Loss attorney David Silver has filed a 2,000 person class action suit against the founder of the “Massive Adoption: Memphis” cryptocurrency conference.
Defendant Jacob Kostecki has yet to refund ticket sales after the event was canceled on January 31.
A class-action lawsuit has been filed against the founder of the “Massive Adoption” conference for bitcoin following his refusal to refund ticket sales.
According to the initial complaint filed on May 7, Ashley Gentry was named as the lead plaintiff in a 2,000 person lawsuit against Colorado native Jacob Kostecki, creator of the “Massive Adoption in Memphis: Blockchain and Digital Assets” event.
The cryptocurrency conference was originally scheduled to be held in November 2019, before being rescheduled to February 2020. The event was subsequently called off on January 31.
The lawsuit, filed in the District of Colorado by securities fraud and investment loss attorney David Silver, claims Kostecki promised event-goers a refund on tickets and packages within six months. The suit, referencing Kostecki’s promises, reads..
Silver accused Kostecki of causing “significant financial loss” to ticketholders after failing to carry out his promise of a refund. The class-action filing demands compensation for damages due to lost airfares, attorney fees and other applicable costs.
Twitter: @BeardsBitcoins Website: BeardsAndBitcoins.com Telegram: http://t.me.beardsandbitcoins Hosts BitBoy: @BitBoy_Crypto JChains: @CryptoJChains EPISODE 77: Crypto Fyre Fest Implosion & ICX Explosion Episode 77: Crypto Fyre Fest, ICON Pumps, & Greatest UFC Fighter JChains gets ready to go on a one week cruise vacation while the market is pumping. We take a look at the markets and how they could help everyone in crypto take vacations! In this episode BitBoy & JChains talk about the most interesting storylines from this week in crypto. This week on Beards and Bitcoins: JChains is going on vacation. BitBoy discusses the market & how the stock to flow chart looks like Bitcoin is heading to at least $90k in 18 months. Token Time this week features Celsius Token $ICX – https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/… Icon has been on an absolute tear and shows no signs of stopping. At one point it was down 98% and was the face of the bear market. But finally it looks like altcoin season is upon us. This week for News Break.. we talk about what is being dubbed the crypto Fyre Fest. The Massive Adoption conference in Memphis has been postponed several times. People have asked for refunds, and now founder Jacob Kostecki has announced he is cancelling the conference. People have claimed he is scammer from Poland who is currently on the run and people will never get their money back. For Manspreading today, the boys give their picks for the best UFC Fighter of all time. BitBoy is taking Jon Jones while JChains goes with the classic Chuck Liddell. This week, the Beards & Bitcoins podcast has announced their new telegram group t.me/BeardsBitcoins
OneCoin is a Ponzi scheme promoted as a cryptocurrency by Bulgaria-based offshore companies OneCoin Ltd (registered in Dubai) and OneLife Network Ltd (registered in Belize), both founded by Ruja Ignatova in concert with Sebastian Greenwood. OneCoin is considered a Ponzi scheme due to its organisational structure and because of the previous involvement of many of those central to OneCoin in similar schemes. It was described by The Times as “one of the biggest scams in history.”
US prosecutors have alleged the scheme brought in approximately $4 billion worldwide. In China, law enforcement recovered 1.7 billion yuan (US$267.5 million) while prosecuting 98 people. Ruja Ignatova disappeared in 2017 near the time a secret US warrant was filed for her arrest and was replaced by her brother, Konstantin Ignatov. Most of the leaders have now disappeared or been arrested. Greenwood was arrested in 2018, as was Ignatov in March 2019. In November 2019 Ignatov pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and fraud. The total maximum sentence for the charges is 90 years in prison.
According to OneCoin, its main business is selling educational material for trading. Members are able to buy educational packages ranging from 100 euros to 118,000 euros,or, according to one industry blog, 225,500 euros. Each package includes “tokens” which can be assigned to “mine” OneCoins. OneCoin is said to be mined by servers at two sites in Bulgaria and one site in Hong Kong. Each level (except six and seven), or package, gives new educational material, which is plagiarized from several sources. However, in a typical OneCoin recruiting meeting recruiters mainly talk about investing in cryptocurrency and the educational material is barely mentioned.
The only way to exchange Onecoins for any other currency was OneCoin Exchange, xcoinx, an internal market place for members who had invested more than just a starter package. Onecoins could be exchanged for euros, which were placed in a virtual wallet from which they could be requested for wire transfer. The market place had daily selling limits based on which packages the seller had invested in, which greatly limited the amount of onecoins which could be exchanged.
On 1 March 2016, without notice, OneCoin issued an internal notice that the market would be closed for two weeks for maintenance, explaining that this was necessary due to the high number of miners and for “better integration with blockchain”.On 15 March 2016, the market opened again but no visible changes had been made; most of the transactions expired as before and daily limits stayed on.
On 10 July 2017, Ruja Ignatova, the CEO, was charged in India with duping investors as a part of the Indian investigation. On 17 and 18 January 2018, Bulgarian police raided OneCoin’s office in Sofia at the request of the prosecutor’s office in Bielefeld, Germany. German police and Europol took part in the bust and the investigation. Also 14 other companies, tied to OneCoin, were investigated and 50 witnesses were questioned. OneCoin’s servers and other material evidence were seized. On 3 May 2018, the Central Bank of Samoa (CBS) banned all foreign exchange transactions related to OneCoin and OneLife. The bank had earlier in March issued a warning about OneCoin. CBS describes OneCoin as a very high risk pyramid scheme.
On 21 November 2019 the New York Federal Court found lawyer Mark Scott guilty of money laundering and bank fraud for his role in routing US$ 400m out of the US. On 24 November 2019 the BBC published a detailed investigation of OneCoin and Ignatova titled Cryptoqueen: How this woman scammed the world, then vanished. The reporters believe that Ignatova resides in Frankfurt under a false identity
“Obviously we want to move forward at some point soon [and] not have this take many years to roll out,” Zuckerberg told Nikkei Asian Review, a Japanese business newspaper. “But right now I’m really focused on making sure that we do this well.”
Bitcoin traders and investors have closely-watched the development of Facebook’s libra, which has been adopted as something of a cryptocurrency regulatory bellwether and a tacit endorsement of bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology.
“A lot of people have had questions and concerns, and we’re committed to making sure that we work through all of those before moving forward,” Zuckerberg added.
The bitcoin price lost further ground yesterday, dropping some 5% and dipping below the psychological $8,000 per bitcoin mark.
Bitcoin cash, an offshoot of bitcoin itself, led the cryptocurrency market lower, recording losses for the day of over 5% and taking its weekly decline to almost 30%.
The bitcoin sell-off comes after a muted launch of the New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange’s Bakkt crypto platform, which was unveiled last year boasting software giant Microsoft and coffee chain Starbucks among its partners.
Bakkt’s platform allows traders and institutional investors to swap so-called “physically” settled bitcoin futures contracts, meaning traders and investors are not able to sell more bitcoin than they actually have, but the total number traded came to just 72 by the end of its first day, compared to over 5,000 traded on the first day of CME’s cash-settled futures, launched at the peak of bitcoin-mania in December 2017.
“Bitcoin staged a brief recovery yesterday but is again below [$8,000], currently trading at $7,990,” Marcus Swanepoel, chief executive of bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange Luno, said in a note to traders.
“Similar losses have been recorded by all the main altcoins. The loss of value is certainly as a result of the overall global market negativity, but the change in the structure of the market with the launch of the bitcoin futures on Bakkt is thought, by a number of traders, to have been a contributing factor.”
The bitcoin price sunk further over the last 24-hour trading period after a sudden sell-off earlier … [+]
Coindesk
Facebook’s libra, considered by some to be a competitor to bitcoin, is being pitched as a global currency, with the social media giant aiming to bring as many countries on board as possible.
However, the primary target is developing countries where banking and access to finance is low.
Facebook and Zuckerberg, who launched the platform in 2004, are both still reeling from a string of data-sharing and privacy scandals that have plagued the company in recent years and led to questions around the power of some of Silicon Valley’s biggest internet companies.
“Part of the approach and how we’ve changed is that now when we do things that are going to be very sensitive for society, we want to have a period where we can go out and talk about them and consult with people and get feedback and work through the issues before rolling them out,” Zuckerberg said.
“And that’s a very different approach than what we might have taken five years ago. But I think it’s the right way for us to do this at the scale that we operate in.”
I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business around the world. As the founding editor of Verdict.co.uk I reported on how technology is changing business, political trends, and the latest culture and lifestyle. I have covered the rise of bitcoin and cryptocurrency since 2012 and have charted its emergence as a niche technology into the greatest threat to the established financial system the world has ever seen and the most important new technology since the internet itself. I have worked and written for CityAM, the Financial Times, and the New Statesman, amongst others. Follow me on Twitter @billybambrough or email me on billyATbillybambrough.com. Disclosure: I occasionally hold some small amount of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
Now, legendary investor Mark Mobius, who last year founded his own Mobius Capital Partners after some 30 years at Franklin Templeton Investments, has attacked bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, branding them ‘psycho currencies,’ and predicting their emergence will ultimately push up the price of “real, hard” assets, such as gold.
“I call them psycho currencies, because it’s a matter of faith whether you believe in bitcoin or any of the other cyber-currencies,” Mobius told Bloomberg, a financial newswire.
Mobius, who once branded bitcoin a “real fraud,” appeared to have changed his tune on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
However, his latest comments suggest Mobius’ belief in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies extends only as far as their emergence will boost the price of gold.
“I think with the rise of [bitcoin], there’s going to be a demand for real, hard assets, and that includes gold,” he added.
Gold has recently hit a six-year high due to a sharp rise in expectations of a U.S. and global recession, looser monetary policy from the U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks, and the escalating U.S. China trade war.
The bitcoin price has risen almost three-fold so far this year but remains far from its all-time highs set in late 2017.
CoinDesk
Meanwhile, Mobius said investors should be “buying [gold] at any level,” pointing to dovish moves from many of the world’s biggest central banks, including the European Central Bank and the Fed.
“Gold’s long-term prospect is up, up and up, and the reason why I say that is money supply is up, up and up,” Mobius said.
I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business around the world. As the founding editor of Verdict.co.uk I reported on how technology is changing business, political trends, and the latest culture and lifestyle. I have covered the rise of bitcoin and cryptocurrency since 2012 and have charted its emergence as a niche technology into the greatest threat to the established financial system the world has ever seen and the most important new technology since the internet itself. I have worked and written for CityAM, the Financial Times, and the New Statesman, amongst others. Follow me on Twitter @billybambrough or email me on billyATbillybambrough.com. Disclosure: I occasionally hold some small amount of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
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Traders were scratching their heads on social media Saturday in the wake of the sudden losses, with BTC/USD crashing from $10,180 to $9,410.
At press time, the pair had recovered marginally to circle $9,500, while a lack of obvious factors left commentators struggling to understand the market.
As Cointelegraph reported, a return to $10,000 earlier came as a surprise after a similar uptick occurred in a matter of minutes.
Previously, regular commentator Josh Rager had eyed a break below $9,600 as a gateway to lower levels, with the potential for $9,000 to also fall.
Some had anticipated volatility continuing in the short term. On Twitter, the trader known as CryptoCohen sounded the alarm hours before the $800 losses.
“Could be a larger correction in play – could take a lot longer too – longer than many would expect/hope. But good things come to those who wait,” he summarized.
Bitcoin’s move meanwhile had a more predictable effect on altcoin markets, with tokens in the top twenty cryptocurrencies by market cap shedding up to 4.5%.
Monthly, Bitcoin price has lost 20%, Cointelegraph noting that end-of-year and longer-term price forecasts remain bullish.
