[Resolved] Tradehill.

[fgmnp]

 UPDATE: Resolved. Please ignore this thread.

Only after sh** hits the fan, after a month of requests, does Jered periodically come out of the woods, pays one or two guys, and disappears.

This is the latest unpaid:

[EDIT: Mean this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77232.msg858244#msg858244 ]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75291.msg861796#msg861796

Here's more:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75291.0;all


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75300.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75708.0

[1714964491]

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[1714964491]

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[1714964491]

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[Stephen Gornick]

Step #15

Decide which legal entity this claim is against?  Jered or Tradehill?

 - http://egov.sos.state.or.us/br/pkg_web_name_srch_inq.show_detl?p_be_rsn=1525974&p_srce=BR_INQ&p_print=FALSE




(Step 1 was talk to a lawyer, by the way.  They'll know the correct steps to follow.)

[R-]

Here's is good on his word.

He is resolving cases one at a time in a professional fashion.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=76001.0

[DILLIGAF]

"I will mail your check out today". - actually happened 2 months later, after many reminders, and only when a forum post happened.

Ah the "checks in the mail" yet another classic recycled for bitcoin.

[Tomatocage]

You guys need to relax already.  Jered seems like he's doing the best to pay people back as best he can.  Be thankful that he's not pulling a Chris Mallick on you.

[John (John K.)]

You guys need to relax already.  Jered seems like he's doing the best to pay people back as best he can.  Be thankful that he's not pulling a Chris Mallick on you.

Or another shakaru 

[Maged]

Do you guys have any idea of the scale TradeHill was running at? They had at least several hundred thousand accounts, based on the referral codes I've seen. Now, imagine having to lay off your entire staff that was already overworked with the daily running of the business, and then having handle all of the payouts by yourself.

It could seriously take all year.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Do you guys have any idea of the scale TradeHill was running at? They had at least several hundred thousand accounts, based on the referral codes I've seen. Now, imagine having to lay off your entire staff that was already overworked with the daily running of the business, and then having handle all of the payouts by yourself.

It could seriously take all year.

Seconded.

Anyone who thinks a major exchange's laundry is done as easily as your own has never run a business before.

I also wonder if there are people here who somehow than that Jered operated Tradehill in his own name out of his garage or something. He technically could just file TRADEHILL for bankruptcy and be done with it.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Sorry man. Until the last person gets their money/btc, he's a scammer.

If she floats, she's a witch.

[R-]

Sorry man. Until the last person gets their money/btc, he's a scammer.

If she floats, she's a witch.

Haha +1 to that brother. I am glad I don't deal with other peoples money on a regular basis. Sheesh!

[caveden]

lose your wallet, you're a scammer.
get scammed by dwolla? you must be a scammer
bank freezes your account... d'oh now you're a scammer.
dog eats your backups... oh shit you must be a scammer.

+1

I would only call scammer someone that deliberately tries to defraud someone else. Tradehill got screwed by Dwolla and the state/banks. He didn't defraud anyone.
He has done a good service to the bitcoin community AFAIK. The simple fact that he's trying to honor his debts also show he's an honest person.
I understand it's not nice at all to have your money stuck somewhere, but compared to what Jared lost, this "time lost" of yours is not that significant, IMHO.

[Bitsinmyhead]

Don't know much about this situation, but I just hope it does not end up like the shakaru situation.
If you are not aware of that it, he pretty much stole $20000, but because he promised to pay it all back, everyone thought he was such a good guy and no way he could be a scammer. By paying back 40BTC he was able to stay around and scam people out of several 100BTC more. Always coming up with amazing excuses...

[Matthew N. Wright]

User's funds in exchanges are not supposed to vanish just  because an exchange's own financial situation changes.

You're selling lemonade. You take the customer's money, and a robber runs by and takes your lemonade and the customer's money. You have no money and no product so you have to shut down. The police know who the robber's friends are, but they say that they don't want to take responsibility. The lemonade stand is a victim of theft.

Who should pay?


If you said "the robber", you're right! And that's why Tradehill is going to court.

If you said "that dirty mother fucking lowlife lemonade stand owner" then you should stop breathing now.

[Matthew N. Wright]

If you said "that dirty mother fucking lowlife lemonade stand owner" then you should stop breathing now.

Did you see this:

"The only case where I can imagine something like the above logic applying is if the funds were stolen... "

I was replying to the bankruptcy argument above.

Sure! I should have clarified that I wasn't really directing it at you, but more at people in general for jumping into the lynch mob.

If people really want someone to lynch, they need to lynch their friends and family for making mtGox so big and making it a single point of failure in the bitcoin economy.

[jammie]

I know for a fact he payed people who did not mailed here.
En i can tell u he payed me , let me say that was more then 5 k.
However ,that he dont come here `more often  to see what is going on I dont understand.
I my self was pretty much stressed of not getting my money.
But in the end it came.   

Jammie

[Raoul Duke]

User's funds in exchanges are not supposed to vanish just  because an exchange's own financial situation changes.

You're selling lemonade. You take the customer's money, and a robber runs by and takes your lemonade and the customer's money. You have no money and no product so you have to shut down. The police know who the robber's friends are, but they say that they don't want to take responsibility. The lemonade stand is a victim of theft.

Who should pay?


If you said "the robber", you're right! And that's why Tradehill is going to court.

If you said "that dirty mother fucking lowlife lemonade stand owner" then you should stop breathing now.

If things happened just like you described, in any civilized country you'd be responsible for serving the customer his lemonade.
The theft would be a case between you and the robber and your customer would have nothing to do with it.

Jut like TradeHill will have to settle things between them and their customers and pursue Dwolla on their own terms. Or are you expecting TH's customers to sue Dwolla on TH's behalf?
If you do, you're seeing the picture upside down.

I agree that people are probably jumping the gun too fast. But should they just let it go and make Jered feel like he doesn't owe them anything? Should they wait 10 years, until TH resolves the matter with Dwolla?

[Matthew N. Wright]

If you said "the robber", you're right! And that's why Tradehill is going to court.

Jut like TradeHill will have to settle things between them and their customers and pursue Dwolla on their own terms. Or are you expecting TH's customers to sue Dwolla on TH's behalf?

 


I'm expecting Tradehill to sue Dwolla, Dwolla to pay Tradehill, Tradehill to take care of thier debt to their customers, their customers to understand that a contract with an uninsured, unlicensed financial business has these risks.

Calling Jered a scammer is obviously idiotic. You could call him a bad businessman perhaps.

[niko]

While generally I may be emphatic towards people who had their money gone missing for one reason or the other, I can't feel for the obviously ignorant, angry folks who throw around serious accusations without any regard to known facts.

Calling someone a scammer implies an intention and planning to scam people. It doesn't seem like there is any of that in case of Tradehill. You can bitch about them being unresponsive, sloppy, whatever, but you have to take into account the fact that most of people did get their money back. Also, the fact that Tradehill have been a victim of a scam. You can even take legal action if you think that's reasonable. But calling Jered a scammer is out of touch with reality.  I understand you are angry that your money is gone, but try and be realistic and act accordingly.

[Gareth Nelson]

I feel the need to step up here as Jered is someone I hold a great deal of respect for and feel he's being extremely unfairly criticised here.

Due to the close partnership that existed between BitInstant and TradeHill, I know a great deal about what happened over there and have to say that Jered is one of the hardest working and honest people I have ever met. I am aware that he is having to manually deal with all requests that come in from multiple users and is doing this solely by himself while also suffering all the blame for TradeHill's business failure as the public face.

Because TradeHill was at its peak the second largest exchange around, it's only to be expected that a LOT of users will be wanting their funds back, and that might make the process slow but there is absolutely no evidence of malice anywhere.

There ARE real scammers in this community sadly, Jered is not one of them - he's one man who's got a lot of weight on his shoulders and is struggling. At no point has there been even a single sign of malice.


One thing I personally intend to do now is to talk to Jered about a more efficient way of handling this, rather than dealing with ad-hoc requests, and the most efficient way to handle things is to sort accounts by balance and proactively contact users. While lawsuits and threats of lawsuits may make you feel better or may possibly get you pushed to the top of the queue, they won't solve the core issue that there's quite simply a huge pile of people needing their funds.

[Raoul Duke]

If you said "the robber", you're right! And that's why Tradehill is going to court.

Jut like TradeHill will have to settle things between them and their customers and pursue Dwolla on their own terms. Or are you expecting TH's customers to sue Dwolla on TH's behalf?

 


I'm expecting Tradehill to sue Dwolla, Dwolla to pay Tradehill, Tradehill to take care of thier debt to their customers, their customers to understand that a contract with an uninsured, unlicensed financial business has these risks.

Calling Jered a scammer is obviously idiotic. You could call him a bad businessman perhaps.

Don't shout!

Interesting how you left the most important question unanswered...

Should TH's customers wait until the whole court case with Dwolla is resolved , even if it takes 10 years ?

[Matthew N. Wright]

Don't shout!

Sorry!

Should TH's customers wait until the whole court case with Dwolla is resolves , even if takes 10 years ?

In a perfect world? No. In a realistic world, they can, will and do on a regular basis. When paypal robbed me of nearly $20k, I had to wait for the class action suit to finish before I got paid.

[Bitware]

My father taught me a valuable lesson when I was in my early teens. My mother screwed up all his finances and spent his money before she filed for divorce. Long story short, his business folded and he sold off everything he had to pay his debts (vehicles, house, deer camp, bobbles, tools, trailers, materials, guns, reloading equipment, some of it sentimental in value, and pretty much everything butn the clothes off his back), to make sure everyone he owed money to got paid. He then rented a 1 room apartment, working 3 jobs for 8 years to recoup. He didnt take the road of bankruptcy. He did the responsible thing. The right thing. He then rebuilt his busienss and its thriving to this day, and to this day he has virtually the same creditors who work with him knowing this man is absolutely no risk.

Was it his creditors fault that Mom was a whore, spent everything, then divorced him? Not at all but he saw it as his personal responsibility, and everyone got every penny on the dollar of what he owed them.

Thats what a good and decent human being does when the end comes and thats the criteria by which I judge cases such as this.

Now if Jered pays everyone every penny of the fund they trusted him with...fine. Good man.

If not, and until then ... scammer ... either intentional or not makes little difference when your actions or inaction causes food to be pulled from the mouths of your customers and their families.

[Littleshop]

If not, and until then ... scammer ... either intentional or not makes little difference when your actions or inaction causes food to be pulled from the mouths of your customers and their families.

I do not agree.  If Jered had spent customer money on salaries and expenses that would be a different matter.  From the looks of it he did not, in fact he was (marginally) profitable.  He did not knowingly risk customer money either, he had it in places like banks and Dwolla that promised (in writing) no chargeback/theft risk.  His company is the one that spotted the Dwolla problems, and pointed them out to Dwolla. 

Dwolla (and the scammers who stole from Dwolla) are the ones that have the money.  That does not absolve Jered of all responsibility but you can not call him a scammer.  There is no intent and in this case there really was not error or incompetence either. 

Car analogy......  Jered was driving down the road in a safe quality car with your cargo....   and a meteor hit the truck and destroyed your stuff. 

On top of that he is trying to get the funds back.  I would be mad too if I were you.  It was your money.  And it sucks. 

[tiptopgemdotcom]

My father taught me a valuable lesson when I was in my early teens. My mother screwed up all his finances and spent his money before she filed for divorce. Long story short, his business folded and he sold off everything he had to pay his debts (vehicles, house, deer camp, bobbles, tools, trailers, materials, guns, reloading equipment, some of it sentimental in value, and pretty much everything butn the clothes off his back), to make sure everyone he owed money to got paid. He then rented a 1 room apartment, working 3 jobs for 8 years to recoup. He didnt take the road of bankruptcy. He did the responsible thing. The right thing. He then rebuilt his busienss and its thriving to this day, and to this day he has virtually the same creditors who work with him knowing this man is absolutely no risk.

Was it his creditors fault that Mom was a whore, spent everything, then divorced him? Not at all but he saw it as his personal responsibility, and everyone got every penny on the dollar of what he owed them.

Thats what a good and decent human being does when the end comes and thats the criteria by which I judge cases such as this.

Now if Jered pays everyone every penny of the fund they trusted him with...fine. Good man.

If not, and until then ... scammer ... either intentional or not makes little difference when your actions or inaction causes food to be pulled from the mouths of your customers and their families.

Integrity and honor: that is what your father has that Jered lacks.  Baffling that so many on this forum don't see that.

[Maged]

It seems to me that Jered is moving through these requests at a reasonable rate. Until that changes, the scammer tag will not be used.

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

Didn't see this post until just now.

Deego, my apologies on taking the time to pay your brother. I sent the funds this morning and you've acknowledged receipt.
I let the email go to the bottom of the queue and worked back up to it. If you could change the thread title that would be great.

I've sent a lot of money out. I'm manually processing a lot of requests. Not everyone that wants their money posts on this forum.
I've gone as far as purchasing products online with client's Bitcoin balances via my personal debit card and then mailing their products to Europe to close them out.
For every person that complains I get a lot of emails from other clients telling me how happy they are.

Do I have everyone's money? Yes
Is it going as fast as I would like? Hell no.
Am I working on something else simultaneously to feed myself? Yes
Am I paying out from my personal bank account if if need to when I could run off? Yes
To be honest I haven't made $1 off of TradeHill and I've invested a year / a lot of my own cash.

I'll probably regret this but my personal cell number is (415) 409-9867.
Send me a text ( I don't answer unknown numbers) if I still owe you. If you want to talk text me and I'll call you back.
I'm about as public as you can get on this. I don't know anyone else holding funds that is as willing to step out and be held accountable. Mark from Gox can post his cell if he wants.
Charlie (Yankee) from Bitinstant is very public but it's a different business as he doesn't hold your funds.

If I come out and say "I don't have your money, sorry" then call scammer if you like. I'm not saying that. The money is flowing and of the millions of dollars that I was holding 98% give or take has been paid back.
If I were a scammer I would have ran off long ago when I had millions of dollars in our bank accounts and not thousands, not even mentioning the Bitcoins.

I live in San Francisco. Send me a text at the above number if you're in town and I'm happy to meet in person. I've been involved with Bitcoin since before it had a recognizable value and I'm in this to see it succeed.
I believe in Bitcoin and the last thing it needs is another major player being called a scammer prematurely.

Regarding Dwolla: I'm not going to speak a lot about it. My lawyers have essentially said "keep your mouth shut" additionally my mother taught me: "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything else at all". I'm going to listen to both of them.  I think everyone is aware of our lawsuit and it can be viewed publicly.  I want to make it clear I'm not waiting on that to return funds.

Almost everyone has gotten all of their funds back and the rest are coming.  Contact me if I don't contact you today (April 24th).

It's been a pleasure (most of the time) and I'm glad to have played my part in Bitcoin. I'd like to wrap this up and move on to new things (within Bitcoin).

-Jered

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

I let the email go to the bottom of the queue and worked back up to it. If you could change the thread title that would be great.

-Jered

Hi Jered.

Yes, my own issues are now resolved. Thanks. Per your request. I will be glad to delete the thread, or change the title. May I request you to resolve the 4 other posters' posts mentioned in the OP who have been trying to contact you for months?
Can those 4-5 posters who are waiting - can you please confirm that your funds are processed?
Thanks.

I've addressed them on the threads. I think one acknowledged receipt. 2 of them are the same person and my bank said they sent the funds out. I'm verifying with them tomorrow.
If it's not taken care of I'll spend more time on the forum and check in.

Glad we got you resolved. We've done a hell of a lot of business directly and this isn't how it should end (or pause).

-Jered

P.S. thanks for updating the title or deleting.

[Jeremy West spendbitcoins.com]

Sorry man. Until the last person gets their money/btc, he's a scammer.

If she floats, she's a witch.

Haha +1 to that brother. I am glad I don't deal with other peoples money on a regular basis. Sheesh!

Yeah. I'm glad I don't hold funds too. Sounds messy.

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

Jered, when this all blows over and you're still around, would you be happy to write a "Lessons Learnt" thread? I bet there is a tonne of knowledge that others could benefit from, not necessarily from a technical POV, but general stuff for the 100s of people starting new businesses who maybe have never experienced failure/or don't know how to deal with failure properly.

I really do appreciate the concern and criticism.

Regarding Ababa:
I've got the Bitcoins loaded and ready to go out just waiting for him to confirm the address. He can do it here if he likes.

Regarding Niyum:
My bank is telling me that he was paid correctly on time.
I've requested additional information from the bank which takes time for them to research. I can't just login and pull it up myself. One of the biggest downsides to wires.
I've seen receiving banks fail to credit for no real reason and my bank confirming that it's been sent. Deego himself can attest to this as it's happened with him.

Regarding Omehenk:
The bank didn't send his wire the first time and didn't tell me either. It's on it's way now and hopefully will show in a few hours.

Regarding the few hundred other people I sent USD / EUR or BTC to this week:
They're all happy and got their funds without a hitch.



I'm going to begin blogging soon. I'd have started earlier if I had more time.
There's a lot that I'd like to write about. I wouldn't say a lessons learned is out of the question.

Other than grabbing a domain name and contemplating different ideas, TradeHill and it's shutdown at this point is still the focus.
I'm hoping after this week it will be a very small amount of time that I need to devote to pulling records and sending funds out.

-Jered