Category: Bitcoin
The Average Scam Band
Thursday October 13, 2016
Let’s see what an average scam in Bitcoin looks like today. For reference we will use this Reddit post from a known scammer. A complete newcomer clueless as to where to ascertain real knowledge will likely fall for such a scam.
The previous tight “lockstep” correlation between Bitcoin price and volume ended in late 2014 – with the price now dipping/lagging below the level predicted by Metcalfe’s law.
First we see the utilization of pseudoscience as evidence to a claim. Con artists usually use scientific sounding theories to back their con.
Metcalfe’s Law was debunked earlier, and it has even been postulated that connections in a network such as Bitcoin can detract from the system’s value. Using this as evidence for a claim ignores the existence of scammers and malicious actors. In this case the real scammers are ignored since they are too difficult to see for the average derp, and instead more visible and less malicious scammers are targeted instead.
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Bitcoin – Four Years In
Wednesday October 12, 2016
October 9th marked 4 years since I first registered my GPG key into the Web of Trust. As those years have passed, the pandemonium fortress that is IRC has weathered the storm of idiots attempting to unleash an Eternal September onto Bitcoin. The saddest thing is as the idiots cheer themselves into a stupor, the real enemy has successfully created immigration checkpoints known as KYC (know your customer), in an attempt to apply capital controls to Bitcoin. The invisible war continues, but I remain hopeful.
In September 2012, I bought $400 of Bitcoin, totaling approximately 22 BTC, and invested it on GLBSE for entertainment, upon which GLBSE closed and nominal losses turned to realized losses overnight. The greatest lesson I learned here is easily earned money, in perception, tends to amount to scammer money. As Dave Chappelle once said imitating Puff Daddy, “You can’t choke all your problems away. It takes hard work.”
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Thug Motiviation 101 Applied
Thursday October 6, 2016
Due to the nature of the New York Bitlicense, buying Bitcoin can result in physical harm. This war on Bitcoin has resulted in a significantly less cash deals occurring, funneling users en masse to KYC checkpoints. Cash deals now require a significant amount of trust, but allow for extraordinary financial empowerment if due diligence is applied correctly.
Each tier of trapping has different caveats, but similarly aligned strategies. They all aim to preserve anonymity and incentivize recurrent relationships to develop trust. All scenarios require a TRB node to generate addresses with funkenstein’s import/export privkey patch applied.
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Metcalfe’s Lie
Thursday August 11, 2016
Delusional consumers in revolt of the mass adoption variety, often utilize pseudoscience to advance their agendas. Voices have formulated pseudoarguments in such quantity it has become a disservice to the endearing novice seeking actual education. One of these psuedoarguments involving the debunked Metcalfe’s “Law”, has resulted in an endorsement of scamming. Hopefully, showing the failed application of this pseudoscience in Bitcoin, will allow for the endearing novice to understand the dangers of becoming too friendly to scammers.
Now for the pseudoscientific argument:
Well, I wasn’t the first one who said that. I[t] was some guy named Metcalfe. And as I already mentioned, “Metcalfe’s Law” has functioned pretty good up until now for Bitcoin – showing that, yes, more people does mean more value – despite the fact that you for some reason refuse to believe that.
Building policy around this logic in Bitcoin will inevitably lead to an influx of scammers that prey on weak novices. Unfortunately many have placed confidence in this flawed advice.
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