It's not the money I care about. It's the fact that I put a lot of volume through my Amazon account, a lot of which comes from gift cards. My concern is about my Amazon account being associated with multiple frauds over time and having it closed (or worse).


This is the Copay wallet? I'll check that out. Although now that I know US/Canada is cut off from gift card resellers but the rest of the world isn't, I hope they don't send me codes that can't be used in the US.


The problem is Amazon gift cards which later turn out to be fraudulently obtained. And just general hassle from scammers on Purse. Maybe they've cleaned up the site, but there's been lots of discussion on this over the years:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4zczow/my_experience_with_purseio/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4duiai/why_i_am_no_longer_using_purseio/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2po40d/since_my_house_is_being_searched_right_now_small/

I'm happy to pay full price with no premium if it means the gift cards are 100% clean. As timerland points out:

Completely agreed. In the case of outright bans, I'd expect that enforcement would be lax, as there is likely no dedicated authorities or task forces devoted to it. Usually the ban itself is the only deterrent.

In this case, they're making it so your tax liability can be greater than your net income, and then sicking the tax authorities on citizens. That's really scary. People will be ruined over this if nothing changes. And there are very few agencies that can instill fear and terror like tax agencies...

You realize that cryptocurrency exchanges are the only type of exchange that charge percent commissions, right? Conventional stock/commodities broker-dealers always charge flat fees on transactions. Exchanges have made a killing off naive cryptocurrency traders and investors since inception. It's still incredible to me how little people complain about trading fees vs. other markets. Robinhood may encourage some industry change there, as they've now introduced zero-fee trading.


This discussion isn't about profiting from developing a good trading engine and designing/marketing a great exchange. It's about profiting from market manipulation and basically extorting altcoin developers into lining an exchange's pockets (under threat of de-listing). And if coins that were listed before such ongoing fee policies were instituted are subject to them now, that's really grimy.

But exchanges on the whole aren't exactly known for being honorable. What else is new? Cash grabs all around.

I've used them for ~ 4 years and bought hundreds of gift cards without a problem.

In that thread, Amazon mentions multiple invalid gift cards. It's not clear where the prior cards were bought from. There's no way they closed his account over one $125 card. We don't know their fraud detection methods; it may have been automatic when he redeemed another gift card regardless. It almost looks like they swiped the money to recoup prior losses from fraud.


I wonder why Gyft dropped them. eGifter is US-only apparently. I'm in the US so that works for me.

Thanks. I'm in the US so I'll check them out. Any idea how reputable they are, or how long they've been around?


I used to buy a good deal of Starbucks cards on the forums a couple years back. A lot of them ended up being carded. I wasn't too concerned then, but I'm more paranoid about my Amazon account because it's linked to my identity and physical address. Maybe if I found a very reputable trader on here who loads gift cards himself, but dealing with randoms in the marketplace sounds risky. Stuff like this scares the crap out of me: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2po40d/since_my_house_is_being_searched_right_now_small/

Last night, I went to buy some Amazon gift cards with BTC on Gyft. They weren't available. I figured it was a temporary thing, an API issue or something, because that's happened before. But I emailed them about it and they responded, "Amazon is no longer available through Gyft."

Are there any similar alternatives? I really liked having a corporate reseller because you could always trust that their cards weren't fraudulent.

With P2P or things like Purse, fraud is really common, so I'm looking for a reputable reseller like Gyft.

Not to do with listing fees specifically, but I suspect altcoin exchanges have been on regulators' radar for a while already. The SEC seemed quick and happy to whitelist Poloniex's acquisition because the deal included much stricter compliance standards and licensing, etc. I believe we're moving into an era of whitelisted exchanges -- in contrast with exchanges that are prone to regulatory enforcement. The recent warning Binance received from the Japanese FSA is the mildest we should expect. The other extreme would include actions like the BTC-e shutdown last year.


That's the fundamental problem with most decentralized platforms right now. Listing is a matter of centralized development and market launch. The exception is ERC20 token exchanges like Radar Relay and Etherdelta, where you can trade any ERC20 token without official action. This works with standardized interoperable protocols (like ETH/ERC20/ERC721), but naturally doesn't extend to just any altcoin.

At least these are just new AML rules -- nothing we're not already used to seeing. Exchanges will need to register with the Australian authorities, implement KYC procedures and report suspicious transactions involving physical currency of $10,000 or more.


Australia Launches New Cryptocurrency Exchange Regulations


The real problem I see is licensing. At least that's the problem in the US. The state-by-state MSB licensing scheme is a massive barrier to entry.


Apparently, many exchanges have operated unregistered in Japan for years. For whatever reason, they singled out Binance, maybe because they had some physical operations in Japan. I still don't see how moving to Malta changes anything unless they start prohibiting Japanese residents from trading there.

Decentralized exchanges are definitely possible for BTC, altcoins and tokens. It can be done with open-source contracts, and there's lots of work being done on platforms like the Blocknet to make the process smooth. You can trade Ethereum tokens decentralized with no custodial risk using a Ledger wallet and Rader Relay. The problem is that everything is still in a nascent stage. The platforms are young and underdeveloped and there isn't much order book depth right now.

When it comes to fiat trading, though, things don't look as rosy. I'm very skeptical of stablecoins -- they generally just transfer custodial risk outside of the exchange you're trading on. So your funds are still at risk.

Re: ongoing fees -- I had no idea. That's news to me. The politics around exchange listings felt pretty scummy already, but that adds a new angle. It's such an obvious quid quo pro, and major exchange de-listing can really cripple a coin, so it's basically extortion to some degree.


The exchanges are still in cash-grab mode. They know that altcoin trading will move predominantly to decentralized platforms.


All in time. I think Circle's acquisition of Poloniex is the first major step in that direction.

There's something very ironic about exchange-traded funds for assets that can literally be traded P2P. Futures markets make sense because large-scale businesses and miners can limit exposure to volatility risk by hedging with forwards. An ETF would really just be for speculation. It would mainly exist because of current regulatory uncertainty and counterparty risk around spot trading for institutional firms.


I wouldn't say they're hostile. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are a brand new asset class. They haven't even existed for a decade yet. That alone suggests the SEC should take time to analyze market conditions. Liquid ETFs can mean significant Wall Street exposure, which can in turn have major effects on the US and even the global economy. If an ETF will be derived from the futures markets, the SEC would want to see very healthy and liquid futures markets. For now, volume is still quite low.

Consider that the first US-regulated copper ETF was just established a few years ago. It took over two years to get approval.

Now compare bitcoins to copper.

There's a few explanations for this that I can think of. Well-funded universities often have powerful computers and campuses full of computer labs. My feeling when I attended school was that there wasn't as much oversight as you see in corporate sectors. Often times, a goofy, absent-minded professor runs a lab with just a couple low-paid assistants. Industry tends to take security more seriously.

Then there's the fact that cryptocurrency is big with millennials (including college students). It's no secret that college kids are spending student loan money on crypto. They're probably buying mining rigs, too.

Maybe "higher education" folks are also smarter -- i.e. they see the writing on the wall that cryptocurrency is the future.

There is no listing requirement on EtherDelta. It's possible that they haven't assigned it a ticker, though.

Click on any market on EtherDelta, and in your web address bar, replace the ticker with Pocketinns's contract address. So, instead of "#OMG/ETH" you would type in "#0x..../ETH". You should then be able to see the order book for Pinns and execute orders.

The SEC or FINRA will do nothing for you, anyway.

He's just talking his book. If anything, he's probably trying to hype the market so he can sell into it. That's how these traders and funds usually operate.


Bear markets are a great time for ecosystem and infrastructure development. Skyrocketing price and overwhelming hype can be a big distraction for developers. If the bull market is over, then it's time to build stuff.

As for whether price will follow? I'm sure it will, but when? This could be like 2014 all over again.

Not really. We had the same bearish cross right around this time in 2014. Same story, different year. What's Easter got to do with it?


And if we look at Dow theory, we still haven't reversed trends just yet:

We need to go lower than $6,000 to establish a trend. Until then, this could all be "market noise." But holders should always be prepared for the worst case scenario. Cryptocurrency is risky and experimental; it can always drop further than you think, and even to zero.

The news already dropped weeks ago. The policy just officially went into effect. It only affects the ability to buy cryptocurrency or ICO-related ad space from Twitter. Nothing is really going to change, except you'll stop seeing scam ICO ads promoted in your feed.


The market has already been selling off for months. Where have you been? You'd wait until now to panic sell?


It doesn't matter either way. The big problem isn't paid promotion; this is just so Twitter and other companies can give the appearance of doing something. The real problem on Twitter is copycat accounts replying to threads by real accounts. They litter the threads with scams -- "send me 0.5 ETH, get 5 ETH back!" -- and people actually fall for it. The amount of dumb money in this space is truly incredible.

Anything to prove this assertion...? This is news to me.


That happens to lots of people, though. Jobs died at age 56. It's not like he was a teenager.


How so? The only thing that lends some credence to this idea is that the forum is now run on Cloudflare.


Where the backdoors, though?

It's pretty remarkable. The overt spam attacks we know about and the abruptness with which fees recently dropped suggest that spam attacks were a major culprit during high-fee periods.


I looked into this at one point. IMO, the swings in difficulty/hash rate were never large or sustained enough to be the primary culprit. I think they exacerbated things, though. I believe that spam attackers were very effectively leveraging bad fee estimation algorithms against the network. 

In reality, though, there are security trade-offs. The security model of LN is very different than Bitcoin.

Speaking of value, high-value transactions probably necessitate on-chain transactions which leverage offline storage. Updating channel states means keeping your keys online. That's a big no-no for any meaningful amount of money.

Also Edward Snowden:

Just something to keep in mind.

If you pick apart what he's saying, he's just attacking the very idea of a public ledger. The point of Bitcoin was not privacy -- although that can be improved, anyway. He's just dismissing its utility based on the base protocol, as is. I guess he's dismissive of Layer 2, TumbleBit, etc.