Are Chinese bitcoin investors that gullible?

[hl5460]

Note: Charlie Shrem is a bitcoin advocate who co-founded a bitcoin exchange start-up Bitinstant in 2011. The company charged a fee for users to purchase and make purchases with bitcoins at over 700,000 locations. On January 27, 2014, Charlie Shrem was arrested at New York’s JFK airport and charged with “conspiring to commit money laundering by selling more than $1 million in bitcoins to users of the black market website Silk Road”. BitInstant website has been blank since then. Charlie  was sentenced to two years behind bars, serving his time at Lewisburg Federal Prison Camp in Pennsylvania. He has now been released from imprisonment and is serving three years of supervised release.

His recent ICO plan was questioned by Chinese lawyer:

Liu Xinyu, a senior partner of Dacheng Law Offices, warns that Chinese investors should consider it as carrying a “high degree of risk”. He suggests that no investment should be made without detailed info about the following questions.

Is there a maximum amount of token holders?

How to be a accredited investor for Chinese investors?

Who is the owner of all those digital assets?

How to verify project info?

How to protect the interest of token holders?

How to sell tokens? To whom?

http://news.8btc.com/bitcoins-first-felon-charlie-shrem-speaks-about-his-new-investment-fund

[Wind_FURY]

Why are they singling out Charlie Shrem? There are other ICOs in China that also deserves the same kind of attention. There is this new big ICO called Qtum that was featured in Coindesk a few months ago and it has formally announced that they had $1m in VC funding. They are also claiming that Roger Ver is an investor.

If you check their ANN thread there are a lot of dishonest stuff being exposed there. The lead developer or something was involved in an altcoin scam and ran away with hundreds of Bitcoins. The Chinese lawyer should question them too without bias.

[franky1]

ICO=pre-mined coins

majority of pre-mined coins are pump and dumps.
it does not matter how many coins are produced or any of that. unless a coin serves an actual purpose and actually has places to use a coin. its useless.

treat ICO's as penny stocks (pumps and dumps) only throw a penny at them, and at most just the same amount you would waste on fast food that just gets flushed away in the toilet 6 hours later.

and as for all governments that all make the standard investment advice of "investors should consider it as carrying a “high degree of risk”. and not to expect guaranteed returns or profits. because you can make a loss aswell as a gain"

[HabBear]

Why would Chinese investor be gullible?

I'm probably not understanding the full story. Are you saying that Chinese investors are gullible for considering an ICO or that Chinese investors are gullible because they need or are listening to the Chinese lawyer's questions/guidance?

What exactly are you asking here?

[hl5460]

Why would Chinese investor be gullible?

I'm probably not understanding the full story. Are you saying that Chinese investors are gullible for considering an ICO or that Chinese investors are gullible because they need or are listening to the Chinese lawyer's questions/guidance?

What exactly are you asking here?

Sorry, the title is a quote from Chinese news comments.

[Kakmakr]

The government has a obligation to protect consumers from fraudulent operations and any information that would help to inform gullible people, will help. Most people's judgement is clouded by greed and then they make bad decisions. Just look at the success of MMM for instance and with a simple "Google" search, losses could have been avoided.

There is a difference between being gullible and being greedy. ^hmmmmmm^

[ImHash]

This is just another story mentioning someone got arrested and went to prison simply because was involved with bitcoin, I'd strongly suggest to ignore any information on this thread because a homeless man can get arrested and go to prison due to involvement with begging for paper money
And about ICO, why would you offer coins to people if you know you can succeed? yes ICO usually puts the risks of failure on investors.

[hl5460]

Why are they singling out Charlie Shrem? There are other ICOs in China that also deserves the same kind of attention. There is this new big ICO called Qtum that was featured in Coindesk a few months ago and it has formally announced that they had $1m in VC funding. They are also claiming that Roger Ver is an investor.

If you check their ANN thread there are a lot of dishonest stuff being exposed there. The lead developer or something was involved in an altcoin scam and ran away with hundreds of Bitcoins. The Chinese lawyer should question them too without bias.

Can you give me the link?

[N00Bitcoin]

Never invest money in ICO which is found by criminals, your tokens will be worthless if he gets arrested again.

[megynacuna]

I don't think they are gullible but they are generally genuine risk takers who want to see the good outcome of a risky venture.

[hl5460]

I don't think they are gullible but they are generally genuine risk takers who want to see the good outcome of a risky venture.

It's human nature to take risk, only difference is preference.

[szpalata]

Never invest money in ICO which is found by criminals, your tokens will be worthless if he gets arrested again.

Well you should tell Yobit and the likes to stop listing shitcoins on their platforms to defraud investors of their hard earned money(Bitcoins). They've found the easiest root to riches is to fork coin to create a shit coin and run an ICO.

[hl5460]

Never invest money in ICO which is found by criminals, your tokens will be worthless if he gets arrested again.

Well you should tell Yobit and the likes to stop listing shitcoins on their platforms to defraud investors of their hard earned money(Bitcoins). They've found the easiest root to riches is to fork coin to create a shit coin and run an ICO.

Chinese exchanges might never touch any ICO again if they follow the self-regulation rules.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1801250.msg17944659#msg17944659

[RoommateAgreement]

Never invest money in ICO which is found by criminals, your tokens will be worthless if he gets arrested again.

Well you should tell Yobit and the likes to stop listing shitcoins on their platforms to defraud investors of their hard earned money(Bitcoins). They've found the easiest root to riches is to fork coin to create a shit coin and run an ICO.

first of all i think yobit is russian or mostly of unknown origin and shady.
second of all they will never do that. because listing these shitcoins is how they earn money. first they get paid to list some of these from the developer then they may get paid to pump it. even if they are not they fake pump it when it died and nobody were watching to fool their newbie users to buy from the inflated price and then dump on them.

[Wind_FURY]

ICO=pre-mined coins

majority of pre-mined coins are pump and dumps.
it does not matter how many coins are produced or any of that. unless a coin serves an actual purpose and actually has places to use a coin. its useless.

This brings me to this question. If an ICO coin or token has serves some actual purpose in its own platform like how Ethereum is used for "gas"to run smart contracts in the platform, would you say that kind of "use" is justifiable to not brand it as a pump and dump or ponzi scheme?

[franky1]

ICO=pre-mined coins

majority of pre-mined coins are pump and dumps.
it does not matter how many coins are produced or any of that. unless a coin serves an actual purpose and actually has places to use a coin. its useless.

This brings me to this question. If an ICO coin or token has serves some actual purpose in its own platform like how Ethereum is used for "gas"to run smart contracts in the platform, would you say that kind of "use" is justifiable to not brand it as a pump and dump or ponzi scheme?

if ethereum cannot function without gas. and if ethereum too has an actual use. thus making 'gas' essential and usable for something real.. then yes it passes the usability test that it can survive beyond some fabricated promotional period.

but if its just a Kenyewest coin. created for no purpose but to have a famous persona brand name.. and wont survive past a promotional period, because people cant use it for anything real. then treat it as a pump and dump coin/novelty.  not as a asset

[rajasumi3]

I don't think they are gullible but they are generally genuine risk takers who want to see the good outcome of a risky venture.

It's human nature to take risk, only difference is preference.

well risk should be taken? Yes it should be , but should it be taken with not too much information. Well we study the market very careful before doing anything.

[Wind_FURY]

ICO=pre-mined coins

majority of pre-mined coins are pump and dumps.
it does not matter how many coins are produced or any of that. unless a coin serves an actual purpose and actually has places to use a coin. its useless.

This brings me to this question. If an ICO coin or token has serves some actual purpose in its own platform like how Ethereum is used for "gas"to run smart contracts in the platform, would you say that kind of "use" is justifiable to not brand it as a pump and dump or ponzi scheme?

if ethereum cannot function without gas. and if ethereum too has an actual use. thus making 'gas' essential and usable for something real.. then yes it passes the usability test that it can survive beyond some fabricated promotional period.

But what if the platform itself is not scalable and cannot work as promised? These concerns are already slowly being voiced by some observers but they are not recognized by the developers. Instead the developers keep saying that Ethereum will work as promised but there is a chance they are hiding the truth. How would you classify something like that which is still hanging but know that there is a big chance it will not work? Ponzi or not?

[Wind_FURY]

Franky1, it would be nice if you answer my question in the post I made before this. I would like to know what you think because I value your opinion even if we have different views and opinions sometimes. Thanks.

[franky1]

a ponzi is where you hand funds over. and those funds are just used to pay off the middle mans other debtors. where you are left with nothing.
basically hand over X with promises of X+0.X return. but wher X pays out to others as their 0.X return.

totally different game theory to cryptocurrencies


crap coins are you buying an 'asset' with the knowledge/naivity that the asset may go up or down in value.
if it goes down and becomes worthless. you might aswell have bought a bag of dogs mess..(hence crapcoin)

unless a coin has REAL utility its a crapcoin. and its 'value' is short lived with a pump and dump.
some try to rinse and repeat empty promises of FUTURE POSSIBLE uses.. but unless it has ACTUAL REAL USE NOW. treat it as a pump and dump crap coin.

if a crapcoins 'utility' is just a peg to another coin. but that second coin has no REAL WORLD UTILITY. then defacto the first coin is just as crap.


EG
bitcoin is great example of how real utility gave real value. it was released in january 2009. but did not actually get any "value" until 2010 when it obtained REAL UTILITY (bitcoin pizza / alpaca socks) and its VALUE increased due to REAL UTILITY (silkroad then more legit merchants).

in short if a coin just mentions future 'possibilities' your playing 100% speculation (pump and dump).

look for where it has REAL AND ACTUAL USE and follow the real and actual utility growth to know of its 'value' and longevity