Mooncoin taken over by the feds?

[joulesbeef]

Someone suggested I post this here.

If you got to https://moonco.in right now you get an invalid cert error, if you look at the cert it says it is owned by ICE.gov

If you whois he IP of his site, it says it is owned by ice.gov

immigration and customs enforcement, is responsible for closing down a bunch of gambling domains and domains that sell counterfeit goods.


Right now mr_moon is MIA, and his reddit account is deleted(not sure why but figure it is info that belongs here)

his Gmail addy no longer works.

but most of the time when they seize a site you get an federal warning on the site, explaining it was seized.

Last and probably of little note, bitcoinexpress said he was going to report moonco.in to icann for lying on the whois.


which you can imagine how i would feel about that.

[johnj]

What I would wonder is why the guy would lie on his whois in the first place.

[joulesbeef]

What I would wonder is why the guy would lie on his whois in the first place.

really? People like to think of bitcoins as anonymous, it is one of the big draws.

plus you have to admit there are a few trolls here.

and he is running a gambling site in the US.

He probably didnt have to outright lie though, he could have told the truth but not been very forth coming. Set up a business name. He could have obscured his identity without lying

[Stephen Gornick]

If you whois he IP of his site, it says it is owned by ice.gov

Shows Akamai for me.
http://dnstools.com/?count=1&arin=on&portNum=80&target=moonco.in&submit=Go%21

[ampirebus]

i dont know what moon coin is, why its important or what it did/does, or why they would get shut down

please inform me

[Stephen Gornick]

i dont know what moon coin is, why its important or what it did/does, or why they would get shut down

please inform me

It had been operating with a variety of services -- including something interesting to me, a prediction market similar to what http://www.betsofbitco.in offers.  Google cache shows a recent version of the site:
 - http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:moonco.in&hl=en&strip=1

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=23002.0
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=29375.0
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25182.0

[Isepick]

As I said in the other thread, it is precisely for this reason that Namecoin exists. Note that sites do not need to be based in the U.S. for the US Government to seize their domains, since ICANN is based in the US. I wonder if this is an isolated incident or the start of something larger.

[BitVapes]

A lot of speculation elsewhere that this was a 'faked' ICE seizure and the moonco admin just took the bitcoins and ran and setup a fake ICE seizure as his excuse/alibi

[BitcoinPorn]

A lot of speculation elsewhere that this was a 'faked' ICE seizure and the moonco admin just took the bitcoins and ran and setup a fake ICE seizure as his excuse/alibi

Wow, I was going to post that as my going theory.

Damn you BitcoinExpress btw, karma will not be kind to you in life.

But yeah, Mr Moon seemed fed up with having to deal with everyone's bullshit, this is one of the few times that I almost would side with that party based on the amount or real stress that must have been caused by just the SolidCoin hater harassment alone, people are such assholes.

[johnj]

A lot of speculation elsewhere that this was a 'faked' ICE seizure and the moonco admin just took the bitcoins and ran and setup a fake ICE seizure as his excuse/alibi

Wow, I was going to post that as my going theory.

Damn you BitcoinExpress btw, karma will not be kind to you in life.

But yeah, Mr Moon seemed fed up with having to deal with everyone's bullshit, this is one of the few times that I almost would side with that party based on the amount or real stress that must have been caused by just the SolidCoin hater harassment alone, people are such assholes.

I dunno.  SolidCoin was shady from the start.  Lots of promises backed by one guy?  Bragging his chain was flawless, exposing it to attack and harming the users of his chain to fluff his ego?  Doesn't sound stable at all.  Infact, this sounds par-for-course in terms of SC's history.

[BitcoinPorn]

I dunno.  SolidCoin was shady from the start.  Lots of promises backed by one guy?  Bragging his chain was flawless, exposing it to attack and harming the users of his chain to fluff his ego?  Doesn't sound stable at all.  Infact, this sounds par-for-course in terms of SC's history.

SolidCoin and Mr Moon are not the same person nor thing.  Mr Moon was being harassed by SolidCoin haters just because he was dealing with SolidCoin at all it seems.  People did not like the fact that you could have a nice place to exchange BTC and SolidCoin, along with side perks.

[BitcoinPorn]

Doesn't this belong in "Alternate Cryptocurrencies"

BITCOINEXPRESS DOESN'T MAKE THE RULES..

.. HE JUST ENFORCES THEM!

[FreeMoney]

Doesn't this belong in "Alternate Cryptocurrencies"

No? He took my bitcoins it seems. I thought I withdrew, but I can't find the tx, maybe I didn't or maybe he didn't pay it.

[joulesbeef]

Doesn't this belong in "Alternate Cryptocurrencies"

THERE IS A COPY THERE AND SOMEONE ELSE SUGGEST I POST IN BTC DISCUSSION SINCE YOU KNOW MOONCO.IN WAS ORIGINALLY A BTC SITE, AND YOU COULD BET ONLY WITH BTC AND NAMECOINS AND NOT WITH ANY ALT CURRENCY(yes I know namecoin is one technically, how about search the site for it) AND THE EXCHANGE TRADED BTC AS WELL.... BUT IF YOU THINK IT WOULD BE BETTER IF WE KEPT BITCOIN USERS IN THE DARK ABOUT WHERE THEIR BITCOINS WENT THEN BY ALL MEANS HAVE THE THREAD MOVED.


and yeah i had a couple btc there as well. WE all get how much you hate solidcoin and yes it was the biggest solidcoin exchange, but it was mainly a BTC site

[Andrew Bitcoiner]

Serial No. of the SSL certificate used on
moonco.in: 01:00:00:00:00:01:2C:EC:30:35:8B
ice.gov 01:00:00:00:00:01:2C:EC:30:35:8B
(the sha1 and md5 fingerprints are also the same)

whois: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/476701/
output of moonco.in: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/476705/
nmap: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/476710/

I had 2 bitcents on moonco.in 

You nailed it.  He's a scammer.  Bring out the pitchforks.

[w00ly]

doesnt make sense that ice would close his gmail and especially his reddit account (wtf?). Definitely smells of scam imo

[johnj]

Hmm, wonder if that is where that 20k sell-off came from.

[Cosbycoin]

Doesn't this belong in "Alternate Cryptocurrencies"

BITCOINEXPRESS DOESN'T MAKE THE RULES..

.. HE JUST ENFORCES THEM!

And you cry about them when they are enforced...

[joulesbeef]

actually i will agree with you there btcexpress, people need to be wary, i didnt have anything of consequence, at todays prices probably less than $25. I thought about removing them and even told people it would be stupid not to, until the solidcoin situation was worked out but that I didnt have enough to matter if it was lost.

here is what a domain normally looks like after being seized

and it's whois

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Serial No. of the SSL certificate used on
moonco.in: 01:00:00:00:00:01:2C:EC:30:35:8B
ice.gov 01:00:00:00:00:01:2C:EC:30:35:8B
(the sha1 and md5 fingerprints are also the same)

whois: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/476701/
output of moonco.in: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/476705/
nmap: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/476710/

I had 2 bitcents on moonco.in  

You nailed it.  He's a scammer.  Bring out the pitchforks.

I'm on it!