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Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

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Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#11
Maybe I misunderstood this, but basically you got 1 bfx token for each dollar that was stolen due to the hack. As people sold bfx tokens at lower prices than $1, (in part, because the us announced this was not ok, in part due to varying confidence in bfx ability to repay,) bitfinex could rebuy some of those tokens at a discount, and clear them to itself at a fraction of the cost

There were also occasionally rolling rebuys of bfx tokens at the face value of $1.

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#12
post #9

While I'd enjoy a good detective journalism, this article is just making claims out of thin air. And here is one: > However, this doesn’t stop Bitfinex from tripping over their shoelaces to immediately list a fork which doesn’t exist, in order to make money off of suckers. That is not correct. Bitfinex didn't list Bitcoin Gold. They listed a future contract of Bitcoin Gold (though the naming "token" is a bit confusin…

[deleted]

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#14
Reading this article made me wonder - how much of the bitcoin rally is due to counterparty risks?

If I remember correctly the last ramp up happened during Mt. Gox era. They were having USD withdrawal issues which resulted in BTC prices being very high on the exchange. But it din't deter them from publishing prices and making markets.

Now is the case of Bitfinex suffered from a hack like Mt. Gox and are trying to stay afloat. As per coinmarketcap, has nearly 15% of bitcoin volume which is pretty high to ensure market follows in-step to their market making. A quick search on Google turns up pages of people asking about Bitfinex withdrawals.

For people who are curious about this, there was an article yesterday about Zimbabwean Bitcoin soaring to 12k USD, which obviously hinges a lot on counterparty risks and resulting low liquidity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15627608

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#15
post #8
post #4

> As Bitfinex has become more and more desperate, they have listed more and more crypto-currencies of questionable value, such as EOS/IOTA/ETP and so on. As per coinmarketcap.com: EOS is ranked 19, 442 million in marketcap IOTA is ranked 11, 950 million in marketcap ETP is ranked 70, 73 million in marketcap Anyone can throw some light on what these coins really are? Additionally, BTC markets: https://coinmarketcap.co…

IOTA actually seems pretty revolutionary. I don't think it's a finished product yet but if you want some info then it's a DAG ("tangle")[1] instead of a blockchain and offers 0 fees and possibly huge scalability. There are some products already using it: RuuviTag[2], Bosh XDK Iot[3], PoC ElaadNL charging station[4], Modum[5]. Once they prove they can go without the "Coordinator"[6] I'm going to be completely sold on…

The principles could be relevant (although I haven't verified (or read an independent review of) the proofs).

However, at least the execution is dubious: not only was a major cryptographic vulnerability found a few months ago[0], it highlighted that

1. they made their own unproven crypto hash, which is a red flag, (in production, you should always prefer crypto that has survived many years of cryptanalysis) and

2. they were really not up-to-date on cryptanalysis techniques, as being vulnerable to differential cryptanalysis is, as Bruce Schneier puts it, "a rookie mistake".

Worse than that, they seem to rely on security through obscurity, purposefully making it hard to analyse their systems by making it base 3 (instead of the obvious base 2 that all of practical computer science relies on).

Finally, their justification for the coordinator is also a red flag[1].

[0] https://medium.com/@neha/cryptographic-vulnerabilities-in-io...

[1] https://medium.com/@ercwl/iota-is-centralized-6289246e7b4d

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#16

Reading this article made me wonder - how much of the bitcoin rally is due to counterparty risks? If I remember correctly the last ramp up happened during Mt. Gox era. They were having USD withdrawal issues which resulted in BTC prices being very high on the exchange. But it din't deter them from publishing prices and making markets. Now is the case of Bitfinex suffered from a hack like Mt. Gox and are trying to stay…

I am not sure I follow. Counterparty risk should push the price down, not up. This thing is not worth as much because there is a significant risk your investment may go away because of a bug or a mistake.

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#18

LOL Even better than a Ponzi Scheme, let's just sell "shares" of this "company" (which by the way has a paper value of a very round and big ZERO) for cash Toilet paper provides better value Oh wait, he "buys low and sells high", that explains it.

Bitfinex is the largest BTC exchange in the world, over $500 million per day in volume today. Big days are multi-billion dollar volume. Like most exchanges, they take a percentage cut of every transaction. This is not a company with zero value. The "buy low sell high" arbitrage thing is from a previous, unrelated business idea posted 5 years ago to a btc forum by the founder of bitfinex. As far as I know, it never went anywhere.

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#19
post #4

> As Bitfinex has become more and more desperate, they have listed more and more crypto-currencies of questionable value, such as EOS/IOTA/ETP and so on. As per coinmarketcap.com: EOS is ranked 19, 442 million in marketcap IOTA is ranked 11, 950 million in marketcap ETP is ranked 70, 73 million in marketcap Anyone can throw some light on what these coins really are? Additionally, BTC markets: https://coinmarketcap.co…

All of those are legit cryptocurrencies.
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