The Trade Satoshi exchange announced on Thursday it is closing down on March 1st, giving its users just 10 days from the date of announcement to withdraw their coins. The exchange had been riddled with problems for quite some time, including frequent withdraw delays, account closures, absurdly high withdrawal fees, and the locking of customer accounts for seemingly arbitrary reasons.

One of the things making it hard for the exchange's remaining customers to withdraw their coins is the fact that they frequently have been in "maintenance mode" during the last few days, and even when customers can log into their accounts, they see the withdraw option for Bitcoin (and other coins) disabled.

Some customers logged into their account only to see new KYC documentation requests, preventing them from attempting to withdraw coins or even cancel trades. Others are reporting that their 2-FA codes are no longer working on Google Authenticator.

Whatever the actual reason for the closure seems to be, it would appear that Trade Satoshi seriously does not want customers to withdraw their coins, despite there being only 8 days remaining before the scheduled closure.

For a background on the exchange, its operator, and a look into its bizarre connections with Cryptopia, you can read more here:

https://coinclarity.com/trade-satoshi-closing-exit-scam-likely/

Here is the Twitter announcement, followed by scores of complaints from frustrated users underneath:

https://twitter.com/TradeSatoshi/status/1230509341142220800

[What happened::]

What happened:: Keplertek was an ICO that wanted to revolutionize the AI/robotics industry by creating a platform for related businesses to launch their projects and collaborate with each other as well as investors and the larger community. After a severely flawed bounty distribution, the coin was launched on an exchange, but only announced 5 days after the Kepler team and managers had time to dump their tokens, crushing the token price to 1/10th of its ICO value. The team did not adhere to any part of its roadmap (except for the ICO portion) and the CEO has silenced the official Telegram group chat, preventing anybody from being able to ask what happened to their investments.

Please read the full article on Coinclarity for more info: https://coinclarity.com/spotting-a-scamcoin-keplertek/

Scammers Profile Link: CEO Giorgi Topuria doesn't have an account here, and Wapinter is not at fault
Reference Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2839512, https://keplertek.io
Amount Scammed: somewhere between $1.5-$13.7 mil
Payment Method: ETH, BTC, USD, EUR
Proof of Payment: (I have some deposit addresses but am not publishing them for the sake of investor confidentiality)
PM/Chat Logs: https://t.me/Keplertek_Unofficial, https://t.me/KeplerTechnologies
Additional Notes:

Additional topics on the subject and scam accusations:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5127623.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5151422.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5128865.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5114598.0

[Hail King Bitcoin: Why BTC Remains #1 After All This Time]

Originally published on coinclarity.com (this is my own article, but its more of an opinion piece than a news item, so I posted it here -- I'd like any input you may have to give on it).

Bitcoin has tripled in price since the beginning of the year – a move that not a whole lot of people saw coming – yet this time around altcoins have failed to follow in its footsteps… Why? In this article, we take a deeper look into what might be going on in the minds of investors that is preventing the expected “altcoin season” to manifest itself in the wake of bitcoin’s recent rise.


Hail King Bitcoin: Why BTC Remains #1 After All This Time
 
Normally speaking, within the context of the last 5 years or so, bullish momentum for BTC has usually translated into bullish momentum for altcoins. However, 2019 thus far has proven to be a rather lackluster year for most altcoins, as the total market cap of all altcoins has only doubled in comparison to bitcoin’s tripling. This has had the byproduct of helping BTC’s dominance of the total market cap percentage actually increase instead of decrease; the opposite of what happened in 2017.

Indeed, a few altcoins have had rather extraordinary rises in 2019, some even surpassing that of BTC’s. In terms of return on investment (ROI), Litecoin (LTC) is up 233%, Holochain (HOT) is up 223%, and Binance Coin (BNB) is up a staggering 408%. However, the list of coins that managed to beat King Bitcoin is much smaller than the list of coins whose ROIs paled in comparison. Take for example this year to date chart comparing the top 10 coins by market cap (excluding Tether, for obvious reasons).



All but 2 coins have a lower ROI than bitcoin, and Ripple (XRP) has somehow managed to be negative for the year thus far. Other traditionally “top tier” coins that have significantly underperformed in 2019 include IOTA (MIOTA), losing 1.7%, and Stellar (XLM), down a whopping 18%. No matter how you dice it, altcoins as a whole have not lived up to investor expectations in light of bitcoin’s magnificent rise.

Looking back at the great bull run of late 2017, the crypto market saw a declining dominance of bitcoin in the total market capitalization of all coins. This was due to the fact that even though bitcoin was rising to stratospheric new heights, the altcoin market as a whole was rising even faster. Coins like Ethereum (ETH), Dash (DASH) and NEM (XEM) – among countless others – were experiencing drastic gains in magnitude that BTC had not seen since 2011. Thus, even though the total market cap of all coins was rising, bitcoin’s relative share of this metric was on the decline. This can be visualized in the chart below, which shows BTC’s percentage of the total market cap (top line) sinking throughout the year as compared to other coins.



In 2019, however, a different picture has emerged: BTC is up, but altcoins as a whole are not up very much at all. This has led to an increasing dominance in the total market cap by bitcoin, rising from 52% on January 1st to 65% today. Likewise, the percentage of the total market cap held by other coins has been on the decline, meaning most of the new money flowing into crypto has been aimed at bitcoin.



So what gives? Why hasn’t there been a terrific “alt season” yet for altcoins in 2019? Well, a number of theories abound. The one most popular with altcoin holders – particularly those who recently plunged their money into alts thinking that they would be due for a 2017-like boost thanks to a rising bitcoin – is  that there is a lag currently occurring and that a renewed interest in the altcoin markets is just around the corner. Another theory, though not nearly as popular, is that altcoins were simply far too overvalued the last time around. In 2017, there seemed to have been a lot more optimism about what the future of cryptocurrency held. The idea was catching on that the general public may one day soon be ready to adopt not only bitcoin but a whole host of other coins as well, each one being able to fill a particular niche in the online economy.

After years of being overwhelmed by skeptics and a larger feeling of irrelevancy, the attitude of crypto enthusiasts in 2017 – encouraged by a largely prosperous 2016 – was that a blockchain solution could be applied to almost any problem, and that everything could be tokenized. In the fourth quarter of 2017, it truly looked like the sky was the limit for cryptocurrency. Globally-speaking, investors poured billions into highly-questionable projects, hoping to get in on “the next bitcoin.” Pretty much every cryptocurrency with the word “coin” in its name saw a rise, from Potcoin (POT), to Sexcoin (SXC), to PutinCoin (PUT).

The most notorious of coins to benefit from bitcoin’s rising tide was undoubtedly Bitconnect (BCC), which even managed to crack CoinMarketCap’s coveted top 10 for a couple of months. Though 2018 saw a surge of ICO projects that made 2017 look tame by comparison, a damper was put on the mood of crypto investors when a study revealed that up to 80% of the ICOs conducted in 2017 had proven themselves to be scams. Indeed, the market had grown too rapidly, and it was beginning to be impossible to sort out legitimate projects from the illegitimate. Dozens (if not hundreds) of Ethereum tokens that started out with good intentions are now all being thrown into the same branding as scam projects, perhaps even along with Ethereum itself.

To make matters worse, the rate of crypto adoption hasn’t been happening nearly as quickly as the markets are reflecting, which means that an even larger percentage of the total market cap is speculation-based than before. The third and fourth quarters of 2018 saw some major corrections occurring, with several coins having 50-80% of their market cap wiped out. Many of these coins will likely never recover, as perhaps they had simply been over-valued for far too long. Popular crypto Twitter personality Peter McCormack perhaps put it best in a recent tweet:

@PeterMcCormack
 The reason you haven’t had an alt season is simple. You all know that alts are junk and aren’t worth shit.

You’re hoping for more clueless morons to pump this shit but they aren’t here. 2017 was a one off, we were all clueless.

Buy Bitcoin, go long, STFU!

After all these years, BTC is still number one; more firmly now than it has been since April 2017. This fact stands even in the wake of potential “Bitcoin Killers” whose popularities have most likely already waxed and waned (the likes of which include ETH, BCH, and most recently, BSV). Bitcoin remains the increasingly-dominant cryptocurrency for some good reasons:

• It is the oldest, most dominant, most respected of its class, having achieved by far the greatest penetration of real world use case scenarios.
• It has some of the most innovative, experienced and well-funded minds working to make it better, allowing for its evolution in the face of stiff competition (Blockstream, Bitcoin Core, Lightning Network developers).
• It is the most trusted and secured of all blockchains, with over a million individuals likely to be mining on its network at any given time.

Of course, anything could happen in the future, and it’s surely possible that one day King Bitcoin will be overthrown by a worthy competitor that is perhaps better suited to meet the public demand for a permissionless, decentralized digital currency. However, for the time being, BTC reigns supreme in not only market cap, but in having the elements required to attract a wide stream global audience — a potential crowd of users that as of yet has been barely tapped into, even after 10 years in the making.

(for full links and image credits please visit the original source on coinclarity.com)

Hello Bitcointalk,

I’ve been a professional cryptocurrency writer for 3 years. I bought my first BTC in 2013 and have been a hardcore fan of crypto ever since. Before then I was technical writer for the healthcare industry, and before that, I helped write and edit academia-related articles, papers and theses. In short, writing is in my blood, and I’m currently looking for additional work.

I've written over 250 articles, product descriptions, guides and reviews, and have pretty extensive knowledge in most things crypto-related. If I don't know it, you can be sure I'd be willing to learn. I also do editing.

Some of the relevant subjects on which I have written include:

-   cryptocurrency and blockchain-related news
-   the blockchain and different consensus algorithms (PoW, PoS, DPoS, etc.)
-   ICOs (including analyses, white papers and promotional content)
-   price movement, technical analysis
-   guides on how to use wallets, sign up for exchanges and use DEXs
-   gambling and casinos (reviews, how-to manuals)
-   blockchain use outside of cryptocurrency
-   guides on how to identify scams and avoid them
-   interviews with industry members, traders, blockchain-related business owners
-   descriptions of altcoins, crypto-related products, casinos and exchanges

My going rate is $0.05 per word, or $20 per hour (BTC, BCH, ETH and XRP accepted).

Below are some examples of my published articles and guides.

General news:

QuadrigaCX Missing Crypto Investigation Full of Twists and Turns
Weekly Roundup: Bitcoin Bullish, Lightning Network Reviewed, McAfee Wallet Hacked (Again)
The Bitcoin Cash Civil War

Guides / Backgrounds:

What is Grin and MimbleWimble?
Why the Drop? 3 Scenarios for Its Explanation, and Why Its the BCH Fork
A Review of All USD Stablecoins (Except Tether)
Decentralized Internet Coins
Spotting a Scamcoin: Ethconnect

Lightning Network:

What is the Lightning Network?
Bitcoin’s Lightning Network: Cool Things You Can Do With It Today

Casinos:

Best Bitcoin Casinos for 2019: Safety, Best Games, Easy Deposits & Withdrawals

Exchanges:

Cryptocurrency Exchanges in 2019: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

For a full list of my articles, please visit the page below:

https://coinclarity.com/author/cyrusmcnally/

Please PM me for offers or write a reply here if you have any questions.

Thanks for your consideration!

[What is Known vs. What is Speculated]

It seems like either they were insolvent or slowly being robbed by a security consultant. Either way, the death of the CEO was the perfect cover..

In one of the most intriguing crypto mysteries of 2019 thus far, analysts and investigative journalists recently discovered that a recently-deceased CEO’s one-man-show might not be the convenient excuse as to why $190 million in crypto assets have gone missing from Canada’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange.

Highlights of the story:

What is Known vs. What is Speculated

The hunt is on, and in the brief time since Kraken posted their reward offer, lots of new information concerning QuadrigaCX has come to light. Here are some interesting aspects of the story that are known for sure:

- Gerald Cotten changed his will 12 days before his death, naming his wife as the sole heir of his estate. Cotten’s name was mis-spelled on his official death certificate, which lists his death date as December 9th (news of his death was not made public until February).

- Over $100 million worth of ETH was withdrawn from Quadriga’s exchange wallets in December, just days before Cotten’s death, sent to addresses belonging to exchanges Bitfinex and Poloniex.

- Contrary to claims stated in an affidavit filed by Cotten’s wife, BTC wallets under the control of Quadriga were found by auditors to have been empty since April 2018, and did not contain the tens of millions of dollars in customer funds believed to have been located there.

- The FBI is now working with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in order to track down the location of the missing funds, inviting those with information related to the matter to step forward to help their investigations.

Here are some allegations that have substantial evidence to back them:

- One of Quadriga’s biggest shareholders, Michael Patryn, is thought to have been arrested and charged with financial fraud crimes in the U.S. under another name, Omar Dhahani, in 2004. Dhanani was an active member of Shadowcrew.com, which was a site described by prosecutors as a “hub of online identity theft activity.” The website was mainly used to traffic stolen credit card and bank card numbers, per court filings associated with the case. As a result of his involvement, Dhahani was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison and released in May 2007.

- In 2008, Dhahani is thought to have started a website called Midas Gold Exchange, under the name Omar Patryn, launched using the URL M-Gold.com. The website offered digital currency exchange services, focusing heavily on an anonymity-based virtual currency called Liberty Reserve, which was later shut down by U.S. prosecutors, who dubbed it “a criminal business venture, one designed to help criminals conduct illegal transactions and launder the proceeds of their crimes.”

- Though denying being the same person as Omar Patryn to reporters, Michael Patryn, who acted as a security consultant to Quadriga in addition to being a major shareholder, was contacted by staff at The Globe and Mail through an email address associated with M-Gold.com. Canadian court documents also tie the two together by mentioning Omar Patryn as an alias of Michael Patryn, and also through a P.O. box associated with Midas Gold Exchange Inc. Six months later, Patryn co-founded QuadrigaCX with Gerald Cotten, however he quickly relinquished any executive duties in favor of becoming a shareholder.

- According to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, QuadrigaCX was not likely to have been perpetrating an exit scam, noting that the market conditions to do so would have been horrible for an exchange founded back in 2013. Instead, he believes the exchange suffered a “multimillion dollar bug” in July 2017, in which millions of dollars’ worth of customer ETH went missing or became locked up in a miscoded smart contract. Quadriga was well-aware of the problem, having issued a statement about it on Reddit while simultaneously claiming that user funds were not at risk, and that only company profits had been affected.

- As a result, Armstrong believes Quadriga found itself playing “catch up,” trying to replace lost funds with new ones, of which became too impossible a task to manage as the crypto markets rapidly declined through early 2018. In the months following the steep market sell-off, the exchange became insolvent and was on the verge of bankruptcy, though this information was never disclosed to its customers.

- In order to help alleviate insolvency issues incurred during the “bug drain” outlined by Armstrong, QuadrigaCX created fake accounts on its own platform to trade against its users with a “significant volume” using “artificially created” deposits and then withdrew actual assets to accounts not associated with QuadrigaCX. This would also help explain issues with delayed fiat withdrawals stemming back to early 2018, well before Cotten’s passing.

- The country of India, and specifically the region where Cotten was pronounced deceased, is known for having a “fake death mafia,” which lends credence to the theory that he may have faked his own death. However, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell is “99% certain” that Cotten is actually deceased.[/color]

You can read the story in its entirety (and with the pictures) here:

https://coinclarity.com/quadrigacx-missing-crypto-investigation/

[What is Seasteading?]

You may have heard about this story through other news sources already, but mine was the first to have an actual interview with the man behind the project, Elwar. I've included parts of the story and interview below, and you can read the whole thing here:

https://coinclarity.com/bitcoin-early-adopter-seastead/

Besides buying Lamborghinis, going on cruises and attending thousand dollar-ticket Bitcoin Conferences around the world, what else do BTC’s early adopters do with their money? In the case of Chad Elwartowski, ex software engineer and retired bitcoin investor, the answer is pretty novel, and indicative of the amount of creativity, curiosity and bravery that many crypto investors have: seasteading.

What is Seasteading?

Seasteading is the idea of removing oneself from the confines of society and government by building an unregulated, nationless house in international waters. This can be accomplished by anchoring a livable platform to the ocean floor with a steel cylinder, otherwise known as a spar. The design is similar to an oil platform, but for the purposes of housing a single family, much smaller and less costly.

Why Become a Seasteader?

When asked on the forum about the advantages to living in a seastead as opposed to living in a house boat, Elwar answered “Sovereignty.” One gets the feeling by reading Elwar’s posts on the forum that, after establishing a degree of financial mobility, freedom becomes one of the most important things that money can buy. This includes freedom from government regulation and societal restrictions, as well as a clearer control over one’s own destiny.



Interview with a Bitcoining Seasteader

We caught up with Elwar online, who was kind enough to grant us an interview about his revolutionary project.

Coin Clarity: I read in one of your earliest posts [on the Bitcoin Forum] that you bought your first BTC at $16 a coin, in July 2011. As an early adopter, it seems like you were a pretty firm believer in bitcoin since the beginning. What was compelling to you about bitcoin that made you see it as a long-term investment?

Chad Elwartowski: I didn’t like the idea of having my money in a currency that loses value over time as a feature. I had researched gold and tried to find a way to use gold as a currency, but any options out there required that you pay fees for storage and fees every time you used the card. Too much to be practical. For me Bitcoin isn’t an investment, it’s my new currency that doesn’t lose value as a feature.

CC: How much prep and planning was involved before you began to put things into action?

CE: We have evolved the plan over time. Even now we’re fixing and changing things on the prototype to see what makes things better. Yesterday we added chains to the anchor lines so it’s anchor/chain/rope/chain. There were tiny jerking motions in big waves. That should clear those up.



CC: Sorry, I have to ask: what do you plan to do to fend of pirates? What kind of defense plans do you have in place?

CE: Pirates are just burglars on the sea. Except it’s a lot harder to get into our house than a house on land. If someone wants to steal our laptops and cell phones it’s a lot easier to break into a hotel room than moor your boat, get into your dinghy, climb up 2 meters with no ladder (if they can do that I’ll give them my laptop as a reward for being impressed). Plus we would be sitting there for 10-15 minutes watching from our deck as they do this. We have IP cameras covering the whole place as well. And guns are legal in Thailand. And even more legal on the seastead.

(you can read the interview in its entirety at CoinClarity.com)

[this article]

In this article I wrote up interviews with two (pretty) prominent members of the forum, moderator Flying Hellfish and scam buster Phinnaeus Gage. The first two articles are more basic stuff about the contents of the forum and how to use it:

https://coinclarity.com/the-bitcoin-forum-part-1-of-3/
https://coinclarity.com/the-bitcoin-forum-part-2-of-3/

I've included the segment with the Bruno interview below, for easy reading (in Bruno style he posted it as a secret comment edit, from 2011):



(Coin Clarity:) How did you first hear about bitcoin, and then how did you hear about the Bitcoin forum (BitcoinTalk)?

(Phinnaeus Gage:) It was June 13, 2011, a Monday morning, when I first learnt of Bitcoin and BitcoinTalk (BCT) at the same time. I was on my laptop while taking a long shit  , exploring the feasibility of amassing copper US cents (pre 1983) as an investment opportunity. Due to certain keywords I was using on Google, the search results kept suggesting Bitcoin, of which I dismissed at first. Finally, curiosity got the best of me and found myself reading some post of some thread on BCT. Eight hours later I was still reading treads on Bitcoin's only forum at the time. The next day I immediately went back to BCT and read threads for at least another eight hours. Same true for the following day. On the morning of June 16, 2011, I signed up on the forum under the moniker Phinnaeus Gage so to interact with what I believed at the time to be a well-educated group of posters.

Would you mind talking a little bit about how/why you got "doxxed"? Everybody (most people) on the forum knows who you are now, but it wasn't always that way... What happened?

Don't mind at all. It was during a late spring morning a few years ago when I was taking a long shit ...   Seriously, one word - Inaba (aka Josh Zerlan of the now defunct Butterfly Labs). For some reason I gave Josh my vitals via PM on BCT, whereupon weeks later when I inevitably pissed him off one too many times, he opted to publicly release my vitals on BCT as payback.

How did you become an acquaintance of Charles Hoskinson / Charlie Shrem / Roger Ver? (you can mention just one, two or all three if you want)?

It was during a July morning when I was taking a long ...  

I first met all three on BCT, each of them all contributing to Bitcoin 100, crypto's first crypto-accepting charity which I founded. Charles Hoskinson was the very first Bitcoiner I met in person at a conference hosted by BitPay in Atlanta, in front of BitPay's office upon exiting the elevator. Quick aside, I'll be speaking at Charles' IOHK Summit in April and will be manning a booth representing YuTü.Co.in, also founded by me. I first met Charlie Shrem at the same conference in Atlanta. I've never met Roger in person cuz of all the conferences I've attended where he was scheduled to speak, he pulled a George Jones and didn't show. #Sad!

What/when was your greatest feeling of victory, like a moment you knew when you really nailed somebody or took down a scam project?

There are so many, I truly can't name one, looking at all of them as victories, though Black Arrow, BFL and EthTrade definitely come to mind. I do get a kick on how Leroy Fodor, Marshall Long and Nick Spanos ALL claim to have been mining and trading bitcoins in 2009 when BCT was the ONLY source of info in the space back them, it having ONLY 17 registered users (none them) and the first exchange had yet to be created, let alone envisioned [mostly via the Bitcoin White Paper]. I'll add that Nick is on record in not knowing who Satoshi is directly after claiming he knew everybody in the space, Leroy can't rite good english in spite of earning a college deegre, and Marshall stinks like a pig perhaps cuz he has ablutophobia.

I noticed you're on the Default Trust list but don't issue feedback. Why don't you use the Trust system? Do you have any personal thoughts on it?

Oddly, just opted from the get-go to not participate on the let's-shit-on-people thingy (guess that answers the second question as well, eh?).

You've been one to speak your mind, coming across often as quite anti-authoritarian. Do you have anything to stay about the current state of forum "politics"?

Actually, I haven't gotten caught up in the politics of BCT, albeit I may have been a victim of such given the comments left on my Trust thingy. As for BCT proper, I'd say that within five more years, theymos will have the new improved $1.5M forum up and running.

Do you have any tips for people who want to become a scambuster? Like, any certain "do's" or "do not's" that you're willing to share?

What's it like being the most prolific poster on the forum? I mean, between Phinnaeus Gage and Gleb Gamow you're about 12,000 posts ahead of the next closest member, philipma1957.

I currently live in Mindanao. Want me to go check out a certain ex-solar powered mining operation?

Yeah, go and unplug Leroy Fodor's solar array powering the Philippines largest bitcoin mining farm located in his sorry-ass 20' X 20' Sari Sari-cum-disco-cum-grocery-cum-internet cafe-cum-living quarters in the basement-cum-piggery ...

You can read the interview with Flying Hellfish here:

https://coinclarity.com/the-bitcoin-forum-part-3-of-3/

[Part 1]

Hello guys and girls,

I am a news writer for the crypto website Coin Clarity, and this is my first post to the Beginners & Help section.

I've been involved with bitcoin since 2013 and a long-time forum user. Although I didn't formally register until 2017, I've been using the forum for various purposes quite a bit over the last 5 years.

In a series of 3 articles I compiled pretty much all the information I could think of that was relevant about the forum for new users: an explanation of how it works, what the rules are, how to find what you are looking for, how Activity, Trust and Merit work, and how to be productive with your time here.

Here are the articles and what each one contains:

Part 1 - a basic overview of the forum:

- the history of the forum
- links to the forum's "greatest hits" (popular threads)
- how ranks & merits work
- forum sections & their contents
- moderation & guidelines
- the Trust system

Part 2 - how to find what you're looking for & be a successful member:

- how to get started
- forum rules
- boards for educational purposes
- boards for trading
- boards for promoting your project
- boards for signature and bounty campaigns

Part 3 - the interviews:

- an interview with a moderator (Flying Hellfish)
- an interview with a scam buster (Phinnaeus Gage)

Your feedback is welcomed, and I am willing to entertain any and all questions you might have about the articles or the forum itself... I'll try to answer them the best that I can! Thanks.

Dear Members,

I am currently writing an article (probably a 3 part series) on the Bitcoin Forum (after reading xtraelv's thread on most iconic threads I learned that its actually called "Bitcoin Forum" and not Bitcointalk -- I never really looked at the words in the upper left hand corner before).

The first part will be about the history of the forum and its components.
The second part will consist of interviews with prominent members.
The third part will be about recent ongoings in the forum: most popular projects, and where things are possibly headed.

I'm looking for people (preferably early users and moderators) who would like to be part of a short interview -- I know who a lot of you are (not in real life but from the forum) so I could probably tailor some questions specifically to you, so as to avoid being too generic or boring. It would be good to get some unique insight that perhaps hasn't yet been shared and would be most grateful if you could shoot me a PM if you are interested.

I also have a few questions, if anybody could help me out I'd be greatly appreciative:

1. Is this the biggest forum on the internet? I mean "forum" in the classical sense, as in "biggest SMF forum".. An independent entity and not run by some corporation like AOL or Yahoo or something. It certainly seems like it from what I've researched.  

2. Can anybody take a guess as to the approximate monthly revenue raised by the site? If you feel its sensitive but want to discuss please PM me. Worth of Web estimates it to bring in about $193k a month. Its stats are also a bit more exaggerated than the general stats provided by the forum (at the bottom of the main page), so I have no idea what the actual income is.

3. Are there still plans to upgrade the forum at some point or have those been nixed entirely?

For what it is, I think the forum works great -- its so many things at the same time: a historical archive, a collection of "how to" manuals and instructional information, a site to discuss and launch crypto projects; not to mention a marketplace, "social network," and fully-fledged ecosystem. I don't want to sound like a suck-up but props to theymos and the moderators for keeping it functional and holding everything together over the years -- its a job that most of us probably take for granted.

Thanks for your help and contributions in advance, its greatly appreciated.

ps: if you want to get a sample of the kinds of stories I write, you can click here for a list of my most recent articles. A while back I did a 3 part series on Satoshi Nakamoto and even interviewed Bruno at one point.

Watching aitrades.org launch and not being able to do anything about it is like watching a stroller rolling in front of a freight train, so I thought I would at least post this here so it might show up as a Google search result for the website. They are set to launch in 2 days time.



Basically, AI Trades is (99.9% likely to be) a Ponzi scheme masking as an investment program based on - you guessed it - artificial intelligence-driven trades. Here are some of the "products" they offer (taken straight from the website):

1 - AI Robots for arbitrage between exchanges
2 - AI Robots for trading with any pair of cryptocurrency
3 - AI Robots for margin trading on exchanges (in development)
4 - AI Robots for mining (in development)
5 - AI Robots for market analysis and search for financially-beneficial altcoins (in development)
6 - Ai-Power Nodes


As you're probably already aware, arbitrage-based investment programs have been all the rage in Ponzis over the past couple of years. It's a smart move because it can be automated, black boxed, and consistently profitable. A perfect front for a Ponzi operation.

On top of them having no identifiable team, no type of information about the software or exchanges used (that would be black box confidential I guess) and no sort of licensing, partnerships or backers of note, they have an investment "calculator" that shows very lucrative ROIs; though it should be noted they have the following disclaimer right next to the calculator:

"We are not a license investment Company we are a Bitcoin management Company, We manage our members Bitcoins and return a ROIB daily. We do not give any guarantees. The crypto market is a very volatile space. This Calculator is to give you an estimate of what could happen"

... And monkeys _could_ fly out of my ass.



But wait, there's more! If you up the deposit to 5 BTC, your 1 year "Clear ROIB" shoots up to 72.54%! This isn't much compared to many Ponzis, but the fact remains, a 72% ROI per year is pretty darn good.

The kicker (and thing that ups this from a 77% chance of scam to 99.9%) is that the idea was founded by Joff Paradise, of Trade Coin Club, which was a pretty huge Bitconnect-esque Ponzi that was popular throughout several parts of the world. There isn't much on Trade Coin Club in this forum, but there is a hell of a lot of information on the internet -- disgruntled customers, unfavorable reviews, dissatisfied promoters, and tons and tons of negative information about Joff Paradise.



I don't want to say Joff has been a con man his entire life but as far as what the internet has to say about him, it would certainly seem that way. Among his many internet accomplishments, he's been accused of mismanaging a franchise of gyms into bankruptcy, racking up huge debts at casinos, and even pretending to be a veteran. He also goes by the names Jeffrey Webb and Geoff Paradise.



The thing that scares me the most about this guy is, besides the fact that he's been legally untouchable, he has a huge, vulnerable following -- almost a cult of personality. He regularly gives seminars about how awesome his moneymaking programs to financially illiterate member bases, jetsetting to Vietnam, Belize, Thailand, Ukraine, Nigeria, India, etc., on the regular.

Here's an article my website published about Trade Coin Club for more details.

Joff Paradise Twitter: https://twitter.com/joffparadise?lang=en

Joff Paradise Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/joff.paradise

I just hope I can somehow minimize the damage this guy is going to inflict with his latest scheme, again.

This was supposed to be the #1 catalyst of upward trajectory in an otherwise poopy year for the price of BTC. As we all know (or may not know), all 9 Bitcoin ETF applications were rejected by the SEC thus far, and after a delayed re-evaluation on the matter they pushed back their final decision announcement until today, November 5th.

https://www.coindesk.com/vaneck-and-solidx-unfazed-by-the-secs-latest-bitcoin-etf-delay/

https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/sec-bitcoin-etf-approval-decision-for-9-different-exchange-trade-funds-to-happen-next-few-days/

So let's do some speculating on the outcome before hand as there are only but a few hours to go.

(Edit: updated for 2019)

[CC:]

You know him as the lover of goats, ümlauts and scam busting, under screen names YuTü.Co.in, Gleb Gamow and of course Phinnaeus Gage, probably the most prolific poster in the history of the forum, reviled by some and revered by many. I sat down with Bruno (well not really with him, but we were both sitting down at our respective computers thousands of miles apart) for an interview about what makes him tick, his thoughts on bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, and some of his favorite scams he's come across in his days as a member of the forum, which dates all the way back to 2011.

I had personally been a fan of Bruno for quite some time, following his antics on bitcointalk since 2013. He is a man of ups-and-downs, a personality to be reckoned with; some days being your average human being with access to the internet and others capable of upending fraudulent empires. Love him or hate him, Bruno is a cornerstone of Satoshi's other great contribution, this very forum.

Here's a sample from the interview:

CC: A couple weeks back we wrote an article about the origins of Satoshi Nakamoto and floated across the idea that bitcoin may have been developed by the secretive hedge fund manager James Harris Simons. Admittedly that theory was inspired by you. In addition to the fact that he’s obviously a very smart man with an NSA background and famous for his ability to put together capable teams of talented individuals, what else leads you to believe that Simons is a candidate for being Satoshi?

BK: His penchants for secrecy first comes to mind. Then, it all centers around money, of which hedge funds and the like need a constant and new source of influx. Enter cryptocurrencies. First, you acclimate the populace to the new ideal as you set the stage within “The Law” on Wall Street, exactly what we’re seeing now in virtually real-time.

CC: Speaking of Wall Street and the law, do you have any particular take on what will become of the Bitcoin ETF? Is it a sure thing, or not, or not relevant to bitcoin’s continued success?

BK: I honestly think it’ll become a reality, and a good thing for the space, especially for the powers that be assuming, of course, them powers that be [in the shadows] exist… I don’t believe for a second that some one dude using the name Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, forfeited his fortunes, then disappeared … all for the betterment of mankind. I reserve the right to amend said sentiment if by happenstance he raises from the dead in three days… Given that we’re now at the stage of “Satoshi, why have you forsaken us?”

You can read the rest of the interview here:

https://coinclarity.com/an-interview-with-bruno-kucinskas-the-anti-scammer/

[Spotting a Scamcoin: Razormind and DeOS]

Hi guys,

Recently I've started a series of articles entitled "Spotting a Scamcoin." I was told by a member of the forum that it might be a good idea to publish the whole articles here on the forum, and I'm choosing this section to do so. If it is at all popular I will publish the other ones I have so far (Bitconnect, Ethconnect). Thanks!


Spotting a Scamcoin: Razormind and DeOS

In Part II of our educational series on how to identify a cryptocurrency-related scam, we look at the story of Razormind, a would-be revolutionary service that planned to create a decentralized operating system that could allow developers to grow custom-built businesses around open-sourced, blockchain-based technology. What investors got instead were some worthless tokens, an extensive list of excuses, and months (or years) of their life taken away while waiting for a project that never bore fruit.

Razormind: The Curious Case of Jawad Yaqub

In this week’s article, we’ll review some of the tell-tale signs of a crypto scam one by one, as they apply to the story of our main subject, Mr. Jawad Yaqub. Much like Bryce Weiner from last week’s edition, Yaqub has a severely inflated sense of grandiosity and self worth, which does not necessarily stem from anything he’s actually accomplished but perhaps some sort of deep-seeded neuropsychological issue.


source: Twitter

However, if you let him do the talking, he’ll tell you he’s done – well – more than a lot. A bio under a YouTube video of which Yaqub was the main speaker, describes him as:

An Enterprise Architect and enthusiastic developer, with over 15 years of Architecture experience from complex distributed and high performance enterprise projects at the likes of Akamai (first and most senior architect in EMEA), Telegraph Media Group, UBS, BSkyB, Financial Times, O2 (lead architect for the iphone launch platform).

Not only this, but also that:

His recent focus on decentralized architecture and blockchain technology complements a history of building massively concurrent low-latency enterprise platform for financial services and mission critical applications.

Perhaps most impressively:

He has done a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and was voted Time’s Man of the Year in 2006.

There’s only one problem with all this information: very little – if any – of it is true, and none of it is verifiable! It’s hard to prove or disprove a bold claim when there’s no publicly available record of it occurring.

Sign #1: Repeat History of Scamming

Cryptocurrency or blockchain tech-based con artists who successfully get away with one swindle are usually unsatisfied with the idea of returning to an honest living, and by nature can’t help but take a swing at another one. Whether they become emboldened, develop a taste for easy money, or simply believe in their heart they can do no wrong, scammers often return again and again – often using their real name in each scam – believing deep down that either they have committed no wrong (morally or legally) or else are somehow above the law.


source: Github

Our story begins with Razorcoin (not to be confused with the Bryce Weiner-led “RZR”), led by self-described “AI and computer science expert” Jawad Yaqub, which offered affordable coin-building and related product services, naming IrishCoin (IRL) as one of their primary success stories. For only a one-time $150 payment in bitcoin, customers would get:

Lifetime Operational Guarantee
12 Months Free Software Upgrades/Updates
Free 24×7 After Sales Support
Full Source Code
1 Seed Node + 12 months hosting Free
The list of potential use-case scenarios and “recommended” supplementary services was indeed astounding, covering anything from legal advice to coin protection services to “celebrity coin” building. The only problem is, outside of IrishCoin – which does sit on CoinMarketCap’s list of biggest coins, in the #1124 spot – not many other coins were ever created by Razorcoin, if any. A mere five weeks later, complaints were already being lodged against Yaqub and Razorcoin for failure of delivery of services:


source: bitcointalk

Unfortunately, the situation was never resolved, and through the years other complaints about the failure to deliver also surfaced:


source: bitcointalk

After all is said and done, Razorcoin cannot technically be classified as a scam so much as a failed coin development business. However, it certainly renders its creator(s) suspect and not necessarily trustworthy when it comes to future projects to which their name is attached.

Sign #2: Lack of Creative Distinctions from the Last Scam

Almost exactly 2 years after the launch of Razorcoin, Yaqub was back at it again, announcing plans for another attempt at cashing in on the blockchain craze, this time promoting his “parent company” with the name Razormind. While the Facebook page for Razormind opened as early as 2013, it existed as more or less only a concept until August 2014, when Yaqub decided he wanted history to reflect that it was the entity behind the creation of Razorcoin.


source: web.archive.org for razormind.co.uk

The Razormind logo appeared to be remarkably similar to that of Razorcoin’s, which was in turn remarkably similar to that of DeOS (which itself has been compared to pre-existing corporate logos).


source: coinidol.com

Razormind was incorporated in February 2016 in the U.K., where restrictions and regulations guiding the formation of company are relatively lax, opening a headquarters in Belfast a few months later. For only £12 (at the time), anyone could register their own company or corporation over the internet, so long as they were willing to provide some basic owner, shareholders, and other requested data about the company (most of which could be easily fabricated).

Sign #3: Suspicious Accomplices in the Media

In June 2016, the well-established crypto news outlet CoinTelegraph published an interview with Yaqub about an upcoming blockchain-based fintech project called DeOS, hailing it as a competitive alternative to  “corporate giants such as Microsoft, IBM… as well the new crypto on the block Ethereum.”

Like Razorcoin, DeOS seemed almost too good to be true: a decentralized, easy-to-use operating system that allowed for the digitization of assets and securities. The project certainly seemed like a legitimate, highly-intellectual, and massively coordinated undertaking that was said to employ 260 people around the world.


source: web.archive.org for razormind.co.uk

Yaqub, in his interview with CoinTelegraph, described it as the following:

"DeOS is a decentralized OS which uses the blockchain as its register. It works by constantly indexing and allocating resources in the network for execution. Resources include items such as memory, cpu, storage, and bandwidth, assets, smart contracts etc. Each DeOS seed node indexes its available resources, and publishes this index to the network along with a list of tasks it wishes to perform on the network…

Unlike Ethereum or Ripple, or Bitcoin it uses the blockchain as a register for the decentralized network and has secure Turing complete smart contracts, digital identity, and because most of the world doesn’t know or care about any of that we added a shiny desktop and office suite.

As a result we do a lot of our internal blockchain product work on the DeOS system itself as it gives us the computing power, the blockchain advantages, and the security we need."

In July 2016, the same author at CoinTelegraph that conducted the initial interview with Yaqub the previous month, published an announcement article for the DeOS ICO, an ICO-driven product under development by the Razormind team for over 2 years, according to Yaqub. Indeed, the idea of “trustless computing” via an open-sourced, multi-collaborative OS was a novel and compelling reason to entice investor funding, raising over 2,000 BTC in the period of less than a month. There was a final article on Razormind which read kind of as a half-hearted apology to readers who had invested in DeOS. The author stated:

"Neither myself, lawyers or other professionals can legally brand this as a scam or fraud."

No further information was published in CoinTelegraph, despite promises of another article to round out the series.

Sign #4: Plagiarism in Marketing
There were some serious problems with the now-defunct Razormind homepage from its launch. For one, they were quickly demonstrated (also by vigilant members of the bitcointalk community) to employ fake employees, or people who had no idea they were also working for Razormind. Below is an example of one such “plagiarized employee”:



source: bitcointalk.org user cryptodevil

It is clear that the picture provided for Razormind’s “Olga Petrusha” is actually that of BuzzFeed author Chelsea Marshall – easy to spot if one knows how to properly use a reverse image search. Not only were Yaqub and Razormind fabricating employees, they were also plagiarizing customer testimonies. It is quite easy to see where the words “Razormind” and “SAS” were swapped to the benefit of Razormind:



source: bitcointalk.org user cryptodevil

Here are a few more examples of how Razormind directly lifted information and content from some major websites without regard to accrediting the original source, switching the name of a corporation or a company with the word “Razormind” (also courtesy of research performed by the bitcointalk community):



source: bitcointalk.org user spartak_t

Yaqub’s blatant disregard for copyright infringement, willingness to fabricate content and seemingly invincible approach to such wanton fraud are all symbolic of a classic narcissist personality, or somebody who has an utter lack of care for moral standards or sympathy for others.

Sign #5: Suspicious Social Media Activity

By August 1st, 2016 (less than a month after the announcement of the DeOS project), the Facebook page for Razormind had amassed a staggering 26,639 “Likes” — a number extraordinarily close to the 27,000 active users of Razormind as claimed by Yaqub in an interview on the cryptocurrency-related podcast, “Let’s Talk Bitcoin!” (episode #177). Interestingly, the 3 posts made after the DeOS crowdsale managed to draw a total of 3 reactions (2 “Likes” and 1 heart-shaped “Love”), which is not exactly a blistering amount of response. This suggests it was highly likely that Yaqub purchased Facebook followers from a vendor of such social media services, most likely paying for them in the form of bitcoin and on a darknet market, where these vendors can easily be found.


source: bitcointalk.org user cryptodevil

Sign #6: Suspicious Changes in Crowdsale / ICO Terms

At first, the DeOS crowdsale was to be a limited affair, with a set deadline for contribution funding with no minimum contribution necessary. DeOS tokens, created using the Omni Layer protocol, went on sale at a rate of 1,000 DeOS per BTC, and the project quickly saw a large influx of investor money from the get go. However, according to testimony provided by crowdsale participants in a bitcointalk.org forum thread, ICO conditions quickly changed, with the participation period being extended by 2 weeks (highly irregular for ICOs or crowdsales), and users who donated amounts of BTC between $5 and $95 being told they would not be credited with any DeOS tokens, as fractions of BTC in the amounts of 0.15 and below being regarded as un-accreditable “dust” by members of the Razormind/DeOS team.

"FailCommunity
@FAILCommunity
Oct 17, 2016
What exactly happened? (note that Razormind blocked our account)

Spartak Tomanov
@bulgar1an
 Haven't you seen this? I tried to warn everybody long time ago: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1564499.0 …

10:38 PM - Oct 17, 2016
See Spartak Tomanov's other Tweets"

Regardless, the final dollar figure brought in by the crowdsale as claimed by Yaqub was in excess of $19 million, though more recent estimates put the number somewhere between $3 and $10 million. By October, several complaints from investors were being lodged against Yaqub and Razormind, from lack of distribution of tokens, to disappointment with the utter non-functionality of the DeOS network, to realization that investors had just been handed a bunch of worthless Omni Layer tokens that could not be used for anything except sloughing off on uninformed investors/traders not hip to Yaqub’s scam.

Sign #7: Debunking by Technical Experts


announcement for a public release that never came. source: Twitter

After months of empty promises, the ignoring of investor complaints and sheer defiance of professional responsibility, Yaqub’s DeOS received the nails in its coffin as a scam, when software architects at GitHub publicly stated that DeOS was not an original product, merely posing to be so to those without in-depth knowledge of computer programming:


source: Github

On the same date of the above post, a GitHub member who managed to open the DeOS software package (most people who attempted could not) composed the following review of it – an ultimate confirmation that DeOS was, in fact, a scam all along:


source: Github

Investor complaints began to pour in, though there was not much of anything to be done by this point, as Yaqub had collected his money and disappeared off the Razormind radar, with the Razormind and DeOS websites being shut down soon after, along with Razormind’s Twitter page.


source: bitcointalk

A thread on bitcointalk, which has over 44,000 views and from which a large portion of the research for this article came, first identified DeOS as a potential scam as early as July, 2016, days after the beginning of the token crowdsale. The thread thoroughly chronicles the development and exposure of Yaqub’s Razormind debacle, taking some interesting twists and turns through its 600 post-long course.

Though the story is quagmired in the misery and hopelessness of those who happened to get caught up in the DeOS scam, it does have something of a happy ending, as reports are beginning to surface that central authorities may be pursuing legal action against Yaqub. This statement should be taken with a grain of salt as nothing definitive has been posted about such action.

The fact remains, however, that sometimes the only way to stop a scammer is by physically stopping them from being able to commit financial crimes in the future. For now, we’ll just have to check in on the thread at bitcointalk for the latest news regarding the curious case of Jawad Yaqub. We hope that by presenting this list of some of the major tell-tale warning signs of a crypto fraud, our readers will have an idea of what to be on the lookout for before they plunk down their hard-earned money into the next ICO or blockchain project crowdsale. Always remember that just 30 minutes of “due diligence” can save months or even years of headache and heartache when it comes to the wild west landscape of cryptocurrency-related investments.

https://coinclarity.com/spotting-a-scamcoin-number-2/

If you pull up the total amounts lost going by their ICO deposit addresses, the numbers are pretty piddly. Yet I was informed that "millions" of dollars was lost in Ethconnect (imagine Bitconnect without an actual exchange or token).

Their bitcointalk thread is massive, so I'm just wondering what the other addresses that people sent BTC or ETH to are:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2301946

Does anybody here have some good experience on this topic and wouldn't mind sharing some detailed info with me? This scam didn't really make the media radar, but it deserves to. Thanks for your help.

Hi All,

I'm a news writer for the website coinclarity.com and I'm looking for new content.

Recently I've been writing a series of articles entitled "Spotting a Scamcoin." Here are my first three:

https://coinclarity.com/spotting-a-scamcoin-number-1/
https://coinclarity.com/spotting-a-scamcoin-number-2/
https://coinclarity.com/spotting-a-scamcoin-number-3/

I'm looking for juicy, original stories for my next article. They don't have to be about a fraud coin or ICO; they are more based around an individual or company and these are meant to help people decipher the good from the bad in the all-too-often shady world of crypto.

Feel free to PM me or else post a link or two to a thread here. I would prefer something that is particularly bizarre, cringeworthy or that basically defies any logic or sense of humanity that people are supposed to be born with.

What's in it for you? A sense of justice knowing "the media" has covered a potential crime that you felt needed to be exposed, that maybe otherwise would never see the light of day.

OK thanks guys. Your contributions will all be considered, and are always appreciated.

[Coins.ph: Bringing Satoshi’s Vision of Financial Freedom to Life]

Coins.ph: Bringing Satoshi’s Vision of Financial Freedom to Life

Below is our recent interview with Colin Goltra, Head of Cryptocurrencies at Coins.ph:

https://coinclarity.com/coinsph-colin-goltra/

Feel free to let us know what you think. We're curious: how many of you guys use coins.ph to send data loads, pay for bills, etc.?

Maraming Salamat Guys (and Babaes).

Its currently sitting at about 53%. Its simply mind-blowing that even at record prices for BTC, all the altcoins are rising at break-neck speeds, which I assume is largely due to the dark hand of Wall Street. And as BTC is simply long overdue for a correction, I suspect BTC's dominance could fall within a matter of weeks, if not days..

"To HODL or not to HODL, that is the question." - Shakeyhandspeare

Pick the option that is closest to your guess, "Price is Right" style. Me, personally, I'm guessing about $15k, but I have no idea what percentage of the final poll results that number will be.

If there is no implementation of a block size increase that was supposed to go ahead in a few days, why is BTG still hard forking on their own? I mean the fork is backed by a Hong Kong-based ASIC mining company, I guess you needn't look any further. But still, without the scheduled block size increase (the latter half of the "New York Agreement"), what is BTG forking against?

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-segwit2x/2017-November/000685.html

It's funny to me that the philosophical underpinnings of BTG are to make bitcoin (even though its no longer bitcoin, its Bitcoin Gold) more ASIC-resistant are backed by an ASIC manufacturer.

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-gold-release-cryptocurrency-sunday/

And I also wonder if Vorhees was pressured by Garzik and his other peers into acting right instead of constantly bitching about transaction fees. I guess if he really believed in what he's been tweeting recently, he woulda left the Core team. But that would be leaving behind too much power and influence for the great unknown (ala Roger Ver), and he can't have that, now can he....

Personally I think transaction fees are a bit high -- but nowhere near the >$10 cost that Vorhees claimed they are. I'm all for an increase from 1 MB to 2 MB blocks, however you have to keep in mind that the BTC blockchain is already >140 GB in size, so who actually has the space and time to run a full node? Not many. Certainly not the average citizen.

Maybe keeping blocks at 1 MB is the best move after all. Let the forks keep coming and failing. They will simply be remembered as failed altcoins that tried to cash in on the good name of bitcoin.

Its evident there's enough space in the industry for multiple coins to be employed and there doesn't have to "be only one."

They already are technically part of the 1%. Why can't they just be happy being super wealthy while the bottom 50% literally sleeps on dirt and concrete? They want to take away more from people who already have nothing? Never having been over-privileged myself, I just don't understand the psychology of how outstanding success makes greed become exponentially more powerful in the human psyche. I suspect it doesn't for everybody.

Besides, where is he getting his information from? Not this planet.

https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/