Ethics

Conflict of Interest Mitigation

The need for an Ethics section on this webpage is due to the different implications of all work presented on it. Since the process of what specific cryptocurrency to review and rate is random (based on Bitcoin block nonces), it means that also cryptocurrencies with low trading volume can be selected for review. Given the hypothetical that market actors consider ratings from this webpage to have predictive power, it means that a conflict of interest arises where BD Ratings may profit by taking a market position in illiquid cryptocurrencies before releasing or updating a ratings analysis.

Additionally, the work provided opens up for immoral actors to suggest payments for a non-fair rating. One example could be a large holder of a specific coin trying to pay for a positive rating for possible price increase. Another example can also be imagined in which an actor pays for a negative rating on a perceived competitor project, or simply to profit from personal short-selling.

With the above said, it is important for BD Ratings to stress that the author's personal cryptocurrency positions have mostly been taken before the thought of starting a free ratings provider ever materialized. The rest of the positions were taken during a period when less than 50 people - real or not - followed BD Ratings on Medium, or on Twitter. Needless to say, any impact on price up until now ought to have been non-existent. For the future, all positions held by BD Ratings are public for anyone to see at the end of this Ethics section. And finally, to adress the other concerns with paid ratings, BD Ratings has established a strict name-and-shame policy where any such proposal from a verified source with any social reputation to lose, will result in negative exposure on Twitter, bitcointalk.org and Reddit.

BD Ratings takes potential conflict of interest seriously and will review all policies should the general following or the amount of traffic on this webpage increase to a non-negligible number. Please do not hesitate to contact us for suggestions on how to improve this section, and preferably how to establish processes that help reduce the potential of wrongdoing.

Transparency

No rating posted on this webpage will ever be removed. If a high rating is posted and the cryptocurrency falls in price, this is something that BD Ratings is fine with. The same goes for a low rating where the coin shoots up in value. BD Ratings is not scared of looking like a fool from time to time; the volatile cryptocurrency market makes fools of the best of us regularly. A BD Coefficient was introduced as a neutral way of self-measuring all assigned ratings. Read more about this new coefficient here. It helps you as a visitor on this webpage to quickly establish if a specific rating set in the past has been successfully predicting the price of today. Finally, we urge anyone to review this webpage and other media where BD Ratings is active and to call us out should you suspect activity of ratings removal or ratings polishing. By all means, use the Wayback Machine or whatever tools you have at your disposal.