Topic: Gathering Opinions: Stickies in Lending - page 2. (Read 5038 times)

Agreed, asking us to impose our will on others just because you think they're wrong is a little extreme. People are gonna do what they want to do, the only thing you can do is warn them. If people choose to ignore your warnings, then that is absolutely their right to do so.

Stickies should provide information important to lenders/lendees, not advertise the latest get rich quick scheme.

This is a good point for a meta discussion and goes to the objectives of the site.  The two main threads I have in "lending" were stickied at someone else's request.  If they were not stickied, that wouldn't particularly bother me either, but it would make it harder for forum users to get the information they are seeking.  A simple example is hunting for information in the securities sub-forum and that is much more crowded than lending.

If the objective is to promote efficient commerce, then due to the limitations of the forum as a tool, there are not too many ways of doing this.  Providing access and information to the top dozen lenders could occur in a single thread and even a single post.  You might have requirements such as a minimum level of capital available to loan rather than allowing people that are max'd out advertising with no capability.  Also, as is already covered in https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--97214 there is a list of lenders and their preferred market space.

No forum staff gets paid from forum revenue. Only about 75 BTC has ever been spent from the forum funds. The rest is kept in reserve (mostly in this cold storage address).


Allowing potential con-artists to post here is entirely consistent with the forum's policy of free speech. Free discussion and free trade will help Bitcoin more than (temporary) PR gains would. Truth is best determined through discussion and a free market, not through decree by moderators. When BS&T defaults, I will be happy that I:

- Allowed individuals to make their own investment choices freely.
- Allowed individuals to freely post their thoughts on BS&T, positive or negative.
- Posted my own honest thoughts on BS&T. (I'm pretty sure it's a Ponzi scheme.)

Theymos and other admins/moderators/etc.,

In the interest of transparency and since you are de facto gatekeepers here, would you each care to describe your individual positions on profiting from (via ads) and facilitating the promotion of manifest frauds?

Are you comfortable accepting responsibility for your roles and will you accept the blame for providing a venue for con-artists and not taking due diligence in protecting bitcoin newcomers? Will you be pleased to explain your current choices, actions, and non-actions once this superstructure of fraud collapses?

Finally, do you believe that your current choices, actions, and non-actions will help or hurt bitcoin in the long-term? Please justify your response.

Given the facts of the currently unfolding situation, these questions seem quite reasonable and are salient to the stakeholders in the bitcoin community.

I should also note that your actions to date imply much about the above, but your individual responses or non-responses may be illuminating, nonetheless.

Both.

If we adhere to elementary ethical standards, then the answer is straightforward.

Stickies should be reserved for warnings against fraud rather than free advertisement for fraudsters.

I'm not holding my breath, though. I see that the forum sells ad space to ponzi schemes on this very page. Based on the best available information, this place is knowingly facilitating fraud.

Keep in mind that legally, intent can be established from predictable consequences.

That probably would work better. Would leave three informational stickies, and one could be moved as John said. Would it be intended for the deposit services only or the lending services as well?

Stickying individual lenders is as bad as  stickying individual merchants and should be avoided as the forum should be agnostic and not recommend one over the other.

How are you going to know that every non-PPT program isn't a secret PPT in this case? Anyway, it would be better if you could make a new thread in Meta to propose your case to theymos, and keep this thread solely on the discussion of the stickies.

Awesome. If I understand it correctly, posts like '★ VESCUDERO's Guaranteed Weekly Term deposit at 1.5% ★' and 'NCKRAZZE's Deposits - Low Risk Deposits with Guaranteed Payback Weekly @ 2.5% /w' goes under long-term offers? If that's so, the 'Who pays What' sticky could be migrated there as a sticky too.

That sounds better, IMO.

I never liked the stickies. Using stickies for categorization seems like a misuse of the feature. How about "long-term offers" under "Lending" for this kind of stuff, and no restrictions on post content?

1)  It is important to understand the BTC behind the words when reading posts by BurtW & Payb.tc - they are the 2 biggest affiliates of this giant Ponzi scheme.  BurtW is a strong Pirateat40 shill and IMO will say anything to perpetuate the scam 1 more week.

2)  IMO it is extremely shameful to send this scammer BTC each week and take a small %.   This is Ponzi 101 and in no way flaming or trolling or FUD.

I am going to strongly disagree with your proposal.

Currently there is a sub-forum called "lending".  It is a bucket for people offering deposits as well as seeking loans.  We also have people asking for project donations, arguing the merits of different users and different arrangements that assist commerce.  We also have people posting blatantly off-topic responses (and I'm pleased to see one in particular got removed), or posting false material without bothering to check the background of what is posted (that happens and I can live with that).

I would be comfortable with stickies for people that are actually active in lending.  I checked with INAU a couple of weeks ago about his because he had no availability, and I see Znort's gone for now as well.  Sen, Kluge, and HK are still active, and I'm still running an active loan book and actively look for opportunities (I have done seven loans this month so far (around 2000BTC , but only two from this board).

Some time ago, I was receiving regular requests for information about where people could deposit funds, and users were after "banking" services.  That resulted in the WPW thread (and it's not pure lending).  WPW has grown to cover more than simple long-term deposit takers (including bonds and some other instruments), and the next step was to provide some ranking information on the financial strength of these people taking other users funds.  This is part of my ambition to clean up this sub-forum.  I still have concerns about some of the entities listed, and that is probably why people still ask who I have my money with or where they should invest.

The proposal to require the StarfishBCB OP to remove references to deposits is, in my view, silly.  It is part of the business.  There is not a good alternative location within bitcointalk to place such a thread, and it is not analogous to a loan as you claim.  That might be due to my deposits being on-call.  As someone noted, it is more like an ATM and I have people that deposit and withdraw small amounts regularly.  I certainly do not advertise other parts of my portfolio here such as the securities I run, simply the banking side of things.

I am not a moderator here (and I've had people wonder why not), and I actually care about the stuff that goes on.  There is real money at stake, and I see people get burned or put off by the aggressive and often unnecessary trolling that occurs.  I hold a lot of information confidentially about different people and that is necessary to help make this a better and safer environment for people, even if it is viewed as a conflict of interest or Starfish is viewed as a competitor to some of the other offerings.  I will continue to be as impartial as possible and contribute to the lending forum, and cater to the needs of people needing banking services - and that includes noting in the Starfish thread that I do a high volume of loans and provide low risk place for people to park funds (even if it has returned more than 50% since 1Feb12).

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As a BTW: I support micon's right to discuss the BS&T system which has been done many times before, and one of the reasons it has been viewed so many times is that it is entertaining, but a lot of the material within the OP is false.  The discussion would more properly be located elsewhere, but it may as well be in lending as anywhere.

yes, most of the lending forum is Ponzis or other scams.  A major cleanup is needed.  You are helping on particular PPT help scam by giving them a sticky

all PPTs are ponzi affiliates

I'm sure you have seen the 2nd most viewed thread ever in Lending --> https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bryan-micons-list-of-btc-ponzi-schemes-that-should-not-be-listed-as-lending-94900 

many, many of us believe it's an obvious Ponzi, and there is almost no defense for some1 guaranteeing 3000% APR with no business unit.  There is over $1M+ USD in this scam, and allowing stickies to PPTs help the scammer each week scam a bit more.

I don't know which way I'm leaning in this one, but you should make a separate thread about it, and make your case there so theymos can read it.

So then why aren't we arguing that bonds are the same thing?  After all, there's nothing to verify that those people have actually bought anything or done anything, yet we have a securities board. 

It seems John (johnthedong) and matthewh3 seem to agree with me, at least in principle, so surely I'm not being that unreasonable.  I have to wonder if it'd be more acceptable had someone else proposed it first, since it seems you oppose most anything I have to say the last few weeks.

I agree, having them sticky looks like the forum supports them and makes them seem more legit than they are. Doesn't look good for anyone.

Glad to see you're taking steps to rectify the situation, was gonna do it myself eventually  .

It sucks cause anytime you mention ID, someone says they can fake it. But like anything there is a some risk, just like you could get hit by a car walking across the street. That being said you can always do things to lessen your risk, like looking both ways. But there is always that risk of something you can not control. People just have to understand with no central regulations there will be no sure way to prevent this. So the "what if" game can be played all day with bit coins and that's what is done everyday on here it seems.

I agree no Business should have a advantage over another and each business should have to market for themselves. At first I could not understand why they would not divide loans and deposits. But I guess here it is exactly the same thing with a different name and interest rate, so yes I would  say keep them the same thing.

@Micon
There is no telling of a lending program that might turn out to be a ponzi solely based on it's APR alone. Heck, most if not all deposit programs in the Lending subforum would be ponzi schemes then. A low return program might turn out to be a secret PPT, thus folding shop if something happens with Pirate.


Back on topic, yes, I do concur that depositors listed on the stickies are having an unfair advantage over the others in terms of exposure and advertising. They are indeed using their sticky's to advertise their company's entire range of products (deposits, PPT's, etc) instead of just the Lending part.  

As some of you might know that I'm the regular loudmouth at the Lending subforum with Tomatocage and we troll suspicious threads looking for gullible lenders - we're really incensed by the scams which occur so easily. There is people who visit the Lending subforum just to make some returns on their idle coins, so having a list of verified lenders (people taking deposits) that is more unlikely to scam as compared to the regular newbie-looking-for-xxBTC would be better.  This could be covered by the 'Who pays What' thread, but it'll be better if the thread is retitled succinctly - like 'List of Long Term Deposit-Takers'.

tl;dr: Cut down the stickies with deposit programs, make/edit a few stickies/subforum dedicated to deposit takers with proven track records.

Sorry for the garbled reply, but I'm currently on the go and typing this on a tablet. Maybe I'll try to restructure my post later.

There is a board for bitcoin "securities" to help those businesses so why can't we have a child board for bitcoin banking/deposits.