As well of course, there will be the spam spam...

I've been watching the development of trading bots/quants for a long time and seen them come and go with varying results, not just in crypto.
CryptoSparks has had to field some pretty dumb assertions and has reacted strongly, I don't blame him for that.
Obviously we're all on Scam Alert on a daily basis, usually triggered by high ROI's, and I'm making no judgement on CS and his scheme at the moment.
The central question is "How will he scam you?"
If you invest your money directly into your own Bitmex account and IF the API key is set up so that no third party has direct access to those deposited funds, where is the scam?
You may well lose your money if/when the trading system incurs trading losses, but how will CS profit from that if his only income comes from sharing in your profit?
Until that can be answered, everything else is just peripheral noise.

*my bold

It's not possible that it's a conspiracy, not because it's not against the law (not a prerequisite for use of the term), but because one person can't conspire with themselves.

I think not


Good question

Junior, 30 activity and 1 merit. Judging on your history, that last bit could take a while. Buy the chopper.

According to the man himself (if you can bear to give him a click)
https://news.bitcoin.com/the-history-of-bitcoin-com-an-introduction-to-our-new-company-blog/
If you can't

Axactly.

It's an example I made up. Does anyone know how much they owe to investors, all of whom are expecting 140+% ROI?
It could be $400m, $200m, name a figure.


Yes, so that's ~$150m plus $35m stable = ~$185m. As I said, an impressive figure, but meaningless without knowing the other side of the balance sheet.

Sorry, but it's Biddlebaddleboo time!!!!


Looking forward to the sig spam.

Mildly, but not really.
You're referring to

alphosini5
pranavmahajan
tesupihao
and a newbie
roks2019

And there are at least a further three to come, currently shillposting in the original BitWolf ANN thread which got moved to the Investor Games Section, presumably because of its Ponzi-like ROI.
widulys
aversuz
xtardeya

These accounts just do what they are told to do, by whichever social media manipulation service that owns them.
They all have recently been emulating an echo chamber, shilling for the Pointpay.io shitcoin as their last job.

What it does mean, however, is that by employing supposed damage limitation by using these alt accounts, BitWolf have showed a serious error of judgement, a mixture of arrogance and ineptitude, in thinking that this clumsy subterfuge wouldn't be seen thru by us stupid keyboard warriors on BitcoinTalk.

Arrogance and ineptitude are the characteristics of scammers' mentalities, not those of people with whom to safely trust large amounts of money.

---

I spent a little more time yesterday trying to ascertain exactly what "entity" will be responsible for the security of investors funds, should they deem it prudent to send any to BitWolf's wallet.
So far in the mix we have

A Hong Kong private company
A moribund Romanian "vehicle"
A virtual London trading name
Various references to France
Two UK limited companies, one dissolved
An American "entity"
A mining firm with a name and precious little else
A CEO of this and that and the other, running multi million $ companies for ~20 years with no social footprint and one photograph

And, after having a look at BitWolf's T&C's, I read that yet another corner of the globe is involved


Scammers Heaven, the Caymans, as most of you are aware, but this is the first time I've come across T&C's with this condition when the company setting them isn't even registered there...or do I add it to the list?

How did it do that, when there was no audit/analysis of creditors? The auditors nor anyone else, bar the scheme admin, know what the scheme's investment repayment schedule is.
Sure, apparently there's something in the region of $185m of assets in exchange accounts.
What if that's all that's left of say $300m invested? 

Protect them from what, people laughing at them in the street?

---

On the bright side, I just got a PM about one of my posts, eighteen months ago in a Cloud Mining thread...

Yet more immaculate stats, ty Loyce.
And what do we learn from the latest batch, what intellectual duels and incendiary spirals of creativity have occurred in the last 24 hours....?

The following users posted in the past 24 hours (sorting: most posts first):
1. 116 Member Andersen_KMD....................  spam, reported and deleted
2. 39 Legendary TECSHARE......................... arguing, mainly with #4
3. 29 Newbie 1Excalibur.............................. signature spam
4. 21 Legendary nutildah............................. arguing, mainly with #2 
5. 20 Sr. Member realr0ach..........................

According to Google Translate, it reads in part


This suggests to me that they have confirmed the value of assets, i.e. the amount held in accounts on platforms, but not whether that covers the liabilities to investors, as that was not within the remit laid down by Atlas.
~$185m is a lot of moolah, but not if you have $200m to pay out.
Quite how this constitutes "a breakthrough", I don't understand.

I know that wasn't addressed to me, but I'm in the process of unpicking your rather unorthodox company "structure."
Would be investors should know that there are essentially two types of "passive income opportunity" on offer with bot trading.
Type 1
API keys allow an investor to deposit funds directly on an exchange and then share trading access to their account with the third party bot manager. An example here (not a recommendation, just an example).
Whether or not the bot is successful is one thing, but the fact that it cannot withdraw funds from your exchange account means the only non trading risk to your capital is an exchange "hack" or moonlight flit.
Type 2
Is to send investment funds directly to the bot owner, who then trades with your money in a conventional client/investment manager relationship. As this is crypto and fund managers (such as BitWolf) are unregulated, this adds an extra dimension to complete capital risk, as they can simply disappear when they have collected substantial deposits. Or claim a "hack", as has happened many times.

Bitwolf is obviously Type 2, so their structure and backing are hugely important.
So, who or what is Bitwolf legally, and what is to stop it disappearing with your investment, leaving you no recourse?


An entity....this is an obvious fact, but not information of use. A flea on a dog is an entity.
Is it a legally established "entity" with capital backing from shareholders?
Is it any more than two words?
What other information is there about this "entity"?
There is an address in London on the Bitwolf website
37, Ludgate Hill,
London EC4M 7JN
This address has 1,382 companies registered there, including a virtual office and mail forwarding operation.


On the Hash-Core website, there are three "entities" mentioned: Hashcore Mining, HashCore USA and HashCore Investment.
1) HashCore USA appears to be an entity similar to BitWolf, insofaras it exists because it is said to exist, not because it has any actual legal identity (that I have found so far).
2) HashCore Mining is said to be "A Xedis Technology Ltd brand" with a Hong Kong address. All that is known about Xedis (at present) is that it was registered five years ago as a Private Company.
3) HashCore Investment. Following the helpful link above leads to the Romanian company details. Registered in 2003, it has never traded in any meaningful way (probably why it only needed one employee) until just recently (2018) when it made ~$10k profit. No mention of Bitwolf and HashCore Investment's relationship can be found until one looks at the people involved. I am not doxxing anyone here, just collating publicly available information about the person known as Darren Moon.

Mr. Moon claims in his Linkedin to be CEO and Co-Founder of both Bitwolf Capital and Hashcore Investment (and others).
I guess it's possible to claim to be CEO and Co-Founder of any "entity", so Bitwolf CEO and Co-Founder he is.
With HashCore Investment, it's slightly different because, as mentioned above, that was legally registered back in 2003. Mr. Moon claims to be Co-Founder since 2017. Can one be a Co Founder of an entity 14 years after it was founded?

There's quite a bit more to look at as Mr. Moon* has a substantial history but, as it stands, I find it difficult to see where the buck would actually stop in the theoretical situation where BitWolf attracted substantial investment and something awful happened. To whom would an impoverished investor go for redress?:

A virtual office address in London?
A dormant Romanian company with unknown capital and one employee?
A private Hong Kong registered company?

*I am in no way suggesting that Mr. Moon is a scammer.

@ Bitwolf
If, as you say, you have been involved in crypto long term, then you will be only too aware of the number of "Golden Geese that lay Golden Eggs" scams that have passed thru this forum over the years, promising (but not exactly promising) wonderful ROI by the use of spectacularly efficient new approaches and techniques.
Cynicism is (rightly) high and due diligence a matter of course. Many scams are unmasked because of small errors and inconsistencies in their documentation and claims. High on that dd checklist are fake team members and plagiarism, both of which have been found in your proposal. Blaming a third party is a standard response. So, please, quit the faux outrage at factual evidence of this being presented and stop shooting the messenger: it's your website and only you take responsibility for its content.


No, you don't anywhere actually guarantee a 240% annual gain, you simply present summaries which you claim refer to trades that have been made. The fact that, according to these summaries, your trading has achieved since inception a virtually flatline of ~20% monthly ROI in mixed market conditions makes any overt claim to future performance redundant. Investment will be attracted and made on the reasonable? expectation that this ROI will continue.
These summaries, of course are meaningless as stand alone proof of anything, how can you claim them to be "proven trading activities"?
Once again, we have seen this many many times in the past, here is a current one.

For you to think that anything will be accepted at face value, especially when you consider the implications of the reality which you propose i.e. that it is a simple process for anyone to achieve ~20% monthly ROI with a passive investment in a scheme like yours, is naive in the extreme.

Whether you like it or not (and you obviously don't) your scheme has failed first scrutiny big time: there is factual evidence that you have plagiarised content and  false team member details on your website.
Is it possible to accept your excuses for this? For some No, for others, Maybe.
As for me, if I were satisfied that, despite the above, there was compelling evidence that your Magic Money Making Machine was really trading and achieving these returns, that would be weighed in the equation (along with your apparent mining track record).
As you as no doubt aware, 20% pm is hugely tempting ROI.
It is up to you to show that you are to be trusted with the large minimum investments that you are asking for.
This may help

I gave up reporting this type of abuse a while ago. Sometimes I noticed that between making the report and it being actioned, pages of further crap had been posted.
On some threads where I think there is a risk of a very questionable scheme's bumping service actually succeeding in boosting credibility, I periodically post summaries of the spam and a warning about it, but rarely go to the lengths that JollyGood has on the basis that

Never wrestle with a pig.
You get covered in shit and the pig enjoys it.


This.

If the senior management of the forum doesn't consider the thousands upon thousands of spam posts being made (solely to distort visitors' perception of the popularity of usually dubious schemes) to be a threat to the forum's credibility, then this conclusion seems inevitable

Your management team (Messrs. Moon, Stancuilescu and Bucur) are also in charge of the Hash Core mining operation, is that correct?

I agree with you.
So are accusations like
made in reaction to claims made by one member in flags which attracted no support whatsoever from the wider community.


+1