Topic: I was offered $550 to say that "Ripple is a Scam." (Read 9210 times)

If TradeFortress or anyone else with a hardon for slandering Ripple were honest, this entire thread may never have existed in the first place, GoWest may have never felt it necessary to call out someone bribing people to slander on their behalf, and TradeFortress may not have been guilty of lying by omission. Unfortunately, all of these things happened so here we are. Since nothing besides attempts to derail have been posted by anyone, I'll lock the thread for now.

Everybody could always be guessed to have hidden agendas for everything and starting discussing them based on just a hunch almost never leads to anywhere sensible if the people behind them are not willing to be open about them.

I am also not sure it is you who should start throwing rocks. I vaguely remember you attacked some hw-wallet smartcard business very ruthlessly and unfairly telling people unaccurate information that you have information that an competing product which is massively superior is coming to market in a matter of weeks and later it was found out that it was you that was developing the competing wrist wearable hw wallet not even at a prototype stage yet which you were talking about without disclosing your agenda. You also took strong positions related to zhoutong in the bitcoinica fiascos and it was later found out that you had many ongoing business dealings together with him. You have been involved in more than a dozen bitcoin businesses and I am pretty sure there were many other instances where you were not disclosing your agenda when publicly taking strong positions on subjects around them. Based on your extensive involvement in what felt at the moment like half of all bitcoin businesses there were many people that honestly believed you were probably best pals with pirate when you started the 'bet'. That was probably not true in the end but honestly, who can be sure about it because many people thought and still think: "The interesting thing is how much money was willing to be wasted to defend pirate and to convince people that pirate is going to pay his debts. That screams to me agenda". We just haven't found out exactly what was he truth about that particular agenda.

I am also not sure you have not recently developed a strong business interest with OpenCoin. However starting to discuss that is unlikely to be fruitful, so I am not starting that discussion.

I've always worried about this in regards to bitcoin, because no manner of coding can change human nature.

Regardless of what Ripple was originally designed to be, the Ripple we're dealing with now is a product of OpenCoin inc. -- a private, for-profit corporation.  Like all private, for-profit companies, OpenCoin inc. has to make a profit.  By definition.  You with me thus far?

If it fails to make a profit, no more OpenCoin inc., and no more "open source sometime in the future" codebase. 
"Bitcoin needs Ripple" is just a less-defeatist rephrasing of "Bitcoin design is flawed, and needs another layer of non-p2p protocol/token system to succeed.  The best choice happens to be a demonstrably flawed product of a for-profit startup called OpenCoin inc."

But all of that's irrelevant.  This thread is not about the worth & validity of Ripple -- it's about you dredging up old threads, spinning them into sinister plots, and passing yourself off as the intrepid truth-seeker in the process. 
Bonus:  Drag TF through the mud, call people not buying your watered-down koolaid "white knights" and "trolls."

People with money support the status quo against all. This little baby economy is no different than its big brothers. Businesses and individuals fat with cash don't want tax laws to change to favor the poor because they are not poor. It doesn't matter if its a good change or even if it has the potential to make them more money. All they see is that change is change and I'm doin good right now so don't fuck with the recipe. This is the reason larger economies don't work. The only odd thing is that people around here expect the Bitcoin economy will be different. No, it won't be different because humans are still involved.

Ripple was originally designed to act as a decentralized and open source (yes, yes, I know, it's neither at the moment) exchange. In that, bitcoin *needs* Ripple in order to ween itself off of MtGox and other centralized exchanges. Bitcoiners should be embracing Ripple's concepts, but questioning and wary of OpenCoin's decisions. There is nothing wrong with Ripple, blindly calling it a 'scam' is ignorant imo. You can always call OpenCoin "dishonest" though.

Yeah but doesn't everyone invested in btc have a reason to see ripple fail? Maybe TradeFortress just has more btc than the rest of us. Considering the amount he paid to bash it I'd say that's a safe bet.

There is a reason it's in "Off-topic". The interesting thing is how much money is willing to be wasted to slander Ripple. That screams to me "agenda" and I've always been fascinated with uncovering the hidden agendas. I can just imagine finding out that Ripple's new secret competitor is TradeFortress or something. At least then it'd make sense.

So essentially this thread is just a bunch of drama crap because TradeFortress in a thread openly asked people to change their posts almost a month before this thread started? Nice.

RIPPLE IS A SCAM!!

You know what to do 

This ^^^

 

That's hilarious!  I assumed it was another one of TF's  "I'll pay you 5 BTC in open-ended Ripple IOUs" trolls, but he seems to have actually paid in real BTC to at least one real BTC address after publicly soliciting users?  Everything looks 100% above board -- what TF did is no different from any other paid advertising.  It isn't even astroturfing -- soliciting in a public forum makes it explicit that he, and not the paid users, is the source of the message  
edit:  Come back from having a cig & the price has gone up by $2...

Thanks for that.  Suddenly this thread is not so controversial.  TradeFortress is very open about it there.  I'm not sure what he was trying to say with his "BULLSHIT" statements here.  What's the BS, that he PM'd a certain guy?  Well, AFAICT the OP never even said TradeFortress himself PM'd anyone, but the claim that TF was, at one point, paying 5 BTC to edit-in an anti-Ripple message is absolutely true, looking at the thread just linked.

Okay so that confirms what every troll in this thread had attempted to mislead away from. The next question is, why would anyone (including TradeFortress) waste multiples of 5 BTC just to put up anti Ripple propaganda?

Someone should find out just how much they have spent to date (forum advertisements, ripplescam domain and hosting, paying accounts, etc) to try and make Ripple look bad. Usually people don't go to such lengths without some kind of personal motives. I'm sure we all appreciate when people come together to warn each other of potential scams, but we can probably all also agree that this is a bit suspiciously over the top (considering Ripple's developers are respected members of the community).

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2070493

This might clear it up.

I'm not sure, I think we would see him post in this thread if he wanted to deny it.  It would be poinless if someone has a PM from him offering the money though... I think the people complaining about the accusation are trolls.

I'm acting as a bystander in this thread, with no real horse in the race, albeit happy to help out, if I did, or made the situation worse.

TradeFortress - I am willing to denounce Ripple for my 5btc. 

I don't think he has made any significant comments, just "BULLSHIT" and that he didn't contact GoWest directly (something that was never claimed by anyone ever).

Either:

A) someone is spreading propaganda against Ripple for their own benefit; (who and why?)
B) there is a conspiracy to frame TradeFortresss (who and why?)

It's fascinating to see all the whiteknighting posts completely missing this point.

What a bunch of crap. You are using this unproven incident as a tool to try to discredit all criticism to ripple and that is a total bullshit attitude to take.

What you should be doing first is questioning GoWest to provide some sort of evidence that the allegations have anything to do with reality. And second thing to do if the first thing is first proven is really to blame TradeFortress for doing that that shit. But there is no absolutely no legitimate reason to try to discredit all criticism towards ripple as you are trying to spin this into especially if you are at the same time talking fondly about TradeFortress.

On the other hand if you are so willing to attack people based on them getting payed maybe you should say what you think about people saying they like ripple after they have received free XRP donated by OpenCoin.

One person I think this thread definately paints with a cloud of discredit is someone called Matthew N. Wright.