Dotview #3c Making Money Online by Lisa Charlotte Rost

dotview “All the Internet That’s Fit to Print” Summly’s 17-Year-Old Founder Becomes a Millionaire – p 102

Silk Road 2.0 hacked – p 69

How the Internet created a multi-billion dollar porn industry – p 38

This Is How You Mine Some Bitcoin – p 87

U.S. Cracks Down on Online Gambling – p 112

Spaceships destroyed in biggest virtual space battle ever p 24

The Magazine for

Issue 3

Comments on the Web

May 2014

Making Money Online

Header

Online Games

Online Porn

Silk Road

Bitcoins

Get Bought

Online Poker

Footer

Ads with Cats in Space with Instruments

Are you looking for Silk Road Drugs? We uncover everything you need to know about the Silkroad market and more.

http://silkroaddrugs.org

http://hqwallbase.com/images/big/Cat-In-SpaceWallpaper-1600x900.jpg

BTC! BUY THEM UP, INVEST while you still can, INTEREST FREE. NO FED.....NO CENTRAL BANKING CARTELS, commerce of the future!

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/ wan/4292685588.html

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tdUg_hXoIdk/Un3EOEj8YqI/ AAAAAAAAVgY/fxeDrIP7BOk/s1600/cis14.jpg

The Quote of the Issue

Listen, I'm a capitalist. I like money a lot. A QUOTE from http://recode.net/2014/02/07/bitcoin-get-your-bitcoin-here

dotview issue #3 about

Making Money Online

Header

Online Games

Online Porn

Letter of the Designer

Silk Road

Bitcoins

Get Bought

Online Poker

A selfwritten text from: http://themagazinedesignproject.tumblr.com

Footer

The Definition

Money in Theory and Practice Not only since yesterday the newspapers got competition with free usergenerated content on the web. Is Journalism dead? The dotview magazine has always suggested a close companionship of Journalism and web content instead of enmity. Journalism is important for the overview; for linking the dots. The dots itself include the many individuals on the Web who want to share their complementary stories and opinions. The result of old and new media working together is a bigger picture. And still, the newspaper world and the Web world are different and want to be celebrated as such. The new issue of dotview wants to show that and separates these two universes: The content that's accompanied by results from a Google Images search represent the printing world with its professional journalism â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with stories that are accessible on the web sites of the individual publishers. The content framed with a black border offers one view on the wild west of user generated content on the web; full of exciting, unknown stories and opinions. Both kinds of content want to complement each other: The publishing content shows the theory, but the individual stories written by the people who experienced something exciting themselves, shows the practical part of the story. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m looking forward to feedback. If you like or dislike this magazine, email me and tell me why: lisacharlotterost@gmail.com. You can also have a look at the other issues of dotview on lisacharlotterost.de.

Money Money Money

Sincerely, Lisa

Money Money Money

http://www.urbandictionary.com/ define.php?term=money

= Currency. = a gift card to everywhere = Paper and coinage that can be used to exchange for goods and services. More of it equals power and chicks. = What I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have. = The only thing very hardly ever refused by anyone. = The biggest reason for stress in most marriages and the number one cause of divorce in the United States. = the reason paris hilton is famous = the only thing that matters in the world. = The root of all evil.

The graphic shows the highest number mentioned in each individual articles. These numbers can be wages per day, week, month or year, total spendings of countries etc. Missing bars mean missing numbers in the articles.

Silk Road 2.0 hacked

The 2nd Death

The Resurrection

The Death

Silk Road illegal drug website shut down by FBI

The Silk Road, reborn

The Seller

I am a seller on Silk Road

Online Porn

Porn Actor 2

My porn name is Lance Hart

Porn Host

I am a internet porn biz veteran of 15 years

Statistics

Porn Actor 1

GRAPHIC PornHub Statistics

Duke porn star reveals herself

History

Online Games

How the Internet created a multi-billion dollar porn industry

The Sims Online

Interview with a Child cyber-Prostitute in TSO

EVE Online

GRAPHIC The Bloodbath of B-R5RB The Sims Online

EVE Online

Spaceships destroyed in biggest virtual space battle ever

Online Poker

The Dark Side of Sims Online

GTA Online

World of Warcraft

Who knew this would all come from video games

Get Bought

Rockstar promises $500,000 in-game cash

World of Warcraft

Chinese prisoners forced to play game

Header

World of Warcraft

Bitcoins

Making real money in virtual worlds

E The First Graphic

D The First Story

Spam costs billions

Silk Road

Top Countries by Money Pledged on Kickstarter

D The First Story

Online Porn

I am a person who sends “spam” email for a living

C The Text

B The Question

Make Money Fast

Money can't buy us happiness": agree or disagree?

Articles 8

Page

A The Importance

Online Games

Why money really can buy you happiness

Header Footer

Table of Contents

Silk Road

100 b

10 b

1 b

100 m

10 m

1 m

100 k

10 k

1 k

100

Articles about Coins

This Is How You Mine Some Bitcoin

By Google By Yahoo

Google VP: Here’s How to Get Bought By Us

Summly’s 17-Year-Old Founder Becomes a Millionaire

I am A Thief

Swag Bucks Romance Scam

Swag Bucks: Yeah, it’s still a thing

Adsense

Ransomware

How Much Revenue Does Google Keep from AdSense?

For PC Virus Victims, Pay or Else

$1,000,000

Winning, even more

Winning, how?

125

124

122

121

120

118

116

114

112

110

108

102

101

100

Online Poker

Cssh pours in for student with $1m Web idea

GRAPHIC Top 10 Biggest Online Poker Winners

How much can a online poker player make?

Winning, a lot

Black Friday

U.S. Cracks Down on Online Gambling

If I’m playing, I’m playing to win.

Black Friday

Losing

By Google

For Google, a New High in Deal-Making

Get Bought

I blew over $30,000 playing internet poker

By Google

By everyone

GRAPHIC List of mergers and acquisitions by Google

Startup scene waits for ‘big exit’

Bitcoins

Articles about Coins

Man Throws Away Trove of Bitcoin

The Investment

Articles about Coins

Cyberattack Leads to $1 Million Bitcoin Heist

I have my entire savings invested in Bitcoin

Articles about Coins

One Bitcoin Exchange’s Demise Is Another’s Birth

The Hype Cycle

Articles about Coins

MT Gox goes up in smoke

The Bitcoin Hype Cycle (requested repost)

Articles about Coins

Real Money

The Definition

‘Funny money’ has officially entered the real world

Real Money: Bitcoins in the Physical World

Bitcoin – The Definition

Footer 7

Header

Online Games

A The Importance

Online Porn

B The Question

Silk Road

C The Text

Bitcoins

Get Bought

D The First Story

Online Poker

Footer

E The First Graphic

By Eleanor Harding, updated on 00:39 GMT, 16 January 2012

Why money really can buy you happiness

The Importance of the Theme He spent millions trying to measure national wellbeing. Now researchers say the Prime Minister needn’t have bothered as they already know what makes us happy – and it doesn’t take a genius to guess the answer. Money – and lots of it – is the most important factor in a person’s happiness, according to a comprehensive think tank report. Findings by the Institute of Economic Affairs show that happiness levels correlate with the amount of wealth a person accumulates. And, in contrast to popular belief, it does not level off when the assets reach a certain threshold. The report, by a dozen academics from around the world, has dismissed David Cameron’s strategy of promoting happiness over other objectives. It suggests he would have done far better to invest the time and money into simply making us all better off by boosting Britain’s flatlining GDP. Philip Booth, editorial director at the IEA, told The Sunday Times: ‘The Government is spending money on collecting happiness statistics inç order to promote government policies to try to increase national happiness. ‘This is a flawed policy and based on a complete misconception.’ Drawing from an array of data from 126 countries, the report is published today to coincide with ‘Blue Monday’, which has been identified as the most miserable day of the year because of factors including weather, time of year and debt levels. Its most controversial finding contradicts the widely-held belief that above a certain income level, people do not become any happier. The theory, conceived in 1974 by wellbeing expert Richard Easterlin, claimed that happiness stagnates when income rises beyond a certain level. And two years ago, a study at Princeton University claimed to have found that wellbeing stopped increasing at £58,700 – with an increase of as much as a third making little difference. But the report, The Pursuit of Happiness, condemns the theory as a ‘myth’ and ‘fake’.

It argues a 20 per cent rise in income has the same impact on wellbeing irrespective of how much wealth the person has initially. It states: ‘No country is rich enough to have hit a satiation point, if such a point exists. These findings are robust and use an extremely rich set of data. Richer individuals are happier with their lives. The report says this holds true for 140 countries studied, in which ‘the relationship between income and satisfaction is remarkably similar’. The report’s authors include British academics as well as those from Spain, America, Holland and Denmark. It is likely to dismay Downing Street, as it suggests there is little hope of improving Britons’ mood unless the economy improves. GDP is expected to show growth of just 0.1 per cent at best later this month. David Cameron said six years ago it was ‘time to admit there’s more to life than money’ and has talked much about promoting wellbeing while in office. Last year, he announced plans to spend £2m a year finding out how to measure wellbeing, focussing on ‘all those things that make life worthwhile’. A pilot study found three-quarters of people rate their life satisfaction at seven out of 10. The concept of measuring happiness was first tried out in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan 40 years ago by its then king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who said progress should be measured by Gross National Happiness. In the last four decades, similar ideas have been taken on board by governments around the world, who have implemented policies aimed at promoting wellbeing rather than income.

An Online Newspaper Article from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087162/Why-moneyreally-buy-happiness-Cash-important-factor-making-feelcontent-say-researchers.html

http://cdn.3news. co.nz/3news/ AM/2014/4/6/338964/ grumpycat1200.jpg

The Question to the Theme

"Money can't buy us happiness": agree or disagree? An USER SURVEY from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money

Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given socio-economic context or country.The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past, a standard of deferred payment.

e gr

% 6 3

http://i1.kym-cdn. com/photos/images/ facebook/000/100/128/ happycat.gif

http://de.sodahead.com/fun/money-cant-buy-us-happiness-agreeor-disagree/question-1663077/#comments

The Definition of Money

sa i d

e gr

What would you do with 1 million dollar? http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/ comments/1tgdvo/people_of_reddit_what_ would_you_do_with_1000000/

The_Clincher (2013): With 1m Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d get my family members out of debt, then use what was left to get my wife and myself started up with a decent house/ vehicles/some kind of business investment, use some for personal investments, then probably give the rest to some good charities.

How to make money?

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/ comments/194s6u/what_would_be_the_ first_thing_you_would_do_with_a

http://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/ comments/1fh6sw/is_there_an_amazonseller_subreddit_or_are_the

Donut-Puncher (2013): Go to the strip club. I went with a hundred bucks and a 12 pack of bud light a few years ago and had an amazing night, so Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d imagine if I took a few thousand my fun level would be multiplied. I blacked out a few hours into it and came to at some gas station in the middle of no where with a crown royal bag filled with quarters and a phone charger for a car, which did not fit my phone.

matznerd (2013): Amazon is good to make money from and there are many different ways. Selling a product on amazon, creating and selling a kindle ebook, or the most common way, though affiliate marketing. They pay well, and good percentages if you can get volume. The trick is to do expensive items like TVs, cameras or other electronics.

Header

Online Games

A The Importance

Online Porn

B The Question

The Text to the Theme

Silk Road

C The Text

Bitcoins

Get Bought

D The First Story

Online Poker

Footer

E The First Graphic

A Spam Mail from http://www.cs.rutgers. edu/~watrous/dave-rhodes.html

Date: 26 Aug 1994 14:53:58 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 0600 Dear Friends, My name is Dave Rhodes. In September 1988 my car was reposessed and the bill collectors were hounding me like you wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe. I was laid off and my unemployment checks had run out. The only escape I had from the pressure of failure was my computer and my modem. I longed to turn my advocation into my vocation. This January 1989 my family and I went on a ten day cruise to the tropics. I bought a Lincoln Town Car for CASH in Feburary 1989. I am currently building a home on the West Coast of Florida, with a private pool, boat slip, and a beautiful view of the bay from my breakfast room table and patio. I will never have to work again. Today I am rich!!! I have earned over $400,000.00 (Four Hundred Thousand Dollars) to date and will become a millionaire within 4 or 5 months. Anyone can do the same. This money making program works perfectly every time, 100% of the time. I have NEVER failed to earn $50,000.00 or more whenever I wanted. Best of all you never have to leave home except to go to your mailbox or post office. In October 1988, I received a letter in the mail telling me how I could earn $50,000 dollars or more whenever I wanted. I was

The Definition

http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Make_money_fast

Make Money Fast (stylised as MAKE. MONEY.FAST) is a title of an electronically forwarded chain letter which became so infamous that the term is now used to describe all sorts of chain letters forwarded over the Internet, by e-mail spam or Usenet newsgroups. In anti-spammer slang, the name is often abbreviated “MMF”. The original “Make Money Fast” letter was written around 1988 by a person who used the name Dave Rhodes. Biographical details are not certain, and it is not clear if this was even the person’s actual name. The letter encouraged readers of the email to forward one dollar in cash to a list of

people provided in the text, and to add their own name and address to the bottom of the list after deleting the name and address at the top. Using the theory behind pyramid schemes, the resulting chain of money flowing back and forth would supposedly deliver a reward of thousands of dollars to the ones participating in the chain, as copies of their chain spread and more and more people sent one dollar to their address. The scam was forwarded over e-mail and Usenet. By 1994 “Make Money Fast” became one of the most persistent spams with multiple variations.

naturally very skeptical and threw the letter on the desk next to my computer. It’s funny though, when you are desperate, backed into a corner, your mind does crazy things. I spent a frustating day looking through the want ads for a job with a future. The pickings were sparse at best. That night I tried to unwind by booting up my computer and calling several bulletin boards. I read several of the message posts and than glanced at the letter next to the computer. All at once it came to me, I now had the key to my dreams. I realized that with the power of the computer I could expand and enhance this money making formula into the most unbelievable cash flow generator that has ever been created. I substituted the computer bulletin boards in place of the post office and electronically did by computer what others were doing 100% by mail. Now only a few letters are mailed manually. Most of the hard work is speedily downloaded to other bulletin boards throughout the world. If you believe that someday you deserve that lucky break that you have waited for all your life, simply follow the easy instructions below. Your dreams will come true. Sincerely yours, Dave Rhodes

Header

Online Games

A The Importance

Online Porn

B The Question

Silk Road

C The Text

Bitcoins

Get Bought

D The First Story

Online Poker

Footer

E The First Graphic

An User Story from http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9xrn1/iama_person_who_sends_spam_email_for_a_living_ama

The First Story

I am a person who sends “spam” email for a living.

evade spam filters, but sometimes they just don’t

in terms of dollars per e-mail sent, but rather

work and I get into the inbox... in which case,

dollars per click, and I do what I can to get as

I can get 15k/day for a few days and then residu-

many clicks as possible.

als slowly start dying off over a week until I’m back to normal. The year’s not over yet, but I’m

Well just to be clear, I’m completely against spy-

estimating (after expenses are taken out) 450k

ware, viruses, and all that stuff... I have parents

profit. But I’ve had a few good months this year.

too and I’m the one who gets to clean up the mess because they wanted a free screensaver.

I spend a lot of time improving the software, it’s

I really don’t think I’m doing anything that bad.

actually most of my day. It works great now, but

When someone clicks my unsubscribe button,

I want to stay ahead of the curve. I’m working

I never e-mail them again. 95% of all of my e-

on IPv6 support now, once these mx servers

mail ends up in the user’s “junk” box anyways.

get ipv6 addresses I want to be one of the first people using them. I don’t think many spam fil-

So I’m really only making money off of people

mysteriousmeat (2009): I send bulk e-mail for

ters will be prepared. Setting up the day’s cam-

who open their junk box, see my offer, find in-

a living. I do it legally while obeying all the re-

paigns doesn’t take more than 10 minutes. But

terest in it and click on it, see the page it takes

quirements of the CAN-SPAM act. It isn’t me

things can get time consuming when you need

them to and decide they want it enough to fill

who sends you viagra emails or nigerian scams

to change domains or IPs.

out the form. I don’t understand why someone would get pissed off. I’ve only been doing this

or anything... but if you get e-mail regarding free giftcards, ringtones, debt relief, dating sites... it

I tell people that I’m a programmer. It’s techni-

for 5 years or so, before that I was getting junk

might have been me.

cally true, as I program the software that sends

mail too... it never pissed me off. What really

I’d consider a good day $1500 to $2000, a bad

the e-mail, and license it to other marketers.

pisses me off is getting postal mail for coupons

day is $500. Expenses aren’t more than 5000/

People that are close to me, such as really good

and credit card offers... I have to actually do

month, so profit is pretty good.

friends and some family, know what I do. But af-

work as a result of those. But my stuff, you’ll

I have a various lists, and I don’t send from all of

ter a while having to explain things gets old, and

probably never even see it. If you see it, you’re

them every day. Each list has between 2 million

some people act differently when they know you

looking for junk mail (by going into your junk

and 9 million e-mails. I send maybe 50 million

must make quite a bit of money. Then you get

box). As for spam filters and stuff, you’re wel-

emails a day. I get paid when the user opens

people who want you to help them get started

come, spam filter company. I don’t want them

the email, clicks on the link, and fills out the first

(which I actually did once, and regret).

to go out of business (well, I sorta do... but you know what I mean).

page. Each time they do that, I make between $1 and $5. For things like dating sites, I usually get

I deliver close to 100% because I pretty much

paid when they actually sign up to the dating site.

exclusively send to the big companies (hotmail,

How to get into this: Buy a good list, will proba-

Giftcards convert at about 20-40% (percentage of

aol, gmail, etc.). For a $2 payout, I’d send 50

bly cost you $10,000 to $30,000. Definitely pay

clickers who fill out the form), generally if it comes

million and get 5000 to 10000 clicks. They usu-

to have it cleaned. Buy servers. Find or make

out to 15-30 cents per click I’m happy. Otherwise

ally convert at about 15-30%. I don’t think of it

software that will send the e-mail for you. Buy servers to run it all on. And pay for bandwidth

I’ll try another offer. Dating offers get a lot more clicks than giftcards, but they convert less. They pay more, but it usually comes down to 5 cents per click... but its not so bad because you get a ton of clicks, I imagine mostly lonely men, but I haven’t done any statistics on it or anything. I only have your email address because you signed up for something and checked a “i want advertisements” checkbox. I don’t actively try to

"I’d consider a good day $1500 to $2000, a bad day is $500."

(at least 50 mbps on the 95th, but that’s pretty slow). You’ll also need a lot of domains and IPs. Your IPs will go bad quick, so you need a way to continuously get fresh IPs so you don’t get blocked. Find a good affiliate network who will actually pay you, and won’t boot you at the first sign of trouble.. It’s not a cheap thing to get into, and it’s not all fun and games... it can be hard work.

By Thomas Claburn on 2/3/2005 03:32 PM

Spam costs billions The cost of spam in terms of lost productivity has reached $21.58 billion annually, according to the 2004 National Technology Readiness Survey. The annual survey, conducted by Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and Rockbridge Associates, a technology research firm, reveals that Internet users in the United States spend an average of three minutes deleting spam each day they use E-mail. Multiplied across 169.4 million online adults in the United States, this comes to 22.9 million hours a week, or $21.58 billion based on an average wage. “The business community needs to realize that a lot of its money is going down the drain,” says Roland Rust, director of the Center for Excellence in Service. “This is a problem that concerns everyone.” The survey indicates that 78% of online adults receive spam daily and 11% receive at least 40 such messages. Of those, 14% read spam they receive. Four percent of online adults said in the past year they purchased a product or service advertised in spam–that’s almost 7 million people propping up peddlers of herbal Viagra and the like. “They’re the ones that cause the problem,” Rust says. An enviable 22% of online adults say they tend to get no spam whatsoever.

Messaging market-research firm Ferris Research expects to reveal similar, if slightly lower, figures soon. Analyst Richi Jennings projects the cost of spam in 2005 will come to $17 billion in the United States and $50 billion worldwide. These figures reflect the productivity loss to the diminishing number of business users without spam filters, the cost to purchase and administer anti-spam systems, and time wasted dealing with spam that gets through and with legitimate messages that have been misidentified as spam. While spam volume has increased tenfold since 2003, its estimated economic impact hasn’t even doubled–it was $11 billion in the United States in 2003, Jennings says. “Antispam technology is doing well,” he says. In a recent Weblog entry, he noted that some anti-spam vendors have suggested that spam volume is leveling off. He says that’s a misapprehension that comes from measuring spam as a percentage of all E-mail–70% to 85% of E-mail today is said to be spam. The volume of spam appears to be leveling off because trying to graph this information over time results in a line that curves as it approaches, but never reaches, 100%. But, as Jennings points out, this asymptotic plateau is an illusion of mathematics. Graph the number of spam messages from 2003 to 2005 and you get a line that rises steadily. “Far from slowing down,” he writes, “the volume of spam continues to grow at a fairly consistent rate.”

EMail Spam by Topic

81% Pharmacy

6.3% Other

5.4% Replica

2.3% Enhancers

2.3% Phishing

1% Casino

An Online Newspaper Article from: http://www.informationweek. com/spam-costs-billions/d/did/1030111?

1.3% Degrees

http:// en.wikipedia. org/wiki/ Email_ spam#Types

0.4% Weight Loss

Header

Online Games

A The Importance

Online Porn

B The Question

Silk Road

C The Text

Bitcoins

Get Bought

D The First Story

Online Poker

Footer

E The First Graphic

By Matt Petronzio on March 05, 2014

The Top 10 Countries by Money Pledged on Kickstarter

The First Graphic Kickstarter passed $1 billion in pledges on Monday, more than half of which was pledged within the past year alone. More than 5.7 million people have backed creative projects on the crowdfunding site, from 224 countries and territories on all seven continents. Kickstarter backers in the U.S. take the cake for most money pledged â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a grand to-

tal of $663.32 million. The UK takes the next spot with $54.43 million, followed by Canada with $44.91 million.

An Online Newspaper Article from: http://mashable.com/2014/03/04/kickstarter-countries

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Ads with Laser Cats

Comodo Antispam Gateway: Cloud-based email anti-spam protection for your corporate mail servers. Buy now.

http://silkroaddrugs.org

http://hqwallbase.com/images/big/Cat-In-SpaceWallpaper-1600x900.jpg

Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/ wan/4292685588.html

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tdUg_hXoIdk/Un3EOEj8YqI/ AAAAAAAAVgY/fxeDrIP7BOk/s1600/cis14.jpg

Header

Online Games

Online Porn

Silk Road

Bitcoins

Get Bought

Online Poker

Footer

THE QUOTE

My friends are very jealous and alwaysOnline call me the next mark zuckerberg.

THE CONTENT

Making real money in virtual worlds

World of Warcraft

Chinese prisoners forced to play game

World of Warcraft

Who knew this would all come from video games

World of Warcraft

Rockstar promises $500,000 in-game cash

GTA Online

Spaceships destroyed in biggest virtual space battle ever

EVE Online

GRAPHIC The Bloodbath of B-R5RB

EVE Online

The Dark Side of Sims Online

The Sims Online

Interview with a Child cyber-Prostitute in TSO

The Sims Online

Games THE IMAGE

Header

Online Games World of Warcraft

Online Porn GTA Online

Silk Road

Bitcoins

EVE Online

Get Bought

Online Poker

Footer

The Sims Online

By Laurence H.M. Holland on 8/07/2006 @ 6:00PM

Making real money in virtual worlds

http://mmoatk.com/uploads/World_of_Warcraft_ Screenshot_11.jpg

Still toiling away as an elementary school teacher or a firefighter? Turns out you could probably be making more money as a troll or a night elf playing World of Warcraft . World of Warcraft is a popular, massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, that takes place in a Lord of the Rings-inspired world of wizards and warriors. Recent advances in video game technology have allowed users to assume a virtual identity and interact with thousands of other gamers in three-dimensional, Internet-based worlds. MMORPGs allow gamers to build up their character’s attributes by completing goals and collecting items, and typically charge a monthly subscription fee for access to the servers that power the vast online realms. In 2004, the launch of games like Sony Online Entertainment’s Everquest II and Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, along with increased access to broadband Internet, turned a niche market into a global phenomenon. In January, industry Web site MMOGchart.com put the total number of MMORPG subscriptions at over 13 million, and The NPD Group estimates that game developers raked in $292 million in subscription fees in 2005. As the popularity and sophistication of MMORPGs has skyrocketed, enterprising gamers have found ways to make real money playing them–to the point where experts say that it has become common to run across gamers who make their entire income with virtual jobs. “It’s eminently doable,” says Edward Castronov , an associate professor at Indiana University and author of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. “If a person in Shanghai can live on a dollar a day, they can make their living playing video games.” Gamers mine virtual worlds for currency, build virtual real estate empires and even sell their virtual bodies–all in the name of real-world profit. One such entrepreneur is Julian Dibbell , a contributing editor for Wired magazine, who in 2003 challenged himself to spend a year making a living as a retailer in the massively multiplayer game Ultima Online. Dibbell sold in-game items, currency and real estate on eBay, eventually making almost $4,000 a month in profits, translating into roughly a $36,000-a-year salary. And Dibbell says that his income only qualifies as lower-middle class among virtual businessmen. “There are people making six figures,” Dibbell says. “One-man operations, basically, doing seven figures. It’s not hard to make money doing this.” The upshot, Dibbell says, is that as more users find ways to wring dollars out of gold pieces, games like World of Warcraft develop sophisticated economies , with measurable GDPs and exchange rates. “On one level, there’s very little that distinguishes this world from the real world,” Dibbell says. And indeed when he talks about his experience–which he has documented in his new book Play Money– it is sometimes hard to tell that he is talking about a universe that doesn’t exist.

An Online Newspaper Article from:

http://www.forbes.com/2006/08/07/virtual-worldjobs_cx_de_0807virtualjobs.html

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By Daily Mail Reporter on 18:14 GMT, 27 May 2011

Chinese prisoners forced to

play game as wardens gamble If you end up serving any time in prison, you can pretty much assume hard labour will make up at least a small part of your sentence. However, one prison in China has taken the concept to a whole new level after it was claimed inmates are being forced to play in online games – in a bid to make money for the guards. An inmate complained that he, along with 300 other prisoners, were being forced to toil away in the virtual world after competing a full day’s work in the real world at the Jixi labour camp, it was reported. By day, prisoner Liu Dali claimed he was forced to break rocks and dig trenches in the open cast coalmines of north-east China. But by night, the inmate says he would cast spells, slay demons and battle goblins. He told the Guardian he was one of many prisoners who were forced to play online games to build up credits on behalf of the guards, who would then trade it in for real money. Raising large amounts of credit in online games through multiple accounts and individuals is known as gold-farming – a practice which is thought to be especially widespread in China, leading to it being banned in 2009. There are thought to be 100,000 full-time gold farmers in China. According to the 54-year-old, who was jailed for three years in 2004 for ‘illegally petitioning’ the government about corruption in his home town, the practice was even more lucrative than the physical labour inmates were forced to undertake. He also said those who didn’t raise enough virtual money would be beaten. He told the Guardian: ‘Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour. ‘There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off.’ Liu Dali claims that the practice is still widespread in Chinese prisons. The allegations have been denied by Chinese officials, who have insisted that prisoners would never be allowed to engage in online gaming as it would involve them having contact with the outside world.

http://i.telegraph. co.uk/multimedia/ archive/02386/chinaprisoner_2386555b.jpg

An Online Newspaper Article from:

http://www.dailymail. co.uk/sciencetech/ article-1391636/Chinese-prisoners-forcedplay-World-Warcraftwardens-gamble.html

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http://nextnature. net/wp-content/ uploads/2009/03/ gold-farming-chinawow7go-530.jpg

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Who knew this would all come from video games

I have only completed 12 years of school, a highschool diploma is as far as my education goes. Though I wish to attend higher schooling (college) asap. Besides working I work out, play football on the weekends, spend a lot of time with my girlfriend, read books/newspaper, invest in the stock market, and I love watching TV shows. My favorite right now is game of thrones and mad men. I don’t think I can ever get a proper job unless its something like corporate management of a large

An user story from: http://www. reddit.com/r/ IAmA/comments/ spc44/i_make_ over_100000_a_ year_selling_ world_of

company that pays well over 100k a year. I really ToonVendor (2014): I’ve been buying and selling

wish to be my own boss for the rest of my life, and

WoW accounts for nearly 6 years now. I started out

I’m always looking to start another start up, possibly

when I was only 13 years old (now 19). To obtain my

game related. What I am doing right now is really

first account to resell, I had to mow lawns for about

just building a nice savings account so that I can

2 months to get $300. I took that $300 and made my

have more freedom to do whatever I want.

first “flip” on an account, and now I’m buying/sell-

My friends are very jealous and always call me the

ing accounts full time. So far I make about $2,000-

next mark zuckerberg lol My girlfriend hates it be-

$6,000 a week depending on how good the week is.

cause I work a lot of hours and often times can’t talk to her at all while I’m working. My parents are envi-

My full website is launching in May which I expect will

ous and ask me for hand outs all the time.

help double sales. I honestly see myself doing this for the rest of my life, as I love dealing with video games.

I moved out and bought an awesome pad when I was still in high school, and now I invest most of

http://us.media. blizzard.com/wow/ media/screenshots/ screenshot-of-theday/mists-of-pandaria/mists-of-pandariass0009-full.jpg

Because I specialize in really the best accounts in

my money in the stock market to grow my portfolio.

the world, I’ve had some “famous” clientele. A “ce-

Trust me though, I have made my fair share of stu-

lebrity”, multiple sheikhs, in WOTLK I was the of-

pid impulse buys. Lets see, I bought a brand new

ficial supplier for the entire Al-Thani Family (The rul-

challenger last month for nearly 40 grand cash even

ing family of Qatar), etc. I have plenty of interesting

though I know its going to diminish in value quite

stories to tell about my buyers, or even interesting

quickly, and on Sunday I bought an iPad just be-

stories about some accounts I’ve purchased and

cause I was at Target and felt like getting one lol.

things I’ve had to do to get them. I definitely feel I’m better off than most americans these days. I can buy basically anything I want to an extent, and I have been making more money than my parent’s since I was 17. Sometimes I feel bad to see my friends from highschool working manual labor jobs 10 hours a day and coming home with about $60-$70 after taxes from a full day’s work. When I just brought in $1000 from one account selling that same day. My business model is a bit different than my competitors, which is also why I get the best accounts. You see most “resellers” buy accounts cheaper, and

http:// us.media. blizzard. com/wow/ media/ screenshots/ screenshotof-the-day/ mists-ofpandaria/ mists-ofpandariass0005-full. jpg

sell them higher. Aka Lowball the seller, and take

acters they have that they no longer want. For $500

as much as they can.Instead I operate as a more

they can have the account put in their name. This

personal account provider. Basically when someone

is also HUGE. I have a method I have worked out

comes to me, they know they’re coming for the best

myself, and I am the only person in the world who

of everything. I have the best security, the best war-

offers this service (besides the one other website

ranty, the best addon services, etc. I provide a lot

I have licensed it to).

of extras that no one else in the business can. So I make money on the services I provide to the buyer

Official Blizzard Policy is to NEVER change the

of the account, not on the account itself. Meaning

name on an account, only for special circumstances.

the sellers are happy they’re getting full price for the

And it always requires a supervisor to sign off on it.

toon, and my buyers get a lot more for their money.

I can assure you changing the name on an account

Here’s some examples of what my extras are:

is not as simple as just blinding faxing an ID scan

I am the only seller to offer a lifetime recall guaran-

to them lol. It is quite difficult and takes quite a bit

tee. I have good enough security to offer this to my

of work out of my part to get done. (Forms, special

buyers. Meaning if the account is recalled, they get

departments, multiple calls) I have in fact created the

their money back in full. I can’t tell you how big re-

method, and it is no exploitation. It isn’t a glitch in the

calls are in this industry, and this protection is HUGE.

system or anything and does involve blizzard greatly.

I offer Hacker Protection and Support. Meaning if

I can’t give away much other than the fact that I usu-

the buyer gets the account hacked, I can recover

ally have 2-3 name change orders a week.

and secure it for them. I Offer Character Resale Assistance. Say they get

I was at Blizzcon this past year at the Curse After

bored of the character, instead of just having them

Party handing my business card around like crazy.

sell it back to me, I sell it on the market for them.

I talked to Blizzard devs and other staff and they

Often times getting my buyers more money than

all thought it was awesome. No one had a problem

they paid, or at the very least the same amount

with it, it seemed perfectly acceptable. We make

they paid. Also I offer to sell and secure any char-

money with the game despite however we do it.

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such as www.toonstorm.com, www.ige.com, and countless others that have been selling characters for years at high volume, making me a small time account seller in comparison. For planning on my business model surviving if WoW were to die out, yes I would happily switch over to a new MMO if one were out. As I said earlier, luckily I am “The ToonVendor” not the “WoW Vendor”. I know I will be on the fore-front of any major MMO that is actually good enough to properly I know to you guys the typical wow audience, you see that its against the EULA and you think its illegal. Breaking an EULA is against a game’s policy, and technically I shouldn’t be allowed to play the game after I’ve broken it. But really thats as far as it goes. You say I’m selling blizzard’s property, I say I’m selling the time invested in Blizzard’s property.

http:// us.media. blizzard.com/ wow/media/ screenshots/ screenshot-ofthe-day/mistsof-pandaria/ mists-of-pandaria-ss0012full.jpg

compete with WoW for its audience. It would take at least a year or so to establish itself enough for me to make a switch, but I am ALWAYS very cautious of market conditions so I know when something like this is going to happen ahead of time. Right now its a full time job, but when my website launches I plan to hire a bit more help and then go back to school so that I can get my degree whilst

I can’t speak for the wholesalers, but the accounts

making good money from upper management of my

I sell are from pure 100% USDA-approved Ameri-

own business. Less day to day essentially. I’ve been

cans :) haha. Really though, the accounts I sell

training my “replacement” so to speak and he’s set

are of a certain quality, they aren’t just your typical

to move out to California and move in with me in

chinese farmer account. They generally have over

September.

10,000 achievements, top level gear, etc. A sweatshop wouldn’t be doing something like this.

I’d say I work about a solid 40-50 hours a week, granted again a lot of those hours aren’t straight

Sadly there’s no price list we can look at that tells

work. I may be “working”, but working can some-

us what adds value to an account and what doesn’t.

times entail sitting in my room watching game of

Really if an account is good as a whole its going to

thrones while I wait for people to message me. Or

sell. What it sells for is really up to the seller. Its all

on hold with blizzard while I play a game of League.

about how well you market it to the buyer(s), and if you can sell them on it at the value you’ve set.

The highest number I’ve ever sold an account for is $6,500, and I’ve sold some of the best accounts

What I do isn’t hurting anyone, or the game itself.

in WoW. Even some of Blood Legion’s characters

Most of the people who buy accounts from me suc-

are only worth $2000-$3000 or so. I have a TON of

ceed in real life (make good money), but the trade

gamer contacts that refer toons over to me to buy. I

off is they don’t have enough time to play the game

offer a great referral program, basically award any-

as much as they’d like to. So they can’t succeed as

one $100-$200 just to refer an account to me to buy.

much as they want to ingame, so they cut corners where they can. This brings up a whole ‘nother argu-

I’m sure I have sold a stolen account, though I do

ment in itself, but I’ll leave it here ;)

take every step I can to make sure its not stolen. Basically the only way to sell an account to me is

Honestly I don’t think I would be the company they

to prove you’re the original owner by scanning your

would be going after. I sell a small volume of ac-

driver’s license. Though people have tried to give me

counts at a high value. Whereas there’s companies

fake ID’s all the time, I can usually point them out.

By Keith Stuart on Monday, 14 October 2013 10.37 BST

GTA Online :

Rockstar promises $500,000 in-game cash An Online Newspaper Article from:

http://www.theguardian.com/ technology/2013/oct/14/ gta-online-rockstar-gamersoffered-cash

http://www.nowgamer.com/siteimage/scale/0/0/362426.jpg

Rockstar has just the thing for gamers frustrated by the stuttering debut of its Grand Theft Auto Online mode: $500,000 of in-game cash. The company announced on its Newswire blog on Friday that the ‘special stimulus package’ would be dropped into the world perhaps as early as this week. The cash injection will be provided to any purchaser of Grand Theft Auto V who has attempted to play the Online mode during October. Launched at the beginning of the month, the service has been plagued by technical problems, including disappearing player-characters, and unreliable server access. Many gamers have lost thousands of in-game dollars, during the opening weeks. “In order to keep the current worldwide in-game economy balanced, we will be providing this GTA$ to players via two deposits of $250,000,” explained Rockstar on its website. “We will announce specific dates as soon as possible, but are currently hoping to be able to make the first deposit by the end of next week (after we’ve confirmed that issues causing game progress loss have been fixed) with the second installment to happen by the end of the month. For players who experienced cloud server errors, connection issues, and lost game progress and characters in these first days of GTA Online, we hope this GTA$ helps to facilitate a fresh start or makes your continued life in Los Santos and Blaine County extra sweet.” There has been controversy over Rockstar’s decision to include microtransactions in the Online mode, allowing participants to pay real money for packages of in-game cash. The company insists it has balanced the experience to allow players to quickly earn money through in-game activities such as missions and car thefts. This stimulus package will at least allow microtransaction-adverse players to quickly access some of the upper end purchases, such as apartments and multicar garages (although players will still have to rank up to unlock fancy-pants guns and vehicle upgrades). Reactions have, as ever, been mixed. “Great news,” wrote one reader of the Rockstar site. “I’ve stuck with the game even thou (sic) there have been issues but this just shows rock star have listened and shows respect to us gamers. Cheers Rockstar”. However, one comment on Time’s coverage of the news, complained, “I hate the fact they are giving everybody 500K. this is because i worked for a long time dragging myself through missions to earn enough to buy a 150K apartment and a 155K car... and now everybody even the people still on level 5 and such will be able to buy this stuff and they don’t deserve it.” It just goes to show that money can’t always buy happiness. But it can buy a desirable residence in Rockford Hills and a new spoiler for your Pfister Comet super car .

https://sketchfab.com/ models/6aee9e8f91204 63ba15e277c369f48e7

http://img2.wikia. nocookie.net/__ cb20130813174706/ de.gta/images/6/6a/ Rockford_Hills_GTAV. jpg

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By Rich McCormick on January 29, 2014 02:32 am

Spaceships worth more than $200,000 destroyed in biggest virtual space battle ever EVE Online has its own economics, politics, and trade systems, built almost entirely by players in the 10 years the game has been running. It also has its own wars, as huge alliances vie for control of tracts of space in the massively multiplayer online game. One such conflict came to a head yesterday in the biggest battle in the game's decade-long history. More than 2,200 of the game's players, members of EVE's largest alliances, came together to shoot each other out of the sky. The resultant damage was valued at more than $200,000 of real-world money. Most of that cost came from the destruction of more than 70 Titans. Titans are EVE's largest ships: they take weeks to construct, and are worth hundreds of billions of ISK (EVE's internal currency). Players are able to ascribe a dollar value to such ships because of the game's payment model. EVE players pay for a monthly subscription (a "Pilot's License Extension," or PLEX) either with real-world money or with in-game currency. The transfer rate between the two currencies determines the conceptual value of these pretend spaceships. One of the most advanced Titans destroyed in yesterday's conflict had a price tag of 222 billion ISK – around $5,500. The short-term reason for this loss: a missed bill payment. EVE historians will be able to track a bubbling conflict back to late October, as major alliances traded potshots with each other over small systems, but when alliance Nulli Secunda forgot to pay their rent for a spa ce station in a key area of space – the unassuming B-R5RB system – opposition forces were able to move in and attempt to snatch it out from under their noses.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ commons/f/f5/EUR_ against_ISK_20002009.png

http://nowgamer.net-genie.co.uk/siteimage/ scale/0/0/370615.jpg

An Online Newspaper Article from: http://www.theverge. com/2014/1/29/5356498/ eve-online-battle-sees200000-dollars-worth-ofspaceships-destroyed

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http://a.abcnews.com/images/Technology/HT_eve_online_video_game_ sk_140129_16x9_992.jpg

http://crossingzebras.com/wp-content/ uploads/2014/04/b-r_Image_2.jpg

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The resultant escalation in forces â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with Nulli Secunda and its friends in alliance Pandemic Legion on one side, and the pairing of alliances CFC and RUS on the other â&#x20AC;&#x201C; continued as neither side was willing to back down. Eventually both groups had deployed their largest fleets, and their most expensive Titans, in a bid to bludgeon their enemies out of the important territory. Both sides held even for a time, trading Titans as smaller ships were swept away by blankets of missile and laser fire. The tide turned as the United States came online. Bolstered by its American members, CFC was able to secure systems for reinforcements, and begin the careful process of picking apart enemy Titans left in the strife-ridden B-R5RB system . EVE developer CCP says it's "still digesting numbers" from the battle, but the player count could rival a fight in system 6VDT-H in July, 2013 that boasted 4,070 players. Regardless of player numbers, yesterday's conflict was already the bloodiest in the game's history. According to The Mittani, the previous record for most Titans destroyed in a conflict was 12, with a cost of around 1 trillion ISK. By the time the smoke had cleared on yesterday's battle, 75 Titans had reportedly been turned into virtual scrap, most worth upwards of $3,000. CCP spokesman Ned Coker told Eurogamer the battle "dwarfs any other online player-versus-player fight in terms of scale and sheer destruction." Already, the battle has had an impact on the economics and politics of EVE's universe: as both sides scramble to rearm and rebuild, the price of in-game resource tritanium is starting to rise. "This sort of conflict," Coker said, quoting Kill Screen, "is what science fiction warned us about."

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http://tagn.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/ titanomachyfieldonplanet.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ Zykw52iyIo

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The Bloodbath of B-R5RB Gamings’s most destructive Battle ever

Financial loss

lfa

Capsule ISK 323.48

IS K 24 rI 0 R S K ev 27 el at 0 io n M IS or os K 28 IS 0 K 47 0

by ship group and by ship type, in billions (except USD)

Carrier ISK 260.35

The game provides support for the trading of in-game resources, including graphs of item price history, with Donchian Channel and daily average price. Some player characters operate primarily as traders, buying, selling and transporting goods to earn profits. Others operate primarily as producers, purchasing components or raw materials and transforming them, sometimes on massive scales, into useful items such as weapons, ships, ammunition, or various technologies wanted by players. Some less combat-oriented players operate as miners or salvagers, collecting and sometimes processing ore used in manufacturing and collecting salvage to make into ship rigs, respectively. Finally, some characters operate as mercenaries or pirates, earning money or being paid primarily to be battle-ready and either to attack or defend-from-attack profitable enterprises such as mining, salvaging or transportation of goods.

Eve Online (stylised EVE Online) is a video game by CCP Games.

0 (= rok $ 4 IS 7, K 1 40 5 0) 80

Av at (= ar I $ 8 SK 5, 2, 50 85 0) 0

Titan ISK 8,772.64 Only 73 units of Titan ships got destroyed, but they account for almost 80% of the financial loss.

Where? Eve Online (stylised EVE Online) is a video game by CCP Games. It is a player-driven, persistent-world MMORPG set in a science fiction space setting. Characters pilot customizable ships through a galaxy of over 7,500 star systems.Most star systems are connected to one or more other star systems by means of stargates. The star systems can contain moons, planets, stations, wormholes, asteroid belts and complexes.

Sup-Capital ISK 248.59 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodbath_of_B-R5RB

on Ae

Supercarrier ISK 367.47

Dreadnought ISK 1010.72

11 0

The Bloodbath of B-R5RB or Battle of B-R5RB was a massive-scale virtual battle fought in the MMORPG space game EVE Online, and was possibly the largest player versus player battle ever. Pitting the CFC and Russian alliances (CFC/ Rus) against N3 and Pandemic Legion (N3/PL), the 21 hour long conflict involved over 7,548 player characters overall and a maximum of 2,670 players in the B-R5RB system at one time. The in-game cost of the losses totalled over 11 trillion InterStellar Kredit (ISK), a theoretical real-world value of $300,000 to $330,000 USD.

Loss by Units

Capsule 2,261 units

100 m

Carrier 117 units

The financial loss by Capsule ships is – because of their cheap price – only ISK 323.48 billion ($ 704.40), but 2,261 units of them got destroyed in the battle.

1,000 m

Dreadnoughts 365 units

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The lost momentum in the Soutnern conflict due to the B-R fight is a far greater loss than the isk assets. Because try as you might, you cannot buy swagger.â&#x20AC;? Statement from Elise Randolph, Pandemic Legion Fleet Commander

The Belligerents & their Strengths N3 & Pandemic Legion

vs.

~1616 ships ~72 Titans ~172 Supercarriers ~355 Dreadnoughts ~414 Carriers thousands of smaller ships

Clusterfuck Coalition (CFC) & the Russian alliance ~3670 ships ~143 Titans ~273 Supercarriers ~817 Dreadnoughts ~233 Carriers thousands of smaller ships

Accumulated Total ISK Lost (= 11 trillion ISK)

9 trillions ISK

eb us (= IS $1 K 4 30 ,3 ,8 60 00 )

3 trillions ISK

0 ISK

27th January 2014, 13:55

midnight

28th January 2014, 10:19

Super-carrier 13 units

Sup-Capital 3,139 units

Titan: 73 units

http://www.justinscustomcomputers. com/images/eve/EVE_Shipchart_ Apocrypha_Edition.jpg

http://community. eveonline.com/news/ dev-blogs/the-bloodbath-of-b-r5rb/

Results CFC and Russian coalitions capture B-R5RB, N3 and Pandemic Legion forces and allies withdraw from the southeast region.

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By Julian “Spunior” Dasgupta on Sat, 12/13/2003 – 5:14am

The Dark Side of Sims Online

And we’re not referring to the gameplay here. The Salon put up a nice article (‘adpowered’ for non-subscribers) on Professor Peter Ludlow , who has been playing The Sims Online until recently. Ludlow’s TSO character Urizenus used to work as some kind of reporter who investigated various incidents and persons in the city he lived in and even ran a news paper/blog called Alphaville Herald. Naturally not only covering the shiny spots of the game he also talked to people who earn money through ‘in-game prostitution’. What bothered Ludlow and Bolter about this was that Evangeline asserted that, in real life, he was a minor and that many of the “girls” he hired to talk dirty in his brothel were also underage. Bolter wondered whether the characters were breaking any laws or doing anything else immoral or unethical. She says she acknowledges that, because the characters weren’t having real sex, it’s hard to say they were involved in “prostitution.” An interesting point especially since the in-game currency “ Simoleans ” can be turned into real cash through Ebay. And since hardly anyone of us plays the game I recommend reading the Salon tidbit as it is a fascinating tale of Ludlow, who ended up getting his character deleted by EA due to a chain of incidents and complaints, the way The Sims Online is being played by a number of subscribers and the ‘Sims Shadow Government’ among other things.

http:// upload. wikimedia. org/wikipedia/en/d/ d4/Ludlow. jpg

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/11/1117_secondlife/ image/8-sims-online.jpg

http://fc05. deviantart.net/ fs71/f/2013/092/2/0/ dark_queen_guinevere_by_cryptcrawlerd608v2e.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot. com/-efIBpXlFa3c/ T9IxOlWonLI/ AAAAAAAAFZc/ x5c7X1AQ5hY/s1600/ Bag+of+Simoleons.jpg

An Online Newspaper Article from: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/7164

alphavilleherald (2003): In the following interview, notorious

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mxb70F9GdNs/Uf6oe5irARI/AAAAAAAD89U/ znaxerAAXzs/s1600/modelposes4.png

sim Evangeline goes back to her early days in Alphaville, and claims to have worked as a cyber-prostitute and then to have been a madam for

various cyber-brothels under the guise of her sims Roxy, Tori, Fanki and then Dorian

Merrill, claiming that at times she made the equivalent of $50 US per trick from her

customers. She claims to still being a minor and hints that some of her customers

have been Maxis employees. She discusses the conflagration with Mia Wallace, and claims to have guessed Mia’s

password and trashed her property and account. Finally she discusses her current policy of newbie-humiliation

on her Free Money for Newbies property, currently number 1 in Alphaville’s welcome category. In particular,

she discusses her new game of locking newbies “in the

freezer” and “caging” dark skinned avatars and calling them “monkeys” and also calling them “ugly” because one can’t see their eyes. [angry editorial aside, apparently Maxis believes all this is consistent with the user agreement ? whatever you do Van,

http://alphavilleherald. com/2003/12/ evangeline_inte.html

don’t commit a real crime like mentioning the Alphaville Herald in game!!! –Uri] Oh, and did I add that Maxis DOES permit Evangeline to advertise a link to her We Love Newbies website, which advertised money trades?

An INTERVIEW from:

Interview with a Child cyber-Prostitute in TSO

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so you signed up and got into beta.

did you check to make sure your girls (their typists) were legal?

i did interviews

and you asked if they were 18?

i only hired real mother fuck’n bitches to represent that shit

what was your first character in game? u

I assume that in the interviews you asked

Roxy Merrill

she was your very first?

yes roxy…

yes

and she set up the first brothel on

like how descriptive they could be

Oct. 11, 2002?

they had to eat it all up till i cant walk straight

them to show you their stuff.

yes. back then tso was filled with homeless

people would pay for interviews

disgusting people…everyone was new and

everyone wanted to be in my clique [...]

innocent. many people say i brought sin in

they paid? how much?

to tso. i dont care. sex sells and it was my

people tried to shut us down but it didnt work cuz maxis was eating my pussy

goal to create the greatest cyber sex house.

alllllllllll night

when i say cyber i mean cyber not that shit with the love beds and “oh baby”

5k an interview [...] people pay that to “interview” with me now too

this was dirty and descriptive we had no love beds

you say maxis was “eating your pussy all night”, does that mean you had maxis

LOL, how soon after you came into game

employees as customers?

did you open the cyber brothel E

1st day i started recruiting

possibly

so you knew as soon as you got in that that

you don’t know or you’re not saying

is what you wanted to do?

maybe maybe no

yes….i never was a skill person. i needed

who’s got more ass then the average

money. why skill when you can suck dick

bitch? they know i was the baddest bitch

to keep food on the plate.

and many people would want me but

i was strolling the places with no purpose..

i wasnt cheap like the other girls

tall body guards held me while i sit

how much did you cost? and how much did the other girls cost

underneath..i lived in the ghetto..a bad neighborhood in sims

other girls set there own prices…Bj’s were 20k.. wet sex,lap dance etc

i did not have anything really u

so Roxy was forced to suck dick, sadly.

ok, how much did you charge for full service?

anything for some G’s…i could have

i charge 150k or more…nothing cheap… i got 500k many times from the rich ones..

made love but i wanted to be fucked [...] i opened it up and we flew to number one

wow, and that was real money back then

no one could get the customers to cum

yep

like us [...]

what was the exchange rate to US dollars back then, do you remember?

so where did you find the sex workers?

they found me..they needed money

ic, so a sim would come to you and say

yes like 100$

they needed simoleans

wow

and you would put them to work

no one was buying money on ebay

you

80 dollars for a million simoleans?

it was strange now people do

i set many motherfuckers up…sell them with your name and your game but you got

did you sell the simoleans for dollars then?

to show a lil shot of ass to get in there head.

no i didnt get involved with it

http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/usgamer/ TS4_CAS_1.jpg/ EG11/resize/1249x-1/ format/jpg

"why

you just kept the simoleans? what did you do with all that money?

yes ..back then u could get a sz 8 lot for 80k but lil mama dont play so they always paid me [...] see in AV the bigger the dick the bigger the

when

bank the bigger the check and i was never a trashy ho lways a classy ho i make a newbie

skill

eat it while my period was on..[...] I was excited a bout the new city so i opened granny’s secrets there it was very successful [...] other places would take the girls money.. i or my granddaughters never did

http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/The_Sims_Online

can

http://sims.wikia.com/ wiki/Neighborhoods_in_ The_Sims_Online

dick suck food to keep the plate"

The Sims Online (also known as EA-Land) was the first massively multiplayer online variation on Maxis’s highly popular computer game The Sims, the second being the Online Weekend mode for The Sims Bustin Out, and third being The Sims Social. It was published by Electronic Arts and released on December 17, 2002 for Microsoft Windows. In March 2007, EA announced that the product would be re-branded as EA-Land and major enhancements would be made. About a year later, EA announced that the game would shut down all activity on August 1, 2008. The next online games in the series are MySims (PC version only) followed by The Sims Social for Facebook. AV = Alphaville. Alphaville is the largest residential city to choose from in The Sims Online. It is one of 12 major cities in the game. It is notable, as it is the largest city in the game. FF = Fancy Fields. Fancy Fields is one of the cities to choose from in The Sims Online.

it was free stay just sell the pussy u keep all ur profits u

you didn’t take a cut?

nope

so how did you make money

visitor’s bonus..food…and people would tip me the owner for the service [...] i would get many tips though so many i had a waiting list [...] all my girls had to recreate and wear special granny girl uniform

u E

did you interview them before you hired them i had managers who interviewd them [...]

and did you do background checks for age etc?

fuck that shit i ain’t even 18 if u can sell it u old enough well if u were not mature then u would be worthless we would have virgin sales

yah

sell a newbie girl [...]

why did you decide you wanted to be a scammer?

i was rich!!!! i bought a big house i hate all the people of AV..all serious and make me sick

serious people and ugly people?

yes so ugly have you seen my sim face when i do it upclose like on my site..its so beautiful

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lol

all u need to know is im I’n college

thats how it looks when i want to do actions

and you’re 17 I’m guessing.

the beauty mark is a nice touch too

in r/l i hate all serious people and wish

anyway I’m rich I wanted a number 1 property

i could slap them

i took over welcome..i did not want to do

am I getting too serious? lol

the sex thing because it was played out

no don’t go “lol” though..go “hahaha”

yah, I can see where the sex thing would get old

anyway, what kinds of fiction are you into?

i live in a barbie dream house [...]

there’s a reason I’m asking this

ok, so voleur decided to scam newbies, but not

I wanna know if your interest in fiction and

just scam them right?

graphics arts stuff influences your game here

the idea was also to humiliate them

i like fantasy

Voleur unlike her sisters were much

examples

stronger and did not want anyone to

Disney

replace her so she had a new identity Van

new stuff or just the old?

Evangeline

old

why did you retire Voleur?

like Disney World?

1 month free was up

snowwhite,little mermaid,sleeping beauty

snowwhite!!!!!

so you change every month?

i love villians

no van’s here to stay..i like her I’ve settled down

hahahah

lol

the evil queen always wins..bad girls finish

van is the baddest bitch cuz she’s smart

first [...]

she don’t suck no dick

you believe I’m a guy?

ok, lemme ask about the whole newbie

aren’t you? You read like one.

humiliation thing. What’s that about?

read?

slapping them, putting them in the freezer etc

you type like one

newbies are so disgusting..they’re the

how does one type? i hate stereotypes they make me *throw up*

bane of my sim life [...] u

just an impression. If you don’t wanna say,

like for example, what are you into besides TSO?

I’m an artist

tha’s cool. But I agree with you about

graphic artist?

stereotypes. Break em!

fine arts all arts

you still in HS or in college

i cant be mean in r/l like i can in tso

I’m not in HS

well i can but i can’t boot people

you in school?

so that means…

my sim is wonderful i love being her

college u

in art?

people think i have no real life so sad I’m not like my sim ..sometimes i can be – i was at movies last night and go “there’s so many ugly people here”

aren’t you young to be in college? you said you weren’t 18

how’s that too young?

you a freshman?

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/mxb70F9GdNs/Uf6oe5irARI/AAAAAAAD89U/ znaxerAAXzs/s1600/ modelposes4.png

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The Business Update, the latest content addition to the world of Grand Theft Auto Online, is now available to download from PSN and Xbox Live. Today we’ve also added 14 new Jobs to GTA Online, many of which are inspired by the new additions from The Business Update. There are four new Land Races designed specifically for the Sports and Super class cars. You can take the new Vestra airplane on a tour of the Los Santos skies in any of four new Air Races.

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Be Somebody Else. With Everybody Else. The Sims Online is a massive world built by thousands of players. Create a Sims and play as yourself or your alternate Sim persona. Explore neighborhoods, make friends, host events, or run a business. The only limit is your imagination. Get that entrepreneurial spirit in gear, because your ingenuity will determine how much money your Sims make.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030207151200/http:// www.ea.com/eagames/official/thesimsonline/home

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How the Internet created a multi-billion dollar porn industry Duke porn star reveals herself

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GRAPHIC PornHub Statistics I am a internet porn biz veteran of 15 years My porn name is Lance Hart

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THE QUOTE

Kinky porn pays a lot more than Porn climbing a corporate ladder.

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By Christopher Jackson on Sunday, 7 Oct ‘12, 07:00am

How the Internet created a multi-billion dollar porn industry 1

The Internet is really really great… FOR PORN! I’ve got a fast connection so I don’t have to wait… FOR PORN! There’s always some new site… FOR PORN! I browse all day and night… FOR PORN! It’s like I’m surfing at the speed of light… FOR PORN! The Internet is for porn! The Internet is for porn! Why you think the net was born? Porn! Porn! PORN! In 2003, these lyrics were heard on the Broadway stage courtesy of Jeff Marx, Robert Lopez and the puppets of musical show Avenue Q. It would quickly become a famous Internet meme and catchphrase, thanks to two things. First, the song is hilarious, and two, and most importantly, there is a definite kernel of truth to it. But how did porn make the successful leap from the hidden and shameful secret of lonely men and horny teenage boys, to a worldwide entertainment industry worth billions of dollars?

An Online magazine Article from:

http://thenextweb.com/ insider/2012/10/07/ cybersex-ascii-pinupscelebrity-fakes-howthe-internet-createda-97-billion-pornindustry/#!yQVbd

Analogue porn

Before the Internet, porn meant foil-wrapped magazines on the top shelves of service station newsagents, dark, plain-fronted shops full of erotic literature and pay-perview satellite channels with ten-minute titillating previews every hour or so from about 10pm. It was hushed, hidden and private. It was something you did in secret. Secrecy normally means doing something alone and keeping it to yourself. But as computers became connected and networks began to emerge, consumers of pornography found that secrecy could exist with other people. Today, discovering new things we like and sharing them with other people is an essential component of the social web. But these things became a reality for people who enjoyed erotica online many years before MySpace.

http://sunsetgun. typepad.com/.a/6a00d8 3451cb7469e2017ee49 cf375970d-400wi

Porn’s first home http://www.davidmelamed.com/wp-content/ uploads/2013/07/one_ billion_dollars2.jpg

Text-based discussion boards BBS (Bulleting Board System) programs and later Usenet were the first homes of pornography online. Here, erotica took to the Internet like a teenager finally escaping the restrictive clutches of its childhood home,

As computers became connected and networks began to emerge, consumers of pornography found that secrecy could exist with other people.

where it would hide away in its room. Porn had moved out into a cheap, rented flat where it could begin to express its true self and realize its potential. Usenet groups were the predecessor to the forums and message boards that we use today, and enabled the sharing of images before bandwidths increased and the world wide web truly created a network where users could exchange pictures as easily as they did text. There were many restrictions to get around (due to the technology, not arbitrarily placed rules) so files had to encoded in ASCII before posting and decoded back into an image after download. File sizes were also massively restricted, but anyone with the know-how and a bit of tech (most importantly, a scanner) had the ability to share pornography. These were the beginnings of pornography becoming truly accessible, something that had always been a problem for porn companies, who had trouble distributing porn to customers who wanted to protect their anonymity. The Internet allowed for any niche, no matter how deviant, to be represented. Porn magazines and companies creating porn films already catered to the more “mainstream” fetishes – big breasts, BBW (big beautiful women), racial preferences, schoolgirl attire – but now anyone could create or find a group of anonymous, like-minded individuals, and share and discuss erotic material. Anybody could share what they had – either for free, or a price. Commercial porn distribution found its beginnings on the BBSes. Users would dial into a remote computer via a modem even slower than the 56k dial-up modems many of today’s Internet users were introduced through, and connect with others through that server. Since the BBSes would allow users to download files, users could put their pictures up, sometimes using a payment gateway (though not always with an age verification process). The Internet at this point was an extension of pornography offline, and the technology didn’t yet exist to produce digital amateur pornographic content such as digital cameras or webcams. But there was ASCII. ASCII is probably the first example of people creating – as opposed to mere sharing – pornographic content online, using ASCII text code to generate (often surprisingly realistic) images. While not in demand today ASCII porn does still hold interest to people and there are several forums and archives for anyone interested. Today, it has a distinctively retro feel, given that it was usually modeled after 80s porn stars who were modern at the time. We’ve always had to adapt what we want from technology to the limitations of technology, and porn is no exception – in fact, it’s always been a big driver of that. ASCII art is just one example of the lengths we’ll go to for some porn. Still, porn had a long way to go before it was able to become a lucrative industry online.

Porn driving technology Pornography is often credited as the fuel behind technological innovation, or at least as a major driving force behind technology adoption. It is often – not unfairly – blamed for many of the negatives of online life, such as pop-ups throwing hardcore images in the faces of unsuspecting Internet users, malware infecting our

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computers and, of course, that spam about penis enlargements, Viagra and busty women filling our inboxes. But porn has pioneered positive developments too. Do you stream video online? Most likely you do, without even really thinking about it. Porn companies were trying to perfect this technology long before the mainstream media, in order to offer live sex performers that could be streamed directly to consumers. Better tech meant better quality, which meant higher prices. Live chat, between porn consumers and performers, is the logical step up from this, and porn companies were driving this technology that we use almost daily today to conduct business and to stay connected with our loved ones. Performers could sell these one-on-one chats at high prices. It’s no wonder the industry pushed to perfect the technology. Some claim that we have porn to thank for the fast broadband connections that allow us to download large files in seconds and stay constantly connected. Whether or not that’s true, it is hard to argue that the adult industry didn’t help render dial-up difficult to use by advancing the state of media on the web. Companies need a way to get their product to their consumers, and as the Internet took off in the mid-1990s the big players in porn needed a way to get their content out there, easily and quickly. Access to porn, which had increased exponentially since the days of adult book stores and mail order, would count for little if it took you hours to download a few images. Anecdotal evidence (as so many of the numbers surrounding the industry are) suggest that this rush to distribute high-res pornographic images fuelled broadband development, and a 2004 Nielsen/NetRatings study found pornography (along with online music sharing) to be one of the biggest factors behind broadband penetration in Europe. 5

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Payment for access

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http://www. nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/05/18/ business/ 18gordoCA03ready.html

But it is in the area of online commerce that pornography has arguably had the biggest impact, and in fact it is that innovation and driving adoption that has been the primary force behind the growth of the “adult entertainment industry” online. As we talked about earlier, enterprising BBS users were setting up payment gateways long before users were buying anything else online. It was Richard Gordon who founded Electronic Card Systems in the mid-1990s. At this point, sites like Amazon (launched in 1994) and eBay (1995) were still just starting up, and it was Gordon who worked with many clients in the pornography industry to set up ways for them to make money through distributing their wares online rather than their traditional revenue streams such as satellite pay-per-view. Electronic Card Systems made lots of money processing sales for sites such as ClubLove, who published the famous Pamela Anderson/Tommy Lee sex tape. The big players could now make some serious money distributing content to paying consumers who could access porn in the comfort and, most importantly, privacy of their own homes. The demand was there, always had been, and now the technology was making the industry boom.

Illicit desire, legitimate business

When we think of porn our thoughts often stray to illegality, and while there is a lot of porn that is illegal (and it’s the sort that makes the headlines) it is, after all, a legitimate business. It is backed up by legitimate companies who have helped the industry grow and who allow it to run. These important businesses, separate from the actual adult entertainment production companies, are concerned with two things – access verification and payment processing. In 2001 there were a handful of these companies that were imperative for the industry’s existence: Adult Check, CyberAge, CCBill and Internet Billing Co. “Whenever there’s an Internet porn transaction, there’s a good chance that at least one of these outfits had a hand in it,” wrote Seth Lubove in Forbes Magazine. The credit card was key to this whole operation. Previously endorsed for age verification by the government in the Communications Decency Act 1996, the credit card became like a magic wand. If you had one, you could enter your details and have access to porn in minutes. And by requiring one, porn industries could immediately side step anyone accusing them of displaying porn to minors. If the porn industry grew in a garden, then these middlemen were the gardeners. The desire for porn was already there, the growth of the Internet was creating accessibility, and the porn companies were pushing the technology to further that access and to create new and better experiences for consumers. Companies like CCBill acted as middlemen between banks and porn producers, making the commerce of smut possible and weeding out anything that could damage it, such as fraud or illegal, obscene content.

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Porn today

British documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux has twice investigated the porn industry. The first time, in 1997, he visited LA where porn companies like Vivid were making millions and millions. It was an industry that, while still hidden to many people across the world, had become successful to the brink of mainstreaming. The Internet had made superstars of people like Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson . Porn had its own A-list. It is hard to know where the industry stands today. Some statistics put its revenues as high as $97 billion a year at one point in the last decade, with US revenue at around $13 billion. But within the industry people like Vivid Entertainment founder Steven Hirsch are describing it as the worst they’ve seen the industry in 25 years. Why would this be? The general state of the economy doesn’t help, but that couldn’t be a driver for a massive loss of revenue; stress releases like alcohol and porn tend to survive recession well. It is more likely to have to do with the ease with which consumers can find adult content, thanks to sites like YouPorn and RedTube. These sites brought the YouTube philosophy to pornography, and anybody can upload content to them. They make their money from advertising, while porn DVD sales have dropped considerably. In fact, sales of DVDs have dropped so dramatically that several people cited it as a factor in the suicide of Jon Dough, a 9

YouPorn is a free pornographic video sharing website and one of the 100 most accessed websites in the world. Since launching in August 2006, it grew to become the most popular pornographic website on the internet, and, in November 2007, it was reported to be the largest free pornographic website as well.

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porn star that British documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux interviewed in 1997, and whose widow he spoke to earlier this year. Much of what is affecting the porn industry is simply part of the inevitable trend of technology disruption. Music, journalism and movies are all becoming much more democratic. Getting content for free is easy, and generating that content is easy too. In fact, amateur content is some of the most popular; after decades of bleached blonde hair and fake breasts, people want authenticity.

Internet = porn

Ultimately, the same characteristics of the Internet that created a multibillion dollar porn industry are enabling its disruption. We’re seeing a significant shift away from the days of glamorous brands like Playboy and Vivid taking all the profits with their line-up of stars forming the A-list. Even more interesting is how intrinsically tied together pornography and the Internet are. The Internet is not “just” for porn, as Avenue Q so musically put it. The Internet is, in many ways, because of porn too.

Slogvoyeur (2011): I am a male porn ac-

bonuses based on how well our movies do.

tor, working for a large internet site for

What you see in camera isn’t actually as

past 4 yrs. Got into it because of financial

sexy as the truth. We always think about

hardships, ended up enjoying what I do

angles and guys are asked to be in un-

and continuing. I don’t do gay porn but

comfortable positions for the sake of a

have several DP scenes which is known

good shot. So it is not as enjoyable as

to be the gateway to MM. Male actors

one might think.

tend to stick around. Believe it or not, it’s

See if you can fuck a girl in front of 10 ran-

more difficult to find good male actors.

dom guys and take direction about posi-

Girls can fake it through, but guys can’t

tions, etc. See if you can still cum, if yes

really fake a cumshot.

then you’re better than most. I’ve seen

I work 5 days a week, do 7-8 scenes.

newbies trying out and mist can’t keep it

Some guys do more than one scene a day.

up. The ones that can can’t cum.

It takes longer than you would imagine with

Never use your real name. It is a con-

promo shits, makeup, etc. I am usually

sideration, but I think I’ll always be in the

done after one scene. Every one hour of

industry in one way or another. Not easy

footage takes about 4 hours of actual time.

to shake the stigma. And very difficult to

I have a contract that pays me a flat weekly

maintain an honest relationship. I have

salary of $1,000. I have to commit to a cer-

been in countless short term relationships

tain number of scenes per month. We get

for the past few years.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ IAmA/comments/xv7b6/ iama_fetish_porn_producer_and_porn_model_ama

By Todd Venezia on March 4, 2014 5:57pm

Duke porn star reveals herself

The Duke porn star has come out from under the covers. The university freshman – who bared her skin in blue movies to pay for college – bared her soul Tuesday in an online column in which she posted her picture and revealed her stage name as Belle Knox . She wrote about how she has been bullied on campus since word of her racy parttime job spread. “My decision to do porn to pay for college was a private one I made, and then I was outed to my university classmates by another Duke student who had seen me on the Internet a few months ago,” Knox wrote on the XO Jane website. “He proceeded to reveal who I was to the entire Greek system . . . I started to be harassed. He started to be applauded.” Knox first sparked controversy when she posted an anonymous column on the Jane site last month, talking about how she worked as a porn actress while attending the prestigious North Carolina school. In today’s revealing story, Knox says she was heavily criticized online for not going the full monty with her identity in the February article. She also talked about how people had posted messages online saying she should be “raped” and calling on her to “slit her wrists.” She complained about a double standard under which women who act in porn are shamed but men who watch it are not. “You want to see me naked. And then you want to judge me for letting you see me naked.” She ended by saying: “Today, I am choosing to reveal my porn identity to the world. My name is Belle Knox, and I wear my Scarlet Letter with pride.”

http://rhrealitycheck. org/wp-content/ uploads/2014/04/belleknox-375x250.jpg

An Online magazine Article from: http://www.educationviews.org/dukeporn-star-reveals/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Duke_University

http://manhattaninfidel.org/wp-content/ uploads/2014/03/ Belle_Knox_Porn_ Real_Name_Miriam_ Weeks_Duke.jpg

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892.

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PornHub Statistics Top Search Terms Worldwide â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2013 in alphabetical order

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Percentage of Traffic on PornHub, by Device

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Mobile Tablet Desktop

Creampie is a slang term used in pornography to describe when a male ejaculates inside his partner's vagina or anus.

creampie deutsch francaise french german italian japanese japanese milf japanese wife lesbian lisa ann mexicanas milf novinha

Novinha is a young girl (usually a 13-17 years old teen) who is pretty, attractive, charming, hot, sexy, etc, etc, etc. I think you get it, don't you?

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To compare: Percentage of Traffic on the Web in general, by Device

15% Mobile 15% Tablet 70% Desktop

http://marketingland.com/mobile-devices-generate-30-pcttraffic-15-pct-e-sales-75498

Pornhub, part of the Pornhub NETWORK campaign, is a pornographic video sharing website - possibly the largest porn video web site on the internet. Launched in 2007 and based in Montreal, Quebec,

What Were the Most Watched Videos on

Farrah Abraham Teen Mon Sex Tape

PornHub of 2013?

12,366,884 views

An graphic with data from: http://www.pornhub.com/insights/pornhub2013-year-in-review/

Top 3 Search Terms

Most and Least Traffic /

in Different Countries

Visitors in Year and Week

– 2013

Brazil

Brazilian Novinha

Japan

Anal

Japenese Japanese wife Japanese milf

Italy

Italian Sara Tommasi Amatoriale

Most Traffic per Year: January

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Least Traffic per Year: August

10 11

France

French Francaise Beurette

British Lisa Ann

Lesbian

Teen Creampie

Milf

1 2

Most Visitors in the Week: Monday

3 4 5 6

Germany

German Deutsch Teen

Spain

Spanish Casting Amateur

Mexico

Mexicana Teen Lisa Ann

Pornhub is a free, ad-supported website, which allows its users to view professional pornography, in addition to amateur pornography. In 2012, the website launched a "Save the Boobs!"

campaign for the month of October for breast cancer awareness and research. For every 30 large-breast or small-breast videos viewed, the website offered to donate a penny to breast cancer research. They

My Girlfriend is Back – X-Art

Two Blonde Med Students – Brazzers

To compare: PSY - GANGNAM STYLE on YouTube

9,584,256 views

5,336,596 views

1,989,150,155 views

Least Visitors in the Week: Sunday

ended up donating $75,000 to various organizations including the Eileen Stein Jacoby Fund and Cancer Sucks Inc.

http://en.wiki pedia.org/wiki/ Pornhub

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smokealottapotamus (2012): I have been making

Then i would save the file and upload to my server. I

money from internet porn for nearly 15 years now,

would then submit that page to infoseek and 2 min-

been through the ups and downs and it’s been so

utes later when it was indexed, I would search info-

long, i’m not sure what else i am suited for. i am still

seek for “big tits” and guess what?? #1 listing eve-

making a lot of money, but it’s not quite as easy as

rytime, for every search phrase i wanted. I would

it used to be... i currently own/run about 125+ adult

spend around 20 minutes a day doing this about a

websites with a combined 6,000+ affiliates.

dozen times with different terms and would rake in about 25,000 fresh SE hits daily. These would get

Back in 97’ my buddy and i started building web-

sent directly to a banner farm which would generate

sites and found newsgroups where people were

about 5k+ banner clicks at around .22 – .25 each,

requesting adult content. We would print things out

resulting in well over $1,000/day.

and mail via snail mail for $5 bills. The po boxes

One morning I woke up and Disney had not only

filled up quick.

purchased Infoseek, but changed out their entire structure. That was the end of that.

I have worked on all levels. After about 7-8 years in the biz, I started shooting my own porn and had

I don’t make the plots. My partners are the produc-

a big warehouse where girls would come through

tion guys who direct everything, I handle everything

and we should shoot porn, edit, author, distribute,

once it’s mastered.

etc.. but was robbed by my ex-partner and went back to square one.

I tell people that I do “web marketing” and if they con-

My revenues are generated mainly from subscrip-

tinue to question it, I tell them that I “basically drive traf-

tions, but we also upsell via our member areas.

fic to websites based off peoples clicking trends and

There are also popup and popunder ads we sell.

online habits”. And if I have to continue, I’ll say “I sell

Though we have affiliate traffic and those are pop-

advertising spots on various websites.. blah blah blah”

up/under free since we do not want to hijack the traffic sent to use by affiliates.

I am married to a girl I went to high school with. We have no kids yet, though there’s a chance she’s

Porn SEO? It’s a huge part of what we do. It’s

pregnant now (fingers crossed), we were but it

tough to stay on top of google’s algorithms these

didn’t happen... as far as the rest of my family goes,

days though. And even though I have #1 results for

they’re all aware of what I do. I am not religeous,

MANY searches, a small percentage of my traffic

nor is my mother.

actually comes from SE’s. I remember about 10-12 years ago, there was SE

Exactly how much do I make now? Around 250k/

called Infoseek.com and they had a funny way of

year right now. Prior to tubes, about 35% more than

indexing sites. That was when you could actually

that. There were times that I would pull in $40,000/

“submit your site” to the SE’s which nowadays is

month in the past.

handled by robots and spiders. But back then, you could submit your url to infoseek and it would tell

And now with tube sites basically giving you every-

you “thanks, your site is being spidered”. Then you

thing for free, we’re constantly lowering the cost of

wait about 2-3 minutes and refresh the page, you

access. In the beginning, the tube sites would steal

would then see “Your site has bee indexed”. Well,

their content from paysites and host it overseas.

I had a .html document that I called the “superbowl

And since they were free, there were no problems

source” and it was basically a story about one of

with billing, and only billing issues would get atten-

the past superbowls, no pictures or anything, just

tion since the banks were involved, etc. So obvious-

text with about 14 occurrences of the term “super

ly, people flocked to the free porn. All the sudden

bowl”. I would find/replace “super bowl” with what-

you have the major 4 porn tubes giving away eve-

ever search result i wanted (for example “big tits”).

rything scraped from the dvd companies that were

http://pornomass.com/ uploads/photo/original/224bilder-von-einzigartiger-porndownload.jpg

going out of business due to dvd sales becoming

Well... the same thing that happened to music with

obsolete... So yes, it was pirated at first.. Then we

napster has also happened with porn. It’s so readily

started paying companies to scour the tubes and

available via the tube sites, it makes it that much

remove any content that was ours, though to legal

harder to sell. Not to mention, the economy has

recourse was worth taking. We would say “take that

definitely affected business. They used to say porn

shit down” and they would. But it was too late, the

was “recession proof”.... I believed that for 12 years

traffic was already gone. The bookmarks were al-

until lately.

ready reset to these tube sites... Now, years gone

Very aspect of the industry changes, fast. Content

by, our content has already been seen by the mass-

delivery methods, availability, price points. Origi-

es and now we’re putting videos back onto the tube

nally, there were very few adult subscription sites,

sites which we probably, previously had requested

and each were very broad in terms of niches. It was

to be removed, and the only difference is, they’re

“mega sites”. These days you have “micro-niched”

allowing us the 720x60 banner ad spot below the

paysites that range from “lesbian foot fetish” to

clip.... demanding that we show at least 6 minutes

“hairy midgets” and so on... we have scraped the

of our 20 minute video, and demanding that we put

bottom of the barrels when it comes to content. Ba-

the cum shot in there as well. WTF.. but fuck.. if you

sically, the only thing left is live. Can’t be shared.

cant beat em, join em...

And these days, we have to be competitive when it

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comes to pricing. Originally we would sell one mi-

Since it’s not a mega site, it’s easy to regulate. My

cro-niched site for $30/month and that’s all you got.

new stuff doesn’t last very long on the torrent sites

But now that we’ve built 100’s of these sites of vari-

these days...

ous niches, we have bundled them altogether and offered you access to all for the same $30/month.

I have aquired all of my employees through places

Until lately, there were camera men, gaffers, pro-

like gofuckyourself.com which is the biggest adult

ducers, directors, editors, web designers, market-

webmaster forum out there. Most of the people on

ers, you name it... a whole staff of people. Now, I will

there now are trolls, but back in the day it was pure

make it possible for the actress to reap full benefits

business. I have met tons of people from my indus-

without all those middle men. And with the addi-

try there and many of them work with/for me now.

tion of social media and self marketing, who needs them? It’s you and me babe!

It’s much more difficult to be successful in my industry these days. You really really need to be

Girls make more money in porn, guys make about

creative now whereas in the past, you could throw

1/5 of what the girls make. Plus, guys will do it for

up a page of banners and get traffic to it. If you are

free so it’s rare that a good performing male will

hot (guy or girl), start shooting your own movies

re-appear, due to the abundance of them willing to

with just yourself and/or another guy/girl and build

work for free, and under-performing. we want to see

your own site. then you have fresh content that no

the girls, that’s why they are the ones getting paid.

one has ever seen and trust me, people will come

A good shoot will run from 1200-5000. Depends

watch it if you self promote yourself via social me-

on who you have, but chances are, the guy is 250

dia outlets. Doesn’t really matter what you look like

and the girl is 800, depending on the shoot. Then

if you’re a guy. If you can get girls over, throw on

you have the set/camera guy & production costs. I

some mask if you don’t want to be recognized and

say, go gonzo and just pay the girl, do it yourself,

do some POV videos of your own. You will make

no editing since gonzo is the bomb and call it a

some money. If it turns out that you’re good and

day. As far as the girls go, it’s like anyone at any

can perform and get creative with your content, you

appointment, they’re often late, but hey, it’s LA...

will be able to get into the industry without question.

traffic is a nightmare.

The hard part is getting traffic.

The biggest perks of the job are definitely being able

There are people who write descriptions for the

to work from anywhere, anytime I want to. All of my

content that goes on our sites. I often do them my-

employees are scattered around the country, some

self. Some people hire overseas people to write

even outside the country and they all work on their

stuff, but it’s usually crap since the broken english

own schedule. They are paid well and don’t have to

fucks up the whole mood. There is not much de-

show up to work. Not to mention, I can simply move

mand in porn for writing, but it’s definitely needed. I

to Hawaii and nothing will change. The people in

have a girl who lives in the mid-west who’s like 50+

the industry are very cool, never conservative and

and a mother of 3-4 (amish) who writes a lot of our

some of the smartest people I have ever done busi-

stories. It’s only part time work for her.

ness with. Afterall, we’re the ones who beta tested

If you were to review individual movies that are re-

every aspect of the internet for you all. Those video

leased on some of the big network sites, you could

players would not be where they were if millions of

probably attract some visitors. And with an affili-

hours of porn hadn’t been watched on them. Porn

ate link back to the site where they can watch the

has evolved online billing and content delivery to

full movie, you might be able to make a few extra

where it is today.

bucks. The paysites usually have free video content for you to use (or a trailer) to promote a site.

I am working with some top pornstars, doing their solo sites. And I pay people to scour for pirates.

I have seen it all, porn does not get me off anymore.

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done in the butt, and I get to cum all over some pretty lady’s pantyhose. I have found a host of kinky friends in Florida where I live. We do all kinds of silly sex stuff together for more than 40 hours a week. The people I work with pride ourselves on helping young models make good money and better their

lancehart (2012): I am 33 years old. I have a Bach-

lives. I still model for main-stream gay and straight

elors Degree in English with a focus in Modern

porn companies on the side if the shoot looks fun,

American Literature (which comes in more handy

but mostly I produce my own stuff now. I spent a

than you would think in the Adult Film Industry).

couple years buying porn from clips4sale.com and

Before the internet was the internet, I used to spend

thinking, “I could make this stuff,” especially after I

hours hogging my parents phone line while looking

had been in a few big production gay porns. One

for nudie pics of Cindy Crawford on bulletin boards

night I couldn’t sleep, so I went to walmart and

with a 2400 bd modem. I was always a nerdy kid,

bought a $300 video camera. I already had a com-

scared of the sports, introverted, and spent a lot of

puter with some free editing software. I put an add

time indulging in sexual fantasies. After high school, I

on backpage and craigslist “looking for female tal-

guess I grew into my looks and started getting atten-

ent” and I got a call within 5 minutes. She showed

tion. I was still too scared to have sex until I was 19.

up in 20 minutes and we got to work. What I’m saying is, I thought about it for years, but

I took a long time to work my way through college,

once I started I realized that it really wasn’t too

and graduated when I was 25. I started a career in

hard. Making good money can be hard, but mak-

B2B sales, mostly selling software and wholesale

ing enough to cover your costs shouldn’t be all that

internet bandwidth. Still being sexually obsessed

tricky. So I guess my first step was buying a cam-

with things that I did not know were pretty common

era, and after that placing the ad for a model.

fetishes, I spent a lot of money on escorts, hookers and strippers. One day I was in a financial bind,

Anyway... within 2 weeks of buying a cheap cam-

and I answered an ad on craigslist for “male talent,”

era and posting some video clips of a girl kicking

which ended up being my first paid porn gig. I was

me in the balls and jerking me off onto her nylons,

paid $1900 and flown across the country just to jerk

I had a Top 50 clipstore on clips4sale.com called

off on camera. I was good at it. Really good at it,

“She Owns Your Manhood.” That month I started

and I found my true calling in life.

making $300 a day by making art (fetish film) out of the perverted stuff that I had always been ashamed

I signed a contract with a gay porn company at that first shoot. I’m not gay, but I’m not remotely homophobic either. I looked at having sex with men as a sport, a sport that I actually cared about, and I strived to be better and better at it. After that contract ran out, I launched my own production where I could indulge in stuff that I really enjoy. My fetishes include: ballbusting (getting kicked in the balls by hot girls), pegging (getting it up the butt by hot girls with strap-ons), pantyhose, spandex leggings, high heels, fishnets, leotards, bodysuits... I like regular “Vanilla” sex too. I like it a lot. I just have a fetish itch that I need to scratch, and it can’t be scratched by anything but some kinky sex. In most of my films I get kicked in the balls, teased,

"I was paid $1900 and flown across the country just to jerk off on camera. I was good at it. Really good at it, and I found my true calling in life."

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#tbt when I was a sof tware salesman 8 yea rs ago. I was at eBay live then. Now I'm on my way to the Phoenix Forum . http://web.stagram .com/p/68546866 6856937160_2179 57756#2bQ0HOdRuD0KltsH.99

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Hangin g out in the artsy distr revers ict, taking e dick p missin g Lau ics, ra and my ca ts es. Mos and pack. a n s No ing u p Hel

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@_lau ra_eliz a_ thinkin g hard face This re stauran . t is also re ally rea lly red http://w eb.stagr am.com 442063 /p 159_21 795775 /664079091 6#BZ2h pp1IKpl 8X8u3 .99

My On thre frie e of e ne nd the w r @ m i oom _la s m m ura a y _e girl tes. liza _

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An user story from: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/xv7b6/iama_fetish_porn_producer_and_porn_model_ama

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of. The profits kept growing, and a couple months later I quit my day job. At the time I was a well paid Business Analyst at a pretty big software company. My parents found out what I do for work a few months ago. I guess someone told them where to

. ean y cl d out a eak Squ t to he . u t Abo e nigh th for

look online and they saw me in a scene I did for kink.com where I am ball gagged, bound, and getting done in the butt by a 6ft tall black lady with a

/p/ om m.c 5_2 gra 6 .sta 28388 iOQ b e 17 Yc ://w http 97908 iY8BS 5 b 686 7756# u.99 Y 5 z 9 Y p 17

strap-on. My parents are from the south, very right wing, and had a hard time accepting this. Since I haven’t asked them for money ever as an adult, there’s nothing they can do but take it for what it is. Now we get along okay. I get some level of judgement from other people in my life, but those that matter don’t judge, and those that judge don’t matter. All and all, I am grateful

Riddle me th is

everyday that I finally found a healthy and profit-

...

able outlet for what I, at one time, considered to be a sexual or psychological problem. I used to think

http://w e 14604 b.stagram.c 99903 o 950_2 m/p/70549 D4p1 1 Q3y4 HSut3 7957756#x Hy5H GB.99

I was a freak for being obsessed with my fetishes. I used to be terrified that anyone might see the kind of porn I looked at online. I could never be totally honest with anyone. art at in I w filter o #n

When someone contacts me who is interested in working with me, typically they come through my landing page: instinctdrivenmedia.com or a lot of the landing page I direct them to it so they can see actual footage of what they would be doing. All my pay rates are on that page too, so it clears up a lot. A lot of girls that work for me never get naked and never touch a dick. That’s normally the first thing I get across in the first conversation. They can make

Babycat is pretty happ y about @ laura_eliza_ _ moving in. More clothe s to get hair on

. ram 70 tag 92 b.s 829 joW /we 180 6#fg 7 p:/ htt /688 5775 T.99 p 79 04 m/ co 3_21 5b76 4 71 hpkR

times they find me on twitter. If they haven’t seen

http://web.st

agram.com/ p/7054914 17957756 60499903 #xD4pQyH 950_2 SutEHyHG B.99

$100 an hour without doing anything porny, and they need to know that they don’t have to jerk a guy

"I used to get paid $3000 per gay sex scene and I did one every couple months."

Last y ea in a sle r I met @ro xanne azy m xxrae made otel in a fun movie Ft Laud. W I had e that d the ple ay. To asure start h day of er ow n porn helping he r produ ction :)

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off or show their boobs to make whatever amount

per scene...Producing and selling my own porn is

of money they need.

another story.

Once we establish what the model wants to do, I

I just started my production 12 months ago and my

need to know what they really look like. If I can’t

company made over $150000. The first 6 months I

find recent footage of them online, and haven’t met

really didn’t know what I was doing and could have

them in person, I require a couple pics send to me,

made a lot more. Now I still have a ton to learn but

with the model holding a piece of paper with the cur-

it’s get more and more profitable. Out of this year’s

rent date written on it. This is pretty standard in the

revenue I’ve paid myself about $70000.

porn industry. That way I know it’s them and current,

The rest went to models, costumes, cameras, com-

and they haven’t gained or lost 20 lbs since the pic

puters, an accountant and other stuff. I brought on

was taken.

a partner to be a CFO (Im not so good with money)

If we are filming at my apartment and not at my stu-

and have plans to grow my production a lot in the

dio they have to be nice to my cats, or I will send

next few months. I guess it’s like any other business.

them home. Then schedule a first shoot. The first

The sky is the limit if you work hard and stay creative.

shoot is normally just 2 hours, to see if we work

The margins get tricky. I hired a CFO and he helps

well together. If they like the work, and want to do

me a lot with the tricky math. Basically, I try to make

more, and I can sell their look, I can typically shoot a

clips for a cost of less than $60 each. Each clip is

model a couple times a month. For male talent, it’s

about 10 minutes long and sells for $9.99 (I only

a little different because I have to weed out the jerks

get 60% clips4sale gets 40%), and I try to make

and creeps. I’m pretty picky about male talent, so

clips that sell enough to break even within 2 weeks

I don’t recruit all that much.

of posting them. Some blow it out of the water and make me $500 in two days, but that’s really rare.

I have a “normal” girlfriend now. We met in AA. Oh

Most do break even in a 2 weeks though.

yeah, I’m celebrating 14 in recovery this Thursday :) She gets jealous of my work sometimes but we talk

Well, when I’m talking to other porn people we talk

honestly about it and I do what I can to make her

about it like it’s art. I do really think it is art, because

feel special. To be honest, it does seem unfair to her

I’m expressing myself creatively and I get criticized

because I can hook up with anyone on camera and

for the “film” aspects, and mostly because my goal is

she doesn’t feel comfortable with anyone but me.

to evoke a very specific “lustful” response from the

I’d be okay with her playing with others but she says

viewer (easier said than done). At the same time,

she doesn’t want to. We have really great “normal”

I try not to be delusional. I know I’m not Alfred

sex. Now that she’s read 50 Shades of Gray (like

Hitchcock (who would have had a great porn

every other vanilla girl on the planet) she wants me

name... just say’n).

to tie her up and spank her. It’s kind of cute, so I indulge her. We mostly snuggle, watch movies, pet my cats, go out to eat, travel, do back rubs, and I make sure she cums as much as possible. She’s just not the kinky type I guess. it’s a tricky thing... I love her because she lets me and she loves me back. But, yeah, I’d be nice to be teamed up with a lady who could perve out with me full steam ahead. Well, when I was only talent in gay porn, that was a couple years ago. A LOT has changed in just a couple years in the adult film industry. I used to get paid $3000 per gay sex scene and I did one every couple months. Now the going rate is more like $500

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66 68 69

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I am a seller on Silk Road

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DO NOT get comfortable! This is not Road wal-mart, or even amazon.

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I am a seller on the illegal anonymous marketplace Silk Road. Ask me anything.

silkroadmagic (2011): I’ve been selling prescription Adderall (an amphetamine salt based prescription drug used for treating people with ADD and ADHD) on Silk Road, the anonymous “black market” that uses Bitcoin and Tor. The site is similar to other e-commerce websites like Amazon or Ebay, but Silk Road specializes in illegal drugs. I came across the Silk Road around the same time that I had realized that I had more Adderall than I needed. An user story from:

http://www.reddit. com/r/IAmA/ comments/inrbo/ iama_seller_on_ the_illegal_anonymous_marketplace

I’ve since made pretty good money with the sales.

gaia12: is it worth it for the adv person? or is it just an opportunity to

Not a fortune or anything, but more than I expect-

further grow bitcoin and an internet black market. It seems so risky,

ed. About $200-300. I mostly just did it because I

especially for someone not very versed in it, that buying on the silk

cared about having Bitcoins, not making Bitcoins.

road just isn’t worth it.

Selling the Adderall just seemed like a good way to get Bitcoins. I could have just found a site to

silkroadmagic: I’m not sure whether “adv” means “adventurous” or

trade USD for Bitcoins, but with this I was able to

“average” (or something else), but I’ll try to answer that. If you’re

get Bitcoins and make money in the process, so it

feeling adventurous and you know enough about technology to get

seemed like a better idea.

your hands on some bitcoins and you’re able to get to the Silk Road

I’ll answer anything, as long as it doesn’t give away

homepage and you want drugs, then maybe you should give it a

my identity. Proof here (only works if you’re logged

shot.

into Silk Road). I put proof on my Silk Road seller

If you’re average, then maybe you shouldn’t come here yet. It’s

page. So... AMA.

pretty easy to make a simple mistake. If you put your address in the wrong box, you might accidentally make it public (and I’m sure

that law enforcement is watching everything listed on Silk Road). It is definitely a brilliant opportunity to further grow bitcoin, and it is an Internet black market. But, yes, it is pretty risky if you make a small mistake. Silk Road is pretty easy to use, but you can never be too careful. If it seems too risky, maybe buying on the Silk Road isn’t worth it for you. If it’s not worth it, don’t do it. It’s pretty safe, but it’s ok to be cautious. [deleted]: Why are you telling the public about Silk Road? Don’t you worry that having too many people in on this shit is going to lead to it getting shut down or having independent sellers get busted? I got an ounce of shrooms from Silk Road (the dudes) back in the day and it just seems like such a fucking mess nowadays with the inflated Bitcoin prices and publicity.

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site gets more people are going to talk about the taboo subject and perhaps see through some lies. But then again I’m just the kind of guy who likes to see the world burn. Anyway, best of luck in all your future endeavours and try not got get v&. silkroadmagic: I’m sure there are people who don’t think it’s a good idea. But putting illegal drugs in a positive light is probably a good idea. I don’t use illegal drugs myself, but I truly believe that there’s no reason that they should be illegal. Hopefully this can help people see that not all drug dealers are completely terrisilkroadmagic: Having more people using it will

ble people. Some of us are just strapped for cash and have some-

make the market even better. More sellers and

thing other people want.

more customers means better products at lower costs. Today’s drug sellers and buyers are almost

[deleted]: Any advice on we should look out for aside from the stand-

completely disconnected from one another, so pric-

ard “stick with reputable sellers etc” stuff. Is there anything specific

es and quality vary widely.

to Tor/Silk Road?

Because Silk Road’s servers are delivering everything through Tor, I really really really really doubt that anyone could shut down the site. Tor makes it nearly impossible to find where the servers are, so the only people who could shut it down would be the Silk Road’s own admins. I’m sure that some of Silk Road’s rising publicity has hurt a little bit of the marketplace, but I think most of it is getting better. If someone sees this AMA and decides to go on Silk Road to sell some pot, they’ll end up helping the market. More supply means lower prices, which means more trade, and this is all very good for the Bitcoin economy. I can completely understand why some people won’t like the added publicity, but I believe that it’s a good thing. ImUsuallyWrong: You’re probably going to get a lot of shit about talking about SR in a public forum. I agree with you however, the more attention this

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silkroadmagic: Look at the seller’s description of

Check if they have a PGP key. If they don’t have a PGP key, don’t buy

the product. If they’re very detailed, then they’re

anything illegal from them. If somehow Silk Road’s servers are seized

probably more serious. If they give one sentence,

(which is very unlikely), the authorities will be able to read ALL of the

they probably don’t care as much.

unencrypted information that’s on the site. If you send your information

Look at the seller’s own page. The address will look

in PGP, the authorities will NEVER be able to read that information un-

something like “http://ianxz6zefk72ulzz.onion/in-

less they beat the passwords out of the seller.

dex.php/silkroad/user/1914” (That’s mine. The only

There are people on Silk Road who are selling things on it that aren’t

difference will be the “1914”, which is the unique

illegal. Computers, Xboxes, iPods, jewelry, etc. There shouldn’t be a

number for me. Other sellers will have a different

need to use PGP with them.

number there). Again, you want detail. They should

Lastly, I realize that you already mentioned it, but look at their reviews.

say a bit about the kinds of products they sell, ac-

If they have four bad reviews and one brilliant review, then they made

cepted payments, how to contact them, etc.

a fake account. If they have no reviews, wait for someone else to try it.

mrpappy: This is fascinating. I really want to go exploring the deep web one day. Thanks for doing this ama silkroadmagic: You’re welcome! Shinhan: Hello to all the DEA agents reading this thread. Hope you’re having fun :) silkroadmagic: I’m doing it for them!

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As one of the Silk Road admins put it, “DO NOT

psychicnameguesser:

It usually arrives in 2-10 days.

get comfortable! This is not wal-mart, or even ama-

Tim?

I use a fake mailing address now

zon.com. It is the wild west and there are as many

silkroadmagic: Nope,

(I used to use no return address

crooks as there are honest businessmen and wom-

sorry. Not Tim. Edit: I just

at all), and I put it in a different

en.” Just be careful. Use common sense. Silk Road

noticed your username.

mailbox each time (there are

is perfectly safe is you look carefully and really try to

That made me chuckle.

several withing walking distance

find out if the seller is honest.

Thanks for that.

from my house).

I know people say this all the time, but it really is

psychicnameguesser:

Law enforcement doesn’t know

true: Silk Road is a lot like Amazon. I order some-

Anytime Phil.

what mailboxes the packages

thing, and then a few days later, it’s just there, on

silkroadmagic: Seriously,

come from. Also, if they did find

my doorstep, waiting for me to open it up. There’s

if he had guessed my

out the mailboxes I’m sending

no awkward “Where and when should I meet you?”

real name, I would have

from, they still wouldn’t be able

It just works!

literally shit a brick. I’m not

to find me. There’s tons of other

kidding. A big, rectangular,

houses here. They’d have to drill

DavidFree: How did you deliver your product?

rock-hard red brick would

down to one of at least 50 differ-

Doesn’t that necessarily remove the anonymity?

have come tumbling out of

ent houses.

my ass.

In some cases I’ve walked or

silkroadmagic: I don’t use my real return address

biked as much as two miles to

(for a while I didn’t use one at all, but that just

Advicefroman-idiot: Heres

get to a mailbox that I haven’t

looked way too sketchy). I don’t keep information

how to make more money.

been to before. I’m not in the

on a buyer’s address. I realize I don’t have any

Take the pills, cut them in

exact center of them all. I wish I

proof of that, but none of my customers have been

half and sell them. Instant

could show you where I live and

arrested yet, so obviously I’ve been keeping my

double profit!

where the mailboxes are with

customers’ addresses safe. (I realize that “none of

silkroadmagic: But I sell

Google Maps, but... yeah...

my customers have been arrested yet” is a pretty

by the milligram. If I sell

I don’t know if I’m shipping to

stupid defense, but it’s the only one I have at this

10mg pills for one price,

someone’s real address. I’m

point). To actually send them, I just put the pills in

I would sell 5mg pills at

just shipping to the address

an airtight plastic bag, and then I fold that bag up

half that price.

they told me to send to. It might

and put it in another airtight plastic bag. Then I put

thegerbilking: You need to

be their friend’s address or their

that bag in a bubble mailer and drop it in the mail.

start looking at usernames.

mom’s address. Or it could be their own. I’ve also sent to a few PO boxes.I suggest that if you’re going to receive a package, you should have it sent to a PO box instead of your own house. Don’t use your real address, and DEFINITELY don’t use your real name. What if you buy some drugs and suddenly the seller sends you a Facebook friend request? That would be terrifying.

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TrouserDemon: I was tempted, but things are more expensive than I could buy if I just spoke to my usual guy. I know some

of that is the shipping costs, but there’s not much incentive to use this unless all my contacts die in another gang war or I want something rare. silkroadmagic: For people who already have a good dealer, there really isn’t a very good reason to move to Silk Road. For those who don’t have a dealer (or those who have a dealer who sells crap), Silk Road is probably better. But I totally understand why you wouldn’t want to use Silk Road. For some people it’s just not that useful.

"Hopefully this can help people see that not all drug dealers are completely terrible people." http://www.redorbit. com/media/gallery/ national-sciencefoundation-gallery/ pf2507_twist_02_h.jpg

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There are a lot more small steps to get pills. Set

change the entire way that the postal service works. I’m sure the

up Tor, open it, sign up for Silk Road, get Bitcoins,

DEA is working hard to find a way to take advantage of that one weak

put Bitcoins in Silk Road account, buy product, wait

point in Silk Road: the buyer’s physical address. It’s easy to find the

for it to arrive. Lots of steps involved. If you already

buyers than the sellers. What I’m wondering is: shouldn’t the DEA be

have a dealer, the only advantage that Silk Road

scanning through the shipments of marijuana coming in from Mexico,

might have is better prices and higher quality. They

instead of watching some goofball ship small amounts of Adderall

might be a lot better, or they might not be much bet-

around the country?

ter at all. bitcoinfan: If goverments really can crack out bitcoins and tor (which silkroadmagic: We only have drugs here. If I remem-

I highly doubt), it is better to be happen sooner or later. That way we

ber right, there were some folks on the Silk Road

can work out the weaknesses of the system and work for a better

who were trying to sell

system in the future.

child pornography a little while ago, but I think the

silkroadmagic: That’s actually a very good point. Luckily, I don’t think

admins cracked down on

there are really any flaws in the Bitcoin software, but there could be. It

that (which is good. No

would be better for someone (possibly the government) to find it now

one should have stuff

rather than later, so we can just get working on a new cryptocurrency

like that).

if necessary.

I don’t think there’s much

I think the only way that law enforcement could possibly take down

here in terms of terror-

Silk Road would be a sting operation. That is, putting up fake ads for

ism. Some people sell

drugs and waiting for people to buy. Then the law enforcement officers

guns, but I think terrorism

know exactly where you are. Something like that would be expensive

is more of WMDs and

for them (they would have to buy tons of buyer accounts, and those

whatnot. But Senators

are getting pricey!) and they would need to wait a little while for people

like to stretch the truth

to buy (people don’t want to buy from new sellers for obvious reasons).

from time to time just to

I don’t think I’m risking much. It would be almost impossible for law en-

get what they want.

forcement to find me. They would need to find out where the package came from, and go to that mailbox, and have a police officer wait a few

Baraka_Flocka_Flame: So it seems that sellers are the most protected ones since there’s hardly any way to track it back to them if they use a fake return address. Buyers, on the other hand, have to deal with the fact that they might get a bunch of DEA agents at their doorstep instead of that eighth they ordered. silkroadmagic: Pretty much, yes. Unfortunately, there’s really no way of getting around that unless we were to

http://www.personal.soton. ac.uk/tim/FIG19.JPG

weeks for me to return to that mailbox. All just because they found a 100mg of a Schedule II drug in an envelope. Also, they wouldn’t suspect me. My criminal record is perfectly clean. Not even a parking misdemeanor. And Adderall can really help people. Sure, some people can use it as a recreational drug, but most uses involve fixing conditions like Depression and Narcolepsy and ADHD. I think I’m doing a little bit of good by offering it at such a great price. Edit: I forgot to mention: I’ve also never had a problem with it being addictive. I’ve gone months at a time without ever using it and I’ve never had withdrawal symptoms. I’ve never felt a need to continue using it unless I have difficulty with procrastination. vgry: What do you do with your Bitcoins? silkroadmagic: For now, I’m mostly just holding on to them. Bitcoins will likely become more valuable over time (even if only a little bit). So far the only thing I’ve purchased was some graphics hardware for Bitcoin mining. That’s one of the few things you can buy with Bitcoins right now. There aren’t many things that can be purchased with Bitcoins yet, but the Bitcoin economy is growing rapidly. Soon there will be lots of things that can be purchased with Bitcoins.

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ByThomson Reuters on Oct 02, 2013 1:30 PM ET

Silk Road illegal drug website

shut down by FBI

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More than 900,000 registered users 3

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U.S. law enforcement authorities have shut down “Silk Road,” an anonymous Internet marketplace for illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine and criminal activities such as murder for hire, and arrested its alleged owner. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday it arrested Silk Road owner, Ross William Ulbricht , 29, known online as “Dread Pirate Roberts,” in San Francisco on Tuesday, according to court filings. Ulbricht, who holds an advanced degree in chemical engineering, appeared in federal court on Wednesday and a bail hearing was set for Friday. His lawyer Brandon LeBlanc, a public defender, declined to comment. Federal prosecutors in New York charged Ulbricht with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, the filing said. “Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today,” FBI agent Christopher Tarbell said in the criminal complaint.

The site was used by “ several thousand drug dealers ” to sell “hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs,” he said. The site, which has operated since early 2011, also offered tutorials on hacking ATM machines, contact lists for black market connections and counterfeiters, and guns and hit men for sale, according to the charges. More than 900,000 registered users of the site bought and sold drugs using the digital currency Bitcoin. In recent media reports about the growing popularity of Bitcoin, the Silk Road website has emerged as part of a darker side to the use of digital currencies. Through the site, according to the charges, users could buy drugs and have them shipped to an address. Investigators, posing as regular users on Silk Road, made more than 100 purchases of drugs, which were shipped to the New York area. According to the complaint, Ulbricht, who shortened his alias from Dread Pirate Roberts to DPR when posting on Silk Road’s forums, operated the site from San Francisco. At times, he used computers at internet cafes to access the servers running the website, which employed several technological tools to mask the location of its servers and the identities of its administrators and users. The complaint described other aspects of Ulbricht’s online presence: In a Google+ profile, he described himself as a fan of libertarian economic philosophy and posted videos from the Ludwig von Mises Institute, an Auburn, Alabama-based economics institute.

An ONLINE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE from: http://www.cbc.ca/news/ technology/silk-road-illegal-drug-website-shutdown-by-fbi-1.1876244

Reached by phone in Austin, Texas, Ubricht’s parents said they had not known what their son was doing in San Francisco. “He is a really stellar, good person and very idealistic,” said Ulbricht’s mother, Lyn Lacava. “I know he never meant to hurt anyone.” Ulbricht’s father Kirk confirmed his son had received a master’s in material sciences from Pennsylvania State University. His thesis was titled: “Growth of EuO Thin Films by Molecular Beam Epitaxy.” “He did amazing research on crystals and exotic materials they hoped would have some use for humans,” Ulbricht said. “But it was very theoretical stuff.” The complaint against Ulbricht describes a darker side. During one correspondence with a Silk Road user, Ulbricht tried to call out a hit on another user with whom he had a dispute. That user, known online as “FriendlyChemist,” was threatening to expose the identities of thousands of Silk Road users unless Ulbricht sent him money. “I wouldn’t mind if he was executed,” Ulbricht wrote, offering personal details about his foe, including the fact that he was a married father of three, and the names of the city and province where he lived. In a later post, Ulbricht wrote: “He is threatening to expose the identities of thousands of my clients.” “This kind of behavior is unforgivable to me. Especially here on Silk Road, anonymity is sacrosanct.”

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$3.6M in bitcoin seized 5

During the raid, authorities seized $3.6 million worth of bitcoin , which was used instead of cash or credit cards to complete transactions on Silk Road. The charges against Ulbricht said his website generated sales of more than 9.5 million bitcoin, roughly equivalent to $1.2 billion. Authorities seized the currency by taking control of the digital “wallets” Silk Road used to store bitcoin. In a corresponding civil asset forfeiture action, prosecutors claimed Silk Road and Ulbricht were liable to the government for the value of all transactions involving drug tracking and computer hacking, as well as for money laundering penalties, and a final amount would be determined at trial. The raid on Wednesday was not the first time the U.S. government has made arrests related to Silk Road. Earlier this year, authorities in South Carolina arrested Eric Daniel Hughes, known on Silk Road as “Casey Jones,” and charged him in state court with drug possession. The Drug Enforcement Agency seized units of bitcoin, which Hughes allegedly used to purchase drugs from the online market. Bitcoin, which has been around since 2008, first came under scrutiny by law enforcement officials in mid-2011 after media reports surfaced linking the digital currency to Silk Road.

Silk Road is an online market. It is operated as a Tor hidden service, such that online users are able to browse it anonymously and securely without potential traffic monitoring. The website launched in February 2011; development had begun six months prior. It is held to be part of the Deep Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)

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From the print edition, economist.com, Feb 15th 2014

The Silk Road, reborn

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The Dread Pirate Roberts , a character in William Goldman’s novel “The Princess Bride”, which was made into a cult film, is not one man but several who take the name in turn. It was also the nickname of the creator of Silk Road, an online drugdealing website that was shut down in October by the FBI. On February 9th a date was set for the trial of Ross Ulbricht, a 29-year-old physics graduate from Austin, Texas and, allegedly, the Dread Pirate Roberts–at least for a time. Already Silk Road 2.0, complete with a new Dread Pirate Roberts, is online and gaining market share. Two technologies have enabled drug dealing to move online. The first is Tor , software that bounces data around the world untraceably, thereby making it possible to hide where a website’s servers are. The second is Bitcoin, an online “cryptocurrency” that lets buyers and sellers trade in close to anonymity. Silk Road was the first site to combine them into something usable. By August 2012, just 18 months after it opened, it was facilitating sales worth more than $1m a month. Dealers across the world sold all manner of illegal substances, usually delivered by post. On its forums, reviews of sellers’ wares jostled with advice on security and on the laundering of illicitly obtained Bitcoins. How Silk Road was taken down is not clear. But Mr Ulbricht’s arrest warrant alleges that he ignored his own advice: that he administered Silk Road through unencrypted connections, used his own name on technical-support forums and arranged deals personally. It also claims he ordered several assassinations (none of which seems to have been carried out). Some would-be successors of Silk Road seem, if anything, even more amateurish. In December Sheep closed after millions of dollars of Bitcoin were stolen, possibly by the founder. On February 12th Utopia , which had been gaining market share, was shut down by Dutch police. A third, Black Market Reloaded, was closed by administrators worried about a security breach. The most successful by far is Silk Road 2.0, a recreation of the original. Yet it, too, has security flaws, says Nicolas Christin of Carnegie Mellon University. In order to launch quickly, it relied on administrators and dealers from the original site. In December two alleged forum moderators it inherited were arrested. New technology cannot turn drug dealers into criminal geniuses, but the Dread Pirate Roberts may still have several incarnations to come.

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An ONLINE MAGAZINE ARTICLE from: http://www. economist.com/news/ international/21596561it-still-possible-get-lineonline-silk-road-reborn

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By Christopher Hooton on Friday, 14 February 2014

Silk Road 2.0 hacked with

over £1.6m worth of Bitcoin ‘stolen’ 6 An Online Newspaper Article from: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/ gadgets-and-tech/news/ silk-road-2-hackedwith-over-16-million-inbitcoin-allegedly-stolen-9127696.html

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Silk Road 2 moderator Defcon has claimed that hackers have stolen over 4,000 Bitcoins after using a transaction malleability exploit to hack into the black market. The deep web marketplace uses an escrow system to allow buyers and sellers to trade bitcoins, with the bug that was exploited masking transfers and allowing hackers to request the same amount of BTC again and again until the coffers were cleaned out. It is thought to be the same technique that forced bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox to halt all transactions earlier in the week. Members of the bitcoin community have said that the exploit has been known about for a while, and that the onus is on websites that handle the currency to introduce measures to stop abuse of the vulnerability. “I should have taken MtGox and Bitstamp’s lead and disabled withdrawals as soon as the malleability issue was reported,” said Defcon in a blog post. “I was slow to respond and too skeptical of the possible issue at hand.” Defcon has also called on the hackers to return the stolen bitcoin, writing: “Given the right flavour of influence from our community, we can only hope that he will decide to return the coins with integrity as opposed to hiding like a coward.” Usernames employed during the theft have been listed, with users of the site now setting about tracking down the people behind the robbery. Defcon encouraged individuals to “use whatever means you deem necessary to bring this person to justice.” The incident has driven down the price of BTC by around 50 points, and it is now wavering at around 600. “No marketplace is perfect,” Defcon commented. “Expect any centralized market to fail at some point. This is precisely why we must unite in the decision to decentralise.” Famous bitcoin investors include Virgin founder Richard Branson, who previously promised to accept the cryptocurrency on Virgin Galactic.

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Could it drop to $200 again? Sure. Bitco I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care. I believe in Bitcoin long term.

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70 71

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The Definition

http:// en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system and digital currency introduced as open source software in 2009 by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto. It is a cryptocurrency, so-called because it uses cryptography to control the creation and transfer of money. Bitcoins are created by a process called mining, in which participants verify and record payments in exchange for transaction fees and newly minted bitcoins. Bitcoins can be obtained by mining or in exchange for products, services, or other currencies.

2 October 2013: Ross William Ulbricht, alleged by the FBI to be the owner of Silk Road and the person behind the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was arrested in San Francisco on suspicion of drug trafficking, soliciting murder, facilitating computer hacking, and money laundering. The FBI seized over 26,000 BTC from accounts on Silk Road, which were worth approximately $3.6 million at the time. An FBI spokesperson said in an interview that they would hold the bitcoins until the judicial process finished and after that, they would liquidate them.

November 18, 2013: Senate hearing titled Beyond Silk Road: Potential Risks, Threats and Promises of Virtual Currencies discusses legitimacy and challenges of virtual currencies.

December 2, 2013: The biggest heist in history. 96,000 Bitcoins are stolen from Sheep Marketplace, an online drug site, while the internet watches the thief move the funds wallet to wallet.

December 5, 2013: China’s central bank bars financial institutions from handling Bitcoin transactions, causing a price drop of more than 20 percent to below $1,000.

First Opinions

user daveys (2010): What a crock. Bitcoin is rising because the “real” economy is run with fake money, and is teetering on collapse all by itself, twithout any help from Bitcoin. Propaganda!

Erik Voorhees (2010): Monopoly money is more like US dollars than like Bitcoin. The former two can be printed at whim, are centrally controlled, and are geographically restricted.

Bitcoin Exchange Rates

$1000 4 $800 2 $600

$400

$200

09/2013 $128.72

10/2013 $126.12

11/2013 $202.7

12/2013 $1,110.8

01/2014 $739.01

02/2014 $803.95

Bought one Bitcoin on 1/09/2013 for $128.72?

Sell it with a loss of $2.60.

Sell it with a profit of $73.98.

Sell it with a profit of $982.08.

Sell it with a profit of $610.29.

Sell it with a profit of $675.23.

Bought one Bitcoin on 1/10/2013 for $126.12?

Sell it with a profit of $76.58.

Sell it with a profit of $984.68.

Sell it with a profit of $612.89.

Sell it with a profit of $677.83.

Bought one Bitcoin on 1/11/2013 for $202.7?

Sell it with a profit of $908.10.

Sell it with a profit of $536.31.

Sell it with a profit of $601.25.

Bought one Bitcoin on 1/12/2013 for $1,110.8?

Sell it with a loss of $371.79.

Sell it with a loss of $306.85.

Bought one Bitcoin on 1/01/2014 for $739.01?

Sell it with a profit of $64.94.

http://finance.fortune.cnn. com/2013/03/25/onlinecurrency-regulations

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/ bitstampUSD#rg180zig2-hourztgCzm1g10zm2g10zvzl

http://historyofbitcoin. org/

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Real Money: Bitcoins in the physical world Physical bitcoins are ubiquitous in media coverage and combine a novelty coin with a private key printed on paper, metal, wood, or plastic. Physical bitcoins aren't widely seen outside of pictures in news article, but for those serious about security, storing private keys on paper printouts or in offline data storage devices is the best option.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

http://fmymind.com/wp-content/ uploads/2014/04/bitcoin2.jpg

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Satoshi Nakamoto is a person or group of people who created the Bitcoin protocol and reference software, Bitcoin Core. In 2008, Nakamoto published a paper on The Cryptography Mailing list at metzdowd.com describing the Bitcoin digital currency. In 2009, he released the first Bitcoin software that launched the network and the first units of the Bitcoin currency, called bitcoins.

The hash rate is the measuring unit of the processing power of the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin network must make intensive mathematical operations for security purposes. When the network reached a hash rate of 10 Th/s, it meant it could make 10 trillion calculations per second.

http:// en.wikipedia. org/wiki/ Satoshi_Nakamoto

https://bitcoin.org/en/vocabulary

A block is a record in the block chain that contains and confirms many waiting transactions. Roughly every 10 minutes, on average, a new block including transactions is appended to the block chain through mining.

Difficulty is a measure of how difficult it is to find a hash below a given target. The Bitcoin network has a global block difficulty. Valid blocks must have a hash below this target. Mining pools also have a pool-specific share difficulty setting a lower limit for shares.

https:// bitcoin. org/en/vocabulary

http://cryptocoinupdates.com/ wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ a7c17_bitcoin_10306004756_60 9e00b5cf_o.jpg

https://en.bitcoin.it/ wiki/Difficulty#What_ is_.22difficulty.22.3F

04/12/2013 0.1 BTC = $ 123.07

13/02/2014 0.1 BTC = $ 54.68

16/05/2012 0.1 BTC = $ 12.35

16/05/2012 7.5 grams silver = $ 6.55

13/02/2014 7,5 gram silver = $ 4.9

http://digitaljournal.com/ img/1/0/4/8/1/8/4/i/1/7/2/ o/2014-02-12T225150Z_1_ CBREA1B1RIM00_ RTROPTP_4_CTECH-US-USABITCOIN-SECURITY-ANALYSIS. JPG

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BIPS makes it easy to get started accepting bitcoins today â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no acquirer agreement.

Bitcoin is a digital currency you can use for personal transactions or business at high speed and low cost. Why Use Bitcoin? Low Fees. Global. Protected.

http://www.bitcoins.com/

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Trade bitcoins in 5403 cities and 216 countries. Find local bitcoin exchangers in your country or start your own bitcoin exchange, for profit.

https://localbitcoins.com

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https://bips.me

Using Bitcoin to pay and get paid is easy and accessible to everyone. 1.Inform yourself. 2.Choose your wallet. 3.Get bitcoins. 4.Spend bitcoins.

https://bitcoin.org/en/gettingstarted

http://resources3.news.com.au/ images/2012/09/27/1226482/267215-spangles-the-cat.jpg

Past Present Future

ARTICLES ABOUT THE

OF BITCOINS

‘Funny money’ has officially entered the real world

MT Gox goes up in smoke. Is this the end for bitcoin?

One Bitcoin Exchange’s Demise Is Another’s Birth

Cyberattack Leads to $1 Million Bitcoin Heist

Man Throws Away Trove of Bitcoin Worth $7.5 Million

This Is How You Mine Some Bitcoin

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A By Brendan Drain on Sep 11th 2010 4:00PM

‘Funny money’ has officially entered the real world

An ONLINE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE from: çhttp://finance.fortune. cnn.com/2013/03/25/ online-currencyregulations

Remember those days when Monopoly money was just play cash that bought everything in the game from railroads to houses? When the game was over, the value of that colorful paper currency spiraled to zero. Now with online currencies, the game never really ends. The Internet never shuts off, so the value of money circulating through cyberspace is always worth something. Last week, new U.S. government rules regulating online currencies affirmed the value of what was previously passed off as funny money. Now companies that issue or exchange online cash would have new bookkeeping requirements. For instance, transactions of more than $10,000 would have to be reported. While one of the big draws of virtual currencies is that they’re independent and generally sheltered from the government’s watch, the new rules are unlikely to ruin their allure. If anything, they effectively pull the currencies offline and into the mainstream world of finance, making them infinitely more valuable. These new regulations come as the popularity of virtual currencies rise, fueled by online merchants that have come up with their own tender and forms of payment – indeed, a stark contrast from years ago when the European Union thought it was only wise to run the economy on a single currency, the Euro. Needless to say, big problems have followed, and many have wondered if the answer is having multiple competing currencies. In 2011, Facebook (FB) launched Credits as the de facto form of currency. Though now largely defunct, it’s used for purchases made inside games hosted by the social networking site. Last month, Amazon (AMZN) unveiled Amazon Coins , a virtual currency that could be used for purchasing apps, games, and in-apps items on Kindle Fire. As The Wall Street Journal notes, it’s unclear if the new regulations will impact Amazon. One thing is almost certain, though: It will regulate Bitcoin, the fastest-growing online currency. Launched in 2009, the online currency works almost like real money. It can be used to buy anything from upgrades on Reddit to pizza. And as Cyrus Sanati reported in December, it’s increasingly used to conduct all sorts of shady business, making the anonymous sale and purchase of everything from drugs to guns possible. More specifically, the new regulations come at the urging of federal authorities. In April 2011, the FBI recommended that third-party exchanges of Bitcoins be forced to follow the same anti-money laundering rules that banks are supposed to follow. In the coming years, expect more regulations, experts say. “The government is just catching up,” says Edward Castronova , a gamer and telecommunications professor at Indiana University.

http://www.tpnn. com/wp-content/ uploads/2014/03/ ObamaSmerk3-1.jpg

http://g-ecx. images-amazon.com/ images/G/01/zeroes/retail/images/zeroes-coindp._V353889149_.jpg

http://www.blogcdn. com/massively.joystiq. com/media/2011/08/ castronova.jpg

The Chinese have been a step ahead of the U.S. In 2009, authorities issued new regulations aimed at restricting the trade and use of online money on worries that currencies used in online games had become so commonplace that they could impact, and possibly destabilize, the real economy. In the U.S., future rules could either deepen the legitimacy of online currencies or destroy them entirely, depending where lawmakers go from here, Castronova says. Whereas the latest anti-money laundering regulations help their credibility by treating them similarly to traditional money-order providers, levying taxes and transaction fees obviously would hurt their value. To be sure, the pot of virtual money is nowhere as liquid as traditional cash in the global financial system. But while they play a relatively small role, at least for now, bankers nonetheless view their rise as potentially dangerous to the health of the economy. Because virtual currencies arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t backed by a central bank or controlled by a central administrator, their values are vulnerable to wild swings. In 2011, the American Bankers Association asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to apply consumer financial protection laws uniformly, regardless of whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a traditional bank or nonbank payment providers. The fact that bankers are watching online money signals they have potential to help or destroy all that exists in the real world.

http://monopoly. cdbpdx.com/AUS_GE/ tn-600_Mon_AUSGE_Money_001.JPG

http://www.cosmeticsdesign-europe.com/ var/plain_site/storage/ images/publications/ cosmetics/cosmeticsdesign-europe.com/ regulation-safety/ mhra-say-tanningnasal-spray-is-potentially-dangerous/58483201-eng-GB/ MHRA-say-tanningnasal-spray-is-potentially-dangerous_medium_vga.jpg

"Microsoft uses a points system to enable purchases from the XBox online marketplace. In reality, the only purpose it serves is to replace a simple thing (paying with dollars and cents) with a confusing thing. I have to believe the only reason Microsoft created this process is to make it harder for customers to know how much they're paying for their apps and games. Here's how the Microsoft system works: Let's say you want to download the new Call of Duty game from the XBox Marketplace. The "price" is 5200 points. What is 5200 points worth, you wonder? Microsoft decided that 80 points = $1, so you have to do some math to determine the actual selling price of the game." Review of Amazon Coins by The Bee Bee:

http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-500-Coins/dp/B0096E8CQA

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B By finextra.com on 25 February 2014

MT Gox goes up in smoke .

Is this the end for bitcoin?

Bitcoin prices have cratered again after troubled Japanese exchange operator MT Gox suspended trading amid reports that it has allegedly lost almost $350 million to a year-long cyber-theft and is technically insolvent. A crisis strategy draft for MT Gox, leaked on the Web, reveals large amounts of bitcoin have gone missing from the exchange. “At this point 744,408 BTC are missing due to malleability-related theft which went unnoticed for several years. The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet,” the document posted by bitcoin blogger Ryan Galt reads. “The reality is that Mt. Gox can go bankrupt at any moment, and certainly deserves to as a company.” Once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, MT Gox went offline within hours of suspending trading, as the scale of the losses rocked investors in the crypto-currency. As panic spread, Bitcoin prices hit a low of $419 before stabilising.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/sites/computerworld.com/files/ u23/mt-gox-evil.jpg

An ONLINE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE from:

http://www. finextra.com/news/ fullstory.aspx?News ItemID=25768

http://fncdn.marcwaringventur.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/ uploads/2014/02/ssssfev25-1.png

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9g1Ege5PHsE/TPlAzyfHASI/AAAAAAAACzs/lPlZ3RRbLz8/s1600/ smoke+iStock_000002749818Large.jpg

Mt. Gox was a Bitcoin exchange based in Tokyo, Japan. It was launched in July 2010, and by 2013 was handling 70% of all Bitcoin transactions. In February 2014, the Mt. Gox company suspended trading, closed its website and exchange service, and filed for a form of bankruptcy protection from creditors called minji saisei, or civil rehabilitation, to allow courts to seek a buyer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox

C By Takashi Mochizuki on 3:30 pm Feb 26, 2014

One Bitcoin Exchange’s Demise Is Another’s Birth

http://image1-cdn.n24. de/image/3907470/2/ large16x9/9gn/ bitcoin_580x325.jpg

For some, the turmoil at embattled major bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox meant an opportunity to start a new business. One of them was Josh Jones , a Californian who found his own bitcoin trapped inside his Mt. Gox account after the exchange abruptly halted bitcoin withdrawals on Feb. 7. The 36-year-old Santa Monica resident spent 12 hours over the following weekend to put together Bitcoin Builder, a platform that allows the trade between bitcoin at Mt. Gox and the crypto-currency elsewhere. He launched it on Feb. 11. “I always wanted to run a bitcoin exchange,” said Mr. Jones, who also hosts a bitcoin meet-up group in Los Angeles. The halt on withdrawals made it impossible to transfer bitcoin at Mt. Gox accounts to third-party accounts. But until Tuesday, when trading on the Mt. Gox site came to a complete halt, trading between accounts inside Mt. Gox had been possible, leaving room for arbitrage. Bitcoin Builder initially attracted scant interest, with 117 bitcoin traded on its launch day. But the site became increasingly popular among worried Gox users, and by last week trading volume exceeded 5,000 bitcoin a day. Mr. Jones was taking a commission of 2% of trades–well above other trading fees in the bitcoin community, which are almost all below 1%. In just two weeks, he had amassed more than 6,000 registered users, and earned more than 1,000 bitcoin in trading fees. Based on the CoinDesk index bitcoin price on Wednesday at $550.34 per bitcoin, that would mean a cache of $550,340. However, that gain was unlikely to be fully realized since some of the fees had been paid in Mt. Gox bitcoin, the status of which is now anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, Mr. Jones said the popularity of Bitcoin Builder had surprised him. “I was agonizing over whether it was worth spending $200” in monthly operational costs, he said in an email interview. The swift trading at Bitcoin Builder indicated that Mt. Gox users who wanted to sell their holdings for untrapped bitcoin elsewhere were able to find buyers. Mr. Jones said the buyers were probably investors without Mt. Gox accounts who were interested in arbitrage, since the Mt. Gox bitcoin price was much lower than that elsewhere. Even after the shutdown of Mt. Gox, he said he is willing to continue the exchange, with a plan to provide similar platforms for other exchanges. On Wednesday, despite the unclear status and trading halt of Mt. Gox bitcoin, trading prices and volume were still updating on Bitcoin Builder, showing by midday in Tokyo that 0.15 regular bitcoin would buy 1 Mt. Gox bitcoin. In other words, a Mt. Gox bitcoin holder would need more than six Mt. Gox bitcoin to buy an untrapped bitcoin.

An Online Newspaper Article from: http://blogs.wsj. com/japanrealtime/ 2014/02/26/ one-bitcoinsexchanges-demise-isanothers-birth/?KEY WORDS=bitcoin

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/R0Wg6Adi3z0/hqdefault.jpg

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D By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierainov on Nov 25, 2013

Cyberattack Leads to 1

An ONLINE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE from:

$1 Million Bitcoin Heist

http://mashable. com/2013/11/25/cyberattack-leads-to-heist-of1-million-in-bitcoin

Another Bitcoin company has fallen victim of a massive cyberheist. BIPS, one of the largest European Bitcoin payment processors, lost 1,295 Bitcoin (currently worth $1 million) after a cyberattack. As the price of Bitcoin continues to rise, cybercriminals are targeting companies with large holdings of Bitcoins in their servers. The attack on BIPS happened just a few weeks after inputs.io, which allegedly lost 4,100 BTC, worth more than $1 million at the time. Hackers launched their initial Distributed Denial of Service ( DDoS ) attack on BIPS on Nov. 15, the company wrote in a Reddit post. The hackers attacked again on Nov. 17, overloading BIPS servers and somehow getting access to several online wallets, which allowed them to steal the 1,295 BTC. BIPS, which claims to have more than 20,000 customers, offered free online wallets to store their Bitcoin online. It also offers a payment processors for merchants who want to accept payments in Bitcoin. The company released a statement saying the attack compromised “several consumer wallets.” However, it didn’t specify how many accounts were hacked. BIPS’ CEO Kris Henriksen told Mashable that “most of the missing funds were from our company’s own holdings,” but declined to be interviewed for lack of time. “This is my fifth day without sleep,” he added in an email. After the attack, Henriksen advised his customers to avoid online wallets altogether, despite the fact that his company offered them to users. BIPS’ online wallet service is now suspended. “Attacks are not isolated to us, and if you are storing larger amounts of coins with any third party, you may want to find alternative storage solutions as soon as possible,” he wrote in a BitcoinTalk forum message. “Web Wallets are like a regular wallet that you carry cash in and not meant to keep large amounts in,” he added. But several BIPS customers, who still don’t know if they’ll ever get their Bitcoin back, aren’t convinced by Henriksen’s advice, saying he never warned them of any danger before the attack. On the contrary, the company said it was secure. Responding to Henriksen’s claim that web wallets are only meant for little amounts of Bitcoin, a BitcoinTalk forum user that goes by the name of Cubicdissection said: “At NO point did you EVER say hey you shouldn’t keep your BTC with us.” “In fact, your website said: ‘Your data is secure at BIPS.’ So yeah, I felt pretty goddamn secure leaving my BTC balance there,” he added. “Why don’t you speak in plain English and quit giving us the runaround? Because it makes me think you’re a liar and have something to hide.”

http://www.folkets. dk/sites/default/files/ styles/800wide/public/ bips.jpg?itok=Cvui-RdP

http://www.cisco.com/ web/about/ac123/ ac147/images/ipj/ipj_74/dos_figure_5.gif

https://img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/1388/01/1388019336569.png

http://rack.3.mshcdn.com/media/ ZgkyMDEyLzEyLzA0LzQzL2lzcmFlbGRlbmllLmJ2Ty5qcGcKcAl0aHVtYgk5NTB4NTM0IwplCWpwZw/79693353/b3a/ israel-denies-creating-flame-cyberattackb88821a0a0.jpg

Another user, nicknamed Genghis34, said he had 90 Bitcoin (around $73,000) in his BIPS wallet. He his now asking other victims to sign up online to form a group to potentially sue BIPS and use the threat of a lawsuit as a “negotiating block” for a settlement. Henriksen’s conclusion that online wallets aren’t safe echoes what the founder of inputs.io said after his website’s loss of 4,100 Bitcoin. “I don’t recommend storing any Bitcoins accessible on computers connected to the Internet,” he wrote at the time. But for victims of the BIPS heist, these warnings come too little too late. “Bitcoin is the wild west ,” wrote Genghis34. “And I really doubt this was intentional on the part of bips.me – just probably overconfidence to run a wallet service without proper security.”

http://www.xda-developers.com/wpcontent/uploads/2013/08/bitcoin-logo-3d1024x1024.jpg

“Your data is secure at BIPS. Our entire website is protected with AES RIJNDAEL 256 encryption and we have encryption of data traffic with 2048-bit, highest assurance Extended Validation SSL certificate, with 99.9% Browser Recognition."

https://traxarmstrong.com/bips-hacked1-milion-worth-bitcoins-stolen/#gsc.tab=0

http://www. abramsbooks.com/ uploadedImages/ Books/9780810996892. jpg

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E By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierainov on Nov 27, 2013

Man Throws Away Trove of Bitcoin Worth $7.5 Million

An ONLINE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE from: http://mashable. com/2013/11/27/manthrows-away-millionsof-bitcoin

1 http://www.ericsink.com/ bell2.gif

http://i.dailymail. co.uk/i/pix/2013/11/29/ article-251458019B1584100000578381_634x438.jpg

As Bitcoin hit $1,000 dollars on Wednesday morning, a lot of early adopters saw their Bitcoin, bought or mined for cheap years ago, turn into a high-return investment. And some forgot they bought Bitcoin years ago, only to realize they were suddenly rich. However, there are also those on the other side of the Bitcoin – so to speak – and British IT professional James Howells may be the unluckiest of them all. According to The Guardian, Howells mined 7,500 Bitcoin in 2009 and kept it in a hard drive until last summer, when he threw the drive away without realizing he was throwing away a fortune. At the time, his Bitcoin stash was worth around $675,000. Now, it would be worth $7.5 million. Howells reportedly threw the hard drive in a landfill near Newport, Wales, that is the size of a soccer field, meaning it’s now somewhere buried under at least four feet of garbage . Worst of all, he never backed it up. “I’m at the point where it’s either laugh about it or cry about it,” Howells told The Guardian. “Why aren’t I out there with a shovel now? I think I’m just resigned to never being able to find it.” He says he won’t go and look for the hard drive himself, because authorities told him it would be almost impossible to find; but he has set up a new Bitcoin wallet asking for donations that would go towards funding a recovery effort. It’s hard to blame Howells, who simply forgot the treasure saved on the hard drive he stashed away after rescuing it from a ruined Dell laptop. But perhaps this will serve as yet another lesson on the value of backing up your data. Because, one day, that simple backup could make you rich.

http://rt.com/files/news/21/4f/50/00/wales-garbage.si.jpg

F By Toph Tucker and Allison McCann on January 13, 2014

This Is How You Mine Some Bitcoin Suppose you’re buying an Ellsworth 2-drawer Night Stand on Overstock.com. Since the retailer began accepting Bitcoin last week, you choose to pay with the volatile and enthralling virtual currency. Great! What actually happens behind the scenes? And how does Overstock know your Bitcoins are real? The transaction is not run through a bank, or credit card company, or any single well-defined entity at all. Instead, it is distributed to every computer on the Internet that’s running the Bitcoin software. These computers check the public global record of transactions to confirm that your anonymous Bitcoin address (a really, really long number represented below by fake regular-people names) has the Bitcoin it’s trying to send. If it does, a new record is added showing that that amount is transferred to Overstock. If you then try to spend that same Bitcoin with Zynga on FarmVille crops, it will see that you no longer have that “money”–Overstock does–and your new transaction will be rejected. The process of validating transactions is essential. So the Bitcoin system has a way of rewarding people who make the effort: It gives them new Bitcoins. The whole process is called “ mining ”.

http://www.overstock. com/Home-Garden/ Ellsworth-EspressoTall-2-drawer-NightStand/3917800/product. html

http://rxmacduff. files.wordpress. com/2014/03/mir3.jpg

An ONLINE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE from: http://www. businessweek.com/ articles/2014-01-13/ interactive-simulationhow-to-mine-bitcoin

Besides being important for maintaining the transaction database, mining is also the mechanism by which bitcoins get created and distributed among the people in the bitcoin economy. The network rules are such that over the next hundred years, give or take a few decades, a total of 21 million bitcoins will be created.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_bitcoin_ works#Bitcoin_mining

http://www.joeydevilla.com/wordpress/wpcontent/uploads/2013/04/bitcoin-diagram.jpg

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After each cycle: USD/BTC value “lands” higher than it did before the cycle started. More people are aware of bitcoin. A few more businesses spring up around it. People trust it slightly more. Pool of people using bitcoin is expanded. 17

The Bitcoin Hype Cycle (requested repost) An user story from: http://www.reddit.com/r/ Bitcoin/comments/1r2ls1/ the_bitcoin_hype_cycle_requested_repost

The Investment

Rookies get cleared and orders start going through. Price starts climbing waaaaaay too fast to be sustainable. 5

vocatus (2014): I’ve been following the recent activity (like most of you), and have observed what I think I’ll call the “bitcoin hype cycle.” Without further ado...

redforeva: This is how all markets work actually. Pretty funny. shadowbandit: Bitcoin is more than a market.

S T A R T

Price bottoms out, but not below where it started 10

atomheartother: I don’t get why this is a systematic reply to any post saying bitcoin is similar to a market. We get that it’s not a market, but you have to admit, it behaves a whole lot like one.

Time passes. Price stabilizes and moves slowly or not at all for a while. 14

Amanojack: It does, but there’s a subtle and important difference: with Bitcoin the final goal isn’t to cash out with the most fiat money, but to end up with the most bitcoins. It’s the dynamic of a landgrab, versus that of a stock.

People see that bitcoin is still around even after a hype bubble, and start realizing it might have long-term potential. 15

Bitcoin barons, understanding this, sell only the amount necessary to ensure their fiatworld needs are met. The rest is their castle, their own place secured on the universal asset ledger of civilization in perpetuity. There is no exit; Bitcoin is the ultimate exit. anarchir: Thats what I keep trying to explain to people. Dont dump bitcoins to get USD. We’re trying to transfer currencies here from any currency into bitcoin: thats the whole point of bitcoin.

News outlets pick up on this event and promptly publish wildly inaccurate / heavily-biased articles, either in favor of, or opposed to, Bitcoin. Regardless of the particular spin, buzz is generated. If the news is negative, rookies/outsiders ridicule both Bitcoin and people involved in it. If the news is positive, we go to:

Veterans hit their limits and start dumping coin on unsuspecting noobs below. 7

People buy/sell/ use/start/keep building businesses around it. Value rises little-by-little.

Value begins to plummet

Something Bitcoin-related happens; exchange fails/starts, some guy finds out his BTC are worth bazillions or loses a bunch due to hack/carelessness; some government action involving bitcoin; some flaw is discovered/hypothesized, etc. The price moves a little bit.

Rookies/outsiders think “oh wow maybe I was wrong, why didn’t I listen to <friend/colleague/pundit> back when it was <$x> per coin!? I don’t want to miss out!”

Noobs see value plummeting, panic, and sell (often at a loss) 9

Price stabilizes a little bit; noobs think “I’m an idiot”; feel burned and get out of Bitcoin. But some stay.

Rookies see this, don’t realize what’s actually happening, and excitedly keep buying. 6

News outlets see “crash” (correction) and decry Bitcoin. It begins to fall out of the mainstream public consciousness for a while. 13

Veterans hike down into the crater and buy, buy, buy. 11

Rookies start signing up for accounts, getting verified, and buying (takes 4-10 days to see the price move because of this due verification wait time).

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F I R S T P O S T 2 / 1 2 / 1 3 non_bitcoin_gambler: I created this throwaway be-

An user story from: http://www.reddit. com/r/Bitcoin/ comments/18f3pd/i_ have_my_entire_retirement_and_savings_invested

2/10/14

2/12/13

I have my entire retirement and savings invested in Bitcoin. I will track its progress here over time.

1 BTC = $ 24

cause I wanted to share what I’ve done, and someday look back on this thread in either regret or triumph. I am not a wealthy man. I am actually quite poor and have a lot of student loan debt. card 0% balance transfer cash, which I have slowly been investing in bitcoin for the past two months. I started when it was $14/BTC. At this second, it is $25.10/BTC. I have invested some of it in satoshidice, and the rest will be stored in an offline wallet. I may someday regret this decision. It represents the exact amount of my entire retirement and savings accounts. If bitcoin ever becomes worthless, well, I will just have to deal with it and find another way to retire. If bitcoin takes off the way I think it will, I will someday be a wealthy man and my family will be set. I am not doing this out of greed, but to support my family and hopefully never have to worry about money again... something I’ve stressed about for decades. I realize it’s controversial and some may take a dim view of it (my family included). But what’s done is done. I am not going to post again until a year from now. And then I will post each year following. Wish me luck. EDIT: Thank you all for the feedback. I expected some opposition and advice. I have received more than enough, including some things I had not thought of. Most of it I anticipated and already considered though. I am done posting, and hopefully have clarified my position. I will be back in 1 year to document what happened. Have a good day.

that if it goes above 200 and stays there for at least a week, I am going to quit my job. This morning it crossed $200/BTC. Next week I will be quitting my job if it hasn’t

[deleted]: I won’t presume to tell you how to deal with your money but as someone who trades professionally and has traded foreign exchange for prop shops before. I would highly consider an exit strategy if I were you. Bitcoins are clearly on a very artificial bubble and you made a good amount of money. Get out while you are ahead. nagdude: Tip: A bet on bitcoin is a binary bet, they can either go to thousands of dollars each or they will go to zero. There is no other option. Success or failure. If you already almost doubled your initial investment you should sell half your holding and be happy with that, you have in essence gotten them for free and you will be debt free in addition. Just the coins you have left will provide you with a good bonus for your retirement if bitcoins turns out to be great. Source: Somebody who has gone all-in before, lost everything and learned the lesson the hard way.

But I have good credit. I have applied for, and received over $30,000 USD in credit

U P D A T E 4 / 9 / 1 3 I won’t give a full accounting until after a year, but I have said

DrPolice: “In the game of money, you get rich or you die tryin’.” –Tree Fiddy

1 BTC = $ 165

zdierks: I would spend 100k creating a cheap 1 minute infomercial. Then call fox news and try to purchase as much remnant ad time as possible.

HarshlyThrownAway: Wow! Kudos for having the ‘nads to pursue such a gamble..Now, a month after your original post, your $30,000 is worth approximately $272,408.57 USD (according to the weighted average on Mt.Gox). Don’t care what the others say, but THAT’S impressive. Not sure what the rest of the year will bring, but good luck to you, sir. ScienceisMagi: Whenever I hear someone say “I put all of my money/bank account/ retirement fund/nest egg/hope/etc into one investment (stock, bond, business, forex, house, piece of land, time share, car, drug of choice)” I realize they have very little intelligence when it comes money management. Look what happened to esteemed institutions like Lehman Brothers, which was over 150 years old at its collapse, or Bear Sterns, which had about 90 years. They’re gone. This can happen to any singular company, asset class, commodity, or currency in aan instant. If BTC are going to explode in value, than you would only need 5-20% of your portfolio in them in order to do really well. jdoe74: OP you have balls of steel. If my math is correct: $30,000.00 / 14 = ~2142 units times a price of 143 right now puts you at $306,000.00 Consider the marginal utility of more money vs. the probability of your position continuing to grow. Another thing to consider is you are not $30,000 of debt into this exercise – You have $276,000 of your cash invested in bitcoins. Ask yourself if you woke up tomorrow and you had no bitcoins and you had $276,000 in cash would you buy bitcoins with ALL of your money. If they answer is YES, carry on – if the answer is no, take some or all of it off the table. Good luck.

1 BTC = $ 165

gone below $200. I have a few Avalon ASIC miners on the way that will hopefully help me preserve this wealth, or at least pay my debts back and enjoy some time off from work for a while... or forever. U P D A T E 4 / 1 0 / 1 3 : All: I cashed out $30,000 USD worth the past few days.

1 BTC = $ 125

I plan on repaying the credit card debts in their entirety next week. I sold at 195, 212, and 242 price points. It was just getting too stressful watching all the recent gains and corrections. I will have a little seller’s remorse as the price continues to go up, but I also feel relieved that all the coins I have at this point are icing on the cake. Plus, I am hopeful that my incoming Avalons will generate a lot more down the line. More later. To the asshole trying to crack my password and access my tip funds: 16 character lastpass randomly generated, non-pronounecable, minimum 8 digits with special characters. Good luck with that.

1 BTC = $ 117

U P D A T E 4 / 1 1 / 1 3 A few have suggested that I have played a role in the recent correction with my decision to cash out my initial investment. I highly doubt that, and you are all smart enough to make your own decisions. Nevertheless, I am going to take a break from commenting for a while. It’s just been too crazy. I will be back when things stabilize, at whatever price that is. U P D A T E 5 / 1 5 / 1 3 What a month. I took the plunge and quit my job a few weeks ago. Last day is Friday. I was told by my supervisor I could “come back anytime,” so I am not too worried if the Bitcoin thing doesn’t work out. Anyway, I have an ASICMiner blade arriving any day now. I have several Avalons arriving in the near future as

1 BTC = $ 118

well. I am confident they will pay for far more than my salary ever did. But just in case, I cashed out about 100 coins when the price was $76 a few weeks back. Talk about a panic sell! I didn’t post the update here in the off chance it would influence the market as some of you speculated. That should get me through the next few months until all the ASICs arrive and start hashing. After that, who knows. I have a new lease on life right now, and have been exercising and spending tons of time with my kids the past few days as I wound down time at my job. Recently, I have also pondered starting a non-profit food bank or other charity like sean’s outpost. That would be my dream: to help others after I have paid my debts down. We will see. I’d provide a full accounting, but most of you would laugh because about 70% of it is tied up in ASIC miners right now. As my name implies, I guess I am still a gambler at heart. Thanks for the pms and kind words everyone. U P D A T E : 5 / 2 2 / 1 3 Pic of my new 13,000 mH/s baby. :D

1 BTC = $ 123

http://imgur.com/FAbVfPJ U P D A T E 8 / 1 4 / 1 3 Not much to really say, but I’m still here. I am a little annoyed with the skyrocketing difficulty though. Right now I’m mining with about 470-480Gh/s of equipment on BTC Guild under the team name “Fecal Antimatter.” I don’t think the ASICs will ever pay for themselves, so that was probably a bad investment. I occa-

1 BTC = $ 113

sionally hang out in the just-dice chat room and invest there if any of you ever want to chat. With the exception of the climbing exchange rate right now, there honestly hasn’t been much good news to talk about. To be honest, mining and the IPO craze

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going on right now has soured my views on things. I am a stay-at-home dad now and loving every minute of it. I am not going to sell my coins, but am definitely not going to take as many risks as I used to. Thanks for all the kind PMs, and even the hate mail. It’s all good fun.

1 BTC = $ 113

U P D A T E 1 1 / 2 / 1 3 Still here, folks. The exchange rate has climbed back up to $204/coin and I am ecstatic. I knew it would, and I am confident Bitcoin will continue to grow. With the shutdowns of btct.co and bitfunder (at least toward US citizens), I have no more coins invested in bitcoin businesses, and I have pulled all my coins out of just-dice because of the volatility. I have come to terms with the fact that my Avalons and Blades will never pay for themselves, but I am happy with what they did mine. It was a risk, and some of the risks I have taken inevitably won’t pay off. At this time, I am very risk-averse, and have all the coins I mine going to paper wallets, backed up via scanned images that I have encrypted and saved in a safe location.

1 BTC = $ 211

Exciting times, so I am content to sit back and watch my efforts pay off simply by the natural appreciation in price. Any questions, feel free to PM me! UPDATE 12/7/13 So many uninitiated have joined us the past few weeks. Some are now growing hair on their balls/vaginas. Others are neutering themselves. I will say that I sold a few coins between $1000 and $1130 just to pay some bills, but I bought them all back a few minutes ago at $630. Could it drop to $200 again? Sure. I don’t care. I believe in Bitcoin long term and the value is in its fundamentals. Once people realize this and stop focusing on the day-to-day price, the panic selling will stop, and the focus will again be on its fundamentals. This is bubble #2 for me, and I see the same patterns, but ultimately, the fundamentals are unchanged. China/Baidu are not Bitcoin and there are so many more upsides that will influence price down the line. Stay focused on the long term picture, and this is an easy decision. Happy Holidays all.

1 BTC = $ 750

UPDATE 2/10/14 Well it’s been about a year. Four more days, so close enough. I debated on posting a new thread or doing an AMA, but decided not to for a few reasons. 1) I am not an attention whore, and my goal in doing this was never to please anyone else or make myself look good. 2) I also like my privacy and after the arrest of Charlie Shrem and watching public figures become targets of both private and government entities, I’d rather avoid that. So, I won’t be doing an AMA or writing a book or anything silly like that. I look back on this thread and realize how crazy it was of me to think I could sock all those coins away onto a paper wallet and never touch them. I suppose greed got the best of me. I am happy to say that I still own the majority of the coins that I initially bought. But I made some stupid investments though, and gambled some away. Namely, ASICs, and satoshidice. I don’t have nearly as much as you all think I do because of those costly mistakes. That, and now I have taxes coming due. I don’t want to do a full accounting for the world to see, but I will say that it is enough to keep my family and me happy for a long time. If anyone wants to contact me, feel free to pm me or find me on the just-dice / dogedice chat rooms. Yes, I own dogecoin. I like the community and did well buying some of it early on. Thanks for the nice pms, and even the shitty ones. I enjoyed this little experiment. Bye.

1 BTC = $ 670

btcthinker: The way I see it, you’re taking a calculated risk: you take out a loan for $30K and you risk your credit history on the upshot that you can earn a good profit on that money. The worst thing that can happen is that Bitcoin crashes, you lose the money, you will file for bankruptcy and ruin your credit history (I assume that you don’t own anything significant that they can go after). Of course, in about 7 years your credit history will probably recover and you’ll be fine. For me, it was a nobrainer: I took a loan for $25K and invested it in Bitcoin when it was around $12. I’ve been selling $700 worth of bitcoins a month in order to make the loan payments. Let’s look at the moral landscape we live in and who we’re competing against: the big banks have been doing this for years and they were not doing anything which actually supports the average person. When you get a loan to buy Bitcoin, you support the entire Bitcoin community and that helps the average person WAAAAY more than the banks ever did! skeptickal: That shows a bias most of us have to “not losing”. Losing $20 hurts much more than winning $20 feels good. It’s not rational, but most of us act this way. EDIT: Yes, paying back the loan is a good idea. Yes, diversification make a ton of sense. And yes, the first $20k/ year is much more important than 20k more if you’re bringing in 500k/year. All good points. Thanks reddit for continuing to not disappoint! I was just trying to point out the natural aversion to lose. We naturally think that pulling out 30,000 makes sense but not 60,000 or all of it. Somehow everything greater than 30k isn’t as real because he got it “for free”. TL;DR It’s weird that losing hurts more than gaining the equivalent feels good.

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Bitcoin Domain Name Portfolio for sale $2,500 each domain or $50k for group purchase of all of them. Will accept bitcoins as payment. All payments, and open to barters of equal values. 30 top domain names in portfolio: BitCoinPriceQuote.com BitcoinBuyingSecrets.com BitcoinSellingSecrets.com BitcoinBuyingTips.com BitcoinSellingTips.com BitcoinMiningResources.com BitcoinWebDesigners.com BitcoinWebDevelopers.com BitcoinWebTemplates.com BitcoinTradeShows.com BitcoinSellingOnline.com BitcoinNewsMedia.com BitcoinWebcamGirl.com BitcoinWebcamsLive.com BitcoinWebcamLive.com BitcoinHardwareDeals.com BitcoinMiningJobs.com BitcoinProductStore.com BitcoinBuyCar.com BitcoinBuyCondo.com BitcoinBuyHouse.com BitcoinConsultingCompany.com BitcoinMiningCompanies.com BitcoinMiningConsultants.com BitcoinMiningInvestment.com BitcoinOnlineMarketing.com BitcoinConsultingService.com BitcoinSellOnline.com UsedMining.com BitcoinMiningJournal.com RECENT DOMAIN NAME SALES: BitcoinWallet.com $250,000 BitcoinWallets.com $3,000 BitcoinCalculators.com $3,000 BitcoinCurrency.com $1,000 BitcoinPaymentServices.com $2,495 BitcoinBaccarat.com $1,750 BitcoinDaily.com $5,000 Bitcoinnation.com $2,000 Bitcoinresource.com $1,200 Bitcoin2014.com $1,200 Bitcoinmarket.com $4,869

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/ bfs/4333883342.html

February 2014, February 2014, February 2014, January 2014,

I am looking to sell up to 5 bitcoins at $750 each. Cash only. Will meet in person at any bank or coffee shop. If you are interested please reply with your phone number. Thank you!

January 2014, January 2014, January 2014, December 2013, November 2013, November 2013, November 2013,

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Startup scene waits for ‘big exit’

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By Danny Bradbury on October 11, 2011

Startup scene waits for ‘big exit’ 1 2

In Vancouver , everyone is waiting for the big earthquake. “It could happen at any time,” says Boris Mann, co-founder of Bootup Labs, a technology incubator and seed fund. But the quake he is referring to is economic, not seismological. Vancouver’s technology startup scene needs what investors refer to as a “big exit”; a ground-shaking initial public offering that leaves the founders super rich, and gives the rest of the startup community hope. There have been smaller preshocks, the most famous being Flickr, which sold to Yahoo! Inc. for US$35million in 2005; CNN just snapped up IPad magazine Zite for about US$20million; and Adobe Systems Inc. just bought Nitobi Software, which develops software frameworks for mobile apps. But these are all acquisitions by U.S. firms, not grand-slam IPOs. The Big One hasn’t happened yet. The ecosystem isn’t developed enough, says Ryan Holmes , founder of social media firm Hootsuite, which just landed US$3-million in Series A funding. “We need a PayPal mafia here,” he says. “People that come back after a big exit and double down.” He’s referring to the super-rich founders of PayPal, who reinvested their money and their knowledge in the next generation. But, like most other tech startup rock stars, they came from Silicon Valley, traditionally the breeding ground for technology startups that make it big. Consequently, when Vancouver startups need cash and connections, they take the two-hour flight to San Francisco . Many of them never come back. Mr. Holmes says that this is changing. “We have seen over the past couple of years a big decentralization from San Francisco,” he says. “The startups can now happen elsewhere. We’re seeing a huge increase in incubation across other cities.” Hootsuite is one of several promising companies singled out by angel investor Boris Wertz , co-founder of GrowLab, a technology incubator that launched in April. It gives up to $25,000 in funding to young startups, in a runup to a second stage of $150,000 in loan money. “There are some young entrepreneurs that are now thinking about reinvesting their money, which is exactly the way that the valley works,” Mr. Wertz says. One of them is Jason Bailey, a co-founder of GrowLab, who founded KITN Media, a payment platform for Facebook games, which sold for more than Flickr. Since his KITN exit, he has founded several new businesses, one of which is already producing more than $1-million a quarter in revenue, and is getting acquisition offers. GrowLab, and Bootup before it, are a sign Vancouver is picking up on trends set by incubators such as YCombinator in San Francisco and adapting them to Canada. They represent an alternative to traditional sources of funding, from government and associated agen3

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An Online Newspaper Article from:

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cies. Mr. Mann and others see the system of government-backed funding groups in Vancouver as slow to move, and bloated. “GrowLab is changing that. We are taking VC, angel, and government money and filtering it down to the best of the best, regardless of where they are from. We are creating community,” Mr. Bailey says. GrowLab, like Ycombinator, invests small amounts in relatively high numbers of firms. The feedstock for GrowLab comes largely from the lean startup movement, which thrives on this sense of community. Championed by people like Jesse Heaslip, the Lean Startup movement starts companies quickly, using next to no funding, testing assumptions using cheap prototypes before “pulling the trigger” and launching into commercial development. Heaslip uses Meetup.com to organize get-togethers for his Startup Tech CEO group. “We just ran with it, and we had a couple of events a month,” he says. “We are up to 500 members now.” Lean startups are all about agility. When Facebook launched Timeline, a service that creates a timeline from your Facebook status updates and photos, it blew Sean Sherwood’s idea for a social media timeline out of the water. Within days, the sometime restaurateur and tech startup enthusiast repositioned his service as a Facebook application focusing on checkins and personal achievements. It launches this week. In the meantime, he has cooked up Nickler, a digital invoicing system for restaurants. Mr. Sherwood spent years running successful eateries in Vancouver and knows everyone in the business. He already has half the restaurants in the city’s Gastown signed up to Nickler, in just a few weeks. Wilkins Chung, co-founder of A Thinking Ape, came back to Vancouver from Seattle. His company lies at the intersection of two of Vancouver’s most promising technology sectors: mobile development and gaming. He opened a subsidiary here because his co-founder had problems getting a U.S. visa. “I used to work in Seattle, and we found a number of Canadians that got hired in the States but wanted to move back to Canada,” he says. “The problem is that Canada doesn’t have that many interesting places to work, whereas the U.S. has firms like Facebook, Google and Microsoft.” That also means there is less competition to pull developers away when Mr. Chung recruits them. In a world where smart people can start a company with little more than a collection of cloud-based services and a credit card, the only barrier left to starting one is community. Thanks to monied investors such as Mr. Wertz, and Mr. Bailey, and hungry outsiders such as Mr. Heaslip, that is growing quickly.

http://business. financialpost. com/2011/10/11/ startup-scene-waits-forbig-exit

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Google acquired Android Inc. on August 17, 2005. Many assumed that Google was planning to enter the mobile phone market with this move.

On June 3, 2007, FeedBurner was acquired by Google Inc., for a rumored price of $100 million. One month later, two of their popular “Pro” services (MyBrand and TotalStats) were made free to all users. On May 26, 2011, Google announced that the FeedBurner APIs were deprecated. Google shut down the APIs on October 20, 2012. Google “retired” AdSense for Feeds on October 2, 2012 and shut it down on December 3, 2012.

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Google, the lead developer of B Android itself, announced in August 2011 that it would acquire Motorola Mobility for US$12.5 billion, subject to regulatory approval. The deal closed in May 2012. Google’s ownership of Motorola would be short-lived, as the company announced on January 29, 2014 that it would sell most of Motorola Mobility to Chinese personal computer maker Lenovo for $2.91 billion.

Mergers and Acquisitions, sorted by product category and year

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Following the acquisition of Israel-based startup Waze in June 2013, Google submitted a “10-Q” filing with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) that revealed that the corporation spent US$1.3 billion on acquisitions during the first half of 2013, with US$ 966 million of that total going to Waze.

Networks, which became YouTube Next Lab and Audience Development Group.

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Google has acquired over 100 companies, with its largest acquisition being the purchase of Motorola Mobility, a mobile device manufacturing company, for $12.5 billion. Most of the firms acquired by Google are based in the United States, and, in

acquired. For example, Google’s first acquisition was the Usenet company Deja News, and its services became Google Groups. Similarly, Google acquired Dodgeball, a social networking service company, and eventually replaced it with Google Latitude. Other acquisitions include web application company JotSpot, which became Google Sites; Voice over IP company GrandCentral, which became Google Voice; and video hosting service company Next New

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google

turn, most of these are based in or around the San Francisco Bay Area. To date, Google has divested itself of three business units: Frommers, which was sold back to Arthur Frommer in April 2012; SketchUp, which was sold to Trimble in April 2012; and Google Radio Automation, which was sold to WideOrbit in 2009.

List of mergers and acquisitions by Google

The acquisition date listed is the ate of the agreement between Google and the acquisition subject. If the Google service that is derived from the acquired company is known, then it is also listed here.

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Google is a computer software and a web search engine company that has been acquiring, on average, more than one company per week since 2010.

The table below is an incomplete list of acquisitions, with each acquisition listed being for the respective company in its entirety, unless otherwise specified.

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BeatThatQuote.com was a British price comparison site specialising in personal finance products. In the financial year 2006 to 2007 the company posted revenues of ÂŁ7.8 million. BeatThatQuote.com was penalised by Google for search engine spamming the day after it acquired it.

Key

Life span of the product category; e.g. iGoogle: launched in 2005, discontinued since 2013

Number of acquisition. smallest circle = 1 aquisiton

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005 and owned by Google since late 2006.

Waze is a GPS-based geographical navigation application program for smartphones with GPS support and display screens which provides turn-byturn information and user-submitted travel times and route details. It was developed by the Israeli start-up Waze Mobile, which was acquired by Google in 2013.

The company introduced their first product, the Nest Learning Thermostat, in 2011. In October 2013, Nest Labs announced the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector. On January 13, 2014, Google announced plans to acquire Nest Labs for US$3.2 billion and leaves Nest Labs to use its own brand.

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By Evelyn M. Rusl on October 27, 2011, 9:51 AM

For Google, a New High in Deal-Making http://cdn1.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs. dir/1/files/2011/08/2011-08-18-handshakeTNW-520x245.jpg

With 57 completed deals under its belt this year, Google has already smashed its 2010 record of 48 acquisitions – and it is only October. According to a filing submitted on Wednesday, Google announced it had spent $1.4 billion in the first nine months of 2011 on acquisitions. That tally includes its $151 million purchase of Zagat, the online restaurant reviews site, $114 million for Daily Deals and $676 million for ITA Software, the travel software company. Beyond those three transactions, Google largely focused on completing smaller transactions of $10 million or less. The remainder of its deals, 54 in all, accounted for about $502 million. During the period, Google also announced a $12.5 billion cash deal for Motorola Mobility, but has not completed the transaction. In its filing, Google reminded investors that if the deal fell apart because of regulatory issues it would have to pay Motorola a $2.5 billion fee. Although Google’s executives have been optimistic that the deal will close by early next year, the company has faced increased scrutiny from regulators, who are worried about its ever-expanding online empire. Earlier this year, regulators approved the company’s acquisition of ITA, but also required Google to agree to certain stipulations to ensure fair competition.

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Google acquired that Groupon-like site back in September 2011 as a way to get some daily deals traction in Europe. But as you probably know, the daily deals space has fizzled in the past year. Google laid off staff in September 2012, and reportedly planned to shutter DailyDeal entirely. So Fabian and Ferry Heilemann, the founders of DailyDeal, stepped in to save the company from being completely shut down by making Google an offer to buy it back.

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By Chris Taylor on July 18, 2012

If you’re a startup looking for the fabled goldmine of a Google exit, here’s the guy you’ll want to meet: David Lawee . The search giant’s VP of Corporate Development, along with CEO Larry Page, signs off on the dozens of acquisitions and acqui-hires made every year, large and small. (One got added to the latter category Tuesday: design firm Cuban Council, which will be shipping off a portion of its team to help improve the look of Google+.) So what does it take to impress Lawee? Well, for one thing, being lucky enough to have a startup that covers a particular area of tech Google is curious about right now (and naturally keeps close to its chest). “It’s like a giant puzzle,” Lawee told Mashable, “and we’re looking for the missing pieces.” Speaking on stage at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Lawee explained the next steps: be a good cultural fit, be a conscientious worker, and don’t think of it as an exit. “We’re trying to find entrepreneurs who are thinking of it as another stage in the company,” he said. “We’re counting on people to come to Google and take advantage of the opportunity. The product is the star of the show.” Should there be any doubt of that, Google has quite the legacy to point to. There’s YouTube, of course – well established in its own right, it rewrote the book on how an acquisition can be run delicately, as a company within a company. But there’s also the satellite-mapping company Keyhole, which in 2003 became the seed that sprouted Google Maps. And maybe you heard of a tiny Linux-based mobile software designer Google bought in 2005, called Android Inc.? For many startups, the transition isn’t a hard sell. “Entrepreneurs who sell to Google are doing it because they have a vision of what they’re trying to do,” Lawee told attendees. “Very few entrepreneurs get to the stage of creating a billion-dollar company. They’re thinking about their legacy.” Going down in Google history is a lure that must be hard to resist. (When it comes to the most famous company that got away, Groupon – which was offered and turned down $6 billion in 2010, and recently fell below that market cap – Lawee refuses to speculate about whether it would have fared better inside the Googleplex.) But just in case startups feel like haggling, we hear from other conference attendees that Page has to personally approve any change whatsoever in the offer price. In other words, if you don’t agree with exactly what Google wants to give you, you’ll have to wait in line for one of the world’s busiest CEOs to have his next meeting with his acquisitions team.

Google VP: Here’s How to Get Bought By Us

An Online magazine Article from: http://mashable. com/2012/07/18/google-acquired

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By Yahoo

By Douglas MacMillan and Amy Thomson on March 26, 2013 11:28 PM GMT

Summly’s 17-Year-Old Founder Becomes a Millionaire 1

Nick D’Aloisio became a millionaire at 17 after selling Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) on a mobile-phone application he devised two years ago at his home in London. The biggest U.S. Web portal said yesterday that it’s buying Summly, an app that makes it easier to read online news on small screens, without disclosing financial terms. Yahoo is paying $30 million, a person familiar with the transaction said. It’s the type of entrepreneur-makes-good story that has fueled the aspirations of a generation of engineers toiling in garages and workshops in hopes of finding financial backing or a buyer for a new program or gadget. Few fare as well as D’Aloisio, who has been making applications for handsets since he was 12 and will join Yahoo along with some members of his team. He met Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer in 2012 and counts her among his influencers. “Yahoo in my mind is one of these classic Internet companies, and there is so much opportunity now that they have new leadership with Marissa Mayer,” D’Aloisio said. “There’s a massive opportunity in what they’re doing, which is taking technologies like Summly and allowing them to become used by hundreds of millions of people.” D’Aloisio, whose handicraft includes “gimmicky games” like a program that turns a phone into a treadmill for fingers , said in an interview with Mark Barton on Bloomberg TV’s Countdown show that his parents will keep the proceeds from the sale in a trust fund for him.

Li Ka-shing

Summly, founded in 2011 as Trimit, lists Zynga Inc (ZNGA). Chief Executive Officer Mark Pincus, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing , as well as actors Ashton Kutcher and Stephen Fry among its early backers. Summly’s technology generates summaries of news items and helps users search for topics based on keywords. The company partnered with SRI International, a nonprofit research institute, to come up with the algorithm that automatically generates its blurbs. “Most articles and Web pages were formatted for browsing with mouse clicks,” Yahoo said on its blog. “The ability to skim them on a phone or a tablet can be a real challenge. We want easier ways to identify what’s important to us.”

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An ONLINE MAGAZINE ARTICLE from: http://www.bloomberg. com/news/2013-03-25/ yahoo-buying-summlyto-boost-searches-onmobile-devices.html

Sara Gorman, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo, and D’Aloisio declined to comment on the price. Yahoo gained less than 1 percent to $23.59 at the close in New York. The shares have risen 19 percent this year.

http://blog.360i.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/mayer.jpg

The program will be worked into multiple Yahoo products, and for now has been removed from Apple Inc (AAPL)’s online app store, according to a statement on Summly.com. Mayer is stepping up Yahoo’s focus on Web services that are customized for individual users, and aims to add engineers by buying small technology startups, she said on a conference call last year. Since Mayer took over in July, Yahoo has made at least six such deals, known informally as acqui-hires. These include Jybe Inc., Stamped Inc., OntheAir, Snip.it and Alike. Mayer has said she sees the company building sites and technologies for daily activities such as checking e-mail and stock tickers. She said in January that she’s focused on technology that will personalize content from the Web and deliver it to people on handheld devices. “We think about how do we take the Internet and order it for you,” Mayer said. Raised in Australia, D’Aloisio has resided in a suburb southwest of London since the age of seven. He lives with his father, a commodities analyst for Morgan Stanley; his mother, a lawyer; and a younger brother.

100 Percent D’Aloisio took a sabbatical from King’s College School six months ago after receiving an investment from investors including Li Ka-shing. “It came down to me wanting to commit 100 percent to the build and the launch,” he said. “I wanted to throw everything I had at Summly.” That passion for his company resulted in an emotional exchange with a blogger that even D’Aloisio admits betrayed a lack of maturity. In a series of e-mails with

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Mayer’s Personalization

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the technology blog Gizmodo, D’Aloisio urged writer Casey Chan to reconsider a decision to drop Trimit from a Best Apps of the Week feature. “ I feel like crying I’m that disappointed ,” D’Aloisio wrote in an e-mail, which was later posted to Gizmodo. “You don’t understand what this means if we don’t get featured. We’ll go bust and I’ll end up unemployed.”

Ive Fandom

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D’Aloisio said he has matured in the two years since then. “The great thing about that is it shows I was a 15-year – old who has been on an amazing journey,” he said. “I was young and inexperienced.” D’Aloisio met Mayer in January 2012 at a design conference in Munich, where he was a speaker and she attended as a representative of Google Inc., her then employer. The two had a “very brief chat” at the conference, and reconnected late last year, when Yahoo approached the entrepreneur about a possible acquisition, he said. As much as he admires Mayer, D’Aloisio may not be long for the company she runs. He said he’d like to continue building companies after a stint there and is particularly interested in artificial intelligence technology, such as Apple Inc.’s Siri. For now, he said he’s eager to learn what it’s like working inside an established technology – a prospect that helped convince him to sell. “I’m going to need to have had the experience at companies like Yahoo ,” D’Aloisio said. “I’m going to have this awesome learning experience.” D’Aloisio said that besides Mayer, he also draws inspiration from Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and Jony Ive, Apple’s design chief. To hear D’Aloisio tell it, the admiration is mutual. “He is a fan,” D’Aloisio said of Ive, with whom he’s met to exchange ideas. “Which is awesome.”

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Now I serve tablesOnline at a Italian restaurant. THE QUOTE

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THE IMAGE

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e Poker THE CONTENT

I blew over $30,000 playing internet poker

Losing

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Black Friday

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U.S. Cracks Down on Online Gambling

Black Friday

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Winning, a lot

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Winning, how?

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Winning, even more

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If I’m playing, I’m playing to win. How much can a online poker player make? GRAPHIC Top 10 Biggest Online Poker Winners

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I blew over $30,000 playing internet poker and then asked my girlfriend to sell her body to pay for debt. Ask me Anything. 4

An user story from: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cpv83/i_blew_over_30000_ playing_internet_poker_and_then

gsadamb: Guys can sell their bodies too, y’know. thisusernametakentoo: Seriously...why wouldn’t you have sucked dick or something instead of whoring out your lady? Durty_G35: Agreed...... you shoulda sucked some dick rather than whore out your girlfriend. imdk: Why didn’t you hooker yourself for old gay guys instead? I know this might just be a stereotype but rumor has it they pay well. renasissance_loser: Yeah, for skinny twinks. I’m 6’2, 168 pounds. I didn’t because I couldn’t, that’s the answer. I’m assuming – I don’t think I could have made enough money in the time the bookie gave me. My girlfriend made huge bucks at the hotel.

user renasissance_loser (2010): Two years ago I started playing poker at my buddys house before buying several books on the subject and playing online. ping down to minus $1000 in the second. After about 6 months I had lost about $5000 of college/rent/food money. I began sports betting in a desperate attempt to win the money back but lost even more. In November last year I had maxxed my overdraft, credit card and owed loan payments to my bookie and bank. I admitted I had a problem to my girlfriend

but

couldn’t bare to tell her how badly my situation was. Her parents gave me $5,000 to pay for my most serious debts. I gave $3,000 to my bookie, $500 to my landlord, $1,000 to my bank and sadly played cards with the rest. I then started to shoplift, bag snatch and steal from loved ones to play more and to cover debit card charges. Two months ago my computer, TV, car, xbox, weights and stereo system was seized to pay for debts I owed and I finally came clean to my girlfriend about the extent of my problem. I begged her not to tell her parents and she agreed expensive hotel

. She was working in an

bar at the time and she had joked

about how often sleazy guys would offer to pay her for sex

. I brought it up

and begged her to do it so I could pay the bookies I owed and she, after many tears

I made about $400 profit in the first month before drop-

, agreed. She did it 11 times

10 11 12 13

to pay about 75% of

the debt I owed before the hotel found out and fired her. She slept with one of the guys she met another several times to pay the rest off. I never played poker again and now go to a secular gamblers support group. Yesterday I broke up with my girlfriend. We was together for 4 years.

2 108

13 12

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EDIT: I’ve just realised how many people are going to say how disgusting I am, how reprehensible my actions were and so on. I realise this. I understand what I did was morally unforgivable. I snatched bags from old wom-

Winning, how?

Winning, even more

Black Friday

en too. I stole money from my brother. I have to live with all these things. I’m working through it in a support group. I was in a terrible place, I feared for my well-being. I had nobody and didn’t see any other options. Would I do it again? No, absolutely not. But I can’t go back in time. I’m sorry. EDIT: Lot’s of posts about how I need to ‘pay’ for my wrongs. I know that. I’m attending support every week, I’m helping people in similar situations and believe it or not people have done worse than I have. I’ve been giving every dime I can afford to either my ex and her family or to problem gambling charities. I’m saving money to take a course which will help me work part time with a gambling support organisation. I’ve contributed over 200 posts to a forum that deals exclusively with problem gambling. I’ve accepted my mistakes. I’ve found therapy for my girlfriend and am willing to give her anything

TheSeeker00: So basically, you talked your girlfriend into ruining her life because you were too big of a pussy to do something about it yourself? Shit, I would sell drugs or about a thousand other illegal and immoral things before I would push that shit off onto a loved one like that. You, sir, are going to have to spend the rest of your life trying to make up for that bad karma. How you plan on going about doing that?

she needs in support of this. There isn’t one packof cards in my house. I don’t drink or take drugs. I don’t go to bars to pick up women. I’ve lost the woman I am deeply in love with and several friends. My brother no longer speaks to me. What more can I offer? Enough of this “I hope you get hurt, raped, pimped, killed bullshit.” You have no idea the personal pain I’ve suffered with this. It’s no excuse, but I’m doing more than you can imagine to repay my debt. Fuck you if that isn’t enough, you don’t know me, you can never understand where I was at that time in my life. I wasn’t thinking with love or rationale. I’ll do everything I can, personally. I’m currently working with my support group and hopefully will become a part time volunteer within their organisation. I now have a full time job and 30% of my wage has been going to her/her parents. I’m tee total. I can’t give anything more at the moment. People become born again Christians, say God saved them, forgiven them and people find that socially acceptable. I’m trying to find redemption on my own. Seek forgiveness without religion and I get bullshit for it.

United States v. Scheinberg, 10 Cr. 336 (2011), is a United States federal criminal case against the

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(2011)

founders of the three largest online poker companies, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Cereus (Abso-

lute Poker/Ultimatebet), and a handful of their associates, which alleges that the defendants vio-

lated the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) and engaged in bank fraud and money laundering in order to process transfers to and from their customers. A companion civil case, United States v. PokerStars, et al., 11 Civ. 2564 (2011), includes Full Tilt and Cereus as defendants and seeks the forfeiture of approximately $3 billion in assets belonging to the companies. After the indictment was unsealed on April 15, 2011, a date quickly dubbed Black Friday by the online poker community, PokerStars and Full Tilt stopped offering real money play to their United States customers.

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By Matt Richtel on April 15, 2011

U.S. Cracks Down Online Gambling 1

An ONLINE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/ technology/16poker.html

In an aggressive attack on Internet gambling, federal prosecutors on Friday unsealed fraud and money laundering charges against operators of three of the most popular online poker sites. The government also seized the Internet addresses of the sites, a new enforcement tactic that effectively shuttered their doors. Prosecutors charged that the operators of Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Absolute Poker tricked banks into processing billions of dollars in payments from customers in the United States. They said the actions violated a federal law passed in 2006 that prohibits illegal Internet gambling operations from accepting payments. The sites have their headquarters in places where online gambling is legal – Antigua and the Isle of Man – a hurdle that has made it difficult for authorities in the United States to crack down on the industry. The indictment shows the intensifying game of cat-and-mouse between prosecutors and gambling sites that generate billions of dollars in transactions. The online poker operators sought to avoid detection by banks and legal authorities by funneling payments through fictitious online businesses that purported to sell jewelry, golf balls and other items, according to the indictment. It says that when some banks processed the payments, they were unaware of the real nature of the business, but the site operators also bribed banks into accepting the payments. Preet Bhararay , the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that the defendants “concocted an elaborate criminal fraud scheme, alternately tricking some U.S. banks and effectively bribing others to assure the continued flow of billions in illegal gambling profits.” Representatives for the poker sites could not immediately be reached. On Friday, authorities arrested two defendants, including John Campos, the vice chairman of a small bank in Saint George, Utah, who they said processed gambling transactions in exchange for a $20,000 fee and a $10 million investment in the bank by poker site operators and their associates. The United States attorney’s office is working with foreign law enforcement in hopes of extraditing defendants located abroad and seizing their assets. Experts in gambling law said that the forceful action raises tricky questions about gambling laws and the government’s reach. These experts said it was not clear, for example, whether countries that sanctioned and licensed such activity would allow extraditions. Lawrence Walters , a lawyer who represents online gambling operations, though not those involved in these cases, said the indictment might raise an even more fundamental question: Is online poker actually illegal? Federal law prohibits sports betting, but experts are divided over whether it clearly prohibits online games like poker and blackjack. 3

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In the indictment, prosecutors seemed to skirt the issue. They based parts of their prosecution on state laws in New York and elsewhere that prohibited unlicensed gambling, including poker. Legal experts said the prosecutors needed to rely on such prohibitions as a foundation for going after the claims of money laundering and fraud. But Mr. Walters said this strategy might face challenges. He said it was not clear that the state laws applied to foreign-based gambling operations, given that under federal law, international commerce was regulated at the federal level. “This appears to be a precedent-setting case,” Mr. Walters said. “It will be the first time the Department of Justice takes on the looming question of whether federal law prohibits online poker.” Opponents of online gambling have been trying to figure out for years how best to police casinos that can be located abroad but reach easily into American homes. According to statistics provided by the Poker Player’s Alliance, an advocacy organization led by former Senator Alfonse D’Amato of New York, seven million Americans play online for money once a month. In a statement, Mr. D’Amato criticized the prosecution. “We are shocked at the action,” he said, adding, “Online poker is not a crime and should not be treated as such.” ComScore, a company that measures Internet traffic, said that in March, Full Tilt Poker had 2.6 million visitors from the United States, PokerStars had 1.9 million and Absolute Poker had 1.3 million. ComScore also reported that 1.4 million people visited Ultimate Bet, a site that the federal indictment says joined forces last year with Absolute Poker. Those were the nation’s four most popular poker sites, ComScore said. On Friday, visitors to those sites were met with a message that begins: “This domain name has been seized by the F.B.I. ” The government used the same controversial tactic of seizing domain names in actions last year against sites accused of copyright violations. Losing a domain name can be costly for a company that has invested in promoting it as the main route to its site. But the tactic can also be of only temporary effectiveness, because the company can switch to a new Web address that is outside the reach of law enforcement in the United States – one that, for example, does not end in .com. According to the indictment, the fraud and money laundering scheme evolved from deception to bribery. Initially, after the enactment of the 2006 law aimed at limiting payment processing for online gambling, the defendants sought to dupe banks by creating fake companies, according to the indictment. But the indictment says that as financial institutions got wise to those efforts, several defendants sough to persuade smaller banks to process the transactions by making multimillion-dollar investments in them.

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If I’m playing, I’m playing to win. A user story from: http://www.reddit.com/r/ IAmA/comments/10f6m2/ iama_professional_online_poker_player_of_8_ years

jaysdailydose (2014): I was a professional online poker player, in the United States, who has been out of the game due to US regulations for nearly a year and a half now. I played on all major sites, have been through all of the scandals, and have played against some of the best in the world. I was mainly a tournament player, specializing in multi-table sit-n-goes and multitable scheduled events... my yearly earnings generally were six figures, with a high five figure year having been my smallest year.

“How do you get a professional poker player off your doorstep? Pay him for the pizza.”

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Insider cheating can occur when a person with trusted access to the system (e.g. an employee of the poker room) uses his position to play poker himself with an unfair advantage. This could be done without the knowledge of the site managers. Perhaps the first known major case came to light in October 2007, when Absolute Poker acknowledged that its integrity had been breached by an employee, who had been able to play at high stakes while viewing his opponents’ hidden “hole” cards. The cheating was first brought to light by the efforts of players, whose saved histories of play showed the employee was playing as only someone who could see their opponents’ cards could. In 2008, UltimateBet became embroiled in a similar scandal, with former employees accused of using a software backdoor to see opponents’ cards. UltimateBet confirmed the allegations on May 29. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission announced sanctions against UltimateBet as a result. // wikipedia. org, 2014 Rakeback is a player rewards method that began in 2004, whereby some online poker sites or their affiliate partners return part of the rake or tournament entries a player pays as an incentive for them to continue playing on that site.

I played for my expenses, mainly – and I also have house payments (plural) as I support my mother. Multiple nice cars, insurance, and living a nice lifestyle will run through money very fast. As I said, I had a year’s expenses in reserve for when the bubble burst. I never expected a situation to where I wouldn’t be compensated if they were busted by the US Government. Once the money was out of the poker site, it was spent... I lived life. :) I had great bankroll management in the game, in life – not so much. While I had a “safe fund” none of us ever really thought it would end, and we were told to expect around 18 months even if it did when UIGEA first dropped. There’s a lot of things that can put you on “tilt” in poker. The best players just avoid it as much as possible. Certainly, there are times where emotions can become far too much involved. I was just always a good one to be able to turn off the games when I could feel myself playing like a twat. Poker, as opposed to what the MIT blackjack team dead, is an exercise in patience, and using long-run patience and smarts to achieve the highest monetary gain over time. Those guys were trying to hit big and fly away. While I won’t say there aren’t parallels, there was certainly never anytime after I became a professional where I ever had more than like 3% of my bankroll riding on the outcome of any one action. I had a 27% rakeback deal for my FTP play, but I did not have rakeback on Pokerstars. I got a few merchandise things

jaysdailydose (2014): I am still waiting to collect over $14,000 from Full Tilt Poker, that kept me from playing live poker and having to get a real job – so for me, the risk is not worth playing right now.

near the end, but I used almost all my FPP on events or cash bonuses, and I was SuperNova once after those levels were brought about. http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Online_poker

They say a solid ROI at trading is 17%... my ROI hovered around the 40% mark.

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Plus, I know nothing really about the market, other than a few stock market games we used to mess with in our off time from play as little prop bets and stuff like that. I always set aside days to myself, as a “weekend.” I would say I averaged between 60 and 80 hours a week at peak times. Especially on long MTT days, you could be there 16 hours. At the end, before Black Friday – the

An answer from:

level at the online tables at any stake

http://www.quora.com/ Online-Poker/How-muchcan-a-competitive-onlinepoker-player-make

you could actually make a living from was generally swimming with regulars with enough fish to make the game profitable for a few players. Especially for players like myself, who specialized in multi-table tournaments and sit-n-goes, you aren’t going to get the volume you need to make a living without a significantly higher bankroll risk. I’m not worried about the level of play in any game, I’m confident I’ll be either the best or second-best player in any game I sit down at... but the poker players that make money are generally a lot more risk-adverse. But I did have three years that I played

How much can a competitive online poker player make?

over two million hands, so that’s six million hands right there. I’d definitely estimate that I played at least another six to ten million in the other five years or so that I was playing actively. When we were playing in the “boom” time, and especially after UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) – we always knew the bubble would burst. There are places now that are technically legit and operating within legal parameters, but its a slippery slope. I could actually play 30 games without feeling like a complete degenerate at certain levels. Absolutely it is stressful!

Kevin Espiritu (2011): As with every answer in poker: it depends. Let’s take the case of what I will call the “Typical Grinder.” This is by far the most average estimate of the earn that those who actually CAN beat online poker will be making. This is a guy who is playing competitively. Let’s assume that he is playing No Limit Texas Holdem at “6-Max” tables. This just means that no more than 6 people can be sitting at the table at a time. Oftentimes, a professional player will be playing upwards of 4 tables at once to maximize their hourly earn. Hourly earn is determined by Big Bets per 100 hands. So, if you are playing a $100 buyin table that goes through 100 hands an hour, and you are

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But yes, you do enjoy it still. I worked from a home office, and if I woke up with a headache, I called in to myself. If I wanted to play one set of tournaments, and then go out for the evening, I could. At that level, it’s still WORK, and hard work at that. Most people don’t have to study for their jobs. I’ve probably read every decent poker book released in the past 30 years, and most of them to where their covers wore off. Coaching is/was prevalent all over the internet at the end, with high-end coaches being able to realistically stop playing entirely and support a lifestyle strictly from coaching. I did use pretty much all of the major software utilities at one time or another. PokerTracker, HEM, TableNinja, Poker Stove, you name it – I used it. Pretty much absolutely essential when you are actively playing, especially TableNinja for a massive multitabler. My favorite type of poker was undoubtedly Razz. My most dominant game would definitely be Pot-Limit Holdem, with No-Limit Holdem a close-second, but I was also a very accomplished Omaha-8 and Stud-8 player.

winning at 2BB/100, your hourly earn would be equivalent to $4/hr. One big bet = two big blinds. We’ll assume he is playing tables with a $200 buyin. These tables typically play at about 100 hands/hr, and the average grinder will be playing around 6. A very typical winrate per 100 hands is around 2BB/100, or $8/hr per table. This is a post-rake figure. At six tables, this comes out to $48/hr. Most serious players have something called “rakeback,” which is a clever business model that poker affiliates have created. Rake as you probably know is the amount of money the poker sites remove from each pot – it’s how they get paid. Rakeback essentially gives you a percentage of your total rake back every month. An

average figure for this is about 25%. If we assume our hypothetical player plays 5 days a week at six hours a day then our player will have made around $1440/week, or ~$75,000 a year. Add in rakeback for all of the year’s rake and you have another $30,000, bringing the total to $115,000. Depending on how you file taxes, you’ll be in a variety of tax brackets based on professional or hobbyist status. In addition, because of the luck element in poker, the concept of variance plays very heavily into the lives of professional players. It’s entirely possible to run VASTLY below expected value and VASTLY ahead of expected value. In addition, where most people may thing that losing a lot of all-ins with AA is an obvious form of variance affecting you in a

negative way, there are many more subtle manifestations that can never be fully discovered. I want to stress that the “average” player is not playing anywhere near this amount of hours in a year. In my experience, the typical poker player who can win and plays at medium to low stakes is somewhat lazy and doesn’t take full advantage of the skillset he’s trained himself in. Thus, you see a lot of these players waste a bunch of their time. All of these figures are as average as I could possibly make them. Here’s a list of some factors that will affect these:

• Your propensity for emotional instability (also known as tilting) • Your ability to play 6h/day without losing your competitive edge • Your ability to focus on higher/ lower amounts of tables • Your progression vs. the field: Staying at the same level of skill = losing, because the field as a whole is improving on average. • The stakes you play: Both moving up or down in stakes could make you more or less money – move up and keep same winrate = win more, drop winrate by more than 50% = win less, corollary applies to moving down. • Rakeback percentage – even a small % change can add or subtract a few thousand dollars. • Consistency – can you play consistently throughout the year, with optimal mental sharpness?

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Black Friday

Winning, a lot

Winning, how?

Winning, even more

Top 9 Biggest Online Poker Winners

Phil

Dang

Ivey

(USA)

$8.1m

(USA)

won

9. Rafi Amit

$16.6m

(ISR) $5.5m

Hac Dang

$7.4m

Phil

Galfond

(USA) $6.4m

$10.1m

(USA)

playing Online Poker

Brian Hastings

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http://www.pokerupdate.com/news/ top-10-biggest-all-timelive-poker-and-onlinepoker-winners-theultimate-list/

I played from a very young age, and I fell in love with the game from the start... poker, more than many things, is one of those things you will just never stop learning about, especially if you want to be good at it. A minute to learn, a lifetime to master. If you consistently make the

Patrik

Antonius

(FIN)

best decision you can make, the luck will balance out over the long run. You’ve got to learn that beats are part of poker and keep playing your game at all times. There isn’t a “better” decision that you can make that will affect the luck of the

Ben Tollerene

cards, you’ve just got to consistently put yourself in the best position you can, and you will succeed. I don’t really play “casually” ever... I mean, sure – there are times I play with friends, but poker is poker. If I’m playing, I’m playing to win. My brain doesn’t work

(USA) $6.6m

$15.8m

any other way. Not to sound like I’m some guy who can’t loosen up and chill and enjoy a game of poker with friends – but I’ve played so many hands there isn’t any difference between how I’m going to play between a high-level game online and how I’m gon-

(USA)

na play for a few bucks between friends.

Daniel

I lied here, a little. When I play my real FRIENDS – they know what I used to do for a living, so I get away with ridiculous re-raises, check-raises, stone cold bluffs, and things of that nature strictly off reputation.

(USA)

$8.2m

Many people on my Facebook have always wondered why I am so active in working towards poker legislation, and I tell them I lost an easy six-figure yearly earning potential without leaving my house. I also had offers on the table to move to

Cates

two other countries, one being Canada, and one being The Netherlands, to continue my online playing career. A desire not to uproot from family or friends.

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By Reuters on 2005-12-31 10:57

The Footer

Cash pours in for student with $1m Web idea He spent millions trying to measure national wellbeing. Now researchers say the Prime Minister needn’t have bothered as they already know what makes us happy – and it doesn’t take a genius to guess the answer. Money – and lots of it – is the most important factor in a person’s happiness, according to a comprehensive think tank report. Findings by the Institute of Economic Affairs show that happiness levels correlate with the amount of wealth a person accumulates. And, in contrast to popular belief, it does not level off when the assets reach a certain threshold. The report, by a dozen academics from around the world, has dismissed David Cameron’s strategy of promoting happiness over other objectives. It suggests he would have done far better to invest the time and money into simply making us all better off by boosting Britain’s flatlining GDP. Philip Booth, editorial director at the IEA, told The Sunday Times: ‘The Government is spending money on collecting happiness statistics inç order to promote government policies to try to increase national happiness. ‘This is a flawed policy and based on a complete misconception.’ Drawing from an array of data from 126 countries, the report is published today to coincide with ‘Blue Monday’, which has been identified as the most miserable day of the year because of factors including weather, time of year and debt levels. Its most controversial finding contradicts the widely-held belief that above a certain income level, people do not become any happier. The theory, conceived in 1974 by wellbeing expert Richard Easterlin, claimed that happiness stagnates when income rises beyond a certain level. And two years ago, a study at Princeton University claimed to have found that wellbeing An ONLINE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE from: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ english/doc/2005-12/31/content_508426.htm

stopped increasing at £58,700 – with an increase of as much as a third making little difference. But the report, The Pursuit of Happiness, condemns the theory as a ‘myth’ and ‘fake’. It argues a 20 per cent rise in income has the same impact on wellbeing irrespective of how much wealth the person has initially. It states: ‘No country is rich enough to have hit a satiation point, if such a point exists. These findings are robust and use an extremely rich set of data. Richer individuals are happier with their lives. The report says this holds true for 140 countries studied, in which ‘the relationship between income and satisfaction is remarkably similar’. The report’s authors include British academics as well as those from Spain, America, Holland and Denmark. It is likely to dismay Downing Street, as it suggests there is little hope of improving Britons’ mood unless the economy improves. GDP is expected to show growth of just 0.1 per cent at best later this month. David Cameron said six years ago it was ‘time to admit there’s more to life than money’ and has talked much about promoting wellbeing while in office. Last year, he announced plans to spend £2m a year finding out how to measure wellbeing, focussing on ‘all those things that make life worthwhile’. A pilot study found three-quarters of people rate their life satisfaction at seven out of 10. The concept of measuring happiness was first tried out in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan 40 years ago by its then king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who said progress should be measured by Gross National Happiness. In the last four decades, similar ideas have been taken on board by governments around the world, who have implemented policies aimed at promoting wellbeing rather than income.

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121

An Online Newspaper Article from:

By Nicole Perlroth on December 5, 2012

For PC Virus Victims, Pay or Else Kidnappers used to make ransom notes with letters cut out of magazines. Now, notes simply pop up on your computer screen, except the hostage is your PC. In the past year, hundreds of thousands of people across the world have switched on their computers to find distressing messages alerting them that they no longer have access to their PCs or any of the files on them. The messages claim to be from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some 20 other law enforcement agencies across the globe or, most recently, Anonymous, a shadowy group of hackers. The computer users are told that the only way to get their machines back is to pay a steep fine. And, curiously, it’s working. The scheme is making more than $5 million a year, according to computer security experts who are tracking them. The scourge dates to 2009 in Eastern Europe. Three years later, with business booming, the perpetrators have moved west. Security experts say that there are now more than 16 gangs of sophisticated criminals extorting millions from victims across Europe. The threat, known as ransomware, recently hit the United States. Some gangs have abandoned previously lucrative schemes, like fake antivirus scams and banking trojans, to focus on ransomware full time. Essentially online extortion, ransomware involves infecting a user’s computer with a virus that locks it. The attackers demand money before the computer will be unlocked, but once the money is paid, they rarely unlock it. In the vast majority of cases, victims do not regain access to their computer unless they hire a computer technician to remove the virus manually. And even then, they risk losing all files and data because the best way to remove the virus is to wipe the computer clean. It may be hard to fathom why anyone would agree to fork over hundreds of dollars to a demanding stranger, but security researchers estimate that 2.9 percent of compromised computer owners take the bait and pay. That, they say, is an extremely

conservative estimate. In some countries, the payout rate has been as high as 15 percent. That people do fall for it is a testament to criminals’ increasingly targeted and inventive methods. Early variations of ransomware locked computers, displayed images of pornography and, in Russian, demanded a fee – often more than $400 – to have it removed. Current variants are more targeted and toy with victims’ consciences. Researchers say criminals now use victims’ Internet addresses to customize ransom notes in their native tongue. Instead of pornographic images, criminals flash messages from local law enforcement agencies accusing them of visiting illegal pornography, gambling or piracy sites and demand they pay a fine to unlock their computer. Victims in the United States see messages in English purporting to be from the F.B.I. or Justice Department. In the Netherlands, people get a similar message, in Dutch, from the local police. (Some Irish variations even demand money in Gaelic.) The latest variants speak to victims through recorded audio messages that tell users that if they do not pay within 48 hours, they will face criminal charges. Some even show footage from a computer’s webcam to give the illusion that law enforcement is watching. The messages often demand that victims buy a preloaded debit card that can be purchased at a local drugstore – and enter the PIN. That way it’s impossible for victims to cancel the transaction once it becomes clear that criminals have no intention of unlocking their PC. The hunt is on to find these gangs. Researchers at Symantec said they had identified 16 ransomware gangs. They tracked one gang that tried to infect more than 500,000 PCs over an 18-day period. But even if researchers can track their Internet addresses, catching and convicting those responsible can be difficult. It requires cooperation among global law enforcement, and such criminals are skilled at destroying evidence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/technology/ransomware-is-expanding-in-the-united-states.html

The Definition

http:// en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Ransomware

Ransomware is a class of malware which restricts access to the computer system that it infects, and demands a ransom paid to the creator of the malware in order for the restriction to be removed. Some forms of ransomware encrypt files on the system’s hard drive (cryptoviral extortion), while some may simply lock the system and display messages intended to coax the user into paying. While initially popular in Russia, the use of ransomware scams has grown internationally; in June 2013, security software vendor McAfee released data showing that it had collected over 250,000 unique samples of ransomware in the first quarter of 2013–more than double the number it had obtained in the first quarter of 2012. Ransomware typically propagates as a trojan like a conventional computer worm, entering a system through, for example, a downloaded file or a vulnerability in a network service. The program will then run a payload: such as one that will begin to encrypt personal files on the hard drive. Ransomware payloads utilize elements of scareware to extort money from the system’s user. The payload may, for example, display notices purportedly issued by companies or law enforcement agencies which falsely claim that the system had been used for illegal activities, or contains illegal content such as pornography and pirated software or media. Some ransomware payloads imitate Windows XP’s product activation notices, falsely claiming that their computer’s Windows installation is counterfeit or requires re-activation. Encrypting ransomware reappeared in 2013 with a worm known as “CryptoLocker”. Distributed either as an attachment to a malicious e-mail or as a drive-by download, CryptoLocker first attempts to connect to a command-andcontrol server, after which it generates a 2048bit RSA public and private key pair, and uploads the key to the server. The malware then attempts to encrypt data on any local or network storage drive that the user can access using a 2048-bit RSA key, targeting files matching a whitelist of file extensions. While the public key is stored on the computer, the private key is stored on the command-and-control server; CryptoLocker demands a payment with either a MoneyPak card or Bitcoin to recover the key and begin decrypting files, and threatens to delete the private key if a payment is not received within 3 days. Due to the extremely large key size it uses, analysts and those affected by the worm have considered CryptoLocker to be extremely difficult to repair.

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By Adam Ostrow on May 24, 2010

How Much Revenue Does Google Keep from AdSense? An Online Newspaper Article from: http://mashable. com/2010/05/24/google-adsense-revenueshare

Google has finally disclosed the percentage of revenue it keeps from publishers that participate in its AdSense program, which places text ads alongside content on third-party websites. The breakdown: 32% of revenue from publishers in the AdSense for content program, and 49% from those who run AdSense alongside Google search on their own sites. That means that publishers keep the majority of revenue from AdSense, though Google notes that it does negotiate special deals with major websites. While Google says its sharing these numbers in the “spirit of greater transparency,” it

The Definition Google AdSense is a program run by Google that allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to serve automatic text, image, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google, and they can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. In Q1 2011, Google earned US $2.43

billion ($9.71 billion annualized), or 28% of total revenue, through Google AdSense. Some webmasters create websites tailored to lure searchers from Google and other engines onto their AdSense website to make money from clicks. Such websites often contain nothing but a large amount of interconnected, automated content (e.g., a directory with content from the Open Directory

Project, or scraper websites relying on RSS feeds for content). Possibly the most popular form of such “AdSense farms” are splogs (spam blogs), which are centered around known high-paying keywords. A Made for AdSense (MFA) website or webpage has little or no content, but is filled with advertisements so that users have no choice but to click on advertisements. Such pages were tolerated

in the past, but due to complaints, Google now disables such accounts. http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/AdSense

is also using the opportunity to address competing products. In a blog post, the company writes, “when considering different monetization options, we encourage you to focus on the total revenue generated from your site, rather than just revenue share, which can be misleading.” In other words, while some networks might promise a greater revenue share, they might not always be able to collect on it from advertisers. For now, Google’s not disclosing the revenue share on AdSense for mobile, feeds and games, areas it describes as “quickly evolving.”

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Top 20 Highest Paying Google AdSense Keywords 2013 http://dukeo.com/ adsense-accountprotected/

Mesothelioma law firm: $179.01 Sell annuity payment: $107.46 Asbestos lawyers: $105.84 Structured annuity settlement: $100.80

Mesothelioma (or, more precisely, malignant mesothelioma) is a rare form of cancer that develops from cells of the mesothelium, the protective lining that covers many of the internal organs of the body. Mesothelioma is most commonly caused by exposure to asbestos.

Annuity settlements: $100.72 Virtual data rooms: $83.18 Automobile accident attorney: $76.57 Auto accident attorney: $75.64 Car accident lawyers: $75.17 Data recovery raid: $73.22

http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Mesothelioma

Motor insurance quotes: $68.61 Personal injury lawyer: $66.53 Car insurance quotes: $61.03 Asbestos lung cancer: $60.96 Injury lawyers: $60.79 Personal injury law firm: $60.56 Online criminal justice degree: $60.40 Car insurance companies: $58.66 Business voip solutions: $51.90

The Story

The Tweet

Futurum (2011): I’m 16 and

income while I sleep and go to

I make $40/day consistently with

school. Now it’s basically a free

Google Adsense (now without do-

$40 every day! Apart from the few

ing anything). I’m not too sure how

weeks of intensive work I spent

popular this will be, but I tend to

6 months ago, I do nothing to the

think it will be downvoted to hell.

site anymore.

No, I’m not advertising my site. I know $40 a day isn’t impressive, a real job makes much more than that. However, I think maybe some people would be interested just because of the fact that now that I have the site established, it’s making me some decent, passive

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ ljioz/im_16_and_i_make_40day_consistently_with_google

https://twitter.com/ajdinthedream/ status/438482274896457728

@ajdinthedream 26. Feb. 2014

In 2013, Google gave out $9 billion USD in their AdSense program, I got $3.11 of that haha

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By Rick Broida on April 16, 2013 8:50 AM PDT

Swag Bucks: Yeah, it’s still a thing

Swagbucks – Ways to Earn Members of the program are able to earn and spend Swag Bucks in a variety of ways. Searching: Swagbucks hosts a custom search engine that will periodically reward registered users with random amounts of Swag Bucks. The engine’s layout is similar to that of Google’s, though the results are compiled from multiple sources and are not necessarily the same. Theoretical payouts from searching are from 1-1000 Swag Bucks (SB). The selection of winners is completely random, and it is emphasized that searching more often will not necessarily increase the odds of winning. “Bots” that automatically search using the engine are banned, and if the system detects unnatural searching habits, the user can be blocked for a certain amount of time. Unregistered users can use the search engine, but no SB’s will be awarded. Special Offers: This allows the user to complete offers made by various companies to receive Swag Bucks. The payouts can be virtually any number of Swag Bucks. It should be noted, however, that this is a particularly risky way to earn – most offers do not offer sufficient re-compensation, and certain offers are scams or do not pay. Special offers vary greatly, and the user is advised to exercise discretion when using this feature. Swagbucks TV: Here the user can watch videos, in a similar fashion to YouTube. Watching 10 videos (or a large portion of each) will earn the user 3 Swag Bucks. The user can only earn up to 150 SB from videos per day. Due to many users using auto-refresh bots and reloading the same video multiple times to exploit the system, more barriers have been implemented: the user can now only gain credit the first time they watch a video each day, and captchas sometimes appear to discourage the use of automated computer software. This feature requires Flash, and it is also available as a small popup window through the toolbar. Surveys: Through the Surveys portal, Special Offers portals, or through email invitations, the user can complete surveys from third parties to receive Swag Bucks. Generally, surveys take longer to complete than other activities, and

It was just over three years ago that I first encountered (and wrote about) Swag Bucks, a service that rewards you for completing various online activities. I used it pretty hot and heavy for about a year, eventually accumulating some downright decent prizes, but then it dropped off my radar. Way, way off – I kind of forgot it existed. Come to find out, though, that Swag Bucks is alive and well – and still a rather interesting way to score freebies just for doing stuff you might already be doing anyway. For example, you can earn points (“swag bucks,” natch) for things like Web searches. You can search via the Swag Bucks site, or install a toolbar or plug-in for your browser, thus saving you the extra step of heading to the Swag Bucks home page. You can also score bucks by shopping online, same as you normally would. This works not unlike cash-back services such as Ebates: just start your shopping at the Swag Bucks portal, then earn x bucks for every dollar you end up spending. If you’re headed to Amazon, for example, you can score three bucks per dollar

just by clicking through Swag Bucks first. At Hotels.com: six bucks per dollar spent. Other earning options include watching videos (which you can also do via Swag Bucks’ Android app), playing games, completing surveys, and even clipping (and using) grocerystore coupons. How much time you want to devote to all this is up to you. But if you spend, say, 5 to 10 minutes per day on various activities, your bucks will definitely start to add up. Once they do, head to the Rewards Store to exchange them for things like tech gear (Kindle Fire, anyone?), gift cards, and charitable donations. For example, 500 swag bucks gets you a $5 Starbucks gift card. For 2,500 you get $25 in PayPal cash. Not huge prizes by any means, but fun freebies that I find kind of fun to earn. I’ve used Swag Bucks enough to confirm that it’s the real deal, and definitely worth a try if you like free stuff. An Online Newspaper Article from: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33153_7-57579824-10391733/ swag-bucks-yeah-its-still-a-thing

consequently the payouts are larger on average.

is maintained by CrowdFlower, a crowdsourcing company.

Shopping: Includes Coupons, Daily Deals, and Shop and Earn. Coupons allows the user to clip coupons (hosted by coupons.com) and upon their usage earn Swag Bucks. Daily Deals lets the user purchase certain products and receive Swag Bucks in return. Finally, Shop and Earn lets the user browser online shops (ex. Walmart, Apple, Kmart, etc.) and receive a set amount of Swag Bucks per dollar spent.

Games: 2 Swag Bucks are periodically awarded for playing Flash games. Tournaments are hosted which award large amounts of Swag Bucks as prizes. At one point, tournaments were removed from the section due to rampant cheating; the feature has since been reinstated, along with the Games section receiving a makeover.

Tasks: This gives the user an opportunity to perform simple tasks, such as collecting data, for various companies in exchange for Swag Bucks. This option

Trade-in: The user can trade in video games and consoles or books for Swag Bucks. Swag Codes: Strings of text can be periodically found on the Swag Bucks

network, and can be entered into a box in the menu bar or on the ledger screen. These can appear anytime, and can expire anytime. Referral Program: A current user can invite another person to use Swagbucks. If the other person signs up under the current user, the current user will earn matching Swag Bucks for every search win the new user receives, up to a maximum of 1000. Only search wins will be matched, though in special cases, this can be expanded to other categories. Daily Goals: A meter on the home page shows an amount of Swag Bucks that is the user’s goal for that day. If the

124

I am A Thief http://youngandpennywise. tumblr.com/ page/3

"Just earned $0.02 for watching a 15 second video on Swagbucks."

goal is reached, bonus Swag Bucks will be awarded at the start of the next month. These bonuses accumulate, and meeting the goal for many days in a row will earn additional bonuses. Hourly Random Winner: Users that are logged in to the site can check the SwagBucks blog every hour. If their username and avatar is displayed in the “Hourly Winner” section, the user can click “Claim Your Swagbucks” and earn 1,000 Swag Bucks. Unclaimed winnings are not distributed to anyone. The hourly random winner is now seen in the blog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swagbucks

125

An user story from: http://www.reddit.com/r/ aww/comments/1sw9i6/ iama_thief_ama

TorontoRocks (2013): I steal a lot from big chain

floor to the next. They have no cameras in their

store like Target, Walmart, Loblaws etc. I take

elevators, which I find very odd. I have only paid

around 400 dollars worth a week quite easily.

for fast food in the past few years... I have not

One of the best things about those kinds of

once paid fro groceries.

stores is that most employees do not care to

I also travel for free on public transit, and have

know if you are stealing or not. Sure, there are

for 1.5 years. There is a glitch which allows me

a few whose actual job is to monitor people; but

to add free money to a PRESTO card. I make

the rest are just working hard for a small pay-

one legit payment, and then duplicate it as

check and would rather not have the bother.

many times as I want. So I have made a pay-

For many years I have been visiting Loblaws

ment of 10 dollars which is the minimum, and

and stealing things like meats from their butch-

then I duplicated it to 40,000 dollars. I also sell

ery (I always pick the most expensive cuts of

scammed PRESTO cards to my friends for pen-

the most expensive meats), fish, Nicorette

nies on the dollar.

quickmist, ready made foods from their kitchen,

I also steal supplies from the University that I

drinks, cakes and more. All I do is I go to their

teach at. Printer paper, printer ink, keyboards,

kitchen section first and order pre-made food

monitors, speakers, mouse, mouse pads... ba-

like scalloped potatoes, lasagna or whatTever

sically everything except the actual computers.

else I want. Next I pick up 2 packages of their

I also manipulated a 68 year old man on the

most expensive sushi packages from their sushi

virtual world “Second Life” to believe I was a

area. Next I grab a couple of drinks like Vitamin

24 year old woman. I sent him pictures of an

Water or POM juice. Then I go shopping! I grab

ex girlfriend of mine from when I was a teen.

Nicorette stuff for me to use but also to sell to

She is married now with children, and I took the

friends, I grab the best meats from both their deli

pictures off of facebook. She is actually over

and their butchary... I make sure to scope out

10 years older than 24, but she is really pretty

the most expensive stuff and I used to get looks

and has aged very well. He believed I was this

at first for ordering 100 dollars worth of meats at

woman, and I got him to buy me all kinds of

once; but they have come to recognize me and

things sent to a fake address. I knew the house,

know me and expect the large orders so now

and the schedules of the people who live there.

they no longer give those looks. I keep shop-

They own a business and they leave their

ping like this.

house at 7am and come home at 10pm. So I

When I am done, I then do the trick...I simply

would just go and stand in front of the house

walk up stairs to sit down in their eating area. I

and sign off on all kinds of gifts. I got a PS3

sit down, and I start to eat. As I am eating,

this way, plus many games .. which I then sold. He also sent me over 8000 USD in lindens over

I am subtly removing any tags that might set off

second life over a period of 4 months. In the

the alarms when I go. I remove the Nicorette

end, I asked him to come meet me at a local

from its package and pretend to be reading the

carnival we have in Toronto every year called

instructions while I eat the ready made food

the CNE and he travelled from New York to

from their kitchen. I put all the stuff in my brief-

Toronto. I was to meet him outside the casino

case, and then I walk out after my meal.

there, and I was there and he was there... but

I have different strategies depending on which

“she” wasn’t. I sat there drinking a vodka cooler

store I am stealing from. For example: When

and watching him wait for hours, while I also

I steal from Target, I just go into their elevator

took in the local music band playing. There is

and remove packaging when it travels from one

more, but this is a good start.

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dotview, Issue #3b Making Money Online May 25th, 2014 Concept, Editor-in-Chief, Layout, Graphics, Photo Editor etc.: Lisa Charlotte Rost lisacharlotterost.de lisacharlotterost@gmail.com Copyright on any articles or images is retained by the author(s). This magazine was designed as part of a Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Thesis at the Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany.

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