at way higher prices though).

Yes, I do know how fucked up the system can be if it goes against you. Some insurance against it is very wise move. Never went into this to turn "rich"... even though I almost dreamed about it when BTC was at $20K and it looked like it could keep going. For me it was just a "hedge"/insurance. It still is... even if now I sometimes dream of obtaining some richness out of it too.