Topic: The BCH value in forum wallets - page 5. (Read 2837 times)

This reminds me of a conflict in a movie I saw, I Love You Philip Morris.  The protagonist got a job as a settlement officer for an insurance company.  When he took the job he was paying out millions in settlements out of a standard checking account.  He then got the bright idea to move the majority of the funds to an investment account, and transfer what he needed to the checking account to cover the disbursements.  The end result was a lot of money was made in the investment fund, that the protagonist kept for himself.  By today's standards we can all agree that was illegal embezzlement, but there was a time when such actions were unprecedented, their legality was vague.

In the fiat world we don't have air-drops and forks (at least none that I know of,) so this is a new paradigm for financial wealth that I believe is also unprecedented.

My opinion is that OG should have included theymos in the decision, or at least offered to share the reward reaped by the 1Eog8 address.  But I also believe my opinion is irrelevant.  Theymos has indicated he wasn't concerned, and OG has chosen to stay silent.  I can't fault OG for taking advantage of free money, other than to say that he earned some of it by holding Other People's Money.  Like others have mentioned, banks do that shit all the time.  

Is it right or wrong?  I would say that depends on the amount of risk OG subjected the OPM.  In this case I think it's safe to say there was no risk.

This type of situation can easily be avoided by future contracts; making it clear how such events are to be handled, and who owns the rights to any proceeds earned by air-drops and forks.  It's a vague and unexpected event that left no one hurt.  At least theymos doesn't seem hurt by it, and his is the only opinion that really matters in this case.

Hence why Theymos did not know about the airdropped coins claimed by Nastytreasurer until this thread popped up and LoyceV asked the question. So we as a community have no idea of how much exactly was claimed, when it or if it was sold and what happened with the funds - same with XLM, there were others but I generally ignored all those shitcoins (wish I hadn't now seeing some of the totals people talk about)

Also interesting..
I was thinking a few posts ago how crypto is still a new frontier where contracts can become obsolete due to the changing technology..
We are all concerned with forks now but it wasn't even really though of when the contract was made..



Forks require you to move the BTC befor you claim them because claiming them can compromise your private key and they can take everything..
Airdrops you can just sign a message, doesn't risk the keys..

Why OG didn't inform theymos about this airdrop, but he claimed it?
Why OG returned some other forks and kept this one?
What is difference between bitcoinshith fork and GBYTE airdrop except theymos didn't know about it?
Does it mean, if theymos hasn't been aware of bitcoinshit airdrop, OG could have kept it?
If so, why returning it in first place (BCH, I mean...)?

I think if we go the "code is law" route then it should have been multisig. Then claiming airdrops would not have been possible without explicit agreement, or at all.

Instead this was a fiat-like escrow/loan/whatchamacallit ("[...] the treasurer owes the Forum the held bitcoins [...]") and I do believe that the forum had more rights to the funds, not merely a contract.

Then there is the question of ethics. Regardless of how the contract is interpreted, in my opinion the ethical thing to do would be to pay all claimed airdrops to the forum, minus a reasonable fee for the effort. This is not so much about the specific instances (I know some here could argue to death that 7 BTC is dust compared to the 500 returned BTC) but about the general interpretation of unforeseen events for the benefit of the customer. Where is the threshold for that to start to matter e.g. in OgNasty's escrow service.

Did the contract even specify which Bitcoin fork would be the real Bitcoin? I don't think it said anything about the longest chain or most POW or anything of the sort. What if theymos and Og had different opinions about that and asked you to arbitrate. What would you say?


LOL, you should really read the 5 pages of small print that you sign when you open an account. Granted you're giving them the rights to everything including your firstborn but that's not the same as saying they can do anything they want without asking.

I hope he claimed everything possible and dumped hard on them all..
I hope he made a million bazillion BTCs..

Drifting dangerously off topic, but you'd be surprised how much people are really paying their banks, indirectly.  All the costs are hidden, whether it be through inflation, or the mark-up you pay on goods and services designed to cover the fees retailers have to pay to the banks.  The interest they "pay you" doesn't actually cover the true cost you pay to rely on them.  They definitely aren't upfront with the public about how they earn their money.  Perversely, their methods are not just deemed societally acceptable, but fundamental to the continuation of the traditional economy.  

But that's partly what we're all here to shake up with crypto, so the discourse on whether such practices should be frowned upon here is still positive.

Then you are using the wrong banks son.


Totally agree with that one as well fella, hence being paid 6BTC a year to hold the funds.

my issue here is transparency and integrity..

I fail to see any integrity in profiting off the Forums funds whilst not informing the man who entrusted him with the funds, even worse when it comes out 2 years after the fact and adding insult to injury it was a forum member who asked the question. Theymos was not aware at all, this does bring into question all the other airdropped coins like XLM..

how much money was actually made off of holding the forums funds? I am sure someone much more experienced in investigating these things will come out with some numbers to inform us all though

Yes, but he couldn't exactly engage in fractional reserve banking, or gamble/invest with those funds, because I think the contract stated that the coins were to remain in the specific escrow address, not to be moved around and such..

But signing a BTC signed message from the address did not breach that contract..

Another way to look at it, if OG was claiming airdrops from all of his keys, why skip that key?


It happens..
Many accounts have fees for the use of them..
Negative interest rates happen sometimes too..
Escrow agents are not free..

But you don't pay a bank to hold your money do you? imagine paying a bank 1.2% a year to hold on to your cash? infact the obverse is true, banks pay you so you deposit funds with them, therefore they use those funds to generate profit to pay your interest.

apples and orangutans here man

Interesting quandary.  As a loose analogy, isn't this roughly equivalent to what commercial banks do?  They hold the funds, then use that value to generate additional value?  It's not like they seek permission from you about how they use that wealth.  Maybe you earn some interest in the process, but when you eventually withdraw your funds, the bank do keep the profits they made from the value they generated from you.  

I can see why some people aren't exactly comfortable with someone operating that particular business model when it comes to forum funds, but there was clearly no rule against it.  Depending on your personal stance, the opportunism is either admirable or sickening, heh.

While mob rule is obviously too tempting to resist for some, I'm going to stay on the fence and say that it's ultimately a matter for theymos and OgNasty to work out between themselves.

Not necessarily. I think you could link several address in an airdrop (more BTC meant more Byteball). I remember Zepher doing some sort of group-airdrop where people sent him BTC.

Well yes, that would be a breach of contract..

An interesting question is, while OG held the coins, did the forum own those coins, or just owned a contract?
I'm not sure.. What do you think?

I often look at it as, if you don't own the keys, all you own is a contract..

he didn't say ok.. he said its a bit tacky.


to educate those not to into slang tacky = trashy or cheap.

hope that helps clear that up for you non native speakers

Even after theymos found it after this thread creation or if he knew before, he said it's OK for him.

totally agree, that isnt what is being discussed here - OG signed up for an airdrop as he had 500BTC of forum funds in an address, he did not inform theymos of this - theymos only found out in this thread!

Theymos thinks it is right for OG to keep the fork funds ( if he got any ). This funds usage totally depends on theymos himself.

cool so he is nice and gave the BCH - that is the only reason?

taking that into account and my estimate that GBYTE is in the range, 10BTC+ lets keep up with the nicety and hand that back instead of not informing anyone and pocketing the funds in such a "tacky" way

Not only did he give the BCH but also gave ALL of the other "major" forks worth much of anything at all.. Very admirably..

Because he is nice..

And how did that go? Who ended up with the BCH value eventually?
Can you refresh my memory on that?



All I see is more witch hunt for OG going on here..

Better get to digging into all of those addresses you can link to OG to find something to complain about..

That's not all, that was just one of the Byteball airdrops. Soon after the one I mentioned, the value started dropping hard though, and the airdrops stopped, but it was fun while it lasted.
The Stellar Lumens airdrop gave around 975 XLM per Bitcoin, the value since then has been anywhere between 300 and 6000 satoshi. I think it was around 1200 sat/XLM when the airdrop happened. You do the math

The earliest airdrops (which I missed) handed out much more (but the value was lower back then), the later ones airdropped less.
(I had my airdrop claiming service back then)