Bitcoin Forum

Recently I have seen a few accounts being sold that have some trust on them. Personally I think it is bad to sell any accounts, but trusted is obviously worse. I think dropping a negative is probably alright as I do not trust people who buy them. Right now I have been leaving neutral warnings to inform others, but that does not lower their trusted status. Let me know what you think or at least flame me for the fun of it.

I think it is a problem that a acount with default trust (green numbers) is being sold.
Trust should be reset when an acount is being sold, since all previous trust cannot be trusted, I know the system cannot do it.

Therefor should the account be nuked with negative untill it is back to zero.

Short version: no it is not abuse, go ahead and swing that negative whip!

A high ranking account in general is going to have value. Although some members of the community may disagree that these are "good" things to be trading, the below reasons are why a Hero member would be valuable (for example):

• Higher Signature Payments
• Prestige of being a "Hero"
• They are rare and hard to come by (this is less so as of recently)
• Less posting restrictions - no 360 second jail
• Can be used to promote your business
• Can be used with/for giveaways
• Can otherwise allow it's owner to earn money/btc
• Can be used to scam - it is actually very rare this actually happens, but this is an unfortunate reality

Additionally, an account with positive trust has value for the following reasons:

• All of the above
• Greater chance of being able to promote your business
• Can entice others to send first to you, which will result in a lesser chance of you getting scammed
• Can earn money/btc by offering services requiring trust (e.g. managing a signature campaign)
• Prestige/respect of having positive trust
• Can be used to scam, it is rare that this happens, however it is a reality that others should be made aware of

As you can see, there are a lot of reasons why people buy accounts, both trusted and neutral-trusted. The vast majority of these reasons are not scam related (giving a negative rating means that a person is either a scammer, or you strongly believe they are a scammer). On a percentage of instances of sold accounts basis, I believe that a very low minority of sold accounts are used to attempt to scam, and of those, a very small percentage of accounts are ever successful at scamming.

As stated above, there are a number of reasons that give accounts value.

The reasons that someone will sell an account are below:

• They are in need of money, and are willing to dispose of their valuable asset
• They want to make money (this would be common in the case of people trading accounts

As you can see above, the primary reasons people will sell accounts is around the fact that they need money.

If it becomes a common practice to give a negative rating on known sold accounts, then the value of such accounts will decline because buyers will need to factor in the risk that their newly purchased account will receive a negative rating (and along with it, lose all/most of it's value) for no real reason. This will cause two things to happen:

1) When accounts are sold, the new buyers will have a greater incentive to try to scam because they know there is a chance it will receive negative trust eventually anyway, so they have less ways to make their initial investment back.

2) Owners of accounts (the original owners) will have greater incentives to try to scam because the EV of a scam attempt verses trying to sell their account would be greater because of the low prices their account would now be worth, when compared to the potential payout of scamming.

If someone around here is desperate for money, lets say they are behind on their car payment and is in need of $250 to avoid it getting repossessed in the near future, their first choice might be to sell their account, but might not do so if the price is not high enough, then they might try a few other "honest" avenues, and eventually turn to trying to take out a loan they have no interest in ever repaying, or selling something that does not exist (or selling the same item twice, or selling something and never sending it to the buyer), or buying/selling bitcoin but not following through on their side of the trade, or some other form of scamming.

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To answer your question, I think engaging in the practice of giving negative trust to sold accounts is going to do more harm then good. I personally will not even leave a neutral rating when I know an account is sold, I will however keep an eye on it, and if it starts to do anything scammy/sketchy then I will drop it a negative.

I think a much more effective way to stop scams is to not give positive trust for micro trades, and to get other respected members of doing the same (and when others do not stop giving out trust for small trades/loans, to have them be removed from DefaultTrust (or lobby for their removal).

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=363749

Was recently sold and has decent feedback. I really think with it being sold it should not be green.

I  voted yes some sellers dont give a damn as long as they make money, abuse YES

I wonder who sold /bought this account https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=374778 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=374778)

Scammer https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1136500.0;all (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1136500.0;all)

And who bought/sold this account  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=266213

This fkr scammed bipolarbob https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1133424.msg11956641#msg11956641
Also this fucker gave me negative trust... so to be the same as him I too abused the negative ratings system why not everyone eles seems to do this the nobs get at a kick out of it.

I once asked a high ranking mod to see what they could do about my neg ratings, dare I say I was ignored.

Do I trade here?

Am I a cnut here?

Who have I offended here?

I must admit though I did  make a new account,  as this red minus is not applicable to me.

The person who purchased the account paid some level of premium for it having positive trust, and if the new owner tries to scam with it then he would be risking that he would lose out on his premium.

I don't really think he should have received positive trust for those micro trades though. Even if the trust remains (and if the account was not sold), he should not be trusted because all the trades he has engaged in were very small.

I think the real question is where does this policing stop? A lot of people object to sold accounts, as do I, but its really not something that can be effectively enforced, and frankly negging sold accounts just incentivizes them to sell more because they will need to buy a new one with a clean rep anyway, so more money in the farmer's pockets. The problem with this type of policing is eventually everyone will start doing it for everything they just don't like, and negative ratings will become meaningless and become ignored, as well as hundreds of people inserting themselves uninvited in perfectly legal person to person trade.

Isn't that why Bitcoin was created, so we wouldn't have financial nannies constantly telling us what we can and can not do with our money? The negatives outweigh the positives, and if you think you are preventing anything from happening you are totally naive. A fool and his money will soon be parted, always. Always has been, always will be. Focus on the ones that actually did something instead of playing Tom Cruise in Minority Report busting future crimes. It is just not a healthy mentality for the community in general.

So what do you suggest? Do nothing and let the scammers be free to do whatever they please? I won't argue with you that wrong negative feedback from DT members can harm when wrongfully given, I know that but you keep forgetting or ignoring the fact that some of those who are new to bitcoin never come back to bitcoin after being scammed. Nothing will stop the long term cons but negative trust will slow them down while making users a little more aware IMO.

Since the account was sold, perhaps approach those that left the feedback and ask to remove it since it is no longer valid. At the very lease a Neutral should be left. In some cases Negative. Gray area really and maybe it's time for the community to take a stance one way or the other.

Sold account should absolutely not have positive trust from trades of the previous owner. Seems obvious to me. They simply do not deserve that positive trust as they were not involved in the actual trade.

IMO the only legit reasons to buy an account do not need "fake positive trust". However, I can see how negative can harm it (for example signature campaigns don't need positive trust, but neg. trust not allowed.)

So the best thing to do, would be to PM the persons who left the feedback and ask them to remove it or make it neutral. You should give some proof of the sale with that though. Also neutral feedback seems good - I agree negative might harm it. Unless the person is trying to do trades already without disclaimer that he is the new owner, then I would definitely give negative trust.

edit: Temporary adding negative trust until the positive ones are removed? Not sure about that one.

Could you imagine if I sold my account off? Would you be willing to message who knows how many people to drop my trust down? I just think selling the accounts is an issue when they have feedback. Who would pay extra for an account with trust and why?

the damage would most likely have been done by the time others reached out to have trust removed.

buying trust is frowned upon here, through loans or micro transactions. so why is buying accounts with trust not?  ??? same thing, no?

Pretty much except the buying/selling of accounts is allowed. Why I said it was a gray area.

I wouldn't mind if admins wipe all the feedback of sold accounts. But I think the problem is it will only make the "business" of selling accounts less public - which would be even worse. Also in some cases it might be difficult to really prove accounts are sold, even for admins (people can be inactive and can move to a different country, etc.)



Either way I agree with the reasons mentioned by Quickseller, I just disagree that some of them are "non-scam" reasons. I mean:


To me all of these are sketchy and at least on the edge of warning others (eg negative trust.) If you have a business and you buy a full member account from some Indian guy (like scam CloudThink (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1074272.msg11491080#msg11491080) did) to more easily promote your business, you are sketchy (even more so if that account already has positive trust.) If you want people to send money first even though you do not have a real established trust, you are sketchy. If you want to escrow/manage things without deserved trust, you are sketchy. If you want "Prestige/respect" based on trust of a previous owner,  IMO you are sketchy.

Now "sketchy" might not be a scam, but a counter negative trust if they already have positive trusts to warn others, maybe seems okay...?

However, the most common legit reason would be "Higher Signature Payments" and they cannot join with negative trust. So that's why I would say: neutral, ask positives to remove, and make it negative if they try to trade without "I am new owner" disclaimer - just to extra warn others the green numbers are not based on his real established trust.

I think that the process of selling accounts is a doubt process. Doubt because on one hand everyone has the right to sell something which is not abusive and don't harm anyone: on the contrary help the buyer to achieve something. The reason of bought. But on the other hand the utility of an account is very dubious. I can't imagine for what can serve this account except to be used for some signature campaign or maybe to be a sign of status symbol: I am old in this forum and I am someone here.

Without judging this I think that if am account must be sold must be in collaboration with the administration of the forum. It will be sold white without signs of the previous author except the value from which would be sold: the number of posts and the activity.

The CloudThink example is an exception to the rule. However I also think that the CloudThink situation only proves my point that people will not want to purchase a trusted account to scam.

First of all, it is beyond obvious that CloudThink is a scam, and regardless of if it was a newbie trying to pull off that scam, or a level 1 Default Truster, the account running the scam would have loads of negative trust. I also don't think the CloudThink scam has actually been able to steal from anyone, or if they have from a very small number of people (this is based on the fact that there are not large numbers of people complaining about having their money stolen from them).

Secondly, the fact that the person behind CloudThink purchased all of those accounts, and that those accounts are now virtually worthless because of the negative trust they now have means that CloudThink's investment in those accounts has gone down the drain. They have permanently lost the money they paid for those accounts, really prior to even having the opportunity to even try to scam their first victim.

I can also say that when a newbie opens a thread in the currency exchange section trying to buy/sell a large amount of bitcoin that almost no one takes them seriously because everyone thinks they are trying to scam, granted a lot of the time they probably are, however other times, they likely simply give up and either trade their bitcoin elsewhere or abandon the trade entirely (making it look like it was a scam when it really wasn't). If someone who was actually trying to conduct an actual trade were to purchase a trusted account then maybe others would take them more seriously. You can apply that same logic to other types of businesses.

Any time that you send first to your trading partner, and anytime you use escrow, you are risking that either your trading partner or the escrow agent is going to scam you (hopefully you do enough due diligence so the risk of escrow scamming is low, however this does still happen - see maidak (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1086873.0)). If you are acting honestly and people are willing to send first to you, then you losses due to getting scammed will be zero.

I would also say that acting honestly is almost always going to be more profitable over the long run then scamming will be. When I was only a Junior Member, for some strange reason, someone was willing to send first to me when I was selling a Hero account to them (escrow was offered but they did not want to use it) for over 2.5 BTC (at the time, USD/BTC prices were well over $500). I ended up delivering as agreed, and did not scam that person. If I had scammed them, then I would have been "up" 2.5+ BTC as of then, however I would likely have not been able to trade again in the future. Acting honestly, I delivered and have since made over 10 times the amount I would have been able to scam in terms of profit from trading in BTC (the amount in USD is much less due to the BTC price being lower, however that is besides the point).

I think leave a negative trust because an account was sold is an abuse, because it is not against the forum rules (but it is discouraged). A neutral trust would be more appropriate.

if someone on DT doesnt trust sold accounts as a matter of principle, I think it is perfectly fine for him to leave negative trust, as long as the trust rating explains the reason.

people not agreeing with that behaviour could always exclude the DT member from their own trusted list, right?

DT people have to take more into consideration when they leave a feedback is why I asked. Since when we leave a rating it would most likely make the account red for most users. It is looking like the best route is just a neutral, but it still bothers me trusted accounts are sold. I guess dropping the people who left feedback a message is the best thing.

Scammers aren't already free to do what they please? Sure fooled me. Please, be real, the trust police don't stop anything, at the very best they delay the inevitable. That effort spent patrolling the forums looking for targets could be better spent teaching honest users how NOT to get ripped off, or actually helping people in some way. You think people will just leave after they have been scammed? I disagree, most people understand that scammers are everywhere and won't blame Bitcoin or the entire forum for what an individual has done. Furthermore I have seen many people who were duped stick around to try again, knowing their own lackadaisical attitude was the cause of their loss, not the forum.

Conversely though, if people who are perceived to have authority here (trust patrol) permanently ruin their reputation over mere suspicion, there IS a very high likelihood they will leave and never come back, unfortunately the scammers ALWAYS come back, usually within seconds to start up what they were doing right again. The ONLY effective defense is teaching people how to protect themselves, the rest is just self serving bullshit that is destructive to the community rather than being helpful no matter how many times you repeat that you are doing good.

Even if you really believe that, without teaching the user how to protect themselves, they will just walk right into the very next scam! Playing whack-a-mole is not the solution, and a lot of innocent moles are getting whacked over the rising nanny state on this forum known as "scambusters". All this serves to do is make new users have the erroneous impression someone is filtering out scammers for them, making them that much more vulnerable. A fool is a fool, and saving him from a single scam does nothing if he is still a fool, he will just walk right into the next one.

Is account farming common here? How much can somebody make by doing it? Surely it's far too much effort to create dozens of accounts with new email address, passwords & usernames. You'd have to remember the log in details & post constructively on dozens of accounts to upgrade their membership limits.
I guess they normally get sold at full member level?

it's not worth it, and because of this now there is the new trend to sell less ranked account but with green trust, so they are more valuable and faster to sell

a member account with good trust can have the same value of a senior, this tells you how much time they can save, by not farming senior....

a part from this, i'm for a neutral rate, unless it is discovered that the owner was a scammer or that the new owner is a scammer

Whenever an account's password is changed, everyone who left positive feedback on it should be automatically notified that they should investigate whether the account was just sold and if so, to delete their feedback that applied only to the previous owner.

Oh boy, I can't imagine how much work this would be, to farm 10 full member accounts, this is insane. And at the end, you would earn what, not even 1 bitcoin. I would rather do a real job and then just buy this 1 bitcoin.

As for the selling of accoints with positive reputation, this is unacceptable. There should be some mechanism that returns all these accounts to the neutral. I don't know how this would be possible to do though.

I think you're onto a good idea, but it would get a little annoying for users who do a ton of trades (Blazedout419 for example) because they'd be getting a lot of notifications whenever a user they sent positive trust to changes their password.

I think a better idea would be notifying everyone who left positive trust for a user, if that user changes their password more than once every 12 or 24 hours. Because it seems often when an account is sold the password is changed at least twice in less than 6 hours: once when the seller sends the account details and then twice when the new buyer secures the account for themselves. Something like that might be a better idea because it wouldn't be as annoying as getting a notification every password change, but would still provide useful information to users who have sent positive feedback.

I too like the idea but I don't think we've come up with quite the right formula yet. Maybe rather than an automated system, several members could vote to activate a warning system as described. That way its getting human checked that something looks iffy or the behaviour has changed.

If this was implemented then people would change passwords less often, or in increasing intervals when accounts are traded, or they will take the risk of not changing the password.

All this will lead to is more confidence that accounts have not been sold which will cause people to do less due diligence when trusting them with some amount of money.

Ideally should accounts not be traded at all, the whole idea is absurd.

The only way to handle this is to set an example.  

Next line of accounts with positive trust that is being sold, should be bomb with negative trust .... thus making the acount worthless. It would not take long before it would be public known that trading with account that has postive trust is a risky business. This would be very effecient. Who want to pay a lot of money for an account with trust as red as the devil? nobody, would be better to make your own account or at least buy one with no postive trust.

What I am saying that trading a account with positive trust should not be acceptable by the commnunity and be punihsed very hard.

I like this idea with some work could be good.  Instead of like scammer tag, have a bought tag if so many  say it was bought.  Only count members above X level so someone cannot register accounts just to hurt someone.   And needs to be reversible by mods if used to just pick on someone.

I do think putting trust for X amount of day's is fine.  I don't do it myself as I like to avoid arguments and I don't feel it's my place currently.   But if you have the time to do this it would prevent sold accounts from doing most sig campaigns (neg feedback), and would prevent some scams.   So I can see why it has positives.

That would not work since if sold account would lose their green trust, or maybe even red trust, then these accounts simply would be sold in private. You would not even have a public auction anymore to prevent any risk of having it exposed.

By the way.. removing red trust would not make sense since scammers then could sell the accounts for much more.

ORLY? How do you figure that?


Ohhhh, you *believe* there's only a small minority and, even then, you're going to claim that *only* a small percentage of that tiny minority successfully manage to scam anyone.

SMH. Where to even begin with that fallacious reasoning?

You spent so many words explaining why people would sell an account that it might confuse people into mistakenly thinking that your reasonable assertions explaining the seller's side of the process, also holds as reasonable for the buyer's side. It doesn't.

1. The very act of buying an account with good standing and a high member ranking is to defraud the natural process of social selection all users have to go through in establishing their posting history and community standing.

2. Anybody who promotes anything through a high-standing account they have purchased is being dishonest and deceptive, unless they are willing to clearly state in their signature or avatar text that it is a bought account, which would make the purpose of purchasing an account pointless, right?

3. You state that a buyer would have a greater incentive to try to scam if they know they will receive negative trust for it being a bought account, that is laughable. You are essentially saying, "Don't piss these dodgy bastards off, otherwise they'll *really* work harder to defraud people.

4. You then state that owners of accounts who are desperate for money would try and scam if they couldn't offload their account to someone else, which is basically the same thing as saying, "Desperate people should be allowed to sell their ID so that scammers will defraud forum users instead of them having to".

5. As for claiming it would do more harm than good to nuke sold accounts, I disagree, the trade in this dodgy practice would soon become pointless, thereby drastically curbing the number of fake high-ranking account users if was clear that sold accounts were being torched once discovered to not be the original owner.



Give me three valid reasons why somebody would want to buy a high-ranking account which wouldn't count as deception?

I'll save you the effort, don't bother, you can't.

Maybe he refers to him being an escrow and probably having escrowed a lot of accounts already. You then can justify a bit how often accounts end up for being used for scams.

I escrowed a lot accounts already too and i can say that i did not see an account related in a scam. Except a scam accusation that came because of the previous owner. Since i escrowed it could be cleared. Or a hacked account that was sold. But buyers practically every time are trying to make the account worth more to resell them or/and use it only or additionally in signature campaigns. But an account i escrowed i did not find in a scam after.

So you sell them mid range accounts which they build up to sell off as high ranking member accounts. What legitimate reason do people have for buying those high ranking accounts?

Voted yes because of the bolded part.

You're on default trust because (hopefully) you've got a good grip on who can and cannot be trusted.

PS. Flaming you seems pointless since you're all blazed out...  :D

I was the account making wakka622 green, I have just changed that to a neutral rating and it now shows as "0: -0 / +0"

As far as i can say it as escrow that escrowed a lot account deals, if the accounts are bought by endusers then practically everytime it is bought by someone who wants to join a signature campaign with it.

Think about it, what you can earn with that is a monthly salary that exceeds the average income of many developing countries.

Then add some more accounts to raise your profit and get rich.

The remaining buyers buy in order to resell the account after they levelled them up.

I refer you to my previous answer:

2. Anybody who promotes anything through a high-standing account they have purchased is being dishonest and deceptive, unless they are willing to clearly state in their signature or avatar text that it is a bought account


So we are still yet to discover the magical reasoning that involves a person buying a high-ranking account for non-dishonest purposes, ergo, negative trust still stands as the correct response to a purchased high-ranking account.

Signature campaigns pay more for higher ranking forum accounts. Because the signature allows more signs the signature campaign runners can create bigger and more flashy signatures.

As far as i saw there are a lot of users form poorer countries who create an additional income. Or maybe a fulltime income with that.

I would do the same when i know an account is sold where i voted green. Though of course sellers won't chose me as the escrow then. :D

And yes. Green Trust accounts have a high risk. Unfortunately the new owner can't simply ask everyone to remove the rating because he most probably will get a neutral rating saying that the account was sold. It might hinder in signature campaigns. I'm not sure about that though.

I know. So which part of buying a high-ranking account in order to take part in signature campaigns whereby people believe a 'senior' forum member is supporting the campaign, thereby lending it a degree of undeserved credibility, is not dishonest?

If the intention is to mislead for personal gain, then the act of buying a high-ranking forum account is absolutely evidence of somebody being demonstrably untrustworthy.

Even just having multiple non declared accounts is an issue. I've still not heard a good reason for not making it known that you have more than 1 account.

Id say nuke em for all they're worth. Who cares if they get negative trust? That only balances the factor of the trust and the rank. Isn't selling accounts against the btct rules?

Trust system is not moderated but I wouldn't trust anyone who use negative trust to a person he didn't have any interaction before.


No. Account sales are discouraged but not against the rules.

I remember having an argument discussion with a good friend 6 or so months ago about the buying and selling of accounts on here. He seeing no issues with it, and me dead against it. He is a succussful businessman and likened it to goodwill of a business when that business is sold. Although that goodwill was built by the previous owner it still survives in the business under the new owner and is valued with a considerable premium and so on... I likened it to a personal credit rating - it is a rating for that person alone, it cannot be traded and should not be traded and so on.

Anyways, this topic is about whether leaving neg trust to a bought account is trust abuse etc. As no one should dictate to anyone else what or who they should find trustwothy or otherwise, leaving neg trust in such a situation  is imo definitely not trust abuse. Members of this forum should freely leave feedback they see fit. Other members can deal with it by adjusting their trust lists accordingly. That's how it is meant to work.

And you can actually (normally) find the real person (ID) behind the ownership. Any bad dealings can be arbitrated any number of ways, not so much with internet anonymity.
Your analogy is much closer to reality.

You cannot always arbitrate bad dealings when a purely internet company is sold privately (or when a domain is sold). For example, it has been reported that satoshi-dice has been sold a number of times, and AFAIK the current owner is not publicly known (and likely would be unable to be determined), however many people seem to be trusting them with at least 3,000BTC of bankroll investments without issue.

Well maybe a better question would be, would you remove and/or exclude someone who made a habit of giving negative trust to someone whose account was purchased?

Although it may not be "abuse", if you were to ignore the ratings of someone who leaves negative trust to someone who leaves negative trust for someone whose account was purchased, then someone who wishes to have his trust ratings be taken seriously and wishes to be reputable regarding his trust ratings should not leave such negative trust.

I think if someone wants to find a bit of dishonesty then he can, right?

It doesn't really matter to the campaign how credible a user is. What matters is what he writes. And that depends on the person.

That and the kind of signature that is possible has the highest impact on the campaign. Since higher ranking accounts can wear bigger, more flashy signatures.

I think there are reasons. For example your privacy when you sell or buy something where others maybe should not know it. For example being with one of these sexsites. Some users might have a problem with that

Next thing might be shame for being scammed in a stupid way by someone.

And something i often see is selling accounts with a newbie account because otherwise everyone would know which account gets sold because it was a collateral for a loan.

It's not against the rules. And if you would go against account sale like that then we already know what would happen. Accounts would be sold in silence. Nobody would know about it.

I prefer accounts being traded through escrows. This provides a semi publicity. Staff and escrow can know which accounts were traded and might be able to draw connections.

I think that is way better than trying to forbid it unsuccessfully.