Bitcoin Forum

We've just started to accept anonymous cryptocurrency investment in Iran from today.

Our Plan
Currently, we have plan to focus on following options to invest:

1. Tehran Stock Exchange:
Highly potential because of U.S. sanctions. See yearly stock exchange indices (http://tse.ir/en/indices.html) and IRR/USD rate (https://english.tgju.net/chart/price_dollar_rl/2). We'll trade on the exchange by our real identities with real money (changed BTC to IRR).


2. Mining:
Due to low electricity price (1kWh = $0.008 ~ $0.015).

3. Other possible potential options like importing beneficial goods.

Process:
First round of the investment will be started by a crowdfunded budget of $45k (currently $2.5k is allocated - update: 2020-01-29).
To manage investors and assets properly, minimum amount of investment would be BTC valued $500 which means at max there will be 90 investors.

Upon accepting, a Bitcoin address will be given and the investor can deposit there. Then, we'll increase the allocated amount above. If we couldn't hit the budget for 3 months (at 2020-05-01), investors will decide to whether increase the deadline, get back their coins or start investing with current budget with other investment planning.

We'll start investing by changing BTCs to real money (IRR). Our group will decide about investment strategies (between mining, exchange stocks or other assets) but for risk management of each asset, we'll consider opinions of all investors by the percentage of their investment as much as possible.

Profit:
We've planned (NOT GUARANTEED) a profit up to 10% per month. It totally depends on risk endurance of the investors. See planned portfolio for each strategy:
You can either add the profit to your investment amount or request a profit withdrawal. Profit withdrawal payments will be done at the end of the month (all dates are in Jalali calendar) possibly with a delay.

Things to consider:
1- War: There is a very small chance of war between Iran and U.S. allies.
2- Losses: We'll do our best to make as much as profit we can from the investments but we can't guarantee anything. No one can! There is always a chance of loss.
3- Money Blocking: This is not really happening but even if it's less than 1%, we have to mention it. There is a very small chance of money getting blocked temporarily (short or long term) by the bank, exchange or the government.
4- No Short-Time Investment: Since the budget is crowdfunded, instant withdrawals (Deposit amount - Not profits) are not permitted. We'll open withdrawal periods after each stage of investment (probably every 3 months).
5- IRR/USD Rate + fees: Withdrawal amounts will be based on IRR/USD rate at the time of payment plus exchange fees for converting IRR to your BTC.
6- DO NOT invest with the money which is essential for your living.
7- If you don't know how to use Bitcoin properly to be untraceable or how to stay anonymous without leaking your identity, you shouldn't go for this investment.

What we get?
We're investing money in the budget too. Plus, we may take small amount of your profit too. Overall, we'll profit from your profit and will loss with you.

Your/Our identities:
We're a group of tech and financial experts located in Iran. We know it can sound scary especially when you might not be able to reach us at all.
Since Iran is under U.S. sanctions and it can be possibly problematic for you, we don't want to know your identities too. Only an email!
This is our first crowdfunded investment so you won't find any history about us in Google. We don't have any fancy website too since it won't make any difference in trusting between you and us. We're neither active under a registered company; just individuals.

Should you trust us?
Well, it can sound deadly scary but let me say it. We are NOT doing something secret. Anyone foreign can start investing in TSE by accepting its legal consequences (read https://tse.ir/cms/Page82.html). And any one can setup miners in Iran by having proper relation with someone inside. If you think you can handle it, just go for it and enjoy the profits of this untouched market.

Overall, we're not doing super secret thing. We're just covering identities of both sides to make it simple and avoid possible consequences.

You're going to trust some people who you can't know and can't reach! So if your money is essential to your living or is not something that can be risked highly trusting us or simply can't handle bad feelings about this project, you may not really involve in it.

Any question?
Shoot us an email if you're interested, want to know more or have any question: ir.crypto.invest@gmail.com

Which cryptocurrency are you dealing in? You don't actually say Bitcoin

How will you be involved with the Tehran Stock Exchange? Will you be selling crytpocurrency directly over the exchange? Will you be offering a fund that's pegged or staked to the price of a cryptocurrency? Will you be offering options?

An email to you seems too personal or involved at this point. If you want to get the word out about your project, give us the details, publicly on this forum. You'll get interest, i'm sure of it.

Also, consider putting notice of your plans on the Project Development board.  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=12.0)

You should move this post in to marketplace https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=5.0    Service announcement or some other more appropriate thread.

Thank you about the suggestion. I'll inform there 👌
The post has been updated. Could you please review it once again?

Thank you. Just moved it.

Due to the aforementioned sanctions, it would be most likely illegal for anyone to invest in your project worldwide. Anyone investing in your project also has the potential to be placed on sanctions lists yourself, which would make it very difficult to transact business or maintain a bank account.

This is in addition to the red flags your project is emitting.

No, it wouldn't be problem for worldwide.

Currently, the problem goes to trading with USD. For example, we have no problem trading with Russia or China or our neighbors with their own currency. Bitcoin doesn't belong to US nor have any official relation with USD.
It can be problematic for people dealing BTC with USD. Even in that condition, it's not a problem for people who take care about their identity. More or less, cryptocurrency is all about being anonymous (by considering other things of course).
Overall, any investor should consider this issue by the way. It's all up to them as I've mentioned.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1UH1UO

It is a problem world wide. If you are caught doing business with or in Iran you are breaking US law, which is being enforced worldwide and you also have the risk of being sanctioned yourself. In 2018 (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/business/huawei-cfo-arrest-canada-extradition.amp.html), there was a high profile Chinese businesswoman arrested in Canada for helping Iran evade sanctions.

Yes I see. It's described here: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/programs/pages/iran.aspx

I've appended to 'Things to consider' section.

Using bitcoin properly has nothing to do with the legality of investing in your project. Not getting caught doesn't mean someone didn't do anything wrong; it only means no one knows about your transgressions.

Even if a person were to "use bitcoin properly" and were able to stay anonymous, there is no guarantee they would not make a mistake in the future that would cause prior transactions/addresses to be linked together.

If a person were to somehow address the sanctions issue (that remains outstanding), there is still the issue that your project is screaming scam. If your claim that you are located in Iran is true, if you were to scam someone, there is nothing the person could do about it because suing you would lead to nothing happening. Ditto with reporting it to the police/law enforcement.

Thank you for making people more aware of potential risks of this project. I fully understand that this can be illegal depending where you are and what you've planned for your future. This can be not illegal for some people by the way. Double-edged sword with very sharp blade!

About the scam part, I completely understand it too but technically I have no method to prove something is or is not scam.

A registered company? There are just dozens of scammers with registered company!
Identity information? Even Ruja Ignatova has just disappeared!
A video of ourselves shouting out we're not scammer? Oh come on!
A fancy website with full of elements there and there? It would take few hours.

So please let me know if there is literally any method to prove it. I'll appreciate it.

There are a lot of restrictions that make investing in your idea "losing money" that will never make profits due to the following:

 - Low electricity prices: This is not a real advantage. Iran has passed legislation on the use of electric energy in mining, indicating that additional fees will be imposed.

Legal status: The central bank prohibits crypto transactions, which makes the legal basis non-existent, in addition to the fact that Iran is an unwanted country, so (legally) it will not be able to recover money if any problem occurs.
 

Low exchange rate of local currency due to excessive inflation.

And many other things.

Thank you for the reply. A fully detailed article here is explaining legal aspect of dealing with Bitcoin in Iran:
https://arzdigital.com/iran-bitcoin/

Let me summarize it:
* Mining is prohibited in peak time ONLY for non-industrial users. If you have industrial electricity subscription, you can mine. Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade do even give license for related mining businesses. Electricity price for miners is $0.015 (2000 IRR - 13000 IRR/USD) per 1kWh as I've mentioned.
* Can banks or official exchanges involve in trading cryptocurrencies? No. It's described here: https://www.cbi.ir/showitem/17722.aspx
* Can people/individuals trade cryptocurrencies? Yes because there is no law for it (and thus it's not forbidden). And since the government itself uses Bitcoin to bypass the sanctions and mining is allowed officially, you can be sure that there won't be any law about it.

Inflation rate is excessive; you right and that plus high amount of money entrance in this year are the real reason Tehran Stock Exchange is growing that much. However, you shouldn't compare IRR/USD rate solely. It's needed to be compared with stock value growth which make a large net profit margin in final USD conversion

I want to ask something about mining. You and your team already have the mining equipment? What coin you want mine with and all is prepared for mining?


PS: don't invest without any trust and before doing research

No, we're not mining currently. Our co-workers are just selling miners and setting them up. About the coins, we've not decided yet. It should be decided upon starting since there are a lot of factors that can be changed by that time. Our main focus is on stock exchange.

That right PS should be bold BTW:
PS: Don't invest without any trust and before doing research.

that market is currently in a massive bubble due to a year of local currency value declining, and since that has stopped the market is currently waiting to burst and end in a catastrophe.

that rate grows incrementally the more you use and since mining is using a lot of electricity the rate is going to be a lot higher than this. not to mention all the red flags that it will raise.

so basically you want to remain completely anonymous while receiving a lot of money without giving any guarantees. you also claim to invest it in a very unpredictable and volatile market. and we don't even know if you know how to invest since you have no history!
be honest, would you invest in something as shady as this?

how about what if the government enforced another 2 week internet blackout again? maybe for a much longer time this time...

Thank you, very good questions and tips.

Bubble:
Yes, some part of it is bubble and there are over-valued companies there. However, most of the stocks are still under their real values. Anyone have access to data and can evaluate current market potentials.
Until past year, people almost haven't heard about this stock value. During this period, the government made it much more easier for public to go into the market.
I really encourage anyone interested in this offer to actually take a look at researches done about its growth potentials and risks.

Electricity Price:
There are five main plans (official announcement: http://tbtb.ir/uploads/1398.pdf):
First one is for "residential usage" which goes up as you use more as you mentioned. Second and third one are for "generic usage" and "agriculture usage" which we have nothing to do with.
Fourth one is for "industrial usage" which depends on peak time and licensed miners goes in this one (in 4-الف row) which is lower than mentioned $0.015.
Fifth one is for "other uses" which unlicensed miners users go there. It's costs are way more (~$0.06). Although we know that they're paying $0, illegally.

Being shady:
Yes, this is our first crowdfunding investment. Until now, we were doing so in our group or individually only.
You definitely right. It sounds too shady. No connection, no possible official complainant and nothing. But we have absolutely no idea on how it's possible to make the trust here (read my previous reply). Let us know and we'll go for it.

Internet outage:
Yes, internet has been shut down for 10 days. But it wasn't completely shut down, about 95% only. Read more about it here:
https://netblocks.org/reports/internet-restored-in-iran-after-protest-shutdown-dAmqddA9

Tech experts (including us), government itself and few others were making that 5% online. From our perspective, this is absolutely nothing to consider or worry about. We ALWAYS have some methods to connect to outside even on 100% national-wide outage. Believe me ;)

when economy crashed and many of the very same companies started having reduced revenues, their stock value should have decreased. and when it instead went up it means they are overpriced not underpriced. we may see more pumps but that doesn't change that fact.

well if it is mining then you could start by posting some verifiable picture of ASICs running and mining. you could also post some of the block hashes of the blocks that your miners found.
you could also take one step further and post the address of the place where you are mining at so it could be visited!

it was the national security council that shut down the internet and it was 100% so unless you are part of this council you didn't have access to the "internet". accessing servers located within the country doesn't count as having internet.
of course there are always "methods" to go around anything but claiming you have access to such methods is just another "claim"!

Mining in Tehran with electricity is not cheap as you say its very expensive and you need a mining license.Using subsidised electricity and getting caught gets you prison.

You really think that anyone would give invest with you blindly? If you would have a decentralized and transparent way to manage the funds it would be another discussion, but when you ask people to blindly send you BTC without even seeing your face and knowing where to find you in case you steal their money is just foolish.

You'd raise more money by begging on the streets.. ::)
A plan without infrastructure and execution is worth nothing in a professional investors' eye.

In what kind of business, will you invest? Have you some guidelines for your portfolio? Some market strategies?
Will you only invest in stocks or you will make other investments alongside with the funds?
What is the minimum required amount to invest in your project?

Sorry but I don't understand from which source you're saying that companies have reduced revenue? There are plenty of fundamental companies priced much lower than their estimated intrinsic values.
There are definitely companies with overvalued stock price because of heavy cash inflow during this year. Here is official TSE website to evaluate company information: http://en.tsetmc.com/Loader.aspx

As I've replied to Adriano2010 previously, we're not mining currently. For now, our co-workers are just selling miners and setting them up.

About the Internet outage (we know Internet definition), I'm referring you to that article again. Please read these. For second one, you'll need a translator:
https://netblocks.org/reports/internet-restored-in-iran-after-protest-shutdown-dAmqddA9
https://circle.arvancloud.com/گزارش-یک-کابوس؛-ایران-۱۶۰-ساعت-بدون-این/

Again, it was 95% outage and we (and NOT only us) have methods to bypass 100% outage too. We're living in a county of censorship; we know how to deal with it. I'm not going to talk about these methods for obvious reasons.

Thank you for replying. I've explained electricity price with official announcement and required licenses here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5220855.msg53714611#msg53714611
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5220855.msg53710484#msg53710484

There is no illegal action related to mining or using industrial electricity with license.

You correct. It's horrible indeed. But even if I expose our full identity and addresses, will it really make any trust? Can people reach us in Iran? They probably can't even make compliment about us!

We don't have extremely complicated plan. We'll simply invest in TSE (short and mid term) and/or mining. Portfolio management will be up to us but real plan will be all about endurance of investors and current potential of these options. Here is an overall portfolio of the assets:
And yes, we could raise more money that way :‌)‌)

By the way, we're not doing something secret. Any foreign can invest in TSE (https://tse.ir/cms/Page82.html) and correct relation with someone in IR, you can simply run your miners here. We're just doing same thing by covering identity of both sides.

We'll have dedicated portfolio upon starting investment for five main situation which will be chosen by majority of the investors. Here is currently estimated assets:
https://i.ibb.co/99fj8WT/assets.png

This portfolio is weighted on each row to follow the estimated profit. Assets can be changed upon investment or any time if we found better potential opportunities with lower risks in either these options or new assets.

Minimum investment is $500 in BTC but we won't start until reaching $45k. If we reach the deadline (2020-05-01), investors will decide to either get their coins back, increase the deadline or start investing with tuned investment plan.

Just added another $500 to the budget from our own group. Total: $2500

Just for the update, we couldn't reach the budget for the investment, it's still $2500. Though 7 days are remaining to the deadline, I think we might not be able to reach the budget.

During this period (~90 days), TSE stock growth was +85% (chart (https://i.ibb.co/V9K8YY8/chart-2.png)) and IRR/USD was +18% which means 67% profit in 3 months which was a little bit beyond our expectations.

Much more money is expected to be injected into TSE this year and though we lost that 67% profit, I think the opportunity is still there strongly!  :)

Sources:
TSE Index (https://www.nahayatnegar.com/tv/IRX6XTPI0006)
IRR/USD rate (https://english.tgju.net/chart/price_dollar_rl/2)