Bitcoin Forum

It was only a matter of time before one of the many 'investment schemes' in the bitcoin community got some regulator's attention.



Judging by the machine translation, this report fails to distinguish between Bitcoin - and the scheme run by 'Leandro César' (bitcointalk username)





Leandro's response is quite enlightening: http://www.bitcoinbrasil.com.br/?p=464

He makes a fair point about the investments and returns all being in BTC - so it is a little strange that the CVM should see this as falling within their jurisdiction - unless they have determined that bitcoin is a 'currency' ?
Also regarding jurisdiction - the offers were made on a non-Brazilian website, in portuguese, not aimed specifically at Brazilians.

Perhaps this is undesirable attention for bitcoin - but an interesting case for sure.

Hi friends.

Any questions, I am here!

L.

I know several people who would be interested in a Brazilian investment for the residency visa (http://www.gringoes.com/articles.asp?ID_Noticia=2512). If you could help facilitate this then I bet we could get a great Bitcoin based business started down there.

How did they suspend your investment?  ???

This is probably going to be considered "a big deal"


"CVM suspende oferta irregular de investimento em moeda virtual‎"
 - http://br.noticias.yahoo.com/cvm-suspende-oferta-irregular-investimento-moeda-virtual-201946365.html
 - http://oglobo.globo.com/economia/cvm-suspende-oferta-irregular-de-investimento-em-moeda-virtual-5585121


"CVM suspende veiculação de oferta de fundos por Leandro Marciano César"
 - http://monitormercantil.com.br/2012/index.php?pagina=Noticias&Noticia=116667

And the thread for the business:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46721.0

Big deal? It's all moonspeak to me.

lol @ those silly regulators.

This is just showing that Brazil is not going to be the place to do bitcoin related business, I don't believe that other first world countries will be following suit. This seems like a lazy decision by some official "what? bitcoin, Reals whatever, you need a 'licence' to continue".

Why? What are they doing besides linking to his thread? I can't figure it out, maybe they are doing something.

A few questions:

1.) Had there been any prior contact from any agency in Brazil related to Bitcoin or this investment fund?

2.) Will the investment fund be closing?
If not, will it be closed to all investors from Brazil (current and in the future)?
Also, if not, will you continue to administer it?

3.) How large is the fund currently (bitcoins invested) and how many investors are there for that amount?
Round 8 shows 500 BTC, is that correct as the total investment currently from all investors?
What is the largest amount by any one investor?

4.) How much of this current round was carried over from the previous round?
How much of earnings are re-invested (e.g., from the last round into this round?)

5.) Have there ever been any rounds where there were losses?

6.) Has there ever been a claim by an investor that access to funds wasn't granted?

7.) Do the balances of wallets, EWallets and exchange accounts (valued in terms of BTCs) currently either equal or exceed the total amount invested?
i.e., can every bit of the invested funds be accounted for?  Has an audit ever been performed by another party?

8.) Are there any ties with other Bitcoin or financial-related organizations?
(e.g., own, are employed by, or receive compensation from any exchange?)

I'm sorry to hear that. It was bound to happen. I guess we'll have to hide more to invest in bitcoin.

First question: they can't now to details of your investments and the size of the fund, since this is in bitcoins? Right?

Also, what happens to the fund? Are the bitcoins returned to us, or what?

Thanks

I hate this fascit pigs, these parasites, and above all I hate how passive we the peoples are. Democracy? Social justice? What a joke...

Someone noted in a article, that CVM (the regulator) now has two choices:

Admit that bitcoin is currency (the first country in the world doing that!)

or say that bitcoin is NOT currency (and thus they cannot punish Leonardo)

I wonder what will happen next =D

damn interesting...

Instead I am scared as hell of a GLBSE crackdown. I hope that you have contingency plans in case of a SHTF event of this kind, at least to protect the assets of investors.

Nefario seemed to have taken good measures to protect our investments, I'm not too worried.

Third choice: threat Leandro. Him not being insane, closes his fund. CVM doesn't bother to say anything more.

Plus, them officially recognizing bitcoin as a form of money would not be good at all, IMHO.

@ Leandro:

What was the official reason given for closing your operation down?

He had no authorization to operate investment funds, basically. At least that's what I've seen.

This is an investment fund only if bitcoin is recognized as money by the parasites that be.

True this is a very interesting case :)

Lol, a government attacking our funny little game? Nonsense, we made (ok i know i did nothing) our game, we play it and they now tell us to stop? Next thing will be what, Brazil attacking EVE Online? World of Warcraft? They too have VIRTUAL MONEY
Hell, in EVE they too invest and get paid a % interest! Go Brazil, suspend EVE now!!!!!! Omg a friend of mine invested some eve money in a corporation building spaceships, is that illegal?  :D

Never underestimate the craziness of governments and their presumption to have to regulate everything and forbid what they don't like.

http://i48.tinypic.com/23wtthz.jpg

So a government does the only sensible thing and treats Bitcoin as money or dare I say "virtual currency" and this is an attack on Bitcoin by a "parasitic" government. I do not think so. For many of us that is good news.

This is what Leandro tells me via email:

Not as a currency, but CVM just classified Bitcoin as this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_(finance) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_(finance))

Quite the opposite!!

Now, every single company in Brazil will want Bitcoins!! Because, now, Bitcoin is a Security for the Brazilian Government.

I just LOL a lot!!

WTF is CVM?!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_Commission_(Brazil) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_Commission_(Brazil))

CVM isn't quite government. It's an autarchy.

Rule yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarchism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarchism)

Yes, it isn't the government itself but, it is directly linked to it... "Works for it"...

Sorry... My mistake...

They've forbidden a group of people from making money together. No fraud or crime had happened. Leandro was not hiding his identity.
In what universe can such prohibition be good news??

If they decide to apply all their stupid and corrupt laws to bitcoin as they apply to "their money", they'll just make the bitcoin ecosystem almost as awful as the traditional financial system.

Maybe you should read this: http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2011/11/air-guitars-and-bitcoin-regulation.html

Why are you laughing? They already made them stop. Leandro had to close his funds if he doesn't want to be forced to pay thousands in fines and eventually even be kidnapped.


Don't give them too much ideas!

It's more like:

That someone is telling others adults to stop their voluntary exchanges is just a classic move of the parasites that (try to) rule us, and in any way should be considered "normal" (although nowadays most people find it normal that someone can tell other adults to stop doing business with one another, what a sad world we live in...).

I think the key to this whole event it this , this is where he went wrong, or at least he didn't think it would matter. Had his identity been kept a secret then they could have done nothing, not knowing who he was they would have been unable to prosecute, or even send him a letter with angry words.

I think we know the direction that needs to be taken regarding the identity of people doing things in bitcoin land.

Really I think this is a case of the right people not being bribed.

Doesn't that concern you in regards to GLBSE? You're also not anonymous. Far from it.

This is something I've also thought about and I don't think I'm in the same boat as this gentleman for a number of reasons.

Firstly I'm based in the UK (right now in China but that is temporary), which suffers a lot less from corrupt officials than the likes of Brazil (and especially China). Either what I'm doing is legal or illegal, running a stock exchange for a virtual curreny, good luck proving thats illegal.

I agree. I prevented him of the danger, actually. Something tells me a part of him wanted this to happen, but this is just my speculation. ;)


Yeah, but there's always the trust issue. If you go anonymous, people will not trust you, and they have a good reason to do so. If you expose your identity, the state boot crushes you. Complicated dilemma.


The irony of the thing is, Leandro operation was so small, that any meaningful bribe would be orders of magnitude larger than the entire fund.

And I'm not even that sure a bribe would have worked (if this was a large enough fund). Everything was being done publicly. Unless you also manage to bribe most of the press not to publish anything, but how long can you hold? You'd need very deep pockets, what would make the fund not that worthy to investors due to its costs.

Oh but there was no corruption in this. At least if you define corruption as "not respecting the law", this was not corrupt at all. The law was strictly and actually efficiently applied. And that's the whole problem.

Contrary to popular belief, the main problem with countries like Brazil are not the corrupt officials. These actually give people some air to breath. They allow you, through some bribe, to avoid the worst.  It's precisely those who efficiently apply the laws, like this Otávio Yazbek, that fuck us all. (Of course, officials who ignore all crappy laws and let people live their lives in peace without requiring any bribe are preferable to the corrupt ones, but these are unfortunately quite rare...)


Not wanting to be negative, as I sincerely appreciate what you've done (GLBSE), but  I'm pretty sure they can find tons of laws you're breaking.
I think you're putting yourself in danger by operating GLBSE without hiding your identity. I'd like to be wrong on this one though. :)

+1

Until we throw governments down we should be as anonymous as possible.

Way to go !

[WTS] Brazilian Warcraft CyberInvestment Group Shares  
[WTS] Brazilian Warcraft CyberInvestment Group - Weapons Index ETF
[WTS] Brazilian Warcraft CyberInvestment Group - WoW Gold Trakkers
[WTS] Brazilian Starwars CyberInvestment Group - Lightsaber Futures
[WTS] Brazilian Diablo III CyberInvestment Group - Auction House Binaries ::)

Coming soon, virtual funds for every MMO in existence and websites hosted from every sovereign nation just to keep you busy CMV!  ;D

Well, either we are not getting all the details or the regulators have a shitstorm ahead of them.

What shitstorm?
They've sent a sort of "cease and desist" letter to Leandro, who, not wanting to get screwed, complied. The fund is over, and that's it. There's nothing "ahead of them".

My point is if Leandro hasn't broken any Brazilian laws then he shouldn't back down, even with a "cease and desist" letter.

If he was in the USA then definitely drop the word "Investment" from the name, in my opinion, or change it to something silly like cyberinvestments, vaporshares, whatever...




"The corrupt fear us. The honest support us. The heroic join us." - Bitcoin Magazine

He told us he did not complied. Do you have a source where he says otherwise?

He removed the thread from the forum. He started another one asking for loans, because asking for loans and paying interest isn't illegal ;)

But that imply real money. We just are playing a game where i send you a message in bitcoin and you send me back it, with our funny software, no one can arrest us for that. Or they will arrest me if i shoot someone in a fps?

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
Friedrich Nietzsche

http://www.bitcoinrain.com/

Hugs.

L.

This is a common stategy of overbearing governments (China being a prime example) where nearly everything is illegal (officially, meaning there is a law against that action which could be applied), the only way to get anything done is to bribe or pull strings. Often there are laws there which are almost never applied, except in the situation where the state wants to take someone down. For example, did you know that it is illegal to have pre-marital sex in mainland China? It's never applied (as you can imagine there are plenty of people sleeping around here), but it's there, ready to be used when it needs to be.

However I believe that the concerns about me running GLBSE are well placed, I still don't think that it's large enough to warrant official attention in the UK at least just yet. I believe my next step will be to separate the deveopment of GLBSE and it's running. With the development being tied to my public identity.

Did you mean to say America?

Probably America too, but it's much more obvious in places like China, take for example the definition of a state secret in China, anything that is said in public that is not approved by the government. Only applied when someone has pissed off the wrong person in the communist party.

I really can't compare, just didn't want our persecution overlooked :-)

So, Cesar, the original project is done or no? And there is a new project with no details released yet?

“Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen” - Friedrich Nietzsche

“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Another post on the subject:

 - http://silvervigilante.com/bitcoin-attacked-by-brazils-securities-commission-under-the-control-of-international-finance/

This is crypto-totalitarianism (http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&sl=pt&tl=en&u=http://www.ordemlivre.org/2010/01/cripto-totalitarismo/). It's mostly everywhere, unfortunately.

This example illustrates why Brazil is rank 126 (out of 183) on the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index.

Red tape and regulatory overzealousness in Brazil is horrible. Doing any kind business there is more difficult than in English speaking countries. 

On the other hand, the market is less saturated, and there are more gaps and inefficiencies that present great opportunities for making money.  And Brazilians have a real skill for dodging the overbearing regulators.

That's why am I am certain bitcoin related business won't disappear from Brazil.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eocuqE3Y4Tg&feature=player_detailpage#t=104s

Bitcoin mentioned in this context here as well.....