Trust Building List - Ron Gross

[mobodick]

This way, you're creating a trust issue with yourself.

Why would you trust ID's and facebook accounts? They can be faked.
And as an extention to this, why would other people trust you trusting potentially fake ID's or facebook pages?
Can you actually check ID's and passports? If not they are worthless to you.

And why should people trust you with such information?
Because you said so in a forum post?
That's a pretty poor base for trust.

I said trust will be built on various types of evidence ... and I will be the final judge.
Forum posting history is also a strong indicator for me.

You are completely free not to trust my judgement.

As to why I consider the above as valid evidence, please check out Why I Trust Patrick Harnett. So far this trust has paid off for me.

Ok, but to the outside world it will all hinge on trusting you.
Can you take such a responsibility (or is it even reasonable to ask such a thing from someone) ?

[1714802085]

1714802085

[mobodick]

If anyone whom I don't currently know/trust wants to try and get me to add him to my ID column, you can try sending me some of these to ron.gross@gmail.com:


1. Good quality scan of ID/passport
2. Facebook/LinkedIn account
3. Any other details you think can help

You should at the very least provide this information about yourself to your users before you can put claim on any other persons information.
You use ID as a tool for ensuring a trust relation with the people on your list.
But how can users of the list ensure a trust relation between then and you without using the same tools on you?

[LoweryCBS]

There needs to be a "I know where you live" rating.  I suggest "IWKYL."

"I will kill you, later?"

Thread over. We have a winner.

[ripper234]

Ok, but to the outside world it will all hinge on trusting you.
Can you take such a responsibility (or is it even reasonable to ask such a thing from someone) ?

There is no responsibility being taken here - I am simply doing a public service by outing my views here.
Be an adult, and do your own homework.

You should at the very least provide this information about yourself to your users before you can put claim on any other persons information.
You use ID as a tool for ensuring a trust relation with the people on your list.
But how can users of the list ensure a trust relation between then and you without using the same tools on you?

Good idea, added to OP, except for photo ID scans ... it's not something I won't public, for obvious reasons.
People who don't know me can ask my references (I added some on the OP).

You can also email me (email >> pm) at ron.gross@gmail.com and ask for more clarifications ... I'm not saying I'll provide any, but you can ask

[ripper234]

Updated the list of possible evidence to include an ebay account in good standing.

[ripper234]

Added Ben Reeves AKA piuk, developer of blockchain.info and My Wallet (ID + FT)

[ripper234]

Added LoweryCBS with the ID flag.


I've also added this note to the doc:

Please note that trust is relative. E.g., ID means that I _think_ I know who this person is ... I am not giving any guarantees here, and I can make mistakes.
Use your own judgement!

[Monster Tent]

It would be nice if all the people who gave pirate a rating on #bitcoin-otc had their own level of trust downgraded when he defaulted.

There should be some consequence to rating someone who later turns out to be a scammer. Unfortunately the people who gave him 10 ratings had no consequence to those ratings at all.

[the_thing]

This

[ripper234]

Added an obvious omission - Jeff Garzik, a Bitcoin developer (ID + FT)

[cbeast]

http://www.mememaker.net/static/images/memes/707490.jpg
lol

[datafish]

What would be useful here is some form of zero-knowledge proof, where a person could prove that they are someone who has a real-life reputation in good standing without revealing their identity, unless they default on a contract.  Nothing against ripper234 (I applaud his efforts), but it seems to me that trusting someone to safeguard our ID in a centralized location takes us a step backwards.  That's what we already have in the existing banking system.  Can Ripple and Open Transactions be of benefit to us?

[ripper234]

Removed Patrick Harnett from the list for the time being - he owes people money for too long, and is considered to be in default.

[hazek]

Removed Patrick Harnett from the list for the time being - he owes people money for too long, and is considered to be in default.

I don't know if your list is a good idea. You giving your own opinion without any guarantees might mislead some people into trusting the individuals on your list causing them serious losses as it happened with Patrick Harnett. I think if you will vouch for others you should so so by offering an insurance. A simple list of who you think is trustworthy is at best worthless.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Removed Patrick Harnett from the list for the time being - he owes people money for too long, and is considered to be in default.

I don't know if your list is a good idea. You giving your own opinion without any guarantees might mislead some people into trusting the individuals on your list causing them serious losses as it happened with Patrick Harnett. I think if you will vouch for others you should so so by offering an insurance. A simple list of who you think is trustworthy is at best worthless.

The thing that many people don't seem to understand (and that I understood but failed to act upon) is that trust isn't a boolean thing. An FT for, say, Jeff Garzik means that if he has no liabilities and is requested to be an escrow for 100 BTC, the chances of a problem are close to 0, and for that the list is useful.

It does not mean that if the person borrows myriads of BTC for a suspicious purpose then the money is safe (the greater the total amount, the more the person has to gain by defaulting, and the crazier the offer, the worse the likelihood ratio for originating in a legitimate purpose). No trust table is enough to justify putting money into that. If someone would do that based on such a table, he'll lose his money somehow anyway, probably in an equal amount - and in this light the table doesn't really do any harm.

[cunicula]

- WD - I believe this person is a man of his word.

Pirate had plenty of "WD"-type trust. How about a trust metric that really means something:

BTCBTC - I believe this person is trustworthy and reliable, and I will reimburse anyone up to xxx BTC if this person is shown to be untrustworthy or unreliable.

What is the incentive to do that?  Honest question.  I could see something like that working but there has to be an incentive for the person making the vouch.  Otherwise it is risk x to gain 0 which is always a bad decision.   Interesting concept to monetize trust.  It makes me thing some system is there I just can't see it through the coffee starved fog in my brain.

The classic incentive in these types of systems is associative ostracism. See for example work by Avner Greif on Jewish trading communities in Europe.

The group maintains a list of people who are trustworthy. Anyone who is shown to violate that trust is ostracized. Anyone who does business with ostracized individuals is also ostracized.

This last issue is the new wrinkle. Strict guilt by association makes a web of trust much more powerful as an enforcement mechanism. Essentially you are giving up your own judgement to the community.
This makes unenforced community judgement powerful.

[stochastic]

I love how the wheel is constantly re-invented.

It is called a surety.  Say Alice wants to contract something with Bob, but Bob does not have any reputation.  Alice goes to Zack who guarantees that Bob will do what the contract says.  Alice transfers the risk of Bob not honoring the contract to Zack, whom charges a small fee for the accepting of that risk.

[ripper234]

Removed Patrick Harnett from the list for the time being - he owes people money for too long, and is considered to be in default.

I don't know if your list is a good idea. You giving your own opinion without any guarantees might mislead some people into trusting the individuals on your list causing them serious losses as it happened with Patrick Harnett. I think if you will vouch for others you should so so by offering an insurance. A simple list of who you think is trustworthy is at best worthless.

I might be interested in selling insurance regarding some of the people that have Financial Trust on my list, if anyone is interested.

The list, as it stands, is just my opinion, and of course should not be taken as the sole reason to trust these individuals.

Do your homework. Caveat Emptor.

[franky1]

wow de ja vu of how pirate began.

as soon as i read the first post talking about gaining trust, i thought. hmmm whats he going to sell me next.. a dozen posts later there it was..... insurance.

show a list of who he trusts.. then suddenly gets a big idea of how to make money out of the idea.. but this time not a bank. but insurance........

just a shame you done all of it in one single thread.

nice forum avatar of not a real face. along with the only other picture of you being in a skii mask only showing your eyes on your other links including your youtube.

you wont be in my circle of trust even if you do tweet about bitcoin in march 2011 to show you known about it longer then some others.

i trawled the internet and found other websites not listed on your links and found you have been removing pictures and replacing them all with your skii mask pic.
eg http://www.meetup.com/bitcoin-il/members/14443048/ there were 4 pictures.. but now just 2 one is a birthday cake and the other 3 are the skii mask. even your youtube is limited to the skii mask pic.

may i suggest if your even considering becoming a business requesting money in exchange for trust then do a inaba, gavin andersen thing and show your full face atleast.

answer me this Ron Gross what is your real isreali name?

[ripper234]

FYI, here is a public photo of me:

http://excellence.technion.ac.il/Excellence/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&TMID=610&LNGID=1&FID=513&PID=870&IID=979

And my "real" name is very similar to the name I use on this forums.
Hint, it starts with "Ron" and ends with "Gross", and has nothing in between.