Only trusting a gateway is what Ripple developers have been encouraging.

You're like a troll that just spews the same crap over and over again to hear their own voice.
You remind me of the moon hoaxers, the anti-evolutionists, the anti-vaccinist, etc.

You either love spreading misinformation or you just don't get basic concepts.  I'm not replying for you, because you've convinced me that you have a huge cognitive bias against Ripple. Someone can't be reasoned out of a view they did not reach with reason. I'm replying for others reading that may be reasonable.

What thread is that? I read every post on there and the only ones about this don't say anything like that. Because it can't happen.

That's not what you said. You said (emphasis yours):
Affected is not the same as getting TradeFortress IOUs. Only people that are foolish enough to directly extend trust to TradeFortress can ever get any of his IOUs. Others can only be affected if all the parties in between turn out to be untrustworthy or bad credit risks. The effects of TradeFortress' "experiment" to those that didn't trust him has been zero (other than being exposed to his misinformation).

Although a payment path could go through TradeFortress along a long path (not currently; the TF trusting network of newbs is almost completely self contained) only those that directly trust TradeFortress get his IOUs. Other people may get IOUs of their own directly trusted connections. Either these people made a reasonable choice in extending trust to a trustworthy person/gateway that will honour it; or they made a bad choice and extended trust to someone that will betray that trust.

This is a point that TradeFortress (and others) keep bringing up in various ways even after it's been explained and refuted again and again. It's clear that TradeFortress just doesn't care about reality and facts (or lives in his own imaginary world with his own imaginary facts). He (and others) have repeated claimed that trust chains fail through the entire chain. E.g. if Alice violates the trust Bob placed in her that Bob can and should therefore violate the trust that Charlie placed in him. That's the only way such effects can chain through trust relations. The world doesn't work like that. Trust doesn't work like that.

When this is pointed out, I've seen people fall back from saying that Charlie is effected by Bob being untrustworthy to then claiming that Charlie is effected because Bob now doesn't have the money to pay Charlie (due to be scammed by Alice). How is this different than the real world? It's not. If Charlie has trusted Bob for more than Bob can get (without relying on Alice) then Charlie has made a bad choice or needs to wait to be repaid. E.g. if Alice is a con-woman that cons Bob out of his money while he's on his way to pay back Charlie then Charlie doesn't automatically forgive the debt. Either Charlie gives Bob more time to repay or Charlie realizes he made a bad choice trusting Bob to not get conned or to be reliably pay his debts.

Unlike with banks or with bitcoin exchanges where you implicitly trust them by using with them; in Ripple you explicitly state who you trust and exactly for how much. If a person doesn't like the idea of debt or inter-personal IOUs then no one is forcing them to use them with Ripple. A person can fully use Ripple only ever trusting a single gateway the same way they trust a bitcoin exchange. Including, if they want, (as some have suggested) only leaving their funds in Ripple as long as they need to use the service (for conversion or for making/receiving payments). If someone thinks that's still bad then I hope they speak out just as loudly against all the bitcoin exchanges that are giving people internal IOUs for their USD and BTC deposits (and in many cases those IOUs are not transferable).

In relation to people being hypocritical regarding Ripple, I also find it strange/amusing/sad that I see TradeFortress being defending as not meeting the Bitcointalk's strict definitions of a "scammer" by carefully looking at his exact words to note that he never explicitly claimed to be making a promise/guarantee that he then violated and yet many of these same people loudly scream "scam" on these forums at anything related to Ripple without ever pointing to something exact and specific that OpenCoin promised/guaranteed and then violated. There is a reason the OpenCoin (and JoelKatz, etc) account doesn't have a scammer tag. It's also amusing/sad that some claim that anyone that tries to explain the reality and facts of Ripple or promote it must be a paid shill.

This whole anti-Ripple "movement" is one giant example of logical fallacies, faulty reasoning, cognitive biases, and who knows what else. A physiologist would have a field day examining this.

Except that the actual vandalism/damage to the Ripple system was non-existant. If someone cons a bunch of newbs into publishing their bitcoin secret keys that doesn't damage bitcoin or cryptography or prove any big flaw in either; it just shows newbs (and others) are gullible and can be conned. The only real damage (beyond those conned) is the misinformation. He (and others) are just using this as an excuse to spread more misinformation like this statement:

Which is completely and utterly false. Ripple only gives you balances from people you directly trust. He's either purposely lying/exaggerating or he completely doesn't understand Ripple.

Although I think what TradeFortress did was very dishonest, predatory, and manipulative I think it's worth pointing out the sum total effect on Ripple of his "experiment".

Some people are claiming this indicates some kind of major flaw in Ripple or that there are now "counterfeit" BTC or some other disastrous result. The reality is bit different.

In reality only those foolish enough to trust TradeFortress "risked" anything. Of those, only one single account had anything other than dust amounts of BTC/Bitstamp traded out of their accounts. That one account had a 1.0 BTC/Bitstamp balance before they trusted TradeFortress and now has a 1.0 BTC/TradeFortress balance instead. This is exactly what that person told Ripple he was willing to have. He's trusting TradeFortress to hold his BTC for him.

The other result is that now there is a pool of people that are willing send payments around to each other in BTC/TradeFortress. If someone wants to trust BTC/TradeFortress to join this pool they can. This effects the rest of the Ripple network and Ripple users not at all.

The warnings posted were not about any issue with Ripple, but about informing new users that might otherwise be fooled, that extending trust means that you trust the person and that people can abuse that trust.


Some people see a screen shot showing an account with a 1,000,000 BTC balance and get excited/upset/whatever. Why? If I presented a photo of an official document from Bob's Credit Union that says my account there has 1,000,000,000,000 USD would that get you excited/upset/whatever? People would be foolish to deal with me or Bob's Credit Union based on that document just as they're foolish to trust and deal with TradeFortress on Ripple.


There have been a few analogies used that might help to put this into perspective or to make it clear to people what is/was going on here. There are a number of people attempting to spread misleading information or cloud the issue. The solution to bad information is good information. Consider the following:
(follow the links to see the context or rest of their posts, my apologies if I mistakenly take someone out of context or include a quote of someone here that would rather I didn't)

(I included slothbag's quote embeded within another because the orginal post, along with a number of others, was deleted)

What would you think of someone if back when bitcoin was starting out, they had asked new bitcoiners to post their bitcoin private keys in exchange for a small payment or trade and if that same someone knew full well what the consequences of posting private keys would be? Would you excuse it as long as the person claimed to not use the secret keys themselves? Would you think it somehow showed a fundamental problem with bitcoin or with cryptography in general? Would you think it shows that some people are nieve and trust people with things that they don't understand?

Another analogy that I can't find (I think the post was deleted) was made by themusicgod1. It was something like: imagine "Bob's Credit Services" offering you a credit card with $100 worth of FREE credit on it under the conditiion that you accept Bob's Credit Cards for upto $10,000. The small print is that Bob's Credit Cards are only accepted by others that also take this offer.


Some other points worth highlighting:

That's as stupid as asking someone what the serial numbers on the dollar bills they lost were when someone loses money with a credit card or a bank card or a cheque or something. Do you think the police ask that and then say "well geez no `money` was stolen then sorry".

No we don't. We have a small network of newbs (plus a scammer or three) that have a mostly closed trust network with very little liquidity to someone trustworthy..

Read further. One person that put his misplaced trust in  TradeFortress is out 1 BTC from Bitstamp.

No he hasn't.
It's not fake BTC.

He conned a bunch of newbies into trusting him for 100 BTC with the promise of "1 free Ripple BTC". He gave a pretty picture so that the newbies without a clue could follow his misguided instructions.

Those users have placed a trust in TradeFortress that he is good for 100 BTC when of course he has absolutly no intention of doing so. His goal is to let others use Ripples liquidity features to take the gateway BTC of any newb that has any. One person had 1 BTC/Bitstamp taken out of his account in exchange for 1 BTC/TradeFortress (because that's what TradeFortress knowingly conned the nebie into telling Ripple it was okay to do).

No he hasn't.
It's not fake BTC.

He conned a bunch of newbies into trusting him for 100 BTC with the promise of "1 free Ripple BTC". He gave a pretty picture so that the newbies without a clue could follow his misguided instructions.

Those users have placed a trust in TradeFortress that he is good for 100 BTC when of course he has absolutly no intention of doing so. His goal is to let others use Ripples liquidity features to take the gateway BTC of any newb that has any. One person had 1 BTC/Bitstamp taken out of his account in exchange for 1 BTC/TradeFortress (because that's what TradeFortress knowingly conned the nebie into telling Ripple it was okay to do).

The only way this can happen is if User 2 *also trusts* TradeFortress. If not there will either be no payment path or the path will go through someone that trusts TradeFortress.

See https://ripple.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2552 which points out the bitcointalk.org users that are extracting BTC to Bitstamp.

See https://ripple.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2552
Users ironcross360 and MyZhre/Andj are actively making BTC payments through these IOUs to Bitstamp for withdrawal.

You don't have to leave anything. Just reset the trust line to zero since he clearly deserves zero trust in Ripple. That's all that is needed to keep BTC from TF screwing with your other BTC.

You can either keep the (near) useless BTC IOU or if you'd prefer to clear it out (since Ripple will only let you use/send it to others that have mistakenly trusted TF) you can just send the exact amount back to the source account after having zero'd the trust. BTW, that's what is required to lower your XRP reserves from the trust line; the reserves are only released when the trust is set to zero and the balance is <= 0.

Those taking TF's offer are basically giving the network* a blank 100 BTC cheque in exchange for a 1 BTC cheque that TF never really says if he'll ever honour. Since he's said repeated that he thinks IOUs in general are worthless ...

*the network of those holding TF's BTC IOUs

BULLSHIT!

This is what that paragraph in the e-mail actually said:

Thereafter, we will start a Developer XRP Giveaway. This giveaway will be designed specifically for software developers with the goal of introducing the Ripple protocol to them. If you are a coder interested in our developer programs, we recommend you subscribe to our developer email list ([link]) and follow us on Github ([link]) .                                                  

Post the ripple address that got this supposed giveaway.

It looks more like you're spreading bullshit in a lame attempt to make the price drop.

The topic you link to isn't a giveaway it's a scam. Anyone that follows the instructions in that post is telling Ripple that that account can take up-to 100 BTC from them. Further, anyone else that follows the instructions can take up-to 1 BTC from them. TradeFortress is likely miss-leading people on purpose to later claim it's a problem with Ripple.

More ridiculous fear mongering and FUD from you.
They can no more seize Ripple then they can Bitcoin.

At least one developer has a clause in their contract that the full source code can be released if anything should happen to OpenCoin. Since several developers and other parties currently have the source code outside of OpenCoin (presumably under NDA right now), it's almost certain that the source would appear shortly after any such shutdown attempt and that new rippled servers would pop up quickly. It'd be messy no doubt but not what you'd like to have people believe.

Typical gateway accounts always have nothing but negative balances because they typically extend no trust. For every (non-XRP) positive balance in Ripple there is a matching negative balance somewhere else.

Classic.ripplepay.com did/does not have gateways, only interpersonal trust lines. The easiest would be to contact one or more of your ripplepay contacts that owe you bitcoin (or one of their contacts) and ask them to send you bitcoin in exchange for a ripplepay payment. Depending on your connections you may be able to zero your balance with only a single transaction even if you have multiple trust line balances.

Another option would be to use the services of Ripple Union, however, they usually only deal in CAD.