Topic: Unfair Scammer Judgements - page 2. (Read 3418 times)

Contracts with minors aren't enforceable. There is nothing else to add.

All three steps are optional and not enforceable.

That's a pretty good way to sum it up.  Thanks!

There are three stages of consensus:

1. Negotiation. The two parties discuss the situation with each other and attempt to reach an acceptable solution. Being a minor does not affect this stage at all. 99% of disputes are resolved in this stage.
2. Mediation. The two parties discuss the situation with a third party and the third party proposes an acceptable solution the two parties ratify. Again, there is no reason why being a minor affects this stage. 0.99% of disputes are resolved in this stage.
3. Arbitration. Here, and only here, does the law come in. A third party enforces a solution upon the two parties to ensure consensus. If a minor is entering a contract, the contract may be declared void by the arbiter. 0.01% of disputes are resolved in this stage.

There is no reason a 14-year-old has no business entering contracts, because the law only handles 0.01% of cases. Most cases are resolved through the cheaper methods of negotiation or mediation.

*Sigh*  So, what you're saying is that I can't sign up for an account on any website on the internet?  The ToS's count as contracts.

And, also, isn't one of the points of Bitcoin that it's free from any centralized government?  This, in turn, should mean that anyone could use it.

I'm not saying that I am free from the law (I'm not), but that I should be allowed to use Bitcoin.  


Also, you're assuming that any contract that I make would go to court.  I just want to point out that almost none of broken contracts in this forum go to court.

danieldaniel, aren't you 14?  You have NO BUSINESS entering into contracts with other people, because they mean nothing in the eyes of the law.

Of course it is the case. The operators of this page are in the shadows, only crooks need to operate in secrecy. They dont care who gets robbed. Just ask yourself who operates a business that you aren't allowed to see? Fucking bitcoin is full of pieces of shit.   

Exactly this.  I'm sure many of the global mods would be happy to do this.

So, is the forum consensus that I can scam someone as long as I don't SAY I can't?

I can understand this, thats not a responsability or burden I would want myself. Perhaps in this case you should trust the judgement to another moderator or a well reputed member. After viewing the evidence myself I do believe that he has indeed scammed people, with the added proof of deleted posts and not defending himself things look even worse. I personallu did not lose anything, but am sickened by the fact that he's is the first service I have had bitcoin in myself that has done something like this. I suppose that was poor judgement on my part.

His forums, his rules. If he doesn't want to tag him, then he won't. I think he should, since there's well enough of evidence. But users choose which forums they use.

Theymos, more and more people are coming out and saying that Andrew scammed them.  I usually don't start these kinds of threads complaining about the forum, but I really disagree with the decision you are making here. 

He made a thread recently (I remember someone posted about it in his scammer thread) asking for new business, which was of course locked (nobody could call him out).  People are going to to trust him if he doesn't have the red X's.  I hate to say it, but many people call looking to see if their counter-party has a scammer tag "research," and see no point to google his name or look through the forums.

I don't see what else we have to prove to you.

I don't want to join the witchhunt, but here's my case.

I was promised a generous payout for advertising, which I believed to be too good to be true; however, as Andrew Bitcoiner seemed trustworthy, I went for it. After very little time (less than a week) the account balance reached a point where the "automatic payout" should have activated. Instead of a payout, I was greeted with an inaccessible site for some time. I waited it out, leaving a broken advertisement on that I expected would earn nothing; the reason for this was purely laziness. After the site went back up, my balance was reset. Although the amount was little (just over 0.1 BTC), I immediately pulled the advertisement and my initial concerns were proved valid.

I believe Andrew Bitcoiner was acting extremely unethically through this account reset, that coincidentally occurred after an outage. While I never bothered to speculate or research on the cause of the outage, I have reason to believe he was hacked and intentionally dropped small amounts off people's balances to compensate. This was particularly noticeable on my account because of its newness; there was a very small balance anyhow. This would explain why only a few users reported problems.

Although I am certain that he is a scammer, I can understand the doubt and uncertainty (after all, I am also not the Universal Arbiter of Bitcoin Truth and Justice). In order to ensure that he does not scam more users on these forums, and in an incognito manner (the most dangerous form of scamming), I strongly recommend the use of a scammer tag which can be removed if he successfully defends himself.

In support of this recommendation, I must remind you of the purpose of a scammer tag—one, to deter scamming, and two, to remind newbies to choose an honest vendor. Andrew Bitcoiner has clearly acted dishonestly, and newbies should be reminded of such.

That being the case, please reconsider GigaVPS for a scammer tag. A perpetual mining bond is either perpetual or the principle must be repaid less dividends. Doing neither while the borrower alters the original contract to impose a time limit and prevent transfers between consenting parties is thinly veiled theft.

You can defend yourself if you aren't scamming you can prove it. I like catching and outing scammers but it is a lot of work.

This is too easy to result into lynch mobs, not good idea.

This is why there needs to be policing of the forums by the members. There has to me a flagging system where post that are flagged say 10 times from different users will be removed if you get 5 post removed your account will be review for permanent ban if scammer status is confirmed.

You could just post scammer or not to suspected scammer with a poll attached. After 24 hours if the poll says yes you get banned.

it would be cool if you could see the number of flags a post has and who flagged. 

That.

I don't expect he will ever pay me 13.14 btc. But I don't want more people falling on his trap. Scam accusations were already flying when I got scammed, if he was tagged, it would have saved lots of people from grief.

Of course, if he ever pay me, I will be happy to remove my accusations, but he should.be tagged until he pays everyone back.

If Andrew Bitcoiner doesn't get a scammer tag, then more people are going to get scammed out of their coins.

I don't say this to criticize; it's good that you realize what you do and do not have time for. But ff this is the case, then why not delegate this responsibility to the global moderators? It's a part of the job, and if you're not going to do it, then someone should.


The scam thread for him has been up for quite a while now: he's had plenty of time to defend himself. Other scammers have been given much less time than he has.

Terms of service or not, it should be clear that the guy has other motives in mind for the money people have given him. And it is clear that those people did not expect him to or agree with him doing what he did. The purpose of a scammer tag is to warn people of someone who is out to take their money and run: I think it's warranted in this case, whether or not that statement was in his ToS.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1179111

Tried logging on the site (with my password that I really remember well), did not worked.
Tried creating account... old account still exists.

Read the site news... Oh, several accounts got broken in december, and he just ask you to recreate them (so, if any of those accounts had funds, you are screwed... mine like I said, was empty anyway, he never returned my 13.14 BTC balance or deposited it).

Also you can try to juggle the amounts received and sent on that the all you want, it won't add up to exactly 13.14

On the day I was also doing arbitrage (buying BTC for USD in mtgox, and selling the BTC on mercadobitcoin for BRL), and decided to have some fun (I like playing blackjack) and spend some mtgoxBTC on bitjack and after I won 10 BTC (I spent 3 BTC on his site), I decided to withdraw to mercadobitcoin because it would break my strategy to continue playing (Because bet limit), and poof, 13.14 BTC is gone (the 10.14 I won, and the 3 BTC I deposited).

Reason why I was doing arbitrage: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg360zczsg2012-07-15zeg2012-10-15ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv (ie: extreme volatility on those specific days, leading to me having 10% profits on arbitrage, because when the price climbed, BRL climbed faster than USD, and when USD fell down, BRL remained high until I did my arbitrage).

Seriously, 3 BTC back then was like chump change, I was gambling with it because I liked to play blackjack, but the fact that LOTS of people pointed that the site operator (Andrew Bitcoiner) was stealing people money, and nothing was made about it, make me very sad, specially because many people unwary of it, end falling on the same trap too (deposit on his site, play a bit, get a failed withdraw).

I might understand the site operator having losing streaks, but he never made a attempt to pay back, never fixed the bug on his site (that when you fail a withdraw the site deducts your balance anyway), and when pressed about it, he edited bitjack post to read "removed" instead of replying.