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Looks like the "legit" ponzi that had an advertisement running here stole all the money.
What a surprise. Ponzi turns out to be a Ponzi scheme.
Seriously, can we have a subforum already? Just call it "Ponzi, HYIP and other scams for greedy idiots"
And no apsvinet, never gave a single satoshi to any ponzi scheme. But I do like to follow Gambling threads and it's a bit annoying with all these ponzi shit. (and no I don't really gamble even, mostly poker which is EV+ for me :>)
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Great to see that localbitcoins.com also added a bug bounty program: https://localbitcoins.com/whitehat AFAIK, This program has been there only for a few days.. so if there are any security vulnerabilities, you can still be the first to report  $1.000+ in bitcoin for reporting a previously unknown security vulnerability of sufficient severity. |
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A warning sign is needed in every topic where someone wants to buy bitcoins with paypal. Especially if the account is 2 weeks old. Nothing personal at all, just too many scams like that.
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You are welcome. :X  |
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Basing your assumptions on a couple of commercially available scripts & design is not gonna cut it. Dude, look at the bigger picture. This is a very legitimate finance business with 10 employees and an office in Geneva (one of the world cities in the finance world - very expensive offices) and their website is an exact copy of a ponzi site. Still no alarm bells? But great you add some reasons why this is a ponzi from a trading aspect. |
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Or perhaps there could be a flag post as spam option, these could then be raised to the moderators attention, with the highest flagged posts appearing as a priority for inspection. Just one possible suggestion. There is: " Report to moderator" right under every message. |
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I have added bitcoin.de to the list, see: https://www.bitcoin.de/en/bug-bounty This program has been running since (late?) January but I didn't notice it yet. They say " We will reward your effort at Bitcoin.de. The rate depends on the size and relevance of the safety leaks. ". Also added bittrex.com, running since 2 weeks only, see: https://bittrex.com/Home/Bounty reward between BTC0.01 and BTC10 2 more added: btxtrader.com and whmcs.com. whmcs.com is not a bitcoin related website but they say " Rewards can be paid out via PayPal, BitCoin, or Western Union" between $250 up to $5000. If anyone knows any other big bounty program within the BTC community, let us know |
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FreeJack2k2, "a web developer re-purposed a past design" for a ponzi and now this site? Do you know how many web developers there are? The odds of this being a coincidence are impossible small.
"Poker by Proxy" also easily withdrew money and gave good support. Until the day they ran away with the money > and then it's too late.
I am just quoting myself because you are not replying to what I am saying but just making up other excuses. |
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Yes, I should have said.. it was not that much. I also had other relatively small withdrawals before (months ago) to the same bank account (not sure if that matters.)
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Quoting so it's on top of new page: Ok, it reminded me about "Poker by Proxy" all a long and I did a search for you guys: Poker by Proxy"Poker by Proxy" was a ponzi few months ago that did the exact same thing. They also gave daily results of "their poker players". These were just like btc-arbs daily reports with a whole story about what happened in the poker world. This is why many people believed them. After a few months they run away with the money. Backup site:https://web.archive.org/web/20131203020947/https://pokerbyproxy.com/note: - same type of design/style - same type of info - same page names (!!) like /join.html, /results.html, /login.html, /results/2013/12/04.html - as a webdev I can tell you that exactly the same page names on a site is rare - most have at least "register" instead of "join" or no .html suffix. That specific result page /results/2013/12/04.html is extremely rare - almost impossible. You can check this on archive.org by hovering over the link. - same HTML structure, like (NOTE: /assets/img/ same URLs) pokerbyproxy: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/web/20131205235008im_/https://pokerbyproxy.com/assets/img/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/web/20131205235008cs_/https://pokerbyproxy.com/assets/css/style.css"/>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/web/20131205235008js_/https://pokerbyproxy.com/assets/js/jquery-1.10.1.min.js"> btc-arbs: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/assets/img/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/assets/css/style.css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/js/jquery-1.10.1.min.js"> and on both sites: <div class="f_clear"></div> and other same classes like "footer_wrap", "footer_nav", etc. You can check this on archive.org The members area:http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/1kY24FUzqS4/maxresdefault.jpgnote: - identical members menu Do a bit of search on "poker by proxy" and you will see how similar that website was. They officially only run away with the money 3 months ago. Looks like the same owner started btc-arbs after that. Once again: DO NOT DEPOSIT MONEY ON BTC-ARBS, it is obviously a ponzi and 99% sure its the same as "Proxy by poker". Get your money out as long as you can - unless you like a ponzi.FreeJack2k2, " a web developer re-purposed a past design" for a ponzi and now this site? Do you know how many web developers there are? The odds of this being a coincidence are impossible small. "Poker by Proxy" also easily withdrew money and gave good support. Until the day they ran away with the money > and then it's too late. |
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I did a EUR withdrawal on Sunday evening. Monday it was confirmed. Got it today (Wednesday) No BS questions, all good for me |
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The design was just 1 small example. The URLs and code are solid proof. Any webdev can see that.
If the same webdev made this website, it also says enough.
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Ok, it reminded me about "Poker by Proxy" all a long and I did a search for you guys: Poker by Proxy"Poker by Proxy" was a ponzi few months ago that did the exact same thing. They also gave daily results of "their poker players". These were just like btc-arbs daily reports with a whole story about what happened in the poker world. This is why many people believed them. After a few months they run away with the money. Backup site:https://web.archive.org/web/20131203020947/https://pokerbyproxy.com/note: - same type of design/style - same type of info - same page names (!!) like /join.html, /results.html, /login.html, /results/2013/12/04.html - as a webdev I can tell you that exactly the same page names on a site is rare - most have at least "register" instead of "join" or no .html suffix. That specific result page /results/2013/12/04.html is extremely rare - almost impossible. You can check this on archive.org by hovering over the link. - same HTML structure, like (NOTE: /assets/img/ same URLs) pokerbyproxy: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/web/20131205235008im_/https://pokerbyproxy.com/assets/img/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/web/20131205235008cs_/https://pokerbyproxy.com/assets/css/style.css"/>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/web/20131205235008js_/https://pokerbyproxy.com/assets/js/jquery-1.10.1.min.js"> btc-arbs: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/assets/img/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/assets/css/style.css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/js/jquery-1.10.1.min.js"> and on both sites: <div class="f_clear"></div> and other same classes like "footer_wrap", "footer_nav", etc. You can check this on archive.org The members area:http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/1kY24FUzqS4/maxresdefault.jpgnote: - identical members menu Do a bit of search on "poker by proxy" and you will see how similar that website was. They officially only run away with the money 3 months ago. Looks like the same owner started btc-arbs after that. Once again: DO NOT DEPOSIT MONEY ON BTC-ARBS, it is obviously a ponzi and 99% sure its the same as "Proxy by poker". Get your money out as long as you can - unless you like a ponzi. |
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Yeh great story. I can agree that arbitrage would work like that. But the ROI is over the full amount. So it's seriously this calculation: 1000*1.02^365= 1377408 (every day you are getting *1.02 so its *1.02*1.02*1.02*1.02.. etc 365 times)You would make $1.377.408 only from $1.000 in 1 year. If you can really do that, you will have no problem finding a private investor. If I had a magic get rich formula like that, I would easily have a $100.000 investor to make 100000*1.02^365 = $137.740.829 in 1 year. You guys really think that is possible? But the stories on btc-arbs.com are great. They did put some effort in this ponzi. |
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7 Employ teams (either of employees or trusted contractors) whose job is to target the website and breach security. Should cover ALL aspects of the customer interface (and insider risks) and potential vulnerabilities. Can be also a public vulnerability reward program (big companies like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc also have this.) Actually Kraken, Coinbase, this forum and other websites also have a program like that where they rewards Bitcoins for whitehat security specialists who report the bugs to them privately. The Hall of Fame of Coinbase for that already has like 30 names on it. So it is really effective (or at least: they get a lot of valid reports.) See my topic for an overview of vulnerability reward programs: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=483195.0 Websites can use these example programs for their own program. Don't mean to really spam my own topic here btw. But I do think it's very relevant Besides that I definitely agree with your other suggestions too. I also agree with DeathAndTaxes to think about possibilities to not the hold bitcoins of the users within your own website/exchange. I have read before that BitSimple does it like that, but didn't completely understand it yet (as a developer but without btc site tho) But definitely something worth looking into. |
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are they (developer) going to build a better secured script to exchange bitcoin/litecoin to prevent hackings like what just happened recently? I would like to encourage site owners who read this, to make a security bug bounty program. So there is a bigger chance a non-harmful hacker find any bug and helps you to make your website more secure. See also my topic for examples sites/programs https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=483195.0 |
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Thanks Even today I read that Flexcoin got hacked, 896 BTC stolen, site closing down. Also today: BTC Stolen from Poloniex. If there are site owners reading this, please consider adding a security bug bounty before it's too late and a hacker abuses any bugs !! Better pay a whitehat security specialist 1 BTC than losing it all. There are not that many replies in my topic.. so I guess there are not that many "security specialists" here  so that would be a reason to not pin it. However I do think this is very important and a really effective way of making bitcoin sites more secure. Especially in a time where bitcoin sites still get hacked every day. So from that perspective any more exposure to this topic is good |
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If there are many people who like traditional gambling games and not Ponzis, then a category should probably be created, but I'm not sure where the line would be drawn between Ponzis and other games. Maybe traditional games must be based 100% on chance? But that'd eliminate many other games as well.
Besides the "scam yes or no" discussion I think that this is the situation. There are like 7 "anti ponzi - pls make own forum" topics already and many people agree with that. I can quote them if you want, but I think it's pretty obvious for anyone who is active in the gambling forum. I do think there is a market for ponzis but "traditional gambling" and ponzi seem 2 completely different target groups to me. Also sometimes the first page of the gambling forum is covered by more than 50% ponzi so there are also enough topics to fill an own forum too. I think the line is very clear. At this point sub forum could be called "Ponzi/HYIP Gambling" and all topics that include "ponzi" in the title could be moved to there already. Anything with " invest and get 120% unless you are the last" = ponzi, can be moved there. At this point it's that simple IMO. |
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I have a suggestion : create a Ponzi section and not allow newbies to create a post in this section, it will mean that only bitcointalk members that have been here for a while can post and create a new ponzi, that will avoid a lot of chea.p scams
Ponzis are a gambling game, I don't think they are way more evil than regular gambling if the owner is not luring people into thinking it is an investment and if he is not running away with the money.
There are many legit sites who like to start a topic with an official casino account. Not sure if this is the best solution. But I agree there must be something done against these sketchy ponzis. Just way too many of them. edit: I just read that the "newbies restriction" would be on that new ponzi section only. That is a good idea. I thought it was about the gambling section, sorry |
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