Bitcoin Forum

Here's an idea I had while mowing the lawn this afternoon.

There are many times when I see a new Bitcoin business and I have no idea whether it's legit. So I have to ask around to find out, hope some people respond, and then check to see if the responders are long-standing members of the community or sockpuppets, and so on.

There should be an organization similar in concept to the Better Business Bureau (yes, I know the BBB is a flawed organization but we don't have to adopt the flawed aspects) and the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. This organization should issue approvals to certain Bitcoin businesses which have good reputation for honesty and upholding contracts. Maybe have a secure image they can feature on their website touting their status, or just a listing with a letter rating. Decisions would be made by consensus of a committee of upstanding members of the community.

Having such a trusted organization would be very helpful to people who can't spend lots of time on these forums every day, keeping up with Bitcoin news.

Does such an organization already exist? If not, who would be interested in getting this moving?

It should be forbidden to accept any funding from the businesses being rated. That would be the primary difference from the regular BBB that I alluded to.

Yeah that's gonna be pretty hard to enforce, particularly since you are talking about people that you will probably never actually meet in person.

Also you can search for UABB to find some previous discussions about problems with trust. Not to say it wouldn't work, but it'd be difficult to do.

There would be problems enforcing it due to everyone's familiarity with this great anonymous currency, but we can try to work around that. Perhaps by keeping the decision-making process open, it will become apparent if someone is giving undue support to a crooked business. After all, if they are giving undue recommendations because they are on the take, they're going to have to speak out defending shady business practices at some point, which everyone will see.

Wikipedia works somehow even though there are very big questions about how it can work. Why don't businesses bribe Wikipedia editors to promote their products, or make the edits themselves? The answer is that their biased entries are usually overwhelmed by the unbiased majority.

HATE the BBB

Like your idea. 

I think crowd sourcing credibility is best.  But what is the mechanism?  Votes.  A stack exchange system?

Also any rating system is not full proof.

How many people would have given Bitcoinica the thumbs down the day before the first Hack?

Who saw mybitcoin coming?

Was TradeHill solvent before the Dwolla reversals.

Is Mt. Gox insolvent now and are they practicing fractional reserve?

Lots of questions.  No way to really prove any factual answers.

TRUST is key.

Maybe a web of trust.

Do we trust Gavin Andreesen.  Who does he trust.  Mount Gox.  Bit Instant.  And who do they trust.

Intersango???   Who still trusts PhanotmCircuit and gentix?

Zhoutong?  He still has stanch supporters.  Although they all may be the same person.  An that person is probably into My Little Pony Porn.

I think for the time being the easier goal would be to ferret out the weasels and the scammers.  And let those trusted entities who build reputation  rise to the top.  But then do they become Goldman Sachs,   Long Point Capital, MF Global?  Are any of them run by Bernie Madoff.

Bitcoin is transformation.  We'll figure it out as we go along.

Someone from the Mt Gox support staff posted that they were planning on "verifying" Bitcoin related businesses and issuing their own Seal of Approval. I and others pointed out the inherent susceptibility to corruption just as it has been pointed out here and, as far as I remember, no one came up with an acceptable means of checks and balances.

just make it a user review website, like ciao, dooyoo, etc. That way ratings are difficult to fake, (nearly) no trust needed because 100 different people rate a single business and its hard to corrupt AND you dont have to do anything besides keep the site running and kick trolls out.

Not familiar with either of these.  Care to explain.

Thanks.

BBB is EVIL. If one is BBB acredited then that company is ALWAYS RIGHT.

Fuck that.

Lets come up with something with standards that we NEED not copy off of something else!

Yes, there will be some involved people with conflicts of interest. But I propose modeling it after the way Wikipedia makes decisions - it shouldn't matter how many people say yes or no, it matters who posts a convincing story about something good or bad a company did. It's usually apparent which side has the better evidence and better case.

At the risk of sounding like I'm ignoring constructive criticisms - by all means please continue to bring them up - I think a group of us just get this started and work the problems out as we go rather than trying to preplan too much. Any volunteers?

You could go with the model of Angie's List where the consumer pays to find out the rating of different companies.

A woman!?

Why shoehorn another "legacy app" into the world of bitcoin?

If this is serious then what it needs is something entirely new, like volunteers from all over the planet who go to inspect these businesses and make sure they have real paperwork, and real assets, and then they get ratings for doing multiple inspections so they are potentially more trustworthy.

Of course this will all fail as soon as one scam goes down and you start blaming the poor inspector instead of the real theives, so noone will bother participating.

I have had nothing but good experiences with the BBB. I had some problems with AT&T and when I contacted the BBB, AT&T worked with me to make it right. Same with Verizon.

Some companies take their BBB rating seriously.