Topic: My response to the community - page 3. (Read 17818 times)

Not all promises are equal.  Reasonability is the standard used by rational actors for judging the reliability of promises.

EG I could promise you the moon, but you'd be unreasonable and foolish to expect and/or rely on me to actually deliver said orbiting celestial object.

Applied to this situation, we may observe that relying on Matt to honor his bet was greedy, irrational behavior.

Due diligence and common sense demand using an intermediary specializing in brokering bets, of which there are at least two using Bitcoin.

Furthermore, this forum is well known to be particularly unsuitable as reliable venue for wagers. 

It is rife with scams, trolling, humor, pranks, and drama.  And I like it that way.

Anyone who lost money as a result of entering into such an obviously puckish bet, sans escrow, deserves to lose at least one Bitcoin for each they hoped to gain.

At this point I vote to remove the scammer tag from Matthew, even because there are several a-holes around here who scammed purposefully even larger numbers of people and did not get it.

BTW: I betted with him and now I think that he is sincere and in any case all the drama in his outstandingly well written posts is worth of his presence.

So much drama here - when I was a kid we used to say, "Money talks, bullsh*t walks".

We need secure BTC escrow services - then we'll never have to endure these 40-page docu-dramas...

Welcome back Matthew. It is good to see you take responsibility for your actions rather than just hide with your tail behind your legs. I have always supported and admired your passion, drive, creativity and work ethic. I was disappointed with your actions, but I forgive them. Trust can be earned back from me.

For everyone else:
I did not bet anything with Matthew. I had investments with Pirate. I did not gain from his bet, in fact I lost practically all my btc worth to Pirate and that is embarrassing and hard to admit. While some may have been able to offload their debt due to Matthew's irresponsible behavior, lets not forget who committed the original alleged crime here: Trendon Shavers, not Matthew N Wright. I admit any of my emotion and feelings about "the bet" are misplaced feelings from my own stupidity, actions, etc. with trusting in Trendon based on other forum members who I met that seemed to trust in him to repay, both before and after the default. The lessons I learned are many, but none of them are that Matthew deserves no place in this community. I also admit this is easier for me since I did not bet anything with Matthew. I also tried to talk him into taking Trendon's offer to buyout the bet, one late night on IRC. Matthew stood on principle that night, refusing to take the buyout and give up his responsibility. He made the bets and wanted to be sure they were repaid. I think that shows his original intention. Somewhere along the way that was lost.

I have been reluctant to get back into bitcoin, but I love programming, engineering, and economics. I believe in bitcoin and I believe that I can and will be part of the community again, but it will be much more careful and guarded this time.

It is time to forgive all those who are repentant, including ourselves.

Thank you Matthew for coming forward, best of luck to you.

"It's not my fault for breaking my promise to you, it's your fault for relying on me to keep it."

"If the tables were reversed, it's entirely possible you would have done something just as bad as what I did."

These are pretty weak arguments.

That said, I do think that the actual damage Matthew did is probably not all that much. Obviously, his victims have every incentive to exaggerate the harm done.

+1 please hide this shit

someone please move this to off topic.

Hi everyone. I noticed some conversation this month about this, that some people were still fueling speculation, and although I realize some people may wish to consider my word "worthless" because of a single incident, I still feel it is my duty to at least make a statement about it here as a matter of public record.

This bet was a product of my immaturity in handling personal, work, social and performance stress. Long story short, I kind of snapped, let my ego and mouth write a check my ass couldn't cash, and then didn't know what to do and freaked out. I'll be honest, the entire time I was gone thinking about what to do with my life I couldn't stop thinking about what I had thrown away, how stupid the entire bet was, how many people were absolutely right about how pointless and avoidable this situation was, and about how screwed I was as a result.

This poor judgement lost my year's earnings of over $70,000 in cash, salaries, equity, active work contracts and not to mention reputation (to which I embarrassingly admit I didn't really grasp that I even had one to lose at the time). Looking back I can't believe I did it and I want to crawl into a hole and die, but that won't make things right and it would only serve to make numerous incorrect shortsighted opinions of me a reality.

I returned because I felt responsible. I hadn't intended on returning, not because I didn't feel guilty, but because I didn't think I had a place. It wasn't until I witnessed Roger Ver's recent PR goof of arguing on a public forum over a tiny bitcoin balance, embarrassing himself, his partners, blockchain.info and causing a miniature uprising against him that it finally snapped in my head that absolutely anyone can make a lapse of judgement, life is not over, and you can make it up to people.

I'll be honest, financially speaking there is never going to be a way to make it 100% right because I literally promised the world on a silver platter. Luckily for me, the kind, honest and wiser betters involved in all of this have (mostly) all agreed to much more realistic settlements that can be paid off within 3 years (note to others: never bet in BTC because the price increase will probably make a slave to debt for the rest of your life  ).

Since I see there is still some unclarity about my actions, I feel the need to repeat it. Despite my admitting that I flip flopped on my original intentions in the face of greed and ego, I did not initially intend to "scam" anyone. I was absolutely going to pay up to 1000BTC, but I stayed up late one night after a fight with Bitcoin Magazine staff and for some reason...that night I just couldn't shut up. I lost control and learned a horrible lesson about self discipline and personal image management-- I did something I could never undo, and knowing I had no way of undoing it, I kept going, like a madman. It is true that there was a good majority of entertainment involved (for many!) and that was the most of the fuel, but I will not deny that deep down there was a fear of what I was doing would ruin my life. I had hoped, like always, that I could just walk away from a bad decision and start over. This is when I learned a lesson I had never had first hand experience with until now: *never fuck with other people's money*.

I felt like the world was out to get me. I became paranoid, I became defensive, and in the end I had lost more friends than I even realized I had. Organizations dissolved, passions and previous work vanished, companies went bankrupt and all sorts of legal action started to fly (not related to the bet, related to companies closing as a result of sudden managerial changes, investor issues, etc). Basically, I proved on a larger stage than I really realized I was on, that I was too immature for the amount of trust that was given to me.

This is where it gets interesting people. I have heard some trolls sniffing around saying hateful things like "Look, he thinks we'll trust him again" or "You'll never earn that trust back, get lost". Well, I don't mean to be rude (I am not in a position to be rude I think), but I am not interested in that trust. I want to function trustless, to do what I do *best*-- making major mistakes, learn from them, grow from them, and as I grow from said mistakes, profit from the experience and share that profit. This bet caused all sorts of growing pains, and not just for me. For that, I'm terribly sorry. I don't want to be the CEO of a service company that handles billions of dollars. But when I left, the break from the forums and chatter calmed my senses and I realized just how much of bitcoin's economic theories and political principles I was completely missing. I came back because there is no life for me without bitcoin. Sure, there's life for me without bitcoiners or these forums, but bitcoin is the future. It may not be the future forever, but it's the next logical step, and I get that. I returned because I wanted to tell everyone that they deserve better than what I showed last year (a net negative) and that I deserve to be a part of a movement despite having made a grave mistake.

I realize that in these social and moral situations the only way to make things right is to pay the price, and I am paying it dearly, and have been paying it dearly since those days. For that, I ask that the conspiracy theories try their best to at least hear me out when I make the following statement in all honesty:

I have never had the intent to rip off or damage the community, just foolishly and selfishly attack, pester and troll certain minorities that I felt at the time were "up against me". I have never been knowingly or willingly apart of anything I believed was a "scam", but I admit that my over eagerness to join in projects, prove my worth, be important, be useful, whatever you want to call it, has been stronger than my sensibilities in dealing with other humans, risks, and commonalities that may seem so obvious to most of you.

And finally, I have never known Pirate, made any deals with him, intended to profit from him, owned any of his debt, stocks, bonds, shares, passthrus, etc. (I simply didn't think that far into what I was doing last year to pull that off anyway). I was in it for the "trololol" entertainment but didn't have the sense to know how many I'd actually be hurting (including my friends) and didn't know when to fucking stop. It's as simple as that.

I'm sorry for letting my friends, colleagues and the general community down (at least the part that may have been entertained and then disappointed later when they found out it was a failure on my part). I hope to make it up to you guys in the coming years as my attitude and personality continues to go through a serious change. Thanks everyone for understanding, and those who don't understand, refuse to forgive/forget and want to follow me around the rest of my life posting responses to everything I say as "didn't you once _____", I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate the help you guys have always given me (even if your original intention was to mock) and I've been soaking up criticisms like a sponge for quite some time, I just needed this very long break from this place to let it get to work on me. I feel the need to put down my manchild toys and join the -actually- productive society I pretended to live in before.

Keep it real bitcoiners.

Matthew

You don't know that. There are any number of ways he could have taken people's money and made himself money because of the bet.

For example, Matthew's bet propped up the price of Pirate debt because people who expected Matthew to honor the debt believed Matthew had reason to think Pirate would pay his debts -- otherwise, why make the bet at even odds? Matthew could have taken advantage of this personally to unload Pirate debt.

There are a number of other possible scenarios.

I was thinking more of people like JRO, to be honest.

I can easily fall into this camp (see text in bold above), but I'll blame running a RL viable enterprise that provides the necessary livelihood for my family.

Full disclosure, in case the above included me in quoted statement.

Excellent post!

~Bruno K~

You're misunderstanding what happened.  Matthew didn't take anyone's money.  He made a bet which he didn't honour - he didn't "become rich" because of that bet.


bitmarket.eu did steal user funds and people are proposing a bail-out.  Bail-outs have been proposed for failed Bitcoin businesses more than once - the relatively small number of Bitcoin services makes the community reluctant to let any of them die a natural death.


Matthew was a bit like the Energiser bunny on amphetamines at times.  While he had some level of involvement in a lot of projects, he was often impulsive and his responses weren't always measured.  His energy could be very scattered and divided at times and he's not the only high profile person in this community of whom that's true.  Visibility and "busy-ness" are not the same as effectiveness.  Matthew certainly had a "big" reputation, but it wasn't necessarily a primarily positive one.

Look here, and scroll down to where you see the five issues side by side. Issues 4 and 5 were produced without Matthew's help, after he pseudo-voluntarily left the company and the community following his $250,000 bet. Issues 1, 2 and 3 were designed with his help (he didn't interfere much in the writing, though).

I think #3 especially provides a pretty good insight to the kind of personality that this guy had.

So let me get this straight, a guy makes a bet involving thousands of Bitcoins and you wonder why he turned tail and ran when everything went south for him? Didn't you idiots learn anything from the financial crisis? I'm so glad Bitcoin is run by math and not by human beings because otherwise we'd be completely screwed by now as the scammed people would all be out protesting and the scammer would receive a bailout so he could conduct his scam again and trick people into giving money.

I found a nice quote from a thread that might be what you're looking for: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.373379

I could have quoted it, but opted to supply it this way.

~Bruno K~

Thanks for the explanation guys. It is an interesting story, specially of we the newbies, to learn to don't trust anyone. Where can I find more threads about this? Is this guy mental? I did get the point when some people said "he isn't a common scammer". If he stole many bitcoins just "for fun", I think he became rich anyway. It's a very funny joke to the scammer, sure.    and a sad story to the victims.

I lost 286 USD to a scammer and I am totally hopeless. 

Right. And the way he started here made it clear he was absolutely untrustworthy, whether he had a scammer tag or not. I'm shocked that anybody chose to trust him with anything.

Read the OP for christsake

Really, if you are all that interested, there are a fair number of threads you can track down.  The guy was actually labeled a scammer twice, though under the name 'bitmole' the first time.  My own personal view is that in both cases while he was misguided, he was never what I would consider a 'scammer' in the true sense of the term.  He, like a lot of us, is/was 'off the deep end' from somewhere in the first trimester of gestation.

He made tens of thousands of bitcoins worth of bets, lost, claimed it was a joke.

Why "deep end"? What this guy did? I'm really curious. I don't know why construct a big reputation to just throw away in the rubbish bin...