Gerald Davis aka DeathAndTaxes of BitSimple and Tangible Cryptography

[Tara01]

Gerald Davis a.k.a. DeathAndTaxes of BitSimple (BitSimple.com) and Tangible Cryptography (tangiblecryptography.com) sought out and accepted $600,000 in fiat and bitcoin from investors in January 2014. These funds were acquired by selling stock in Tangible Cryptography and were to be invested in BitSimple.com.

BitSimple.com shut down bank transfer operations in May 2014. The investors were not informed until August 2014. Mr. Davis was asked to consider dissolving the company in August 2014 after he reported a theft of around $25,000 and no banking accounts. Gerald Davis did not respond and failed to communicate to shareholders from August 2014 to January 2015. During this time a six figure amount of US dollars was redirected to Mr. Davis and members of his family.

In February 2015 Gerald asked us to vote for a company dissolution and scheduled the fist company meeting. The shareholders refused to vote for dissolution because promised finical reports were not delivered.

Gerald Davis then asked for more time due to personal reasons and this was granted. However at this time Gerald Davis is no longer communicating or responding to investors. Because of this we felt it was time to inform the community of this very unfortunate and confused situation. We hope that it will be resolved soon.

The best way to resolve this in a civilized way would be for Gerland Davis to provide the legally mandated finical reports and access to the police report that was filed when the funds went missing.

[Muhammed Zakir]

Probably fake or a mistake.

Gerald Davis a.k.a. DeathAndTaxes of BitSimple (BitSimple.com) and Tangible Cryptography (tangiblecryptography.com) sought out and accepted $600,000 in fiat and bitcoin from investors in January 2014. These funds were acquired by selling stock in Tangible Cryptography and were to be invested in BitSimple.com.

Tangible Cryptography has announced the completion of a $600,000 seed round investment funded completely in bitcoin.

Quoting:

Code:

[quote author=Tara01 link=topic=998257.msg10839251#msg10839251 date=1426923639]
Gerald Davis a.k.a. DeathAndTaxes of BitSimple (BitSimple.com) and Tangible Cryptography (tangiblecryptography.com) sought out and accepted $600,000 in fiat and bitcoin from investors in January 2014. These funds were acquired by selling stock in Tangible Cryptography and were to be invested in BitSimple.com.

BitSimple.com shut down bank transfer operations in May 2014. The investors were not informed until August 2014. Mr. Davis was asked to consider dissolving the company in August 2014 after he reported a theft of around $25,000 and no banking accounts. Gerald Davis did not respond and failed to communicate to shareholders from August 2014 to January 2015. During this time a six figure amount of US dollars was redirected to Mr. Davis and members of his family.

In February 2015 Gerald asked us to vote for a company dissolution and scheduled the fist company meeting. The shareholders refused to vote for dissolution because promised finical reports were not delivered. 

Gerald Davis then asked for more time due to personal reasons and this was granted. However at this time Gerald Davis is no longer communicating or responding to investors. Because of this we felt it was time to inform the community of this very unfortunate and confused situation. We hope that it will be resolved soon. 

The best way to resolve this in a civilized way would be for Gerland Davis to provide the legally mandated finical reports and access to the police report that was filed when the funds went missing. 
[/quote]

[Quickseller]

The article says that the $600k was funded completely in bitcoin, however I am sure that people were given the option to send fiat that would be immediately converted to bitcoin, which would make them think they paid in fiat when BitSimple can say that they paid in bitcoin. Not only that the bitcoin related media is not exactly the best source for information as it is generally not made up of journalists with a lot of reporting experience, I would personally consider them mostly to be amateurs.

I would imagine that the $25k theft (assuming that one really was reported to shareholders) was the result of employee theft. They obviously had bank accounts as they would need them to receive bank wires and to send out wires/ACH payments. I am not sure what internal controls were put into place that would prevent these kinds of thefts, and would make it obvious as to who stole money when a theft did occur.

I am not sure how the OP would know that money was sent to DeathAndTaxes without any financial reports.

As for the delay in getting the financial reports to shareholders, I think it is understandable that it is taking a long time as creating GAAP compliant reports is not an easy (nor cheap) task, especially when dealing with such a small company.

[Tara01]

This was moved to the to "Scam Accusations" by a moderator who I guess is more aware of the facts about this than I am. Being around for years seeing 100's of scams I will admit that this does look like a classic scam but I do not have access to all of the information to make that judgment. What is clear however is that Gerald has not been cooperative, fails to communicate and to put it politely has been disrespectful.

As many of you know he just left the community for about 6 months. Many of the investors had just assumed we had become victims of yet another "bad investment". Since he left the community we had no expectation he would return and just left things how they were. However after several months of Gerald paying himself and his family to do "work" he came back and asked us to vote for dissolution. None of the investors wanted to vote for that until we could understand where the money went and why. It is to the point where we have no expectation of Gerald giving us the information that we have requested even though he is legally obligated to give it to us.

Sadly this is not fake. This issue has affected my life and my health. I'm not sure how many of you could take a six digit loss and just write it off without question. This issue has caused me to lose sleep, partly because of how to respond to it. Questions like is letting the community know about this issue unprofessional? Am I being too harsh? Anyway my family and the future of my kids would have been much better off had we not trusted Gerald. I just wish he slightly cared about us, at least enough to explain why he did what he did. There are 4 investors total and I can not say for sure how Gerald received the money. I'm giving the community the most correct information that I have. Much of it comes from the other 3 investors and might not be 100% correct. If I can correct anything in the future I will. However since Gerald has not responded I think it is safe to say this is more or less correct even if some details are off.

About the money missing from the bank, Gerald claims the bank reversed a wire after he paid the people their bitcoins. This seems a bit fishy to me so I just want to see the police report. However I have tried to find the police report but I can't find it and honestly wonder if it was ever filed at all. About the staff, as far as I understand it the only staff is Gerald and his direct family members. I'm not saying they were involved but I will say I have no information about this other than from Gerald. Information in the report might help me understand what happened and how.

If things progress I will give an update. Feel free to ask questions if I am not clear of if you find some inconsistencies in the story like the form $600,000 funding.

[Tara01]

I need to correct some information made in the OP. According to Gerald Bitsimple lost it's last bank account on August 20th 2014. I suspect this was because it was operating without a MSB permit. Sadly there are reasons why I speculate this to be the case but I do not think I can legally share that information at this time.

I would also like to point out that when Gerald asked for more time on Feb 15th 2015 it was so he could go find a job. He told us he was looking for "defense contract related" work. This kept us silent about things so he could get a decent job and then come back to explain what happened with TC and BS. However despite their being a non compete agreement it now seems he is working for a related operation. If I have the correct information this company is outstanding and a blessing to the community, therefore I feel sad that I kept silent about the issues. I do not want to see this issue harming a great operation.

[zefir]

With deep regret I have to confirm the OP's scam accusation claims. One of the previously most competent and respected member of this community collected a lot of money from me and other investors, burnt it, and finally ceased communication and disappeared.

DeathAndTaxes: a legendary member and former mainstay of our community
I took notice of DaT late 2011 after I started building my first GPU based rigs and stumbled upon some of his posts in this forum. What stroke me immediately was the quality and completeness of his technical analyses and explanations and the solidity of his argumentation. Over the years while mining technology evolved over FPGA to ASIC, people were losing coins to online wallets over ponzis to exchanges and securities, and while bitcoin itself evolved, it was hard to find any relevant discussion where DaT did not contribute with valuable input.

While I focused myself on the technical side of mining and over time found it very difficult to keep up-to-date even with this narrow sub-topic, DaT always seemed capable of following any development in the bitcoin world. Take a look at his essay supporting block-size increase as an example of his contribution. If you check the forum stats, you will notice that DaT contributed over 16k posts and with that is the 8th most active poster of all times - even half a year after he stopped posting.

For me, Gerald was one of the (if not the) most competent fellow(s) and with that a mainstay for this community - and for sure I know that I have not been the only one with that impression. Ironically, if you search the 'scam accusation' sub-forum, you'll find him involved as mediator or in other trust-centric functions.

But that was then, and the expensive lesson I and the other investors had to learn is that a brilliant and sane mind does not imply it is also a honest one.

The BitSimple fiasco
Somewhere in early January 2014 (during a chat about immersion cooled high-density ASICs) DaT incidentally told me that he was collecting money for a seed funding of his BitSimple exchange service. I did not even thought about it twice but agreed to buy what is left and ended with 390k from a total of 1200k series A shares. With the total sum of $600k collected, my payment was a $195k equivalent in BTC. Iirc, all of the handful investors paid in BTC, which made this seed funding the first processed completely in the BTC domain. Shares were managed by the gust platform.

I was very well aware of the involved risk, but at the same time I felt it is not worse than putting my coins into pre-orders of mining equipment or into doubious bitcoin companies. After being defrauded and betrayed by so many, my hope was straight and simple: if there is one person to remain honest, it must be DaT - if he did not, it was time to leave this community.

What happened thereafter is what OP is reporting. I was very disappointed to realize that Gerald managed to spend the collected funds mostly to pay his employed family-members - even if most of the time the exchange was not operational due to a missing bank account. Even if this might be legal, it is very unethical and puts him and his intentions in a very suspicious light. Still, I was willing to accept this as business failure when the company is dissolved and remaining assets were distributed to investors (which would give us back some 15%). But shortly after the investors agreed to do so, DaT stopped communicating and is not reachable any more for the past 6 months.


This is a sad ending for a bright shining star.

You too, Gerald?

[Gleb Gamow]

https://www.facebook.com/stacie.davis.716

Operating an exchange: check
Wife uses cat for profile on FB: check
Everybody loses: check

Mt Gox? No.

Actually, this would be a very easy dox.

[Bit_Happy]

With deep regret I have to confirm the OP's scam accusation claims. One of the previously most competent and respected member of this community collected a lot of money from me and other investors, burnt it, and finally ceased communication and disappeared.

DeathAndTaxes: a legendary member and former mainstay of our community
I took notice of DaT late 2011 after I started building my first GPU based rigs and stumbled upon some of his posts in this forum. What stroke me immediately was the quality and completeness of his technical analyses and explanations and the solidity of his argumentation. Over the years while mining technology evolved over FPGA to ASIC, people were losing coins to online wallets over ponzis to exchanges and securities, and while bitcoin itself evolved, it was hard to find any relevant discussion where DaT did not contribute with valuable input.

While I focused myself on the technical side of mining and over time found it very difficult to keep up-to-date even with this narrow sub-topic, DaT always seemed capable of following any development in the bitcoin world. Take a look at his essay supporting block-size increase as an example of his contribution. If you check the forum stats, you will notice that DaT contributed over 16k posts and with that is the 8th most active poster of all times - even half a year after he stopped posting.

For me, Gerald was one of the (if not the) most competent fellow(s) and with that a mainstay for this community - and for sure I know that I have not been the only one with that impression. Ironically, if you search the 'scam accusation' sub-forum, you'll find him involved as mediator or in other trust-centric functions.

But that was then, and the expensive lesson I and the other investors had to learn is that a brilliant and sane mind does not imply it is also a honest one.

The BitSimple fiasco
Somewhere in early January 2014 (during a chat about immersion cooled high-density ASICs) DaT incidentally told me that he was collecting money for a seed funding of his BitSimple exchange service. I did not even thought about it twice but agreed to buy what is left and ended with 390k from a total of 1200k series A shares. With the total sum of $600k collected, my payment was a $195k equivalent in BTC. Iirc, all of the handful investors paid in BTC, which made this seed funding the first processed completely in the BTC domain. Shares were managed by the gust platform.

I was very well aware of the involved risk, but at the same time I felt it is not worse than putting my coins into pre-orders of mining equipment or into doubious bitcoin companies. After being defrauded and betrayed by so many, my hope was straight and simple: if there is one person to remain honest, it must be DaT - if he did not, it was time to leave this community.

What happened thereafter is what OP is reporting. I was very disappointed to realize that Gerald managed to spend the collected funds mostly to pay his employed family-members - even if most of the time the exchange was not operational due to a missing bank account. Even if this might be legal, it is very unethical and puts him and his intentions in a very suspicious light. Still, I was willing to accept this as business failure when the company is dissolved and remaining assets were distributed to investors (which would give us back some 15%). But shortly after the investors agreed to do so, DaT stopped communicating and is not reachable any more for the past 6 months.


This is a sad ending for a bright shining star.

You too, Gerald?

Most things cannot surprise me anymore, but this one really hurts.
We need new ways to encourage long-term honesty in Bitcoin businesses.

[Gleb Gamow]

With deep regret I have to confirm the OP's scam accusation claims. One of the previously most competent and respected member of this community collected a lot of money from me and other investors, burnt it, and finally ceased communication and disappeared.

DeathAndTaxes: a legendary member and former mainstay of our community
I took notice of DaT late 2011 after I started building my first GPU based rigs and stumbled upon some of his posts in this forum. What stroke me immediately was the quality and completeness of his technical analyses and explanations and the solidity of his argumentation. Over the years while mining technology evolved over FPGA to ASIC, people were losing coins to online wallets over ponzis to exchanges and securities, and while bitcoin itself evolved, it was hard to find any relevant discussion where DaT did not contribute with valuable input.

While I focused myself on the technical side of mining and over time found it very difficult to keep up-to-date even with this narrow sub-topic, DaT always seemed capable of following any development in the bitcoin world. Take a look at his essay supporting block-size increase as an example of his contribution. If you check the forum stats, you will notice that DaT contributed over 16k posts and with that is the 8th most active poster of all times - even half a year after he stopped posting.

For me, Gerald was one of the (if not the) most competent fellow(s) and with that a mainstay for this community - and for sure I know that I have not been the only one with that impression. Ironically, if you search the 'scam accusation' sub-forum, you'll find him involved as mediator or in other trust-centric functions.

But that was then, and the expensive lesson I and the other investors had to learn is that a brilliant and sane mind does not imply it is also a honest one.

The BitSimple fiasco
Somewhere in early January 2014 (during a chat about immersion cooled high-density ASICs) DaT incidentally told me that he was collecting money for a seed funding of his BitSimple exchange service. I did not even thought about it twice but agreed to buy what is left and ended with 390k from a total of 1200k series A shares. With the total sum of $600k collected, my payment was a $195k equivalent in BTC. Iirc, all of the handful investors paid in BTC, which made this seed funding the first processed completely in the BTC domain. Shares were managed by the gust platform.

I was very well aware of the involved risk, but at the same time I felt it is not worse than putting my coins into pre-orders of mining equipment or into doubious bitcoin companies. After being defrauded and betrayed by so many, my hope was straight and simple: if there is one person to remain honest, it must be DaT - if he did not, it was time to leave this community.

What happened thereafter is what OP is reporting. I was very disappointed to realize that Gerald managed to spend the collected funds mostly to pay his employed family-members - even if most of the time the exchange was not operational due to a missing bank account. Even if this might be legal, it is very unethical and puts him and his intentions in a very suspicious light. Still, I was willing to accept this as business failure when the company is dissolved and remaining assets were distributed to investors (which would give us back some 15%). But shortly after the investors agreed to do so, DaT stopped communicating and is not reachable any more for the past 6 months.


This is a sad ending for a bright shining star.

You too, Gerald?

Most things cannot surprise me anymore, but this one really hurts.
We need new ways to encourage long-term honesty in Bitcoin businesses.

I nominate Leroy "Honestly" Fodor to head the exploratory committee. He has honestly down to a pseudoscience.

[smoothie]

With deep regret I have to confirm the OP's scam accusation claims. One of the previously most competent and respected member of this community collected a lot of money from me and other investors, burnt it, and finally ceased communication and disappeared.

DeathAndTaxes: a legendary member and former mainstay of our community
I took notice of DaT late 2011 after I started building my first GPU based rigs and stumbled upon some of his posts in this forum. What stroke me immediately was the quality and completeness of his technical analyses and explanations and the solidity of his argumentation. Over the years while mining technology evolved over FPGA to ASIC, people were losing coins to online wallets over ponzis to exchanges and securities, and while bitcoin itself evolved, it was hard to find any relevant discussion where DaT did not contribute with valuable input.

While I focused myself on the technical side of mining and over time found it very difficult to keep up-to-date even with this narrow sub-topic, DaT always seemed capable of following any development in the bitcoin world. Take a look at his essay supporting block-size increase as an example of his contribution. If you check the forum stats, you will notice that DaT contributed over 16k posts and with that is the 8th most active poster of all times - even half a year after he stopped posting.

For me, Gerald was one of the (if not the) most competent fellow(s) and with that a mainstay for this community - and for sure I know that I have not been the only one with that impression. Ironically, if you search the 'scam accusation' sub-forum, you'll find him involved as mediator or in other trust-centric functions.

But that was then, and the expensive lesson I and the other investors had to learn is that a brilliant and sane mind does not imply it is also a honest one.

The BitSimple fiasco
Somewhere in early January 2014 (during a chat about immersion cooled high-density ASICs) DaT incidentally told me that he was collecting money for a seed funding of his BitSimple exchange service. I did not even thought about it twice but agreed to buy what is left and ended with 390k from a total of 1200k series A shares. With the total sum of $600k collected, my payment was a $195k equivalent in BTC. Iirc, all of the handful investors paid in BTC, which made this seed funding the first processed completely in the BTC domain. Shares were managed by the gust platform.

I was very well aware of the involved risk, but at the same time I felt it is not worse than putting my coins into pre-orders of mining equipment or into doubious bitcoin companies. After being defrauded and betrayed by so many, my hope was straight and simple: if there is one person to remain honest, it must be DaT - if he did not, it was time to leave this community.

What happened thereafter is what OP is reporting. I was very disappointed to realize that Gerald managed to spend the collected funds mostly to pay his employed family-members - even if most of the time the exchange was not operational due to a missing bank account. Even if this might be legal, it is very unethical and puts him and his intentions in a very suspicious light. Still, I was willing to accept this as business failure when the company is dissolved and remaining assets were distributed to investors (which would give us back some 15%). But shortly after the investors agreed to do so, DaT stopped communicating and is not reachable any more for the past 6 months.


This is a sad ending for a bright shining star.

You too, Gerald?

Most things cannot surprise me anymore, but this one really hurts.
We need new ways to encourage long-term honesty in Bitcoin businesses.

I'm honest. Still here after over 4 years. It's a shame to hear what happened with DaT and those who lost money with him.

It's so funny because for a long time I was painted out to be a troll and a scammer and dishonest but I'm likely one of the most honest (brutally alot of time) people on this forum.

Even Gleb is pretty decent guy! Yet he is always labeled a scammer or troll yada yada yada.

[bambou]

Bitsimple... How guilible people are when it comes to bitcoin. No it is not simple, and it never will for it to preserve its fundamentals that enable financial freedom.

People using bitcoin should control their private keys, run a client or a node by themselves to ensure the authenticity of the informations, etc etc.

The rest of "businesses" on the web is likely to end up scams, hacked, etc etc.

You have been Warned too much already.

Sorry for you loss though.

Ps: guess who was right, yet again.

Gerald Davis is a contemptible worm. He is not merely lying : he is intelligent and informed enough to know he's lying, and does it nevertheless. The fact that he's done it in the first place, the fact that he does not fear public ridicule more than he fears his masters, the fact that he's - provedly - willing to fuck a goat with cameras rolling satisfy that point : no, he's not going to stop. Because the only thing you can do, once you've lost your good name, is to continue whatever you did that lost it. Right ?

http://trilema.com/2015/gerald-davis-is-wrong-heres-why/#selection-163.58-167.411

[jonald_fyookball]

I would like to hear the other side of the story.  It sounds like bit simple went bankrupt which is always a possibility.  What exactly did Mr davis lie about?  Also, just because he is a great cryptographer doesn't mean he will be a good businessman.  Still, this news is disturbing.

[Fortify]

$600k? Did he promise you a formula to turn mud into gold or something? Hindsight is not going to help now but greed of the investors played a big part. Either you are incredibly wealthy and hundreds of thousands of dollars is a drop in the bucket or you gambled a huge sum on a roll of the dice. This doesn't absolve Gerald of all the guilt but why, after other high level members have pulled similar scale scams, does anyone trust a stranger over the internet? I understand you feel company shares were a tangible asset, but a phenomenal amount of companies go under each year so it really means very little.

I don't want to rub salt in the wound, just don't understand how he duped such huge sums from a few people. 16,000 posts? That's just bits in a database.

[jonald_fyookball]

$600k? Did he promise you a formula to turn mud into gold or something? Hindsight is not going to help now but greed of the investors played a big part. Either you are incredibly wealthy and hundreds of thousands of dollars is a drop in the bucket or you gambled a huge sum on a roll of the dice. This doesn't absolve Gerald of all the guilt but why, after other high level members have pulled similar scale scams, does anyone trust a stranger over the internet? I understand you feel company shares were a tangible asset, but a phenomenal amount of companies go under each year so it really means very little.

I don't want to rub salt in the wound, just don't understand how he duped such huge sums from a few people. 16,000 posts? That's just bits in a database.

There's no evidence he was "guilty" of anything except poor communication.

His company failed to make a profit and was dissolved.  End of story unless there's something I'm missing here.

[zebedee]

This is sad to read.  I really liked Gerald and he seemed a very straight and decent person.  During my dealings with him I never had an issue, it was so smooth.

I would like to hear the other side of the story too.  Though the silence and vanishing probably says it all, unfortunately.

[molecular]

This is disheartening.

I guess trust just doesn't work online. We'll have to find better technological solutions and use them.

[ruggedman_dan]

This is disheartening.

I guess trust just doesn't work online. We'll have to find better technological solutions and use them.

Trust over internet doesn't work really well . . . the problem is the human.

[molecular]

This is disheartening.

I guess trust just doesn't work online. We'll have to find better technological solutions and use them.

Trust over internet doesn't work really well . . . the problem is the human.

I agree. We never should've let the humans onto the internet.

Destroy all keyboards, screens and other HIDs. In fact, let's all just...

Code:

#> cd /usr/src/linux
#> rm -rf drivers/hid
#> make && make modules_install && make install && reboot

[vapourminer]

Code:

#> cd /usr/src/linux
#> rm -rf drivers/hid
#> make && make modules_install && make install && reboot

heh yup. humans are the weak link

real pity though about Gerald Davis.. he was one person here I listened to and would read any post here by him. you could count on it being well thought out, informed and best for the BTC community...

...well until the end.

really want to hear his side of this story

[Hippie Tech]

This is disheartening.

I guess trust just doesn't work online. We'll have to find better technological solutions and use them.

Trust over internet doesn't work really well . . . the problem is the human.

I agree. We never should've let the humans onto the internet.

Destroy all keyboards, screens and other HIDs. In fact, let's all just...

Code:

#> cd /usr/src/linux
#> rm -rf drivers/hid
#> make && make modules_install && make install && reboot

You have displeased the Cryptofiat gods ! -500 points !

Sesame Credit: China's Creepy New Social Engineering Experiment
https://youtu.be/kcEUVDe38Ec

If we do not abandon cryptos, as they are now, humanity is doomed to be eternally enslaved. Or at least until the power gets cut off.

What will you do when your government offers you their "safe" alternative ?