I was offered $550 to say that "Ripple is a Scam."

[cypherdoc]

Ripple has been spamming the Discussion Forum with anti-Bitcoin threads

I'd love to read those. Can you provide a link?

..unless they cannot be proven to be from OpenCoin directly (which means they might be TradeFortress paying someone else to post them to make them look bad, you never know) in which case I don't care to read them. Otherwise I sure as hell do!

they all got moved en masse earlier today to Service thank gaud.

[charleshoskinson]

This honestly doesn't make any sense at all. Why would anyone try to discredit ripple? This community isn't filled with low info retards. They would just be wasting an enormous amount of money.

[oakpacific]

Hmmm, interesting, why "GoWest" has to make it public by editing an old post in Feb.20 which apparently no one other than some archaeological fans will read?

[Matthew N. Wright]

Hmmm, interesting, why "GoWest" has to make it public by editing an old post in Feb.20 which apparently no one other than some archaeological fans will read?

He actually posted it as an article on his site too, apparently. I don't read his blog though so I found it by scrolling through the thread's first page.

[QuestionAuthority]

i criticize Ripple b/c i honestly think the economic assumptions behind the Ripple concept are highly dubious and will fail.  i've never been approached nor accepted any bribe money to be anti-Ripple.

i never signed up for any XRP b/c i never believed in the concept.  yes, i have BTC but that doesn't influence my opinion at all.

what also pushed me to become vocal about this in just the last few days is the fact that Ripple has been spamming the Discussion Forum with anti-Bitcoin threads and trying to steal Bitcoiners away to Ripple in what i view as a zero sum game.

otoh, OT + BM appears to be a promising combination built on the same principles that Bitcoin was and i will look at their platform with enthusiasm.

But Cypherdoc would you say its a scam for 5BTC

money wouldn't affect my decision one way or the other.

I knew you were gonna say that!

[cypherdoc]

This honestly doesn't make any sense at all. Why would anyone try to discredit ripple? This community isn't filled with low info retards. They would just be wasting an enormous amount of money.

i read most of the anti-Ripple posts in the many Ripple threads over the last several days and no one appeared to me to be a paid over the top anti-Rippler except for Shadow of Harbinger and obviously Tradefortress.

most of our criticisms of Ripple are based on hard facts, imo.

[Rassah]

otoh, OT + BM appears to be a promising combination built on the same principles that Bitcoin was and i will look at their platform with enthusiasm.

What's this?

OpenTransactions + BitMessage
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=212490.0

+1

I think ripple would have more to worry about this than paid "It's a Scam" accusations. I wonder what Ripple thinks about this new merger?

[oakpacific]

Hmmm, interesting, why "GoWest" has to make it public by editing an old post in Feb.20 which apparently no one other than some archaeological fans will read?

He actually posted it as an article on his site too, apparently. I don't read his blog though so I found it by scrolling through the thread's first page.

I saw that post as well, I think it's probably a very transparent astroturfing, as all cooperators posted exactly the same thing in the same thread, one after another, I also remember TF advertising it somehow, otherwise it looks really weird and noticeable to anyone.

And yeah, it does look like TF has got a really deep pocket, he can pay for his shills like that, buying forum ad slots just to make them unavailable to BFL and debase Ripple, a lot of these things...., all at hefty prices, wow.

[Matthew N. Wright]

This honestly doesn't make any sense at all. Why would anyone try to discredit ripple? This community isn't filled with low info retards. They would just be wasting an enormous amount of money.

i read most of the anti-Ripple posts in the many Ripple threads over the last several days and no one appeared to me to be a paid over the top anti-Rippler except for Shadow of Harbinger and obviously Tradefortress.

most of our criticisms of Ripple are based on hard facts, imo.

When the criticisms revolved around Ripple being closed source, simply ignoring it until it's open sourced would suffice imo.
When the criticisms are about XRP's value being "pumped", the same arguments apply to Bitcoin and any fork of it. the same argument applies to any world currency or exchange in the world. OpenCoin is a for-profit company. That in and if itself does not qualify them as a scam.
When the criticisms are that it's a "scam" by people scamming others into agreeing to raise their credit for them (TradeFortress), it kind of makes every legitimate argument against Ripple look like (poorly) attempted sabotage.

I'm not huge on Ripple and am skeptical of its future, I talked to Arthur Britto on Skype quite a lot about Ripple and its direction back in the day, and I was building a Ripple network with Vladimir Marchenko and Mihai Alisie even before OpenCoin was formed. That doesn't mean that I'm confident it will work the way they're implenting it though (it's all just an experimental project, as is Bitcoin), a lot has changed in the past year and OpenCoin is showing the rest of us what does and does not work socially. I am interested in Open Transactions and Ripple for the future though and anything that shows hope of allowing exchange should be looked into seriously.

Despite not being huge on Ripple though, I am huge on transparency, anti-sockpuppetry and cutting through the endless power/money grabs in the bitcoin community.

• I am disgusted by MtGox for locking accounts and holding people's funds claiming AML, yet not following other basic legal requirements when it's inconvenient for them. What will they do with Bitcoinica funds? Where does that money go that they refuse to talk about in public?
• I am disgusted by AurumXChange seizing Bitcoinica funds on their own whim and breaking their own privacy agreements publicly posting information about one of their customers. Where are those funds too?
• I am disgusted by BitcoinStore publicly threatening one of their customers over a couple of dollars.
• I am disgusted by Bitcoincard for claiming they'd be "empowering the community and then disappearing completely (where's the card, guys?).
• I am disgusted by BFL for lying repeatedly about "2 weeks", for a year now.
• I am disgusted by BitInstant for barely ever being "instant", telling others in the community to be "more professional" all while publicly supporting blackmail against a government figure and releasing news of a debit card that *still* is just vaporware.

I'm sick of cultism in bitcoin where people are so easily manipulated, constantly following a leader for "political" reasons ("Let's buy things at bitcoinstore, a private for-profit company, because it is good for Bitcoin!") and ignoring the obvious manipulation and corruption right in front of them. That's why even though I have my own academic beef with Ripple and am watching them closely, this anti-Ripple campaign to me seems like a power grab in itself-- a bitcoin power grab, something desperate people do when they're scared their own project currency can't stand on its own two legs against anything else.

I'm confident that's not the case, but people like TradeFortress blur that point for others I'm sure and he's becoming disgusting as a result. Bottom line: you don't become better than the poop by touching the poop.

[oakpacific]

This honestly doesn't make any sense at all. Why would anyone try to discredit ripple? This community isn't filled with low info retards. They would just be wasting an enormous amount of money.

i read most of the anti-Ripple posts in the many Ripple threads over the last several days and no one appeared to me to be a paid over the top anti-Rippler except for Shadow of Harbinger and obviously Tradefortress.

most of our criticisms of Ripple are based on hard facts, imo.

When the criticisms are about XRP's value being "pumped", the same arguments apply to Bitcoin and any fork of it.

No, it's entirely different. No one entity controls Bitcoin's supply, but Opencoin made it clear that they control the XRP supply, and they wouldn't tell others how they control it, just ask Joel Katz. So it costs nearly nothing for them to manipulate the XRP market, as long as they like.

[Elwar]

This post for sale for 5 BTC.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

How do we know this isn't just someone OpenCoin paid to say that TradeFortress paid them to say Ripple is a scam? OpenCoin apparently has a history of paying people off, if the leaked email from Ryan Fugger is authentic.

[cypherdoc]

How do we know this isn't just someone OpenCoin paid to say that TradeFortress paid them to say Ripple is a scam? OpenCoin apparently has a history of paying people off, if the leaked email from Ryan Fugger is authentic.

link?

[Matthew N. Wright]

How do we know this isn't just someone OpenCoin paid to say that TradeFortress paid them to say Ripple is a scam? OpenCoin apparently has a history of paying people off, if the leaked email from Ryan Fugger is authentic.

Link? I'm interested in getting to the bottom of this (as I'm sure every newbie here is too), but statements like yours that can shed light on parties should not be made without references, lest they are intended to continue making the anti-Ripple campaign look like shilled sabotage.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I thought this was well-known, but it is also complete hearsay. Albeit much older heasay. I'll look for the link.

[gweedo]

The worst part about this whole thing isn't the paying people to edit their post which is really low. But that TradeFortress also committed scams on newbies and new to the ripple environment to prove his point. I think that is the lowest thing on earth. Taking advantage of a person, is just really bad.

[Bakemono]

I don't know about ripple but i learned two new words today!

Astroturf and shill ! 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

The alleged email: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5254737

Related: https://ripple.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2023

[BTC Books]

All these offers and I wasn't asked? Hmph I'm offended lol...just kidding 

Proper astroturfing would require choosing shills who won't ask questions. They made a mistake asking GoWest.

Seriously Matthew - it's good you're no longer a 'reporter'.  Bitcoin Magazine could not have survived more of this kind of shit than it did...

From GoWest's post:

I received an interesting message in my bitcointalk.org inbox today. It said that a user going by the name of 'TradeFortress' was paying forum members 5 BTC to edit their posts in this thread to say that, "Ripple is a scam."

Did he receive this from TradeFortress?  No.  He got a PM from an unnamed user who claimed they'd gotten it from TradeFortress.

From that, without any further evidence that I can see, he jumps to:

Some Bitcoin users, like TradeFortress, are adamant about this, to the point that they're willing to pay out thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin to get their message across.

And you jump immediately to:

When the criticisms are that it's a "scam" by people scamming others into agreeing to raise their credit for them (TradeFortress), it kind of makes every legitimate argument against Ripple look like (poorly) attempted sabotage.

and..

I'm confident that's not the case, but people like TradeFortress blur that point for others I'm sure and he's becoming disgusting as a result.  Bottom line: you don't become better than the poop by touching the poop.

and...

which means they might be TradeFortress paying someone else to post them to make them look bad, you never know

and...

When the criticisms are that it's a "scam" by people scamming others into agreeing to raise their credit for them (TradeFortress),

I don't think there's a whole lot of accurate reporting going on here.  And I think that while you may not be leading the charge (unless you paid GoWest to write that post  ), following it uncritically does quite as much unjustified damage.

[bbulker]

Where are the screenshots of these so-called PMs? No evidence, no dice.