Bitcoin Forum

Dear Bitcointalk Administrators,

As you know, the 'Investor-based Games' (IBG) section of this forum is where all the ponzi/pyramid/HYIP scam threads are sent to live or, ideally, die. A community-based action was introduced by a few of us earlier this year whereby both the operators and participants/supporters of these scam threads received negative trust ratings. This has successfully served to all but eliminate the use of purchased sock-puppet senior forum accounts to sucker in newbies to the scam as the negative rating generally destroys the credibility and monetary value of these accounts.

With the small-time con-artists mostly seeing the opportunity to profit from their fraudulent operations rapidly diminishing with the inability to create a fake public image of any substance, what we are now seeing is the emergence of the pre-Bitcoin HYIP scam industry proponents moving in to create larger, more organised threads, often with dozens of new-account sock-puppets being employed to pad the thread daily and give the impression of a viable 'High-Yield Investment Program', or Ponzi scam to you and I.

What we are seeing now is the use of HYIP-scam style promotional terms and methods, such as the following:

Experienced HYIP scammers moving into Bitcoin to run their ponzi is not good for either this industry or this forum.

In order to make it nigh-on impossible for these threads to be created and then padded with new account postings, either by the operators or participants, I propose the introduction of member-level controls for posting in IBG, namely, limiting the right to post or create a thread in IBG to only forum members of 'full' member status.

Where a scammer may seek to create such a thread in another part of the forum in an attempt to circumvent such controls the thread, once moved to IBG by staff, could be rapidly choked off by the use of our PSA's and warning posts, with the OP and shill accounts which may have already commenced in the thread unable to respond further.

I am aware that the new forum software is being beta-tested but we all know it will be many months before it is ready to migrate to. Which is why I ask for this posting policy to be introduced asap in IBG before BCT becomes seen as easy pickings by these organised and motivated HYIP scumbags.

Is Just-Dice losing too much business to HYIP players?

It is spelled 'losing', dumb-ass and I have no idea how that site is doing having never used it or any other dice site.

You're just pissy because the community action crippled your forum account selling market. Acting up because you can't make some ill-gotten gains from scammers hardly helps present you as a reasonable human being, QS.

Just thought I'd educate any drive-by readers who may be unfamiliar with your m.o.

Update to show example of the extent to which the scammy 'HYIP' industry is heading this way:

Limit IBG posting to 'full member' accounts asap so we can halt what will otherwise rapidly become a flood of these organised groups encroaching on to this forum.

Those are all paid to prove scammy sites. Fake monitors which request for daily payments from the ponzi admin to show that the so called program is paying so that more sheeps can fall for it. Limiting would be good, but at the same time, most of these scammers are buying accounts and posting with it but it will definitely limit the fake newbie accounts shilling for the sites

They'll soon abandon any practice of buying full accounts to create their scammy OP if their promotional thread is unable to survive without its army of newbie shills.

I'd also recommend the removal of the 'moderated thread' option for IBG, too. There's no justification for it seeing as it isn't a section of the forum concerned with 'fudders', as the only opponents these threads get are the people working to prevent them from proliferating and drawing in new victims.

Careful devil... QS has now acquired (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1478656.msg14930180#msg14930180) a DT2 account (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=92133) so there's a new sheriff in town (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1478656.msg14925865#msg14925865) ;D

Hey, Theymos, I see you're around at the mo.

Any chance of some input on this proposal?

Forcing users to pay the little amount a Full Member would cost isn't going to deter many. In fact, it'll likely have the opposite effect. People will probably be more inclined to trust a FM than a newb.

They could already do that now, i.e. buy FM and appear more trustworthy, but many are using disposable noob accounts with 0 cost - so it would seem that the extra "trust" of an FM account isn't worth it for them. If CD's proposal can deter at least those shitposters I'm fine with that.

I've noticed every example you posted had "HYIP" in the name. Is it really scammy if its being advertised as scammy? If a scammer makes a posting saying "Hey, I'm going to scam you, send me money" and you do it, is it actually a scam, or did you just make a donation?

For some reason I interpret the defintion of a scam as requiring a deceptive practice. If all of the terms are laid out for you, its not really a scam. The nature of all gambling is unfair to the player. What makes dice sites or card sites "provably fair" is that the odds are mathmatically proven. Theres no rule that says the odds have to be given, go to a Casino and ask the manage what your chances of winning on a slot machine are. They will probably laugh or kick you out.

Anyone who is foolish enough to invest in a HYIP that is publically announcing that it is one is either A) Aware of the risks or  B) Soon to be parted from their money 

I agree on all your points but not on A). Because i am sure a lot people have no idea how a ponzi is really working or are just folled because they see a few payout and then they think hey it seem legit why i should not -double- my money.

Buy in 1 word: they should simply not be allowed anymore or just close this section for good because it's 99% ponzi in investor based section

Before Bitcoin, if you wanted to buy stocks, shares in a mutual fund, bank issued CDs/Bonds or whatever. Would you blindly throw money at something? People have to have a certain level of expected capability. Anyone who doesn't do any research before investing money even in the traditional financial markets is going to get burned. If someone can't spend 5 minutes google searching "Bitcoin HYIP" and finding the thousands of threads on Bitcointalk about how scammy they are, historical trends, etc, thats on them.

Bitcoin is about financial freedom, its like cash that you can send over the internet. In return for freedoms you lose the protection of the government and banks holding your hand. If people aren't responsible enough to do enough due diligence to avoid things like HYIPs, again thats on them.

I agree and I think what you're trying to imply is like caveat emptor?. This will also make user become clever because he will practice this things more often whenever he encounter this type of website.

But this is the problem, even if someone will google about it and read about the scams, but then see that a few payouts when well, their brain will shutdown and the $ sign in the eyes will appear. A lot of them are folled by the fact that a few payouts whent well

If I had the ability to double my money every day, then I could invest $1 and become a billionaire in exactly a month.

Anyone who is not able to see the ridiculousness behind that math is going to end up without their money regardless of if they put their money in a HYIP or not.

As Salty mentioned, some people will lose when playing at probably fair casinos and some casinos will decline to tell you the odds of winning.

Thats on them isn't it? If I start trying to sell my Enron stocks on Bitcointalk right now, and people spend 5 minutes looking into it and go, wow this is a really good deal! They didn't do their due diligence. Being blinded by potential profits is not an excuse for allowing yourself to be scammed. People that invest Bitcoins into anything are taking a risk. Its up to them to determine how great the risk is, and whether potential payouts are worth the risk. Otherwise, don't invest. Or do and lose your money, not really my business.

Except for the fact that the community action of negatively rating IBG ponzi scammers and shills as well as the groundswell of opinion that same is due for traded accounts, means that the accounts are immediately rendered worthless both in terms of the level of trust people will give their posts as well as any future value of that account.

Given that any asshole can purchase a ponzi script for literally a handful of dollars and register a newbie account here to promote it in IBG, the additional burden of needing to do so with a full member account would drastically reduce the number of new IBG threads.

You know it is scammy, I know it is scammy. Everyone in this thread knows it is scammy. Unfortunately, however, not everybody who participates in these operations, whether they be 'cloud mining' or 'HYIP'-based frauds, understands what a ponzi is or how it works. Not everybody has the same level of education, not everybody has the same level of awareness or, for that matter, sufficient knowledge of the English language to understand fully. Besides which, the examples I gave in the OP are prompted by the fact that the 'HYIP' industry has moved into bitcoin in a big way and bitcointalk is fast becoming a popular breeding ground for their promotion.

Most of the threads in IBG are actually masquerading as 'doublers' or even supposedly legitimate investment platforms. Do we just ignore the likely bad press the prevalence of such schemes in this industry will generate or perhaps it is actually worth trying to do something about it?

Since commencing this community action in February I have had numerous contact from people who genuinely did not understand what a ponzi scheme is. Are we to simply shrug our shoulders and say, "fuck 'em" when there are reasonable steps which can be taken to help reduce the prevalence of these threads?

So your argument is that there shouldn't be any action taken against criminal fraud because. . .freedom? This forum and this community are not bitcoin, but they sure as shit will be labelled as being part of the whole negative picture by the mainstream media if all we've got in our locker are anarchic slogans when it comes to personal responsibility and morality.

Where's the down-side to the proposal of requiring full member accounts to make new threads in IBG? Why wouldn't you think it was worth doing simply as a means to help tackle the problem?

A lot of new forum members seem to be coming from countries with extremely low income-levels and they are easy-pickings for these scumbags. All it would take is a little change in rules to help them not be seduced by the promise of high returns from threads they can barely understand beyond which address to send their bitcoin.

I don't see why anybody would be against this proposal if it does not cause a negative repercussion elsewhere.

Re slots - many jurisdictions have regulations on minimum payout and/or disclosures, so it's not quite the same.

What CD is attempting is essentially making the "advertised as scammy" part more obvious, which I think is a good thing for anyone making the decision to lose or not lose their money.

The community opinion and actions they take is the recourse required. The trick to getting people to stop doing it is to make it not profitable for them to do so. If everyone is on board they will stop.


My point being, why do people participate in something they don't know about? It is their responsibility to learn how a ponzi works, or do research on "cloud mining" before putting their money in. By the same logic, Nigerian scammers offering 500000x returns should have even more success taking advantage of people who don't know that its a scam because the payouts are higher. If you don't understand what it is being offered to you, don't accept. The same thing applies to doublers. If you decide to part with your money on a promise from a screen name with no sound logic behind it, that's on you. Hopefully it works for you, but I doubt it will. Press is what it is, Bitcoin already has a reputation for being internet drug/weapon money. Those who the press will negatively effect are those who don't understand that all money is sometimes used for shady things. Can't really change their opinions either way. If the people that contacted you didn't know what a ponzi was, yet they proceeded to give away their money without first learning what a ponzi was, then yes, I'll simply shrug my shoulders. Reasonable steps is a relative term. Bitcointalk could end all scamming done here by shutting down the forum completely, most people wouldn't agree that is reasonable relatively. How about closing all financial sections to end scamming? Probably still not reasonable, however far more reasonable than closing the forum completely, etc etc. At Bitcointalk we typically tend to take the stance that the most reasonable way to deal with it, is to give the user's 100% control over what they participate in or don't. The fact that these HYIPs and Ponzis are still being made means that people are putting money into them. That is their choice. Just because some people decide to put money in without doing their due diligence first doesn't mean that restrictions should be added that would hurt those who are willingly participating.



Again, you say criminal fraud, but fraud implies deception. If I say I'm selling a 50 inch television and someone buys it thinking its larger because they didn't know the Metric:US Standard conversion factor is it fraud? Misunderstanding does not equate to fraud. If someone wants to play an unfair game, that is their decision. If they don't understand it, they shouldn't play. If I explain that we are going to roll a die, if it lands on 1 I'll give you 1.5x your money, but if it lands on 2-6 I take your money, but I explain it in a language you don't know or understand well, are you going to hand me your money and begin the game?  If you cast a wide enough basis, I could very reasonably explain that all gambling is fraud. As I mentioned earlier, Bitcointalk could put in enough rules and changes to completely get rid of any possibility of fraud. But every time a rule is imposed, it cuts down a little bit of each member's ability to make their own choices/actions. There is always a negative repercussion when placing rules, its just a matter of whether or not what you are losing is worth what you gain. If people use common sense, we don't need to add any more rules, so we choose to assume people have common sense. If they don't thats on them.

The majority of threads in IBG are about deception. Most claim to be offering legitimate routes of investment, implicitly and explicitly. I mentioned the ingress of the 'HYIP' industry in the OP primarily because it is a relatively recent phenomenon in IBG and they are extremely well organised as a scamming community. having been online and active long before cryptocurrency existed. So the problem is only going to get worse as it becomes more established here.


I understand the point you are making and even if you don't care about helping those less astute than yourself perhaps you care about bitcointalk being seen as the equivalent of Mos Eisley (You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy) and, by association, bitcoin itself. The more that regular people are victims of deception and fraud which is perpetrated on sub-forums here then the greater the groundswell of opinion supporting the mainstream media spin that this technology is simply a way for criminals to facilitate their operations outside of the traditional banking system.

Even beyond personal opinions about looking out for each other, or otherwise, surely you can accept that for this forum to help prove there is more to bitcoin than the negativity regularly spouted by the media, it would do well to at least be seen to be willing to adopt changes which serve to help reduce the ease with which fraud and other criminal activity can establish itself here?

I think the moderator should place a really big warning there explaining how risky a HYIP really is.