Topic: crypto-bridge.org KYC scam ! - page 4. (Read 1373 times)

Was KYC mandatory before october 1st? If yes then how were they able to operate if they are obligated to follow EU law? If no then when was it ? Unless AML laws were enforced on October first then I see no justification to what they did and how they did it.
 
I have asked this question twice now without an answer, let me rephrase "excuse my English"

If the exchange is located in EU zone, how were they able to operate for 2 years without compliance to EU AML laws and had no issue, i am sure EU law enforcement don't need 2 years to spot an exchange like this one, AML/KYC have been there long before 2017, unless the law in EU is optional and you can follow it whenever you feel like it

if they are not obligated to follow EU laws then where did all this KYC shit come from??


Irrelevant to who? The jude? My grandfather?  True, but to the reputation of the exchange in question it is relevant indeed.

You see, one does not have to break the law of a certain country to be considered a scammer, if that is the case then we probably should hire an international lawyer for this section of the forum before calling anyone a scammer.

If you allow me to deposit funds without KYC then i should be able to withdrawal without KYC as well, unless law enforcement "forced" you do such a thing, if that is not the case then you are a scammer regardless of the law.

What I have misquoted, as I can see LeGaulois agreed with me and you disagreed and then I disagreed with you.

Irrelevant. They can enforce KYC whenever they want. It is a law FFS.
Which is also irrelevant. They can but they are not obligated to do so.
Provide proofs.
Many services ran for years without conducting KYC, because it wasn't written in law that they should conduct KYC. Remember all anonymous VISA cards? Or was it mastercard  
Yes, it could be. Do you have proofs for this statement?
Cmon, proofs. Law has changed, KYC wasn't mandatory 2 years ago in many countries, now it is.

Side note - I am not shilling for them, I want to see more proofs than conversation in reputation.

You are right, but I am not wrong ,you kind of misquoted my reply to LeGaulois's sentence where he stated


What I was trying to say is that, this part does not mean they can "precisely" change the contract as they wish without notifying their clients, unless the modification serves a purpose of complying with a new law / law amendment then that's a different story, meaning that for example, they can't change the withdrawal fees without notifying the users , I am 99% certain about this, however, assuming AMLD5 took place on 1st Oct 2019, then crypto-bridge are not obligated to notify their clients , as you mentioned nobody is responsible on notifying anyone about the law.

Now I hope that part is cleared.

However, the problem with this case is that AMLD5



according to https://www2.deloitte.com/lu/en/pages/risk/articles/amld5-has-entered-into-force.html#targetText=On%2019%20June%202018%2C%20the,application%20from%2010%20January%202020.

non of the two dates mentioned above is 1st Oct 2019.

 I will admit that I was mistaken in the part where I thought what they did was illegal , when I gave it a second thought , the contract's modification enforced a law, thus , it gains legality  , I doubt any judge will send them to jail for doing so  

But wait , it's very likely that they "where were able" to inform their clients but they chose not to,  I also have another way of looking at it , it's sorta of conspiracy theory based, but please hear me out

Crypto-bridge does not answer to any authority, they don't give a fuck about any EU law  "well they run for years without complying to it anyway" and they faked this whole thing in an attempt to steal clients funds who refuse to submit their personal documents (probably plenty of them), so this could be more or less like a scam under the protection of the law.

My conclusion : Crypto-bridge did not break any law by enforcing KYC , but they directly or indirectly scammed clients by "suddenly pretending" to comply to a law they operated without for 2 years.

I am really having hard time to understand this topic and posts within it.

Are we talking about law or justice?

The beauty of the system!
You can call them thieves, everybody knows they are thieves, but ...they aren't
And probably worse than street-level thieves, since by law, they can't hold that money from suspicious accounts, they must give it to the authorities, those aren't tips, but I have a feeling it won't happen.

Unfortunately, the customers are really screwed in my opinion, and even if you take them to court, try to seize assets, by the time the whole process will be over the will be no trace of money, and maybe even now there is none left.
I don't like it, I don't think is normal, I don't think it should be legal but...is one of those moments..what can you do about it?


I live and work in a different country (although still in the EU) that my ID and Driving license show.
Usually, when a problem appears over this I give up, there is no point trying.


They shouldn't have! Why the change? $ Enough motive?


EU regulations and directives have mandatory times but that doesn't mean a country can't approve one as soon as it's printed and to be honest I have no clue how Denmark dealt with it. And it doesn't mean also that one country doesn't have in place stricter regulation.

Sure but there are 2 different points

1) the fact a company can change the agreement
2) how they deal with users who disagree with the changes.

I'm not denying they should have at least left a deadline and announced it much earlier and give the possibility for those who disagree to move on. But the fact they can change the T&C and they told it before.

For others, No.

You are very wrong. We are talking about AML and CTF laws here, so they really can change this at any time they like, and, judging my country laws, this will be mandatory from 1. 1. 2020. for all "money" related services, and this action will take its place without prior notice, no one can say "I didn't know what is in laws" because authorities don't really care if you are not aware of laws. Besides, they can really say "everyone in our exchange is under suspicion that they deposited funds which came from suspicious sources therefore we will conduct KYC to everyone"  and they are pretty much allowed to conduct KYC before releasing funds..

Exchange is financial institution. Please read everything which is in link I posted just few posts before this one, you will get clear picture of everything.

That is partially true information, which will become, as I am aware of it, true information at 2020( for some countries at least). Just for example, in my country, which is in EU, you can do money related business up to 7500 kuna which is cca 1050€ without doing KYC, any other "deal" you make above this amount, well, you will have to go trough KYC procedure. And, you won't be able to deposit funds on some bookies without going "full" KYC while some other bookies will ask you partially private information only on withdrawal and when you go to cash out funds in their "brick and mortar" "office" they even won't ask you for ID's. How about that?

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I just want to say, I am not defending anyone here, I hate KYC as much as you all do, I hate some laws as much as you all do( FFS my authorities said if I will buy something with BTC, I will have to calculate and   pay capital gain taxes for every single shit I bought with BTC  ), I am just saying no one is above authorities and laws. Please don't mix your personal feelings and laws. Things which we consider wrong here doesn't mean they are wrong by law, although some should be, unfortunately, law is above us all  

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Some things don't have any legal background, so if any service change terms to this it just can't and wont be enforced. KYC because of AML is something completely different, and it can be enforced at any time.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure EU members need to comply by Jan 10th 2020.

There is no disagreement about this, every law including AML made by the European parliament must be followed down to a t , however my concern is this


This is how crypto-bridge justify the need for KYC, howver ,AMLD5 has been effective since 9 July 2018 , "assuming" they are based within EU authorities jurisdiction, how were they able to operate without applying AMLD5 for over a year? and why the sudden change?

This takes me back to the same question I asked in the OP


They were able to operate since 2017 without any KYC requirement, what are the chances that they really had noway to notify their clients? I would love to hear more from crypto-bridge, but apparently they don't even care !

What if they change the agreement to say that you owe them your firstborn. Still fair?

Those cop out clauses in TOS and user agreements shouldn't be considered a blank check for stealing customers funds.


And yet they're still thieves and I'll call them that, thank you very much

By not complying with the law when they took deposits they caused damages to those customers who for whatever reason can't pass KYC. And trust me, there are plenty of reasons why a perfectly above-board customer couldn't pass KYC. For example I once briefly lived at an address that wasn't in any of the KYC databases, even the friggin' USPS couldn't deliver to it, had to rent a mailbox.

Imagine this: you check your coat in a fancy restaurant, get a tag, but when you're trying to pick your coat up you're told you need to prove you own it by showing a picture of yourself wearing it. Even if there was law requiring such nonsense, I think it's still theft to confiscate property if it was taken from you under false pretense (promise to give it back in exchange for the tag, or upon supplying your username/password on a website).

Any of you legal eagles getting ready to tell me that this wouldn't fly with the police/judge/etc - yeah, I know.

That's the term they've chosen to use, that's what I have

And no, there is something called reasonable time between the warning sent to the clients and the actual date the terms take effect. Especially telecom companies are losing cases after cases over this when they want to close down or change subscriptions to tv packs or data transfer caps or anything that takes place overnight.

You have to offer your client a reasonable time to analyze, act and to find a solution, you can't put something on a website or send a SMS at 2 am and by 8 am cut him, it's going to be labeled as abusive and the client will win.

But now, this case, is a bit of a tricky situation.
If they would have changed the terms to ask for a 10% fee on withdraws and put them in place overnight and not allow users to withdraw money without the fees it would have been a case of "unfair" terms.

The changes they have made are actually EU AML guidelines, so ......they actually don't require the client approval.

The company shouldn't have operated on this model from the start, if they want to get legal or have been warned to from now that they should require identification, by not doing so and by returning funds to the customers who refuse KYC although moral it's unfortunately illegal.

So, call them scammers, pieces of ... everything, but they are covered by the damn law.


The EU AML directives have become mandatory regulations which are above the national courts jurisdiction, you can't fight them in a civil process.

It is our understanding that a REAL decentralized exchange with full atomic swaps would be pretty much as decentralized as bitcoin (not quite) . You should have zero risk of losing your coins.
We mean a real decentralized exchange like blocknet has created and binance tried to copy from them, perhaps they did manage to copy it I can't recall the story now . They are not taking off because they require a slightly higher level of study before use. People are lazy and impatient. You want super convenient then risk getting scammed with insta KYC over night or exist scammed or pretend hacks etc etc.

TBF a lot of exchanges have introduced kyc or no withdrawals although perhaps not on the same day may they did, can't recall. I think most have given a bit of grace.

That is not true, you can't possibly change the terms without the other party agreeing to the "new" amendments/changes , the term "“We Can Change These Terms at Anytime" only declares that they are not obligated to stick to the agreement "forever", it means exactly that, nothing more nothing less.



Makes a lot of sense if you ask me, however there will never be a "Fully decentralized exchange" unless it's ran and managed by aliens and hosted out side of the milky way, as long as the exchange is located in any place that is reachable by any authority it will always be under some sort of rules and regulations, don't get me wrong , I am all about decentralization, but honestly speaking nothing in this world is fully decentralized, not even bitcoin itself.

I really do not know why you all debating what they have to do or they can do, THEY ARE NOT A FINANCIAL INSTITUTION, THEY ARE NOT AFFILIATED WITH ANY FINANCIAL ENTITY, so what they need to do is let people choose if they want to comply with KYC or not, if not they have to be invited to withdraw their funds and terminate their account.

The EU has what is called unfair contract terms.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1429176294813&uri=CELEX:31993L0013

Cancelation on short notice and modifying a contract without informing a client and presenting him with the option to refuse it without taking a financial loss or going against his constitutional rights are forbidden
You can write in your terms and conditions whatever you want, in case of a complain the court will rule it in tour favor without examining further what the terms implied,  as they are is deemed illegal.

Anyhow, they deal with money, they are in the EU, they must go through all the KYC/AML stuff.
Actually, I would be far more concern with a company that claims to be run from the EU and does not require it, they would either be scammers or they would be shut down in a matter of months.

Decentralized exchange....what a joke this decentralized stuff has become  

@marlboroza

No , I suppose they can't. I saw a post on Reddit yesterday with a screenshot, the user couldn't withdraw, he had a message saying "no asset found" but he has...

edit:
@stompix
"unfair" is very subjective but I don't think it's considered unfair when the agreement warned them before

Informing customers before taking action is right thing to do, however, I don't think they have to do it. For example, you can go to police and say "they won't give me my money back, they ask me to give them my ID and they never asked this before", well how will this sound? Police will probably say "do AML procedure and if they don't give you your money then come to us". I don't think law which could make exchange to not perform KYC exist, keeping their customers informed about new regulations or not. This was always "double edged sword" in this space. I might be wrong, but I am at least 90% sure they don't have to inform anyone about this change in advance.

...and cryptocurrencies.

Big impact on project like ours, we were listed on crypto-brigde advertising it as a decentralized exchange plus we promised to our customers privacy and safety of their personal informations, now all of a sudden we woke up with customers having their coins on crypto bridge without being able to withdraw them without completing the KYC verification.
From my understanding and personal research, its understandable to comply with KYC whenever you deal with USD, EUR, etc. (bank transfers), crypto-bridge does not have direct deposits, or direct exchanging methods to USD, EUR or other regulated currencies, so i really do not understand the need of the KYC, unless they will shut down in the near future.
Crypto-bridge is not a company, or atleast i can't find it... so the need of their exchange being forced to comply with KYC because of anytype of laws .... its impossible to understand atleast from my part.
If you have a company its understandable to comply with KYC, if not it beats me.

So yeah, whoever is acusing crypto-bridge of scaming people, in my opinion its totally understandable.

You can see their registration details here: https://crypto-bridge.org/imprint/
As you say, registered in Denmark to a company called "Liquid Blocks". Interestingly, the link they provide (https://liquid-blocks.com/) currently returns an error.

Anyone know what the Danish/EU laws regarding changes to Terms and Conditions are? I'd be very surprised if they were "The company can unilaterally change them without prior notice or consent and you just have to suck it up".

Sure, but the first inclination the exchange had that KYC for all customers was coming was not a letter which said "Implement KYC today or we will shut you down". There will have been communication prior to this, and any reputable exchange would have taken this opportunity to inform their customers of upcoming changes, especially since their own legalese says they are obligated to do so.

Didn't think I'd find myself saying this, but CH is spot on here.

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He's wearing a Cryptotalk signature. All you can expect is a generic reply which totally misses the point and doesn't read any of the conversation that came before.

If they have not given any prior warnings kyc  was coming before the date it was activated (at least one month) then it looks like they are likely hoping a lot of people will NOT wish to give their personal details and will leave their coins there for them to " look after".

Pretty scammy if that is the case. If you can get a flag going that could put some pressure on them to give a week or 2 grace before it goes live. Then again  if they think the loot will be considerable from abandoned accounts they may not budge.

Fully decentralized exchanges are the only way forward. Shame more people do not support them. Then this kind of thing and exit scams would not keep happening.