~snip~
As squatter said, place emphasis on the fact that your documents were stolen and that there is $5k or so at stake. Don't go into the mumbo-jumbo of bitcoin jargon or too much about Localbitcoins, just keep it simple and ask them to file a case.
Whatever it takes, OP should get his money back. $5k is a lot of money and Localbitcoins should not keep it as bait to get that fraud guy. If they found the account was suspicious then they should not allow the 2nd user to verify their account. They approved the verification and then they let him to deposit the money and now when the user needs the money, now they are creating problem for him. This does not look good. He should get his money back. But LBC here is really juggling two mutually exclusive and directly conflicting interests. One is that the people who got scammed from the flagged account that OP apparently has no affiliation with should get their money back, especially when an account with identical verification documents submitted just pops up like this. Two is obviously the interest of OP to get refunded. It's tough, because is it really anyone's fault at all? Not really, apart from the identity thieves that are nowhere to be seen now. Can LBC be blamed from trying to uphold their protection of the counterparties, as I said before? Not really either. The only thing that LBC should have done better is probably not allowing him to deposit in the first place, or even not allowing him to verify with the same ID. This is the likely culprit. The Pepapig1844 account was probably a legitimate account that was hacked/sold. The new owner procured the OP's documents on the dark web, verified the account with them, and then engaged in fraud.
This is why I avoid KYC like the plague. I gave Coinbase my documents a few years ago. I don't plan on giving them to anyone else.
Exactly. People understate the importance of anonymity in terms of protection against identity theft so much, and this just goes to show it. |
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I think that the comparison of a lot of fiat currencies to in game GP is a good one - while they may be store of values in the short run, or at least appear to be so; in the long term their value is heavily based on trust in the game to continue to function.
The problem isn't trusting the game to continue functioning, the real problem is that nowadays there are a lot of bots that heavily farm on multiple accounts the in game gold to dump it for couple $ cents/million.There is also risk of inside jobs, and this actually happened recently at Jagex where a moderator have stolen from players their GP.All these factors and other similar ones has lead the price of GP to go downhill, which answers the question,- no, it's not a good store of value. I disagree. What the problem boils down to is still that there is a central entity/entities that are capable of modifying people's GP balances arbitrarily, as they wish from a case to case basis. Whether that comes in the form of keeping the game functioning, or having to trust the moderators doing their job properly. Again, the comparison to fiat is that its centrality. Moderators and game developers in RS are essentially the regulators and the central bankers in the fiat world, if you want an analogy. It is because of this that it is not a good long term store of value, not necessarily because of gold farmers. A loosening in the monetary policy, or an increase in the frequency of gold drops would result in debasement of the currency instantly, just like inflation in real life. If the game was decentralized, then even with gold farmers, people can be sure that inflation will be controlled and there won't be modifications to rules in the short term, which means stability in the long run. On a side note, who would have thought that RS would turn out to be such an interesting economics analogy? |
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Actually, there's a lot of demand regarding such digital and/or physical gift cards which gives thieves a chance to make their move and lay down a trap for newbies and even experienced guys with a great need for this thing. You should be extremely careful while dealing with these sellers and only look for the most trustworthy person who is actually in business whether you try to find one over this forum or somewhere else. Although, I've seen even most trusted users turning into scammers, let's talk about how they can scam you:
- By either giving you a used gift card number
- Or giving you a gift card worth less than what's promised
- Worst would be when they leave you without giving anything to you and just run away with your BTC,
And as you know, BTC is irreversible so you can't even claim anything back. So, be very much aware of the purchases you make and always look for a very trustworthy guy to purchase such things. I won't advice about any escrow because my experience says that nobody will accept to become an escrow for such deals due to the fact that they can't check the gift card for you and they won't bet their dignity for some bucks where you may come up and say that the escrow cheated you by redeeming the code himself.
There's one thing that you didn't mention which was the risk of purchasing a card that was initially bought with a stolen credit card. That's the risk I think that is most important to realize when you're transacting with any kind of gift card - that you are trusting the seller to be providing you with a legitimately purchased card. Even escrow won't be able to protect you from a fraudulent gift card.You may be able to spend the GC and redeem it, sure, but you may be in trouble with law enforcement given that the goods are shipped to your address. For those who are saying that purse.io solves this issue, this is not true. A lot of the steeply discounted gift card balances on there are most likely fraudulent in one way or another, and despite their $10k guarantee program, do you really want to go through the ordeal of potentially having police knocking on your door? |
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Is KYC is benefit to crypto people or not. what are the advantages and disadvantages of doing KYC.
Universal money and Anonymous is the biggest strength of btc, now every country follows KYC and then it can be controlled by someone.
You are confusing the concepts of the cryptocurrency network itself, and the third party service providers that utilise cryptocurrencies. The distinction between the two should be clearly marked. It's like saying that bitcoin and bitcoin exchanges are the same thing, and fall under the same jurisdictions - when they are clearly two completely different concepts that are even more different from a compliance/regulatory standpoint. I agree with the majority of people who state that KYC is quite restrictive, and can be draconian when misused by the government in an attempt to disincentivise people to not use BTC. However, I think that you are certainly overstating the influence of the government on BTC. Any government CANNOT gain control over the decentralized network itself by simply implementing regulations. Sure, they could hold a strong influence over exchanges, hosted wallets, businesses and push them to verify all their customers. But at the end of the day, the network remains unaffected. |
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-snip-
Actually the reason is very simple why they are doing this, they dont want to pay hundreds of thousands in fines and even risk prison. Etherdelta paid its fines already! ( https://www.coindesk.com/sec-charges-etherdelta-founder-with-running-unregistered-securities-exchange) I remember that IDEX has been more careful and has periodically delisted tokens which had a higher chance of being defined as security, but that will not be enough if SEc turns its attention to them. Their comment on why they need KYC, is just funny and obviously trying the stare the attention away form real reasons. Thanks for the clarification. I've been basically thinking of the same thing. I guess the reason why Idex are extra cautious in this issue is because of the fact that they are a hybrid - they are not a true decentralized exchange which can avoid centralized strikes on their site. And given the fact that they are a registered company in Panama, they are more prone to regulatory pressures as opposed to some decentralized exchange site that exists without a clear ownership/management team behind it. I also read in a medium article today that: In addition to IP blocking, IDEX will be implementing KYC/AML policies in order to comply with sanctions and money laundering laws I'm still not sure how markets will respond to this. IP blocking in itself will drive users away, and KYC/AML even more so. With the lack of liquidity already an issue for decentralized exchanges, this could prove to be difficult. |
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Bitcointalk forum can gain lots of respect if KYC is implemented for developers who released or want to release ANN posts and bounties on this forum for their new projects,the reason I make this post is we still have some scam projects that are nearly impossible to detect as SCAM until they end up scamming investors and promoters,these projects are well crafted by pros and yet they are scam.
Rubbish. Implementing KYC would not only be a huge breach in anonymity, which I'm fairly sure that bitcointalk as a whole is generally pro- towards, the mandatory implementation of this would also be hugely restricting on legitimate every-day people that have a small project that they want to share (i.e., not an formal project). The current system of trust and/or flags is sufficient, if you just use a little bit of your common sense. I also disagree with you in terms of your claim that 'some scam projects are perfectly made'. If you bother to do some research before you use anyone's services, you'll see how obvious the majority of the crypto scams are. |
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Lee was of the view that with the added focus on Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra, the momentum gained by cryptocurrencies could carry Bitcoin to an all-time high as investors panic of missing out on the opportunity.
“Bitcoin is now trading at a level that it’s only seen 3% of its historical days. If you go back to every milestone that that was achieved, bitcoin subsequently rallied somewhere between 200% to 400% within the next four months, so I think if that’s playing out this time that means bitcoin could be $20,000 to $40,000 sometime in the fourth quarter.” Can we even call his speculative articles "analysis" anymore? All that this is is a blind guess, drawing from completely irrelevant data (in regards to his statement about the 3% of its historical days, what?  ) that is tailor fitted to support his argument. He stands absolutely no ground in TA, let alone a bottom up fundamental analysis. I think that the markets are generally still quite cautious in terms of its sentiments, which as a result means that it is likely we won't see these types of growth until later on, closer to the halving. Lee also talked about the impact that Facebook’s Libra could or could not have on the overall crypto community. He insisted that Libra would have no impact on the long term success and adoption of cryptocurrencies. “In a world without Libra, is crypto going to be successful? Absolutely. So, I don’t think it changes the long-term outlook for bitcoin,” Lee said. I actually somewhat agree with him on his statement on Libra. People overemphasise the importance of this stuff way too much. In the long run, there is really not much that it's going to be contributing neither positively nor negatively towards the actual fundamentals of bitcoin. |
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I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that bitmex is being probed by the CFTC today.
I'm wasting my time writing these legal posts in the hope that more informed proffessional people on this forum will see it and pass word along to people who are connected and capable of lobbying.
The retail noobs who think regulations in crypto are good are just profoundly ignorant to international security and derivative law and american aml kyc law and the history of forex and Dodd Frank and what America did to the forex industry for forex traders.
If people in America do not lobby and fight congress they are going to plow crypto into submission the way they did forex, they are going to ban alt coins and ban leverage to such a draconian extent that no unrich american will be able to adequately benefit from the global market in crypto. They are going to make the regulatory barrier so high, that it is impossible to make money in crypto unless you trade like the top 10 main coins on spot. That is unacceptable, and a gross oversight of the American government, but please go on about how terrible bitmex is and how you want daddy government to step in and super regulate every other country in the world until you are perpetually stuck in minimum wage jobs or forced into the futures or marijuana market. You have no idea how powerful and dangerous the American regulators really are. Underestimating them is profoundly dangerous.
You're absolutely correct in this statement. However, I think that you are overestimating the amount of lobbying power that the crypto community actually has. Apart from perhaps a few big corporations that deals with mining/exchanges, there is really little to no lobbying power in the hands of individual users given how decentralized the distribution is, and how anonymity plays a big role. Underestimating the power of regulation in terms of choking off access is a certainly dangerous concept. However, overestimating the enforceability of certain draconian rules is probably not healthy either. The extent at which governments can control the network is very limited. The worst that can really possibly happen is a very lengthy process to transact fiat with any crypto. |
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Bitcoin Declared Legal Commodity in Chinese Court
To be clear, this is not the first time that Bitcoin has been called a legal asset in China by judicial bodies. In 2018, the Shenzhen Arbitration Commission declared “the asset should be protected in accordance with law” and is legal to own and transfer.
The Hangzhou Internet Court adds further credence to the asset in China, declaring the virtual currency legal and explaining that “the cryptocurrency meets the virtual property requirements because it has value, is scarce and disposable.”
I'm skeptical as to how much weight this actually holds, or if it's just some hyped up media piece. The fact is that last year, we already saw this type of thing happen within Shenzhen's courts, as mentioned by the article. There was no apparent easing of regulatory policy on bitcoin whatsoever, however, as we saw with the continued crackdown on exchanges in China and even p2p transactions involving bitcoin on Wechat pay and Alipay after that decision. I think that the best you can say about decision is that it provides holders with a peace of mind that holding BTC is legal, as it provides a precedence; but in terms of lifting the redtape around exchange regulations and the like, it really doesn't do much. And once political climates shift, they may even reverse their own decisions according to new statutes. So nothing is guaranteed. |
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I know for a fact some Zimbabweans use M-Pesa in their country, because I have done some contract work there a while ago for our company. I do not know if BitPesa <https://bitpesa.co/> is allowed there, if you say all foreign exchange services are blocked? The people will still use the Rand <ZAR> because they can cross the border into South Africa without any restrictions.  A lot of them are using digital Bitcoin exchanges that are not situated inside the borders of Zimbabwe to protect some of their wealth.  <They can also use services like Bisq> Bitcoin P2P use cannot be stopped, so the government is pissing into the wind with these restrictions.  I'm not 100% sure - although I've seen various reports that say that foreign currencies are banned within Zimbabwe, including this one.You're right in terms of the lack of enforceability that the government has when it comes to both the forex market, as well as the cryptocurrency market. As far as I know though, there is no explicit saying that you cannot hold a digital asset like BTC still within Zimbabwe (maybe it'll change in the future, who knows). AFAIK, there are still tons of forex dealers on the streets/black markets. What I'm concerned about is that 1. There will be significantly higher premiums paid by these people, since they exist essentially within a closed off system that has tight capital restrictions. 2. The lack of awareness about cryptocurrencies, leading to people thinking that they have to hold onto their Zimbabwean dollars - and ending up disastruously like the 2007 crisis. |
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People are keep on posting E-mails on a public threads. There is no rule you need to post your e-mail here to be eligible for any bounty or airdrop or anything else.
my advice: if you post you're e-mail than cover it only revealing first few letters and not whole address.
Scammers are always active and your e-mail is one of the data they like the most to get easy target.
Also be careful with your other social media accounts.
Be aware and Stay safe.
This doesn't only apply to threads, which you definitely should not do, since anyone can take that email and try to crack open your exchange/wallet accounts in theory; it also applies to registering accounts on websites of questionable legitimacy. Ideally, you want to isolate each account that you register with a different email. This way, if one database does get hacked, then your other accounts will remain unaffected. But that is rarely practical, so what I suggest people do is to create at least two emails: one for sites that you trust, and one for sites that are sketchy. Make sure passwords aren't reused. You may ask why. I don't think you need to go further than looking at the amount of people that reported their Cryptopia accounts constantly getting login attempt notifications last year and early this year (search up the threads on bitcointalk, if you'd like). It is apparent that this is caused by a leak in either Cryptopia's email database, or some other crypto site's in a targeted attempt to crack open their accounts. If you only had one email and it got leaked - you're screwed at worst, and at best you'll have to go through the gruesome process of resetting passwords for every site. |
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Jewelfxtrade already got their domain suspended, which is a good thing. All the others still remain up and running, though. I'm not familiar with the process, but you are able to report these domains on whois, right? The sheer amount of sites that contain the exact same layout and content is worrisome, given the fact that it suggests it is extremely profitable for the admin to continue to host these sites, and the amounts scammed are probably significant (and majority of times go unreported, it seems). Though, in regards to Crypto Green FX, you really don't need to look any further than their FAQ The amount of return after making the investment if quite high. You can expect a lot of profit. On an average if you calculate you will be able to get the return to almost 70 percent. No other option other than CryptoGreenfx can help you make such profits. The more you will invest the more will be your return. Kudos to them for making me laugh, I guess.
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IDEX, the popular hybrid decentralized exchange, today made an announcement concerning new and existing users, who will now be able to create Know-Your-Customer (KYC) verified accounts from Wednesday, July 24th, 2019. This is in line with last years statement from the exchange and an announcement in March, which disclosed a collaboration between IDEX and regulatory technology (RegTech) provider, Blockpass.
The IDEX team not only pursues compliance, but is also eager to start this new phase, so customers are somewhat closer to the exchange. This will make it easier to share news and product updates as well as listen to the community and use feedback to create more features.
“As an added bonus, the launch of accounts means we will finally get to know our customers – i.e., you – better. We’ll more easily be able to launch requested features, and we’ll finally be able to get in touch to share product notifications, asset updates, and essential alerts to help you stay on top of your trading.” I don't get the point of this. If they are trying to go the decentralized route, then why would anyone in their right minds be willing to conduct KYC? Also, having this verification process essentially says that at the end of the day, they are still a centralized entity. That does not paint a very good public image. Furthermore, why do you need to have KYC in order to take into account people's opinions when you're launching new services? They could already do this with feedback gained through Twitter or even their own support ticket system. If they ever enforce this on a mandatory basis, they're driving themselves out of business. But I think regulatory pressure comes into play as well, might not even be their own choice. |
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I was quite stupid and put some money in this https://farm-mining.com/ website. As you can imagine they let me to withdraw 2 times tiny amounts and after that requested maintanance fee, which I couldn't find anywhere as a requirement. After that maintance fee they told me for the machine I've bought(price 0.05BTC) I should wait 2 months, before I'm able to make withdraws. I'm 99% certain this website is a scam Sad, but I couldn't find it reported anywhere!? I spotted that the money I put in my BTC account created via their website got withdrawn 10 minutes after and redirected to another account. Here is the main bitcoin wallet where the money goes - https://bitref.com/355jBnNchwMVghRACJvciQ7ATK6XjeC66bSorry to hear, man. You should know that not all scams are reported, especially those who are recently launched. Next time you come across one of these, all you need to do is look at what they are promising in terms of returns. Take a look at their 'mining packages'. It is apparent that this is just some template that they copied over from other HYIP sites, and they are no different in principle. They are a HYIP site that is running with the guise of a cloud mining company, which is extremely common. Think about how they are able to guarantee these daily payments - and why these payments won't ever change despite changes in network difficulty? The maintenance fees are completely BS. In legitimate cloud mining services, what they'll do is take a cut of the profits you make, but never will they ask you to make more deposits after your initial one. All they are doing here is milking your investments until you realize it's a scam. |
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We’ve seen this before.
In 2011, the online poker world was rocked when the DOJ indicted executives of the biggest poker sites, seized the websites and froze player accounts. It also turned out Full Tilt Poker was a Ponzi scheme in which only $60 million was available yet players had $390 million owed to them.
Barack Obama’s administration hated payday lenders, gun dealers, and pornography operators. So they attempted to shut those businesses down by choking off their access to the financial system. The FDIC threatened banks with fines and litigation unless they refused their business, while ACH houses that facilitated online payday loan transfers were shut down.
So many things wrong with this comparison of bitcoin to a confirmed poker ponzi schemes. Literally nothing is similar between the two. Would certain countries around the world try to "choke off" access of bitcoin businesses to the traditional financial sector? Most likely. We've already seen stuff like this happen in India, China, and a bunch of other countries that are currently poised to restrict access to that area. But is that going to be enforceable or helpful when it comes to actually deterring people from using bitcoin? I strongly doubt it. Plus, we've seen markets react to certain regulatory concerns before, especially when China banned ICOs. It was never to the magnitude that these people make it seem like. I reckon this might imply that there are whales who want to create fear to cause bitcoin to fall so they can buy or they are in a short position.
In any case, why this sudden sentiment from a bitcoin news journalist? Did JP Morgan pay for this article hehehe?
It's a classic scare tactic. I wouldn't jump to conclusions about a someone behind the scenes 'commissioning' for this fear to be spread, though none of the points raised are valid. |
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Idax has been exposed a long time ago for their shady activities in regards to defrauding projects that want their services/listing. I don't think that anyone debates the legitimacy of their service anymore, since their reputation has pretty much gone to zero. As to coinmarketcap, I did see their affiliation with Idax within that article. In the past, Coinmarketcap has not been the most legitimate entity either since they've constantly associated with scammers, and advertising for ponzi schemes like Bitconnect. But does that mean that the data Coinmarketcap provides in terms of pricing/exchange volumes are necessarily false? They may be, but there is no direct evidence to suggest that. All that it says about coinmarketcap is that its affiliate partners should not be taken at face value, and that any ads they put out you should be wary of. |
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Gold finally gets a little pump after years of stagnation and underperforming when it should have been performing against the ongoing fiat clusterfucks all over, and goldbugs start giving "told you so" lessons.
Whenever you see a goldbug giving you a 101 on economy and investments lesson (the same goldbugs which told you to buy gold instead of "that Bitcoin scam" since 2012) show them this pic which exposes the mother of all goldbugs:
Unbelievable that this guy and their followers still have the audacity to go around lecturing Bitcoin holders. They should be quietly hiding under a rock at best.
I think that a lot of people severely misunderstood where the criticism is coming from. We are not criticising gold investors at all, or even gold itself. What we are shunning is the fact that there are people out there that use their influence to mislead people, put out completely arbitrary figures and say that a certain asset is going to hit $xxxx in y amount of time, with absolutely no backing. And these same people are making profit out of this business due to the premiums they charge on gold/silver bullion purchases from their own site. Blindly believing in a single asset class never ends well, even if that asset class is something like gold which perceived to be a long term store of value. If you don't recognize cycles, short term movements, and simply delude yourself into thinking that it's simply going to hold the value of your investment in the long run, you are dead wrong. Especially in this day and age with blockchain technology that allows people to gain the full monetary benefits of gold on a digital platform. |
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So basically all of us know what happened to the Zimbabwean economy at around 2007, where its hyperinflationary crisis peaked. After that period, the government seemed to take a step back along with the central bank and say that for the interests of the economy, we're just going to not issue our own currency for the time being - but rather use USD, SA rands, CNY etc. as de facto currencies. And then, the launched bond notes, which were supposed to be notes that have a pegged value to USD at 1:1. When I initially saw that I knew it was up to no good, since it was clear what this initiative was supposed to do in terms of being a launchpad for a new national currency. Since then they've introduced what's called "RTGS dollars" (basically Zimbabwean dollars, except they want to dissociate from the negative connation that it brings), and removed the peg of 1:1 from bond notes (surprising, huh? ) Inflation has hit 170+% p.a. in recent days with this new currency, which is worrying since it's starting to resemble the 2007 situation all over again. I'm interested in hearing opinions as to how the population in Zimbabwe can protect themselves given that forex is now banned essentially, and what you think the direction will be for the economy of Zimbabwe for the future. |
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-snip-
People have been using that graph since 2017 in any way it fits them. The first line until the "bear trap" looks nothing like what we had these months, the uptrend was far more pronounced. That graph also doesnt mention any kind of % and its really useless when it comes to predicting price movements. This is contradictory. You are saying that there are no percentages in terms of how far the price swings (duh, if we could match up perfectly the market with this graph, why would people even attempt to conduct TA and analyze fundamentals? They could just refer to this graph all the time), yet you're saying that the price movements that we've seen are nowhere near what the graph suggests? You mention that the uptrend was "far more pronounced". I disagree with this as well, since the markets merely recovered above $10k. Coupled with the fact that the halving, which usually sends the real bullish signal towards the market is still quite some time away, I think it is safe to say that we're still in the smart money/institutional interest phase. |
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Market dominance is a shitty indicator, we all know why: it is based on market prices. After Bitwise report, where we learnt that many exchanges faked volumes, and ultimately prices themselves, we cannot ignore anymore those flaws.
Still dominance can point in the right directions to intresting thoughts about markets in a broader way.
Market dominance just broke the peak during Dec '17 (price) ATH, and at 65,2% it is now at the highest levels since April 2017. Conventional wisdom would have told you that as the bull market progresses, you would see bitcoin dominance decrease due to the fact that people like to take risks while markets are bullish. I think that the two main reasons that this is not happening as follows. 1. As you mentioned, institutional money. They are more inclined towards investing in BTC because it is the most stable, most long term proven crypto. Anything else for them with a smaller market cap would simply be too little liquidity. Market anticipation of this kind of institutional interest occurring is probably a self fulfilling prophecy in of itself. 2. The fact that this is the start of a bull market, and we are nowhere near euphoria yet. People are still very risk averse, and given that fact, they default to investing in BTC which they deem as the safest crypto asset (sort of like T-bills in the bond market). Also, from a fundamental standpoint, perhaps the implementation of LN had something to do with it as well. Scalability was a huge reason why people were inclined to use alts, but with that issue somewhat tackled, the demand for these alternatives isn't there as much. |
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