I am announcing my retirement from scam busting.
Bitcoin has been very nice to me, allowing me to retire early at age 43. I felt I really needed to give back to that which had given so much to me, so I was very active on this forum fighting scams. As of this date I have spent over
136 days fighting the good fight. I gave up the chance to make money by escrowing, using a paid signature, running a business, moderating, etc. I wasn't here to make money but to try and help other people from losing coins.
Over the past year, after selling my coins, I have vastly reduced my computer clients and built my dream home while making this forum my virtual home. Over the last few days I have given away my remaining bitcoin for various project work. I no longer hold any significant bitcoin, and thus have a reduced vested interest in keeping the bitcoin price high. That includes doing my little part to combat fraud here. The only project I am working on now is exposing Armis' long term con on the official
PICISI website, which will be complete by June 5th.
Luckily over the past year there has been an influx of new scam busters being added to the default trust list, reducing my work load considerably. Many times I go to leave negative trust and see it's already been done! I am throwing the torch to these individuals and thank them in advance for their service to the community.
On June 6th I'm planning to execute a life long dream and buy a small sailboat to leave from Vancouver, sail down the coast, through the Panama Canal, and back up to Halifax. I'm expecting it to take most of the summer. If you live on the coast and would like to go for a beer (or just see the boat!), please email me at
martin@martinlawrence.ca.
DISCLAIMERS:
1. I will be locking this thread for now as it will only be filled with complaints from scammers I have busted.
2. I will be blocking everyone's PMs within the week. People may not see this and I don't want them believing they sent a message that I may never read.
3. I am retiring the name Vod. If anyone, anywhere else claims to be "Vod from Bitcointalk", they are lying.
I'll sincerely miss the good times I had in the Off Topic and Political Discussion sections with some great people on here. The last couple days have been an emotional one for sure, but I know things will be better in the future, if I don't drown that is! I got quite sucked up into this community and for that reason I don't know if I'll reconnect when I return. Since I'm not scam busting there will be better communities to joke around on that don't have all the drama and dishonesty/scamming. TC and Dooglus have my contact information should I need to change any negative trust I have left.
I wish good luck to all the honest people out there and I wish the overall bitcoin community continued success! Thanks to the admins and mods for their hard and thankless work.
Feel free to blame me for this.
Vod Bless.
