BitScalper Risk Level

[Matthew N. Wright]

Dear community,

As a businessman and an avid project developer, I have my foot in many doors and sit at many tables. My own organization, the DCAO (dcao.org) is now home to over 50 of Bitcoin's most respected and active members. The group produces products and services (including the Bitcoin Magazine, DialCoin, BitTalk.TV) and has supported me immensely in my decisions-- until now.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed bitscalper's activities, and like the troll I am (ever see the infographic?) I went in to investigate. I immediately contacted him along with another member of our organization in efforts to find out more information. I personally am not interested in arbitrage other than just to learn more about what it is, but the other member was curious about potentially purchasing BitScalper had it been legitimate.

After I had learned a bit more about arbitrage, I came to the same conclusion my mentors in the topic came to: it's a dead end in this market and barely profitable at all, and any site like BitScalper is just giving away his profits and could not possibly even be using the money that is being invested into it.

After realizing this, I instructed Mr. Bitscalper to instead of selling to us, sell to another interested party who in fact was looking for an arbitrage bot. Through our daily discourse I learned many things about him. His supposed name, whereabouts, plan for running his systems. I was still not interested in the details and kept focusing on one key point-- how could I be of service to him while also confirming that BitScalper is not a mildly elaborate scam?

Since day one of my communications with him, the entire DCAO has been telling me "That site is a scam", "there is no way that site is legitimate", and asking me on progress of confirming whether or not it was in fact a scam. I repeatedly advised Mr. Bitscalper of my organizations collective opinions and concerns and I was repeatedly told that they were offensive and unjust, constantly promised an "inside peek" and further divulgence to calm my fears and general concerns.

After a short period of time I was very comfortable with trusting Mr Bitscalper all while telling my fellow colleagues in the DCAO to calm their irrational fears, citing my own poor presentation when I first entered the community. The issue remains that to this day, I have never been provided a single scrap of proof in any form whatsoever of any funds actually being used for arbitrage, stored safely in reserves, or that the owner of the website is not intend on just running off with everyone's money.

I am a man of my word and I have told Mr. Bitscalper that anything said between us would never be posted anywhere else, and I intend on keeping that promise. We had discussed many issues with the system, many ideas on how to make it grow, and even plans to work together on certain business ventures that would have been fun to say the least-- but he never once got around to keeping any of his promises for proving himself. Always another promise, always another day. Yesterday was a new excuse. Today it's another.

What I have learned is this:

He is kind. He is obviously foreign. He makes promises and talks big. He claims to 'know" many people, all while referring to people in my own group that he is unaware are in my own group.

I cannot however prove any wrongdoing yet and it is for this reason that I have decided to simply back off from any dealings with him. Although I cannot tell you his intentions (since I feel sincerely hurt when anyone lies to me, I honestly hope Mr. Bitscalper is an honest, but just poorly represented person) I can tell you that using his website due to his anonymity and vagueness is extremely risky regardless of his character and intentions.

I am not an authority on anything other than what I am connected to, and I unofficially give Bitscalper a Bitcoin Risk Level of 99%.

Do with your money as you may, but instead of threatening and name calling, let's show this newcomer to our new, post-mybitcoin economy, what happens to businesses that don't provide correct representation--- they don't get our business.

Until Mr. Bitscalper provides sufficient proof in private to myself directly, I would never endorse BitScalper. It has now been 2 weeks of runarounds and phantom excuses and the smell is starting to get bad.

Do not let this community suffer through another MyBitcoin. Let's kindly and quietly raise our standards and show these so called 'businesses' how it's done.

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[stochastic]

Dear community,

...I unofficially give Bitscalper a Bitcoin Risk Level of 99%...

This is a great point.  I won't do business with others that won't be more open especially with bitcoin.  It would be great if there was a Bitcoin Better Business Bureau or something like you mention with a Risk Level.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Dear community,

...I unofficially give Bitscalper a Bitcoin Risk Level of 99%...

This is a great point.  I won't do business with others that won't be more open especially with bitcoin.  It would be great if there was a Bitcoin Better Business Bureau or something like you mention with a Risk Level.

I tried to start one called the UABB, and everyone on the forum tore me a new asshole saying that such an idea was anti-decentralization and that the BBB itself is a total scam. After a while I stopped defending myself and listened to the arguments. As hard as it was to swallow at first, it's true--- a BBB model doesn't work, straight and simple.

Instead, a rating system given by users should be the proper replacement. So here's me, in a nice and nonjudgmental way, using only facts to give BitScalper.com a rating of 99% for risk.

I hope he turns out to be honest and I'm totally wrong. I enjoy eating crow on those occasions, but the presentation is heading south at this point.

[xepera]

Okay, nice. My personal rating by now is 0% risk. Put in 5 BTC - returned 5.4 within a few days (withdraw to my wallet). Put in 80 BTC 2 days ago, made a daily win of 0.17 BTC. Let's see if i get back my money this time.

What i want to say: no one so far had problems with bitscalper. At least i am not aware of any problems.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Okay, nice. My personal rating by now is 0% risk. Put in 5 BTC - returned 5.4 within a few days (withdraw to my wallet). Put in 80 BTC 2 days ago, made a daily win of 0.17 BTC. Let's see if i get back my money this time.

What i want to say: no one so far had problems with bitscalper. At least i am not aware of any problems.

The arguments for how easily it could just be him giving you money to get you to put more in are overwhelming. Read the thread with pages and pages of arguments.

Again, feel free to do as you wish with your money but bottom line--- why would anyone give their money to someone completely anonymous?

[bulanula]

I am 100% sure Bitscalper is 100% genuine and mybitcoin will never happen again as people have learnt their lessons.

Put all your money into it and you will get rich !

After all, this is the community that thinks one can make a ton of money while said one is sleeping  

In the end we are all getting scalped anyway so why not deposit some BTC now

[xepera]

Of course this are arguments.

But please point me to a single post in the other thread where somebody has not got his bitcoins back. I don't see the point why Mr. Bitscalper should wait any longer. he could make a cut right now in this second and have scammed many people and let's say made a profit of ? 1500 BTC ?. But the moment hasn't still happend. I don't see the point why he should wait any longer with all the warnings here to make this step - if he is a scammer.

So far i let these 80 BTC in there. And another 25 in ultima funds - yes i am kind of risk liking, but whom 100BTC loss will kill he should NOT play with bitcoin trading. Thats my point. No one is getting rich with these peanuts...

[Jonathan Ryan Owens]

Let's look at it from this point of view:

~500 bitcoin paid out to users

~$3000 total cost

~10000 - 20000 bitcoin deposited by now

value: $50,000 - $110,000 USD

cost to acquire: $3000 or between 3% - 5%

It's a great investment on his part. xD

[Maged]

This has proven to be a ponzi scam, and anybody who has done a shred of research knows this. When this blows up, I doubt that there will even be a news article about it. I mean, seriously, there's hard evidence that it's a ponzi and the owner is some unknown guy who came out of nowhere. Anyone who gets scammed by this deserves it. Hell, not even MyBitcoin was this obvious, even though there were signs that it was going to collapse. (I'm proud to say that I got out of there without losing a thing)

If you see this post and you have money on the site, I'd remove it while you still can. You've been warned.

[xepera]

Okay guys, call me scary about this, but actually you got me to rethink about bitscalper. I withdraw my 80,65 BTC (0,65 BTC brutto profit in 4 days). I then got 79,244 BTC in my wallet, so after 80 BTC deposit i made actually 0,756 BTC netto loss.

I am finally out. Thx guys...

[jago25_98]

the only way to know for sure is to get everyone.. Or close enough to everyone to withdraw...
In fact the % could be worked out from funds paid out.

Bitscalper would be shut down by the regulator bodies in the us and uk... When you say foriegn, do you mean either of these countries? If so that's motive to stay anonymous... But if you have a gut feeling he's from somewhere else then that's more wieght to say it's a scam.

Will this thread be enough to make a run? .. Probably not, we'll see.

I've seen this done with fake hedge funds. The term is not ponzi. You just take deposits and pay out; something you can do because not everyone withdraws at the same time. It's a bit like banks but there's no investing at all or the investing is bad and it's covered up. I'll give a case study on this in a few months. Bear in mind that these traditional scams involve more easily tracable payments and no anonomity. I've seen it before and i'm going to court on it.

All withdraw! Let's find out!
Will you be last?

[kjlimo]

So this DCAO, do they need an Ohio representative? 

As soon as I can prove there are enough people with BTC in my local area, I hope to approach businesses to get them to accept bitcoin.

I'd love to be associated with an organization.

Please PM me if you would like me to join your cause. 

I'm also using DWOLLA as my gateway conversation.  I think if I can get a restaurant to accept dwolla, then bitcoin can be the next option.

We'll see what happens.

In the meantime, I might throw 5 BTC at bitscalper to get invovled.  I'm also looking into ultimafund which has been around a couple more months.

[Tril]

Bitscalper would be shut down by the regulator bodies in the us and uk... When you say foriegn, do you mean either of these countries? If so that's motive to stay anonymous... But if you have a gut feeling he's from somewhere else then that's more wieght to say it's a scam.

bitscalper admitted being in Italy.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=57422.msg694205#msg694205

We could not get a loan because, again, our country is under heavy crisis, and credit is being spilled drop by drop and only to safe ventures. Bitcoin status here is of total illegality. We stay in Italy where now by law, you cannot have more than 1000 eur in cash. Imagine what would be getting a loan for investing with a cryptocurrency, the heaven for money laundering and tax evasion, which is what Italy is fighting the most now.

[Stephen Gornick]

Passwords leaked:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63659.0

[bitlane]

It's really too bad that this service didn't survive, as my personal dealings with the people that run it (email, PMs etc) left a very positive impression on me.

Considering... after tons of scammer accusations and suspicion, the Bitscalper guys themselves were the only ones to lose out on funds as far as I know, which is too bad really.

As an aside....
I was actually sent a duplicate 325 BTC withdrawal (I was sent 650 BTC instead of 325) and I was more than happy to return the funds.
To my knowledge, this may have happened on a smaller scale to others, who also to my knowledge DIDN'T return the overpayments.

Perhaps had it not been for (what I perceived) as the site OP's genuine concern for their own personal security, which resulted in minimal contact info....this venture could have done much better and suffered much less backlash from the community.

My 2 bitcents worth.