Bitcoin Forum

Two scammers and we aren't seeing any scammer or untrustworthy tag.

TradeFortress is a little controversial (although I believe he is firmly in the scammer camp for deliberately misleading newbies).

But there can be absolutely no question that BFL is a bad actor and needs the label right away.

Why are you abdicating your responsibilities?

How is TradeFortress a scammer? You Ripple shills deserve the tag.

I forget. How much are we paying to use this forum?

I think theymos has a few hundred thousand USD-worth from the community, actually....  :P

Anyone selling XRP at the current stage of Ripple development should be tagged as a scammer. Yes, that means you.

I haven't paid anything but I'm more than willing to do so if it will expedite this process!

+1 Agree.  BFL for sure and to think I almost sent them money.  Now all these TradeFortress posts should at minimum, be moved to the speculation forum because, at best, that's all it is. Speculation.  

Now there is justifcation for scammer tags for Tradefortress when we have noobs clearly getting scammed. One individual trying to unload what Tradefortress scammed him for, was busted in the currency section just yesterday.  Even John K. came into add to the thread and called it a "sick trick".  When it blew up in his face, we had PM dialog that included this:


So, what are you going to do?

EDIT:  Look how fast this thread made it to the scam accusation forum.  Shouldn't the Tradeforest threads be here as well?  Really speaks volumes.

He is signing up newbies to Ripple with the false expectation that they will get 1BTC from him when in fact he purposefully leads them into signing him up with a 100BTC trust limit to himself.  I personally do not think this is worthy of a 'scammer' tag but others have certainly suggested that this straddles the line on the wrong side.

How can the mods decide if TF defaults or not? Even if we assume that he did agree to redeem all his IOUs in real BTCs, did he specify any repayment date? He didn't, he can always say he will repay, but probably after a thousand years? I see absolutely no resaon why a scammer tag should be applied, the mods are powerless against him.

Link? I thought TradeFortress was against Ripple. Did he get paid off?


This is a good point. There is no penalty in Ripple for defaulting. Why should TradeFortress get a scammer tag for pointing out a flaw in the system? I think that's his aim.

The scammer tag should be applied because he engaged in predatory practices to con users out of some bitcoins:

1) He posted in the Newbies forum
2) He made his thread self-moderated so no one could warn new users
3) He specifically told new users to take risky actions
4) He took advantage of new users who followed his directions

As it has been stated previously #3 is no different than asking Bitcoin newbies for their private key "to send some coins to them." If this isn't scamming then what the fuck is?

What about BFL? In what universe could BFL NOT be considered scammers?

Could this have to do with that both BFL and TradeFortress have paid for ads on the forum?

No. If he indeed will pay back, then he should not be considered a scammer, the problem is there is no way  for the mods to determine if he will, because no repayment date was specified in the terms. I believe you have signed contracts in your life and you should know.

You do realize that I have not profited at all from this, right?

The people who used the automatic liquidity providing feature are the people who "scammed", but in the end people still have the same amount of "BTCs" as before.

1) He posted in the Newbies forum

Uh huh, hundreds of people do that everyday.

2) He made his thread self-moderated so no one could warn new users

That's right.

3) He specifically told new users to take risky actions

You are taking a risky action by holding any kind of cryptocurrency.

4) He took advantage of new users who followed his directions

I have not taken advantage of anyone. Other people has.


Btw, keep pumping your scam ripples.

TradeFortress. Let's get this over and done with.

I have trusted you for 100 BTC from rPcu8U9dSsK6nHtqgpeSvjuFTmNGq3arPh. And I have put 10.15 BTC/bitstamp in that account.

If you actually did that, someone with my IOUs (not me) is going to have 10.15 Bitstamp BTCs.

I think someone might have a script that does it already. you can still get this transfer done.

Yes I actually did that, and feel free, also do verify, the ripple ledger is public.

Actually, because losing $1100+ is probably not what you want to see happen, I've transferred your 10.15 Bitstamp BTCs.

Give me a bitcoin address to send your 10.15 back, because right now if you check your Ripple wallet you shouldn't have any bitstamp IOUs anymore.

It does seem to me that Tradefortress is scamming people just to prove a point about the problems with Ripple system. The fact that he is engaging newbs into a system that he considers a scam tells me that at the very least what he is doing is unethical. If I thought someone was a scammer I would not suggest them as a middleman for my transactions.

Yes, I am scamming people but I'm not making any money, and in this special case (where I actually used the liquidity providers flaw) I'm doing it as a proof of concept and giving it back to the owner ::)

This is exactly what I wanted to see happen, and exactly what was supposed to happen.

I trusted you for 100 BTC. You have withdrawn 10.15 BTC to blockchain. You owe me 10.15 BTC. We have successfully demonstrated how ripple works.

You of course owe me 10.15 BTC, and you can pay me that back through ripple at any point, I'd prefer it in ripple, rather than blockchain.

Ripple just models real life, only trust people or entities you view as trustworthy. I decided to trust you, and I'm sure you'll want to keep your trust and reputation over the coming weeks and months.

Still unsure what your point is?

My point is that if someone else had done this, you would be at a loss of 10.15 BTC, and I have no obligation to redeem my 10.15 BTC because I had no intention of honoring it in the first place, and there are no terms for redemption.

I know I'm quoting Deprived's posts a lot, but his posts really do illustrate the point:

I trusted you, specifically for 100 BTC. Every person you trust for BTC can access it, not those people who trust you.

You, personally, are either trustworthy or are not trustworthy, it is quite simple, you owe me 10.15 BTC to be paid back through ripple, I do not care if anybody else owes you BTC or not, this is your trustworthyness we're discussing.

So far, all you've done is take 10.15 BTC from me and say that you "had no intention of honoring it in the first place". That would be a scammer would it not?

You do realize I only did it so someone else wouldn't have done it and you'd be at a loss of 10.15 BTC? I'll say it again, btc address and I'll withdraw that 10.15 from bitstamp to your address, or confirm with me and I'll send you the Bitstamp IOU back.

Trustworthy / non trustworthy are not binary unlike what the Ripple system declares. I'm sure there are people you trust more than others in your life, no?

I have not made a promise to honor any of my IOUs. Not all IOUs / debt are redeemable. Simple example: You will be laughed your way out of court if you sue someone for their debt, when you have no contract of any kind.

Send the bitstamp IOU back.

Done.

I'd suggest removing the trust line unless you want to lose 10.15 BTC (or whatever you have now, after bitstamp fees).

Okay, why should I remove the trust line? Have you extend trust to people who are untrustworthy?

edit: I'm going out, I'll leave everything as it is for now, and will reply later.

You do realise that you've said to a lot of people that you owe them one bitcoin, and up to 10 people can make good that promise, every time they do, you owe me one more bitcoin, which I expect you to make good on, just as they did in the first place when you opened that thread.

One person already has, you owe me one more bitcoin. If you do not pay me back, then you are a scammer.

All I have done is facilitate your offer to the masses on bitcointalk, you promised them all one bitcoin for trusting you, now they can do it, and are. Everytime they do, you owe me 1 BTC. I can pump another 100 BTC in to that account if you like?

I just sent you a ripple IOU for 50 BTC. Do I owe you bitcoin? Well, technically yes, but what are the terms? I've already said that I'm not going to honor any Ripple IOUs unless I explicitly state so with terms.

No, I do not have a redemption policy for my IOUs. I promised people one Ripple IOU for a bitcoin, not an actual bitcoin. Debt without terms is absolutely worthless (except for historical value and trying to use the liquidity providers trick).

BFL deserve a scammer tag at this point, but they still buy nearly all of this forum's ad spots, and it seems as though the decision has been made to keep letting them advertise until they stop paying. They have already missed countless promised shipping dates, and defaulted on their power consumption charity wager.

Offtopic, but are you BlackLilac? Why do you have 2 accounts?

That's me. I have one bitcoin, which is not mine. I can reasonably assume it is either your's or TF's? I will return it when I know for sure to what address.

Our first service is close to launching and I'm handing the "BlackLilac" account over to the person who I've hired to do our PR. I won't be posting much anymore but I create this account for myself.

So basicly the ripple system allows me to make a local small kiosk where people can buy ripple iou's for any currency they want. Then they can send the iou's to anywhere in the word, maybe buy something from net.

But the main point is that I can sell the IOU's as debth, ie get the customer's 100€ and give him 100€ IOU's, which i actually create at the same moment he gives me the real money.... So I have a free 100€ loan for ethernity?

But if I want to keep the business running, I guess I should also give customers 100€, if they send me 100 € IOU?

I like this quote.

@Tradefortress...your point is moot and even though it continues to blow up in your face, you refuse to acknowledge that it's not a problem with Ripple,  (Ripple only does what you tell it to do.)  but rather it's a problem with you.  You are misleading people simply to slander Ripple and now you have people trying to get their BTC's back from you and you're giving them a hard time.

You're making an absolute fool out of yourself.  Give it up...your attempts are futile.  

The fact that the mods have not put an end to this shows that "principles" only matter when applied to everyone else except those raking huge profits off this forum.  Shameful.

I think TF is not a scammer.
I agree that ripple IOUs between users are like debts without terms. You trusted that person to do WHATEVER he wants with your money in exchange for a declaration of debt, not a promise of payment. Who owes you is not even a person, is a virtual wallet that is operated by someone. You have a declaration of debt from r3......ghygf! or whatever ripple address. What if that person sells his wallet? Now you trust an unknown! Rsrsrs. This is so naive to trust a ripple addres.

Everyone who accepted to enter in the ripple world agreed to this terms and they have what they paid for. They have their IOUs.

About gateways, things are different in the case you made a deposit, and they are allowed to operate under local anti-scam laws, so they bankly and legally owe you that money, they should provide you liquidity, otherwise they can be sued. The counterpart is a company, and the ripple addres will be linked to it.

IMO we should only trust in gateways.

Still, regarding having exchanges made in my wallet without permission, determined by the flow of orders inside the gateway, i agree that this is too much freedom for free. The gateway uses us as a source of funds for its profitable trading operations without paying for that.

Okay, you owe me 10.15 BTC which you have explicitly given away to users of bitcointalk, asking them to opt in to receive it by taking specific actions: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=206948.0

You purposefully and willing told each user that you were sending them 1 BTC each, an IOU for 1 BTC, and they fully expected to receive that 1 BTC from you, which is why they opted in the first place.

They were not to know whether you had BTC in your account, whether were "good for" the money or not, and as you well knew, the second somebody with BTC from a trusted source opted in, you would incur debt with that person.

YOU sent 1 BTC to multiple people which you had no intention of making good on yourself, YOU asked for the trust from other people. You are entirely 1000% responsible for your own actions.

You promised these people 1 BTC each, 10 have received this so far, and somebody else with 0.15 BTC. In the process you have incurred that debt with me - thankfully not some person who didn't know what they were getting in to.

You owe me 10.15 BTC. And you owe 445+ other people 1 BTC each. You willingly and publicly opted in to this, you set it all up, now you pay the price.

Or are you trying to say that you did not understand this would happen?

Theymos, Mods, John K, I request the scammer tag. TradeFortress owes me 10.15 BTC, and has also promised 445 other users 1 BTC each. As an act of good will, I will not call in the other 50 BTC he has promised to pay me, by issuing me an IOU for said sum.

I think you are going overboard.   What if TF does pay this IOU you feel he has acknowledged?  What if he decides to pay it when the last block is mined (in 2140)?   Do you still feel scammed?  What are your callable rights on this IOU?   Can you send the source that explains the duration of an IOU on ripple?  If TF is still alive, you cannot say that he has not honored his IOU to you.   Only after he is dead and his estate is settled and IF you are left out of the distribution can you really say he never repaid you.

Please do not troll around about this until the his estate is in probate.

I think TF should definitely pay back those hundreds of bitcoins in the time he specified in the contracts. Oh wait, he didn't specify a date!

One of the most important corallaries to Murphy's Law is this:
The hidden flaw never remains so.

This is ridiculous.

TradeFortress has knowingly tried to scam 450 people out of up to 100 BTC each, whether he ultimately received it or not. He knows this, which is why he asked me, ONLY ME, to turn the trust to 0, because he knew he was the main agent facilitating, and responsible, for everything.

If it has exposed a flaw in ripple, one where there are no dates to when a debt is due, so be it, I'm sure this can be remedied quickly.

In the meantime, he has screwed me out of 10.15 BTC, and set up a scenario where he facilitates up to 445 more BTC getting taken from people. BTC he has given, promised to pay, and which he has asked to incur in debt with other people. He has now incurred some of it, he owes it.

You can argue over a technicality all you want, but what he has set up is morally wrong in every way, it is an elaborate scam, and who is to say it is not him who has withdrawn some of the BTC, or planned to withdraw some of it?

Sounds like your accusation is against Ripple, not TF.   Perhaps you should apologize to him as you are basically saying that TF set up the rules of Ripple to cheat YOU.   Can you prove that TF was the creator of this Ripple and he did it just to cheat you?
Considering the USA has had over 20 million people not pay their contractual obligation on their HOME, risking becoming homeless, there is no way I would ever "trust" IOUs from people I do not know.

This is nothing to do with ripple, and show's no flaw in it. It simply shows that you should be careful who you trust, always.

TradeFortress has asked for trust, and promised people money. He has incurred debt. He has a 100 BTC overdraft with many members of this forum, and he's cashed out over 10 BTC so far. This is money he owes.

TradeFortress is either trustworthy, or is not. So far, it seems he's one of the shadiest people I've ever met on the internet. He has facilitated nothing but his own demise.

TradeFortress, make good your promises, repay your debts, contact the people who issued trust to you and ask them to revoke it. What you have tried to do here is low and foolish.

This entire debate is the same as my Pirate bet where I didn't ask for escrow (because I was trying to prove a point about making bets without escrow and trusting strangers on the internet). I never accepted a penny from anyone and I still got instant scammer tagged and was held to actually paying people the balances of my prank.

The general consensus was that I "scammed expected value" or some whatnot. Despite feeling awful for others having made ignorant financial decisions based on that bet and having learned my lessons, you'd think this community would have learned it's lesson too. Instead, here we are again, except this time it seems Theymos is waiting on something (I'm honestly not sure what that is). I don't know what he's waiting on for BFL either.


Bottom line for community (a lesson I learned the hard way): Don't fuck with other people's money to "teach them lessons", despite your passionate crusade against stupidity.

Bottom line for mods: Stop having double standards for everything that happens on the forums. It's either okay to scam expected value (cheating), or it's not. Pick one and stick with it. </end thread>

This thread is really interesting because this is what is going to happen when people start trusting their friends, who trust another layer of friends.

Lots of complaints, misunderstandings, etc

If the "feeling scammed" one would follow riplle rules, he would pay someone with this TF IOU, isnt it right?

The ripple IOUs are like dateless checks. If you have one from wells fargo its good, if you have TF check (in this case) it would be nothing at all!!,!

Trade Fortress would be a scammer if he tried to deny the debt.
But he doesnt, he openly assumes the debt through an IOU with no redemption date, rsrsrs

This was an incredible move, no Scam!

Ripple slogan suggestion: ripple, you trust, you learn

I can't believe you just risked 10 bitcoins to prove your point, lol. Quite a pair on you.

Well I still don't understand what's going on with Ripple BTC.

I have gotten 4 BTC or IOU from tradefortress but I don't use bitstamp. So what should i do now?

PS: I know they are not real btc i only want to know about this thing.

Most scams derive from the stupidity of the victim, does that make it legitimate practice to "prank" or "teach" the (naive or inexperienced) stupid person a lesson? On a slightly unrelated note, I am glad I did not accept those ASIC shares now as it is not good business to involve yourself with people whol like to fuck about with your money. Ironically the same reason I want out of the FIAT system.  ;D

I can't tell if you read what I said or not, but you realize that was also my point? What I did was stupid and I'm not interested in every doing something like that again. I learned a lesson. The point of this thread is, "is TradeFortress going to learn his?" and "Is Theymos going to pick and choose when to have standards for bans and scammer tags?"

Not sure what to say to this as I think it was said in misunderstanding of what is going on..

I misinterpreted, the line above seem to suggest that you thought that people should be able to crusade against stupid people, but that the general communuity look down upon it so its probably best not to. Great to see you learned some lessons from those early experineces, I have been scammed before so I perhaps jumped the gun a little.  :D

When people trusted Trade Fortress they allowed him to do whatever he wants with their money in exchange for "now I owe you xx bitcoins". Thats what the ripple network provides in exchange for TF BTCs.

They cant be redeemed unless you and someone who trusts Trade Fortress trust the same gateway. Then, when you redeem your BTC, someone who trusts Trade FOrtress will have his "gateway btc" exchanged by a "TF BTC".mis this right?

You trust, you learn.

I don't know how you misinterpreted this:


Anyway, I get that a lot. If misinformation were gold, this forum would be Fort Knox.

I can't believe this. Ripple is an IOU trading system where the IOUs have no settlement date?! How on earth is it working at all? Is there any real business being transacted, or is it just a testing ground for enthusiasts?

I agree that no one can be called a scammer just because they receive something and issue an IOU for it unless they break the terms for settlement. If there are no terms for settlement then, according to the English language, the quantum of the transaction is a gift, and that is the end of the matter.

I think the thing with tradefortress is pretty obvious.  He said here is a debt in a system I do not agree with.  I will not pay it.  I do not see how he can be scammer tagged for that.  He could have 'sold' false debt or otherwise made real promises and that would get him a scammer tag.  He did not do that.

He definitely needs the untrustworthy tag, at the least. He has asked people to trust him, which they have, with the sole intention of being untrustworthy.

No.  He asked people to set their trust flags in ripple and explained to them what would happen if they did.

I said it in some other thread and want to say it again here. Matthew N. Wright didn't set the deadline for his payment in his prunk bet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101751.0) (there was a deadline for Pirate's payment, not Matt's). So that bet was not binding exactly the same way as IOUs are not binding. There was no date set for payout. Why did Matthew have to pay, but TradeFortress doesn't have to? Maybe so called victims who received money should return them back to Matthew?

In Trade fortress case, there are IOUs issued.
This is the payment when you use Ripple trusted pathways.

You trust me 100 BTC, Im free to use them as long as I issue you an IOU.

When will you get them? I don't know. But you have the IOU. Its a Security with no maturity date, no interest, just TRUST.

What has he promised? To pay back today? Tomorrow? Next month?

When you get a loan, when you can be sued? When you default. When you default? When you don't pay it in a pre-accorded period of time.

So, since when Trade Fortress can be asked to pay the IOUs?

MNW's promise was that he will give 100% ROI if pirate defaults. When pirate officially defaulted, he has broken his promise.

Compare to a bunch of tokens / IOUs which has zero terms. No contract unlike MNW, end of story. If I said that I would redeem those for actual BTC, and did not specify a time, then it would have to be a reasonable amount of time.

Exactly why I asked Theymos "If I had made the bet with Ripple IOUs instead, would I still have gotten the scammer tag?". It's a legitimate question that he needs to answer. Apparently scamming expected value, cheating, tricking, promising without delivering, whatever you want to call it-- is fine so long as it utilizes the Ripple system.

I know why you did what you did, I know why I did what I did too. I know I'm not a scammer and I'm pretty sure you're not a scammer. This isn't about you or me, this is about what people classify as "scammers", what criteria Theymos uses to give the tag out (for god's sakes, BFL still doesn't have a tag!), etc. This is about policy, protocol and having a community understanding that it's in fact not okay to play with other people's money to prove points.

You owe me 10.15 BTC. However, I will accept 9.15 BTC considering you did this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=211115.msg2215271#msg2215271

Webr3, dont you understand?

Its very clear that he owes you. As clear as that is the fact the he can pay you "WHENEVER HE WANTS", as long as ther is not a path for you to redeem your IOU.
So better than pushing him is to beg him to give you Bitstamp BTC.

If he has the BTC, then why make you suffer? I agree that he should try to pay you because you helped him to prove his point, as a fellow.
But he cant be tagged as a scammer.

LOL, "you did this"? I am responsible for the actions of random forum users now.

Are you going to accuse everyone defending me here as being my sockpuppet?

Damn this scam accusation against TradeFortress sounds pretty serious. Should we be cautious when using the services he advertises in his signature space? I personally love his CoinLenders site and idea. I wouldn't mind attempting to increase my BTC amount. Especially since I don't have the skills to make a mining rig.

Scammer accusations are sometimes legitimate, and sometimes just people who are butthurt and want revenge. Always do your own due diligence before doing business with someone. No amount of opinions on forum (whether positive or negative) will ever matter as much as your own common sense when dealing with people.

Pro tip: I don't break promises / contracts or scam people. Hence why I have done unescrowed trades of 300+ BTC near the peak, ssh access to servers with tens of thousands of coins, report SQL injections to btct.co/Burnside, report XSS to ukto for bit funder, paid out insurance for btcinvest, made shareholders happy, and depositors too while making me a lot of profit too.

Thanks TradeFortress, I think you're doing everyone a service by getting them to take a hard look at how ripple works.

I was just at the bitcoin conference, and I had at least a dozen conversations about ripple. Pretty much none of the people I spoke with understand it. Even some of the guys in the ripple booth (though they were courteous and eager to help), got stumped on some issues.

My primary concern with ripple is exactly what TradeFortress has just demonstrated. Ripple IOUs have different values based on the issuer. If they traded on an open market, you would see this. IOUs for a trusted institution are worth more than IOUs for a less trusted one. E.g. you might see Bitstamp USD IOUs trading against Weexchange IOUs at a non-1 rate, such as 1.1.

But we don't see that in ripple (as far as I can tell). Instead, we see a markets labelled by the currencies only, such as USD/XRP. But whose USD? Where's the Bitstamp USD / Weexchange USD market?

The fact that default risk fluctuates is acknowledged by participants in the real financial markets. We have credit markets. The values of various entities' credit float against one another. They are not all the same.

When I posed this question in the ripple booth yesterday, here is the (paraphrased) answer I got:
me: "So what's up with this automatic liquidity providing, given that some IOUs are more valuable than others? Couldn't we have a 'bank run' type situation when a gateway starts to look like they're in financial trouble, and innocent ripple users who happened to be 'asleep at the wheel' at the time wind up holding all the bad debt?"

ripple employee: "Good point. I think that the protocol supports setting a price at which you are willing to exchange a certain issuer's IOUs for another issuer's. It doesn't have to be 1:1. I think the client just doesn't support this yet."

me: "Okay, cool. But does it have to be a fixed amount or is there some kind of floating rate?"

ripple employee: "I think it's just a fixed amount."

Needless to say, I was not particularly impressed by this answer.

Honestly, I expect to be wrong about this, because there are seemingly a lot of smart guys involved and they really seem to have strong technology. Can they really have missed some basic facts about how markets work? Na, probably I missed something. But I'm definitely not betting on it until I hear a satisfactory answer.

Yeah I don't want to doubt your trust and reliability, but when I read a post that's making a pretty strong accusation against the owner of a service that I recently deposited money to (CoinLenders) it worries me. Nevertheless thanks for reassuring your trustworthiness I actually bought another bitcoin today to deposit into my CoinLenders account. BTW how popular is your site? I mean you can't guarantee that my BTC will gain any interest if it isn't loaned right? With that said, can I have your permission to advertise CoinLenders on my signature space in an effort to try to provide entrepreneurs an option for funding and hopefully increase my chances of earning interest? Or am I not understanding the concept of your business?

These are legitimate concerns and questions, however what TradeFortress did does not illustrate your concerns, it merely shows that he can use technology that newbies don't understand to facilitate a fraud.   At this point in the Ripple system you don't trust any issuer of USD that you don't trust equally with another issuer.  You may not like it, but that's how it works right now.  He is taking advantage of ignorance, while simultaneously misleading through half truths and lies.  Read his post on the Newbie board if you're unclear on this.

He said he was going to deposit 1 BTC in to a person's Ripple account.    A newbie who barely understands Bitcoin is not going to understand that in a completely different system (Ripple) that BTC is an IOU.    Then add an additional layer of complication in that most people are not used to being in control of who they trust when it comes to money IOU's (government usually is) and you have a recipe for theft that is unnecessary and proves nothing but that Tradefortress is willing to hurt people in order to take down Ripple.

The worst part about it is he has credibility on this board and so newbies are liable to trust him (Luckily a moderator put warnings on his OP, since all warnings by other people were self-moderated by Tradefortress).  Abusing this trust and not having moderators put a REAL stop to it  - This is just plain wrong.

Can I just remind people that I am over 10 BTC out of pocket as a direct result of TradeFortress's actions.

Only one user took 1 BTC, as a test, and offered it back to me.

*AFTER* that TradeFortress sent one of his IOUs for 15BTC to bitcointalk user aadje93 ripple address rMyHUbgreHFvvxoD5pGmg1fKRdSBHisy39 who then immediately withdrew 9.15 BTC to bitstamp.

See https://ripple.com/graph/#rH3bZsvVUhzugvcYuJVoSYCEMHkfK6wHNv

Mods: please check the IPs of this user aadje93 to see if it's the same as TradeFortress.

TradeFortress personally took these actions AFTER the entire thing was proved and tested, he issued a IOU to the above user so they could take the BTC he sent to them, the BTC he took from me.

TF may not meet the definition of "scammer" for the forum.

I have other words to describe his actions and the person that would take those actions.

None of them are suitable for print.

Here's how the scam went down along with his admission of what he was doing...


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=206948

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=206948.msg2166536#msg2166536

I PM'd him to ask him how he would deal with redeeming IOUs so that anyone could convert his IOUs into BTC.  He wrote...

http://i44.tinypic.com/96hvf7.jpg


So in summary he misled people, while counting on their ignorance of how Ripple works, into letting him put them in harm's way so he and his confederates could steal their legitimate IOU's from reputable gateways.

But he didn't promise to pay 100% ROI immediately, did he? So he could just say "I will pay... later" and not receive a scammer tag?

We have had the exact same discussion, rebuttals etc already, and it seems like you have nothing to say so you keep repeating the same thing again.

It is okay, I have better things to do than respond to accusations which are false again and again. Check IP logs, ask your friends at OpenCoin inc for logs or user agents or whatever, I don't care because I haven't took anyone's coins.

I suggest everyone who is interested to read previous responses because it is a waste of time, and saying the same thing again and again does not make it true. Just makes you look like you have nothing else to do.

For putting that together, it may be worth noting there was no flaw in the system, he loaned btc from users via an overdraft (trust line) and gave out to other users via an IOU. He is accountable for all his actions.

You loaned 10.15 btc from me, and gave it away. You owe me 10.15 btc.

Interestingly, this does not seem to be true (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=211068.msg2217057#msg2217057). It's only the UI that has this behavior. Power users can turn it off.


I don't know enough to comment about this specific situation. I do know that Ripple is very hard to understand and a lot of people are putting a lot of money into it. Therefore, I support TradeFortress's efforts towards promoting a skeptical attitude about it. Remember Pirateat40?

Just my thoughts. If TF were indeed a scammer, he could have taken off with the proceeds of the IPO of his fund. He could have also taken off with the deposits in Coin Lenders. I think TF is trustworthy and will continue to use Coin Lenders.

You're a user of CoinLenders?

Yes,i am. I dont have many btc, but what I have is on deposit there. If I'm wrong about TF it would be a drag, but wouldn't be life changing. He seems to be able to generate the funds to cover the interest payments.

Much more, lol. You can check out btcinvest's history. :)

EDIT: LOL @ one of the people who have being vocal in this smear campaign, thanks for signing up and depositing! I thought you were saying I'm a scammer?  ??? ???

Yeah same here. I literally bought my first BTC and later found out about his service through his signature ad and decided to deposit my BTC there. Why not? I don't own a rig and I would love for small business to have options for funds. Plus I could increase what very little I have. Lets just hope he is trustworthy his site is pretty cool. If ever he does go rogue on us someone truly trustworthy should create a website just like it. I'd definitely use it.

This was funny. Somebody is running begging classes for the Bitcoin community?


The obvious defense to this is that the ripple thing is very new, populated by very clueless people and it will improve in time. The risk of course is that absent competent people involved it will simply end up tagged as a failure (which is happening already). The complete inability of the managing team to obtain and retain the support of competent people seems to irreversibly doom this particular installment (even if the ripple idea might eventually come to some fruition, made and marketed by people with actual skills, understanding and connections rather than by random "hey ma look, I can programmate the computor" folks).

What rubbish. Do you think Ripple users are not programmers and BitCoin users? I've been programming for almost 20 years, I was in Bitcoin from the start and introduced it to Amir Taaki and Lazlo Torok, I was a very early adopter of Ripple too, and several other money related things from OpenTransactions through to PaySwarm and the surrounding standards. I understand money, debt, and of course am very familiar with David Graebers work. Most of the other Ripple users I know, also come from a similar background.

And now, some newb, TradeFortress, has been allowed to take a vendetta to the point that he can take over $1k from one of those users and get away with it, me. A complete piss take.

That explains it.

If you've being on here for a while, you should know that MPOE-PR is pretty much always correct in determining what services and businesses are junk.

Because they've received a lot of money from BFL both as a forum entity and individually as mods, not all of them but most of them. BFL is obviously a scam and was created to be a scam!

So that gives you the right to take out a 100 btc credit line with me, use over 10 BTC of it, and never repay it?

I don't care how honest you are in your other dealings, I'd expect you to be. In this dealing you have given IOUs which were NOT worthless to other users, then taken a BTC debt out with me and passed it on. When you gave that 15 BTC IOU after everything had been proved, you knew exactly what would happen, or indeed arranged it.

Argue about terms, times, whatever, you have an outstanding credit line of 10.15 BTC with me, 9.15 BTC which I demand back. When will you be paying this?

Blockchain 1BqZohTvZ6KmPFj9ThS3CeGqpm3hJYfSqo or Ripple are both fine. You know my ripple address, I've reduced my trust to you so you can't incur any more debt, since you've proved very untrustworthy in the past 24 hours, certainly when dealing with me through ripple. I cannot speak to your other services or transactions, nor do I care about them.

I obviously do see the conflict of interests between code that allows people to lend to their friends and a business which makes money from lending coins though, but perhaps you are just ripping me off to prevent other people from getting ripped off (!?). You/we demonstrated (a) how a system works, (b) that you were untrustworthy.

In this demonstration you played the part of the scammer, the untrustworthy gateway, and I played the part of the hapless victim (to prevent some newb from loosing up to 100 btc). Only after everything was proved, you took it one step further and really did take 9.15 BTC from me.

I sent people Ripple BTC when they asked, just like what I have being doing in the giveaway thread. I've sent people thousands of Ripple BTC, and sending 15 Ripple BTC to someone who asked was no exception. Have you being following? I also sent you 50 Ripple BTC too.

Either way, I don't redeem ripple BTCs for real BTCs, and..


It's pretty clear that I wasn't going to let you redeem by Ripple IOUs for real bitcoins, I've said it directly to you but you persisted. This is exactly what would happen, have some intelligence pl0x.

redeem your ripple IOUs for real bitcoins? They are promises to pay, but who cares, you TOOK real bitcoins from me. Do you hear me talkign about the what-you-suppose-are-worthless IOUs for 50 BTC and 1 BTC you issued me? no.

This is about the fully trusted and backed BTC IOUs you took from me and gave away.

When will you be repaying your debt with me? YOU personally owe ME.

I didn't take real bitcoins away from you, I didn't even take BTC.Bitstamp from you (remember when I gave it back to you?). My actions have allowed other independent people to exchange your BTC.Bitstamp to more BTC.TradeFortress, but as I've repeatedly said I'm not paying you BTC because I have never sent you bitcoins in the first place. Just Ripple bitcoin tokens, which are not bitcoins.

Derp. (Also, this is coming from the guy that thinks public blockchain / public ledger is a bug and filed an issue in the bug tracker for ripple).

Let me quote this:


Oh wow, isn't that exactly what happened. I already stated that I have no intention of honoring it.

TL;DR response to your question: never.

So you admit you are untrustworthy then.

Sure, I'm untrustworthy on the things I never promised I'll do. :P

Ask someone who I actually promised (coinlenders users, btcinvest shareholders) if I'm trustworthy or not.

Q: When you set up your scheme, was it with the intention that somebody would loose some "real" BTC?

Also, how comfortable would you be if I extended that trust up to say 30,000 BTC and put in 250 bitstamp backed BTC a day in to that account? Would there be a cut off point were you wouldn't want to incur any more debt, a point where courts may get involved?

I would think you are more intelligent than that, however I guess my assumption was incorrect.

I'm not sure if you understand it or not, but I don't choose if you lose your money or not. I have no control if someone decides to exchange your BTC.Bitstamp for their BTC.TradeFortress.

So, let's say you did extend your trust and put more BTC.Bitstamp in your account. I can't stop you in any way, other than laughing at how retarded you are. Seriously.

Kids, don't use Ripple in it's current state.

So there are 2 different kinds of BTC now? Don't be stupid, there is one BTC, and different people who say they will make good on IOUs for BTC. Bitstamp is one, TradeFortress is another.

Bitstamp makes good on it's IOUs, TradeFortress, you, do not.

Ripple works, you are untrustworthy, you send people undated cheques for them to cash at any point and take out overdrafts with them, then when the people you've sent the cheques to cash them in against the overdrafts you've taken out, you claim no responsibility.

The worst bit is, you did this with eyes wide open, in fact the first person to honor your IOUs was you yourself, you took out 10.15 BTC from me, paid it back, took it out again, incurred another 51 btc debt that is as yet unfunded, and ultimately have 10.15 btc cashed out, and 51 btc waiting to be cashed out.

I put in 10.15 BTC to prevent some poor sucker from getting scammed out of their life savings by your foolish vindictive scheme.

That's exactly that I'm saying: that they're programmers. And also idiots. And also early Bitcoin users, who have been pushed out for their idiocy and are now looking for something small enough so they can continue stroking their idiocy rather than fix it. The good news is that indeed MP doesn't give a shit about Ripple, so you may continue the tardparty. Learn to read between the lines.


Thus BitstampBTC and TradeFortressBTC Mr Clueless Programmer guy sir. Why is this so hard? Is it because you're trying to do finance stuff in BTC without having even heard of mystical magical stuff like say *the eurodollar*? Why do you think it's called EUROdollar (and if you go wikipedia that shit I'm going to punch you in the balls through the fucking monitor).

Stop imagining that if you can code you're worth two shits in the real world. Most of the time the reason you're a programmer IS BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT WORTH TWO SHITS IN THE REAL WORLD. Strictly. Strictly that.

Sure, some very talented people are programmers because that's what they chose for themselves. You're NOT THAT. You're the guy who wasn't good enough to sling dope.

Did you come here from the trollbox on BTCe? Grow Up.

Oh this thread is great in showing that side of ripple which most people don't understand and are not even aware of. The way the system works basically looks like a three-click scam creator for script kiddies.

I am waiting for the first ripple gateway-gate. There will be someone who'll create a gateway and bunch of fake ripple users trading on this gateway like crazy, providing lower spreads and much greater liquidity than Bitstamp's gateway users. Plus some marketing efforts to gain the traction. Most of actively trading ripple users will trust that gateway to be able to trade on it with its users, then one day they'll suck all available BTC.Bitstamp and USD.Bistamp and *.OtherLegitimateGateways replacing them with “equally trusted” BTC.Theirs and USD.Theirs, then withdraw to Bitstamp/other gateways real systems, exchange any USD into BTC and send the real BTC away, then close the shop and laugh.

This is what I learnt about ripple because of this thread so thank you both webr3 and TradeFortress for your contribution in the overall awareness of how ripple works.

Totally on the side: ripple web interface is rubbish. I played with ripple for the first time yesterday, and the interface is totally unreliable. You create a trade order, two seconds later see a confirmation that it has been created and even see it in the order book. You cancel the order to create a different one. You see all confirmations, you see order book showing your orders as you'd expect. You do that creating/canceling couple of times. Then you close the client and open it again and you see that your client was totally out of sync with what really happens on the backend. There were some orders that you cancelled and saw cancelled which actually are still open. There were some orders that you created and saw in the order book which actually aren't there (and weren't executed). I've been using a semi-reliable cellular connection yesterday so maybe it doesn't affect most users in their everyday usage, but the fact that it happens on unreliable connections shows that the software is very broken and if it's rubbish in the web client, you should expect it to be rubbish elsewhere as well.

Considering that ripple idea has some serious no-nos (just screaming to use it as three-click scam creator; founders holding tons of XRP; lot of things happening behind closed doors with no transparency) and their software is rubbish, I think it settles my opinion on ripple.

Regarding scam accusations, I'm too new here to throw rocks so I have nothing to say here. Forgive me off-topic post but I found this thread great in providing warnings on how ripple works and how it can be used to replace real currency with worthless IOUs in clueless users wallets. The whole situation deserves to be described objectively and sticked in the altcoins board to warn people on what might happen when they use systems they don't understand.

This just makes me all the more impressed at how silky smooth and blinding fast reddit is. They must have crushing volumes, but their site responds to every click instantly, no double rows (as you constantly see on MtGox as well). Looking forward to bitcoin sites reaching a reddit level of technical maturity.

They do extreme caching, don't they? I recall a few years ago when they were real laggy / slow and had plenty of "you broke reddit"!

Ah. I never bothered looking at it until late last year :-)

Well, this is not a rocket science to build a software that works reliably. You just need some real software developers for that (as opposed to 90%+ of people who call themselves software developers).

Reddit doesn't work that smooth either, as I often see error messages. But I always take error message over pretending that everything went fine (when it didn't). And I can allow some occasional errors on a reddit-like site but not necessarily in a place which wants to hold and manage my money.

"This isn't the kind of software where we can leave so many unresolved bugs that we need a tracker for them." -- Satoshi

Take a look at Ripple's tracker.

I didn't know much about ripple till all this started. I did just a bit of research. To me the whole stinking thing is an attempt to hijack the whole cryptocurrency gravy train and put it under the control of some venture capitalists and silicon valley types. They are going to issue 100 billion xrp of which OpenCoin will hold 50 billion. In other words, they have the money to really try and promote this and if it's successful, they will own half the supply. The whole thing is completely antithetical to the whole cryptocurrency movement, which is a decentralized currency under nobody's control. And then on top of it all, as TF demonstrated the system sucks. Don't drink the ripple koolaid, unless you wanna replace the Fed or other central banks with Open Coin.

Proving the point of why not to use ripple, He proved the point so now leave ripple!

His newbie thread was to make a point.

BTC and BTC IOUs are not the same thing.

DUH.

You are just butthurt that Ripple is being exposed for the scam that it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6WHBO_Qc-Q

thank you for this thread.

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/flash-tub/best-weekendweb-10.php

Well people lost 1000$ so now what for them? This is why I dont believe in ripple, I only believe in its investments, but ripple isnt the way to go. Stick with good ol bitcoin

Oh, really do you need that thread to understand it? WOW

Shit, dude. Do you have any transaction ID's of those payments?
I'm missing my BFL payments and would like to know to which wallet I sent them.
Any help is appreciated.

Sincerely,

-psy

You know that's exactly the dumbass sort of question that proves my point for me. Shut up and go on a reading binge until you know who I am.


Sounds like this is exactly the proof of concept TF was displaying.

The problem is that the default 'quality' factor of newly created trust lines by the client is a bad value. It should be zero (meaning "don't ripple through me") instead of one (meaning "exchange these IOUs for any other IOU I trust of the same currency at 1:1).

I've opened a GitHub issue (https://github.com/rippleFoundation/ripple-client/issues/748) on it.

Seem like they should hire you to kick their system into shape!

Well at least now we know why Theymos isn't doing anything about TradeFortress.

I assume if you'd promised to settle in ripple IOUs (without specifying any settlement date for those IOUs) then you could have just issued ripple IOUs and then forgotten about them.

An IOU without settlement terms is worthless.

What you did was make a bet - where established practice is immediate settlemenet in cash as soon as the outcome is determined.  There's no equivalent default settlement terms for IOUs.

Bets need to be settled in cash on demand (unless agreed otherwise).  IOUs don't.

That's the difference - and why you got tagged but TF didn't/shouldn't.  If anyone should get tagged for this it's the ripple developers for promoting a system which automatically treats even explicitly worthless debt as having the same value as payable-on-demand debt.  Sounds like they intend to fix this - but it's hardly a new issue or one which they were unaware of.

And people handing out ripple trust for no reason is hardly new either - as soon as ripple was launched there were threads where bunches of idiots handed out trust at random to one another.

These are actually very good points.

This is exactly what's wrong with their system. And new users that don't know any better are liable to trust people without having any idea of possible consequences. I would never use ripple to trade.

It doesn't automatically treat any debt as having any value at all. It considers all assets as completely worthless until and unless you specifically tell it to value some particular asset.

Still, proving how defective a system such as Ripple can be, by luring (newbie) people into loosing actual wealth should not be allowed.

It's roughly comparable to proving that Bitcoin is broken by starting an exchange or web-based wallet and then running off with the money or tricking people into deleting their wallet files. It's a Luddite attack on Bitcoin, Ripple, and technology in general -- an attempt to prove that people are too stupid to have powerful tools.

No, it's not. I would explain it to you, but I don't think you're going to listen.

counter-party risk in bitcoin is a well known and discussed topic.

To single out that some users of bitcoin are dumb enough to keep their funds on an exchange explains why they lost their funds as a flaw in bitcoin is retarded. Counter-party risk.

Ripple has much more counter-party risk on more levels than one. The glaring one is that ripple is a centralized system backed by Open Coin and can be shutdown if the overseeing government decided to.

AS the OP indicated many times...THE TRICK IS TO GET RIPPLE TO BE ACCEPTED BY GATEWAYS (I.E. financial institutions) AS WELL AS GETTING OTHER USERS TO ACCEPT IT.

One more level of counter-party risk: User trust.

But like TF said you likely will not listen to what I just said and try to justify why ripple works better or compliments bitcoin blah blah blah.

You have an interest in seeing Ripple succeed so you will ignore logic to see it succeed. Typical salesman. But you are forgiven because that is your job. Just dont try to sucker people into your scam please.

Thanks  :)

Two people reply to me but neither actually addresses the argument I was making at all. You're welcome to make 800 different arguments, but it gets really tedious when you keep switching to another argument you don't actually believe every time I address the ones you made. Does anyone want to actually respond to this argument:

So you are saying because it is comparable that it is okay to mislead newbies to use ripple when bitcoin has people that scam via your described methods or users being "too stupid" to use powerful tools?

Now you can go back and address my points above whether you like how I worded it or not.

No.

No. I'm not going to switch from argument to argument while you refuse to either defend or abandon the arguments I've rebutted. Please don't restate my argument but actually address the argument I made.

Here it is again:

Do you agree or disagree that these are comparable? If you think they are different, in what relevant way are they different?

They are different because Bitcoin does not allow, say, Instawallet to replace 100 BTC in bitcoin-qt with 100 "BTC" in Instawallet without your explicit approval. Nobody would have lost anything if users had to click "I will trade 10 BTC.Bitstamp for 10 BTC.TradeFortress.

Bitcoin allows instawallet to do whatever they want without anyone's approval. Both "attacks" take advantage of the fact that you can trick people into doing things that have negative consequences that they might not be aware of.

Both attacks involve tricking someone into doing something that can have negative consequences of which they may not be aware and then exploiting the results of that trick. Even if it required explicit approval, you could just as easily trick people into providing that approval. By requiring it of them before making a payment to them.

http://www.hrmorning.com/would-you-trade-your-password-for-a-candy-bar/

OK, let us take two scenarios:

You trust Instawallet for up to 100 BTC. You have 10 BTC in Instawallet. Instawallet closes, bye 10 BTC.

You trust Instawallet for up to 100 BTC with Ripple. You have 10 BTC in Instawallet. Instawallet closes overnight, you become a liquidity provider for Instawallet and take on 90 BTC more debt. Bye 100 BTC.

It is impossible with Bitcoin to lose more bitcoins than you put in. In this case, it would have being zero (I handed out free BTCs). With Ripple, you will lose as much bitcoins as you trust, even if you put in nothing.

Rock on TradeFortress. The "automatic liquidity providing" feature is broken and I expect they'll eventually figure it out and turn it off.

The question I have yet to get a straight answer from anyone is, what happens to Ripple when everyone turns off automatic liquidity providing? does it still 'work'?

Yeaahp... yup.. hmm? HMMM?! SPEAK UP I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

Tradefortress is as rad as fook in my book.
"...so theres this giant flaw... allow me to demonstrate!" -my version of TF.

If you're willing to trust Instawallet for 100 BTC, there is something fundamentally wrong with your idea of bitcoin security.

You do know I'm using it as an example, right? Replace Instawallet with Mt Gox. If Mt Gox gets hacked, you only lose the amount you had there. If you're using Ripple and Mt Gox gets hacked, then you lose as much as you have trusted it.

That's not how Ripple works as far as I can tell. If MtGox were hacked, seized or went offline, it seems it would make it impossible for them to function as a gateway, hence no transactions could take place for MtGox USD.

It seems the only thing you're able to prove so far is not to trust you on Ripple.

That is how it works. You don't need to be a gateway to issue IOUs for starters, and if Mt Gox is offline IOU can still be traded along paths.

If MtGox is offline, why would anyone on the network *accept* a MtGox USD IOU in the first place? There is a user on the other side of that trade who has to basically say "Ripple network, this is what I want!". If MtGox was down/hacked/seized, why would anyone tell the network "I want MtGox USD!" in the first place?

Because the Ripple client automatically does it for them if their trust line is not maxed out?

That's what I've being saying for the past N posts.

• The limit of what you're willing to hold in your Ripple balance is your trust limit.
• If mtgox is not operating fractionally, they must have set aside funds to back all the issued IOUs.
• If someone accepts MtGox USD IOUs, they are accepting the risk that MtGox could go down, be seized, DDoSed, etc etc etc. Exact same thing as selling a MtGox code.

Bottom line: Don't trade for things you don't trust.

It is not the exact same thing as selling a gox code (which you can't generate anymore). Your loss is limited to your gox balance. In Ripple, you can lose more than your gox balance.

You can take steps to prevent that (for example, somehow getting access to the closed source client and not making you a liquidity provider), but the fact is that this can happen means it's a flaw - that they can't fix without ruining ripple.

ITT: people not understanding simple concepts yet thinking they do

That doesn't make any sense at all. You can't lose more than your balance because your balance is a balance of how much trust you've issued to people selling MtGox USD. If you're claiming that people could have been holding MtGox USD IOUs at the time MtGox is taken down, then there is absolutely no difference between that and holding a balance in MtGox (in fact, it is a balance in MtGox-- a Ripple IOU balance).

Back to the point, don't issue trust for an institution-relative currency (MtGox USD) that you don't want to trust. Don't use a payment transactions network (Ripple) that you don't want to trust.

Calling Ripple a scam because you don't understand the how trust works is like calling SWIFT a scam because you opened a bank yesterday, convinced a bunch of other banks to trust you personally, issued a bunch of wire transfers to those banks, then refused to back them. If I end up using Ripple, I'll be very careful who I extend trust to and all you've done here is show that no one should trust you for anything other than direct XRP exchanges (which carry no exchange risk for the receiving party).

Practically a trusted node should be any node where you can spend your currency for anything equally valued. This would be any trustworthy store or business that guarantees they accept the relevant currency through Ripple. Essentially, what you are then doing by trusting them, is investing in them with your trust granting them a possible debt (in case they indirectly spend the trust trough other paths) for future services. Anyone who is giving you money through Ripple should NEVER be trusted, with the exception of established gateways for physical currencies. When working with local currencies, you should ONLY trust those who can return you services for said currency, and preferably only for the amount that you expect to spend there in a reasonable future timespan.

HI JK,
This "Luddite Attack" is not quite as warrantless as your wording makes it appear.  After all, what's being discussed *is exactly how fit* a particular technology is for use as currency.  If i understand TF, his opinion is: It isn't.
Stick with me here.  Do you consider criticizing a handgun for not having a safety & shipping with a loaded clip a Luddite attack?  After all, releasing the safety takes time before the gun could be fired, making it a less powerful as tool?  Do you seriously feel that any critique of technology based on its possible misuse is invalid?  Even when the likelihood of such misuse is demonstrably ... well jeesh, endemic to everyone in TF's little troll  ??? :D

Well, I paid over six thousand dollars. And I don't get shit.

No, you paid 50 BTC. Leave the dollars out of it, ok?
Oh, and btw, did anyone promised you anything in exchange for those 50 BTC you paid and didn't deliver on the promise?

Maybe he used Ripple

Starting a bank & joining SWIFT takes millions of dollars & a Kafkaesque legal maze to waddle through.  Issuing Ripple trust by anyone with a laptop?  Priceless.

You don't need a laptop to issue trust. Trust is between human beings. You need a laptop to enter that trust into a ledger.

I stand corrected.  You don't even need a laptop :D

Well the direct answer to the 'argument' you're making is that it's NOT roughly comparable.  To address it in any more depth would be giving credibility to the strawman you constructed.

A roughly comparable situation would be if when you made a transfer of coins in Bitcoin the transaction contained your private key in plain-text by default - and you had to have access to closed-source source-code to change the settings to not broadcast it.  In my view that's how bad an idea valuing, by default, all debt equally (at a non-zero value) is.  The problem isn't that trust CAN be used to provide liquidity - it's that it does so by default.

Take a step back from the TF situation and consider what will happen when (and it WILL happen at some point) a gateway defaults.  Is it really desirable that whoever happens to be around gets to shift all their debt from it to whoever happens to be offline (assuming the system gains enough traction that there are actually a signficiant number of users trusting multiple gateways)?  Exposure to that kind of risk needs to be opted into by users (by them actively setting their trusted counterparties as exchangable) not something they have forced on them without warning the moment they trust more than one target.

You're comparing apples to oranges. To make your analogy work, he'd have to be tricking people into shooting each other with that handgun rather than criticizing it.

You're totally off the topic here. This isn't about microscopic design features of Ripple. He didn't criticize a design feature, make points for and against it, and convince people that the design has a defect that should be changed. He devised a scheme to exploit what he thinks is a defect that hurt real people. (And, by the way, rational people are having that rational argument elsewhere. We're already talking about different design changes to reduce this risk.)

Not at all.  Merely questioning exactly what makes TF's troll a "Luddite attack." 
And i'm not sure i get *your analogy.*  Are you suggesting that if you're going to let people use Ripple you might as well hand them a gun & tell them to shoot each other? :D

He's convincing people to hurt themselves with powerful technology as a way of arguing that people are too dumb to have that technology or the technology is bad because it enables people to hurt themselves. It's completely different from arguing that there should be better safeties or warnings.

For example, consider a hammer. A person can bash their thumb with a hammer. The Luddite argument is that because people can bash their thumb with a hammer, hammers are bad. Or, worse, convincing people to use hammers carelessly so you can show lots of pictures of black and blue thumbs to stop this scourge of evil hammers. It's not at all the same as arguing that because people can bash their thumbs with a hammer, people need to understand how to safely use hammers or that it might be worth investigating whether a hammer can be designed such that it's more difficult to hit your thumb.

No. I'm saying that technical criticism about insufficient safeties or warnings is in a completely different category from tricking people into doing things whose consequences they don't understand and that you know will cause harm.

Basically TradeFortress is saying "HAMMERS ARE SCAMMERS" while telling everyone to hold out their fingers to prove it, and the dozens of newbies out of newbie jail with his paid signatures are repeating it. I really really really wish he'd stick to like 5 logical points and we could even make 5 threads for each one to keep things easy to follow, because Ripple is bigger than OpenCoin and it's much bigger than TradeFortress, and we really all should learn to get along without having to pay the forums for opportunities to libel to hide our ignorance of emerging technologies. The most sickening part is, he's acting the same way everyone in the non-bitcoin world acts about bitcoin and some bitcoiners here are hypocritically supporting it.

"Doesn't follow what I know and am used to? Can't figure out or just don't agree with how it works? SCAM!"

Looks like you paid about $350:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38071.msg1018222#msg1018222
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg360zczsg2012-07-07zeg2012-07-10ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

edit: and you got (correct me if I'm wrong), no more, no less, but exactly what you were to be given for the 50 BTC donation.

No. Everyone who joined his thread was told to, and did extend Ripple trust.  Please don't tell me the same people would just as willingly smash their thumbs with hammers or start blasting each other with guns.  You'll make me lose faith in humanity. :(

1.
Perhaps.  Though TF's argument would be more along these lines:  If you offer a hammer to someone, telling him to bash his thumb with it, which he then proceeds to do with unwarranted abandon, that person is not a carpenter, and thus could only suffer from a hammer.  Something like that, but i'm just guessing.

2.
Wait.  So he shouldn't teach through example & experience, and he shouldn't use pics?  What's he supposed to do?

3.
First, see (1).  Second, why should these innocents, who never asked for a hammer 'till one was shoved in their yet-unbloodied hands, want one?  The were perfectly content with using pushpins & stick-its 'till OpenCoin inc. came along and told them how cool & practical hammers are.  Surprise!


I just don't know how many times i can repeat the same thing:  No it is not.  If the people you speak of could be convinced, en masse, to start bashing their thumbs with the hammers you offer, I'd like to suggest that hammerin' life may not be the life for them.  Please keep them away from hammers, FFS!

edit: matching tags :D

No.  TF hasn't even mentioned hammers.  You're confusing him with JK, who likes the hammer analogy.  Only in his take on things, all the noobs are tripping over each other so they could get more hammers to bash their thumbs with.  Very agreeable bunch.


Not the ripple we're talking about, that bitch is tied right up to Open Coin's hitchin' post.


WUT


Focus!

I think he did a pretty good job of achieving the emboldened.

I pointed out that particular issue ages ago - explaining that just because I (ripple) trust A and B doesn't mean I'm fine with debt from one being exchanged for debt from the other.  That just got ignored - seems his approach had more success in highlighting the issue.

And are you seriously claiming that the ability to ripple debts is a "microscopic design feature" of ripple?  I thought that was pretty much the whole point of it (either that or making profit by selling XRPs).  And the way it currently works is horribly broken.

To take your gun analogy it's as if you'd designed a gun where if you pointed it in the general direction of someone it automatically fired without the trigger needing to be pulled.  And the safety catch was proprietary and not available to the public - only an inner circle got one of those.

Similarly your hammer analogy is incorrect.  You've designed a hammer where it's impossible to hit a nail (maintain extended trust to multiple people) without hitting your fingers (allow equal-value exchange of debt you've accepted even when that debt is NOT of equal value).  It's not about failure to understand how to use the tool - it's that, right now, the tool can't do what it's meant to do safely (If you have unused trust extended then you CAN'T stop it being used in exchange for existing debt you hold).  It's not that you CAN hit your finger - it's that it's impossible to avoid it.

If you're working on a solution to that problem don't fall into the tempting trap of just allowing assignment of value or weight to individual debtors - that would be a more subtly broken solution.  By that I mean a solution where if I trusted A and B and C I could assign a weight of 1 to A and 0.9 to B and 0.01 to C - and any ripples through me would apply the appropriate rates (so someone would have to give me 100 C BTC to get 1 A BTC or 10 B BTC to get 9 A BTC).  It's an obvious way to do it - but wrong.

I like the concept behind ripple.  I'm not so keen on some of the decisions made in your implementation.  Not just technical details like this one but basic things like trying to get sympathy/support by claiming to be open-source whilst not being open-source at all (I assume you realise that a vague promise of becoming open-source at an unspecified time in the future isn't the same thing as being open-source).  Any claims that you are open-source would be lies wouldn't they?

That's fair.
Now can you just comment those simple facts ?

1 - TF wants to prove ripple is a scam platform - which I agree with.
2 - He goes all out on the forum.
3 - Some people still remain dubious.
4 - To prove those dubious people wrong, he decides to make a 'social experiment'
5 - He posts an offer in the newbie section to demonstrate the ripple flaws.
6 - Newbies who might not ever heard of ripple before loose BTC.
7 - Previous dubious people are convinced. But They of course, wouldn't have fallen for TF offer.

TLDR: Randow newbies paid so that TF can prove dubious people who beleived in Ripple wrong.
I sincerly would have no problem if the random newbies were the same as the Ripple defenders.

But they're not.

I agree that what he did was possibly stupid and definitely risked people losing money.

But this thread was accusing him of scamming - which isn't the case.

And the risk already existed - my view is, in part, that it was better he did it WITHOUT trying to scam people than someone did it in a more subtle way causing significant loss.  The issue's been around (and been commented on) since ripple was first promoted in the alt-currencies forum.  There was no sign of any attempt to fix it - or even an acknowledgement that there was a problem.  So I tend to think this episode will end up doing way more good than harm - the good being both a much greater general awareness of the flaw/risk with ripple trust and hopefully a bit more urgency from the ripple team to do something about it.  The bad seems to be a loss of 1 BTC or so plus maybe a further 10 BTC from someone who insisted on losing it to prove a point that we already all knew (point proven - hope it was worth 10 BTC).

That's not comparable at all, it's rather apples and oranges.  You're comparing a Bitcoin third party to Ripple, not Bitcoin to Ripple.  If you were able to show that wealth was lost from the Bitcoin code itself that would be a comparable analogy.  What TF did was entirely within the Ripple system, unless you have an analogy where Bitcoin itself was compromised, your argument falls apart.  

Actually apples and oranges do share similar characteristics. Just saying...

It wasn't entirely within the Ripple system. He approached people outside the Ripple system and used mechanisms outside Ripple to convince them to do things. And it wasn't Ripple itself that was compromised, it was just the accounts of the people who did what he told them to do. He told people to tell Ripple to consider a worthless asset as equal in value to a valuable asset, and Ripple did exactly what they told it to do. He used social engineering to induce people to tell a system to do dumb things, then the system did dumb things, and then he blamed it on the system rather than on himself.

No, the design of the system is bad. If it didn't automatically trade IOUs for you, then nobody would have lost any BTC.Bit stamp.

Sure they would have. If it didn't do it automatically, you would just have had to trick them into enabling it. There's no reason to think that would have been any more difficult than tricking them into trusting you.

Because people fall for "delete wallet.DAT", right?

http://www.hrmorning.com/would-you-trade-your-password-for-a-candy-bar/

Sadly, we see amoral people using zero day exploits to empty people's Bitcoin wallets. Is that a flaw in Bitcoin?

There are two major and fundamnetal flaws in the Ripple system: trust and debt, and those flaws will be exploited endlessly.

These same flaws exist in the conventional financial system. At least in Ripple, you get to choose precisely who you will trust and, by default, trust no one. If you had to make something perfect to make it better, there would never be any progress.

Considering that Ripple is a layer of additional trust and debt over the conventional financial system which is precisely based on trust and debt, it's not strange at all to find much hate for it inside the Bitcoin community.

At the end of the day, Bitcoin was designed to put to an end the need to rely on intrinsecally flawed, trust based systems.

Except you get to choose precisely who you trust. In the conventional financial system, you have no such option and are pretty much stuck with your local currency and your local financial institutions.

Yeah, the problem is how we get from here to there. Ripple is like a bridge in that way. For example, one huge problem is the lack of systems that support hard fiat, particularly in the United States. Ripple can solve that.

More BS from OpenCoin about how ripple "benefits" Bitcoin, more at 11.

I acknowledge you are taking the trust problem to another, "distributed" level, but I see too many negative incentives in extending lines of trust and exploiting its vulnerabilities, and this degrades the economy.

And honestly, introducing your own 100% premined crypto is the cherry on the cake. Sometimes Im amazed to see so many newbies praising Ripple, I wonder if they understood a) which problems Bitcoin was designed to solve and b) why it works.

No - he did NOT tell them to do that.  And they didn't tell  ripple to consider the two as equal in value.

Ripple AUTOMATICALLY considers them as equal in value without any such request being made.  That's the problem - a shame you can't see it or won't accept or won't admit it.  Not only does ripple immediately consider them as being equal in value it also (without being asked to - and with no way to prevent it unless in the inner-circle) allows others to exchange your holdings of one for holdings of the other.

TF didn't explain to users the ramifications of extending trust.  But he didn't tell them to do anything to cause a change in the default behaviour of ripple.  As it stands ripple FORCES worthless BTC-denominated debt to be treated as equal value to redeemable BTC-denominated debt.

Or maybe you'd like to explain how a ripple user COULD extend trust to TF and NOT be forced by the software to accept his debt in return for other BTC debt?

Deprived, whether you like it or not, but it isn't automatic, they actually told Ripple to consider the two as equal in value by trusting TradeFortress.


exactly. He can't. Why should you trust someone for 1 USD if you know he's not going to repay that USD?

Y'all are arguing semantics. The key point here is that, by default (and it's not adjustable in the UI), when you trust two gateways for the same currency, Ripple assumes that means you are willing to trade one for the other. This is broken. If I trust mtgox for 1000 USD and bitstamp for 1000 USD, it doesn't mean I'm willing to trade mtgox USDs for bitstamp USDs at a 1:1 ratio.

The fact that the OpenCoin guys continue to claim this is a good idea demonstrates that they have no idea how risk works.

Why do you think the price of bitcoin over the last couple of weeks between Bitstamp and Mtgox had a multiple-percentage spread? Understand this, and you'll understand why present-day Ripple is broken.

Ripple might still survive and be useful one day, but not until this is fixed.

A good example would be the Brazilian exchange which had a ~25% arbitrage profit. Guess what, 'hacked' a few days later.

qxzn, you're right, but you watch the system from a trader perspective, and, for advanced users, there actually is a way to distinguish between different IOUs and trade them.

But a simply consumer should only be able to pay someone through a gateway (or many) which he believes to be trustworthy.
The problem is that this feature, in my opinion, is a strong point of Ripple, because it allows money to "ripple" through users and find a pathway to anyone you want to give your IOUs, in whatever currency you want.

LOL no, that's not a good feature, there has already being PAGES of discussions on why it's a bad idea.

Let's say a FDIC insured gateway pays 1% APR interest on your fiat. You can't trust anyone else, otherwise you would lose interest as obviously this is worth more than another dollar. Not all debt are equal in value.

Also, what you are saying is a contradiction, if people only trust few gateways the debt will not 'ripple' through the network. That only happens if people trust a lot. So, what do you mean again?

I'm kinda curious what Ripple looks like without this feature. For two reasons. First, the OpenCoin guys don't seem like they get the fact that it's broken.. are they forced to defend it because Ripple is useless without this feature? Second, as a trader I obviously think it would be useful to trade Mtgox USDs for Bitstamp USDs, which doesn't rely on the broken feature. Can I just have that part?

This feature is exactly the whole point of Ripple.  Congrats for missing the core point - that only YOU can ensure that one IOU is one IOU is one IOU, and that the only way to do so is by having nurturing mutual trust, something that you have not shown a willingness to do.

Then RIPple is totally broken. http://polimedia.us/trilema/2013/ripple-the-definitive-discussion/

TF, i thought i was in you ignorelist, and i was pretty proud of it.
By the way, i won't answer your question as you refused to answer mine.

Your logic is flawed, you are obsessed by Ripple, I don't know why and i'm not interested in.

There are a lot of other methods to explain what you think is a problematic feature of Ripple, you could have done it with fake currencies, for example; but you preferred to put at risk the money of people who trusted YOU, not Ripple. Risking theyr money, and reputation of this forum and cryptocurrencies at all.
You really deserve a scam tag and i am very disappointed of the admins, which must be your good friends to let you act like that.

That post is mostly laughable, he does not seem to understand what he's talking about, and even if he does, I think a good case can be made that the flaws he perceives are not so.

For more discussion along those lines, see the posts in:

http://www.reddit.com/r/ripplers/comments/1f4jcy/ripple_the_definitive_discussion/

Posts from two people, yeah.

It's really worthless continuing to have this discussion for you, because you are delusional about Ripple.

There is the problem. You are forced to TRUST another party. Counter-party risk. No thanks.

WE have this with the existing federal reserve system. May as well use that.

Let me be clear on what IS automatic - and shouldn't be.

I trust TF for 100 BTC - NOT automatic.
I trust Bitstamp for 100 BTC - NOT automatic.
Anyone else who trusts both can swap IOUs to me from one of TF/Bitstamp to the other - IS automatic and shouldn't be.


I explained this before.

Even aside from the issue of someone you WON'T repay there's the simple FACT that debts from different sources are often worth different amounts.  That depends not just on the degree of trustworthyness of the debtor - but also (and vitally) on the repayment terms of the IOUS.

Given counterparties who you trust equally, a debt of 1 BTC from one with a promise to redeem on request is, beyond doubt, worth more than a debt of 1 BTC from someone who promises to repay it in a year.  If I accepted IOUs for both debts then I'd (obviously) have built in a bigger markup when accepting the debt from the person who wasn't going to settle for a year.  Issuing a fixed-value IOU in return for a smaller amount of cash NOW is entirely reasonable.

Now ripple does NOT allow attachment of settlement terms to debts.  That leaves two alternatives:

1.  Settlement terms need to be agreed off-ripple.  This is what I assumed to be the case - and is why it is HORRIBLE for debts in the same currency to be considered of equal value.  The settlement terms define the value far more than the face value.
2.  All ripple BTC are to be immediately redeemable for 'real' BTC.  If this was the intent then the system is fucked beyond all belief - as there's not even a token effort to ensure issuers are even aware of that requirement, let alone comply with it.

Believing all debt in the same currency has the same value so long as the issuer intends to repay is just terribly naive and totally ignorant.  That the system not only treats them as equal value but offers no way to do otherwise is a huge flaw (yes - I'm aware there's apparently a way for the inner circle or maybe it's just a planned future way, but in a closed-source project that's not much use to everyone else).

If you believe someone won't repay then their IOUs have the same value as an IOU with no settlement terms : you can have no reasonable expectation of ever being repaid.  The lack of any settlement terms being propagated through ripple is a serious issue if the intent is to ever have debt being widely traded : even if users get the ability to price different debt they'll lack the information needed to do so.  That limits the usefulness of ripple to only debt issued by gateways that pass some quality control - which aside from being a limiting factor also means it has to remain centralised (if every man and his dog can create gateways and issue IOUs with no settlement terms then how do users decide which is trustworthy?).

Why not have different levels of trust? Like say I have Mt.Gox and Bitstamp on my first tier, and I consider those equal value and provide liquidity for them. And then tier two could be my immediate family/friends I trust. And then lower tiers for other more risky people/gateways such as TradeFortress.

Is the system not compatible with this arrangement?

Also, why not reward the people providing liquidity with XRP as a transfer fee to offset some of the risk?

But then liquidity would be lowered on ripple and "it's the core point about ripple" and blah blah.


That's like asking the Federal Reserve to stop printing money for the bankers and actually distribute it to everyday people. Sorry, no, you don't have contacts within opencoin inc.

Sorry to reach back to this old post, but no one answered it yet.

Sure, knowing that Bitcoin is not immune to abuse form amoral immoral hackers could be called a flaw in Bitcoin, just as the possibility of theft is a flaw in paper currency.  A flaw in the sense that its absence would make both products more desirable -- safer & less burdensome to use. 
What it comes down to is a matter of degree, a point where a shortcoming becomes a defining quality.  A point where, in Joe Stalin's words: "Quantity [becomes] a quality all of its own."

Things for me are simple (maybe because my short vision).

Never trust another user in Ripple, even if he is you best friend.

Trust only in trustworthy gateways.

A gateway should trust nobody.

The trusts should be subdivided in:

1 - I trust you to issue IOUs to me (and not the opposite)
2 - I trust you to take my cash and get an IOU issued against you (and just that - if i am a gateway)

The problem with the trust the way it is now is that when you trust someone you are trusting he will not trust anyone that is untrustworthy, directly or indirectly. The untrustworthyness is not just bad faith, but stupidness too. Maybe the trusted person have good intentions but is a terrible administrator, etc.

TradeFortress is not a scammer, he issued his IOUs, thats ripple. IOUs have no maturity date.

Ahaha Joel CherryTruck Insanikatz strikes again.



Because they don't read Trilema (http://polimedia.us/trilema/2013/ripple-the-definitive-discussion/). More importantly, because they can't afford actual consultants and don't have who to give them the quarter to buy a clue with.

So you are parroting everything MP tells you? Or did you look into ripple yourself and have a reason for you opinion?

Both are actually possible inside Ripple ; )
(about the second, if i'm not wrong, the fee is collected in the currency you are trading)

This should teach us something about people who answered you before me?

Even IF you trust two parties the same amount you still should NOT allow their debts to be exchanged without your specific consent.  If you can't see why then you need to consider what the scenarios are where such exchanges would be requested - then realise that some of those scenarios have a cost/risk to you (specifically one where the party requesting the exchange has information you don't).  Which means you need to charge a premium for any exchange that you believe to be of equal value.  Apparently some sort of system to allow this does exist - but as it isn't open-source that can't be verified and it isn't available to the public anyway.  And I wouldn't be surprised if it was flawed (for example by insisting on using the same relative values for trades in both directions).

In fairness to ripple, MP appears to not totally understand ripple.  He seems to be confusing XRP with IOUs/debt on occasion (in the IRC conversation) and also making the mistake many have made of believing if you trust someone and they then trust someone else that causes a problem.  It doesn't - at least not one related to ripple specifically, just the general risk that they lose money to someone else and can't pay their debt to you.  The big problem comes where you trust two different parties and that trust is then treated by ripple as being identical in value and fungible if it has the same denomination.

Specifically this is incorrect:

"Well… that’s not how Ripple works. As long as you trust both Lou Jiwei and some random Chinese dude any people who trust you can trade LJ’s yuans straight for the random dude’s."

The emboldened part should read "any people who trust LJ and hold random dude's yuan can exchange random dude's yuan for any of LJ's yuan that YOU hold".

They don't need to trust you at all - or even know you exist.  And if they do trust you it wouldn't make any difference - as it isn't YOUR (as in ones issued by you) yuan being traded.  They need to hold random dude's yuan (they can have zeroed trust to him) to send you and trust LJ sufficiently to accept whichever of his yuan you hold.  Then they can exchange the junk for good stuff with you - limited by the extent to which you trust random guy.

A lot of people arguing about this don't really understand this - so describe a problem which doesn't actually exist, giving ripple an easy way out (by letting them focus on addressing factually incorrect assertions about how ripple works whilst ignoring the real problem).

The general issues pointed out by MP at the start ARE real problems of course - particularly the whole system being based on a requirement that users willingly accept CP risk (I might not get my money back) and opportunity cost (my money isn't earning anything) without remuneration.  If the software is amended to fix the specific issue discussed in this thread (which effectively blind-sides people into providing general liquifity when they thought they were holding specific debt) then it's hard to see where liquidity will come from - as providing liquidity at significant risk but with no benefit isn't going to appeal to too many people (not ones who still have significant funds that is - the ones willing to do that should mostly have lost their money by now doing the same stupid thing before).

All of that said, if I can figure out some way to pay interest on Ripple I'd seriously considering offering bonds on it.  If there's people willing to provide liquidity for no cost then I'm guessing I wouldn't have to pay a very high rate - making it a cheaper way to fund-raise than I currently use.

No one forces you to trust anyone.  You are grossly mistaken

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1b9k4b/why_arent_we_using_ripple_as_an_exchange_instead/c953blo

Gateways have entities they can trust, such as employees, and true friends will trust eaxhother with trivial amounts ( which do add up in aggregate. )

I woudnt trust a gaeway that trusts someone else.
If your friend needs help, send him money.

You are unjustly paranoid.  People and institutions have other people and institutions that they trust.  Even if most employees do not have access to the cold storage wallet SOMEONE does, and that person the exchange trusts.  The exchange trusts employees to not quit, to not steal from them, to not cause legal problems on their behalf, and so on.   There is no institution that is free from this necessary trust that binds society together.   You'd need a purely virtual exchange to do this and then you wouldn't be dealing with fiat currency at all.


Firstly, who are you to tell the world how to help their friends?  More options for friends to work their finances together isn't necessarily a bad thing.  So it's not your cup of tea, that's OK - you don't have to use it.  But it just works.

Secondly, you don't necessarily know when your friend is going to need it.  Suppose they don't need money 99.99% of the time, is it really worth the effort of their asking you to borrow it when they need it, rather than ahead of time when they don't?

Thridly, since you're effectively creating money when you create ripple connections, this is money that does not really exist in the economy, and as the money supply is increased, the amount of trade that can occur increases, further separating your group of friends, and the entities it is involved with from autarky.. If you only lend money to your friend when he needs it rather than making sure the ripple network routes it appropriately, money can sit more idle than it could given a Ripple network to route it.  It can allow him to be *more productive*, allowing your friend to be better off, which reduces the odds even further of him having to actually use it for something he needs.

Musicgod,

You dont need ripple to help your friends like that. Just give them checks that they can withdraw from your account when they need (its exactly the same concept).

About trusting ( :D :D :D) LOL!!! I mean granting trust in ripple network (giving ripple checks), not the feeling of trust!!!!
LOL!!!!!!!!!!

The problem is that this lets them borrow from you even when it's not convenient for you, it makes it hard to keep track of how much they've borrowed and when they've paid you back, and it makes it hard to set and manage a limit to how much they can borrow. Ripple can knock down a lot of these barriers. But whether that's enough to make social credit work, I don't know. Real social changes will be necessary -- people will have to be more open about their finances and more willing to accept help.

-

Consider a gateway whose primary purpose is to serve merchants. Merchants who accept their balances won't do any business unless their customers can get balances from them. The easiest way for them to get that going is to agree to accept balances from other more established gateways that have a working "cash in from the general public" infrastructure. If customers with balances at other gateways can't pay the merchants, the gateway fails. One way to ensure this is to provide backstop liquidity by trusting other gateways.

Obviously, this has risk associated with it. The gateway would have to carefully weigh the benefits and costs associated with doing this.

Unless arbitragers or market makers come in, a gateway aimed primarily at merchants will have a huge cash imbalance as they pay out to merchants but don't get any cash coming in. Unless they accept balances from other gateways, this imbalance will destroy their business as their customers' customers can't acquire balances to make payments to the gateway's customers.

Maybe, but maintaining the status on those cheques would be a management nightmare with 600 friends.  Ripple makes it easier.

(Also not everyone gets free chequing -- if you trust your friend for 2$ but your cheque costs 2$ to cash...doesn't help you two much)

Also there are things that Ripple can do that are not included with that scenario.

Suppose the Gateway has a physical location, somewhere that they rent, such as the Toronto Startup space company that accepts bitcoin.

They might be interested in being able to pay rent with Ripple, however the Toronto Startup space does not trust them.  They would trust their rental space, and in the event that they managed to use that trust, they would pay a month's rent with it, putting the balance back at 0, perpetually.

In practice this just looks like the customers paying rent for the Gateway, and I've seen something very similar work.

-

More evidence that social media has corrupted the word "friend" until it is almost meaningless. Someone might have 600 acquaintances, but friends?, no. Trusted friends, much less.

Robin Dunbar's wrote the first paper on social group maximums without a hierarchial/authoritiarian structure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

TL;DR
150 friends is the most anyone can reasonably have, and that is exceptional.

Actually that's evidence that you're not using your media efficiently.  600 is a little extreme, but 150 is really low ball these days.  You can be  interacting with people in some way shape or form 24/7 and can know more about the people around you than your ancestors would have thought possible.  Trust has always been a hard nut to crack, but I think that Dunbar's Limit can actually be computed in terms of ripple connections you can honestly maintain in the interests of both parties.  Once Ripple (and other technology) enters into the equation, you can coordinate with much larger groups than had been up until that point reasonable (however still finite).

In practical terms: the person was given some XRP, the person took out some BTC. At some point somewhere there existed a conversion of XRP for BTC, via the IOU system.


This is all that's needed.


Well thank you for that. Passed this along, we all got to enjoy one of those rare "holy shit!" MP faces. Apparently that's what he meant to say. Thanks!


Quoting this mostly so it doesn't get as quickly covered by the prattle of idiocy.

No.

The person wasn't given any XRP.  The only movement of XRP that occurred in the process was the destruction of a tiny amount. 

XRP is entirely seperate to the conversion of debt from one issuer to another (other than some being destroyed during transactions).  The only time XRP gets exchanged for a different currency is if two parties intentionally exchange it - which DOES require both parties to agree to a change in the currency they hold (though they can't necessarily control the issuer from whom the currency comes if they have more than one line of trust open in the currency).

XRP, in general, is seperate from the IOU system - it exists alongside it as an 'actual' currency like Bitcoin.  It's official purpose is to be used to prevent spam by anyone creating a transaction having to destroy some.

BTCs/yuan/USD/whatever in ripple, on the hand, can be created from nothing by anyone (as IOUs) - with ripple treating them as of equal value to ones of the same denomination created by anyone else.

This is a common area of confusion with ripple (IOUs/XRP) - in part because the official function of ripple is rippling IOUs but the only part that works properly/is easily usable is XRPs.  So all the talk/trading is of XRPs despite them being officially just a minor feature to control spamming (in reality the main aim of OpenCoin is to extract value from the 1 billion XRPs they printed - the IOU trading etc is just a necessary evil for them in making the XRPs have some semblance of use/value).

Actually there's two seperate things being discussed in the IRC conversation which MP conflated.

namworld was talking about selling XRPs to someone else.  That has nothing to do with IOUs - XRPs are an alt-currency and there are people who are DELIBERATELY buying them despite them being given away free.  namworld sold his free XRPs to someone for a few BTC - that person wanted to buy XRPs, knew they were buying XRPs and there's no flaw in ripple involved or misunderstanding by either party (of what was being traded).

This topic and the flaws in ripple are entirely seperate and have nothing to do with XRP as a currency in its own right or people voluntarily exchanging BTC for them.

I agree partially. XRP will be part of Opencoin profit. It will be in fact a currency or, if it fails, people will have to buy it from Opencoin to use their system.
But it has its charm. The system depends on the gateways to work, and the liquidity will rise following the number of existing gateways. When there are enough of them people will actually be able to send FIAT currency globally, trough a worldwide compensation system, XRP being or not a currency.

Yes, that is called "Ripple" before OpenCoin Inc bought it and turned it into a venture for their new cryptocurrency. It exists, it works fine, and there's no XRPs or transaction fees.

Apple building iphones and macbooks is just a necessary evil to make APL shares have some semblance of use/value.

But, as you must know, while it works fine it is incomplete and *they are finishing the job*.  XRP, with all its sketchy properties looks like it was the key to their being able to do so.

Except it still doesn't do anything. So yeah, adding a scam to a dysfunctional system resulted in a lot of shills being advanced some quarters and doing their thing, on obscure blogspot blogs and on obscure bitcointalk accounts.

A great success indeed, call the freakshow VCs, the coin* failure shall be nothing compared.

Think you accidentally said the truth there - whilst trying to be sarcastic.

Apple's primary objective is to make profit for their shareholders - building iphones etc is what they do to do that.  Their shares reflect their success in that.

With OpenCoin the value of XRP reflects how well they're doing - as they've defined that as the means by which they'll extract profit from ripple.  Increasing the value of XRP is thus their primary objective (as the means by which they'll make profit).  I have no problem at all with a for-profit organisation trying to make money.  What's unfortunate is that tieing their profit to XRP rather than to the success of ripple itself (and the two are NOT necessarily the same) leads to the situation where the decision of whether to implement a change that makes the platform stronger but lowers the price of XRP becomes a difficult one for them.  

Life would be far simpler if they'd picked a profit-making strategy that rewarded them based on the success of otherwise of ripple (XRP can succeed or fail as a currency in its own right largely independently of how well ripple as a whole succeeds).  But then they wouldn't be able to make a decent profit if ripple itself never really takes off.  So now when deciding how to distribute XRP they can no longer focus on what the most efficient methods are - but have to factor in (to a very significant extent) the likely impact of any particular distribution method on their ability to get cash out of XRP.  That specifically means making distribution inefficient so that some people are forced to buy XRP.  Every legitimate user getting enough free XRP to use ripple would be ideal for ripple - but a total disaster for OpenCoin.  And that's the conflict of interest they've created for themselves.  The distribution of XRP is, in any event. the big unsolved problem with using it as spam-prevention - my money is very much on it mainly stopping legitimate users : attackers have other vectors and those wanting to use transactions for information aren't likely to be priced out of it.

That's a large part of the reason we designed it so that we wouldn't be running it. Ultimately, we think it's adoption of Ripple as a payment network that will drive demand for XRP. We're willing to take the risk that we're wrong on that, as we've taken so many other risks. If we fail because Ripple is successful as a payment network and demand for XRP just doesn't arise, well, of all the many ways we could fail, that's not too bad. Our primary strategy is to remove every possible drag on adoption of Ripple as a payment network and do everything we can to drive adoption.

We don't think so. We think long term that driving adoption is the right strategy both for growth of the payment network and for eventual value for XRP.

We don't care about the value of XRP over that short a term. If people are forced to buy XRP, some people won't adopt Ripple because of that. Our success strategy is exponential growth for many years. Sacrificing growth now for a short term boost in the price of XRP would be foolish.

Joel, what's your position regarding a Ripple clone in which XRP's are 100% distributed, perhaps through a mining-like process?

I guess that could happen as soon as you release the source code, and I assume you have already thought about that possibility.

It seems like an absurd waste of electricity to me. Mining in Bitcoin is essentially paying people to solve the double-spend problem, rewarding them for providing a useful service. Mining in a system that doesn't require proof of work to secure it is pure waste. It is as silly as Opencoin having an XRP giveaway to whoever wastes the most electricity.

And, again, if we fail because we inspire something that people like better, that's probably the best possible way to fail. But I think that's one of the worst ideas for a Ripple spinoff.

I did not say mining - I said a mining-like process. You are going to hold on a high % of the total XRP supply (I've read 20% on some posts, up to 50% on some others). How about a spinoff in which 100% of the Ripples are distributed?

Didn't you think about possible clones that would change only the "premine" thing?

I'm not sure what that would be. If you want me to imagine they come up with some perfect way to do it and then ask me if the perfect way is better, then yes, the imaginary perfect way will be better.

I'm sure there will be such a spinoff, perhaps several. I'm not afraid of competition. We did things the way we did it because we genuinely believed that was the best way. If we were wrong, then the better way will win. I will not be terribly upset if the concept wins even if the company doesn't. There are millions of ways to fail and those are among the best.

If we had been able to think of a better way to do it, we would have done it that better way. If other people can think of a better way than we did, then they deserve to win and we deserve to lose.

I'm serious -- we did things the way we did because that was what we believed was best. Not just for us, for everyone. If we were wrong, then so be it.

Joel,

One source of uncertainty about ripple's future is in XRP concentration, what would give the power over its value to few people, as long as its value will be determined by offer and demand and not by an intrinsic value.

People (including myself) can't resist thinking XRP as a crypto-currency better than credit to use the network. It moves faster than BTC and is apparently safe. If XRP becomes liquid and accepted by real business it will gain currency properties. But, if it happens, can you imagine the fear and uncertainty about holding big amounts of a currency that is 50% held by a private company?

Even if XRP was not planned to be a currency and you intended to sell XRP for those who want to use the ripple network, as a source of revenues, people would turn it into a currency, because it is the fuel for the network.

So, IMO the system will be very useful for all currencies, but the safety for XRP holders and the success for it as a currency is in the hands of Opencoin and depends or its decisions. The more XRP is distributed, the more safe and steady and not subjected to gossip it will be.

Distribution through a mining (or similar) system would be FAR worse than what they're currently doing.  It's about the most inefficient and restrictive way to encourage use.

Ignoring issues with the implementation of things like debt-exchange, the single biggest problem I see ripple facing is the distribution of XRP.  It has to try to solve two diametrically opposed objectives:

1.  Make XRP freely available to legitimate users.
2.  Prevent spammers, hoarders and speculators gaining large quantities of free XRP.

Achieving ONE of those objectives is easy - achieving both VERY hard without making the process of obtaining them prohibitively time-consuming and intrusive.

Mining manages to fail to meet both criteria AND is costly plus slow.  It specifically totally fails on point 1 due to restricting access to only those with appropriate hardware, the willingness to use the mining software AND the readiness to wait until they've successfully mined before using the system.  That would  leave ripple as only usable for 'free' by a small group of people - whilst what (I assume) OpenCoin want is for people unfamiliar with BTC to be able to use it just by signing up with a gateway and getting their handout of XRP (in practice the order may well be reversed - with them getting the free XRP before looking for a gateway).

In short, mining XRP would add complexity, cost and restrictions for no benefit (other than to those who wanted to mine for profit - which there's a never-ending stream of pump and dump altcoins for).

What's wrong with the current XRP system (in my view) is two things:

1.  A lack of clarity on how XRP will be distributed.  This is reminiscent of freicoin and solidcoin with their putative distribution/use of premined coins by some committee with a total lack of detail provided.  This isn't needed just for curiosity - but because without confidence that widespread distribution WILL occur it's hard to see any serious effort/money being put into development of ripple-facing applications.
2.  As mentioned in an earlier post by me, an unnecessary focus on the sale of premined and retained XRP as the source of profit for OpenCoin rather than their reward coming from adoption of ripple itself.  Yes - there's obviously some correlation between the success of the two, but also scope for a conflict of interest.  Whilst OpenCoin will claim (and may well be doing so honestly) that they're not focussed on the sale of XRP at the expense of the 'main' project they've deliberately created that potential conflict of interest.  An alternative approach (simplified) would be to premine, give out ALL the XRP but then have ones that are currently destroyed in transactions instead returned to them as a fee.  Then to make a profit they'd HAVE to get ripple adopted and widely used.

Brilliant, indeed.

An excellent example of what inept execution means.

The more I think about it, the more I come to the realization that this doesn't really solve anything.  Ripple is based on the hope that it will become widely adopted (i.e. enormous growth).  If all of the XRP were distributed, it would still be held by a very small fraction of the populace.  There's a bit more distribution than the current control by one major corporation but in the end, you're still talking about a very small percentage of people controlling the majority share of XRP. 

The better way to do it would be to have a controlled disbursement of XRP, similar to the creation curve in Bitcoin.  Rather than one corporation holding the lion's share of XRP or dumping all XRP to early adopters, XRP gets distributed to the user base over the course of a few decades.  This would encourage acceptance, reward early adopters, and still allow for new users to get their share of the pie.  Unfortunately, this type of distribution does not seem to be possible.  I have a feeling the creators of Ripple did not go down this road because they did not want to be seen as a Bitcoin copycat, but in doing so, I think they created a system that will be very hard for people to adopt as it is abundantly clear that unlike Satoshi, the creators of Ripple wield all of the power.

Except the power weilded by xrp is an insignificant fraction of that weilded by other currency within the ripple network to the point where this power is irrelevant

Irrelevant?  Hardly.  Even OpenCoin would be foolish to agree with you as their whole profitability model is based around the hope that XRP is most definitely relevant.  If you look at the ripple network as a series of moving and interconnected gears, XRP is the grease.  No grease, those gears seize up and nothing moves, that's hardly trivial.

Bull crap. I will defend TradeFortress until I die. Not a scammer. Legit. CoinChat is legit. Inputs.io is legit. Ripple scam is legit. Glados.cc is legit. TradeFortress is legit. 'Nuff said.

BFL is not a scam. They only take years to release miners. It keeps the price from changing dramatically.

You sir, are a moron.

How soon will BFL start doing what they are paid for by their customers has nothing in common with bitcoin price!

Meanwhile the ripple scam is blowing over, and the despicable shill that started this entire thread is much less vocal. So I guess we can forget about this for now, until MrShills find some new shady "business" to push much to the amusement of non noobs.

+1

He's legit? He scams newbies and tells them they will get free 1 btc when they do thing X. They don't get free 1 BTC. Isn't that scamming? + all other stuff that's unreliable BUT could be true. But that ripple stuff is known to have happened.

Is it really so talking can make you non scammer even if you scam?

Also I must add: I really can't take it serious when you first praise TF and then say BFL didn't scam. FYI they lied about shipping times (1 year and counting) and chip efficiency and whatnot.

I agree with Joel here , and lol at the input.io scam so I guess , he went "full retard" after all.

But unfortunately what I would explore Joel is the nature of the society in which we exist, unfortunately thats the one we have to work with,  there is such a "normalization" of debt issuance ingrained in the human society , there is no way that these principles will function because the "person" will always trust.

Thats my bet.

Still standing by this?

 ;D

Actually that's pretty damn coincidental...last online on the 22nd, when was the 'hack' again? I smell sockpuppet.

Should've went with my gut feeling.  ???

Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why o Why did I not read this earlier.

TradeFortress has lied about many many things relating to his services and business practices and has so far taken 100% of CL deposits in excess of 6000 BTC 

Nice spot. I think he might just be a sockpuppet.

Is it possible to give him a posting break for excessive sockpuppeting? I mean come on, Matthew was banned for trolling, please?

I mean scammer or not, he's inciting Drama on a regular basis, and it gets old.

http://www.businessinsider.com/1-million-bitcoin-theft-in-australia-2013-11   Here is a picture of where tradefortress supposedly lives. He better start runnin.

Theymos has got to be in on it, 13 pages and no response. Somehow negative trust feedback on TradFortress's account is being removed.

Perhaps he has been paid by TF.
TF has a GREEN rating...

I think this forum is doomed.

If the owner may be a scammer...

a few of them are not very old even TF himself apparently, and probably most of them have not woken up

it has the hallmarks of many early ebay IP scams where young impressionable broken family kids with access to computers and the net

where used by anonymous older users to partake in theft and id fraud

the concept of cryptocurrencies is solid though which is why the whole show hasn't fallen apart under such extreme pressure

even though most of us are wishing it would so we could add more coin to storage  :D