Great find. His account already got nuked it seems.

But the fact that there is an attempt at this means that this scam is probably going pop up in the future under a different account name, by the same scammer. So be on the watch out if you are taking out collateralised loans from any lender on forum. You don't want to be out of pocket for money that you thought you were going to get a loan on.

You should always make sure that if you are sending collateral in a loan to either an escrow or the lender himself, that you have a signed message containing the address first. That ensures that the account sending this address isn't compromised or an impersonator, and should be regarded as standard practice.

How are they certain that their token is going to be listed on Binance in May? If they are certain, it means that binance has already given them notice which means that they can easily use that notice to get rid of all suspicion - but they are not.

From my perspective this is a classic scam (misleading advertisement at best) where big industry names are being thrown around even though there is absoluetly no links around the project that is seeking funds and the companies themselves.

Changelly, Jaxx etc. all seem at least believable, but google chrome just isn't. And that's not the only shady thing that they are doing. I would avoid investing in them - there is simply no point for so much risk.

What relationship does your exodus wallet have with your blockchain.com wallet? Did you export the seeds of your entire exodus wallet onto this blockchain.com wallet, or only the private keys of an address?

What exodus is trying to say here is that the other part of the transaction went to a change address, which is still controlled by you - which is completely normal and I don't see a problem there. As long as your exodus wallet shows the correct amount after updating and installing the new software there is really nothing to worry about.

I'd suggest that you read into what they sent you, because change addresses are quite commonly used in all wallet management software. I struggle to understand why your blockchain.com wallet doesn't reflect the change address's balance as well (perhaps you never imported that particular address, or blockchain.com doesn't support bech32 addresses), but Exodus is certainly not a scam. I've used them plenty of times without issues, and their exchange function is well tested. If you have any more queries, message support.

Indeed. This raises an interesting point because I do see a lot of people that love to just go out there and use whatever exchange they find, and also use new, unproven exchanges. They seem to just use whatever they find off google.

A lot of these exchanges do exit scam, go rogue, or get hacked as a matter of time, and since they are new and unregulated, and support is generally completely nonexistent there is no recourse that anyone scammed is able to take. But this can be easily avoided - people just keep making the same mistakes.

And the thing is that these losses aren't even included because of the high amount of coins that are stuck in limbo this way. It's impossible to even estimate given the scale of the problem.

Personally I'd prefer Localbitcoins over paxful any day. It's more established and more trusted, and there are more advertisements and better rates in general.

However, in terms of privacy I think that paxful may have the upper edge. Localbitcoins has recently implemented a verification system that forces you to submit ID once you reach a certain threshold of trading volume, on top of the fact that they already force you to verify if you want to place any ads. From experience, there are also more ads on paxful that allow you to buy/sell with certain payment methods without needing to be verified.

I don't think that you can go wrong with either, I've heard some complaints about Paxful's support speed but I've never experienced it first hand. The most important thing that you should look for is probably rate if you're comparing the same payment method between the two.

I can do this if you are able to send the collateral to my address, or a mutually agreed upon escrow, and that the collateral can be liquidated when it drops below 110%.

Unfortunately, Coinbase account access alone isn't going to cut it. From a lender's perspective you are still able to access the funds by potentially recovering the account from coinbase, and thus, the collateral is never exclusively in the lender's control. You're going to find that no one will be comfortable with loaning you with your current offer.

If you do agree with my terms, let me know and we'll get a deal going.

I don't think that mining necessarily will create a "problem".

What will create a problem is if the energy is not sustainably sourced, and I think that is totally out of the control of bitcoin miners. Furthermore, IIRC a lot of bitcoin mining really just uses up excess electricity that would otherwise have went down the drain anyways. If bitcoin mining uses excess energy, and energy that is sustainably generated, then I really don't see a problem with its high consumption (which isn't really that high if you put it into perspective with other, everyday activities that we accept, like gaming, and traditional banking). Especially when you take into consideration the function that PoW plays in securing the network.

Of course, there will be a lot of instances where eco-friendly electricity isn't available. But I think it's ultimately up to the governments to regulate the source of electricity, not bitcoin miners.

I would not attribute the bullish rallies that has happened this year to any particular events.

The fact is that the market doesn't care about JP Morgan's crypto project, because it isn't anything innovative and they aren't going to release it to the market anyways, since it's going to be used internally with their partners and clients. And I really doubt that ETF rumours are able to have such a significant impact on the market, because in 2018, which was the height of the bear market, there honestly have been tons of both institutional investors and ETF rumours appearing constantly in the news, but the market has never reacted positively.

This comes down to that people's sentiment are shifting, and that's because they are expecting a bull market to emerge soon due to the 2020 halving that is getting closer. If you like, we're nearing the tail end of a bear market, and the market is expecting a new cycle to emerge soon due to the fact that it's been on for one and a half years already. This current pullback should prove temporary.

Not just on telegram. I've also seen spoofed exchange emails, discord scams, skype scams etc. that are of the same nature.

I guess you're right, people are impatient and they panic when they see an issue with their exchange account so they try to seek for immediate help, and sometimes that ends up hurting them as they encounter scammers.

Be extremely cautious if anyone proactively approaches you on any live chat platform, claiming to be the rep or support of an exchange. Also be aware of anyone that is "having issues" with an exchange, and require your assistance. Don't be greedy, as most bonuses that are listed are scams as well. But most of all - the rule of thumb is that never send any funds to an exchange outside of their normal deposit protocol. It makes no sense for support to have to ask for your funds to a different address to that of your normal deposit address.

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Good guide, btw.

I can't believe that you're still trying to argue your case here. Whether or not your domain info is redacted for privacy or not is irrelevant when your entire business model is an obvious ponzi.

Claiming that you have an investment algorithm that is able to gain profits many times that of bank interest, having no legitimate, verifiable information on your company or proof that it is a regulated investment entity, and the fact that you offer HYIP like plans all point to the obvious.

Let me propose you this, if you are not a ponzi, why don't you use your own funds to invest, and keep reinvesting without offering this to the public? You could even take out loans from the bank that have a lower interest rates than what you are offering. But since you are a ponzi, what you want is people to invest, because you know that there is no legitimate business model here. The "trading algorithm" is completely fabricated. Even if you pay out investors, it will be unsustainable as you're drawing from new investors to pay old ones (although I doubt you'll pay anyone).

Short term technical analysis in my opinion could be helpful, as fundamentals pretty much never reflect fully in the market in the short term.

However, it is apparent to me that technical analysis has its downfalls, especially in the long run. The fact is that TA can really be manipulated in different ways to tell different narratives, and that's why we see a lot of completely contradictory predictions that all use TA as their argument, especially in mainstream media.

I'd personally rather look at the fundamentals of an investment in the long term. Take bitcoin, as I'm investing for the long run I don't worry about short term price movement as much. But looking at things such as adoption, innovation in the underlying technology in BTC, institutional demand, etc. will be more helpful in a timeframe of 3-5 years, compared to TA.

There is a big, big difference in terms of using blockchain to serve as technology infrastructure in a business, or to gain investment, and actually using decentralised cryptocurrencies to their advantage.

What most businesses that are interested in blockchain technology are really trying to do is cost reduction, and trying to maximise efficiency, and have an immutable ledger to prevent potentially fraud/tampering with their data. That I think is completely fine, but it isn't something that actually affects the adoption of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies themselves.

Also, the abundant amount of crypto projects out there that claim to solve issues are honestly just there to suck up investor money.

On the other hand, if businesses actually started to accept bitcoin, or used it in overseas trading (just for an example) in order to mitigate exchange spreads and international transfer fees, then it'll actually increase demand and adoption. I think this is the type of adoption that will be the most beneficial for BTC, as opposed to purely private use as a database.

Seems like that they have had this one spot on.

In recent days there has been a trend reversal of sorts, but to be quite frank, I don't think that the main stage of the recovery is anywhere near us right now if you look at the trends in previous bear markets and how long they've lasted. I understand that they won't provide an 100% accurate image at all of this current bear market, but since bitcoin moves in distinct cycles of around 4 years (halvings), it will provide a rough guideline.

There has been a lot of FOMO that has sparked this current rally, which led to the significant increases in price of BTC which imo was unsustainable in the short term. Thus, an adjustment was inevitable even though it seemed for a while that we've entered a phase of bullishness. This dip honestly provides quite an interesting buying point that I think traders should take, imo.

It doesn't really surprise me at all that this dump has came. It's quite a routine bull trap, but the size is honestly negligible so it shouldn't cause much panic.

People act like that the bull market is already established, and I personally think that the truth is far from that. Market sentiment, even though there has been a drastic injection of bullishness, remains to be overall, quite bearish. Also, there is significant resistance at the $4k level that has obviously led to prices moving sluggishly.

This is why I personally think that right now is still a great accumulation stage. You're going to see these periodic dips in value because there is still quite some uncertainty within the market, and if you buy periodically you can certainly take advantage.

Yep, he came online just to reply to your post after some time without any activity.

I wouldn't jump to conclusions and say that his account his hacked, though. His PGP signature seems to check out, and there isn't anything more than the fact that he has just been inactive for a while off the forum. It's just that since he's not as active scammers are more likely to take advantage and impersonate him.

The fact is that this isn't a particularly new scam, and I think it's been around for years. Spoofed emails are quite common, and usually Gmail filters them to the spam folder but this sometimes fails. It's a reason why signed messages are important to verify legitimacy of the person before you send any funds, especially with escrow.

They are willing to take on the risk of a gift card being carded because they know they are able to cash it out using a certain route that not a lot of people know about. The rates that these high volume players pay for gift card transactions are so low anyways that it makes it very profitable for them if they do this on a large scale.

That's why they have volume. They aren't just hoarding the gift cards for themselves, they are cashing it out as soon as they receive it.

I personally would stay clear of being an "advertiser" on paxful for these gift card transactions though. You could get into a lot of trouble in terms of receiving carded/stolen GCs in transactions, that risk is just not worth it for the measly few bucks you may save if you are just starting to trade.

I personally think that there is a misconception that the energy that is used by bitcoin miners is going to waste. No, they are not. They are performing the important function of securing the network, validating and processing transactions.

He's not wrong about bitcoin using a lot of energy. But it really depends on what energy is being used, and the way that it is produced in the first place. That's what matters. If bitcoin is using excess energy that was going to go to waste anyways (which I think I read in an article once that this is the case in most scenarios, IIRC), or that the energy is sustainably sourced, then there shouldn't be any issues.

Besides, I think that given that bitcoin is replacing a lot of what gold and silver is as store of values, it may even be more eco-friendly given that gold and silver mining happens on such a large scale.

Main takeaway is that you should never blindly trust centralised exchanges to hold your funds safely. They may claim otherwise and say that they use the best security protocols or whatnot, but ultimately, your coins aren't in your control and you're the one that will be losing funds if anything does go wrong with an exchange's system.

Also, just use your common sense. I can't believe that people are still greedy enough to be investing in ponzis and scam ICOs that are honestly, quite easy to spot. And these are just the major ones - we aren't even accounting for the more minor ones here.


Most likely given that prices were significantly less in previous years.

I'm pretty sure that there has been previous attempts at this as well, like sending BTC via SMS or some form of transponder that doesn't utilise 3G.

Personally I don't think that these will be significantly used in the future given the widespread use of the internet, even in remote regions now. But these non-internet based developments could certainly be useful as a backup for if somehow the electricity grid completely fails (unlikely to begin with), or potentially, sending BTC in space.


Exactly. And that still requires a degree of trust given that both the sender and receiver can take out coins from the address at any time, and accuse the other of fraud. That's the thing that needs refining, as well as the security aspect of brainwallets.

We're already seeing some FOMO in the market because people have simply gone for so long without any sort of real upwards action.

I disagree with the fact that this is the start of a bull market. I personally think that markets will continue to move mostly sideways rather than heading in any one particular direction, at least for the next few months given the bearish sentiment still present.

I also don't think that this upcoming bull market will bring about higher returns - it's very difficult to see that happening given now bitcoin's market cap is several times bigger, and markets have matured significantly. I think that FOMO buying in an overheated market will certainly cause people to buy irrationally, but most likely, not to the extent of the last bull market.