Chinese Police Bust World Cup Gambling Ring With More Than $1 Billion In Cryptocurrency (theverge.com) 28
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Chinese authorities have arrested six suspects behind a World Cup gambling ring that was hosting more than 10 billion yuan -- or $1.5 billion USD -- worth of cryptocurrency bets, according to a statement released yesterday by the police department in Guangdong province. The gambling syndicate ran on the dark web, accepting bets in the form of bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin for an eight-month stretch before being apprehended. It attracted more than 300,000 players from different countries, and 8,000 "agents" who earned commissions for recruiting new members through a pyramid scheme-like system, according to the South China Morning Post. The bust that took down the dark web syndicate was a part of China's larger plans to stem the criminal activity -- though this was the first to involve cryptocurrency, according to Guangdong law enforcement. Thus far, they've arrested 540 suspects and frozen more than 260 million yuan as a part of their efforts.
Look at this lack of an economy (Score:2)
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No, people say it's also for shady, illegal things such as the illegal betting ring in this story.
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In places were gambling is not illegal why shouldn't they be required to pay taxes? If you win thousands in Las Vegas you can expect to be handed a tax form to fill out as you exit the establishment
Do you get a deduction form if you lose?
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How much is that in Scottish Pounds? (Score:1)
If we're talking fictional currencies, at least use ones that actually have value.
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Was it converted to Yuan, or is this another fictional measure like "street price"?
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It says 10 billion yuan. Is the yuan fictional?
No but the 10 billion might be.
It says it was hosting 10 billion "worth of cryptocurrency bets". That might mean that cryptos worth 10 billion yuan were currently in the system waiting on the outcome of the next two games. Or it could mean that the ring handled 10 billion worth of bets over the entire 8-month period.
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This kind of bust is really quite damaging. Hosting those bets, links of holders of crypto, gamblers, Chinese authorities are going to have a field day with all the information. This and lots of crypto which they will be able to use in sting operations and of course espionage pay offs. You can bet every single person tracked to that site and who made a bet will be flagged.
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It says 10 billion yuan. Is the yuan fictional?
Yes. That translates to "10 billion units of cash."
The Chinese yuan is called the renminbi. As in, 10 billion renminbi.
American yuan is called the US dollar. As in, 1.5 billion US dollars.
If you go to China and try to pay for lunch by bartering chickens, and the shopkeeper insists on being paid yuan, that doesn't mean he only accept renminbi; he might very happily accept dollars, or any other type of yuan that is convertible to renminbi.
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The yuan (/jun, -æn/; sign: ¥; Chinese: ; pinyin: yuán; [æn] (About this sound listen)) is the base unit of a number of former and present-day Chinese currencies.
A yuan (Chinese: ; pinyin: yuán) is also known colloquially as a kuai (Chinese: ; pinyin: kuài; literally: "lump"; originally a lump of silver). One yuan is divided into 10 jiao (Chinese: ; pinyin: jio; literally: "corner") or colloquially mao (Chinese: ; pinyin: máo "feather"). One jiao is divided into 10 fen (Chinese: ; pinyin: fn; literally: "small portion").
Today, it usually refers to the primary unit of account of the renminbi, the currency of the People's Republic of China.[1] It is also used as a synonym of that currency, especially in international contexts – the ISO 4217 standard code for renminbi is CNY, an abbreviation of "Chinese yuan". (A similar case is the use of the terms sterling to designate British currency and pound for the unit of account.)
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Why go to the effort of writing such a poor explanation when you can just quote Wikipedia?
Because
Those are the reasons I didn't. Had I considered it, I would have also rejected it in this case because their explanation is of much lower quality than what I presented, with all sorts of irrelevant words about things like subdivision of c
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Scots don't use pounds . . . they use "stones" . . .
Define "gambling" (Score:1)
I find it amusing that betting on sports is illegal and yet bitcoin itself is fine and dandy...
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In China, it's not. They've cracked down on quite a few bitcoin exchanges.
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China already banned exchanging Fiat/Bitcoin.
This action is NOT about protecting people... China sees opportunity, because of many millions of $$$ of bets from all over the world, they can arrest these people, and seize this money, and this $$$ will go straight to the government and corrupt law enforcement officials.
The people who placed these bets will not see a cent of their $$$ ever again, whether their bet wins or loses.