Bitcoin Forum

Ok so alot of people have been scammed and alot of people worried about getting scammed.

Maybe the way bitcoins keep everything so anonymous isnt such a great idea.

What if someone was to come up with an online service that registers and authenticates bitcoin addresses. Maybe a simular way to how paypal works. By having a huge database of registered addresses where the owners geographical address and contact details are verified. Maybe even a feedback system where users can report good experiences with users.

That way people would know only to do business with people who are registered and verified, with a good feedback history.

It would probally require a small fee for every setup for the cost of sending a registration code via post.

opinions?

So you are building a reputation.  That won't stop the scamming - just delay it.  There comes a point where the amount one can scam is worth more than one's online reputation.  Look at mybitcoin for an example.

Ok, possibly like a credit limit sort of system like real banks use.

The only other way i can see is add a middle man company to do the exchange. one sends the coins, the other sends the goods, and the exchange is carried out like that

There needs to be an option when sending coins that isn't anonymous.  The biggest reason for the volatility is that it's to anonymous.  If I got ripped off my only recourse is to go crying on the boards and let everyone
know there a scammer.  If novice's  come to the boards and they see "beware of scammers" or "I just lost all my bitcoins to..."  They'll think twice and more then likely steer clear.  If the mybitcon and MTgox scandle happened before I got into bitcoin, I defiantly would have put a lot more thought into trying it out.

Regulators would have a harder time legalizing bitcoin if it weren't so anonymous.  Yes I know that the U.S. constitution prohibits congress from regulating bitcoin, but what about other country.  Not only that, but congress can change the constitution, it they want.  The more people that adopt bitcoin the better chance that wont happen.

How I see any government toppling bitcoin is to try and put regulations on it, witch in turn will make people reconsider bitcoin as an investment. People that have large amounts of money invested in bitcoin will start to sell.  The more people that dump large chunks of bitcoins will cos destabilization.  

That is not the right way to go about such a tracking system.

The right way is to flag addresses as bad, then automatically track them as they branch out into thousands of addresses (attempted laundering) and make such a database easy to query so mtgox or other exchanges could refuse to pay out such addresses.

Of course it will still get into the hands of people who dont know about the blacklisting system and then they would get screwed... Also people would mark addresses as blacklisted just to be dicks,


No way to win really.

But then if they transfer the money to someone innocent then their address will get flagged