Beware off OTC.

[sublime5447]

Problems with OTC to be aware off.

EDIT---   And the number one reason that bitcoin-otc sucks is that it is run by a bunch of fascist-- This is what happened to me. I joined did several trades with BCB, posted that I needed coins for paypal and was heckled to death by a bunch of assholes, then i had a user steal my name and rate me negative without trading with me, Then the user continued to boot me from the channel, finally I told him I was going to write a grievance against him for identity theft and slander and he banned me from the chat. This users name on otc is rbecker he is a CO and refuses to talk to me or unbann me, I am pretty sure he suffers from a case of infantile penis size. I have been to bitcoin court on at least 5 occasions to get a hearing about all this and have been unable to get one.  It is bullshit.       


*When you first come into the room (if you can figure out how to get registered and authenticated) you will be approached my about 50 scammers.
* Using the site is difficult and seeing who is trust worthy is also difficult
*Even trusted sellers have negative feedback, the problem is anyone can rate anyone regardless if the have had transactions or not.
*You don't know who you are dealing with there are no identifiers in there so it could be a 12 year old or a 60 year old.
*If you don't use nick save (which is not easy to do imo) to save your name then someone else can take your name and pretend to be you.
*People rate on personality conflicts so if you are new and don't share the opinion of the feed they may ruin you reputation
*There are as many scammers as legit sellers
*The channel is full of spamming
*There are no clear guidelines for behavior in the channel
*Even sellers with good reputations may still rob you because they know they could deny new comer negative feedback
*The main way of getting coins is to pay with money pak. There are several problems with this payment method. First you have to go and get it which sucks if you live far from a green dot location, second there is a fee!! of five dollars, so if you only need 3 or 4 coins it adds to the cost considerably, third gas and time ware on you car (if you have a car). And for sellers of coins for money pak it can tie you to a felony crime. When money paks are stolen from green dot locations and the value of the card is over 1000 dollars the police get brought in. If you cash a stolen card or load it to your pay pal it could link you to a felony.
* Lots of tech guys on otc, so they are good at working the system
* Filled with lots of high school kids there is not a section for businesses people or trading only
*There is no place to do trades that are not anonymous
* There are lots of other reasons too feel free to add suggestions Thanks    

[01BTC10]

*Even trusted sellers have negative feedback, the problem is any one can rate anyone regardless if the have had transactions or not.

You need to be rated at least once before you rate someone else.

*If you dont use nick save (which is not easy to do imo) to save your name then someone else can take your name and pretend to be you.

This is why there is PGP authentification.

*If you dont use nick save (which is not easy to do imo) to save your name then someone else can take your name and pretend to be you.

Code:

/msg NickServ REGISTER password youremail@example.com

http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup

[sublime5447]

so you get one account get rated once and them rate yourself on other accounts, people have tons of different alias and use proxies and fake Ip addresses. The single rating to rate system doesn't help much and nick serve is not hard for tech guys to follow but average users find it hard to use the guide could use some serious help both for registration and nickserve.

[Stephen Gornick]

Problems with OTC to be aware off.

The #bitcoin-otc is worthless without the #bitcoin-otc Web of Trust (WoT).

Summary statistics on web of trust

3364 users in database
18078 positive ratings sent
1175 negative ratings sent

- http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratings.php

So negative ratings reflect 6.1% of all ratings.   These don't reflect dollar amounts.  When people are smart and only do trades of higher amounts with trusted counterparties, the ratio of actual losses through #bitcoin-otc should be much less than that number -- perhaps 2% overall, or even less for those who are more risk averse.

Compare that to commercially available exchange methods where PayPal, Dwolla, Moneybookers, MoneyPak, Amazon, etc are instruments used and you'll find they charge much more than 2%.

The difference with -otc is if your 50th trade (assuming of all equal amounts) is the first one you get screwed on then you are at the 2% loss rate.  If it instead happens with your first trade then you are at a 100% loss.

But when you use -otc with the Web of Trust (WoT) and are smart, you'll likely complete trades and not suffer losses.  

Other info:
 - http://wiki.bitcoin-otc.com/wiki/Using_bitcoin-otc#Risk_of_fraud
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Secure_Trading#Use_Bitcoin-OTC

[polrpaul]

Though I agree #bitcoin-otc (and IRC in general) are not user friendly, I do appreciate the Web-of-Trust and PGP authentication. I have never had an issue with any of my transactions. Wading through the junk is no different than your typical (popular) forum. Finding trusted members is not difficult, and all it takes is a small transaction to become part of the WoT.

[mjc]

I cover how to use otc in my book Bitcoin Step by Step, which is free on Amazon today (Feb 1, 2013 Based on an Amazon day until midnight I think PST)  I cover how t:

• get on to IRC
• claim your nick so no one else can take it from you
• how to authenticate
• howto hide your IP address from others so attackers cannot use this to attack you directly

Then in a blog posting here, http://bitcoinsbs.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/establishing-trust/ I talk about how to:

• Use the We of Trust
• GPG Authenticate
• Review others ratings

When using the Bitcoin infrastructure you do need to know what you are doing or you do leave yourself vulnerable.  there is a safe way to use the OTC and if used this way it is an extremely useful tool.  Used incorrectly you will likely find yourself victim to the above mentioned exploits.

[cjanthony]

DRM free PDF next time plz

[sublime5447]

It is a long way from being user friendly. If the average person cant use it then it is never going to take off if the guy off the street logs in and sees a bunch of scammers and kids using profanity or god forbid a woman try and use the site they aren't coming back and they take their money with them. You only get one shot to make a good impression. I have seen dozens of scams. All those people tell their friends.  I understand people work for free on it and it is hosted in a closet at some university out west,  but it needs a lot of work imo it is not a real market place or at least not a good or viable market place. 

[danieldaniel]

THIS PERSON OWES ME 2 BTC.

He is a scammer who ran after he lost his bet.

DO NOT TRADE WITH THIS PERSON.

I did not rate him because I don't like his personality, I rated him because he is a SCAMMER.

Update: This problem is over.  We've made up.

[t.hamilton]

Thanks sublime5447.  Good post.  I'll be more cautious as I proceed into the abyss of trading.  Thanks.

[John (John K.)]

THIS PERSON OWES ME 2 BTC.

He is a scammer who ran after he lost his bet.

DO NOT TRADE WITH THIS PERSON.

I did not rate him because I don't like his personality, I rated him because he is a SCAMMER.

I lol'ed at this. I've seen such OTC/bitcoin/bitcointalk bashing threads before and all ended up with the OP as a failed scammer and simply butthurt.

[sublime5447]

I am not sure I understand your commit are you saying that I am a failed scammer?

[sublime5447]

bump

[Luceo]

OTC isn't any more 'full of scammers' than this forum is.

Briefly to address your points:

*When you first come into the room (if you can figure out how to get registered and authenticated) you will be approached my about 50 scammers.

This is exaggerated but it's true that scammers will try to scam you. That's no different to the forum.

* Using the site is difficult and seeing who is trust worthy is also difficult

It's easier to know who's trustworthy on -otc than on the forum. Here you have post count and you can trawl through post history, on -otc you just have to check who's rated the person you're dealing with.

*Even trusted sellers have negative feedback, the problem is anyone can rate anyone regardless if the have had transactions or not.

This isn't true. You have to be rated to rate.

*You don't know who you are dealing with there are no identifiers in there so it could be a 12 year old or a 60 year old.

That's the same on the forum. Why do you care if you're dealing with a 12 year old or a 60 year old unless you're selling something a 12 year old isn't legally allowed to buy?

*People rate on personality conflicts so if you are new and don't share the opinion of the feed they may ruin you reputation

It happens but very rarely, mostly the channel will side with whoever's in the right.

*There are as many scammers as legit sellers
*The channel is full of spamming
*There are no clear guidelines for behavior in the channel

The rules are pretty clearly set out: http://wiki.bitcoin-otc.com/wiki/Bitcoin-otc_channel_guidelines

*Even sellers with good reputations may still rob you because they know they could deny new comer negative feedback

Most transactions are proveable. If you sent Bitcoins, you can prove that by signing a message with the input address. When in doubt, get somebody to witness the transaction or use escrow. Many people in the channel will escrow for free or for a small donation.

*The main way of getting coins is to pay with money pak. There are several problems with this payment method. First you have to go and get it which sucks if you live far from a green dot location, second there is a fee!! of five dollars, so if you only need 3 or 4 coins it adds to the cost considerably, third gas and time ware on you car (if you have a car). And for sellers of coins for money pak it can tie you to a felony crime. When money paks are stolen from green dot locations and the value of the card is over 1000 dollars the police get brought in. If you cash a stolen card or load it to your pay pal it could link you to a felony.

No, the main way of getting coins is by using sites like aethero's and BitInstant. MoneyPak is a terrible way to get Bitcoins, and you should only take MoneyPak from someone who has a receipt for the Greendot purchase.

* Lots of tech guys on otc, so they are good at working the system

This isn't a bad thing... is it?

* Filled with lots of high school kids there is not a section for businesses people or trading only

OTC is primarily a trading room, it doesn't need a place just for trading.

*There is no place to do trades that are not anonymous

This is down to the users, most users don't feel comfortable giving their life story and urine sample out over the Internet.

When using OTC, there are things you can do to protect yourself. One of the easiest is to register your nickname with nickserv and set up name enforcing (this will mean nobody can use your name):

/q nickserv register password yourem@il.com
/q nickserv set enforce on

After this, you register with gribble, the otc bot (use the ;;guide).

Whenever you're going to trade with someone, don't just look at the number of their rating, take time to read the ratings, check if they're from reputable members etc. Same for negative ratings, scammers like Coolio gave a few of us -50 from his five accounts but as they're all negatively rated it's quite obvious that they're not legitimate accounts.

Is OTC perfect? No.
Is it the hell you made it out to be? No.

I've never been banned, once been muted and never been scammed in #bitcoin-otc. Newbies should give it a go, treat it with caution and realize that it's actually a pretty good place to trade.

[mjc]

I cover how to get set up an lock in your user nick in my book Bitcoin Step by Step: http://bitcoinsbs.wordpress.com/book/

combined with the blog http://bitcoinsbs.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/establishing-trust/, will show you how to GPG authenticated.

Covered in the book is how to
- Set up IRC
- How to register your nick and password protect it to keep others fro using it
- How to get BC authenticate
- How to hide your IP Address from others.

The Blog helps with how to use GPG which is required whe using the rating system.

If you do not follow all of these steps you can have the troubles originally mentioned in this post.

[sublime5447]

Ya I wish I had of done a little more reading before I jumped in. I am not going to be able to go back because I didn't lock in my user name and am unwilling to change to another one. That is my name for everything and I want it to all be the same, plus I am banned