Bitcoin trade biz MyCoin goes dark, investors fear $387 MEEELLION lost Investors fear they may be $387m (£254m) in the red after a Hong Kong Bitcoin biz fell silent. The investment and trading website MyCoin reportedly closed its Kowloon offices a few weeks ago, and the company has not yet responded to inquiries from The Reg and other publications. According to the South China Morning Post, …
Is there any evidence that this shonky outfit actually invested people's funds in anything, let alone in bitcoins? It sounds like it's just a pure con for the greedy.
The reporting seems very unclear to me whether people paid in dollars, or bitcoins, or what.
HK$400,000 is about US$50k. If that is promised to pay out 90 bitcoins, that's only about US$20k at the moment, though it was up to $90k at this time last year.
because setting it up as a Bitcoin operation makes it super easy to run away with everyones money.
No regulation, no ability to track transactions, no ability to trace the money.
It's a scammers dream come true, especially with all the media attention BitCoin received last year.
Can anybody enlighten me on how anybody who has been on this planet for longer than six weeks would ever invest large sums of money into a Hong Kong-based sub-company of another company that has a "sole director" (who apparently does more successful business on Virgin Islands), promises extraordinary large gains, and that requires you to bring new marks into the game (sorry, "sign up new investors") in order to get your money back?
And how these people have made a fortune (apparently) while being that stupid? I mean, come one, they cannot *all* have inherited their wealth, can they? Lottery winners, maybe?
Rich people need not have made their fortune, someone else could have made it for them. For example, they could simply inherit it. No intelligence, or indeed any other talent, is needed.
The selected icon is a "shining" example of this
(note: Paris might not be as stupid as she apparently likes to appear, but her wealth does not stem from any talent she may or may not have)
The HK police are on the case, they don't take kindly to this sort of thing in HK.....
But there is at least one other company that is 'illegally' registered in HK.....
I made this point back in 2013,2014 that ANY company in HK has to be legally registered and MUST provide business registrations when requested, not doing so is illegal.
Just pop over to the government website and for 10US$ you can get a list of all directors & their registered address.
I invest your money in a <insert techno-babble> and promise to return your money to you at a <insert large value> increase. For maximum profit send your cash to <insert off-shore financial institution> care of <insert pseudonym here>.
For further inquiries as to where your cash has gone contact <insert name of someone who gives a fuk>
You can pretty much just skip to that last step.
But it's Risky Bizness. Some of those investors will have resources.
Having a few hundred million is going to help avoid those resources for a while. But it's not going to be a quiet and relaxed rest-of-life, however long it is.
On the upside it's less dangerous than making off with Swiss tax secrets. (Probably.)
Not a bad idea, pretty much naked short selling bitcoins. Promise sales (of something you don't actually have yet) at one price, trigger a market panic, buy cheap and deliver. This would be illegal in a regular stock market, but due to the lack of regulation of bitcoins, you could get away with it. Once.
r"Some customers claim they were told that if they wanted to bring about their promised returns on investment, they should recruit other investors to pump additional funds into the operation."
So a pyramid scheme.
"Final Nail in the bitcoin coffin? "
No, not at all. This is a standard scam, and it doesn't reflect at all on Bitcoins. After all, if I said "I'm going to invest in US Dollars and Euros to (insert financialbabble* here) to double your money in x months", it's obviously a scam and does not reflect in any way on the dollar or euro (the US and EU are doing a good job of digging these currencies into a hole on their own.)
Could one double their money via bitcoin exchange? Sure, bitcoin exchange rate is fairly volatile. Are there any guarantees? No, and the big red flag is right there when someone claims "I'll make x within y time." These investors showed a supreme lack of common sense being taken in by a fairly standard investment scam.
*I guess if you can have technobabble you can have financialbabble.
but the Tech Elite and their cronies keep saying the New Clothes of Bitcoin are just too hard for us peons to see the benefits of....
yet again, another failure of the promises and hype of BC and alt currency in general.
The True Believers will of course, go off in defense. Many of whom were hoping to score big on the pump n' dump but like Amway sellers on the bottom of the pyramid, are stuck holding the bag. Anything to not admit how they were suckered and refused to get out with smaller profits when the getting was good.
Virtual here, virtual gone. Maybe the reason banks use buildings for branches is that it builds trust. Chasing an e-bank is always going to be tough. Am I surprised? Not really. And where are the independent regulators to make sure this virtual money is sound money? Oh, there are none? Well there's a surprise.
It's a nice idea, but to be acceptable there needs to be regulation together with financial backup to make sure the virtual bank can be trusted.
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