Should Giga be tagged as a scammer?

[smoothie]

I do understand the arguments about not giving the scammer tag because of being under legal pressure, however I think some are viewing the scammer tag the wrong way. The scammer tag is not "You need to do this even though it may or may not be illegal". It's not about about dealing justice, or punishing people, or forcing people to do anything. The scammer tag is "He made x agreement, he can't or won't keep it". It's a warning about those who make promises they can't keep, and there's a lot of those around here.

IMO a scammer tag pretty clearly fits the situation, on the other hand he's a longstanding member (year and a half), has fairly good rep, and this is his first and only real incident. Have there been other incidents? Does he have any other investments?

Since when does someone have to have scammed before and then scam again to then get a scammer tag?

Give him the tag already.

[1715300735]

1715300735

[stochastic]

I've decided that gigavps will not get a scammer tag for this. Nefario has proven himself to be untrustworthy, so it would be unreasonable for gigavps to pay out large sums of money based entirely on Nefario's list. Requiring affidavits and proofs of identity are reasonable precautions. It's impossible to strictly follow the contract in a safe way.

You know what I find interesting, is that when Nefario breaks a contract and claims he has to because he has no other option, he gets a scammer tag.  When other people face the same situation they don't get a scammer tag.  Especially those that won't take responsibility for their investments.

[wishfulthinking]

You know what I find interesting, is that when Nefario breaks a contract and claims he has to because he has no other option, he gets a scammer tag.  When other people face the same situation they don't get a scammer tag.  Especially those that won't take responsibility for their investments.

Nefario scammed the top users of this forum, including at least one admin, giga just scammed a bunch of regular users.

[Bitcoin Oz]

You know what I find interesting, is that when Nefario breaks a contract and claims he has to because he has no other option, he gets a scammer tag.  When other people face the same situation they don't get a scammer tag.  Especially those that won't take responsibility for their investments.

Nefario scammed the top users of this forum, including at least one admin, giga just scammed a bunch of regular users.

 Nefario was just the front man who allowed others to raise hundreds of thousands of coins.

[lenny_]

Why admins didn't tag him as scammer yet? 110 votes total is not enough  

[burnside]

but I'll also re-iterate that I do not believe Theymos should be involved in the scammer tag proceedings.  I believe there's a fairly clear conflict of interest.

FTR, what is the conflict?

And at the rate things are going scammer tags will prolly just get phased out, the mods lack both the training to handle the ever-increasingly complex arguments brought and the drive to even bother, on top of which the constant haranguing which necessarily comes with the territory is wearing everyone thin.

Sooner or later we'll have to have some sort of court set-up, and the logistics of that are staggering.

Bit of a delayed response, sorry.

Theymos was one of the GLBSE stockholders/board members, screwed by Nefario.  Right before GLBSE tanked he had started a thread on here wanting to sell his shares.  I'd think he'd want to recuse himself from anything GLBSE related.

Cheers.

[JoelKatz]

You trusted Nefario enough to take our money.

He never necessarily extended any trust to Nefario at all. Asset issuers don't have to extend any trust at all to the exchange. You don't have to trust someone to take someone else's money -- the person giving them the money has to trust them to do the right thing with it.

I've decided that gigavps will not get a scammer tag for this. Nefario has proven himself to be untrustworthy, so it would be unreasonable for gigavps to pay out large sums of money based entirely on Nefario's list. Requiring affidavits and proofs of identity are reasonable precautions. It's impossible to strictly follow the contract in a safe way.

You know what I find interesting, is that when Nefario breaks a contract and claims he has to because he has no other option, he gets a scammer tag.  When other people face the same situation they don't get a scammer tag.  Especially those that won't take responsibility for their investments.

Surely you understand that there's a difference between claiming you have no other option and actually having no other option. We know of no reason Nefario couldn't have done an orderly shutdown of GLBSE. And his prior acts with Goat show that he was acting rashly and in complete disregard for his obligations to others. Giga actually has no other option -- he never extended any trust to Nefaro/GLBSE nor did he ever agree to extend any. The contract doesn't obligate him to accept these costs and risks.

[burnside]

Giga actually has no other option -- he never extended any trust to Nefaro/GLBSE nor did he ever agree to extend any. The contract doesn't obligate him to accept these costs and risks.

I'm going to have to disagree on that one.  My own issue of LTC-MINING was only 1000 shares but I knew going into it that I had to trust GLBSE for the whole process to work for the lifespan of the asset.  I thought about it, did some research, and decided that I could trust GLBSE to be available long term.  Nefario was actively developing on it, progress was being made on outstanding issues, he was posting to the forums regularly, etc.  I even went through all the "what if" scenarios in my head and decided that even if he decided to shut down, it would be easy for him to give a weeks warning, I'd buy back all the issues per my asset's contract, and be done.  Thus I very intentionally and deliberately extended trust to GLBSE to perform their end of the bargain, which was made in exchange for 8 BTC up front, and a percentage of trades thereafter.

Everyone that used it extended trust to GLBSE, especially the asset issuers.

[JoelKatz]

Giga actually has no other option -- he never extended any trust to Nefaro/GLBSE nor did he ever agree to extend any. The contract doesn't obligate him to accept these costs and risks.

I'm going to have to disagree on that one.  My own issue of LTC-MINING was only 1000 shares but I knew going into it that I had to trust GLBSE for the whole process to work for the lifespan of the asset.  I thought about it, did some research, and decided that I could trust GLBSE to be available long term.  Nefario was actively developing on it, progress was being made on outstanding issues, he was posting to the forums regularly, etc.  I even went through all the "what if" scenarios in my head and decided that even if he decided to shut down, it would be easy for him to give a weeks warning, I'd buy back all the issues per my asset's contract, and be done.  Thus I very intentionally and deliberately extended trust to GLBSE to perform their end of the bargain, which was made in exchange for 8 BTC up front, and a percentage of trades thereafter.

Everyone that used it extended trust to GLBSE, especially the asset issuers.

I don't quite follow you. In what sense did you extend trust to GLBSE? In what way could GLBSE have done something that would have hurt you?

Now, the people who bought assets from you had to trust that GLBSE would actually deliver their money to you. Otherwise, they wouldn't get any dividends. And they had to trust that GLBSE would actually distribute the dividends to the asset holders. And, of course, they had to trust that GLBSE would remain in operation and not somehow lose or destroy their ownership interest. They had to trust that GLBSE would remain operational to ensure there continues to be a market that preserves the value of their assets. So they extend all kinds of trust.

But what was your exposure exactly? Maybe I'm missing something. I guess there's risk to your reputation and risk of lost profits.

[conspirosphere.tk]

You trusted Nefario enough to take our money.

He never necessarily extended any trust to Nefario at all. Asset issuers don't have to extend any trust at all to the exchange. You don't have to trust someone to take someone else's money -- the person giving them the money has to trust them to do the right thing with it.

Do you realize that you are aggravating his position? If he did not trust Nefario from the beginning, then he voluntarily put at risk his investors' funds from day 1.

Giga actually has no other option -- he never extended any trust to Nefaro/GLBSE nor did he ever agree to extend any.

False. No other issuers asked for all the crap he is asking up to now (even if many would find profitable to steal their investors' assets in this way).

The contract doesn't obligate him to accept these costs and risks.

Which contract? The one he deleted like a weasel just before requiring for lots of para-legal crap? And which risks? To actually pay back his investors? You call that a risk?

[JoelKatz]

Do you realize that you are aggravating his position? If he did not trust Nefario from the beginning, then he voluntarily put at risk his investors' funds from day 1.

He didn't do that, his investors did. If GLBSE had run off with their money, would you have argued that's somehow his fault?

Giga actually has no other option -- he never extended any trust to Nefaro/GLBSE nor did he ever agree to extend any.

False. No other issuers asked for all the crap he is asking up to now (even if many would find profitable to steal their investors' assets in this way).

That's kind of a circular argument. If this is his mess to clean up, then he extended trust. And if he extended trust, it's his mess to clean up.

In retrospect, we all should have thought of it, but I don't think anyone considered a sudden, complete GLBSE shutdown likely. So I don't think you can argue trust was extended on that basis. If someone gives you free concert tickets and while you're gone they have a friend rob your home, you trusted them to know when you would be away from home in a sense. But you didn't really decide to trust them if you never seriously considered the possibility that the concert tickets were a trick to rob your home.

The contract doesn't obligate him to accept these costs and risks.

Which contract? The one he deleted like a weasel just before requiring for lots of para-legal crap? And which risks? To actually pay back his investors? You call that a risk?

Any contract so far as I know. I don't know of any asset listed on GLBSE that obligated the issuer to cover the costs and risks associated with preserving asset ownership across a sudden GLBSE failure. As for the risks, there are many. The specifics depend on the contract. The most common risk is the risk of paying false claims. And the costs are obvious -- figuring out which claims are legitimate is not free. No asset issuer, to my knowledge, ever agreed to bear those costs or arranged a way to pass them on to the asset holders.

[burnside]

But what was your exposure exactly? Maybe I'm missing something. I guess there's risk to your reputation and risk of lost profits.

Really?  It doesn't take much imagination.

Exposure to lawsuits from investors.
Exposure to release of your personal details after doing the verification process.
Exposure to bugs in the exchange that held up dividends or trading, thus depressing the value of your assets and angering asset holders.
Exposure to legal issues because the exchange wasn't on solid legal ground.
For funds that held their portfolio on GLBSE, exposure to your portfolio disappearing.

Cheers.

[JoelKatz]

But what was your exposure exactly? Maybe I'm missing something. I guess there's risk to your reputation and risk of lost profits.

Really?  It doesn't take much imagination.

These are mostly very minor or aren't a case of an asset issuer having to trust an exchange.

Exposure to lawsuits from investors.

I don't see how this is trust extended to the exchange. You mean if the exchange does something wrong, the issuer might get sued? I would consider that a pretty unrealistic fear. We'll find out which of us is right.

Exposure to release of your personal details after doing the verification process.

True. As it happens, giga isn't anonymous, but that applies to some issuers.

Exposure to bugs in the exchange that held up dividends or trading, thus depressing the value of your assets and angering asset holders.

That doesn't really hurt the issuer.

Exposure to legal issues because the exchange wasn't on solid legal ground.

I don't see how that's trust extended to the exchange.

For funds that held their portfolio on GLBSE, exposure to your portfolio disappearing.

Yes, I agree that asset owners have to trust the exchange. The question was whether asset owners had to trust the exchange.

Sure, if asset issuers also hold assets, then in their capacity as asset holders, they have to trust the exchange. But one can issue an asset without holding any assets on that exchange. As asset issuers, in that role, very little trust is extended to the exchange operator. (This is not the way it would normally be, it's unique to the Bitcoin universe.)

[burnside]

Exposure to lawsuits from investors.

I don't see how this is trust extended to the exchange. You mean if the exchange does something wrong, the issuer might get sued? I would consider that a pretty unrealistic fear. We'll find out which of us is right.

I live in the US.  Lawsuits are never an unrealistic fear.

Exposure to release of your personal details after doing the verification process.

True. As it happens, giga isn't anonymous, but that applies to some issuers.

Exposure to bugs in the exchange that held up dividends or trading, thus depressing the value of your assets and angering asset holders.

That doesn't really hurt the issuer.

Eh... really?  So if an asset's price tanks, it doesn't hurt the issuer at all?  What if it happens during IPO?  What about the asset issuers operating funds holding that asset?

Exposure to legal issues because the exchange wasn't on solid legal ground.

I don't see how that's trust extended to the exchange.

Because if the exchange leads you to believe they're a company operating legally, and later on you find out they aren't, and they shut down, you're f'd?  Isn't this exactly what happened?

For funds that held their portfolio on GLBSE, exposure to your portfolio disappearing.

Yes, I agree that asset owners have to trust the exchange. The question was whether asset owners had to trust the exchange.

Funds my man, I specifically said funds.  You know, the assets that hold other assets as investments?  If you were an asset issuer operating a fund that held assets on the same exchange, you're putting a huge amount of trust in the platform as a whole.


I guess if you're not an asset issuer with your tail hanging out, you might not see the exposure, but it's there, like it or not.  And even if you can't latch on to any of these reasons discussed, you hit the big one square on the head for me in your previous post:

I guess there's risk to your reputation

That's a pretty big deal to anyone trying to operate a legitimate ongoing business.

Cheers.

[conspirosphere.tk]

Do you realize that you are aggravating his position? If he did not trust Nefario from the beginning, then he voluntarily put at risk his investors' funds from day 1.

He didn't do that, his investors did. If GLBSE had run off with their money, would you have argued that's somehow his fault?

If he did not trust Nefario from the beginning, but he resorted to use GLBSE anyway, then he exposed his investors to a third-party risk that he knew about without informing them about it. I think it's kind of illegal, and anyway highly unethical. Like blaming the victims after stealing their money, which is what he's going to do behind the para-legal crap shield he's asking for.

Giga actually has no other option -- he never extended any trust to Nefaro/GLBSE nor did he ever agree to extend any.

False. No other issuers asked for all the crap he is asking up to now (even if many would find profitable to steal their investors' assets in this way).

That's kind of a circular argument. If this is his mess to clean up, then he extended trust. And if he extended trust, it's his mess to clean up.
In retrospect, we all should have thought of it, but I don't think anyone considered a sudden, complete GLBSE shutdown likely.

Don't try to shift the blame. Nefario has already sent him a list of investors' assets. The jig is up.

The most common risk is the risk of paying false claims.

There is nothing to claim. The investors' assets list Nefario sent him should be considered true until the opposite is proven. Otherwise it is too easy for him to steal such assets with such lame argument.

[JoelKatz]

If he did not trust Nefario from the beginning, but he resorted to use GLBSE anyway, then he exposed his investors to a third-party risk that he knew about without informing them about it.

Any such risks would have been equally obvious, or non-obvious, to the issuer and to the investors. It's not like some decision on the part of the issuer exposes the investors to this risk in a way that was hidden.

In retrospect, I agree with you. Anyone listing an asset on a stock exchange like GLBSE should have included a section in the offer explaining the risks associated with using an anonymous exchange. And they should also have included a section explaining what would happen if the exchange failed or delisted the asset.

It's hard to blame any specific person for not predicting this because, as far as I know, nobody predicted it. In retrospect, though, it's obvious that it's a significant risk that should have been addressed ahead of time.

It looks like the crypto-currency community is going to have to learn every single painful lesson that the regular financial world has learned. Probably more than once.

Don't try to shift the blame. Nefario has already sent him a list of investors' assets. The jig is up. .

There is nothing to claim. The investors' assets list Nefario sent him should be considered true until the opposite is proven. Otherwise it is too easy for him to steal such assets with such lame argument.

Nobody knows how to do this. If you do, please explain it to me. For example, what happens if someone claims they held the asset but the asset issuer claims they weren't on the list? This could be resolved if GLBSE was actively participating or had made the lists cryptographically verifiable. But so far as I know, there is zero participation from Nefario/GLBSE.

[conspirosphere.tk]

please explain it to me. For example, what happens if someone claims they held the asset but the asset issuer claims they weren't on the list? This could be resolved if GLBSE was actively participating or had made the lists cryptographically verifiable. But so far as I know, there is zero participation from Nefario/GLBSE.

Easy: just start paying back who is on the Nefario's list if you want be honest and consistent with your promise and past behavior. Who is not in the list, and say he should, can try his best to get things fixed with Nefario in order to get paid later, or just call the cops (the best option for everyone in this case imho). But using such cases as a pseudo-excuse to steal the assets of the most of your investors is just lame.

Not to speak about deleting the original contract from his opening post and try to negate the content of his OP later, or forcing his investors to commit crimes testifying officially falsities while shifting his personal responsibilities to a phony LLC, etc.
 
Anyway, it does not matter any more. No one can seriously expect to get anything back of their GLBSE investments beyond maybe some crumbs of single-digit percentage points in the most fortunate cases. Another lesson learned the hard way.

[jamesg]

Hi conspirosphere.tk,

Your brutal slaughtering of the facts needs to stop.

Easy: just start paying back who is on the Nefario's list if you want be honest and consistent with your promise and past behavior. Who is not in the list, and say he should, can try his best to get things fixed with Nefario in order to get paid later, or just call the cops (the best option for everyone in this case imho). But using such cases as a pseudo-excuse to steal the assets of the most of your investors is just lame.

No one is trying to steal anything. If you would take the time to read anything I've posted, you'd know the PII information is to comply with US federal law along with the other reasons given. Tax IDs are to be able to file the necessary paperwork at year's end.

Not to speak about deleting the original contract from his opening post and try to negate the content of his OP later, or forcing his investors to commit crimes testifying officially falsities while shifting his personal responsibilities to a phony LLC, etc.

The contract was never in to Gigamining OP. The actual contract was only ever hosted on GLBSE. I have posted in on the gigamining website.

http://gigamining.com/faq.html

Anyway, it does not matter any more. No one can seriously expect to get anything back of their GLBSE investments beyond maybe some crumbs of single-digit percentage points in the most fortunate cases. Another lesson learned the hard way.

In all of your screaming, you are advocating doing things the same way that GLBSE did them. But what you fail to see is that doing that will only land us in the same spot GLBSE is now.

Regards,
James

[conspirosphere.tk]

No one is trying to steal anything.

So tell me, what are you going to do with my coins since I have no intention of sending you my notarized ID nor signing anything? Return them to me? No? Well that in my dictionary is called stealing.

If you would take the time to read anything I've posted, you'd know the PII information is to comply with US federal law along with the other reasons given. Tax IDs are to be able to file the necessary paperwork at year's end.

You cannot force me to accept anything while taking my money hostage. You made your original offer in the undergound economy and it is there that I want to remain. If you want to go legit under a new contract, perform a buyback and send me my coins back or you are a thieve.

The contract was never in to Gigamining OP.

So what you deleted from your OP? And why Theymos reposted it, and it was found saying exactly what you was trying to negate in the same thread about your obligations?

[jamesg]

You are advocating doing the same things that put GLBSE squarely in the place it is now.

It makes no sense.

Being upset isn't going to change that.