Bitcoin scams

[SEC agent]

I began visiting this forum a few months ago, and since I have been here I have been baffled by the proliferation of banking and security scams and frauds. Every "business" I have looked at has been nothing more than a poorly hidden scheme to seperate fools from their money.

So, why do you think scams are operated so freely here? Lack of moderation on the forum? A community to greedy to care? Is it just the anonymity and the (until recently) lack of punishment and law enforcement?

Why shouldn't the forums (and bitcoin overall) be shut down? Why shouldn't a central authority be set up to tackle the frauds that are so endemic in this community?

[Raoul Duke]

Why are SEC agents so illiterate?

[SEC agent]

Excellent attempt at avoiding the question. As a moderator, you are part of the problem by allowing security and banking fraud to thrive on this forum.

[CJGoodings]

He's right though, your grammar and spelling is atrocious.

[Raoul Duke]

Excellent attempt at avoiding the question. As a moderator, you are part of the problem by allowing security and banking fraud to thrive on this forum.

Me? I don't allow anything, I have no powers to allow or disallow anything that doesn't fall on the spam category(and your first posts in this forum fall on that category, so prepare yourself to see them vanish).
Sorry about that. You need to find some other scapegoat(lol)

[JoelKatz]

I began visiting this forum a few months ago, and since I have been here I have been baffled by the proliferation of banking and security scams and frauds. Every "business" I have looked at has been nothing more than a poorly hidden scheme to seperate fools from their money.

So, why do you think scams are operated so freely here? Lack of moderation on the forum? A community to greedy to care? Is it just the anonymity and the (until recently) lack of punishment and law enforcement?

Why shouldn't the forums (and bitcoin overall) be shut down? Why shouldn't a central authority be set up to tackle the frauds that are so endemic in this community?

It's just that the community is immature. It's the same reason the "wild west" was once wild.

Sure, imposing a central authority would be one way to tackle the fraud. But it's far from clear that it's the only way.

[SEC agent]

Excellent attempt at avoiding the question. As a moderator, you are part of the problem by allowing security and banking fraud to thrive on this forum.

Me? I don't allow anything, I have no powers to allow or disallow anything that doesn't fall on the spam category(and your first posts in this forum fall on that category, so prepare yourself to see them vanish).
Sorry about that. You need to find some other scapegoat(lol)

You can try to silence me all you want, it wont fix your broken community, it wont get all those victims their money back, and it wont stop me from saying what needs to be said.

[yrtrnc]

Small price to pay for liberation.

I began visiting this forum a few months ago, and since I have been here I have been baffled by the proliferation of banking and security scams and frauds. Every "business" I have looked at has been nothing more than a poorly hidden scheme to seperate fools from their money.

So, why do you think scams are operated so freely here? Lack of moderation on the forum? A community to greedy to care? Is it just the anonymity and the (until recently) lack of punishment and law enforcement?

Why shouldn't the forums (and bitcoin overall) be shut down? Why shouldn't a central authority be set up to tackle the frauds that are so endemic in this community?

[koin]

As a moderator, you are part of the problem by allowing security and banking fraud to thrive on this forum.

that's some very atlas-like trolling, but for some reason i think this is someone else doing the trolling.   any guesses?

[nobbynobbynoob]

Given the atrocities of central authority throughout history, some of us like our anarchy here.

(Personally I don't quite consider myself an anarchist or voluntarist or anvol or ancap or whatever name you prefer, but it interests me and I relate to it strongly. I'm probably more of a libertarian or classical liberal on most issues, with criminal justice being a possible exception.)

[Eridani]

OP and his posts smell fishy to me...

[Foxpup]

I began visiting this forum a few months ago, and since I have been here I have been baffled by the proliferation of banking and security scams and frauds. Every "business" I have looked at has been nothing more than a poorly hidden scheme to seperate fools from their money.

What, every one? Look harder.

So, why do you think scams are operated so freely here? Lack of moderation on the forum? A community to greedy to care? Is it just the anonymity and the (until recently) lack of punishment and law enforcement?

If you look past the obvious answers, you'll see one that's even more obvious. Specifically, there are scams everywhere. These forums actually have relatively few scams, at least when compared to the rest of the Internet, or even just my spam folder.

Why shouldn't the forums (and bitcoin overall) be shut down?

Go shut down the U.S. Dollar. It's involved in far larger and far more numerous scams and illegal transactions than Bitcoin ever has.

Why shouldn't a central authority be set up to tackle the frauds that are so endemic in this community?

We already have one. It was established long ago as a government agency, a commission if you will, in charge of regulating the exchange of things like securities and other investments. I just can't remember what it's called. The Commission of Exchange of Securities? No, that's not it... Oh wait, I remember now, it's called the Securities and Exchange Commission. You may have heard of it. Why aren't they doing something about all this?

[nobbynobbynoob]

Go shut down the U.S. Dollar. It's involved in far larger and far more numerous scams and illegal transactions than Bitcoin ever has.

+1

And as for the anonymity of Bitcoin, I'd say that good old-fashioned cash transactions can be even more untraceable.

[Raoul Duke]

Excellent attempt at avoiding the question. As a moderator, you are part of the problem by allowing security and banking fraud to thrive on this forum.

Me? I don't allow anything, I have no powers to allow or disallow anything that doesn't fall on the spam category(and your first posts in this forum fall on that category, so prepare yourself to see them vanish).
Sorry about that. You need to find some other scapegoat(lol)

You can try to silence me all you want, it wont fix your broken community, it wont get all those victims their money back, and it wont stop me from saying what needs to be said.

Silence you? No way, but, one word, one liner replies just to get away from newbie jail, forget about it...
Complaint about it to the SEC if you wish. So fa, you're nothing more than a spammer and troll. Continue down that path, please...

[jasinlee]

I began visiting this forum a few months ago, and since I have been here I have been baffled by the proliferation of banking and security scams and frauds. Every "business" I have looked at has been nothing more than a poorly hidden scheme to seperate fools from their money.

So, why do you think scams are operated so freely here? Lack of moderation on the forum? A community to greedy to care? Is it just the anonymity and the (until recently) lack of punishment and law enforcement?

Why shouldn't the forums (and bitcoin overall) be shut down? Why shouldn't a central authority be set up to tackle the frauds that are so endemic in this community?

Right, the SEC and all government agencies always let every person know their intentions in public in advance all the time.

Hey you drug dealers in the house there, btw just thought you might want to know, there is a possibility since I have been watching you for a while now that I just might raid your sometime VERY soon. Just sayin.

[SEC agent]

All it takes is a few seconds in the lending or securities board to see how this forum is plagued with con artists and shills. Every time an obvious lending scam pops up, the few honest people on the forum who denounce it get shouted down by the rest of you. Even the moderators join in to defend the ponzi schemes and other scams.

Hell, one of your moderators has a security fraud scheme that is falling apart as we speak, another has admitted to actively participating in multiple ponzi schemes (even actively promoting some). There are so many scams here that your lending board has a disclaimer. If that doesn't speak volumes on the amount of scammers on the forum, it don't know what does.

But there is no problem, right? All is A -OK in the bitcoin community, right?

Mark my words, left unchecked, this poisonous community will kill bitcoin long before the government will, and most of you will be sitting here with an Internet currency worth nothing, wondering where it all went wrong.

[jasinlee]

Cant tell, FUD or Micon with a new strategy.

[SEC agent]

Neither. I'm simply stating the obvious.

What's baffling is watching forum members here defend criminals who are actively stealing peoples money. As far as I'm concerned, that makes them as complicit as the criminals they are defending.

[fcmatt]

do not care or know if this is a sec agent or not. i will pretend it is.

many members here are in denial on just how rotten this forum has become.

i personally tolerate it due to it having critical mass. creating a new forum often results
in a ghost town unless legit key players in bitcoin decide to create the new forum. gavin for
example moves to it and other developers do also. ditto with legit bitcoin businesses. this
leaves the rest behind and if they do attempt to come a ban quickly eliminates the nonsense
they post.

keep in mind there is a lot of people here who had nothing to do with lending, securities, and other
lame attempts at making money via these schemes. the most vocal are often the ones involved.
so the forum appears to be full of this crap.

[Foxpup]

Cant tell, FUD or Micon with a new strategy.

There is also a third option: an actual SEC agent who's never used the Internet before, and while he probably learnt in his training that scams of various kinds are prevalent on the Internet, he hasn't the faintest idea of just how prevalent they are, and the impossibility of getting rid of them without outright banning discussion of any business proposals of any kind (which obviously isn't an acceptable solution on a forum about Internet currency). Hell, I've seen scams advertised on well-moderated furry porn sites ffs; the very idea that all scams can be eliminated from a site devoted to money represents a ludicrous level of wishful thinking.

That said, I tend to stay away from the lending forum for exactly this reason. What exactly goes through people's heads when they're told "Please irreversibly transfer your money to my anonymous account. I'll pay you back. Honest."? I mean, seriously, stuff like this makes you wonder how a fool and his money ever got together in the first place.