Bitcoin Forum

I just saw their post on reddit today and I wanted to get the forum's opinion on it.

"Many of us are waiting for the next big jump in the value of bitcoins and are saving our bitcoins for that glorious day when the price of a bitcoin passes $500. Until then, instead of leaving your bitcoins in a wallet gathering dust, why not make a profit on your stockpile of bitcoins without lifting a finger?

We refer to them as savings accounts but our service is similar to Certificate of Deposits (CDs). CDs are similar to savings accounts in that they are insured and thus virtually risk-free they are "money in the bank". They are different from savings accounts in that the CD has a specific, fixed term (often monthly, three months, six months, or one to five years), and, usually, a fixed interest rate.

We guarantee your deposited balance at all times. If our secure wallets are ever compromised we keep a backup of all deposits to replenish your account in case of a rare catastrophe. This is part of our effort to provide a high level of reliability and trust to our clients."
- http://redd.it/1j3k8r

What do you guys think?

The value of bitcoin relies on the circulation and trust of bitcoins, the more people uses, the more places accepts bitcoin, the more value they are.
My question is how do you make it by only saving them in the wallet?

Hmm...  I'm going to say SCAM until proven otherwise.

Also, a very low post account posting a thread advertising a service by "asking about" it.  I'm also going to say spam.  Again, until proven otherwise.

40% interest for a 3 month deposit?  That's 384% annually.

This is a scam.

I know it's a typical scam story but I'm actually genuinely interested in what people had to say and am no way affiliated with them.

Ask yourself this, how can they afford to pay out those kind of interest rates?

    Two Weeks - 3% Interest
    One Month - 10% Interest
    3 Months - 40% Interest

That just screams Ponzi scheme.

Haven't you heard? Ponzi's are all the rage these days, even the SEC is interested.  ;)

this is scam.

Did they changed the interest? Now it says:
    Two Weeks - 2% Interest
    One Month - 5% Interest
    3 Months - 17% Interest

Not a good sign that they can change these numbers like they want :D

But in general, with these numbers it would be easy possible. They do with our bitcoins, arbitrage trading (I do it on my own, too) with something like ~4% profit per week.

scam.

Anyone who claims to be doing large scale arbitrage is lying. As your deposits grow, it becomes progressively more difficult (and yes, much more difficult) to get the same returns. Arbitrage is something with a fixed stop gap - there is a threshold to how much profit you an extract out of it.

Hmm.. yes you are right... I only use 2000€ for arbitrage and that's about 4%.  I think u can't use more money than ~5000€ to do arbitrage with 4%.

EDIT:
I asked the support of ensure about the interest change and they answered:
We lowered our interest rates in order to further distance ourselves from the Ponzi scheme news that came out recently. We are in no way affiliated with that situation and it's a regrettable misfortune for Bitcoin and for those scammed by that criminal.

People find it difficult to believe such rates are possible but these are routine in our world - the trading world, we simply wanted to pass on a larger part of our profits to our customers as obvious incentive but the timing with this news is unfortunate.

Reality check: anybody who could get returns like that wouldn't be peddling it on some Bitcoin forum.

Most probably if you deposit your BTC with them, they'll use it to do forex trading. They link to http://www.myfxbook.com/members/metaneural
Their site goes on:

Our team is comprised of professionals with over 10 years of experience in the financial services sector. We have a long track record of profitability and stability. If you're interested in our other financial products please visit Metaneural.com

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2013/07/29/bitensure/

Okay, this is DEFINITELY a scam, I've got proof.

If you go to http://www.metaneural.com/about.html and look at the team, look at the first picture. Now go here: http://www.wetpaint.com/the-bachelorette/articles/how-does-jp-rosenbaum-stay-so-businessman-hot-all-the-time

They just took random images and made it the team. Be CAREFUL people don't put your money here.

I've been scammed before, but I guess I just like paying with fire. Coindesk did a story today and it was enough for me to invest: http://www.coindesk.com/looking-inside-bitensure-bitcoin-savings-account-or-ponzi-scheme/

Are you kidding, you actually put money in these guys? Couldn't you wait a minute to see if it was legit or not. Coindesk even put poss ponzi in the TITLE. Mate look at the post above you, get your money out now.

save your bitcoins

So unless JP Rosenbaum IS John Titer... or John Titer is pulling a "Catfish" because he thinks JB has a nicer looking pic... then this really looks mighty fishy.

And the coindesk article quotes a John Jones at Metaneural.. Lots of Johns over there apparently.

That they listed 40% returns over 3 months in the first place is ridiculous as their trade engine is currently at 31% over 6 months. http://www.myfxbook.com/members/metaneural

I think you've found a major clue...   All those "Johns"...

Any chance the owner of MetaNeural will turn out to be Yoyodyne Software? http://yoyodyne.com/
Is JB/John Titor really John Bigboote?

Will they try to steal the Oscillation Overthruster because it will perform 500 PetaHash/s mining both BTC and LTC with NO HW errors?

I guess we'll find out in next week's episode of Buckaroo Banzai... queue 80's credits music....

Without further ado.
Suspicious crap concerning "bitensure";

They have one listed employee without a full name; "David DV", and his email goes to some mysterious black site called qubitlogic.net.
It's beyond "damned weird" for a business to use a website for their email that is separate from either their company (bitensure) or even their parent company (metaneural).

Their "We Are Hiring!" button does nothing.

None of their "read more" buttons work on the front page. (In the presentation doohickey..)

The image of said, "David DV" is a stock photo. Just one example can be found on http://dailyheal.com/meditation-news/using-meditation-and-yoga-to-combat-office-burnout/

(I highly doubt that he/they own "Suite 600" at 8400 East Crescent Pkwy Greenwood Village, CO 80111.)

Metaneural was first registered on: Feb 04, 2013
bitensure was first registered on: July 21, 2013

Unlikely that a business that registered its domain name 6 months ago (metaneural) is some super successful business. It also suffers from the same Mysterious Owner Syndrome that we have at bitensure.com

Randomly decided to reduce their rates (I heard that it was because of the litigation with pirateat40, but that was going on even before their first "offering");
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/07/sec-says-man-named-the-pirate-was-running-bitcoin-ponzi-scheme/
https://cryptocointalk.com/topic/899-bitensure-interest-bearing-wallets-bitcoin-savings-account/
https://www.bitensure.com/services

In short, if you gave them bitcoins, get them back.

Coindesk interviewed their founder and that was good enough for me. You have to have sources that you trust, and right now Coindesk is my #1.

My coins are locked in for 30 days, so hopefully at the end of that I won't regret the decision, but right now I can't get them out. For what it's worth, I also have coins in Coinlenders, but TradeFortress offers a lower return than these guys. Better liquidity and obviously more trust within the community, but if these guys are to be believed as to being who they say they are, it should not be surprising that they can offer significantly better returns.

I'll admit that it is fishy that they offered such high rates initially, though crypto-currencies do offer significantly better returns for smart money than the mature markets of ForEx, and given the reaction here it is not surprising that they lowered the rates...

Will report back.

For future reference, don't trust news outlets. They get scammed too. Example: techcrunch posted the Cryonics miner scam. The guys who ran the scam pulled in half a million dollars from the feature. People lost a lot of money.

You may get your coins back - it is a nice website, I am sure they are in it for the long con.  Build up a rep, pay back a few people and then run off when they get enough large deposits.  100% it is a scam though.

Scam.

How to identify a ponzi
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100696.0

Scam or not, safer to try it early

Nice sleuthing.

These guys are pathetic scammers.  They are following the Ponzi playbook to a T.

Note that John Titor is a well-known fake name on the internet, with a colorful history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor

And now the Coindesk article has been updated to reflect the discussion here:

Now that the "jig is up" and more evidence comes out on this scam, how long until the "Long Con" turns into a "cut-and-run"? 

If you gave money to these guys, it's already gone.

Not again. This is like the Global Standard Bank (http://web.archive.org/web/20111202053717/http://www.globalstandardbank.com/Global_Standard/Global_Standard_Bank_Home_-_The_Bitcoin_Bank.html) fake bank, where the images of the bank were lifted from other sites, and they got caught. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=27777.0;all)

No, the typical action of this scumbag will be too attack those making these accusations that this is "slander" and "libel".  They try to scare people into silence.  I actually forwarded the coindesk article to the SEC.  Let them complain to the SEC and FinCen about their unfair treatment and slanderous comments towards them.

They have an address and phone number on the site, does anyone have a beat on it?

8400 East Crescent Pkwy, Suite 600
Greenwood Village, CO 80111
+1 (918) 928 COIN

Google Streetview is your friend... :)
https://www.google.com/maps?q=8400+East+Crescent+Pkwy,+Suite+600++Greenwood+Village,+CO+80111&hl=en&ll=39.622747,-104.889286&spn=0.00914,0.021136&sll=40.697488,-73.979681&sspn=0.575768,1.352692&hnear=8400+E+Crescent+Pkwy+%23600,+Greenwood+Village,+Arapahoe,+Colorado+80111&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=39.622777,-104.889154&panoid=7DwLmqg7zrs2mRhxFZbWTw&cbp=12,200.21,,0,-18.94

Not my post, but worth quoting:

Alright. I think I have a pretty good idea about what's going on here.

There is only one employee that works for MetaNeural Engineering, LLC. He works from an apartment in Florida, and bought what's called a "Virtual Office" based at the building in Colorado,

8400 East Crescent Pkwy, Suite 600
Greenwood Village, CO 80111

He made some hacks, made an add-on, or downright copied software that was created at WardSystems. Maybe he's a disgruntled employee, or maybe he really did make something novel, whatever. I'm not willing to pay a thousand dollars to find out if his software is legitimate.

He forms the company MetaNeural on Jan 31st, 2013, and put his site together in February, then he decides to branch into a couple dubious Bitcoin businesses.

One is a Bitcoin laundry, the other is "BitEnsure".

Speculation;
His original idea was to get a lot of people to use his Bitcoin laundry, and skim some coins off the top. Acting a lot like a fractional reserve bank. He probably uses those coins to make trades and leverage his bets on the market.

Maybe some trades go south, maybe he wants more leverage, or maybe he just gets greedy. So he forms "BitEnsure" to do essentially the same thing his Bitcoin Laundry does. He piles the money together, skims off the top, and makes bets on the market.

He figures, "Hey, my business is an LLC, and my company has no assets. I have nothing to lose, either I make great bets on the market and everyone wins, or I don't and only they lose."

All along the way he puts disingenuous information on his sites about clients he works with, fictional employee's he doesn't have, job listings for jobs that don't exist, and states MetaNeural has experience of "years" when it's only been around for about 6 months. All to garner more trust from the community to get more coins in his betting pot.

Does that sound about right? Mr. WhateverYourNameReallyIs?
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. He could just be trying to mass coins and then cut-and-run, none of this "betting" nonsense.


At the end of the day the bottom line is this;

He's presented a false image of his company (repeatedly), there is only one employee, he's avoiding liability at all costs, he has no boss, partner, or stockholders he's accountable to, and he's hiding his identity.

Do not give Bitcoins to this guy.

So... after all of this evidence and Coindesk looking into it too (since it looks like they've been had as well)... do you have anything to "report back"?  Have you asked these guys what's up?  Curious to what they'd say to all of this.

Hope you've gotten (or get) your coin back.

He is either a shill for this scam or just a fool who does not deserve his bitcoins. More likely the former

Honestly, I think these guys are just very amateur, incredibly lost, and obviously not well read (40% interest in the midst of a ponzi scheme trial, rofl). I think they have good intentions, but just flat out suck at their PR and presentation (google images for stock photos is nothing new). I doubt they'll achieve the 40% (or even 17%) they expect, but I'll be following this out of sheer curiousity.

What is sad is the investiagtive work in this thread if far better than the crap work Coindesk did. 

The lack of journalistic integrity at Coindesk is pretty disappointing, I must say.

I am going to wait out my month and see if I can get my coins back, if I try to withdraw them early they take the promised interest as a fee instead. Will report back then. I'm honestly a little afraid to ask them what's up in case they are playing a long con; don't want to spook them.

I'm clearly a little too trusting, but with that said it is a little surprising to me that so many people are willing to scam like that and risk getting caught when they can just provide a service that offers value and make money legitimately. Personally I'm just way too afraid of jail to try anything like that.

The new image of John Jones is also a stock photo. An example can be found here: http://www.thedailymuse.com/career/how-to-manage-people-who-know-more-than-you/

The worse part, it is like he is not even putting much effort into it.  Couldn't he take a few minutes to lift a photo from Linked in?  Pretty lazy scammer.

Coindesk has lost all journalistic integrity in my book.  I tried to leave a comment on the article with a link here and some proof this is a scam and they did not approve the comment.  I am starting to wonder if Coindesk it participating in this scam themselves.  Seriously, noone even knew about them until coindesk wrote the article which is what gave this blatant scam an air of legitimacy.  If they did even 5 minutes of basic research, they would have found all the blaring scam evidence we have.  This is below the par of a Junior High School newspaper.  I am not sure whether the journalist and editor are Incompetent, Lazy or Dishonest. Those really are the only 3 options or some combination thereof.

Pathetic

Furthermore, the photos at the foot of the metaneural page are actually from a company named Envato Pty Ltd, based in Australia.

Finally, I want to point out that their explanation about how your coins are guaranteed and they aren't doing fractional banking makes no sense. They are flat out lying in that coindesk article.

Lying about your team and using stock photos to build fake identities is not done with good intentions, sorry mate.

Its not like WSJ has better fact checking.  Coindesk doesn't perform DD either.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323997004578644491403250124.html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Tech

It's attributed to laziness no doubt. I don't see it anymore though, it get removed?

Yea, they wised up. I was gonna scrape the contents for storage but I figured google would for us: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaneural.com%2Fabout.html

This was the post mechs was referencing.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=268416.0

Mr. Bitensure has gotten really quiet all the sudden.. But I guess he's got a ton of stuff to fix on his site.

To be fair, there are some things he could do to at least prove he's attempting this craziness in good faith;

1.) He could put the funds that he supposedly has stashed away to ensure his customers' accounts in a third party escrow. Like maybe btcrow or something.
2.) He could reveal his identity. Not fool proof, obviously pirateat40 was willy-nilly about his identity and he was still a scammer. Still, it would lend to his credibility.
3.) He could partner with a reputable person/company, particularly one that has real assets.
4.) He could actually make some sort of effort to prove someone exists there. It's hard to believe no one that works for metaneural or bitensure or bitcoinhaze wants to show their face. Total anonymity is ok if you don't need trust for your business to function.
(But guess what you need, Mr. Bitensure? hint: trust)

Even if he did all that, he wouldn't get a bitcoin from me. Those returns are just unattainable with any serious amount of money over any serious amount of time, but at least I'd feel he's just naive, not evil.

ps.
I'm glad there's a record of the site like it was. I was kicking myself for not making a copy, and was thinking everyone would think I was just crazy in the future haha.

Exactly.


This is uniquely stupid.

On one hand, Bitcoin is indefinitely divisible. Saving any qty of them does not make the rest any less apt to circulate.

On the other hand, more exposure just brings in more idiots that then are bringing in more scammers to fleece them, which slowly pushes Bitcoin towards being as stupid and useless as the general population (for which I take you personally as a very convenient illustrative example).


You mean like the BTC Garden people do with their blogfull of lifted pics (http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=02-08-2013#197026)?


They never had any. Journalistic integrity is something earned, not presumed. Coindesk is a lulz affair, they tried to buy some relevance by buying a few people a coupla rounds of beer in London and dubbing this adventure "the first conference". That's good enough right there: if they had any integrity, intellectual or even merely journalistic, they'd have done their research with regards to which scammers held the previous "first London conference".

if you are looking for someless scammy thing to invest. Just Dice's rate is actually quiteicompetitive too! Like 160% per year

How do you get 160%? I get 1/3rd of that, still pretty good though no guarantees.  A whale can wipe out profits in a minute as happened before. Plus commission going up as is investment dilution.

Which is it? if it's ony 1/3rd of that, Coinlenders is a better bet.

BitEnsure has shut down due to the negative reception from all of us according to the posting on their homepage. I've emailed them my withdrawal address, will update if/when I receive my coins back.

Mission accomplished.

I hope you get your bitcoins back...

Well the Metaneural site is still running, so they are still trying to scam somebody.

I guess it depends on how pessimistic you are, but I don't think Metaneural was a scam. At least not to begin with.

There's no way to really know for sure.

It was a Ponzi scheme. It had to go bust. That's arithmetic. When you see insanely high yields, you know it's a scam.
Good luck.  I hope nobody had too much money in this.

Someone said this earlier, so I will repeat the gist of my first post: hiding your identity and building an entirely fabricated team as a front to your operation is hugely suspicious. I can think of very few legitimate use cases for this (e.g. the country you host from does not allow for these types of businesses, etc...) and even then it is questionable. In this case he(she) is clearly a US-based resident and the only way an operation like this could justify this behavior is if they were trying to bypass current AML laws, which in the context of Bitcoin would be show stopper. Fly by night operations don't last here in the US. And to think a US-based bank would service their needs. LOL

The fact that it has is closed down is yet another indicator--pessimism has nothing to do with it. Metaneural hasn't been tainted the same way BitEnsure was. They would close that down too if it got bad press in major publications/relevant forums.

So they replied this morning: "Please allow a couple days for the transfer to go through as we must wait for a withdrawal from our investment account. You will be notified when the transaction has occurred." Will update when they send.

That makes no sense at all.  Investment account?  These is no fiat involved here.  All they need to do is make a bitcoin transfer from their cold storage to you. 

Any service which promises to pay interest on Bitcoin deposits right now is a scam.

The only legitimate and sustainable way to pay interest on Bitcoin deposits is by profitably lending bitcoins, and there are very, very few sound loans to be made right now.

There are virtually no business activities capable of generating a return on investment that exceeds the appreciation of Bitcoin in purchasing power. If you lend bitcoins out for a 1 year term and expect to be repaid you've got to plan for the possibility that the exchange rate could be ten times higher a year from now than it is today. This means if you're looking for a borrower capable of paying back a 1 year BTC loan they had better have a business plan capable of generating more than 10X returns in the course of a year, or else they are likely to default.

Lending BTC for a year is insane, anyone proposing longer term loans at the present state of the adoption curve is a danger to themselves and others.

So where are all the sound loans to going to be made that will generate the profit needed to pay interest on deposits? Overnight lending to bitcoin businesses that need extra liquidity? How much demand for that is there really, and how much profit is available to pay depositors?

Basically if the interest you're being paid on a deposit (for any type of deposit, not just BTC) doesn't come from a borrower who used that loan to generate more business profit than they paid in borrowing costs during the loan term, then you're either gambling (speculating) or else dealing with a Ponzi scheme.

I agree.  Tradefortress though on his website coinlenders.com offers very high APR rates as high as 27.25% for 90 day CDs.  He seems to be fairly respected, but I have to think that there is no way such return are sustainable and it must be either a outright scam or a ponzi scheme.

Three possibilities for who is on the other side of that trade:

• BTC Borrower(s) who have business ideas capable of generating 30% return in 90 days but can't find cheaper financing.
• Speculator(s) who want to short the BTC exchange rate but can't find a cheaper borrow. (*)
• Ponzi scheme.

Which one is the least unlikely?

*This also includes people who don't understand that borrowing in BTC is the same thing as taking a short position.

I've looked at all of the "scam" accusations against TradeFortress that I could find, and the accusers have all been untrustworthy or clearly trying to get back at TradeFortress for totally unrelated reasons.
He's been around for more than a year with not one confirmed scam of any kind.
His interest rates, while high, are adjusted based on the loans he's made and the returns he believes he can make in the market.
While he is anonymous to the average person, he is well known in the community, and supposedly there are several people that know his real identity.
He has exposed scams on several occasions, and has paid interest on several accounts at CoinLenders, on one occasion he gave bitcoins to his depositors when his site went down unexpectedly.
The security on his sites are top notch, including SSL and two factor authentication, through two sites. (CoinLenders and inputs.io)
He has been up front about the risks of entrusting bitcoins with him, and he has made great effort to avoid regulatory problems through clever wording. ("Vouchers", instead of interest payments. And his disclaimer is particularly amusing.)
There is evidence that he does lend out coins to people, and he has a very high bar for applicants. He requests a great deal of information from applicants, and avoids loans that exchange into USD because of Bitcoin volatility.
Besides not personally knowing the identity of the guy, I don't see any reason to be suspicious of him.

That said, I've bought a CD at coinlenders, and we'll see how it goes.

I have some coins in CoinLenders as well, TF seems very respected in the community. But I will say that I find it hard to believe that there is a serious market for borrowing BTC...

It doesn't matter how long a scheme goes on before problems show up - if the source of the returns is illusionary or unsustainable it will eventually fail.

No legitimate investment is going to pay random depositors on the Internet 27% to borrow their bitcoins for 90 days.

If there exists a borrower who has such an incredibly profitable opportunity they need to finance that justifies such a high APR they can write up a business plan and find far less expensive lending via other channels so there's no reason for them to pay you exorbitant interest rates.

At rates like those, someone is either borrowing your bitcoins in order to speculate on a BTC price crash, or else funds from new investors are being used to pay old investors, i.e. Ponzi scheme.

The best case scenario is that somebody is gambling with your deposits.

I agree with you, when the returns do not  make sense, you should stay away from it.  However, I disagree with your best case scenario.  The best case is it is a Ponzi scheme, but you are in the early innings, and you will get your principal plus interest back before the whole thing collapses.  Remember, even with Madoff, some early investors actually made a lot of profit (though they were eventually clawed-back)

It will work out for me because I'm special (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading)!

Scammers trap more suckers via that logical fallacy than all the rest combined.

There's always some "gambling" in any investment. I'll also note that it's not 27% in 90 days, it's 27% APY, which is radically different. It ends up being about 5% over 90 days.
It's not unheard of in Bitcoin to make a smart short and make 5% in a single day. I've done it myself, and I'm terrible at speculating.

While not without risk by any means, the difference between BitEnsure and CoinLenders is night and day.
BitEnsure was made by Some-Unknown-Dude^TM, CoinLenders was made by a well known member of BitcoinTalk with a long history.
BitEnsure started as up to 40%/3 months or 384.16%/APY (Static), the best return you can get at Coinlenders is, again, 27% APY which goes up and down, according to him, to meet what he thinks is a reasonable return given the market conditions, the status of his investments, etc.
BitEnsure used SSL to secure information, whereas TradeFortress uses SSL and two factor authentication, through two websites, requiring a thief to bypass the security of both sites in order to steal anything.
BitEnsure had lots of misleading information, including fake employee's, hiding the LLC status of the parent company, fake "We are hiring page", insinuating that there is a physical office which doesn't exist, etc. CoinLenders has no such misleading information.

As far as I can tell, TradeFortress is going to do what he can to make good on the yields that he promises. Does that mean there's no risk/"gambling" involved? Nope.

That's less outrageous, but still highly risky.

The 27.25% is annual interest, that is only 6% for 90 days duration.  

I like your btc.re website but you should add coinbase prices to it as well.

Final update from me on this, they got me back my coins today (I had to ping them one more time this morning). Take it for what it's worth, but I got out unscathed (though without any gains either).

That seems to indicate that it might not have been a scam after all. At best it was just someone with very poor judgement.

They kept a record of transactions in my account, and the account that they transferred my coins into;19U7YYiNxZ5LiHBe3GCm2iZp9VGUNVGWRi; still has over 1200 coins in it. When I searched it on blockchain.info the other day, there were a ton of transactions into that wallet, but now I'm only seeing two. Anyway, I've devoted enough mental energy to these guys at this point; happy to have my coins back.

Some one needs to explain why this is not pirateat40 v2.0.