According to a new press release from the SEC, two ICOs have been targeted for enforcement actions -- REcoin and the Diamond Reserve Club, which are apparently run by some fraud named Maksim Zaslavskiy. He claimed that $2 - $4 million was raised in the ICOs, when only $300,000 was raised. He also claimed to have a "team of lawyers, professionals, brokers, and accountants" when apparently none had ever been consulted. There is an emergency court order to freeze his assets (but good luck to the victims in recovering the funds)....

See here: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2017-185-0

Fair points, but there is some context to consider here. Bank accounts don't require 2FA because fiat transfers take significantly longer to process and are generally reversible. Banks generally cover fraudulent charges/transfers for retail customers.

This is impossible for cryptocurrency exchanges. Once a cryptocurrency is withdrawn, it's gone forever. And for many [younger] people who didn't have much savings before crypto, they may hold significantly more in their exchange accounts than their bank accounts.

Yes, 2FA is not ideal for 70 year olds. But neither is Bitcoin, nor day-trading platforms.

There was a < $200 dip when the rumor broke.... and once the official news dropped, price immediately rebounded and nearly retested the highs. It seems like the market definitely doesn't perceive the Korean domestic ICO ban on the same level as the Chinese bans/rumors.

Price is remarkably resilient considering the Russian ban rumors and Grayscale Investments pulling their NYSE application. Altcoin market still look like crap, but I'm impressed overall with the bulls here.

Yeah, I think most people recognize that. And they are okay with it until deposits and withdrawals stop being processed for masses of customers. Then you start having people trying to camp out in front of the corporate offices MT Gox-style. If exchange operators didn't learn early on, they knew by 2014 to follow MT Gox and administer the company through virtual offices.

The bigger issue that the OP is hinting at is that nobody knows who the fuck runs Poloniex. Literally, all people have is a (likely fake) name for the owner. Anonymous Reddit accounts have said that their corporate office are outside of Boston, MA, but again... nobody can confirm anything about these people. No faces, no LinkedIns.

At least with MT Gox, there was Mark Karpeles. The guy did prison time over it and is still on the hook. You think Tristan D'Agosta will do prison time if Poloniex exit scams? I don't think the guys exists....

I think this ignores all the context. The Bitcoin Cash fork had nothing to do with all the market uncertainty that led to the drop into the $1800s. That uncertainty had to do with BIP148 and the potential split that it could have caused. After miners started signalling BIP91, the market recovered to $3000 in four days. That confirmed that the longer term uptrend remained intact. As some traders like to say, "up is up."

This time, the context may be different. The fear heading into August 1st was always the prospect of a legitimate network split with two viable chains. The BIP148 split never happened, and the Bitcoin Cash fork never purported to be "Bitcoin" and included replay protection. Segwit2x is intended to be "Bitcoin" and won't include replay protection -- and it's backed by a lot more of the industry and miners than BCH was. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

It's not even clear how large of an effect this will have on Ethereum. Apparently, the ban is just on domestic ICOs, and enforcement only affects Korean institutions. At this point, it doesn't seem like foreign ICOs (i.e. the vast majority of ICOs) are affected, and it seems that Koreans are still allowed to invest.

We'll need to wait and see what the regulations looks like when they are actually issued. For now, we can only speculate. But I've seen several opinions from Koreans now that say Westerners are blowing the news out of proportion.

Sorry to hear that. I haven't heard the best things about Kraken regarding user experience, to be honest. But I've heard that these issues are usually resolved in time, at least.

You can try contacting Kraken-Septimus here on the forum. He hasn't logged on in a few days. But I saw that he recently helped to solve someone's issue with a locked/disabled account: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2170220.msg21767153#msg21767153


Bitstamp is probably your best option. If you are in the US, UK or Europe, you might be able to use Coinbase. Good luck!

In recent times, that's true. But markets experience inflection points. The last long term bearish reversal occurred in a similar fashion, with the PBOC rumors about banning Bitcoin panicked the market at the end of 2013. So, while the price always seems to bounce back, you might find yourself waiting two years for the bull market to return, if history repeats.

As for the ETF rumors, I'm skeptical. Grayscale just withdrew its application to list on the NYSE, so I suspect the climate is not right for an ETF this year. The SEC was particularly brutal, too, in their last rejection of an ETF application.

Yes, my suspicion from the day of launch was that Advcash is operated by them. Perhaps others, too. It would be impossible to establish that from online sleuthing, but it's conceivable that they would buy a payment processor and operate as they always have. Why not?

They accepted Tether for deposits earlier this year; it's possible they held some in reserve. I imagine they may have acquired a good deal from Bitfinex, given the apparent demand for fiat output. Hopefully the exodus blows over and the exchange is viable for the longer term.

That's funny. Jordan Belfort founded and operated a "boiler room" that pushed penny stocks and defrauded people with pump-and-dump schemes. He doesn't seem to be in a position where his opinion should carry any weight. (On the flip side, maybe it takes one to know one?)


People are just trying to stay relevant; Bitcoin is a hot topic. Just getting his name back out there with this article definitely helped Belfort's brand, and his public speaking career. People were probably starting to forget who he was.

Transparent... how so? What have they delivered on, besides "airdrops" of a premined coin? And I put "airdrop" in quotes because it's a signature campaign where they don't pay out most of the participants. That would be marked a scam within a day if it were posted in the Services forum.

All I see is fake hype about some vaporware called "Deepsend" or "Deeptrust" but there is no explanation of how it will work. There is no transparency of development. It's just a premine where the devs have the audacity to stake the premine. And they scam their signature promoters. It's all very sad.

This is probably one of the worst spectacles I've seen on this forum. I think DT1/DT2 folks ought to start tagging some of these people, to be honest.

It seems less and less likely everyday that they are going to ban it. One official suggested that even ICOs will be permitted and regulated. Charlie Lee says that his trusted source in China says that the network/mining ban talk is just FUD that manipulators are using to push the market down. If you think about the capital inflows that Bitmain is bringing into the country, and how much more it could potentially bring? It makes no sense to discourage mining. And they can't simultaneously encourage or subsidize mining and prohibit the network.

What they might do is prohibit CNY purchases of mining hardware. If Bitmain is tightly regulated and only accepts payment in USD and cryptocurrency, then that's all capital inflow.

I had only heard good things about ItBit from the two people I know that have used the service. It's not clear from your post: how long have you been waiting for them to respond after submitting the back of license/utility bill/bank statement? Hopefully just a few days? It took me a week to get a response from Coinbase for a recent problem, and even then they clearly didn't bother to read my ticket.

Unfortunately, there are verification delays on all exchanges right now (at least for full, non-automated verification that involves documents and photographs). Some people are waiting months to get verified on Poloniex, for instance.

You raise a good point, but this is not entirely true. One method is to use Bitcoin ATMs -- most require no KYC information, and one can cover their face and identifying features while in front of the ATM.

Another method is LocalBitcoins. This is getting harder and harder, as authorities are increasingly pressuring larger traders to enforce KYC procedures. But smaller/casual traders generally don't, so it's possible to acquire BTC in those cases without giving up any personal identifying information.

I think you probably heard wrong. Tor onion routing was developed in the mid-1990s by the United States Naval Research Laboratory. It has been principally funded by the US government, so I would be more inclined to worry about cooperation with various US law enforcement agencies (not the Russian FSB).

Due to various vulnerabilities that were exploited over the years, and the fact that governments can run exit nodes themselves, I would not expect Tor to provide full anonymity. It can be useful, but it's advisable to use additional tools to secure your privacy.

They are under constant attack. This is to be expected. Any exchange is going to be operating in an adversarial environment -- significant money is at stake, so hackers are always not far behind.

But unfortunately, there is no sign that anything will change. Nova is incompetent. They can't seem to address the attacks, so they continue to run in "Beta" while mass IP banning and shutting down registrations:


I'm going to keep saying it: Get your money off this exchange now before they disappear.

The thing about decentralized exchanges is that they are really useful for altcoins/tokens (not fiat). If one of the major altcoin exchanges -- like Poloniex -- goes down to a hack, or exit scams, then I expect decentralized exchanges to take off. If Poloniex or Bittrex went down, I would expect an exodus from centralized altcoin exchanges.

For now, decentralized exchanges (like BarterDEX) really lack liquidity. Such an exodus could really change that. It's really hard to get people to give up the UI, speed and liquidity of centralized exchanges.

My favorite place to trade now is Bitmex. It takes a little getting used to, though. You use Bitcoin as collateral to buy contracts, which is slightly different psychologically than trading unleveraged against fiat. They also have markets for ETH, XMR and others. They have really good volume and liquidity -- better than any other futures market provider. There's no KYC involved, either, since there are only BTC deposits and withdrawals.

PM me if you want a referral link for reduced fees.

This is such a bizarre state of affairs. The exchange is under constant attack and clearly cannot cope with it, so they mass ban IP ranges and shut down registration, among other things. And people still line up to try to register there?!

I know they list a bunch of tiny market cap coins that are listed hardly anywhere else, but I really hope that people signing up now aren't risking much. This exchange could go down any day now. They've already told you (since a few weeks ago) that they are in "Beta" and if they mismatch your order, you may lose funds because of their screwup.

This doesn't sound too alarming. It sounds like a preliminary report with no real implications. This is the same type of language that US legislators and authorities were using a few years ago. As a matter of fact, a US senator recently called for Bitcoin to be "shut down" due to its association with North Korea. I knew that North Korea connection was going to be used against us.

From a government perspective, there is indeed darknet market usage and money laundering in cryptocurrencies, so it makes sense to keep tabs on that as they become more prevalent. I wouldn't take that to mean an all-out ban is coming.