[SCAM ALERT] BitShares

[Inlite]

BitShares is a well-known platform for cryptocurrencies exchange. They say :

"BitShares is a decentralized platform designed to provide a more efficient global payment network and is commonly used for securely trading cryptocurrencies without any intermediaries."
see https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitshares/

This is a lie and a fraud !  The platform is not decentralized and does not provide security for funds. A cryptocurrency, that you transfer to the BitShares wallet, is actually sent to some outside company controlled by a certain person. And it depends only on the goodwill and honesty of this person, whether you get your money back or not. For your cryptocurrency you get a "debt certificate". In my case, I sent ETH to the BitShares wallet and I received open.ETH in return, which I kept there. A centralized company, which took my ETH, is OpenLedger. What happened with OpenLedger ? It disappeared with my ETH. See here: https://safenetforum.org/t/open-ledger-dex-has-closed-all-activities/32312
What happens with my open.ETH ? It could not be transformed back to ETH. I can sell it inside BitShares wallet with 99% discount.  Below I put a screenshot from my BitShares wallet, you can see that I have 0.1497 ETH blocked in the wallet and it could not be withdrawn.

You can say me that it is not a problem of the BitShares platform. Yes, but it could happen with any other type of assets you keep in the wallet. The platform does not provide any security of the funds and you can lose all your money one day. The BitShares company never warn the users about this kind of risks. I strongly recommend never use BitShares platform for any type of operations with cryptocurrencies.



At the end I would like to show you a CEO of OpenLedger, Ronny Boesing, a guy who has stolen my 0.1497 ETH using BitShares platform. He probably bought himself a yacht already.

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[nutildah]

So you used a bridge to move ETH (or what was supposed to be ETH) into Bitshares, and then the bridge burned down. Yeah that sucks. While I don't think he went out and bought a yacht with your $275, its possible they kept a hundred grand or so in coins. Sounds like most of what was lost was MAID.

The OpenLedger guy is pretty active on Twitter. You can ask him about what do there. I recommend not accusing him of scamming or anything at first as he'll be less inclined to help you.

Out of curiosity, what were you planning on buying at Bitshares? I notice its undergoing a pump, but other than that I can't imagine anything new is happening over there.

[hugeblack]

Thanks for this warning. Yesterday, I saw some gains on BTS/USDT and wanted to buy some of them on the Binance platform, I didn't think they were a exchange platform.
What was the value that you bought/sent ETH/open.ETH? And did you use the platform during that period to get notifications?
The point of their claim that they are a decentralized platform and their use of a third party makes it impossible to trust them.

[Inlite]

While I don't think he went out and bought a yacht with your $275

The total quantity of scammed Open.ETH is 6775 (see the screenshot), so 12 millions dollars is enough to buy a yacht. But there are also Open.BTC, Open.DOGE etc. He is very rich, this guy, now.

The OpenLedger guy is pretty active on Twitter. You can ask him about what do there. I recommend not accusing him of scamming or anything at first as he'll be less inclined to help you.

I sent a message to OpenLedger, using the form here https://openledger.info/contacts/
Also I sent email to BitShares using the contact email dbis@bitshares.org, which they provide here: https://bitshares.org/#/
No reply in both cases.

Out of curiosity, what were you planning on buying at Bitshares? I notice its undergoing a pump, but other than that I can't imagine anything new is happening over there.

I wanted to buy BitShares because I think that the future belongs to decentralized platforms. But since the price of BTS was slowly decreasing during long time, I bought only 283 BTS, and left the rest of my money in Open.ETH, thinking that my funds are safe. But it turned out that BitShares team always lies saying that their platform is decentralized. There are serious risks and now I want to warn others.

[Inlite]

Thanks for this warning. Yesterday, I saw some gains on BTS/USDT and wanted to buy some of them on the Binance platform, I didn't think they were a exchange platform.

I don't think that you can lose BTS as I lost Open.ETH, in this sense it is safe. And the price of BTS could go up in the short period, because something crazy is going on on the market now. But in long term, I don't think that buying BTS is a good idea, because their platform is very dangerous for users. No one will use this BitShares exchange in future.   

What was the value that you bought/sent ETH/open.ETH? And did you use the platform during that period to get notifications?

Initially I sent 0.231562 ETH to the BitShares wallet, I bought 283 BTS and the rest of my money I left in Open.ETH up to now. I made this investment 29.01.2018 (see the screenshot), and the price of ETH at that time was about ~1000$ ( https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ ). Then the prices went down and I left my investments for better times. Recently I decided to check how much I earned during 3 years and surprisingly I discovered that my money were actually stolen. I never received notifications neither from BitShares, nor from OpenLedger.

[nutildah]

While I don't think he went out and bought a yacht with your $275

The total quantity of scammed Open.ETH is 6775 (see the screenshot), so 12 millions dollars is enough to buy a yacht. But there are also Open.BTC, Open.DOGE etc. He is very rich, this guy, now.

That's just the circulating supply of OPEN.ETH, not necessarily reflective of how much ETH was unfairly trapped when the bridge was removed. There's less than 30 OPEN.ETH for sale on the entire BitShares orderbook.

Also, you didn't mention that Open Ledger closed up shop back in April 2020. You would have had a better chance of getting your money back last year.

Not much you can do if they're not responding, I understand. Maybe just remind everybody what this guy did if you see him trying to build something new in the future.

[Inlite]

That's just the circulating supply of OPEN.ETH, not necessarily reflective of how much ETH was unfairly trapped when the bridge was removed. There's less than 30 OPEN.ETH for sale on the entire BitShares orderbook.

As far as I understand, the circulating supply is what physically exists inside BitShares platform now. If somebody luckily removed his open.ETH last year from Bitshares using OpenLedger bridge, the circulating supply of open.ETH would decrease.

[nutildah]

That's just the circulating supply of OPEN.ETH, not necessarily reflective of how much ETH was unfairly trapped when the bridge was removed. There's less than 30 OPEN.ETH for sale on the entire BitShares orderbook.

As far as I understand, the circulating supply is what physically exists inside BitShares platform now. If somebody luckily removed his open.ETH last year from Bitshares using OpenLedger bridge, the circulating supply of open.ETH would decrease.

Taking a look at the list of holders, I'm impressed that over 5000 Bitshares accounts exist:



So a bit less than half of the circulating OPEN.ETH is held by 1 account which hasn't been active since 2019. I can't figure out who it belongs to, except for a dormant Bitshares whale.

Don't know if you saw this already:

https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/k1yc04/openledger_dex_alleged_fraud_investigation/

You're not the only one having problems, it would appear. Should probably confer with those guys as I don't think anyone else on the forum has used Bitshares in approx. 1 million years.

What would be interesting to me is the ETH address that holds the funds that are supposed to be locked. There's probably a smart contract address that has control over those funds. It would be good to see what they're up to.

Also, there is a thread for OpenLedger on the forum, its been inactive for over a year but I referenced this discussion there.

[Inlite]

Don't know if you saw this already:
https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/k1yc04/openledger_dex_alleged_fraud_investigation/
You're not the only one having problems, it would appear. Should probably confer with those guys as I don't think anyone else on the forum has used Bitshares in approx. 1 million years.

Yes, I saw this post on Reddit and I sent email to hwtu20 (at) protonmail dot com to get in touch few days ago. No reply for the moment.

Also, there is a thread for OpenLedger on the forum, its been inactive for over a year but I referenced this discussion there.

Thank you very much for making this discussion more visible. I sent also request to CoinMarketCap using this form
https://support.coinmarketcap.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360000562051
asking to add the information on the BitShare page about scam risks, but I don't think they will do it.

In the instruction, how to launch a BitShares Cli-Wallet, here
https://dev.bitshares.works/en/master/development/apps/cli_wallet.html
they use an OpenLedger as an example. It looks like BitShares and OpenLedger are affiliated companies.

[Bitum]

All of what you describe here, the problem is not BitShares but the problem of OL, and all assets that have created OL open.BTC, open.ETH etc., together with disappearing OL, have also become nothing. I had BTS on the platform, and I can log in from another interface with my private key and easily transfer my tokens

[Inlite]

All of what you describe here, the problem is not BitShares but the problem of OL

BitShares does not provide security for funds. BitShares is not decentralized. BitShares and OpenLedger are probably affiliated. BitShares is a perfect instrument for stealing money because they can create a new "bridge", collect money, then destroy the bridge, and repeat this again and again. That's why BitShares is a scam project.

[zazarb]

Can anyone access this page? It has not been available to me for several months ..
https://bitshares.openledger.info/

[SAA]

not works

[Barnstorm]

All of what you describe here, the problem is not BitShares but the problem of OL, and all assets that have created OL open.BTC, open.ETH etc., together with disappearing OL, have also become nothing. I had BTS on the platform, and I can log in from another interface with my private key and easily transfer my tokens

I have 20,000 MAID tokens locked up or lost on OpenLedger. Is there a way that I can log in to this other interface you refer to and transfer my tokens?

Thanks!

[Barnstorm]

Well, here’s some news, but it’s not good. I sent Ronny Boesing a Telegram message and he repled with this:

Hello, I am sorry, but matters are somewhat complicated now. OPENLEDGER bankruptcy procedure has begun, CVR. No. 35809171.

On the base of a decree by the Danish court on 27.01.2021, OpenLedger ApS has been declared under bankruptcy processing, and the lawyer Soren Aamann Jensen of Kromann Reumert has been appointed curator of the bankruptcy in question.

If you have any questions, please contact curator for the following (https://datacvr.virk.dk/data/visenhed?enhedstype=virksomhed&id=35809171&soeg=35%2080%2091%2071&language=da 2).

Because of above decree, I am unable to discuss anything related to OpenLedger and ask you if necessary to connect directly to the curator.

I pressed him further by asking this:

Thanks for replying, but that doesn’t sound good for the hundreds of us who have maybe millions of dollars “archived” on Open Ledger. If only I had been notified about my MAID Gateway being disabled by something more than an obscure Blog Post, I would have withdrawn it in time. Please do the right thing and try to return all of our funds. I hope that our funds are still on the blockchain and have not been sold and that the curator will recognize this and make sure the archived funds are returned to their rightful owners. Thanks and good luck. Any timeline on how soon the court will process things?

He replied:
Ronny Boesing, [27.04.21 08:32]
maid is long time gone, and was fully informed about it also at the the time of delisting. There is no talk whatsoever about maid.

Ronny Boesing, [27.04.21 08:33]
i cannot say anything more here, but felt u needed reply. the other channel has nothnign to do with the dex

I replied:
"Gone?", as in OpenLedger sold my MAID and took the money?! Please say it isn’t so. That money was very important to me. Is there nothing I can do? The tokens are still on the blockchain. Why can I not retrieve them?

He replied:
Ronny Boesing, [27.04.21 08:45]
Personally i have No idea What has happened except i know at the time from devs that it was delisted. I am Sorry, But its out of my hands now

I tried one last time:
Okay, thanks for replying, but delisted does not necessarily mean sold and confiscated, does it? So the tokens still exist and every effort should be made to return them to their rightful owners. Thanks.

No reply.

I am afraid our MAID tokens and other thousands of tokens representing maybe millions of dollars that were on OpenLedger have been liquidated and the proceeds will be given to Open Ledger creditors. Maybe we can make a claim and become one of those creditors. Maybe we can get some pennies back on the dollar. We should be first in line, but we will see.

[shmaiz]

Hello everyone.

We are gathering everyone who was victim of the OpenLedger SCAM in a Telegram group.
Our plan is to gather enough names/signatures and to (hopefully) be able to group-fund a Denmark based law firm or a lawyer so we can file a legal class action on Ronny Boesing personally for the CRIME he commited by running off with everyone's money and dressing it up legally as a bankruptcy.

We want our original coins BACK (not fiat) and we want this person investigated and brought to justice.

Please join us:

https://t.me/joinchat/FFG9CA9J7DdiYTI0

We are going to do this legally. Denmark is a leading example in Justice and Human Rights globally. WE WILL get our funds back whether out of the OpenLedger wallet or out of Ronny's personal pockets.

Again, to clarify, this is a CRIME.. And our goal is to firstly get our COINS back and secondly bring Ronny Boesing himself to justice and clean the crypto space from people like him.

Cheers.

[Barnstorm]

I received this by email when I contacted the law firm handling the bankruptcy:
On 27 January 2021 Openledger ApS was declared bankrupt and attorney Søren Aamann Jensen was appointed as trustee. I am handling this case on behalf of Søren Aamann Jensen.

During my handling of the bankruptcy estate, I have been informed, that the platform operated by OpenLedger ApS containing bitcoins etc. has been hacked, and all bitcoins and other crypto is lost. During the handling of the bankruptcy estate I will try to confirm the information about hacking and see if I can find more information about the bitcoins etc.

For now, I will register you with a claim towards Openledger ApS in bankruptcy. In order for me to do so, please send a specification of your claim (how many bitcoins did you have etc.), and documentation proving your ownership to the bitcoins.

Med venlig hilsen
Accura Advokatpartnerselskab

Jeanette Hansen
Advokatsekretær, Bobehandler

Klientansvarlig partner: Advokat Søren Aamann Jensen

+45 3945 3954

Jeanette.Hansen@accura.dk

[nutildah]

On 27 January 2021 Openledger ApS was declared bankrupt and attorney Søren Aamann Jensen was appointed as trustee. I am handling this case on behalf of Søren Aamann Jensen.

During my handling of the bankruptcy estate, I have been informed, that the platform operated by OpenLedger ApS containing bitcoins etc. has been hacked, and all bitcoins and other crypto is lost. During the handling of the bankruptcy estate I will try to confirm the information about hacking and see if I can find more information about the bitcoins etc.

For now, I will register you with a claim towards Openledger ApS in bankruptcy. In order for me to do so, please send a specification of your claim (how many bitcoins did you have etc.), and documentation proving your ownership to the bitcoins.

Med venlig hilsen
Accura Advokatpartnerselskab

Jeanette Hansen
Advokatsekretær, Bobehandler

Klientansvarlig partner: Advokat Søren Aamann Jensen

+45 3945 3954

Jeanette.Hansen@accura.dk

"Hacked"... suuure they were hacked. You probably don't believe them either. Its actually pretty simple to see who was hacked and who wasn't via the blockchain. You just have to know what to look for.

The information they gave you was pretty vague, but I'm pretty sure they are referring to a hacking event that took place after this:

https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/openledger-dex-compromised-phishing-attack-account-activities-suspended/

In any case, I wouldn't believe them, and I would go hard with the legal route until this guy coughs up your funds. He certainly shouldn't be allowed to proceed with any business ventures after this.

[Barnstorm]

We are gathering all the OpenLedger victims in a Telegram group so we can maybe file a class action.. Please join us:
https://t.me/joinchat/FFG9CA9J7DdiYTI0

[pineapples]

lol
according to this thread (linked below) there was a hack in 2018 that cleared out everything,
but they kept trading it until apr 2020??

also promising an IOU time of closing ..
"a) All OPEN assets are in their own creation an “I owe you” (IOU) and they will never disappear on the blockchain, and will not be frozen, and are therefore left to be redeemed whenever possible if this opportunity should become a reality."

not sketchy at all.

the thread includes the apparent movement of stolen MAID in apr 2019

https://safenetforum.org/t/open-ledger-dex-has-closed-all-activities/32312/112

i am definitely curious if anyone has links to any other on chain tx for btc ltc eth .. etc