Gold gateway

[Thom]

If I recall correctly the inventory was needed because many established dealers won't ship small quantities of PM. Min order size was much larger than the expected order size on Cryptosmith.

To make any real margin you had to buy wholesale

Probably, but gotta start somewhere. As I said, the 50K inventory was seen as a way to jumpstart the crypto --> PM market, to provide an offramp for crypto without the strings imposed by mainstream FIAT pathways.

I see on the Daily Decrypt today that rrbi.co is a PM outfit that accepts bitcoin. Don't know about their minimum order size, info required to buy etc.

[jsidhu]

If I recall correctly the inventory was needed because many established dealers won't ship small quantities of PM. Min order size was much larger than the expected order size on Cryptosmith.

To make any real margin you had to buy wholesale

[Riverhead]

Never underestimate a long con.

Very true. He may have had other irons in the fire too. 50k here, 20k there, etc. He had a real estate business as well that he might have ripped off. Wouldn't need a very big pile of loot to live like a king in the Philippines.

[tonyk]

You're basically just becoming a gambler with a lot of inventory if you can't rapidly turn it over. 

That's the key. In a low margin business, you must have high volume. That's the only way to make money. And with the price spikes of precious metals, if you're not turning them over quickly, then you are stuck with inventory that can lose a lot of value (or gain it) within days. And then you have the cost of storage, shipping, insurance, etc., which you damn well better figure into your costs. Plus, if you aren't doing enough volume, then your costs have to be higher than other sellers and people will shop around. So the only way for BitShares to engage with this, I think, would be to partner with an established business that already has that cost structure and wouldn't mind adding a bit more volume from us.

Nope... you must be complete idiot to 'work'  for an exchange that trades bitGold/Silver and to have gold/ silver inventory and lose value on that inventory. If someone else paid for the inventory??? well it makes it 'criminal' stupidity to lose money because of price movements.

[gamey]

Never underestimate a long con.  Sociopaths enjoy it. I've seen people go on for months building friendships with people only to run off with a relatively small bag of loot. Then everyone comes to find out that the guy was deported after doing time in NY for financial crimes. The conman's promises of coming to some big get together were not even possible, given he it is doubtful he could gain entry into the states through normal means.

Jsidhu is the one that put up real work of value.  I hope he got part of that 50k. Everything I see about Ryan is questionable. Why not just leave the damn website up if it isn't getting any business for when the mining pipeline was finished etc ? 

Maybe the guy had some vice, or tried to freeroll the money on some speculative venture and it wasn't intentional.

One thing most people don't get, and especially us nerds is that the MORE LIKABLE A PERSON IS THE LESS YOU CAN TRUST THEM.  However, don't think just because someone isn't likeable you can trust them.. I've made that mistake!

I can google and email dropshippers too. That sort of work isn't hard nor does it take a hard skillset. Did he have an LLC and associated costs?  I would not cut the guy a bit of slack. It is unlikely a DA will prosecute this case though as it is too fuzzy and complicated with the crypto payments and emails.

[Riverhead]

If I recall correctly the inventory was needed because many established dealers won't ship small quantities of PM. Min order size was much larger than the expected order size on Cryptosmith.

[Empirical1.2]

From a business standpoint, gold inventory shouldn't have been a problem.  You can drop-ship gold if you have the right suppliers.  It's more about getting orders and customers and proving out your concept.  If he never got an order the business didn't show enough validation for funding or a loan in the first place. 

 

You don't need stock initially,  at most a small subsidy to cover the price difference so BitGold to Gold is priced competitively.

[Thom]

Sucks to read about what happened.  If he left immediately after getting the funds, I don't think he had any intention of using it for the business.  It was pretty much a con job.   Not to say he didn't have some intention of running a legitimate business at the very beginning and was frustrated, but if he asked for money for gold inventory and immediately left he must have fully known what he was doing.  Hopefully he may want to salvage his reputation.  That's why it's much better to limit the risk to a much lower amount for any one person.  I've been ripped off a couple times before because I was too trusting, but you learn from it. 

From a business standpoint, gold inventory shouldn't have been a problem.  You can drop-ship gold if you have the right suppliers.  It's more about getting orders and customers and proving out your concept.  If he never got an order the business didn't show enough validation for funding or a loan in the first place. 

The internet is fucking creepy.

Yeah I don't care for the personal stuff about his family etc., but for him as a business I think you have to expect some level of transparency.  As a business I prefer more openness compared to anonymity.  That's why I don't trust Darkcoin or NXT or any businesses that are run by anonymous entities.   (I'm not commenting on the technology.)

Anyways I have some good contacts in the gold space and if I see the right business and the right team I would try to make the connection and help.  It's a low margin business as @donkeypong stated and you really have to validate the business model with a lot of customers and orders so I wouldn't be interested unless someone brought that to the table.   It takes a lot of experience too.  Gold has been in a bear market so some companies that have gold assets and dollar liabilities have gotten into trouble so you just have to be careful.  I know reputable companies (Tulving in SoCal) that went down during the current gold bear market.   I'm still a gold bug so I eventually would like to help put something together in the future.

As riverhead commented, Cryptosmith was not a flash in the pan con man effort. I too talked with Ryan on skype daily and he was quite transparent with me about the business. I see major parallels between the evolution of the BitShares ecosystem and how Cryptosmith evolved. Neither popped into existence quickly or in a vacuum. Many people were involved. I see several posts in this thread that assume a great deal about the business and Ryan's motives. I will never defend what gentso did but I will at least try to set the record straight and clear up the misinformation surrounding this unfortunate event in BItShares history.

You're basically just becoming a gambler with a lot of inventory if you can't rapidly turn it over. 

That's the key. In a low margin business, you must have high volume. That's the only way to make money. And with the price spikes of precious metals, if you're not turning them over quickly, then you are stuck with inventory that can lose a lot of value (or gain it) within days. And then you have the cost of storage, shipping, insurance, etc., which you damn well better figure into your costs. Plus, if you aren't doing enough volume, then your costs have to be higher than other sellers and people will shop around. So the only way for BitShares to engage with this, I think, would be to partner with an established business that already has that cost structure and wouldn't mind adding a bit more volume from us.

What could be more safe than gold inventory in the hands of a trusted, identifiable, long time community member? Granted, not a very liquid inventory, but quite safe as a reserve of value. The plan was that this inventory was to be seed money to jump start the operation.

As I recall it took some time to convince Stan to allow BitUSD to be used for purchasing the PM as opposed to only BItGold and BitSilver. Gentso was highly engaged in talks with Metaexchange and Jonathon at bunkershares to mine crypto into real PM, and in finding various sources for the PM including those that drop ship to many countries around the world. Plus he had to create the cryptosmith portal and managed to secure and manage very capable talent (jsidhu) to pull that off. He hired me to run his delegate. All of that real work does not paint a picture of a con man trying to turn a quick buck. He never demanded controlling interest (i.e. private keys, tho I was willing to provide them and suggested this to him several times) in the delegate.

The major flaw was a mistaken demand for the PM value cryptosmith could provide, plus it was limited to BitShares assets for purchase. It truly seemed to many it was a great victory for crypto and would really benefit the ecosystem. Why do you think this topic has popped up again? There must be some demand for a service like cryptosmith. Clearly there is, but apparently it takes much more effort to put together a solid business plan and ability to market than was done here. It was never seen as a risk free operation. What entrepreneural efforts are? Anyone thinking about taking on a similar challenge to cryptosmith would do well to study it before assuming it will be successful.

[jsidhu]

Well just do the public shunning thing and move on.

It is bizarre to me he was given 50k.  It is a low margin business, but it also means that there is little saved by buy purchasing wholesale.  You're basically just becoming a gambler with a lot of inventory if you can't rapidly turn it over.  At least the inventory doesn't depreciate I guess.  I wonder what his spiel was.... hustlers and their game are endlessly fascinating to me.

I had to change the prestashop price updater in the core because it only updated every few days while we needed realtime pricing so i based it off of the median price in bitshares which worked well. Did a nice ticker scrolling asset prices at the top as well.
I made it dropshippable by sending out an dhtml designed email upon order completion of a bitshares payment which sent the wholesaler the address of thr customer to ship to, so inventory doesnt even need to be held.

[donkeypong]

You're basically just becoming a gambler with a lot of inventory if you can't rapidly turn it over. 

That's the key. In a low margin business, you must have high volume. That's the only way to make money. And with the price spikes of precious metals, if you're not turning them over quickly, then you are stuck with inventory that can lose a lot of value (or gain it) within days. And then you have the cost of storage, shipping, insurance, etc., which you damn well better figure into your costs. Plus, if you aren't doing enough volume, then your costs have to be higher than other sellers and people will shop around. So the only way for BitShares to engage with this, I think, would be to partner with an established business that already has that cost structure and wouldn't mind adding a bit more volume from us.

[Riverhead]

Well just do the public shunning thing and move on.

It is bizarre to me he was given 50k.  It is a low margin business, but it also means that there is little saved by buy purchasing wholesale.  You're basically just becoming a gambler with a lot of inventory if you can't rapidly turn it over.  At least the inventory doesn't depreciate I guess.  I wonder what his spiel was.... hustlers and their game are endlessly fascinating to me.

It was actually a fairly long and drawn out process. The business was built over months with a lot of work from a number of people. He actually had the inventory for a while before going dark. I recall asking him now and then how the pile of PM was doing. We spoke daily over Skype.

[gamey]

Well just do the public shunning thing and move on.

It is bizarre to me he was given 50k.  It is a low margin business, but it also means that there is little saved by buy purchasing wholesale.  You're basically just becoming a gambler with a lot of inventory if you can't rapidly turn it over.  At least the inventory doesn't depreciate I guess.  I wonder what his spiel was.... hustlers and their game are endlessly fascinating to me.

[Riverhead]

The internet is fucking creepy.

It can be for sure but what I posted is all information in the public domain; especially Twitter and LinkedIn which she put out there herself. There are a lot of things I found that I didn't, and won't, post because it isn't part of a public facing image.

I believe Ryan had every intention to run an honest business. However people's lives are complex and we'll likely never know what events lead him to the final decision to go dark. Maybe he got robbed, had gambling debts, sick family with big medical bills, or any of a million other possibilities other than he was just a con from the start.

[merivercap]

Sucks to read about what happened.  If he left immediately after getting the funds, I don't think he had any intention of using it for the business.  It was pretty much a con job.   Not to say he didn't have some intention of running a legitimate business at the very beginning and was frustrated, but if he asked for money for gold inventory and immediately left he must have fully known what he was doing.  Hopefully he may want to salvage his reputation.  That's why it's much better to limit the risk to a much lower amount for any one person.  I've been ripped off a couple times before because I was too trusting, but you learn from it. 

From a business standpoint, gold inventory shouldn't have been a problem.  You can drop-ship gold if you have the right suppliers.  It's more about getting orders and customers and proving out your concept.  If he never got an order the business didn't show enough validation for funding or a loan in the first place. 

The internet is fucking creepy.

Yeah I don't care for the personal stuff about his family etc., but for him as a business I think you have to expect some level of transparency.  As a business I prefer more openness compared to anonymity.  That's why I don't trust Darkcoin or NXT or any businesses that are run by anonymous entities.   (I'm not commenting on the technology.)

Anyways I have some good contacts in the gold space and if I see the right business and the right team I would try to make the connection and help.  It's a low margin business as @donkeypong stated and you really have to validate the business model with a lot of customers and orders so I wouldn't be interested unless someone brought that to the table.   It takes a lot of experience too.  Gold has been in a bear market so some companies that have gold assets and dollar liabilities have gotten into trouble so you just have to be careful.  I know reputable companies (Tulving in SoCal) that went down during the current gold bear market.   I'm still a gold bug so I eventually would like to help put something together in the future.

[puppies]

The internet is fucking creepy.

[Riverhead]

His (Ex?) wife works as a nurse in a local hospital. Wonder if she's still there...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandy-mechalske-8a13174b

https://twitter.com/palenaki81

Tragic history - her brother and mother were killed by their dad in 2011.

http://www.wetzelfuneralhome.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=1282853&fh_id=10516

http://archive.eveningsun.com/ci_19081972

Still digging...

[Thom]

I'm not saying that was his  o n l y  reason for bugging out, I'm just saying it was part of his overall mindset. If the launch of 2.0 propelled the BTS marketcap on an increasingly upward path he may have decided against taking the criminal route. He sure put in a lot of effort into getting the cryptosmith site up and running. If his intentions were to rip Stan/Dan/BTS off from the get go he could have been gone much earlier.

We talked a lot and I can tell you he was rapidly tiring of the secret sauce / failed promises / management decisions. At which point he made the decision to run with the loot I have no idea.

Shit for all I know he was a con artist / sociopath looking for a quick easy way to cash out for awhile. If that's he case he was pretty damned good at it. I wasn't the only one fooled. We'll probably never know.

[Empirical1.2]

Of course it's expected he's reading this forum. Criminals need to keep informed of who's looking for them.

If he joined under another name and has been participating heavily in the forum, we wouldn't really know.

That is true, but I seriously doubt that is the case. He was pretty disillusioned in late June / early July about the way CNX handled the transition. I think he finally just realized many bad management patterns have been repeated and wanted to break away from that cycle.

That's funny 

[lil_jay890]

Of course it's expected he's reading this forum. Criminals need to keep informed of who's looking for them.

If he joined under another name and has been participating heavily in the forum, we wouldn't really know.

That is true, but I seriously doubt that is the case. He was pretty disillusioned in late June / early July about the way CNX handled the transition. I think he finally just realized many bad management patterns have been repeated and wanted to break away from that cycle.

He jacked 50 grand and disappeared to the Philippines because he didn't like "management decisions"

Sounds more like a con artist to me...

[Thom]

Of course it's expected he's reading this forum. Criminals need to keep informed of who's looking for them.

If he joined under another name and has been participating heavily in the forum, we wouldn't really know.

That is true, but I seriously doubt that is the case. He was pretty disillusioned in late June / early July about the way CNX handled the transition. I think he finally just realized many bad management patterns have been repeated and wanted to break away from that cycle.

[donkeypong]

Of course it's expected he's reading this forum. Criminals need to keep informed of who's looking for them.

If he joined under another name and has been participating heavily in the forum, we wouldn't really know.

[cass]

You need to read it again then. This has nothing to do with BM or being easily deceived. Someone you've known for years and worked with for months suddenly robbing you out of the blue is not what I would call "easily deceived". Any jackass can come on after that fact and say, "omg how could you have been so stupid?" but I didn't see anything except 's leading up to the heist.

i just heard this story
bm you are a 傻逼
a total 傻逼
a 傻逼 victim like
think about so many people work for bts ,but never require pay
think about some people do a lillte thing ,but require a lot of pay
傻逼 mean a person who easy to be deceived

agreed .. i've worked with him last year on the logo for CS etc .. and he was a good person to deal with .. i'm really perplexed about this behaviour

[Riverhead]

I spoke with him a lot about his plans to return to the Philippines. I'll go back through my logs to see what village it was. It was where he had stayed before during a Peace Core or some other type of "mission". It's a place to start I guess.

Of course it's expected he's reading this forum. Criminals need to keep informed of who's looking for them.

[Riverhead]

You need to read it again then. This has nothing to do with BM or being easily deceived. Someone you've known for years and worked with for months suddenly robbing you out of the blue is not what I would call "easily deceived". Any jackass can come on after that fact and say, "omg how could you have been so stupid?" but I didn't see anything except 's leading up to the heist.

i just heard this story
bm you are a 傻逼
a total 傻逼
a 傻逼 victim like
think about so many people work for bts ,but never require pay
think about some people do a lillte thing ,but require a lot of pay
傻逼 mean a person who easy to be deceived

[jsidhu]

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.

I think bitshares team had hoped the price would rise and developers would come clammering back asking them how to integrate again, we know they are busy but there is the right way to do it and the right way to do it, the code is only 25% of the work and teams in crypto are learning the hard way that its not always about code.

[Moon]

想像

幻想世上并没有天堂
这很容易，只要你试试看
在我们下面没有地狱
在我们上面只有天空
想像所有的人
都为今天而活

想像这世上没有国家
试试看，这并不难
没有杀戮或牺牲
也没有宗教
想像全人类
都生活在和平之中

你可以说我在作梦
但我不是唯一的一个
但愿有一天，你能加入我们
世界就能合而为一

想像世上没有占有
我想你可能做不到
不再贪婪，没有饥饿
四海皆兄弟 想像全人类
共同分享这世界

这是传奇 

[lovejoy]

想像

幻想世上并没有天堂
这很容易，只要你试试看
在我们下面没有地狱
在我们上面只有天空
想像所有的人
都为今天而活

想像这世上没有国家
试试看，这并不难
没有杀戮或牺牲
也没有宗教
想像全人类
都生活在和平之中

你可以说我在作梦
但我不是唯一的一个
但愿有一天，你能加入我们
世界就能合而为一

想像世上没有占有
我想你可能做不到
不再贪婪，没有饥饿
四海皆兄弟 想像全人类
共同分享这世界

[Tuck Fheman]

IMO the transition was poorly handled.

[lil_jay890]

Why pay people who are willing to work for free?

That's what brownies are for
i just heard this story
bm you are a 傻逼
a total 傻逼
a 傻逼 victim like
think about so many people work for bts ,but never require pay
think about some people do a lillte thing ,but require a lot of pay

[BTSdac]

i just heard this story
bm you are a 傻逼
a total 傻逼
a 傻逼 victim like
think about so many people work for bts ,but never require pay
think about some people do a lillte thing ,but require a lot of pay
傻逼 mean a person who easy to be deceived

[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?

[Stan]

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.

I have a complete log of the agreement (including payment confirmation) in writing.
Where he made his mistake was suddenly severing all ties and disappearing with the loot.
(even abandoning his delegate position with the BitShares community.)
Then refusing to accept registered letters from us at old and new addresses.
It shows intent to defraud and consciousness of guilt.

[Thom]

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.

[Stan]

The poor guy is looking at up to seven years in jail for felony grand theft, if I understand the laws of PA and VA correctly.
Maybe somebody can wise him up.  Not too late to turn this around.

[bytemaster]

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.

[fuzzy]

I concur that it isn't likely to be very successful within the BitShares ecosystem.

Gentso was my former partner as a 1.0 era delegate. His cryptosmith site was operational from April until July and he never had a single sale from inside or outside of the community. I was about to make my first purchase and he dropped off the face of the map before I could place an order. It was a shocking turn of events for me personally, but fortunately I didn't loose any money by him.

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

I say we go after him and make his life "interesting" until he goves it back along with a full apology.  it could be as simple as 100 people signing up to a list that states they will each call his house each day asking for the money he stole...

if done for a long enough period of time...one never knows...

[tonyk]

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

I have missed that. Who was that? I3?

[btswildpig]

He hasn't answered any of our attempts to contact him.

Perhaps one of you would like to try?

Ryan Mechalske
89 Lion Drive
Hanover, PA  17331-3849

Didnt he move?

Yep.  He apparently tried to sever all connections, but it wasn't hard to have him tracked down to this new address.

I have his wechat . Hope he uses it . Leave him a msg .

[Stan]

He hasn't answered any of our attempts to contact him.

Perhaps one of you would like to try?

Ryan Mechalske
89 Lion Drive
Hanover, PA  17331-3849

Didnt he move?

Yep.  He apparently tried to sever all connections, but it wasn't hard to have him tracked down to this new address.

[jsidhu]

He hasn't answered any of our attempts to contact him.

Perhaps one of you would like to try?

Ryan Mechalske
89 Lion Drive
Hanover, PA  17331-3849

Didnt he move?

[Stan]

He hasn't answered any of our attempts to contact him.

Perhaps one of you would like to try?

Ryan Mechalske
89 Lion Drive
Hanover, PA  17331-3849

[jsidhu]

I did the integration, sneaky bastard that gensto was.

[Shentist]

a better approach would be to talk to this dealers and try to convince them to accept bitGold or bitUSD as payment.

at the moment the community is tiny and so you will not have much success if your sole income will be with the bitshares ecosystem.

[Thom]

I concur that it isn't likely to be very successful within the BitShares ecosystem.

Gentso was my former partner as a 1.0 era delegate. His cryptosmith site was operational from April until July and he never had a single sale from inside or outside of the community. I was about to make my first purchase and he dropped off the face of the map before I could place an order. It was a shocking turn of events for me personally, but fortunately I didn't loose any money by him.

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

[Xeldal]

There is also schiffgold.com/
they accept bitcoin.

[onceuponatime]

This is a big, big job, and I'm not convinced it's worth the trouble. I don't want to fund anyone to do what Gentso was planning. Selling precious metals from one's garage is a thankless headache of a job with low margins and plenty of risk. If we really want a gateway, then we find a partner who is already in the business of physical gold and silver, and knows how to make it work. That way, they have in place the storage, security, insurance, and shipping, so that someone doesn't have to create this business from scratch. Everyone who has tried a crypto e-gold type of thing has not gotten very far with it.

In the U.S. there is amagimetals.com and in Canada there is silvergoldbull.ca which are both very reputable and well established bullion dealers which accept payment in bitcoin. I believe that they even give discounts for persons paying with BTC.

[donkeypong]

This is a big, big job, and I'm not convinced it's worth the trouble. I don't want to fund anyone to do what Gentso was planning. Selling precious metals from one's garage is a thankless headache of a job with low margins and plenty of risk. If we really want a gateway, then we find a partner who is already in the business of physical gold and silver, and knows how to make it work. That way, they have in place the storage, security, insurance, and shipping, so that someone doesn't have to create this business from scratch. Everyone who has tried a crypto e-gold type of thing has not gotten very far with it.

[fuzzy]

its name was cryptosmith .. i think .info

gentso from what i understand bargained for a good bit of money from our community to build it...and then snuck away with the extra cash.

[clout]

Yes, I believe it was run by Gentso1 who is inactive. The site is also down. We should come up with a strategy to get another gateway operational in order to bootstrap the BitGOLD market.

[xeroc]

its name was cryptosmith .. i think .info

[clout]

Does anyone no who operated the previous Gold gateway in Bitshares 1.0? I believe there was a gold supply that was willing to convert BitGOLD for actual gold. We will need a GATEWAY.GOLD / BitGOLD in the future and it would be beneficial to get the previous gold gateway back in operation.