An Example of Not your Keys Not your coins

[noormcs5]

Look how exchanges are scamming us. Most often we create account at exchanges and never care to read the terms and conditions and blindly click on "I agree" button.

Look what happen with celsius. When the Celsius users reach the court to demand their bitcoin back, the judge told that people have already given their legal right on their bitcoins and not no one can claim any bitcoin from Celsius.


https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1610966401778421761

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[tbct_mt2]

Most of us don't read Terms of Service before using. It is kinda betting and taking risk for our fund.

I remember that I read a shady term of Tether company that they can reject to pay user 1 USD for 1 USDT. If you accept their terms, you can use USDT. Months ago, when I read that after the fiasco of Terra $LUNA and $UST, I was very uncertain and doubtful about Tether and their stable coin USDT.

Your news is similar, Terms of Service are very shady and with wall of texts, most of us skip reading but don't know that we can be scammed anytime.

[Plaguedeath]

Thanks to Celsius’s “unambiguous” terms and conditions, any cryptocurrency assets — including stablecoins — that were deposited into Earn Accounts, became Celsius’s property, the filing stated.

I'd say in this case, it's more correct as an example to read the whole terms of service rather than not your keys not your coins, because everyone already know when they deposit to centralized website, the third party has a control over your coins. While in this case, Celsius's terms of service make them win about the coins ownership. If Celcius didn't write such rules, the customers will win this legal court.

[AicecreaME]

Thanks to Celsius’s “unambiguous” terms and conditions, any cryptocurrency assets — including stablecoins — that were deposited into Earn Accounts, became Celsius’s property, the filing stated.

I'd say in this case, it's more correct as an example to read the whole terms of service rather than not your keys not your coins, because everyone already know when they deposit to centralized website, the third party has a control over your coins. While in this case, Celsius's terms of service make them win about the coins ownership. If Celcius didn't write such rules, the customers will win this legal court.

I agree.

It's like buying a product but didn't read the manual. We tend to neglect such thing because we think it's not that important until it is. Celsius doesn't do anything wrong here, it's the client's fault of ignoring important notice from them since the start. This situation is completely different from "not your keys, not your coins" but somehow it's kinda related to the matter where you can't control what you don't completely own.

[virasog]

Thanks to Celsius’s “unambiguous” terms and conditions, any cryptocurrency assets — including stablecoins — that were deposited into Earn Accounts, became Celsius’s property, the filing stated.

I'd say in this case, it's more correct as an example to read the whole terms of service rather than not your keys not your coins, because everyone already know when they deposit to centralized website, the third party has a control over your coins. While in this case, Celsius's terms of service make them win about the coins ownership. If Celcius didn't write such rules, the customers will win this legal court.

The problem is that we don't have a choice. Anyone who read the term and conditions of any exchange will have to "agree" with it, before proceeding for account creation. If you do not agree with them, then they won't let you use their platform.
Since we do not have decentralized platforms and we see others using the same platform, we have no choice but to accept the terms and conditions and hope the exchange / platform will run in good faith.
In case of a collapse just as it happened with Celsius, of course our funds will be lost.

[348Judah]

You're right it's all about not your keys not your voins and we must alligned ourselves to this in other to have our asset in custody or they have it with them and against us, also we need to be careful of the means we save the private keys because it also matters alot from getting exposed to any third party who may end up in using them against us any time, wr must also be mindful of not having them backed up by the cloud storage institutionizations.

[Lucius]

I would say that a successful scam requires at least two people, one who is behind the scam, and the other who will believe in it and invest in it. I remember when some on this forum questioned the legality and risks of the platform mentioned by the OP, and unfortunately many did not understand how stupid it was to believe that such a literal Ponzi scheme could last forever.

It's not just the fine print, expensive lawyers and sleazy CEO that we have, it's the millions who have no idea what they're doing - because every concept of banks and interest in the world of cryptocurrencies is completely wrong, especially if it's Bitcoin. It's too late for some things now, but it seems that even after everything, people have learned almost nothing - millions of BTC are in the possession of various CEXs, and their clients are exposed to the risk of being left without everything.

But you can't force someone to act smart if he insists on being stupid, right?

[fuguebtc]

Look how exchanges are scamming us. Most often we create account at exchanges and never care to read the terms and conditions and blindly click on "I agree" button.

Look what happen with celsius. When the Celsius users reach the court to demand their bitcoin back, the judge told that people have already given their legal right on their bitcoins and not no one can claim any bitcoin from Celsius.

That means investors didn't read the terms but quickly press the agree button, how can it be said that the exchange is scamming investors? This is clearly the investor's fault.

I am not defending centralized exchanges but frankly, the cryptocurrency market is not strictly regulated and not protected by law so we need to be responsible for our assets rather than relying on the government after the losses. If you deposit money in Celsius to receive interest, will you declare it to the government to pay taxes, or will you spend it on your own, and when you get scammed, you go to them for help?

[franky1]

The problem is that we don't have a choice. Anyone who read the term and conditions of any exchange will have to "agree" with it, before proceeding for account creation. If you do not agree with them, then they won't let you use their platform.
Since we do not have decentralized platforms and we see others using the same platform, we have no choice but to accept the terms and conditions and hope the exchange / platform will run in good faith.
In case of a collapse just as it happened with Celsius, of course our funds will be lost.

you have it backwards

handing any funds to another person on the blockchains loses you ownership rights
thats the whole point of bitcoin ownership transfer
#not-you-keys-not-your-bitcoin

its then the terms of service/user agreement whereby the terms should make the claim the value belongs to the user, to give back to the user some ownership right

EG hand a suitcase of cash to a complete stranger.. do you rally think handing it to them keeps your rights over the suitcase in tact.. nope. 'yoink' they took it, its theirs.. you handed it to them and all evidence shows you handed it to them
you then have to prove there was an agreement to hand it back

..
here is another one, grayscales terms are that the value is property of the GBTC trust and they can revoke any users access to the site completely without notice or reason

...
however the opposite side there are exchanges that say that funds belong to customers, and if there is a violation of the rules the service can disable trading features and request users withdraw their funds within 14 days to then close the account and never return

[stompix]

Look what happen with celsius. When the Celsius users reach the court to demand their bitcoin back, the judge told that people have already given their legal right on their bitcoins and no one can claim any bitcoin from Celsius.

No, it doesn't mean this!
https://cases.stretto.com/public/x191/11749/PLEADINGS/1174901042380000000067.pdf

If the cryptocurrency assets in the Earn Accounts are owned by the Debtors, the Account Holders are unsecured creditors and their recovery depends on the distributions to unsecured creditors under a confirmed chapter 11 plan, or under the Bankruptcy Code’s priority rules in the event of liquidation. A fundamental principle of the Bankruptcy Code is equality of distribution. There simply will not be enough value available to repay all Account Holders in full. If only some Account Holders prevail with their arguments that they own the cryptocurrency assets in their accounts, they hope to recover 100% of their claims, while most of the Account Holders are
left as unsecured creditors and may recover only a small percentage of their claims
~snip
Further, even if the Court found that Account Holders loaned digital assets to Celsius Account Holders would still be unsecured creditors. It is blackletter law that a loan of money or property to another creates a debtor-creditor relationship. In re Masterwear Corp., 229 B.R. 301, 310 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 1999) (“Under New York law, a bank and its depositor stand in a debtor creditor relationship that is contractual in nature. The bank owns the deposit, the depositor has a claim to payment against the bank, and the bank has a corresponding obligation to pay its depositor

It doesn't mean that the court said all the coins belong to Celsius, it has only rules that the people who deposit their coins there are unsecured creditors, so per bankruptcy laws, they still have the right to claim those coins and be reimbursed as long as enough funds are available.

The ruling changes little because there aren't enough funds to reimburse everyone so even if they would want to claim back their coins it wouldn't be possible, and each user will have to forfeit a part of this and accept a loss, the same thing that will happen once the bankruptcy procedure is over, or how it happened in MtGxo case.

The problem is that we don't have a choice. Anyone who read the term and conditions of any exchange will have to "agree" with it, before proceeding for account creation. If you do not agree with them, then they won't let you use their platform.Since we do not have decentralized platforms and we see others using the same platform, we have no choice but to accept the terms and conditions and hope the exchange / platform will run in good faith.

Has anyone put a gun to your head and told you to deposit your coins there to earn 16% APY?

[franky1]

Look what happen with celsius. When the Celsius users reach the court to demand their bitcoin back, the judge told that people have already given their legal right on their bitcoins and no one can claim any bitcoin from Celsius.

No, it doesn't mean this!
https://cases.stretto.com/public/x191/11749/PLEADINGS/1174901042380000000067.pdf

If the cryptocurrency assets in the Earn Accounts are owned by the Debtors, the Account Holders are unsecured creditors and their recovery depends on the distributions to unsecured creditors under a confirmed chapter 11 plan, or under the Bankruptcy Code’s priority rules in the event of liquidation. A fundamental principle of the Bankruptcy Code is equality of distribution. There simply will not be enough value available to repay all Account Holders in full. If only some Account Holders prevail with their arguments that they own the cryptocurrency assets in their accounts, they hope to recover 100% of their claims, while most of the Account Holders are
left as unsecured creditors and may recover only a small percentage of their claims
~snip
Further, even if the Court found that Account Holders loaned digital assets to Celsius Account Holders would still be unsecured creditors. It is blackletter law that a loan of money or property to another creates a debtor-creditor relationship. In re Masterwear Corp., 229 B.R. 301, 310 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 1999) (“Under New York law, a bank and its depositor stand in a debtor creditor relationship that is contractual in nature. The bank owns the deposit, the depositor has a claim to payment against the bank, and the bank has a corresponding obligation to pay its depositor

It doesn't mean that the court said all the coins belong to Celsius, it has only rules that the people who deposit their coins there are unsecured creditors, so per bankruptcy laws, they still have the right to claim those coins and be reimbursed as long as enough funds are available.

you ignored the IF

customers have to prove they own the balance in their accounts
which relies on their user agreement terms

IF the user agreement terms do not show that funds/balances/reserves of balances are customer property. then the customers are not debtors/creditors/owners

in short the user agreement needs to contractually say funds are customers property.. otherwise they are not


you are not automatically retaining your right ownership (of assets or of a businesses balance/value), simply because you handed them value..
they have to state there is a agreement that they are allowing the value/balance/asset reserve they received to be assigned/owned by a customer.

this isnt anything new due to crypto.. its standard business/property law
possession is 9/10th of the law. the possessor owns it unless the possessor states otherwise.. or there was an agreement of IOU/property ownership terms

.. now lets clarify
https://celsius.network/terms-of-use
their terms do keep mentioning things like
"Your Celsius Account allows you to view your balances"
"“Account” or “Celsius Account” means a User’s designated user account on the Celsius website or mobile application, allowing a User to access and use the Services, view the User’s balance of Eligible Digital Assets held in custody on the User’s behalf"

all suggestive that the balances/funds are the customers property

however if found that a user is under 18 or from a prohibited country like korea, or broke one of the policies of celsius. the balance/coin does not belong to the customer and they can seize those funds

but as said in last couple posts.. it neds a contractual proof that the business is declaring the funds as customers for the customers to be able to make a valid claim

there are actually other exchanges user agreements with much more evil terms.  so its important people read their user agreement terms when using a service.
celsius terms are not so bad, and most customers should get some amount back

[m2017]

Most of us don't read Terms of Service before using. It is kinda betting and taking risk for our fund.

I remember that I read a shady term of Tether company that they can reject to pay user 1 USD for 1 USDT. If you accept their terms, you can use USDT. Months ago, when I read that after the fiasco of Terra $LUNA and $UST, I was very uncertain and doubtful about Tether and their stable coin USDT.

Your news is similar, Terms of Service are very shady and with wall of texts, most of us skip reading but don't know that we can be scammed anytime.

It's true that most people are too lazy to read the terms of agreements, which contain a lot of unnecessary text in the text in order to confuse the reader more. All these conditions could be greatly reduced. In order not to get into trouble, as users of the Celsius with a user agreement, it was simply not necessary to give btc to this platform or any other. Here I agree with OP, who singled out a well-known phrase in the crypto community, which is often forgotten, but never ceases to be relevant. By handing over your keys /btc you lose all the benefits of owning a bitcoin.

[DaveF]

The biggest thing I think people are missing here is the fact that Celsius from the beginning looked like the kind of people that would take your money and run. Insanely high promises of returns, draconian T&C in terms of who's money it was and who had control of it, and so on.

This is not even a Not your Keys Not your coins issue, but a IT'S JUST FLAT OUT NOT YOUR MONEY issue.

IMO we are going to start to see this more and more now that Celsius more or less got away with it. Yes, they imploded but beyond that for years they were taking other people money and making it their own.
How long until every other shady exchange / platform in general starts using similar T&C if they have not already.

-Dave

[stompix]

~stuff

And as always you didn't check the court document to see what this is about nor did you bother to actually read what I was saying, you felt the need again to...do stuff!
The if is not about proving ownership and it's not about the funds at the disposal of the debtors, it's solely a thing of deciding one of the two
- customers are unsecured creditors
- customers are owners of said assets
See how simple? Two lines, 10 words, not some story by Marcel Proust!

[Broadanbig]

What a lesson to learn from. Most times people really do not read what they have to, they are in a hurry to agree to terms and conditions which they know not what is in-between the agreement. Agreeing to a legal document means you agreeing to everything stated in that documents as it relates to the organization which you consent to and you have no legal right over it after signing up for it that is why it is good to seek the advise of a legal attorney to guide you through.

If I ask now how many of you read terms and conditions before signing  I guess not upto 30% do that
 This case is now a eye opener. Be wise do not sign or agree to terms and conditions without knowing the content of what you are agreeing to.

[franky1]

~stuff

And as always you didn't check the court document to see what this is about nor did you bother to actually read what I was saying, you felt the need again to...do stuff!
The if is not about proving ownership and it's not about the funds at the disposal of the debtors, it's solely a thing of deciding one of the two
- customers are unsecured creditors
- customers are owners of said assets
See how simple? Two lines, 10 words, not some story by Marcel Proust!

you read and admit to reading just 10 words but missed out the important parts
- If the cryptocurrency assets in the Earn Accounts are owned by the Debtors,  the Account Holders are unsecured creditors
-If only some Account Holders prevail with their arguments that they own the cryptocurrency assets in their accounts

funny part is i actually quoted the word for word important parts of the court filing
you however said 10 words that were not in the filing quote you just quoted a few posts ago.. the word "customer" was not in that quote you posted

it used words like debters, users, account holders.. thus you are the one interpreting and misrepresenting by snipping sections without reading full context


the advice, one more time for emphasis
do not by default think that when you deposit you retain ownership rights

always expect #not-your-keys-not your-coin
always inspect user agreement terminology

to see where your rights stand

[Zaguru12]

The problem is that we don't have a choice. Anyone who read the term and conditions of any exchange will have to "agree" with it, before proceeding for account creation. If you do not agree with them, then they won't let you use their platform.
Since we do not have decentralized platforms and we see others using the same platform, we have no choice but to accept the terms and conditions and hope the exchange / platform will run in good faith.
In case of a collapse just as it happened with Celsius, of course our funds will be lost.

It is not just about having accounts on centralized exchanges but the amount of trust we put up to them. Aside Celsius, every other CEXs with lending platforms have shaddy ideas and need not to be trusted. Just look at the the amount left frozen on this Exchange tells you we have a choice to protect ourselves against it. According to the rules some set of people aren’t allowed to get a return of there fund when any collapse happens due to age barrier or country (according to Franky1) but this wasn’t the case when deposits were made? Even the court needs a second look at this judgement.

My take is if you feel the need to use this Centralized Exchanges mostly there lending features then two or more Exchanges might be advisable to minimize loss at a time

[crunck]

I believe that everyone is aware of the risks of joining these lending platforms, but because they are so greedy, they ignore everything and when they know they have been scammed, blame others. If they are not greedy, no one can scam them, if you believe centralized exchanges are scamming you, then you just need to avoid them.

[Eternad]

I’m one of those not reading exchange ToS because they are very long and written on small text which makes user ignored often times. It will be helpful if the part of Celsius ToS that use by the judge as reference will be available on the OP to easily spot it on other exchange ToS.

I believe this is unfair decision since we all know that user doesn’t read ToS and this kind of rule that sneakily place in there knowing people doesn’t bother to read is enough for the judge to make a consideration for this many loss.

[franky1]

I believe this is unfair decision since we all know that user doesn’t read ToS and this kind of rule that sneakily place in there knowing people doesn’t bother to read is enough for the judge to make a consideration for this many loss.

what if i told you that some businesses have different ToS/user agreements per customer
yep it happens
especially when some businesses can say things like "we can modify, alter, change terms without notice..  by using the service you are agreeing to the terms"

in short they dont even have to have a tick box that you have read/agreed to any agreement/change of agreement, and you are suppose to periodically re-read the terms/agreement to notice any changes that affect you