Roger Ver
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 4 months, 2014–2019
0:51 · 104K views · Jul 17, 2013
A short 2013 video in which Roger Ver says Mt. Gox's withdrawal delays are not caused by a lack of liquidity. Mt. Gox collapsed months later, and the description carries a later update and apology.
Cited critically as an example of someone vouching for Mt. Gox just before its collapse.
5 comments from Hacker News
(Article date: Oct 29th 2016). This is so last week. Zcash has already crashed. Peaked around $5000, today $127. Not only that, the anonymity feature didn't work. You can't send to "z addresses" only. This is claimed by the developers to be a bug they will fix. Since that was the main feature of this altcoin, and they shipped with it broken, they're either incompetent or disabled it to avoid regulatory problems. Roger Ver, a convicted felon who claimed Mt. Gox was sound[1], is involved with ZCash. What could possibly go wrong? ZCash is from Tel Aviv, headquarters of "binary option" scams. The entire Tel Aviv based binary options business has been exposed as a scam. [2] (Short version: a binary option is a bet against the house, not other investors, and the house cheats. Online binary option companies claimed to be in lots of places, including Trump Tower, but they're almost always really in Tel Aviv.) People in the "binary option" industry are now looking for new scams. "Forex" is one. There's a lot of interest in "blockchains" there.[3] This is a worry. [1] this video [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK]
It may be baffling that Tether hasn't collapsed yet. But consider the drawn-out drama of the Mt Gox collapse. It took weeks for Mt Gox to unwind. In the time leading up to the finale, many people (who should have known better) insisted that the exchange was secure and fully capitalized. For example, this guy: this video When incredible spreads started appearing between Gox and competitors, the gullible asked "How can I arbitrage this?" rather than "Where are the exits?" Then they became irate at their inability to withdraw the funds they deposited to make a quick buck. There were others who simply refused to believe the facts staring them in the face. I expect the same to happen here. Settle in, this is going to take awhile to unwind.
His mtgox video is emblematic[1]. Mtgox was at the time the largest bitcoin exchange in the world but it was insolvent due to stealing/misplacing customer funds. Roger made a video saying everything was fine and then mtgox went under a couple of months later. He then tried to spin that he was just talking about "liquidity" and not "solvency" but thats a really shitty excuse. [1] this video .
"But, you only had Goxes word for that." Roger Ver, who is well respected in the Bitcoin world, also posted this video: this video It's a little creepy though, like he's being held at gunpoint, forced to read a statement... I agree it's risky to keep money in a Bitcoin exchange that's showing signs of trouble.
Check out the recent update to this YouTube video... this video Apparently liquidity problems and solvency problems are different problems, who knew.