Nah, I don't think a post like that is so off-topic that it's worth reporting.  The main gist of that one in particular was a prediction of bitcoin's price, and the altcoin stuff just looks like an afterthought.  I don't think any mention of altcoins should be disallowed in the main sections of the forum, as long as said mention doesn't make up the majority of a given post (or if it's completely off-topic). 

Mods might feel differently, and it's really up to them if a post like the one here gets reported.  IMO it just adds to their workload when there are many, many more posts that should be deleted because of their low quality.

I don't know, I think he's justified in bumping his own thread, especially given what's going on with Livecoin at the moment.  The only reason I got interested in Livecoin recently was because they were one of two available exchanges listing Curecoin, and I posted in another thread about my lucky experience with the exchange.  I'm not convinced they were a scam exchange from the start, but on the other hand it sounds like they were shady at the very least (as evidenced by the OP of this thread).

Were they known to be a scam from the get-go?  I vaguely remember some hubbub about Livecoin a while back, but since I had never used them I never really paid attention to the details.

Looks like you're on point about them, OP.  As I've said before I seriously doubt they're being extorted by hackers.  The more plausible explanation is just what you said: they're exit scamming.

Hell yes it looks suspicious.  I don't believe that image above with the extortion message one bit--this looks to me like Livecoin is trying to give the appearance of being under attack and under the thumbs of some hackers who are holding their website for ransom.  I'm not sure such a thing could happen, but it sounds ridiculous to me.  What it sounds like is an exit scam in the making, which is something that has definitely happened with other exchanges in the past.

Is their website not separate from all the coins they hold?  If so, they should be contacting all of their customers and offering to give them back their funds, assuming Livecoin still has access to them (which they should). 

That sounds all well and good, but the reality is that it probably wouldn't turn out to be like that--for a lot of different reasons.  In fact at times like these when bitcoin is red hot, I'd be wary of somebody trying to create (or buy) a bitcoin bank.  Bull markets like this one bring the scammers out of the woodwork like termites, and it's only after the crash that a lot of the shenanigans are discovered.  That's always been true in the stock market, and it's true in the world of crypto as well.

Do you recall Trendon Shavers and his attempt to form a bitcoin bank?  Not sure if he's out of prison yet, but that's the first thing I think of when I hear suggestions like yours, OP.  Crypto tends to attract a disproportionate number of scammers/dishonest people--that's unfortunate, but it's the reality.

And then how would what you describe above be much different than Coinbase?  The way you describe it, it would be just another exchange in a space that's saturated with exchanges.  Unless this "bitcoin bank" offered something 1) unique, and 2) something that bitcoiners really want, I don't think it's a great idea.

Cool idea for a thread, OP.  It's kind of amazing to me how mainstream bitcoin has become in terms of its coverage in the financial news compared to when I started getting interested in it about six years ago.  There was some coverage back then, but it was almost as if bitcoin was a freak-show asset that was performing like a carnival act.  Now there's just straight reporting on it as if it were just another investment class.

This caught my eye:



I would not have expected stock values to lag that far behind bitcoin, considering stocks have been in a prolonged bull market for over a decade now--but nonetheless the bitcoin growth numbers are incredible!  There's certainly been huge demand for it, particularly by all those companies that bought it as an alternative to cash (like MicroStrategy).  Whew.  It's been one hell of a year in many ways, but at least one positive that came out of 2020 is that bitcoin reached a new ATH.

Thanks for posting here--you're the Jr. Member I was referring to in my first post, but I didn't want to mention your username.  At least you did the prudent thing and PM'ed me first before assuming the telegram imposter and me were the same person.  There's hope for humanity yet.

Maaaaan....I don't know.  Yes, people ought to be more suspicious about these things and use a bit more common sense, but the way I see it, it can't hurt to put that note in my profile along with this thread that I can point to at some point in the future if I need to. 

My main message in this thread is that I only do deals by contacting people through forum PMs unless there's an exchange of e-mails, which I did with one member a while back.  I don't contact people outside of the forum using any kind of instant messaging service (that's what telegram is, correct?) or via social media or by any other means. 

Pretty much the only time you'll know that I'm looking to buy or sell bitcoin is when I create a thread in Currency Exchange or if I PM a member with whom I've done business with previously.  There are only a handful of those.

I agree, but after I got that PM from the Jr. Member I felt like I had to put up a warning since that scammer is apparently still active and still trying to impersonate me.

Ha ha!!!  That quiz was great!  Unfortunately, I suck at bitcoin/bitcointalk history and failed miserably with a 9/20.  Oh well.  That question about Quickseller and the escrow scamming was interesting, but I got the answer wrong--but I do remember TSpacepilot and his language recognition thing.  What ever happened to him?

This question caught me by surprise:



I had no idea Zepher had that done for him.  I remember when he died and some of his things were auctioned off, and I still have the silver skull I bought that belonged to him.  

Congrats to all the winners as well.  I don't see any members I'd argue shouldn't have won.

That was a good idea, and I made a note to that effect in the "website" part of my profile.  Hopefully whoever this jackass is who's trying to scam people in my name will just give up and go away, though.

I agree, there are too many people who don't do even the most cursory due diligence when it comes to trading with someone who's supposed to be a trusted member (and even members who have no trust reputation). 

I just got a PM from a Jr. Member asking whether I was the one who contacted him on PayPal looking to do a deal, so I'm assuming this has something to do with the recent scam accusation thread against me.

So please, if any of you get contacted outside of bitcointalk by anyone with my bitcointalk username, it isn't me.  I don't use telegram or other social media, and the only way I've ever done trades is on the forum.  If you get a PM from me, that's another matter because I have PM'ed members I've dealt with before when I'm looking to trade.

Don't know if this is the right section for a thread like this, so if it's not perhaps a mod will move it to the right place (or let me know so I can do it).  Thanks, and be careful with impersonators.  I'm certainly not the first member who's name has been appropriated in order to pull off a scam, and I'm sure I won't be the last.

I seriously doubt any of their customers are able to just walk in and lodge a complaint.  It's not like a stock brokerage that has walk-in locations. 

Coinbase has been nuking accounts for various reasons for years now.  I had one back in 2015 that got deleted due to a mistake I made (though they didn't steal my funds).  And aside from making deposit mistakes like I did, they also track where your bitcoin comes from and goes to, and if there's any identifiable shady addresses they won't hesitate to make you a former customer.

I suspect they're not doing this because they enjoy being pricks; the US government probably collects all of their customers' data and is forcing them to comply with whatever regulations exist in Coinbase's jurisdiction.  So you're not alone, OP.

I'm pretty sure Coinbase doesn't just steal people's money, because there's no way in hell they'd get away with that.  They're not some unregulated Russian exchange operating out of a shack in Siberia (no offense to the Russians intended, of course).

Thanks!  I do appreciate your help--they did change things around, though.  It's like a different site now. 

Anyway, you can see the Coinswitch link on the Curecoin website, and I'm still wondering whether two separate entities used the same name for an exchange....? 

I'm confused as to which Coinswitch this is.  I recall writing another post about Curecoin being listed on Coinswitch, and you can see it's still on Curecoin's website:



But the link leads not to coinswitch.co but to exchange.curecoin.net.  I'm assuming they're not the same?

Anyway, sorry you got scammed by them OP.  I don't know if $133 is a lot of money to you, but obviously that's what their reputation is worth, and I do hope you follow through with your threats to raise hell on Reddit and elsewhere.

Edit:  What is it with Imgur?  They changed their entire format, and I'm having trouble displaying that image, which is located here: https://imgur.com/a/jNoG85z

I read that thread, and I'm wondering if there was any sort of resolution for the OP.  My guess is no, but that thread just died off very quickly, and there's been no followup since then. 

I did find this odd:

I'm not sure what kind of illegal activity tokens.net thought he was involved with, but the guy did apparently give them all the info they asked for, and it looks like they just stole his funds using that clause as an excuse.  I don't think it's legal for an exchange to just seize a customer's funds and not give them a chance to appeal.

As far as this thread goes, my suggestion would be to just stay very far away from tokens.net, because they don't seem like an honest exchange--if they're even still functioning.

I get that the US government is printing new money like baseball cards in the 1990s, but what makes you think that the Fed would necessarily have to print any additional money in order to issue stimulus checks?  Someone's got to pay for all of those checks, but that lead me to conclude that stimulus-->money printing-->more USD-->more USDT.  Maybe in your mind it does, and you might be correct but that wouldn't have been my immediate conclusion.

And to all the Americans who are getting this stimulus money, just wait until the bill comes due.  It's either going to be a huge increase in the tax rate or some kind of hyperinflation event--and neither situation is going to be pretty.  Do you agree, OP?

Not being a tech geek, I don't really understand servers and those sorts of things--but Livecoin's stated reasons for them having problems didn't ring true in my ears nevertheless.  And I'll say it again: if your exchange has such shitty security that (apparent) hacks like this can happen, you probably shouldn't be running any sort of crypto exchange.  It's not like it's not common knowledge that hackers are probably trying to get into every single exchange out there, nor that these security breaches have happened many times in the past.

Of course it does.  I don't believe a word of what Livecoin is telling the public.  I seem to recall that Cryptsy pulled this same scam back in 2016 (or whenever it was that they ran away with all of their customers' funds). 

Online petitions do absolutely nothing, and they've been around since the beginning of the internet.  That's the wrong route to go.  Contacting some branch of law enforcement in China (or wherever Livecoin is/was located) is probably the only reasonable solution to recovering your funds, assuming Livecoin doesn't fix this themselves--and my gut is telling me that not only aren't they going to do that, but that they're responsible for this mess.  I think this is their exit scam.

F..f..f..f..uuuuuck!!!  I'm sorry to hear you got burned, bro.  I'm grateful that I just happened to get lucky, but chances are that had I made one more deposit I would be in the same boat (albeit with less money lost, since I never trusted Livecoin with anything more than like $40 at a time).

This sucks for everyone who got burned, don't get me wrong.  I feel badly for everyone who had money there, and I'm hoping at least some of it can be recovered somehow.

That feedback regarding the no-collateral loan was a little bit harsh IMO, but then again OP really should have read the stickies and gotten to know how things are done on the forum before even requesting a loan like that.  The other neg(s) he got for that business proposal are probably deserved.

Ultimately, OP, you make it easy for people here to not like you--because of things like the above and for an attitude like you're displaying here in this thread.  As multiple members have pointed out, there's no reason why anyone here should respect you since you've done nothing to earn it.  And I've previously pointed out that in other people's eyes, you're just another random internet nobody who's done little on bitcointalk except to create thread after insipid thread, spouting near incomprehensible gibberish that you think should be carved onto tablets so that Moses can bring them down from the mountain.

In other words, get a grip on reality.  Stop your whining, stop it with all the threads, stop it with everything except reading (especially the rules).

Sure, that's basically what happened when Mt. Gox was heading to hell in a flaming handbasket back in 2013/14.  The problem of course is that nobody could be sure they'd be able to withdraw their funds even if they made a profit--and so it is with Livecoin right now. 

When I go to the site, it appears that you're still able to log in, though I haven't tried to.  If they're really under attack and if they know their customers' funds are potentially unsafe, they're being irresponsible by not just keeping that warning message as their front page instead of allowing customers to log in (unless they're functional again, but I doubt it).

I've never heard of Exmo or Altilly.  They must be very small exchanges with no security.  I'm so tired of this crap.  If you can't have proper protections in place so that your clientele can't lose everything to a hack, you've got no business running a crypto exchange.

Homey, you're fulla baloney.  You're also full of yourself and at the same time appear to have no justification for the inflated ego.

My guess is that OP got in on bitcoin earlier this year and now thinks he's a investment genius because he made some money in a raging bull market.  But I hate to tell you, pal, but anyone can make money in a market like this if they have enough capital to invest.

But here's the real thing: you start way too many threads with way too little coherency, imagination, or knowledge.  And believe me, I've read quite a few of them and wish I could get those wasted minutes of my life back from you.  

My suggestion to you is to have a happy Kwanzaa/Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, a joyous new year--and pipe it down a notch and do 10 times as much reading as you do posting.  You'd be helping yourself and the forum, believe me.