tbh, it's only troubling insofar as ICO tokens were centrally issued and not censorship resistant to begin with. a lot of tether and ICO token haters have been pointing that out for years---that centrally issued tokens can't possibly have the same security guarantees as decentralized coins like bitcoin.

in a way, it could be argued this is a feature and not just a bug. you can't have the expectation of censorship resistance of course, but hacks and thefts can be rolled back with ease. maybe this is a legitimate trade-off, as long as we all understand the limitations of highly centralized projects. tokens =/= cryptocurrencies etc.


that was the insane part to me. over $150 million in ERC-20 tokens alone. who the hell is withdrawing $40 million in ACOIN tokens on a daily basis? nobody, since kucoin is literally the only market for it, according to CMC anyway. madness!

the other hot wallet losses (BTC, ETH, LTC, etc) were in the range of what you'd expect, more or less. i dunno what they were thinking with their token storage. they were obviously too dependent on their internal risk controls (re withdrawal approval) and not planning for the possibility of getting their actual keys leaked.

no, it's much more rare than that. the BBJ gets triggered when someone loses the main pot with AAAKK (the nut full house) or better. that means you're only gonna see it happen when at least one player has quads or better. there are some additional rules too. for example, quads only count when you have pocket pair hole cards.


all the info you need is here: https://swcpoker.eu/post/bad-beat-jackpot-starting-at-100k

brutal. bubbles are never fun but hey, you can't win every 65-35 flip. it's a numbers game.

these are some solid deep runs though---good job. you're definitely getting some good experience here. of course, micro stakes won't prepare you for the skill level you'll see in mid stakes, but it's an important part of the journey.

oh and i finally got around to making a twitch account. say hello to your newest follower, foma888. i look forward to following your progress.

i saw him getting crushed at the low stakes tables a few weeks ago. i wasn't sure if it was mainly cuz he's out of practice or because nobody respects raises at 1/2 or whatever stakes they were.

is there gonna be any live streaming of DN and polk, or is it just gonna be Kane Kalas providing commentary watching online tables? i'd love to see them talking shit in real time.


lol.

the betting markets didn't take too kindly to trump's coronavirus diagnosis. did anybody bet trump when his odds were below 30%? punters must have been getting close to 3.5!




dumb move. what the hell is he thinking? that's just pissing away votes. he could at least keep talks open even if he wants to delay the actual stimulus. i'm beginning to get the feeling that trump is subtly giving up and doesn't even wanna win the election anymore.

just pay the 400 chips/game dude. everyone else did. those chips are part of the buy-in because they pay for prize pool in the championship. it's not just a matter of the lottery tickets.


yeah, super busy these days. there's 2 qualifiers left right? i should make at least one of them. i'd like to at least keep up my streak of cashing in either the championship or the runners up final in each series.

well done @jayce---good to see you cashing.

with so few qualifiers left, i'm officially out of the running at this point. i set an alarm to play yesterday and intended to play like a maniac (chip up quick or bust) but when the time came i just went back to sleep. i was just coming off a 12+ hour drive the night before.

not my series! i'm still hoping to make it to the last couple games though....

it's hard to know exactly what that would entail, if anything. remember, bitfinex offered its services to USA residents for several years before giving them the boot. bitfinex was also being investigated by the CFTC beginning in 2017, and continues to offer no-KYC accounts to this day. yet the feds never took down bitfinex or tried to arrest its owners.

the feds work in mysterious ways, and CFTC probes often end without incident. until the hammer actually comes down and arrests get made and domains get seized, it's tough to know whats gonna happen.

bitmex operates from a .com domain, which is managed by verisign, who consistently obeys takedown requests from the USA government. the domain could easily be seized if they wanted.


the question is whether they offered services to USA customers. just because they put it in their terms doesn't really mean anything. whether they actually enforced those terms, and whether IP address alone is sufficient to determine customer location, are what matters. that's what this case is about.


it's not illegal for USA customers to trade on bitmex. it is illegal for bitmex to offer its services to USA customers. big difference.

binance at least has some AML procedures in place, and they only allow 2 BTC worth of daily withdrawals from unverified accounts. bitmex had no such controls in place and had also been offering its services for years longer than binance. i've also heard binance is fairly responsive to requests from the USA government, which could play in their favor. these could all be reasons why bitmex is getting targeted and not binance.

bybit is too small and young to be on the radar IMO, but i do think going after bitmex like this is a "warning shot" from the feds, intended to scare non-compliant exchanges into blocking USA customers and mandating KYC.

true, but HSBC also has all the rubber stamp banking licenses they need, and they collect KYC for transactions of remotely significant size. they at least pretend to comply with the law. bitmex on the other hand flouted the law pretty openly.

i was always wondering if the feds would test the theory that geo-blocking alone (no KYC) is insufficient to block USA customers. now i've got my answer.

this press release looks pretty real to me: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8270-20

i'm sure the feds could seize the domain if they wanted to---it's a .com domain. they may not have because they didn't wanna look impotent, since there is no way to get their hands on bitmex's wallets. filing charges and arresting one of the owners is the DOJ's way of prodding bitmex into voluntarily dealing with them.

crazy times. the wild west era really is coming to an end. i guess this is why bitmex was rolling out mandatory KYC. they felt the walls closing in.

are there DEXs that offer 100x leverage yet?

if there are, i can't imagine they compare to bitmex's market depth.


over 32k bitcoins were withdrawn from bitmex in their latest withdrawal batch, after the news dropped. based on this estimate, that's in the range of 20% of their total holdings. https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/79670/32000-bitcoin-withdrawn-bitmex-government-charges

this came out of left field, especially coming from gemini.

i'm particularly surprised to hear that regulators tacitly gave gemini approval to do this since monitoring customer withdrawals after they leave the exchange has become part and parcel to exchange AML and risk analysis procedures. if zcash's anonymity set is adequate, then allowing shielded withdrawals prevents that entirely. doesn't it?

i am curious though since zcash doesn't use mandatory private transactions---how strong is its anonymity set for a typical shielded transaction? how does it compare to monero in that sense?

they aren't leaving you out. the android app just hasn't been released yet. from their press release:



bitfinex is the only exchange i use that supports it, so i never got around to trying it---didn't have anywhere to send L-BTC. i think it's mostly useful for arbitrage traders. i guess it could also be a cheap way for traders to remove their assets from the exchange every day.

little value in bitcoin terms perhaps, but if the entire supply of bitcoins is being bought up by whales, then the dollar value of your 0.00054 BTC will significantly appreciate. it's only worth 5 bucks now. imagine if 1 BTC = $1 million though. it'll be worth $540!

it's simply a matter of supply and demand---strong demand brings higher prices.

1k bitcoins is certainly not nothing. they took what they could---everything in the hot wallets. there's nothing stupid about that! thankfully kucoin didn't have that much in their hot wallets, besides tokens.


that's both good and bad---good in cases of hacks and thefts, bad if you actually need censorship resistance.

with money like bitcoin, censorship resistance is important. with ICO/security tokens, that's less true IMO. different trust/security models for different use cases.

nicely done! it seems like the grind is beginning to pay off. you playing the BIG BTC next weekend?


too lazy to create a twitch account this second, but i plan to! you make me wanna get back to playing.

it's been a solid month since i even played in our forum series, let alone some real MTTs....

dang, can't believe i missed 4 weekends in a row! life has been crazy lately. even if i manage to play the last 3 qualifiers, i'll need a miracle to get into the final. no worries, i'll at least ship the runner's up tourney.

congrats on taking it down last week @arallmuus!

one thing that provides some hope is that the majority of value stolen (by far) was in ERC-20 tokens---many of which are extremely illiquid and can't be liquidated easily through DEXs. and since they are centrally issued tokens, they can be blacklisted and recovered somewhat easily.

for example, ~20% of the entire amount hacked ($36 million) is in the "alchemy" ACOIN token. kucoin is listed on CMC as the only market for this token! there are $150 million in ERC-20 tokens just sitting in the hack address: https://etherscan.io/address/0xeb31973e0febf3e3d7058234a5ebbae1ab4b8c23

a lot of that can be recovered IMO. heck, $20 million of the value in that ETH address was already frozen by tether, with another $13 million being frozen on EOS.

so hopefully between their insurance fund and token issuers blacklisting/freezing funds, this is something kucoin can recover from. we'll see!