Save the Barter Industry – PLEASE!

This is a desperate plea for the barter industry to save itself from impending disaster following my many posts on the corruption within IRTA, the fraud within Universal Currency, the shonky IRTAcard deal, the Tradeqoin crowdfunding scam, increasing numbers of tips from the industry about other scammers and shonky operators . . . and now with the news that Qoin is suing TradeXchange in the Netherlands and trying to stop them from talking to me! What? Spare me days! We need to clean our act up – PLEASE!

Again, I’ll first talk about the scrap between the two Dutch operators – in this case Qoin vs TradeXchange – then I’ll extrapolate this out for the barter industry to wrap it all up. It’s really a very sorry joke, the whole thing is just ridiculous.

Qoin sues TradeXchange

A day following my analysis that Qoin’s flagship currency Tradeqoin was a scam, I received notice from Jacob & Therecia from TradeXchange.nl that Qoin is suing them for associating with me and for posting their opinions on the Internet. [Anyone can have an opinion and share it, it’s just calling people liars that becomes libel and actionable.]

OMG!! Not even Bartercard’s Trevor Dietz was that stupid.

This is a strategic error of colossal proportions because IRTA have successfully managed to suppress the GETS Summary Report, ridden through their Annual Conference with “everyone’s questions answered”, now all of a sudden they score an ‘own-goal’ with one of their Board Members dragging it all out into the public arena again AND bringing it all into a court for an impartial judge to make his assessment on the validity of my claims!

IRTA Executive . . . reign in your loose canon fast – he’s torpedoing the IRAT Titanic!

Here are the communications that I’ve received from TradeXchange:

We received the subpena, summon, today [From Qoin who is suing us]. … we already saw that

they want to forbid us to have contact with you.

They say that we have pointed their clients and others to inferior reports of Dennis Smith.

They refer to the same points as bartercard did to make you look foolish that you think holocaust never took place, that you say 9/11 is untrue, man on the moon is not true etc. They conclude that dennis Smith is a man that writes without having any knowledge of the matery. Dennis Smith is not an expert in barter or alternative money and cannot be taken serious in his opinion en his research into irta and uc. Several relevant people from the business share this opinion. They refer to the article of simon on barternews. Irta has stated at several fora and barternewsweekly that none of the statements of Smith are true and dennis solely does this to harm irta because of a refused consultency contract.

It is proofed that Dennis and the accused work together with the purpose to slender TQ.

They accuse us of sending you info in dutch from the dutch forum of which Dennis is not a member so it has to be tradexchange supplying dennis with info.

Also they want us to write an excuse and rectification on all linkedin groups that:

“Recently we have posted several msgs on this linkedingroup in which we questioned the credibility of tq and rvh. The dutch court has sentenced us to rectify these posts as they are not based on facts. With this msg I rectify my posts and request you to regard them as not posted. On behalf of TradeXchange , Jacob Musschenga.”

And we have to remove all tekst that relates to barteryourbusiness, greg prizmic and Tradeqoin an Rob van Hilten.

And we need to pay their cost for the court and laywer at 1600 euro.

They also claim that we have contacted their members, that we emailed their members with false names, that we have responded to articles about them in newspapers online. …

Apparantly there has been an email from a gmail address of a disgruntled member that they claim it was us.

They give us all the credits for everything that went wrong in their venture.

and

the subpena also containd all the evidence bs they have and it also invloves the Uc blogs and bc and irta blogs from you. Also all the comments Jacob made on Linkedin. It even has the comments from trevor dietz in it. Rvh sais jacob is lying in these matters

I replied with my take on this all summarising it as “Extraordinary” and asked them if I could blog about this. They said yes:

Yes you can make it public

Preamble

I have several points to note here before I address the material matters:

1. Qoin would have commenced preparation for their court case after I commenced litigation for defamation on them and before I blogged on the Tradeqoin scam.
2. It’s a brave call on the defendants part going public for they have a lot to lose. They have been in business for more than a decade and Tradeqoin only since March 2014. On one hand they could be presented by the aggressor as trying to suppress opposition. On the other if they are clean and can present themselves as such to the judge, their clients and the Dutch marketplace, then sure – they could build their credibility but it’s a lot harder for the incumbent to defend in the public’s mind especially when you have skilled media people in the Qoin camp able to play the marketing game. Knowing the type of business they run though, I think they’ll be pretty safe, but it’s certainly not good for the Barter industry if they’re fighting over something to do with IRTA!
3. Why not sue me? I’m the one Qoin should be suing, surely? Or are they too scared to mess with a guy who WANTS to be sued so that it will all come out in court. I’m feeling missed out and if I wasn’t up to it I could have gotten a complex over this because the IRTA Board/Executive are ignoring me and blaming everything on GETS, now they’re ignoring me and suing a Dutch Trade Exchange, and Bartercard’s story that they had commenced court action in multiple countries including Samoa sadly turned out to be all porkies. I’d love nothing more than to flick up to the Netherlands and show a Dutch judge everything I know about IRTA, Bartercard, Universal Currency, Qoin and the Tradeqoin scam. I’ve got over 100,000 words of blogging thus far and my defence would be around 30,000 words and take three days to present. Sadly, I very much fear that Qoin will backtrack and withdraw their case.

The Court Case

The key points of the court case:

1. Forbiding contact with me.

“Ummm judge. It’s not fair. That blogger in Samoa is talking to our competition! Please tell them to stop it!”

What? This is insane! I reckon the judge will laugh them out of court inside one minute – even if it gets to a hearing.

2. Pointing their clients to my reports.

I reckon that this is a great thing to do but sure – bring on censorship on the Internet, please, starting with the Netherlands and www.dennis.co.nz! Any court on the globe except those that Trevor Dietz and Qoin think will hear their cases will say that linking to or referring to others’ websites is not a crime. Qoin is dreaming that they have the same powers as Hitler or Stalin.

3. Dennis doesn’t believe in the man on the moon thing or that a perfectly good 47 story steel structure WTC7 looked over at it’s two brothers WTC1 and WTC2 crumble and then just, well, cried and crumbled in on itself too!

The biggest conspiracy is that there is no conspiracy. Laugh for all you like but if a man believes that he can have 5230 paying members for inside a few short years his first successful Trade Exchange and that people will chip in €150,000 because they agree, then sure, he’ll likely believe anything . . . like that decades ago a few men in flying bathtubs casually slipped through the radiation belt – one that would kill anything not cocooned in a three foot thick lead shield. It’s all bunkum to me, but whatever . . . big deal, I’m an independent thinker and can see through the spin from The Powers That Be – get over it! Courts deal with men, women, Islaamics, Christians, homosexuals, Nazis, conspiracy theorists and even Dutch Complementary Currency experts all the same way – they look at the EVIDENCE. Ad hominem attacks are meaningless in most courts in the world.

4. Dennis is not an expert

I’ve never claimed to be, unlike Qoin who constantly claim to be Complementary Currency experts and who I’ve shown to be totally incompetent at putting a business plan for a trade exchange together.

Shooting the messenger. Courts look at facts, not the messenger.

5. Other relevant people agree

This is called heresay evidence unless they are actually present, so bring ’em on Qoin! I suggest you fire your lawyer for it’s the blind leading the blind with this court case!

6. Barternews

The ad hominem attack website and IRTA mouthpiece? I’d love to see Tyler in the courtroom too Qoin or you’re mouthing off heresay, again!

7. IRTA says

Heresay yet again! Bring them into the courtroom Qoin or ignore what they say. Courts listen to evidence.

8. Dennis and the accused working together to slander TQ

Right, so we now get to the rub of the matter – slandering TQ. Court hearing begins. The facts please and let’s let the judge decide what, when and how slander occurred. Just so there’s no mistake about it, I Dennis, am the one who claimed that Tradeqoin is a scam; that it’s business model is seriously flawed and that it will never return one cent to its investors as a self-funded business. Me. Not TradeXchange!

9. Supplying me with information

Crime of the century, no doubt, except that I don’t reveal my sources if they want confidentiality – investigative journalists have that privilege you know?

10. Requiring a posting on Linkedin groups that apologises

If I was Jacob, I’d post a link to this post showing how stupid court action is in the face of blogging based on facts and show how petrified Qoin is of the truth getting out – but that’s his call.

11. Removing all references to certain people and businesses

Right, so the Streisand Effect will now apply for Barter Your Business, Greg Prizmic, Tradeqoin and Rob van Hilten. Dumb move Qoin!

12. Court and lawyer costs of 1600 euro.

I can’t work out how their lawyer managed to con these guys for so much!

13. Contacting their members, emailing their members, responding to articles about them in newspapers online

I don’t know about this but it must be pretty serious to go to court over [not!]. I’m pretty sure that Jacob will be defending. He has been down this track before with Qoin’s business partner Greg when he tried to sue him in the past. There’s clearly bad blood between these guys. I heard that the last time these guys met in court the case got turfed out. I predict the same, especially seeing as I think it’s the same lawyer that they have!

Whatever . . . it’s not good for the industry whatever happens.

The Barter Industry

The reciprocal trade industry, including barter and all trade exchanges has an impending crisis.

It’s not a sudden thing that has come on in a hurry with disruptive technology like the electronics industry destroyed the watchmaking industry 30 years ago, virtually overnight. It’s not something that has come on suddenly as a result of Bitcoin or because Ormita was found to be a fraud. It’s not that Bartercard has undisclosed deficit spending of somewhere between $200m – $300m and that knowledge of this will expose the entire industry. It’s not that just about every trade exchange on the planet has a big house account, and debt to their systems as a result of deficit spending.

All these things are a factor to some degree, but it is the lack of integrity in leadership that will destroy the industry – thus from within. Th eproblem is this . . . corruption and skulduggery such as unrevealed deficit spending in the industry abounds. One day, this will all get out and this will bring on a crisis in confidence. People within the industry fear exposure and fear a global collapse in trust. The few ‘good guys’ worry that if the big bad boys like Bartercard go down, then the whole industry will suffer.

The greatest fear that many in the industry voiced to me when I started opening up the Bartercard IPO and revealed it for what it was (a giant dodgy deal) was that exposing the ills at Bartercard was going to destroy the reputation of the industry, that others would get tarred with the same brush if they ‘went down’.

While perfectly understandable, this thinking is flawed, for if the corruption is allowed to fester, the authorities may turn a blind eye, but the risk gets higher for every year, and every con that is allowed to survive. The industry itself must act to sort itself out, or it will self-destruct in the age of Internet information sharing, or the authorities will step in and sort it out.

The crisis is amplified as the self-styled industry representative, IRTA, has lost the plot with extreme lacking of strong, ethical leadership. The barter industry desperately needs saving, from itself.

In my next post I write to the IRTA Executive directly giving them advice and guidance to sort their politics out, get their sh*t together and show some integrity in leadership so as not to make the matters worse. I give examples of their strategic stupidity (a recent incredible communication that could have come right out of a Dumb and Dumber script), and how deception and self-interest from the top works against building their credibility to the point that the thinkers in the industry have and are increasingly disconnecting themselves from an association that is becoming quite irrelevant, except to a few deluded few.