Bitcoin Forum

The huge run-up in price poses a subtle but very significant threat to Bitcoin.

As price went from 9 to 90 two things happened: a lot of media coverage which has attracted a lot of newb users on one hand, and some divestment of old blood looking to buy that new car/house/girlfriend on the other.

This fundamentally alters the landscape: the new people mean well but mostly don't understand Bitcoin - much like the Endless September folks didn't understand the Internet. They don't know the history, they have at best a tenuous grasp on finance, they don't have at the ready the skills required for Bitcoin survival. They're lambs to the slaughter pretty much.

Along with them we've seen a flood of scum - like this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=82994), this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=84995), this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=148832.0) and like probably thousands more, simply looking to fleece the noobs. Much like flies follow any herd of ruminants, scammers will follow the retail user anywhere. They've followed them here, they're getting ready to set up shop and they're going to try and take over the show.

Bitcoin is open and decentralized. This means you can't wait for the state to keep them in check.

There's no state in Bitcoin. The only authority is you, and Bitcoin's safety depends upon you exercising that authority. If you see a scam which is obvious but you don't say anything, there's going to be someone who doesn't realize it's a scam, and imagines his interaction with a scammer is what Bitcoin actually is. What may seem obvious to you is not obvious at all to Random Joe Onebitcoin. Heck, the fact that Bitcoin exists to begin with wasn't obvious to R. J. six weeks ago.

See something, say something. You don't have to prove a scam's a scam, you don't have to find the scammer's hut and bitchslap him or her. You just have to put the obvious into words.

If scammers take over Bitcoin there's no future.

It doesn't take much effort to safeguard its future, because it's really easy to puncture the sort of fake "consensus" scammers depend on. Just say something.

Questions like this are going to come up more frequently:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1b4ozh/can_someone_please_explain_how_to_move_btc_from/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1b4ozh/can_someone_please_explain_how_to_move_btc_from/)

Yup, definitely this ^^^.

The community needs to be ready to answer the stupid questions and move on rather than the sarcasm/trolling/hate/etc we see a lot of now.  Hopefully everyone understands that the people are new and don't know what they're doing, we were all there once.

Scammers and malware are a bigger threat than governments.

just build a site, maybe "bitcoin scam" database, a directory of proved scam!

Absolutely. Much bigger.


The problem with that approach is that it fragments discourse.

Just like how everybody on FB uses Snopes before reposting crap!

Maybe there should be some sort of BBB for bitcoin companies? An objective, trusted third party to establish trust?

Someone tried to set that up before, pretty sure it died.  It's hard to get everyone to use one service like that, and most people won't even check it.

There is this site, but it seems to have gone quiet:

http://bitcoin-shitlist.com/

Minimal trust is the way to go. There are no objective parties.

A better solution is a surety system that doesn't rely on a single party for anything.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=153221.msg1628630#msg1628630 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=153221.msg1628630#msg1628630)

Business can't function without trust. The attempt to remove trust from business is very much an Aspie/coder/geek thing to do and just as misguided as the sort of stuff them people usually come up with. 

The correct approach isn't to get a pillow as your girlfriend, the correct approach is to sanely interact with the actual girls out there.

That's what they all say. (http://leverage.wikia.com/wiki/The_Long_Con)

IMO, the business should have earned its trust somehow already, BTC is just another way for me to pay this business for the services it renders. If anything i would trust a company with my credit card # FAR faster than i would with some BTC

Reaction post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160968.0

(portugues - Brasil/portugal)

 We need to get more and more physical stores to starting accepting bitcoin, that will help alot.

Proposition: bitcoin security browser addon.

Community would be able to instantly flag pages according to their credibility.

and then will come 20 scamming keylogger add-ons pretending to also be security assurance tools.

What there needs to be is a 'tip of the day' box built into the satoshi client warning of the potential hazards. Even have the forums set a training course as part of the newbie process, to give noobs something valuable to read while they wait 4 hours which can earn them access to the forums within 3 hours if they pass a test of some sorts at the end.

Newbies shouldn't use the satoshi client.  Tips are a good idea in theory, but like the newbie section very few will actually read the information given to them.

I like this, I like this a lot!

Could it not be made open source and trustworthy, to those worried about keyloggers?

Perhaps a Chrome extension?

Just hanging around the world of bitcoin, visting some links from this forum and a Google alert for all things bitcoin has led to not 1, not 2, but 6 different virus and trojan attacks on my PC. At one point so bad that Avast seemed to give up altogether. I now run AVG, Malawarebytes and Commodo cleaner.

The filth and scum out there hang around bitcoin like flies on shit.

This is the perfect opportunity for the free market to step up and tackle this.. 

Complete decentralization isn't an ideal state for the gullible masses, ideally we would have Paypal-like "clusters" managing BTC for their clients, either that or force people to be educated about cryptocurrencies. Despite all the attention the community has got we are still a counterculture community because the average Joe continues trying to sound wise on all the media outlets claiming BTC is either ponzi or generally "not real money".

The OP here is probably due for a bump.

The scams that start on the climb, often unravel on the decline.  BOLO