I sincerely hope that one of the lessons learned from this whole experience is that all Bitcoin-based businesses will add the following to their TOS in big bold letters:
"NOTE: if you try to scam us, and we find out, your account will be canceled, all your information, public and private, will be shared with all third parties we do business with, who may stop doing business with you as well, and this information may be shared publicly at our discretion."
If the Bitcoin community wants to be taken seriously, Bitcoin businesses better not make that a policy. ...and if the community has nothing better to do than publicly circulate lists of supposed scammers then you're just reinforcing the negative image others try to pin on Bitcoin as only being about scams and we deserve every bit of mockery we get from those outside who see Bitcoin as nothing but.
Bitcoin has its benefits and its drawbacks - if you don't see that the benefits are much greater and accept the drawbacks then go back to doing ecommerce with credit cards: you'll be able to correct mistakes in refunds, but you'll also never be able to do business with 95% of the world and will have to increase your prices because of credit card fraud. You can't have it both ways.
This incident could have sparked a discussion about important issues that face Bitcoin businesses - employee access, delaying/approving payments and refunds, perhaps the need for some sort of more private network for notifying each other of possible threats we face, etc. I hope it still does, but in the meantime a whole bunch of completely unnecessary FUD was produced surrounding Bitcoin and some of the major Bitcoin businesses.
A relevant story from Mark Cuban:
One day, Martin comes back from Republic Bank, where we had our account. He had just gone through the drive through and one of the tellers who he would see every day dropping of our deposits asked him to wait a second. She comes back and shows him a check that had the payee of a vendor, WHITED OUT and Renee Hardy, our secretary’s name typed over it. Turns out that in the course of a single week, our secretary had pulled this same trick on 83k of our 85k in the bank. As Martin delived the news, I obviously was pissed. I was pissed at Renee, I was pissed at the bank, I was pissed at myself for letting it happen. I remember going to the bank with copies of the checks, and the manager of the bank basically laughing me out of his office telling me that I “didn’t have a pot to piss in”. That I could sue him, or whatever I wanted, but I was out the money.
I got back to the office, told Martin what happened at the bank, and then I realized what I had to do about all of this. I had to go back to work. That what was done, was done. That worrying about revenge, getting pissed at the bank, all those “I’m going to get even and kick your ass thoughts”were basically just a waste of energy. No one was going to cover my obligations but me. I had to get my ass back to work, and do so quickly. That’s exactly what I did.
