TradeFortress is a scammer.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

I think you should learn how ripple works.

Didn't you came from the ripple forums? Didn't you see the post about "even worse, this account has never trusted TF but will take TF IOUs"?

If you trust someone who trusts me, you're affected, up to an infinite amount of hops.

[dchapes]

You either love spreading misinformation or you just don't get basic concepts.  I'm not replying for you, because you've convinced me that you have a huge cognitive bias against Ripple. Someone can't be reasoned out of a view they did not reach with reason. I'm replying for others reading that may be reasonable.

Didn't you came from the ripple forums? Didn't you see the post about "even worse, this account has never trusted TF but will take TF IOUs"?

What thread is that? I read every post on there and the only ones about this don't say anything like that. Because it can't happen.

If you trust someone who trusts me, you're affected, up to an infinite amount of hops.

That's not what you said. You said (emphasis yours):

Even if you have never trusted me, your Bitstamp IOUs could be being substituted for my IOUs.

Affected is not the same as getting TradeFortress IOUs. Only people that are foolish enough to directly extend trust to TradeFortress can ever get any of his IOUs. Others can only be affected if all the parties in between turn out to be untrustworthy or bad credit risks. The effects of TradeFortress' "experiment" to those that didn't trust him has been zero (other than being exposed to his misinformation).

Although a payment path could go through TradeFortress along a long path (not currently; the TF trusting network of newbs is almost completely self contained) only those that directly trust TradeFortress get his IOUs. Other people may get IOUs of their own directly trusted connections. Either these people made a reasonable choice in extending trust to a trustworthy person/gateway that will honour it; or they made a bad choice and extended trust to someone that will betray that trust.

This is a point that TradeFortress (and others) keep bringing up in various ways even after it's been explained and refuted again and again. It's clear that TradeFortress just doesn't care about reality and facts (or lives in his own imaginary world with his own imaginary facts). He (and others) have repeated claimed that trust chains fail through the entire chain. E.g. if Alice violates the trust Bob placed in her that Bob can and should therefore violate the trust that Charlie placed in him. That's the only way such effects can chain through trust relations. The world doesn't work like that. Trust doesn't work like that.

When this is pointed out, I've seen people fall back from saying that Charlie is effected by Bob being untrustworthy to then claiming that Charlie is effected because Bob now doesn't have the money to pay Charlie (due to be scammed by Alice). How is this different than the real world? It's not. If Charlie has trusted Bob for more than Bob can get (without relying on Alice) then Charlie has made a bad choice or needs to wait to be repaid. E.g. if Alice is a con-woman that cons Bob out of his money while he's on his way to pay back Charlie then Charlie doesn't automatically forgive the debt. Either Charlie gives Bob more time to repay or Charlie realizes he made a bad choice trusting Bob to not get conned or to be reliably pay his debts.

Unlike with banks or with bitcoin exchanges where you implicitly trust them by using with them; in Ripple you explicitly state who you trust and exactly for how much. If a person doesn't like the idea of debt or inter-personal IOUs then no one is forcing them to use them with Ripple. A person can fully use Ripple only ever trusting a single gateway the same way they trust a bitcoin exchange. Including, if they want, (as some have suggested) only leaving their funds in Ripple as long as they need to use the service (for conversion or for making/receiving payments). If someone thinks that's still bad then I hope they speak out just as loudly against all the bitcoin exchanges that are giving people internal IOUs for their USD and BTC deposits (and in many cases those IOUs are not transferable).

In relation to people being hypocritical regarding Ripple, I also find it strange/amusing/sad that I see TradeFortress being defending as not meeting the Bitcointalk's strict definitions of a "scammer" by carefully looking at his exact words to note that he never explicitly claimed to be making a promise/guarantee that he then violated and yet many of these same people loudly scream "scam" on these forums at anything related to Ripple without ever pointing to something exact and specific that OpenCoin promised/guaranteed and then violated. There is a reason the OpenCoin (and JoelKatz, etc) account doesn't have a scammer tag. It's also amusing/sad that some claim that anyone that tries to explain the reality and facts of Ripple or promote it must be a paid shill.

This whole anti-Ripple "movement" is one giant example of logical fallacies, faulty reasoning, cognitive biases, and who knows what else. A physiologist would have a field day examining this.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Okay, I see where I was wrong. You would not be getting my IOUs if you have not trusted me, you would have got the IOUs of someone who you trusted who trusted me's IOUs which are really being backed by my IOUs. This distinction does not change the fact that:

i) you're still affected
ii) your bitstamp IOUs could have being substituted for someone's IOUs, still based on my IOUs
iii) a large enough default will leave people who you trusted being unable to repay

There's no way for your friend who you trust very much to repay IF he lost every single asset because it was replaced with worthless IOUs.

There is a difference between IOUs on an exchange, and actually trading around IOUs in an infinite web with Ripple substituting your IOUs even through they have a different value. Take this example:

You trust Bitstamp for 20 BTC.
You trust your friend Bob for 20 BTC.

You have 15 Bitstamp BTC. Your friend Bob just went on a holiday for a couple of weeks. Out of the blue, the Ripple system has decided to substitute your 15 BTC-Bitstamp for 15 BTC-Bob - because the Ripple system will not work efficiently without this substitute. You want to redeem your BTC, Bob's on a holiday, you'll have to try and trade your BTC back to Bitstamp but there may not be paths.

15 BTC in 3 weeks is different from 15 BTC now, and that's not even considering the fact that you can never trust someone 100%. Ripple thinks they are the same, and they'll substitute it each other - because OpenCoin Inc's system is more important than you.

[dchapes]

You're like a troll that just spews the same crap over and over again to hear their own voice.
You remind me of the moon hoaxers, the anti-evolutionists, the anti-vaccinist, etc.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

You were arguing over technicalities and trying to justify losing money, fyi

Let's take this quote:

When this is pointed out, I've seen people fall back from saying that Charlie is effected by Bob being untrustworthy to then claiming that Charlie is effected because Bob now doesn't have the money to pay Charlie (due to be scammed by Alice). How is this different than the real world? It's not. If Charlie has trusted Bob for more than Bob can get (without relying on Alice) then Charlie has made a bad choice or needs to wait to be repaid. E.g. if Alice is a con-woman that cons Bob out of his money while he's on his way to pay back Charlie then Charlie doesn't automatically forgive the debt. Either Charlie gives Bob more time to repay or Charlie realizes he made a bad choice trusting Bob to not get conned or to be reliably pay his debts.

There's no way for your friend who you trust very much to repay IF he lost every single asset because it was replaced with worthless IOUs.

So what? The end result is the same, it doesn't matter if "more time to repay", "bad choice", blah blah blah, the bottom line is red, you just money. Justifying it doesn't matter, you lost money.

Make a bad decision? So what? You lost money.

The system encourages and forces you to do exactly that.

I think we've come to the end of this discussion, which, well turned into another Ripple debt discussion rather than "TradeFortress is a scammer".

[dchapes]

The system encourages and forces you to do exactly that.

If a person doesn't like the idea of debt or inter-personal IOUs then no one is forcing them to use them with Ripple. A person can fully use Ripple only ever trusting a single gateway the same way they trust a bitcoin exchange. Including, if they want, (as some have suggested) only leaving their funds in Ripple as long as they need to use the service (for conversion or for making/receiving payments). If someone thinks that's still bad then I hope they speak out just as loudly against all the bitcoin exchanges that are giving people internal IOUs for their USD and BTC deposits (and in many cases those IOUs are not transferable).

Only trusting a gateway is what Ripple developers have been encouraging.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

The system encourages and forces you to do exactly that.

If a person doesn't like the idea of debt or inter-personal IOUs then no one is forcing them to use them with Ripple. A person can fully use Ripple only ever trusting a single gateway the same way they trust a bitcoin exchange. Including, if they want, (as some have suggested) only leaving their funds in Ripple as long as they need to use the service (for conversion or for making/receiving payments). If someone thinks that's still bad then I hope they speak out just as loudly against all the bitcoin exchanges that are giving people internal IOUs for their USD and BTC deposits (and in many cases those IOUs are not transferable).

Irrelevant, explain to me how you would send $25 / 0.25 BTC to a friend without being forced to use IOUs in Ripple.

Meanwhile, with bitcoin, sign a transaction.

[Este Nuno]

But really what he did and what his intentions seem to be fits almost perfectly as digital vandalism against Ripple.

Except that the actual vandalism/damage to the Ripple system was non-existant. If someone cons a bunch of newbs into publishing their bitcoin secret keys that doesn't damage bitcoin or cryptography or prove any big flaw in either; it just shows newbs (and others) are gullible and can be conned. The only real damage (beyond those conned) is the misinformation. He (and others) are just using this as an excuse to spread more misinformation like this statement:

What about people losing their bitstamp  BTC? That's the damage I was thinking of when I wrote that.

He claims he was not the one who ended up redeeming peoples bitstamp BTC, but that he just set in motion events that enabled people to effectively lose their bitstamp BTC. By lose, I mean have them replaced by TradeFortress BTC.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

But really what he did and what his intentions seem to be fits almost perfectly as digital vandalism against Ripple.

Except that the actual vandalism/damage to the Ripple system was non-existant. If someone cons a bunch of newbs into publishing their bitcoin secret keys that doesn't damage bitcoin or cryptography or prove any big flaw in either; it just shows newbs (and others) are gullible and can be conned. The only real damage (beyond those conned) is the misinformation. He (and others) are just using this as an excuse to spread more misinformation like this statement:

What about people losing their bitstamp  BTC? That's the damage I was thinking of when I wrote that.

He claims he was not the one who ended up redeeming peoples bitstamp BTC, but that he just set in motion events that enabled people to effectively lose their bitstamp BTC. By lose, I mean have them replaced by TradeFortress BTC.

Watch out, he's going to argue they were not really TF IOU and instead just other people they trust with that other person getting TF IOU.

Same effect.

[bitaccumulation]

What about people losing their bitstamp  BTC? That's the damage I was thinking of when I wrote that.

He claims he was not the one who ended up redeeming peoples bitstamp BTC, but that he just set in motion events that enabled people to effectively lose their bitstamp BTC. By lose, I mean have them replaced by TradeFortress BTC.

If people trust TradeFortress AND Bitstamp USD, they are saying that they will accept both equally (just like you'd accept a balance at Bank of America and Citibank for US dollars equally).

Douchebag TradeFortress understands that Ripple is a ledger system that keeps track of IOUs but wants to play stupid while he allows people to be scammed because of his actions.

Ripple is a distributed ledger system that allows you to keep track of IOUs.   That's its function.   It allows you to take control of who you do and don't trust when accepting IOUs.   It allows this trust to "ripple" if you want it to (optional).   That's a feature of the system.  It's not like Bitcoin.  TradeFortress is playing on most people's ignorance of this and making it seem like it's a flaw because it doesn't work the way Bitcoin does.   He's a douchebag.

Unfortunately he obviously has friends on this board that will continue to allow him to scam Newbies either because they are ignorant of what he is doing or they just don't care.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

What about people losing their bitstamp  BTC? That's the damage I was thinking of when I wrote that.

He claims he was not the one who ended up redeeming peoples bitstamp BTC, but that he just set in motion events that enabled people to effectively lose their bitstamp BTC. By lose, I mean have them replaced by TradeFortress BTC.

If people trust TradeFortress AND Bitstamp USD, they are saying that they will accept both equally (just like you'd accept a balance at Bank of America and Citibank for US dollars equally).

Douchebag TradeFortress understands that Ripple is a ledger system that keeps track of IOUs but wants to play stupid while he allows people to be scammed because of his actions.

Ripple is a distributed ledger system that allows you to keep track of IOUs.   That's its function.   It allows you to take control of who you do and don't trust when accepting IOUs.   It allows this trust to "ripple" if you want it to (optional).   That's a feature of the system.  It's not like Bitcoin.  TradeFortress is playing on most people's ignorance of this and making it seem like it's a flaw because it doesn't work the way Bitcoin does.   He's a douchebag.

Unfortunately he obviously has friends on this board that will continue to allow him to scam Newbies either because they are ignorant of what he is doing or they just don't care.

Please stop repeating stuff, here:

I would not accept a BoA balance equal to a Citibank's balance if the nearest BoA atm is a hour's drive away compared to 5 minutes, for example.

For one thing, before we can distinguish between the two sample responses you give we need a defined point in time at which the IOU issuer is obliged to give a response at all (a settlement date).

IOUs (taken as meaning any acknowledgement of debt) don't necessarily EVER have to be redeemed.  For example perpetual bonds are never intended to be redeemed - yet are debt.

Thanks for your valuable arguments. You might be right and I think I understand now why theymos said IOU is not a binding contract. But now I feel totally confused. What is debt then, if it is doesn't ever have to be repaid?

Debt is something that you owe - a claim someone else has against you.  Not all debts are created with the intention of being repaid (e.g. loans that are made for tax reasons without either party to the loan having an intention of there ever being a repayment).  Perpetual bonds are another example of debt that will never be repaid (talking RL ones not the pretend mining ones on here).  The bond issuer borrows money that will never be repaid - paying interest (a dividend) on it regularly.  The only way to get your cash back is to sell it to someone else.

That's why debt/IOUs with no agreed terms is worthless.

Maybe an example will help - for the examples below the assumption to be made is that I WILL honour any commitments I made (in practice all debt should be discounted in value based on your confidence that I'd repay):

If I said I'd owe you 20 BTCs to be settled in a week in return for 10 BTCs from you now then (IF you had total trust in me) you could reasonably value those 20 ripple BTCs at similar value to 20 actual BTCs.

If I said I'd owe you 20 BTCs to be settled in 5 years in return for 10 BTCs from you now then (IF you had total trust in me) you would STILL have to value them at a lot less than 20 actual BTCs (as they'd generate no revenue in the meantime and were illiquid).

In ripple BTCs of each of the above scenarios are treated as being interchangeable (whether its 2 sets from same issuer or from 2 different issuers) - despite the fact they have very different actual value.

Now consider a third scenario (equivalent to perpetual bonds):

I say that if you give me 10 BTC now I'll owe you 10 BTC on ripple.  I will never repay those BTC but on the first of each month I'll send 0.01 BTC for each BTC owed to whoever currently holds them.  Again - to ripple those are just BTC - and swappable with anyone else's BTC (provided someone trusts both me and the other issuer).  These BTC may have more or less value than the other ones - depending on how people value 1% interest/month against liquidity.  But I'll never repay them - and am NOT a scammer for issuing them.

Now the final case.  I say if you give me 10 BTC now I'll owe you 20 BTC on ripple but will only ever repay them if I win the lottery.  What are those BTC worth?  Nearly nothing (even ignoring the fact that I don't play the lottery).

Do you see how the value of a debt/IOU is defined by the TERMS that apply to it - not by its face value?  But ripple treats them all based on face value.

TF's ones were pretty much explicitly worthless.  In the absence of terms the only way to reasonably assess value of something is to look at what consideration was given in return for them - and assume a similar value.  Nothing was given - so their value is gong to be around zero.

[bitaccumulation]

I would not accept a BoA balance equal to a Citibank's balance if the nearest BoA atm is a hour's drive away compared to 5 minutes, for example.

This is why you're a douchebag.  

YOU don't have to accept BOA and Citibank equally.   But if you trust BOA - THEY trust Citibank - and thus you can end up with money from someone trusting Citibank.

Get it dumbass?  (probably not)

What Ripple does is let you TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for these trust relationships in a finer and more detailed way.   However, that's harder to do when a jerk-off like you is misleading people into thinking you're "going to send them BTC on Ripple" when they don't even understand what Ripple is.

You're a fucking scammer - you misled people to perpetrate a fraud. That's a fact.  Whether the moderators want to do the right thing or not is irrelevant.

[dchapes]

But really what he did and what his intentions seem to be fits almost perfectly as digital vandalism against Ripple.

Except that the actual vandalism/damage to the Ripple system was non-existant.

What about people losing their bitstamp  BTC? That's the damage I was thinking of when I wrote that.

The only person that lost bitstamp BTC was someone that trusted TradeFortress to hold their BTC for them.

He claims he was not the one who ended up redeeming peoples bitstamp BTC, but that he just set in motion events that enabled people to effectively lose their bitstamp BTC. By lose, I mean have them replaced by TradeFortress BTC.

What would you think of someone if back when bitcoin was starting out, they had asked new bitcoiners to post their bitcoin private keys in exchange for a small payment or trade and if that same someone knew full well what the consequences of posting private keys would be? Would you excuse it as long as the person claimed to not use the secret keys themselves? Would you think it somehow showed a fundamental problem with bitcoin or with cryptography in general? Would you think it shows that some people are nieve and trust people with things that they don't understand?

[dchapes]

Irrelevant, explain to me how you would send $25 / 0.25 BTC to a friend without being forced to use IOUs in Ripple.
Meanwhile, with bitcoin, sign a transaction.

If you're talking about someone that has a bitcoin wallet and just wants 0.25 BTC then the comparison you should make is with transferring some amount of XRP which is ... sign a transaction.

But you mention $25. And since you like to ask for rhetorical explanations: Explain to me how you would send $25 to a friend using bitcoin. Not $25 "worth" of bitcoin but $25. If at any point an exchange is involved then you're using IOUs at the exchange.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Irrelevant, explain to me how you would send $25 / 0.25 BTC to a friend without being forced to use IOUs in Ripple.
Meanwhile, with bitcoin, sign a transaction.

If you're talking about someone that has a bitcoin wallet and just wants 0.25 BTC then the comparison you should make is with transferring some amount of XRP which is ... sign a transaction.

But you mention $25. And since you like to ask for rhetorical explanations: Explain to me how you would send $25 to a friend using bitcoin. Not $25 "worth" of bitcoin but $25. If at any point an exchange is involved then you're using IOUs at the exchange.

There are numerous differences with XRP/BTC, most importantly the fact that you still need trust to send XRP transactions (the whole ledger system is based on trust), and there's also the distribution.

So what if an IOU is involved in an exchange? I'm not going to have that IOU randomly substituted for something else because OpenCoin Inc places having a flawed system that somewhat works over not making me lose money.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

But really what he did and what his intentions seem to be fits almost perfectly as digital vandalism against Ripple.

Except that the actual vandalism/damage to the Ripple system was non-existant.

What about people losing their bitstamp  BTC? That's the damage I was thinking of when I wrote that.

The only person that lost bitstamp BTC was someone that trusted TradeFortress to hold their BTC for them.

He claims he was not the one who ended up redeeming peoples bitstamp BTC, but that he just set in motion events that enabled people to effectively lose their bitstamp BTC. By lose, I mean have them replaced by TradeFortress BTC.

What would you think of someone if back when bitcoin was starting out, they had asked new bitcoiners to post their bitcoin private keys in exchange for a small payment or trade and if that same someone knew full well what the consequences of posting private keys would be? Would you excuse it as long as the person claimed to not use the secret keys themselves? Would you think it somehow showed a fundamental problem with bitcoin or with cryptography in general? Would you think it shows that some people are nieve and trust people with things that they don't understand?

That's a bad analogy. If receiving bitcoin payments required people to post their private keys...

Also, I could have sent everyone 100 BTC, which would have removed the liquidity providing part, but the point that you cannot send money in Ripple still stands.

[bitaccumulation]

That's a bad analogy. If receiving bitcoin payments required people to post their private keys...

It's not a bad analogy.  It shows that if someone doesn't understand something they can be scammed by someone who does.

If you don't understand public vs private keys then you could easily be convinced by a scammer to have them give you a private key.

In the same vein, if someone doesn't understand how trust works in Ripple, a douchebag scammer like yourself can convince them to trust people they shouldn't and have bad consequences.

The fact that you don't steal the money directly in the second scenario doesn't make you less of a scammer.   A more elaborate or complicated scam or the use of a more complicated system in order to perpetrate a scam is still - A SCAM.

You have misrepresented through half-truths and obfuscation what you were having people do.   You used their ignorance to put them in harm's way.  

[bitaccumulation]

Also, I could have sent everyone 100 BTC, which would have removed the liquidity providing part, but the point that you cannot send money in Ripple still stands.

You must be as dense as a rock.  Ripple isn't meant to send actual BTC.   Just like a check isn't meant to send actual USD.  You're a fucking idiot.  Really. I still can't figure out why you don't have a scammer tag for pulling this kind of shit.

[dchapes]

If a person doesn't like the idea of debt or inter-personal IOUs then no one is forcing them to use them with Ripple. A person can fully use Ripple only ever trusting a single gateway the same way they trust a bitcoin exchange. Including, if they want, (as some have suggested) only leaving their funds in Ripple as long as they need to use the service (for conversion or for making/receiving payments). If someone thinks that's still bad then I hope they speak out just as loudly against all the bitcoin exchanges that are giving people internal IOUs for their USD and BTC deposits (and in many cases those IOUs are not transferable).

Irrelevant, explain to me how you would send $25 / 0.25 BTC to a friend without being forced to use IOUs in Ripple.

I didn't claim an IOU wasn't involved at some point for non-XRP transfers. I claimed inter-personal IOUs or trusting more than a single gateway wasn't forced.

So: I trust one gateway for $25 or for 0.25 BTC that I've deposited and the friend trusts the same or different gateway for $25 or 0.25 and then I sign a transaction. Now my friend can pay people with the $25 or withdraw it.

[dchapes]

There are numerous differences with XRP/BTC, most importantly the fact that you still need trust to send XRP transactions

Whoa whoa whoa, stop there. Sending XRP from any ripple address to any other ripple address requires no trust. Unless you're going to claim it's the users trusting Ripple itself but that's no different from trusting bitcoin itself.