4 ms·

Service Changes for U.S. Customers

78 points by Randgalt 9y ago

matthewbauer 9y ago
Between this and the Bitcoin split thing[1], I wonder if there's something going on behind the scenes at Bitfinex? I read through an article about alleged "spoofing" at Bitfinex[2] but not sure if I 100% believe it. Does anyone have any ideas on what's going on the general shadiness of Bitfinex? [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-02/bitcoin-exchange-had-too-many-bitcoins https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-02/bitcoin-e... [2]: https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-dominates-the-price-of-bitcoin-39c711d28eb4 https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-domin...
- joeyspn 9y ago
  Manipulation in the crypto-world is rampant, it happens all the time in ALL the exchanges. But it's not a bug, it's a feature of unregulated markets. I've posted this before: Go to "shenanigans section": http://parasec.net/transmission/order-book-visualisation/ http://parasec.net/transmission/order-book-visualisation/ Code is available here: https://github.com/phil8192/ob-analytics https://github.com/phil8192/ob-analytics, just in case someone decides to grab a good chunk of tick-by-tick data (orderbook) and wants to go down the rabbit hole...
- benwilber0 9y ago
  After Bitfinex was hacked in 2016[1] to the tune of 120,000+ bitcoins, I wouldn't trust them with a penny of my money. There's no way they've secured their infrastructure and process to be anywhere near even basic PCI-DSS, let alone institutional banking standards. Big surprise they couldn't comply with USA KYC/AML laws. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitfinex_hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitfinex_hack
  - ryanlol 9y ago
    >There's no way they've secured their infrastructure and process to be anywhere near even basic PCI-DSS This simply couldn't be further from the truth.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - benwilber0 9y ago
      They're in Canada, right? I would like to see what kind of financial data security standards they adhere to, and what kind of physical/process security they've implemented since "the hack". For all we know Bitfinex is just a few guys in an open layout office in Toronto running their Node.js "exchange" on Linode.
Keeeeeeeks 9y ago
According to this video (possibly fake, as the source has been removed), Bitfinex often played cat-and-mouse games with regards to banking partnerships in the US: https://youtu.be/62cvxPIDBGY https://youtu.be/62cvxPIDBGY The spoofy and Tether thing does lead to some suspicious stuff as well
ve55 9y ago
This doesn't surprise me, and I expect other large exchanges to follow suite. Although the intentions of many US cryptocurrency regulations are to protect US residents/investors, they are instead leading to the exclusion of US residents from everything cryptocurrency-related. No one wants to touch US residents when cryptocurrencies are involved. Exchanges turn you down. ICOs tell you that you are not allowed to participate or outright block you. Gambling websites don't want to touch you either, of course. Neither do derivatives platforms, some sites with margin trading, and many sites with other types of speculation, such as sports betting, prediction markets, etc. It's easier to just exclude US residents instead of dedicating significant time and resources in trying to comply with new regulations that don't fit new technology as well as they should.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Additionally, most international banks refuse US citizen unless you bring a lot of money, because the US taxes all citizen (not just the money made in the US, or money made by people while they were in the US). And this goes even further, for example due to US patent laws, and export regulations (encryption are weapons of war, etc) even lots of open source software is not directly legal in the US (and many projects outright ban US citizen from working on these, while living in the US - this is also why the OpenBSD hackatons originally were a thing[1]). ________________________ [1] http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html
  - benwilber0 9y ago
    > many projects outright ban US citizen from working on these, while living in the US Do you know of any projects that don't allow US citizens to contribute?
    - kuschku 9y ago
      I literally linked one. For quite a while, OpenBSD banned US citizen from contributing to any cryptography code. Other projects that do stuff that would be illegal under US patent law (including some of my own) do the same today. Even other projects that use the EU law that allows decompilation, but which would be illegal in the US, do the same. But OpenBSD's hackathons are the only project that I want to specifically name. See the footnote 1 in my original comment.

78 points by Randgalt 9y ago

Between this and the Bitcoin split thing[1], I wonder if there's something going on behind the scenes at Bitfinex? I read through an article about alleged "spoofing" at Bitfinex[2] but not sure if I 100% believe it. Does anyone have any ideas on what's going on the general shadiness of Bitfinex? [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-02/bitcoin-exchange-had-too-many-bitcoins https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-02/bitcoin-e... [2]: https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-dominates-the-price-of-bitcoin-39c711d28eb4 https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-domin...

joeyspn 9y ago
Manipulation in the crypto-world is rampant, it happens all the time in ALL the exchanges. But it's not a bug, it's a feature of unregulated markets. I've posted this before: Go to "shenanigans section": http://parasec.net/transmission/order-book-visualisation/ http://parasec.net/transmission/order-book-visualisation/ Code is available here: https://github.com/phil8192/ob-analytics https://github.com/phil8192/ob-analytics, just in case someone decides to grab a good chunk of tick-by-tick data (orderbook) and wants to go down the rabbit hole...
benwilber0 9y ago
After Bitfinex was hacked in 2016[1] to the tune of 120,000+ bitcoins, I wouldn't trust them with a penny of my money. There's no way they've secured their infrastructure and process to be anywhere near even basic PCI-DSS, let alone institutional banking standards. Big surprise they couldn't comply with USA KYC/AML laws. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitfinex_hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitfinex_hack
- ryanlol 9y ago
  >There's no way they've secured their infrastructure and process to be anywhere near even basic PCI-DSS This simply couldn't be further from the truth.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - benwilber0 9y ago
    They're in Canada, right? I would like to see what kind of financial data security standards they adhere to, and what kind of physical/process security they've implemented since "the hack". For all we know Bitfinex is just a few guys in an open layout office in Toronto running their Node.js "exchange" on Linode.

Keeeeeeeks 9y ago

According to this video (possibly fake, as the source has been removed), Bitfinex often played cat-and-mouse games with regards to banking partnerships in the US: https://youtu.be/62cvxPIDBGY https://youtu.be/62cvxPIDBGY The spoofy and Tether thing does lead to some suspicious stuff as well

ve55 9y ago

This doesn't surprise me, and I expect other large exchanges to follow suite. Although the intentions of many US cryptocurrency regulations are to protect US residents/investors, they are instead leading to the exclusion of US residents from everything cryptocurrency-related. No one wants to touch US residents when cryptocurrencies are involved. Exchanges turn you down. ICOs tell you that you are not allowed to participate or outright block you. Gambling websites don't want to touch you either, of course. Neither do derivatives platforms, some sites with margin trading, and many sites with other types of speculation, such as sports betting, prediction markets, etc. It's easier to just exclude US residents instead of dedicating significant time and resources in trying to comply with new regulations that don't fit new technology as well as they should.

kuschku 9y ago
Additionally, most international banks refuse US citizen unless you bring a lot of money, because the US taxes all citizen (not just the money made in the US, or money made by people while they were in the US). And this goes even further, for example due to US patent laws, and export regulations (encryption are weapons of war, etc) even lots of open source software is not directly legal in the US (and many projects outright ban US citizen from working on these, while living in the US - this is also why the OpenBSD hackatons originally were a thing[1]). ________________________ [1] http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html
- benwilber0 9y ago
  > many projects outright ban US citizen from working on these, while living in the US Do you know of any projects that don't allow US citizens to contribute?
  - kuschku 9y ago
    I literally linked one. For quite a while, OpenBSD banned US citizen from contributing to any cryptography code. Other projects that do stuff that would be illegal under US patent law (including some of my own) do the same today. Even other projects that use the EU law that allows decompilation, but which would be illegal in the US, do the same. But OpenBSD's hackathons are the only project that I want to specifically name. See the footnote 1 in my original comment.