I would run the other way looking at the media attention right now and the contents of this forum:
There's only 2 sane approaches here:
1 - Encourage the spread of bad news about other payment approaches and get bitcoin mentioned as an alternative
2 - Reduce the bad news in the first place - this one is going to be essentially impossible to do perfectly with something decentralised like bitcoin - anyone can setup a scam and they'll always have willing victims
WHAHAHAHAHAHAHASo bitcoin has serious scamming problems because scamming is so easy and you deal with it as if its an image problem? And your solution is propaganda? LOL at fixing bitcoin like this. FYI, the problem bitcoin is facing is that noone has a stick to hit with when their coins get scammed out of their pockets. You'd need to go USSR on the media to propagandize that away... If you look at point 2 - we have an image problem DUE TO the amount of scams, I was saying we should focus on trying to make scams more difficult. |
|
|
|
Awhile back, Groupon had a contest and customer who lived off of nothing but Groupon for an entire year. He went around the country using different groupons and when he couldn't use them he relied on the groupon fans for help.
I think if the bitcoin community did something like this it would bring much needed good publicity and public awareness to bitcoins. I also think we'd see a rise in bitcoin worth, and with more people hopefully more stability?
Do you think the community is established enough for one person to succesfully live off of only spending bitcoins? Either staying in one place or traveling across the country/world using only things purchased with actual bitcoins?
What are everyones thoughts on this?
Honestly I think you'd starve. But that would be PR in and of itself. :-) I know where to buy MREs for bitcoin, and MREs are awesome |
|
|
|
How about creating a forum for accusations, investigations and Bitcoin problems in general and let people blow off steam in there?
Keep the main forum problem free and let people take their problems in a forum that is only for registered Bitcointalk.org users? It seems our little tiny community is suffering more and more from "family" problems than as much outsider problems. Nobody as you said can really relate to Bitcoin if they havent gotten the slightest clue about it to begin with, thus removing these VERY LONG and tiresome debates to another forum is a great way to let the public approach to Bitcoin with a positive view, in its first instance.
EDIT: I myself have given up looking at the negative threads. The problems seem to be convoluted and reminds me of a board for teens accusing each other of being bad. Keep the main forum clean, professional and positive.
That might help some, but we also need to handle the wider PR issues outside of the community and the underlying ease with which scams occur. |
|
|
|
I would run the other way looking at the media attention right now and the contents of this forum:  Anyone else find this really sad? We've got an awesome piece of technology that's secure and reliable, and a huge pile of scammers and unreliable fools - what can be done to address this? More and more, bitcoin is being viewed by the general public as insecure, that is bitcoin itself - the masses can't tell the difference, and there's various psychological reasons as to why this is. If people hear a negative fact from some random source and forget the source, they assign a greater likelihood of that source being correct (this is known as source amnesia confabulation), and on top of that there's also a known bias in the media for bad news (good news doesn't sell well compared to bad news - bad news spreads further). There's only 2 sane approaches here: 1 - Encourage the spread of bad news about other payment approaches and get bitcoin mentioned as an alternative 2 - Reduce the bad news in the first place - this one is going to be essentially impossible to do perfectly with something decentralised like bitcoin - anyone can setup a scam and they'll always have willing victims What we could do on point 2 however is to try and work on ways to get education out to potential scam victims and to reduce the ease of scams. One example that comes to mind for how to reduce the ease of scams is multisig transactions combined with a notification feature - if we could integrate a messaging protocol into bitcoin and have a "signature request" message sent to clients for multisig transactions then the following becomes possible: 1 - User has a pile of BTC on exchange 2 - User requests withdrawal of BTC 3 - Exchange sends a signature request to user's client - perhaps we could just handle this by broadcasting a transaction with a "half-signed" input, when the user's client picks it up, it prompts the user 4 - Regardless of the technical implementation, the user gets a prompt on their client asking to authorise sending X amount of BTC, they click yes and enter a password, the client signs it, coins move 5 - The prompt dialog should contain warnings telling newbies how to respond if they did NOT request the movement It would also be sensible if the main bitcoin clients contained warning messages on how to spot a scam, the first time the user attempts to send funds somewhere a simple message in the send funds dialogue with bullet points asking the user to confirm their understanding (and a "do not bother me again" option) would work well. Something must be done regardless, because otherwise the bad press is going to kill the market for our little currency, even if we can continue trading it amongst ourselves within the community. |
|
|
|
Ok, so what if there was somebody with a tor hidden service paying people to run their LOIC against certain targets in certain time frames for BTC?
Looks like a business idea to me but I guess it's hard to verify if the people actually did what they are being paid for.
Now running this exclusively to force websites into accepting bitcoins is where it gets just stupid. Ok, you could take small businesses offline one at a time and cheer with them coming back - now with bitcoin but I thought we had agreed to not reveal the evil nature of Bitcoin before 2015? Change of plan? Satoshi? Can you please clarify?
Dammit, you just leaked it |
|
|
|
gangnam style
aaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy sexy lady With regards to the original topic of this thread - why are we seeing so many obvious trolls and/or stupid people? School is back in session so all the script kiddies who want to sound techno-savvy and grown up rush to fora like this and start trying to act all big and knowledgeable. I hate September for just this reason. Little fuckers get computers for the new school year, and instead of searching pr0n like they should be, they clutter up interesting places with their stupidity. Eternal september |
|
|
|
Technically it's possible to use /cashtobtc or the IPN system at BitInstant to implement a payment processor  But yeah, I even mentioned bitpay to them after that above reply and got no response. It's sad as I fully meant what I said about paying more. |
|
|
|
I asked them about accepting bitcoin and told them (honestly) that i'd spend a lot more on the bundles if they took BTC, got this reply: Hey Gareth! The EFF has a great statement on BitCoin that closely follows our feelings toward BitCoin, which is available here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/eff-and-bitcoin“We don’t fully understand the complex legal issues involved with creating a new currency system. Bitcoin raises untested legal concerns related to securities law, the Stamp Payments Act, tax evasion, consumer protection and money laundering, among others. And that’s just in the U.S. While EFF is often the defender of people ensnared in legal issues arising from new technologies, we try very hard to keep EFF from becoming the actual subject of those fights or issues. Since there is no caselaw on this topic, and the legal implications are still very unclear, we worry that our acceptance of Bitcoins may move us into the possible subject role.” We like BitCoin and would love to accept it, but after contacting the EFF and a lawyer specializing in this sort of thing, we are not comfortable with the plethora of untested issues and legal traps, which would be a major distraction for us. We have been in contact with a number of bitcoin startups, and will be monitoring the landscape carefully. Thank you for your support, Drew Support Ninja Humble Bundle |
|
|
|
Gareth's probably right on Fraud, but the most valuable thing you lose is credibility. Even when everyone is anonymous, you don't poo where you eat so to speak.
What do you mean? How do you have accountability or credibility with complete anonymity? I'm sorry but bitcoin history does not agree with your assertion - nckrazze started a PPT and lied about it being a PPT with only two week's investment in the forums. How many accounts has Atlas had, again? By not being completely anonymous - giving large sums of money to people who are completely anonymous is a bad idea, even if you have the technology to do so. |
|
|
|
There are risks, and it's only a matter of time before someone serves jailtime for a bitcoin related crime.
There's already people serving time for USD-related crimes. I have two questions: 1) Since BTC is decentralized and apparently subject to no law or taxation, how do you propose bringing a bitcoin thief to "justice" and under whose law? 2) If bitcoin miners and traders are not paying any taxes on their bitcoin related activity, why are they entitled to the protection of whatever society they're evading taxation from? How i'd handle it: 1 - Here in the UK i'd use the computer misuse act or fraud charges 2 - Simple answer - tax evasion is illegal too, for myself I do file my tax returns and pay the amount owed under british law, part of which includes funding for the police - so I have absolutely no ethical qualms whatsoever about using the services of the police - whether or not those services are any good is a different question.......... |
|
|
|
what a shame...
as a friend and me decided to offer a new bitcoin service: should we steal the coins?
seems to be more profitable: and i am not able to see any risks.
(btw: no we won't do that. we'll just make sure its impossible to steal us a huge amount. but damn morality... if you would shut up i'll be rich!)
There are risks, and it's only a matter of time before someone serves jailtime for a bitcoin related crime. There's already people serving time for USD-related crimes. |
|
|
|
gangnam style
aaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy sexy lady With regards to the original topic of this thread - why are we seeing so many obvious trolls and/or stupid people? |
|
|
|
Is this the magazine that Matthew started?
And which he now has nothing to do with as is my understanding. When a business has a badly behaving member of staff in a key position, yes it looks bad on that business if they keep that person on - but that hasn't happened here. Matthew got kicked out. Refusing to support a valuable product (bitcoin magazine) due to a former staff member misbehaving is short-sighted. |
|
|
|
I recently had a friend send me an IM saying nothing more than "I heard the news  ", upon asking what news she linked to an article on BBC news about the bitfloor theft: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19486695I think she thought that bitcoin == BitInstant and she was trying to express her condolences over the business failing or something. My response: (10:59:50) Gareth: it's sad, but this kind of thing happens when people setup exchanges with poor security - bitcoin itself remains pretty damn secure
(11:00:05) Gareth: problem is that these news stories give the impression to people that bitcoin itself is insecure
We then moved onto the important issues of whether or not Summer Glau turns women into lesbians just like John Barrowman turns men gay, in other words serious business - I get the impression that people outside my circle of friends would not "get it" that quickly and be able to move onto the question of the sexual attractiveness of sci-fi actors. |
|
|
|
I disagree - theft (even if you disguise it as a breakin at your service) just puts a blackmark on your reputation and thus limits future legit income.
This is only possible in an environment where you are not a mostly anonymous entity. In an environment like here you just take off that blood soaked nickname, done a new pristine squeaky clean one and you're all set up for the kill of your next juicy victim. That only works for the little guys or for the thieves who break into other people's services - if you're well-known and meeting people in-person etc it'd be difficult to get a whole new identity and maintain it at the same level. So basically, if you're a public figure, theft is more difficult. |
|
|
|
|
I disagree - theft (even if you disguise it as a breakin at your service) just puts a blackmark on your reputation and thus limits future legit income.
So apart from the obvious ethics issues (which I hope I don't need to spell out), theft is actually not that profitable.
|
|
|
|
1- The only people who have access to it is BitInstant. The bank, mastercard, card issuer does not have access to or need any of this info. Your privacy is safe.
Thanks. I assume that the usual caveats of such ID data being subject to request by relevant governing authorities, etc, etc .... also does BitInstant have any plans to datamine this database for its own commercial purposes, e.g. promotions, targeted marketing, etc? 2- So, there is 1 address printed on the card, but we can easily pin more addresses to it.
Umm, interesting that you can "pin" other addresses to the card, but what I was actually asking about was the number of copies, and whereabouts, of the private key associated with the card's public address. To answer your first question - we might datamine to get general data on usage in terms of average transaction volume etc but we won't be spamming people. As for where the private keys will be held - we'll be holding them internally on one of our servers devoted entirely to this one task, the only access will be via SSH from a small whitelist of IP addresses and we'll take all the usual security precautions including external penetration testing etc. |
|
|
|
"I tried once to install the software. It took forever and didn't do anything," says Robert Hughes, a senior vice president with the consulting firm Speer & Associates who's been studying Bitcoin. I gotta say this cracked me up ... I wonder if he is representative of the intellect of your average Vice-President? If I was his boss he would not be working for me much longer. Technology moves on and some people will not make the grade ... one of the good things about bitcoin is it raises the bar substantially on raw intellect and competence to remain competitive. Probably does not even realize how bad the PR is for his firm from a comment like that .... Many (impatient) people have the same complaint.  I disagree myself - it's entirely possible that the reason it didn't work for him is because of the setup of the corporate network's firewall. While he should have got in contact with his IT staff to figure it out, he probably dismissed it as being some weird buggy thing. It's easy to dismiss people who "don't get it", but we should focus on making bitcoin easier to use and understand, light-weight clients such as electrum or bitcoinspinner are the way forward here - the latter is what I actually use myself to store most of my personal funds. I wonder if it'd be possible in fact for the clients page on bitcoin.org to make electrum or another lightweight client more prominent. |
|
|
|
I used to be one of the core opensim devs and happen to have a service (BitInstant) that can do precisely this - please email me and we can work on it together - I was thinking of getting an opensim bitcoin module together anyway. gareth@bitinstant.com |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
