I also just received a large reimbursement from TF. Feel free to contact me if you want details.

Thanks, I didn't know that. I thought the seed == the wallet, and so both the wallet and the seed have all 2FA private keys. I'll have to double check, but that sounds good.

Thanks!

Of course it's good to be able to recover without trustedcoin, but that's the point of 2-of-3 (compared to 2-of-2), and giving another party sole access to the third recovery signature.

Requiring both your private keys be in one place, as Electrum advises, seems to render multisig useless...

Right?

I didn't see it, but if this has already been answered somewhere, I'd be grateful for the link.

I'd like to use electrum 2FA + trustedcoin for a 2-of-3 cool wallet.

The suggestion at http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/2fa.html says that I can recover my wallet without trustedcoin, all by myself, with just the seed. That doesn't seem like 2FA to me! (The instructions for multisig seem similar.)

I think the way to avoid the my-backup-bypasses-all-my-2fa problem is this:

• I have one private key. I backup mine.
• Trusted coin has one private key. They backup theirs.
• A friend as one private key. She backs up hers.

In other words, I don't want to backup all my keys in one place.

Can I do this with Electrum? Any suggestions?

I'm just writing to say that, even though I haven't been posting, I haven't forgotten about this, and I'm still very keen on finding a solution and helping where I can. I'm sure there are many others out there that are keeping an eye on this thread for any developments.

The only news I've seen is that Jon was arrested, but I didn't see why. I also don't know where he is ATM or if anyone has communicated with him.

Does anyone have more up to date / complete info, or any ideas?

TF,
IIRC, I was the largest BTCINVESTer. *After* the alleged hacks, you liquidated BTCINVEST and into coinlenders so that we could withdraw what remained of our investment with you. As you know, we were never able to withdraw from CL, even though there were no further hacks.

Now that you have some money and are doing some shopping (https://blockchain.info/address/1GLadosEkeAsLReqS3yQ51E1R3wVtbJCDF), are you going to return some of our money?

(Numbers made up.)

After the fork, the government could regularly post blocks with a million transactions in it. If it happened regularly enough, people would lower their transaction fees, and some profit-seeking miners would leave.

They can try to do the same thing before the fork, but each time they are limited to posting blocks with only 100 transactions in it. There's still scarcity, and fewer miners will leave.

Granted, scarcity is not driving mining at this time. But transaction fees were "supposed to" take over mining bounties (which I think is bad design, see below).


There are four groups of people (a) stakeholders, (b) saboteurs, (c) transactors, and (d) miners. With PoW, stakeholders want to protect their coins from saboteurs, and for some reason transactors pay miners to do so. That's pretty convoluted! Transactors and miners would be just as happy destroying the blockchain, if it enriched them somehow. (We've seen attack vectors along these lines.)

However, if block size is increased, there's really no reason why most miners won't include as many transactions as possible, since it doesn't really cost them anything. Transactors will no longer be required to pay to have their transactions included in the blockchain, and eventually profit-seeking miners will leave. Stakeholders will still need to protect their coins from saboteurs. Suddenly, stakeholders will either have to mine themselves, or send bitcoin to themselves with large fees, in order to keep miners in the game (which is inefficient, because sometimes the fees will go to saboteurs). In this scenario, we've realigned the costs of maintaining the integrity of the blockchain: the transaction fees have dropped, and stakeholders are paying to protect their coins. These are the same incentives as PoS.

However, this is a really inefficient way of determining which ledger is correct. There are at least two ways to do so:

(1) You can ask the stakeholders and the saboteurs to fight it out. The last one standing decides which ledger is correct. This is PoW.

(2) You can just ask the stakeholders which ledger is correct. This is PoS.

Thoughts?

Blocking transactions? I don't think anyone was talking about that.

If "enough" miners don't require a fee, then some transactors will not send transactions with a fee, and many others will simply send insignificant fees (like now). Some miners that were mining for a profit will no longer be able to make a profit, and they will stop mining.

Despite what someone else claimed, this does not make confirmations take longer, increasing the price of transactions, and incentivizing more miners to mine, because of the fixed time to mine a block.

Either this will reduce the security of the bitcoin network, or stakeholders will mine "at a loss" to avoid losing their bitcoins.

And, it's silly to make stakeholders do PoW.

Add:

LOL, I didn't make that hypothesis. I don't know what you're talking about :-)

Miners aren't currently mining for transaction fees, because of how insignificant they are, so it's not really a good question.

https://blockchain.info/charts/network-deficit

But is "average transaction fee revenue" increasing or decreasing? It's kind of hard to tell...

https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees

I'm not really in favor of small blocks, because I don't like the idea of incentivizing non-stakeholders to maintain the blockchain. I just think that this is a problem better solved with PoS. Let a stakeholder make a 1 GB block, for all I care.

On the other hand, the thought of letting a rando non-stakeholder (e.g., the government) make 1 GB blocks of ~0 fee transactions (or spam) makes me uneasy.

Yeah, if I want my transaction to be picked up by a miner who doesn't require fees, I can just sit patiently.


Miners leave all the time when they're no longer profitable...

They'd stop mining because they wouldn't be profiting. It would be like if Amazon lowered the price of hot cakes to $0. Some other retailers would stop selling hot cakes.


As the bounty decreases, and if the transaction fees decrease (as a result of block size increasing), then non-stakeholders will have no (or decreasing) incentive to mine. Stakeholders, on the other hand, will need to mine to keep their bitcoins safe. It's no more "truly altruistic" than a bank hiring a security guard to protect its assets.

How much will a stakeholder or saboteurs need to spend on mining to protect / steal $100 in a PoW system? About $99.

How much will a stakeholder need to spend on mining to protect $100 from saboteurs in a PoS system? A lot less than the saboteurs... Right?

tldr; As we move the direct profit incentives for mining, the responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the blockchain will fall on stakeholders. PoW is a great way to distribute the initial coins, but it's a really inefficient way for stakeholders to "vote" on which chain is right.

Right?

"Occasionally" was bad word choice on my part. If "enough" (1 large or many small) miners are willing to fill 20 MB blocks of ~0 fee transactions, then some bitcoin users will send ~0 fee transactions, and some miners that mine for transaction fees will stop mining, which weakens the security of the bitcoin network.

While this has always been a vulnerability, it seems like increasing the block size limit makes this economic sabotage more potent.

There's no need for other miners to follow their example.


Increasing the block size limit reduces transaction fees. Eventually, miners are not mining for transaction fees, but mining as stakeholders to maintain the integrity of the blockchain. Only stakeholders mining doing PoW is like a really inefficient PoS.

Larger blocks and lower fees means less mining, but not longer confirmation times, since larger blocks will still be mined every 10 minutes.

All it takes for transaction fees to go down to ~zero is a benevolent or a malevolent miner occasionally accepting 0 fee transactions.

The question is, will stakeholders step up to mine "at a loss" to secure their funds?

Increasing the block size limit is a poor implementation of PoS...

And, he more recently offered to liquidate, and then kept, the assets he controlled from BTCINVESTors.

People (including me) try very hard to believe that scammers have the same ethics as us- that they're hard working entrepreneurs with a bum rap. But too often, they're just scammers.

I'm dealing with it now also IRL. Me and another party agreed to something in writing. Now they're like "well, we just don't want to pay you." :-(

Hi Sebastian,
Thanks for reaching out to him.


Ukyo has eluded to circumstances that have not happened many times. He still won't tell us what happened to the coins. He promised dozens of times to provide information, "good news," and updates. Each time, he later says he can't talk by eluding to works in progress, gag orders, NDAs, legal action, and/or bitcoin problems. And a little later, he denies whatever was implied.

So, where are the coins? What's the "big news?"

And, since all of this, he offered to liquidate BTCINVEST assets for the BTCINVESTors. Did he just decide to keep all of the proceeds from liquidation?

Added:
After reading about them, it sounds to me like Ukyo (and TF) followed the "six definite steps or stages of growth in every finely balanced and well-conceived confidence game" almost to the letter.

If he wants us to believe otherwise, he just needs to deviate from the con man's playbook by telling us what happened.

What's really impressive is how he strung us along, with news announcements about upcoming news and by giving us a little money back (all in the playbook), and learning from /us/ what story would be the most believable. At first, he said bitcond problems, but then he kept his mouth shut and had us come up with our own story (bitcoin malleability + lawsuits to get it back from the person who took them.) But, if he tells us, then we'd require proof (which he could give), so he just keeps his mouth shut.

He unexpectedly just paid 1 BTC to BTCINVESTers...

I think it's more ethical to get the funds back yourself rather than having the government do it. After all, it's pretty much the same thing, except that the government itself is funded with stolen funds.

Although, I think it would be less thug-like to hire a PI to confront Ukyo to find out what happened and determine his assets.

I actually put KosherCoin on my project to-do list some months ago. I love the idea :-)

Well, Ukyo has been better than a few of the people I've dealt with.

But I don't remember receiving any significant news, which was promised and planned, like, a dozen times. I don't know if Ukyo is solvent or where 96% of the coins went.

While I don't have my money, I'd like to know why.

I'm so happy to have my 6% back. Thanks Ukyo! 

(What happened to the rest?)