Bitcoin Forum

Look how exchanges are scamming us. Most often we create account at exchanges and never care to read the terms and conditions and blindly click on "I agree" button.

Look what happen with celsius. When the Celsius users reach the court to demand their bitcoin back, the judge told that people have already given their legal right on their bitcoins and not no one can claim any bitcoin from Celsius.

https://i.imgur.com/vgjqfyz.png
https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1610966401778421761

Most of us don't read Terms of Service before using. It is kinda betting and taking risk for our fund.

I remember that I read a shady term of Tether company that they can reject to pay user 1 USD for 1 USDT. If you accept their terms, you can use USDT. Months ago, when I read that after the fiasco of Terra $LUNA and $UST, I was very uncertain and doubtful about Tether and their stable coin USDT.

Your news is similar, Terms of Service are very shady and with wall of texts, most of us skip reading but don't know that we can be scammed anytime.

I'd say in this case, it's more correct as an example to read the whole terms of service rather than not your keys not your coins, because everyone already know when they deposit to centralized website, the third party has a control over your coins. While in this case, Celsius's terms of service make them win about the coins ownership. If Celcius didn't write such rules, the customers will win this legal court.

I agree.

It's like buying a product but didn't read the manual. We tend to neglect such thing because we think it's not that important until it is. Celsius doesn't do anything wrong here, it's the client's fault of ignoring important notice from them since the start. This situation is completely different from "not your keys, not your coins" but somehow it's kinda related to the matter where you can't control what you don't completely own.

The problem is that we don't have a choice. Anyone who read the term and conditions of any exchange will have to "agree" with it, before proceeding for account creation. If you do not agree with them, then they won't let you use their platform.
Since we do not have decentralized platforms and we see others using the same platform, we have no choice but to accept the terms and conditions and hope the exchange / platform will run in good faith.
In case of a collapse just as it happened with Celsius, of course our funds will be lost.

You're right it's all about not your keys not your voins and we must alligned ourselves to this in other to have our asset in custody or they have it with them and against us, also we need to be careful of the means we save the private keys because it also matters alot from getting exposed to any third party who may end up in using them against us any time, wr must also be mindful of not having them backed up by the cloud storage institutionizations.

I would say that a successful scam requires at least two people, one who is behind the scam, and the other who will believe in it and invest in it. I remember when some on this forum questioned the legality and risks of the platform mentioned by the OP, and unfortunately many did not understand how stupid it was to believe that such a literal Ponzi scheme could last forever.

It's not just the fine print, expensive lawyers and sleazy CEO that we have, it's the millions who have no idea what they're doing - because every concept of banks and interest in the world of cryptocurrencies is completely wrong, especially if it's Bitcoin. It's too late for some things now, but it seems that even after everything, people have learned almost nothing - millions of BTC are in the possession of various CEXs, and their clients are exposed to the risk of being left without everything.

But you can't force someone to act smart if he insists on being stupid, right?

That means investors didn't read the terms but quickly press the agree button, how can it be said that the exchange is scamming investors? This is clearly the investor's fault.

I am not defending centralized exchanges but frankly, the cryptocurrency market is not strictly regulated and not protected by law so we need to be responsible for our assets rather than relying on the government after the losses. If you deposit money in Celsius to receive interest, will you declare it to the government to pay taxes, or will you spend it on your own, and when you get scammed, you go to them for help?

you have it backwards

handing any funds to another person on the blockchains loses you ownership rights
thats the whole point of bitcoin ownership transfer
#not-you-keys-not-your-bitcoin

its then the terms of service/user agreement whereby the terms should make the claim the value belongs to the user, to give back to the user some ownership right

EG hand a suitcase of cash to a complete stranger.. do you rally think handing it to them keeps your rights over the suitcase in tact.. nope. 'yoink' they took it, its theirs.. you handed it to them and all evidence shows you handed it to them
you then have to prove there was an agreement to hand it back

..
here is another one, grayscales terms are that the value is property of the GBTC trust and they can revoke any users access to the site completely without notice or reason

...
however the opposite side there are exchanges that say that funds belong to customers, and if there is a violation of the rules the service can disable trading features and request users withdraw their funds within 14 days to then close the account and never return

No, it doesn't mean this!
https://cases.stretto.com/public/x191/11749/PLEADINGS/1174901042380000000067.pdf


It doesn't mean that the court said all the coins belong to Celsius, it has only rules that the people who deposit their coins there are unsecured creditors, so per bankruptcy laws, they still have the right to claim those coins and be reimbursed as long as enough funds are available.

The ruling changes little because there aren't enough funds to reimburse everyone so even if they would want to claim back their coins it wouldn't be possible, and each user will have to forfeit a part of this and accept a loss, the same thing that will happen once the bankruptcy procedure is over, or how it happened in MtGxo case.


Has anyone put a gun to your head and told you to deposit your coins there to earn 16% APY?

you ignored the IF

customers have to prove they own the balance in their accounts
which relies on their user agreement terms

IF the user agreement terms do not show that funds/balances/reserves of balances are customer property. then the customers are not debtors/creditors/owners

in short the user agreement needs to contractually say funds are customers property.. otherwise they are not


you are not automatically retaining your right ownership (of assets or of a businesses balance/value), simply because you handed them value..
they have to state there is a agreement that they are allowing the value/balance/asset reserve they received to be assigned/owned by a customer.

this isnt anything new due to crypto.. its standard business/property law
possession is 9/10th of the law. the possessor owns it unless the possessor states otherwise.. or there was an agreement of IOU/property ownership terms

.. now lets clarify
https://celsius.network/terms-of-use
their terms do keep mentioning things like
"Your Celsius Account allows you to view your balances"
"“Account” or “Celsius Account” means a User’s designated user account on the Celsius website or mobile application, allowing a User to access and use the Services, view the User’s balance of Eligible Digital Assets held in custody on the User’s behalf"

all suggestive that the balances/funds are the customers property

however if found that a user is under 18 or from a prohibited country like korea, or broke one of the policies of celsius. the balance/coin does not belong to the customer and they can seize those funds

but as said in last couple posts.. it neds a contractual proof that the business is declaring the funds as customers for the customers to be able to make a valid claim

there are actually other exchanges user agreements with much more evil terms.  so its important people read their user agreement terms when using a service.
celsius terms are not so bad, and most customers should get some amount back

It's true that most people are too lazy to read the terms of agreements, which contain a lot of unnecessary text in the text in order to confuse the reader more. All these conditions could be greatly reduced. In order not to get into trouble, as users of the Celsius with a user agreement, it was simply not necessary to give btc to this platform or any other. Here I agree with OP, who singled out a well-known phrase in the crypto community, which is often forgotten, but never ceases to be relevant. By handing over your keys /btc you lose all the benefits of owning a bitcoin.

The biggest thing I think people are missing here is the fact that Celsius from the beginning looked like the kind of people that would take your money and run. Insanely high promises of returns, draconian T&C in terms of who's money it was and who had control of it, and so on.

This is not even a Not your Keys Not your coins issue, but a IT'S JUST FLAT OUT NOT YOUR MONEY issue.

IMO we are going to start to see this more and more now that Celsius more or less got away with it. Yes, they imploded but beyond that for years they were taking other people money and making it their own.
How long until every other shady exchange / platform in general starts using similar T&C if they have not already.

-Dave

And as always you didn't check the court document to see what this is about nor did you bother to actually read what I was saying, you felt the need again to...do stuff!
The if is not about proving ownership and it's not about the funds at the disposal of the debtors, it's solely a thing of deciding one of the two
- customers are unsecured creditors
- customers are owners of said assets
See how simple? Two lines, 10 words, not some story by Marcel Proust!

What a lesson to learn from. Most times people really do not read what they have to, they are in a hurry to agree to terms and conditions which they know not what is in-between the agreement. Agreeing to a legal document means you agreeing to everything stated in that documents as it relates to the organization which you consent to and you have no legal right over it after signing up for it that is why it is good to seek the advise of a legal attorney to guide you through.

If I ask now how many of you read terms and conditions before signing  I guess not upto 30% do that
 This case is now a eye opener. Be wise do not sign or agree to terms and conditions without knowing the content of what you are agreeing to.

you read and admit to reading just 10 words but missed out the important parts
- If the cryptocurrency assets in the Earn Accounts are owned by the Debtors,  the Account Holders are unsecured creditors
-If only some Account Holders prevail with their arguments that they own the cryptocurrency assets in their accounts

funny part is i actually quoted the word for word important parts of the court filing
you however said 10 words that were not in the filing quote you just quoted a few posts ago.. the word "customer" was not in that quote you posted

it used words like debters, users, account holders.. thus you are the one interpreting and misrepresenting by snipping sections without reading full context

---

the advice, one more time for emphasis
do not by default think that when you deposit you retain ownership rights

always expect #not-your-keys-not your-coin
always inspect user agreement terminology

to see where your rights stand

It is not just about having accounts on centralized exchanges but the amount of trust we put up to them. Aside Celsius, every other CEXs with lending platforms have shaddy ideas and need not to be trusted. Just look at the the amount left frozen on this Exchange tells you we have a choice to protect ourselves against it. According to the rules some set of people aren’t allowed to get a return of there fund when any collapse happens due to age barrier or country (according to Franky1) but this wasn’t the case when deposits were made? Even the court needs a second look at this judgement.

My take is if you feel the need to use this Centralized Exchanges mostly there lending features then two or more Exchanges might be advisable to minimize loss at a time

I believe that everyone is aware of the risks of joining these lending platforms, but because they are so greedy, they ignore everything and when they know they have been scammed, blame others. If they are not greedy, no one can scam them, if you believe centralized exchanges are scamming you, then you just need to avoid them.

I’m one of those not reading exchange ToS because they are very long and written on small text which makes user ignored often times. It will be helpful if the part of Celsius ToS that use by the judge as reference will be available on the OP to easily spot it on other exchange ToS.

I believe this is unfair decision since we all know that user doesn’t read ToS and this kind of rule that sneakily place in there knowing people doesn’t bother to read is enough for the judge to make a consideration for this many loss.

what if i told you that some businesses have different ToS/user agreements per customer
yep it happens
especially when some businesses can say things like "we can modify, alter, change terms without notice..  by using the service you are agreeing to the terms"

in short they dont even have to have a tick box that you have read/agreed to any agreement/change of agreement, and you are suppose to periodically re-read the terms/agreement to notice any changes that affect you

There are still people who are not aware of those exchanges. They still keep storing huge amounts of bitcoin on those platforms? That is, we are still being victimized. Let's always be cautious. When you see this post, you should immediately withdraw your assets from those exchanges to be safe. However, if you are still stubborn then leave it there. With these incidents, we should now wake up, open our eyes, and make our move, as we can't really win on this kind of thing. Let's just prevent this from happening to us.

Don't feel bad; who does? I don't recall ever reading them myself. It goes without saying that when you deposit money or coins into a third-party service, you no longer have access to your funds. Whether or not the crash of Celcius was deliberate, people willingly deposited their funds on the platform. We've already seen quite a few of these instances. I still use Binance to this day but I'm planning to discontinue and resort to using Metamask or Trust wallet, since these funds are actively used in staking. My Bitcoin is stored separately in a desktop wallet, away from CEX services.

I have to pay attention to T&Cs because I am guilty of this too. This is sad. I cannot imagine how pained and totally powerless they feel right now. I wish that bitcoin supporters really get the message from these sad occurrence that as long as it is not your keys, then you can't be sure that the money in your centralized exchange is yours. It will be terrible if other people do not learn from reading these experiences. Move your coins out of exchanges while you still can.

case in point
grayscale
https://grayscale.com/terms-of-service/

Can you explain a little more about this case, imagine we don't know anything about it, if you post something to discuss about an incident/event, it'd be nicer to have all the information on the OP, so that people could read what they need here and don't have to go to other sources.

If a service (especially exchanges) doesn't give you the ownership rights for your coins/assets/money, don't do it, don' fall for it, they tend to lure people at first to get big, suddenly you see billions are gone, rinse and repeat, maybe we are becoming retards ( devolving instead of evolving)

shortest version possible:

celsius had multiple versions of terms of service. lets call them 1-9
versions 5-8 were in favour of property belonging to celsius estate, not account holder

versions 1 and 9(9 is the current one on website now) were in favour of users ownership and to be treated as creditors
versions 2-4 are in the middle.
5-8 side with celsius ownership

the bankruptcy and date of closing access to trading earning. milestoned version 5-8 as the active ToS
which said that

there will be a separate court case hearing where account holders can provide arguments and proof of being a creditor via the claims resolution process

I saw this today on Twitter and I learn something that it's a little thing we overlooked are the things that kill us atimes. I'm also guilty of this clicking "agree" stuff without going through the terms and Conditions, though I'm not stupid enough to live my bitcoin on any self custody.
The year 2022 has tought everyone a lesson, the not your key, not your bitcoin phrase doesn't sound to be new to anyone, people have feel what it is and would forever stay in their head after loosing all their wealth to some groups of scam entity. For those affected can start again and wait until Celsius give back their coin and go the traditional ways of Bitcoin, never trust anyone with your bitcoin.

The issue is that we are too lazy to manage our financial affairs. Few people read the terms and conditions of a centralized wallet or an exchange. We unconsciously give them access to our funds and then cry. We enjoy leaving our funds in an exchange that has led to a lack. We have spread "not your key not your funds", but we have not used it ourselves. Every incident results in a loss of funds for investors. As a result, the market keeps collapsing. We must learn from the past. Last year was labelled "Bloody Year for Crypto" due to a series of incidents. If we do not learn from our mistakes, we will continue to lose.

Maybe if there were simplified version of these terms and conditions it will make it much easier for investors to be able to read. Of course it is a thing of concern when you agree to terms you are not able to read. The best way to address this issue is to stop storing money on exchange. Store your funds on exchange only if you are able to read the T & C and understood it.
I don't know why terms and conditions are so lengthy anyways  :D

This is a perfect example of not your keys, not your coins. And if you are stupid enough not to read the terms and conditions carefully, then you are putting yourself at the losing end. But we have been warn even before not to trust exchanges as they are just good for nothing and they’ll eventually steal our funds when we are too trusting. This is already a proof. Just stay off from exchanges, and manage your own coins at your own non-custodial wallet.

Anyone who is currently leaving their funds on centralized exchange are the one risking themselves. For a very long time i don't really buy the idea of dealing with exchangers which would warrants leaving assets inside without trading or something else, i believe all this are happening to open our eyes the more because most users don't really know the intention of these exchangers.
Sometimes it gets me wondering why there's always hack occurring in most of this exchange, this could be a staff working underway to steal people's funds and term it to be something else either security breaching.

With this example that has happened i think many of us here would picked interest in reading Terms and Conditions of any exchange before furthering ahead making an account with them. Everyone is liable for their funds Take note and have it back.

Any smart person who reads this agreement will never use the services of a crypto exchange. It says literally that the client's account can be blocked without explanation on any suspicion.
It's like a medicament analogy. A person does not read about side effects.

Isn't this kind of action fraud?  They had version  9 published on the site while implementing 5-8 on the declaration of bankruptcy.  And why do I have a feeling that the judge, in this case, is too company-sided?  Didn't the judge consider the possible fraud attempt of the company through changes in terms and conditions?  The pioneers does not signed on the revised TOS, and the publishing of the version 9 keep the users stay in the company. 

On the latest version that is published on the company it is clearly stated that:

Since it was stated that those who avail of the earn option is not eligible to claim their funds since the ownership is transferred to Celcius but on the terms, it was clearly stated that the owner lend the amount to the Celcius company making the company borrower of the said amount.

I don't know how the judge did not see the act of fraud of Celcius in choosing 5-8 versions of the TOS.

That is why if there are terms and conditions listed, we should read and understand them so that we will not end up regretting and blaming ourselves. But even if there are no terms listed, we should never stick to centralized exchanges no matter what because we are giving them the permission to have an access of our account when in fact, it should be only ourselves have the sole access to our own wallet.

Unfortunately, most of us don't read the terms of these exchanges or trading platforms.
Usually, we just click the agree button even if we haven't read their terms and understand what it is trying to imply.
But if you won't read the terms, just make sure you are not leaving your funds in those platforms for long.
So you won't be worrying if you can still get out your funds or not. After you make a trade or avail any of their service, withdraw it to your own wallet.
People will only realize their shortcomings once a certain platform got bankrupt or closed their services.

The thing is there is often times a clause of revising the terms without prior notice.  This kind of clause in the terms should be banned.  Clients have the right to know any changes happening on the terms of the condition after all that was written to have both parties agreed upon.  So in reading TOS, we should look for this clause and if appears, we can opt to skip their services since this kind of condition is too vague and oftentimes unfavorable to customers just like what happened in the issue stated in this thread.

you do not even have to "clickwrap" (tick a checkbox and press accept) these days... just maintaining an account(continuing to have balance and using an account) is all that is needed to justify an agreement to the terms. even when terms change each month. by simply logging in you are then locked to that months terms, whether they have notified you or not that the terms changed since last visit/use.

Despite terms and conditions, the fraud is evident by the behavior of the CEO one day before withdrawals were freezed on this tweet:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FewRsmAWYAEv8OA?format=jpg&name=large

He was inspiring confidence and trustworthiness on his community that the services offered by Celsius were completely fine ONE DAY BEFORE they seized investors' funds. He acted maliciously knowing what was going to happen on the next day, besides cashing out a considerably sum of tokens days before the fateful day. The crime was premeditated and the criminal term used as an excuse to legitimate that funds belong to the scammers is there just to add one more proof of their criminal nature and forethought they were planning to scam depositors futurely.

I think a fair judge could see that and immediately order Celsius to give the money left back to depositors, no?

Not only lending platform but crypto currency exchanges and all centralized platform where we deposit out money (bitcoin), they are greedy indeed.

Although the fall of FTX, Celsius and all these platform is bad for crypto but these have created much awaited awareness that crypto need dex's.
Now people are afraid of centralized platform. Good to know this but this awareness came at a huge price  :(

You say they are greedy, so are you greedy? If there was an opportunity to take their money, would you pass it up? I'm sure you won't miss the opportunity, so they are just like us. This is a financial market, not a babysitting place, where we wait for them to take care of us and feed us.

We are all very afraid of CEX and always wary of it, but it is a fact that we are still using it and cannot stop it. I bet you also have a binance account and have assets on it.

When we deposit our crypto to an exchange they are fully under the control of the exchange and our exchange account only has a fake balance that you can never transfer without the exchange's permission. So in this case if the exchanger refuses to give you the money then in that case you will not be able to recover the money in any way So it must be true not your key not your coins. So a non-custdial wallet must be used to keep crypto safe and for self control

I guess the next time I will put my coins into an exchange, I will read those long paragraphs in the terms and conditions part.
This is an example of "Not your keys, not your crypto" scenario but this is more of a "Learn to read Terms and Conditions" scenario.

What Celsius did is an eye-opener to us who are putting some funds on the lending platform that whatever happens, always and always read the terms and condition. Let's be truth here. Many of us (including me) aren't reading those long paragraphs and we are just clicking that small box below that says we are agreeing even though we didn't read the whole Terms and conditions/services.

It's good to me that I didn't ever put my coins into lending platforms like Celsius. I just don't know but I guess me being very picky is a blessing in disguise for me. :D

Clicking a button to accept to the terms of a service is not only peculiar to exchanges, this is common everywhere. It’s time people begin to read thoroughly the terms and conditions a service is bind to in order to avoid an occurrence of this type of case. So sad that these people gave their savings to an exchange and couldn’t spend some time to know the rules the exchange runs on, indeed a total negligence by them. If these can happen to an exchange wallet where one keeps his/her funds then it can happen anywhere.

Not quite sure the Tweet says what exactly happened and I am pretty sure, if it did, it was because of some kind of user agreement all clients signed up to. Cannot blame them as I accept plenty of ToS myself just to user services, but must say am much more careful when it comes to money.

In any case, that is not so much an example of not your keys but no keys, no access. Applies to almost every centralised service, really.

We are all guilty of just checking terms and agreements. Things should be read in the first plsce but I guess this won't make hacking certain especially if you are with the 'right' exchanger. Some exchangers such as Binance, ibeen existing for years in this industry and complaints was never regarding hacking incident, except for delays with some transactions. Our negligence should not be passed towards exchangers. In the first place, it is our responsibility to be cautious of our actions especially if it is involving money. Do's and dont's should always be our top priority to avoid unfortunate things to happen on your asset, right?

Some of these companies purposely make their terms and conditions so long so that it will be too much for people to read.
They also put these terms and conditions in ways that people that read them don't understand.
In the past, I don't read the terms and conditions of a site or app until a couple of years ago. Now I take my time to read it from beginning to end. I learned my lesson the hard way in the first place I worked immediately after college and I vowed it would never happen again.

Signed paper generally mitigates any rights to the signer.  It is the norm within society to have an order.  The Internet is the savage *I accept* of endless clauses that are complex or not, but that almost always end in the gray area.

But in many other countries, including the United States itself, sometimes your universal rights to request leniency for a just cause are not unprotected for the simple fact that a clause wants to limit your rights or hide to allow scams.

So it is a good example for the famous phrase but it also reminds us that it is an unbalanced legal system that could do more in these cases for ordinary people and not always protect the interests of companies  that protect themselves in verbiage of some clauses.

I'm really sad for those people who have been exposed and lost their BTC because of an exchange going down. It's really important to know what you are signin in off with centralized exchanges but it's kind-of unproductive because if you do not sign or agree to it, you won't be able to use it, so it's just a sure way to lose your BTC if something happens.

This is really hard for people who have really made an effort to buy their BTC and just lose everything because of a shady exchange.

It seems like the story of scams by the exchanges will never end and every day we hear about a new case and we see new people losing their hard-handed money just because they hold their bitcoins on the exchanges, and this case is just another example of this old story of not your keys, not your coins, Also regarding the agree button mostly people will just click on it without of even read whole text even if the agreement is about how the exchange is going to react in these situations I hope people pay attention to the agreement before passing it because that's just like singing an agreement in the real world.

This is also tough for everybody, especially for traders. Using cryptocurrency exchanges seems also become important for every people that use cryptocurrency.
So for me, this also kind of issue in the future will still exist. This is also given for all the cryptocurrency exchanges at all, it's not only about the term of services per cryptocurrency exchange because in most exchanges once you already deposited your Bitcoin, but you have also already given them access to your Bitcoin.

Normally, we don't really read the whole TOS and that's a reality. Though some might have read it, but 80% of the time, we just go ahead and start using the platform as long we are not in a restricted region. But, if you decide to put on a huge amount of crypto into that platform, you should always make sure to read and understand every detail in the TOS. That is how I think when I'm dealing with a huge amount of money anywhere other than the exchanges.

Sometimes it is even pointless to read the terms and conditions because you would still click on 'I agree' anyway. Before you even tried to sign up to something like Celsius, you already have the intention of creating an account there.

With regard to Celsius, it is probably because you are planning to take a loan or to invest and grab that high annual yield. Had those Celsius users read the terms and conditions, would they have decided not to proceed? I don't think so.

It is even likely that these users won't notice that there is something wrong with the terms and conditions.

I think it doesn't matter whether we read it or not, whether the clause exists or not. Because deposit in lending platforms and exchange is for profit, then I will call investment, and investment is risky. We all know that depositing money in centralized companies is always risky, even we deposit money in a bank, we say it's too risky, then why should we trust exchanges? Investing is about taking risks, so once we lose, we should ask ourselves why we are so greedy before blaming them.

I think if people made a lot of profit from it and it didn't crash, there wouldn't be posts slandering these centralized exchanges. Just stay away from us and we will be at peace, don't be greedy, give them money and then say they scammed us, they don't force us to give them money, what we do is voluntary.

yes many shady exchanges use the clause "your investment can go up or down and you can lose it all, we are not liable for loss" as their catch all clause to think they can take funds off people because users agree they can lose it all and not hold exchange liable

I saw this tweet yesterday, And i must say that this is really disheartening to to read, and like you said, 99(if not actually 100) percent of centralized exchange users dont read their terms of conditions before deciding to deposit and start trading on the exchange.

I for example, since i started my crypto journey in 2016, I can you all that i have an account on at least 40 percent of all the exchanges that currently exist and not one have i read their terms and conditions, for me, this tweet was like a warning to desist from being so ignorant of things like this.
I have decided that from now on, i will go back and read the terns and conditions of any exchange i want to use, and i will only continue using that exchange if i find nothing fishy in their terms, this is for my daily trading though, For my Bitcoins that i hold for long term purposes, this is always kept safe in a non-custodial wallet.

I believe that even if they read all those terms, they will click the agree button and quickly deposit money there to invest and earn interest. Since their purpose is profit, even if they read the terms a few more times, they will continue to invest in it. Most of the time, when investing, people hardly care about the risk but just try to compare the returns, where higher will be preferred. People only start looking for causes and terms when they go bankrupt and lose money.

Oh my God, that is most cruel judgment I have read up until now. Can you imagine the amount
of money that we talking about? Its 4.2 billion dollars. He was billionaire and now he can't even
access his own money. Who knows how hard he might have invested in them? What would
have been his hodling period and what not. Why would Celsius do anything like this to a user.
Are they just being greedy about the money? Because that is surely whole lot of money and
that's why they might have turned up against him with some small error of user.
After reading this, I am not even going to keep a single penny on an exchanger. Neither I do it actually. I believe in keeping bitcoins on wallet and using it right from there

I see no fraud in this case, the exchange has attached terms and conditions attached before registering there. As a result of lazy reading third parties can avoid fraud charges against them, clicking the "I agree" button on the terms and conditions when registering on the Exchange is strong evidence that anyone loses in court for giving legal rights to their bitcoins.
On the one hand we have no other choice to register on the Exchange besides pressing the "I agree" button, on the other hand we can choose an exchange whose terms and conditions are not burdensome to either party.

Always read term and condition of company while signing up especially in matter of money

And store your crypto in hardware wallet if it's in big amount

It's really important to educate people about this aspect, most of people join Crypto in the bull market thinking that it's easy to make money here, but they don't think about the possibilities of losing money because of the FOMO case that's created by the media and many other entities. during the bull market, I didn't see any post on Twitter or in a public news site warning people of this aspect, I personally could have been one of those scammed people as I went to make an account on Celsius, but dropped the idea from the point I read their terms and conditions. I can feel the pain of people who lost money to this platform while they could have bought cheap Bitcoin with this money. However, it's one from a lot of lessons Crypto trader/investor have to learn.

The real enemy of Bitcoin isn't the government but the CEOs of this centralized platforms and they all have to be shutdown. Therefore we should stop using them. When I read stories like this then I understand better why it's advice to not use exchange as wallets were we store our coins or keep large some of money in them at any given time.
They're no different from banks as they both operate in the same manner. Celsius isn't even feeling for their customer to compensate them in some way. They're forgetting that without this customer trusting them in the first place that they would had been out of business a very long time ago.
Hope this serve as a lesson to others to avoid been a victim of this centralized platforms stealing people money. As we enter a new Bitcoin bull market, more platforms like Celsius will come up but we just have to avoid them to not become a victim later in the future.

That's also what I probably do if I'm looking forward to my potential earnings. What I usually do when I'm about to sign up to an exchange, gambling site, or any online services for that matter, is that I would read reviews. Once I'm convinced that the platform or site is worth using and legit positive reviews are many, the tendency is that I might just sign up for it. So before I even click on the 'I agree' button at the end of the terms and conditions, I am already decided to use the site.

But I'm not a fan of these crypto investment sites so there's no reason why I would sign up for this.

everyone. its not just the terms of service/user agreement. you signed up to.. you have to now continuously re-read the terms each time you use the service

most sites dont need to even inform you of changes.

and in the celsius case. the court was defining a certain term sheet based on the new terms just 2 month prior to the funds lockdown.. not the ones years prior when users signed up

I can tell that it's not true. Most people don't read the ToS when they use almost any platform. It's long, boring and mostly there is nothing new or interesting. I asked my friends and no one read it in the bank, games, etc. Neither do I, but I'm not using exchanges and don't have a lot of choices in terms of banks.

And this is precisely the reason why you should always read the ToS agreement. It never hurts to know more about what you're trying to get yourself into. Most likely stuff like this is explicitly documented amidst the piles of mumbo jumbo that Celsius has fed their users in the Privacy Statement as well as the ToS and us, being the belligerent, lazy people that we are, just scrolled as quick as we can to the bottom, and pressed agree, from there we fell right into their trap. Ultimately this isn't just a Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins dilemma. This is also a good example of why you should always read the fine print and not skip directly to the bottom. You don't have to read the whole thing, just a little skimming and scanning could go a long way in ensuring that you are legally protected from anything the provider could do to you.

I'm one of them and guilty that I just click the "I agree" button without reading because I want to save time. But the more of these cases appear and you'll get to realize that you should also be careful with such terms and agreements, it starts to read every time we sign up.
While for the side of users of Celcius, that's a hard part to accept since they've trusted them but then, they'll just make it like this and will have to partways through a separation that's not favorable to the users.

And the fact is maybe that almost all exchanges apply terms and conditions that are almost similar to those applied by Celsius if we read them more carefully. so there is no reason for us to put our assets on the stock exchange. except only temporarily when we trade or when we accumulate. and when our accumulation is fulfilled then it would be nice if we immediately withdraw it to our personal Wallet. be it a hot wallet or a cold wallet. at least when the assets are in our personal wallet it will make us calm as long as we can store the private key / Seed phrase in our wallet properly and safely.

Terms and conditions can be upgraded at any time without informing users, and when things go wrong they will easily blame it on users for not going through the terms and conditions in the first place.

I was a victim of this act by a crypto exchange before, I thought something was wrong with my eye but later I noticed they change their rules themselves. Anything centralized in crypto right now is a big red flag for me, I can't say for others.

That is the reason why we need to read carefully every details of the terms and conditions because everything is listed there, and once you signed it, the company has assumed that you already agree to their rules. And since most of us are not doing this, the reason why most of us are prone to scams. Exchanges will always take advantage from us, and that will only stop if we stop using them and resort into saving with our own hardware wallet. That way, they can never scam us anymore.

Some shit happens once again and people never ever learn, whether they do have the rights or not and on the time of hacking or fraudulent events then the users or investors itself doesnt have the power nor the
option on taking their coins back unless if the company would really be able to return them so but this is unlikely yet most of the time it would be ending up on a cat-and-mouse chase.
Its been told for how many times that centralized platforms arent that long term or safe main wallets but there are people who are really fan on doing that.
Mistake on here is that people dont have read up the terms and just completely agree it all.