I know we went through this back in 2010 in depth and no one learned anything from the experience (apparently), but do people here even know what the word "scam" means?

I'm on a forum where you can pay to change the tag of anyone else for shits and giggles. It doesn't bother me in the slightest that Theymos' personal opinion is displayed on my account.

Another month old account with a passionate opinion. Okay, so you think this forum should only be able to communicate about bitcoin? Then why do we let alt currencies, namecoin, bitcoin  exchanges, open transactions, colored coins, etc be discussed?

Be careful! You're being rational and that's dangerous around here with all the cultists.


It's funny you say that, because when I see a cultist leader in bitcoin preaching about how it will crush Japan like Godzilla, fly faster than a speeding bullet and be able to destroy governments, I wonder if they're just saying what hopeful idiots want to hear while they laugh at how much money they're making as cult leaders.

(I mean, come on, isn't it odd how we have a meme called "Bitcoiners not affected" and yet we still use centralized exchanges that can bring bitcoin to a halt for a day, disturbing business and livelihood of people from a simple DDoS?)

There are much richer people who are more anonymous who have wasted more money on seemingly dumber things. That is a logical fallacy (fallacious appeal to possibility).

First thing that came to mind.

https://blockchain.info/api/api_receive


Did someone create a forwarding address and you're using that address as your main wallet?

Couldn't agree with your points more. It seems these points would be obvious enough to anyone who thinks this way to simply not use Ripple until they resolve these issues. What the manipulation attempts then? Is it just a product of a group of angst-ridden teenagers who got rich from bitcoin?

Well, despite only being here 3 weeks and having already formed a serious (and unfoundable) opinion of Ripple, I won't assume you're a sockpuppet and will instead happily assume you are just an average joe with your own opinion.

On that note:

You've been saying Ripple is a scam for the whole 3 weeks duration of your completely anonymous account?

Just checked the site out for the first time ever. If it actually works and reports accurately, this is awesome and a much needed equalizer to stabilize things.

Has the wording changed since "The Founder" sold it? His name alone should clue you in to his ambiguous, exaggerating and sometimes scammy tone if you hadn't already read his posts. I wouldn't be surprised if that was all still there from when he wrote it.

Yep, that's really far. I made this exact thread as a joke in Off-topic. (it's actually a repeat of my post in a different thread). It's interesting you read so much into it, but that's what got people in trouble the past few years too-- reading too much into the things I do. 

You make some good points, I wasn't intending to be serious with this thread but I suppose I was strictly referring to the over saturation of "same" businesses (t-shirts, million bitcoin pages, chain games, ponzis, mining contracts, "investments", etc)

I've never worked as a reporter. I'm not sure where you heard that. I am a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine though.

As for the claims in this thread, No one said TradeFortress messaged GoWest directly. The claim is that TradeFortress was offering others that much to change their posts(something he hasn't bothered to deny).

As for TradeFortress spending money to spread his opinion of Ripple, that's public knowledge. See the "forum advertisement" auction threads from Theymos.

No one is attacking TradeFortress (I happen to appreciate his talents and current projects), what is being discussed is the unethical and extensive efforts to discredit a project that should otherwise just be ignored. Ripple is as much of a "scam" as bitcoin is (neither one is a scam), but Ripple (the current implementation) is understandably not what many politically idealed bitcoiners would want to follow until it is open sourced and its basic problems are resolved.

The point is that there is something shady going on. If TradeFortress has never paid anyone to post bad things about Ripple, he should be here stating exactly that, and leading the conclusion that someone rich is trying to frame him.

Bitstamp is an exchange, not a coin. Its discussion doesn't belong on this forum.
Avalon is a company that sells chips and mining rigs, not a coin. Its discussion doesn't belong on this forum. 

Link? I'm interested in getting to the bottom of this (as I'm sure every newbie here is too), but statements like yours that can shed light on parties should not be made without references, lest they are intended to continue making the anti-Ripple campaign look like shilled sabotage.

When the criticisms revolved around Ripple being closed source, simply ignoring it until it's open sourced would suffice imo.
When the criticisms are about XRP's value being "pumped", the same arguments apply to Bitcoin and any fork of it. the same argument applies to any world currency or exchange in the world. OpenCoin is a for-profit company. That in and if itself does not qualify them as a scam.
When the criticisms are that it's a "scam" by people scamming others into agreeing to raise their credit for them (TradeFortress), it kind of makes every legitimate argument against Ripple look like (poorly) attempted sabotage.

I'm not huge on Ripple and am skeptical of its future, I talked to Arthur Britto on Skype quite a lot about Ripple and its direction back in the day, and I was building a Ripple network with Vladimir Marchenko and Mihai Alisie even before OpenCoin was formed. That doesn't mean that I'm confident it will work the way they're implenting it though (it's all just an experimental project, as is Bitcoin), a lot has changed in the past year and OpenCoin is showing the rest of us what does and does not work socially. I am interested in Open Transactions and Ripple for the future though and anything that shows hope of allowing exchange should be looked into seriously.

Despite not being huge on Ripple though, I am huge on transparency, anti-sockpuppetry and cutting through the endless power/money grabs in the bitcoin community.

• I am disgusted by MtGox for locking accounts and holding people's funds claiming AML, yet not following other basic legal requirements when it's inconvenient for them. What will they do with Bitcoinica funds? Where does that money go that they refuse to talk about in public?
• I am disgusted by AurumXChange seizing Bitcoinica funds on their own whim and breaking their own privacy agreements publicly posting information about one of their customers. Where are those funds too?
• I am disgusted by BitcoinStore publicly threatening one of their customers over a couple of dollars.
• I am disgusted by Bitcoincard for claiming they'd be "empowering the community and then disappearing completely (where's the card, guys?).
• I am disgusted by BFL for lying repeatedly about "2 weeks", for a year now.
• I am disgusted by BitInstant for barely ever being "instant", telling others in the community to be "more professional" all while publicly supporting blackmail against a government figure and releasing news of a debit card that *still* is just vaporware.

I'm sick of cultism in bitcoin where people are so easily manipulated, constantly following a leader for "political" reasons ("Let's buy things at bitcoinstore, a private for-profit company, because it is good for Bitcoin!") and ignoring the obvious manipulation and corruption right in front of them. That's why even though I have my own academic beef with Ripple and am watching them closely, this anti-Ripple campaign to me seems like a power grab in itself-- a bitcoin power grab, something desperate people do when they're scared their own project currency can't stand on its own two legs against anything else.

I'm confident that's not the case, but people like TradeFortress blur that point for others I'm sure and he's becoming disgusting as a result. Bottom line: you don't become better than the poop by touching the poop.

From what I can understand, bitcoin is more akin to a commodity and is insanely inefficient as a currency to use, obtain and maintain. What started out as a project with the intention to trade value freely has been affected by its own inherent deflationary nature and caused massive hoarding by the free market. The free market has deemed bitcoin to be more of a *highly traded* commodity than a currency.

Ripple (the old one) is an interesting concept. Open Transactions is also an interesting concept. Both of them revolve around the trading of funds (bitcoins, dollars, whatever) and are basically accounting systems. Neither one is a currency. That said, the *new* Ripple has a currency inside of it native to the application itself. This will make its developers rich. You should care about Ripple because it allows you and I to make a trade where I only have USD and you only have BTC, yet we are still able to trade abstract values. You should also care about OpenCoin's Ripple because it is a reminder of why things in an open source community should never be released closed-source (marketing suicide).

Try not to make any judgements on it at the moment though, as both Open Transactions and Ripple are infant projects in their current states and, just like Bitcoin, needs many more years of adoption, changes, and consensus before any fair assessment can be made.

He actually posted it as an article on his site too, apparently. I don't read his blog though so I found it by scrolling through the thread's first page.

I know nothing about the site in question, but common sense would tell you that a there is foul play for any website purporting to provide information on something mathematically verifiable, that when independently verified doesn't match, unless a major site error or updating is done manually (ridiculous notion).

EDIT: Okay, so they manually update something that is automatically provided as a service for others to automatically update from.