Background checks on persons vital in the Bitcoin eco system ?

[Herodes]

I'm tossing out this idea, should there be done background checks of important people in the bitcoin community ? Now that so much important bitcoin persons reside in the US, would it not be smart to have a dossier on each person ? In my opinion we've had enough instances of fraud, scams and whatnot.

I would think that any individual not having anything to hide, would not object to a background check, but relevant things may surface, and then the community should be aware of it. Like legal troubles, ties to certain organizations and other relevant information.

Would this be wasted money, or a good idea ?

It seems that so far, bitcoin have attracted a lot of crooks, and I think it's better to attempt preventing such things from happening again than just passively sitting and waiting for disasters to happen.

If it is an idea people like, we could collect funds and have a private investigator firm do the job. Of course such an investigation would not find everything, but if there's anything glaring that sticks out, it should be possible to catch it. Heck, I see that its possible to get extensive reports online for online a few dollars, never tested it, so don't know how good it is.

So what I suggest is that we collect a list of names of important bitcoin people and run background checks on them.

Thoughts ?

[Severian]

You first. Dox yourself. : )

[Elwar]

If it is an idea people like, we could collect funds and have a private investigator firm do the job.

There is a private investigator on this forum that provides his services for a decent BTC price that has had some decent feedback.

What is your full name?

[[Coins!]]

Hi Herodes,

What is your address and social security number?

[buddyrandom]

I'm tossing out this idea, should there be done background checks of important people in the bitcoin community ? Now that so much important bitcoin persons reside in the US, would it not be smart to have a dossier on each person ? In my opinion we've had enough instances of fraud, scams and whatnot.

If one person could have any negative effect than bitcoins wouldn't be nearly as cool as they are

[franky1]

define vital?

if you mean the guys behind mtgox(coinlab), bitinstant. then kind of, yea because they are the ones holding the main bank accounts. i can agree that a legit business asking for fiat/bitcoins should be transparant. and im glad that we already know their names.

the same way we know that bill gates was behind microsoft and steve jobs was behind apple.

what i will say though is invading their private lives beyond their business by suggesting a whole dossier is required on them is a little extreme. as long as you have enough due diligence to compare a companies legal status in comparison to a bricks and mortar company such as apple/microsoft. it would settle any doubts about scams.

for those of you owning a iphone v1-v3. do you have a whole dossier on steve jobs? i bet you don't
for those of you owning an actual retail bough microsoft XP/ office 2003. do you have a dossier on bill gates? i bet you don't

ad why do i think you dont. its because they never hid themselves to the extent silk road does.

but if a company is hiding behind proxies, never to reveal real life info. just think to yourself, if they are legit, why need to hide?

i would say its time legit businesses (if there are any left in hiding) come out of hiding from proxy hidden domain who-is look up's. but i don't think i need to say it as there are not that many legit businesses that do hide, as they have no reason to.

and those that are not legit. EG S.R they have their reasons to stay hidden and you purchasing from them is your own risk.  so if you don't like S.R's secrecy. then don't use them.
(i never have or will, but thats because i have no need/use of them)

its not hard to find info on bitpay, walletbit, bitcoinstore, coinlab, bitcoincentral, mtgox, bitinstant and the many other actual legit businesses. so a dossier is not really needed any more then microsoft would need to produce a dossier for strangers it may never meet.

this is where BFL in 2011/2012 messed up. they started off in hiding, not revealing info about them.. that it caused people including the now famous josh Zerlan to wonder why all the secrecy from an apparent legit business that is asking for tonnes of cash.

so if your going to start a business that is going to be legit. don't "do a BFL", instead just be transparent about the business and you will find the truths you do reveal about the business will stop the stalkers trying to invade every little crumb of detail of your personal life. and will be satisfied by the honestly of the business information that is readily available through government databases and google searches without the requirement of expensive and time consuming stalker investigations/dossiers, thus avoiding any finger pointing.

[WishIStartedSooner]

If it is an idea people like, we could collect funds and have a private investigator firm do the job.

There is a private investigator on this forum that provides his services for a decent BTC price that has had some decent feedback.

What is your full name?

I've always wanted to be a private investigator ever since tex murphy...


hEY! I should make a bitcoin equivalent to good ole games! *gears turning*

[Herodes]

I'll make a brief response:

Unlike Apple and MS, a bitcoin service often holds significantly clients funds. If you purchase a software or hardware product from Apple or MS, you hand over your money and get the product in return. If you're not happy with it, you return the product and get your money back. You don't deposit large funds with these companies, and they can't run off with large funds of yours, like a bitcoin service can.

Now, a medium/large bitcoin service that holds client funds are no safer than the people running the show. Therefore, knowing whether the persons involved have a history of scamming, unethical behaviour or have been brought to court before is of high interest to investors.

Let me take a direct example:

Bruce Wagner was at one point one of the most outspoken persons in the bitcoin community. He advertised heavily for 'MyBitcoin'. We all know how that went. Now, I haven't seen any clear evidence of connection between him and Mybitcoin, however, it was later revealed that he was involved with Bold Funding, an operation that simply sucked money out of people about to lose their homes on promises to help them with saving their homes. His involvement in this operation was not known widely when he first started to get involved in bitcoin.

Financial magazines and journals quite frequently holds a tab on conmen and scammers, if someone that's been involved in scams earlier is starting something similar again, it's in the public interst to be educated about it.

Also, the more money you invest with an unregulated, uninsured institution, the higher your trust level needs to be.

Making public doziers about 'vital' bitcoin people may be stretching it, but surely checking out criminal records and any 'interesting' connections may be worthwhile checking out.

I'm pro bitcoin, and I want things to happen in an orderly fashion, that's all.

If it was found that 2 out of 3 founders of a bitcoin company has a very questionable past, would you rather know this before depositing funds, or would you prefer to be ignorant of this fact ?

Of course, we could say that each client/customer is responsible for his own actions and completely ignore that there's a community that everybody should care about and work to make better, but I think it's every community members distinct moral obligation to tell if he knows about something that could potentially wreck havoc with a bitcoin service. Bitcoin won't stand or fail because of single failures, but if we can avoid it, I think we should focus on attempting to avoid things like this happening again in the future. It's in the interest of the community and in the interest of public relations.

With all the fairly recent scams that took place, that's what people are picking up when they read articles about bitcoin, and that's what journalists write about, but it seems like the tide has changed now, and let's hope it continues to go our way.

People who are critical and ask hard questions should be praised, not ridiculed. While I don't care much what people say online, some people may, and therefore they may be reluctant to speak their minds.

If a service is run by a person that has a shady history, and you because of that avoid that service, then you will tell yourself, "Great, I didn't invest with them", when they eventually get 'hacked' or just vanish. And you will be thankful towards the community that pointed this out to you in advance.

Now, don't get me wrong, people have to think for themselves and do their own risk assesment, but having some more information about persons that run the show in a unregulated, uninsured market, I can't see what's wrong with that.

[jim618]

I think Herodes has a valid point.

We all value that we can use Bitcoin software without having to jump through ID and registration hoops. However anyone who has access to your private keys you need to have a certain level of confidence in. You have a trust relationship with that person.  

I am quite a private person but my real name is on the bottom of every MultiBit page and the Team page makes it easy to contact me. In psychology this is known as an 'honest signal'. It is the same as standing in front of everyone you know on your wedding day - a public signal of intent.

Personally I would rather not do it as it is easy to imagine scenarios where being so strongly associated with Bitcoin may not be in your best interest. But it is necessary.

I'm not sure we need whole dossiers on people but a bio online of verifiable facts (like you have for company board members on .com websites) and contact details I think make sense. I'll put one on multibit.org.

[HorseRider]

I once have thought about an independent individual credit rating organization, which collect the volunteered person's back ground information and publishing the rating result to the public. The rating organization will keep the private information private from the public while at the same time can get conclusion with solid evidence.

However, who pays this credit rating organization? If it is hired by the ones who are rated, there obviously a conflict of interest. If it is supported by donation, I doubt that it can have enough money to have some really professional investigation.

[sega01]

I can understand some of your points, however I very much like the current Bitcoin economy the way it is. Everyone tends to forge their own identities and paths here. And to me, sometimes a "criminal" history means little. There's a million different crimes against the state which you can commit that mean little. I understand conflicts of interest can be hairy, but on the whole what we have now has worked remarkably well. The system will tune itself more in the future and prevent even more scams, but I don't think that wide-spread background checks are a good idea. I believe that the plausible small percentage of fewer scams would be underweighed by other damage which that could do.

The beauty of this system is there are those who will work with you with a background check, and without. Plenty of freedom here to choose who you do business with and question those you suspect.

Sincerely,
Teran

[cdog]

Is this some sort of joke? Half the reason BTC is so popular is because is just as anonymous as cash.

The notion that background checks would be conducted on its users would instantly kill the currency. It preposterous, frankly.

[Herodes]

Is this some sort of joke? Half the reason BTC is so popular is because is just as anonymous as cash.

The notion that background checks would be conducted on its users would instantly kill the currency. It preposterous, frankly.

May I kindly suggest you read the thread again ?

The suggestion is that there should be background checks on people running bitcoin services that store funds, and also perhaps of developers on the core team.

Would you hand over your funds to an exchange started by a person convicted of scamming people ?

[niko]

If your concern is that people handling your coins might scam you, simply do what is prudent: get in touch with your business partner, learn their name, look them up, ask around. Don't rely on the community to do this in an organized fashion you are proposing here. If you find serious red flags, please do share the facts and let others decide. Case in point: scammer Sonny from Butterfly Labs.
Letting everyone do their due dilligence is much better than relying on one private eye do it once, for a variety of reasons.

If your concern is that a developer might have some skeletons in the closet, and therefore subject to being blackmailed to introduce exploitable bugs, then your background check is pointless. Let's say you find out that Biggrogobulux, one of main developers, was arrested for theft as a teenager, or was investigated for credit-card fraud. This is not a kind of secret that would make him do anything just to keep it secret. It's already public information, that's how these investigators get it for you and serve it on the plate with the bill. You might be more interested to check whether Biggrogobulux has been banging his high-school sweetheart behind his wife's back for the past three years. Case in point: David Petraeus of CIA. Private investigators you are thinking of do not dig that deep. Besides, such information is too precious to trust a random internet guy would not sell it up (or give it up) to a third party that might be interested in exploiting it. You'd have to do background check on people running the background check. See the problem? This is kind of shit presidents have to deal with all the time.

[Lethn]

May I kindly suggest you read the thread again ?

I figured as much you'd give this kind of response, anonymity protects everyone, not just criminals and scammers, if you take that away then you're just going back to the same route that governments want. Scammers are being ousted these days without the need for private investigators poking into everyones computers or private lives, it's unnecessary, if people get scammed etc. they'll warn everyone about it as they have done on these boards, if the people who are stupid enough to trust them again give them their money then they're stupid.

I've had enough of people who think they can justify spying on everyone just to catch a select few.

[franky1]

herodes has got a valid point when it comes to long term investments. after all the bruce wagner and trendon shavers (pirate) ordeal.

my comments were for PRODUCT shops/complete transaction same day. But now i am replying on the bases of, if you are just going to hand someone else your money and think you can come back in 6 months and expect automatic profit with 0 risk, then even a dossier wont help you.

be prudent with your funds try not to leave them long term with other parties 'on trust' many people knew trendon's picture, met up with him, had his whole biography including home address.. and they still got stung. similar with bruce wagner.

invading peoples private lives wont protect your funds. but seeing they haven't even set up any legal business registration details or hiding behind proxies is a big neon sign to not even get involved.

as i said bitinstant, bitpay, walletbit, mtgox have given out legit business info and im happy to trade with them, even mtgox, BUT i would never throw my whole hoard of coins in their long term with ANY crypto company no matter the promises and life history they had.

its your money so set a daily usage limit and only play with that amount that day and withdraw it. no matter how trusted the guy is, don't use them like a institutional bank by them holding your money for you long term.

invading peoples personal lives, for the sake of lazyness and to shift the blame off you for not being careful with YOUR MONEY is a silly thing to do. especially when even after getting every detail of the guys family history, and after they scam you, you then want someone else to then take them to court. EG look at trendon shavers. no one has personally filed a court case against trendon.

there's to much "someone else should do it for me" mind set here.

so if anyone wants to have a dossier on anyone. DO IT YOURSELF. don't make it someone else's problem so that you can then not only blame the scammer but also blaming the guy providing the dossier for vouching for them as being legit.

do your own due diligence and look after your own money. don't rely on others. The big selling point of bitcoin for me is not that it can be anonymous. but the fact that IT IS MINE

[Herodes]

If your concern is that people handling your coins might scam you, simply do what is prudent: get in touch with your business partner, learn their name, look them up, ask around. Don't rely on the community to do this in an organized fashion you are proposing here. If you find serious red flags, please do share the facts and let others decide.

Yupp, that was my whole point. Thank you.

[acoindr]

It seems that so far, bitcoin have attracted a lot of crooks ...,

What is your definition of crooks? Some would say many politicians fit that category... What would a background check there yield? As Steve Gornick said in one thread anonymous businesses are not necessarily the most dishonest, as he lost more dealing with people with open identity (Bitconica) than anonymous businesses.

Also, nobody is vital to Bitcoin. Everything about it is interchangeable. That would be like saying we should do checks on people vital to the Internet.

[Rothgar]

What is your full name?

Hi Herodes,

What is your address and social security number?

Herodes,

What do you have to hide?   You have failed to answer these questions, don't you think that's very suspicious.  What are you hiding? 

Now what are the last seven addresses you have lived at?  Are you hiding something?