Topic: I'm done with Bitcoin Securities... - page 2. (Read 6326 times)

A criminal background check would not expose most scammers; a lot of the "scams" perpetrated on this site started off as idiocy by the newly rich who don't necessarily have a criminal history.

Why can't the "trusted commission" be a private organization that charges new ventures for a vetting process? It's a false assumption that such services can only exist through the use of violence against our neighbors.

You do not understand libertarianism; your criticisms are based on ludicrous parodies. You should be embarrassed for parroting these talking points -- or stick to what you know: programming; you surely don't know much about the law.

Of course there is crap in traditional investments, but not to nearly the same percentage that there is in BTC Securities. I have dealt with plenty of both types of investments to know that most of the crap is in BTC Securities.

Perhaps we need to start getting all those that want to introduce a security to have to put up insurance that will protect investors. If we all were omniscient then we could exercise due diligence. We need some sort of system of trust that can be relied on. Regulations do prevent scams as we would have much more scams if we did not have the threat of sanctions. I am not certain what the perfect system would be, but letting it simply be a free-for-all is not the solution.

yeah, I did misunderstand.  I thought you meant that they were buying their own shares to create buzz or something.

I have a hard time believing they spent 10K+ btc in a month.  The IPO ended the day before the branch opened.

Personal attacks aside, you have just proven my point. Investors will not each want to spend large amounts of time in order to personally vet each of the funds they are considering. This is when a trusted commission that carries out some basic vetting functions comes into play. Nobody is claiming investment is a right. What it comes down to though, is that people with the money or BTC to invest will stop doing so if they personally need to spend hours checking out the backgrounds of all that are involved in a new investment. A simple investor does not even have the power to get the required information to do so.

Even if you consider a running a simple criminal background check, your method implies that each investor should have to do this on their own. This is very inefficient as compared to having a central trusted commission do this vetting. You would have to be a f*cking moron to think otherwise. In the Libertarian world we would spend ALL our time doing trust checks on everyone else and nothing real would get done because everyone would be too busy with due diligence. This is when the big stick of the law comes in handy with a good smack across the arse of the scammers and anarchists!!

Actually in seeing how Libertarians operate I am beginning to think more and more that these anarchists simply want the ability to set up scams and go unpunished because they think there should be no law and that everyone should exercise due diligence on their own. From what has happened more and more in the Bitcoin world it is becoming apparent that:

LIBERTARIAN = SCAMMER!
ANARCHIST = SCAMMER!

As a C++ programmer, I still think that Bitcoin and the Blockchain are some of the greatest inventions in programming. I really hope that Bitcoin survives the filth that has been attracted to it from unsavory groups!!

Why would they buy them?  That would've been like Pirate investing his personal funds in his ponzi...  I think you misinterpreted what I meant.  I was insinuating that they had to continue spending money to keep people buying the shares.  Once outflows passed inflows, it was game over.

no, what I mean is if they are buying their own shares, why didn't they buy all of their own shares?  why only buy a fraction?

Maybe the demand wasn't there to sell out and they had better plans for those coins?



There are several threads about it.  His main thread is a good place to start.

I only ever had one escrow deal with JohnK, and yes, he paid from the same address we sent to.  To be totally honest, I had no idea he was gone.  Is there a thread link somewhere? 

If that's the case, why didn't they sell out?  They still had a ton of shares that didn't sold, and they certainly had enough coin to buy them all.

Well, common sense has to play a role as well.  Is there anyone who thought Patrick Harnett & Pirate were doing honest dealings?  I certainly hope not.  Pirate came out and said not to trust him several times as well as hinting that he was engaging in illegal activity.  Even TradeFortress' lending site didn't pass the sniff test.  I also suspected ukyo & graet were trying to get rich playing the spread between their loans and the ones TradeFortress was brokering and thus kept a close eye on them selling off my stake as soon as they became unresponsive.  



Perhaps scam is a bad description.  It was obvious that the operation was a money furnace and of course you would waste money on advertising after the IPO.  You don't think all those shares were sold to investors do you?  They needed to appear legit to continue dumping their own shares after the IPO.

I don't see how Neo was an 'obvious scam'. If i was going to cut and run I wouldn't waste a load of money on office space, employees and newspaper and TV advertising after the IPO was closed. A flawed business plan possibly but a scam from the start, I don't see it.

What can the state do to prevent these kinds of scams? Why can't that service be provided through voluntary interaction?

Why do you suppose you have a right to invest without "spending large amounts of time on due diligence?"

Somebody has to put the work in to do that "due diligence." If it isn't you, you'll have to pay a premium for that service. By suggesting that the state should be responsible for this, you are advocating the use of violence against your neighbor in order to force him to subsidize your investments..

I think it's worse to bake violence into the system for the purpose of protecting idiots from themselves.

Doesnt guarantee a thing. Dont you remember the 'why I trust Patrick Harnett" threads,  Pirate had the top rating on OTC, and have you seen JohnK lately? If a contract isnt enforceable by legal means, you can bet on getting scammed sooner or later.  AM may be the proverbial exception that proves the rule. So far.

I'm shocked that even in hindsight people don't see the signs...  Reputations are earned through time and honest dealings, not with identifications and promises.

Well said. This is the point I was trying to make.

In the meantime, I'm sorry for implying Neo&Bee was a scam. Mismanaged, maybe, and definitely in bad shape right now, but I don't feel it was a straight-up scam like, say, Labcoin apparently was.

The "action" itself started at the beginning of Nov 2013. After then an appropriate lawyer was chosen, information from shareholders collected, the complaint written.. etc.

I do not blame you one bit. Those suggesting that NEO-BEE was an obvious scam either are insiders that are in on it, or they are just spouting off rubbish. This does however highlight a problem with Bitcoin Securities in that there is little recourse once these come to light. All the due diligence in the world cannot protect you from a clever liar. This is why we need the heavy hand of government to start regulating these Bitcoin securities.

Libertarians are deluding themselves if they think a world with minimal government would function. Such a world would be very inefficient for investors and we all would be spending large amounts of time on due diligence for each of our funds only to find out we have been lied to anyway. Investors would soon all become leery due to high amounts of fraud and losses, and investment capital would dry up. Investors would retreat and progress would suffer.

Even with overseers fraud still occurs (Madoff), but on a much smaller percentage overall scale than with Bitcoin securities. I too will not be putting any further BTC into Bitcoin Securities until there is some better and proven vetting process in place. No process is 100% effective, but until Bitcoin Securities approach an acceptable level of trust through vetting by a commission it seems too risky to consider investing in them.

damn took them long enough, didn't it?

edit: oh wait, just saw that was posted in Feb.  Still, took much longer than it should have.

FYI: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.5035462 ("The criminal complaint against Labcoin was filed on Friday to the Polizia Postale")

Wow! That is a lot of money to lose. I'm really sorry for your loss man, that sucks.  I know the feeling (on a much smaller scale anyways).

Losing money in bitcoin has turned me off of the bitcoin economy.  Now I'm only going to buy and hold and do a few minor trades for other new coins I like.  But what, 75%+ or more of exchanges have gone under taking everyone's money, and most of the securities have been a wash.  It's one thing to lose money investing in a product or service that loses value, but it hurts 100x more to lose money to scamming thieves, such as Bitfunder/WeExchange Jon Monroll, who I hope dies soon.

Until we have decentralized exchanges with open source software I think anyone is better off just buying  or mining bitcoins and holding them. There are just too many people who see Bitcoin as a way to personally enrich themselves by stealing from others, such as Jon Montroll.