Am I a friend or foe of Bitcoin?

[Vod]

Long time users know me as a good judge of scammy behavior.  As my interests have changed, I have started to pick the lower hanging fruit - the ones easiest to identify.  I no longer deeply investigate, and let others with the skill and interest to do so, to do so.   

Recently I identified a very probable scam.  This has ruffled the feathers of those that profited over the last six years.  I'm now childishly being called an enemy of bitcoin and an enemy of this community.   So, I want to take two days and see what everyone else thinks.

The poll question is:  "How is crypto affected by reporting suspected fraud?"

Thank you if you choose to answer.  Due to the proliferation of alt accounts, there is no accuracy to this poll.

[angel55]

Bunch of random thoughts:

Ever since I got more involved in crypto I have seen the enormous amount of scams. People willing to cut someones throat for a few bucks figuratively speaking.  Traditional online money transfers with paypal and bank transfers were a lot harder to scam than crypto came along and the scammers loved it.  Once its in their hands you have vritually zero chance to recover it or do anything about it.

Remember, every coin you aren't holding is a scam!!..... Only the coins you own are legit.  Same goes for people advertising scam gambling companies and other bs.  People shilling trading bots and other bullshit like that.

Now lets go to the most advertised company on this forum: Chipmixer , obviously stays in business due to mixing hacked funds, drug money, etc.  Thats no secret, they have no morals its all about money.  They are contributing to the problem.

I consider every coin sketchy including bitcoin

bitcoin: still many questions about the origin and Satoshi's coins??  Inflation bug that was luckily found by a honest bitcoin cash developer

ethereum:  huge premine like everything else, rolled back something that was supposed to be decentralized, now trying to push in a founders tax, greedy devs

ripple: complete shit, what else is there to say, this isn't even a crypto and its in the top 3 and top it off majority of coins owned by their group

eos: somehow this centralized piece of shit that can reverse transactions at will raised billions of dollars but members on this forum are more concerned with noobs scamming 100 bucks



There are good people in this world but they are few and far between, money can be truly evil.

[Lauda]

Remember, every coin you aren't holding is a scam!!..... Only the coins you own are legit.

Sigh. Such a worthless post.
The situation completely put aside, the answer to the title is: You're a friend.

[The Cryptovator]

Voted on "Helps crypto legitimacy", so logically you are you are a crypto friend (IMO). Crypto made a easier, fast and secure fund transaction opportunity for us. On the other hand crypto give easier opportunity to scammer to steam our money easily. That's why we should report such as scammy projects/website in order to helps crypto legitimacy.  

[TMAN]

Recently I identified a very probable scam. 

well as far as I know all you have done is stop skams, to my knowledge you have not had people invest in you or any project that you are involved in "for profit" so fuck yea you are one of the good guys, you might have saggy tits but that doesn't make you an enemy of crypto bud

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Vod, enjoy the tears of your dishonest, scamming victims. Anybody worth their salt on this forum knows that you only act honestly & are helpful here.

Don’t let anybody bring you down. Smile & enjoy your weekend.

[yogg]

Long time users know me as a good judge of scammy behavior.  As my interests have changed, I have started to pick the lower hanging fruit - the ones easiest to identify.  I no longer deeply investigate, and let others with the skill and interest to do so, to do so.  

Recently I identified a very probable scam.  This has ruffled the feathers of those that profited over the last six years.  I'm now childishly being called an enemy of bitcoin and an enemy of this community.   So, I want to take two days and see what everyone else thinks.

The poll question is:  "How is crypto affected by reporting suspected fraud?"

Thank you if you choose to answer.  Due to the proliferation of alt accounts, there is no accuracy to this poll.

To reply to the question being the title, I don't think that you Vod, as an individual, are a friend or a foe of(to?) Bitcoin.
Bitcoin has no concept of morality, good and bad, etc .. It just processes transactions.
Maybe the people calling you "an enemy of Bitcoin" should document themselves on Bitcoin instead of speaking on it's behalf.

Now, to reply to the question inside the post, "How is crypto affected by reporting suspected fraud?" ; I want to reply with a question.
"How is fiat affected by reporting suspected fraud?" Nada, nothing.
Same goes for bitcoin, excepts as it is a nascent technology and showing legitimacy may help, some people have interests in it's success and some have interests in it's demise.
This is another story...

As for the community ...
Personally, I always enjoyed to see your interventions, and I note all the hard work you do to make this forum safer and clearer.
There is nothing wrong with reporting frauds, was it involving crypto or fiat. Rather much the contrary, it is beneficial to a lot of people to weed out fraudsters.

For messages, there are always their contents, and how this content is expressed (format).
I think the content in your scam investigation is interesting however the initial format maybe wasn't the best.
But heh, what's done is done. No "Undo" button.

Big names eventually come to dust (Bernie Madoff?) as their practices are revealed.
True that, presumption of innocence, supposedly OG did everything according to the rules fixed by regulators, as he claims.
If investigated, the outcome (if all cleared) will attract a lot of business to Nasty Mining for their extended compliance, or they will probably have to close (if not all cleared).

Everyone makes mistakes ; on each and every side.
The sum of every and each action makes you who you are.
Please keep doing what you are doing Vod.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

The poll question is:  "How is crypto affected by reporting suspected fraud?"

Technically it does more good than harm, it helps strengthen the technology and community as a whole. Let me paint a scenario involving the latest exchange (binance) getting hacked event. Let's say before the hack there was a report of suspected hacking (fraud) and the exchange was able to prevent this hackers from stealing such amount of BTC they went away, won't that have been much better than the success of the hacking?. I guess yes.

Although reporting suspected fraud may demage the reputation of cryptocurrency but that's just a short term effects as these reports will motivate the developers to work on improving the technology to eliminate all the reported flaws as a result giving us a better technology which helps cryptocurrency legitimately.

So from my opinion above, you're a friend of bitcoin. We need more reporting of suspected fraud so developers can improve on existing technology to give us more flawless technology to support cryptocurrency innovation.

[creeps]

We are all humans, people will always have a negative things to say especially when if you are working against them.
You are doing great mate, I admire you for a job well done in this forum so don't feel the sad now and continue to do what is right.

You are just simply amazing, scammers have no place to stay in this market and forum. Continue to help the legitimacy of cryptocurrency and the quality of this forum. 

[DireWolfM14]

@Vod I think, you are a friend to crypto.  My vote was cast months ago when I added you to my custom trust list.

As for reporting suspected frauds, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and you'll never convince some people that they are being scammed.  Take Amway, for example; I used to work with a pair of bottom-rungers who ceaselessly attempted to recruit everyone in the plant.  No one could convince these guys they were being scammed, and one guy was asked by management to stop trying because of the heated discussions.

No matter how you dress up a pyramid scheme; MLM or blatant Ponzi, they're six in one and half dozen in the other.  Voicing your concern only encourages others to be more scrutinous.

I'd rather you continue to voice your concerns and possibly be wrong, than the alternative.

[eddie13]

Form 3949-A completed to be mailed.

I did not realize until talking to an agent that I could qualify for up to a 30% reward!   That means I could potentially refund part of the money lost by the initial scam victims.  

OG sure is going crazy with the edits on his sites...   does he realize everything is archived?

Reporting users you are arguing with to the IRS to satisfy a personal vendetta is wrong..

Talk about choosing words.. "How is crypto affected by reporting suspected fraud?"
More like "Should I call the IRS on someone I don't like to try to get them into trouble?", which is what I see going on here..

[NeuroticFish]

The poll question is:  "How is crypto affected by reporting suspected fraud?"

Sooner or later we have to clean up our own backyard, whether we like it or not.
I think that's better if we do it ourselves. If others will have to do it, we may hold part of the blame for closing our eyes.
So on long term, the reporting should be beneficial.


Also, if you are not sure, maybe you ask for help. Lately there are many other members of the forum that can be trusted and maybe they could help.

[Quickseller]

Your question is loaded, and is an attempt to stroke your ego.

Long time users know me as a good judge of scammy behavior. 

I don't think anyone knows you as that. You are known to hand out ratings against many new users who engage in transparent scammy behavior. If memory serves me correctly, you used to accept "anon" reports of scams, but had to stop because you were unable to sufficiently judge the evidence on its own, and received too many inaccurate reports that resulted in you handing out bad ratings.

Obviously fraud should be reported, as such *suspected* fraud, however with regards to the later, there needs to be a reasonable basis to forum the suspicion that extends beyond the preponderance of the evidence standard, not the I don't like the person standard, or the this person is criticizing me standard.

The fact that you were afraid to speak out against lauda and aTriz shows you care more about your stats and less about actually warning others about wrongdoing.

[Vod]

The fact that you were afraid to speak out against lauda and aTriz shows you care more about your stats and less about actually warning others about wrongdoing.

And you don't act on claiming I'm a pedo why?    

[Quickseller]

The fact that you were afraid to speak out against lauda and aTriz shows you care more about your stats and less about actually warning others about wrongdoing.

And you don't act on my being a pedo why?   

You are assuming I haven't reported you.

You have a strange obsession of trying to determine if you are being investigated by law enforcement for this.

It is best if the subject of an investigation not know they are under investigation by law enforcement so to prevent them from acting differently while they are being investigated, and to prevent them from specifically wanting to destroy evidence because they are under investigation.

[LeGaulois]

It doesn't damage the crypto reputation, nor it helps with legitimacy.
See yourself from the media and all the news published about BTC fraud, people don't give a fuck to it anymore. If it was because you cleaned the whole industry that would be something else.
Legitimacy: At a large scale it can show to others that the community is ready to act to get a clean 'environment' but a single case, again people don't care.

Do what you think is your duty, no matter if it damages or helps.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Now lets go to the most advertised company on this forum: Chipmixer , obviously stays in business due to mixing hacked funds, drug money, etc.  Thats no secret, they have no morals its all about money.  They are contributing to the problem.

Ouch.  I don't agree with your vitriol aimed at Chipmixer, by the way.  That's like saying Tor is evil because it allows the dark markets to exist, but while that's basically true it misses the big picture that a lot of people love their privacy and some have a legitimate need for it.  So as far as coin mixing services go, I have no doubt that they get used by scammers looking to cover their tracks, but those services are also used by people for completely legitimate reasons. 

Reporting users you are arguing with to the IRS to satisfy a personal vendetta is wrong..

Talk about choosing words.. "How is crypto affected by reporting suspected fraud?"
More like "Should I call the IRS on someone I don't like to try to get them into trouble?", which is what I see going on here..

I haven't been following this recent drama between Vod and OgNasty, and I don't know exactly what it's about but I'm assuming Vod discovered some tax evasion on the part of OgNasty and is going to report that to the IRS?  If that's the case, I have mixed feelings.  I have mucho respect for Vod and everything he's done for this forum, but at the same time I have a serious loathing for the IRS and the tax system in the US. 

I completely understand the importance of citizens paying their taxes, but I feel that we're almost to the point of being victimized by the IRS and the state internal revenue services and other taxes like those for property, sales tax, and probably more taxes than I can think of.  Thus if I uncovered some tax evasion activity being done by any member here, I think I would just remain silent--but as I said, I have mixed feelings and am somewhat conflicted.

But to address Vod's comment in the OP:  Vod isn't an enemy of bitcoin or the community, even if he reports someone to the IRS.  He'll still have my respect even if I don't necessarily agree with his actions.  Nor should this one thing destroy an otherwise solid reputation.

[eddie13]

I haven't been following this recent drama

How inconvenient..

I'm assuming Vod discovered some tax evasion on the part of OgNasty and is going to report that to the IRS? 

No not really.. He thinks he has discovered in some convoluted way which he may may not have paid taxes correctly in his opinion. I didn't see any commentary from any tax experts or tax documents..

I completely understand the importance of citizens paying their taxes, but I feel that we're almost to the point of being victimized by the IRS and the state internal revenue services and other taxes like those for property, sales tax, and probably more taxes than I can think of.  Thus if I uncovered some tax evasion activity being done by any member here, I think I would just remain silent--but as I said, I have mixed feelings and am somewhat conflicted.

Nobody accidentally happened to discover any evidence of anything, everything pointed to is years old.. What is happening is a which hunt searching for dirt, "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime."

Funnily enough they, vod, sbogovac, marlboroza, are not even from the US and seem delighted in sicking the US IRS on him..

But to address Vod's comment in the OP:  Vod isn't an enemy of bitcoin or the community, even if he reports someone to the IRS.  He'll still have my respect even if I don't necessarily agree with his actions.  Nor should this one thing destroy an otherwise solid reputation.

I have held great respect for Vod for years also but he is going crazy over this spat with OG to the point to where he is attacking him with the US IRS over forum drama..
Sicking the IRS on a fellow crypto user is low and dirty..

I feel it could be very damaging to this community if we are all running around calling the feds on eachother for whatever "evidence" we can construe to get their attention..

"Be careful over at Bitcointalk guys, if you make them mad they'll send the feds to raid you."

[Vod]

"Be careful over at Bitcointalk guys, if you make them mad they'll send the feds to raid you."

Infinity better than "Do what you want at Bitcointalk guys, they turn a blind eye to crime if they can make money."

[Quickseller]

"Be careful over at Bitcointalk guys, if you make them mad they'll send the feds to raid you."

Infinity better than "Do what you want at Bitcointalk guys, they turn a blind eye to crime if they can make money."

Actually no.

You are essentially extorting other forum members to scare them out of not being critical of you out of fear you will make frivolous reports of crimes to start an investigation by the SEC (which is very expensive on the part of the person being investigated, even if there is no wrongdoing).