Market Discussions

You can get a few hundred milion by convincing some suckers to give you ISK.

Or you can build up a reputation and run an honest business worth tens and hundreds of bilions.

And then run off with the money.

This is true in Eve as well as RL. Good business practices pay off long term. Scamming someone for a couple hundred million would be a net loss for me. Because I would lose billions in steady business from the people who trust me. Writ large you can make huge returns with the only commodity being your good reputation. Chribba gets a piece of most of the super-cap transactions in the game. Consider what that adds up to in the long term. I did have a general question along these lines. those of you who play the bond markets here. What are your standards for reliability in capital investments. I'm not the trusting sort. I'm just curious.

To answer the OPs question with another question: Like in RL, what's the downside to being a trusted person in the community?

Being trusted in MD means you get pick of the litter, people take you for your word and (generally) listen to what you have to say. It also helps other gauge the validity of a bond, if RAW or flakeys are buying into it then it's usually a safe bet as those guys have been around for a while (at least in my experience).

Building trust in MD is exactly the same as building it anywhere else. Slow and steady progression through positive interactions.

edit: don't worry. be happy. this is a positive interaction.

I will, however, add that collateralized transactions can make sense because the return to a lender from just keeping someone's collateral is much much lower relative to the potential gain from repeated business, though even this is rare. For collateralized loans I would only trust someone who is rich enough that they have run out of other more profitable uses for their money (50b+ at least) and who seem like someone who enjoys the interaction of being such a lender. Although collateralized loans remain risky, you are also taking much less of a chance, as you will only lose ~10% of your loan, and even if that is ~10% of your total wealth, that will hardly hamper you in any significant way.

I'm sorry, is the fact that I have a new default forum character due to the need to give my corporation's recruitment thread a daily bump somehow relevant to the validity of my arguments?

While this is true for a some, the same can be said about "Once you know how to obtain it legitimately you become bored of the game and attempt to scam to see how much you can get away with." Case in point cosmoray....

Well trusted, Liked, considered the voice of reason, could get whatever he asked for at the drop of a hat. While he could have continued on this making hundreds of billions easily he made a choice to start a long term scam. Even to the point of logging and explaining everything he did, when, and how. That type of detailed execution and the final result became his passion, and was proud of that moment..

There is also the "I'm done time to be an arse" scammer.. Ricdic takes the cake on that. He, like cosmoray after him, could ask for whatever he wanted and get it. Not only that he also had the knowledge and means to generate ISK from nothing.. (His Rags to Riches thread) - In the end he said and I quote "I was sick of giving, so I started taking."

There are four types of possible scam personalities..

1) The Out right Scammer - Plans and does things with the complete intent to scam - Example - "YouGotRipped"

2) I'm bored Scammer - Either unknown or trusted that is board with the game and wants to try something new - Example - "cosmoray"

3) Screw you all Scammer - Usually someone known at least in a small degree or niche section of EVE something bad happens like Freighter caring 70% their wealth or public investment, or they are fed up with all the crap despite their best intentions - Example - "FastLearner", "Ricdic"

4) The Desperate Scammer - Can't work out how to make any amount of ISK and see that people much intelligent people whom have a trusted history can make in a single scam and believe if they just get a fraction of the ISK they'll be set. - Example - "Jita Local" - "Terrible Written IPOs on MD"

#1 and #4 are usually pretty easy to spot, these you don't actually have to worry about often because they'll either be identified as such or their social manipulation skills just suck.

#2 and #3 hurt more because they usually get the most ISK and often cause megathreads and are remembered for a long time. The final scam affects are felt across a larger portion of their niche section of EVE. These people usually have large amounts of trust. Or at least the general perception is they are trustworthy.

The problem is, that type of trust was not built up around the the initial thought of "I'm going to scam them for everything!!" A lot of the time I feel some (now) well trusted in MD initially thought about running a long term scam, but realized just how easy ISK is gained. So they never actually execute the scam. These people can easily turn into a #2/#3 if given the right scenario.

Like you said - It makes no sense to scam after a long path of reputation building because your reputation can garnish ISK from people much easier and in larger amounts for you do things, than taking a one time installment. The one time installment scam for very trusted individuals needs to be massive, simply because at that stage they have probably proven to others and themselves they can turn a billion profit a day. It takes a change of attitude to get these people to scam even if they initially thought about a long term scam and a big payday.

A few hundred mil... ROFL That's not worth wrecking a reputation over trust me. That wouldn't last a month.

SencneS' post is a nice example of revisionist history.

Couple of years ago I was curious how much I could raise on MD for a bond without any collateral or audit or business plan for that matter except for "going to wormholes" . After some time fending off extensive, but nevertheless deserved trolling I managed to raise 6bil instead of 4bil just because one dude had a good laugh reading my thread.

I kept the bond running for a year just because I could and never tried it again. Oh and in case you are wondering I didnt scam in the end.

So is there a reason to make a bond on MD and not to scam? Sure it is a game and you can do whatever you want as long as you are having fun and willing to accept the consequences. For example exploiting in wormholes and getting fined for 60 bil by CCP.