I seriously doubt rpietila is Moneroman88.
His paid troll that went too far, maybe.
But not him.
~BCX~
So far I have been able to raise a following among actual people, with the merits of the ideas I am propagating. Sometimes it has not been easy (see my post about the frustration that I as a newer account, had to pay first):
Hello community,
I am sure this matter has been discussed before, so hopefully you can forward me to some good threads.
The matter is trust. I have for a few months been moderately active in the forum, and Bitcoin itself I know ever since 2010.
I have been doing full-time business for 12 years. My investing experience is 16 years. I have established about 5 companies, been advisor to more, organized tens(!) of financing rounds, and still own, chair and/or run multiple businesses in two countries. Their combined sales are in the range of millions. I am married for 10 years, I have a daughter. One of the companies I lead, has more than 60 shareholders. I have enriched them by selling them silver when it was cheap. They hold several tons(!) of silver in the company's dedicated vault. They have thousands of bitcoins, too. I also have some bitcoins.
I am not old, I'm 32. But I am adult. And I have a hard time with some of the "rules" in this community. Everybody is paranoid as hell. I understand that bitcoinworld is full of scams, but I have a hard time accepting that. Anyone who has been with bitcoin as long as I is sitting on good gains from the value appreciation alone. In the world outside of bitcoin, scamming is not really the modus operandi. I have encountered scammers in my career, yes. One sold me silver-plated trinkets worth € 25,000 with forged documents and an elaborate cover story why they were solid silver. I was relaxed by the appearance of this 60-year old gentleman with his 25-yo son and their family company. Another time I was defrauded of 300 grams of gold. I paid first to a long-time customer. He never sent the product and vanished. Luckily I paid only 50% upfront. Then another one bought 20,000 oz of silver and did not pay. I had quite a diplomacy in canceling the binding order that I had placed with my supplier. That one cost me thousands, and I won in restitution court. The customer paid me most of my damages. One year later he apologized. This may sound like much, but compared to the total volume of business, we are talking about minor setbacks.
It defies my imagination in general, why somebody with enough money would turn to scamming. It must be that bitcoin for some reason is a honeypot that attracts people, who already are scammers, to participate. This concentration of scammers and scam-businesses is unheard of, anywhere in the outside world.
It is well-intended that newcomers should be rigorously scanned if they can be accepted to the web-of-trust. But I tell you something: most newcomers don't have the time and/or dedication for that. They come from already-established networks, and there needs to be a way to incorporate this already existing trust to the community.
I mean, of course I can start to use escrow in my dealing with forum people. It is not a big deal really. I do pay taxes, and that is far more expensive and difficult.. But if you really require that (instead of you sending first because I am an established, incorporated business and don't have the luxury of anonymity), I cannot count being part of the community an asset, rather a liability because it worsens my terms of doing business. I hope that there could be a solution. Otherwise I will consider that this is a risk vector to the whole Bitcoin: established people don't want to join because the community is full of scammers, people that are paranoid of scammers, and kids screaming to multimilliondollar businesses that they should use escrow when dealing with them. Phew. I am in first-name terms with the largest bullion dealer in the U.S. and there was a month in 2011 when I was their largest customer in the best-selling product. I can lock-in $500,000 with one phone call of 1 minute and get 7 days to pay. Beat that.
This coin thing is a good one, because the world needs more privacy. How can the community accommodate established people? Or do you turn us down, so that there needs to be another coin for people in good standing?
The troll war is getting out of hand. I have never needed to buy trolls. Afaik no one in Monero side does it, and I cannot see a reason for doing it.
What I
can see, is summarized in the last paragraph of the quote. I am disgusted of what is happening, and getting more resolved to use only the coins where the developers and the activists play fair.
