The Case against Solidcoin, and it's place on bitcointalk.org

[sd]

Ok, so let's reverse what was done previously and move it back. It's not a cryptocurrency. It's a Paypal-like online payment system.

It is a currency, it uses cryptography to secure it. How is it not a cryptocurrency?

SolidCoin does use encryption but so does Paypal, which has a SSL website for security. Linden dollars likely use SSL too. So does all internet banking and on-line share trading. You have to draw the line somewhere.

SolidCoin fails as a currency because it will never be trustworthy enough to use as medium of exchange. A single man maintains god like powers over the entire SolidCoin network. The author can freeze the whole network at will, alter block rewards, lockout certain addresses, and likely perform many other manipulations. Surely a currency has to be a stable container of value for it to be any use. This same man trolls this forum posting outrageous lies about BitCoin and insane claims about SolidCoin in order to hook more people into his scam.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Exactly. If you use a lose enough definition ("crypto" = useless token encryption) then SC doesn't fail on the "crypto" part but it still fails on the "currency" part.

[johnj]

Okay,

Now it appears that the 12m+ premine that CoinHunter and his followers chanted 'Not spendable' are now very much spendable.


Really, how many more bait-and-switches does RS have to promote on these forums until the forum mods here deal with it?

[DeathAndTaxes]

And what about the removal of Bitcoin's copyright notice from the source? Shouldn't that be grounds enough to not allow Solidcoin's promotion?

Technically and someone correct me if I am wrong but at least in the US failure to at least to attempt to enforce ones copyright/patent/trademark can be grounds for it to be nullified.  If you allow your property to be treated as public domain then the courts can deem it in the public domain.

[johnj]

Sue goes to the Marketplace forums, and says 'I have a 5850 for sale. It's brand new with an aftermarket heat-sink included.  Send me 150 BTC and it's yours.

People then weigh take variables into account before they invest.  They weigh their long-term electric cost, initial cost, they are able to weigh how much a 5850 and an aftermarket heatsink are worth to them, before they spend their money.

Now Sue sends instead a 5770 with no heat-sink at all. Though a 5770 is still technically a graphics card, what was received is not what was advertised.   Or what if the card was broken?  Or what if Sue left out the heatsink?  Further, what if any of those things happened and it was proven that Sue had prior knowledge? Or what if Sue used the defense she made a 'decision' she thought was best for you, without your input?  Sue would be labeled a scammer for accepting peoples investment and changing the terms of the sale after the fact.

CoinHunter goes to the Cryptocurrency forums, and says 'I have an investment opportunity.  If you invest X money (based on your hardware cost), you'll receive Y (coin reward) over Z period (time it takes to find a block), according to N parameters (design of SC). People then weigh all those variables into account before they invest.

Coinhunter has adjusted and concealed many variables people must weigh in order to make a proper investment. Further, CoinHunter has lied about his own 'earnings', to a tune of holding a whopping ~85% of the current coin supply. Coinhunter has changed the Y reward and N parameters directly, after initial investment was made. The investment made by those people, whether it be through buying on an exchange or contributing hashes to the blockchain, were done under the guise of A terms, but coinhunter executed the investment under B terms, of which B terms are directly beneficial to Coinhunter and directly detrimental to the investor.

Lets take TerryTibbs case.  He sold X-long Spotify accounts, which lasted only X-N. Since the investment advertised was not the investment received, Terrytibbs was labeled a scammer.

I do not see how this is any different than what Coinhunter is trying to pull off.

This is beside the Oracle DB licenses
This is beside the Bitcoin MIT licenses

In genuine sincere honesty, I'm at a loss of what else the mods would need in order to take action.

[bulanula]

Sue goes to the Marketplace forums, and says 'I have a 5850 for sale. It's brand new with an aftermarket heat-sink included.  Send me 150 BTC and it's yours.

People then weigh take variables into account before they invest.  They weigh their long-term electric cost, initial cost, they are able to weigh how much a 5850 and an aftermarket heatsink are worth to them, before they spend their money.

Now Sue sends instead a 5770 with no heat-sink at all. Though a 5770 is still technically a graphics card, what was received is not what was advertised.   Or what if the card was broken?  Or what if Sue left out the heatsink?  Further, what if any of those things happened and it was proven that Sue had prior knowledge? Or what if Sue used the defense she made a 'decision' she thought was best for you, without your input?  Sue would be labeled a scammer for accepting peoples investment and changing the terms of the sale after the fact.

CoinHunter goes to the Cryptocurrency forums, and says 'I have an investment opportunity.  If you invest X money (based on your hardware cost), you'll receive Y (coin reward) over Z period (time it takes to find a block), according to N parameters (design of SC). People then weigh all those variables into account before they invest.

Coinhunter has adjusted and concealed many variables people must weigh in order to make a proper investment. Further, CoinHunter has lied about his own 'earnings', to a tune of holding a whopping ~85% of the current coin supply. Coinhunter has changed the Y reward and N parameters directly, after initial investment was made. The investment made by those people, whether it be through buying on an exchange or contributing hashes to the blockchain, were done under the guise of A terms, but coinhunter executed the investment under B terms, of which B terms are directly beneficial to Coinhunter and directly detrimental to the investor.

Lets take TerryTibbs case.  He sold X-long Spotify accounts, which lasted only X-N. Since the investment advertised was not the investment received, Terrytibbs was labeled a scammer.

I do not see how this is any different than what Coinhunter is trying to pull off.

This is beside the Oracle DB licenses
This is beside the Bitcoin MIT licenses

In genuine sincere honesty, I'm at a loss of what else the mods would need in order to take action.

Anyone here left thinking RS has bribed the mods with tons of SC The rabbit hole goes even deeper ...

[johnj]

Anyone here left thinking RS has bribed the mods with tons of SC The rabbit hole goes even deeper ...

No, I don't think it's that, it's just that SC isn't a 'traditional' scam. I don't think most of the mods frequent the AltCurrency board, and without informing them (here) of all the red flags, they simply wouldn't know.

[bulanula]

Anyone here left thinking RS has bribed the mods with tons of SC The rabbit hole goes even deeper ...

No, I don't think it's that, it's just that SC isn't a 'traditional' scam. I don't think most of the mods frequent the AltCurrency board, and without informing them (here) of all the red flags, they simply wouldn't know.

Still one has to admit a fact. The amount of PR that SC gets from this forum with BCX and all the others is just phenomenal. RS might as well be paying the forum for advertising SC at this point in time. Flame on folks ! You fail to realise that by talking about SC you are actually giving it more momentum

[johnj]

Anyone here left thinking RS has bribed the mods with tons of SC The rabbit hole goes even deeper ...

No, I don't think it's that, it's just that SC isn't a 'traditional' scam. I don't think most of the mods frequent the AltCurrency board, and without informing them (here) of all the red flags, they simply wouldn't know.

Still one has to admit a fact. The amount of PR that SC gets from this forum with BCX and all the others is just phenomenal. RS might as well be paying the forum for advertising SC at this point in time. Flame on folks ! You fail to realise that by talking about SC you are actually giving it more momentum

While I'm aware of the Streisand Effect, I would hope the intended effect would be akin to yelling 'fire' when indeed there actually is a fire and people need to be warned.  How the mods decide to put out the fire is up to them.  At this point, I can see no other way to communicate this is an actual fire that needs the mods attention.

[memvola]

While I'm aware of the Streisand Effect, I would hope the intended effect would be akin to yelling 'fire' when indeed there actually is a fire and people need to be warned.  How the mods decide to put out the fire is up to them.  At this point, I can see no other way to communicate this is an actual fire that needs the mods attention.

bulanula has a point; I would probably have forgotten about SolidCoin altogether if it wasn't for BitcoinEXpress threads. "Yelling 'fire'" can be confined to responding claims of SC publicists without any ill effects.

[johnj]

While I'm aware of the Streisand Effect, I would hope the intended effect would be akin to yelling 'fire' when indeed there actually is a fire and people need to be warned.  How the mods decide to put out the fire is up to them.  At this point, I can see no other way to communicate this is an actual fire that needs the mods attention.

bulanula has a point; I would probably have forgotten about SolidCoin altogether if it wasn't for BitcoinEXpress threads. "Yelling 'fire'" can be confined to responding claims of SC publicists without any ill effects.

I completely agree, however this requires users to moderate documented users who issue and promote fraudulent investments.  There is already a forum function in place to warn people who may not be aware or have 'kept up' with a particular users prior fraudulent investments.  When you have users moderating users, it ends up with a lot of noise.  This is why I'm petitioning for a moderators intervention.

Edit: Imagine a Marketplace forum where there were no 'scammer' labels.

[theymos]

I don't agree that it was scamming. Lying is not scamming. He didn't make a contract with users, and users voluntarily ran closed-source software that could be centrally controlled.

[johnj]

I don't agree that it was scamming. Lying is not scamming. He didn't make a contract with users, and users voluntarily ran closed-source software that could be centrally controlled.

I'm not trying to split hairs here, but I'm trying to fit that into TerryTibbs case, or any other 'scam' case. Though lying is not scamming, it's critical to scamming, when the lie is to the detriment of the investor and to the gain of the scammer.  If TerryTibbs Spotify Accounts instead were X+N in length, he wouldn't have received the 'scammer' label.

I genuienly don't understand how lying in this case isn't a scam.

[johnj]

Even though I may not understand it, I guess if it's the stance that what CH is doing is not an actual 'scam', then I guess that's that.

While I understand the AltChain subforum isn't of critical importance to the strength of Bitcoin, I sincerely wish the moderaters would in the future perhaps change their stance, and help the forum users not get lured into shady dealings, even if they don't take place on the market board.

[theymos]

Gavin does have a warning sticky in alt currencies.

It's not the forum's job to protect users from dangerous people/services/ideas. You need to use your own brain. (I was initially opposed to the idea of responding in any way to scammers. I only created the scammer tag because it seemed that almost everyone expected scammers to be banned once identified, which caused otherwise-reasonable people to stop using their brains in some cases.)

[simonk83]

I absolutely support a removal of anything SC related from here.   It has no place here at all.

[johnj]

Even though I may not understand it, I guess if it's the stance that what CH is doing is not an actual 'scam', then I guess that's that.

While I understand the AltChain subforum isn't of critical importance to the strength of Bitcoin, I sincerely wish the moderaters would in the future perhaps change their stance, and help the forum users not get lured into shady dealings, even if they don't take place on the market board.

An appeal to nannying will definitely not work on theymos. You should pursue the "Solidcoin is not an actual cryptocurrency" argument instead.

I'm not super tech minded, so I can only gather what everyone says and filter through it. I think we've already covered license infringements, not-a-cryptocurrency (it's a cryptocurrency just as much as PayPal is), bait-and-switch investments... I'm not sure what else to say really.

I guess is this is kinda sketchy territory to set precedents, and don't want to jump the gun. Or it could simply be ideological, that they simply see it from a different perspective.

But the only thing I could do was raise awareness, and of which I take it they've read through what's been provided by myself and others. theymos is right, there is clear disclaimer stickied by Gavin, but I (and others) believe that SC, for many reasons provided, is an anomaly which requires further mod action. They're intelligent people and can weigh the evidence for themselves, and though I may disagree... it's not my forum.

Edit: Unless of course theymos has other questions concerning SC, of which I'm sure there are people that can answer.  Unless he says otherwise, I'll interpret the silence as to be a dead issue.