OP, sorry for your loss. There is no question that the person in question is the same as YoutubeTV.

Unfortunately, he used a telegram channel just so that he is able to kick out anyone after he scams. Always check trust ratings before dealing. Also, 80% off on gift cards is outrageous. I'd say that anything over 10-20% discount without receipt should be taken with caution, as there are many fraudulent GCs out there (even if you do get them delivered to you).


Locking threads can be useful in many scenarios. Self moderated threads are also useful in other scenarios to prevent spam. However, if used in digital goods, it will mean that the person that started the thread is basically trying to directly target and scam those who doesn't have an account on the forum and trying to get a good deal, just like in your case.

I don't know about the fact that they copied their legal statement from another whitepaper. It does seem extremely shady and from that alone I would not invest in it personally, but it wouldn't be considered to be a confirmed scam yet.

But the fact that the press release photo from that article is completely false, and it's proven by tmfp pretty much destroys all confidence in them.

Also, it's misleading the way that they place all of the major exchanges on their site. If you go to https://www.arbitao.com/, you will see on the right hand side "we work with:" and a ton of major exchanges. This is probably done to mislead customers into thinking that they are partners with them. Plus, the whole idea just seems too good to be true at least to me.

I just went onto their site and it's pretty much verified. No way an actual business would ever fake their identities. That alone is a huge warning sign that they are a scam. It's almost ironic considering that scam ICOs will most likely be their customers anyways.

Either they don't have the qualifications to actually be a legit group of developers, thus the reason of hiding their true identities, or they are planning on scamming which is why they are using fake profiles for their team members.

This guy should be tagged. He's been spamming his service across every board over the forum recently as well.

Now that you say this, I think that it was probably this clause that triggered the suspension of OP's account:


I don't know if it's done because of the fact that OP used his wife's bank account to purchase bitcoin, and the seller reported him. But it's very unlikely that it's the 3rd possibility, as clearly it states in the email that he violated some terms of service, and it's not just some routine identity check.


Great! LBC is usually easy to deal with compared to other exchanges, as proven here. Did they state any reasons?

How can you ban bitcoin derivatives trading and futures trading first of all?

I don't know if the price drop was as a result of manipulation from futures trading, or just a natural event occurring as a result of the end of a bull market and start of a bear market (probably the latter, to be honest). But even if it was manipulation from futures trading, there is no way to stop futures trading itself.

Yes, it's not included in satoshi's vision. Because it's not a part of the bitcoin network. It's something that institutions can choose to offer for trading on their own markets. There is virtually no way of shutting it down per se, because it's simply not on-chain.

Well, what do you mean?

There are no 'counterfeit' bitcoins. Every bitcoin that you can publicly see on the bitcoin blockchain is going to be real and legit. The legitimacy of your coins can be easily verified once you hit a number of confirmations on your receiving transaction.

There is no identity theft possible with bitcoin. You don't need any KYC in order to get a bitcoin address. Identity theft ironically is actually the major concern for credit card companies and banks.

The only "protection" that is lacking from bitcoin are chargebacks, which does more good than harm in most cases. Bitcoin is perfectly fine as it is, as a decentralised network.

I agree with 1Referee completely. Regardless what's happening with gab.ai, I think it's important to see how much control centralised wallets and other bitcoin services have over your funds, if you choose to use them.

The fact that you no longer hold your private keys yourself once you deposit into coinbase, and the fact that they have shown in the past that they are very willing when it comes to suspending accounts, is definitely enough for people to reconsider using them. Plus, if the sole purpose is to send and receive BTC, get a trustless desktop wallet. Works just as well honestly.

They are lucky that they got their money back. It doesn't mean that all users in the future will be able to get their funds withdrawn after they get banned, which is another thing to consider.

It's a good guide overall.

However, it's important to note that even though you are able to resell gift cards, it's unlikely that you'll ever be able to obtain legitimate gift cards for cheap prices. That's just the fact, if you see steep discounts on a particular brand of gift cards, usually, it'll mean that the card is obtained fraudulently. I wouldn't recommend anyone reselling cards to make money as a result.

Article writing would take a pretty big portfolio before you can actually start earning decent money, so unless you're interested in investing that much time into building a portfolio, and you're exceptionally good at English writing, then it's probably not a good idea to go there.

What kind of frauds are they?

If they are just typical credit card frauds, then this figure isn't really that surprising at all considering the fact that credit card chargebacks is one of the most common fraud types out there that banks have to deal with on a daily basis.

If it's more institutional fraud, then it would be some surprising statistics.

But the fact that there are so many cases of fraud means that some institutions have to devote a lot of time to prevent & resolve these. I don't see anything positive coming out of this, so it's definitely a negative.

Guy hasn't logged in since 4th of June as Patatas mentioned. Consider that repayment was supposed to be at the 2nd of June, the chances of him actually coming back and making a repayment at this stage is honestly extremely slim.

If he had any intention of paying you back, then they would have at least came online and told you what's going on, even if he's busy.

So consider the coins gone. Even though it's a small amount, these loan scammers will basically scam for any amount which is why lending to anyone below hero member without any reputation isn't something that is done here. Sure, he gets tagged. But he'll just come back in another alt account and do the same thing. What I'm trying to say is simply don't lend without collateral, unless there is some kind of special reputation/trust involved with the user, even if they're gonna get tagged (they're going to abandon the account anyways after they scam).

What do you mean?

I mean a lot of people are worried that whales moving coins = all of a sudden bitcoin prices crashing down, which may be the case. But simply them moving coins doesn't mean much, it could mean that they just want to trade for the short term.

Plus, if traders with big volume do sell their coins, it'll just mean that another person or persons will be picking up on the long position. Nothing too special going on here.

You're right, there is a false fear involved here. Bitcoin is supposed to be traded on the free market, and people with lots of it can do whatever they want with their BTC, and that includes selling. Their individual actions don't affect long term aspects of bitcoin at all imho, and thus it's pretty useless to look at.

I think that the next major bull market is most likely going to come at the next halving, or the year after the next halving (so namely, 2020 and 2021), if the trend that has been the case for 3 halvings repeats.

Thus, I don't see 2022 as much of a bullish year at all. In fact, it'd be probably on the way down from a correction from all the hype that is generated by a potential bull market the year before.

But either way, I don't see the next bull market going up to $250k. That prediction is almost McAfee-like. Yes, institutional investors are flooding in atm, but it doesn't mean that $250k is guaranteed or even probable. There will be a huge chance though that this ATH of $20k will be broken during the next bull market. But prices at or beyond 6 figures is something else entirely, as it would require adoption to increase drastically over the next few years, and also see extremely high levels of hype imho.

Even if it's just a photo that is used in an article, there is nothing negative about that. In fact, it shows that the IMF probably sees at least some potential in bitcoin succeeding in the long run, which has been my belief since I've started to use bitcoin.

But I really doubt that it's going to affect prices much.

People are unlikely to see this article as a major thing to be bullish about, and there are plenty of other positive coverages out there daily. It's just that it's something written by the IMF that makes this somewhat more important.

You just have to wait for them to respond to you, mate. And also ask them what's actually triggered this suspension of your account. Sometimes, it does take a while for them to get back and verify that your identity documents are legit.

I think that 1 is the most likely, if you have visited from an IP that is in the country that is sanctioned by the US.

Also, due to the new terms and conditions of LBC, a lot of unverified traders with somewhat significant volume are being asked to provide ID. It could be that they're just suspending your account to force you into verification. But these are all speculation until you actually get a response back from support. In the meanwhile, I wouldn't panic too much.

As The Pharmacist said, there is simply no good reason that I can see for anyone to be using fake team members. A legitimate ICO or any other investment would simply not do that, because they would be comfortable with providing their real linkedin profile or whatnot.

Xcov impersonating other people without their consent is criminal at worst, and shady at best.

I'd say that this is a confirmed scam. The names don't even match up so it's very unlikely any of these 'team members' even have any knowledge of this ICO.

And to echo The Pharmacist, this is why escrow needs to be used when funds are involved. Otherwise, if a campaign for a site is shut down due to the fact that the site is suspected to be scam, nobody gets paid.

Tim Draper has always been extremely bullish, so you do need to take his words with a grain of salt.

I personally think that having a 50 fold increase in unlikely in the next 4 years, especially when you consider that even the biggest bull market that was seen so far in the bitcoin scene last year only resulted in a 2000% gain over a year. It's quite absurd to think that in 2022, markets will be that bullish again.

That's not to say that I'm not bullish over the long term. In fact, I believe that it would only be a matter of time before BTC does hit $250k. But it will take a lot more people adotping the currency, and it will take fiat depreciation to some degree. So 2022 seems a bit too early for me, at least.

It wouldn't be coming as a surprise to me if we see a growth in adoption for bitcoin as a reserve asset in the future.

But I think the main thing is still bitcoin's ability to store wealth, and a lot of people will prefer to have their wealth in decentralized assets whether precious metals or bitcoin, rather than to have them in USD, AUD, etc. that is centrally controlled.


I don't think that the ability to serve as a every-day global currency is hindered by the fact that individuals or organisations such as central banks may use it as a reserve currency, or store of wealth for the long term in an individual's case. They are not mutually exclusive.

I wouldn't feel comfortable in investing in these ICOs. It seems extremely unprofessional in my opinion to have animated team members instead of actual ones when you're asking for thousands if not millions in funding from the public.

It's not guaranteed to be scam yet, however.

But as I said, I simply wouldn't dare or be interested in investing in this, even if I understand the problem that they are trying to address(which I really don't). Because either they have something to hide by not using real photos, or that they don't have enough experience. Like having a team like this is literally worthless, there isn't even a single linkedin profile here.

I mean, China has been turning against cryptocurrencies for ages now. Ever since last year they've started to regulate ICOs, they have been turning against cryptocurrencies. I don't think that the regulation in China has been overly supportive of crypto at any given time.

The real question is, are they going to bring back some of the companies that have left as a result of these restrictions by implementing new regulation?

There is a chance considering that IIRC there is a research project to rate all coins going on right now in China. But for now, most Chinese exchanges have already moved overseas, and isn't coming back for the time being. So yes, you can definitely say right now that they're quite against crypto.

The site is the same as https://cryptonhash.com/, with everything just copied over. That's extremely shady to me.

Also the fact that you are allowed to win 'a few BTC' for free, however, they ask you to deposit a sum of money in order to withdraw that amount. That's as obvious a scam can get, honestly. Obviously they are trying to get you to deposit, and run away with those funds. Need more proof? Just look at the "jackpot" page, where the bets are most likely all faked. The volumes they are generating are just too good to be true.

So no, don't deposit anything. The bitcointalk promo(https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4445842.0) they did was clearly for the sole purpose of luring in new victims, and this is not a safe site to bet on or send any money to.