Greed has been a motivator for most of the bad things you are seeing in this scene. The Ponzi/HYIP's / Scams / Fake Hack reports and much more. Bitcoin is a relative new technology and people will be skeptic at first and once they see some potential, they would start poking holes in it, to see if they can somehow utilize it to make some quick profits.

Like with the old Gold Rush, some people came in early and they took some fairly high risks and got huge profits. They found the biggest nuggets and picked them off the ground. The people who came in late, had to invest in expensive mining equipment to get to the fine gold.

There are some jealousy with the people, who missed out on the first <Gold Rush> and these people will attack the integrity of the technology, because it will be the only way for them to vent their anger.     

Let us not hijack the thread with discussions on the technological merit of the different proposals, but rather stick to the allegations that was made against the people that are behind that proposals. OP wants us to look at the people backing these proposals and what their motives could be, if they received that position and power.

I would like to see more debate going on about the background and history of these people and if they could be a threat to the technology, if their only reason for supporting it, would be to exploit it later.    

Well, I checked it against this list http://www.badbitcoin.org/thebadlist/index.htm#Crypto and it is not on there, but that might only be because it is new or someone has not reported it as a scam. I will be cautious for now, and only deposit very small amounts, just to test them for now.

If you look at that site, you will see a lot of scam sites using a very similar naming convention, and that already raise the red flag for me, even though this reason is quite stupid, but not uncommon.   

Let us put it this way, If you had zero other options and free electricity the faucet route would be your third option to make some money. You can spend your time more constructively, if you took up a second job and invested that income into buying more bitcoins or you could signup for a signature campaign and get some more income.

I experimented with faucets when I first saw them a few years ago, and I built up a huge referral network. Now I receive referral income weekly from people who use these faucets and I am doing nothing. So this was a Win-Win relationship for me. ^smile^

Most people do not have a Xapo wallet, so their comments will be uninformed. If both parties in a transaction have a Xapo wallet, the transfer of any amount between them <off-chain> will be free. This is why most faucet operators use this wallet, because it is the ideal solution for micro payments.

They have a debit card option too, which gives them a bit of a edge over other wallet providers. The security is also very good, but I would still suggest someone to invest in a hardware wallet for bigger amounts of bitcoins.  

When you look at debt statistics over 224 years, you will have to look at other statistics too. For example the historical inflation rate for the same period. http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/HistoricalInflation.aspx The money 224 years ago, buy much less than what the currency <Dollar> is worth today.

You also have to take the US population growth into consideration. The more people you have, the more resources you will need. <Higher unemployment = higher social responsibilities and funding>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States

This will spiral down uncontrolled, if some of these other issues are not addressed. ^hmmmmm^

Some things I also picked up over time :

_ Some malware will get between your copy & paste routine, when you send coins to your paper wallet and they would replace whatever you pasted, with their address. So just check the address to make sure it is your paper wallet address, before you click send.

_The safest way to create these paper wallets, is to keep the device you used to create it offline. Nobody can get cached or logged information from a device that does not go online again. <Not always possible, but it is the safest option.

Good luck, it is a step in the right direction.

They do not want to control free men, they want to control their money. The power and the manipulation of currencies are inherent to any government. Some do this to keep people in power and others do it to stimulate growth. If your economic survival as a country are reliant on a stronger currency, you will take measures to protect it.

A lot of people think crypto currencies will threaten these control measures, but if it is properly regulated, it might even improve these controls. <Every transaction can be traced, if the users of these technologies are identified>   

You might be off with 1 year, with that prediction. These banks are already in the final stages of development for their <private ledgers> and they will go live within this year. I think Citibank were the first bank, who deployed some sort of Bitcoin based technology.

The regulation are always behind innovation and will come into full swing within say the next two years. By this time the mechanisms to influence decision makers will also be working hard to push their technology and stopping other similar technologies.

You might think you are hedging your bests as you placed it, but many of these Alt coins are mostly pump and dumps and you have a high chance of losing even more, if you chose one of these coins. The failure rate of many of these coins are relatively high, compared to Bitcoin that has been around for years.

Diversifying is a good thing, if you know what you doing. You can do a lot of harm, if you not going to do your homework.

This does not make sense at all. If you cannot afford something, you do not go out to the shops and steal it. It is a criminal offense and you will be fined or jailed for that. These services are the vehicle  for criminal actions and they will be targeted by the authorities.

What will happen if everyone starts downloading copyrighted content from the internet and this industry collapse, due to financial problems? It also has a ripple affect, because legal providers of these products like Netflix or video shops have to close their doors too.

If you cannot afford it, do not steal it. ^hmmmm^ 

We already got rid of the potential benevolent dictatorship, with the departure of Mike Hearn. The immediate threat have been dealt with. If the development team turns into a <Communist> system, like the OP defined it, we will deal with that too.

The developers work for the community and to improve the technology based on the needs of the community. If they do not address those needs, other developers are free to bring their proposals and the community will decide, if the proposal is good enough to replace the current developers.

This has been blown out of portion for no reason. Any forum on the internet has rules and you are informed about this in advance. One of the rules on \r\Bitcoin on Reddit says specifically, NO Alt coin promotion will be tolerated. Until one of these forks replace Bitcoin, it is deemed to be a Alt coin.

We are free to join any other forum, where Alt coin talks are tolerated or to create our own forums for these discussion, like Roger Ver and those guys did. If XT or Classic or any other BIP proposal is correctly defined as a Alt coin, we would never know, because it is open for interpretation.

The fact of the matter is, the moderators of these platforms has decided that these discussions are Alt coin based, and should not be allowed on a platform that were meant for Bitcoin discussions. 

I think people are jumping to their own conclusions, because some banks in Australia has already been taken to court for the same thing. <Anti-competitive practices> They will still do this, but they will be more creative. If these Bitcoiners give them the slightest opportunity, they will jump at it.

These people did not get where they are today, because they followed all the rules. In 2008 we saw how they nearly destroyed the economy, with their scrupulous lending practices and fractional reserve.   

Loads of new cars out there are driven with manufacturer problems and people do not even know it. As soon as these things are reported, it gets investigated and if it was attributed to the car, the manufacturer will recall the cars to be re-fitted with a replacement part. These things just happen.

It could also have been a problem with the charging station and not the car. 

Hey, like it or not, some regulation and monitoring will happen and we should just accept it. The governments has a obligation to protect their citizens against terrorists and/or consumer protection against fraud and scams. So I agree with their views on that.

The positive thing about this is, the door was left open for discussion and further investigation. They could have just closed the door and forced the current financial systems down on us and they did not do that. Let's just enjoy the small steps we are taking towards a better Bitcoin future. 

Just use a off-chain solution like Xapo with instant transaction confirmation. You get people to sign up for a Xapo account and then have them use their Xapo debit card to pay for the stuff they want to purchase from these vending machines.

Once this takes off, Xapo could form a partnership with these vending manufacturers and arrange for discounts on fees for these micro transactions. At this stage all in card spending <off-chain> is free. Correct me if I am wrong.

The best we can do for now, until some sort of verification service can be developed to help identify legitimate businesses, would be to visit this site and to see if it is on the bad list. http://www.badbitcoin.org/

Someone or a group of people with a good reputation and standing in the community should create a site, listing the legitimate businesses. I know this will be a bit controversial, but it could serve as a guideline to help people to use more trustworthy services. 

He would not have been influenced by personal gain for one thing. He will also not worry about not having enough experience to do a hard fork, if it was needed. He will also not allow for a <hostile takeover> or a power grab. His objectives and his goals was centered around the improvement of the technology.

The developers working on BIP proposals now, seems to concentrate on their own personal gain <monetary or power>

What would be interesting, is if the Chinese government force all Chinese mining farms to mine their own coin and not Bitcoin. It would effectively take away 50% to 60% of the Bitcoin hash power. A lot of these operations can be moved out of the country if that happens, but it will be more expensive to do that, because electricity is subsidized in China.

Now that is a scary thought. Then again difficulty would drop and we would possibly be able to mine with GPU's again.