This is pathetic.  You only posted your "due diligence" after he'd stopped paying.  It's easy to say that something is a scam when they've already stopped paying, and all you did was Google a username.

Hey man, please give me some info:  what other scammers use the same screen name for every forum they go on?  The answer is, there aren't any.  Google would have done nothing in any other circumstances, that's where probability comes in - hence why I called you a "lucky idiot".

Obviously ranlo is much better at doing due diligence than you, because he actually did it on the person and his intentions rather than doing something which people do to feel like they're special.

You're also insulting me for having a signature ad, which you have as well.

I don't need to answer your loaded, retrospect-based bullshit.  You're in bed with scammers.

You're still heavily implying that you believe scammers deserve to keep their money and that they shouldn't be punished.  If that's your way of thinking, why not go and run your own investment scam?

Nice "poll" there.

Right, let me just get this straight.  "Due diligence" means a lot more than Googling his damn username.  It's extremely unusual for a scammer to use the same name on several different forums and you were not intelligent to do so, just extremely lucky.

What due diligence normally means is to evaluate the potential of an available system/business.  People who were scammed here, including ranlo and Slow Death, did this far more than you did and considered how what he was offering was possible as a high-risk investment for at least a while.  You were just a lucky idiot, so don't get cocky.

You also didn't answer my question:  why the fuck do you think that he deserves to keep the money and not the authorities or the victims?  He is the sort of scum that would scam 5 Bitcoin from strangers on the Internet!

Plenty of shady websites, but very few actual users who were there talking to people, explaining their methods in detail, giving additional information etc.
A very similar scammer to djordjamayna had their identity found recently and legal proceedings could go through.
Running Bitcoin services is by no means anonymous if you have several forums showing that user with the same screen name.  If someone dedicated their time, they could find out various details about him and connect the dots.  To be honest, it wouldn't be that hard and someone has already posted his phone number.
Yeah, what was the thread title again?  "Please invest in this Ponzi scheme that I have created as I really enjoy scamming people"?

Even if people were naive to invest in it, why the fuck do you think that he deserves to keep the money and not the authorities or the victims?

"The Chinese" are not one group.  Therefore while a large amount of hashrate is based in China, that doesn't mean that the pools which make up that hashrate necessarily collaborate with each other.

For example, F2Pool's leader Wang Chun conducted a poll and found that a majority of people viewing their Twitter wanted them to signal SegWit, so they decided to do that.

However, Antpool's leader Jihan Wu decided to signal for BU.  So they're in opposition and are definitely not collaborating.

By that logic, no operator of a Ponzi scheme would be punished.  You can argue that a fool and his money are soon parted, but arguing that Ponzi scheme operators should be the people who keep that money would be directly supporting them and their actions.  It should be either the victims or the authorities.

Oh, plenty of people care.  It's just that those people are speculators rather than users.  As with all cryptocurrencies, the key cause for a price hike is just people thinking that in theory it could be more useful - in reality, Litecoin was nowhere near its maximum capacity anyway so LN wouldn't have made transactions as much better as it would make Bitcoin transactions.

The "dump" is just what happens when there's a speculative bubble caused by an excellent fundamental aspect of the currency (in this case, SegWit and LN) which people try to join before the event actually occurs.  When it does occur, people pull out as they expect that the price has peaked.

I have sent the vouch copy recipient BTCForJoe a PM explaining the situation and asking for the e-books.  If I receive them, I will share them privately with other scammed members via PM in order to help recoup losses if needed.  If not, I will PM other vouch copy recipients in an attempt to find what he was selling.

It's not really at the point of locking Bitcoin out of circulation yet.  People who trade and exchange Bitcoin are unlikely to suffer from a fee of around $1.

The only case in which it would be "locked out of circulation" is people who claim trivial amounts from faucets or receive other microtransactions, as the cost of accepting more transactions adds too much to their transaction costs to be used.

It seems extremely unlikely that he actually lost the money in gambling.  Ponzi scheme operators seldom do extremely stupid things like that, as they're clever at manipulating people into giving them money rather than getting manipulated into losing their own.

It could just be an excuse to try and slightly ease the wave of hatred and possibly attempted tracking that could be coming his way.

It's pathetic that Ripple is listed on exchanges, coinmarketcap and other sites as if it's a decentralised cryptocurrency.  Ripple is designed for the bankers and for the greedy developers, which is why they're clearly intending to gradually dump their own coins onto exchanges to make them millions of dollars. 

Banks are unlikely to do business with Ripple, sure, but if they do it'll be a sign of how pathetic some cryptocurrency users are for throwing their money into this centralised garbage.

I PMed ranlo after he invested a large amount.  He called the investment "high risk, high reward" and said "I know the risks here".

I thought the same thing when mettwuerstle invested 0.5 but since djord basically scammed as soon as he received that large investment, I'm assuming that ranlo wasn't in on this.

Probably not.  If anyone could figure out your private key using the username and password of an account, they would have stolen your Bitcoin before you could count to three.

I guess the lesson is, there are only three things which makes a person trustworthy:

-Proven business activity

-Strong government regulation of business

-Pays out more in returns than they receive in deposits (therefore unlikely to be a Ponzi scheme).

No amount of nice words will make an investment safe.

Sorry OP but the clock is ticking.

Tick, tock;  tick, tock...

For as long as ranlo hasn't received his first payment after depositing 3 Bitcoin, I'm skeptical.  Don't break this trust.

No, because they're not sent on the same blockchain.  Even if they're exactly identical to Bitcoin in every way (which some shitcoins are or nearly are) they're not counterfeit Bitcoin, they're just worthless [insert shitcoin here].

And in the case of altcoins which change significant parts of the code, they're even less similar to "counterfeit Bitcoin", as they're not related to Bitcoin but just take inspiration from it instead.

No, that's why the mining system exists - to confirm that the transaction definitely happened with real coins (which by the way are real money as fiat money represents nothing except previously created fiat money, while Bitcoin has a limited supply).  

However, while there can't be counterfeit Bitcoin, it's possible for people to believe that they have received Bitcoin when they haven't.  That's why zero-confirmation transactions are dangerous, because they can be double-spent.  From the receivers' perspective in those situations it could be like they received "counterfeit" Bitcoin, but they wouldn't actually be able to spend it again themselves, thus making it worthless.

I've invested 0.105 more.

ID:  00d7fb2600eead14a84649f6e2a5914d964a22ffcc13fd166af6660f28130eba

Good luck OP.  Please reinvest my profit - I should end up with a 0.591 balance.

Yes.  Any malware, even a keylogger which can't be detected by most antivirus programs, could steal your Bitcoin and Blockchain is notorious for phishing attempts.  You also have to trust various aspects of Blockchain as a third party.  With a TREZOR you can use several different wallets, like Electrum, with it which are all better and sometimes even more convenient than Blockchain with its broken fees.

There are no cases that I know of involving a hardware wallet's funds being stolen.  Without the seed, it's impossible as far as we know.  Even in the case of a 5-dollar wrench attack you can use a decoy passphrase which you remember in addition to the seeds.

A TREZOR is extremely secure, and for current purposes a Ledger is too, although there are elements which are not "ultimate" security, like how they advise you to set it up from a trusted device while TREZOR says that it's safe to set up with a compromised computer.  In nearly all cases and for conventional purposes I would regard them as equal.

"Over time" yes, but the amount of miners that there are will only increase as their revenue does even though they're not needed.  The network is as secure as it's going to get - paying no transaction fee or a token fee for large transactions would be all that we need right now and have done for quite a while.  The fees should definitely not spiral out of control as the network just can't deal with the transactions we want to send.

Come on.  The recommended fee is 480 satoshi/byte.  That's not normal.

The Ripple developers can do whatever the hell they want with that pointless XRP that they're holding.  They could dump huge amounts of it on exchanges to line their fat pockets a bit more.  As well as being centralised and controlled by bankers, that makes it much worse than any of the scam coins that premine 15% and then dump.

The reason that guy's Twitter isn't insanely popular is because he's lying.  If the Ripple organisation dumped all that XRP, the market cap would be next to 0.  The only thing that matters to the market cap is the circulating supply (not that the market cap itself matters anyway).