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BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

bloomberg.com

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Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#121

Post by TeMPOraL »

daemin wrote: post #107
aiCeivi9 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is disclosing yourself as not a lawyer enough to excuse from giving legal advice?

I got told this from a friend that studied law (but is not a lawyer). That to put a disclaimer of "I am not a lawyer" when giving opinion about legal matters is so that they will not be prohibited from practising law in the future, or prosecuted for misrepresenting or impersonating a lawyer. I guess someone that has studied law more or is an actual lawyer can weigh in on this in an unofficial capacity (because we are…

I always assumed that the "this is not legal advice" part (and similarly, "this is not medical advice") are meaningfully used by actual lawyers (or doctors), so that you can't sue them for malpractice over something they said that was tangentially related to what they do for a living.

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#122

Post by Nursie »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #6
ve55 wrote: post #5

For those unaware, Bitconnect was a Bitcoin-based ponzi-scheme that had operated 'successfully' for quite some time. I don't say 'ponzi' as an insult in the way some do for cryptocurrencies, it was quite literally just a bare-bones ponzi scheme, where you deposit your money (Bitcoin) on their website, buy their token, 'lock' your funds for some amount of time, and you are promised very high interest rates while encou…

> 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…

In the UK it's likely that you should talk to Action Fraud, a Police-run service - https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud_protection/ponzi_sch...

And/Or contact the Financial Conduct Authourity.

Pyramid and Ponzi schemes are illegal here too AFAICT.

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#123

Post by mcintyre1994 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #49
sitepodmatt wrote: post #3

One scam down at least, next the Tether printer and BitFinex boys. Clean up in aisle HKG please.

Tether just hit a new all time high of $1.07, making the return on investment significantly better than most VC funds.

Isn't the entire point of it to be pegged 1USDT === 1USD? Obviously it fails at that by being backed by nothing like enough USD, but what does it being worth $1.07 even mean? Also, where do you sell Tethers given Bitfinex won't exchange them for USD?

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#124

Post by usrusr »

StavrosK wrote: post #41
ve55 wrote: post #5

For those unaware, Bitconnect was a Bitcoin-based ponzi-scheme that had operated 'successfully' for quite some time. I don't say 'ponzi' as an insult in the way some do for cryptocurrencies, it was quite literally just a bare-bones ponzi scheme, where you deposit your money (Bitcoin) on their website, buy their token, 'lock' your funds for some amount of time, and you are promised very high interest rates while encou…

I know a few people who fell for this, despite my warnings. When you tell someone "these returns are astronomical, teams of PhDs in hedge funds cannot come anywhere close, do you think they're so dumb that they wouldn't put billions in this if it were legitimate" and they reply "yes, I do", there's no helping them.

Some people will eventually just want to prove that their freedom to make their own decisions is more powerful than rational arguments, no matter how good.

"You may be right on all points, but it's still my decision to make, you can't do anything about it."

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#125

Post by arethuza »

csomar wrote: post #108
bhouston wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If $200M was printed today, then it likely doesn't exist. Hilarious that this is going on. At some point the music has to stop.

They don't really "print" a $200million. Finex explanation is that when a user requests USDT they issue new USDT from their USD reserves.

You really believe they added $200million to their USD reserves to cover the USDT?

Edit: Where would they get that USD?

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#126

Post by celticninja »

Nursie wrote: post #122
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…

In the UK it's likely that you should talk to Action Fraud, a Police-run service - https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud_protection/ponzi_sch... And/Or contact the Financial Conduct Authourity. Pyramid and Ponzi schemes are illegal here too AFAICT.

Yes this is correct, further the company was registered under 3 different names with companies House in the UK.

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#127

Post by arethuza »

celticninja wrote: post #126
Nursie wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK it's likely that you should talk to Action Fraud, a Police-run service - https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud_protection/ponzi_sch... And/Or contact the Financial Conduct Authourity. Pyramid and Ponzi schemes are illegal here too AFAICT.

Yes this is correct, further the company was registered under 3 different names with companies House in the UK.

Doesn't that just mean 3 different companies? It's not actually unusual for what you might think of as a single company actually to be a group of companies - e.g. a holding company and a set of subsidiaries.

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#128

Post by roma1n »

avip wrote: post #119
Marazan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

this is not grammatical advice (uncountable, no 'a')

Disclaimer: I am not a native English speaker and this is not grammatical advice

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#129

Post by zerostar07 »

nstj wrote: post #46
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…

> token amount :)

it appears it's a coin, not an (eth-)token

Re: BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

#130

Post by TeMPOraL »

Fnoord wrote: post #103
avenoir wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to believe that people watched this and still invested in this shitshow.

I've been to a MLM conference once (or well, a conference by a company who distributed purely via MLM) and I saw people buying into it as well. When I googled them (this was back around 2006), I saw tons of domains and websites with these products all from people with their own "company" (lol). You know what sells? Sampling, and success stories. The first thing I got told is that I must believe in the product. Yeah,…

Had a very similar experience - a friend of our family (also a member of a, let's call it, high-intensity christian denomination) got started in a MLM (MonaVie) and invited me to their "internal" event (one aimed at people already in the network).

Oh. My. God. What I saw there was a textbook definition of a cult, a pure affective death spiral[0] instantiated in our material world. People were literally one-upping one another in telling how happy they are by being the part of this MLM, and how happy they will be when it makes them rich. The overall atmosphere was pretty similar to that Bitconeeeeeeeeeect video.

> The first thing I got told is that I must believe in the product.

Yeah, that's the thing that kept me from getting recruited into MLMs back when I was more naïve about people involved - I could tell the products were bullshit, and selling them required you to lie about either the qualities of the product or your expertise on the topic (in case of financial products). Both of which I find to be despicable behaviour.

--

[0] - https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Affective_death_spiral

"An affective death spiral (or happy death spiral) occurs when positive attributes of a theory, person, or organization combine with the Halo effect in a feedback loop, resulting in the subject of the affective death spiral being held in higher and higher regard. In effect, every positive thing said about the subject results in more than one additional nice thing to say about the subject on average. This cascades like a nuclear chain reaction."

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