Topic: I was offered $550 to say that "Ripple is a Scam." - page 5. (Read 9137 times)

I will change my post for only 1.9 btc.  Get it while it's fresh!

Ripple's hard limit: g₆₄ XRP.
XRPs are mined by measuring IOUs in BTC and then getting bitcoiners to buy them until a hard limit is approached and the reward for bitcoiners approaches derp.
I <3 me a good hijack thread.

i can do it for only 2 btc

for 1kbtc i can launch a nuke at ripple HQ

I've never worked as a reporter. I'm not sure where you heard that. I am a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine though.

As for the claims in this thread, No one said TradeFortress messaged GoWest directly. The claim is that TradeFortress was offering others that much to change their posts(something he hasn't bothered to deny).

As for TradeFortress spending money to spread his opinion of Ripple, that's public knowledge. See the "forum advertisement" auction threads from Theymos.

No one is attacking TradeFortress (I happen to appreciate his talents and current projects), what is being discussed is the unethical and extensive efforts to discredit a project that should otherwise just be ignored. Ripple is as much of a "scam" as bitcoin is (neither one is a scam), but Ripple (the current implementation) is understandably not what many politically idealed bitcoiners would want to follow until it is open sourced and its basic problems are resolved.

The point is that there is something shady going on. If TradeFortress has never paid anyone to post bad things about Ripple, he should be here stating exactly that, and leading the conclusion that someone rich is trying to frame him.

Thanks for the links, but unless you're seeing something I'm not in those PDFs in the top link, I'm not finding this conclusive at all.  The supposed proof is a short, heavily excerpted and edited quotation, posted by someone I've never heard of, allegedly Miles Thompson, if you follow the Google+ link in the HN user profile.  It seems there is a Miles Thompson somewhat active in the original Ripple community, but a) the HN user isn't necessarily the real Miles Thompson, and b) I don't have a reason to trust Miles Thompson's secondhand reporting of an email someone else supposedly received.

Further weakening the case: a) the quote doesn't even say who is supposedly paying off Ryan Fugger (just "group", although the poster may be implying it was OpenCoin), b) the only instances I can find of this quote on Google are this short HN post and several people in cryptocoin communities re-quoting that.

Is this still going?

BULLSHIT

I have never PM'd GoWest. I didn't even know wtf he did. Again,


BULLSHIT

Where are the screenshots of these so-called PMs? No evidence, no dice.

Seriously Matthew - it's good you're no longer a 'reporter'.  Bitcoin Magazine could not have survived more of this kind of shit than it did...

From GoWest's post:


Did he receive this from TradeFortress?  No.  He got a PM from an unnamed user who claimed they'd gotten it from TradeFortress.

From that, without any further evidence that I can see, he jumps to:


And you jump immediately to:


and..


and...


and...


I don't think there's a whole lot of accurate reporting going on here.  And I think that while you may not be leading the charge (unless you paid GoWest to write that post  ), following it uncritically does quite as much unjustified damage.

The alleged email: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5254737

Related: https://ripple.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2023

I don't know about ripple but i learned two new words today!

Astroturf and shill ! 

The worst part about this whole thing isn't the paying people to edit their post which is really low. But that TradeFortress also committed scams on newbies and new to the ripple environment to prove his point. I think that is the lowest thing on earth. Taking advantage of a person, is just really bad.

I thought this was well-known, but it is also complete hearsay. Albeit much older heasay. I'll look for the link.

Link? I'm interested in getting to the bottom of this (as I'm sure every newbie here is too), but statements like yours that can shed light on parties should not be made without references, lest they are intended to continue making the anti-Ripple campaign look like shilled sabotage.

link?

How do we know this isn't just someone OpenCoin paid to say that TradeFortress paid them to say Ripple is a scam? OpenCoin apparently has a history of paying people off, if the leaked email from Ryan Fugger is authentic.

This post for sale for 5 BTC.

No, it's entirely different. No one entity controls Bitcoin's supply, but Opencoin made it clear that they control the XRP supply, and they wouldn't tell others how they control it, just ask Joel Katz. So it costs nearly nothing for them to manipulate the XRP market, as long as they like.

When the criticisms revolved around Ripple being closed source, simply ignoring it until it's open sourced would suffice imo.
When the criticisms are about XRP's value being "pumped", the same arguments apply to Bitcoin and any fork of it. the same argument applies to any world currency or exchange in the world. OpenCoin is a for-profit company. That in and if itself does not qualify them as a scam.
When the criticisms are that it's a "scam" by people scamming others into agreeing to raise their credit for them (TradeFortress), it kind of makes every legitimate argument against Ripple look like (poorly) attempted sabotage.

I'm not huge on Ripple and am skeptical of its future, I talked to Arthur Britto on Skype quite a lot about Ripple and its direction back in the day, and I was building a Ripple network with Vladimir Marchenko and Mihai Alisie even before OpenCoin was formed. That doesn't mean that I'm confident it will work the way they're implenting it though (it's all just an experimental project, as is Bitcoin), a lot has changed in the past year and OpenCoin is showing the rest of us what does and does not work socially. I am interested in Open Transactions and Ripple for the future though and anything that shows hope of allowing exchange should be looked into seriously.

Despite not being huge on Ripple though, I am huge on transparency, anti-sockpuppetry and cutting through the endless power/money grabs in the bitcoin community.

• I am disgusted by MtGox for locking accounts and holding people's funds claiming AML, yet not following other basic legal requirements when it's inconvenient for them. What will they do with Bitcoinica funds? Where does that money go that they refuse to talk about in public?
• I am disgusted by AurumXChange seizing Bitcoinica funds on their own whim and breaking their own privacy agreements publicly posting information about one of their customers. Where are those funds too?
• I am disgusted by BitcoinStore publicly threatening one of their customers over a couple of dollars.
• I am disgusted by Bitcoincard for claiming they'd be "empowering the community and then disappearing completely (where's the card, guys?).
• I am disgusted by BFL for lying repeatedly about "2 weeks", for a year now.
• I am disgusted by BitInstant for barely ever being "instant", telling others in the community to be "more professional" all while publicly supporting blackmail against a government figure and releasing news of a debit card that *still* is just vaporware.

I'm sick of cultism in bitcoin where people are so easily manipulated, constantly following a leader for "political" reasons ("Let's buy things at bitcoinstore, a private for-profit company, because it is good for Bitcoin!") and ignoring the obvious manipulation and corruption right in front of them. That's why even though I have my own academic beef with Ripple and am watching them closely, this anti-Ripple campaign to me seems like a power grab in itself-- a bitcoin power grab, something desperate people do when they're scared their own project currency can't stand on its own two legs against anything else.

I'm confident that's not the case, but people like TradeFortress blur that point for others I'm sure and he's becoming disgusting as a result. Bottom line: you don't become better than the poop by touching the poop.

I saw that post as well, I think it's probably a very transparent astroturfing, as all cooperators posted exactly the same thing in the same thread, one after another, I also remember TF advertising it somehow, otherwise it looks really weird and noticeable to anyone.

And yeah, it does look like TF has got a really deep pocket, he can pay for his shills like that, buying forum ad slots just to make them unavailable to BFL and debase Ripple, a lot of these things...., all at hefty prices, wow.

+1

I think ripple would have more to worry about this than paid "It's a Scam" accusations. I wonder what Ripple thinks about this new merger?