Brief intro:

Me: Founded the Litecoin Global and BTC Trading Corp exchanges in early 2012, which were not compromised and had all funds when the SEC asked me to shut it down in 2013. Over $250mm in crypto at today's values that I returned.

TxQuick: (https://ca.txquick.com) My latest project - A zero custody, instant deposit / instant delivery platform similar to Shapeshift before they pissed off the regulators. So what's different about us?

• All the regulatory T's are crossed, i's are dotted. We are operating globally from our Canadian HQ. (US FinCen registration pending, NK & Iran blocked.)
• Our flows are setup so that we will not have to hold or confiscate funds for suspicious behavior. We ask for anything that might be suspicious up front, and similar to an airport cash counter -don't deliver a trade unless things check out PRIOR to deposit. Basic sub-$1k trades can legally be done with just name + email address. (Higher limits coming as we develop KYC flows)
• We are one of the few (maybe only?) instant delivery platforms that have a full trade engine and set of books backing the retail trades. That is to say, we keep our own set of books rather than just using another exchange's API. With the help of a few solid market makers we expect this to allow us to offer some of the best instant delivery exchange rates out there.
• We are one of the few (maybe only?) exchanges that publicly post our crypto balances so it can be verified that we are not operating fractionally. We believe transparency is the basis of trust.
• We are one of the few exchanges that take deposits directly into multisig warm wallets on nearly every currency.

So we need a few rock solid market makers / liquidity providers to help us become the most trusted platform in the world. Benefits of doing market making on TxQuick:

• No fees when providing liquidity. (no fees for makers)
• Volume rebates. We profit, you profit.
• Binance compatible API. If you're already on Binance, our API is drop-in compatible. Just change the URL & API keys and you should be good to go. (https://gitlab.com/txquick/txquick-api-docs)

Please PM me if interested!

Hard to say.  The fact there isn't more out there about it and efforts to trace the funds makes it suspect no doubt.


BS for sure that all the fines/seizures are not pooled for the victims.  I'd like to know where all my LTC went after the BTC-e seizure.  Why wasn't a recovery website setup and funds distributed if they had the db and everything they needed right there?

The SEC fines I'm pretty sure just go to fund their next investigation.

You can hire a lawyer and file a suit. Honestly surprised it hasn't happened already.

I agree - with one caveat.  Investors will learn the hard way to do their research but it's only possible to do that research if what the company themselves puts out is truthful.  I think access to ICO's and STO's etc should be wide open, but with hefty penalties for INDIVIDUALS (not just the companies they work for) that put out fraudulent information.

Yeah, the track record doesn't help.  Without public disclosure, a police report, telling the community the addresses involved, etc you pretty much have to put the responsibility for repayment on him.

With the unpaid taxes, unfortunately things like that happen easily if you don't plan ahead and have an accountant or someone who understands taxes to guide you.  Happens a lot to people running small businesses.  Can't really afford good advice, but can't afford not to either.

Not making up excuses for Jon, but the full list clearly shows that he's not a violent offender and probationary oversight is probably sufficient.

Thank you for posting the articles.  I've been watching this quietly for a while.  I always saw Ukyo as a highly respected competitor of BTC Trading Corp and it has been sad to see things how things have developed over the years.


Taking out other people's money for personal expenses is a big deal.

Not disclosing the theft and operating a fractional reserve exchange without transparency is a big deal.  He tricked every single person that deposited after the theft into thinking they were safe.

Compounding it by announcing a loan and accepting investment without disclosure to investors that they are buying into a 6,000 BTC hole is a big deal.


Even with all that, it seems crazy that you'd put a non-violent person in federal prison for 20 years.

The guy has proven tech skills. Order him to pay it back. Let him work and garnish his pay. Put him on probation until every victim is made whole.

Unless you really think he's rotten to the core don't let those 4 kids grow up without a father. Hating the world, hating the government, and hating their dad. You create 4 more victims, an additional burden on taxpayers, and how will he ever repay anyone from prison?

If he fails to keep a job, fails to make payment progress, goes out defrauding people again, or fails to care for his family - then you can wack him with a parole violation and then prison becomes an option.

My $0.02.

I lost bitcoins and investments on GLBSE (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/GLBSE) when it closed.

Then I had my own exchange, BTC Trading Corp, which was forced to close due to regulation. (Though I kept it online long enough to process withdrawals and generate tax reports!)

Then I lost a whole bunch of LTC when BTC-e (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTC-e) was forced to close due to failing AML regulation.

So now when I look for an exchange I try to figure out:

• Is it secure?  Do they have per-trade 2FA and experienced developers and system administrators?
• Is it in a jurisdiction with good legal structure?  If they run with my money - are the local police even going to care?
• Is it legal?  Do they follow the laws of not just their own country, but also all countries around the world that might seize them?  This applies to AML, KYC, Securities, etc.
• Is it transparent?  Can I easily find out who they are and where they are located?  (important if I have a legal dispute with them)
• Is it properly registered?  Can I easily look up their business registration and licenses on the internet?
• Do they have low trade fees without me having to hold one of their special tokens?  I don't care if they profit share or any of that gibberish - just give me a low trade fee in the first place!
   Profit sharing will never give me as much back as I give in over-priced trade fees - that is WHY they do it!
• In their jurisdiction do they have a fiduciary duty to protect me?  This means - do they legally have to put me first?  Or can they put themselves first?  This is important if something happens and they lose your money or if a hacker takes your money using flaws in their exchange.

I've been around in the cryptocurrency space since 2012 and I've seen a lot of bad things happen to good people.  I hope that helps!

Cheers

I'm glad this worked out for you!  I can't believe things like this are still happening.  I programmed an exchange back in 2012-2013 (BTC Trading Corp) which had both failed login brute force protection and per-trade 2FA, which was awesome with Yubikey support.  (not great for Google Auth - very time consuming - but at least SAFE)

I'll point our devs for our upcoming new exchange at this post - good for them to see why these things are important!

Cheers

This answer is specific to the USA & Canada - I have no experience elsewhere.

Should ICOs be considered a Security? - Great question.

We're wrestling with this right now with our new exchange startup in Canada.  (The laws here are very similar to the USA.)

There is a lot of confusion about what is a currently a security, what is/was a security offering, etc.

I am not a lawyer - But I do have a settlement with the SEC for offering securities on my Bitcoin and Litecoin sites back in 2013.  The most simple explanation for a security offering I think would be whether or not you are making a payment (via money, time, or services) to the creator of the asset in exchange for coins/tokens/etc, and whether or not you are expecting to make a profit as the result of their work.  If both of the above are true, the ICO is almost certainly a security offering.

Another red flag is if the offering is for a product that does not yet exist, though that aspect is not all that clear to me and I'm still figuring it out.

After the Initial (Coin) Offering - is the Asset a Security?

This one is harder - but if you go back to the initial offering above as a starting point - If the initial offering was a security offering then that's a pretty good indicator that the asset itself is a security.

I say it's a good indicator because some assets that started as a security later ceased to be a security because the asset was no longer dependent on the work of a central party, or because people buying it were no longer buying it with the expectation of making a profit.  Ethereum is a great example.  When they launched it was a security.  But over time enough developers came in that even if the founders disappeared, the network would run on it's own.  Also - while some people buy ETH as an investment, many people genuinely buy it for utility or for commerce without expectation of profit from price speculation.

Hope that helps!

Hi all,

I ran BTC Trading Corp back in 2012 - 2013. Returned everyone's deposits and shut it down when the SEC asked us to shutter it in late 2013.

Now I have a team working on resurrecting it under a new name and website as a crypto (BTC) to crypto exchange akin to Polo and Bittrex. Just as before, security, trust, and transparency are our core values.

We always had a full trade oAuth API, but now seems like a good time to improve on it. I'd like to get everyone's opinions for the dev team -

• What are your favorite API's to trade on? (Polo? GDAX? Binance? Bittrex?)
• Which were easiest to understand and integrate?
• What are your favorite security features within the API's?

Thanks a bunch, really appreciate any input we can get!

Is there an Italian equivalent of a private investigator?  Someone that can figure out what assets Armandi has available?

Do the police have the ability to seize his computers and banking documents and look for traces of bitcoin?  (Would they know what to look for?)

Pretty sure the courts will value the losses as of 2013, not as of 2018.  (as they should - BTC could have gone to zero instead.)

Thank you for putting in all this work!

Sorry, responding to an old post, but I figure it's still relevant.

I don't have all the servers anymore, but I do have CSV's of trades for all accounts that could be used to show ownership prior to BTC-TC's closure.  Labcoin may potentially counter that you could have sold them when they moved to an alternate exchange, but should anyone need their BTC-TC CSV I am happy to assist as time allows.

Cheers

No problem!  I've been getting quite a few requests like this lately.

I don't have the server around anymore.   I tried to keep it going but it was already a used server and the drive ended up refusing to boot after a patch/reboot cycle.  90 days later the backups would have rotated out on the backup service.  I have the code in a separate svn repo, but not the db, wallet, server configs, etc.

Balances above the litecoin transaction fee at the time should have been sent to the addresses on file using the auto-withdraw system.  I remember doing a litecoind upgrade even after shutting down so I could process more withdrawals and save people some change.

Cheers

I think here in BC we can only have 50 shareholders before we have to become a "reporting" company, meaning regular audits and all the same overhead a public company has.  Doing some math, if we wanted to raise $1,000,000 and only take up 40 slots (leaving a little room) that'd be a minimum $25,000.  If we wanted to raise $500,000 and only take up 30 slots, that'd be a $16,667 minimum.

On the Bunco game, summer vacations have taken their toll, but since my last post we've rolled out friend game invites, updated chat, private chat, friending, gifting, and a bunch of bug fixes.  We currently have the new avatar system and HUD in QA.  Power ups and leaderboard are done server side, just waiting for the client team to catch up.

Our next game or two will be a bit easier.  Chat, friending, gifting, facebook integration, leaderboards, database structure, inventory, store, etc are all reusable and we have a good team in place. 

If seriously interested PM me your email and we can discuss privately. I'll forward our deck, business plan, etc.  Our overall goal is 1M daily players across 3-4 games within a 5 year span, which would make the company worth around $100M - $120M.

Cheers.

Quick update - the game is in open beta now - feel free to give it a spin!

https://apps.facebook.com/BuncoBonko

We still have a few more core features to add; a nice intro, powerups, and integrated private chat and friend management are in the works.  Then we tackle the tournament standings.  Probably 2-3 weeks of work.

We already have some mobile builds, but after that we start customizing the UI for mobile to prep for a mobile release.  Probably 6-8 weeks away.

And once we have mobile builds we put the pedal down in the marketing department.

We're considering investment offers on an individual basis.  With BTC as high as it is, you definitely get more bang for your buck now.  PM if interested.  Anyone coming on board in the next few months will have some say in what our next social casino game is. 

Cheers

Just posted a quick youtube clip of the game, it's corny, but fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOGHRjiMGkU

Also, lots of updates on the Facebook page about recently completed content, quotes from the closed beta, etc: https://facebook.com/BuncoBonko

All of the bugs that came up in the closed beta have been fixed.  The current plan is to roll out an open beta later this month which adds the; inventory, store, collection items, facebook game invites, daily credits, and a few other goodies.  Fun stuff.   

Thank you for your concerns.  It'll be pretty clear if and when I post a JOBS Act compliant public offering to my website and start accepting actual money.  I don't think that will happen though.  More likely a deal will be worked out... in private.  In the meantime, I'll continue to discuss various options amongst friends here.


2010: I join Buffalo Studios to do Bingo Blitz
2012: I create Litecoin Global as a hobby.  GLBSE tanks and I think I can help people out so I make a bitcoin version and call it BTC-TC.
2013: Playtika buys Buffalo Studios
2015: I leave Playtika

Cheers.

Add:
2015: A week after my last day Playtika lets go 2/3 of the remaining senior executives.
2016: Playtika lays off 90% of the studio, moves operations to Israel / Ukraine.

(I think my departure was at a pretty good time.)

Thanks!

Been a while since I've posted an update.

We've launched the facebook page: https://facebook.com/buncobonko

And made a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd8OdueoUOQ

And will be in closed beta in a day or two.  Probably not the kind of game this crowd would like, but if Bunco is your thing you can sign up here:  https://yappingmoose.com/

Cheers.

I'd be interested to know what laws those are that have changed.  If anything crowdfunding for equity laws have been relaxed in the US and Canada.

It's ok to say "we messed up, we're trying to fix it."