What is with Bitmex????

[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.