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Bitcoin & Other Cryptocurrencies

Stormkhan said:
Me? I'm no technophobe and appreciate digital banking, with all it's hazards and flaws but also it's benefits.
However, I distrust digital money. Perhaps because I've only a rudimentary grasp on the concept, but largely because of all those early investors becoming multimillionaires almost overnight.
It's almost as if they haven't got real money but have created their own on the blockchain; in effect they still rely on real, actual currency to give their crypto value. For me, I don't distrust the banking industry enough to regard being 'unregulated' as a good thing. Complex financial regulations are there to counter crooks - successful in doing so or not.
We now see people demanding money for NFT's - which can be copied and disputed over ownership and is 'valued' by the seller - and these images are only links to a single number on a blockchain. Just because something is unique, doesn't mean it has value.
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A lot of digital money is actually a scam. It gets sold at 5$ or whatever a share when it opens.... gets traded for a while... maybe goes up in value.... then one day all the people who are real investors sell out, and all the people who currently have it have fake money worth a few cents. Then that fake money is never worth anything ever again.
 
marhawkman said:
A lot of digital money is actually a scam. It gets sold at 5$ or whatever a share when it opens.... gets traded for a while... maybe goes up in value.... then one day all the people who are real investors sell out, and all the people who currently have it have fake money worth a few cents. Then that fake money is never worth anything ever again.
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Yup. The classic rug-pull.
The thing that annoys me are You Tube influencers - already wealthy - pump 'n' dump shitcoins to earn a few more million at the expense of their gullible fans.
 
I discovered this article through the Manifold prediction market, where I'm betting against Tether (purely on sentiment, no deeper knowledge). But this is very nice and conspiratorial:

Hindenburg Research, a forensic financial research firm, today announces it is launching the Hindenburg Tether Bounty Program (the “Program”) – a reward of up to $1,000,000 for information leading to previously undisclosed details about cryptocurrency “stablecoin” Tether’s backing.

https://hindenburgresearch.com/tether/

Note: I have a lot of fun doing predictions here (you only lose play money)
https://help.manifold.markets/
 
Combining all the buzzwords with the maturity level of a 13 year old boy, it raised $40 million from investors before disappearing. I'm going to mark this one as nsfw.



"Hello investors, we're making a crypto NFT Web3 blockchain based mecha-cockfighting game. Players mecha-cocks will be able to use cock-blocking skills as they fight in the 'Cocktagon'." Investors: "Here's $40 million."

https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/i...und-funded-by-andreessen-horowitz-and-others/

2023_05_16_17_29_00_MechaFightClub_mechafightclub_Twitter.jpg

 
Interesting to note that one proposal for the government is to declare crypto trading as a form of gambling - as many are unaware of the actual mechanics - and therefore bring it under the aegis of the relevent legislation.
Can't see that working, though, as the existent stock trading is regulated as a financial product, but is the same form of gamble.
 
I blame the Gamestop event for it all. It demonstrated the power of stockmarket manipulation who were doing it for fun, who then decided that it's easy money.
Bit like the dot com bubble and burst.
 
I recently gave online dating another go. It seems quite a few people on there are happy to tell you how to invest in cryptocurrency. That shows the pyramid scheme aspect for me.
 
A friend called today.

He said he'd been through a rough time the past few months.

Someone stole 100 grand of his crypto currency.

Obviously someone who can invest 100 grand is not poor, but neither is he wealthy.
He has a family to support, and I got the impression he invested a fair chunk of his savings in it.

I have nothing to invest in anything, but if I did, I would not invest in crypto currency.

He has hired someone to try and recover it, it's been traced to an IP address in Ukraine.

Sounds like a wild goose chase.


@Xanatic*

Dating profiles which mention crypto are scams.
They have tag lines such as "Teach me something about Crypto" or "I am attracted to crypto investors".

The photos are of a real person but not the person who has set up the profile.
 
They are not quite so blatant. Though I did see a few profiles which said: "I do not want to hear about your bitcoin".
 
As Logan Paul advises - make up a cryptocoin with a silly name. If no one buys it, claim it was all a joke. If someone buys it then sell more, run away with the money then say it was a joke.
The other tactic is to come up with a name that sounds similar or connected to an established coin - say, BitcoinErsatz - pay a couple of vapid celebs to wear a t-shirt with it on, then sell it to mugs, rug pull and away.
 
ramonmercado said:
Where is the Cryptoqueen?

When a plush London penthouse flat bought by the "missing cryptoqueen" Ruja Ignatova re-appeared on the market, it appeared the fugitive scammer was orchestrating a sale from the shadows.

The same week her £12.5m "ultimate penthouse" was listed for sale, new UK transparency rules meant Ms Ignatova was also publicly revealed as the owner.

But the OneCoin fake cryptocurrency founder hasn't been seen for five years and currently sits on the FBI's 10 most-wanted list.

The BBC previously revealed how she secretly bought the four-bedroom penthouse, said to have once been stuffed full of expensive artwork and designer clothes, after financial regulators in at least one European country had already issued a warning about her fake cryptocurrency.
Ms Ignatova, a 42-year-old Bulgaria-born German national, disappeared on 25 October 2017 after being tipped-off about intensifying police investigations into her Sofia-based scam.

OneCoin, created in 2014, is one of the biggest known of such scams, with the FBI estimating its value at $4bn (£3.2bn).

In the UK alone, the BBC estimates that investors lost more than £100m.

Layla Begum, from Bow, east London, says her family lost more than £54,000 in OneCoin when she was persuaded to invest by a family friend.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-64407723
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Now her adviser has disappeared.

An FBI-wanted former spy and trusted adviser to the fugitive "Missing Cryptoqueen" has disappeared.

Frank Schneider, 53, was under house arrest in France awaiting extradition to the US. But like his former boss Ruja Ignatova, he has gone missing before facing US justice. He faces a maximum of 40 years in prison on fraud and money laundering charges for his alleged role in a $4bn (£3.2bn) cryptocurrency scam.

French authorities confirmed to the BBC that Mr Schneider, who was fitted with an ankle tag, had evaded his electronic surveillance. Nancy's Court of Appeal issued a fresh warrant for his arrest on 16 May, meaning his whereabouts have been unknown for more than three weeks.

Neither Mr Schneider, his wife, or his lawyers could be reached by the BBC.

He worked as a troubleshooter for Miss Ignatova, architect of the OneCoin crypto scam. As investigators closed in on her, she boarded a Ryanair flight from Sofia to Athens in 2017, never to be seen again. The FBI is offering a $250,000 (£200,000) reward for information leading to her arrest.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65861495
 
Stormkhan said:
As Logan Paul advises - make up a cryptocoin with a silly name. If no one buys it, claim it was all a joke. If someone buys it then sell more, run away with the money then say it was a joke.
The other tactic is to come up with a name that sounds similar or connected to an established coin - say, BitcoinErsatz - pay a couple of vapid celebs to wear a t-shirt with it on, then sell it to mugs, rug pull and away.
Click to expand...
the funny part is people have made money selling joke coins that weren't rug-pulled. Not sure why they bother with that part of these scams.
 

How a supermarket voucher scuppered the £3.5billion ‘crypto heist of the century’​

Rapper Heather Morgan, 32, and her tech entrepreneur husband Ilya ‘Dutch’ Lichtenstein, 34, hacked the Bitfinex exchange

their stash of 119,000 Bitcoins was worth about $4.5bn (£3.5bn), which makes it the US Department of Justice’s largest single financial seizure in the nation’s history.

​


Lichtenstein, who is a dual citizen of the USA and Russia, admitted he was behind the hack as part of a plea deal, the BBC reports.

Both he and his wife pleaded guilty to money laundering and Morgan also admitted to an additional charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Now they are both likely to be locked up for decades. Lichtenstein faces a 20-year prison sentence, while Morgan could be jailed for up to 10 years.

After Lichtenstein hacked the system in 2016 and landed himself £3.5bn in Bitcoin, the couple started to launder their riches.

Their demise ultimately came when they decided to buy their shopping with Walmart supermarket vouchers that had been paid for with the stolen funds.

‘Police were able to link the Walmart gift cards back to some of the proceeds of the Bitfinex hack, which then opened up the further investigation,’ said Jonathan Levin, founder of cryptocurrency investigators Chainalysis which was involved in the investigation.

‘Buying gift cards and moving between different exchanges and different cryptocurrency never actually created this sort of break in provenance that the couple intended.’
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bbc report here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-66390639
 
Stormkhan said:
As Logan Paul advises - make up a cryptocoin with a silly name. If no one buys it, claim it was all a joke. If someone buys it then sell more, run away with the money then say it was a joke.
The other tactic is to come up with a name that sounds similar or connected to an established coin - say, BitcoinErsatz - pay a couple of vapid celebs to wear a t-shirt with it on, then sell it to mugs, rug pull and away.
Click to expand...
That seems to be the top and tail of it, it's been a remarkably easy scam to pull off but I think the halcyon days are now over, it's been the Tulip bubble of the 21st Century
 
Like with any fad or 'bubble', if you are in at the beginning then you can earn plenty. You just need the judgement to pull out before the burst. Trouble is, when others join later - with the same expectation - it's too late.
 
At the beginning, I was interested in the theory.

After all, we already have electronic currency exchange, money that doesn't exist in actuality and so on. Coin 'mining' was a bit beyond my ape-brain though.
The blockchain theory - i.e. a unique string of numbers which can be assigned - was interesting ... until it was trumpeted to the skies that it was unregulated and unrestricted - if you had the investment and the 'wallet' you were good to go.
So no protection of your investment, unlimited - and unaccountable - transactions made my simplistic mind ask "So ... if you want to 'free' yourself of the banking industry then great. But the only folks I could see delighting in the system are unaccountable, international criminals. Pay off a cyberattack on your firm's computer? "We take Bitcoin." Want under-the-counter shady deals between governments and terrorist organisations? "Etherium? That'll do nicely."
And - to my mind the worst: Invest the (real) thousands in your life-savings or college funds in order to make (theoretical) thousands more! These big mouths on social media, showing off their sports cars, prostitutes and bundles of (real) cash, show it can be done.

I'm not bitter, nor am I enjoying schadenfreud - I never had enough real money to invest. But, then again, if I had ... I had too much doubt over the whole thing.
And don't get me started on the absolute lunacy on Non-Fungible Tokens. :hahazebs:
 
Stormkhan said:
At the beginning, I was interested in the theory.

After all, we already have electronic currency exchange, money that doesn't exist in actuality and so on. Coin 'mining' was a bit beyond my ape-brain though.
The blockchain theory - i.e. a unique string of numbers which can be assigned - was interesting ... until it was trumpeted to the skies that it was unregulated and unrestricted - if you had the investment and the 'wallet' you were good to go.
So no protection of your investment, unlimited - and unaccountable - transactions made my simplistic mind ask "So ... if you want to 'free' yourself of the banking industry then great. But the only folks I could see delighting in the system are unaccountable, international criminals. Pay off a cyberattack on your firm's computer? "We take Bitcoin." Want under-the-counter shady deals between governments and terrorist organisations? "Etherium? That'll do nicely."
And - to my mind the worst: Invest the (real) thousands in your life-savings or college funds in order to make (theoretical) thousands more! These big mouths on social media, showing off their sports cars, prostitutes and bundles of (real) cash, show it can be done.

I'm not bitter, nor am I enjoying schadenfreud - I never had enough real money to invest. But, then again, if I had ... I had too much doubt over the whole thing.
And don't get me started on the absolute lunacy on Non-Fungible Tokens. :hahazebs:
Click to expand...
Honestly, it's always been fake money. The mining thing was kinda real, but the RW consequences had a more major ecological fallout that an atomic bomb blast. 'cause even if the original bitcoin has that value to it... other cryptos don't have that. It's like the various fiat currencies that have been used in the past. you can totally print fake money if you want, and get people to use it like real money. the trick is to tie it to something of actual value... even if only an association. loads of places have had company credit that was paper currency. In modern times it's rarely seen, and usually handled as non-transferrable credit lines.

But this is essentially what CryptoCurrency is... store credit for an online vendor who has no real merch.
 
Heh.
Looks like the wunderkind Sam Banking Fraud is being called in from house arrest and into jail.
Seems that no one told him that trying to use the media to slander his ex-girlfriend who's turned state witness is not a 'done thing'.

https://www.ft.com/content/41daa2d8-9b9d-4214-a2ee-243ca004b74f

Hey - he sold himself as 'thinking outside the box'. Now he's in one. Can't Mommy or Daddy get him out, hmmm?
 
He can apply for parole after he has served half of his sentence.

A Turkish cryptocurrency boss and his two siblings have been jailed for 11,196 years each for defrauding investors of millions of dollars.

Faruk Fatih Ozer, 29, fled to Albania in 2021 with investor assets after his Thodex exchange suddenly collapsed. He was extradited back to Turkey in June and found guilty of money-laundering, fraud and organised crime.

Ozer told the court he would "not have acted so amateurishly" if his intent was criminal, state media reported.

"I am smart enough to lead any institution on Earth," the Anadolu agency quoted him as saying. "That is evident in this company I established at the age of 22."

The brief trial in Istanbul also found his sister Serap and brother Guven guilty of the same charges.

Turkish news agencies said that the defendants were sentenced separately for multiple crimes against 2,027 victims, leading to the total number of years in the judgement.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66752785
 
Hamas received $41 million (€39 million) between August 2021 and June 2023, according to crypto analytics and software firm BitOK, which is based in Tel Aviv. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), whose militants joined Hamas in carrying out the attack, received another $93 million in cryptocurrencies, according to London-based crypto researcher Elliptic.

https://www.dw.com/en/how-cryptocurrency-fueled-hamas-terror-attack-on-israel/a-67094982
 
uair01 said:
Hamas received $41 million (€39 million) between August 2021 and June 2023, according to crypto analytics and software firm BitOK, which is based in Tel Aviv. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), whose militants joined Hamas in carrying out the attack, received another $93 million in cryptocurrencies, according to London-based crypto researcher Elliptic.

https://www.dw.com/en/how-cryptocurrency-fueled-hamas-terror-attack-on-israel/a-6709498.
Click to expand...

Ironically a bill is going through the Knesset which would make things easier for all crypto rogues. less regulation, lesstrax.

Israeli Lawmakers Support Axing Crypto Capital Gains Tax for Foreigners​

A bill exempting foreign residents from capital gains taxes on crypto sales, and lowering tax on stock-options-like crypto options for employees has passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset.​


A bill to extend certain tax benefits afforded to Israel's high-tech firms to the country's crypto sector passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset, the country's parliament, on Wednesday.

If passed into law, the bill would exempt foreign residents from capital gains taxes on the sale of digital currencies and reduce tax on crypto options for employees – similar to stock options – to about 25% from 50%, the Israel Crypto, Blockchain and Web3 Companies Forum (ICBW3) told CoinDesk.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/202...xing-crypto-capital-gains-tax-for-foreigners/
 
I suspect that any resurgence is created by those who refuse to accept they've lost money. An artificial inflation of an artificial value.
 
Here's an interesting lecture on cryptocurrency and how it's not a new concept.
 
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