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BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

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Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#111

Post by arethuza »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #31
spookthesunset wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For starters, they don't deal in USD at all. They deal in "USDT", which isn't at all USD but a token called a tether that is somehow magically supposed to be pegged so 1 USDT == 1USD that you can... well... I dunno what you can do with a tether but one thing you can't do is turn it into actual fiat money on Bitfinex. You might be able to convert it to cold hard fiat on some other exchange though, but odds are good sa…

The fact that Tether does not guarantee in their terms and conditions that they'll exchange Tether back into equivalent reserve currency makes it _super_ sketchy from my point of view. The only way that Tether should be considered backed by and equivalent to USD (risk-reduced) is if Tether is contractually obligated to convert it back into USD. Instead, this is what their TOS says: > Tethers are not money and are not…

So basically the only thing you could do with Tether is try and offload it to someone else?

Are all tokens issued as part of ICOs like that?

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#112

Post by JustFinishedBSG »

beejiu wrote: post #94
JustFinishedBSG wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Ponzi schemes are illegal. Even if you write in huge bold red letters "HEY THIS IS A PONZI SCHEME" before people "invest" it wouldn't change anything legally.

> Even if you write in huge bold red letters "HEY THIS IS A PONZI SCHEME" Remember a few years ago the service ponzi.io, a openly transparent Bitcoin ponzi scheme. Here's the discussion from back then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7202182

I unfortunately know all too well considering I own a very similar domain name haha.

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#113

Post by jv22222 »

dudus wrote: post #14
andirk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether has remained at about $1/coin for a long time. Isn't it liquid if you trade it for BTC then to fiat?

If you trade it for bitcoin someone is selling you that bitcoin for tether. That person will go ahead and trade that tether for some other coin.... rinse repeat, but in the end someone is holding that Tether, if exchanges stop accepting tether eventually your only option is to cash out to USD. USDT is basically being used as a trade coin, to avoid cashing out (maybe to avoid taxation) or to speculate on USD with the…

The concept of tether is a good one.

I wish that a reputable company or YC startup would do exactly the same thing but in a very legitamate way.

It seems like they could make a good amount of money by charging withdrawal and transfer fees.

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#114

Post by asddddd »

spookthesunset wrote: post #44
saalweachter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, this being the internet, it could have started as a tongue in cheek joke and then when the money started rolling in the founders just kind of went with it. Which I think is a potential lesson for HN readers: something can be funny, but still be fraud.

No. My USDT is on them deliberately putting that crap on the site in order to weed out anybody with a functioning brain. It's kinda like Nigerian prince scammer emails are full of deliberate grammar and spelling errors. You gotta filter out the noise in your conversion funnel. Lots of crypto-coin stuff, including virtually all "name brand" crypto's, do the same thing. Most of the marketing is full of complete politic…

I disagree, lots of smart people who know it's bullshit are still involved (because it's very easy money if you know what you're doing). Any sort of tangible value is utterly irrelevant, what matters is future market opinion. Quite the same for gold, stocks, forex, or anything else, just with much greater volatility.

> If you were a scammer, wouldn't you want to target a group of people who wouldn't in a million years report you to the police?

Most of the fresh faces that make the bubbles happen don't care about any of that stuff, they are just blinded by greed and will get burned for it. The ancap/libertarian ideologues who have been involved for years are the ones who are worth ridiculous amounts of money these days.

The fact that it's a relatively large community of fresh millionaires/billionaires (they won't tell you, but that's a huge percent of people involved in crypto for 5+ years) with an unwillingness to convert to fiat currencies (revoking citizenships to avoid taxes, even) does mean that there's a willingness to put money in marginal opportunities.

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#115

Post by shawabawa3 »

arethuza wrote: post #111
Pyxl101 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Tether does not guarantee in their terms and conditions that they'll exchange Tether back into equivalent reserve currency makes it _super_ sketchy from my point of view. The only way that Tether should be considered backed by and equivalent to USD (risk-reduced) is if Tether is contractually obligated to convert it back into USD. Instead, this is what their TOS says: > Tethers are not money and are not…

So basically the only thing you could do with Tether is try and offload it to someone else? Are all tokens issued as part of ICOs like that?

Yes, and yes

Some ICO's may claim other uses for their tokens but I don't think any are really usable at this point

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#116

Post by lhl »

drexlspivey wrote: post #85
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Famous Youtubers and other individuals with influence convinced hundreds of people to put their money into BitConnect in order to profit off of referrals If you lost money in this scheme and are in the United States or Canada, contact your state securities regulator [1]. Mention any such referral sources. Those individuals may be liable for securities fraud under state and federal law. If you're in the United State…

Most of them took down their videos by now

@Bitfinexed [1], who tracks all kinds of scams (the Tether one is going to be the real doozy when that unravels) has been diligently saving Bitconnect videos, tweets, etc. He is pseudononymous, so the question now is how to effectively get these (apparently) hundreds of gigs of videos archived/shared. [2] I can't imagine he's the only one to have thought to do this, though. Bitconnect was simply too blatant of a skeezy ponzi for no one to have bothered tracking down who all these people were...

[1] https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed

[2] https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/953510174244986880

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#118

Post by andirk »

frakr wrote: post #53
andirk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether has remained at about $1/coin for a long time. Isn't it liquid if you trade it for BTC then to fiat?

Has it? https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/#charts

That's what I'm saying. If they are actually able to always trade at very close to USD every day for over a year, does not that show stability in the coin? If it is, in fact, printed money, then it keeps working so far. Just like USD.

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#119

Post by avip »

Marazan wrote: post #79
roel_v wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me, because your comments in this thread don't make it quite clear to me - are you a lawyer? Is this legal advice?

I believe the reasonable person test would result in a court coming to the conclusion that he had presented himself as neither a lawyer nor that he was giving legal advice. However, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice

I think one should say "neither he had... nor was he giving..."

However, I am not a native English speaker and this is not a grammatical advice

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#120

Post by glenneroo »

spookthesunset wrote: post #18
BayesStreet wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware that tether's reserves are a little doubtful, but could you elaborate on why Bitfinex is sketchy?

For starters, they don't deal in USD at all. They deal in "USDT", which isn't at all USD but a token called a tether that is somehow magically supposed to be pegged so 1 USDT == 1USD that you can... well... I dunno what you can do with a tether but one thing you can't do is turn it into actual fiat money on Bitfinex. You might be able to convert it to cold hard fiat on some other exchange though, but odds are good sa…

Poloniex and Binance let you convert to/from Tether (USDT). Do you consider Poloniex or Binance to be sketchy?
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