Topic: Trust Building List - Ron Gross - page 2. (Read 6218 times)

"I will kill you, later?"

If anyone whom I don't currently know/trust wants to try and get me to add him to my ID column, you can try sending me some of these to [email protected]:


1. Good quality scan of ID/passport
2. Facebook/LinkedIn account
3. Any other details you think can help

I said trust will be built on various types of evidence ... and I will be the final judge.
Forum posting history is also a strong indicator for me.

You are completely free not to trust my judgement.

As to why I consider the above as valid evidence, please check out Why I Trust Patrick Harnett. So far this trust has paid off for me.

This way, you're creating a trust issue with yourself.

Why would you trust ID's and facebook accounts? They can be faked.
And as an extention to this, why would other people trust you trusting potentially fake ID's or facebook pages?
Can you actually check ID's and passports? If not they are worthless to you.

And why should people trust you with such information?
Because you said so in a forum post?
That's a pretty poor base for trust.

No, you will see which people ripper234 is trusting.
Then you'll have to consider whether you trust ripper234.

If anyone whom I don't currently know/trust wants to try and get me to add him to my ID column, you can try sending me some of these to [email protected]:


1. Good quality scan of ID/passport
2. Facebook/LinkedIn account
3. Any other details you think can help

I will of course keep any details you wish confidential.
I am not promising to add you to my ID trust list ... I will consider the entire "evidence pile" and choose whether it's sufficient for me, or not.

Adding this to the op.

What do you mean "in case"? The list is posted.

I am not currently comfortable with publicly exposing specific details like amount of BTC or other specific tx details. Even a mean tx amount is too much for my privacy needs.

Also, those parties have some privacy needs of their owns, which should be accounted for.

If anyone whom I don't currently know/trust wants to try and get me to add him to my ID column, you can try sending me some of these to [email protected]:


1. Good quality scan of ID/passport
2. Facebook/LinkedIn account
3. Any other details you think can help

I will of course keep any details you wish confidential.
I am not promising to add you to my ID trust list ... I will consider the entire "evidence pile" and choose whether it's sufficient for me, or not.

Adding this to the op.

There needs to be a "I know where you live" rating.  I suggest "IWKYL."

OP, in case you go through with the list i would suggest (with stress) to also collect data on the amount of BTC involved in the successfull transactions and present a mean.
That way you can know for what sum that person is generally trusted.

I don't expect that you personally will give such insurance for free. But there are some situations where people might do this.

Two individuals might choose to mutually assure each other's performance. Or someone might agree to underwrite a retailer's performance in return for a discount at that retailer.

Mobodick thought that this kind of assurance was like Matthew's bet. It isn't. It's like how Matthew's bet would be if there was a whole web of assurance. Suppose Matthew's performance was underwritten by MagicalTux, Gavin Andresen and Vladimir, and furthermore that those guarantors' performance was underwritten by others. That would be enough to satisfy most people.

There needs to be a "I know where you live" rating.  I suggest "IWKYL."

Thanks for list, I'm glad I can look at that and at least see who "other" people are trusting at the moment.

On the note of insurance - I think thats possible, if it was underwriten correctly with the correct premium for the size of risk... why not - thats what insurance companies do today (I have worked as an insurance broker a long long time ago so do have a basic understanding of mechinisms involved... not that I can remember any of the specific's nowdays ).

I'd like to make that list one day, but there's time for that.

Matts bet (as stupid as it was) does highlight that trust has limits.  Prior to the bet I would have trusted Matt with a couple BTC, maybe even a couple hundred BTC but 10,000 BTC requires a lot of trust (and 80,000 BTC even with a signed promissary note is just silly.  Think your bank will give you a $1,000,000 promissory note).   

If the bettors stopped and looked at it this way:
"Would I transfer my 10,000 BTC to an address Matt controls and trust him to transfer it back?"

Most probably would have said no.  If they said no then they logically shouldn't have placed an unescrowed wager.   Matt's bettors while individually bet small sums collectively were trusting Matt to pay almost a million dollars.  Someone betting 20 BTC wasn't trusting Matt to pay 20 BTC (why would he pay 20 BTC and default on the 79,980 BTC) they were trusting him to pay 80,000 BTC.   I don't trust anyone that much.  Period. 



"Trust-bonds" could have limits.  They wouldn't need to be open ended.  i.e. I pledge 5 BTC that ripper234 won't bust a trade of up to 100 BTC.  I trust ripper234 moderately well but if he pulled a "open bet 10,000 BTC with no escrow" obviously that goes beyond how much I trust him.  Obviously trust bonds would need to be revokable (maybe with a delay).  I trust ripper234 (to use him as an example) but if opened a "magic investing biz offering 7% per week" I should be able to revoke that trust.

For large transaction escrow is the only way to go.  Vlad made a 5,000 BTC bet but it was escrowed.  Neither party had to trust the other (although they did need to trust the escrow agent).  Where "trust-bonds" could be useful is smaller tx where the incentive to scam is less and the complexity and cost of an escrow is not worthwhile.  For example if I buy a Steam game from some seller for 2 BTC I am not going to escrow that.  Still if there are two sellers and one has a significant amount of trust-bonds pledged towards him well I probably would pick the more trusted one.

The issue still remains how do you handle disputes.  Still just kinda thinking out loud here but I could see a system of decentralized arbiters. Maybe people that are trusted enough can opt-in as an arbiter (collecting a fee for arbitration) and the system randomly selects arbiter in the case of a dispute.  If an arbiter acts in bad faith well there is a consequence, people could pull their trust-bonds and the bad arbiter not only is not longer an arbiter but also no longer is trusted by other traders.

The only bad thing is I can't see how this can be done completely decentralized.  Semi-decentralized maybe ...

The underwriting doesn't affect how much you trust Matthew. It affects how risky the transaction is, because if Matthew doesn't pay then the underwriters can be asked to pay.

I don't get it. Even if Mathews performance would have been underwritten in ths way, would there have been a reason to trust him in hindsight? If not, then this system would have failed, and propably not only in this obvious case.