Topic: [SCAM ALERT] Free BTC Ripple Giveaway by TradeFortress (Read 4797 times)

Sadly, another guy is trying this scam:

• Crypto-Giveaways: Free Ripple BTC Giveaway!
• Twitter: @CryptoGiveaways

Cheers,

Non sequitur

No its not a bug, Its the ripple interface itself, , thats why its a scam.

[/quote]Does Bitcoin have a bug because if someone convinces you to send your Bitcoin to their account, you lose them? If people aren't able to safely use powerful tools, then the world is not ready for either Ripple or Bitcoin.[/quote]

Does ripple have a bug that allows users to get conned? thats debatable, but your bitcoin anology is weak. ripple has extremely poor implementation that allows users to be easily caught out because it fails to implement KISS procedures......systems 101.

shocked that its semi-live even in this beta stage.

Although I think what TradeFortress did was very dishonest, predatory, and manipulative I think it's worth pointing out the sum total effect on Ripple of his "experiment".

Some people are claiming this indicates some kind of major flaw in Ripple or that there are now "counterfeit" BTC or some other disastrous result. The reality is bit different.

In reality only those foolish enough to trust TradeFortress "risked" anything. Of those, only one single account had anything other than dust amounts of BTC/Bitstamp traded out of their accounts. That one account had a 1.0 BTC/Bitstamp balance before they trusted TradeFortress and now has a 1.0 BTC/TradeFortress balance instead. This is exactly what that person told Ripple he was willing to have. He's trusting TradeFortress to hold his BTC for him.

The other result is that now there is a pool of people that are willing send payments around to each other in BTC/TradeFortress. If someone wants to trust BTC/TradeFortress to join this pool they can. This effects the rest of the Ripple network and Ripple users not at all.

The warnings posted were not about any issue with Ripple, but about informing new users that might otherwise be fooled, that extending trust means that you trust the person and that people can abuse that trust.


Some people see a screen shot showing an account with a 1,000,000 BTC balance and get excited/upset/whatever. Why? If I presented a photo of an official document from Bob's Credit Union that says my account there has 1,000,000,000,000 USD would that get you excited/upset/whatever? People would be foolish to deal with me or Bob's Credit Union based on that document just as they're foolish to trust and deal with TradeFortress on Ripple.


There have been a few analogies used that might help to put this into perspective or to make it clear to people what is/was going on here. There are a number of people attempting to spread misleading information or cloud the issue. The solution to bad information is good information. Consider the following:
(follow the links to see the context or rest of their posts, my apologies if I mistakenly take someone out of context or include a quote of someone here that would rather I didn't)

(I included slothbag's quote embeded within another because the orginal post, along with a number of others, was deleted)

What would you think of someone if back when bitcoin was starting out, they had asked new bitcoiners to post their bitcoin private keys in exchange for a small payment or trade and if that same someone knew full well what the consequences of posting private keys would be? Would you excuse it as long as the person claimed to not use the secret keys themselves? Would you think it somehow showed a fundamental problem with bitcoin or with cryptography in general? Would you think it shows that some people are nieve and trust people with things that they don't understand?

Another analogy that I can't find (I think the post was deleted) was made by themusicgod1. It was something like: imagine "Bob's Credit Services" offering you a credit card with $100 worth of FREE credit on it under the conditiion that you accept Bob's Credit Cards for upto $10,000. The small print is that Bob's Credit Cards are only accepted by others that also take this offer.


Some other points worth highlighting:

Disgusting behavior. Honestly this is inexcusable and only serves to hurt any trust in crypto currencies as a whole. Nicely done keeping the worth of Bitcoin down.

Fair enough. I understand the principle. But I don't see "the masses" being able to use the system successfully as it stands. It will be interesting to see what scams get developed to exploit this.

  I think

You're not the only one brother.

No, it is the way it runs but, should you trust a user who has 1 trillion BTC in his balance?
The first thing i've learned when nearing Ripple is that trust is a delicate matter. Opencoin itself recommandes to not extend trust if you don't precisely understand what it is.



I totally don't care of the reputation of the guy, who is clearly obsessed by Ripple. I don't even know (and i'm not interested) if his intentions are good. But he's putting ingenuous people in the conditions of loosing a lot of Bitcoin, real ones.

No. Garbage in, garbage out. Is it a bug in the forums that I can make them say: 2 + 2 = 5

If you tell it to consider something worthless to be worth 1 trillion BTC, then it will tell you that you have something worth 1 trillion BTC. And, worse, it will trade something worth 1 BTC to get it, causing you to lose 1 BTC. It does what you ask it to do. If you tell it do something stupid, it can hurt you.

Ripple is a trading and payment platform. You have to tell it what assets are worth because it has no way to know otherwise. There are no central authorities to set exchange rates or tell you what assets are really worth.

As I said above, "this really is just a question of whether people are ready for access to powerful financial tools that permit pseudonymous transactions that are irreversible or whether people are just too dumb and careless to be trusted with that kind of power and will only hurt themselves."

So it's not a bug in Ripple that one's account balance can show 1 trillion BTC?

Precisely for this reason there is no need to launch crusades against Ripple.
Because this is not a social experiment .. is a crusade

Does Bitcoin have a bug because if someone convinces you to send your Bitcoin to their account, you lose them? If people aren't able to safely use powerful tools, then the world is not ready for either Ripple or Bitcoin.

I'm a pretty sophisticated user, and every time I send Bitcoins, I admit I have this moment of panic where I wonder if I've done everything exactly right because I know that if I cut/pasted the wrong account or made some other similar mistake, my money is gone. While we can do some work to make both systems safer, this really is just a question of whether people are ready for access to powerful financial tools that permit pseudonymous transactions that are irreversible or whether people are just too dumb and careless to be trusted with that kind of power and will only hurt themselves.

It's not a simple question.

Thanks

Yes I agreed dude, TF is reputable member, I have PM him before and his reply is nice and fast..
That's why I'm confusing about this this thread....
Because I Think, Nobody people for that excellent reputation like that
to scamm any member of this forum. That's is very stupid things.
Built reputation is hard ,...
Please ..... don't judge any people scammer with out valid proof.

Just so you know, I predate OpenCoin's involvement with Ripple.  While their solution is, in my opinion the legitimate heir to the previous attempts, it's not a matter of believing this is a good idea because they say so.  It's a matter of believing it is a good idea because it works.


This is not a zero sum game.  They are not taking money from everyone's pocket -- at worst they are allocating themselves money which, up until they made it, did not exist, in a future world where it is valuable.  They are creating value, and then allocating some of that created value to themselves for the trouble of it.

Its clear, your book smart. You can read what they tell you and believe only what they tell you. Like I said it will probably work, and some people will like it.

Still doesnt change the fact it was made to make money for those who made it. A for profit Item that the company wants everyone to use so they can take money from everybodys pocket.

First of all, let's get one thing clear here.  XRP is not Ripple.  XRP is an anti-spam mechanism that just happens to be a special purpose currency..  The fact that they call it 'ripples' is confusing, but Ripple is much more than XRP.

The price of XRP is basically a non issue.  People determine the price of XRP -- the currency that, I will remind you, is created *by* OpenCoin.  TF is not dealing in XRP.  TF is dealing in Bitcoin.

This is only true until they actually release their server -- at which point they will be just another network participant abiding by the rules which they are clearly laying out on the wiki ( https://ripple.com/wiki/Main_Page ).

For the time being, you probably shouldn't use the system as it's in development -- use the pre-existing versions such as http://www.villages.cc instead.