A troll by any other name would smell as foul.

[billyjoeallen]

Their is a high probability that many if not most of the anti-bitcoin posters ARE trolls. The circumstantial evidence is economic:

Concentrated costs and distributed benefits. Even if we assume that the skeptics are sincere, that is not a rational reason for continuing to post here.

Presumably their goal is to see bitcoin fail, but according to them, it is doomed to fail anyway, which makes their posting an unnecessary expenditure of time and effort. 

The next possible explanation is they want bitcoin to fail FASTER than it would without their "help". The problem with this is that, even if they succeeded, they and their friends reap only a tiny portion of the "benefits" resulting from their time and effort.   Most of the "beneficiaries" are people who put in no effort to effect the desired outcome.  This type of selfless crusaderism will eventually reduce the crusaders to abject poverty, especially if pursued against every bad investment idea on the Internet.

So the next reason after that is that somehow bitcoin is a <i>particular</i> threat to financial prudence and all right-thinking friends of civilization. To which it needs to be asked- which is it? Either bitcoin is a joke or it is a dangerous threat, but it can't be both.

So what is it about bitcoin, of all the topics on the Internet, that commands the attention of these nay-sayers?
Is it a scam? There are many scams on the web. Why this one? Is it a ponzi-scheme? same question. Is it a systemic threat? why? wouldn't that mean that bitcoin proponents like myself are correct?

Which leaves one last possibility: These skeptics are in it for the entertainment value, party crashers who piss in the punch bowl. There's a name for people like that: trolls.

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[Jaime Frontero]

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=13344.0

but you're wrong about this:

So what is it about bitcoin, of all the topics on the Internet, that commands the attention of these nay-sayers?

[emphasis mine]

actually, the paid trolls are mostly centered on the global warming 'debate'.

with the big oils showing a billion dollars a day in profit, they have no problem spending $250k/day to support blogging pits that aggregate out to 3-4,000 bloggers with 3-ring-binder scripts and personna management software.

the financial institutions are just getting started, methinks.  there's only a comparatively few here (with sock-puppets).  and they're easy to spot on reddit, and the comment sections of whatever news outlet has a story on Bitcoin.

but if you don't follow global warming, you have no idea where it's going...

[billyjoeallen]

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=13344.0

but you're wrong about this:

So what is it about bitcoin, of all the topics on the Internet, that commands the attention of these nay-sayers?

[emphasis mine]

actually, the paid trolls are mostly centered on the global warming 'debate'.

with the big oils showing a billion dollars a day in profit, they have no problem spending $250k/day to support blogging pits that aggregate out to 3-4,000 bloggers with 3-ring-binder scripts and personna management software.

the financial institutions are just getting started, methinks.  there's only a comparatively few here (with sock-puppets).  and they're easy to spot on reddit, and the comment sections of whatever news outlet has a story on Bitcoin.

but if you don't follow global warming, you have no idea where it's going...

PAID trolls are not specifically the topic of this thread.  If they were the topic, I would argue that most paid trolls are dragons attempting to manipulate small cap stock prices. 

[myrkul]

Trolls, Dragons...

We need some Knights.

[epi 1:10,000]

Trolls, Dragons...

We need some Knights.

[billyjoeallen]

ok, now that's funny.

[Djao]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaqC5FnvAEc

on topic: trolls need people who want to get trolled, so actually it's a win:win situation