Bitcoin Forum

There's a thread in the alt coin section in which members are organizing an extortion ring.  They will demand payment from alt coin creators, and if they don't pay they will launch DDOS attacks and attempt to fork the coin.

Regardless of your feelings about alt coins, this is extortion and it is illegal.

I've reported this thread, and others said they have as well, but it remains open.

Is Bitcointalk OK with the forum being used to organize a criminal enterprise?

Sure.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=522235.0

You don't need an anonymous pool or any payment. LukeJr loves to kill altcoins. He'll do it for free. He's done it before.

No need to slander me.
I killed one scamcoin before, simply by mining it.
Was pretty funny until the scammers got up in arms.

But I have no problem with legit altcoins.
It doesn't sound like these guys do either (but I only read the first post).
I don't see any extortion either, sounds like they're just a volunteer community service team.

AND/OR pay the extortion fee:



Obviously you are not going to call it an extortion fee, so you call it a "listing fee" or whatever.  It's still extortion.  People have to pay up or suffer the consequences.

This has nothing to do with cleaning up alt coins.  The guy who started the thread is a producer of "scam coins" himself.  Other members are pool operates, and part of the plan is to launch DDOS attacks on their competitors.  They are "cleaning things up" in exactly the same way the mafia "cleans up" neighborhoods.

For those who did not see the extortion in the thread.

From Miriam Webster Dictionary:

Extortion:  "Unlawful exaction of money or property through intimidation or undue exercise of authority. "

I've been here a long time sweetheart. Do you really want me to list the fucked up shit you've done? The lead dev (everyone's beloved Gavin) himself has called you poisonous.

I don't want YOU as a judge and jury of what's right or wrong and I certainly don't want you to take unilateral action to destroy anything. Thanks

Gavin also once changed his signature to try to get Deepbit to "vote" on the blockchain for BIP 16, risking a network fork. Developers shouldn't beseech miners as it sidesteps the community itself and can potentially set folks at odds with each other financially. There are no innocents here.

Tycho made his position clear (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3889.msg750364#msg750364) as to why this was a bad idea. If he switched before others did, it would reflect poorly on his pool's consensus ability, putting him at odds with other miners and devs.

I'm not defending Luke, but the BIP16/BIP17 stuff should never have hit the community or become something for miners to "vote" on, IMHO.

Killing premined altcoins sounds like a great idea, IMHO.

Do you also agree with extorting money from them?  Under the plan outlined, premined coins are OK as long as they pay the 20 BTC protection fee.  If they do not pay, "they are instantly targeted and destroyed via BCX's methods."

I know, I remember the whole BIP16/17 fiasco. I don't agree that turning to the community for a decision is wrong. It's not like I think killing premined altcoins is bad. I just don't want LukeJr, without telling his miners or getting their support, to turn his mining power away from what it is supposed to be doing to whatever he wants to do with it. He can put prayers in the blockchain all day long for all I care. I just want him to get consent from his miners before he does shit like that and stop wielding his mining power like a sword. He doesn't have the right to do it. I would think it would be a red flag for him that his supporter is Realsolid Coinhunter BitcoinEXpress.

I shutdown CoiledCoin by myself. Eligius miners were not involved.

How exactly is this a criminal enterprise? The community needs this. In fact, I think BitcoinTalk administrators should be pressured to moderate the alt-coin announcement forums more severely

I don't believe you. I notice you selectively didn't respond to Eligius miners spamming the blockchain with Christian prayers.

That's your problem, not mine.

Get serious, it doesn't fit into our profit model. None of us are holding any altcoins, we don't profit when altcoins succeed and this is a Bitcoin forum. I don't even understand why altcoins want to be here anyway. There are some perfectly reasonable altcoin forums out there and they are setting themselves up to be attacked by Bitcoin lunatics.

No, it's not my problem it Bitcoins problem. You have proven yourself to be an untrustworthy negative force in Bitcoin development. You also selectively ignored the spam question again.

I thought I spelled this out VERY clearly, but lets try again.

Extortion is a crime.

Extortion is intimidating people into paying you money, and if they don't bad things will happen to them.

These thugs are requiring alt coin providers to pay them a fee (20 BTC), and if they don't pay, they destroy they coin and launch a DDOS attack against pools mining it.

Two of the organizers are themselves creators of shit coins.  The just want to reduce the competition so the price of their coins go up.

Other organizers are pool operators who are excited about getting idiotic sheep to launch DDOS attacks against their competitors.

But it has NOTHING to do with cleaning up alt coins.  If a coin dev pays, they won't touch that coin, no matter how shitty it is.

That is extortion.  No question about it. 

what is your opinion on more innovative coins (eg nxt, pts or mcs; hopefully more in the future).
i like your reasoning ;)

Sounds like free market action to me. I dont't understand your problem.

So if someone came up to you and said, give me $2,000 or I'll burn your house down while you're sleeping, that would be fine with you?  Just the free market at work, right?

In any case, it doesn't matter what you or the members of this criminal gang think. It's not a surprise that thugs think it's perfectly OK to strongarm people into giving you money.  But the law is clear.  This is extortion.  

If an alt-coin, or even bitcoin, needs me to hold it's hand and protect it then it is not going to work anyway.

And the way they are deciding is by who pays the extortion.

So while you may not be receiving the extortion payments directly, your conspirators are.  And if your fellow thugs don't receive their payments, they just point you in the right direction and you do their bidding, no questions asked, right?  And you don't even get a cut of the money they're bringing in.  Basically, you're their little bitch.

Haven't you figured out yet that this is the Wild West and Bitcoin is the gold rush? Yes, extortion is ok, prostitution for Bitcoins is ok, ponzi's for Bitcoin is ok, drugs for Bitcoin is ok. Basically anything that you wouldn't normally do in civilized society is ok in Bitcoinland. The faster you come to terms with that the better you'll fit in here.

I didn't realize that you had to check your morality at the door when you obtained your first bitcoin.

So are you telling me that no one around here believes that there is any difference between right and wrong?

QuestionAuthority, do you support child porn, as long as they pay for it with Bitcoin?  Slavery?  Murder?  From what you've said so far, I'm guessing it's a big yes to all 3.

Anyway, I think I got my answer.

Bitcointalk is just fine with this forum being used to organize a criminal enterprise.

You know, Silk Road thought they were above the law, too.

They got caught, and they were trying to hide.  Bitcointalk isn't trying to hide at all.

I didn't say I supported any of it. I bitched myself blue telling people Pirate was a thieving piece of shit. I was one of the first ones doing it. I tried to tell everyone to stop playing satochidice or they'll end up broke. I warned several friends to stop using SR or they'll end up in the middle of a mess when the cops finally close in on them. It doesn't matter what you believe. What I said was, the faster you come to terms with that the better you'll fit in here.

OK, gotcha.  That does make sense, unfortunately.

Since bitcoin may be made illegal in some places, your also participating in a criminal enterprise.
 

Ross Ulbricht isn't in prison because he used Bitcoin.

He's in prison because he was running a criminal enterprise.  And he got caught because of posts he made on this very forum.

And at the time, I'm sure there were idiots running around saying, "They can't arrest him for running Silk Road because bitcoin might be illegal, so using Bitcoin's just as bad as running Silk Road and blah blah blah."  Yet Ross is in prison.  

And let me say this again -- he's in prison because of posts he made on Bitcointalk.

I've come to accept that people around here have no morals.  But do you not have a single drop of commons sense, either?

wohooooooo the number of pages on the thread is 48  :o Jesus Christ.................

I personally feel there is no coin in the market who can be a threat to bitcoin at least no coin till yet. All the clone coins won't survive for long that's for sure so i don't think there is any good reason to run a riot against the cloned coins instead let them face their misery or success whatever comes on their part.

Extortion is evident in IP laws. Prostitution in lobbying. Ponzi's exist in various forms in most financial assets nowadays.

And drugs not in civilized society? Seriously? Who do you think you're convincing, anyway?

Give it a rest already.

It was the zeroc00l noob that came up with the "extorsion" post, and others noobs picked it to throw mud at everyone, even those that can't stand the outright IPO/premine scams but aren't part of the initiative or on the sidelines.

How convenient that post was for the scammers and shitcoin shills, must I say...  ::)

I was wondering when that thread would get into Meta
Anyways killing the coins with no innovation to the protocol is a community response to all the tom dick and jerry coins that get premined and then sent out into the wilderness
Seems like natural selection to me the best coins survive and the coins that can't adapt or change fall back into obscurity

From the community response you can tell its a far larger rage issue than it appears at first glance.