LibertyReserve.com Shuttered, Founder Arrested In Spain 138
hypnosec writes "Libertyreserve.com has been shut with the founder arrested by police in Spain this week over his alleged involvement in money laundering. Libertyreserve.com has been down for over three days now and the arrest seems to be the reason behind the outage. Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, a 39-year-old male, has been arrested by Spanish authorities as a part of their ongoing investigations into money laundering. U.S. officials may very well seek his extradition."
Re:Well that's vague. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like the guy running Bitcoin should keep his anonymity?
That comment shows a complete lack of understanding of what Bitcoin is. What you just said is as vague as saying that "The guy running the Internet better watch his back!"
Regardless, the only reason I know about LibertyReserve is because of Bitcoin. LR used to be one of the few ways to reliably buy Bitcoins, but it looked way too shady for me so I found other ways.
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Sounds like the guy running Bitcoin should keep his anonymity?
That comment shows a complete lack of understanding of what Bitcoin is. What you just said is as vague as saying that "The guy running the Internet better watch his back!"
Regardless, the only reason I know about LibertyReserve is because of Bitcoin. LR used to be one of the few ways to reliably buy Bitcoins, but it looked way too shady for me so I found other ways.
I really hate to snap you back into reality here, but in the eyes of every single bank in the world, all possible ways to obtain Bitcoins is shady.
Of course, the real irony here is we're going after this guy for "laundering" while trillions sit in offshore accounts, untouched and unaccounted for, under massive tax shelters, as everyone in power simply laughs it off as if it were some kind of old-school ringknocker tradition, while the rest of us pay their taxes.
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Emphasis on power.
Fairness and justice are hollow concepts these days. If you don't wanna get fucked in the ass by the elite, don't piss them off.
Re:Well that's vague. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why you are laboring under the impression that it was ever different. I'd say that despite all the corruption we have now, we still have more in the way of fairness and peace than we've generally had during most of the agrarian age.
Re:Well that's vague. (Score:5, Insightful)
People of every age like to disasterbate about how bad it is. Yet every objective measure continues to show increasing lifespans and quality of life. Hell, our worst problem now is too many cheap calories per person, throwing a monkey wrench into one of the most historically useful measurements.
These indicators all scale directly with economic freedom, regardless of political narratives of either party. Hell, there shouldn't even be political narratives anymore. We have solved the problem: let people be free.
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It's hard to answer this without guffawing, but effectively you've just said that the only thing that matters is the ability to form companies.
What companies do doesn't matter. The fact that companies are under complete control by government doesn't matter. The fact that they can screw the taxman doesn't matter. The fact that they can screw the citizenry doesn't matter either. Government controls over feeding the population crap would be bad, right?
In other words, society and people don't matter to you.
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I was just reading a book about the civil rights era. A black man had irritated the local Southern sheriff. The local sheriff took him out back, shouted "he's coming right at me!" in his police radio, and shot the man several times. The man miraculously survived, so the local prosecutor charged him with assaulting the sheriff. T
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I would guess you're not living in Africa, or the middle east
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Right, because clearly my post was arguing that the world no longer has any problems whatsoever.
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Yeah, because saying, ...we still have more in the way of fairness and peace than we've generally had during most of the agrarian age. is not the same thing. It would be wise to consider other viewpoints that illustrate the utter absurdity of your post, because yours come from a very small minority.
Re:Well that's vague. (Score:5, Insightful)
If we put peace and fairness on a scale from 1 to 100, with 100 being perfect justice and no war/fighting, then if we go from a 15 to a 25, it's still an improvement, even if there's much left to be desired. Far more people in the world today do live safe and prosperous lives, lives that were once only for kings and clergy. A lot of people still don't, but it hasn't really gotten worse over the last 1000 years, say.
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Yes, well, as I keep on saying, but not getting through, is that it is very easy to put "peace and fairness on a scale from 1 to 100" when it's not your ass being raped with a broken coke bottle.
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What I'm basically saying, reduced to its logical beginnings, is:
Treat all cultures as we do Aboriginal cultures: Let them persist as they have been for millennia, without obstruction, intervention, or moral superiority. Let each region, culture evolve under the laws of natural selection until they, too, have reached our (white, Japanese, etc.) level of technology.
And, yes, I believe this should eventually be carried out on even a regional basis, so that some (many?) parts of great megastates, like the Uni
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Trade is intervention (Score:2)
Treat all cultures as we do Aboriginal cultures: Let them persist as they have been for millennia, without obstruction, intervention, or moral superiority.
Since antiquity, societies with different cultures have been trading with one another. Trade is intervention.
RFC 1149-c compliant crazy formatting: (Score:2)
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This is a variant of the "no atheist in a foxhole" meme. What may be true for this or that person should not be the basis by which we judge overall quality of life in the world. There will always be people who get broken coke bottles up the ass. And there will always be people who live lives far more posh than they deserve. I see no point in saying the world is a shithole because it's a shithole for some people, nor in saying that the world is wonderful because it's wonderful for some people. We should judg
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You are totally unable to see how subjective such statements are. There is no neutral position in which to quantify your 'justice velocity'. It's all a bunch of think tank nonsense.
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And you live in a sad world where the fact that somebody is getting raped by coke bottles somewhere means the world totally sucks and nobody can ever say anything nice about it. Which is really a slap in the face to the large number of people who work tireless and thanklessly to bring about justice and peace, from grassroots agitators and rebellious populations willing to give up their lives to make things right to the variety of NGOs and other organizations that do real work to help real people, to say not
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There's lots of 'nice things' to say. They just don't add up the way you want to think they do. You speak from a very luxurious position, and get all defensive when challenged on it.
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No, it's not just a lot of nice things to say. A lot of nice things to say is "there really aren't any problems in the world today" and "anybody can be rich if they put in just a little bit of hard work". Those kinds of statements ignore reality. So do yours. It's easy to go around shooting the messenger and focusing on the ethos rather than the logos. You can always call someone biased or declare that they are in a position where "it's easy to say...". It's really really easy to do that. I could probably d
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Overall, yes. Individually no. Individuals before the invention of modern firearms and rail were able to basically migrate and say piss off to most. But were equally limited in escape from larger numbers. The only people they had to worry about was their neighbors. If you didn't live in Europe it wasn't to bad.
Hermit caves are no longer viable. Small nomadic tribes can no longer just disappear. There are a few exceptions sort of. Like Bedouins. But even they and their Kurdish neighbors are influenced by glo
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I would disagree. If it's a small tribe, 20 or 40 people at most. Or a village. You could either escape the asshattery or directly resist the individuals giving the orders. People make the assumption that all tribes were ruled purely by force. I think if you study the matter many were ruled by responsible leadership as well. In fact there were many more forms of leadership. People could pick and choose better just what kind of politics they liked over all. Of course they took much more individual responsibi
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It is the Just Us system after all. You don't expect anything different do you? I'm starting to side with the folks who make the juvenile comments about wanting to see them swing from the lampposts. Well, I'm not starting to side with them as much as I'm starting to get their frustrations. I am lucky enough to where such doesn't concern me but the repeated abuses of those who aren't are bound to result in a backlash eventually. You can only piss on someone's head so many times before they rip your dick off.
Re:Well that's vague. (Score:4, Informative)
Laundering and tax evasion are two different things, why are you confusing them? Laundering is the process of breaking the money trail of illegal activities. You know, like organised crime, human trafficking, drug dealing...
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There is no requirement to evade taxes when laundering money. In fact it would be wise to pay taxes to avoid suspicion.
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On what basis do you disagree?
The low level of people reporting income as being from illegal activities, vs the estimations of illegal income. The discrepancy indicates that a large number of people don't report correctly.
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Are you suggesting that the banking system does not launder money for criminals and terrorists??? The International banking system is known to launder billions and billions. Far more then the total market value of all bitcoins combined.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18880269
Highlights: HBMX (mexico) shipped $7bn to HSBC's US operation for high-profile clients involved in drug trafficking. 28,000 undisclosed sensitive transactions between 2001 and 2007... The vast majority of those transactions - worth $
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No. I'm not suggesting who is and who isn't a party to a crime.
I have no idea where you got that suggestion from. Are you hallucinating?
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Of course, the real irony here is we're going after this guy for "laundering" while trillions sit in offshore accounts, untouched and unaccounted for, under massive tax shelters, as everyone in power simply laughs it off as if it were some kind of old-school ringknocker tradition, while the rest of us pay their taxes.
That would be called a "you too" argument. Doesn't mean the original point is wrong. Also, the US (and most governments in fact) have long established money laundering laws precisely to stop criminals moving money around by any means. I assume they are going after liberyreserve.com because it is running afoul of those laws in some way, e.g. by not reporting large or suspicious transactions or actively facilitating them.
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I really hate to snap you back into reality here, but in the eyes of every single bank in the world, all possible ways to obtain Bitcoins is shady.
Of course, the real irony here is we're going after this guy for "laundering" while trillions sit in offshore accounts, untouched and unaccounted for, under massive tax shelters, as everyone in power simply laughs it off as if it were some kind of old-school ringknocker tradition, while the rest of us pay their taxes.
Exactly. If you want to launder money or transact payments for black market goods, then you better use the international banking system. Otherwise, you will upset people and you will be arrested.
On the other hand, the banking system will appreciate your work in helping them make all digital currency transactions appear shady. It will help them in their efforts to brand bitcoin as a currency of the criminals
Liberty Reserve has *NOTHING* to do with Bitcoin!! (Score:5, Informative)
There was an entire selection of e-currencies to choose from before cryptocurrencies [wikipedia.org] (Bitcoin being the first, and premier, example) were even invented by Satoshi [wikipedia.org] in 2009. Liberty Reserve wasn't even the first example of such, but indeed an often trusted replacement for the original e-Gold service [wikipedia.org] that came under fire by the US Department of Justice already over 6 years ago in 2007. There seems to be a basic confusion in the comments so far as to the blatant fundamental differences between services like LR (and e-Gold before it) and Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency derivatives thereof). As a user of centralised e-currencies multiple years before Bitcoin existed, I would like to make a couple of things clear:
The difference between services like Liberty Reserve and e-Gold and Bitcoin is that the former are centralised services operated and controlled by a single collection of people, often legally protected by an incorporated entity in the Central American/Carribean region of the Earth. The pioneers of Internet "e-currencies [wikipedia.org]" such as these specifically chose to create their corporations in this part of the world within known tax havens. It is only natural for the creators to wish to legally establish such a corporation designed specifically to manage money transfers in a place that will minimally tax such transfers.
e-Gold's creators incorporated in the Carribbean island state of St. Kitts and Nevis, and the Liberty Reserve creators incorporated in Panama (altho I truly did not know where the masterminds lived or where from they operated until now, but it seems from this article the answer is España). The entire difference between them and the pseudonymos 'Satoshi Nakamoto' is that old generation e-currency operators maintained central control of monitary transactions using their service. You managed your account by connecting to their website, logging in, and checking your funds, managing transfers, and so forth, but all of this was always under their full control. If they had any issues with your use of your own account, they had the right to shut off your access to it and confiscate all of your funds, with essentially no capability of retrival (I know of people who lost access to thousands of USD this way). They taxed every transfer you wished to make, which affected both transfers between 2 users within the same system (sending LR LR) or to exit/enter the system (exchanging LR to/from USD). They could monitor all transactions made between every user and geolocate non-anonymised users' IP addresses to log all financial activity within their system; with Bitcoin, all transactions are public to all, as opposed to only a select few being able to monitor all else who use this system to transfer money.
The most essentially incorrect aspect of confusing this story with anything to do with Bitcoin, is that Bitcoin is exciting and inspiring exactly because it is the antithesis of centralised architecture, or at least the closest successful example thereof. When we were using Liberty Reserve (or other centralised e-currency), we were completely under the creator's control. LR eventually forced upon users a captcha based in Flash that prevented us from using Tor to login securely as we could for multiple years before. When LR attacked our technical ability to use the service anonymously, many moved to Pecunix. Whilst Pecunix has a better login system (one that blatantly allows for anonymous access), it was still a centralised e-currency controlled by a single group of people operating behind a
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It's all open-source, openly developed, openly operated— if the strings you claim exist actually existed you'd be able to point to them easily. So where is your evidence?
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Actually, Mr. Nerdcoin Apologist, it's entirely possible part of Nerdcoin's design is to make it appear no one is in control of Nerdcoin, when in fact there is someone "pulling the strings." Nerdtcoins ARE shady in and of themselves. Sounds like someone can't see the forest through the trees.
That comment shows you have no understanding of how Bitcoin works.
Re:Well that's vague. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well that's vague. (Score:5, Funny)
I tried reading the source but it was all written in code.
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You can't have some big conspiracy when it comes to open standards and open source programs. Claiming that there MUST be some sort of malicious thing lurking in the program is completely unfounded because Bitcoin is open. Its counter-productive to claim a conspiracy when one does not exist and if you think one exists, you can look in the source yourself and see if it does exist.
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Sounds like the guy running Bitcoin should keep his anonymity?
Sounds like the guy who knows nothing about Bitcoin should keep his mouth shut until he knows how it works?
And you won't particularly care to learn this, but LR had far more going on than simply serving as a Bitcoin/USD gateway. If the feds wanted to go after Bitcoin, it would have tried to take out Gox by now (and no, closing their Dwolla doesn't count).
That said, based on their increasing level of fear over a silly little online currency, I h
he is not going to an resort prison (Score:1)
he is not going to an resort prison no for that it's FMITA prison.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:he is not going to an resort prison (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the justice system (alone) that's broken, it's the general public.
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They both are.
Not only is prison rape wrong even though the victim is a prisoner, but why the hell should the guy doing the raping get free buttsex?
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Sure they can. They just keep on choosing not to.
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And that took quite a lot of effort, from what I can tell.
Think about it: in order for the public to be the way it is, that is, broken with regards to how it treats its fellow human beings, some sort of self-sustaining design with negative feedback cycles has to be developed. This is, of course, assuming that human beings are, on the majority, naturally empathic beings, who do not wish each other harm...perhaps with the odd exception. Now, is it this way because of some natural evolution, or because it's si
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the Amish, etc. are not broken)
OMG WTF?!!! Amish not broken?!! [google.com]
Next you'll try to tell us that there wasn't a global cetacean [google.com] conspiracy to rape Carl Sagan [williampoundstone.net].
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I would say there is something profoundly broken with the general public as well, not mention a few of us here, given that the second titled post leapt to partisan politics via a non sequitur, and the rest weren't much better, each in their own way, although there was at least a valid grammar nazi post. Yay for us.
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There is something profoundly broken about our justice system in that the general public takes joy in imagining the likelihood of prison rape.
A casual visitor to Slashdot might be excused for thinking that it was the geek --- and not the general public --- who was obsessed with talk of prison rape and never more so then when one of his own is coming up for sentencing on a felony charge,
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Somebody from Crete?
U.S. officials may very well seek his extradition. (Score:2, Insightful)
When I read that part the first thing that popped into my head was, "the entire arrest could be bogus".
It's weird, when the U.S. is behind something like this then that increases the chances of the whole thing being bogus.
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Like the illegal raids on Kim Dotcom?
Re:U.S. officials may very well seek his extraditi (Score:4, Insightful)
The US government thinks that it needs to be able to spy on anyone's account, for any reason, at any time and if you don't agree to violate your customer's privacy you're aiding *insert scare-word of the day*.
I'm imagining that the US government is scared at its increasing financial irrelevance in the digital world. The US Dollar, currently the backbone of most financial transactions is in jeopardy. Digital, open currencies such as Bitcoin provide a transparent look at monetary policy and potentially can have more stability when compared to the US dollar which has the monetary policy of "whatever the hell Bernake thinks is best" and hard money like gold and silver make very good stores of wealth that cannot be devalued by printing.
Now, the total collapse of the US dollar is likely to be delayed because out of the major currencies (USD, Yen, Euro, Sterling) the USD looks to be the one in least jeopardy, but fiat currencies have a 100% rate of failure and its likely that the multitude of better currencies will hasten the end of the USD.
N/T (Score:4, Insightful)
wtf is libertyreserve? how about a proper sumamary?
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wtf is libertyreserve? how about a proper sumamary?
I guessed it's some bitcoin exchange. that probably wasn't sending transactions direct to DOJ.
Re:N/T (Score:5, Informative)
wtf is libertyreserve? how about a proper sumamary?
I guessed it's some bitcoin exchange. that probably wasn't sending transactions direct to DOJ.
I was wrong, it seems it was an egold clone. a money sending service. pretty much by definition running one is going afoul of US laws regardless of you having anything to do with USA..
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Unless you're HSBC, of course. Then it's all cool.
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Cue the ominous sound of black helicopters.
"gl4ss... gl4ss...????"
HSBC (Score:5, Interesting)
He should use the HSBC defense.
Or does that only apply if you money-launder billions of drug money?
Re:HSBC (Score:5, Insightful)
Only applies if you're Too Big To Fail.
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Only applies if you're ...
"... too big to jail" were the exact words used.
It is still the USA saying that one corrupt, violent government can use international finance and a less corrupt, violent government can't. I note that no-one has made that complaint on Slashdot.
When no-one goes to jail and the corporation gets 20% commission, another 'too big to jail' operator will take the money. It's just like the drug trade. Although the US knows the racket now, the new 'Mr Big' can make lots of money if it doesn't get greedy. That's
Don't panic (Score:2)
Where do annoying words come from? (Score:1, Insightful)
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How is closed any better? It's just another metaphor.
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Perhaps because shuttered [thefreedictionary.com] is [google.co.nz] the [reference.com] correct [merriam-webster.com] word [oxforddictionaries.com]
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Re:Where do annoying words come from? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shuttered and closed have different implications in this case. Closed implies an orderly wind down, while shuttered implies a rapid and disorderly cessation. It's akin the difference between closing time at night a local restaurant, and the owners throwing everyone out in the middle of the day.
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Now, tell me if it was out of business or I got there later than they were open for the day.
What if I said:
I went to the local market last night, and it was shuttered.
With us or against us (Score:2)
SEPA Eurozone surveillance (Score:1)
The next big thing is the Euro zone SEPA transfers. These replace all internal European transfers by Feb 2014, so there will be one big central database of all the money sent between anyone.
Want to know how much rent Bob pays? It's right there in the database. How much money was donated to Jeffs political campaign? Who what when and how much is listed in that big database ready to be mined by anyone with a political mind to do so. Every money transaction listed in a nice juicy database waiting to be data mi
digital currencies, money exchanges (Score:2)
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Most of the other digital currencies are scams and frauds. Most of them are created for the express purpose of making the creator rich. Besides, Wikipedia lists heaps, just not at the article you linked to. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_currencies [wikipedia.org].
Oh, and Bitcoin. Don't use LibertyReserve or another centralized system, use Bitcoin!
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It was the same thing with the property bubble. Those invested in the pyramid scheme were always the most vocal, trying to keep prices propped up. Watch this post get modded down now as they try to protect their 'investment'.
A crackdown on non-USD transactions... (Score:1)
The question is, what isn't the government telling the public? According to their official numbers, inflation is minimal, the currency is stable and the Fed's policies are helping the economy. On the other hand, their actions and the results are completely different.
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What does money laundering have to do with "exiting the USD"? Anybody can convert USD to anything they like anytime they like.
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The US's "money laundering" regulations either make you have to refuse US customers (which is what most foreign banks do) or invade the privacy of your customers. There is no way to respect the privacy of your customers and take US customers. Its not about money laundering, its about control.
Preventing money laundering does not mean you have to go to the extremes that the US government requires. The only reason
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Those are annoying to regular users of USD, but if you just want to exit the USD, they do not "prevent" you from doing so: you exchange your USD once, fill out the paperwork, and never have to deal with USD or US banking regulations again.
If you find a currency and country that's actually better, let me know. So far, holding money in USD st
Money laundering is bad, mkay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that time when biggest Wall Street and City of London banks were found guilty of laundering drug money? They all went to prison!
And by prison I mean got bonuses.
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bitcoin story (Score:2, Troll)
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Bitfloor was another way, but BofA shut down their account without warning. Guess they didn't like the competition. Same thing happened to a similar bitcoin service in Canada.
What took them so long? (Score:3, Informative)
For all the talk about "ZOMG the US government/New World Order/Illuminati is going to take our moneez!" in this thread, I'm surprised there's been absolutely no mention of what Liberty Reserve was often used for: the crimeware trade.
Head over to Krebs on Security [krebsonsecurity.com] for a better idea of why shutting down Liberty Reserve is a Good Thing.
Obviously, they didn't expect it. (Score:1)
Because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Obama? Left wing? LOLLLLLLLl (Score:2)
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