The Everything Bitcoin Thread

[GLASSJAW]

46 minutes ago, CBH1926 said:

It’s investing and hoping that the next person will be even more excited and pay a lot more.

I know people make money off of it, including my close friends that are very smart and educated.

Reminds me of a giant Ponzi scheme to be honest

 

but it's literally not, by definition, a ponzi scheme. whether it reminds you of one or not doesn't really matter

 

buying bitcoin isn't investing and hoping the next person will pay more

 

...unless that's the reason why you bought bitcoin

 

but bitcoin, itself, has nothing to do with making profit in fiat, it has to do with disrupting the broken, totally corrupt fiat system. which, by the way, would also be a ponzi scheme if its definition were also applicable to bitcoin. so would buying a picasso. so would buying stocks, etc.

 

yes, some will profit off bitcoin, and some (who sell) will lose. that is the nature of buying and selling literally anything

[GLASSJAW]

nice to see Kraken coming up with a lot of Quadriga's wallet addresses, and the grassroots movements to document the potential sources of Quadriga's "lost" funds. if the keys AREN'T lost, it's going to be pretty obvious when and and where the attached funds move

Edited February 3, 2019 by GLASSJAW

[CBH1926]

21 hours ago, GLASSJAW said:

but it's literally not, by definition, a ponzi scheme. whether it reminds you of one or not doesn't really matter

 

buying bitcoin isn't investing and hoping the next person will pay more

 

...unless that's the reason why you bought bitcoin

 

but bitcoin, itself, has nothing to do with making profit in fiat, it has to do with disrupting the broken, totally corrupt fiat system. which, by the way, would also be a ponzi scheme if its definition were also applicable to bitcoin. so would buying a picasso. so would buying stocks, etc.

 

yes, some will profit off bitcoin, and some (who sell) will lose. that is the nature of buying and selling literally anything

Any investment that drops 80% in 1 year is bubble waiting to burst.

You might be not invested into bitcoin for money, but I guarantee you that most people are.

 

Also companies with stocks like xom, have produced 1 trillion in earnings since 1928.

As a guy that stares at accounting spreadsheets all day, I will take that to a bank.

You might think stock market is a scam like lot of people do.

 

Also you seem heavily interested and invested into it, plus very knowledgeable.

My humble opinion is that this investment will be worth zero. 

I hope I am wrong for those who have put money into it.

 

[GLASSJAW]

2 hours ago, CBH1926 said:

Any investment that drops 80% in 1 year is bubble waiting to burst.

You might be not invested into bitcoin for money, but I guarantee you that most people are.

 

Also companies with stocks like xom, have produced 1 trillion in earnings since 1928.

As a guy that stares at accounting spreadsheets all day, I will take that to a bank.

You might think stock market is a scam like lot of people do.

 

Also you seem heavily interested and invested into it, plus very knowledgeable.

My humble opinion is that this investment will be worth zero. 

I hope I am wrong for those who have put money into it.

 

sure, of course that's a bubble. bitcoin has had numerous bubbles in its short life - it has dropped 50-80% of its value plenty of times now, but it keeps coming back, and its yearly lows keep getting higher.

 

i don't think the stock market is a scam per se, but obviously the stock market harbours loads of scams. but that doesn't mean it's a scam itself - it's a great way for the wealthy to get more wealthy, that's for sure

 

i'm not heavily invested in bitcoin with money, not really. but i am interested in it, yeh. if you're at all curious about it and you have netflix, i recommend the movie 'banking on bitcoin' as a decent way to spend 90 minutes 

 

 

[Tortorella's Rant]

On 2/2/2019 at 7:16 PM, GLASSJAW said:

but it's literally not, by definition, a ponzi scheme. whether it reminds you of one or not doesn't really matter

 

buying bitcoin isn't investing and hoping the next person will pay more

 

...unless that's the reason why you bought bitcoin

 

but bitcoin, itself, has nothing to do with making profit in fiat, it has to do with disrupting the broken, totally corrupt fiat system. which, by the way, would also be a ponzi scheme if its definition were also applicable to bitcoin. so would buying a picasso. so would buying stocks, etc.

 

yes, some will profit off bitcoin, and some (who sell) will lose. that is the nature of buying and selling literally anything

But that's what literally the vast, vast, vast majority of people are doing with it. This whole thing is extremely hypocritical. I got "one of those people" on my Facebook who says he goes the BTC route because of this, then sells it for cash, and then brags about how he made $5,000.

[Tortorella's Rant]

On 2/2/2019 at 5:59 PM, 73 Percent said:

Alot of people made out ahead. Alot of people lost alot. That being said its no difference than investing your money anywhere else including the blackjack table. 

No investment is 100% guaranteed. I went through my own scare not long ago so I sympathized with people before and I certainly do so even more now. But there are way safer investments than this such as index funds and ETFs which are extremely diversified and take out the human ego aspect of a managed portfolio. The problem with investing for a lot of people is that it takes a long time to see any real return, and you need a lot of capital to begin with to see any real return. And "real" is subjective. So people most with almost no investing experience look at BTC growing exponentially among a few other factors, and think "wow, I can get rich and retire early." That's obviously not how this works and very few have accomplished that. And they got very lucky playing a very dangerous game doing so. But if you bought at late 2017 and never sold because you thought it would continue to grow, you've probably contemplated killing yourself since. I've seen people discuss how they've put their life savings into cryptocoin.
 

 

Edited February 4, 2019 by Tortorella's Rant

[GLASSJAW]

4 hours ago, Tortorella's Rant said:

But that's what literally the vast, vast, vast majority of people are doing with it. This whole thing is extremely hypocritical. I got "one of those people" on my Facebook who says he goes the BTC route because of this, then sells it for cash, and then brags about how he made $5,000.

...so? that doesn't change bitcoin's purpose. the purpose was not to be an investment for fiat. but regardless, of course you can trade it for cash, how else would the market grow? how else would miners cover their overhead? my point was that the purpose of the project isn't to make early investors rich in usd - meaning, bitcoin isn't a ponzi 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tortorella's Rant]

1 minute ago, GLASSJAW said:

...so? that doesn't change bitcoin's purpose. the purpose was not to be an investment for fiat. but regardless, of course you can trade it for cash, how else would the market grow? how else would miners cover their overhead? my point was that the purpose of the project isn't to make early investors rich in usd - meaning, bitcoin isn't a ponzi 

 

 

 

 

 

So.. how are you disrupting the "totally broken fiat system" by contributing to it. Maybe that wasn't the purpose of BTC when this first started, but that is certainly the purpose of BTC for 99% of all BTC investors.

[GLASSJAW]

8 minutes ago, Tortorella's Rant said:

So.. how are you disrupting the "totally broken fiat system" by contributing to it. 

money is an arbitrary concept - a lie agreed upon that X has value. in order for a new type of money to grow, more people need to agree on its value. the point of bitcoin wasn't for it to instantaneously become a sovereign currency to exist outside of the corrupt USD scope. obviously there were, and are, issues - issues that have existed and been discussed since before bitcoin was even created - scaling being chief among them

 

but who cares if people sell right now or in the past? my point wasn't that people should hold on to bitcoin forever and ever and never spend it. again, how else would miners - the backbone of bitcoin - afford to mine?

 

if you're asking how bitcoin itself disrupts the financial system, then that's a different question

 

Quote

 

Maybe that wasn't the purpose of BTC when this first started, but that is certainly the purpose of BTC for 99% of all BTC investors.

 

maybe it is, and even if it were 99.9% it still wouldn't matter. what matters is the .1% who recognize the purpose and keep chipping away at the ideological intention behind it. luckily, though, with each bubble more people jump on and stay on

 

do they take profit? sure. but the point is they learn about the world of technology and new money, which is much, much, much more fascinating and indicative of the future than, say, going to your local bank and buying some boomer's stocks.

[almo89]

6 hours ago, Tortorella's Rant said:

But there are way safer investments than this such as index funds and ETFs which are extremely diversified and take out the human ego aspect of a managed portfolio. The problem with investing for a lot of people is that it takes a long time to see any real return, and you need a lot of capital to begin with to see any real return.

 Pretty much this. It's boring to invest in index ETFs because you don't see "real" returns right away and it takes so long. Most people don't have the discipline. I started doing Couch Potato style investing over a year ago. It's pretty boring. At this point, it's mostly just my savings being put away, but at least I have the discipline to keep putting money away. In the long run and I'm talking around when I retire in 25 years or so, it should be a decent chunk of money. A lot of people can't think that far down the road and want fast money. 

[nuckin_futz]

This story just gets weirder and weirder.............

 

The QuadrigaCX saga keeps getting weirder

Mon 4 Feb 2019

 

Canadian crypto exchange founder dies with private keys

Canada's largest crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy on Friday claiming liabilities of about $210 million and assets of about $30 million.

 

The filing and a notice on the website said the company has been unable to recover the private keys of its considerable holdings of cryptocurrencies. They were apparently lost after the death of the 30-year old founder and CEO Gerald Cotton (above) on a trip to India. The bankruptcy claimed 26,500 BTC, 20,000 LTC and 430,000 Ethereum, among others holdings. It would be the fourth-largest known crypto hack.

 

"The laptop computer from which Gerry carried out the companies' business is encrypted and I do not know the password or recovery key. Despite repeated and diligent searches, I have not been able to find them written down anywhere," his wife said in the bankruptcy filing.

 

The company had 115,000 active users.

 

Since the announcement, blockchain-watchers have set out to find the wallets that might contain the reserves.

 

Immediate question have arisen. Kraken CEO Jesse Powell first cast vague doubts about the reserves.

Others have noted that money continues to flow in and out of its Litecoin wallets associated with QuadrigaCX.

 

Now, there is growing speculation that the company never had the Bitcoin reserves at all.

 

There has been plenty of speculation that the founder faked his death but I don't think that happened.

 

I think they were lost, squandered and/or hacked. The company had publicized some losses. It's also possible the founder had unwisely invested in crypto ICOs with customer funds and lost them.

 

Evidence is the lax accounting at the company. According to the filing there are hardly any accounting records.

 

"To the best of my knowledge, most of the business of the Companies was being conducted by Gerry wherever he and his computer were located," the filing said. It also notes that in 2016 all of the other directors resigned and that Cotton was the sole director. The company was also hit with a cease trade order for failing to file financial statements. His wife also said she has been unable to find any corporate records.

 

I find it almost impossible to believe that Canada's largest exchange was essentially run by one person and a handful of contractors. If the accounts were meticulously maintained, it would have been necessary to have checks and balances. Nevermind the stupidity of having only one person with access to the private keys.

 

My guess is that the founder somehow lost out massively and resorted to operating a ponzi scheme to balance withdrawals. That would explain the frequent delays in processing withdrawals for the past year.

 

Yet it gets even weirder from there.

 

The co-founder of the company was Michael Patryn. Various sources on the internet make a compelling argument that's not his real name. Instead, it's Omar Dhanani who was convicted for fraud in the United States and was released in 2007. The fraud was for operating an online marketplace for identity theft. He was later arrested again in in Canada for money laundering in relation to Liberty Reserve, which was a fraud payment processor. There are certainly some strong connections to them.

 

What's strange about that theory is that Pateryn still appears to be cooperating with Cotton's widow to figure out what happened to the cryptocurrency, which isn't the kind of thing that someone would do if they were hiding their identity or committing a massive fraud.

Safe to say there will be plenty more to come.

 

 

https://www.forexlive.com/cryptocurrency/!/the-quadrigacx-sage-keeps-getting-weirder-20190204

 

****************************

 

So either they were hacked and essentially robbed. Then shifted to run the business as a ponzi, using new customer deposits to satisfy existing customer withdrawals.

 

Or they simply pissed it all away on dumb investments or living a lavish lifestyle. Either way it's massive malfeasance.

 

How can you have $210 million in assets and hardly any corporate records?

 

I wonder if Gerald Cotton is actually dead?

 

Your thoughts on this mess @GLASSJAW

 

As to the speculation Quadriga never had the Bitcoin reserves at all. This reminds me a bit of the "Nonko Trading" scam of a few years ago. The operators of a shady proprietary trading shop (trading US stocks) named Nonko Trading noticed that +90% of all traders opening new accounts lost money. So they hatched a plan to put them all on a simulator instead of actually trading live and sending live orders to the markets. So when clients "lost" their money they assumed it was legit and accepted it and the owners of the company would simply pocket the client's money. It was actually a brilliant plan until it all fell apart and they all got busted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 4, 2019 by nuckin_futz

[GLASSJAW]

1 hour ago, nuckin_futz said:

This story just gets weirder and weirder.............

 

The QuadrigaCX saga keeps getting weirder

Mon 4 Feb 2019

 

Canadian crypto exchange founder dies with private keys

Canada's largest crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy on Friday claiming liabilities of about $210 million and assets of about $30 million.

 

The filing and a notice on the website said the company has been unable to recover the private keys of its considerable holdings of cryptocurrencies. They were apparently lost after the death of the 30-year old founder and CEO Gerald Cotton (above) on a trip to India. The bankruptcy claimed 26,500 BTC, 20,000 LTC and 430,000 Ethereum, among others holdings. It would be the fourth-largest known crypto hack.

 

"The laptop computer from which Gerry carried out the companies' business is encrypted and I do not know the password or recovery key. Despite repeated and diligent searches, I have not been able to find them written down anywhere," his wife said in the bankruptcy filing.

 

The company had 115,000 active users.

 

Since the announcement, blockchain-watchers have set out to find the wallets that might contain the reserves.

 

Immediate question have arisen. Kraken CEO Jesse Powell first cast vague doubts about the reserves.

Others have noted that money continues to flow in and out of its Litecoin wallets associated with QuadrigaCX.

 

Now, there is growing speculation that the company never had the Bitcoin reserves at all.

 

There has been plenty of speculation that the founder faked his death but I don't think that happened.

 

I think they were lost, squandered and/or hacked. The company had publicized some losses. It's also possible the founder had unwisely invested in crypto ICOs with customer funds and lost them.

 

Evidence is the lax accounting at the company. According to the filing there are hardly any accounting records.

 

"To the best of my knowledge, most of the business of the Companies was being conducted by Gerry wherever he and his computer were located," the filing said. It also notes that in 2016 all of the other directors resigned and that Cotton was the sole director. The company was also hit with a cease trade order for failing to file financial statements. His wife also said she has been unable to find any corporate records.

 

I find it almost impossible to believe that Canada's largest exchange was essentially run by one person and a handful of contractors. If the accounts were meticulously maintained, it would have been necessary to have checks and balances. Nevermind the stupidity of having only one person with access to the private keys.

 

My guess is that the founder somehow lost out massively and resorted to operating a ponzi scheme to balance withdrawals. That would explain the frequent delays in processing withdrawals for the past year.

 

Yet it gets even weirder from there.

 

The co-founder of the company was Michael Patryn. Various sources on the internet make a compelling argument that's not his real name. Instead, it's Omar Dhanani who was convicted for fraud in the United States and was released in 2007. The fraud was for operating an online marketplace for identity theft. He was later arrested again in in Canada for money laundering in relation to Liberty Reserve, which was a fraud payment processor. There are certainly some strong connections to them.

 

What's strange about that theory is that Pateryn still appears to be cooperating with Cotton's widow to figure out what happened to the cryptocurrency, which isn't the kind of thing that someone would do if they were hiding their identity or committing a massive fraud.

Safe to say there will be plenty more to come.

 

 

https://www.forexlive.com/cryptocurrency/!/the-quadrigacx-sage-keeps-getting-weirder-20190204

 

****************************

 

So either they were hacked and essentially robbed. Then shifted to run the business as a ponzi, using new customer deposits to satisfy existing customer withdrawals.

 

Or they simply pissed it all away on dumb investments or living a lavish lifestyle. Either way it's massive malfeasance.

 

How can you have $210 million in assets and hardly any corporate records?

 

I wonder if Gerald Cotton is actually dead?

 

Your thoughts on this mess @GLASSJAW

 

As to the speculation Quadriga never had the Bitcoin reserves at all. This reminds me a bit of the "Nonko Trading" scam of a few years ago. The operators of a shady proprietary trading shop (trading US stocks) named Nonko Trading noticed that +90% of all traders opening new accounts lost money. So they hatched a plan to put them all on a simulator instead of actually trading live and sending live orders to the markets. So when clients "lost" their money they assumed it was legit and accepted it and the owners of the company would simply pocket the client's money. It was actually a brilliant plan until it all fell apart and they all got busted.

 

 

 

I think, yeah, they essentially had to turn into a ponzi-type situation.

 

But I'm not sure they were hacked, and I don't really believe the ICO thing either 

 

But there's pretty strong documentation (which the company has confirmed) of them 'misplacing' 70,000 ether in a faulty contract, for example. That isn't them being hacked, it's them being stupid and losing $20m through a simple mistake which cost them assloads of money out of pocket.

 

I think it's just a still-unraveling thing, and the truth will come out sooner or later. The thing about BTC, LTC, and ETH is that it's all documented. Once the proper wallets are identified, we'll be able to see when and if they are moved, and centralized exchanges will undoubtedly refuse those coins. If that happens, then we'll know someone is lying along the way. If it doesn't happen, then we had one pulled over on us, and there's a very deep scheme going on somewhere. there's lots of chain analysis going on on reddit, at the sub r/bitcoinCA, some of it's pretty interesting, but lots of debate still on the validity of some wallets

 

If Cotten ISN'T actually dead, and he left his wife and co-workers to face the outcome, either they'll rat him out or the watchful eyes of those spurned customers will find out, IMO. They will literally be on the run their entire lives at this point. His wife has already been doxed (address, contact information) and will certainly have a miserable life going forward if there's something more to this story.

 

If not, and this just is a bizarre story of someone dying of a traditionally non-fatal disease, then it's just another hard-earned lesson of why you shouldn't leave lots of money on an exchange, which can go under at any minute

 

 

another good sub for breaking info is r/QuadrigaCX

 

 

 

 

Edited February 5, 2019 by GLASSJAW

[CBH1926]

2 hours ago, nuckin_futz said:

This story just gets weirder and weirder.............

 

The QuadrigaCX saga keeps getting weirder

Mon 4 Feb 2019

 

Canadian crypto exchange founder dies with private keys

Canada's largest crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy on Friday claiming liabilities of about $210 million and assets of about $30 million.

 

The filing and a notice on the website said the company has been unable to recover the private keys of its considerable holdings of cryptocurrencies. They were apparently lost after the death of the 30-year old founder and CEO Gerald Cotton (above) on a trip to India. The bankruptcy claimed 26,500 BTC, 20,000 LTC and 430,000 Ethereum, among others holdings. It would be the fourth-largest known crypto hack.

 

"The laptop computer from which Gerry carried out the companies' business is encrypted and I do not know the password or recovery key. Despite repeated and diligent searches, I have not been able to find them written down anywhere," his wife said in the bankruptcy filing.

 

The company had 115,000 active users.

 

Since the announcement, blockchain-watchers have set out to find the wallets that might contain the reserves.

 

Immediate question have arisen. Kraken CEO Jesse Powell first cast vague doubts about the reserves.

Others have noted that money continues to flow in and out of its Litecoin wallets associated with QuadrigaCX.

 

Now, there is growing speculation that the company never had the Bitcoin reserves at all.

 

There has been plenty of speculation that the founder faked his death but I don't think that happened.

 

I think they were lost, squandered and/or hacked. The company had publicized some losses. It's also possible the founder had unwisely invested in crypto ICOs with customer funds and lost them.

 

Evidence is the lax accounting at the company. According to the filing there are hardly any accounting records.

 

"To the best of my knowledge, most of the business of the Companies was being conducted by Gerry wherever he and his computer were located," the filing said. It also notes that in 2016 all of the other directors resigned and that Cotton was the sole director. The company was also hit with a cease trade order for failing to file financial statements. His wife also said she has been unable to find any corporate records.

 

I find it almost impossible to believe that Canada's largest exchange was essentially run by one person and a handful of contractors. If the accounts were meticulously maintained, it would have been necessary to have checks and balances. Nevermind the stupidity of having only one person with access to the private keys.

 

My guess is that the founder somehow lost out massively and resorted to operating a ponzi scheme to balance withdrawals. That would explain the frequent delays in processing withdrawals for the past year.

 

Yet it gets even weirder from there.

 

The co-founder of the company was Michael Patryn. Various sources on the internet make a compelling argument that's not his real name. Instead, it's Omar Dhanani who was convicted for fraud in the United States and was released in 2007. The fraud was for operating an online marketplace for identity theft. He was later arrested again in in Canada for money laundering in relation to Liberty Reserve, which was a fraud payment processor. There are certainly some strong connections to them.

 

What's strange about that theory is that Pateryn still appears to be cooperating with Cotton's widow to figure out what happened to the cryptocurrency, which isn't the kind of thing that someone would do if they were hiding their identity or committing a massive fraud.

Safe to say there will be plenty more to come.

 

 

https://www.forexlive.com/cryptocurrency/!/the-quadrigacx-sage-keeps-getting-weirder-20190204

 

****************************

 

So either they were hacked and essentially robbed. Then shifted to run the business as a ponzi, using new customer deposits to satisfy existing customer withdrawals.

 

Or they simply pissed it all away on dumb investments or living a lavish lifestyle. Either way it's massive malfeasance.

 

How can you have $210 million in assets and hardly any corporate records?

 

I wonder if Gerald Cotton is actually dead?

 

Your thoughts on this mess @GLASSJAW

 

As to the speculation Quadriga never had the Bitcoin reserves at all. This reminds me a bit of the "Nonko Trading" scam of a few years ago. The operators of a shady proprietary trading shop (trading US stocks) named Nonko Trading noticed that +90% of all traders opening new accounts lost money. So they hatched a plan to put them all on a simulator instead of actually trading live and sending live orders to the markets. So when clients "lost" their money they assumed it was legit and accepted it and the owners of the company would simply pocket the client's money. It was actually a brilliant plan until it all fell apart and they all got busted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This case is definition of a Ponzi scheme.

If something is too good to be true, it usually is.

[Grapefruits]

Never leave your coins on the exchange.

[NucksPatsFan]

On 2/3/2019 at 7:54 PM, GLASSJAW said:

if you're at all curious about it and you have netflix, i recommend the movie 'banking on bitcoin' as a decent way to spend 90 minutes 

 

 

just downloaded it before my flight, thanks!

[Toni Zamboni]

.

Edited June 28, 2019 by Toni Zamboni

[Tortorella's Rant]

Terrible. I do sympathize with those people especially after reading some of those Reddit threads. Nobody deserves to be wrecked like that. Especially those who lost 5 figures. What would you even do? How do you go on? How would you ever console someone in that situation. I guess the next step is the Smith and Wesson retirement plan because your financial future is gone unless you want to work until you're dead.

Edited February 14, 2019 by Tortorella's Rant

[Tre Mac]

I read that story and found it hard to believe he died due to Crohn's, maybe murdered or he's not even dead but why on earth do you travel to India if you're sick?  How hard would it be to fake your death in India if you still have a ton of money left?  Anyways I remember my friends talking about this and I was a bit jealous to be honest.  I am busting my ass off at work while somebody clicks a few pages on the internet and makes off with god knows what.  I even said, 'yeah as I soon as I invest it'll tank.'  Good thing I didn't. 

 

[nuckin_futz]

10 minutes ago, Tre Mac said:

I read that story and found it hard to believe he died due to Crohn's, maybe murdered or he's not even dead but why on earth do you travel to India if you're sick?  How hard would it be to fake your death in India if you still have a ton of money left?  Anyways I remember my friends talking about this and I was a bit jealous to be honest.  I am busting my ass off at work while somebody clicks a few pages on the internet and makes off with god knows what.  I even said, 'yeah as I soon as I invest it'll tank.'  Good thing I didn't. 

 

One version of the story is that he went to India to open an orphanage and on his honeymoon no less. Yeah that's a major 'yeah right' with an LOL tossed in.

 

My main question is where is his body? If a Canadian national dies overseas isn't the body shipped back to Canada to be buried by his loved ones? Let me guess, he was already cremated and spread in the Ganges? Anyone know where his body is?

 

Why is this story getting so little press? You basically have to go digging to find info despite this probably being one of the biggest Ponzi's in Canadian history.

Where is the mainstream media on this one? You've got scores of people financially wrecked with no where to turn for information. Where is CBC, Global, CTV?

[Tre Mac]

5 minutes ago, nuckin_futz said:

One version of the story is that he went to India to open an orphanage and on his honeymoon no less. Yeah that's a major 'yeah right' with an LOL tossed in.

Like really, who hasn't done this.