Live data from Hacker News

Bitconnect founder indicted in global $2.4B cryptocurrency scheme

justice.gov

121–130 of 328 posts

Re: Bitconnect founder indicted in global $2.4B cryptocurrency scheme

#121
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrency is the solution for a very valuable problem. How do you commit financial crimes and frauds in a way just new enough to confuse people that what you're doing may be valuable?

Easy. Criminals, extremists and fraudsters use Signal for E2EE communications and MobileCoin (an untraceable, privacy cryptocurrency) to fund it all. [0] It is what criminals and terrorists are using to make their activities impossible to trace. Got to thank MobileCoin for enabling that. [0] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In...

MobileCoin whitepaper didn't make any claims about untraceability, AFAIK.

Re: Bitconnect founder indicted in global $2.4B cryptocurrency scheme

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do thousands of transactions with thousands of people every day without committing financial crimes and without paying any fees. It's extremely valuable to my businesses. Wrenches can be used as weapons but they are also essential for plumbers.

Curious - what is your use case?

[deleted]

Re: Bitconnect founder indicted in global $2.4B cryptocurrency scheme

#124
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just plainly not the definition of a ponzi scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

That’s just semantics at this point. I would encourage you to address the statement being made and ignore the technical definition of the phrase. To restate without the offending phrase: [T]he idea that the promotion of crypto thus far has existed to allow early adopters to cash out at the apparent expense of later adopters, while bringing essentially no other utility to any of its backers or the public at large, is…

It is very much not just semantics. Ponzi schemes are illegal so the difference matters.

Re: Bitconnect founder indicted in global $2.4B cryptocurrency scheme

#125
post #26

Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. Apart from the obvious issues (eg energy expenditure) the one myth that needs to die about crypto is that it is extragovernmental and indictments such as this and the Bitfinex laundering case recently should underline that. The simple fact is that the developed world could shut down what little utility cryptocurrencies (and NFTs) have tomor…

Agreed. I think the Russia situation may be an interesting test to see whether cryptocurrency can be a viable replacement for SWIFT. I don’t think it will be because, as you said, it is not extragovernmental, and at some points those funds need to be repatriated. And of course cryptocurrency provides a useful public ledger all the way to repatriation.

Re: Bitconnect founder indicted in global $2.4B cryptocurrency scheme

#127

Nice job. Now if only some people would see the difference between an actual ponzi scheme like this one and bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. That would be nice.

The fact that cryptocurrencies are even Ponzier than any Ponzi scheme, more pyramidal than any pyramid scheme, much getter, richer, and quicker than any get-rich-quick scheme, and more shaggily carpeted and vigorously jerked than any rug-pull scheme, doesn't mean they're not scams. Edit: when shills gets called on purposefully missing the point by arguing over semantics, they switch to outright denial and making stuf…

> The fact that cryptocurrencies are even Ponzier than any Ponzi scheme

What does that even mean?

Especially since most cryptocurrencies factually doesn't fit the definition of a Ponzi scheme.

Re: Bitconnect founder indicted in global $2.4B cryptocurrency scheme

#130
post #90

Bitcoin is like bit torrent. A technology that has legitimate use cases in theory, even can be really truly useful tech, but is used mostly for shady things.

BitConnect is crypto, not Bitcoin.

Bitconnect isn't even a real crypto.
Post reply on HN