BadBear is invested in BFL. Gmaxwell has been promised free BFL units, ostensibly in support of his development. Gmaxwell is also extremely angry about how Avalon snubbed him, claiming publicly that Jgarzik was the only developer to purchase an Avalon unit and rewarding him accordingly. In actual fact Gmaxwell had also ordered a unit and he is absolutely seething about this, seeing it as a public humiliation. He is taking a very pro BFL moderation stance because of these two factors.

I have seen private correspondence that proves this.


Nowhere near as many, and when Cablepair did buy ads the price had already been forced up by BFL bidding. He would never have given you (and yes, I mean you, because we all know where a good proportion of that money ends up. Right in your pocket) so much money if BFL hadn't driven the prices up.


Well, I have seen email correspondence that indicates you have invested in BFL. So either are lying, or people at BFL are telling lies about you to people.

This won't happen. Many moderators are on the BFL payroll, plus ad spot sales, plus Theymos owns part of BFL.

There is no clever reason to do so.


Any amount is too much.


Even if you withdrew money, it doesn't make it a wise decision.


Even if you were fortunate enough to gain money, it would still have been a stupid risk.


I have a few £50 notes in my wallet now. I could take them out, set them on fire, and I'd never feel the difference or miss the money. It would still be a completely stupid thing to do, would it not?

Yes I could. I currently hold a good bit more coins than that, and my risk management policy is to only keep money in coins that I can comfortably afford to lose. I've lost more than $63,000 in high risk ventures before. I wouldn't call it "chump change" because I have more respect for money than that, but losses like that are manageable in relation to my current financial situation. I suspect your "chump change" rhetoric is nothing more than bravado anyway.

The difference is, of course, that I lost nothing with Pirate.  I would never put money into a ponzi scheme. I suspect that I'm at least as greedy as you, but nowhere near as stupid.

Well, I'm seeing that you guys aren't really interested in transparency and accountability.

It makes no difference to me, I know that I won't be taken in by scams and poor products even if the moderators are pushing them and suppressing criticism.


Psy, it's ironic that you would come in here and criticise this idea, since it is actually designed to protect gullible people like yourself. How much did you lose to Pirate again?

You better hope that

A) A moderator isn't invested in the company or
B) The company hasn't made donations to the forum

Otherwise the scam will be allowed to continue here. That is how things work on this forum.

I'm sorry to hear you are in a bad situation. A lot of people are in the US, I gather. However mining Bitcoins is unlikely to be the answer you are looking for. I hope you aren't putting all your hopes on it. You would be better off trying to think of another solution to your financial issues.

I think many people would be willing to deal with the chore of moderation in exchange for the opportunity to clandestinely push the agenda of businesses they are invested in by belittling or suppressing criticism. Not that I am suggesting that you, or anyone else is doing that, but if one of you did choose to then it would have a great effect due to how focused the Bitcoin community is on this one single forum.

I personally think that neutrality is an important quality for forum moderation generally, but it is especially important in this situation.


There should be greater transparency about this as well. Due to the rising Bitcoin price the forum probably has $1m or more in reserve. This is supposed to be used to create new forum software but there has been no movement on this. Theymos is, after all, just a young kid in college. There's no way he should be entrusted with that kind of money without any transparency. For all we know he's blown it on prostitutes, or it's paying for his own personal expenses. Of course there's no reason to think that he would, but why risk it all on some anonymous 20 year old kid? There should be more accountability.

No, this is a wider issue.


Wouldn't you feel more comfortable knowing whether or not the mod is biased because of some financial interest?

This forum has collected a lot of donations. This, I am sure we will all agree, is a good thing.

However, I think there should be some transparency about donations. Cynical people might suggest that the forum moderation policy could be influenced by the weight of these donations.

I think that Theymos should reveal whether he has received donations from Butterfly Labs or any Butterfly Labs employees.

I would also like this thread to be home for general discussion about the transparency of donations to this forum.

In the last month or two there have been a few allegations going around of a pro-BFL bias in the moderating activities of the forum. I don't personally have a strong opinion one way or the other, but I do think that there is certainly some basis for these claims.

The Bitcoin community is still a reasonably small one. This means two things:

Firstly, the moderation team of this forum holds an incredibly powerful position. This is the main and original Bitcoin forum and the only one with a significant amount of activity. It's also worth noting that Theymos, the chief administrator of this forum, is also the chief administrator of the Bitcoin reddit, the only other Bitcoin forum with any reasonably amount of activity.

Secondly, it's not unfeasible that members of the moderation team would have a financial interest in various Bitcoin businesses. It's a small community, moderators tend to be reasonably prominent members of that community, and we're all entrepreneurial souls. This could lead to conflict of interest.

In the United Kingdom, members of parliament need to submit information to a "register of member's interests." This is a public, written record of the business interest of members of parliament. It records all of the companies they work for, have received gifts from, or have invested in. This helps prevent unfair practices under the table.

I propose a similar system for moderators of this forum. They should publicly reveal their Bitcoin business interests. This would help identify bias, as well as fend off false allegations of bias.

If moderators don't feel comfortable revealing which Bitcoin businesses they have a financial interest in succeeding, then they should reassess their suitability to be moderators.

He definitely deserves another chance as long as he pays people off.


What he was trying to achieve was make a great deal of money at no risk to himself.

Korbman, I'll post again in the future. After all, that's where we'e all heading. It's where it's at.

Hahaha. Speak of the devil eh?

I wouldn't call myself a troll. If it makes you feel better about being humiliated by me to label me one then go ahead. I've noticed a trend on these forums for people to label those with a contrary opinion to themselves "a troll". Usually how it works is the more stupid the opinion, the more likely they are to call you out for "trolling" when you disagree. It's like these people have never been questioned by anyone before, and anyone who disagrees with them must be doing it to bully them somehow. It's probably the case that no one has actually questioned them before, as they are unlikely to hold any position of responsibility or influence. I mean there's only one way to make a big mac, right?

Has anyone checked out Korbman's "investment company" website in his sig? For some dumb reason I thought he might actually be involved in real world investing (I know, I know)

It's pretty funny, here's a quote:


Wow, what a visionary.

And what is this great visionary venture capitalist's main investment?


Warren Buffet must be terrified. Keep up the good work, Mr. Galt! Truly you are a captain of industry.

Unless you pay your debts, you are not welcome here.

You are a lying, scamming sack of shit and you make me sick.

Fuck off and don't come back.

This should be a lesson to everyone, register your fucking name if you can.

Good work Micon, that'll drive the ugly fucker up the wall.

So fucking what? You challenged us to find engineers for one of your clients, as if it would be impossible. We found them in 5 minutes.

Look at what you found. You've made yourself look like a total idiot. Get out.

I must have missed the part where Rockstar games was founded and is run by a convicted fraudster.

Although it's funny because Syko G, that 18 year old BFL "engineer" you posted is actually more like a character from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas than an engineer working for a tech company.

Hahah, the problem is that cloq buqqfer niqqa

Hahah and which one of these are engineers with solid careers who have too much to lose by participating in a scam? Let me guess, it's "Syko G", the hispanic ghetto homegirl who looks like she is 20 years old max?

Or perhaps it's Mike Wazowski, who: "Went to RHS [Rosewood High School] for the most part.... Looken to meet up with old friends from school....if i add you its for a reason cause i know you or have seen you around RHS before"

So, which one of these two kids have too much to lose by participating in a scam? Are either of them even engineers?

This is fucking pathetic man you can do better than that. Where are the ENGINEERS with CAREERS BEHIND THEM?