Normally we are the ones that interview crypto folks, but it was refreshing to flip positions: Barstool Bitcoin, quite a well-known Bitcoin Podcast sat down with us for their fresh issue. The discussed topics in a nutshell:
Download & listen here: iTunes: https://goo.gl/833zvb | Stitcher: https://goo.gl/vr1ztK | Google Play: https://goo.gl/o5pXST The post [Podcast] SmartOptions.io as Guest at Barstool Bitcoin appeared first on Smart Options. via Blogger [Podcast] SmartOptions.io as Guest at Barstool Bitcoin
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Recently we saw someone in a chatroom telling about a sad story. The guy got robbed in an Over-the-counter deal in a Telegram group for such kind of transactions. Obviously, he is still angry about what happened and searched for a way to spread a warning to the community, trying to effectively reduce the number of scams and learn from his expensive lesson, so he can pull something positive for others out of his pitiful situation. We want to help him and make sure our readers won’t fall for the same scam. Thank you, Samo for compiling your story into an interesting read. And now read and scare while reading this cryptocurrency thriller. The following content has been contributed by Telegram user @samurai007 – Please contact him if you have further ideas, hints, information for his hunt. On average there are about 9 million dollars a day stolen in the cryptocurrency market. Who knows what would be the number if all small thefts, scams, and hacks that nobody knows about would be considered. If you get robbed on the street you call the police but what can you do if you get robbed in cyberspace. Well, this article is one of the things I will do about it. I made a mistake, done things to quickly and lost quite some money which was stolen by a scammer on Telegram chatroom group called OTC Trade NEP5, ERC20, ICO. There were a lot of interesting offers with slightly better prices than in one other well-known group. This should have been the first warning. Those compelling prices, which were set a little below the OTC market prices, the purpose is to attract as many traders as possible. One other thing that acted as a positive impression was a large number of members which gave me some sense of security. Those numbers were fake in my opinion. The group had more than 5k members. I am not so sure if the trade offers were real at all. The group had just one administrator Dmittri W with a username @Dmittri1986. This should have been another warning for me. I should have stepped away but I didn’t. Albert Einstein said that anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. So why even try such trading if you have trusted regular exchanges where you can make a trade not worrying that you might lose your money while doing the trade? I believe most people didn’t hear about the OTC trading or know just a little about it, which is why I will make a quick abstract from the articles I have read. It is also important for me to inform you about this way of trading despite the fact that my main goal is to warn people about the scams and scammers that come with it. OTC (Over the Counter) trading is basically a trade that is done by one buyer and one seller behind the scene and bypassing the exchanges. That kind of trading is done for a long time in various markets. It is preferred by wealthy investors or hedge funds who make large transactions. It is necessary to explain why someone would choose the OTC trading over regular exchanges. PRICE …you can get a better price which you negotiate with the seller. LIQUIDITY …there is a lack of liquidity on some exchanges, trading pairs, tokens/coins. That is especially problematic when you want to fill a large order. SLIPPAGE …slippage refers to the difference between the expected price of a trade and the price at which the trade is actually executed. Slippage often occurs during periods of higher volatility when market orders are used, and also when large orders are executed when there may not be enough interest at the desired price level to maintain the expected price of the trade. LIMITATIONS …cryptocurrency exchanges often set trading limits as KYC (Knowing Your Customer), day trading and withdrawing amounts. Completing larger trades and exchange KYC verification processes are time-consuming. Those are the obvious problems regarding regular exchanges trading in the cryptocurrency market. Selling hundreds of millions of dollars of bitcoin on a public exchange in a short period of time could crash the market due to lack of liquidity. So with the OTC trading, you can make large transactions with which you don’t disturb the market prices and you don’t become bait for crooks. You can discuss and set the price and complete a trade instantly. There are many paths you can take to make an OTC trade but there are also many wrong turnings. You can do the OTC trade on ATM machine, you can find a broker (which can be quite expensive), cryptocurrency exchange OTC platforms or chat rooms. Many regular traders use chat rooms to discuss different projects, prices, trading techniques and other stuff regarding cryptocurrency market and trading. Telegram and Discord are two of the most popular chat rooms in a crypto scene. They are used by traders and different projects who can join or create specific groups. Such groups are also created and used for the OTC trading. Chatrooms OTC groups have almost no regulations and legal criterions. They are managed by administrators who usually offer escrow service in exchange for a fee as well. The reputation of the OTC group and administrators are probably the best indicators if one should choose to make a trade and trust the escrow provided. Some groups also offer whitelisting and KYC from both parties and escrow to make sure that you know with whom you will make a deal. Trading via chatroom has a history and is used even more today. First major Bitcoin OTC trade was done on an IRC chatroom channel #bitcoin-otc. The trade itself is quite simple. Basically, you can post your offer that includes information of the trade you wish to complete, where you specify the type of a trade, the coin/token pair and amount you want to trade and finally your price proposal. You must then wait for the counterpart contact. You can also just respond to an existing offer. Both sides negotiate the conditions and specifics and make a deal by themselves or with the agreed escrow. You can get stuff on the OTC that you can’t nowhere else. This aspect has another appeal for regular traders as they can buy some potentially worthy coins/tokens for a good price before they hit a market. Another opportunity for scammers to seize and another warning for traders to stay away as those kinds of trades are often accompanied by greed and lust for money. Chasing good prices and quick profits is where people lose their mind and forget about safety. One must always remember that in the cryptocurrency market it is always better to err on the side of caution. I wanted to buy a token that I couldn’t get an ICO allocation for because of the difficult entry conditions that were set by this project’s team. I have missed the allocation at the end of this long procedure to be whitelisted for a crowdsale. FOMO (fear of missing out) stayed with me. I decided to give the OTC trade a go. I found this one Telegram group that had a good reputation, many members and administrators who were whitelisted and posted an offer after completing whitelisting myself. Everything was ok. At first, I posted a very low price to see how others will react to it and after nothing happened I raised my offer’s price. I was curious about the OTC market prices of the token I was interested so I looked for another OTC group. I found, already mentioned one, OTC Trade NEP5, ERC20, ICO with this one administrator Dmittri W with a username @Dmittri1986. I checked the prices which were slightly better than those in the other group and posted an offer. I didn’t pay much attention to this group’s reputation and security as this was meant just as a comparison. It was already late at night when I received two offers, one after another. This was probably a pure coincidence. I discussed both offers and chose to go with the better one. I totally forgot about the second post I made in another group I knew nothing about. I was quite tired, it was late and I was carried by a seemingly good offer and made a huge mistake. I made a deal with a seller named “Utkarsh Surse” with username @utkarsh156O13. We contacted an escrow and administrator “Dmittri W.” We agreed that I send my money to the escrow and when he confirms the transaction the seller does the same and he sends me the money. Another coincidence was that there were problems with the blockchain involved in this trade so my transaction didn’t go through. As if someone was trying to prevent me to make a mistake. But I didn’t listen to my guardian angel and somehow forced this transaction which got stuck anyways. So we agreed to wait and go to sleep and finish the deal in the morning. Before I went to bed I checked one more time and the transaction went through but no one responded as they were probably already sleeping. I went to bed with a very bad feeling and I just hoped everything will turn out ok. At this time my intuition already tried to tell me that I did something wrong. No one responded in the morning. And soon I just heard three message alarms one after another. Even before I have looked at my phone I already knew what has happened. The buyer and the seller left the conversation and the chatroom was gone. So was my money. And there was nothing I could do about it as I realized I made a deal with some guys from this OTC group I knew nothing about. Another thing I realized was that I was tricked and robbed by one person as only one person could delete those conversations in a second. The worst part was that I could check the scammer’s wallet and I could see my money but could not touch it. This was a torment for my stupid deed. I want to post the NEO wallet addresses of a seller and an escrow. That might help you not to get robbed by this scammer(s).
I have found one other article dealing with the same name and address but I don’t have the permission to include that information yet. I followed the transactions from this addresses and the money goes through one particular big exchange and there are very large assets on that wallet. I also believe that this scammer steals the identities of other people and uses them to betray people. Please be aware that those people mentioned in this article, if they are real, are probably not involved and don’t even know about this scam. All that I wrote above influenced on my decision to make a trade in which I got scammed. There was this wish to go into the unknown field of cryptocurrency market, to learn to trade via OTC but mainly there were those bad factors that drove my decision. Opportunism, lust, and greed. Now, that I know. I am in the crypto market for more than a year, I am not dealing with large assets, I find blockchain technology something that will co-shape the future and I take trading as an interesting experience from which I can get much more than just money at the end. I will miss the money that was stolen from me and that I’ll probably never see again. This is one mistake I will never forget and one opportunity to make a change for myself and for everybody else. Please be careful and enjoy yourself while trading! p.s. References The post User Report: How I got robbed with an OTC (Over The Counter) Trade appeared first on Smart Options. via Blogger User Report: How I got robbed with an OTC (Over The Counter) Trade We got the black ties ready! This is going to be a rather short post, as we just want to inform you that, we will send you live updates from the ALQO and Bitfineon Gala tonight, starting from 8:00 PM CET in Germany. We recently featured ALQO as HODLTHAT! and it has done extremely well since that. We hope to get a sneak peak into the Bitfineon Beta tonight (a new Fiat2Crypto Exchange by the ALQO team with XLQ as base currency). We will post a roundup here on smartoptions.io in a few days, but if you want to follow the Gala live with some pics and comments, please follow our accounts on See you there! The post SmartOptions Live from the ALQA Gala Dinner appeared first on Smart Options. via Blogger SmartOptions Live from the ALQA Gala Dinner October 31, ten years ago, Bitcoin has released its Whitepaper – from there the revolution was unstoppable and changed the lives of many. Digital money was not a pie in the sky anymore – instead, a vision has been formed, progressed into an actually used payment form and started slowly to enter our world. Pioneers became rich & others became depressed as they lost access to their coins – a whole industry grew on the back of the cryptocurrency movement. And Bitcoin and other cryptos have still a long route in front of them; still they made already a big gift. The gift of hugely volatile trading assets that enabled traders to increase their crypto holdings and accumulate more of the coins, whose tech they believe in. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BITCOIN
The Bitcoin Birthday BountyThe PrizesBy participating in the Bitcoin Birthday Bounty, you can win FREE 3-MONTH MEMBERSHIP in the following channels: InfoCrypto (Telegram) Cryptomedics (Telegram) Bitmex Lifestyle (Telegram) Margin Signals (Telegram incl. Auto Trader) Crypto Addicts (Telegram incl. Auto Trader for Binance & Bitmex) Bitcoin Compass (Telegram & Discord) CryptoPro400(Discord) Coin Observatory (Discord) Verified Crypto Traders Bronze Membership (Telegram) The MissionTo generate some lots for this draw, you need to complete one of the following tasks (5 submissions possible; only one submission per platform). Basically, you just have to write about one of our three signal posts and let the world know about them. There are so many shady fishes in this sea, we think it is important to spread the word about the legit ones. Help us with that and win a free three-month membership! How To ParticipateTo win one of these excellent premium memberships, we prepared a little bounty for you. Each completion of one of the following tasks is one lot, and you can submit up to five actions to generate five lots. Spread the word about the success of our hand-selected Signal Groups and write about the movement! Here are step-by-step instructions to get you started:
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If you face any questions this post did not answer, don’t hesitate and drop a comment, we will follow-up quickly. And now: hit the keys, Ladies and Gentlemen! The post The Bitcoin Birthday Bounty – Win Free Crypto Signal Memberships appeared first on Smart Options. via Blogger The Bitcoin Birthday Bounty – Win Free Crypto Signal Memberships Choosing an appropriate cryptocurrencies exchange for leveraged trading is hard – as there are barely any of them. However, the selection between the few options can often make or break a traders career before it’s even started. With the continued growth of cryptocurrencies and the emergence of multiple exchanges, finding the perfect exchange is often a daunting task, especially if you want to trade with leverage. In the recent past two particular exchanges have gained significant prominence in the industry, they are BitMEX (as market leader) and Deribit (as new challenger). In this article, we are going to look at a critical comparison between these two exchanges. BitMEX or Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange is peer to peer trading platform that allows leveraged contracts in Bitcoin. BitMEX combines margin trading and derivatives of crypto assets for traders. The company was founded in 2014 by HDR Global Trading Limited and is currently the world’s largest Bitcoin futures and derivatives market by trading volume. It has its headquarters in Hong Kong, China. Deribit which is coined from both Derivatives and Bitcoin is a futures and options trading platform utilizing Bitcoin exclusively for depositing, withdrawals and trade collateralization. Deribit was founded in 2016 and has its headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Battle Between Bitmex and DeribitPerpetual swapsBitMEX was one of the first exchange platforms to launch perpetual swaps for its users. After every 8 hours, the system calculates a time-weighted price versus a post price presentation if the result is a premium, the traders in the long position pay traders in a short position. Consequently, taking a long position is less attractive and hence the premium is reduced. Conversely, if the result is discount the traders in a short position pay those in long, hence attracting buyers and consequently raises the price. These perpetual swaps are aimed at providing the benefits of future without expirations. Similarly, Deribit’s perpetual swaps are conducted in the same manner with a slight distinction. Instead of paying out at intervals of 8 hours active positions receive continuous payouts based on the premium or discount versus the spot price. Overall, the Deribit system allows for smoother adjustments between contract deviations and the underlying spot price. Order execution and transaction speedsThe average time taken to execute an order at Deribit is only a couple of milliseconds, in comparison, BitMEX takes 20 to 40 time longer during a stable market. The difference increases considerably when there are high volume trades being executed. Test have shown that Deribit can perform an average of 1000 orders in a trading block per second. In contrast, BitMEX performs 500 orders per second. Pump and dump allegationsFor a long period, BitMEX has faced grievous accusations of price manipulation through pump and dump. A recent example is that of August 22, 2018, where the company had scheduled maintenance for its engines. Shortly, after BitMEX went under maintenance Bitcoin was pumped by 10%, liquidating numerous shorts. On the same day, BitMEX reported a DDOS attack that resulted in 5% dumping. A thing that might puzzle the most of its user, how a company of this size cannot afford servers that handle the amount of transaction when the action happens. The notorious “System Overload” is an issue most of the BitMEX users might have experienced when the action starts – if you failed to set up your stop-loss before placing your actual order, it can REK you forth and back. On the other hand, Deribit remains quite credible and have not faced such allegations since they began operations. One has to consider that Deribit faces much lower amounts of traffic and the brand is less known than Bitmex – the market leader. Hence, it is hard to compare this point, as only the future will show how Deribit behaves to attacks once the volume and brand awareness is granted on a similar level. LiquidityBitMEX boasts the enviable position of being the most liquid crypto-derivatives exchange in the world today. Due to its high liquidity BitMEX has some of the tightest spreads and least slippage in the market. Currently, BitMEX executes a phenomenal number of up to 400000 BTC a day, in comparison to Deribit 10000BTC. Additionally, BitMEX offers a wider variety of product to trade in such as XBT Perpetual, ETH Futures, ETH Perpetual, XRP Futures, LTC Futures, ADA Futures, TRX Futures, EOS Futures, XBT Futures, and Bcash Futures. Deribit only allows BTC Futures and BTC Perpetual. This is one of the biggest issues with Deribit. Low liquidity means you orders are less likely to fill and the price action might be skewed to an extent. Also, the missing altcoin futures is a big drawdown for Deribit. User interfaceThe BitMEX user interface is largely user-friendly and simplified. The interface allows users to drag and drop orders around charts. This makes it increasingly simple to execute and stop orders. Overall, this is an increasingly vital feature since the difference between making a profit or a loss in the volatile world of cryptos is timing. You can also customize the layout to your preference in BitMEX. Deribit user interface is rather clogged and users have to navigate and click around in order to edit positions. There is much air on the upside for improvement when it comes to the Deribit UX – especially new traders will find it hard to navigate and set up orders properly. BitMEX in comparison is a very nice piece of web development and makes it easy to find your way into leveraged trading. Trust, Payouts and Account ClosingDue to the nature of the products, you won’t be able to make use of the services of these both companies everywhere in the world. BitMEX excludes US customers and makes use of Geo-Blocking for American traders. They have clearly defined rules in regards to that. ConclusionOverall, Deribit offers users with ultra-fast transactions, advanced perpetual swaps, and enhanced trust and credibility. On the other hand, BitMEX provides users with a seamless user interface and TONS of liquidity. As things stand BitMEX still remains the market leader – their UX and the available liquidity is much better and this is a make or break factor to many. The liquidity issues of Deribit makes it a bit dangerous to trade there, as you never know if a trade might get filled or not. On top of that, it is a vicious circle as if the UX is hard to get for the masses, the lion’s share of leverage traders will stay away. Hesitating traders results in low liquidity. Low liquidity is feared by pro traders which would actually make use of the platform. However, if Deribit can overcome the challenges with UI and liquidity it’s might become a real challenger to BitMEX – right now it is a pretty boring competition and we’d need to see how Deribit would perform in the conditions BitMEX faces. The post Bitmex vs. Deribit appeared first on Smart Options. via Blogger Bitmex vs. Deribit |
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