SCAM ALERT: "Mastercoin" Official Launch (Exodus address) (read first)

[adamstgBit]

Spiral, you made no points to debate that have not been addressed. Moderating to reduce noise is fine. Your thread will be entertained by concerned folks *if* there are valid discussion points. It's a little early to accuse this of being a scam. I would suggest changing your alert to something less dramatic unless of course you are a sock puppet yourself.

Do you even know what a sock puppet is? It means you've got multiple accounts posting as if they were different people. They're used to create a fake appearance of support or obscure a discussion.

You've dismissed the concern about money being sent to an address the creator controls before he has developed anything again. What do you think about that? Let me guess its a "risky investment".

No. It's not an investment. It's sending this guy money for promises and nothing even as good as kickstarter or the credit card companies to help you out.

I agree with you that caution is warranted with sending money. I don't even recommend buying Bitcoin with money you can't afford to lose. Do you have any reason to believe that his 'fake address' scheme of tracking transactions won't work?

Good job glossing over the fact that he is currently accepting money into an account without releasing any source code. You have no way to take possession of your "mastercoins" even if he says you have them.

This isn't like investing in an alt-coin. It's not risky because it's an online transaction. It's not about whether or not you can "afford to lose the money" (you keep saying that a lot). It's risky because you're sending money directly to a pseudonymous user for nothing but a promise of more money in the future. Aka Nigerian prince scam.

The fake address scheme is irrelevant until you explain what is stopping the owner of the "Exodus address" from simply keeping the Bitcoins and walking away.

So you are claiming that he is not the panelist at the San Jose convention sitting next to Jeff Garzik. Fair enough. Let's investigate this.

If he really is that guy it's still a scammy proposal. He gives no guarantees or goals for his project, releases no source, yet expects cash now. I just don't think someone would be stupid enough to post their real identity when running a scam like this. You never know though, he might think he's smarter than everyone else, criminals often do. In the other thread you posted "if he can convince people to send him the coins he deserves them". Total sociopathic thinking there.

that was me...

and i meant:
  we know the risks of sending money to random avatars on the internet. its our risk to take.

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[spiral_mind]

Spiral, you made no points to debate that have not been addressed. Moderating to reduce noise is fine. Your thread will be entertained by concerned folks *if* there are valid discussion points. It's a little early to accuse this of being a scam. I would suggest changing your alert to something less dramatic unless of course you are a sock puppet yourself.

Do you even know what a sock puppet is? It means you've got multiple accounts posting as if they were different people. They're used to create a fake appearance of support or obscure a discussion.

You've dismissed the concern about money being sent to an address the creator controls before he has developed anything again. What do you think about that? Let me guess its a "risky investment".

No. It's not an investment. It's sending this guy money for promises and nothing even as good as kickstarter or the credit card companies to help you out.

I agree with you that caution is warranted with sending money. I don't even recommend buying Bitcoin with money you can't afford to lose. Do you have any reason to believe that his 'fake address' scheme of tracking transactions won't work?

Good job glossing over the fact that he is currently accepting money into an account without releasing any source code. You have no way to take possession of your "mastercoins" even if he says you have them.

This isn't like investing in an alt-coin. It's not risky because it's an online transaction. It's not about whether or not you can "afford to lose the money" (you keep saying that a lot). It's risky because you're sending money directly to a pseudonymous user for nothing but a promise of more money in the future. Aka Nigerian prince scam.

The fake address scheme is irrelevant until you explain what is stopping the owner of the "Exodus address" from simply keeping the Bitcoins and walking away.

So you are claiming that he is not the panelist at the San Jose convention sitting next to Jeff Garzik. Fair enough. Let's investigate this.

If he really is that guy it's still a scammy proposal. He gives no guarantees or goals for his project, releases no source, yet expects cash now. I just don't think someone would be stupid enough to post their real identity when running a scam like this. You never know though, he might think he's smarter than everyone else, criminals often do. In the other thread you posted "if he can convince people to send him the coins he deserves them". Total sociopathic thinking there.

that was me...

and i meant:
  we know the risks of sending money to random avatars on the internet. its our risk to take.

Yes I'm talking to you dacoinminister, Sock Puppeteer General, Sir!

You keep acting like this is the same as buying anything for Bitcoin when in fact this is very much different. You ask for money now and offer nothing but cheap words and a pseudonym in return.

[adamstgBit]

Spiral, you made no points to debate that have not been addressed. Moderating to reduce noise is fine. Your thread will be entertained by concerned folks *if* there are valid discussion points. It's a little early to accuse this of being a scam. I would suggest changing your alert to something less dramatic unless of course you are a sock puppet yourself.

Do you even know what a sock puppet is? It means you've got multiple accounts posting as if they were different people. They're used to create a fake appearance of support or obscure a discussion.

You've dismissed the concern about money being sent to an address the creator controls before he has developed anything again. What do you think about that? Let me guess its a "risky investment".

No. It's not an investment. It's sending this guy money for promises and nothing even as good as kickstarter or the credit card companies to help you out.

I agree with you that caution is warranted with sending money. I don't even recommend buying Bitcoin with money you can't afford to lose. Do you have any reason to believe that his 'fake address' scheme of tracking transactions won't work?

Good job glossing over the fact that he is currently accepting money into an account without releasing any source code. You have no way to take possession of your "mastercoins" even if he says you have them.

This isn't like investing in an alt-coin. It's not risky because it's an online transaction. It's not about whether or not you can "afford to lose the money" (you keep saying that a lot). It's risky because you're sending money directly to a pseudonymous user for nothing but a promise of more money in the future. Aka Nigerian prince scam.

The fake address scheme is irrelevant until you explain what is stopping the owner of the "Exodus address" from simply keeping the Bitcoins and walking away.

So you are claiming that he is not the panelist at the San Jose convention sitting next to Jeff Garzik. Fair enough. Let's investigate this.

If he really is that guy it's still a scammy proposal. He gives no guarantees or goals for his project, releases no source, yet expects cash now. I just don't think someone would be stupid enough to post their real identity when running a scam like this. You never know though, he might think he's smarter than everyone else, criminals often do. In the other thread you posted "if he can convince people to send him the coins he deserves them". Total sociopathic thinking there.

that was me...

and i meant:
  we know the risks of sending money to random avatars on the internet. its our risk to take.

Yes I'm talking to you dacoinminister, Sock Puppeteer General, Sir!

You keep acting like this is the same as buying anything for Bitcoin when in fact this is very much different. You ask for money now and offer nothing but cheap words and a pseudonym in return.

its working isn't

people are sending me coins!

and it only took like 45 mins to write the white paper and create all the puppets

muahaha
muahahahahahahaha

[cbeast]

Spiral, you made no points to debate that have not been addressed. Moderating to reduce noise is fine. Your thread will be entertained by concerned folks *if* there are valid discussion points. It's a little early to accuse this of being a scam. I would suggest changing your alert to something less dramatic unless of course you are a sock puppet yourself.

Do you even know what a sock puppet is? It means you've got multiple accounts posting as if they were different people. They're used to create a fake appearance of support or obscure a discussion.

You've dismissed the concern about money being sent to an address the creator controls before he has developed anything again. What do you think about that? Let me guess its a "risky investment".

No. It's not an investment. It's sending this guy money for promises and nothing even as good as kickstarter or the credit card companies to help you out.

I agree with you that caution is warranted with sending money. I don't even recommend buying Bitcoin with money you can't afford to lose. Do you have any reason to believe that his 'fake address' scheme of tracking transactions won't work?

Good job glossing over the fact that he is currently accepting money into an account without releasing any source code. You have no way to take possession of your "mastercoins" even if he says you have them.

This isn't like investing in an alt-coin. It's not risky because it's an online transaction. It's not about whether or not you can "afford to lose the money" (you keep saying that a lot). It's risky because you're sending money directly to a pseudonymous user for nothing but a promise of more money in the future. Aka Nigerian prince scam.

The fake address scheme is irrelevant until you explain what is stopping the owner of the "Exodus address" from simply keeping the Bitcoins and walking away.

So you are claiming that he is not the panelist at the San Jose convention sitting next to Jeff Garzik. Fair enough. Let's investigate this.

If he really is that guy it's still a scammy proposal. He gives no guarantees or goals for his project, releases no source, yet expects cash now. I just don't think someone would be stupid enough to post their real identity when running a scam like this. You never know though, he might think he's smarter than everyone else, criminals often do. In the other thread you posted "if he can convince people to send him the coins he deserves them". Total sociopathic thinking there.

After all the scams in Bitcoinland, I understand the paranoia. You'll need more evidence this is a scam rather than a risky investment in not another currency, but a new type of client. Look at ASICs, Trezor, and Bitcoin Magazine to name a few that had donated seed money. We'll see how the devs approach this. I suspect details will be addressed soon enough.

[spiral_mind]

After all the scams in Bitcoinland, I understand the paranoia. You'll need more evidence this is a scam rather than a risky investment in not another currency, but a new type of client. Look at ASICs, Trezor, and Bitcoin Magazine to name a few that had donated seed money. We'll see how the devs approach this. I suspect details will be addressed soon enough.

You can't just ask people to have faith in you. You have to provide them some reason to trust you. So far you've provided none and asked for cash upfront in exchange for NOTHING. SCAM

[adamstgBit]

After all the scams in Bitcoinland, I understand the paranoia. You'll need more evidence this is a scam rather than a risky investment in not another currency, but a new type of client. Look at ASICs, Trezor, and Bitcoin Magazine to name a few that had donated seed money. We'll see how the devs approach this. I suspect details will be addressed soon enough.

You can't just ask people to have faith in you. You have to provide them some reason to trust you. So far you've provided none and asked for cash upfront in exchange for NOTHING. SCAM

what you gana do? save the sockpuppets from scamming themselves  

[cbeast]

After all the scams in Bitcoinland, I understand the paranoia. You'll need more evidence this is a scam rather than a risky investment in not another currency, but a new type of client. Look at ASICs, Trezor, and Bitcoin Magazine to name a few that had donated seed money. We'll see how the devs approach this. I suspect details will be addressed soon enough.

You can't just ask people to have faith in you. You have to provide them some reason to trust you. So far you've provided none and asked for cash upfront in exchange for NOTHING. SCAM

Whom are you addressing? The person in question is not entertaining this thread. I am only here because I will not add to the noise in his thread. If your only complaint is that you have evidence it is a scam, then you should be appealing to the moderators or police authorities.

[spiral_mind]

After all the scams in Bitcoinland, I understand the paranoia. You'll need more evidence this is a scam rather than a risky investment in not another currency, but a new type of client. Look at ASICs, Trezor, and Bitcoin Magazine to name a few that had donated seed money. We'll see how the devs approach this. I suspect details will be addressed soon enough.

You can't just ask people to have faith in you. You have to provide them some reason to trust you. So far you've provided none and asked for cash upfront in exchange for NOTHING. SCAM

Whom are you addressing? The person in question is not entertaining this thread. I am only here because I will not add to the noise in his thread. If your only complaint is that you have evidence it is a scam, then you should be appealing to the moderators or police authorities.

Dacoinminister you used the phrase "noise in the thread" to defend your deletion of my critical posts in the original thread. Your phrasing reveals more than you think. As far as evidence goes, when you propose that people should send you their money before you've made anything the burden of proof is upon you alone. Explain how this project ISN'T a scam please.

[BitPirate]

I'm not sure if this really is a scam -- seems too obvious to be one... but...

The best way to do this is for him to STFU until he has at least a semi-working client. Everyone has ideas. Having and executing ideas is what makes the difference. That doesn't preclude collaboration on the protocol, which is very important... but that's very different from an "OFFICIAL LAUNCH" thread.

For funding -- fair enough to ask for funding if this will be a group effort, but this isn't the way to do it. There are plenty of crowdfunding sites where dacoinmeister could be more open and accountable. If he wants to be sent money directly, then he could create contracts which we could sign and release using multisig transactions.

Still a hell of a risk though. The only difference between this being valuable and worthless is a single flaw in the code. And there isn't any code yet.

[Seth Otterstad]

Spiral_mind, shut up please.  Just because something uses the kickstarter model instead of the bitcoin or opencoin model does not make it a scam.  There have been hundreds of projects in the development forum here that have asked for money before having source code available for inspection.  JR's identity is public, so it is highly unlikely he is scamming.

I think his project has major flaws and a bunch of his ideas will never work.  Why don't you contribute to the discussion instead of screaming scam about something that is clearly not a scam?

[spiral_mind]

Spiral_mind, shut up please.  Just because something uses the kickstarter model instead of the bitcoin or opencoin model does not make it a scam.  There have been hundreds of projects in the development forum here that have asked for money before having source code available for inspection.  JR's identity is public, so it is highly unlikely he is scamming.

I think his project has major flaws and a bunch of his ideas will never work.  Why don't you contribute to the discussion instead of screaming scam about something that is clearly not a scam?

You generate "coins" by giving him money directly. That's his project idea. Anyone who doesn't think this is a scam isn't thinking it through. As you said, it will never work yet he's asking for money RIGHT NOW QUICK SEND IT.

[spiral_mind]

Here's some of the posts he's deleted reposted for your viewing pleasure:

(this one's from his sockpuppet Adam)

you really don't get it?
he can take off with the coins
it won't matter
he will have left us with his idea and we can implement it ourselves. we'll get our MasterCoins one way or another.

the coins are going to his address because he deserves them

you made your point quite clear over and over, thank you.

now, good day!

He can take off with the coins and it won't matter? What about releasing the source code? What about all the people whose money he would have stolen?

The idea alone is worth everyone sending him Bitcoins in advance in exchange for nothing? Actually it does matter if you steal people's coins.

He (or should I say you?) deserves them simply for writing a paper that says he should get the coins?

You still haven't answered my question. That's why I keep posting it. Tell us what will keep you honest and I'll stop.

Increasing supply to decrease price is the easy part. Decreasing supply to increase price is the impossible part.

Indeed even if you ignore the glaring issue with sending cash in exchange for nothing but a promise with no source code his economics are way off base. However that's totally irrelevant until the creator addresses the nigerian prince scheme he's trying to sockpuppet down people's throats.

Willet chose a valid way to bootstrap his idea.
It is not identical to the way Satoshi bootstrapped his idea, but as we all know Satoshi made quite a profit nonetheless.
Ripple/OpenCoin also choose a different way to bootstrap their idea, and as far as I know it's working well (they got investments from Google and Peter Thiel for one).

I believe Colored Coins was left in relative stagnation in the last year precisely because it lacked a good bootstrapping model that would pay for the cost of development (although it is seeing some increased usage today).

I summarized my thoughts on the matter on a blog post I just wrote about MasterCoin.

Having everyone send their money to the creator's personal address is not bootstrapping.

Both Ripple and Bitcoin gave out their coins for free to bootstrap their projects. Since so many people had them they began using them as money and they became valuable. This "project" is totally different in that it asks for money to be sent directly to the creator. This will not give it value in and of itself. This does nothing to "bootstrap". You're actually doing the exact opposite of what Bitcoin and Ripple did to bootstrap themselves.

How convenient that you posted a link to a blog post about how Mastercoin is "the new high yield investment". This whole thing stinks of a scam so hard.

Your proposal has so many flaws that you've refused to answer time and time again, deleting posts instead. That's a sure sign of a scammer, self moderate the thread to create an appearance of positivity. First of all we have to send Bitcoins directly into your pocket in order to get "master coins". That's the biggest one. You still haven't addressed that concern.

The other is that you don't understand how economics works. You can't maintain a fixed asset price against the market's wishes without losing money. You're proposing to act as a central bank to a fundamentally flawed system just because you know you'll be able to get a few suckers to give you real money.

There's absolutely nothing that will ever make Mastercoins valuable within your proposal. Just because people spent money on an asset doesn't guarantee that what they buy with it will be worth anything. You're making no goals, no guarantees, and still haven't even proved you are who you say you are.

Nobody should be treating this as legitimate.

[spiral_mind]

Here's an exchange that was just deleted in his other thread.

He keeps dodging all the substantial questions such as "why are you the only one who can make mastercoins if you plan to release the source code eventually? Why does the money go directly into your account (other than "I deserve it !!").

Now someone's sent 1,222 Bitcoins into his stupid "exodus address". My guess is that these are his own funds that he's transferred to make it seem as there are actual investors into his scam.

he answered that question
hes using the funds to work on the project.

at 1million $ worth of bitcoin he quits his day job and makes this project his lifes work

LOL. So once everyone sends you a million dollars then you'll actually devote your time to the project(you say). What a fucking total joke. I think it more likely that you  just take off with whatever people are stupid enough to send you.

It's silly that he even allows himself to buy "mastercoins". Talk about rigging the system from the get-go, if it even is a real project. This whole thing seems rushed and questionable, at best.

He's able to buy these coins at -ZERO- risk while everyone else risks losing their entire investment for the same potential reward.

It's quite clear he's purely financially motivated and not interested in a fair and properly decentralized model.

I suggest ignoring this one and wait for something better and less shady.

Quoted for truth

[spiral_mind]

Spiral_mind, shut up please.  Just because something uses the kickstarter model instead of the bitcoin or opencoin model does not make it a scam.  There have been hundreds of projects in the development forum here that have asked for money before having source code available for inspection.  JR's identity is public, so it is highly unlikely he is scamming.

I think his project has major flaws and a bunch of his ideas will never work.  Why don't you contribute to the discussion instead of screaming scam about something that is clearly not a scam?

You generate "coins" by giving him money directly. That's his project idea. Anyone who doesn't think this is a scam isn't thinking it through. As you said, it will never work yet he's asking for money RIGHT NOW QUICK SEND IT.

if you think his idea is not worth exploring click here

There's no way in hell I'm clicking your random fucking links. I give it 99% chance odds that's some malware he's trying to infect people with.


Here's a list of his (very likely) sockpuppets:

AdamstgBit
Ripper234
Notme
hmmstrange
cbeast

With both AdamstgBit and Ripper234 he's been asking pre-scripted questions and answering them himself from another account to give the appearance of legitimacy. One thing they never ask about is why the money has to go directly into his account. They focus on the economics instead because he knows that most people will get lost in something that complicated.

View their post history yourself if you don't believe me. The vast majority of their posts are one line and add nothing to the conversation. It's also possible these accounts were legit at one point and then were purchased. Dacoinminister has over 120k in Bitcoins in his account so buying a few would be a trivial task.

[bvt]

Are you guys really all my sock puppets?? Dang, I wish I had known - I could have used you a lot of times in the past!

While I personally don't care about the sock puppet account accusations, it's quite clear that you're removing any criticism from your own thread. You've "launched" (put up an address for people to send you bitcoins) a severely flawed and rigged project.

Hopefully more people will see this and not send you any more bitcoins. EVEN if you're trying to make this at the best of your abilities the whole thing is useless because you control the "exodus" address and you used it to buy with your own bitcoins at zero risk. At the very least you should put up the same risk as anyone else when you're asking us to "trust" you based on a short written paper. And how about some transparency?

And calling your paper "the second bitcoin whitepaper" That's quite the hubris.

[nameface]

I disapprove of spiral_mind and this thread.

+1

...calling your paper "the second bitcoin whitepaper" That's quite the hubris.

+1, but who cares?

[bvt]

...calling your paper "the second bitcoin whitepaper" That's quite the hubris.

+1, but who cares?

I agree, but it starts to add up on everything else.

[spiral_mind]

+1, but who cares?

How about the people who you're asking to send you money blindly? They probably should care. This is a crap idea so you have to try and make it look like its the best thing since sliced bread to ignite people's greed.

You've been astroturfing to make it seem like it's a "risky investment" rather than just sending you cash for nothing.

As bvt said a lot of things add up to make your project total shit. (I've already listed them)

[cbeast]

I don't think it's a bad investment because it is a scam, I think it is a bad investment because he has nothing to back it up. This concept would be great to be used as local currencies. They are better than alt coins, because they would have the Bitcoin Network to provide stability to transaction propagation.

[Chang Hum]

He's probably just deleting your posts because he thinks your an annoying semi-retarded cock mate