Trust No One

[jcp]

TLDR: Treat bitcoins like cash (don't get hacked).

[Dinkytoyz]

What about this problem then; Im new but want to do a bitcoin lottery or so (just for illustrative purposes). I send 50btc to a trusted member so that people know they will get their btc back if I fuck something up. The lottery ends and 1 guy wins. This guy however is malicious (but the community doesnt know this and he has very little trust, just a fraction more then I would have) and says that he never got payed and since I have less trust then him the 50btc which got sent to the trusted member will now go to the malicious person and not back to me.

Of course this can be mitigated by letting the winner post a btc address and have proof that funds were sent there, but now think about this:

What if the winner of the lottery and the one making the lottery were the same person? Unprovable and because of that I have just pulled of the perfect scam (I didnt scam anyone, just for illustrative purposes, again). Anyways, I hope with writing this message I have contributed a bit to the paranoia so scammers will have a more difficult time stealing our coins

[bovinium]

Wow, long password. I can't even trust online wallets? Damn. Well, I only have a few anyway.

[Serenity]

Yeah, paranoia is essential. Physical Security and Digital Security become equally as important with Bitcoin. I bet that the person who lost $5.5 Million of Bitcoin had hit wallet stolen by someone he knows. Most wall street investors are lame with computers.

[relentless]

That sucks! Make sure all your passwords are 8 or more characters long with different symbols and capital letters to throw any one off.

[hibits]

Seems that this issue of trust (read as paranoia) is the biggest issue which is holding back bitcoins from growing by leaps and bounds and replacing more currencies as a way of doing business. The reality is that sooner or later bitcoins will have to go the way of all other forms of exchange just due to the simple fact that the concept is hard to come to grasps with. Someone has to be making money in the business of making money to be able to provide that level of security, name recognition, and/or insurance.
Yeah, Paypal sucks in terms of how it makes money, especially via ebay, but they do have an option of sending via Personal with no fees for either side, but you get stuck with not knowing if the other person(s) you are dealing with are legit.

I'm sure someone else has replied on this post similarly, but didn't want to spend forever reading through 14 pages worth of replies.
Just my 2 cents (not sure what that would be in bitcoins).

[rclljj]

3ks very much. dont trust moshengren.

[TheJuice]

how can i trust your post then, my good friend?

[TheHeroMember]

how can i trust your post then, my good friend?

Ask the one who posted this thread, he might have bunch of answers.

[frank90]

Unfortunatelly scammers didnt stayed out on this forum. We have to take care.

[Buckets]

I just joined the forum and stopped lurking because I saw an excellent price for 4 mining rigs, mostly 6970s and 6950s (13 cards and all the hardware) for $2500. But only in bitcoins. It's a new member with no selling history who says they are moving to an apartment.
I want to buy it, but would only risk that kind of money using an escrow service.
So I'm looking for a bitcoin escrow service now.

[frank90]

In those cases using escrow is a must in my opinion

[buck92]

great advice...just being around the forums the past few days I've noticed lots of members trying to manipulate the market one way or another through their posts, but I understand it is part of the game and you just gotta stay vigilant.

[Ente Erstickenfickër]

Relying on trust sucks. Avoid it completely when you can.

[SuperP]

With the recent takedown of Megaupload.com, I think trusting any third party is worth another look.

"Megaupload is based in Hong Kong, but some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Va., which gave federal authorities jurisdiction, the indictment said."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g0HiB0PrdprLqIHlwUdYtB05l2sA?docId=c93737704b504930a11fc307d67b674d

How many coins is Mt. Gox in possesion of?  How big a blow would that be to bitcoin?  This would be worst than the incident in which the polish exchange last year lost bitcoins due to hardware failure. In a raid such as with Megaupload.com, not only could all users of an exchange lose their bitcoins, some government would be in charge of those bitcoins. 

It's a wake up call to me.  I've moved most of my coins from the exchanges, but I think bitcoin as an idea would definitely face a set back unless a large number of people exercise this kind of caution.

[Eveofwar]

With the recent takedown of Megaupload.com, I think trusting any third party is worth another look.

"Megaupload is based in Hong Kong, but some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Va., which gave federal authorities jurisdiction, the indictment said."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g0HiB0PrdprLqIHlwUdYtB05l2sA?docId=c93737704b504930a11fc307d67b674d

How many coins is Mt. Gox in possesion of?  How big a blow would that be to bitcoin?  This would be worst than the incident in which the polish exchange last year lost bitcoins due to hardware failure. In a raid such as with Megaupload.com, not only could all users of an exchange lose their bitcoins, some government would be in charge of those bitcoins. 

It's a wake up call to me.  I've moved most of my coins from the exchanges, but I think bitcoin as an idea would definitely face a set back unless a large number of people exercise this kind of caution.

This is why there's a call to decentralize.  Essentially the reason Bitcoin was created.

P2P Exchanges should be able to solve this problem.

[juancarlosm1983]

I'd like to add Trust no-pc either. I don't know how, but in the last 3 o 4 days somebody cracked my e-mail password and requested a password recovery from Deepbit, then changed the Reward Address... I've lost almost 1BTC, until I realize what happened.

Therefore, don't trust any other pc than yours, and eventually check your payments address...

[vokain]

I sent 6 bitcoins to Instawallet, thinking they were gone forever after 3-4 days when they didn't appear. Figured if the site was legit, people might've been loggin all these different addresses and constantly checking to see which wallets have activity. Got those six BTC though!

[TheHeroMember]

Relying on trust sucks. Avoid it completely when you can.

Agree 

[farfiman]

Although in the lending thread there is quite a big amount of trust.