Bitcoin Forum

French police dismantle illegal Bitcoin exchange

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/07/us-france-bitcoin-idUSKBN0FC19220140707

"It's also the first time in France that Bitcoins have been seized as part of a judicial procedure."



Barry, here is your second chance  :P

What was the website?

Makes you wonder if bitfinex is next in line. They operate form a virtual office address in Hong Kong
Room 1601, 16th Floor, The Sun's Group Centre, 200 Gloucester Rd, Hong Kong

Raphael and giancarlo don't look like hong kong names to me and until proven otherwise bitfinex is operated out of a garage in southern France (Nice) next to the Italian border

In the past several Hong Kong exchanges have run away with costomer funds  (GBL, 796, mycoin, ANX.....), basicaly anyone dealing with a hong kong registered exchange deserves to get goxed

What site was it?

It seems like the depositors should have a right to claim their bit coins. Of course that doesn't prevent the French government from tying them up in red tape for a few years.

HKCEx as well. Regulations must be so weak in Hong Kong, anyone can start a shell company and a virtual office front without any identifications. I think there is another one popping up right now which boosts transparency of funds. Personnally, I would avoid exchanges from Hong Kong.

"Police were tipped off to the platform's existence by a retired policeman who alerted financial investigators after buying Bitcoins on the site, he said."
^^^What a jerk, he needs to get a life.

How can the article not name the site?

The whole thing sounds slightly implausible, my first question was "what inspired a retired policeman to start tracking down 'illegal bitcoin rings' ?". Sounds a bit unlikely.

And cryptocurrency has no explicit legal status in any country other than Germany, so the whole thing seems somewhat contrived at some level. At what level, and to what end, who knows.

maybe   bestxchanger.com https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=272515.msg6169730 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=272515.msg6169730)

or  chronocoin.fr or codetocoin.com or beegcoin.com

as far as i know there is only 5 French exchanges, time will tell

Yeah, this definitely sounds like a fake news story to scare people. Reuters is owned by the Rothschilds.

Not saying the whole thing is fake, there's no evidence of that. But equally, there's sparse evidence of what did happen, as this operation was (ostensibly) incredibly small.

I'd highlight the politicised aspect again also: any attempt to prosecute this apparent operation under French law should not be significantly different to Mt Gox's own legal case in France, where they too were running an unlicensed exchange (despite the fact that no license for cryptocurrency even exists to obtain, perhaps that's how Gox won the case). In fact, Mt Gox didn't have a license anywhere AFAIK, and they were permitted to operate for almost 4 years, transmitting and exchanging billions of dollars on an international scale. And they still won their French case.

So this event is certainly not especially newsworthy, ostensibly there wasn't alot of money involved (compared to Mt Gox). I'd guess that other unlicensed financial services of all types are busted frequently without making the news, let alone an international reportage service like Reuters. So why are a couple of off-beat guys from the French riviera, running a bitcoin exchange service out of their garage, getting very publicly arrested for it? And being reported on by "authoritative" international news services, and seemingly nowhere else yet?

Reeks of some kind of manipulation, but it's difficult to tell quite what the purpose is.

French police dismantle illegal Bitcoin exchange

Dismantled?
Is there a video?
What kind of tools did they use?  ::)

How do you "illegally" sell or lend bitcoins in France anyway?

..You "sell them" but don't actually deliver them?

french source found , some local paper
https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?act=url&depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.lepoint.fr/chroniqueurs-du-point/guerric-poncet/bitcoin-les-gendarmes-demantelent-une-plate-forme-en-france-07-07-2014-1843937_506.php&usg=ALkJrhirteBvoeerKe7IylSiylBfVwGGhA looks like fake story.

Does anyone else see a pattern with the french attacking Bitcoin? Like everytime there's an european politician coming up with giant red tables of "risks" , bans and warnings. And anecdotally mtgox, instawallet and those cops at some airport putting a guy in interrogation for mentioning bitcoin?  :D

 

Hmmm, maybe. But Gox won their case, and don't forget Monoprix and Maison du Bitcoins. There is some balance to the French authority's handling of cryptocurrency.