Why even a market like our own needs regulations

[awesome31312]

I am, by no means, a believer of an ideal society nurtured by a free market (laissez-faire capitalism)

My sincerest apologies if I have posted this in the wrong section.

There is currently a market on this forum for the licit trading of accounts, and a user may not be challenged for his trades as long as his trust rating is either neutral or positive.

That is a recipe for disaster, because a user may purchase a well trusted, veteran account with an excellent trust rating, then use it to operate a High Yield Investment Ponzi schemewithout any suspicion from its victims.

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to track a stolen/lost/sold account, unless by authentication through security questions for identity verification on every session. Of course, this is very inconvenient and I don't see it being implemented any time soon.

If anyone else has solutions to counter this issue, please share them with us.

[1Referee]

Many complained about people who sell their accounts, but it doesn't help.

You can only hope account sellers think before they accept any offers from suspicious people.

As long as the forum admin thinks it's not a problem, people are free to sell their accounts  

[Farmer17]

The problem of account trading has been discussed for many times, and the mods and admins are not convinced to disallow it.

The only solution I can think of is to encourage everyone to use escrow even when you are trading with old accounts or positive-trust accounts that looks suspicious (change of writing style, password reset recently, come back after leaving for months, and so on).

[Quickseller]

There is currently a market on this forum for the licit trading of accounts, and a user may not be challenged for his trades as long as his trust rating is either neutral or positive.

It is only illicit if it is against the rules. The trading of accounts is not against the rules, therefore it is not illicit.

That is a recipe for disaster, because a user may purchase a well trusted, veteran account with an excellent trust rating, then use it to operate a High Yield Investment Ponzi schemewithout any suspicion from its victims.

I would highly doubt it if anyone reading this does not know what a Ponzi is, so there is no reason to link to a wikipedia page explaining what a ponzi is.

By your own logic (see above quote) someone can simply create a new account, that by default has neutral feedback and make "unchallenged" trades.

Also see below for a very good explanation as to why someone who would purchase a trusted account would not want to try to scam with their trusted account.

--snip--
As far as the trust system goes, it is not flawless, people need to stop taking it as definitive proof of trust. It is essentially ebay feedback, past history does not guarantee future trustworthiness. However! Something that everyone seems to forget, is that your account and its history has financial value, and so does your trust. If I wanted to sell my account (I'm not going to) I would get a pretty hefty offer. My account valuation would be based on account age, past actions, future opportunities with my name, and my trust, plus various other things. A person can calculate how much money they can trust me worth, based on similar factors. If I have 50 positive feedback, people trusting me with 1 BTC, that doesn't magically mean I'm trustworthy with 50 BTC, perhaps 5 BTC, based on various calculations. If the valuation of what I'd sell my account for is based on my trust value + other factors, it doesn't make economical sense for someone to buy my account for 20+ BTC (the combination of financial factors) and then to scam for just the value of my trust. Now of course that isn't foolproof, but its a heavy incentive not to buy trust heavy accounts and scam with them. Buying accounts with the intention to scam is frankly a gamble. If you get caught after paying a hefty sum for a valuable account, you are out a bunch of money. Perhaps it is more valuable to play it straight and sign up for sig campaigns, invest in business opportunities, etc.

Anyway, I'm not justifying account selling, I'm not in denial, and sure it can be used to scam, but if you actually do the math, sometimes there can be legit reasons to buy accounts. But, thats all moot anyway, because we can't stop it either way.
--snip--

Additionally the last time that I know of someone trying to scam with trusted accounts, someone spent an estimated 4 BTC between two accounts, one on default trust and one with existing "green" trust. Within 30 minutes of the scam starting a scam accusation was opened calling out the scam; this only affected the account that had the existing positive trust. The following day the account that was on default trust stepped in and the same day a separate scam accusation was opened calling out a second part of the scam. It appears that the scam was vastly unprofitable and the values of both accounts went to nearly zero.

[hilariousandco]

That is a recipe for disaster, because a user may purchase a well trusted, veteran account with an excellent trust rating, then use it to operate a High Yield Investment Ponzi schemewithout any suspicion from its victims.

If anyone else has solutions to counter this issue, please share them with us.

Don't invest in ponzis? Problem solved. If I or John K sold our accounts do you really think people would just blindly invest? No. We'd get negative feedback from the community likely within minutes. Accounts are allowed to be sold because there's absolutely nothing you can do to regulate it or stop it.

[MadZ]

That is a recipe for disaster, because a user may purchase a well trusted, veteran account with an excellent trust rating, then use it to operate a High Yield Investment Ponzi schemewithout any suspicion from its victims.

If anyone else has solutions to counter this issue, please share them with us.

If I or John K sold our accounts do you really think people would just blindly invest?

Would be an interesting experiment to test this out somehow, without people actually losing their coins of course. I believe a lot of people would invest, if the idea was presented in the right way.

[hilariousandco]

You might be able to get people to invest in some other business idea or to do a deal without escrow or something but if it's out of character you should be suspicious (always check their feedback to see if their password has been reset recently), but even trading with supposedly "trusted" veteran accounts you should still exercise caution. Accounts can be hacked or just go rouge anytime and there's nothing you can do to stop that.