Bitcoin Forum

TradeFortress is participating in a scam on this forum.  I figured I would warn new users.

He is offering "1 BTC" through Ripple if you trust him for 100 BTC.   When you issue BTC in Ripple what you are issuing is IOUs.   So in essence TradeFortress is issuing you a receipt for 1 BTC.  He has failed to say how he will redeem these receipts he is issuing for BTC and when I asked him on his thread how he would redeem it, he erased my comment.

More damning is that he is using this to scam people.  "Trust" in Ripple is a somewhat complicated thing that should not be given out freely to people.   The people you "Trust" in a given currency can issue that currency and through certain mechanisms exchange it for other issuer's IOUs.

I see nothing that says that TradeFortress plans to redeem the IOUs he has issued and to make matters worse he sent the following private IM to me when I asked him about it:


So he is essentially saying he won't be redeeming the IOUs he's issued but will profit by exchanging his own for one's issued by providers that do redeem their IOU's.

This is a flat out scam.

He can pretend that he's finding a "flaw" in Ripple, but the entire Ripple payment system is based on Trust and by tricking new members into thinking that he is giving them a Bitcoin by having them trust him for 100 BTC in the Ripple interface he is not exposing a flaw in the system, but rather exposing himself as a scumbag scammer.

Beware!

Ripple is a flat out scam, Lookout!

Whatever your opinion of Ripple, does that mean it's OK for TradeFortress to scam people because they are ignorant about how Ripple works vs Bitcoin.  I would think not, unless you're really sleazy.

Ban these pathetic scammers

I hope your talking about the douchebag that is stealing real BTC from the unsuspecting by having them play with something he understands but they don't.   

That's pretty scummy behavior to allow on the newbie board.

Yep I saw this from a mile away.

Hey bitacc ; )

 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=207535.0

2 is better than 1 ; )

Yeah, well a lot of newbies aren't seeing it from a mile a way and they are getting ripped off by someone that is a Hero Member on Bitcointalk.org.   It's really disgusting.  

I hope the moderators look into this.  There is absolutely no excuse that TradeFortress can give that makes this justifiable.   "I am stealing Bitcoin from other people by tricking them into using something they don't understand, in order to teach them a lesson about Ripple"  is not something to be proud of.

This scammer should be banned for good.

He is not scamming, he only is exposing an error in the ripple system, he is showing us how a gateway/person can scam anyone using the trust system.

Thats why he said this is an "experiment".

using Ripple is very easy to get scammed :(

lol wanna send me free btc for an experiment.....

could he not have explained this rather than getting ppl to pay btc.....im surprised at you all...really I am....

Wrong.

There is no error in the Ripple system.  The system is based on IOUs- trust and receipts and promises to pay.  When you issue a BTC-ripple you are issuing a PROMISE TO PAY THE REAL THING.   He knows this and is tricking people, but that's not all he's doing.   He's tricking them and then stealing BTC-ripple IOUs from vendors that will fulfill their PROMISE to redeem the IOU's with REAL BITCOINS (unlike this douchebag).

This is a scam and calling it an experiment makes you a douchebag too.

Stealing money from other people is stealing no matter how the fraud is played out.

He's stealing bitcoins, for real.

And if he's not him, he can't control his own credit network and with this stupid thing he's letting OTHERS to steal money.

This is not an 'error' -- this is the very basic function of the ripple system.  It is capable of transforming social capital/trust (ie that an IOU of 1BTC from a Hero member of this forum might actually be worth something) into financial capital/usable currency.

Also is he scamming or not?  Either he's scamming people on ripple showing how easy it's done, or he's not and he's actually providing 30 odd people a chance to trade with eachother in quantities up to 1BTC whether or not they actually have 1BTC to their name(in which case he's not showing how easy it is to scam 'anyone' at all)

The posters starting these threads about Tradefortress should be banned. They are likely all Ripple sockpuppets. Scammer tags are for scammers; those who steal, don't pay back loans, break contracts, or the like. Not people exploiting holes in centralized systems like Ripple.

Until OpenCoin came around, did you think that Ripple was a scam?

No it isn't.  Don't create a line of trust to anyone you do not trust. It's really that simple.

I am not a sockpuppet.  I have been a member of these forums for quite some time(though I have not yet figured out how to convince you all that I am not a 'noob' and am hence not able to post in most threads) and I am a fairly public person (albeit a Ripple supporter) on much of the web.  I have been on TV promoting Bitcoin and I do not appreciate the suggestion that Ripple is a scam.

I didn't suggest Ripple is a scam... Ripple is what it is; a centralized, closed source service. Personally I'm reserving judgement on its usefulness.

I said that Tradefortress seems to have exploited a hole in it, and that he is far from a scammer.


PS. You should be out of the newbie section once you have been logged in for more than four hours. If you've already done this and you are still restricted, I'd send a PM to a moderator.

I agree - you didn't, but you did call us sockpuppets.  And I want to make the point that it is reasonable for people who are being called scammers carte blanche to be able to justify their position, and that it isn't just OpenCoin sockpuppets coming out of the woodwork or something that's happening here.

There is no "Hole" that he is exploiting -- he exploiting *people* (if he's exploiting people at all).  Now granted, they will only be exploited to the extent that they trust him, but that is only going to happen because he's a Hero member, and that's the issue.

I will try staying logged in for 4 consecutive hours and do that if that doesn't work, thanks.

Shouldn't have to be consecutive, there is a "Total time logged in" counter towards the top of the page, next to your avatar and directly under the "Watchlist" link. Once that hits four hours, and you have five or more posts, your restrictions should be lifted automatically.

Agree to disagree about Ripple/Tradefortress.

Cheers.

It is not rational to Agree to Disagree.  But let's make sure we're on the same page -- I don't think TF is a scammer per se, but posting in a thread and then removing all discussion that doesn't go along his point of view is very sketchy.

Why isn't it rational? I know what I think about the situation, and I don't feel like arguing with those who are thinking about it differently.

Tradefortress is one of the more trustworthy people I know on this forum, and it is clear that his thread was done to exploit perceived failures in Ripple, not to scam anyone, and certainly not for personal gain.

I don't know about the posts he edited/deleted, certainly that could be sketchy, depending on the content of the posts.

I do understand -- arguing on the internet is a pain, and it's probable that you're arguing against a cad who doesn't know any better than you half the time who thinks he does.  It's exhausting and it's not always fruitful -- but nevertheless, rational people cannot agree to disagree.  Either one of us is irrational, we're talking past eachother(I suspect this is happening) or one of us is wrong and we need to both consider that possibility(really all 3).


Know what's funny?  I actually had encountered him earlier on the ripple network and had allocated him some trust there -- so he was likely trusted in the Ripple community by others too.  He (or any of these 30 people) could have made use of that ~0.002BTC because he seemed, at the time, pretty legit.  Now I am definitely wondering, and he can contact me if he wants to maintain that credit.

In the meanwhile I think I can post in other areas, thanks.

please check out how TF scammed me and vote on him being a scammer: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=151880.0;all

Sorry but no scam :(