TradeHill - Why we no longer accept Dwolla and an open letter to Ben Milne

[Smalleyster]

If Dwolla does not cover the losses incurred from their inappropriate advertising and data inaccuracies, then we will take legal action. In the meantime, we will make good with our customers from our own pockets. We hope people realize what this means to us.

Adam  

Good stuff!

I want to thank you guys publicly for bringing this out in public. I feel 2 weeks was an appropriate time to wait for Dwolla to answer you.

As a consumer and relatively new and admittedly small client of yours it makes me feel that your instincts are to do the right thing and be as transparent as possible. That means that I plan to continue to do more and more business with you.

Thank you both.

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[Vod]

Dwolla has already refused to respond and only admitted in one email - right before we went public - that 'charge-backs' did/do occur. After which, they promptly changed their TOS on July 25th (the day we went public). Everyone knew they promoted and marketed 'no charge-backs' and this is what made them so attractive to Bitcion exchanges.

I believe it is illegal to unilaterally change terms of service without notice.  I hope you have copies of their old terms so you can sue them.

You are doing a great job Adam.  Ignore the couple trolls who are trying to twist your words.

[Rob Lister]

Excuse the repeated question Jered, but did any of your customers lose money in this?  That's really the only concern I have.

Jered,

Can you answer the question directly?


If the answer is no and I highly suspect it is, why did you make this such a public spectacle?

I think the answer he provided was about as direct as possible under the circumstances; that they would not pass on the loss to their customers.  Maybe I'm missing something.

If the answer is no and I highly suspect it is, why did you make this such a public spectacle?

I don't follow your logic.  The answer to that question, yes or no, has nothing to do with making it public or not.  IMO, making it public was the appropriate course of action.  IMO, they got scammed.  Other words that come to mind are ripped off, defrauded, and cheated

Why wouldn't they make this public?  They did a service by making this public.  It should be made public. 

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

Excuse the repeated question Jered, but did any of your customers lose money in this?  That's really the only concern I have.

Jered,

Can you answer the question directly?


If the answer is no and I highly suspect it is, why did you make this such a public spectacle?

I think the answer he provided was about as direct as possible under the circumstances; that they would not pass on the loss to their customers.  Maybe I'm missing something.

If the answer is no and I highly suspect it is, why did you make this such a public spectacle?

I don't follow your logic.  The answer to that question, yes or no, has nothing to do with making it public or not.  IMO, making it public was the appropriate course of action.  IMO, they got scammed.  Other words that come to mind are ripped off, defrauded, and cheated

Why wouldn't they make this public?  They did a service by making this public.  It should be made public. 

Thanks, that's essentially what I was about to say. This came out of our users balances so yes they were effected. We're covering them for now but Dwolla is responsible and we are going to get that back from them. Hopefully lawyers won't have to get involved in this. It will draw it out and most likely end up costing everyone involved more money.

Jered

[tvbcof]

Dwolla and CampBX are discussing a solution to the problem and everything seems to be going fine. MtGox is ok with this (I haven't heard anything from them). Why is TradeHill the only one being ignored? This doesn't make much sense to me...

That seemed very odd to me as well.

As I hypothesized on another thread, perhaps there are NSL's involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter

Mt Gox confirmed some transactions have gone missing on IRC and possibly a post. exchangebitcoin.com confirmed it and isn't accepting Dwolla, Bitcoin7 isn't accepting Dwolla and I've been told they confirmed the chargebacks.

It's 100% possible that CampBX didn't receive any chargebacks. If I have to guess it's because they didn't have the open orders to justify defrauding 5k or they thought they would get caught faster with lower volume to hide in. If that's the case good for them. Dealing with fraud isn't fun. I'm assuming if they continue to accept Dwolla and nothing changes they will see fraud.

Jered

Thanks for the reply Jered, but...

On a recent Wagner interview, CampBX (Keyur?) seemed to indicate that he is having detailed discussions with Dwolla about how to mitigate the fraud that you guys have uncovered.  And that the announcement of a solution was to be forthcoming.  The question of why the disproportionate level of attention and communications between Dwolla's customers is what I am interested in in this particular post.

In other news, I just added to my TH funds so I could be positioned more flexibly should any unpleasant and unexpected fallout come out of 8/2/2011.  That is to say, while all of my eggs are by no means in one basket, Tradehill's word to do right by their customers has some level of equivalence to my faith in Wells Fargo's ability to look after my assets.  You guys alone seem to have detected, quantified and communicated the damages and told us how you expect to handle situation.  That means a lot to me.

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

Dwolla and CampBX are discussing a solution to the problem and everything seems to be going fine. MtGox is ok with this (I haven't heard anything from them). Why is TradeHill the only one being ignored? This doesn't make much sense to me...

That seemed very odd to me as well.

As I hypothesized on another thread, perhaps there are NSL's involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter

Mt Gox confirmed some transactions have gone missing on IRC and possibly a post. exchangebitcoin.com confirmed it and isn't accepting Dwolla, Bitcoin7 isn't accepting Dwolla and I've been told they confirmed the chargebacks.

It's 100% possible that CampBX didn't receive any chargebacks. If I have to guess it's because they didn't have the open orders to justify defrauding 5k or they thought they would get caught faster with lower volume to hide in. If that's the case good for them. Dealing with fraud isn't fun. I'm assuming if they continue to accept Dwolla and nothing changes they will see fraud.

Jered

Thanks for the reply Jered, but...

On a recent Wagner interview, CampBX (Keyur?) seemed to indicate that he is having detailed discussions with Dwolla about how to mitigate the fraud that you guys have uncovered.  And that the announcement of a solution was to be forthcoming.  The question of why the disproportionate level of attention and communications between Dwolla's customers is what I am interested in in this particular post.

In other news, I just added to my TH funds so I could be positioned more flexibly should any unpleasant and unexpected fallout come out of 8/2/2011.  That is to say, while all of my eggs are by no means in one basket, Tradehill's word to do right by their customers has some level of equivalence to my faith in Wells Fargo's ability to look after my assets.  You guys alone seem to have detected, quantified and communicated the damages and told us how you expect to handle situation.  That means a lot to me.

Thanks and as much as I would love to have "everyones eggs in our basket" I'll say it over and over. Don't do it. Diversify and minimize risk. This goes for exchanges, walllets, banks, credit cards and more.
I'm assuming their lawyers have told them to keep quiet because we still haven't received a response from Dwolla beyond "we'll look in to this".
I'm curious to hear this solution that makes "non-reversible reversible payments non-reversible" again. Or how we will know ahead of time if it's going to be reversed.

We're open to work with Dwolla in the future if they can get it straightened out and come clean.

Jered

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

Excuse the repeated question Jered, but did any of your customers lose money in this?  That's really the only concern I have.

Jered,

Can you answer the question directly?


If the answer is no and I highly suspect it is, why did you make this such a public spectacle?

I think the answer he provided was about as direct as possible under the circumstances; that they would not pass on the loss to their customers.  Maybe I'm missing something.

If the answer is no and I highly suspect it is, why did you make this such a public spectacle?

I don't follow your logic.  The answer to that question, yes or no, has nothing to do with making it public or not.  IMO, making it public was the appropriate course of action.  IMO, they got scammed.  Other words that come to mind are ripped off, defrauded, and cheated

Why wouldn't they make this public?  They did a service by making this public.  It should be made public.  

Thanks, that's essentially what I was about to say. This came out of our users balances so yes they were effected. We're covering them for now but Dwolla is responsible and we are going to get that back from them. Hopefully lawyers won't have to get involved in this. It will draw it out and most likely end up costing everyone involved more money.

Jered

You're playing word games Jered.

The only way this comes out of User's balances is if you pass on YOUR loss on to the customers. This is an issue between Dwolla and Tradehill, not Dwolla and TradeHill's customer base. This doesn't have to involve TradeHil's customer base if you don't want it to.

The only decision you need to make is if you are going to eat the $37K or pass it on. Quite playing word games.

I don't believe I'm playing word games. We have an account with user balances in it. Dwolla went in and pulled $37,000 out of our user balances.  We've said that we want that back from Dwolla. If they don't return those funds then we will compensate our users out of our company funds. Users will be able to withdraw their funds from TradeHill.

Does this answer your question?

Jered

[Jaime Frontero]

Thanks, that's essentially what I was about to say. This came out of our users balances so yes they were effected. We're covering them for now but Dwolla is responsible and we are going to get that back from them. Hopefully lawyers won't have to get involved in this. It will draw it out and most likely end up costing everyone involved more money.

Jered

You're playing word games Jered.

The only way this comes out of User's balances is if you pass on YOUR loss on to the customers. This is an issue between Dwolla and Tradehill, not Dwolla and TradeHill's customer base. This doesn't have to involve TradeHil's customer base if you don't want it to.

The only decision you need to make is if you are going to eat the $37K or pass it on. Quite playing word games.

and you're just looking to start a fight where the basis for one doesn't exist.

yes they were effected

We're covering them for now but Dwolla is responsible and we are going to get that back from them.

your 'yes or no' question has been answered with a yes.

the decision about eating the dough has been made - and no, nobody would let it stay there:  of course they'll go after dwolla if they need to.  but do you seriously believe TH is going to go into its user's accounts sometime in 2012, if dwolla doesn't pay up, and extract $50k?  grow up.

[tvbcof]

Thanks and as much as I would love to have "everyones eggs in our basket" I'll say it over and over. Don't do it. Diversify and minimize risk. This goes for exchanges, walllets, banks, credit cards and more.

I cannot help but add my suggestion to that list: currencies/monetary systems.

[MaGNeT]

[Raoul Duke]

Now it's clear, so you don't have enough funding to insulate your customer's funds from your operational account. Dwolla withdrew or debited your account which essentially was your customer's money. Not a very smart way to do business. Wreckless at best. BTW I work on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park and I know that has VC meaning to you. I'm no dummy.

You're up a creek if a lot of people suddenly withdraw USD from TH aren't you?

Keep airing this out in public, saying more than you should and that is exactly what will happen. If you have any sense at all, you will stop making this public, arbitrate with with Dwolla and settle this quietly.

If your users start an attack on Dwolla based on your postings here in this forum as they have indicated, you are done in the VC world and you can take that to the bank.

Once again, if you're smart, you'll stop the public whining and settle this quietly.

So, why are you trying to make matters worse by asking questions whose answers can hurt TradeHill so much?

Are Dwolla's VC's paying you for it? F*ckin' SockPuppet...

[datguywhowanders]

I don't believe I'm playing word games. We have an account with user balances in it. Dwolla went in and pulled $37,000 out of our user balances.  We've said that we want that back from Dwolla. If they don't return those funds then we will compensate our users out of our company funds. Users will be able to withdraw their funds from TradeHill.

Does this answer your question?

Jered

Now it's clear, so you don't have enough funding to insulate your customer's funds from your operational account. Dwolla withdrew or debited your account which essentially was your customer's money. Not a very smart way to do business. Wreckless at best. BTW I work on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park and I know that has VC meaning to you. I'm no dummy.

You're up a creek if a lot of people suddenly withdraw USD from TH aren't you?

Keep airing this out in public, saying more than you should and that is exactly what will happen. If you have any sense at all, you will stop making this public, arbitrate with with Dwolla and settle this quietly.

If your users start an attack on Dwolla based on your postings here in this forum as they have indicated, you are done in the VC world and you can take that to the bank.

Once again, if you're smart, you'll stop the public whining and settle this quietly.

Wow, that sounded an awful lot like a threat. So the typical business world would rather we all play in the dark and hide in the shadows instead of dealing openly and fairly? Did I get that right?

[MaGNeT]

Now it's clear, so you don't have enough funding to insulate your customer's funds from your operational account. Dwolla withdrew or debited your account which essentially was your customer's money. Not a very smart way to do business. Wreckless at best. BTW I work on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park and I know that has VC meaning to you. I'm no dummy.

You're up a creek if a lot of people suddenly withdraw USD from TH aren't you?

Keep airing this out in public, saying more than you should and that is exactly what will happen. If you have any sense at all, you will stop making this public, arbitrate with with Dwolla and settle this quietly.

If your users start an attack on Dwolla based on your postings here in this forum as they have indicated, you are done in the VC world and you can take that to the bank.

Once again, if you're smart, you'll stop the public whining and settle this quietly.

BitcoinExpress is working for Dwolla...
But he will state he isn't...

Dwolla wants to cover things up... That's for sure...

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

I don't believe I'm playing word games. We have an account with user balances in it. Dwolla went in and pulled $37,000 out of our user balances.  We've said that we want that back from Dwolla. If they don't return those funds then we will compensate our users out of our company funds. Users will be able to withdraw their funds from TradeHill.

Does this answer your question?

Jered

Now it's clear, so you don't have enough funding to insulate your customer's funds from your operational account. Dwolla withdrew or debited your account which essentially was your customer's money. Not a very smart way to do business. Wreckless at best. BTW I work on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park and I know that has VC meaning to you. I'm no dummy.

You're up a creek if a lot of people suddenly withdraw USD from TH aren't you?

Keep airing this out in public, saying more than you should and that is exactly what will happen. If you have any sense at all, you will stop making this public, arbitrate with with Dwolla and settle this quietly.

If your users start an attack on Dwolla based on your postings here in this forum as they have indicated, you are done in the VC world and you can take that to the bank.

Once again, if you're smart, you'll stop the public whining and settle this quietly.

We can cover 37k, it is a lot of money to suddenly go missing without warning but it's not something we can't handle.
We're not up a creek.

Thanks for the warning though.

Jered

[JoelKatz]

You're playing word games Jered.

I'm not sure what else he can do. Money is fungible. Exchanges keep their customer's money in a big pile. Dwolla took from that pile.

The only way this comes out of User's balances is if you pass on YOUR loss on to the customers.

You mean like Dwolla did?

This is an issue between Dwolla and Tradehill, not Dwolla and TradeHill's customer base.

TradeHill is not the only Dwolla customer affected. TradeHill isn't even the only bitcoin exchange affected. This is an issue between Dwolla and their customer base.

This doesn't have to involve TradeHil's customer base if you don't want it to.

It has to if for no other reason than that TradeHill had to at least temporarily stop accepting Dwolla. There are TradeHill and Dwolla mutual customers who relied on TradeHill to provide a service that they now cannot.

The only decision you need to make is if you are going to eat the $37K or pass it on.

We're still waiting to hear Dwolla's answer to that question. The difference is, Dwolla promised not to pass it on.

Quite playing word games.

Again, the Dwolla business model. "Our transactions are not reversible, except when they are."

[Raoul Duke]

Now it's clear, so you don't have enough funding to insulate your customer's funds from your operational account. Dwolla withdrew or debited your account which essentially was your customer's money. Not a very smart way to do business. Wreckless at best. BTW I work on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park and I know that has VC meaning to you. I'm no dummy.

You're up a creek if a lot of people suddenly withdraw USD from TH aren't you?

Keep airing this out in public, saying more than you should and that is exactly what will happen. If you have any sense at all, you will stop making this public, arbitrate with with Dwolla and settle this quietly.

If your users start an attack on Dwolla based on your postings here in this forum as they have indicated, you are done in the VC world and you can take that to the bank.

Once again, if you're smart, you'll stop the public whining and settle this quietly.

Wow, that sounded an awful lot like a threat. So the typical business world would rather we all play in the dark and hide in the shadows instead of dealing openly and fairly? Did I get that right?

Not just Dwolla's VC are watching this thread, so are the ones that Jered potentially can get support from. Jered will have little chance of securing any seed or Series A money if he continues to turn this into childish back and forth. While I  am only a "Jr. Member" here I have been involved with Bitcoin since 2009.

As an account executive and analyst in VC world of Silicon Valley it is my job to find  potential new investments and more so in vetting them out.

Are people looking at TradeHill, of course they are. It has potential.

All I am doing is trying to help Jered from flushing himself out of the system. The method he is employing is unprofessional at best in dealing with Dwolla. TradeHill has damaged it's image. Sure they look great to you guys, but none of you guys are going to drop a couple of million in seed either.

Once again Jered, consider what I said previous about going quiet and furthermore, if I were you I would definitely make statement strongly discouraging any coordinated attacks on Dwolla in your behalf.

Now... This ^^ WAS a threat! LOL

[wolftaur]

Not just Dwolla's VC are watching this thread, so are the ones that Jered potentially can get support from.

I'm sure if Dwolla's VCs are terribly intelligent, they're ignoring everything you say. After all, you're the one who's sitting there being either incredibly moronic, or intentionally disingenuous.

Let's simplify this.

Fraud occurred. Dwolla ended up not having enough money to actually cover all their customers' balances if they kept all the profit they wanted. They solved this problem by retroactively editing Tradehill's balance.

Fraud occurred. Tradehill ended up not having enough money to actually cover all their customers' balances if they kept all the profit they wanted. You insist that they declare they won't solve this problem by retroactively editing their customers' balances...

The fact that you're apparently perfectly fine with Dwolla doing it, but not with Tradehill doing it, is why I've been having a very enjoyable afternoon laughing at pretty much everything you're posting here.

It's worth noting, as well -- I don't even have an account on Tradehill. Or on Dwolla. And bluntly put? I wanted to get a Dwolla account because my roommate's home business has lost a pretty big amount in the last year due to fraud -- a type of fraud that, supposedly, Dwolla would have insulated us from. As far as I'm concerned, Tradehill did me a massive favor by disclosing what risks actually still exist. So if I end up deciding I need to go to an exchange to sell coins, Tradehill's got pretty damn good odds of getting some of my business now.

[Mistafreeze]

So....did everyone else get a "customer service check-up" call from Dwolla just to make sure that they're happy with the service? I assume it's just coincidence that I get this call less than 24 hours after I posted the comment that's been screen-captured earlier in this thread on their Facebook page....

[hugolp]

So, why are you trying to make matters worse by asking questions whose answers can hurt TradeHill so much?

Are Dwolla's VC's paying you for it? F*ckin' SockPuppet...

Not just Dwolla's VC are watching this thread, so are the ones that Jered potentially can get support from. Jered will have little chance of securing any seed or Series A money if he continues to turn this into childish back and forth. While I  am only a "Jr. Member" here I have been involved with Bitcoin since 2009.

As an account executive and analyst in VC world of Silicon Valley it is my job to find  potential new investments and more so in vetting them out.

Are people looking at TradeHill, of course they are. It has potential.

All I am doing is trying to help Jered from flushing himself out of the system. The method he is employing is unprofessional at best in dealing with Dwolla. TradeHill has damaged it's image. Sure they look great to you guys, but none of you guys are going to drop a couple of million in seed either.

Once again Jered, consider what I said previous about going quiet and furthermore, if I were you I would definitely make statement strongly discouraging any coordinated attacks on Dwolla in your behalf.

The more you talk the more convinced I am you are just a troll or have some personal interest on the issue.

[dacoinminster]

. . . I have been involved with Bitcoin since 2009.

But you only registered on the forum last month?

As an account executive and analyst in VC world of Silicon Valley it is my job to find  potential new investments and more so in vetting them out.

Are people looking at TradeHill, of course they are. It has potential.

All I am doing is trying to help Jered from flushing himself out of the system. The method he is employing is unprofessional at best in dealing with Dwolla. TradeHill has damaged it's image. Sure they look great to you guys, but none of you guys are going to drop a couple of million in seed either.

Once again Jered, consider what I said previous about going quiet and furthermore, if I were you I would definitely make statement strongly discouraging any coordinated attacks on Dwolla in your behalf.

Check this guy's posting history. Laugh at his spelling and grammar. Notice almost all his posts have been a frantic attempt to get TradeHill to keep this scandal quiet.

I've been a TradeHill booster since the day they launched, and their transparency only increases my loyalty.