Bitcoin Forum

This is a hot-button topic on the meta board, so here's a poll to voice your opnion.

I think that if we are going to host this kind of activity, then we are handling it well.

Keep in mind that it would be much more work for mods to enforce a ban on lending-type posts here.

How am I gonna reach my recommended daily intake of humour if all of these are moved to bitscamtalk? No one would 'invest' in these any more.

We'd have to go back to exchanges being "hacked" and I think this trope is really played out for now.

Yes. Please.

Those subforums make bitcoin look like a bigger scamfest than it already is. Its bad for the community and it is bad for bitcoin.

There are plenty of legitimate businesses in those forums, Dank's Bank being a prime example.  Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater it would be better to find a way to separate out the scams from the legitimate enterprises.

They're all scams....like scientology.

While you are at it you better move all topics about BFL since they are selling thin air and have no actual product.....what is the difference ?

This thread is not about your views on religious matters, please take that kind of thing elsewhere.

I was simply drawing a comparison between two similar organizations...scammers on bitcointalk and scientology. Both "organizations" prey on the ignorant and rob them blind. Both leave willing victims that thank their attackers for the opportunity. Niether pay taxes....

Do you just not like analogies or something?

Evolve, please start a new thread and pool and make your opinions known there.

If I may, I suggest a name for the proposed poll/thread:
[POLL] should the "Scientologist" members of bitcointalk.org be moved to a new site?

Nah, I'm done...I was just trolling rarity, I could care less about scientology.

Trolls like you are ruining this site.  Please take your immature antics to another forum.

I don't think it should be done purely for the sake of preventing the possibility of this domain being seized.  

I understand the desire of the mods to avoid having to make judgements about the various high risk investment opportunities being made here, but I think that sometimes works against the interests of the community.  

People can continue to post here as VIP members and promote other schemes even when one of their ventures owes large amounts of money to its users.  While I'm not sure that the "scammer" tag is appropriate for those people, the absence of any kind of "flag" can be seen as tacit endorsement given that people have been given the scammer tag for a whole lot less.  The scammer tag is of little use if it's not applied to people who are still actively peddling their wares here despite major, unresolved financial problems from other ventures.  

Moving some of the forums promoting high risk ventures to another domain might be one option for dealing with the perception that this community both allows and supports the promotion of scams.  I don't totally buy the argument that various scams damage the perception of Bitcoin per se, but I do think that scams which are born in this community and promoted in this community damage the credibility of these forums, and that we'll start seeing more legitimate operators abandoning this community to avoid having their own services associated with what currently looks like a scam incubator.

You are including yourself in this right? Don't try to play the pariah now, your ignore button isn't orange on accident.

Please stop trying to troll this thread.

At this point, I agree with everything you just said.

Splitting bitcointalk up would be a mistake, and it will not solve the problem of scams. The scams found in the lending and securities sub-fora are just a small subset of the scams present on bitcointalk - there are also scams in mining, newbies, trading, and all of the other marketplace sub-fora. I don't know what the answer is to preventing bitcoin scams but it is not this.

Gavin wants to sever the entire marketplace.

To be honest, I'm not sure that's a bad idea.  The Bitcoin world has grown large enough that it could probably sustain a stand-alone market-place messageboard, I think it would be a healthy thing if people relied less on this forum as a primary means of promoting their businesses.

Scams have come to dominate the conversation here because they've taken place here.  Had they not been launched and promoted here, there'd still be discussion of them but not thread after thread of "where's my money" across multiple forums.  The number and scope of scams is only going to increase so we need to think about ways to ensure that they don't continue to be the dominant topic of discussion here.

Told you so: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=105818

I'd like bitcointalk.org to be in the spirit of the Internet's original ".org" -- For Non-Commercial Use Only.

But... it is hard to figure out what is Commercial Use and what isn't (e.g. some mining pools are non-profit, some for-profit, and I'm sure there are some in the fuzzy middle), which is why there really aren't any rules for .org any more.

The whole point of Bitcoin is to be a currency that you can do business with.

To sever the marketplace would be removing Bitcoin from what it's intended for. As far as I know, this forum is one of the few marketplaces where you can do direct business with Bitcoins through almost anything.

If Gavin wants Bitcoin to remain as a niche hobby in spirit, then we should just make this forum technical discussion only then.

I agree.

There's alternative way to achieve the desired seperation - instead of moving the business subforums leave them here and move tech support and development forums to bitcoin.org

+1

Thats a great suggestion.

+1

New suggestion: Leave everything the way it is except change the domain name to "bitcoindrama.org"

LOL, I like it.

I think that this board should at least be split in these parts.
1) bitcoin internals (development, general bitcoin stuff, focus on the network)
2) speculation (everything to do with bitcoin<->other currencies/financial instruments)
3) merchants (everything to do with bitcoin<->goods/services)

Furthermore, businesses should not be allowed to use the board for official communications or for organizing their business on.
It would get rid of the clutterfest that's been going on.

Ponzis must go. Vote with your hearts people. Bitcoin has a serious future, but only if we are willing to stand by the truth.

+1

You're the biggest non-productive troll I have ever seen in my life.

Please begin to do something in this community, if not you're going to start catching an ignore from alot of people..

I agree with you 1000% Gavin. This forum should be non-profit operated.

Which means you guys can set rules.

Which means obvious ponzis like the bitcoin savings and trust can be removed by the staff.

...said the unicorn pony.

There should be a scammer tag for unproductive people like Rarity. They contribute no value to the community, and instead waste all of our time by polluting our forum with garbage.

It is a shame that I have to suffer personal attacks on my character and baseless made up accusations of scamming simply because I had the gall to ask an admitted troll to leave me alone. 

I don't agree.
Rarity can bring good points to discussions.
Same can be said for you.

In general, i feel that tagging people for anything other than known scammings sould be avoided altogether.
Maybe a system so you can managed such tags for personal use, but not globaly.
One persons hero is anothers troll.

If the marketplace was split off to bitcoinmarket.org or whatever, then that forum would prosper and bitcointalk.org would wither away and die.

I voted "no" because I see the great potential for legitimate business. The scams so far were 90% PPT. Sorry but those who got burned deserved to get burned and hiding it doesn't prevent more people from getting burned. The open forum here can help get an idea of how to detect a scam and in the end of the day everybody has to decide for himself which risk he wants to take and which proof to ask for. If I want you to invest $10k in my business, I not only make my business as transparent as possible but invite you to a 3h skype meeting to present you all my assets and answer all your questions. I don't just hold a photoshopped passport to the camera and ask 100k for my mining operations from people that I don't care about. Still the latter seams to work in bitcoin land. Not my fault and not the fault of the host of this forum.

Keeping business out of bitcoin is a ridiculous idea and not doing so leaves you to the problem to detect before the fact what is a scam and what not regardless whether you are dealing with HYIP, BFL (http://www.butterflylabs.com/) or casascius coins (https://www.casascius.com/).

Doesn't matter now, the SEC (or the equivalent in other countries) will start shutting them down soon enough.  Their investigation of pirate is just the beginning...I wouldn't be surprised if the entire forum gets shut down for openly allowing the ponzis to operate and advertise here.