Crypto Exchange Founder Disappears with $2 Billion

[IkeaGnome]

30 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

And 90% of people that use crypto don't do illegal activities.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-false-narrative-of-bitcoins-role-in-illicit-activity/?sh=d4b45583432f

https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/cryptocurrency-crime-2020-report

But you'll ignore the second because the name is Chain Analysis and not look into the reports they do on Crypto. Including 2019 being a Ponzi scheme, their CTO spending 23 years in the FBi etc.

 

Just now, Bitter said:

Cite a source, anyone can make a chart about anything.

 

 

I did.

[Bitter]

Just now, Ar558a said:

Well there are very few places where that applies, and even if that is true you would put your money in USD or GBP or EUR not some dodgy made up digital currency.

Where do you get USD in Turkey?

[Bitter]

1 minute ago, IkeaGnome said:

 

I did.

My bad, I didn't see that. Actually looks like a legit source too!

[Ar558a]

1 minute ago, SlidewaysZ said:

Yeah and you know what I used to not like cryptocurrency till I took a look around and realized the stock market is being inflated by our government/mega corps  and our currency is being printed so fast won't be long until it's only worth wiping your butt with. I'm not looking to get rich quick from crypto and I haven't bought any extra GPUs to mine it with I only want to use it to diversify my portfolio.

While it is sensible to want to diversify and spread your risk crypto is WAY to volatile and unregulated to use as an sort of investment even if you don't find it morally repugnant.

[not found]

2 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Or people who though that their government backed currency was going to crash and burn and crypto was the only option they thought they had. The Turkish Lira has be very unstable for the past year. https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=TRY&view=1Y I'm willing to bet that these are people who were trying to protect what they had, not get rich quick.

Or try looking at Argentina, 46 to 200 ARS / USD in just over a year...

 

There are a lot of really legit interests in crypto, apart from the ones I mentioned earlier. Even Nestle uses blockchain in AWS to "increase transparency in supply chains"

 

[Ar558a]

3 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Where do you get USD in Turkey?

Well you can get USD everywhere but even if you can't get physical USD you can still put it into USD based investments.

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, Ar558a said:

While it is sensible to want to diversify and spread your risk crypto is WAY to volatile and unregulated to use as an sort of investment

Ah, this argument. There are currencies designed to be stable, such as G-Coin (1 G-Coin = 1 gram of gold). 

1 minute ago, Ar558a said:

even if you don't find it morally repugnant.

Ad hominem - an argument which attacks the character of the person delivering the argument, rather than the argument itself. E.g. "I think 2+2=5 because the person who said 2+2=4 is ugly and he smells."

Just... stop with the ad hominem. It comes off as desperate, at least for me.

[Fasterthannothing]

4 minutes ago, Ar558a said:

While it is sensible to want to diversify and spread your risk crypto is WAY to volatile and unregulated to use as an sort of investment even if you don't find it morally repugnant.

Sure years ago it would be considered volatile and I don't have my retirement funds in it. However when the United States Government is printing more money in the last few months than a large portion of the entire history of country you look around and realize the large swings in crypto prices still won't be much worse than the insane inflation thats about to happen in a few years.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/us-printed-more-money-in-one-month-than-in-two-centuries-2248196%3fampMode=1

[Ar558a]

Just now, not found said:

Or try looking at Argentina, 46 to 200 ARS / USD in just over a year...

 

There are a lot of really legit interests in crypto, apart from the ones I mentioned earlier. Even Nestle uses blockchain in AWS to "increase transparency in supply chains"

 

Crypto has moved faster than that in less than a week!

[doubleagent214]

So what exchange did this happen to?

[not found]

1 minute ago, Ar558a said:

Crypto has moved faster than that in less than a week!

Yeah, just so you know there are stable coins designed to be 1 on 1 with fiat or other valuable things (like gcoin, mentioned earlier). Bitcoin isn't the only coin out there.

[IkeaGnome]

Just now, Bitter said:

My bad, I didn't see that. Actually looks like a legit source too!

Eh, mine too. I didn't realize that half hour and as many posts had happened until I scrolled up to find it. 

If you go through the articles, there's some interesting reads, including possible upcoming regulations. The crime reports are very through if you snag them up.

https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/gurvais-grigg-chainalysis

 

[IkeaGnome]

1 hour ago, IkeaGnome said:

Here's some more information since the Tomshardware article is oddly vague.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56871403

  Hide contents

"Increasing numbers of people are opting to use cryptocurrencies in Turkey in an attempt to protect their savings from a sharp decline in the value of the local currency, the lira. But the Turkish cryptocurrency market is unregulated.

Last week, Turkey said it would ban the use of cryptocurrencies to pay for goods and services from 30 April."

"On Friday, Vebitcoin announced on its website it had stopped all activities "in order to fulfil all regulations and claims". It was not immediately clear how many people had been affected.

"Due to the recent developments in the crypto money industry, there was a much higher density in our operations than expected. We would like to state with regret that this situation has led us to a very difficult process," it said.

Meanwhile, Turkey has issued an international arrest warrant for the Thodex founder, Faruk Fatih Ozer, who reportedly fled to Albania with an alleged $2bn (£1.4bn) from investors.

Police also arrested 62 people over alleged connections to Thodex. Mr Ozer called the allegations against him "baseless" and said he was in Albania for work meetings."

 

 

23 minutes ago, doubleagent214 said:

So what exchange did this happen to?

Vebitcoin, owned by Thodex. A mostly Turkish coin. Essentially, Turkey is outlawing all use of cyrpto as a payment on the 30th.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Ar558a said:

Summary

A Crypto Exchange Founder in Turkey has fled with $2billion of Currency

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

 I couldn't help but smile when I saw this, I know this guy is a crook but maybe it make some people think twice before mining and maybe we can have our tech back!

 

Sources

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/turkish-crypto-exchange-goes-bankrupt-losses-2-billion-usd

Imho the uses cryptocoin are put to far too often are way too close to outright criminal activity for me.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, FakeKGB said:

Drugs =/= crypto. They're VERY different.

If I need to explain why, something is wrong.

 

Not different enough from a moral perspective.

Crypto = burns energy, generates nothing tangible or valuable

Drugs = harms pretty much everyone who gets into it from peer pressure, or the medical system not having proper controls over dispensing.

 

Illicit drugs, stuff made from matches and lithium batteries, can be controlled better by making certain precursor materials harder to obtain, like for metaphetamines , pseudoephedrine has to be have packaging and quantity controls so that nobody can buy more than they could reasonably use, or making them by prescription only.

 

Crypto however, can only be controlled with carbon taxes and making energy much more expensive , since people will do it anyway without a disincentive. Early bitcoin farms were often flagged for being Cannabis grow ops for the amount of energy being consumed. So it's not like the electric utilities don't know who is doing it. 

 

Both of them have consequences on the environment, never mind the costs on the medical system or energy system that is paid by everyone.

 

 

[Cyberspirit]

I don't know much about crypto so let me ask. Say they catch the guy, do the people who mined or invested into this get their money back or all they can do is spend it before it becomes illegal in the 30th?

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, Kisai said:

Crypto = burns energy, generates nothing tangible or valuable

I beg your pardon? In what world is crypto unvaluable?

1 Bitcoin = ~$50000 USD
1 Ether = ~$2200 USD

[soldier_ph]

Interesting coincidence that this happend because my Ledger Nano X (Crypto Cold Wallet) arrived yesterday. I invest in Crypto on Coinbase and Binance and have setup 2FA through both of my Yubikeys (5Ci and 5 Nano) on both of them. But yeah this is very sad to see for the Crypto Community myself included.

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

I beg your pardon? In what world is crypto unvaluable?

1 Bitcoin = ~$50000 USD
1 Ether = ~$2200 USD

The same world in which Texas ostriches once went for 50grand instead of $500.

[ElementHD]

As someone who has worked with Exotic financial derivatives for a long time.. Banks only take Crypto seriously because its index linked to the USD not because they see mega growth in it. lets not forget that even in London the FX turnover in a day makes Crypto look like a joke  at $3.6 Trillion. 

 

i'd rather return 30/40% every year on physical money than the See-Saw that is Crypto

 

And if you truly believe that a huge proportion of Crypto isn't used to fund cartels,civil wars and drugs then you are just plain naive 

[Vishera]

2 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

1. mining is not the problem

It's a huge problem,It's a waste of power and computing capabilities,harms the environment,puts a lot of unnecessary load on local infrastructure,

Disrupts markets such as the PC industry,and contributes more to the global shortage of semi-conductor chips.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Tech youtubers need to stop perpetuating this.

1. mining is not the problem, at least not most of it. In all likely hood, most caards are probably going to gamers (though id bet most gamers now after ltt talked about it are also miners), just so many people want cards from a very limited supply

2. cryptoexchange =/= miners. Probably most of the people without their crypto dont know how mining works, much less do mine. This is akin to someone taking 2bil worth of stocks and selling them.

3. anyone who think its a good thing that people got something stolen from them it has really big moral problems going on. Hell, even scalpers dont deserve to be robbed of billions.

People blaming GPU unavailability solely on mining are likely just as wrong as it turned out the people who blamed the fall of Detroit on the Japanese were.  Not THE problem doesn’t mean not A problem though.  

[Vishera]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

People blaming GPU unavailability solely on mining are likely just as wrong

Yeah,but the shortage of power supplies and the raise of their prices is the doing of crypto-mining.

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Yeah,but the shortage of power supplies and the raise of their prices is the doing of crypto-mining.

Might be an element.  My understanding is part of the issue with PSUs is theyre heavy.  Have to be moved by ship which makes things slow.  Even slower when there’s life safety stuff that has to be moved instead.  PSUs are just luxury items then.  I understand people in India are dying in droves because they can’t get medical oxygen.  A container full of oxygen bottles to India is going to take precedence over a container of PSUs.

[poochyena]

2 hours ago, FakeKGB said:

Drugs =/= crypto. They're VERY different.

If I need to explain why, something is wrong.

 

yea, drugs are fine and don't ruin the world