Topic: Trust Building List - Ron Gross (Read 6162 times)

I still think it's funny you refer to something he mentioned in passing after being called on it as "his service".

I agree that bitcoin-otc WoT is powerless against true con artists. But the reason we don't have a proper rating system - not just in Bitcoin, but at all - is that doing such a thing is fundamentally hard. Even the rating system of established markets such as eBay is a joke (and even if you try to fix it in the obvious ways you still don't have something very good). You have to rely on approximations such as ripper234's list, read up on the person in question, and use your own judgement taking into account his total liabilities and the legitimacy of his offer.

im not shunning anyone i just see too much of pirates story line.

nothing wrong with doing a business but hopefully he atleast read some isreali laws on the matter.

and its not my loss at all. i have done well getting bitcoins and litecoins without his insurance, never been scammed yet. So there is no loss to me by not using his service.

i agree with the first part of the post about their needing to be a proper credit rating/reputation system for some people to go by. as the bitcoin -otc is flawed with people gaining rep by buying rep points at 1btc a time, making it not true rep. even btc-jam can get a 8/10 with false information.

a new, better and less flawed rating system is needed... that i agree on. even if i don't trade with individuals.

You'll notice that ripper234 only mentioned insurance after it was pointed out it was expected of him. I don't think monetization was the purpose of starting this thread, but even if it was - so what? Is it wrong to do business anymore?

I agree though that if in fact monetization was the purpose, it should have been clarified from the start.

As someone who has sold Bitcoin-related sureties and lost from it, I can tell you it's not as profitable as you seem to think.

As stochastic mentioned sureties are hardly a new thing so a priori there's no reason to bash someone just for offering it, any more than if he were to sell, say, apples. One difference is that the insurer himself needs to enjoy a great deal of trust, as if the worst happens he needs to be able and willing to pay up the entire insured amount.

I trust ripper234 and I say he's definitely good for an insurance of, say, 100 BTC - and I'd be willing to offer second-level surety (Oh noes! I offered a service!). But if he were to have a total insurance liability of 10000 BTC I wouldn't recommend insuring with him, wouldn't give 2nd-level insurance, and wouldn't trust him myself with more money. Not yet, anyway.

Search harder.

He has a Facebook account. I have met him several times and can verify that the linked photo is of him. There are also videos online, e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zIbbA8GrL4&playnext=1&list=PLs2y5QtCoQ9q4738Rti3O8AqoJ_DhnNm4&feature=results_video (it's in Hebrew, and due to bad camera positioning he's invisible through most of it).

I cannot say I am 100% certain his real name is Ron Gross, but the sign on the door of his apartment includes the name "Ron", and I have some evidence his last name is Gross (which I will not currently disclose due to privacy concerns)

Of course, if you believe we have a secret agenda you have no reason to listen to us both saying we trust each other. But if you trust one of us you should trust the other - within reason.

How about the volume of his high-quality activity on the forum and bitcoin.stackexchange?

Anyway, shunning him for no apparent reason is your loss.

FYI, here is a public photo of me:

http://excellence.technion.ac.il/Excellence/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&TMID=610&LNGID=1&FID=513&PID=870&IID=979

And my "real" name is very similar to the name I use on this forums.
Hint, it starts with "Ron" and ends with "Gross", and has nothing in between.

wow de ja vu of how pirate began.

as soon as i read the first post talking about gaining trust, i thought. hmmm whats he going to sell me next.. a dozen posts later there it was..... insurance.

show a list of who he trusts.. then suddenly gets a big idea of how to make money out of the idea.. but this time not a bank. but insurance........

just a shame you done all of it in one single thread.

nice forum avatar of not a real face. along with the only other picture of you being in a skii mask only showing your eyes on your other links including your youtube.

you wont be in my circle of trust even if you do tweet about bitcoin in march 2011 to show you known about it longer then some others.

i trawled the internet and found other websites not listed on your links and found you have been removing pictures and replacing them all with your skii mask pic.
eg http://www.meetup.com/bitcoin-il/members/14443048/ there were 4 pictures.. but now just 2 one is a birthday cake and the other 3 are the skii mask. even your youtube is limited to the skii mask pic.

may i suggest if your even considering becoming a business requesting money in exchange for trust then do a inaba, gavin andersen thing and show your full face atleast.

answer me this Ron Gross what is your real isreali name?

I might be interested in selling insurance regarding some of the people that have Financial Trust on my list, if anyone is interested.

The list, as it stands, is just my opinion, and of course should not be taken as the sole reason to trust these individuals.

Do your homework. Caveat Emptor.

I love how the wheel is constantly re-invented.

It is called a surety.  Say Alice wants to contract something with Bob, but Bob does not have any reputation.  Alice goes to Zack who guarantees that Bob will do what the contract says.  Alice transfers the risk of Bob not honoring the contract to Zack, whom charges a small fee for the accepting of that risk.

The classic incentive in these types of systems is associative ostracism. See for example work by Avner Greif on Jewish trading communities in Europe.

The group maintains a list of people who are trustworthy. Anyone who is shown to violate that trust is ostracized. Anyone who does business with ostracized individuals is also ostracized.

This last issue is the new wrinkle. Strict guilt by association makes a web of trust much more powerful as an enforcement mechanism. Essentially you are giving up your own judgement to the community.
This makes unenforced community judgement powerful.

The thing that many people don't seem to understand (and that I understood but failed to act upon) is that trust isn't a boolean thing. An FT for, say, Jeff Garzik means that if he has no liabilities and is requested to be an escrow for 100 BTC, the chances of a problem are close to 0, and for that the list is useful.

It does not mean that if the person borrows myriads of BTC for a suspicious purpose then the money is safe (the greater the total amount, the more the person has to gain by defaulting, and the crazier the offer, the worse the likelihood ratio for originating in a legitimate purpose). No trust table is enough to justify putting money into that. If someone would do that based on such a table, he'll lose his money somehow anyway, probably in an equal amount - and in this light the table doesn't really do any harm.

I don't know if your list is a good idea. You giving your own opinion without any guarantees might mislead some people into trusting the individuals on your list causing them serious losses as it happened with Patrick Harnett. I think if you will vouch for others you should so so by offering an insurance. A simple list of who you think is trustworthy is at best worthless.

Removed Patrick Harnett from the list for the time being - he owes people money for too long, and is considered to be in default.

What would be useful here is some form of zero-knowledge proof, where a person could prove that they are someone who has a real-life reputation in good standing without revealing their identity, unless they default on a contract.  Nothing against ripper234 (I applaud his efforts), but it seems to me that trusting someone to safeguard our ID in a centralized location takes us a step backwards.  That's what we already have in the existing banking system.  Can Ripple and Open Transactions be of benefit to us?

http://www.mememaker.net/static/images/memes/707490.jpg
lol

Added an obvious omission - Jeff Garzik, a Bitcoin developer (ID + FT)

This

It would be nice if all the people who gave pirate a rating on #bitcoin-otc had their own level of trust downgraded when he defaulted.

There should be some consequence to rating someone who later turns out to be a scammer. Unfortunately the people who gave him 10 ratings had no consequence to those ratings at all.

Added LoweryCBS with the ID flag.


I've also added this note to the doc:

Please note that trust is relative. E.g., ID means that I _think_ I know who this person is ... I am not giving any guarantees here, and I can make mistakes.
Use your own judgement!

Added Ben Reeves AKA piuk, developer of blockchain.info and My Wallet (ID + FT)

Updated the list of possible evidence to include an ebay account in good standing.

There is no responsibility being taken here - I am simply doing a public service by outing my views here.
Be an adult, and do your own homework.


Good idea, added to OP, except for photo ID scans ... it's not something I won't public, for obvious reasons.
People who don't know me can ask my references (I added some on the OP).

You can also email me (email >> pm) at [email protected] and ask for more clarifications ... I'm not saying I'll provide any, but you can ask