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

[suchmoon]

Meet the BOI. I don't think this part of the website is available without logging in:


Edited 2020-11-28 to fix a broken image

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[Phildo]

Do you have access to the see what addresses the coins are being staked in so you can see the proof that staking is happening since you lit your $1 on fire.

[suchmoon]

Do you have access to the see what addresses the coins are being staked in so you can see the proof that staking is happening since you lit your $1 on fire.

Addresses are not posted on the website but they did post them a while ago on the GH forum. I did some digging and yes, they are staking but the total balance is less than the 107 BTC claimed on the site. Waiting for cyberpinoy to explain it.

https://forum.gethashing.com/t/pos-mining-stakeminers/3925/1232

Here are approximate current balances. I'm not familiar with any of these coins so please don't take this as a fact, feel free to double-check. Perhaps I googled up the wrong explorer or misplaced a zero after the decimal point or something.

Netcoin
19 million NET
40 BTC (Cryptsy 212 sat)
http://www.presstab.pw/phpexplorer/NET/address.php?address=nRAWBySK7wAm57biV9uNGASzWPZhsMPsQC1

OKCash
122k OK
0.2 BTC (Bittrex 150 sat)
https://chainz.cryptoid.info/ok/address.dws?PNffkgFynsUhzq7MJP2yXCpWh5HqNY5Yas.htm

HyperStake
1.6 million HYP
3.4 BTC (Cryptsy 216 sat)
http://hyp.cryptocoinexplorer.com/address?address=p7vC2g61JMvguY5Pj9DtZJS6NK6Q5B5q4F

TEKcoin
226k TEK
5.7 BTC (Cryptsy 2500 sat)
https://www.blockexperts.com/tek/address/BjSZyef8BbVgdGCGViKJ6R3CEWfRMSn9tv

PayCon
408k CON
4.1 BTC (Cryptsy 1000 sat)
https://www.blockexperts.com/con/address/PVKVPfVB3yijNaL2jRPx9NPF2TjbwLAiTk

BitBean
7 million BITB
2.1 BTC (Cryptsy 30 sat)
https://chainz.cryptoid.info/bitb/address.dws?2X8bqUvaSRkbkQ2MCnkjnoK2qWMLUNEpFj.htm

BottleCaps
252k CAP
3 BTC (Cryptsy 1175 sat)
http://cap.cryptocoinexplorer.com/address?address=Ev8nEYQaDMzKWd1WNvTVPcFmymVbEdrYWM

Diamonds
4.8k DMD
5.1 BTC (Cryptsy 107000 sat)
https://chainz.cryptoid.info/dmd/address.dws?dY4RBAxdyxycfFXXCRUgByta5oKio7zEV2.htm

Hyper
35k HYPER
10.5 BTC (Bittrex 30000 sat)
https://chainz.cryptoid.info/hyper/address.dws?HLiszCKnW5fXPMp2VzizmDQTT1xiob46Jt.htm

Hobonickels
70k HBN
2.8 BTC (Cryptsy 4000 sat)
http://hbn.cryptocoinexplorer.com/address?address=F5Vcy6RZxHz1JVtSLZzsRsx2iMKFY2VMRw

Not sure about Ratecoin. StakeMiners website says "♦ WE WILL BE ADDING RATECOIN VERY SOON. ♦" and I couldn't find an address for it. I would assume it's not being staked yet unless @cyberpinoy would like to give us the staking address.

Ratecoin
805k XRA
4.8 BTC
(from wallet screenshot)

So the total is...
~ 77 BTC (added Ratecoin) ~ 82 BTC

Just a bit shy of 107 BTC displayed on the website. @cyberpinoy you're up. WOT is fine if you like.

[Phildo]

I assumed they would be easy to find if you logged in because when I asked cyberpinoy he said that everything was on the website and locked his thread.

I'm not shocked.

That's the biggest problem with this whole operation. It may be an ok idea, and it's trivially easy to do it in a straight up and transparent manner. The fact that it is neither should scare people.

I also like how half i tied up in 1 coin when they claim that diversification will protect them from price volatility, what a joke. We've officially reached the point where it's on you if you lose money in this shit show.

[suchmoon]

I assumed they would be easy to find if you logged in because when I asked cyberpinoy he said that everything was on the website and locked his thread.

I'm not shocked.

That's the biggest problem with this whole operation. It may be an ok idea, and it's trivially easy to do it in a straight up and transparent manner. The fact that it is neither should scare people.

I also like how half i tied up in 1 coin when they claim that diversification will protect them from price volatility, what a joke. We've officially reached the point where it's on you if you lose money in this shit show.

He posts SCREENSHOTS of his wallets on the website. The page is behind a login wall but the images are not so here it is:

[suchmoon]

Looking at those screenshots I realized a couple of things. At least one wallet (OKcash) has multiple staking addresses. That may account for some of the difference but I don't know how much exactly. And there is a Ratecoin wallet with a balance visible in the screenshot so I'll add that to my calculations.

[vancefox]

So...

What exactly is the difference between having your own coins in your own wallet and giving them to him?

The only advantage I see is if you have less than the number of coins recommended for one single block in order to achieve a stake within a period of time that you think is reasonable.  The problem with this is all the PoS coins are not exactly expensive...

With that said, there are plenty of businesses that rely on ignorance and/or laziness of the masses so that shouldn't be held against him.

From the little I've seen, and because I myself am too lazy to bother and research this, I don't see this as anything else but someone offering (for a price) their own wallet for those that either can't or won't use their own.

If you have your own wallet(s) and know the basic concepts of their use you will most likely not use this "company".  If you don't have the ability or knowledge required to have your own wallets you'll probably use something like this.

Just my opinion...

[vancefox]

Sorry for doubling the post but my above post is one topic... and this is another...

That's an awful lot of people involved in a project that is only worth by their own accounting of 107BTC, assuming this is what was claimed, translating to (@ $246/BTC) only 26k USD and some change...

For 6 executive officers and 4 trusties and assuming a 4% realistic return on the coins invested per month (I know, very kind) that's only a gross revenue of just over 1k USD per month...

Since I don't know how much is personal and how much is client I won't expand beyond the simple facts but even if that 1k was all internal that would relate to an even distribution of 100 USD per month... not exactly enough to be considered a salary IMO... unless you're living in a 3rd world country with no or limited access to potable water and your house is made of fig leaves (not saying anything bad against the 3rd world areas... just stating realistic living conditions.

With the number of people involved I was kind of expecting to see more like 1000-5000 BTC total...

[suchmoon]

Sorry for doubling the post but my above post is one topic... and this is another...

That's an awful lot of people involved in a project that is only worth by their own accounting of 107BTC, assuming this is what was claimed, translating to (@ $246/BTC) only 26k USD and some change...

For 6 executive officers and 4 trusties and assuming a 4% realistic return on the coins invested per month (I know, very kind) that's only a gross revenue of just over 1k USD per month...

Since I don't know how much is personal and how much is client I won't expand beyond the simple facts but even if that 1k was all internal that would relate to an even distribution of 100 USD per month... not exactly enough to be considered a salary IMO... unless you're living in a 3rd world country with no or limited access to potable water and your house is made of fig leaves (not saying anything bad against the 3rd world areas... just stating realistic living conditions.

With the number of people involved I was kind of expecting to see more like 1000-5000 BTC total...

Despite the fancy titles those are volunteer positions. Even cyberpinoy himself claims to be making money from his own investment and is not taking a salary.

His investment is ~11 BTC in case you're wondering.

https://forum.gethashing.com/t/pos-mining-stakeminers/3925/781


Edited 2020-11-28 to fix a broken image

[Phildo]

So...

What exactly is the difference between having your own coins in your own wallet and giving them to him?

The only advantage I see is if you have less than the number of coins recommended for one single block in order to achieve a stake within a period of time that you think is reasonable.  The problem with this is all the PoS coins are not exactly expensive...

With that said, there are plenty of businesses that rely on ignorance and/or laziness of the masses so that shouldn't be held against him.

From the little I've seen, and because I myself am too lazy to bother and research this, I don't see this as anything else but someone offering (for a price) their own wallet for those that either can't or won't use their own.

If you have your own wallet(s) and know the basic concepts of their use you will most likely not use this "company".  If you don't have the ability or knowledge required to have your own wallets you'll probably use something like this.

Just my opinion...

The more coins you have in a wallet the more coins you can stake, so putting your coins into a bigger pot to stake will generate you a bigger return than keeping them yourself, so 1 wallet with 100 coins in it will stake more coins overall than 10 wallets with 10 coins each combined. That is where this could make sense. I get a bunch of people to put a bunch of coin x into the same wallet so that we will get a bigger return together than we could all get on their own.

The problem with this is that they are collecting and distributing btc. What they do with the btc can be done transparently and clearly, but they don't do that. If I got a bunch of people to stake coin x and the coin crashed, we lose, but we knew what we were getting in to with coin x, so that's on us. in this system, you don't have control over what coins are staked, so you are relying on someone who locks threads and possibly lies about his crypto experience to distribute the coins properly.

My biggest concern is that by without allowing users/prospective investors to see the wallets on blockchains, there is nothing stopping someone with questionable integrity from scamming. Imagine the price of TEK goes from 2500 satoshi to 1500 satoshi, what is stopping stakeminers from saying they had 50 btc in TEK and pocketing the rest for themselves?

[vancefox]

The more coins you have in a wallet the more coins you can stake, so putting your coins into a bigger pot to stake will generate you a bigger return than keeping them yourself, so 1 wallet with 100 coins in it will stake more coins overall than 10 wallets with 10 coins each combined. That is where this could make sense. I get a bunch of people to put a bunch of coin x into the same wallet so that we will get a bigger return together than we could all get on their own.

The problem with this is that they are collecting and distributing btc. What they do with the btc can be done transparently and clearly, but they don't do that. If I got a bunch of people to stake coin x and the coin crashed, we lose, but we knew what we were getting in to with coin x, so that's on us. in this system, you don't have control over what coins are staked, so you are relying on someone who locks threads and possibly lies about his crypto experience to distribute the coins properly.

My biggest concern is that by without allowing users/prospective investors to see the wallets on blockchains, there is nothing stopping someone with questionable integrity from scamming. Imagine the price of TEK goes from 2500 satoshi to 1500 satoshi, what is stopping stakeminers from saying they had 50 btc in TEK and pocketing the rest for themselves?

While I do understand the premise of pooling coins the effects would only be vastly realized if, and only if, difficulty rises to a point where an "average" wallet will not stake.  One coin that is a prime example of this is HYP, and to another extent his new ratecoin project (from what I see as I bought in and subsequently sold out after I realized this to be in effect).  I have not pooled my coins and I have ~500k of them and only get one or two blocks per day on average.  It is what it is and this coin would see a benefit to pooled staking.  I've just decided to let the wallet go and see where the thing winds up.

Coins that have a relatively low difficulty do not create any marked increase in stake.  My 100k or so TEK blocks stake within an hour or so of achieving minimum coinage.  Same with my HBN, CAP, and (to a lesser extent but still valid) CON.

I guess I'm saying that the only thing I see this as is giving my coins to someone else to do the same thing that I could do but losing the primary rule for cryptocurrency... "trust no one".

With the multitudes of scams and confidence men in this "industry" this mantra seems to be ignored by the very people who need to heed it most.

[suchmoon]

While I do understand the premise of pooling coins the effects would only be vastly realized if, and only if, difficulty rises to a point where an "average" wallet will not stake.  One coin that is a prime example of this is HYP, and to another extent his new ratecoin project (from what I see as I bought in and subsequently sold out after I realized this to be in effect).  I have not pooled my coins and I have ~500k of them and only get one or two blocks per day on average.  It is what it is and this coin would see a benefit to pooled staking.  I've just decided to let the wallet go and see where the thing winds up.

Coins that have a relatively low difficulty do not create any marked increase in stake.  My 100k or so TEK blocks stake within an hour or so of achieving minimum coinage.  Same with my HBN, CAP, and (to a lesser extent but still valid) CON.

I guess I'm saying that the only thing I see this as is giving my coins to someone else to do the same thing that I could do but losing the primary rule for cryptocurrency... "trust no one".

With the multitudes of scams and confidence men in this "industry" this mantra seems to be ignored by the very people who need to heed it most.

I don't have much experience with staking coins - other than XPY and CON of course - but this sounds like the old-school multipool mining. Instead of trying to solo-mine a bunch of coins, dealing with wallets, exchanges, etc you're delegating all that to a pool. Even if I CAN do that myself I can see how it would make sense to have someone do it for me.

Obviously there is a problem. You don't gift your hardware to a mining multipool with the hope that they might give it back. You have to give your coins to a staking pool unless some kind of multisig solution could be implemented.

This is even before we get into the inflationary economics of this thing. It's unsustainable to pay out the whole stake if the principal depreciates due to inflation. Although that part is somewhat similar to hardware depreciation it's not quite clear how a staking pool should handle it.

[vancefox]

I don't have much experience with staking coins - other than XPY and CON of course - but this sounds like the old-school multipool mining. Instead of trying to solo-mine a bunch of coins, dealing with wallets, exchanges, etc you're delegating all that to a pool. Even if I CAN do that myself I can see how it would make sense to have someone do it for me.

Obviously there is a problem. You don't gift your hardware to a mining multipool with the hope that they might give it back. You have to give your coins to a staking pool unless some kind of multisig solution could be implemented.

This is even before we get into the inflationary economics of this thing. It's unsustainable to pay out the whole stake if the principal depreciates due to inflation. Although that part is somewhat similar to hardware depreciation it's not quite clear how a staking pool should handle it.

Well what I can help you with is that some developers are integrating the idea of "pull a little bit of profit out of the exchange slowly" by building S4C (stake for charity) or multisend into their respective wallets.

Basically what this allows is for a percentage of the stake to be sent to an exchange, presumably to sell for BTC.  Obviously the only way to sustain this is to provide or create demand.  If there is no widespread demand the coin's price will suffer (i.e. XPY).


So... it all falls down to the only coins that are being staked on stakeminers  (disclaimer: that I know of) that would benefit from pooled staking is HYP and XRA.  And I wouldn't recommend those two coins, unless you're willing to buy >1m of each.  And that minimum number continues to grow as difficulty does.

[dooglus]

The more coins you have in a wallet the more coins you can stake, so putting your coins into a bigger pot to stake will generate you a bigger return than keeping them yourself, so 1 wallet with 100 coins in it will stake more coins overall than 10 wallets with 10 coins each combined.

That is apparently true of Netcoin, up to a point(*). They actively encourage decentralisation by having large wallets stake disproportionately faster than smaller wallets. By doubling the size of your wallet you more than double the return from staking.

That seems like a silly thing to incentivise, but that's what they do.

I don't know if any other coins have the same. As I understand it, most don't.

So why would we want to use a staking pool?

 1. the pool runs all the wallets for us, saving us the trouble / bandwidth / disk space / maintenance / etc. of having to do it ourselves

 2. pooling our resources reduces the variance; we achieve our expected return much more quickly than by solo staking

 3. some coins stake better (ie. higher expected percentage return) the bigger the wallet balance is (eg. netcoin) and so pooling makes sense

And why wouldn't we want to use a staking pool?

 1. we have to trust a third party with our coins; there's no way of using multisig for staking coins, since in order to stake, the staking wallet needs to be able to sign a transaction with our private key; with the same private key the staking service can steal our coins

 2. the staking service presumably takes some kind of fee (or 'penalty', call it what you will) which reduces our expected profit

 3. if we were solo-staking, we could evaluate each coin and decide which one to invest in; with this setup it appears that such decision is made by the pool itself which leaves us vulnerable to manipulation (pool owner buys up some shitcoinX for himself, then buys a bunch of the same coin for the pool, then dumps his personal holdings at the pool's expense)

These downsides could be alleviated to varying degrees, but the current lack of transparency and control really don't help potential investor confidence.

(*) Netcoin balances stake better as they grow to 10 million, and then the growth stops. 10 million netcoin is current worth a little over $5000, which is probably more than most altcoin speculators are willing to hold in netcoin, and so there is clear pressure to pool. It appears that stakeminers already hold over 10 million netcoin, and so adding more won't increase their return, but from my point of view it does increase my return.

[Paul Revere]

Meet the BOI. I don't think this part of the website is available without logging in:

All those pictures and not a single thumb's up. Most definitely untrustworthy.

[suchmoon]

cyberpinoy doesn't seem to think it's worth responding to explain the difference between the invested amounts stated on the website and the value of published assets.

I was looking at some of the addresses more closely and noticed that for example the big one (NET) doesn't seem to have any recent withdrawals for payouts. I had the impression that the idea of a staking pool would be to put the coins into a wallet, stake, remove the staking proceeds / minted coins (perhaps in some sort of a fashion to avoid disrupting coinage too much), exchange to BTC, and pay out.

Which raises a question now - if the wallet containing 50% of StakeMiners assets hasn't had a withdrawal for a month (since August 18) then where are the payouts coming from? And why is cyberpinoy putting half of his proverbial eggs into such a volatile coin? (Yes, I checked and he didn't sell any significant amounts when the price was 300+ sat so it looks like he's not using his Forex experience here)


Edited 2020-11-28 to fix a broken image


Edited 2020-11-28 to fix a broken image

[dooglus]

[words] so it looks like he's not using his Forex experience here

You're clearly a novice trader at best. Look at the right hand edge of the chart. Netcoin is exhibiting a very strong cock-n-balls "boner" formation, which is predictive of the price exploding upwards:

[suchmoon]

You're clearly a novice trader at best. Look at the right hand edge of the chart. Netcoin is exhibiting a very strong cock-n-balls "boner" formation, which is predictive of the price exploding upwards:

https://i.imgur.com/G50RH2F.png

I thought it was Leroy giving the finger to his investors who dare to ask questions, but your explanation is much better. My 0.005 BTC investment is going to the moon.

[rdyoung]

[words] so it looks like he's not using his Forex experience here

You're clearly a novice trader at best. Look at the right hand edge of the chart. Netcoin is exhibiting a very strong cock-n-balls "boner" formation, which is predictive of the price exploding upwards:

Holy crap, I needed that laugh. Thank you dooglus

[stingleword]

So why would we want to use a staking pool?
And why wouldn't we want to use a staking pool?

Given this is a guy that operates a site that effectively doubles as a staking pool for its investors, he's probably worth paying attention to on the subject. This lends a lot of credibility to his next insight...

You're clearly a novice trader at best. Look at the right hand edge of the chart. Netcoin is exhibiting a very strong cock-n-balls "boner" formation, which is predictive of the price exploding upwards:

https://i.imgur.com/G50RH2F.png