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Bitconnect founder indicted in global $2.4B cryptocurrency scheme

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

#301
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…

"Thugs with guns could shut it off at any time" is the weirdest criticism of anything I have ever seen. Don't you see it can be said of everything?

Just buy some and stop being a hater. It's not early anymore.

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

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't you watched "Line Goes Up - The Problem With NFTs" yet? It's about a whole lot more than just NFTs. Your question is thoroughly addressed and truthfully answered in that video. Also see his references and citations in "Sources and Further Reading" for more proof. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g Sources and Further Reading: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://tante.cc/2021/12/17/the-third-web/ ht…

A friend asked me to watch that video back when it came out, but I couldn't get past all the technical inaccuracies about Bitcoin and Ethereum in the first half hour or so. Most of those links are about artwork NFTs, not Bitcoin or Ethereum. There are a lot of cryptocurrencies that are scams, and there are a lot of NFT projects that are scams. I've heard respectable arguments that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not actuall…

And just what specifically were those "technical inaccuracies" that were so intolerable to you that you couldn't stomach watching the whole thing?

You should thank your friend for trying to deprogram you from the cult you've fallen for, and go back and watch the entire video. Because he makes excellent and "technically accurate" points about the cult-like behavior of that community, which explains why you're so quick to "ignore warning signs and dismiss criticism", and have a such a difficult time perceiving the pervasive fraud that's so stunningly obvious to everyone else:

>The shorthand WAGMI, We’re All Going To Make It, is aphoristically bandied about even in openly zero-sum competitions where, by definition, most participants explicitly won’t make it.

>But you can’t point that out, because that would be FUD.

>And if you’re spreading FUD then you’re NGMI, Not Going to Make It.

>And making it, getting rich, is all that matters.

>HFSP, have fun staying poor.

>These are synthesized into a No True Scotsman paradigm.

>The “we” in We’re All Going To Make It does not refer to we all, it refers to the select, the chosen, the Diamond Hands and the hodlers.

>Those who make it are clearly the We, and if you didn’t make it, then you weren’t.

>People who get angry about being scammed by a rug-pull or by malware or by social engineering are berated and belittled for not following the crowd.

>This incubates a community trained to ignore warning signs and dismiss criticism, a community with internal language and customs that are explicitly incompatible with outside communications.

>Skepticism is FUD from non-believers who are trying to undermine the value of your assets and manipulate a crash or trick you into being a paper hands.

>It all maps onto narratives of sin and deception, a chosen-few who are privileged with advance knowledge about the promised land, which they can achieve by holding strong to the rituals and expelling all doubt.

>The end product is a self-organizing high-control group.

But back to the main point: Do you earnestly believe that his extremely well-documented point that Bitcoin and Ethereum are riddled with fraud that's pervasively promoted by shills is "technically inaccurate"? Are you asking us to believe all those shills are actually correct and telling the truth, or do you deny the existence of shills and their get-rich-quick pyramid schemes?

Since you asked "why" "Bitcoin and Ethereum are scams", here is the transcript of Line Goes Up, which decidedly answers your question.

https://eizebasa.baby/line-goes-up

Which of the following quotes do you claim are "technically inaccurate"? And what do you claim are the "technically accurate" counter-arguments? Please refer to specific quotes.

>And as far as banking is concerned, Bitcoin was never designed to solve the actual problems created by the banking industry, only to be the new medium by which they operated.

>Peter Thiel, who also went from wealthy to ultra-wealthy off the Web2 boom via PayPal, loves crypto, and is friends with a bunch of eugenics advocates who promote cryptocurrency as a return to “sound money” for a whole bunch of extremely racist reasons because when they start talking about banks and bankers, they mean Jews.

>So just to head all this off at the pass, Bitcoin and proof-of-work cryptocurrency aren’t incentivizing a move to green energy sources, like solar and wind, they are offsetting it.

>Because electrical consumption, electrical waste, is the value that underpins Bitcoin.

>Miners spend X dollars in electricity to mine a Bitcoin, they expect to be able to sell that coin for at least X plus profit.

>When new power sources come online and the price of electricity goes down, they don’t let X go down, they build a bigger machine.

>[Drumming] In 2012 Vitalik Buterin, a crypto enthusiast and butthurt Warlock main set out to fix what he saw as the failings and inflexibilities of Bitcoin.

>Rather than becoming the new digital currency, a thing that people actually used to buy stuff, Bitcoin had become an unwieldy speculative financial instrument, too slow and expensive to use for anything other than stunt purchases of expensive cars.

>It was infested with money laundering and mired in bad press.

>After the FBI shut down Silk Road you couldn’t even buy drugs with it anymore.

>In practice you couldn’t do anything with your Bitcoin but bet on it, lock up money you already have in the hopes that Bitcoin goes up later, and pray you don’t lose it all in a scam, lose access to your wallet, or have it all stolen by an exchange.

>In terms of problems with Bitcoin, Ethereum solves none of them and introduces a whole new suite of problems driven by the technofetishistic egotism of assuming that programmers are uniquely suited to solve society’s problems.

>Bitcoin in particular, owing to its glacial transaction times, suffers from problems where the value of the coin can change dramatically between the start and end of a transaction.

>Ethereum is ultimately a central platform, and the fact that a few dozen people need to sign off on every major change before it can be implemented is largely meaningless and symbolic, with the validation network ultimately sitting somewhere between consortium and cartel.

>While the network of Ethereum miners and validators are not a formal corporation Yet There’s no mechanism in existence that compels them to act in the interest of users, particularly poor and disempowered users, where those interests conflict with their own.

>The movement of Ethereum from proof of work to proof of stake has been vapourware in no small part because the validators simply choose not to.

>The entire market is absolutely lousy with scams, and has been since Bitcoin first gained any traction.

>Every single scam structure imaginable has been dusted off and redeployed into this explicitly unregulated market where victims are largely without recourse.

>These range from institutional scams, like Ponzi schemes, pump and dumps, and insider trading, to middle-weight scams like gold brick and wash trading, to grittier scams like phishing and sending fake links.

>Pump and dumps, in particular, are conducted in broad daylight, since it’s not illegal, it’s just against the terms of service of the exchanges that you use to do it, so the worst case scenario is you burn your account.

>They’ll straight up walk you through the process of doing a pump and dump, no codewords, diagrams and everything.

>They’re notable as they’re actually a two-headed scam because, you see, you might get recruited onto the pump half of the scheme, or you might think you’re being recruited to pump, but you’re actually the dump.

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

#303
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the factual difference? The similarities being that both rely on finding an ever greater number of people to buy in so that early investors can cash out.

That's a pyramid scheme, a Ponzi scheme is a subset where earlier investors are paid profit using money from the later investors, giving the appearance of a functioning business. In the same way you can argue that investing in gold is a pyramid scheme (since it relies on its price going up), you can argue that crypto is too. (Note that there are some real Ponzi schemes in crypto too, but they're not real cryptocurren…

Gold is a physical commodity with plenty of uses (ornaments, electronics etc). This is not true for cryptocurrency.

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

#304
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…

"Thugs with guns could shut it off at any time" is the weirdest criticism of anything I have ever seen. Don't you see it can be said of everything? Just buy some and stop being a hater. It's not early anymore.

>Don't you see it can be said of everything?

So why this and not anything else? What's so special about Bitcoin anyways, other than the fact that some HN commenters seem to have some heavy bags that need offloading

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

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend asked me to watch that video back when it came out, but I couldn't get past all the technical inaccuracies about Bitcoin and Ethereum in the first half hour or so. Most of those links are about artwork NFTs, not Bitcoin or Ethereum. There are a lot of cryptocurrencies that are scams, and there are a lot of NFT projects that are scams. I've heard respectable arguments that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not actuall…

And just what specifically were those "technical inaccuracies" that were so intolerable to you that you couldn't stomach watching the whole thing? You should thank your friend for trying to deprogram you from the cult you've fallen for, and go back and watch the entire video. Because he makes excellent and "technically accurate" points about the cult-like behavior of that community, which explains why you're so quick…

Not who you asked but I'll reply anyway.

>And as far as banking is concerned, Bitcoin was never designed to solve the actual problems created by the banking industry, only to be the new medium by which they operated.

Bitcoins original goal was to try and solve the trusted third-party issue. "A peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." So definitely not be the new medium through which banks operated.

> Peter Thiel, who also went from wealthy to ultra-wealthy off the Web2 boom via PayPal, loves crypto, and is friends with a bunch of eugenics advocates who promote cryptocurrency as a return to “sound money” for a whole bunch of extremely racist reasons because when they start talking about banks and bankers, they mean Jews.

Guilt by association isn't an argument. You tried to use the same trick on me by calling me a shill, so maybe that's why you don't recognize the logical fallacy. Either way, it's not valid. It's a staple in any propaganda handbook though. Web2.0 was coined in 2004, two years after Paypal IPOd by the way.

We're on quote number two and the "arguments" are already at rock bottom, I'll stop here.

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

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except that sometimes they reduce to speech. especially in cases where there are incidental human rights violations suppressing those payments. the examples why this cannot be left up to arbitrary governments are abundant. so there's nothing wrong with my argument. if you disagree then please show proof. by the way just a heads up I suggest you learn the value of basic human kindness in your manner.

My definition of basic human kindness includes NOT shilling and trying to defend and justify get-rich-quick pyramid schemes and fraudulent scams, under the pretense of not wanting to pay your taxes.

No post body was provided.

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

#307
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except that sometimes they reduce to speech. especially in cases where there are incidental human rights violations suppressing those payments. the examples why this cannot be left up to arbitrary governments are abundant. so there's nothing wrong with my argument. if you disagree then please show proof. by the way just a heads up I suggest you learn the value of basic human kindness in your manner.

Speech is the use of language to communicate ideas and thoughts. A payment is not speech. Paying involves transmitting of a financial asset. It doesn't involve the use of language to communicate ideas and thoughts. Therefore, it's not speech. You can't arbitrarily decide that something is speech, just because it suits your interests. This is not how things work.

of course it uses language. it's called a protocol for a reason. god this debate is tiresome.

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

#308
post #65
post #55

So now their stuff is actually valued $2.4B and it's no longer monopoly money?

> BitConnect operated as a Ponzi scheme by paying earlier BitConnect investors with money from later investors. In total, Kumbhani and his co-conspirators obtained approximately $2.4 billion from investors That $2.4B is real money they stole from people. The monopoly money would start at the first penny after that number.

You're right and I made an error too. Previously, they had nothing but a scam but now a government force trying to recoup the sum. That is labor paid for by taxpayers. Something which was previously worthless in now worth something as it is backed by labor.

To me it appears to be useless labor so its value appears to be negative. To the lawyers however this must be a great source of income.

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

#309
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speech is the use of language to communicate ideas and thoughts. A payment is not speech. Paying involves transmitting of a financial asset. It doesn't involve the use of language to communicate ideas and thoughts. Therefore, it's not speech. You can't arbitrarily decide that something is speech, just because it suits your interests. This is not how things work.

of course it uses language. it's called a protocol for a reason. god this debate is tiresome.

Whatever. Good luck convincing anyone that a financial transaction is speech.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that folks who claimed their bank accounts were frozen because they were “donors to the convoy” never actually verified that that actually happened [1]. At the same time the government, the RCMP, and the banks have come out and said “that didn’t happen” [2]. Last, the government ceded its emergency powers after about a week total, despite claims on HN and various thinkpieces that they would be extended in perpet…

> and the banks have come out and said “that didn’t happen” The article didn't say it didn't happen. In fact, it says it did happen: “individuals and companies suspected of involvement in illegal acts,” such as “influencers in the illegal protest in Ottawa”” What exactly does it mean to be an "influencer"? Why are people being punished for "suspected involvement"? You're using circular reasoning claiming the only peo…

I specifically referred to donors, it is largely understood that convoy organizers and a number of participants had their accounts frozen.

I am not using circular reasoning; I am literally addressing the fact that donating $50 to the convoy did not subject you to your bank account being frozen, despite purported claims to the contrary.

The “illegal acts” are referring to the plain-as-day laws that the protesters (to some, occupiers) were accused of breaking, like parking tractor trailers in the middle of the street for weeks blocking traffic in downtown Ottawa.

If folks outside the immediate circle of downtown protesters and organizers were affected, I would find that deeply concerning. But I can only find unsubstantiated rumors. If you have a credible source indicating otherwise, I’d appreciate it.

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