I understand that you may not trust my review, no offence taken. It's true that I don't have a high post count. However, I've been a member/lurker here for nearly 3 years now and I bought my first Bitcoin 4 years ago, so I'm not exactly "green", but nor am I a grizzled old veteran. I just don't post unless I feel I can contribute (there is far too much white noise on this site). I'm linking a screen grab of some of my xCoins transactions - perhaps that may suffice to convince you that I'm not a shill.

http://imgur.com/a/SbAXg

Anyway, bear in mind that I'm not necessarily recommending xcoins.io, but my experience has been mostly positive (I've been luckier than some). Also, I'm more knowledgeable about this platform than most, as I'm an active lender and member of both the private lenders forums and chat channels. Personally, I'm convinced it's not a scam site, but it is new and it is not yet as professional as it could be.

As I mentioned before, there are several obvious risks involved, so, as always, do your due diligence. xCoins fees are higher than you may be used to (as I said, you can use the promotion code jbh184 on registration to mitigate this). Also, customer service at xCoins is definitely lacking; xCoins seem to be under-staffed in that department, but they seem to be trying pretty hard and the system is mostly automated and effortless (when it works as it should).

The poster above who claims it is a scam is 100% wrong - that incident is most likely a result of poor customer service, not intentional fraud, and that poster is just frustrated and venting. There are no genuine incidents of fraud that I'm aware of (and I'm paying close attention - my money is at risk). I don't blame the poster though, there definitely have been periods lasting for several days with no word from customer support. Usually, they come back and launch a new feature they have been working on, then they deal with the outstanding support issues (hardly an ideal way of doing business). However, I opened a support ticket today and had a response within 30 mins, so things seem to be improving.

Hope this all helps a little.

genesis-mining.com is up for me.

Honestly, Yobit's prices are only for their own benefit. I highly doubt launch price will skyrocket to that kinda price. You can refer to the recent LSK scenario for example. Although i do feel that WAVES is better, i don't think Yobit's price is highly reflective of launch day price but rather a foreseeable future in the next few months. And I hope so too!

You are better off trading with members here via escrow.

Dood, you essentially bounced a check. How can you be mad at COINBASE? That's just retarded.

If you had made a credit card purchase Monday with a maxed out credit card that you KNEW had $0 available credit, would you be mad at the credit card company for charging you an over-the-limit fee? After all, the thing you ordered on Amazon wouldn't arrive until FRIDAY!

Circle and Coinbase are the same goddamn thing...people need to stop acting like one is better than the other. Same policies, same cost. (No, Circle is not "free")

I hate centralized exchanges too...but they are a necessary on-ramp to get regular people into BTC. They have all kinds of dumb regulation to comply with or THEY ALL GO TO JAIL.

So sick of reading angry adolescent, "I know it all", teenage-angst bullshit on this forum. Honestly, just shut the fuck up.

It recently occurred to me that all this speculation about "who" Satoshi is might be a red herring, and that the name does not stand for an individual person but for a top secret gov't operation. Then I started to wonder how to crack the enigma of that elusive name, and it soon became clear that it had to be an anagram for something. As I researched further into this I became convinced that this has to be the answer to "who" Satoshi is. After some exhaustive work I arrived at what seems to me the most likely decipherment of the code and I now present it in these forums for the review of the bitcoin community. You may not agree with the specific anagram I came up with as there are many other possibilities. But it seems undeniable that the name "Satoshi Nakamoto" is some kind of code. Solving the code could be the key to the survival of bitcoin. Here's the anagram I came up with:

A NSA Soma hit to KO

KO is of course a term from the sport of boxing which means "knockout." Soma is a fictional drug from the Aldous Huxley novel "Brave New World," which is used to keep the masses docile and controllable. I don't think the term "NSA" requires any explanation in these forums.

And with this it becomes clear what's really going on with bitcoin. I'm not saying to avoid bitcoin and never use it. It's possible that the people will be able to re-direct bitcoin from its original purposes of governmental control, or even to create a new crypto with different aims. But an awareness of these hidden realities is advisable as we move into an unknown future.

In the year 2010 I was introduced to bitcoin while listening to a philosophy podcast. At that time bitcoin had just CRASHED all the way from $30 down to $3. The "bubble" had popped if you will, and it was quite clear to everyone that bitcoin was dead.

So I decided to buy 500 Bitcoin.

The very next day I walked into my garage and accidentally stepped onto a rake which flew up and hit me in the head and was knocked out cold and remained in a coma for 5 years.

I woke from my coma yesterday and the first thing that I did was ask what the price of bitcoin was doing, the answer i got was, "Bitcoin is dead, it's just crashed all the way down to $197."

i've noticed a big series of people coming here as new users and posting 1 long ass FUD post out of nowhere. What a coincidence!

I wonder how much of that is due to trading. Also: what immediatly catches the eye is that the growth in adoption seems far slower than price growth (that is, the bubble we saw in november/december 2013). I still don't see people jumping into Bitcoin, as it is far too complex for the average joe. He wants something simple, easy and safe, and therefore Bitcoin will simply prove to be no candidate at all in the long run. I expect that some altcoin (that is, not some Bitcoin clone but something real like Nxt for example) will take its place and that particular altcoin might have a small chance of becoming used as it is meant to be.

The funny thing is, though, these HYIPs have been around for ages - but it is only just comparatively recently that they are moving into the Bitcoin scene - obviously, like a lot of other people, because they have seen something new and exciting and thought "I can make money out of this".

I get the feeling though, that they have forgotten one thing - Bitcoin has a community, and people that will speak out again and again to warn others away from things like this.
There are "traditional" HYIP forums, where people discussed these programs (Bitcoin related or not) - but they are heavily moderated and often supported by ad money from the admins of the HYIP programs. But the people posting there are very aware (usually) that they are taking a massive risk, and it's really just all a gamble - they don't really go out of their way to point out (what should be) the obvious, to the noobs who turn up expressing an interest. In the Bitcoin community, people WILL take the time to do that.

In some ways these new Bitcoin-related HYIPs are more insidious, because they are preying on a new pool of people who most likely haven't been targetted by HYIP admins before. Some of them genuinely think they have found a risk-free way of increasing their Bitcoin wallet values. At least with the traditional HYIPs the admins seem to know that, to some extent, they are really just catering to a hardened bunch of HYIP players who are used to taking the wins with the losses, just like fruit machine or card gamblers.

If you invest in HYIPs or Ponzis, your life is basically meaningless garbage.

BT lasted for quite a bit longer than 120 days, so I'm fairly certain that there are some that managed to cash out their initial money and profits.

Also, the 120 day lockin was one of the smart tricks that contributed to the success of this particular scam. Almost all Ponzis allow you to withdraw your money at any time. The 120 day lockin has 2 advantages over that: First, it makes the story more believable, because if your money was truly invested somewhere, it wouldn't be available for immediate withdrawal. Second, and more importantly, the lockin period prevented panic withdrawals. With other schemes you see people trying to mass withdraw when the site is down for a few hours or when there are other issues. With BT that was not possible and the operator could anticipate potential large withdrawals long in advance and this, I think, contributed greatly to the stability and longevity of this particular Ponzi.

Another pirate40? It is amazing that you never run out of people that would fall for such kind of scheme, never...  

You know folks...I have not been able to make any money with bitcoin it is just a passing scam...We have paypal and transfer systems much more reliable and that are not a hotbed for snake oiling scamming theives (the anonymous nature of BTC is their magnet).

I am tending to side with Warren Buffett recently.

ElectricSavant