Gold gateway

[lovejoy]

There are others who lost big time however, to the tune of $50K.

I have missed that. Who was that? I3?

Yes.  We lent him the capital for the gold inventory.  Then he ran.  I would very much support a community led campaign to track him down and pressure him into refunding the money.   I will offer a bounty of 50% to anyone who can track it down, the other 50% will be put toward improving BTS.

With this sort of motivation, I have a feeling Gentso will come to his senses before too long... Hanover, PA is trivial, and the Philippines sure are lovely this time of year.

[Thom]

Wow somebody was paid to deliver something for bitshares and it turned out to be some half assed attempt that never came close to what was promised?!?!

Inconceivable!!

What the hell are you talking about? It was exactly what was promised, the first precious metal off-ramp for BitShares. jsidhu probably still has access to the code. Too bad nobody wanted to buy any PM from it.

Actually, in retrospect, probably it was a good thing they didn't seeing as they might have also been victimized. I came pretty close to being one of them.

My mistake. I didn't know you could actually use the service.  What is stopping someone else from opening the business again under a different name?  Is all the work that was done lost?

I don't think so, at least not the website and store shopping cart. However b/c of the radical changes of BitShares 2.0 the backend interface to would have to be totally rewritten. There isn't a single storefront or shopping cart that survived the transition from BitShares 1.0 to 2.0, and there was no advanced notice to the community about it so they could prepare. If that ever happens again it would probably be the death of the BitShares brand. IMO the transition was poorly handled.

[lil_jay890]

Wow somebody was paid to deliver something for bitshares and it turned out to be some half assed attempt that never came close to what was promised?!?!

Inconceivable!!

What the hell are you talking about? It was exactly what was promised, the first precious metal off-ramp for BitShares. jsidhu probably still has access to the code. Too bad nobody wanted to buy any PM from it.

Actually, in retrospect, probably it was a good thing they didn't seeing as they might have also been victimized. I came pretty close to being one of them.

My mistake. I didn't know you could actually use the service.  What is stopping someone else from opening the business again under a different name?  Is all the work that was done lost?

[38PTSWarrior]

50K is not enough to do stuff like that.

What's your number that makes it OK to do "stuff like that"?

5 or 50 million. But my heart could not steal from private people. I would take a train of Porsches and disappear somehow to eastern Europe [emoji14]

[fav]

a quick google gave me this option http://www.peoplebyname.com/people/orderbg.php?name=Ryan%20L%20Mechalske

[Riverhead]

He did spend some time in the Philippines - I think a couple years. It was in a small town there he planned to market bitUSD as a local currency. Good place to disappear to I guess.

He still has family in the area from what I've been able to tell from snooping. I've been looking at people adjacent him (family, friends, etc.) to see if there's any reference on social media but nothing.

Are the police involved yet?

[Thom]

Wow somebody was paid to deliver something for bitshares and it turned out to be some half assed attempt that never came close to what was promised?!?!

Inconceivable!!

What the hell are you talking about? It was exactly what was promised, the first precious metal off-ramp for BitShares. jsidhu probably still has access to the code. Too bad nobody wanted to buy any PM from it.

Actually, in retrospect, probably it was a good thing they didn't seeing as they might have also been victimized. I came pretty close to being one of them.

[Tuck Fheman]

50K is not enough to do stuff like that.

What's your number that makes it OK to do "stuff like that"?

[38PTSWarrior]

All these votes wasted for him..arrrrgh. Sorry for the Larimers. Ryan, come back and say sorry, 50K is not enough to do stuff like that.

[jsidhu]

He works with real estate im sure he bought into a property and is doing well since market is hot.. Probably lives in area still too.. Does a name search come up with anything?

[lil_jay890]

Wow somebody was paid to deliver something for bitshares and it turned out to be some half assed attempt that never came close to what was promised?!?!

Inconceivable!!

[donkeypong]

I think what he did was terrible and inexcusable. However, and this is just my personal speculation, it may be very difficult to convict on criminal charges if no written contract was signed. I know the funds to buy the inventory were provided through crypto as well, making it that much harder to prove who (real world identity) received the funds.

Gentso was no dummy. I have no clue how long he was planning this, perhaps after the lack-luster response to cryptosmith which he and jsidhu worked hard to create, he could see it wasn't going anywhere and saw an opportunity to make off the gold with minimal risk. IMHO his intentions were (at least initially) to deliver a valuable service to the BitShares ecosystem. He was in contact with a lot of gold dealers, trying to wheel and deal a solid business out of this project. When that changed I can't really say.

I do recall asking him in June if Stan indicated any type of time limit on the funds or indicated he wanted to have the inventory returned. Gentso told me he pitched the deal as a long term proposition and there was no set timeframes, aside from the schedule to complete the development of the cryptosmith website, which the initial seed money funded.

Gentso and I talked quite regularly as that development was underway, and from my outside perspective that aspect of the project was managed well. In fact I believe the site was up and running ahead of schedule. He had nothing but praise for jsidhu.

He's probably here again under another name. On the marketing forum, he also had an idea about going to Asia to work on remittances. I seem to remember exchanging messages with him on both that idea and the gold gateway thing, trying to find out if he understood what the work would involve. Now I realize he probably wasn't serious about either one. The remittance idea was probably just another option to extract some funds from the community, so not sure if he actually went overseas or not.

There are a lot of bottom feeders in crypto, as we all know. The fact that it's the Wild West also enables tremendous opportunities, but to realize them we need to sort through the muck. Sometimes we get dirty in the process. There's no reason to become distrusting of other community members. Just be vigilant and skeptical, ask questions, be fairly sure what you're getting, and don't risk what you cannot afford to lose. This community is awesome. Together, we'll get there.

[fuzzy]

There are others who lost big time however, to the tune of $50K.

I have missed that. Who was that? I3?

Yes.  We lent him the capital for the gold inventory.  Then he ran.  I would very much support a community led campaign to track him down and pressure him into refunding the money.   I will offer a bounty of 50% to anyone who can track it down, the other 50% will be put toward improving BTS.

I'll help organize it...gladly.  And Sadly.  If Gentso would have kept up with it and put in the worl, he would have likely had cryptosmith advertised to Jim Willie's crowd at least once by now...and in time likely would have seen something huge grow out of it.

[Tuck Fheman]

It never fails to amuse me, while at the same time disgusting me, at how much money the cryptocurrency ecosystem will throw at "ideas" that rarely, if ever, pan out and usually end up screwing over those who throw money at them ... while at the same time these same people ignore projects that produce results up front, on their own dime, that benefit the entire ecosystem. It's a wonder that there are any people/projects left willing to actually produce up front in this space, when they could simply throw out an idea, get paid up front, never produce a thing and walk (or better, run) away.

BTW, I have an idea ... and it's great ... and you're all going to be rich!!!!

Send money to BTS account : yergonnagetfuckedandthenimgonnarun

 

[yvv]

Ripple has a deal with Gold Bullion International (GBI). GBI is the ripple gateway which issues XAU tokens on ripple (rrh7rf1gV2pXAoqA8oYbpHd8TKv5ZQeo67). According to

https://www.ripplecharts.com/#/markets/XAU:rrh7rf1gV2pXAoqA8oYbpHd8TKv5ZQeo67/XRP

they still have some volume, although ripple officially diverged from their original goal to be a decentralized exchange. Does it worth do attract GBI to dark side bitshares?