Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys,

I am bringing this before you guys to please judge, your opinions or judgements will tell if I should remove the negative trust I gave Live Stars (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1069642) or keep it there, or change it to neutral..

Back in 2018, there used to be this altcoin project called Live Stars, they promised to build a live streaming platform for adults only contents, the owners promoted the project on this forum and outside this forum, ran an ICO and raised alot of money (I was one of their investors).

After raising millions of dollars, they managed to list the Live token on cryptopia(a crypto exchange that was hacked to death in January 2019), it was like the hack of cryptopia(the only exchange live token was trading on) gave the developers of the project(Live Stars) the opportunity to run away with all money they raised in the ICO, allowing the project to die a slow death..

All this is cool with me, nothing to worry about since they are not the first, and neither will they be the last as long as people continue to give altcoins attention..

But here is the main reason why I am writing this...

Recently, this account - Live Stars (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1069642) - which is the official account that managed Live Stars Ann Threads (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3256604.msg34446720#msg34446720) on this forum(in the global and local boards) woke up from a very long period of inactivity...
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/27/PP3Ow.png


And went straight to their Live Stars Ann Threads(global - both self moderated) and deleted everything, every single comment/posts was deleted from the threads this morning...

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/27/PPvn9.png

So when I noticed the activity of this user, I suspected that this user (Live Stars) probably wants to return to the forum, but wants to first of clean up/hide his bad history, since by now, he or she believes that every one of us here must have forgotten and moved on - well, I moved on but I never forgot.

So I suspect he or she doesn't want his past to come back haunting him or her, which is why he or she decided to delete every trace of this projects connection to his account, but how can't his past haunt him when they made away with investors hard earned money..

Who knows what next he or she is back to do, maybe launch a new project, or maybe he has squandered all the money and now wants to clean up his past so he can join a signature campaign.. Whatever it be, I decided to tag the account with a negative trust so that all be away..

Does he or she deserve the negative tag? Or do you think it's too harsh, that a natural tag would have been more appropriate? Please feel free to tell what you think, your opinion will determine if I leave the tag or delete it.

Did they scam? Simple question.  Did they legitimately scam you and other investors or are you only upset at losing money? Answer that truthfully and you have your answer. It's shady of them to come delete their posts, but everything is saved ya know so they aren't really covering their steps like they think. Deleting posts alone is no reason to tag them, you strictly need to consider the previous question I asked when deciding to tag or not to tag.

If you have to ask, you shouldn't hand out negative feedback.

I can't tell if they deserve a tag, but if you do, do it for the right reasons.
From your tag:
Waking up is not a reason to tag someone, deleting posts is not a reason to tag someone. Even better: most posts on the altcoin board are spam anyway, so they won't be missed.
Asking for a good reason to change the tag is like reversing the chain of evidence. It's bad.

If they indeed ran away with investors money, how come no one created scam accusation thread, or even write anything in their thread all those years ago? If you can prove that they indeed scammed people and its not just one of the many failed altcoins, then I think negative tag is deff warranted.

From what I can see, in their last post (that is now deleted) in ANN thread they mentioned "Parity multisignature wallet hack" beside cryptopia. You think that that hack was actually an exit scam?

https://ninjastic.space/topic/3256604

Well, the answer to the question is simple - they did not directly scam me and other investors, but this recent action gave me reasons to believe that they had this all planned out -

First - A self moderated thread
Second - Deleting everything in the self moderated thread over 5years after..
This makes me believe they knew right from time that a day would or will come when they will have to delete everything to hide every trace, which is why they made the thread self moderated from the very beginning.


Yeah, you are right, and I sincerely apologize, I really should have asked before handing out that neg trust, it actually did not occur to me to me ask, I honestly do not like tagging other users if I am not 100 percent sure they deserve it, and here, I wasn't so sure even after having handed out the tag, which is why I decided that what will really put my mind at peace is; asking the community if what I did was right or wrong.


Well, like I already said, they didnt like just ran away with investors money after ico, they hand around, listed the token on cryptopia, gave investors a reason to believe they were building, did sometime release a product which was absolutely unusable, long story short is that, I personally feel they purposely allowed the project to die slowly, so as to make investors believe it was or is one of those failed projects.

There is always a lot of cock and bull stories on every altcoin project that have decided to pull the rug on their investors, I will believe it was an exit scam as long as there is no proof.

If we do speak about that cryptopia hack then how you would really be able to say that they did totally run all of the money or their investors if those coins arent really getting some value if they cant be able to sell on cryptopia itself? Unless theres a huge dump or rugpull before that hacking incident happen then we can consider that they had truly scam or fraud their investors on selling out
their coin holdings but if we arent seeing that scenario then for sure they didnt really been able to make use of those coins since it cant be sold, which means that you are all both the team and investors
had been affected with it.

If you are really that in torn whether those feedback should remain red or not then it would be up to you and its your decision but since they had deleted out all of their post and trying out to cover something then assuming that he/she might be have plans on joining some campaign or launching some service , who knows? but i would say that leaving it neutral would be
at least putting up some information about its history and let other users do be wary about it.

Respect your point of view, but it seems to me like you didn't completely read the op before putting up this comment, or maybe you didn't completely understand..

I said they ran an ICO, ico means initial coin offering, several projects do this to raise money in other well established coins like bitcoin, Ethereum, usdt, bnb etc.. To build the project.

So by the above, you should understand that they already raised money by selling their tokens(live token) to investors who paid any of the establish coins for the token, now, if they already have BTC, Ethereum, USDT belonging to investors in their custody, then the cryptopia hack doesn't really affect them since they don't have to sell their token in the open market to raise money to fund the project.

Good advice, thank you very much, I wil put this into consideration, will probably go wit this but before then, let's go or move a bit further.

It is obvious that the step they took was the wrong one and to go by what happened in the past, their reappearance should warrant an apology from them as the case may be and a way to sort out things with their investor amicably so that  they could in other words clear their name off the  record and restore their reputation to normal but the step they took to deleting their post is not welcoming. I really have no idea of what happened then and how it happened but I would suggest you give them a little time as it happens that the account just woke up from a long time sleep. I think they should have something to present after the deleting.

The first thing I thought, like LoyceV, is that if you're not sure, then you probably shouldn't leave negative feedback.
On the other hand, if there are elements of fraud and if you can present valid evidence, then perhaps it is best to open a scam accusation topic against them and present everything related to them.
Washing personal history by deleting posts is certainly not a good sign and with valid evidence, it can cause additional negative tags from other members. What I read in this topic is not enough for feedback, at least not from my side.
Before doing any business with this member, I would definitely consider your tag, as well as peloso's (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3257194.0) (although he is on my distrust list)

I don't think anyone should be leaving a red-tag unless there is valid, concrete evidence of wrongdoing.

Many shitcoins started out with good intentions, especially back during the boom of the late teens, so involvement in a failed shitcoin isn't enough for a redtag, in my opinion, nor is deleting old posts.  If the shitcoin in question was a blatant fraud, then evidence of such should be presented.

The first thing I though when I saw this post is that, like many accounts that were created to promote since failed shitcoins, the account in question has probably been sold.  So, whoever is controlling the account now may not have had any involvement in that failed coin, anyway.

Tbh having a self-moderated thread is not suspicious at all to me and if I was starting a thread in altcoin board I would do the same to protect myself from spam. Its another thing if they deleted posts in which they were accused of scam. Regarding deleting everything, my guess is that whoever is in control of the account might want to use it for signature campaign or even sell and they woulnd't be the first one trying to erase connections with shitcoin projects.


You just described like 99.99% of the altcoin projects and if that's enough for a tag, then you might do the same to almost every altcoin project that has annoiuncement thread on bitcointalk.

If anything, I think neutral would be the more appropriate feedback here. At least for now until you have more evidence.

I looked at the tag you gave and tbh I think you were a bit too harsh with the tag. It’s not against the forum rules to delete old posts. A neutral tag would be more appropriate since there is no solid evidence to prove that the user pulled a scam years ago. Although this thread may just open that can of worms and users from back then may have a thing or two to say about the user and the project.

I believe these are all excellent suggestions. A neutral tag, along with a link to a thread in a scam accusation or reputation board that presents all the relevant information, should be enough to ensure their history isn't hidden from the forum community. This way, if they ever try something similar in the future, we'll have a reference point to rely on.

What if the account is sold and the new owner deletes all the posts?
Even if it's the old account owner, even if their project failed, what could be the reason for deleting the old posts? It looks shady to me. If you believe that they have scammed you, you can tag them. But, if you create a scam accusation and create a flag, you need some evidence. I don't know if you have any information regarding the scams since it's been five years.

I rule out a signature campaign maybe an Altcoin bounty campaign he has a long way to climb before he can join a signature campaign but then again this is a newbie account he can opt to just create a new account if it only bounty or signature campaign.

Neutral feedback is okay if he launches a new project which I doubt he will,  the two pieces of feedback on his account will be a reference on what action he will take on this account, or maybe there is a coming project where he is one of the owner from a new account, where there is a similarity between the two so he deletes his history to avoid connection.

Wow, interesting judgement you have here, in your opinion as a DT1  member, OP should just neutral tag a possibly actual scammer/ or accomplice  so the history is not hidden?

So he shouldn't red tag and make him come forward with evidence?

---

@OP,  how much did they raise during ICO?

Selling/buying accounts is frowned upon and can warrant a neutral tag. I don’t think it would be much of a problem if OP had given live stars a neutral based on suspicion of the account changing hands. It is very possible that may have happened and the new owner doesn’t want to associate himself with the project.

I see OP has given red tags to users who were proven to be scammers before, so I can say he’s on his way to become a part of the scambuster gang. I don’t know how his strategy in catching scammers but deleting old posts is not enough reason to give negative trust. The activity is enough to draw suspicion and eyes on the account but until evidence is found, I don’t think a negative tag should be given just yet. We still follow the innocent until proven guilty principle here.

If you can evident it that it has a scam history and proof it accordingly, then you might just be right about it, but now that you have already made justice with your judgement makes it more of a reopening of what has already been concluded, so if you think they have previous scam record, then leaving a neutral tag isn't bad or maybe if you can dig in deep on those days where they first made this kind of launch and present some cognitive reasons to proof them wrong.

This doesn’t sound like a situation where negative trust would be appropriate, but I’ll admit to not being familiar with the details. The deleting of posts is definitely a concern though. It sounds to me like they probably deleted the posts and sold their account or they want to get into a signature campaign. Maybe this would be a situation where using a flag to give details of the previous venture and linking to copies of the deleted posts might be appropriate? Again, I’ve never even used flags so who knows what their purpose is, but this seems like it might fit there.

From my own view tagging should come when they involved in scamming people although you can try to sense another things like account changing of hands, currently you haven't detected any of this rather than just the post they are deleting and even as that was there a previous records of scam or a scam accusations that was labeled against them before going offline for so much long period and if "No" then I don't see any reason for tagging the account. But if they had previous records of scam and they went offline for that long period then giving him or her tag is ideal only if you were among the victims from my own judgements.

OK, going by what every one here have said or suggested or both, I have decided to withdraw the negative tag, I have actually withdrawn it before posting this comment.
And like I believe that I have stated before, My main reason for giving that tag was majorly because the user deleted every post or comment on the Ann thread of their failed project, and even as I have withdrawn this tag, I still believe that such act is suspicious.

What I think I will do is to keep a close watch on that account, money they took from investors who invested in their project, and yet they delivered nothing, is enough for them to spend for the rest of their lives, if I eventually notice any suspicious activity with that account, I wont hesitate to put back my tag.

Thank you all for the great discussion and contributions, I think I should lock the thread now.