Theymos: What the fuck is up with BFL and TradeFortress?

[webr3]

MNW's promise was that he will give 100% ROI if pirate defaults. When pirate officially defaulted, he has broken his promise.

Compare to a bunch of tokens / IOUs which has zero terms. No contract unlike MNW, end of story. If I said that I would redeem those for actual BTC, and did not specify a time, then it would have to be a reasonable amount of time.

You owe me 10.15 BTC. However, I will accept 9.15 BTC considering you did this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=211115.msg2215271#msg2215271

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[Mitzplik]

Webr3, dont you understand?

Its very clear that he owes you. As clear as that is the fact the he can pay you "WHENEVER HE WANTS", as long as ther is not a path for you to redeem your IOU.
So better than pushing him is to beg him to give you Bitstamp BTC.

If he has the BTC, then why make you suffer? I agree that he should try to pay you because you helped him to prove his point, as a fellow.
But he cant be tagged as a scammer.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

LOL, "you did this"? I am responsible for the actions of random forum users now.

Are you going to accuse everyone defending me here as being my sockpuppet?

[The 4ner]

Damn this scam accusation against TradeFortress sounds pretty serious. Should we be cautious when using the services he advertises in his signature space? I personally love his CoinLenders site and idea. I wouldn't mind attempting to increase my BTC amount. Especially since I don't have the skills to make a mining rig.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Damn this scam accusation against TradeFortress sounds pretty serious. Should we be cautious when using the services he advertises in his signature space? I personally love his CoinLenders site and idea. I wouldn't mind attempting to increase my BTC amount. Especially since I don't have the skills to make a mining rig.

Scammer accusations are sometimes legitimate, and sometimes just people who are butthurt and want revenge. Always do your own due diligence before doing business with someone. No amount of opinions on forum (whether positive or negative) will ever matter as much as your own common sense when dealing with people.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Damn this scam accusation against TradeFortress sounds pretty serious. Should we be cautious when using the services he advertises in his signature space? I personally love his CoinLenders site and idea. I wouldn't mind attempting to increase my BTC amount. Especially since I don't have the skills to make a mining rig.

Pro tip: I don't break promises / contracts or scam people. Hence why I have done unescrowed trades of 300+ BTC near the peak, ssh access to servers with tens of thousands of coins, report SQL injections to btct.co/Burnside, report XSS to ukto for bit funder, paid out insurance for btcinvest, made shareholders happy, and depositors too while making me a lot of profit too.

[qxzn]

Thanks TradeFortress, I think you're doing everyone a service by getting them to take a hard look at how ripple works.

I was just at the bitcoin conference, and I had at least a dozen conversations about ripple. Pretty much none of the people I spoke with understand it. Even some of the guys in the ripple booth (though they were courteous and eager to help), got stumped on some issues.

My primary concern with ripple is exactly what TradeFortress has just demonstrated. Ripple IOUs have different values based on the issuer. If they traded on an open market, you would see this. IOUs for a trusted institution are worth more than IOUs for a less trusted one. E.g. you might see Bitstamp USD IOUs trading against Weexchange IOUs at a non-1 rate, such as 1.1.

But we don't see that in ripple (as far as I can tell). Instead, we see a markets labelled by the currencies only, such as USD/XRP. But whose USD? Where's the Bitstamp USD / Weexchange USD market?

The fact that default risk fluctuates is acknowledged by participants in the real financial markets. We have credit markets. The values of various entities' credit float against one another. They are not all the same.

When I posed this question in the ripple booth yesterday, here is the (paraphrased) answer I got:
me: "So what's up with this automatic liquidity providing, given that some IOUs are more valuable than others? Couldn't we have a 'bank run' type situation when a gateway starts to look like they're in financial trouble, and innocent ripple users who happened to be 'asleep at the wheel' at the time wind up holding all the bad debt?"

ripple employee: "Good point. I think that the protocol supports setting a price at which you are willing to exchange a certain issuer's IOUs for another issuer's. It doesn't have to be 1:1. I think the client just doesn't support this yet."

me: "Okay, cool. But does it have to be a fixed amount or is there some kind of floating rate?"

ripple employee: "I think it's just a fixed amount."

Needless to say, I was not particularly impressed by this answer.

Honestly, I expect to be wrong about this, because there are seemingly a lot of smart guys involved and they really seem to have strong technology. Can they really have missed some basic facts about how markets work? Na, probably I missed something. But I'm definitely not betting on it until I hear a satisfactory answer.

[The 4ner]

Damn this scam accusation against TradeFortress sounds pretty serious. Should we be cautious when using the services he advertises in his signature space? I personally love his CoinLenders site and idea. I wouldn't mind attempting to increase my BTC amount. Especially since I don't have the skills to make a mining rig.

Pro tip: I don't break promises / contracts or scam people. Hence why I have done unescrowed trades of 300+ BTC near the peak, ssh access to servers with tens of thousands of coins, report SQL injections to btct.co/Burnside, report XSS to ukto for bit funder, paid out insurance for btcinvest, made shareholders happy, and depositors too while making me a lot of profit too.

Yeah I don't want to doubt your trust and reliability, but when I read a post that's making a pretty strong accusation against the owner of a service that I recently deposited money to (CoinLenders) it worries me. Nevertheless thanks for reassuring your trustworthiness I actually bought another bitcoin today to deposit into my CoinLenders account. BTW how popular is your site? I mean you can't guarantee that my BTC will gain any interest if it isn't loaned right? With that said, can I have your permission to advertise CoinLenders on my signature space in an effort to try to provide entrepreneurs an option for funding and hopefully increase my chances of earning interest? Or am I not understanding the concept of your business?

[bitaccumulation]

My primary concern with ripple is exactly what TradeFortress has just demonstrated. Ripple IOUs have different values based on the issuer. If they traded on an open market, you would see this. IOUs for a trusted institution are worth more than IOUs for a less trusted one. E.g. you might see Bitstamp USD IOUs trading against Weexchange IOUs at a non-1 rate, such as 1.1.

But we don't see that in ripple (as far as I can tell). Instead, we see a markets labelled by the currencies only, such as USD/XRP. But whose USD? Where's the Bitstamp USD / Weexchange USD market?

The fact that default risk fluctuates is acknowledged by participants in the real financial markets. We have credit markets. The values of various entities' credit float against one another. They are not all the same.

These are legitimate concerns and questions, however what TradeFortress did does not illustrate your concerns, it merely shows that he can use technology that newbies don't understand to facilitate a fraud.   At this point in the Ripple system you don't trust any issuer of USD that you don't trust equally with another issuer.  You may not like it, but that's how it works right now.  He is taking advantage of ignorance, while simultaneously misleading through half truths and lies.  Read his post on the Newbie board if you're unclear on this.

He said he was going to deposit 1 BTC in to a person's Ripple account.    A newbie who barely understands Bitcoin is not going to understand that in a completely different system (Ripple) that BTC is an IOU.    Then add an additional layer of complication in that most people are not used to being in control of who they trust when it comes to money IOU's (government usually is) and you have a recipe for theft that is unnecessary and proves nothing but that Tradefortress is willing to hurt people in order to take down Ripple.

The worst part about it is he has credibility on this board and so newbies are liable to trust him (Luckily a moderator put warnings on his OP, since all warnings by other people were self-moderated by Tradefortress).  Abusing this trust and not having moderators put a REAL stop to it  - This is just plain wrong.

[webr3]

Can I just remind people that I am over 10 BTC out of pocket as a direct result of TradeFortress's actions.

Only one user took 1 BTC, as a test, and offered it back to me.

*AFTER* that TradeFortress sent one of his IOUs for 15BTC to bitcointalk user aadje93 ripple address rMyHUbgreHFvvxoD5pGmg1fKRdSBHisy39 who then immediately withdrew 9.15 BTC to bitstamp.

See https://ripple.com/graph/#rH3bZsvVUhzugvcYuJVoSYCEMHkfK6wHNv

Mods: please check the IPs of this user aadje93 to see if it's the same as TradeFortress.

TradeFortress personally took these actions AFTER the entire thing was proved and tested, he issued a IOU to the above user so they could take the BTC he sent to them, the BTC he took from me.

[TomUnderSea]

MNW's promise was that he will give 100% ROI if pirate defaults. When pirate officially defaulted, he has broken his promise.

Compare to a bunch of tokens / IOUs which has zero terms. No contract unlike MNW, end of story. If I said that I would redeem those for actual BTC, and did not specify a time, then it would have to be a reasonable amount of time.

TF may not meet the definition of "scammer" for the forum.

I have other words to describe his actions and the person that would take those actions.

None of them are suitable for print.

[bitaccumulation]

Here's how the scam went down along with his admission of what he was doing...


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=206948

I am giving away at least 1 BTC per address on Ripple.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=206948.msg2166536#msg2166536

B) I won't defraud/scam you out of any money. Yes, you can convert the BTC I send you to real BTCs. For continued discussion, send me a PM, responses will be deleted from this point.

I PM'd him to ask him how he would deal with redeeming IOUs so that anyone could convert his IOUs into BTC.  He wrote...




So in summary he misled people, while counting on their ignorance of how Ripple works, into letting him put them in harm's way so he and his confederates could steal their legitimate IOU's from reputable gateways.

[arsenische]

MNW's promise was that he will give 100% ROI if pirate defaults. When pirate officially defaulted, he has broken his promise.

But he didn't promise to pay 100% ROI immediately, did he? So he could just say "I will pay... later" and not receive a scammer tag?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

We have had the exact same discussion, rebuttals etc already, and it seems like you have nothing to say so you keep repeating the same thing again.

It is okay, I have better things to do than respond to accusations which are false again and again. Check IP logs, ask your friends at OpenCoin inc for logs or user agents or whatever, I don't care because I haven't took anyone's coins.

I suggest everyone who is interested to read previous responses because it is a waste of time, and saying the same thing again and again does not make it true. Just makes you look like you have nothing else to do.

[webr3]

Here's how the scam went down along with his admission of what he was doing...


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=206948

I am giving away at least 1 BTC per address on Ripple.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=206948.msg2166536#msg2166536

B) I won't defraud/scam you out of any money. Yes, you can convert the BTC I send you to real BTCs. For continued discussion, send me a PM, responses will be deleted from this point.

I PM'd him to ask him how he would deal with redeeming IOUs so that anyone could convert his IOUs into BTC.  He wrote...




So in summary he mislead people, while counting on their ignorance of how Ripple works, into letting him put them in harm's way so he and his confederates could steal their legitimate IOU's from reputable gateways.

For putting that together, it may be worth noting there was no flaw in the system, he loaned btc from users via an overdraft (trust line) and gave out to other users via an IOU. He is accountable for all his actions.

[webr3]

We have had the exact same discussion, rebuttals etc already, and it seems like you have nothing to say so you keep repeating the same thing again.

It is okay, I have better things to do than respond to accusations which are false again and again. Check IP logs, ask your friends at OpenCoin inc for logs or user agents or whatever, I don't care because I haven't took anyone's coins.

I suggest everyone who is interested to read previous responses because it is a waste of time, and saying the same thing again and again does not make it true. Just makes you look like you have nothing else to do.

You loaned 10.15 btc from me, and gave it away. You owe me 10.15 btc.

[qxzn]

At this point in the Ripple system you don't trust any issuer of USD that you don't trust equally with another issuer.  You may not like it, but that's how it works right now.

Interestingly, this does not seem to be true. It's only the UI that has this behavior. Power users can turn it off.

He is taking advantage of ignorance, while simultaneously misleading through half truths and lies.  Read his post on the Newbie board if you're unclear on this.

He said he was going to deposit 1 BTC in to a person's Ripple account.    A newbie who barely understands Bitcoin is not going to understand that in a completely different system (Ripple) that BTC is an IOU.    Then add an additional layer of complication in that most people are not used to being in control of who they trust when it comes to money IOU's (government usually is) and you have a recipe for theft that is unnecessary and proves nothing but that Tradefortress is willing to hurt people in order to take down Ripple.

The worst part about it is he has credibility on this board and so newbies are liable to trust him (Luckily a moderator put warnings on his OP, since all warnings by other people were self-moderated by Tradefortress).  Abusing this trust and not having moderators put a REAL stop to it  - This is just plain wrong.

I don't know enough to comment about this specific situation. I do know that Ripple is very hard to understand and a lot of people are putting a lot of money into it. Therefore, I support TradeFortress's efforts towards promoting a skeptical attitude about it. Remember Pirateat40?

[Jaseph]

Just my thoughts. If TF were indeed a scammer, he could have taken off with the proceeds of the IPO of his fund. He could have also taken off with the deposits in Coin Lenders. I think TF is trustworthy and will continue to use Coin Lenders.

[The 4ner]

Just my thoughts. If TF were indeed a scammer, he could have taken off with the proceeds of the IPO of his fund. He could have also taken off with the deposits in Coin Lenders. I think TF is trustworthy and will continue to use Coin Lenders.

You're a user of CoinLenders?

[Jaseph]

Yes,i am. I dont have many btc, but what I have is on deposit there. If I'm wrong about TF it would be a drag, but wouldn't be life changing. He seems to be able to generate the funds to cover the interest payments.