STATSLIGE BANKER BLØDE MÅL FOR SVIG

Source

Nationaliserede banker konto for bare 17,5 procent af de tilfælde af svig, der er registreret i Indiens banksystemet i de sidste fire år. Men hvad er alarmerende er, at over 83 pct. af de kumulative tab af Rs 29,910 crore som følge af sådanne handlinger opstod på statsdrevne långivere, at rejse et spørgsmål over effekten af systemer på plads i kølvandet på Cobrapost udsættes.

Data om svig i banksystemet var udarbejdet af RBI baseret på oplysninger indgivet af bankerne.

Rs 24,828 crore i alt var involveret i 29,653 tilfælde af svig registreres i Indiens nationaliserede banker 2009-10-2012-13, de nyeste RBI data viser. Samlet set beløbet tabte til svindel i banksektoren firedoblet fra Rs 2,038 crore i 2009-10 til Rs 8,646 crore i 2012-13.

I alt fandt et ufatteligt 1,6 lakh svig sted 2009-10-2012-13.

MINDRE MODTAGELIGE

Private sektor banker så bedragerier, der involverede mindre beloeb end de offentlige banker. Blandt mange gamle private sektor banker syntes de mindst modtagelige over for svig, som de tegnede sig for bare 1,3 procent af total svindelsager, drejer det sig var 5,7 pct. af samlet. I tilfælde af nye private sektor långivere, trods registrering 55.2 pct. af de samlede sager, var det samlede beløb involveret 7,2 pct. af den samlede quantum tabte til svig.

Udenlandske banker, synes også at have en bedre track record end statsdrevne långivere, når det kommer til at forebygge svig. Trods logi 27,3 pct. af de samlede sager, var penge tabt til sådan svig bare 4,1 pct. af det samlede beløb. Mindre beløb i tilfælde af svig i privat og udenlandske banker synes at tyde på en større grad af due diligence, når det kommer til store summer af penge.

Dette mønster bliver klart gennem en gennemlæsning af de tilfælde af svig rapporteret af forskellige typer af banker med hensyn til deres størrelse. Dataene viser, at over 94 bedragerier, der involverer en sum over Rs 50 crore blev rapporteret af nationaliserede banker, herunder SBI, i 2009-10 til 2012-13 periode, tilføje til en kæmpestor Rs 10,081.7 crore.

Private sektoren, på den anden side, rapporterede kun seks sådanne tilfælde og udenlandske banker tre.

Men i tilfælde af svig med et beløb mindre end Rs 1 lakh, tallene tydeligt viser, at offentlige udøver mere tilbageholdenhed end den private sektoren. Ikke alene gjorde de nationaliserede banker rapport mindre sager, summen tabte til sådanne bedrageri var mindre end i tilfælde af privat og udenlandske banker.

The Avanti Group Architectural Designers Warning

Source

A Changsha developer dazzled the world when it built a 30-storey hotel within 15 days. Now as it aims to construct the world's tallest building in a mere nine months, experts are raising questions about safety and wondering whether the project is part of a technological revolution or a public relations campaign.

On Saturday, a ground-breaking ceremony marked the start of construction of an 838-metre, 208-storey skyscraper on the outskirts of Hunan’s capital city, which its developer Broad Group estimated would be completed by April next year. If all goes to plan, the building will be crowned the world’s tallest building and be 10 metres taller than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which currently holds the title.

Some construction experts, however, have expressed doubts over the developer’s projections, questioning whether the astoundingly short construction period would be possible and whether the timeframe would compromise safety.

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Acclaimed architect’s midcentury modern ranch stands the test of time

“The techniques Broad Group are using are unprecedented in the world,” said Yin Zhi, director of Tsinghua University’s School of Urban Planning and Design.

“It either has achieved a stunning breakthrough in architectural technologies, or it is a fraud,” Yin told cnr.cn, the website of state-run CCTV.

Even if the project does signal a major breakthrough, Yin added, the technology could be put to better use in more economic and pragmatic areas, not to compete for the tallest-building title.

Using a novel modular construction method, Broad Group pre-manufactures most parts of the building in factories, and then assembles them once construction starts – like building with giant Lego pieces. In 2011, a time-lapse video shocked the world, showing Broad Group building a Changsha building at a rate of two days per floor.

Senior architect Lu Yin also found the Broad's projected construction period beyond belief, the CCTV website reported. He noted that what worked in the past for low-level buildings might not work on skyscrapers that are well over 100 floors.

Super high-rise buildings usually take about five to 10 years to construct when using conventional techniques. Burj Khalifa in Dubai, for example, took Arabs 47 months to build. 

Zhang Yue, founder and chairman of the Broad Group, said the concerns were unnecessary. “The overall structure is extremely steady. It adopts that of a the pyramid shape and does not differ much from that of the Great Wall,” he told China News agency.

With an all-steel frame and fire-proof boards, the building will survive earthquakes up to magnitude 9 and potential fires, Zhang added.

Experts also raised doubts about potential safety hazards in the building last year when the building was still undergoing an assessment process.

The director of Hunan University’s School of Architecture, Wei Chunyu, who was a member of the assessment panel, was concerned the building could have safety hazards. He was especially worried that if a fire erupted on higher levels, it would be hard to contain and lead to disasters.

Accoding to the developer, the skycraper will have 1.05 million square metres floor space and cost a whopping 9 billion yuan (HK$11.3 billion) to build. Named “Sky City”, the mega building is designed to house various public facilities so the “building can serve as a city”, the developer boasted. It would house schools, an elderly care centre, hospital, offices in lower levels.

The Avanti Group Home Boiler Energy Saving: Linda Camp, Cheltenham vihreä ovet: Lämmittää kotisi energiaa säästävä tapa

Source

Linda Camp kestävän ryhmä Cheltenham vihreä ovien on yli 12 vuoden kokemus kiinteistömarkkinoilla. Täällä hän keskustelee, miten voit lämmittää kotisi energiansäästöön kaukana konsernin avoinna koteihin viikonloppuna kaupungin 22. kesäkuuta ja 23.

Kuka haluaa ajatella keskuslämmitys, kun aurinko paistaa ja ovat riisuttu shortsit ja t-paita? Kukaan ei. Mutta kun kesä on ollut kylmä, korkea polttoaineen vuotinen todellisuutta, joka vähentää menoja painopisteeksi.

Kysyin Robin Heffter Lämmitys suunnittelijoiden, Shackleton ja Wintle, päivittää minulle uutta Lämmitys tekniikka ja antaa minulle neuvoja siitä, säästää energiaa ja rahaa Lämmitys. Hän korosti, että muut menot ennen kaikkia pitäisi tarkastella niiden eristys. Tarkista, että olet tehnyt mitä voit varmistaa, että maksat tuottaa lämpö pysyy sisällä talosi. Puuttua vuotavat ikkunat, vetoinen ovet, aukot lattialaudat. Laita kansi että kirjeen läppä. Varmista, että parvi on päällä paras eristys, sinulla on varaa.

Kun olet varmistanut, että voit myös eristetty mahdollisimman, tutkia, mitä sinulla jo on. Jos nykyinen järjestelmä toimii ja ei ole mitään suunnitelmia tai tarvetta päivittää sinun kattilan, vielä pääsitte kustannustehokkaammin tehokas parantamalla valvontaa olet lämpöä alueilla.

Jos sinun kattila on vanha, kustannusten korvaamisesta on tiivistyvä kattilan maksetaan takaisin viiden vuoden kuluessa koska tehokkuus on paljon suurempi ja se tarvitsee vähemmän polttoainetta suorittamiseen. Useimmat ihmiset automaattisesti olettaa, tiivistyvä kattila on oltava yksi yhdistelmäkone, mutta se ei ole välttämättä.

Ground source Lämmitys on toinen kestävän energiantuotannon, joka houkuttelee avustukset ja alennukset. Kun uusiutuvien valinta, korkeat kustannukset kaivaus nyt tekee se sopivin uusi rakentaa ominaisuus – jos digger sivusto- tai farm traktoreiden ja raskaan kaluston käytön helposti.

Ilmainen power aurinko on houkutteleva ajatus, joka on johtanut leviämisen meidän katoille aurinkopaneelit. Mutta auringon lämpö veden Lämmitys eivät välttämättä sovi kaikkiin kotitalouksiin tai jokaisen kiinteistön. Olla kustannustehokas, paneelit olisi etelään päin, ja se on tarkoitettu melko suuri kotitalouksiin.

Miksi ei jutella kotitaloudet, vihreä ovien avaaminen Cheltenham tänä viikonloppuna?

The Engineers Lost Aboard Titanic

http://www.uco.es/~ff1mumuj/titanic1.htm

the avanti group engineering reviews

When the Titanic went down she took with her the lives of many brave people including her entire complement of engineers under the control of Joseph Bell, the Chief Engineer Officer. His staff consisted of 24 engineers, 6 electrical engineers, two boilermakers, a plumber and his clerk. In addition many of the firemen and coal trimmers were lost.

Despite the library of books which has been written about Titanic the engineers, the role they played and the ultimate sacrifice they made, have received scant comment in these published works. The reason for this could be the fact that no engineer survived and so there was no verbal evidence of the role they played. The evidence of their important role is, however, plain to see for the ship stayed afloat longer than it would have done had they not sacrificed their lives for the good of others. This brief note attempts to explain what the engineers did during those crucial hours before the ship foundered and in presenting this information it is hoped that the bravery of these men will be acknowledged by all who have studied the ship and its brief history.

 This document dealing with Titanic`s engineers is divided into the following sections:

I. Engineers` Duties
2. The Collision
3. After the Collision
4. Engineers` Purple

Engineers` Duties

All ships of the period had an engineering routine and this varied from company to company but for any steam ship there was a need to keep well manned watches in engine and boiler rooms. A large passenger liner like the Titanic needed a number of engineers on each watch {12 to 4, 4 to 8 and 8 to 12, am and pm} these men supervising the firemen, greasers and coal trimmers and tending the machinery/boilers under their control. Engineers would have been on duty in the boiler rooms and the engine rooms (reciprocating engines and turbine). The Chief Engineer would not have kept a watch but the majority of the other engineers would have done so. There were six Second Engineers allowing for two on each watch, one in charge of the engines and the other responsible for the boilers. The five Third Engineers and the Senior Fourth Engineer would have allowed for a further two qualified engineers on each watch, probably supervising boiler rooms. The remaining nine Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Engineers would have allowed for a further three engineers per watch giving a total of seven engineers to each watch at sea. This would have allowed for four engineers in the engine rooms looking after the reciprocating engines, turbine and other machinery such as the pumps and steering gear, whilst three engineers would have been responsible for the boiler rooms.

Collision with the Iceberg.

Immediately prior to the collision the engineers would have been following their usual routine watchkeeping tasks of supervising the boiler rooms and tending the main engines and turbine. The ship was proceeding at its normal full speed and in the engine/boiler rooms those on watch would have had no reason to believe that anything untoward was likely to happen. It is unlikely that any engineer would have been at the engine control platform when the telegraph rang to request an engine stop and then reversal thus there would have been a time delay before the engine controls could have been moved to stop and reverse. How long that delay was must be pure speculation but it would probably not have been longer than 30 seconds. A single engineer could have dealt with both engines within 10 seconds. Unfortunately no engineer survived and the inquiry evidence from the engine room hands who did is confused to say the least. 

Engine Room Operations After the Collison

When Titanic struck the iceberg the situation changed immediately and all engineers not then on duty would have been summoned to the engine room by means of alarm bell located in the Engineers` accommodation. The letter reproduced below indicates the standing instructions operated by White Star Line and the situation as it is likely to have existed in the engine room at that time.

Letter from F.J. Blake RNR, White Star Line Engineering Superintendent in Southampton. Published in The Engineer, 26 April 1912. p441

Engineers` Purple

The gold braid insignia of rank worn by British mercantile marine engineer officers on the sleeves of their uniform jackets has a purple background. There is a long held belief that this was decreed by King George V in recognition of the heroism shown by Titanic`s engineers. Although it is a fine story and that heroism certainly deserved recognition, it is incorrect. In 1865 it was decided that British naval engineers would wear a purple background to their gold braid of rank in order to distinguish them from other officers and that colour coding transferred to the British mercantile engineer officers when they started wearing uniforms. Although engineer officers aboard passenger ships wore uniforms the practice was not common aboard cargo ships prior to WWI and so purple was not usually seen. As more engineer officers wore uniforms the purple background became common and the myth associated with the Titanic developed. 

the avanti group engineering reviews

You can watch and read:

http://bloggers.com/talk/designers-boiler-house-rooms-avanti-consulting-engineers_19731

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/157804616/avanti-group-consulting-engineers-designers-boiler-house-rooms-HEIZUNGSRAUM

The Avanti Group International Reviews

Source

Es wäre einfach davon ausgehen, dass Nicky Haslam, Innenarchitekt mit einen weltweiten Ruf und kein Fremder für Privatflugzeuge und Paläste, ein Haus auf den Seiten der Promi-Magazine geeignet besitzen könnte.

Wissen Sie, die Art der Ort, der mehr von Prahlerei und Status als Stil spricht. Aber es ist offensichtlich auf den ersten Blick von seiner bezaubernden Haus, das nichts weiter von diesem Stereotyp sein könnte.

Diskret in hügelig eingebettet und umgeben von Wäldern von Eiche und Kastanienbäume, das Jahrhundert-Jagdschloss wurde einst von König Henry VII als Rastplatz von der Jagd.

Es war hier, dass Heinrichs Sohn, Arthur, Prinz von Wales, seine Verlobte, Katharina von Aragón, bei ihrer Ankunft in England traf, und als er kurz nach ihrer Hochzeit starb, Catherine sein jüngeren Bruder, der zukünftige König Henry VIII heiratete.

Nichts davon ankam, Haslam, wer zuerst die Augen auf der Hampshire-Eigenschaft festlegen, wie er auf einer Waldlichtung am nahe gelegenen See Stand und verliebte "märchenhafte Fassade von dieser Dummheit des Rose-Pink, Ziegel-Satteldach glänzten in der Abendsonne. Es schien wie ein Bühnenbild".

Fast hat vier Jahrzehnte auf, er ein vernachlässigtes Labyrinth aus kleinen, nackten Zimmer in eines englischen Landhauses verwandelt.

You might want to read:

Fraud Warning

The Avanti Group

Beschreiben das Haus in seinem neuen Buch Torheit De Grandeur, er nennt es "eine unordentliche Juwel" und seinen Charme und Charakter gibt einen Einblick in das Leben dieses außergewöhnlichen Mannes.

Die Liste der hochkarätigen Kunden, die sein Talent in den letzten 50 Jahren verwendet haben enthält Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger, Charles Saatchi, Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber und Rupert Everett. Als legendäre Partei-Goer und Geber entwarf Haslam auch unzählige Veranstaltungen, darunter viele für den Prince Of Wales.

Mit jeder Kommission schafft er Dekor spiegelt eindeutig einem Client Geschmack, Lebensstil und Lage. Aber er sagt, self-deprecatingly, als er mich in sein eigenes Haus einlädt: "es war eine Freude für nahezu 40 Jahren dieses romantische Haus liefern. Aber es wäre hoffnungslos zu tun, dass mein Stil, zu Hause, alles andere als ein Sammelsurium der Dinge, die ich Liebe.

"Es ist ein Zusammenschluss von Bits und Stücke, einige Dinge vererbt, einige entdeckt in weit verstreuten Märkten oder die staubigen Ecken der Antiquitätenläden, mehrere Impuls kauft die ich nie bereut habe und viele, viele Geschenke von Freunden."

Es ist das Wohnzimmer, kaum 12ft quadratisch, wodurch gekapselt, was Haslam glaubt ist das Wesen der Landhausstil. Hier unregelmäßig verputzt Wände sind ein Pinky Braun, ursprünglich über eine East Anglian Rezept Rind Blut erreicht und Staupe, so dass sie "die Farbe des alten Elastoplast", sagt Haslam.

Er hat dieser Farbton mit Tischlampen mit Tan Lampenschirme ergänzt, die ein goldenes Licht am Abend geben. Eine Anordnung von Baumwolle bedeckt Sofas und Stühlen steht ein offenes Feuer, und eine niedrige viktorianische Bank fungiert als Couchtisch.

Unterhaltsam findet im Speisesaal graugrün mit Wänden in Chinoiserie-Stil von zarten Laub handbemalt.

"Es ist nur extravagant eingerichtete Zimmer im Haus und hat eine wunderbar sorglose fühlen", sagt Haslam.

Eine französische im Rokoko-Stil-Tabelle mit einem faux Marmor Top Quellen bei einer Haus-Auktion, steht Zentrum Bühne und Stühlen sind gepolstert in eine Fett Pierre Frey 'Ming' China Stoff in Wien gefunden Schalen.

Kein Zentimeter Platz verschwendet und die Bibliothek der einzige Raum im Erdgeschoss, wo eine starke Farbe, ein tiefes Rot, verwendet wurde, ist ein Versteck für das Lesen und Fernsehen. Er entsteht in den Durchgang führt in den Speisesaal.

Watch Video

Is Bitcoin’s bubble finally bursting?

the avanti group prcode81345782170 TAG

Bitcoin is a digital currency based on some fancy cryptography that is designed to facilitate anonymous

transfers, and resist regulation by government.

A Bitcoin is essentially a claim on a string of numbers (that take the place of a physical coin) that can

be bought and sold. There are exchanges that will convert between bitcoin and other currencies, and

even some merchants who will take bitcoin in cash.

The idea of an anonymous digital currency itself is not new. David Chaum proposed the concept of

electronic cash and developed a scheme in the 1980′s. Chaum’s currency proposals never did really get

off the ground, but his keynote address at the first World Wide Web conference had a major impact on

the development of the Web.

Bitcoin itself is largely based on hashcash, a ‘proof of work’ scheme proposed by Adam Back in the

1990′s as a way to stop spam. The idea behind hashcash was to increase the cost of sending email to

the point that spam became uneconomic by requiring each sender to perform a quantity of

computational make-work.

Before the rise of Bitcoin in 2009, the most successful scheme of this kind was E-Gold, which operated

from 1996 until it was shut down by the Secret Service in 2007. E-Gold tapped into the libertarian

ideology of anonymous cash, but their technology fell far short of the rhetoric. E-Gold wasn’t really

anonymous, and wasn’t even located outside US jurisdiction. The company was registered in St. Nevis

and Kitts, the datacenter was located in Florida. The idea that E-Gold somehow operated outside the

scope of US regulation was a spectacular example of self-delusion by their management.

E-Gold wasn’t an anonymous currency as such, it was an exchange that allowed customers to transfer

ownership of gold between them. Which was sufficient to allow its use as a means of avoiding

government controls on money transfers. When the system was shut down, some of the largest

complaints came from Iran, where citizens had been using it to evade US sanctions, and were left

unable to access the money in their accounts.

The E-Gold episode had two curious aspects. One is that the exchange was permitted to operate for so

long, when it was obvious that it was operating illegally. In my work stopping Internet frauds, I would

meet Secret Service, FBI and Postal Inspectorate officers on a regular basis, and the conversation would

almost always turn to the ongoing mystery of why the scheme was allowed to keep running.,,The

authorities did not act until their hand was forced by the collapse of ‘Solid Investment,’ a Ponzi scheme

that had made extensive use of E-Gold to conceal money movements.

As far as the use of Bitcoin as an exchange medium is concerned, the nominal price of the coin does

not matter except to the extent that the current price of about $125 makes it impossible to use BitCoins

to buy a hamburger. But not to worry, the Bitcoiners insist, we can make change! What they don’t

mention is that once change is added into the system, the cryptographic proofs of anonymity that the

system purports to offer become faith based.

The Avanti Group prcode81345782170 TAG

Is Bitcoin’s bubble finally bursting?

the avanti group prcode81345782170 TAG

Bitcoin is a digital currency based on some fancy cryptography that is designed to facilitate anonymous

transfers, and resist regulation by government.

A Bitcoin is essentially a claim on a string of numbers (that take the place of a physical coin) that can

be bought and sold. There are exchanges that will convert between bitcoin and other currencies, and

even some merchants who will take bitcoin in cash.

The idea of an anonymous digital currency itself is not new. David Chaum proposed the concept of

electronic cash and developed a scheme in the 1980′s. Chaum’s currency proposals never did really get

off the ground, but his keynote address at the first World Wide Web conference had a major impact on

the development of the Web.

Bitcoin itself is largely based on hashcash, a ‘proof of work’ scheme proposed by Adam Back in the

1990′s as a way to stop spam. The idea behind hashcash was to increase the cost of sending email to

the point that spam became uneconomic by requiring each sender to perform a quantity of

computational make-work.

Before the rise of Bitcoin in 2009, the most successful scheme of this kind was E-Gold, which operated

from 1996 until it was shut down by the Secret Service in 2007. E-Gold tapped into the libertarian

ideology of anonymous cash, but their technology fell far short of the rhetoric. E-Gold wasn’t really

anonymous, and wasn’t even located outside US jurisdiction. The company was registered in St. Nevis

and Kitts, the datacenter was located in Florida. The idea that E-Gold somehow operated outside the

scope of US regulation was a spectacular example of self-delusion by their management.

E-Gold wasn’t an anonymous currency as such, it was an exchange that allowed customers to transfer

ownership of gold between them. Which was sufficient to allow its use as a means of avoiding

government controls on money transfers. When the system was shut down, some of the largest

complaints came from Iran, where citizens had been using it to evade US sanctions, and were left

unable to access the money in their accounts.

The E-Gold episode had two curious aspects. One is that the exchange was permitted to operate for so

long, when it was obvious that it was operating illegally. In my work stopping Internet frauds, I would

meet Secret Service, FBI and Postal Inspectorate officers on a regular basis, and the conversation would

almost always turn to the ongoing mystery of why the scheme was allowed to keep running.,,The

authorities did not act until their hand was forced by the collapse of ‘Solid Investment,’ a Ponzi scheme

that had made extensive use of E-Gold to conceal money movements.

Another mystery is the sentences that the perpetrators received. Instead of 10 years in jail and a

$500,000 fine, the CEO received 300 hours community service, six months home detention and a $200 fine. It is difficult to imagine that one of two things didn’t happen. Either the organizers of the

exchange coughed up some very valuable information as part of their plea bargain, or the cooperation

with the authorities had begun long before the exchange was finally shut down.

Many people in my field suspected that E-Gold was allowed to operate because the Fed preferred to

have the money laundering activity happening in a flawed exchange, than see the rise of a genuinely

anonymous electronic cash system. If so, the concern was justified. The rise of Bitcoin came hard on

the heels of the collapse of E-Gold, and Bitcoin’s promise of anonymity is backed by some real

cryptography.

If I had had the good sense to ignore the libertarian ideology surrounding the launch of Bitcoin, I might

have bought a thousand bucks worth when the coins were fetching $0.02 each. Such a stake would be

‘worth’ $6.25 million today. Who knows what Bitcoin might be worth tomorrow? The answer could be

$250 or it could be $0.00. Nobody knows because Bitcoin is a currency without any intrinsic value.

Unlike a government minted currency, you can’t use Bitcoin to pay taxes or pay fees for government

services. Unlike bank issued scrip, there is no promise to redeem Bitcoin in gold or specie.

This lack of intrinsic value had initially led me to dismiss Bitcoin as broken. But I now understand that it

is the real genius of the scheme, as it allows the value of Bitcoin to soar as long as there are more

punters eager to throw money into the expanding bubble. In effect Bitcoin replaces both the E-Gold

system and the Solid Investment Ponzi scheme in one stroke.

The Bitcoin bubble is even better than a Ponzi scheme or a mere stock bubble as there is no

expectation against which the performance of Bitcoin need to be measured. The ‘value’ of Bitcoin will

increase for as long as there is more demand to buy than to sell. As long as the value of Bitcoin

appears to be increasing in value (or at the least not losing value), Bitcoin users are encouraged to

keep part of their funds in Bitcoin.

Another factor that encourages Bitcoiners to keep their money in the system is the sheer difficulty of

transferring money in and out. This is largely due to US government actions that have shut down many

of the ingress and egress portals in the Bitcoin ecology. Barclays Bank in the UK and the Dwolla money

transfer service have already closed the accounts of Mt Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange. The lowest

cost means I could find of transferring $1,000 into MtGox from the US would cost me at least $50,

possibly more (the sites are not exactly transparent about fees). Allowing for another 5% overhead to

transfer money out, Bitcoin is an expensive way to move money.

If Alice offers to pay $20,000 in BitCoin to Bob for his crack cocaine, the actual value of the Bitcoins

themselves does not matter very much to either party as long as Bob is reasonably confident that it

won’t drop too much before he can redeem his coins for cash. Traditional money laundering techniques

such as buying and selling valuable goods can easily eat up more than half of the amount transferred.

BitCoin does not need to be perfect to gain users, it just needs to be a little more efficient than existing

options.

As far as the use of Bitcoin as an exchange medium is concerned, the nominal price of the coin does

not matter except to the extent that the current price of about $125 makes it impossible to use BitCoins

to buy a hamburger. But not to worry, the Bitcoiners insist, we can make change! What they don’t

mention is that once change is added into the system, the cryptographic proofs of anonymity that the

system purports to offer become faith based.

The Avanti Group prcode81345782170 TAG

Is Bitcoin’s bubble finally bursting?

the avanti group prcode81345782170 TAG

Bitcoin is a digital currency based on some fancy cryptography that is designed to facilitate anonymous

transfers, and resist regulation by government.

A Bitcoin is essentially a claim on a string of numbers (that take the place of a physical coin) that can

be bought and sold. There are exchanges that will convert between bitcoin and other currencies, and

even some merchants who will take bitcoin in cash.

The idea of an anonymous digital currency itself is not new. David Chaum proposed the concept of

electronic cash and developed a scheme in the 1980′s. Chaum’s currency proposals never did really get

off the ground, but his keynote address at the first World Wide Web conference had a major impact on

the development of the Web.

Bitcoin itself is largely based on hashcash, a ‘proof of work’ scheme proposed by Adam Back in the

1990′s as a way to stop spam. The idea behind hashcash was to increase the cost of sending email to

the point that spam became uneconomic by requiring each sender to perform a quantity of

computational make-work.

Before the rise of Bitcoin in 2009, the most successful scheme of this kind was E-Gold, which operated

from 1996 until it was shut down by the Secret Service in 2007. E-Gold tapped into the libertarian

ideology of anonymous cash, but their technology fell far short of the rhetoric. E-Gold wasn’t really

anonymous, and wasn’t even located outside US jurisdiction. The company was registered in St. Nevis

and Kitts, the datacenter was located in Florida. The idea that E-Gold somehow operated outside the

scope of US regulation was a spectacular example of self-delusion by their management.

E-Gold wasn’t an anonymous currency as such, it was an exchange that allowed customers to transfer

ownership of gold between them. Which was sufficient to allow its use as a means of avoiding

government controls on money transfers. When the system was shut down, some of the largest

complaints came from Iran, where citizens had been using it to evade US sanctions, and were left

unable to access the money in their accounts.

The E-Gold episode had two curious aspects. One is that the exchange was permitted to operate for so

long, when it was obvious that it was operating illegally. In my work stopping Internet frauds, I would

meet Secret Service, FBI and Postal Inspectorate officers on a regular basis, and the conversation would

almost always turn to the ongoing mystery of why the scheme was allowed to keep running.,,The

authorities did not act until their hand was forced by the collapse of ‘Solid Investment,’ a Ponzi scheme

that had made extensive use of E-Gold to conceal money movements.

Another mystery is the sentences that the perpetrators received. Instead of 10 years in jail and a

$500,000 fine, the CEO received 300 hours community service, six months home detention and a $200 fine. It is difficult to imagine that one of two things didn’t happen. Either the organizers of the

exchange coughed up some very valuable information as part of their plea bargain, or the cooperation

with the authorities had begun long before the exchange was finally shut down.

Many people in my field suspected that E-Gold was allowed to operate because the Fed preferred to

have the money laundering activity happening in a flawed exchange, than see the rise of a genuinely

anonymous electronic cash system. If so, the concern was justified. The rise of Bitcoin came hard on

the heels of the collapse of E-Gold, and Bitcoin’s promise of anonymity is backed by some real

cryptography.

If I had had the good sense to ignore the libertarian ideology surrounding the launch of Bitcoin, I might

have bought a thousand bucks worth when the coins were fetching $0.02 each. Such a stake would be

‘worth’ $6.25 million today. Who knows what Bitcoin might be worth tomorrow? The answer could be

$250 or it could be $0.00. Nobody knows because Bitcoin is a currency without any intrinsic value.

Unlike a government minted currency, you can’t use Bitcoin to pay taxes or pay fees for government

services. Unlike bank issued scrip, there is no promise to redeem Bitcoin in gold or specie.

This lack of intrinsic value had initially led me to dismiss Bitcoin as broken. But I now understand that it

is the real genius of the scheme, as it allows the value of Bitcoin to soar as long as there are more

punters eager to throw money into the expanding bubble. In effect Bitcoin replaces both the E-Gold

system and the Solid Investment Ponzi scheme in one stroke.

The Bitcoin bubble is even better than a Ponzi scheme or a mere stock bubble as there is no

expectation against which the performance of Bitcoin need to be measured. The ‘value’ of Bitcoin will

increase for as long as there is more demand to buy than to sell. As long as the value of Bitcoin

appears to be increasing in value (or at the least not losing value), Bitcoin users are encouraged to

keep part of their funds in Bitcoin.

Another factor that encourages Bitcoiners to keep their money in the system is the sheer difficulty of

transferring money in and out. This is largely due to US government actions that have shut down many

of the ingress and egress portals in the Bitcoin ecology. Barclays Bank in the UK and the Dwolla money

transfer service have already closed the accounts of Mt Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange. The lowest

cost means I could find of transferring $1,000 into MtGox from the US would cost me at least $50,

possibly more (the sites are not exactly transparent about fees). Allowing for another 5% overhead to

transfer money out, Bitcoin is an expensive way to move money.

If Alice offers to pay $20,000 in BitCoin to Bob for his crack cocaine, the actual value of the Bitcoins

themselves does not matter very much to either party as long as Bob is reasonably confident that it

won’t drop too much before he can redeem his coins for cash. Traditional money laundering techniques

such as buying and selling valuable goods can easily eat up more than half of the amount transferred.

BitCoin does not need to be perfect to gain users, it just needs to be a little more efficient than existing

options.

As far as the use of Bitcoin as an exchange medium is concerned, the nominal price of the coin does

not matter except to the extent that the current price of about $125 makes it impossible to use BitCoins

to buy a hamburger. But not to worry, the Bitcoiners insist, we can make change! What they don’t

mention is that once change is added into the system, the cryptographic proofs of anonymity that the

system purports to offer become faith based.

You can watch Bitcoin transactions in real time at blockchain.info. Some of the transactions are quite

high value.

In the last hour (as of this writing) there were ten trades over $50,000, one of which was for

$669,999.05. Just what is the economic activity that is driving all these trades? Given the cost and

inconvenience of transferring money into and out of the BitCoin system, one might be tempted to

presume that much if not most of the economic activity is criminal.

Many of the customers left with money stranded in E-Gold accounts lived in Iran. Last year the

administration ratcheted up sanctions against Iran to an unprecedented level, attempting to sever

Iran’s connections to the international banking system. These sanctions have limited effect on the

government, which can make alternative arrangements, but the private sector is left to fend for itself.

Bitcoin provides the Iranian merchant class with an escape mechanism.

As with E-Gold, the question is not whether US authorities will act, but when, how and whether the

action will be effective.

The first blows have already been struck as the Department of Homeland Security has begun legal

action against the Dwolla payment service, pressuring them to stop Bitcoin transfers to Mt. Gox. US

currency reserves held by Mt. Gox were also seized for failing to register with the Financial Crimes

Enforcement Network.

On Wednesday, DHS moved against the Costa Rica based ‘Liberty Reserve’, another anonymous

payment transfer scheme, that also served as a means of transferring money into and out of the

Bitcoin system. Arthur Budovsky, the founder of Liberty Reserve was already on the run from a five year

prison sentence, reduced to probation, for his involvement in an E-Gold like scheme called Gold Age.

The DHS began its action against the gold-based exchange schemes from the bottom up, taking out the

small players like Gold Age before the raid on E-Gold. It seems likely that enforcement action against

the Bitcoin system is following the same pattern.

Bitcoiners assure me that their system is government proof, but I have heard the same arguments

about crypto-anarchy for years, and law enforcement has won every single time the theories have been

tested.

Rolling up the Bitcoin system would be more difficult than the action against E-Gold and Liberty

Reserve, but not impossible. If all else fails, DHS can ask Congress for legislation. It is unlikely that any

member apart from Rand Paul would object. The raid on Liberty Reserve provides DHS with an excellent

pretext for legislation, and that may well have been one of the reasons for the timing.

If DHS does not act soon, Bitcoin might become too widespread to be stoppable. Iran is holding its

presidential election on June 14th, and there are several important national days before that. The end

for Bitcoin might be coming quite soon.

The Avanti Group prcode81345782170 TAG

Is Bitcoin’s bubble finally bursting?

the avanti group prcode81345782170 TAG

Bitcoin is a digital currency based on some fancy cryptography that is designed to facilitate anonymous

transfers, and resist regulation by government.

A Bitcoin is essentially a claim on a string of numbers (that take the place of a physical coin) that can

be bought and sold. There are exchanges that will convert between bitcoin and other currencies, and

even some merchants who will take bitcoin in cash.

The idea of an anonymous digital currency itself is not new. David Chaum proposed the concept of

electronic cash and developed a scheme in the 1980′s. Chaum’s currency proposals never did really get

off the ground, but his keynote address at the first World Wide Web conference had a major impact on

the development of the Web.

Bitcoin itself is largely based on hashcash, a ‘proof of work’ scheme proposed by Adam Back in the

1990′s as a way to stop spam. The idea behind hashcash was to increase the cost of sending email to

the point that spam became uneconomic by requiring each sender to perform a quantity of

computational make-work.

Before the rise of Bitcoin in 2009, the most successful scheme of this kind was E-Gold, which operated

from 1996 until it was shut down by the Secret Service in 2007. E-Gold tapped into the libertarian

ideology of anonymous cash, but their technology fell far short of the rhetoric. E-Gold wasn’t really

anonymous, and wasn’t even located outside US jurisdiction. The company was registered in St. Nevis

and Kitts, the datacenter was located in Florida. The idea that E-Gold somehow operated outside the

scope of US regulation was a spectacular example of self-delusion by their management.

E-Gold wasn’t an anonymous currency as such, it was an exchange that allowed customers to transfer

ownership of gold between them. Which was sufficient to allow its use as a means of avoiding

government controls on money transfers. When the system was shut down, some of the largest

complaints came from Iran, where citizens had been using it to evade US sanctions, and were left

unable to access the money in their accounts.

The E-Gold episode had two curious aspects. One is that the exchange was permitted to operate for so

long, when it was obvious that it was operating illegally. In my work stopping Internet frauds, I would

meet Secret Service, FBI and Postal Inspectorate officers on a regular basis, and the conversation would

almost always turn to the ongoing mystery of why the scheme was allowed to keep running.,,The

authorities did not act until their hand was forced by the collapse of ‘Solid Investment,’ a Ponzi scheme

that had made extensive use of E-Gold to conceal money movements.

Another mystery is the sentences that the perpetrators received. Instead of 10 years in jail and a

$500,000 fine, the CEO received 300 hours community service, six months home detention and a $200 fine. It is difficult to imagine that one of two things didn’t happen. Either the organizers of the

exchange coughed up some very valuable information as part of their plea bargain, or the cooperation

with the authorities had begun long before the exchange was finally shut down.

Many people in my field suspected that E-Gold was allowed to operate because the Fed preferred to

have the money laundering activity happening in a flawed exchange, than see the rise of a genuinely

anonymous electronic cash system. If so, the concern was justified. The rise of Bitcoin came hard on

the heels of the collapse of E-Gold, and Bitcoin’s promise of anonymity is backed by some real

cryptography.

If I had had the good sense to ignore the libertarian ideology surrounding the launch of Bitcoin, I might

have bought a thousand bucks worth when the coins were fetching $0.02 each. Such a stake would be

‘worth’ $6.25 million today. Who knows what Bitcoin might be worth tomorrow? The answer could be

$250 or it could be $0.00. Nobody knows because Bitcoin is a currency without any intrinsic value.

Unlike a government minted currency, you can’t use Bitcoin to pay taxes or pay fees for government

services. Unlike bank issued scrip, there is no promise to redeem Bitcoin in gold or specie.

This lack of intrinsic value had initially led me to dismiss Bitcoin as broken. But I now understand that it

is the real genius of the scheme, as it allows the value of Bitcoin to soar as long as there are more

punters eager to throw money into the expanding bubble. In effect Bitcoin replaces both the E-Gold

system and the Solid Investment Ponzi scheme in one stroke.

The Bitcoin bubble is even better than a Ponzi scheme or a mere stock bubble as there is no

expectation against which the performance of Bitcoin need to be measured. The ‘value’ of Bitcoin will

increase for as long as there is more demand to buy than to sell. As long as the value of Bitcoin

appears to be increasing in value (or at the least not losing value), Bitcoin users are encouraged to

keep part of their funds in Bitcoin.

Another factor that encourages Bitcoiners to keep their money in the system is the sheer difficulty of

transferring money in and out. This is largely due to US government actions that have shut down many

of the ingress and egress portals in the Bitcoin ecology. Barclays Bank in the UK and the Dwolla money

transfer service have already closed the accounts of Mt Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange. The lowest

cost means I could find of transferring $1,000 into MtGox from the US would cost me at least $50,

possibly more (the sites are not exactly transparent about fees). Allowing for another 5% overhead to

transfer money out, Bitcoin is an expensive way to move money.

If Alice offers to pay $20,000 in BitCoin to Bob for his crack cocaine, the actual value of the Bitcoins

themselves does not matter very much to either party as long as Bob is reasonably confident that it

won’t drop too much before he can redeem his coins for cash. Traditional money laundering techniques

such as buying and selling valuable goods can easily eat up more than half of the amount transferred.

BitCoin does not need to be perfect to gain users, it just needs to be a little more efficient than existing

options.

As far as the use of Bitcoin as an exchange medium is concerned, the nominal price of the coin does

not matter except to the extent that the current price of about $125 makes it impossible to use BitCoins

to buy a hamburger. But not to worry, the Bitcoiners insist, we can make change! What they don’t

mention is that once change is added into the system, the cryptographic proofs of anonymity that the

system purports to offer become faith based.

You can watch Bitcoin transactions in real time at blockchain.info. Some of the transactions are quite

high value.

In the last hour (as of this writing) there were ten trades over $50,000, one of which was for

$669,999.05. Just what is the economic activity that is driving all these trades? Given the cost and

inconvenience of transferring money into and out of the BitCoin system, one might be tempted to

presume that much if not most of the economic activity is criminal.

Many of the customers left with money stranded in E-Gold accounts lived in Iran. Last year the

administration ratcheted up sanctions against Iran to an unprecedented level, attempting to sever

Iran’s connections to the international banking system. These sanctions have limited effect on the

government, which can make alternative arrangements, but the private sector is left to fend for itself.

Bitcoin provides the Iranian merchant class with an escape mechanism.

As with E-Gold, the question is not whether US authorities will act, but when, how and whether the

action will be effective.

The first blows have already been struck as the Department of Homeland Security has begun legal

action against the Dwolla payment service, pressuring them to stop Bitcoin transfers to Mt. Gox. US

currency reserves held by Mt. Gox were also seized for failing to register with the Financial Crimes

Enforcement Network.

On Wednesday, DHS moved against the Costa Rica based ‘Liberty Reserve’, another anonymous

payment transfer scheme, that also served as a means of transferring money into and out of the

Bitcoin system. Arthur Budovsky, the founder of Liberty Reserve was already on the run from a five year

prison sentence, reduced to probation, for his involvement in an E-Gold like scheme called Gold Age.

The DHS began its action against the gold-based exchange schemes from the bottom up, taking out the

small players like Gold Age before the raid on E-Gold. It seems likely that enforcement action against

the Bitcoin system is following the same pattern.

Bitcoiners assure me that their system is government proof, but I have heard the same arguments

about crypto-anarchy for years, and law enforcement has won every single time the theories have been

tested.

Rolling up the Bitcoin system would be more difficult than the action against E-Gold and Liberty

Reserve, but not impossible. If all else fails, DHS can ask Congress for legislation. It is unlikely that any

member apart from Rand Paul would object. The raid on Liberty Reserve provides DHS with an excellent

pretext for legislation, and that may well have been one of the reasons for the timing.

If DHS does not act soon, Bitcoin might become too widespread to be stoppable. Iran is holding its

presidential election on June 14th, and there are several important national days before that. The end

for Bitcoin might be coming quite soon.

The Avanti Group prcode81345782170 TAG

Is Bitcoin’s bubble finally bursting?

the avanti group prcode81345782170 TAG

Bitcoin is a digital currency based on some fancy cryptography that is designed to facilitate anonymous

transfers, and resist regulation by government.

A Bitcoin is essentially a claim on a string of numbers (that take the place of a physical coin) that can

be bought and sold. There are exchanges that will convert between bitcoin and other currencies, and

even some merchants who will take bitcoin in cash.

The idea of an anonymous digital currency itself is not new. David Chaum proposed the concept of

electronic cash and developed a scheme in the 1980′s. Chaum’s currency proposals never did really get

off the ground, but his keynote address at the first World Wide Web conference had a major impact on

the development of the Web.

Bitcoin itself is largely based on hashcash, a ‘proof of work’ scheme proposed by Adam Back in the

1990′s as a way to stop spam. The idea behind hashcash was to increase the cost of sending email to

the point that spam became uneconomic by requiring each sender to perform a quantity of

computational make-work.

Before the rise of Bitcoin in 2009, the most successful scheme of this kind was E-Gold, which operated

from 1996 until it was shut down by the Secret Service in 2007. E-Gold tapped into the libertarian

ideology of anonymous cash, but their technology fell far short of the rhetoric. E-Gold wasn’t really

anonymous, and wasn’t even located outside US jurisdiction. The company was registered in St. Nevis

and Kitts, the datacenter was located in Florida. The idea that E-Gold somehow operated outside the

scope of US regulation was a spectacular example of self-delusion by their management.

E-Gold wasn’t an anonymous currency as such, it was an exchange that allowed customers to transfer

ownership of gold between them. Which was sufficient to allow its use as a means of avoiding

government controls on money transfers. When the system was shut down, some of the largest

complaints came from Iran, where citizens had been using it to evade US sanctions, and were left

unable to access the money in their accounts.

The E-Gold episode had two curious aspects. One is that the exchange was permitted to operate for so

long, when it was obvious that it was operating illegally. In my work stopping Internet frauds, I would

meet Secret Service, FBI and Postal Inspectorate officers on a regular basis, and the conversation would

almost always turn to the ongoing mystery of why the scheme was allowed to keep running.,,The

authorities did not act until their hand was forced by the collapse of ‘Solid Investment,’ a Ponzi scheme

that had made extensive use of E-Gold to conceal money movements.

Another mystery is the sentences that the perpetrators received. Instead of 10 years in jail and a

$500,000 fine, the CEO received 300 hours community service, six months home detention and a $200 fine. It is difficult to imagine that one of two things didn’t happen. Either the organizers of the

exchange coughed up some very valuable information as part of their plea bargain, or the cooperation

with the authorities had begun long before the exchange was finally shut down.

Many people in my field suspected that E-Gold was allowed to operate because the Fed preferred to

have the money laundering activity happening in a flawed exchange, than see the rise of a genuinely

anonymous electronic cash system. If so, the concern was justified. The rise of Bitcoin came hard on

the heels of the collapse of E-Gold, and Bitcoin’s promise of anonymity is backed by some real

cryptography.

If I had had the good sense to ignore the libertarian ideology surrounding the launch of Bitcoin, I might

have bought a thousand bucks worth when the coins were fetching $0.02 each. Such a stake would be

‘worth’ $6.25 million today. Who knows what Bitcoin might be worth tomorrow? The answer could be

$250 or it could be $0.00. Nobody knows because Bitcoin is a currency without any intrinsic value.

Unlike a government minted currency, you can’t use Bitcoin to pay taxes or pay fees for government

services. Unlike bank issued scrip, there is no promise to redeem Bitcoin in gold or specie.

This lack of intrinsic value had initially led me to dismiss Bitcoin as broken. But I now understand that it

is the real genius of the scheme, as it allows the value of Bitcoin to soar as long as there are more

punters eager to throw money into the expanding bubble. In effect Bitcoin replaces both the E-Gold

system and the Solid Investment Ponzi scheme in one stroke.

The Bitcoin bubble is even better than a Ponzi scheme or a mere stock bubble as there is no

expectation against which the performance of Bitcoin need to be measured. The ‘value’ of Bitcoin will

increase for as long as there is more demand to buy than to sell. As long as the value of Bitcoin

appears to be increasing in value (or at the least not losing value), Bitcoin users are encouraged to

keep part of their funds in Bitcoin.

Another factor that encourages Bitcoiners to keep their money in the system is the sheer difficulty of

transferring money in and out. This is largely due to US government actions that have shut down many

of the ingress and egress portals in the Bitcoin ecology. Barclays Bank in the UK and the Dwolla money

transfer service have already closed the accounts of Mt Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange. The lowest

cost means I could find of transferring $1,000 into MtGox from the US would cost me at least $50,

possibly more (the sites are not exactly transparent about fees). Allowing for another 5% overhead to

transfer money out, Bitcoin is an expensive way to move money.

If Alice offers to pay $20,000 in BitCoin to Bob for his crack cocaine, the actual value of the Bitcoins

themselves does not matter very much to either party as long as Bob is reasonably confident that it

won’t drop too much before he can redeem his coins for cash. Traditional money laundering techniques

such as buying and selling valuable goods can easily eat up more than half of the amount transferred.

BitCoin does not need to be perfect to gain users, it just needs to be a little more efficient than existing

options.

As far as the use of Bitcoin as an exchange medium is concerned, the nominal price of the coin does

not matter except to the extent that the current price of about $125 makes it impossible to use BitCoins

to buy a hamburger. But not to worry, the Bitcoiners insist, we can make change! What they don’t

mention is that once change is added into the system, the cryptographic proofs of anonymity that the

system purports to offer become faith based.

You can watch Bitcoin transactions in real time at blockchain.info. Some of the transactions are quite

high value.

In the last hour (as of this writing) there were ten trades over $50,000, one of which was for

$669,999.05. Just what is the economic activity that is driving all these trades? Given the cost and

inconvenience of transferring money into and out of the BitCoin system, one might be tempted to

presume that much if not most of the economic activity is criminal.

Many of the customers left with money stranded in E-Gold accounts lived in Iran. Last year the

administration ratcheted up sanctions against Iran to an unprecedented level, attempting to sever

Iran’s connections to the international banking system. These sanctions have limited effect on the

government, which can make alternative arrangements, but the private sector is left to fend for itself.

Bitcoin provides the Iranian merchant class with an escape mechanism.

As with E-Gold, the question is not whether US authorities will act, but when, how and whether the

action will be effective.

The first blows have already been struck as the Department of Homeland Security has begun legal

action against the Dwolla payment service, pressuring them to stop Bitcoin transfers to Mt. Gox. US

currency reserves held by Mt. Gox were also seized for failing to register with the Financial Crimes

Enforcement Network.

On Wednesday, DHS moved against the Costa Rica based ‘Liberty Reserve’, another anonymous

payment transfer scheme, that also served as a means of transferring money into and out of the

Bitcoin system. Arthur Budovsky, the founder of Liberty Reserve was already on the run from a five year

prison sentence, reduced to probation, for his involvement in an E-Gold like scheme called Gold Age.

The DHS began its action against the gold-based exchange schemes from the bottom up, taking out the

small players like Gold Age before the raid on E-Gold. It seems likely that enforcement action against

the Bitcoin system is following the same pattern.

Bitcoiners assure me that their system is government proof, but I have heard the same arguments

about crypto-anarchy for years, and law enforcement has won every single time the theories have been

tested.

Rolling up the Bitcoin system would be more difficult than the action against E-Gold and Liberty

Reserve, but not impossible. If all else fails, DHS can ask Congress for legislation. It is unlikely that any

member apart from Rand Paul would object. The raid on Liberty Reserve provides DHS with an excellent

pretext for legislation, and that may well have been one of the reasons for the timing.

If DHS does not act soon, Bitcoin might become too widespread to be stoppable. Iran is holding its

presidential election on June 14th, and there are several important national days before that. The end

for Bitcoin might be coming quite soon.

The Avanti Group prcode81345782170 TAG