Hi guys,
As some of you may know, I'm the main person in charge of stickies in the Lending forum along with John. Our current policy is to sticky major lenders in order to separate them out from all of the lending requests. I believe that this is reasonable, since there are far fewer lenders than lendees, and when people go to the lending board for the first time, chances are that they are looking for a loan, so making them be stickies makes sense.
However, what has happened is that many of these lenders have started taking out loans of their own in the form of deposit programs and they are advertising them through their sticky, giving them an unfair advantage over all of the other loan requests. In fact, just this last week I had to yell at BurtW for converting his sticky into ONLY the deposit program. As a result, I took about a week to reevaluate the sticky requirements in the Lending board, and I think I have a solution that I want to hear the community's opinion on.
I propose that after giving the current sticky holders a few days of notice, no current sticky in the Lending board other than the Who Pays What? sticky can even mention a deposit program in the first post of the sticky. The only exceptions to this would be for mentions that are part of the company name and the user's signature. No other mention would be allowed in the first post of the sticky, and any other mention would most likely be considered off-topic and subject to deletion as per standard moderation rules. As such, I will likely request that the users make a whole new thread to replace the current sticky, and one of us will swap the two threads out.
Let me know what you guys think.
The Lending section is currently a joke, and a black eye on this forum and soon to be bitcoin as a whole when the BCST ponzi finally goes boom.
Most threads in Lending are Ponzi derivatives or "pass throughs" all sending BTC to 1 guy in 1 giant, biggest ever BTC theft.
that being said, they should be allowed to operate, and guys like me should be allowed to post that they are blatent scams and you shouldn't send BTC to them.
Currently categorizing anything that claims to pay 6%+ per week as "Lending" gives major credence to these scams, and the Ponzi schemers are making tons of BTC from this categorization.
Lending section stickies are extremely valuable to the thread OP. It should cost BTC to get stickied there, in auction format, with ~ 1-4 stickies total available for purchase, top 4 bidders get a sticky thread. would be a good way to monitize this forum to make BTC and improve it, sustain it, give away some to users, etc.
1) as a forum, you are helping this guy scam ppl: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66802.0 by not only allowing his scam to be listed under "Lending" but now you are HELPING the scammer by giving him a sticky! When I saw this place I almost thought, holy shit I have to start yet another forum. They are going to kill bitcoin or at least try and harm it greatly. I will bring it up at the poker table and ppl will say "oh bitcoin - you mean that internet scam-currency everyone is always stealing? the one with the bitcoinica theft? and the $1M+ USD Ponzi's listed as "lending" on the only major bitcoin forum?"
2) Mods eyes cannot stay shut and admins cannot stay silent on this matter any more. I know everyone was waiting for it go boom as block-chain investigation, even if embellished by the scammer 5x, is starting to get to a point where new investment this week < interest + principle withdraws requested. This is an obvious scam that you guys let go unchecked for so long that like a cancer it spread all over the GBLSE in bond form and so many "trust account pass throughs" threads, allowed clear as day to be listed under "lending," while a guy named Pirate gets funneled tons of coin, profiting greatly
every single week - more and more BTC scammed from the community, week over week, unchecked by the mods, who all seem to understand it's an incredibly obvious scam, and they still list it under lending
3) We should brainstorm solutions. Here is a possible starting point: Categorize all investments based on APR% - if someone lists 7% /wk interest investment, I want it categorized as 3000%+ APR category. Yes someone with some economics knowledge will need to read each on and categorize appropriately. This person or panel of 3 or voting of 11 board members or something would be fine. Most of these are easy. If you had a handful of investment sub-categories such as:
<10% APR investment threads
10-25% APR investment
25-100% APR investment
100-1000% APR investment
1000-3000
and of course for those really looking to gamble, the
3000%+ APR investment obvious scams.
ok you don't need to keep the obvious scams part of the last one, but you understand. Categorize by rate of yearly return. The scams will categorize themselves.
More organization and decision making process must be implemented here. this is a very important community IMO. The world watches us occasionally here. Usually whenever there is a huge theft to write about. Unfortunately, there will be another to report very soon. Lets at least learn from this and set up structure to categorize correctly and discuss further as the issue progresses.