Topic: TradeFortress is a scammer. - page 10. (Read 14504 times)

TradeFortress has said that he is sending BTC to your Ripple account.  Not that he is sending Ripple BTC. This is a PROMISE to pay real BTC.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2175378
In this post he writes: "Over 177 BTC has being sent."

He didn't say "177 non-redeemable ripple-fake-btc sent"  He said he sent 177 BTC.

He said he's giving away 1 BTC on Ripple.   In order to do that, he is giving people an IOU for a BTC (a PROMISE to pay you 1 BTC)  that can be redeemed by you giving him back the IOU.  He knows this, knows he will not redeem any of his IOUs (won't fulfill his PROMISE to pay you the BTC) and is using the trust he is asking people to give him to steal BTC IOU's issued by legitimate providers that will redeem their receipts for real BTC.   It's a scam, he's running the scam and he's a scumbag for doing it.

There is no error in the Ripple system.  The system is based on IOUs- trust and receipts and promises to pay.  When you issue a BTC-ripple you are issuing a PROMISE TO PAY THE REAL THING.   He knows this and is tricking people, but that's not all he's doing.   He's tricking them and then stealing BTC-ripple IOUs from vendors that will fulfill their PROMISE to redeem the IOU's with REAL BITCOINS (unlike this douchebag).

That's not a "social experiment" - that's called fraud.   It doesn't matter that he's using a system that people don't understand in order to perpetrate the fraud.  He is using misrepresentation and most Bitcoiner's ignorance of how Ripple works in order to do defraud people (or enable them to be defrauded by others).

Ripple as a system isn't meant to send actual BTC, it's meant to send IOUs.  Douchebag TradeFortress knows this.  

The only currency in Ripple that is similar to BTC is XRP.

I see nothing that says that TradeFortress plans to redeem the IOUs he has issued and to make matters worse he sent the following private IM to me when I asked him about it:


So he is essentially saying he won't be redeeming the IOUs he's issued but will profit by exchanging his own for one's issued by providers that do redeem their IOU's.

This is a flat out scam.

He can pretend that he's finding a "flaw" in Ripple, but the entire Ripple payment system is based on Trust and by tricking new members into thinking that he is giving them a Bitcoin by having them trust him for 100 BTC in the Ripple interface he is not exposing a flaw in the system, but rather exposing himself as a scumbag scammer.

So you were one of the one's who blindly posted there address, then found out with was an experiment WHICH WAS CLEARLY OUTLINED IN HIS POST.

So now your butt is hurting so much you needed to make a post flinging blind(read as ignorant) accusations?

Pls leave.

Srs.

I believe it's called selling someone a bill of goods.

TradeFortress knows what BTC is. He knows that his IOU recipients understand BTC the same way.

No, he just gave people Ripple TradeFortress bitcoins - they have a market value independent of bitcoins based on demand. People can trade these coins and establish a value based on market forces.
Since the word 'bitcoin' is made up it can mean anything - the word 'bitcoin' has no legal status.
If I say I'll give you $20 which $ am I referring to? Australian? Canadian? or my own made up $ currency?

Maybe the problem is how few of us actually understand Ripple.

When I look at the linked page, it seems Ripple is telling me TF owes ~$900 and ~.04BTC. How do we see how much money TF took from others (not trust, but the redeemable BSTP BTC notes)?

Not exactly. It's more like this:

1. TradeFortress issues a cryptographically signed, digital promise to provide actual Bitcoins in the future when the promise is redeemed

2. TradeFortrees breaks his promise.

Well.. They don't loose actual BTC.. they loose BTC IOUs from another issuer (Bitstamp) whom they trust too. And they don't really loose it.. They just get TradeFortress BTC IOUs instead.

The problem is that unlike Bitstamp (who is trustworthy) TradeFortress doesn't want to acknowledge that he has to pay his debts. So you shouldn't have trusted him. If you trusted him - you loose.

I don't understand what's going on here.

So far people are claiming this sequence of events:

1. TradeFortress posts thread in newbie section asking people to do something on ripple and that he will give them one ripple BTC.

1a. TradeFortress does not mention that people who follow his instructions could lose BTC.

2. People follow TradeFortresses instructions

3. At least one person ends up losing *actual* BTC because of TradeFortress.

4. This is completely acceptable.

Is this correct?

I wasn't scammed, i've just wanted to warn others.

I've saw the thread in the morning, posted there to warn people but the post was deleted, and yesterday evening when i came back to home i saw the thread full of potentially scammed people.

Pretty unethical what TF has done.

There was obviously ulterior motives at hand when that thread was made (The one you got scammed by).

Doubt you're going to achieve anything through this thread however. This isn't the first time he's dodged bullets as far as scam accusations go. Just google it lol

premise: if you give 1 btc to a person, he or she can default on this loan
conclusion: ripple is scam
perfect logic 

No, it shows how stupid it is to trust strangers in general and TF in particular.

But the IOU system itself is great, because it allows for P2P cash payments, i.e. electronic long distance transactions that are netted and then settled in cash with your trusted associates. This is exactly the sort of thing that will allow BTC <-> fiat exchanges to continue even if governments are unwise enough to try to suppress it.

And now you all experienced first hand(again) how bad a debt based currency is.

I can only LOL.

I've opened up an issue in Github so that the client can be more explicit:

Second trust line for the same currency should produce a warning dialog (github.com)

What a salesman! - I've put in a bid.

Yep, they are scarce so far, but you can buy few. Or probably TradeFortress would send them for free if you ask him.


Regarding the flaw of Ripple... This is quite discussible. IMHO it is not the system flawed, it is trust to this particular issuer flawed.

The issuer of IOUs knows what IOU means and what BTC means and what BTC IOU means... Only the ones that trusted that issuer could loose anything. So is it a Ripple scam, or the issuer, who abused the trust?

There are very few TradeFortressRippleBitcoinIOUcoins out there - they may actually be worth more than 1btc - they may become collectors items in the future.

His reasoning is probably along the lines of "1 'BTC' on Ripple does not even mean 'bitcoin', it can mean anything!".

At least he gave these away for free, still there can be considerable harm done to anyone keeping the 100 BTC trust line to him. I'd advise anyone to remove the trust (= trusting him for 0 BTC) asap, especially if there is any intention of having other BTC IOUs in the same account.

An IOU is a promise to pay. TradeFortress has issued IOUs which are essentially promises. He did this using the Ripple system. All of his transactions are part of the ledger. But he hasn't let anyone redeem his promises into actual Bitcoins.

This is no different than someone coming to the forum and saying "I owe you XXX BTC and I promise to pay you in the future." Except that he did it using a cryptographically secure accounting system (called Ripple).

To make matters worse, he took advantage of people by using the forum to promise bitcoins to people in order to get them to extend trust to him in the Ripple system. Then he used that trust to loot their Bitstamp BTC IOUs, replacing them with his worthless "TradeFortress BTC IOUs" (promises to pay Bitcoins).

All of this information is right there in the Ripple ledger. His Ripple address is rH3bZsvVUhzugvcYuJVoSYCEMHkfK6wHNv and you can see his transaction history here:

https://ripple.com/graph/#r3kmLJN5D28dHuH8vZNUZpMC43pEHpaocV

This shows that he has promised users 1,454.65 worth of Bitcoins. But when you try to redeem these promises, he does not pay the Bitcoins he promised.

If the SCAMMER tag applies to someone who makes a promise and then does not deliver, then TradeFortress is the poster child.