Topic: So you think you're going to start a Bitcoin business, right? - page 10. (Read 71765 times)

I have several shelf companies, I keep them around so as to remind me just how difficult having your own "profitable" business can be.

Could you elaborate on some of the fraud these businesses have encountered? I'd be genuinely interested in more detail.

+1

I really wish this could be ingrained in anyone looking to start a business...bitcoin or not. Even I thought starting up mine would be easy, but as I generated my "To Do" list I found out quite quickly that this was no easy task. If you want your business to be started correctly and taken seriously, you've got to spend the time to be thorough...and that takes a lot of work.

I can sum up this entire thread in one sentence: My way or the highway.

One of the current problems in the Bitcoin world is businesses lacking the capacity to absorb rapid growth.  They simply don't have the resources to put in place the systems necessary to deal with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of other people's money because they started on a shoe-string without any high level infrastructure baked in and they haven't made significant profits a few months later when they're suddenly playing a whole different ball game. 

Many Bitcoin businesses don't have the capacity to adapt to rapid expansion because their owners have neither the resources nor the skills necessary to implement the changes required to see the business through a vulnerable period.  It doesn't help that the businesses are often "brand new" in real world terms and so the owners are still emotionally attached to their idea and don't necessarily make rational decisions about how to fund expansion.  We have a plethora of business owners who've never consulted an accountant, security expert or a lawyer but who are responsible for tens of thousands of dollars worth of other people's money.  They think that they "can't afford it" because they aren't making significant profits from their new business, yet it should be a standard start-up cost not something people are going to get around to when they "can afford it" (many businesses will fail long before they reach that point).

People in general underestimate just how much work is involved in operating your own business.  Those who dream of opening their own business so they don't have to answer to anyone and can work part-time are in for a rude shock and extremely likely to fail.

One thing I consistently hear back from Bitcoin business owners I talk to off-board is that they grossly under-estimated the level of attempted fraud they would encounter.  It's something for which every Bitcoin business needs to be prepared before they even launch because many have no capacity to absorb losses in their early months of operation - losing even a few thousand dollars to fraud will be catastrophic.

It's not too hard, if you join either #bitcoin-otc or #bitcoin-assets there's very likely someone there willing to help you.

I do believe I stand corrected, I guess it's back to several hours of trying to figure out why the "guide to using the OTC web of trust" does not seem to work for me : /

Ok. I now copy your tellings, pictures, whatever you put up and claim I'm you. What can you do?

Read this and think about it. It may be seem long, unnecessarily complicated or whatever. It's in fact the minimally complex functional solution.


This may be true. On the other hand, you never know when it will. Your proposition is akin to not having a credit score irl because "you don't plan to need it". Any financial advisor will tell you this is a bad strategy.


What is this, organizing The ButtHurt Team?

If you and your users are completely content with fact that neither you nor them can in retrospect satisfiably verify whether some order actually took place or not, then I understand requiring such high standard makes you nervous and you feel attacked. Correctly using GPG can alleviate such problems in many situations and thus makes scammers incomfortable. Please don't take that personally, I don't mean to insinuate you at all, I don't use icbit either. Just my 2c.

This MPOE-PR has gone too far. Claiming that their options exchange is the largest bitcoin business, false accusations to ICBIT to proof that MPOEX is the biggest exchange and ICBIT is scam, now attacking everyone else.

What points would you like me to address? I've addressed all your points already and you've provided nothing the counter, so the discussion appears to be over.  Your valuation of MPEx is ludicrous in the extreme.  You deny the fact that all of the major Bitcoin business do not use WOT (you've yet to name a single large Bitcoin business that uses WOT) and continue to maintain that WOT is required to run a successful business... which I've already shown that is a false statement.  

You hold up MPEx and Satoshi Dice as successful businesses, and give them valuation in the millions of dollars.  I mean, seriously, what is there to argue?  I've already provided you evidence and reasons as to why the utter nonsense you're claiming is evidence for your arguments is false and you just keep providing the same nonsensical arguments over and over.  BFL has sold tons of hardware, that is verifiable proof.  Bitpay is doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in business, that is verifiable proof.  MTGox does hundreds of thousands of dollars of transactions, that is verifiable proof.  

Your proof?  Random number input into the gribble calculator.  Heh... yeah, we are done here.

Anything you wish to say as to the actual points raised?

Says the guy who works for BullshitLabs.

LOL... you are laughable man.  Good luck with your business ventures, it's clear you have exactly zero connection with business reality!

Seriously, this arguing from ignorance again...


Whopdee for you. Anyone with a modicum of common sense would understand that you're attempting to compare your own secret recipe with Worchestershire sauce. You say your secret recipe is the best there is. Well done, but that's a claim, not any sort of proof. Get BFL listed and we can talk apples to apples (same goes for MtGox, obviously).


Anecdotal evidence will hardly work in this context you realize. There's people who crossed the Atlantic in a barrel, that scarcely "shoots to hell and gone" the otherwise undisputed theory that you need some sort of ship in order to offer transatlantic transportation.

But for the record, as far as I'm concerned you're not much of a Bitcoin businessman. You're a forum loud mouth, currently stuck in the position of extracting BFL from the entire mess with the CEO-convicted-of-fraud, the entire mess with the "we've announced one spec, then the competition announced better stuff so we magically upped our spec", the entire mess with the "we're going to deliver in October except November except etcetera" and whatever other messes I don't know about, not being particularly interested in the completely marginal business you're in (mining, that is). So...yeah.


Anyone with a modicum of common sense - hey, I like that expression! - would understand that had in fact MtGox used a GPG based system they wouldn't have found themselves in the sorry position of asking their entire userbase to change passwords and excuse the impending spam because "independent contractor" last year. If you weren't such a hard-headed ignoramus you might have noticed that Tux is in the WOT, as well as mtgox itself.

Why do you persist? After having what you're doing wrong explained, you stop doing it and move on. Not too hard now is it? Do you particularly wish to be remembered as "that ignorant lazy fuck who couldn't get over the fact that ignorance and laziness aren't arguments"?

My numbers are off?  Really?  It's funny you think MPOE is a large business... can you show me any sort of proof that the "money" that MPOE "has" is actual asset and not funds transacted?  I doubt it.  In fact, it's laughable that you say MPOE is valued at 500k Bitcoins... who's doing this valuation?  Who would pay even 10% of that for MPOE?  You say it is not arguably, but provably... please provide proof to your claims.  MPEx is not a serious bitcoin business... take a look at the FAQ page, it's an idealistic, angry adolescent rant.  The user interface is unusable.  Everything about it indicates it's a hobby site run by a really good tech geek or geeks.

SatoshiDice, again... whee!  You can show a company that transacts a lot of Bitcoins, but last I heard, it was barely breaking even as far as profit goes.  It's completely irrelevant how many bitcoins you pass through your system... I can pass fifty million bitcoins a day through my accounts, that's trivial... it doesn't mean I own the value 50 million bitcoins would provide, now does it?  Of course not.  The actual value of SatoshiDice and MPEx is, and this is just an educated guess, somewhere around $10,000 USD combined.  Neither of those ventures has any sort of actual monetary value, beyond the fact that they transact a large number of bitcoins through their system.  MPEx will never take off due to the user interface.  GLBSE did not gain any ground until they changed their interface from the completely incomprehensible mess they had on v1.  There's a reason for that.

Of course I am not going to speak about the financials of BFL, but anyone with even a modicum of common sense would understand that 20k Bitcoins while not quite a trivial amount, is a tiny fraction.  As you said, it's provable, so please provide any sort of proof you are able to muster that MPEx and/or Satoshidice have any sort of assets beyond a bit of marketshare and a trickle of income.  If that were the case, you would be a multimillionaire and I am pretty sure you aren't that.

But I digress, you've provided nothing to convince me (or anyone else) that WOT is anything but a niche hardcore Geek tool.  No large business use it (Sorry, but MPEx and SatoshiDice are not large businesses, but I'll be happy if you prove me wrong) - and the large businesses that I've mentioned, which are provably large, have zero interest in WOT... in fact, one you mentioned, MTGox, does not use it either... that kind of shoots your theory to hell right there.

As for me being the greatest bitcoin businessman in existence, hardly.  My point was that I have run and continue to run successful business(s) on the Bitcoin platform and yet somehow I've managed to do this without WOT... again shooting your theory to hell and gone.  Bottom line: No large bitcoin businesses use WOT.  There are successful businesses running now that do not use WOT.  Ergo, WOT is not required to run a successful business.

Well, your numbers are a little off.

The largest Bitcoin business in existence (not arguably, but provedly) is MPOE/MPEx, currently market-valued at a little under half a million bitcoins (or a little over, I forget).

The second largest Bitcoin business in existence (idem) is currently SatoshiDice, currently valued in the hundreds of k's range.

Other large Bitcoin businesses would probably be MtGox and (if indeed it exists, and indeed it makes money) that shadow marketplace whatever it's called.

It's great that you think the company you represent is large, it's fine that you want to argue the point, but you will need something a little more solid than just that passion. Trying to evaluate the claim, I know your competitor that used to go under ASICMINER before GLBSE imploded was worth in their estimation something like 200k x 0.1 = 20,000 Bitcoin. I presume you think yourself larger than them, how much larger? 10x? That'll put you (arguably) in third position.

Moving on: you're free to use or not use whatever you want. What bearing does that have on anything? You're not about to tell me now that you're also (arguably) the greatest Bitcoin businessman in existence or something?

At some points you'll have to revisit the simple concept that declaratory statements do not change the cold hard reality of the outside world, or else I'ma start calling you Rakim. Seriously, re-read this post. You'd have to be particularly boneheaded to not realize that the exact arguments you imagine you're bringing against the WOT are the "arguments" people bring against Bitcoin. Ignorant, useless people, that is.

The cheaper alternative would be for you to learn how to use the WOT, rather than trying vainly to prove how the superior solution isn't really superior because "we the people".

Huh?  Really?  Can you point me to one serious major Bitcoin business that utilizes WOT?  BFL, arguably the largest Bitcoin business in existence, does not use WOT.  I don't use WOT in my business ventures.  Bitpay, as far as I know, does not use WOT.   The list goes on. Name a major business that uses WOT.

Sorry, but WOT is for hardcore geeks and is functionally meaningless to the larger Bitcoin world.  Whether that's because people just don't care or it's impossibly hard to use I'll leave that up to you to decide, but the fact is, WOT is a niche that a tiny, tiny fraction of the Bitcoin-o-sphere uses at all and an even smaller fraction that uses it regularly.