StakeMiners: restricted withdrawals, falsified stats, insolvent. Do not invest!

[Crestington]

I am a little disappointed that cyberpinoy would not discuss Stakeminers more openly than he has been. I have pushed him a bit to try to make that happen but seems convinced that people are out to get him when these questions and advice from people (particularly in this thread and on Gethashing), are among the most experienced in the Crypto community. I personally think that negative questions and opinions are the very stuff that should be listened to the most, you should be trying to satisfy the critics because the ones that will go along with everything will do so anyways.

I think I put in about $20 worth of PayCon a while back to test out the site, I suppose I should check on it and see how it's doing.

My pm's with cyberpinoy was mainly about proper use of splitting Blocks in PayCon for better payouts as he was using very large Blocks when he could receive better rewards by using smaller Blocks. He also complained to me about people trolling him and I told him that he should be transparent, not attack people when posting and use correct spelling as it is a more professional way to handle situations but for the most part ended up saying the same thing multiple times. I would be ok with sharing all of my pm's sent and received between us, I'll leave this on the table for suchmoon to decide if he wants it or not but I think for the most part it won't really shed light on anything new.

I quite like the idea of a Stakepool but the challenge is having a central authority running it which will always cause problems as it is run as a security.

[Phildo]

I am a little disappointed that cyberpinoy would not discuss Stakeminers more openly than he has been. I have pushed him a bit to try to make that happen but seems convinced that people are out to get him when these questions and advice from people (particularly in this thread and on Gethashing), are among the most experienced in the Crypto community. I personally think that negative questions and opinions are the very stuff that should be listened to the most, you should be trying to satisfy the critics because the ones that will go along with everything will do so anyways.

I think I put in about $20 worth of PayCon a while back to test out the site, I suppose I should check on it and see how it's doing.

My pm's with cyberpinoy was mainly about proper use of splitting Blocks in PayCon for better payouts as he was using very large Blocks when he could receive better rewards by using smaller Blocks. He also complained to me about people trolling him and I told him that he should be transparent, not attack people when posting and use correct spelling as it is a more professional way to handle situations but for the most part ended up saying the same thing multiple times. I would be ok with sharing all of my pm's sent and received between us, I'll leave this on the table for suchmoon to decide if he wants it or not but I think for the most part it won't really shed light on anything new.

I quite like the idea of a Stakepool but the challenge is having a central authority running it which will always cause problems as it is run as a security.

the entire point of this shit is that everything is supposed to be transparent and visible on the blockchain. You can't have any problems with "trolls" if you can do that.

I don't know why cyberpinoy isn't able to make everything transparent and open, but it tells me all I need to know.

There were "trolls" (including me) but that doesn't mean the questions weren't legitimate. The lack of transparency is the biggest issue. If/when one of the coins gets dumped, investors lose value. The lack of transparency means there is no way to show that the investors don't get fucked by that dump and then fucked by cyberpinoy saying they had more of those coins then they really did.

The smart way to do a staking coin is to collect a certain coin and pool it together. Needing the pool operator to exchange coins opens up so many more methods of failure that it makes zero sense.

[suchmoon]

I am a little disappointed that cyberpinoy would not discuss Stakeminers more openly than he has been. I have pushed him a bit to try to make that happen but seems convinced that people are out to get him when these questions and advice from people (particularly in this thread and on Gethashing), are among the most experienced in the Crypto community. I personally think that negative questions and opinions are the very stuff that should be listened to the most, you should be trying to satisfy the critics because the ones that will go along with everything will do so anyways.

I think I put in about $20 worth of PayCon a while back to test out the site, I suppose I should check on it and see how it's doing.

My pm's with cyberpinoy was mainly about proper use of splitting Blocks in PayCon for better payouts as he was using very large Blocks when he could receive better rewards by using smaller Blocks. He also complained to me about people trolling him and I told him that he should be transparent, not attack people when posting and use correct spelling as it is a more professional way to handle situations but for the most part ended up saying the same thing multiple times. I would be ok with sharing all of my pm's sent and received between us, I'll leave this on the table for suchmoon to decide if he wants it or not but I think for the most part it won't really shed light on anything new.

I quite like the idea of a Stakepool but the challenge is having a central authority running it which will always cause problems as it is run as a security.

Unless there is something criminal in those PMs there is probably no need to publish them. It would just give more ammunition to cyberpinoy to claim he's being attacked by trolls. A quick recap of how he moved the goalposts:

1) When being questioned about his past he claimed this has nothing to do with StakeMiners therefore not worth answering/proving/etc.
2) When being questioned about StakeMiners TOS he claimed those questions have an unknown intent, are coming from someone (me, suchmoon, specifically) who is not going to invest, therefore not worth answering/proving/etc.
3) When being questioned about StakeMiners investments (after I invested) he locked his thread and went quiet. Yesterday he demanded that I apologize for saying "shortage", which he took to mean "stolen". I apologized and he's still not answering questions.

[Crestington]

I am a little disappointed that cyberpinoy would not discuss Stakeminers more openly than he has been. I have pushed him a bit to try to make that happen but seems convinced that people are out to get him when these questions and advice from people (particularly in this thread and on Gethashing), are among the most experienced in the Crypto community. I personally think that negative questions and opinions are the very stuff that should be listened to the most, you should be trying to satisfy the critics because the ones that will go along with everything will do so anyways.

I think I put in about $20 worth of PayCon a while back to test out the site, I suppose I should check on it and see how it's doing.

My pm's with cyberpinoy was mainly about proper use of splitting Blocks in PayCon for better payouts as he was using very large Blocks when he could receive better rewards by using smaller Blocks. He also complained to me about people trolling him and I told him that he should be transparent, not attack people when posting and use correct spelling as it is a more professional way to handle situations but for the most part ended up saying the same thing multiple times. I would be ok with sharing all of my pm's sent and received between us, I'll leave this on the table for suchmoon to decide if he wants it or not but I think for the most part it won't really shed light on anything new.

I quite like the idea of a Stakepool but the challenge is having a central authority running it which will always cause problems as it is run as a security.

the entire point of this shit is that everything is supposed to be transparent and visible on the blockchain. You can't have any problems with "trolls" if you can do that.

I don't know why cyberpinoy isn't able to make everything transparent and open, but it tells me all I need to know.

There were "trolls" (including me) but that doesn't mean the questions weren't legitimate. The lack of transparency is the biggest issue. If/when one of the coins gets dumped, investors lose value. The lack of transparency means there is no way to show that the investors don't get fucked by that dump and then fucked by cyberpinoy saying they had more of those coins then they really did.

The smart way to do a staking coin is to collect a certain coin and pool it together. Needing the pool operator to exchange coins opens up so many more methods of failure that it makes zero sense.

The questions are completely legitimate, Gleb is a bit profane but then again it's everyone's right to be able to be as profane as they want and does highlight that what was said before does not match up along the same timeline. If I were to call you a fuckwit retard, maybe that might offend you, but why? Does it matter if someone calls names? What matters is the content of the message, not the delivery. If I were to respond to someone by calling them names or talking down to them because they did so to me then that would only make me look like a fuckwit retard for engaging in a pointless argument.

It is impossible to troll someone that will listen to what you say, to be transparent about everything and admit to being wrong so if being the center of a dramacade, it is because that person chooses to foster that.

[Crestington]

I am a little disappointed that cyberpinoy would not discuss Stakeminers more openly than he has been. I have pushed him a bit to try to make that happen but seems convinced that people are out to get him when these questions and advice from people (particularly in this thread and on Gethashing), are among the most experienced in the Crypto community. I personally think that negative questions and opinions are the very stuff that should be listened to the most, you should be trying to satisfy the critics because the ones that will go along with everything will do so anyways.

I think I put in about $20 worth of PayCon a while back to test out the site, I suppose I should check on it and see how it's doing.

My pm's with cyberpinoy was mainly about proper use of splitting Blocks in PayCon for better payouts as he was using very large Blocks when he could receive better rewards by using smaller Blocks. He also complained to me about people trolling him and I told him that he should be transparent, not attack people when posting and use correct spelling as it is a more professional way to handle situations but for the most part ended up saying the same thing multiple times. I would be ok with sharing all of my pm's sent and received between us, I'll leave this on the table for suchmoon to decide if he wants it or not but I think for the most part it won't really shed light on anything new.

I quite like the idea of a Stakepool but the challenge is having a central authority running it which will always cause problems as it is run as a security.

Unless there is something criminal in those PMs there is probably no need to publish them. It would just give more ammunition to cyberpinoy to claim he's being attacked by trolls. A quick recap of how he moved the goalposts:

1) When being questioned about his past he claimed this has nothing to do with StakeMiners therefore not worth answering/proving/etc.
2) When being questioned about StakeMiners TOS he claimed those questions have an unknown intent, are coming from someone (me, suchmoon, specifically) who is not going to invest, therefore not worth answering/proving/etc.
3) When being questioned about StakeMiners investments (after I invested) he locked his thread and went quiet. Yesterday he demanded that I apologize for saying "shortage", which he took to mean "stolen". I apologized and he's still not answering questions.

Nothing criminal and basically don't want to post them because it is opinion (and said in confidence), I can send you copies through pm if you'd like and you can look over them.

[suchmoon]

cyberpinoy seems to be double-counting withdrawals. For example before s3v3nh4cks' withdrawal the "Total invested" amount was ~120 BTC, after the 35 BTC withdrawal it dropped to 85 BTC. That part is fine. But he also seems to have added that amount to total payouts, which is not correct.

If we take cyberpinoy's numbers at face value it would seem that investors deposited ~112 BTC (total investment amount as of a few days ago), and got ~80 BTC paid out, i.e. only about 32 BTC until "break even". This makes the 82.5 BTC current value of assets look like a substantial gain (+50 BTC).

However the site is probably "under water". If you don't double-count withdrawals it paid out 26 BTC, i.e. 112 - 26 = 86 BTC until "break even". But it only has 82.5 worth of assets and that's in ideal conditions, i.e. if it somehow could liquidate those positions without crashing the prices.

Withdrawal totals collected from the payouts page:

https://stakeminers.com/transactions.php

[suchmoon]

cyberpinoy is sort of admitting that StakeMiners is insolvent:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=989670.msg12560048#msg12560048

Highlights:

You request a withdrawal of 10 BTC.  Stakeminers calculates that 6 BTC are available for withdrawal this month.  Stakeminers will return to you 6 BTC this month and 4 BTC next month.

In order to reduce the rapid in and out movement of funds, which causes large swings to earnings, Stakeminers is implementing a 90 day lock-in period for deposits.

It's not explained how exactly the "available" amount is calculated and it doesn't appear that StakeMiners is offering an opt-out for investors who don't agree with the new terms.

[dooglus]

It's not explained how exactly the "available" amount is calculated

What it does say is:

Once your withdrawal request is received Stakeminers will calculate the available BTC in excess or earnings and advise you of your BTC payout for that month.

I suspect that's a typo for "in excess *of* earnings", but it's still not clear what that means.

Seems to me like further obfuscation for its own sake.

He should take a look at how Just-Dice.com works - it is essentially a staking pool, operated in a transparent manner. At any point in time everyone can see exactly what their balance is, and can withdraw it without penalty. There's no need to penalise withdrawals. People will leave their coins on the site if they see they are performing well. The first step towards allowing that is to offer transparency wherever possible. Otherwise all investors have is vague statements like "earnings are up again this week".

[suchmoon]

I suspect that's a typo for "in excess *of* earnings", but it's still not clear what that means.

Sounds like he's going to subtract earnings from your principal.

E.g. if you invested 12 BTC and got paid 2 BTC in weekly payouts over 90 days then your "available BTC in excess of earnings" is probably 10 BTC. At this point I'm not sure if he's saying that you can withdraw 10 BTC now and 2 BTC next month, or 10 BTC total (e.g. 6 now 4 later) or something else entirely.

The complication for StakeMiners (compared to just-dice) is that cyberpinoy wants to operate in BTC while the assets are in assorted altcoins. Even if he decided to show the "real" BTC balance that still wouldn't mean he'd be able to pay it out (for reasons that you pointed out earlier - slippage etc).

It's a moot point though. I don't think transparency is going to happen here.

[suchmoon]

Here is why cyberpinoy decided to change the rules:

The implemented change was brought about from me. I had requested a withdraw for a large amount of BTC from the site and instead of completing the transaction like he has always done, Leroy has given me the work-around. Telling me that he will "pay me when wolvman has some coins available to deposit." and that he will "buy my contract out later this week."

See the link for more info - e-mails etc:

https://forum.gethashing.com/t/pos-coin-staking-service-stakeminers-com/3925/1380

[Phildo]

Suchmoon, do you mind pointing out that husky should be getting some profits from now until he actually gets his coins. If they are holding his coins to not hurt the rest of the pool, he should definitely reap the rewards from not until he actually gets his coins back. I would do it but there's zero chance of my signing up to any of these gaw-fallout sites.

This is the problem that I have been pointing out since I found out that he was taking in BTC to run this operation. He takes the BTC, then buys various coins. Those coins will stake, but when the value of those coins drops, he won't be able to to provide BTC to his investors.

That's why it would make sense if he took in and paid out various coins, that way people would be responsible for the risk by choosing to deal with a specific coin.

That's also why Gleb's constant perstering to find out Leroy's actual experience with btc/cryptocoins matters. It's not just a lie for the sake of lying, how long he has been involved is directly relevant to his crypto knowledge, which impact which coins he invests in, which is definitely relevant to his investor.

[suchmoon]

Suchmoon, do you mind pointing out that husky should be getting some profits from now until he actually gets his coins.

Done:

https://forum.gethashing.com/t/pos-coin-staking-service-stakeminers-com/3925/1413

[blacklizard]

good evening Gents 

[Phildo]

Suchmoon, do you mind pointing out that husky should be getting some profits from now until he actually gets his coins.

Done:

https://forum.gethashing.com/t/pos-coin-staking-service-stakeminers-com/3925/1413

Thanks, I commend you for having the patience/insanity to give them some money in order to get the inside info and get a look at the inside. I hope it prevents some of those people from losing all their money.

[dooglus]

the unfortunate truth to this whole thread is StakeMiners is not a Ponzi, It is not a scam.

Is that a joke? How is it unfortunate if it is not a Ponzi?

Every single thing we do in crypto has a system and theirs is the best and promotes itself as the most profitable or the cheapest service out there.

It sure is hard to follow the intended meaning. What is "theirs"? Who is the "they" to which this refers?

We do not always agree with the system or the people running them, but there is nothing we can do about it. If we send a message like these to another service and watch them be ignored, go ahead and send an email to the owner about how you think his system is not worth it, or it is a scam/ponzi and it too will be ignored. They will ignore you and move onto the next email.

When people accuse me of running a Ponzi, I point them at the proof of solvency that I publish on a weekly basic. Proof of funds plus proof of liabilities equals proof of solvency. I would never ignore such accusations, because it would make me look guilty.

We will not change things because a handful of people do not like me

Nor should you. You should change things because the way you currently do things makes you look shady as fuck. If you aren't running a Ponzi then you should endeavor to prove it. There's no reason not to.

As for the fee issue, I see where you're coming from. The outputs in your wallet have built up a certain "weight", and disturbing them to process withdrawals will hurt that weight. Offering investors the option of paying a reduced fee if they're willing to delay their withdrawal until you have low weight outputs on hand seems like a reasonable approach. I'm not sure if that's exactly what your new terms imply, since they themselves are pretty vague and hard to understand.

[suchmoon]

There was a lot of activity in the GH thread over the last couple days. One of the posts was quoted by dooglus above and it reflects cyberpinoy's overall attitude - he's trying to be calm (commendable) but is still deflecting any requests for proof or questions to clarify his claims. He seems to be totally lost in his own TOS:

https://forum.gethashing.com/t/high-risk-pos-coin-staking-stakeminers-com/3925/1518

a 3 month (90 day) investment incurred a 10% fee, it was not 5% until 120 days.

You're lying.

https://archive.is/R8NEL#selection-655.1-655.3684

8.4. A Withdraw Penalty will be imposed for investors wishing to withdraw their investment with StakeMiners. The schedule for such a withdraw is as follows. Investments Withdrawn Within 30 days 30% Penalty, Investments Withdrawn Within 60 days 20% Penalty, Investments Withdrawn Within 90 days 10% Penalty, Investments Withdrawn Within 120 to 364 1/4 days 5% Penalty.

Less than 90 days - 10%.
Less than 120 days and up to 364 1/4 (stupid wording but still) - 5%.

After his repeated attempts to coerce me into a "semi face to face" conversation - reason for which remains unclear to me, perhaps some kind of a phishing/doxing attempt? - I made this offer:

https://forum.gethashing.com/t/high-risk-pos-coin-staking-stakeminers-com/3925/1472
https://forum.gethashing.com/t/high-risk-pos-coin-staking-stakeminers-com/3925/1477

How about a compromise - please PM me the signed messages if you don't want to make the addresses public. I will check them out and if they add up to 115 BTC I'll leave you alone.

The signed message should read (without the double quotes):

"This address is part of StakeMiners staking pool"

It's impossible to relay such information via voice chat anyway.

Just to make it clear what happens if you don't provide a proof of your assets @cyberpinoy.

I will try to determine your staking addresses from your most recent wallet screenshots that you posted on the website. That is far more than anyone would in a situation like this and you certainly don't deserve this but I'll spend the extra effort just so you couldn't say I'm not using the correct facts.

Then I'll calculate the total value of the assets same way I did it before (since you're not telling me what was wrong with my calculation I'm assuming it was in fact corect) and will add the BTC balance in your payout wallet.

If that adds up to less than the number you're showing as the total invested amount (currently ~115 BTC) I will keep repeating that StakeMiners is insolvent until you either prove otherwise or StakeMiners ceases its operations.

[dooglus]

I will try to determine your staking addresses from your most recent wallet screenshots that you posted on the website.

It looks like I'm just as bad at math as you, because I still get only around 80 BTC in the staking wallets. I linked to the blockexplorer pages for the coins whose staking addresses have been publicly disclosed, and not for the ones I was told in private by cyberpinoy.

Are we still missing some? ie. is the list incomplete? I'm not implying anyone stole the "missing" addresses, just that perhaps there aren't as many as there should be:

Netcoin    19911983.723418   @ 0.00000198 (cryptsy) = 39.42572777
HYPER         47351.815894   @ 0.00023818 (bittrex) = 11.27825550
TekCoin      231037.34010500 @ 0.00002971 (cryptsy) =  6.86411937
Diamonds       4891.964673   @ 0.00103165 (cryptsy) =  5.04679535
HyperStake  1613801.125      @ 0.00000201 (cryptsy) =  3.24374026
Paycon       438177.54123722 @ 0.00000670 (cryptsy) =  2.93578952
RateCoin     496321.466108   @ 0.00000489 (cryptsy) =  2.42701196
HoboNickels   73669.898438   @ 0.00003150 (cryptsy) =  2.32060180
Bottlecaps   204569.640625   @ 0.00001020 (cryptsy) =  2.08661033
BITB        7277696.06410332 @ 0.00000026 (cryptsy) =  1.89220097
OKCASH       943867.20550006 @ 0.00000150 (bittrex) =  1.41580080
OKCASH       919700.13393631 @ 0.00000150 (bittrex) =  1.37955020
OKCASH       819537.514672   @ 0.00000150 (bittrex) =  1.22930627
                                                      -----------
                                                      81.54551010

[suchmoon]

Are we still missing some? ie. is the list incomplete? I'm not implying anyone stole the "missing" addresses, just that perhaps there aren't as many as there should be:

Payout address has 1.2 BTC in it:

https://stakeminers.com/transactions.php
https://blockchain.info/tx-index/82e145c5c3f734a608d48ca9ef242404de7976f7ee5e4a9b4b6085110fb5afc2
https://blockchain.info/address/15RNyRkxBn3g3rcYGCbj7n1sFHhQkg9wPo

An investor withdrew ~6 BTC recently.

https://blockchain.info/tx/73461e5dac38d0965ac4a400b24a2c6e0a8671f1bc3d6221f1b997ac013ebb92

Still we are looking at less than 90 BTC vs cyberpinoy's recently claimed 115 BTC (before the ~ 6 BTC withdrawal):

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=989670.msg12560048#msg12560048

Edit: he's still saying "113.76823939 BTC Invested" inside the website. Which can either mean that he didn't update the number after the withdrawal, or that someone deposited a similar amount.

[suchmoon]

It looks like Quotient (XQN) has been added to the pool but there is no wallet address or screenshot for it. I think I read somewhere that the XQN deposit was donated by the devs but I can't that post now.

[Phildo]

It looks like Quotient (XQN) has been added to the pool but there is no wallet address or screenshot for it. I think I read somewhere that the XQN deposit was donated by the devs but I can't that post now.

Isn't it possible that he has 18.6 million of the 12.5 million total xqn? Wait that doesn't make sense. Never mind.

No matter how much it is, I'm sure that investing in a coin that has an official twitter with no posts since the last pump and dump 7 months ago will lead to nothing but vast riches for everyone involved.