Topic: Bitfinex HACKED - funds stolen ! - page 7. (Read 32184 times)

I said $5 million (USD) in their bank accounts at the time of shutdown. They had massive profits for years, evidenced by the $40 million and multi-asset seizure from Ray Bitar. I'm guessing you were not a player there in the months leading up to the shutdown. The problem was that they were processing incoming deposits from US customers for several months during that period without being able to collect on them. However, they were paying out all withdrawals promptly. That lead to a huge insolvency that came to light after the shutdown.

Sure, it was a Cinderella Story for players there (although it took me well over a year to get my money back). Funny thing is that Full Tilt being insolvent meant that the US government shutting down Full Tilt and forcing this deal on Pokerstars was the best thing for Full Tilt customer. Otherwise we may have never been paid (US or not).

Pokerstars came out like a champ. An incredibly profitable company that was well capitalized and could save their own ass.

Full Tilt was an insolvent wreck of a company headed by absolute buffoons, who pissed away all their money on marketing, then became entirely insolvent by allowing US players to gamble with unreceivable deposits for months on end. Arrogant retards.

Bitfinex = Full Tilt. There is no Pokerstars in this equation. You do the math.

Officer they had $5 million the day they opened:

There were nine professional players involved with the launch of Full Tilt Poker. These were Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel, John Juanda, Andy Bloch, Erick Lindgren, Phil Gordon, and Clonie Gowen. Collectively these pros were known as Team Full Tilt. Tiltware, the software company from California, was also involved and there was an initial budget of $5 million. They operated from 2004 to 2011 as the only online poker site in the world that serviced US citizens and only made $5 million? lol $5 million isn't even a good weekday afternoon for Caesars Palace. Raymond Bitar was the only person ever held liable for wrongdoing and he was an asshole anyway. It was definitely a Cinderella story for poker players. Pokerstars got the DOJ to transfer $547 million to them to "reimburse" the victims. Haha They were given a boost that made them huge all over the world. In 2013 they dealt their 100 billionth hand and have an average of 100,000 customers a day. That sounds like a fairy tale to me.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.15095450  and then I "like" the Zane Tackett's nerve when he was asked if he still accept US clients even Bifinex had/has NO license : Yes, we did, and we still do"

A kid without brain, a hipster without logic.This is one of the Bitfinex owners. Of course, the other owners are the same.

 https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.15115801

This is the attitude(beyond any common sense and law) that explains everything. Bitfinex owners are feeling like Gods . " We are GODS and "you", mortals, you are only some shits."

This happened because Pokerstars and Full Tilt were using the same illegal banking mechanisms to fraudulently transmit money to US customers (e.g. coding money transmission as retail sports shop sales). Pokerstars executives were facing prison time; fortunately for them, Full Tilt left a giant hole in US customer pockets that the feds wanted Pokerstars to fill.

Full Tilt would never have been bought by Pokerstars otherwise. They were completely insolvent because they allowed "phantom deposits" on their site for many months without being able to physically receive money from US customers.

Full Tilt did not have $400 million, LOL. They had $5 million in their bank accounts at time of shutdown (more money was clawed back from executives like Ray Bitar). Um, and Full Tilt executives plead guilty to multiple charges. Given that they took $40 million from Bitar and his multiple homes -- no, Full Tilt did not shit on the US government. The judge also expressed that he only avoided prison by having a serious heart issue that require(d/s) a heart transplant; it was believed at the time he only had a couple years to live.  

The US government had an interest in Pokerstars buying Full Tilt; this would compensate all US customer losses. There is no such Cinderella story here. The US government leveraged prison time and asset forfeitures against Pokerstars. That's the only reason Full Tilt was bought and customers made whole. But why the hell would anyone buy Bitfinex?

No serious investor would touch Bitfinex now given that they have now stolen and redistributed customer funds (illegal asset conversion under common law) and securitized a debt note (illegal in many jurisdictions including the US).

Because the Full Tilt Poker homepage was reinstated six days later on April 20, 2011. On July 31, 2012, the US government dismissed with prejudice all civil complaints against all PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker companies after coming to a settlement with PokerStars which included PokerStars purchasing Full Tilt. PokerStars and Full Tilt admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which ended all litigation between the government and the companies. Full Tilt had real cash, $400 mil, to throw at attorneys and they took a giant crap on the US government and beat them at their own game. You can grease a lot of politicians with that kind of money and make legal cases against you just go *poof*.

That's gonna work out well. Western users are going to be flocking to deposit money into an insolvent, hacked exchange that just had its domain seized by the US government. And on a .ru domain.

I agree that it would be game over. At that point, Bitfinex is more than likely to have some of its USD bank accounts seized anyway.

I mean, why didn't Full Tilt Poker just spring up on .ru when the US shut them down?

Yeah, it's very hard to believe. That a site exchange (bitfinex) doing a scam or exposed to hacker attacks. Indeed we are more careful in keeping the money in exchange for the event as experienced by bitfinex. No indemnity, for bitcoin is a currency that does not yet have a definite laws

that's why we have a thread warning about exchanges, just don't keep money on an exchange that isn't trusted. besides, bitfinex doesn't have licenses as said above.

at least it doesn't affect to the users of the exchange only, but also to all of us because the price was down.

excellent post !  as you can see, most of the sheep are happy for the haircut.

Bitfinex earned a LOT of money in few weeks because it's a theft and not a hack. More than that, their friends from Whalepool (these ones had large amounts in Bitfinex and these guys know the owners) had to be refunded partially. How can they get funds without taking from their own? From their "normal" clients.
 
i warned against Bitfinex since 2 years ago and I said that they are an unlicensed money transmitter company(they need a financial license in US, EU and many other countries) with no insurance, no procedures, no supervision. how can you take "my" balance and give me monopoly tokens instead if my account wasn't hack?

where are the orderbooks where the clients can see the real funds that Bitfinex had? how do the clients know that 36% is the right amount? just because Bitfinex says so?


Issuing securities like these tokens is another illegal thing and SEC is interested about that. That's why Bitfinex doesn't allow US clients to trade them but issuing securities without a proper a license is illegal in all the countries too...

How do we know their volume isn't being faked to entice customers to return?

Register bitfinex.ru and start operating from there. All they'd need is a domain registrar that is not located in a Western friendly nation.

The weak link in their structure is their web registration. They can hide, but they may not be able to keep operating if law enforcement targets a) Bitfinex.com or b) Bitfinex's bank accounts.

If their domain gets seized, it's game over. What are they gonna do -- act like torrent tracker sites and spring up on a new domain every few weeks? Completely unsustainable. Anyone who still has funds on Bitfinex (including BFX tokens) is playing with fire.

In regards to law enforcement actions against Bitfinex, this doesn't actually matter. Bitfinex served US customers. If they broke US laws, they have a target on their back.

Whether accused persons will be extradited is a different matter. But that doesn't matter. The interesting question is whether bitfinex.com or their bank accounts get seized.

hong kong originally. now I think their legal base is the british virgin islands, the servers are in milan and the staff are all over the world. I think there's some scope for legal moves in there somewhere.

It was my understanding that Bitfinex was based in China, I'm not sure if they have any extradition treaty with any nation. (*they have no extradition treaty with US but they do with 23 other nations.)

I'm not surprised about any of that in the slightest. I'm glad I'd already taken my money out of Bitfinex to invest in XMG on Polo a few weeks before the hack. Didn't think the GUI was as intuitive either.

Pull up a daily chart. Volume is dead -- and a lot of it was the initial exodus that has bled half of Bitfinex's cold storage balances. My guess is volume will simply dry up. Plus, as someone else mentioned, I wouldn't necessarily trust the volume numbers pushed through the API. Bitfinex is desperate, and their whole shoddy criminal plan goes to shit if their platform becomes a ghost town.

You think the owners of Bitfinex will get out of this unharmed? I don't. I think they are headed to pound-me-in-the-ass prison if the US (world police) ever find them. You can't serve massive numbers of US customers, haircut their account balances based on dubious numbers with no relation to actual lost assets, issue and securitize a non-interest-bearing debt note which offers zero rights, and then continue business as usual.

In any common law jurisdiction, they are guilty of theft and illegal asset conversion. There are also likely legitimate fraud allegations, considering they have been completely non-transparent. For example, Phil Potter let it slip a couple days ago that they retained 10-13% of reserves for operating expenses and a legal slush fund to protect themselves from customer lawsuits.

This is outright theft, and despite no transparency, they still come right out and say it.

FBI seizure incoming. Whether tomorrow or next month. Pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

Idiots is a great term for people that are still using an exchange that f*cked their customers in 2 ways. 1- That they got hacked, and 2- They passed the bill to every account holder with a balance.

They refunded someone? who knows?