Topic: Trust Building List - Ron Gross (Read 6223 times)

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.

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........

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?

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 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.

What is the incentive to do that?  Honest question.  I could see something like that working but there has to be an incentive for the person making the vouch.  Otherwise it is risk x to gain 0 which is always a bad decision.   Interesting concept to monetize trust.  It makes me thing some system is there I just can't see it through the coffee starved fog in my brain.

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.

Ok, but to the outside world it will all hinge on trusting you.
Can you take such a responsibility (or is it even reasonable to ask such a thing from someone) ?

You should at the very least provide this information about yourself to your users before you can put claim on any other persons information.
You use ID as a tool for ensuring a trust relation with the people on your list.
But how can users of the list ensure a trust relation between then and you without using the same tools on you?

"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.

For the amounts over lets say 10 BTC I agree this would be a good measure, pay like .5 btc to a trusted party to perform a short interview where the person would have to take the webcam and show the outside of the home so it can be tracked down on google maps. Thats kinda difficult to fake.

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.

I am willing to sell insurance about certain people ... a subset of my FT list.
But why would you expect that I give such insurance for free?

Pirate had plenty of "WD"-type trust. How about a trust metric that really means something:

BTCBTC - I believe this person is trustworthy and reliable, and I will reimburse anyone up to xxx BTC if this person is shown to be untrustworthy or unreliable.

Yeah it does have some parallels.  In making a "BTC-vouch" you are trusting the person you are vouching not to cause a financial loss much like when you deposit your money/gold/btc in a bank you are trusting the banker not to cause a financial loss/theft.


Just had a weird idea.  If a system like that ever developed (where people backed "vouches" with financial penalties) you could see professional "trust-bondsman".  Say some new trader has no rep or little rep and he needs rep to get rep.  So he goes to a "trust-bondsman" who collects some ID, makes some verifying phone calls, and requires the new trader to put up some funds into escrow (say 20 BTC).  The trust bondsman may then offer x BTC of rep (will pay x BTC for a busted trade).  The 20 BTC are just escrowed so later when the new trader has enough self earned rep he can collect his escrow back (minus a fee).  Higher level of guarantee may require more extensive dox (mail verifciation, public records search, etc) and a larger escrow.  In time the bondman may offer a higher x BTC on the same escrowed amount.

Anyways feel free to ignore just bouncing some unfinished ideas out there.

Isn't that how banking started?..

What is the incentive to do that?  Honest question.  I could see something like that working but there has to be an incentive for the person making the vouch.  Otherwise it is risk x to gain 0 which is always a bad decision.   Interesting concept to monetize trust.  It makes me thing some system is there I just can't see it through the coffee starved fog in my brain.

Pirate had plenty of "WD"-type trust. How about a trust metric that really means something:

BTCBTC - I believe this person is trustworthy and reliable, and I will reimburse anyone up to xxx BTC if this person is shown to be untrustworthy or unreliable.

Pirate had plenty of "WD"-type trust. How about a trust metric that really means something:

BTCBTC - I believe this person is trustworthy and reliable, and I will reimburse anyone up to xxx BTC if this person is shown to be untrustworthy or unreliable.

Indeed. Do you know of a better existing website to manage this list?
If not, it should be built (and will eventually be built).

Until the site exist, I posted the list here as a public service.

Lists won't work for large communities.
It would become impractical to go through them in no time at all.
It would be much better if all things that rely on trust would move to a different location on the web which has facilities to deal with trust relations.
This board is already bogged down by impractical ammounts of impractical lists of stuff.

I foresee a structured large-scale graphic web-of-trust wiki-style reference with history that's dynamic and distributed...

In light of the last few crazy months, I wanted to share a list of all the people in the Bitcoin world that I trust to some degree. I will try to update this list sometimes (no promises) ... if you think I should trust you, pm/post and if I do, I'll add you to the list.

You are welcome to post your own message on this thread (or create another), with a list of people whom you personally trust.

Here are some trust flags:

- WD - I believe this person is a man of his word.
- RL - I have met this person in real life.
- ID - I believe I know who this person is.
- FT - I financially trust this person to honor his word.

(Sorry for overly complicating this, but I think it's important to break down trust into specific elements)

The list itself has now become a table, hosted at Google Docs

I will post when I updated this list.

The list itself has now become a table, hosted at Google Docs

I will post when I updated this list.