Two interesting emails I received today...

[rainingbitcoins]

I read 3 pages of this and this is what I conclude.

At this point, I don't even care if Bruce is a pedophile.

This entire conversation is sick.  His desire is outta control, he has absolutely no mindfulness in distancing Bitcoin from Pattaya, and there is good reason to believe that his desires are linked with the MyBitcoin scandal.

Think of Bruce as an investment correlated with Bitcoin.  At this point, would you invest in Bruce?  Would you invest all your trust, your money, your BTC investment with Bruce?

Hell no, not me.  I do NOT trust him.  If you knew all this about a person with whom you were about to conduct business with on the marketplace section, would you buy from him?

Again, hell no, not me.  And if he came on my property, I'd grab a bat.

If you're all rational, you will put Bruce in the dark corner of the Bitcoin basement with all the other scammers and bad publicity and run far, far away.

A good con artist will charm the pants off you in person, on TV, etc.  That's what makes them good.

But, they can only be good for so long.  Let's move on from this shmuck.

Edit:  Seriously, you guys want a dude that will pay thousands of dollars to fuck in another country?  Think of the impulsive nature of such a person and the exaggerations Bruce has made recently regarding Bitcoin.  A cruise was the big conference news?  You all want to go on a cruise with Captain Bruce?

Only on the Bitcoin forums will you see a post condemning fraudsters with a link to an admitted pyramid scheme in the sig.

[lemonginger]

Only on the Bitcoin forums will you see a post condemning fraudsters with a link to an admitted pyramid scheme in the sig.

Hey now, nothing wrong with pyramid schemes if everyone involved knows that's the way it works and is transparent about it. Just like any other sort of gambling. Pyramid schemes only troubling when they are sold as legitimate investment opportunities and no one realizes they are getting paid with other suckers money.

[Raoul Duke]

Only on the Bitcoin forums will you see a post condemning fraudsters with a link to an admitted pyramid scheme in the sig.

Hey now, nothing wrong with pyramid schemes if everyone involved knows that's the way it works and is transparent about it. Just like any other sort of gambling. Pyramid schemes only troubling when they are sold as legitimate investment opportunities and no one realizes they are getting paid with other suckers money.

rainingbitcoins would never understand a bitcoin pyramid rules even if they were very well explained.
Him and the rest of the SA mofo's are just too dumb. All they can do is use google, read titles and flash accusations.
Maybe the #bitcoin-police should start digging the real names of these dudes and then would be where the fun would start, because i bet most of them are just snitches, criminals who snitch on others in exchange for free-passes for their own crimes.

[bitrebel]

Only on the Bitcoin forums will you see a post condemning fraudsters with a link to an admitted pyramid scheme in the sig.

Hey now, nothing wrong with pyramid schemes if everyone involved knows that's the way it works and is transparent about it. Just like any other sort of gambling. Pyramid schemes only troubling when they are sold as legitimate investment opportunities and no one realizes they are getting paid with other suckers money.

rainingbitcoins would never understand a bitcoin pyramid rules even if they were very well explained.
Him and the rest of the SA mofo's are just too dumb. All they can do is use google, read titles and flash accusations.
Maybe the #bitcoin-police should start digging the real names of these dudes and then would be where the fun would start, because i bet most of them are just snitches, criminals who snitch on others in exchange for free-passes for their own crimes.

I'll bet your 100% correct!
I'm thinking of starting my own Somethingsmellsaweful troll thread to troll and categorize these losers and their positions and backgrounds.

[lemonginger]

Only on the Bitcoin forums will you see a post condemning fraudsters with a link to an admitted pyramid scheme in the sig.

Hey now, nothing wrong with pyramid schemes if everyone involved knows that's the way it works and is transparent about it. Just like any other sort of gambling. Pyramid schemes only troubling when they are sold as legitimate investment opportunities and no one realizes they are getting paid with other suckers money.

rainingbitcoins would never understand a bitcoin pyramid rules even if they were very well explained.
Him and the rest of the SA mofo's are just too dumb. All they can do is use google, read titles and flash accusations.
Maybe the #bitcoin-police should start digging the real names of these dudes and then would be where the fun would start, because i bet most of them are just snitches, criminals who snitch on others in exchange for free-passes for their own crimes.

uhhh, no. If you all had brains you would be profusely thanking the SA folks for doing the due diligence this forum never did. Exposing scammers and removing their influence from the community is a good thing, not a bad thing. (Even if the SA folks think it's hilarious to call bitcoin itself a scam).

As far as my other point, you are right, there is no desire on their part to understand the difference between a pyramid scam - that involves deception, and a pyramid /game/ which involves transparency where everyone involved knows where they are on the list and the fact that the vast majority of players never get paid. Personnaly, I generally go to the casino if I want to gamble, but they are two very different things. But whatever, haters gonna hate - still grateful for their work around exposing Bruce and I hope they can help get to the bottom of the mybitcoin fiasco.

[Minsc]

Bruce, you posted the email addresses publically without any obfuscation.  They now have been scraped and will be spammed to death.

[ctoon6]

Bruce, you posted the email addresses publically without any obfuscation.  They now have been scraped and will be spammed to death.

fair game, anytime you email anyone, always expect they will reveal it.

[Minsc]

Bruce, you posted the email addresses publically without any obfuscation.  They now have been scraped and will be spammed to death.

fair game, anytime you email anyone, always expect they will reveal it.

Common decency?

[tvbcof]

uhhh, no. If you all had brains you would be profusely thanking the SA folks for doing the due diligence this forum never did. Exposing scammers and removing their influence from the community is a good thing, not a bad thing. (Even if the SA folks think it's hilarious to call bitcoin itself a scam).

As far as my other point, you are right, there is no desire on their part to understand the difference between a pyramid scam - that involves deception, and a pyramid /game/ which involves transparency where everyone involved knows where they are on the list and the fact that the vast majority of players never get paid. Personnaly, I generally go to the casino if I want to gamble, but they are two very different things. But whatever, haters gonna hate - still grateful for their work around exposing Bruce and I hope they can help get to the bottom of the mybitcoin fiasco.

Those SA bastards seem to have cut me off.  Now they want me to sign on to see the thread updates.  I must have hit the refresh button to many times   I guess I'll have to get back to my real work.

I'd happily pay the somethingawful fee if I could use BTC.  In fact, I would happily donate to them as a token of my appreciation if I could do so in BTC.  I'm damn sure not going to give them a link to my PayPal or credit card info for free.

Hey SA Goons (and I mean that as a good thing...) check out that bitpay plugable payment app or whatever it is called would ya?

[ctoon6]

Bruce, you posted the email addresses publically without any obfuscation.  They now have been scraped and will be spammed to death.

fair game, anytime you email anyone, always expect they will reveal it.

Common decency?

please understand the internet has not line to cross in the area of morality. "decency" is mostly non existent here on the internet.

[julz]

I'd happily pay the somethingawful fee if I could use BTC.  In fact, I would happily donate to them as a token of my appreciation if I could do so in BTC.  I'm damn sure not going to give them a link to my PayPal or credit card info for free.

Hey SA Goons (and I mean that as a good thing...) check out that bitpay plugable payment app or whatever it is called would ya?

Before I saw this - I too mentioned I'd happily pay if they accepted in bitcoins.  I don't have a CC - and paypal is a complete pain in the arse for me.
Somehow I think they would get quite an influx of funding if they accepted bitcoin - but perhaps they wouldn't be so pleased with the type of people joining?

[JeffK]

I'd happily pay the somethingawful fee if I could use BTC.  In fact, I would happily donate to them as a token of my appreciation if I could do so in BTC.  I'm damn sure not going to give them a link to my PayPal or credit card info for free.

Hey SA Goons (and I mean that as a good thing...) check out that bitpay plugable payment app or whatever it is called would ya?

Before I saw this - I too mentioned I'd happily pay if they accepted in bitcoins.  I don't have a CC - and paypal is a complete pain in the arse for me.
Somehow I think they would get quite an influx of funding if they accepted bitcoin - but perhaps they wouldn't be so pleased with the type of people joining?

What are they supposed to do with Bitcoins once they acquire them? Try to flip them for the USD needed to run the forums on the untrustworthy sites mtgox or TradeHill? How, in that sense, is accepting Bitcoin for fund a service that needs US dollars actually 'funding'?

[tvbcof]

I'd happily pay the somethingawful fee if I could use BTC.  In fact, I would happily donate to them as a token of my appreciation if I could do so in BTC.  I'm damn sure not going to give them a link to my PayPal or credit card info for free.

Hey SA Goons (and I mean that as a good thing...) check out that bitpay plugable payment app or whatever it is called would ya?

Before I saw this - I too mentioned I'd happily pay if they accepted in bitcoins.  I don't have a CC - and paypal is a complete pain in the arse for me.
Somehow I think they would get quite an influx of funding if they accepted bitcoin - but perhaps they wouldn't be so pleased with the type of people joining?

I dunno...they seem like a fairly diverse group to me.  And if anyone could see the value in being able to pay for something without giving away a lot of semi-personal info, it would the the goons.

[julz]

I'd happily pay the somethingawful fee if I could use BTC.  In fact, I would happily donate to them as a token of my appreciation if I could do so in BTC.  I'm damn sure not going to give them a link to my PayPal or credit card info for free.

Hey SA Goons (and I mean that as a good thing...) check out that bitpay plugable payment app or whatever it is called would ya?

Before I saw this - I too mentioned I'd happily pay if they accepted in bitcoins.  I don't have a CC - and paypal is a complete pain in the arse for me.
Somehow I think they would get quite an influx of funding if they accepted bitcoin - but perhaps they wouldn't be so pleased with the type of people joining?

What are they supposed to do with Bitcoins once they acquire them? Try to flip them for the USD needed to run the forums on the untrustworthy sites mtgox or TradeHill? How, in that sense, is accepting Bitcoin for fund a service that needs US dollars actually 'funding'?

Flipping them on an exchange is one option - but they don't have to 'acquire' them.  There are at least 2 merchant service providers which do immediate conversion.
Are you saying you wouldn't trust any new business in the bitcoin world? It's not like you're using them as a bank and holding large amounts of funds with them for an extended period.

Ideally - yes you'd acquire them and flip them on an exchange - but unless you also want to be a bitcoin speculator (which quite rightly most merchants wouldn't), then the price instability is currently a problem.

In the mean time - services such as btcinch and bit-pay make this unnecessary.

I have no problem with SA or other merchants deciding the infrastructure and various bitcoin businesses aren't yet proven enough for them to feel comfortable with - but I see this as an argument against 'bitcoin right now', not bitcoin itself - and this would similarly have been the case for things such as paypal in the beginning.

[JeffK]

I'd happily pay the somethingawful fee if I could use BTC.  In fact, I would happily donate to them as a token of my appreciation if I could do so in BTC.  I'm damn sure not going to give them a link to my PayPal or credit card info for free.

Hey SA Goons (and I mean that as a good thing...) check out that bitpay plugable payment app or whatever it is called would ya?

Before I saw this - I too mentioned I'd happily pay if they accepted in bitcoins.  I don't have a CC - and paypal is a complete pain in the arse for me.
Somehow I think they would get quite an influx of funding if they accepted bitcoin - but perhaps they wouldn't be so pleased with the type of people joining?

What are they supposed to do with Bitcoins once they acquire them? Try to flip them for the USD needed to run the forums on the untrustworthy sites mtgox or TradeHill? How, in that sense, is accepting Bitcoin for fund a service that needs US dollars actually 'funding'?

Flipping them on an exchange is one option - but they don't have to 'acquire' them.  There are at least 2 merchant service providers which do immediate conversion.
Are you saying you wouldn't trust any new business in the bitcoin world? It's not like you're using them as a bank and holding large amounts of funds with them for an extended period.

Ideally - yes you'd acquire them and flip them on an exchange - but unless you also want to be a bitcoin speculator (which quite rightly most merchants wouldn't), then the price instability is currently a problem.

In the mean time - services such as btcinch and bit-pay make this unnecessary.

I have no problem with SA or other merchants deciding the infrastructure and various bitcoin businesses aren't yet proven enough for them to feel comfortable with - but I see this as an argument against 'bitcoin right now', not bitcoin itself - and this would similarly have been the case for things such as paypal in the beginning.

A business or merchant? Sure I would trust them. Another untrusted exchange? Hell no, given the acceptance of scams and history of exchange problems and scams as made apparent by these forums, it is easy to see that there are no 'trustworthy' exchanges, especially given the anonymous nature of many of them.

[tvbcof]

A business or merchant? Sure I would trust them. Another untrusted exchange? Hell no, given the acceptance of scams and history of exchange problems and scams as made apparent by these forums, it is easy to see that there are no 'trustworthy' exchanges, especially given the anonymous nature of many of them.

I see pretty little risk.  Get paid right away in $$$ with those bit-pay like things (as I understand it.)

Unless they do some charge-back thing, you'd lose at most a couple of $10 bills even if they were a scam.  It seems unlikely that they would screw you with chargebacks...or at least that they would get away with it if they were Bruce-ish caliber scammers.

But go ahead and throw away free money if you like.  I would have expect that the SA'ers who run the show, at least, would be smarter than that though.

[julz]

A business or merchant? Sure I would trust them. Another untrusted exchange? Hell no, given the acceptance of scams and history of exchange problems and scams as made apparent by these forums, it is easy to see that there are no 'trustworthy' exchanges, especially given the anonymous nature of many of them.

I'm not clear on why exchanges such as mtgox and tradehill are not considered reasonably trustworthy.
I had a small amount on deposit with mtgox during their major security issue - and from my perspective it was resolved pretty well.  Security breaches and information disclosures from major corporations happen all the time - and yet perhaps because of their sheer scale, their reputation doesn't seem to suffer as much as mtgox's has.

Mtgox were not only reasonably communicative about what was going on - but provided compensation in the form of temporary reduced fees + free yubikeys for those affected. 

My problem with mtgox at the moment is that they don't appear to be engineered for high volume trading.
It's apparent that during higher volume trading both mtgoxlive and the manual trading interface become unresponsive. 
I suspect that this is a lack of concurrency in the programming - and may even be contributing to the overall price instability. People can't get in to execute their desired trades at the times they most want to! 

I do however trust that they have a (belatedly) strong security focus, and a profitable business model as evidenced by their ability to take on the books of bitomat.pl and compensate their users.

[KeyserSoze]

But go ahead and throw away free money if you like.  I would have expect that the SA'ers who run the show, at least, would be smarter than that though.

I'd join SA if they took Bitcoin. That's at least 3 people I've seen offer to join. $30 SA could make right now if they took Bitcoin. Though I am curious if they'd rook us for more lulz instead of seeing an opportunity to gain more users (and money). I can see a segment of the userbase preferring to point and laugh like Nelson (from the Simpsons). "HA HA!" That would be unfortunate because I found their site pretty fun and helpful during the time of my disagreement with Bitmole.

[FAtlas]

I'd join SA if they took Bitcoin. That's at least 3 people I've seen offer to join. $30 SA could make right now if they took Bitcoin. Though I am curious if they'd rook us for more lulz instead of seeing an opportunity to gain more users (and money). I can see a segment of the userbase preferring to point and laugh like Nelson (from the Simpsons). "HA HA!" That would be unfortunate because I found their site pretty fun and helpful during the time of my disagreement with Bitmole.

SA makes more off of IWC in a week than all the members here could put in.  Also, I don't think we're all that interested in recruiting off the 3rd most retarded forum on the internet.

[wolftaur]

Also, I don't think we're all that interested in recruiting off the 3rd most retarded forum on the internet.

Hey, if bitrebel keeps up his threads, we'll be the #1 most retarded within days.