Topic: Basement Dweller Risk (Read 354 times)

Hi,

I think the Bitcoin ecosystem needs a methodology to reduce what I would like to call Basement Dweller Risk. It could be defined as "the risk that the individual or group of individuals running a decentralized online business is/are sociopathic and is/are willing to run a parasitic operation". As we deal with each other over the internet it becomes easy to obscure who we really are and whether or not people we deal with are sane enough to follow through on their commitments, or insane enough to run a months-long con and run away with peoples' money, or be ignorant of obvious security risks.

If the Bitcoin ecosystem can't self-regulate it will never gain traction and wider acceptance as I'm sure we can understand.

Basement Dweller Risk would be higher if for example,
No photos of people participating are provided
No photos of any physical assets involved are provided
No addresses of business or people participating are provided (Ardeva seems to play a part here)
No phone number is given
-In a world where IP phone accounts and VoIP solutions are dirt cheap it shouldn't be a problem for any cloud miner or other Bitcoin service provider to have a phone line and a human on the other end willing to pick up the phone and use their voice muscles slightly.

My 0.02 BTC
After watching exhaustingly the Hashie and PBMining threads and shenanigans I make these suggestions. I would laugh if a Basement Dweller Risk metric was to be further fleshed out with more parameters.

-bmarch