Topic: Irony on bitcointalk (Read 655 times)

You are right that that it would be hard to know whether it is the real person or whether they bought or hacked the account.
You are right that a good hoaxer that has access to the account could possibly pass as the real deal.
Their identity was (DOX) was only suspected - it was never established in a court or confirmed beyond doubt.

I have interviewed a few people on here for articles and for articles in progress. It is not an intense "investigative interview" and generally focuses on what people want to tell me. I try to get their perspective on what happened. Which potentially can be a "story" rather than the truth.  I try to get a balanced perspective by interviewing others involved.

In the crypto sphere articles are often unreliable. I try to get the technical perspectives correct and to get balance by telling multiple perspectives rather than just relying on a single interview. I'm more interested in finding out what actually happened (history) than apportioning blame or a hard hitting report.

Do you guys know each other here real life to hold an interview? If it was a good impersonator, you probably won’t find out who you actually interviewed.

BTW, I’m kinda carried away with the memories you guys shared. Quite funny most posts on the thread was too. I came to read about ‘Irony on Bitcointalk’ remember?

This is a fair point and one which is undeniable. However, we need to consider that as soon as it was undeniable that he was a danger, he was removed by theymos correct?

The far larger problem now is that, even with undeniable evidence of financially high risk behaviors (multiple counts of)  or even undeniable SCAMMING, there is nothing to say and indeed there is plenty of evidence to demonstrate they are NOT removed, but further entrenched by those they selectively ALLOW to join DT..

The point that DT are now seen as Not essentially trustworthy I would agree with, but only by those that are familiar with meta board. Most hardly know anything about the trust system and take it at face value.
Furthermore we often hear that they give accurate ratings. I mean if they are not 100% trustworthy themselves but are on DT that opens up many vectors of abuse and that their inclusions will eventually entrench themselves to an extent where they are immune to being removed regardless of their actions. There is undeniable incentive to have unreliable trust ratings where DTs are caught out in financially dangerous behaviors.

It is solving one issue but creating a host of other issues including crushing free speech and removing all accountability for DT behaviors.

So to say it is an improvement is not something that really holds water. Crushing free speech is far more important than saving the very most greedy and very most stupid from themselves.  Anyone using the trust score metric at face value is still taking a huge risk and the glaring new issues and problems the new trust system opens far far far outweigh any real benefits.

I would say the most ironic thing about bitcointalk is that  " default trust" is full of undeniable scammers and scammer supporters and that they are able to give negative trust to those that whistle blow on their actions.  

If that is not ironic , nothing is.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/scam-report-format-use-it-to-make-scam-reports-properly-260073

LOL

For the record, I'm not accusing OgNasty of being TF's sockpuppet, I have enough drama. For all I know he really did get six bitcoins from TF, or recovered them from the sofa cushions or whatever. I do know some others were not so lucky and I have no doubt that TF is still very comfortably rich.

omg disgusting

wouldn't be surprised if sock-puppetry smh this forum

All that Japanese prison starvation has turned Mark into a suave dreamboat.

I wonder if he'll ever write a Gox story and whether any of it would be true. No doubt he was a slack, arrogant, dishonest weirdo but no one would've been able to cope with what it became in such a short time. If it had been me I would've shut it down and walked away before it properly bit me and everyone else but many people would believe they could stick at it and make it work.

According to some dox I think he was close to that, yeah, same age as Zhou Tong of Bitcoinica infamy. That's old enough to know right from wrong.

I never did any real research on him since he didn't go through with the interview. Maybe he is a good topic for an article. The main reason I didn't go through with with writing an article anyway  was because other people had said that he was really young at the time (17 or 18).

This sounds a bit like whitewashing. He's a bona fide scammer and a sociopath. inputs.io happened before my time but I was around when he exit-scammed with hashie. He set up the scheme with a purchased hero account, managed to get into some sort of partnership with a reputable (at the time; later exit-scammed too LOL) hardware vendor, and then didn't just run away with the funds - he trolled everyone on the way out. And again blamed a "hack".

His attempt to refund his victims was also just a form of trolling really. He refunded a few, nobody knows if they were real or just his sockpuppets. The he just stopped issuing refunds earlier than promised. I know at least two victims who didn't even get a response from him.

I would say theymos adding him to DT1 only further legitimized him, now more people than in the past are aware that being DT1/DT2 is more of a sign that a given user gives accurate ratings rather than them being inherently trustworthy. Back then I think there were like ~6 users on DT1, now there are around a hundred, being DT1 means nowhere near as much as it used to and that's a good thing.

The trust system will never prevent all scams. A bit like the Government does not catch all criminals or may be guilty of illegal or immoral conduct themselves.

Scams change and the bad guys will infiltrate a system.  The system is not dependent on Theymos.  He can be voted out of DT (unless he uses his special ability to exclude specific people from the entire DT system).

Companies that give a lifetime guarantee go broke. Not everything comes with a consumer warning.

A system will always be a system. No system involving people is perfect. KYC will not prevent anything. It would not have stopped Bernie Madoff from being highly trusted.

The trust system will prevent some preventable scams. Most likely the majority of the low level scams and a few sophisticated scams.


He probably - would - still be a trusted person if he hadn't been affected by a hack.  

I believe he was extremely young when he was running that business.
Business failures are problematic. They are breach of contract but may be due to an external issue out of their control.
Ultimately the money is still owed by him. He didn't get found, prosecuted or bankrupted.
I tried to interview trade fortress for an article but he didn't proceed with it.

I hear what you are saying, but I do not understand how the trust system now would prevent an anonymous person doing this again? Actually if theymos removed him directly when this went down, then it seems to me the trust system is far weaker now. Does theymos now do kyc on all DT1?

I'm being generous here with my speculation. He didn't refund everything that he lost/scammed. I'm not even sure if he himself knows how much he still owes.

It's good that the Trust system has evolved so that hopefully never again a single anonymous person will be allowed to scam so much money from so many people. People have placed way too much trust in him than they should have for their own good.

So then are we saying that Tradefortress is not UNDENIABLY a scammer? it is speculation that he scammed and was not hacked?  was he not refunding people also in recent years?  If so what exactly do you mean that is is "good" that the trust system has evolved?

What does this instance here demonstrate is the  "good" part about the evolution? I just want to understand what you mean?

Speaking of irony and TradeFortress, he used to be one of the most trustworthy users here, theymos even added him to DT1 back when it had only a handful of manually added forum members. He was also very vocal when it came to security and scammers himself later either becoming a victim to a hack or exit scamming (probably a mixture of both). Good that the Trust system has evolved since those times.

The downfall of Gox was caused by Karpeles's inexperience and arrogance. My belief is that he created most if not all of the production code in Gox, and did not rely on any type of peer review audit process before code was put into production, so there wasn't anyone checking for problems, or weaknesses in his code. He was one of the first that learned the hard way that if coin is not sufficiently secured, bad people will exploit weaknesses to take your coin.

Karpeles was able to produce code that took a decent amount of skill and effort to exploit, but could still be exploited, as history shows. I don't believe he intentionally mismanaged the Gox production code, and securing a financial company that accepts deposits and processes withdrawals is much more complex than securing a SMF forum whose economy has many financial transactions.

Bitcointalk history of MtGox and how a Bitcointalk post caught the MtGox hacker.

Karpeles was probably quite a capable IT guy. I think he was just in it over his head. One of the aspects that is overlooked is that without MtGox there would have been much less trading and the bitcoin value may not have risen so fast.

(Tether is another game of musical chairs where you want to be sitting when the music stops and some of the chairs have disappeared. )

MtGox was already insolvent according to "Wizsec" when Karpeles bought it.

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/09/17/kim-nilsson-of-wizsec-how-the-bitcoins-were-stolen-from-mt-gox/



To set up a cryptocurrency exchange already takes a lot of risk. It is really hard to comply with all the legal requirements because some of the rules (common law) are applied retrospectively due to no case law existing that specifically deals with crypto. This is why a lot of the exchanges are in questionable jurisdictions, anonymous or run into legal trouble later.  Attempts to exploit the code are made constantly. It takes just one mistake.

Where Karpeles got into trouble was - with the manipulation where he tried to earn it back.
He was arrested by Japanese police for manipulating the Willy bot to increase the balance in an account

This is going to be a FANTASTIC THREAD...

Let's get started with the super ironic...hehe  I hope this thread is not just ironic posts "some" members made right??


CONTEXT SELLING ACCOUNTS... here we go..

The build up hehe











THEN WHAT HAPPENS....


WAIT FOR IT GUYS...... WAIT...... YOU WILL NEVER GUESS....

OH GO ON THEN..haha


http://web.archive.org/web/20190704162438/https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/not-for-sale-decided-to-keep-it-a-long-time-ago-you-fucks-1622642

or as it has been SNEAKILY altered too now..  apparently a poll because it is someone elses fault he will facilitate scamming and turn evil for about $300 bucks or perhaps less at the time..


https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/not-for-sale-decided-to-keep-it-a-long-time-ago-you-fucks-1622642


****More tasty irony about Not being interested in SIG CAMPAIGNS...

Seems to be some POLL about someone else because it is their fault he got busted.


More undeniable irony of bitcointalk coming soon...