Bitcoin Forum

Does anyone get the feeling that the people who keep taking micro loans from the Lending section over and over and over are just farming trust? They are mostly the people who create the threads instead of posting something in the countless loan threads - makes me think that they're looking for new loaners to get positive feedback from. It's continually small loans like 0.1BTC, but positive reputation keeps piling up - sometimes even a DT1/2 person sends them a loan feedback.

I'm not trying to point out everyone who creates a thread in the loaning section - just the people who take loans out continuously every couple of weeks without real reasons - often things like "buying gifts" or "renewing a miner"... etc.

I'm not really aware of any person on DT who leaves trust feedback for loaning.... Who are you talking about exactly? Any examples?

I'm not going to name any names and that wasn't the main reason for creating the thread; untrusted feedbacks are included as well.

This issue was discussed before in one of the threads (can't find it at the moment) and it's not just 0.1BTC , their few which request weekly loans of around 0.025 - 0.035 BTC and do it pretty much in every single week and as you said the reasons are not valid but again there are always some who give loans to them and as result half of them, leave some feedback as well. Honestly it's really annoying and clearly an indication of users farming trust.

You're allowed to leave positive trust if you had a positive experience trading with someone though, isnt that right?

I couldn't agree more with you on this one , but I don't think there is much to do because giving trust is not only limited for doing trust , some people even give positive trust to other people when they see that they are helpful on the community and it's not against the rules .

It's nothing new to this community... That's just how things are at the moment, unfortuntaely.

I fully agree on your notion, Athertle. Moreover, trust farming is also being done when an escrow provider vouches for a very small trade. I think "trust farming" can be prevented by giving neutral feedback after every successful micro-loans/trades. No harm done either way.

Mitchełł did a great job adding a footnote on his escrow thread:

you can add the currency exchange section on top of that, I dont think many of these trades ranging in the below 5 dollar range are actual trades made from a need of the funds, considering the fees a lot of these trades go with. I haven't really gone back there in a while though.
then again, I never really understood why people want green numbers next to their name so much. imo an established reputation precedes green numbers by far.

Discussed that one over here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1197533.0). People who did this were either removed from DT or have agreed not to do so any further(no names, were PMed about this). If you know of any user(DT, others feedbacks don't matter) who still does it, PM them and they should be sensible enough to stop doing so

Unfortunately, most loaners will continue to add positive trust to anyone who gets a loan of a single bit from them.

I remember reminding Vod that he gave a unnecessary trust rating for a small amount of loan, and he later removed his trust rating. Well if it can happen with Vod, I'm sure others are sensible enough as well. DT members are quite sensible(most of the times  :P ).
Edit: If you meant non-DT members, well their feedback hardly matters

I was mainly talking about non-DT members, yes. Positive feedback is positive feedback - even untrusted feedback in a large amount can affect what people think about them.

In fact, I found Athertle's post makes sense. Lenders should be careful about that.
If someone continuously take loan and change the loaner every times in order to get positive trust, this should be considered as suspicious.
Maybe loan trust farmers asking for a positive trust after repaying a loan should be tagged in order to prevent trust farming accounts.

This I'd say is nothing new in the P2P lending landscape. Just look at btcjam and (where I see it more) loanbase. THey'll have people that continually take 0.1BTC loans until they eventually take a 2-3BTC (or even higher) loan and never repay it. At least loanbase is now working with a collection agency (though I don't think they have anything set-up in the US currently) to try and get some money back from these dead beats.

Another thing people will do is take small amounts of loan of increasing values. Like start off at 0.1 and go to 1 increasing by 0.1BTC each loan. They'll do the same thing once their "trust" or "reputation" goes up for the bigger loan they have no plans to repay.

*Disclaimer* there are people just looking to build legitimate "trust" or "reputation" so their is always the exception to the rule.

I agree OP scammy farming carp for sure.

My policy is i don't do deal with anyone until i get to know them.
I would never have a need to escrow anything.. i simply don't do deals with people i don't trust.
For example there was a regular guy i had used to sell my Bitcoin to on LocalBitcoins..
I had done maybe around 4 or 5 deals i think with some guy and i think the last one
i contacted him and asked him if would do me a deal for under his minimum request amount.
I think he wanted no less than a $100 deal.
But i wanted to do a deal for about $93
We offered..
I said to the guy i don't care how much of a fee he wants to charge me etc
And he was cool with it and we did the deal off the site and it went fine i sold him BTC via Interac eTransfer.
I wasn't worried about it at all either..
But i did have other guys try and rip me off on LocalBitcoins.. while selling my BTC.
Like one guy was telling me he did the transfer etc implying i should release the coins.. but i wouldn't bite !
I called him out and Negged his ass on LBC !

Same shit here, i have sent the coins first to guys not worried about it.

I wouldn't bother trying to do deals on this forum with unknown people.
If people do you are doing so at your own risk.. (escrow or not)

I think the currency exchange section is more of a worry than the lending section... A lot of people giving out trust on DT there.

Yes, it is, definitely. As mexxer-2 mentioned, though, that's already dicussed here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1197533.0).

Well, is there a better way to regulate this?  I mean for Chrissakes, scams aren't even against the rules here much less giving out trust for loans that go OK.  And if there's no names mentioned and no proof that these folks are taking out loans in order to build trust in order to scam, then what's the point of this conversation? 

I don't have any good ideas on how to regulate something like this so that's why I opened the thread - also to give a heads up to loaners that they should be more wary with their trust distribution.

Gotcha.

One of the things I find attractive about bitcoin is that I don't need a bank and the gov't doesn't issue it.  A lot of people think like that.  But one of the consequences of this, obviously, is that there's little recourse when something goes wrong and one's trading partner needs to be vetted with much more diligence than would be necessary with a credit card, for instance.  And at bitcointalk, I guess it's always been the tradition that members police for scammers and I'm cool with that for the most part.

But two things bother me:  Nothing is done by admins about scammers.  I think there should be rules in place for this.  And the second is the trust system, which is just broken.  There's a reason why Ebay makes you complete a verifiable transaction before leaving someone feedback.  People have way too easy a time on this forum building up positive trust, and on the flip side there are idiots who spam negative trust feedback when no transaction took place (take a look at my trust feedback). 

If those two things could be improved, I think there would be a solution to the question you posed in this thread.

I broke up a ring of these guys doing it with Paypal.
A ton of new accounts all doing $5 deal with BTC+Paypal.

If you see these guys doing it i say neg their ass hard !
Look for their ring-leader and nail that fucker hard LOL

But why?  Why is it your fight to fight?  Why be concerned?  Ebay allows sales of cryptocurrency!  Wesellcrypto.com has been doing it for quite a while now and I don't see how they get away with it if Paypal forbids it.  How can they forbid it anyway?  They allow gift transfers of funds which can be for any reason.

Because i am in charge.

And ebay does NOT allow sales of Crypto-Currencies.
At least not that long ago when it was jointly owned with Paypal anyway.
Try using Google before spouting nonsense next time son ;)

EDIT:
Way back i had even reported some guys doing it.
I also seen a TON of listings pulled by eBay.. so your an idiot full of shit Mr. Pharmacist.
Jeez you sure post a lot of stupid comments.. WOW !

I did see that, it may become a problem but the trust rating should reflect that behavior at long term, i do take small loans myself from here when there is no shark around.

If this is really their aim, I won't help them to do so, because I'll only give a positive trust to someone if we had at least 3 loans that had no problem at all.

Feedback on loans should be given as neutral, or possibly a specific loan dedicated feedback rating.

I only got negatives & neutrals on my loans lol
Looks like the user "paka" (if I remember correctly) is asking for multiple loans one after another. Suspicious, each loan amount is higher than the last. Might be trying to sell his account or scam.

I think lenders who give out loans should set up something in mind from starting up of lending service that

1)Lender will not leave a positive trust until it exceeds certain amt. [like I will not give a positive feedback if amount is >0.5BTC (example)]
2)Lender will not leave a positive trust until it exceeds certain interest (in percentage% or any amt) [like I will not give a positive feedback if interest amount is >15% or 0.025BTC (example)]
3)Also lender will give a positive feedback after some successive loan requests [like X giving a positive feedback after 5-6 successful lending transactions]

All of the points should be fulfilled to give out a positive feedback.

Also this thing must not be posted in the lender's thread.So far it is good as Mitchell posted

What do you think?


Pretty smart isn't he? Point to be noted: He didn't gave any hint to trust farmers about the range . He just posted it as micro-transactions.


I have come over the point that there should be a loan request limitation per week/month per user(whichever suitable)[like a user say X can only request for loan twice a week]


(Am sorry there may be some grammatical errors . Hope you guys got it what I am trying to say.)

I dont really care about it now but if i was limited to x times weekly id just find sharks somewhere else, they would lose many of the good users.
Edit: i completly forgot that the topic is about trust lol, eitherway maybe a whitelist would do the job, tough loans on crypto are mostly used to gamble which means that players will eventually default and end up in red trust

But collateral is also there to secure the lender not to loose the money even if the person who took loan scams him. Also 150% collateral thing secures most of the lenders here.

i dont think feedback should be left at all, you took out a loan because you needed it for whatever reason, and youre obligated to pay that back anyways. paying back what you should doesnt really merit trust, youre just fulfilling the tacit agreement made when you took out the loan.

theres nothing that directly points to that being true, even if some borrowers do come forward and say its a gambling loan.

I really doubt the forum would make a rule regarding something like that. For that to happen, all the lenders would have to come to a censuses. Some people will also request loans via PM.

Different people have varying degrees of what they think "trustworthy" is.


Basically, being greedy and making people pay extra to get some positive feedback (or you could think of it as bribing, but that's probably stretching it)


See my first response.

Why would the forum make such pity rules ? or why would they even involve in the high school drama.The trust doesn't requires trade and it has been discussed several times in the past.I can leave trust to anyone regardless of they repaying the loan or not.It's opinion based and people should stop sensationalizing others with their brand of logic.

This is how i see it aswell. I dont really see a problem with stating you had a positive transaction with someone if you did. I understand that this trust thing can get out of hand though, it just has not effected me much personally who has trust, who has given trust ect. that isn't going to make me just instantly trust a user.