Topic: I will pay 0.3 BTC for an insurance policy against btc-e (Read 3844 times)

Uhhhh here's an idea... Withdraw 100 BTC to Bitstamp, 50 BTC to a wallet, leave 100 BTC on BTC-e.  You can always grab the 100 BTC off Stamp later, you don't need to sell the BTC.  Once the first 100 BTC is cashed out from BTC-e, move another 100 in.  Free insurance.

Doubt that anyone was willing to risk the 250BTC.

So did anyone do this and make the 0.3btc because i believe BTC-E didnt go down or get screwed over during this time!

Yes purely insurance would be difficult to do, but CDS's are definitely viable. Furthermore, reliable/confident companies can in fact sell shares protecting against their own default as a way to earn additional revenue and provide customer confidence.

Call Lloyds of London. They insure damn near everything.

I am not an actuarial but know enough about it that for this particular policy (250 BTC payoff on a default of an anonymous third world overseas website) would cost a whole lot more than .3 and given that all have the same risk of default with no offset I don't suspect there will be much interest in providing it.

But we could establish an OTC swaps market on credit default. I think Ripple and Coinbase are working on such capabilities. Then if you wanted to buy a structured CDS on the exchange you could pay whoever was willing to sell it to you. And also willing to put their BTC into escrow in this case, which is the major difference. Insurance companies net take in proceeds each month, they can invest all of it and they do, that is where a lot of their money comes from. They would never put a policy payout amount in escrow before the event.

Although everyone is bashing the OP, I agree that such a service would be highly useful for the bitcoin economy. It's stupid that site owners can just run with everyone's money with almost no warning.

So you think Btc-e has a 0.1% chance of going down and you need insurance for this? lol. Want some insurance for walking across the street tomorrow?

Is this where you landed, Jon Corzine? I remember you from the old days.

Horrible scam, really, horrible. That line practically ensures you get the escrow, because you used the word, ANY. So if you're too lazy to withdraw the 0.2 BTC you likely have in BTC-e, you magically get 250 BTC.

Go scam EVE or something, and stop trying to teach us about life insurance.

Not true. What you're referring to is known as a Credit Default Swap (CDS) and they are insurance-type financial instruments that were a bit part of the cause of the 2008 financial crisis.

For instance, if someone owned $10 Million of IBM bonds and wanted to insure those bonds against total loss, they would purchase a credit default swap for IBM Bonds for $10 Million. A highly stable company like IBM would have very low risk of default and, consequently, companies would offer very low premiums for 'insuring' against default of those bonds.

So, the IBM bondholder would pay an amount like $300,000 (3% of $10,000,000) to the CDS seller. The CDS seller (often an institutional investor like CalPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement System) would receive a nice income each year and the IBM Bondholder would sleep soundly knowing that he was A-OK if IBM went belly up overnight.

SO, yes these do exist and are still in use today!

The issue with CDS is that the risk has to be valued appropriately. Many institutional investors were misled about the risk of the underlying assets they were 'insuring'. I wouldn't know how to rate this kind of risk of default, but there is a fair number out there somewhere.

For simplicity sake lets say 1 BTC=1000$.
Where have you seen an insurance policy that gives you 250k$ for a 300$ insurance?
What doesn't exist in real life should not exist here, because what you are offering is not fair at all.

Insurance companies don't escrow that 250K though. It comes out of their funds when needed. So a better analogy is an agreement to insure you, but not escrow the bitcoins. That is especially appropriate in an unsafe and unregulated market (unlike with an insurance company).

This thread has to be shenanigans.  No one is this dense. 

Why is it obvious this is a raging scam?

Because no one with the sense to actually construct a legit scheme like this would ever let 250 BTC accumulate on BTC-e without doing something about it. If 250 BTC was too much for this person to comfortably keep in BTC-e he would've already done something about it, and if 250 BTC is just a small fraction of his total BTC holdings, then he wouldn't be soliciting this kind of arrangement in the first place.

So basically the OP is soliciting funds to perform a transaction that, in the absolute best possible case scenario, is only happening because he's a moron!

There are a million things wrong with this - start that it's on an internet forum and you're asking someone up put up 250 BTC.  Someone with 250 BTC might want to hire a lawyer for this contract.  Who's to say OP won't attack sit ehimself, and who makes the call and shows the proof that the site is down or you can't withdraw?

He got me cracking up..    I like the thinking malfunctions, we usually say see a doctor if its for real....

Also it could be YOU who DDos's the site & claims the escrow. :/

not sure if brilliantly complex scam

or just plain retarded

Salty did a good job pointing out some potential weasel words, but I don't think you were trying to be sneaky.

Life insurance is not a good analogy because there is not a lot of risk of fraud with life insurance because in order to get it you have to be, well, dead.

Homeowners insurance will also only reimburse you for your actual losses, which is not what you are talking about here, e.g. I may or may not have 250 BTC in btc-e.

Maybe if you also escrowed your BTC-e account credentials.  In the event of nonpayment the "insurer" pays you the 250 BTC but gets your account and the BTC within (when and if BTC-e gets back up).  The insurer would also probably want to stipulate that you will not be paid from escrow more than your actual BTC-e balance.

An arrangement like that would protect you from your legitimate purpose of wanting to be sure to have access to your coins if you need them, but not basically be a high odds wager on the stability/veracity of btc-e.  It would also protect you from an inputs.io type debacle.

If I had the BTC to do this (and regretfully I do not) I would want 1% of the amount protected per week as the premium not to exceed the amount to be kept in the account, with the account to transfer to me on the event of a payout to you.  1% to be guaranteed access to your coins if you need them seems about right given that there are not a lot of other people to sell this type of insurance to in order to spread out the risk - as takagari pointed out.

If you are serious, you might want to offer something along those lines, I imagine someone might consider your offer, or at least make a counter one.  However, as you said this is mostly an experiment, good luck!

sorry, i guess i misread. i should have read it more attentively