What is with Bitmex????

[wwzsocki]

Looks like fake news because the Bitmex website is still working and trading ongoing.

But would be great to have some more info on this, for sure will impact prices across all markets and as we can see BTC is going down already!

https://twitter.com/stephendpalley/status/1311694266389929986

Department of Justice filed criminal charges against Hayes, Delo, Reed and BitMEX head of business development Greg Dwyer with violating the Bank Secrecy Act. According to the DOJ press release, Reed was arrested in Massachusetts on Thursday morning "and will be presented in federal court there."

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/79483/cftc-bitmex-charges-lawsuit

[1714948469]

1714948469

[mr.relax]

https://www.coindesk.com/bitmex-cftc-enforcement
I still have full access to the Bitmex site. The Logo you showed does not appear. Everything is fine.
Read the article above with info, whats happening there.

[Indymoney]

Looks like fake news because the Bitmex website is still working and trading ongoing.

But would be great to have some more info on this, for sure will impact the rice and as we can see BTC is going down already!

https://twitter.com/stephendpalley/status/1311694266389929986

Department of Justice filed criminal charges against Hayes, Delo, Reed and BitMEX head of business development Greg Dwyer with violating the Bank Secrecy Act. According to the DOJ press release, Reed was arrested in Massachusetts on Thursday morning "and will be presented in federal court there."

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/79483/cftc-bitmex-charges-lawsuit

For better response from members of this community move this thread to Services Discussion Exchanges section https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=223.0  I also check its working ok but on social media something happening may be they are doing some investigation or any other related to this exchange.

[wwzsocki]

For better response from members of this community move this thread to Services Discussion Exchanges section...

Thanks for this suggestion, of course, you are right, but I have published this thread here on purpose.
I don't want to make too much noise and to spread this too much, because it's already used for market manipulation and has impact on the crypto market as a whole.

I see many different versions of this news published across all social media channels and biggest crypto media outlets at the same time.
Ranging from an ongoing investigation, to even such info that Bitmex CTO Reed is already in jail, as you can see in the quote in my OP, ending on fake Bitmex exchange seizure screens, spreading on Twitter like crazy. This will cause panic and already has, don't want to help in this but hard to not talk about this when we are involved in crypto, especially here on Bitcointalk forum.

I wanted to make the community aware but don't cause panic and fuel more hype for this, all interested members will find it finally and if not let it be and fade away in the Bitcointalk abyss  

[hosseinimr93]

Yes, the website is working fine and without any problem. They are even allowing people to make withdrawals faster than before.
Below is the announcement made by Bitmex.

United States CFTC & DOJ Filing

In the meantime, the BitMEX platform is operating entirely as normal and all funds are safe. To allay any potential customer concerns, pending withdrawal requests were processed at 17:45 UTC, in line with our standard procedures. We will process another off-cycle withdrawal at 08:00 UTC, 02 Oct 2020, and then 13:00 UTC, as usual.

[nutildah]

For better response from members of this community move this thread to Services Discussion Exchanges section...

Thanks for this suggestion, of course, you are right, but I have published this thread here on purpose.
I don't want to make too much noise and to spread this too much, because it's already used for market manipulation and has impact on the crypto market as a whole.

The funny thing about BitMEX is they don't actually exchange anything. You can only deposit BTC there and withdrawal BTC from there. You give them your BTC and they give you "fun tokens" which you can then cash out for BTC when you're done playing their games. So I wouldn't leave this topic in this thread, nor would I be concerned about dropping the price of BTC by having it in other sections.

[wwzsocki]

...among the table of top traders were found U.S. residents...they were sued for lack of registration of commodity exchange trading futures.

I only wonder how they found all these top BiTmax traders with no KYC/AML data?

Pretty scarry and alarming to be honest.

Mass withdraws began...already deduced 20% of the exchange balance..

Yes, I expected this to happen.

No matter what BiTmex will do people are losing confidence in them and will withdraw, to be honest, I think this is only the beginning and the snowball effect will be only bigger with every new day. People are afraid and they are totally right that finally all BiTmex owners will end up in jail and no matter how many additional withdrawals they will offer this will not change what people think right now.

[figmentofmyass]

Looks like fake news because the Bitmex website is still working and trading ongoing.

this press release looks pretty real to me: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8270-20

i'm sure the feds could seize the domain if they wanted to---it's a .com domain. they may not have because they didn't wanna look impotent, since there is no way to get their hands on bitmex's wallets. filing charges and arresting one of the owners is the DOJ's way of prodding bitmex into voluntarily dealing with them.

crazy times. the wild west era really is coming to an end. i guess this is why bitmex was rolling out mandatory KYC. they felt the walls closing in.

[LordShanken]

The accusations are that they knowingly allowed money laundering.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/technology/bitmex-bitcoin-criminal-charges.html

As the New York Times writes, it is about company registered in Hong Kong. I suspect it is external Market Maker.

The case will be about proving that they allowed it with full awareness. But in my opinion, if the prosecution makes such information public, they already have very good evidence of it. The judgment in this case is only a matter of time.

[Darker45]

I am not a lawyer but I wonder how could one country legally seize a domain of a company which is governed by the separate laws of a different sovereign country?

We know that BitMex is legally registered under the laws of the Republic of Seychelles and is mainly operating from Hong Kong. We also know that the services of BitMex are not offered to the citizens of the United States. With all these information, is it legally valid that the USA filed civil and criminal cases against the entity and its top officers, respectively, for violations of the US Bank Secrecy Act, in particular their failure to gather personal identity information of their users as well as the information of their transactions? I mean, can a certain company registered in one county be sued under the laws of another country?

If there are Americans found to be trading on BitMex then they're the ones who should be charged under the laws of the USA. BitMex could be charged but only according to the laws of Seychelles under which it is governed.

[wwzsocki]

Looks like fake news because the Bitmex website is still working and trading ongoing.

this press release looks pretty real to me: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8270-20

As you can see I was talking about the domain seizure, especially the screen you can see which was and is obviously not the truth.
Additionally, at the time of writing there was a lot of different news coming out, so I wanted to be transparent as possible with the community and not spread false info.

I think this the biggest mistake we can do as a community when such news popup is to spread them further without proper checking, causing only more panic and harm to the market.
This happened already many times and these bad forces behind, count on this and do everything to go viral.

My advice is to take it always easy and think twice before posting because it could look like a great topic for a thread and real info but without even knowing it you are the tool in their hands causing chaos they count on.

[LordShanken]

Looks like fake news because the Bitmex website is still working and trading ongoing.

this press release looks pretty real to me: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8270-20

As you can see I was talking about the domain seizure, especially the screen you can see which was and is obviously not the truth.
Additionally, at the time of writing there was a lot of different news coming out, so I wanted to be transparent as possible with the community to not spread false info.

I think this the biggest mistake we can do as a community when such news popup is to spread them further without proper checking, causing only more panic and harm to the market.
This happened already many times and these bad forces behind, count on this and do everything to go viral.

My advice is to take it always easy and think twice before posting because it could look like a great topic for a thread and real info but without even knowing it you are the tool in their hands causing chaos they count on.

From your statement, I assume that you saw something disturbing and you reacted.
Something happened, it's true, but I don't understand why talk about it as something incorrect ?! This is what the forum is for! So that people talk to each other, help each other and verify the facts.

Take it easy!

[Tytanowy Janusz]

I am not a lawyer but I wonder how could one country legally seize a domain of a company which is governed by the separate laws of a different sovereign country?

We know that BitMex is legally registered under the laws of the Republic of Seychelles and is mainly operating from Hong Kong. We also know that the services of BitMex are not offered to the citizens of the United States. With all these information, is it legally valid that the USA filed civil and criminal cases against the entity and its top officers, respectively, for violations of the US Bank Secrecy Act, in particular their failure to gather personal identity information of their users as well as the information of their transactions? I mean, can a certain company registered in one county be sued under the laws of another country?

If there are Americans found to be trading on BitMex then they're the ones who should be charged under the laws of the USA. BitMex could be charged but only according to the laws of Seychelles under which it is governed.

Yea that's the most funny part to me too. Looks like US thinks that US law = international law. And US can go around the world and jail anyone they want. Jail CEO of company registred in Seychelles and operating from Hong Kong only because few of US citizens were using Bitmex on their own free will. Can you imagine this shit from other country - not US? A small village in Africa creates a law that it's citizens can't use facebook, few of them used facebook, so Mark Zuckerberg is going to jain. What a nonsense.

Money laundering? As someone mentioned before they were accepting BTC deposits and BTC withdrawals. So what money laundering we are talking about if BTC is not a currency according to US law (Bitcoin is generally not considered legal tender.). So basically speaking bitmex was only accepting deposits and withdrawals of collectables. I've never heard about law that prohibits collectables laundering.

[Darker45]

~snip~

Yea that's the most funny part to me too. Looks like US thinks that US law = international law. And US can go around the world and jail anyone they want. Jail CEO of company registred in Seychelles and operating from Hong Kong only because few of US citizens were using Bitmex on their own free will. Can you imagine this shit from other country - not US? A small village in Africa creates a law that it's citizens can't use facebook, few of them used facebook, so Mark Zuckerberg is going to jain. What a nonsense.

Money laundering? As someone mentioned before they were accepting BTC deposits and BTC withdrawals. So what money laundering we are talking about if BTC is not a currency according to US law (Bitcoin is generally not considered legal tender.). So basically speaking bitmex was only accepting deposits and withdrawals of collectables. I've never heard about law that prohibits collectables laundering.

Unfortunately, that has always been the case. The US has this superiority complex which makes them think they are the standard of everything. They constantly meddle with domestic affairs of other independent countries because they want to impose their own set of principles, lifestyle, beliefs, and so on and so forth. I can even notice this to ordinary American citizens. When non-Americans go to America, they need to behave like Americans, but when Americans go to foreign countries they want others to adjust to however they are comfortable.

Crypto companies, however large they may be, should take this BitMex harassment as a very stern warning. They are not vulnerable from US suppression regardless of where they are legally licensed, where they operate, under which laws they are governed, and so on. This is Uncle Sam saying, "you can ran but you can never hide."

[exstasie]

Yea that's the most funny part to me too. Looks like US thinks that US law = international law. And US can go around the world and jail anyone they want.

Why not? They did it with Alexander Vinnik, owner of BTC-e. Same principle. It was just more straightforward, practically and legally, to go after their bank accounts. In this situation, they can't freeze or seize any money.

They already have one of Bitmex's owners in jail. Sadly I do not see anyone coming to his rescue.

Jail CEO of company registred in Seychelles and operating from Hong Kong only because few of US citizens were using Bitmex on their own free will.

Hayes shouldn't have taunted the US authorities, bragging about how easy it is to bribe Seychelles regulators and how easy it is to get around Bitmex's AML/KYC controls with a VPN.

I think this is a message to all the companies hiding in the Seychelles and avoiding mandatory KYC. Binance, Poloniex, etc.

Money laundering? As someone mentioned before they were accepting BTC deposits and BTC withdrawals. So what money laundering we are talking about if BTC is not a currency according to US law (Bitcoin is generally not considered legal tender.). So basically speaking bitmex was only accepting deposits and withdrawals of collectables. I've never heard about law that prohibits collectables laundering.

If collectibles are used as part of a money laundering scheme, it's still money laundering. Money laundering is about the act of concealing the source of illegal proceeds, not about whether the scheme employs legal tender. Legal tender status just means it must be accepted as payment of debts and taxes. Fincen has made clear that it applies its money laundering regulations to centralized exchanges, whether or not fiat money is involved.

https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/new-fincen-guidance-affirms-its-longstanding-regulatory-framework-virtual

[nutildah]

filing charges and arresting one of the owners is the DOJ's way of prodding bitmex into voluntarily dealing with them.

Hayes shouldn't have taunted the US authorities, bragging about how easy it is to bribe Seychelles regulators and how easy it is to get around Bitmex's AML/KYC controls with a VPN.

Yes, You are right here.

Ultimately, BitMEX contributed very little to the Bitcoin ecosystem. They were more or less just a casino pretending to be an exchange. I won't feel bad if they get shut down completely as they offered very little value to actual traders... As I said initially, you can't actually trade anything for anything there. It's just a video game where you get rewarded Fun Tickets if you win the game, which are then redeemable for BTC. That part of "bitcoin culture" needs to disappear entirely if actual bitcoiners (not Arthur) want not only regulators but the general public worldwide to take them seriously.

[figmentofmyass]

I am not a lawyer but I wonder how could one country legally seize a domain of a company which is governed by the separate laws of a different sovereign country?

bitmex operates from a .com domain, which is managed by verisign, who consistently obeys takedown requests from the USA government. the domain could easily be seized if they wanted.

We also know that the services of BitMex are not offered to the citizens of the United States. With all these information, is it legally valid that the USA filed civil and criminal cases against the entity and its top officers, respectively, for violations of the US Bank Secrecy Act, in particular their failure to gather personal identity information of their users as well as the information of their transactions?

the question is whether they offered services to USA customers. just because they put it in their terms doesn't really mean anything. whether they actually enforced those terms, and whether IP address alone is sufficient to determine customer location, are what matters. that's what this case is about.

If there are Americans found to be trading on BitMex then they're the ones who should be charged under the laws of the USA.

it's not illegal for USA customers to trade on bitmex. it is illegal for bitmex to offer its services to USA customers. big difference.

[exstasie]

Ultimately, BitMEX contributed very little to the Bitcoin ecosystem. They were more or less just a casino pretending to be an exchange. I won't feel bad if they get shut down completely as they offered very little value to actual traders... As I said initially, you can't actually trade anything for anything there. It's just a video game where you get rewarded Fun Tickets if you win the game, which are then redeemable for BTC. That part of "bitcoin culture" needs to disappear entirely if actual bitcoiners (not Arthur) want not only regulators but the general public worldwide to take them seriously.

I don't think we can get rid of speculators. They come with the territory. You can't have a game changing form of money in limited supply and expect it to not be volatile. And with a volatile asset, you can't expect traders to stay away. It's all very natural and organic in my view.

I agree that Bitmex has contributed very little to the ecosystem. In fact, their once daily withdrawal scheme has consistently driven up network fees for a long time. Not to mention all the traders they have screwed over with their laggy, unresponsive platform. I left a long time ago.

[Tytanowy Janusz]

I don't think we can get rid of speculators. They come with the territory. You can't have a game changing form of money in limited supply and expect it to not be volatile. And with a volatile asset, you can't expect traders to stay away. It's all very natural and organic in my view.

I agree that Bitmex has contributed very little to the ecosystem. In fact, their once daily withdrawal scheme has consistently driven up network fees for a long time. Not to mention all the traders they have screwed over with their laggy, unresponsive platform. I left a long time ago.

I agree.

Each market participant is valuableh, no matter what his purpose is. Investor/trader/speculant/market maker/gambler.

There is no volume without traders/speculators. There is no liquidity without volume. Without liquidity there are no inwestors (10% slippage will scare out most of big investors)


I dare to say that without speculators asset would be much more volatile because of no liquidity. Bitmex was the biggest BTC/USD market for quite a while and i'm sure that, despite gamblers, there were also a lot of market makers that was using Bitmex liquidity to hedge their positions from other crypto exchanges.

[wwzsocki]

I still keep wondering how they get all these data on all involved U.S citizens?

Of course, there will be quite a few who used VPN but a shitty one or did nothing more to protect themselves because after so many years they became lazy.

Still, they need at least some confirmation from the source Bittrex, without such data, it could be probably not possible to sue all these people and Bitmex because they will have no clue on the volumes, amounts of money involved by each individual and at all.

Nobody is saying this but for me, it's just obvious that there has to be somebody working with the agency from the Bitmex stuff or there was a leak or other data breach.

Bitmex never worked with the U.S agencies, so they had to get their hands on real data somehow, which can be verified and confirmed that are authentical, only insider job is what comes to my mind.

So, if this is true then this is pretty scary, what is your opinion on that?

[figmentofmyass]

Nobody is saying this but for me, it's just obvious that there has to be somebody working with the agency from the Bitmex stuff or there was a leak or other data breach.

last november, bitmex carelessly leaked ~30k customer email addresses: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitmex-email-data-leak-fallout-is-serious-many-users-already-affected

maybe that pointed the feds in the right direction. they have lots of user data from past requests from other USA-facing exchanges. if hundreds or thousands of those addresses belonged to confirmed USA residents, maybe the justice dept used that as justification to pursue a case against them.

Bitmex never worked with the U.S agencies, so they had to get their hands on real data somehow, which can be verified and confirmed that are authentical, only insider job is what comes to my mind.

IIRC the SEC and CFTC built a case against 1broker partly by having agents engage in prohibited trading activity from the USA---activity that 1broker should have been blocking. that demonstrated that they were operating in the USA.

i'm guessing agents did the same with bitmex, and that the case is not purely based on 3rd party data.

[wwzsocki]

IIRC the SEC and CFTC built a case against 1broker partly by having agents engage in prohibited trading activity from the USA---activity that 1broker should have been blocking. that demonstrated that they were operating in the USA.

i'm guessing agents did the same with bitmex, and that the case is not purely based on 3rd party data.

Ok then only Bitmex would be accused and I have read that many U.S whales will face problems for unregulated trading, taxes.

This detailed informations about all these people have to be solid, they have to operate with real numbers and the only way to do this is to have access to Bitmex data one way or another.

[figmentofmyass]

IIRC the SEC and CFTC built a case against 1broker partly by having agents engage in prohibited trading activity from the USA---activity that 1broker should have been blocking. that demonstrated that they were operating in the USA.

i'm guessing agents did the same with bitmex, and that the case is not purely based on 3rd party data.

Ok then only Bitmex would be accused and I have read that many U.S whales will face problems for unregulated trading, taxes.

i suspect that's a big part of this. they are probably leveraging criminal charges to force the owners into giving up all their user data. maybe it will be under the guise of sanctions enforcement, but one way or another i reckon the IRS plans to get their hands on that data and use it to go after large scale tax evaders.

[gentlemand]

Ok then only Bitmex would be accused and I have read that many U.S whales will face problems for unregulated trading, taxes.

This detailed informations about all these people have to be solid, they have to operate with real numbers and the only way to do this is to have access to Bitmex data one way or another.

Taxes of course, as for 'unregulated trading' it's the platform's problem for allowing it. I'm unaware of any law about a civilian taking their business to places they may not approve of. Maybe there is one. Dunno.

[wwzsocki]

Taxes of course, as for 'unregulated trading' it's the platform's problem for allowing it. I'm unaware of any law about a civilian taking their business to places they may not approve of. Maybe there is one. Dunno.

TBH I have never traded there, so I can't tell but if there was something added to the platform, that Bitmex doesn't accept U.S citizens by registration and then they bypassed it with full awareness using VPS or any other tool, then (I am of course not sure) but it seems like they can be charged because registered and used exchange knowing about U.S limitation.

Now going back to Bitmex and "insider job", the most obvious scenario is that they offered somebody a deal in return for info, but we will have to wait for court cases to know something more.

[gentlemand]

It'll be interesting to see what effect Bitmex either going full sensible or buggering off will have. It's possible that it'll be the same as when all the piece of shit Chinese zero fee exchanges died, Bitcoin finally took off after years of suppression.

I've no doubt Bitmex commanded the price for long stretches as people played with spot markets to screw with others on it.

[figmentofmyass]

It'll be interesting to see what effect Bitmex either going full sensible or buggering off will have. It's possible that it'll be the same as when all the piece of shit Chinese zero fee exchanges died, Bitcoin finally took off after years of suppression.

i'm not convinced that wasn't a coincidence.

it's funny given the timing---it might fit perfectly with the "4 year cycle" bitcoin bulls are always talking about. chinese exchanges died in 2017, bitcoin mooned. bitmex dies in 2021, and.....?

I've no doubt Bitmex commanded the price for long stretches as people played with spot markets to screw with others on it.

whales fighting with whales. i reckon spot whales fucked with their share of bitmex whales too. that's just how it goes in such an illiquid market.

[gentlemand]

it's funny given the timing---it might fit perfectly with the "4 year cycle" bitcoin bulls are always talking about. chinese exchanges died in 2017, bitcoin mooned. bitmex dies in 2021, and.....?

You never know. It's quite possible. I wonder who we'll have to sacrifice in future. Perhaps we'll need to make sure Tether keeps limping on then we can push it off a cliff and watch it plummet into the abyss at the right moment.

As for China I think it was a strong factor. For some reason exchanges elsewhere always worked their way up, China smacked them down and they'd run screaming. I remember all the talk of '95% of trading happens in China' when it was actually 5-6 teenagers with bots, and the exchange owners of course.

[wwzsocki]

Heh, apparently BitMEX is now ready to accept any conditions, just to stay afloat...

Any news about BitMEX?

To be honest I haven't heard anything in the past week?

Of course, we can see that even BitMex finally will accept regulations and for sure this is a big win for U.S law enforcement.

I wonder what will be with the jailed board member and if implementing KYC now will be enough to keep the ball going?

If you have something, heard something, please share.

[nelson4lov]

From the latest news is the addition of new pairs on BitMEX.

And here's an interesting moment. Let us recall the chronology of events: On Bitmex filed a lawsuit in the court, as a result of which massive withdrawals from the exchange begin, most of the liquidity goes to Binance, then the management changes, then the timing of KYC implementation is accelerated and then BNB trading is announced.

Something tells me that it's not just that. Imagine this in 2019, BitMEX and Binance - these were almost the main competitors.

Looks to me like Binance has taken the lead in this one. People began to lose faith in Bitmex the moment their management changed and they accelerated KYC verification for their users. That only instigated more fear among their users. If they aren't careful, they might start becoming obsolete as they've been losing volume on daily basis according to Coinmarketcap.

In hindsight, it's time to get careful with binance too. They might get hit soon even if they have a different branch for their US customers.

[figmentofmyass]

Looks to me like Binance has taken the lead in this one. People began to lose faith in Bitmex the moment their management changed and they accelerated KYC verification for their users. That only instigated more fear among their users. If they aren't careful, they might start becoming obsolete as they've been losing volume on daily basis according to Coinmarketcap.

In hindsight, it's time to get careful with binance too. They might get hit soon even if they have a different branch for their US customers.

this is exactly the same thing binance did in 2017. back then, the established altcoin exchanges (bittrex, poloniex) were pressured by regulators to implement mandatory KYC. binance on the other hand, as a newcomer to the market, retained their unverified KYC levels, went on a listing spree, and paid out lucrative referrals. it paid off big time, obviously. they continued skirting the law for 2 years before even showing USA traders the door.

i see the same thing happening now. binance futures was only just launched a year ago. CZ probably figures they can get away with at least another 1+ years of the status quo. they'll grab a huge piece of the post-bitmex market share, and then they'll just implement KYC down the road when they feel regulators closing in.

[wwzsocki]

...Something tells me that it's not just that. Imagine this in 2019, BitMEX and Binance - these were almost the main competitors.

To be honest, I never understood why some exchanges don't list other exchanges tokens, coins?

All these anty competition explanations, somehow don't get to me and I found this odd because it only takes the profit away and makes lives hard for their clients.

As you said, now when the volumes shrank this is suddenly a good idea to list BNB, they are not concurrents anymore?

I think these are/were fully personal decisions (in many cases), I don't like you - you don't like me, so we don't list our tokens, and doesn't matter what the clients want or say.

Looks to me like Binance has taken the lead in this one...

Certainly, as a market leader, Binance will take over the majority of Bitmex customers and volume, if not already then soon.

...this is exactly the same thing binance did in 2017

Despite everything, they are able to keep all law enforcements away and so far they have no major problems.

Binance operates on the fringes of the law, but how to act differently when these laws don't exist or are being created on an ongoing basis?

In order to stay in this game, and in a leadership position, that is exactly how one needs to play it, and Binance is the best proof of that.

I don't want to say that I like what they are doing but as we can see this works, so we just shouldn't argue with the facts, I suppose?

[wwzsocki]

...BitMEX management changed very quickly... possible that this could have been organized by Binance.

I wasn't aware of that and to be honest, didn't expect that Hayes position in BitMEX could be so weak.
Don't know how the BitMEX legal structure looks like, but I was sure he owns it or at least is so strong that nothing can influence his position.
I thought that if Hayes will go down - BitMEX goes down too.

I wonder how much truth is behind this Binance rumor and why people think so?
Is there any source of this, like a new board member tied to Binance, don't know, something which could explain this. Of course, obvious reasons such as volumes and new clients flowing to Binance are behind any doubt, but that would benefit Binance anyways, even without any involvement.

I never followed Hayse and don't know what person he is and who are his friends or enemies, but from what I have seen on Twitter, there were more haters than supporters when the U.S law enforcement step in. It's a little surprising for me because at least in the crypto space a significant amount of people should support him.

Like I said I don't know him and maybe a lot of this hate is because of his personality or things he did or said, but still, I haven't seen anybody supporting the BitMEX case.
Pretty strange, taking into consideration the true anonymity and other values his exchanges provided. Looks like the sentiment in the crypto space is slowly changing into pro-regulatory, this case can be a very good example of this.

[wwzsocki]

I think Hayse wasn't supported because of a long history of constant problems with the exchange... nothing has been forgotten in the community.

Thanks for your comments, now I understand this case a lot better.

I think this is very good that the community shows that there is no place or support for obvious scammers.

I can remember many more known exchanges (from my own experience) that suffered "outages" during the biggest market movements, I hope they get the message already  .

[figmentofmyass]

...BitMEX management changed very quickly... possible that this could have been organized by Binance.

I wasn't aware of that and to be honest, didn't expect that Hayes position in BitMEX could be so weak.
Don't know how the BitMEX legal structure looks like, but I was sure he owns it or at least is so strong that nothing can influence his position.

even so, he should be distancing himself from bitmex for the sake of the company and customers. these are serious charges he's facing. stepping down is a standard executive decision in a situation like this.

I wonder how much truth is behind this Binance rumor and why people think so?

because everyone always looks for someone to blame, some sort of conspiracy.

i don't think binance had anything to do with it. the feds have been investigating bitmex for a very long time, and their policy of having absolutely no limits on withdrawals and allegedly not enforcing USA/international sanctions is likely what did them in.

[nutildah]

Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed at the end of 2019-beginning of 2020 distributed themselves the proceeds of illegal activities, knowing that there is an investigation and is already preparing a prosecution. In this way, they tried to reduce the amount that could be confiscated by the U.S. authorities.

Hah. Arthur Hayes hasn't tweeted for over a month, you know the shit must really be hitting the fan if Arthur is off twitter. His background image has text that says "I'm a business man, not a priest." Well I don't think anyone is accusing him of being a priest, and as far as being a business man is concerned, he shoulda stuck to that before moving on to his current job: wanted thief.

[wwzsocki]

...when Bitmex management learned about the investigation against them, they embezzled about $400 millions...

Al I can say is: that so typical!

When the ground starts to shake rats are the first to run to safe lives, of course, human rats are much worse and they run with bags full of stolen money from their clients because the only thing they are scared of is to live without them when being hunted by the law. One day everything collapsed and now every new day is worst and the money will be gone so fast, especially, if you can't run business openly anymore and have to hide. You really need a lot, if you don't want to give up on high standard living.

Wonder if Haynes would be so free today to talk bribes openly?  

Hah. Arthur Hayes hasn't tweeted for over a month, you know the shit must really be hitting the fan if Arthur is off twitter... his current job: wanted thief.

If you have seen how people commented on his Tweets when it started, then you know that 99% was critical, no wonder he stopped.

Always so confident, he suddenly has to curl his tail and run away most of his life, especially if 400 million will be not recovered.

[exstasie]

Bitmex continues to be bombed with lawsuits. This time the claim was filed by the Romanian exchange user, Păun Gabriel-Razvan.
The charges are the same: racketeering, money laundering, market manipulation.

The claim is here: https://www.tbstat.com/wp/uploads/2020/11/BitMEX-Ravzan-Complaint-As-Filed-.pdf

By the way, a similar claim was already filed a month ago by a Moscow user Dmitry Dolgov. And now these guys have the same lawyer.

I wonder how this will affect the exchange? 

There have been a slew of ambulance chasing lawsuits filed against the unregulated exchanges like Bitmex and Bitfinex. I don't believe anything has ever come of them. I'm pretty sure this is a salty, losing trader whose lawyers think he has a chance at clawing back money via punitive damages because of the new charges from the CFTC and DOJ against Bitmex. I'm skeptical there is actually much merit to the case. I think the law firm is trying to get evidence for their nonexistent case through the discovery process, or maybe just force a quick settlement with Bitmex in a cash grab.

I'm usually skeptical of these PR statements from exchanges, but it's true, this ambulance chaser keeps popping up over and over:

"Pavel Pogodin of 'Consensus Law' continues to file spurious claims against us, and others in the cryptocurrency sector," a BitMEX spokesperson today told The Block. "As we've said before, regrettably, Mr. Pogodin operates just like a patent troll, filing 'copy and paste' complaints against us based on rehashed information culled from the internet. We will deal with this through the normal litigation process and remain entirely confident the courts will see his claims for what they are."

[nutildah]

There have been a slew of ambulance chasing lawsuits filed against the unregulated exchanges like Bitmex and Bitfinex.

Dude, you're honestly putting Bitmex and Bitfinex in the same bucket here? Have you ever actually conducted a trade before? Bitmex isn't an exchange. You're not actually exchanging anything for anything. Try it. I dare you. Like I said earlier in this thread, you're just buying fun tokens at an arcade, hoping to win the big prize so you can cash it out for as much or more than you put in. But mainly you're just paying for the experience of "fun" as you can't deposit or withdraw anything other than BTC.

It's all well and good that they can stick another Young Old guy in there, and now this one has legit stock market industry cred, but this isn't gonna solve their problems of breaking a shitload of laws.

https://www.coindesk.com/bitmex-risks-for-defi

The government alleges BitMEX’s “maze” of offshore entities was meant to obscure its significant contacts with the U.S. Despite being registered in the Seychelles, BitMEX allegedly has no physical presence there, but does have many subsidiaries and affiliates in the U.S.  The CFTC also points out:

- Approximately half of BitMEX’s workforce is based in the U.S.
- It developed and runs its website in the U.S.
- One founder allegedly lived in the U.S.
- Another founder, while residing abroad, owns his interest through a Delaware LLC and has a U.S. bank account
- BitMEX actively solicited and marketed to U.S. residents through participation in industry events and the development of a bounty program for U.S. users

[figmentofmyass]

But there is another claim that was recently filed, I wrote about this:

Bitmex continues to be bombed with lawsuits. This time the claim was filed by the Romanian exchange user, Păun Gabriel-Razvan.
The charges are the same: racketeering, money laundering, market manipulation.

The claim is here: https://www.tbstat.com/wp/uploads/2020/11/BitMEX-Ravzan-Complaint-As-Filed-.pdf

By the way, a similar claim was already filed a month ago by a Moscow user Dmitry Dolgov. And now these guys have the same lawyer.

I think you'll have to pay here as well. It's a question of time.

i'm pretty sure pogodin's lawsuits are frivolous and not much will come of them. he's been filing copy/paste manipulation lawsuits against lots of exchanges, not just bitmex. he's just hoping for a quick buck by suing anyone he can.

the case bitmex just settled had a lot more merit. they stiffed an early investor despite having very clear written agreements with him.