Topic: Bitcoin7 - Official letter, following first week of operation (Read 16322 times)

now this scammers lunching ico https://lockchain.co/ ?

I agree. A pissing match is no good for anyone.

Massive edit: I'm elaborating greatly on my above response.

So, okay. Here's my essay on why this pissing match is not good.

On first impression, it gives me little confidence in any exchange. Trust and confidence are
really important for people handling your money, as evidenced by the sheer number of
renouncing folks who have either switched from Mt. Gox or stopped trading altogether.
You can see both of these effects in the greatly-diminished post-rollback volume at Mt. Gox.

Actually, volume between all exchanges, in total, is terribly low. The confidence of those
buying into your exchange is a massive issue. Although Bitcoin is worldwide, it still
often strikes me as a small community. What happened at Mt. Gox, while in the short term
undeniably benefited other exchanges, is bad past that near-sightedness. A lot of new or
timid people were taking Mt. Gox's rollback to indicate that bitcoin as an enterprise wasn't
holistically ready for their money yet, no matter the exchange.

On examination, it appears that what affects one exchange affects all exchanges.

Well, this is bad for business on all sides. What worries me further is that I don't see enough
business acumen in anyone to realize what is good for their own companies. MagicalTux
obviously needs to hire someone to handle PR and communication, because silence,
rumors, and dubious quotes from IRC are not good for business. You don't want the
indivduals handling your money to appear shadowy.

Now, while Tradehill and Bitcoin 7 are trying to capitalize on diminished faith in Mt.
Gox, Bitcoin7 being relatively strangers to bitcoin does them no good. On top of that,
this whole referral scheme, while it probably introduced a lot of people to the site, is
horrible PR. You know what else gets good initial results with little effort? Door to door sales,
infomercials, telemarketing, spam, pyramid schemes, MLMs, and HYIPs. But if you plan on
staying around as a company for more than a few months, you're shooting yourselves in your dicks.

Phew. Where was I? Oh yeah. Professionalism. I am the least professional person I know
of and I can't believe that I'm having to tell money-handlers this: This pissing match--as it is
so unprofessional and money handling is nothing of not about professionalism--makes me question
the owners' ethics and, more importantly, their ability to stay afloat while they hold my money.

In truth, what prompted me to write this extensive elaboration on my initial, single
sentence comment was that I was getting flashbacks of the early days of several MMORPGs. Banking
industries were developing and competitive strife resulted in a massive amount of drama bullshit
that inevitably erupted on forums and in-game. And usually this kind of thing just prompted a more
supreme authority to smack everyone down, which is the kind of scenario that Bitcoin doesn't need.

Allright.
Let's get specific:

Look, Bitcoin7, if it's taking you so long to respond to a cut-and-dried issue such as you
borrowing, stealing or inadvertently copying text, then why the hell should I trust that, if
users like me had an issue, you would respond to it promptly, if at all? If you're
leveling blame on outsourced copywriters, what else might you blame others for in the future?
Lo, are you under the impression that the whole "blaming the contractor" thing worked out
so well for Mt. Gox's security breach? It makes you look incompetent. It makes you look
heartily unresponsive to what should be an reasonable request. It makes you look like
idiots for, in the face of being called on these issues and doing anything but saying "Oh gosh.
Truly a mistake. We're very sorry."

In short, you have no ammo to criticize others with. So, in political advisement terms, the only
foresightful way to settle the issue is to do as requested and very plainly, bluntly and
yearnfully apologize. Here's an example: A politician cheats on his wife, and a few journalists pick up
on hints of the story. The politician can either try to keep the cat in the bag for an
unendurable while (which, granted, is sometimes the best move if the fallout
can be delayed until after an election) or he can announce his cheating. For the latter option,
a smart politician would say very plainly that he's ashamed, that his marriage is
narbacular and rocky, and they've been keeping up appearances for the sake of their public image,
reasons such as kids and family, etc. In the first option, there would be rumors for an
exhaustingly long time, then news stories, then an investigation, and the politician will
actively downplay everything until more investigations make him look silly. Then he finally would
defeatedly admit his guilt, but only with excuses and defensive attacks against the motives of
those who dug up the story.

However, in the second option, there would be a shitstorm for a few days, but then the story would stop.
It has been spent. There is nothing new that could be said. It becomes a non-issue. Hell, for
some of his constituents, the politician has actually won favor by suddenly
appearing human and bluntly honest. After that, if pressed with further attacks by his
conniving opponents, they look like bullies attacking a flawed and already-beaten man.
Really, their only move then is to stop and let third parties (media and voters) do the rest of the talking.

Okay. So, by firing back or presenting more excuse, Bitcoin7, you're only prolonging a battle that
simply will only cause you to lose by greater and greater margins.

Tradehill, here's what I think:

I don't see how you could really give an honest shit about your text being copied. Why? Because everyone
completely knows it's yours, it makes Bitcoin7 look terrible, you can't make them
possibly look any worse by attacking them further, and actually forcing them to do anything through
official, legal means is quite laughable. Doing anything but making continuous, polite,
sane requests just makes you look amateurish.

Through the proper response, you could have appeared as a larger, more professional exchange.
Think about what something like this statement would say about you guys: "We're very flattered
here that a new upstart exchange, Bitcoin7, has used our text and some design
elements on their website. We've been assured by them that it was a rookie mistake, apparently the
work of an incompetent outside contractor, and that the it will be corrected soon.
Otherwise, we just wanted to inform our users that, despite the similarities, Bitcoin7 is not a
related business enterprise to Tradehill. However, we welcome the competition and the
dependability and access that more and varied exchanges bring to Bitcoin."

So, while a bit rough, if I had read that statement, it would give me these impressions:
1) Heads above, you are a much more established exchange (worthy of being copied)
2) Even more important: You are gracious and calm in the face of problems.
3) It seems that you are Bitcoin supporters--You're not new to the community or in it
solely for profit, which also hints at bitcoin7 developers' relative newness to the community.
4) Although welcoming the competition, you don't think that they're worthy of
much complaining on your part because they're small fries. See, if you were to attack them more
overtly, you would give this new company credence and put them on level ground. That would
really make me think that you perceive them as the real deal.

On the point of being gracious, that doesn't mean your complaint is invalid. What I'm saying,
now, is that saying much of anything combative makes you look bad. And
it's unnecessary in this community because, in case you couldn't tell, assholes and
nincompoops like me will freely find and take up any valid cause. There are plenty of vocal
Tradehill supporters on these forums. When dealing with new or "lesser competition", your only
honest move is to make repeated, boring, polite inquiries until their noncooperation is
evident and someone other than you points this out. Right now, as that plagiarized
text still exists in some form, they look like total plagiarizing dicks, but only so long as you
have a cool head.

Right. Or, to couch this point in political terms, the well-established incumbent cannot himself, in
effect, make accusations against his competitor, even if he had something as damning as
a bestiality sex tape featuring the town's prized horse mascot.

Dirt only works in your favor in close races, and it permanently paints you as a mudslinger.

On another note, quoting your TOS is hilarious. Yeah, that worked out real well for MagicalTux, who
kindly made a thread about how his Force Majeure clause exempts Mt. Gox from liability. Even if he's
accurate, quoting a TOS as anything more than a list of helpful suggestions is hilarious,
yet especially to this highly-technical audience.

The rest of this just delves into complete gibberish. You can skip it if you want.

The crappy referral idea, which is neither itself original nor a good idea, makes me think that you don't plan on being around for very long (as I explained in some now-distant above paragraph). But mentioning this as something stolen is pretty laughable. It's akin to a business complaining about the ethics of their cleavage tattoo advertisement initiative being cooped by another company. I can't think of a better analogy, so I'll stick with that crappy one and let's all pretend that it was really witty and move on, okay? Cool.

Tradehill guys, I'm picking on you a bit more because I think your problems are  more obscure and need more explaining, while Bitcoin7's flaws are pretty readily apparent.

Here's one final point for both new exchanges: You're not exclusive competitors. There's another exchange coming soon with better features than everyone and they, get this, actually did an open testing period using funny money rather than just throwing their hats into the ring, unprepared. Also, Mt. Gox, reopened, is still the volume leader. This is despite the dual confluences of unsolicited referral spam piss streams that cover the forums and anywhere that bitcoin is mentioned (See, for example, comments sections on some news articles).

The final option that customers have is not to be a customer of any exchange at all. It seems that, post-rollback, many having chosen this route. Bitcoin is perceived to be risky enough as it is, but add to that the risk that one might lose it all, not to a tanking investment but to issues at an exchange, and that's enough for a lot of people to stop trading on exchanges.

Not to mention that half of the people who don't want to use someone's referral are just plain disinclined to join at all because you've effectively given a biased discount. It's like when you pick up an item in a retail store and notice that it was formerly on sale. That's a great way to instantly reduce your perceived value. Or, in a more common example: After you graduate and stop getting student discounts, you generally stop patronizing those formerly-discounted places because it's almost like the price increased, but only for you. If ever the crappy referral free-ipod-pyramid-scheme ends, future customers are going to be very aware of their "overpayment." So the least harmful solution is to stop the referral program and then give the same discount to all new customers.

However, nobody really bets money on a vicious fight for second place. It's interesting drama, sure, but they'll usually just bypass the fight entirely and go straight to the number one company. In fact, by ignoring the other second place contestants, you can often become second place just by acting the part:



Avis was not the second-biggest rental car company, by a long shot, when they started that campaign. But they were at the end of that campaign. You can easily become how customers perceive you. That can be a good or a bad thing.

Jesus, this post wasn't even slightly funny. What have you guys done to me?

I like both B7 and Tradehill, and this internal quibbling is going to do nothing but bring bad blood between the both of them. Which will just make things harder on the both of them being stuck in the huge shadow of Mount Gox.

B7 is crazy fast with Dwolla transfers, and has somewhat of an orderbook.
Tradehill could benefit by just dropping this and asking B7 for help with the crazy fast Dwolla transfers?

If both B7 and Tradehill are shills for CIA black ops, it wouldn't surprise me, I would however be more inclined to trust camp bx as the CIA shill based on the form of psyops their promoters are using.

That basically says one thing, tighten up the both of you, because a new competitor is coming, and they use PSYOPS.

While I agree that short headings are not copyrightable (likely not "creative" enough), and that the headings are too generic to be trademarked (a trademark can not actually describe a product; competitors must be able to use generic terms to describe their own product); Jared seems to be claiming that only 1% of the text is different from his site.

The similarity between the two sites is confusing to users. Both have operations in the US, both use the same anonymous registrar. The dangerously paranoid part of me thinks that both may be a CIA front (the argument over originality sort of convinces me otherwise).

I can understand your reasoning as well. I have been running an IT business for 10 years now, I know what competition can cause people to do, but what I wrote above fits with my work ethics and principles. So, I'm just voicing my view, as we all do. It's up to the exchange owners to take it into account or not.

I can understand your sentiment but slightly disagree.

First the forums are a little bit removed from "real world" and I think this IS the appropriate place for the members of BTC community, including the exchanges, to air thier voice so the community can understand the thinking going on. It would be easier for them to go behind closed doors but here they are opening themselves up to the public. I think it's healthy.

Secondly you speak of trust issues. I think your understanding of the world of business may be a little naive. No disprespect. I live near Detroit, MI and it is very common to see cars driving around with test apparati and big leather (nylon?) coverings over the vehicle as to hide the design of the vehicle. Why? Because the competitors were on the look out to steal ideas. Right or wrong? They all do it. You drive a vehicle don't you?

I had a Hynudai Sonata, 2004, that had a front end that looked very similar to a Jaguar. Obviously bogarted. I would get compliments on my "nice Jaguar". Did I mind? Nope. I got to experience that "Jaguar" feel for about $10K less!!!   

I will use TradeHill and Bitcoin7 both with no reservations.

Directed to both sides (Tradehill and Bitcoin7):

Having read both sides, I would be hesitant to go either with Tradehill or Bitcoin7.

People who try to prove something about OTHERS on a public forum instead of relying on proving THEMSELVES and their own INTEGRITY through their work and their business, do not seem attractive to me to say the least.

I understand it's competition and there's money involved, but I wouldn't trust my money with someone that goes out of their way to convince me that someone ELSE is NOT trustworthy, unless if I had asked them to give their opinion.

In my view this discussion downplays both of you, and for the sake of your business and the Bitcoin community I would humbly suggest that you refrain from it, and try to promote your exchange in a positive way instead of going with negative comments on competitors. This means not interfering on each other's threads.

I don't even mention the Referral spamming which is getting to be a burden.

I'm not using an exchange yet, but if I need one in the future, I will look for someone who is decent and honourable from start (their 1st post) to finish.

This is written with all respect due to your efforts, which I believe are well intended to start with. And I sincerely hope that we will have many good competing exchanges in the future.

Jered,

I guess the users will decide, after all, based on the the quality, availability, security, functionality and service conditions.
It should be this way anyway.

I PMed you for our openness for potential cooperation and communication, it's now obvious that such could not occur.


P.S. 1% similarity, obvious and logical features like Instant Buy/Sell and someone PMed you is nothing exact I would say. I claim exactly the opposite. Anyway, I wonder when we will see some of our features and benefits copied on your interface it is all part of the game

@Jered Kenna : I wouldn't really insist on this one if I was you, thanks for bringing it to my attention...

Chris,

First, most of the big pages have not been rewritten. We have been monitoring your site and you have made less than 1% changes in the text over two weeks.

Its hard for us to believe that you never once looked at our site before you launched. Especially considering the number of non-text features that are also exactly like ours. Things such as instant buy/sell, referral program, partnership program, etc (the descriptions of which have also been plagiarized). Creating instant buy/sell functionality are not items that 'just outsourced copywriters' have control over.

Further, hiring such copywriters doesn't alleviate your firm of the duty to ensure quality; especially with glaring misrepresentations like "Registered under the laws governing the nation of Chile" (Tradehill is based in Chile and the US and is run by Americans and Chileans living in both).None of your staff (if you have one) looked at the site beforehand and realized that you were not in fact in Chile - but rather Bulgaria ? Moreover, your lack of quality assurance doesn't exempt you from legal liabilities either.

We asked more then once for you to take it down - yet, you did not - hence this post. If you had taken it down, this post would not exist.

In great dismay, I must also inform you, that while I was writing this response, I was PM'd by someone who claims you had full knowledge this occurred.

No matter how spiffy your site looks, you clearly do not understand that security of intellectual property is equally important as the security of peoples money, assets, and property.

Buyer beware!

Jered,

As you have already seen from the post we acknowledged that fact. It is true, it's shame, I would have never approved such business ethic if I knew before the start.

You should agree that it seems very strange to create 10x better looking site than Tradehill (no offense) and steal your texts, thus ruining the whole originality of the product. We got scammed by the copywriters we hired. We have been working on this issue from the start (from your post once I understood this was really the situation). Most of the big pages are already re-written (FAQ, How it works etc).

The Trading pages won't be rewritten as strings like "Highest Bid" or "Highest Ask" are not exactly a copywrite of you.

About the Terms and Conditions, we are updating them as we speak but they need to be communicated in the right way with the users. Also with a similarity google search it becomes clear that you haven't been so original here as well...

MOST IMPORTANT WHICH SHOULD MATTER FOR US AND THE USERS:
----------------------------------------------------
We are constantly evolving the functionality and the service of the site.
- I am sure there will be nobody complaining for a withdraw/add funds transaction delayed for more than 8h (the majority is being executed with 1h)
- We are the first exchange to add personal security certificates securing the single login on 1 machines
- We have published the AML policy we are currently following, thus ensuring better understanding of the Bitcoin and its "white nature": https://bitcoin7.com/index.php?show=aml
- We have presented our selves with full names and information about our previous businesses. We have also done that on the page: https://bitcoin7.com/index.php?show=imprint   -> Everyone is welcome to do a double check on the validity of the data. We aim to be clear, clean and 100% transparent as we know this is most important for anyone when sending money or BTC.

So please stop spaming the topic with actions about scamming referals or non-originality. Since our start we are doing more than 50 changes on texts, UI elements, procedures, security, funding etc in order to present better functionality and service.
-----------------------------------------------------

Dear Bitcion7,

As many people have already noticed, your firm has admittedly plagiarized the text (and more) from Tradehill's website.

We pointed this out in the above posts and asked you to change the text several times. You have been apologetic and explanatory but have not remedied the situation. It has been two weeks since we've made multiple requests and less then 1% of the text has been changed. We understand it takes time to change a site but you have not taken any steps yet. Additionally, you've made plenty of time for marketing your company via lengthy forum posts and updates.   

It is also very coincidental that your site came on-line 4 days after ours, with the exact same text, same layout, same features (like instant buy/sell), offering referral codes.  We have spent time and resources on developing our own website and ideas – please respect our intellectual property and remove the text immediately.

The text on Tradehill's website under “Introduction”, “Add Funds”, “Withdraw Funds”, “Support”, “Deposit Funds” and more, has been directly plagiarized by Bitcoin7 under – coincidentally – the exact same titles of “Introduction”, “Add Funds”, “Withdraw Funds”, “Support”, “Deposit Funds”.

See below - just some - of the exact plagiarisms which currently remain (at least up until the dating of this post).



TRADEHILL:

Under “Legal” and “Terms of Use”

Proprietary Rights
All contents of the TradeHill website, including, but not limited to, text, names, data, logos, buttons, icons, code, methods, techniques, models, graphics and the underlying software (the “Components”), are proprietary of TradeHill and are protected by the patent, copyright, trademark and trade laws of Chile and/or other countries. Nothing contained in this website shall be used in any form unless expressly stated by TradeHill.

https://www.tradehill.com/Support/Legal

BITCOIN7:

Proprietary Rights
All contents of the Bitcoin7 website, including, but not limited to, text, names, data, logos, buttons, icons, code, methods, techniques, models, graphics and the underlying software (the "Components"), are proprietary of Bitcoin7 and are protected by the patent, copyright, trademark and trade laws of Bulgaria and/or other countries. Nothing contained in this website shall be used in any form unless expressly stated by Bitcoin7.




TRADEHILL:

Under “Legal” and “Terms of Use”

Changes to Website
TradeHill will always attempt to keep its users informed of any changes to the website. However, TradeHill may terminate, change, suspend or discontinue any aspect of this website, including the availability of features of the site, at any time. TradeHill may also impose limits on certain features and services or restrict your access to part or the entire website without prior notice or liability.

https://www.tradehill.com/Support/Legal

BITCOIN7:

Under “Legal” and “Terms of Use”


Changes to Website
Bitcoin7 will always attempt to keep its users informed of any changes to the website. However, Bitcoin7 may terminate, change, suspend or discontinue any aspect of this website, including the availability of features of the site, at any time. Bitcoin7 may also impose limits on certain features and services or restrict your access to part or the entire website without prior notice or liability.

What security benefits does Bitcoin7 feel they have over the markets that make it the site I should use?

I support many markets, and have not joined Bitcoin7 because of such forum based negativity, I would argue that the strategy of ignoring the spammers that are spamming in your name, is not a great strategy, but I won't allow this to think ill of the site if it provides better function and security that what is available, is that what you offer?

Can you please elaborate on this? I'm trying to wrap my head around you thinking that calling spammers spammers is being a troll.

you, damn trolls, if you knew it was a scam DON'T use that account, sent a note to delete your account and create another.

if b7 staff deletes some refferals without proof, because some troll said they should, they become scammers themselves

This is what I meant by ethics. It seems clear they will not do anything against it as long as it's in their interest, and apparently don't mind lying about it, or at least being extremely cavalier about fraud.

That isn't enough. I would like them to be more proactive in making it clear that this will always be the consequence. Make it public policy that any spammers/scammers will have their accounts deactivated. Put it front and center at the page where you get your referral link. Make a thread denouncing the scammers and let everyone know that the penalty is deactivations


This one bothers me the most. People have complained of being scammed and all you have done if remove the referral of the person that complained? If a user has scammed someone, all their referrals should be removed.


I don't buy this for one second. I have checked the addresses of everyone who has asked to get paid and none of them have been. And furthermore, how would you (bitcoin7) know that? Someone contacted you and said "BTW I did get paid by this referral"? And then you believe this? This sound to me like you are actually trying to give the scammers credibility. Sound really shady to me that you would do that.


Being reactive isn't enough. Given all the scamming that has happened, I want proactive.


Fine, I don't want a response from you. I want action from bitcoin7.

From Chris: @ DamienBlack

"We have deactivated already some of these spammers.
For some of them we have at least removed the referral IDs of the users who complained they didn't get anything.
We even had cases where it was not a scam and some BTCs have been exchanged.

If you have been scammed please let us know the exact details at [email protected] and we will act accordingly and immediately."


Your logic is flawed and I'll not address you again.

My browsers are choking on security issues when I try to log into bitcoin7.

Tradehill has been very proactive in making it very clear that their policy is to disable commission on any account that scams or spams. This has significantly reduced both because the scammers/spammers have no incentive. They know that if they spam, their commission will be taken away from them.

Bitcoin7 has been less clear that scammers and spammers will be treated like they should, and that is why they continue to crop up. In the meantime, bitcoins7s lack of strict enforcement is benefiting them as they continue to get users signing up because of these scams. Bitcoin7 has the responsibility to do everything in its power to discourage scammers. If they don't, then I don't see the difference between them and the scammer, because they are effectively encouraging it.