Bitcoin Forum

So I've been posting in "dacoinminister"'s thread about "Mastercoin". He asks people to send him coins directly in exchange for "1000 mastercoins" but there's currently no client and no source code. Once he gets "enough money to develop full time" he'll get around to making those he says.

Could this be any more obvious of a scam?

-He controls the creation of "mastercoins"
-You send him Bitcoins directly in exchange for a promise of future "mastercoins"
-He then develops the project at his own pleasure with no way to keep him honest
-Nothing stopping him from running with your Bitcoins or making as many mastercoins as he wants
-He deletes any posts criticizing his project

YOU CAN'T MAKE A VIABLE ALT COIN BASED UPON CLOSED SOURCE AND GIVING ONE GUY A BUNCH OF MONEY

Can you say nigerian prince scam?

He deleted the following post over 10 times rather than reply to it:



SCAM. STAY AWAY.

Mods please move his post to the "scams" section. Link to original (SCAM don't send him coins): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.0

I disapprove of spiral_mind and this thread.

Another sock puppet account of dacoinminister?

Any particular reason you disapprove of me? Let me guess. Because I exposed your bullshit before you had very many people send you coins at all.

Impressive how many "hero member" sock puppets you've accumulated. That's not very difficult though considering you've been planning this scam for a long time and "hero member" status is based only upon number of posts.

Care to share any thoughts as to why I'm wrong?

This seems like an investment risk more than a scam.
His "coin" is similar to ripple, whoever buys in will probably know the risk of a single-minted close-source altcoin. Let it be.

He's asking for money before anything has actually been created. Ripple gave out free ripples and let people voluntarily assign them value.

This is nothing like ripple. It's a scam. It's not a "risky investment" it's him asking for cash money right now in exchange for promises of future money. It's a nigerian prince scheme masquerading as an alt-coin.

me too


spiral_mind thanks for the warning, but i think your wrong.

first, every Mastercoin TX will recorded on the block chain so it wont be hard to see if he starts creating them out of thin air.
second, the protocol he plans on implementing will be open-source, i'll read the source code, and not this conspiracy theory



Mastercoin ( if implemented like he said he would ) will offer perfect information to all participants at all times.

It should put ripple to shame.

-There is currently no source code yet he's asking for money right now in exchange for promises alone
-It's not a conspiracy theory, this is what the creator has said about his project
-Putting messages on the blockchain is useless unless someone actually values those messages somehow. Since there's nothing keeping the creator honest besides fear that his fake money will be devalued these blockchain records are useless. He'll just run off with his real money (Bitcoins) and post some lame message about how "he can't afford to keep developing since he's too poor"




And now it's pretty obvious this is a sock puppet account as well.
You were one of the only people in the other thread to post positively about it.
Is it really so unlikely that someone would create a few hero member sockpuppets in order to scam people out of a lot of money? Nope it's not unlikely at all.

The idea is pretty neat. It's understandable to ask for early adopters to crowd fund the project. He has not released any code other than pseudocode, but that is still more than Opencoin has done.

Are you guys really all my sock puppets?? Dang, I wish I had known - I could have used you a lot of times in the past!

-There is currently no source code yet he's asking for money right now in exchange for promises alone
 yes this is somewhat worrying, I am excited about the project, but will refrain from investing until i can be sure he can actually do it ( but if he can't someone else will, this is a powerful idea)

-It's not a conspiracy theory, this is what the creator has said about his project
 there was no mention about the hole project being a scam in the other thread.

-Putting messages on the blockchain is useless unless someone actually values those messages somehow. Since there's nothing keeping the creator honest...
 I really don't need to trust him, the blockchain will record every tx, and i can reimplement this protocol, and make my own client.

- He'll just run off with his real money (Bitcoins) and post some lame message about how "he can't afford to keep developing since he's too poor"
Yes, investing early ( before the client is up and running ) is quite risky,

lol, I am not a sock puppet... I created Abstract Coin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=224873.0)!  :D


anyway, risky investment is risky, but calling it a flat out scam is not cool.

Interesting how many single line posts that don't add anything to the discussion the people who say positive things about Mastercoin have. If you use a VPN we'd never really be able to know for sure they were your sockpuppets, but from the post history on all of these accounts it definitely appears to be an astroturfing operation. I'm sure you figured that if enough hero members said it sounded worthwhile you'd get plenty of noobs with coins to send them right to you. Accounts are bought and sold all the time on this forum, and your member status is determined only by your number of posts making it easy to fake yourself.

I thought you were going offline for a while? You must have gotten tired of posting on your sock puppets, or couldn't stand seeing my reply in your other thread linger so long. I'm sure you'll delete it and make me re-post it.

Feel free to tell everyone what is going to keep you honest besides the hypothetical devaluation of your promise money.

oh come on i'm not a sock puppet!

or am i?  :o  mind blow!

I am a sock puppet.  U got me spiral!

Well it's impossible to prove. So that's why I keep asking dacoinminister or anyone else who thinks its such a great idea to debate the points that I've raised rather than attack me personally or just say something blandly positive about mastercoin being an investment. Even calling it an investment at all is using very loaded language considering what you're proposing (sending money blindly to an account in exchange for a promise of future money).

Let's bring some substance to this debate. What's going to keep this guy honest at all? By sending him your coins you don't even really own anything and he hasn't promised that he will even complete the project or set a goal. He linked a LinkedIn account but anyone could link anyone's LinkedIn account so that is meaningless. He's nothing more than a forum identity and those are bought and sold and faked easily.

Now all the accounts he's posted with are posting one line responses. Looks great man nice defense there. Tell me how you're not a nigerian prince scam and I'll stop posting.

Spiral, you made no points to debate that have not been addressed. Moderating to reduce noise is fine. Your thread will be entertained by concerned folks *if* there are valid discussion points. It's a little early to accuse this of being a scam. I would suggest changing your alert to something less dramatic unless of course you are a sock puppet yourself.

Do you even know what a sock puppet is? It means you've got multiple accounts posting as if they were different people. They're used to create a fake appearance of support or obscure a discussion.

You've dismissed the concern about money being sent to an address the creator controls before he has developed anything again. What do you think about that? Let me guess its a "risky investment".

No. It's not an investment. It's sending this guy money for promises and nothing even as good as kickstarter or the credit card companies to help you out.

I agree with you that caution is warranted with sending money. I don't even recommend buying Bitcoin with money you can't afford to lose. Do you have any reason to believe that his 'fake address' scheme of tracking transactions won't work?

Good job glossing over the fact that he is currently accepting money into an account without releasing any source code. You have no way to take possession of your "mastercoins" even if he says you have them.

This isn't like investing in an alt-coin. It's not risky because it's an online transaction. It's not about whether or not you can "afford to lose the money" (you keep saying that a lot). It's risky because you're sending money directly to a pseudonymous user for nothing but a promise of more money in the future. Aka Nigerian prince scam.

The fake address scheme is irrelevant until you explain what is stopping the owner of the "Exodus address" from simply keeping the Bitcoins and walking away.

So you are claiming that he is not the panelist at the San Jose convention sitting next to Jeff Garzik. Fair enough. Let's investigate this.

If he really is that guy it's still a scammy proposal. He gives no guarantees or goals for his project, releases no source, yet expects cash now. I just don't think someone would be stupid enough to post their real identity when running a scam like this. You never know though, he might think he's smarter than everyone else, criminals often do. In the other thread you posted "if he can convince people to send him the coins he deserves them". Total sociopathic thinking there.

that was me...

and i meant:
  we know the risks of sending money to random avatars on the internet. its our risk to take.

Yes I'm talking to you dacoinminister, Sock Puppeteer General, Sir!

You keep acting like this is the same as buying anything for Bitcoin when in fact this is very much different. You ask for money now and offer nothing but cheap words and a pseudonym in return.

its working isn't

people are sending me coins!

and it only took like 45 mins to write the white paper and create all the puppets

muahaha
muahahahahahahaha

After all the scams in Bitcoinland, I understand the paranoia. You'll need more evidence this is a scam rather than a risky investment in not another currency, but a new type of client. Look at ASICs, Trezor, and Bitcoin Magazine to name a few that had donated seed money. We'll see how the devs approach this. I suspect details will be addressed soon enough.

You can't just ask people to have faith in you. You have to provide them some reason to trust you. So far you've provided none and asked for cash upfront in exchange for NOTHING. SCAM

what you gana do? save the sockpuppets from scamming themselves  :D

Whom are you addressing? The person in question is not entertaining this thread. I am only here because I will not add to the noise in his thread. If your only complaint is that you have evidence it is a scam, then you should be appealing to the moderators or police authorities.

Dacoinminister you used the phrase "noise in the thread" to defend your deletion of my critical posts in the original thread. Your phrasing reveals more than you think. As far as evidence goes, when you propose that people should send you their money before you've made anything the burden of proof is upon you alone. Explain how this project ISN'T a scam please.

I'm not sure if this really is a scam -- seems too obvious to be one... but...

The best way to do this is for him to STFU until he has at least a semi-working client. Everyone has ideas. Having and executing ideas is what makes the difference. That doesn't preclude collaboration on the protocol, which is very important... but that's very different from an "OFFICIAL LAUNCH" thread.

For funding -- fair enough to ask for funding if this will be a group effort, but this isn't the way to do it. There are plenty of crowdfunding sites where dacoinmeister could be more open and accountable. If he wants to be sent money directly, then he could create contracts which we could sign and release using multisig transactions.

Still a hell of a risk though. The only difference between this being valuable and worthless is a single flaw in the code. And there isn't any code yet.

Spiral_mind, shut up please.  Just because something uses the kickstarter model instead of the bitcoin or opencoin model does not make it a scam.  There have been hundreds of projects in the development forum here that have asked for money before having source code available for inspection.  JR's identity is public, so it is highly unlikely he is scamming.

I think his project has major flaws and a bunch of his ideas will never work.  Why don't you contribute to the discussion instead of screaming scam about something that is clearly not a scam?

You generate "coins" by giving him money directly. That's his project idea. Anyone who doesn't think this is a scam isn't thinking it through. As you said, it will never work yet he's asking for money RIGHT NOW QUICK SEND IT.

Here's some of the posts he's deleted reposted for your viewing pleasure:

Here's an exchange that was just deleted in his other thread.


Quoted for truth

There's no way in hell I'm clicking your random fucking links. I give it 99% chance odds that's some malware he's trying to infect people with.


Here's a list of his (very likely) sockpuppets:

AdamstgBit
Ripper234
Notme
hmmstrange
cbeast

With both AdamstgBit and Ripper234 he's been asking pre-scripted questions and answering them himself from another account to give the appearance of legitimacy. One thing they never ask about is why the money has to go directly into his account. They focus on the economics instead because he knows that most people will get lost in something that complicated.

View their post history yourself if you don't believe me. The vast majority of their posts are one line and add nothing to the conversation. It's also possible these accounts were legit at one point and then were purchased. Dacoinminister has over 120k in Bitcoins in his account so buying a few would be a trivial task.

While I personally don't care about the sock puppet account accusations, it's quite clear that you're removing any criticism from your own thread. You've "launched" (put up an address for people to send you bitcoins) a severely flawed and rigged project.

Hopefully more people will see this and not send you any more bitcoins. EVEN if you're trying to make this at the best of your abilities the whole thing is useless because you control the "exodus" address and you used it to buy with your own bitcoins at zero risk. At the very least you should put up the same risk as anyone else when you're asking us to "trust" you based on a short written paper. And how about some transparency?

And calling your paper "the second bitcoin whitepaper"??? That's quite the hubris.

+1+1, but who cares?

I agree, but it starts to add up on everything else.

How about the people who you're asking to send you money blindly? They probably should care. This is a crap idea so you have to try and make it look like its the best thing since sliced bread to ignite people's greed.

You've been astroturfing to make it seem like it's a "risky investment" rather than just sending you cash for nothing.

As bvt said a lot of things add up to make your project total shit. (I've already listed them)

I don't think it's a bad investment because it is a scam, I think it is a bad investment because he has nothing to back it up. This concept would be great to be used as local currencies. They are better than alt coins, because they would have the Bitcoin Network to provide stability to transaction propagation.

He's probably just deleting your posts because he thinks your an annoying semi-retarded cock mate

your an annoying semi-retarded cock mate

why who r u?

dacoinminister can code, he's got some example scripts here:
http://userscripts.org/users/303682

We know next to nothing about him, though. I believe that he checks out as possibly being who he says he is, but I see nothing wrong with spiral alerting people to the high likelihood that coins could be taken and he could run with them. Everything else is just superfluous. People who are sending him coin at this point likely know the risks they are engaging in.

What he's doing is almost certainly illegal.
He is selling an investment instrument without complying with any of the regulations. See this article: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2045083/sec-charges-texas-man-with-running-bitcoin-ponzi-scheme.html

Even if you disagree with that assessment he's proposing at minimum to sell a virtual currency directly to consumers without doing any know your customer regulation compliance. See: http://www.paritynews.com/2013/05/26/libertyreservecom-shuttered-founder-arrested-in-spain/

He claims to be based within the US yet follows none of the applicable laws. Even if he doesn't run with the money and actually releases some source code he's going to get a nasty visit from the law eventually.

If he's really released his true identity, I think he's screwed. He still hasn't proved he is who he says he is. Maybe he could take a picture holding a sign saying "Mastercoin is totally not a scam guys"?

Definitely stay away from this one and don't give him any money. Since even if he succeeded at his project he'd be violating the law I think it's far more likely he'll run with the money instead.

I believe all applicable laws deal with transfers into and out of U.S. Dollars, which I am not doing.

Also, my LinkedIn profile links to the MasterCoin spec, and I spoke about it on video at the bitcoin conference, so I really doubt anybody is seriously questioning my identity.

You posted a video of someone at a conference. You also posted a LinkedIn profile. That doesn't prove that your forum identity is in any way linked to that real identity.

As far as the applicability of the laws, the first link I posted the guy collected only Bitcoin just as in your proposal.

The creator of Liberty Reserve got taken down by the US govt and you will too. Decentralization and open source are the only thing keeping Bitcoin from being shutdown. Since your project has neither it will be shut down if it ever ends up existing in the first place.

(PS: Again, you can't profit from maintaining an artificial peg so the economics of your system make it a failure before it's even begun. Taking people's Bitcoins and promising them Mastercoin is certainly just as illegal as what the guy from Texas did in the first link. So whether you deliver or not you're still violating multiple US laws.)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/06/us-court-sec-bitcoin-idUSBRE97517G20130806

The SEC will go after you for selling an unlicensed and unregistered investment instrument within the US regardless of the currency used. Here's a relevant quote:

For those of you who are on the fence, you can now get some MasterCoins for free on my giveaway thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=272577.0

If you get them that way, the only risk is to your reputation.