My first post yes. Been reading the forums for ages. But I feel it neccessary to state one simple demand to mtgox and the current situation about bruce wagner. Please stop sponsoring this proven con man (and most likely affiliated with mybitcoin.com - tod williams tom williams). I desire an official statement from mtgox that they are in no way associated with this asshole. If that is not possible to produce then one question is left, why? The reason for this post is Bruce Wagners latest bitcoin show where he states that he is in tokyo to visit mtgox. Make it official that this guy is in no way on the good side with bitcoins biggest trading site.
And please no posts that this is a newbs forum, first post so no choice on my part. I had to make this post to relieve my worries about the continuation of being affiliated with this scammer.
This is not an official statement, there is not enough information at this point for such a thing. I'll try to expose our views at this point.
For information we are not "sponsoring" Bruce Wagner, we are buying advertising on the Bitcoin Show as many others have been doing or are doing, which was (until now) the only show about bitcoins to have enough viewers to start to be interesting.
Many new things have appeared during on the forum during the past 2 or 3 days, so I'll list - quickly - those here:
- About thailand "boys", the evidence produced so far is far from being anything to worry about. We know Bruce is homosexual, as he's open about this, but this has nothing to do with bitcoins. It seems from what I saw that Thailand is more "gay-friendly" than USA and it could explain Bruce's presence there and why he likes that country. Anyway without more evidence there is nothing we can decide there.
- Bruce ran Bold Funding, which was unable to do what it claims to do. He was caught and judged for this, and I believe the justice does its thing. I know Bruce have been handling a lot of funds for bitcoin users while promoting it, and I never heard of him running with someone's cash (would have been easy enough). I didn't know what he did, but I know he did a great job in promoting bitcoins, allowing people to buy coins with cash without ever defrauding anyone.
- About the case in NY and some guy asking $500k in 2008, that case seems to be closed, open again, ... anyway it's not settled yet, and I'm wondering a bit about the guy on the other side. As long as the case is not settled there's no way to know who's wrong, and considering how long this have been running I wouldn't think it's anything serious.
- Finally about Bruce's affiliation with MyBitcoin, this is quite amusing. Not only this is highly unlikely considering technical details on the way MyBitcoin was run, but the "link" (TodWilliams?) is the most ridiculous thing I ever saw.
We are however aware of the image problem this represents, both for us and the bitcoin community as a whole, and are considering which steps should be taken in the future.
I do think that everyone around here are slightly too busy reading about Bruce (I don't know about you but I'm already bored of this) and ignoring some more important things happening on Bitcoin. We are about to start service for Bitomat users and open multi currency support, among other things, and various things are moving within the bitcoin community.
The evidence is overwhelming. I find your judgment questionable at best at this point. Moreover, if you can't make a reasoned and thought-out judgment about this issue, than how am I to trust you with my moneys and assets? The simple answer is I can't, if you can make this kind of mistake, than you can make other mistakes in judgment just as bad.
Therefore I am closing my MtGox accounts, and taking my business to another firm. I will also be directing my partners, friends and associates to do the same.