tl;dr -
1) Stock prices move continuously because different market participants end up having different ideas of the future value of a stock.
2) This difference in valuations is part of the reason we have volatility.
3) IV crush happens as a consequence of future possibilities being extinguished at a binary catalyst like earnings very rapidly, as opposed to the normal slow way.
I promise I'm getting to the good parts, but I'm also writing these as a guidebook which I can use later so people never have to talk to me again.
In this part I'm going to start veering a bit into the speculation territory (e.g. ideas I believe or have investigated, but aren't necessary well known) but I'm going to make sure those sections are properly marked as speculative (and you can feel free to ignore/dismiss them). Marked as [Lily's Speculation].
As some commenters have pointed out in prior posts, I do not have formal training in mathematical finance/finance (my background is computer science, discrete math, and biology), so often times I may use terms that I've invented which have analogous/existing terms (e.g. the law of surprise is actually the first law of asset pricing applied to derivatives under risk neutral measure, but I didn't know that until I read the papers later). If I mention something wrong, please do feel free to either PM me (not chat) or post a comment, and we can discuss/I can correct it! As always, buyer beware.
This is the first section also where you do need to be familiar with the topics I've previously discussed, which I'll add links to shortly (my previous posts:
1) https://www.reddit.com/thecorporation/comments/jck2q6/no_gods_no_kings_only_nope_or_divining_the_future/
2) https://www.reddit.com/thecorporation/comments/jbzzq4/why_options_trading_sucks_or_the_law_of_surprise/
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A Random Walk Down Bankruptcy
A lot of us have probably seen the term random walk, maybe in the context of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, which seems like a great book I'll add to my list of things to read once I figure out how to control my ADD. It seems obvious, then, what a random walk means - when something is moving, it basically means that the next move is random. So if my stock price is $1 and I can move in $0.01 increments, if the stock price is truly randomly walking, there should be roughly a 50% chance it moves up in the next second (to $1.01) or down (to $0.99).
If you've traded for more than a hot minute, this concept should seem obvious, because especially on the intraday, it usually isn't clear why price moves the way it does (despite what chartists want to believe, and I'm sure a ton of people in the comments will tell me why fettucini lines and Batman doji tell them things). For a simple example, we can look at SPY's chart from Friday, Oct 16, 2020:
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https://preview.redd.it/jgg3kup9dpt51.png?width=1368&format=png&auto=webp&s=bf8e08402ccef20832c96203126b60c23277ccc2
I'm sure again 7 different people can tell me 7 different things about why the chart shape looks the way it does, or how if I delve deeply enough into it I can find out which man I'm going to marry in 2024, but to a rationalist it isn't exactly apparent at why SPY's price declined from 349 to ~348.5 at around 12:30 PM, or why it picked up until about 3 PM and then went into precipitous decline (although I do have theories why it declined EOD, but that's for another post).
An extremely clever or bored reader from my previous posts could say, "Is this the price formation you mentioned in the law of surprise post?" and the answer is yes. If we relate it back to the individual buyer or seller, we can explain the concept of a stock price's random walk as such:

Most market participants have an idea of an asset's true value (an idealized concept of what an asset is actually worth), which they can derive using models or possibly enough brain damage. However, an asset's value at any given time is not worth one value (usually*), but a spectrum of possible values, usually representing what the asset should be worth in the future. A naive way we can represent this without delving into to much math (because let's face it, most of us fucking hate math) is:
Current value of an asset = sum over all (future possible value multiplied by the likelihood of that value)

In actuality, most models aren't that simple, but it does generalize to a ton of more complicated models which you need more than 7th grade math to understand (Black-Scholes, DCF, blah blah blah).
While in many cases the first term - future possible value - is well defined (Tesla is worth exactly $420.69 billion in 2021, and maybe we all can agree on that by looking at car sales and Musk tweets), where it gets more interesting is the second term - the likelihood of that value occurring. [In actuality, the price of a stock for instance is way more complicated, because a stock can be sold at any point in the future (versus in my example, just the value in 2021), and needs to account for all values of Tesla at any given point in the future.]
How do we estimate the second term - the likelihood of that value occurring? For this class, it actually doesn't matter, because the key concept is this idea: even with all market participants having the same information, we do anticipate that every participant will have a slightly different view of future likelihoods. Why is that? There's many reasons. Some participants may undervalue risk (aka WSB FD/yolos) and therefore weight probabilities of gaining lots of money much more heavily than going bankrupt. Some participants may have alternative data which improves their understanding of what the future values should be, therefore letting them see opportunity. Some participants might overvalue liquidity, and just want to GTFO and thereby accept a haircut on their asset's value to quickly unload it (especially in markets with low liquidity). Some participants may just be yoloing and not even know what Fastly does before putting their account all in weekly puts (god bless you).
In the end, it doesn't matter either the why, but the what: because of these diverging interpretations, over time, we can expect the price of an asset to drift from the current value even with no new information added. In most cases, the calculations that market participants use (which I will, as a Lily-ism, call the future expected payoff function, or FEPF) ends up being quite similar in aggregate, and this is why asset prices likely tend to move slightly up and down for no reason (or rather, this is one interpretation of why).
At this point, I expect the 20% of you who know what I'm talking about or have a finance background to say, "Oh but blah blah efficient market hypothesis contradicts random walk blah blah blah" and you're correct, but it also legitimately doesn't matter here. In the long run, stock prices are clearly not a random walk, because a stock's value is obviously tied to the company's fundamentals (knock on wood I don't regret saying this in the 2020s). However, intraday, in the absence of new, public information, it becomes a close enough approximation.
Also, some of you might wonder what happens when the future expected payoff function (FEPF) I mentioned before ends up wildly diverging for a stock between participants. This could happen because all of us try to short Nikola because it's quite obviously a joke (so our FEPF for Nikola could, let's say, be 0), while the 20 or so remaining bagholders at NikolaCorporation decide that their FEPF of Nikola is $10,000,000 a share). One of the interesting things which intuitively makes sense, is for nearly all stocks, the amount of divergence among market participants in their FEPF increases substantially as you get farther into the future.
This intuitively makes sense, even if you've already quit trying to understand what I'm saying. It's quite easy to say, if at 12:51 PM SPY is worth 350.21 that likely at 12:52 PM SPY will be worth 350.10 or 350.30 in all likelihood. Obviously there are cases this doesn't hold, but more likely than not, prices tend to follow each other, and don't gap up/down hard intraday. However, what if I asked you - given SPY is worth 350.21 at 12:51 PM today, what will it be worth in 2022?
Many people will then try to half ass some DD about interest rates and Trump fleeing to Ecuador to value SPY at 150, while others will assume bull markets will continue indefinitely and SPY will obviously be 7000 by then. The truth is -- no one actually knows, because if you did, you wouldn't be reading a reddit post on this at 2 AM in your jammies.
In fact, if you could somehow figure out the FEPF of all market participants at any given time, assuming no new information occurs, you should be able to roughly predict the true value of an asset infinitely far into the future (hint: this doesn't exactly hold, but again don't @ me).
Now if you do have a finance background, I expect gears will have clicked for some of you, and you may see strong analogies between the FEPF divergence I mentioned, and a concept we're all at least partially familiar with - volatility.
Volatility and Price Decoherence ("IV Crush")
Volatility, just like the Greeks, isn't exactly a real thing. Most of us have some familiarity with implied volatility on options, mostly when we get IV crushed the first time and realize we just lost $3000 on Tesla calls.
If we assume that the current price should represent the weighted likelihoods of all future prices (the random walk), volatility implies the following two things:

1. Volatility reflects the uncertainty of the current price
2. Volatility reflects the uncertainty of the future price for every point in the future where the asset has value (up to expiry for options)

[Ignore this section if you aren't pedantic] There's obviously more complex mathematics, because I'm sure some of you will argue in the comments that IV doesn't go up monotonically as option expiry date goes longer and longer into the future, and you're correct (this is because asset pricing reflects drift rate and other factors, as well as certain assets like the VIX end up having cost of carry).
Volatility in options is interesting as well, because in actuality, it isn't something that can be exactly computed -- it arises as a plug between the idealized value of an option (the modeled price) and the real, market value of an option (the spot price). Additionally, because the makeup of market participants in an asset's market changes over time, and new information also comes in (thereby increasing likelihood of some possibilities and reducing it for others), volatility does not remain constant over time, either.
Conceptually, volatility also is pretty easy to understand. But what about our friend, IV crush? I'm sure some of you have bought options to play events, the most common one being earnings reports, which happen quarterly for every company due to regulations. For the more savvy, you might know of expected move, which is a calculation that uses the volatility (and therefore price) increase of at-the-money options about a month out to calculate how much the options market forecasts the underlying stock price to move as a response to ER.
Binary Catalyst Events and Price Decoherence
Remember what I said about price formation being a gradual, continuous process? In the face of special circumstances, in particularly binary catalyst events - events where the outcome is one of two choices, good (1) or bad (0) - the gradual part gets thrown out the window. Earnings in particular is a common and notable case of a binary event, because the price will go down (assuming the company did not meet the market's expectations) or up (assuming the company exceeded the market's expectations) (it will rarely stay flat, so I'm not going to address that case).
Earnings especially is interesting, because unlike other catalytic events, they're pre-scheduled (so the whole market expects them at a certain date/time) and usually have publicly released pre-estimations (guidance, analyst predictions). This separates them from other binary catalysts (e.g. FSLY dipping 30% on guidance update) because the market has ample time to anticipate the event, and participants therefore have time to speculate and hedge on the event.
In most binary catalyst events, we see rapid fluctuations in price, usually called a gap up or gap down, which is caused by participants rapidly intaking new information and changing their FEPF accordingly. This is for the most part an anticipated adjustment to the FEPF based on the expectation that earnings is a Very Big Deal (TM), and is the reason why volatility and therefore option premiums increase so dramatically before earnings.
What makes earnings so interesting in particular is the dramatic effect it can have on all market participants FEPF, as opposed to let's say a Trump tweet, or more people dying of coronavirus. In lots of cases, especially the FEPF of the short term (3-6 months) rapidly changes in response to updated guidance about a company, causing large portions of the future possibility spectrum to rapidly and spectacularly go to zero. In an instant, your Tesla 10/30 800Cs go from "some value" to "not worth the electrons they're printed on".
[Lily's Speculation] This phenomena, I like to call price decoherence, mostly as an analogy to quantum mechanical processes which produce similar results (the collapse of a wavefunction on observation). Price decoherence occurs at a widespread but minor scale continuously, which we normally call price formation (and explains portions of the random walk derivation explained above), but hits a special limit in the face of binary catalyst events, as in an instant rapid portions of the future expected payoff function are extinguished, versus a more gradual process which occurs over time (as an option nears expiration).
Price decoherence, mathematically, ends up being a more generalizable case of the phenomenon we all love to hate - IV crush. Price decoherence during earnings collapses the future expected payoff function of a ticker, leading large portions of the option chain to be effectively worthless (IV crush). It has interesting implications, especially in the case of hedged option sellers, our dear Market Makers. This is because given the expectation that they maintain delta-gamma neutral, and now many of the options they have written are now worthless and have 0 delta, what do they now have to do?
They have to unwind.
[/Lily's Speculation]
- Lily

I have been lurking on this board for a few years. I decided the other day to finally create an account so I could come out of lurk mode. As you might guess from my id I was able to retire at the beginning of this year on a significantly accelerated timetable thanks to the 20x return from my AMD stock and option investments since 2016.
I spent my career working on electronics and software for the satellite industry. We made heavy use of FPGAs and more often than not Xilinx FPGAs since they had a radiation tolerant line. I thought I would summarize some of the ways they were used in and around the development process. My experience is going to be very different than the datacenter settings in the last few years. The AI and big data stuff was a pipe dream back then.
In the olden times of the 90s we used CPUs which unlike modern processors did not include much in the way of I/O and memory controller. The computer board designs graduated from CPU + a bunch of ICs (much like the original IBM PC design) to a CPU + Xilinx FPGA + RAM + ROM and maybe a 5V or 3.3V linear voltage regulator. Those old FPGAs were programmed before they were soldered to the PCB using a dedicated programming unit attached to a PC. Pretty much the same way ROMs were programmed. At the time FPGAs gate capacity was small enough that it was still feasible to design their implementation using schematics. An engineer would draw up logic gates and flip-flops just like you would if using discrete logic ICs and then compile it to the FPGA binary and burn it to the FPGA using a programmer box like a ROM. If you screwed it up you had to buy another FPGA chip, they were not erasable. The advantage of using the FPGA is that it was common to implement a custom I/O protocol to talk to other FPGAs, on other boards, which might be operating A/D and D/A converters and digital I/O driver chips. As the FPGA gate capacities increased the overall board count could be decreased.
With the advent of much larger FPGAs that were in-circuit re-programmable they began to be used for prototyping ASIC designs. One project I worked on was developing a radiation hardened PowerPC processor ASIC with specialized I/O. A Xilinx FPGA was used to test the implementation at approximately half-speed. The PowerPC core was licensed IP and surrounded with bits that were developed in VHDL. In the satellite industry the volumes are typically not high enough to warrant developing ASICs but they could be fabbed on a rad-hard process while the time large capacity re-programmable FPGAs were not. Using FPGAs for prototyping the ASIC was essential because you only had one chance to get the ASIC right, it was cost and schedule prohibitive to do any respins.
Another way re-programmable FPGAs were used was for test equipment and ground stations. The flight hardware had these custom designed ASICs of all sorts which generally created data streams that would transmitted down from space. It was advantageous to test the boards without the full set of downlink and receiver hardware so a commercial FPGA board in a PC would be used to hook into the data bus in place of the radio. Similarly other test equipment would be made which emulated the data stream from the flight hardware so that the radio hardware could be tested independently. Finally the ground stations would often use FPGAs to pull in the digital data stream from the receiver radio and process the data in real-time. These FPGAs were typically programmed using VHDL but as tools progressed it became possible to program to program the entire PC + FPGA board combination using LabView or Simulink which also handled the UI. In the 2000s it was even possible to program a real-time software defined radio using these tools.
As FPGAs progressed they became much more sophisticated. Instead of only having to specify whether an I/O pin was digital input or output you could choose between high speed, low speed, serdes, analog etc. Instead of having to interface to external RAM chips they began to include banks of internal RAM. That is because FPGAs were no longer just gate arrays but included a quantity of "hard-core" functionality. The natural progression of FPGAs with hard cores brings them into direct competition with embedded processor SOCs. At the same time embedded SOCs have gained flexibility with I/O pin assignment which is very similar to what FPGAs allow.
It is important to understand that in the modern era of chip design the difference between the teams that AMD and Xilinx has for chip design is primarily at the architecture level. Low level design and validation are going to largely be the same (although they may be using different tools and best practices). There are going to be some synergies in process and there is going to be some flexibility in having more teams capable of bringing chips to market. They are going to be able to commingle the best practices between the two which is going to be a net boost to productivity for one side or the other or both. Furthermore AMD will have access to Xilinx FPGAs for design validation at cost and perhaps ahead of release and Xilinx will be able to leverage AMD's internal server clouds. The companies will also have access to a greater number of Fellow level architects and process gurus. Also AMD has internally developed IP blocks that Xilinx could leverage and vice versa. Going forward there would be savings on externally licensed IP blocks as well.
AI is all the rage these days but there are many other applications for generic FPGAs and for including field programmable gates in sophisticated SOCs. As the grand convergence continues I would not be surprised at all to see FPGA as much a key component to future chips as graphics are in an APU. If Moore’s law is slowing down then the ability to reconfigure the circuitry on the fly is a potential mitigation. At some point being able to reallocate the transistor budget on the fly is going to win out over adding more and more fixed functionality. Going a bit down the big.little path what if a core could be reconfigured on the fly to be integer heavy or 64 bit float heavy within the same transistor budget. Instead of dedicated video encodedecoders or AVX 512 that sits dark most of the time the OS can gin it up on demand. In a laptop or phone setting this could be a big improvement.
If anybody has questions I'd be happy to answer. I'm sure there are a number of other posters here with a background in electronics and chip design who can weigh in as well.

Forgiveness should always be offered to someone who demonstrates that they understand how their actions caused harm, that they are sorry for the harm, and that they are committed to repairing the damage they did as well as not do it again. Bernie has not done any of this. This is the speech he would give if he were truly taking the first step on the road to redemption.
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Looking back at the last 5 years I realize that I have made some big mistakes and caused a lot of harm to a lot of people. I am here today to ask your forgiveness. Since I was a young man I believed in a vision of America that I sincerely believed would be widely adopted if I could only get the word out. I was arrogant. I assumed that the only explanations for not supporting my vision was ignorance or corruption. There was no room in my worldview for good faith disagreement or working with others. It was my way or the highway. Which is not the American way.
The first people I want to apologize to are my donors. I told you that money wins elections and that if you donated to me I would win. I asked many of you to give not simply from your excess but from your need - promising you that pain endured now to support me would pay off later. And you gave me over half a billion dollars across 2 primaries allowing me to outspend everyone except Bloomberg by tens of millions of dollars. Yes, I outspent Hillary. I was the big money candidate in 2016, not her. I spent twice as much as Joe in 2020. And they both won by popular vote landslides. Money doesn't buy elections. It just gets your message out there. If voters don't like your message then money can't help you.
I refused to accept what this meant in 2016 choosing instead to focus on how much better I had done than I ever had before. I saw myself on an upward trajectory and focused on spreading my message instead of on defeating Donald Trump. In fact, I viewed Donald Trump's election as beneficial to my long term goals. If Hillary won and made things better people would cease feeling the urgency I did. But if Trump won things would get worse and I would be in a position to harness that pain in 2020. I had no idea how much worse things would get. But that is no excuse. The very act of supporting harm to others to advance oneself is disqualifying and self destructive. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "You can't fight hate with hate, only love can do that". He was right. I was wrong.
In the beginning of 2020 I had an option to atone and put progress ahead of my own ego but I didn't take it. I could have stayed out of the race and supported Elizabeth Warren. She is a better candidate than me in many ways. She was a struggling single mother where I was a deadbeat dad - it's true I walked out on my son Levi when he was an infant - something you'd all know if the DNC had been rigging things against me. They weren't. There are many more such skeletons in my political closet that not one single Democrat has attacked me with. But you can bet the GOP would not hold back if I'd been the nominee. Warren is a much better face for the movement than I am. She has won significant victories in passing banking regulations and consumer protections - actually doing things I only talked about. I've been in Washington for 30 years while she has only held office for 7 yet her accomplishments dwarf mine. She is a decade younger and in much better health. She has higher approval ratings and support among constituencies I can't get traction in. Where I have slogans she has plans. But I was drunk on adulation and validation. I wanted the roaring crowds chanting my name like I had in 2016. I wanted the money, the interviews, the attention. So I convinced myself that her sex meant she couldn't win and that I had an obligation to run - to do what I deeply wanted to do anyway. This is nonsense. Hillary Clinton proved in 2016 that a woman can win when she got 3 million more votes than Donald Trump. With my help Warren could have won. With my help Clinton could have won. And I will spend the rest of my life trying to atone for undercutting both of them. Especially Warren who was always my friend and ally but I treated her like an enemy and encouraged my fans to attack her horribly when she got in my way. I'm so very sorry Elizabeth.
The 2020 primary was my wake up call. I expected to do better than I did in 2016 - I expected to win. My name was now nationally known, I had spent 4 years in the public eye ensuring that my message understood by all. I had finally achieved my lifelong dream of being heard. It is why I published a newsletter as a young man, why I had my own weekly television show as Burlington's mayor, why I was blogging regularly when most Senators didn't know what the internet was. It was why I was deeply jealous of Clinton for not only getting higher speaking fees than I did but having a much wider audience than me. It is why in 2016 I spent 29 million dollars on social media manipulation. If you add up every House, Senate, and presidential candidate in American history combined it is less than what I spent drowning out any other voice on reddit, twitter, and facebook. But now that I had been heard I was certain there would be a moment of class consciousness that would elect me in a landslide.
But there wasn't.
In fact not only did I lose, I lost even worse than last time. In 2016 Hillary Clinton got 4 million more votes than I did. In 2020 Joe Biden got 9 million more votes than I did. But - most shocking to me - I got 4 million fewer votes than I did last time. People who supported me in 2016 left me in 2020. How could they have seen the light and then walked away from it? I really struggled with this and understanding it was not easy. Some people noticed that I stopped showing up for work in the Senate for several months while I came to grips with losing a race I had assumed was in the bag. Important votes happened and I wasn't there. My absence made the difference in some of them. Warren, Klobuchar, Harris - they didn't let having their dreams be crushed stop them from doing their job. I did. Yet another way in which I failed to be the person I thought I was. The person I told you I was. They were fighters, showing up every day for you. I wasn't.
Most of the reason my vote total shrank was that in 2016 over a fifth of my voters listed Biden as their first choice. He wasn't running in 2016. He was running in 2020. I was so caught up in my own righteousness that I assumed every vote cast for me was truly for me. They weren't. As soon as a candidate more to their liking showed up they left. Another reason my vote shrank was due to my own behavior. I hired to run my campaign people who saw the world as I did. A simple binary choice between good and evil where I was good and everyone else was evil. Where the world was broken and only I could fix it. Nobody else was good enough. Everyone else was corrupt. They worshipped me and I reveled in it. I treated every other successful candidate as enemies to be destroyed and my staff imitated me creating a uniquely toxic campaign culture that repelled voters. My zero tolerance policy for questioning or criticism blinded us all to impending defeat. Anyone who disagreed, after all, was "low information" or "corrupt" and didn't need to be listened to. But we were the real low information people.
In examining my failures and coming to accept my faults I now understand and accept why so many voters rejected me. I failed the Commander and Chief test not once but many times in these last 5 years. I am never running for President again and wouldn't accept the nomination if it was somehow offered to me. So please, stop wishing for something bad to happen to Biden on my behalf. He is a good man and a great leader who will be a fine president. He may not be going to my destination but he is going in a good direction that will heal this country. Vote for him. And vote in every election, not just Presidential years.
- Imaginary Bernie Sanders

Yes, Regulated Forex Brokers Commit Scams

When one typically hears the phrase “forex scam” one automatically assumes that it is being perpetrated by an unlicensed or unregulated forex broker. For the most part, that assumption is correct. All you have to do is a quick google search and you will find numerous articles detailing reprehensible acts committed by unregulated forex and binary options brokers. However, there have been numerous instances of regulated forex brokers skirting the rules.

Not all regulated brokers are trustworthy

Unfortunately, there are numerous regulated forex brokers that have defrauded unsuspecting clientele as well. Last year on the CFTC slapped a $7 million fine on Forex Capital Markets (FXCM) in a civil monetary penalty for engaging in fraudulent and misleading solicitations, spanning from September 4, 2009, through at least 2014.
Additionally, the CFTC emphasized that FXCM had misrepresented that its ‘No Dealing Desk’ trading platform had no conflicts of interest with its clientele. Instead of running a true ECN execution platform where trades are performed directly in the interbank market, their clientele’s trades would be redirected to a Effex Capital LLC, which was originally designated to be an independent market maker but was, in reality, an extension of FXCM. Effex Capital would take very aggressive forex trades against the investors in order that they would lose and in return, FXCM would be the beneficiary of some very high kickbacks, which they received under the table from FXCM.

FXCM barred from the U.S.

Because of their duplicitous practices, the CFTC withdrew their regulation and FXCM was no longer allowed to service U.S. customers. Additionally, FXCM was caught by the FCA in yet another forex scam. They took away their investors’ positive swaps, causing them to only receive negative swaps. Surprisingly, the FCA did not remove their regulation.

Beware of OTCapital

OTCapital, forex broker regulated by ASIC has been swindling numerous investors. Broker Complaint Registry has received numerous complaints from those who have been victimized by their reprehensible practices. Complaints have ranged from not allowing clients to withdraw their earnings to never receiving a call back after they had deposited. Unfortunately, ASIC has not taken any action against OTCapital.

Protect yourself from a forex scam

Before you deposit money with a broker you must first make sure that the broker is regulated by an entity such as the CFTC, FCA, ASIC or the IIROC. Remember not all regulatory bodies are created equal. For example, if the broker that you are interested in has only a CySEC (Cyprus) regulation it would be wise to steer clear. Although they have gotten tougher on rulebreakers, CySEC is still lax in numerous areas.
Additionally, do your research. This means reading reviews, looking at various forums, and so on. It is not enough that the broker you are interested in has a regulation. You must vet them.
If you have fallen victim to a cryptocurrency scam, send a complaint to at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and we will do our very best to get into contact with you as soon as we can to initiate your funds recovery process. Visit www.fundsrecovery247.com for more information or Contact - [email protected] com.

I'm hopeless at formatting text, so if you think you can structure this post better take everything i write and put it into an easy to digest way. I'm just going to type out everything i know in text as fast as possible. I'm not a legal expert, I'm not somehow who understands every bit of information in the PDF's below, but i know I'm a retail trader that uses leverage to make profit which is why I'm posting this, in the hope that someone who can run a charge better than me, will.
Some of you are already aware of what might be happening, this is just a post to educate retail traders on changes that might be coming to certain brokers. This effects Australian Customers the most, but also effects those living in other countries that use Australian brokers, such as Pepperstone and others.
Last year in August 2019, ASIC ( Australian Securities and Investments Commission ) was concerned about retail traders going into Forex and Binary options without understanding these instruments properly and started sticking their noses in for tough regulation.
ASIC asked brokers and anyone with interest in the industry to write to them and explain what should and should not change from the changes they proposed, some of the proposed changes are very misguided and come from a lack of understanding exactly how OTC derivatives actually work.
I will provide the link to the paper further down so you can read it yourself and i will provide a link to all the submission made by all parties that sent submissions to ASIC, however the 2 main points of debate are:
1, To reduce the overall leverage available to retail traders to either 20:1 or 30:1. This means people who currently use leverage such as 100:1 to 500:1 and everything in between will be effected the most, even more so are those traders with relatively small accounts, meaning in order to get your foot in the door to trading you will need more capital for it to be viable.
^^ This point above is very important.
2, The removing of Binary options trading, which basically includes products like "Bet if gold will rise to this price in the next 30 seconds" This sort of stuff. So far from all the submissions from brokers and individuals nobody really cares if this changes as far as i know, though if you have concerns about this i would start voicing your disapproval. Though i would not waste your time here, all is pointing to this being eradicated completely with brokers also supporting the changes, I've never used such a product and know very little about them.
^^ This point above isn't very important and will probably be enforced in the future.
Still to this day i see retail traders not understanding leverage, they think of it as "dangerous and scary", it's not, position size is the real danger, not leverage. So ASIC is aiming to limit retail traders access to high leverage, they are claiming it is a way to protect traders who don't really understand what they are getting into by attacking leverage and not the real problem which is position size relative to your capital.
If it was truly about protecting retail traders from blowing up their accounts, they would look for ways to educate traders on "understanding position sizes and why it's important" rather than attacking leverage, but their goal is misguided or has an ulterior motive . I will give you a small example below.
EXAMPLE - We will use 2 demo accounts for demonstration purposes. If you don't understand my example, i suggest you try it for yourself. - Skip if not interested in examples.
Lets say we open 2 demo accounts with $1000 in both, one with 20:1 leverage and one with 500:1 leverage and we open an identical position on both accounts ( say a micro lot '0.01' on EURUSD ). You are safer on the 500:1 account as you don't need to put up as much margin as collateral as you would on the 20:1. If the trade we just opened goes against us and continues against us, the account with 20:1 leverage will run out of free margin a lot faster than the 500:1 account. In this simple example is shows you that leverage is not dangerous but safer and gives you a lot more breathing room. This trade was a small micro lot, so it would take hundreds of pips movements to get margin called and blow up that $1000 on each account. Lets now use a different position size to truly understand why retail traders blow up accounts and is the reason why trading can be dangerous.
This time instead of opening a micro lot of '0.01' on our $1000 dollar demo accounts, lets open a position size much larger, 5 lots. Remember we only have $1000 and we are about to open a position much larger relative to our capital ( which we should never do because we can't afford to do that ) the 20:1 probably wont even let you place that trade if you don't have enough margin as collateral or if you could open the position you would have a very tiny amount of free margin left over, meaning a small pip movement against you will instantly blow up your $1000 account. On the 500:1 account you wouldn't need to put up as much margin as collateral with more free margin if the trade goes bad, but again a small movement could blow up your account. In this example, both accounts were dangerous because the lack of understanding position sizes, opening a position you can't afford to open. This is what the true danger is, not the leverage.
Even in the second example, the higher leverage would "margin call" you out later. So i would go as far to say that lower leverage is more dangerous for you because it margin calls you out faster and just by having a lower leverage doesn't stop you from opening big positions that can blow you up in a 5 pip movement anymore, any leverage size is dangerous if you're opening positions you can't afford to open. This is also taking into consideration that no risk management is being used, with risk management higher leverage is even more powerful.
ASIC believes lowering leverage will stop people opening positions that they can't afford. When the reality is no matter how much capital you have $500, $1000, $5000, $50,000, $500,000, $5,000,000. You don't open position sizes that will blow that capital up completely with small movements. The same thing can happen on a 20:1 or 500:1 account.
Leverage is a tool, use it, if your on a lower leverage already such as 20:1, 30:1 it means your country has been regulated and you already have harder trading conditions. Just remember higher leverage allows you to open larger position sizes in total for the amount of money you own, but the issue is NOT that your using the higher leverage but because you are opening positions you can't afford, for what ever reason that is, the only fix for this is education and will not be fixed by simply lowing leverage, since you can just as easy blow up your account on low leverage just as fast or if not faster.
So what is going on?
There might ( get your tinfoil hats on ) be more that is involved here, deeper than you think, other agendas to try and stop small time retail traders from making money via OTC products, theories such as governments not wanting their citizens to be traders, rather would prefer you to get out there and work a 9 to 5 instead. Effective ways to do this would be making conditions harder with a much larger barrier of entry and the best way to increase the barrier of entry for retail traders is to limit leverage, lower leverage means you need to put up more money, less breathing room for trades, lower potential. They are limiting your upside potential and the downside stays the same, a blown account is a blow account.
Think of leverage as a weapon, a person wielding a butchers knife can probably destroy a person wielding a steak knife, but both knifes can prove fatal. They want to make sure your holding the butter knife then tell you to butcher a cow with it. 30:1 leverage is still workable and can still be profitable, but not as profitable as 500:1 accounts. This is why they are allowing professionals to use high leverage, this gives them another edge over successful retail traders who will still be trying to butcher a cow with a butter knife, while they are slaying limbs off the cow with machetes.
It's a way to hamstring you and keep you away rather than trying to "protect" you. The real danger is not leverage, they are barking up the wrong tree, how convenient to be barking up the very tree most retail traders don't fully understand ( leverage) , pass legislation to make trading conditions harder and at the same time push the narrative that trading is dangerous by making it even harder. A full circle strategy to make your trading conditions worse, so you don't succeed.
Listen carefully especially if you trade with any of the brokers that have provided their submissions to ASIC. Brokers want to seem like they are on your side and so far some of the submissions ( i haven't read them all ) have brokers willing to drop their leverage down to 30:1 because they know by dropping the leverage down it will start margin calling out their clients at a much faster rate, causing more blown up accounts / abandoned accounts with residual margin called funds, but they also know that if they make trading environments too hard less people will trade or even worse move their funds elsewhere offshore to unregulated brokers that offer higher leverage.
Right now it's all just a proposal, but as governments expand and continue to gain more control over it's citizens, it's just a matter of time till it's law, it's up to you to be vocal about it, let your broker know that if they drop their leverage, you're out, force them to fight for you.
If you have any more information related to this, or have anything to add, post below. I'm not an expert at this technical law talk, i know that i do well with 500:1 leverage and turn profits with it, it would be harder for me to do on a lower leverage, this is the reason for my post.
All related documents HERE
CP-322 ( Consultation paper 322 ) & Submissions from brokers and others.
https://asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/find-a-document/consultation-papers/cp-322-product-intervention-otc-binary-options-and-cfds/

Disclaimer: This is my arbitrary summary for myself, so there could be some misunderstandings.
If you want the full picture, I recommend reading the full thread.
But, for a guy who just settles with 'less than perfect' summary, why not sharing my own?
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Billy-IF
All the key research questions in coordicide have been answered. The challenges lying are implementing and testing our solution. We are implementing our solution into the Pollen Testnet and typing it up into our research specifications**(the specifications, while not complete, will hopefully be made publicly available soon).**
**After these tasks are done, our solution will go through a rigorous testing phase.**During this time, we will collect performance data, look for attack vectors, and tune the parameters.
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domsch
the only way for IOTA and crypto-currencies in general to be adopted is via clear and strong regulatory guidelines and frameworks.
We often have the situation where a company reaches out to us and wants to use the IOTA token, but they are simply not able to due to uncertainties in regards to taxes, accounting, legal and regulatory questions.
The EU is taking a great stance with their new proposal (called MICA) to provide exactly this type of regulatory clarity and guidance we need. So we are very happy about that and see this as a great development for the adoption of IOTA.
We are very active in INATBA (in fact Julie is still on the board), are in the Executive Committee of the Digital Chamber of Commerce (https://digitalchamber.org) and are actively working with other regulatory bodies around the world. I think that especially in 2021, we will be much more pro-active with our outreach and efforts to push for more regulatory guidance (for the IOTA Token, for Tokenization, Smart Contracts, etc.). We are already talking with companies to start case studies around what it means to use the IOTA token - so that will be exciting.
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domsch
actual product development, will really help us to convince regulators and lawmakers of what IOTA is intended for and where its potential lies.
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DavidSonstebo
We are actively participating in regulatory matters via entities such as INATBA, as well as with local regulators in individual countries to help shape regulations to favor the adoption of crypto.
once the use cases can display real-world value, then deployments will happen regardless.
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serguei_popov
"The multiverse" is quite an ingenious and promising idea that has many components. Actually, quite some of those are being incorporated to the Coordicide already now. The most "controversial" part, though, is the pure on-Tangle voting -- Hans thinks it should work fine while I think that it can be attacked
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Billy-IF
Several of our modules have been devloped jointly with researchers in academia. For example, our rate control module is being developed jointly with professor Robert Shorten **and his team at Imperial College. Moreover,**our team has published several papers in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings,
We are also making sure the entire protocol is audited. First, we have a grant given to Professor Mauro Conti specifcally to vet our solution.
you may hear an announcement regarding a similar grant to a second university.Second, eventually will offer bug bounties on our testnet. Lastly, we will hire some firm to audit our software and our protocol.
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domsch
I would say that the entire enterprise and also the broader crypto-community is certainly actively following our developments around Coordicide**.**
Once that is removed, and with the introduction of Tokenization and Smart Contracts as Layer 2 solutions, there is no reason not to switch to IOTA.
there are probably even more who will reach out once we've achieved our objective of being production ready.
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serguei_popov
Our objective is to have Honey ready within the first half of 2021.
we are very confident that Coordicide will happen in time.
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Billy-IF
For Chrysalis, we will implement a deposit system. In order for an address to receive dust (which will be explicitly defined as any output with value less than a certain threshold), that address must already have a minimum balance (either 1 MIota or 1 KIota). The total ordering in conflict white flag makes this solution incredibly easy to implement.
this solution in the Coordicide needs alterations, because of the lack of total ordering.
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HusQy_IOTA
Sharding is part of IOTA 3.0 and currently still in research.
there are of course some hard questions that need to be answered but we are pretty confident that these questions can and will be answered.
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Billy-IF
**Having these layers helps keep the protocol modular and organized.****Indeed,****it is important to be able to track dependencies between the modules, particularly for standardization purposes.As your question suggests, a key component of standardization is the ability to update the standard(no living protocol is completely static).**Standardization will be accompanied by a versioning system, which tracks backwards compatibility.
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Billy-IF
Well, let me try to clear these things up.
-The congestion control mechanisms are indifferent to the types of messages in the tangle. Thus non-value transactions (data messages) will be processed in the same way as value transactions (value messages). Thus, in times of congestion, a node will require mana in order to issue either of them.
-You will not need mana to simply “set up a node” and monitor the tangle.
However, in order to send transactions (or issue any messages) you will need mana in times of congestion.
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IF_Dave
**The next big one is next month:**Odyssey Momentum; This is a huge multi-day DLT focussed hackathon with a lot of teams and big companies/governments involved working on solutions for the future. The IOTA Foundation is a Ecosystem member of Odyssey and we will be virtually present during the hackathon to help and guide teams working with IOTA.
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Billy-IF
Coordicide will not fail. We are working very carefully to make sure that coordicide is a success, and we will not launch Iota 2.0 until it has gone through the proper testing.
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domsch
Everyone internally and also our partners are very confident in the path that we've defined. Failure is not an option for us :)
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HusQy_IOTA
We will most probably see a slight delay and see Nectar early 2021 instead.
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DavidSonstebo
No, IF is not running out of money, this narrative has been repeated for 3 years now, yet we're still operating. Of course, bear markets impact our theoretical runway, but The IOTA Foundation is hard at work at diversifying revenue streams so that we become less and less dependent on the token holdings.
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IF_Dave
We are constantly working on getting more exchanges to list IOTA, we however do not pay for listings
Some exchanges require a standard signature scheme
with the introduction of ed25519 in Chrysalis phase 2 that will be introduced and no longer be a restriction.
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HusQy_IOTA
Being feeless is one of the most important aspects here since a new technology usually only gets adopted if it is either better or easier to use than existing solutions.
if it enables new use cases that would be completely impossible with the existing infrastructure. That is the single biggest reason why I think that IOTA will prevail.
An example for such a "new" use case is the Kupcrush use case presented by Terry
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domsch
there are so many amazing use cases enabled with IOTA
I would say that****the most specific use cases which gets me really excited is conditional access control based on IOTA payments - in particular for the sharing economy.
IOTA Access + IOTA tokens really enable so many exciting new possibilities.
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Billy-IF
In fact, with coordicide research coming to an end, we have already started to look into sharding**.**Indeed, sharding will provide the scalability needed to handle the demands of an IoT enabled world.
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Billy-IF
We have designed Iota 2.0 to not have large concentrations of power. Unlike PoS systems, Iota will not be a block chain and thus will not be limited by a leader election process.
in a DAG, people can information in parallel, and so nodes with small amounts of mana can create messages at the same time with large mana holders.
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Billy-IF
**In any DLT, "voting" needs a sybil protection system, and thus "voting power" is linked to some scarce resource.****Typically the allocation of any resource follows some sort of Zipf distribution, meaning that some people will have a lot, and others not.**The best we can do is to make sure that the little guys get their fair share of voting power.
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HusQy_IOTA
With Chrysalis and coordicide we are finally moving to being production ready which will most probably also lead to a bigger market share as partners will start to use the technology which will increase the demand for tokens.
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HusQy_IOTA
Privacy features are currently not being researched and it might be hard to support that on layer1 but privacy features could definitely be implemented as a 2nd layer solution
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domsch
We focus on making the base layer of IOTA (namely transactional settlement) as secure and fast as possible. Many of the greater extensions to this core functionality are built on layer 2 (we already have Streams, Access, Identity and now also Smart Contracts)
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HusQy_IOTA
There are discussions about increasing the supply to be able to still have micro transactions if the token would i.e. cost a few hundred dollars per MIOTA but we have not made a final decision, yet.
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IF_Dave
We think we have a edge over other technology especially when it comes to fee-less transactions allowing a lot of use-cases that would otherwise be impractical or impossible.Adoption is not a given but a useful technology will be utilized with the right functionality,
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DavidSonstebo
**why we have such a widespread strategy of driving IOTA, not only its development but in industry, academia, regulatory circles, raising awareness, funding ecosystem efforts etc.**I am confident in the position we are in right now.
There is a clear demand for financial disruption, data security, and automation.
someone has to assemble a killer application that meets the demand; IF is pushing for this with partners
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Billy-IF
Our goal is to have at least 1000 TPS.
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Billy-IF
Personally, I think our congestion control algorithm is our greatest innovation.
our algorithm can be used in any adversarial setting requiring fairness and consistency. Keep an eye out for a blog post that I am writing about it.
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HusQy_IOTA
about proof of inclusion?
I have started implementing a proof of concept locally and the required data structures and payload types are already done but we won't be able to integrate this into goshimmer until we are done with the current refactoring of the code.
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Jakub_Cech
**Many of the changes that are part of the Chrysalis would have made it and will make it into Coordicide.**Like the atomic transactions with binary layout. The approach we took was actually opposite - as in, what are the improvements we can already make in the current network without having to wait for Coordicide, and at the same time without disrupting or delaying Coordicide?
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Billy-IF
All the key research questions in coordicide have been answered.
in reality, the biggest research challenges are behind us.
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Jakub_Cech
When Chrysalis part 2 will be live?
We are still aiming for 2020****as still reflected at roadmap.iota.org. **We want to have a testnet where everyone can test things like the new APIs on, and some initial implementations of specific client libraries****to work with.**This will also allow us to test the node (both Hornet and Bee) implementations more in the wild.
The new wallet will also be tested on that testnet.
The whole testing phase will be a big endeavor, and, at the same time, we will also start auditing many of the implementations,
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Billy-IF
We are in contact currently with OMG, and they are advising us on how to draft our specifications in order to ease the standardization process. Coordicide, or Iota 2.0, actually provides us a chance to start off with a clean state, since we are building it from the ground up with standardization in mind.
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IF_Dave
The focus at this point is delivering Chrysalis and Coordicide. DeFi could possibly be done with Smart contracts at a given moment but it's not a focus point at this stage.
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domsch
about price?
We are quite frankly not worried about that. Knowing everything that we have in the pipeline, our ecosystem and how everything around IOTA will mature over the next few months, I am sure that the entire crypto ecosystem will wake up to IOTA and its potential. **Many participants in the market still have outdated information from 2017 about us, so there is certainly some education to do.**But with Chrysalis and the Coordicide progress, all of that will change.
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domsch
At the core of it, the IOTA Foundation is a leader in trust protocols and digital infrastructure.We will always remain a R&D organization at our core, as there is a lot more development we can lead when it comes to make our society and economy more fair, trustless and autonomous.
I certainly see us evolving into a broader think-tank and expert group to advise governments and large corporations on their strategies - in particular around data, identity and IoT.
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HusQy_IOTA
barely any cryptocurrency gets used in the real world.
IOTA will soon start to actually be used in real world products and it is likely that this will also have an impact on the price (but I can't really give any details just yet).
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domsch
ISCP (IOTA Smart Contract Protocol) is based on cryptographic consensus via BLS threshold signatures. That means a certain pre-defined amount of key holders have to come together to alter the state of the contract****or to send funds around. **If majority of the nodes are offline, the threshold will not be reached and the contract cannot be executed anymore.**There are various ways in how we are looking at this right now on how to make SC recovery and easy transitions possible.
**The beauty of ISCP is that we have a validator set which you can define (can be 3 or it can be 100+), and via an open selection process we can really ensure that the network will be fully decentralized and permissionless.Every smart contract committee (which will be its own network of course) is leveraging the IOTA ledger for security and to make it fully auditable and tamper-proof.**Which means that if a committee acts wrong, we have cryptographic proof of it and can take certain actions.
This makes our approach to smart contracts very elegant, secure and scalable.
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Billy-IF
No, we will not standardize Iota 1.5. Yes, we do hope that standardization will help adoption by making it easier for corporates to learn our tech.
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serguei_popov
In general, I also have to add that I'm really impressed by the force of our research department, and I think we have the necessary abilities to handle all future challenges that we might be facing.
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Billy-IF
In coordicide, i.e. Iota 2.0, yes all nodes have to process all transactions and must receive all data. Our next major project is sharding, i.e. Iota 3.0 which will remove this requirement, and increase scalability.
FPC begins to be vulnerable to attack if the attacker has 30%-40% of the active consensus mana.
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HusQy_IOTA
There is no doubt about coordicide working as envisioned.
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HusQy_IOTA
When will companies fully implement iota tech?
Soon(TM) :P
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Billy-IF
Well first, we are going to make sure that we dont need a plan B :) Second, our plans for the actual deployment are still under discussion. Lastly, we will make sure there is some sort of fail safe, e.g. turning the coordinator back on, or something like that.
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Billy-IF
All the key research questions in coordicide have been answered, and each module is designed.
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Billy-IF
What will be standardized is the behavior of the modules, particularly their interactions with other nodes and wallets. Implementation details will not be standardized. The standardization will allow anyone to build a node that can run on the IOTA 2.0 network.
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DavidSonstebo
Tangle EE has its own Slack (private) and calls, so the lack of activity can probably be explained in that fashion. Coordicide will have an impact on all of IOTA :) There's certainly a lot of entities awaiting it, but most will start building already with Chrysalis v2, since it solves most pain points.
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Billy-IF
If there are no conflicts, a message will be confirmed if it receives some approvals. We estimate that this should happen within 10-20 seconds.
To resolve a conflict, FPC will typically take another 4 minutes, according to our simulator. Since conflicts will not affect honest users, most transactions will have very short confirmation times.
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Billy-IF
a colored coin supply cannot exceed that of all Iota. You could effectively mint a colored coin supply using a smart contract, although there would be performance downsides. There are no plans to increase the supply. The convergence to binary will not affect the supply nor anyone's balances.
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HusQy_IOTA
Both, Radix and Avalanche have some similarities to IOTA:
- Avalanche has a similar voting scheme and also uses a DAG
- Radix uses a sharding approach that is similar to IOTAs "fluid sharding"
I don't really consider them to compete with our vision since both projects still rely on fees to make the network work.
Centralized solution can however never be feeless and being feeless is not just a "nice feature" but absolutely crucial for DLT to succeed in the real world.
Having fees makes things a lot easier and Coordicide would already be "done" if we could just use fees but I really believe that it is worth "going the extra mile" and build a system that is able to be better than existing tech.

Canada’s recurring binary options problem

Approximately seven months ago the Canadian financial regulatory authorities enacted a ban on brokers offering binary options to all retail traders. Unfortunately, these actions seemed to have had little to no results on certain brokers that have implemented new tactics in order to gather money from unsuspecting investors.
On April 12th the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, more commonly referred to the IIROC cautioned Canadian traders not to be duped by fraudulent online trading brokers attempting to unlawfully sell binary options under the pretense of legitimate brokers regulated by the IIROC.

Binary options scams still exist

Recently the ombudsman has been made aware of at least two brokers that misleadingly state that they are regulated by IIROC:
​

• CFDtradeoption.com – run by Westrade Holdings, Inc;
• Globaloptionsmarket.net.

Binary options cannot be offered or sold to retail traders in Canada and the regulator has issued plenty of warnings, imploring Canadian citizens not to invest in these fraudulent companies. Under no circumstances are IIROC regulated entities authorized to sell binary options to retail investors in Canada.
This troubling tendency is bringing up concerns about how effective a blanket ban on offering of such toxic products as binaries to stop scams. ESMA, the European Securities and Markets Authority has recently put in rules that prohibit regulated brokers from offering binary options to retail investors. However, these recent developments in Canada call into question on whether a ban in Europe would, in fact, produce the wanted effect.

Opposition to the binary options ban

It should be noted that when the Canadian regulatory authorities first suggested to ban binary options, the proposal encountered stern opposition. The Investment Industry Association of Canada (IIAC), which represents 130 Dealer Member firms regulated by IIROC, asserted that the injunction should only include binary options scams offered by unregulated binary options brokers. The IIAC further maintained that its members should be allowed to offer binary options to retail traders.
Interestingly enough there have been proposals to allow trading binary options on an exchange, as this is allowed in the United States. However, opposed to that line of thinking are organizations such as the Canadian Advocacy Council for Canadian CFA Institute Societies (CAC), which heavily supported the binary options ban proposal and even went beyond it by questioning the status of OTC (Over the Counter) or more commonly known as retail Forex trading. The council questioned whether the sale of similar financial instruments to retail investors should additionally be restricted.

Get help now

If you have fallen victim to a cryptocurrency scam, send a complaint to at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and we will do our very best to get into contact with you as soon as we can to initiate your funds recovery process.

So first of all this post was inspired by GGExMachina's brief statement on the issue:

For example, it is objectively the case that biological men have a physical advantage over women. Yet if someone points this out and suggests that transgender people shouldn’t be allowed to fight in women’s UFC, or women’s soccer or weightlifting competitions or whatever, suddenly you’re some kind of evil monster. Rather than saying that of course trans people shouldn’t be bullied and that we could perhaps have a trans olympics (like the Paralympics and Special Olympics), we are expected to lie.

I've found that this position is incredibly popular among liberals/left-leaning people, especially here on reddit. It seems like, once or twice a month, like clockwork, a thread stating more or less the same thing on /unpopularopinion or /offmychest will get thousands of upvotes. And while I completely understand the thought process that leads otherwise left-leaning people to come to such conclusions, I feel like the issue has been, broadly speaking, dishonestly presented to the general public by a mixture of bad-faith actors and people who have succumbed to the moral panic. And, as I've seen, there are plenty of people in this subreddit and elsewhere who are itching to be as supportive as they possibly can to the trans community but find themselves becoming very disillusioned by this particular issue. By making this post I hope to present a more nuanced take on the issue, not only in regards to my personal beliefs on what kinds of policies are best to preserve fairness in women's sports but also in regards to shining a light on how this issue is often times dishonestly presented in an attempt to impede the progression of pro-trans sentiments in the cultural zeitgeist.

Sex & Gender

The word "transgender" is an umbrella term that refers to people whose gender identities differ from those typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, the approximate composition of "the trans community" in the United States is 29% Transgender men (Female-to-Male), 33% Transgender women (Male-to-Female), and 35% non-binary. (The remaining 3% were survey respondents who self-identified as "crossdressers", who were still included in the survey on the grounds of being gender non-conforming)
While non-binary people, as a group, are probably deserving of their own separate post. the focus of this post will be on trans men and trans women. I will also be primarily focusing on transgender people who pursue medical transition with Hormone-Replacement-Therapy, as they are most relevant to the issue of sports. (Mind that while the majority of binary trans people fit into this camp, there is a sizable minority of trans people who do not feel the need to medically transition.)
What do trans people believe about Gender?
The views of transgender people in regards to Gender are actually pretty varied, although the most prominent positions that I've personally seen are best summed up into two different camps:

1. The "Trans-Medical" camp

Transgender people who fall into this camp usually consider Gender Dysphoria to be the defining factor of what makes somebody trans. The best way I can describe this camp is that they sort of view being transgender akin to being intersex. Only whereas an intersex person would be born with a disorder that affects the body, a trans person is born with a disorder that affects the brain. Trans people in this camp often times put an emphasis on a clinical course for treatment. For example, a person goes to a psychologist, gets diagnosed with gender dysphoria, starts hormone replacement therapy, pursues surgery, then emerges from this process of either cured of the gender dysphoria or, at the very least, treated to the fullest extent of medical intervention. This position is more or less the original position held by trans activists, back in the day when the word "transsexual" was used instead of "transgender". Though many younger trans people, notably YouTuber Blaire White, also hold this position. Under this position, sex and gender are still quite intertwined, but a trans man can still be considered a man, and a trans woman a woman, under the belief that sex/gender doesn't just refer to chromosomal sex and reproductive organs, but also to neurobiology, genitalia, and secondary sex characteristics. So someone who is transgender, according to this view, is born with the physical characteristics of one sex/gender but the neurobiology of another, and will change their physical characteristics, to the fullest extent medically possible, to match the neurobiology and therefore cure the individual of gender dysphoria.
Critics of this position argue that this mentality is problematic due to being inherently exclusive to transgender people who do not pursue medical transition, whom are often times deemed as "transtrenders" by people within this camp. Many people find it additionally problematic because it is also inherently exclusive to poorer trans people, particularly those in developing nations, who may not have access to trans-related medical care. Note that there are plenty of trans people who *do* have access to medical transition, but nevertheless feel as if the trans community shouldn't gatekeep people who cannot afford or do not desire medical transition, thus believing in the latter camp.

1. The "Gender Identity" camp

I feel like this camp is the one most popularly criticized by people on the right, but is also probably the most mainstream. It is the viewpoint held by many more left-wing trans people, (Note that in the aforementioned 2015 survey, only 1% of trans respondents voted Republican, so trans people are largely a pretty left-wing group, therefore it makes sense that this position would be the most mainstream) but also notably held by American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, GLAAD, and other mainstream health organizations and activist groups.
While people in this camp still acknowledge that medical transition to treat gender dysphoria can still be a very important aspect of the transgender experience, it's believed that the *defining* experience is simply having a gender identity different from the one they were assigned at birth. "Gender identity" simply being the internal, personal sense of being a man, a woman, or outside the gender binary.
Many people in this camp, though, still often maintain that gender identity is (at least partially) neurobiological, but differ from the first camp in regards to acknowledging that the issue is less black & white than an individual simply having a "male brain" or a "female brain", but rather that the neurological characteristics associated with gender exist on more of a spectrum, thus leaving the door open to gender non-conforming people who do not identify as trans, as well as to non-binary people. This is where the "gender is a spectrum" phrase comes from.
"52 genders" is a popular right-wing meme that makes fun of this viewpoint, however it is important to note that many trans and non-binary people disagree with the idea of quantifying gender identity to such an absurd amount of individual genders, rather more simply maintaining that there are men, women, and a small portion of people in-between, with a few words such as "agender" or "genderqueer" being used to describe specific identities/presentations within this category.
It's also noteworthy that not all people in this camp believe that neurobiology is the be-all-end-all of gender identity, as many believe that the performativity of gender also plays an integral role in one's identity. (That gender identity is a mixture of neurobiology and performativity is a position held by YouTuber Contrapoints)
Trans people and biological sex
So while the aforementioned "Gender Identity" viewpoint has become quite popularized among liberals and leftists, I have noticed a certain rhetorical mentality/assumption become prevalent alongside it, especially among cisgender people who consider themselves trans-allies:
"Sex and Gender are different. A trans woman is a woman who is biologically male. A trans man is a man who is biologically female"
When "Sex" is defined by someone's chromosomes, or the sex organs they were born with, this is correct. However, there is a pretty good reason why the trans community tends to prefer terms like "Assigned Male at Birth" rather than "Biologically Male". This is done not only for the inclusion of people who are both intersex and transgender (For example, someone can be born intersex but assigned male based on the existence of a penis or micropenis), but also due to the aforementioned viewpoint on divergent neurobiology being the cause for gender dysphoria. Those reasons are why the word "Assigned" is used. But the reason why it's "Assigned Male/Female At Birth" instead of just "Assigned Male/Female" is because among the trans community there exists an understanding of the mutability of sexually dimorphic biology that the general population is often ignorant to. For example, often times people (especially older folks) don't even know of the existence of Hormone Replacement Therapy, and simply assume that trans people get a single "sex change operation" that, (for a trans woman) would just entail the removal of the penis and getting breast implants. Therefore they imagine the process to be "medically sculpting a male to look female" instead of a more natural biological process of switching the endocrine system form male to female or vice versa and letting the body change over the course of multiple years. It doesn't help that, for a lot of older trans people (namely Caitlyn Jenner, who is probably the most high profile trans person sadly), the body can be a lot more resistant to change even with hormones so they *do* need to rely on plastic surgery a lot more to get obvious results)
So what sexually dimorphic bodily characteristics can one expect to change from Hormone Replacement Therapy?
(Note that there is a surprising lack of studies done on some of the more intricate changes that HRT can, so I've put a "*" next to the changes that are anecdotal, but still commonly and universally observed enough among trans people [including myself for the MTF stuff] to consider factual. I've also put a "✝" next to the changes that only occur when people transition before or during puberty)
Male to Female:

• Breast development and nipple/areolar enlargement, including in some people, the development of mammary glands and the ability to breastfeed
• Thinning/slowed growth of facial/body hair
• Cessation/reversal of male-pattern scalp hair loss
• Softening of skin/decreased oiliness and acne
• Decreased muscle mass/strength
• Widening and rounding of the pelvis
• Changes in mood, emotionality, and behavior (anecdotally crying is way easier to do)
• Decreased sex drive (anecdotally, taking progesterone helps a lot in regards to regaining sex drive, though attraction is often noted as being experienced a bit differently than how it feels with testosterone)
• Decreased sperm production/fertility
• Decreased testicle size
• Decreased penis size
• Decreased prostate gland size
• Voice changes (As far as I've heard, most people only experience minor changes from transitioning in adulthood, so it's common to do vocal training on top of everything to actually get a female-passing voice. I'll add a ✝ here since vocal changes seem to be a lot stronger in people who transition before/during puberty)
• Changes in body odor (It's been documented that men and women often times have different smelling body odor, and trans people commonly notice a change in this regard) *
• Changes in how arousal, sexual pleasure, and orgasms are experienced *
• Changes in facial complexion *
• Slight changes in hair color, texture, or curl *
• Slight changes in eye color *
• Changes in alcohol/drug tolerance *
• Experiencing pubescent skeletal development and bodily growth along female-typical lines, including both bodily size/shape and facial bone/cartilage features ✝

Female to Male:

• Growth of facial/body hair
• male pattern scalp hair loss (in some individuals)
• Roughening of the skin and prominence of veins
• Increased muscle mass/strength
• Increased sweat
• Changes in mood, emotionality, and behavior (I forget the source for this sadly but I remember reading that trans men are significantly more likely to commit crimes and get into fights after starting HRT)
• Increased sex drive
• Cessation of ovulation and menstruation
• Acne (especially in the first few years of therapy)
• Alterations in blood lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides)
• Increased red blood cell count
• Deepening of the voice
• Enlargement of the clitoris
• Changes in body odor *
• Changes in how arousal, sexual pleasure, and orgasms are experienced *
• Changes in facial complexion *
• Slight changes in hair color, texture, or curl *
• Slight changes in eye color *
• Changes in alcohol/drug tolerance *
• Experiencing male pubescent skeletal development and bodily growth along male-typical lines, and closure of growth plates ✝

For the sake of visual representation, here are a couple of images from /transtimelines to demonstrate these changes in adult transitioners (I've specifically chosen athletic individuals to best demonstrate muscular changes)
https://preview.redd.it/ntw333p9sbty.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=5fe779757dfc4a5dc56566ff648d337c59fbe5cb
https://www.reddit.com/transtimelines/comments/dpca0f/3_years_on_vitamin_t/
Additionally, here's a picture of celebrity Kim Petras who transitioned before male puberty, in case you were wondering what "female pubescent skeletal development" looks like in a trans woman:
https://cdn2.thelineofbestfit.com/images/made/images/remote/https_cdn2.thelineofbestfit.com/portraits/kim_petras_burakcingi01_1107_1661_90.jpg

How does this relate to sports?

Often times, when the whole "transgender people in sports" discussion arises, a logical error is made when *all* transgender people are assumed to be "biologically" their birth sex. For example, when talking about trans women participating in female sports, these instances will be referred to as cases of "Biological males competing against females".
As mentioned before, calling a trans woman "biologically male" strictly in regards to chromosomes or sex organs at birth would be correct. However, not only can it be considered derogatory (the word "male" is colloquially a shorthand for "man", after all), but there are many instances where calling a post-HRT transgender person "biologically [sex assigned at birth]" is downright misleading.
For example, hospitals have, given transgender patients improper or erroneous medical care by assuming treatment based on birth sex where treatment based on their current endocrinological sex would have been more adequate.
Acute Clinical Care of Transgender Patients: A Review

Conclusions and relevance: Clinicians should learn how to engage with transgender patients, appreciate that unique anatomy or the use of gender-affirming hormones may affect the prevalence of certain disease (eg, cardiovascular disease, venous thromboembolism, and osteoporosis), and be prepared to manage specific issues, including those related to hormone therapy. Health care facilities should work toward providing inclusive systems of care that correctly identify and integrate information about transgender patients into the electronic health record, account for the unique needs of these patients within the facility, and through education and policy create a welcoming environment for their care.

Some hosptials have taken to labeling the biological sex of transgender patients as "MTF" (for post-HRT trans women) and "FTM" (for post-HRT trans men), which is a much more medically useful identifier compared to their sex assigned at birth.
In regards to the sports discussion, I've seen *multiple threads* where redditors have backed up their opinions on the subject of trans people in sports with studies demonstrating that cis men are, on average, more athletically capable than cis women. Which I personally find to be a pathetic misunderstanding of the entire issue.
Because we're not supposed to be comparing the athletic capabilities of natal males to natal females, here. We're supposed to comparing the athletic capabilities of *post-HRT male-to-females* to natal females. And, if we're going to really have a fact-based discussion on the matter, we need to have separate categories for pre-pubescent and post-pubescent transitioners. Since, as mentioned earlier, the former will likely have different skeletal characteristics compared to the latter.
The current International Olympic Committee (IOC) model for trans participation, and criticisms of said model
(I quoted the specific guidelines from the International Cycling Union, but similar guidelines exist for all Olympic sports)

Elite Competition
At elite competition levels, members may have the opportunity to represent the United States and participate in international competition. They may therefore be subject to the policies and regulations of the International Cycling Union (UCI) and International Olympic Committee (IOC). USA Cycling therefore follows the IOC guidelines on transgender athletes at these elite competition levels. For purposes of this policy, international competition means competition sanctioned by the UCI or competition taking place outside the United States in which USA Cycling’s competition rules do not apply.
The IOC revised its guidelines on transgender athlete participation in 2015, to focus on hormone levels and medical monitoring. The main points of the guidelines are:
Those who transition from female to male are eligible to compete in the male category without restriction. It is the responsibility of athletes to be aware of current WADA/USADA policies and file for appropriate therapeutic use exemptions.
Those who transition from male to female are eligible to compete in the female category under the following conditions:
The athlete has declared that her gender identity is female. The declaration cannot be changed, for sporting purposes, for a minimum of four years.
The athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to her first competition (with the requirement for any longer period to be based on a confidential case-by-case evaluation, considering whether or not 12 months is a sufficient length of time to minimize any advantage in women’s competition).
The athlete's total testosterone level in serum must remain below 10 nmol/L throughout the period of desired eligibility to compete in the female category.
Compliance with these conditions may be monitored by random or for-cause testing. In the event of non-compliance, the athlete’s eligibility for female competition will be suspended for 12 months.

Valid criticisms of the IOC model are usually based on the fact that, even though hormone replacement therapy provokes changes to muscle mass, it does *not* shrink the size of someone's skeleton or cardiovascular system. Therefore an adult-transitioned trans woman could, even after losing all levels of male-typical muscle mass, still have an advantage in certain sports if she had an excessively large skeletal frame, and was participating in a sport where such a thing would be advantageous.
Additionally, the guidelines only require that athletes be able to demonstrate having had female hormone levels for 12-24 months, which isn't necessarily long enough to completely lose musculature gained from training on testosterone (anecdotally it can take 2-4 years to completely lose male-typical muscle mass) So the IOC guidelines don't have any safeguard against, for example, a trans woman training with testosterone as the dominant hormone in her body, and then taking hormones for the bare minimum time period and still having some of the advantage left.
Note that, while lower level sports have had (to the glee of right-wing publications sensationalizing the issue) instances of this exact thing happening, in the 16 years since these IOC guidelines were established, not a single transgender individual has won an Olympic medal
Also note that none of the above criticisms of the IOC policy would apply in regards to the participation of pre-pubescent-transitioned trans women. After all, male-pubescent bone structure and cardiovascular size, and male-typical muscle levels, can't possibly exist if you never went through male puberty to begin with.
What could better guidelines entail, to best preserve fairness in female sports while avoiding succumbing to anti-trans moral panic?

• The most extreme way for female sports to reasonably go about addressing this issue would be to only allow for the participation of transgender women who are documented to have, with puberty blockers, carried out their transitions without having gone past Tanner Stage II or III of male puberty.
• Sports leagues willing to be a bit looser could accept adult transitioners under the stipulation that their bodily measurements in regards to certain skeletal features fit within a standard deviation of the cis-female average
• Sports leagues willing to be even looser could copy the IOC guidelines, but require documentation of having gone through HRT for a greater period of time rather than just the 12 months, (3 years would probably be better) to guarantee full loss of male muscle mass

In my personal opinion, sports leagues should pick one of the three above options depending on what best fits the nature of the sport and the eliteness of the competition. For example, extremely competitive contact sports might be better off going with the first option, but an aerobic sport such as marathon running would probably be fine with the third option.

How this issue has been misrepresented by The Right

• Right-wing rhetoric surrounding this issue assumes that the issue exists as an innate consequence of trans activism (Ie. "This is what the left is pushing!") rather than as a result of individual sports leagues failing to have solid rules for participation. Often times, certain low-level sports leagues have failed to even measure trans athlete's hormone levels, and have, in some cases, let completely male-bodied athletes participate as women. This is obviously the fault of these specific sports leagues failing to implement or enforce reasonable rules for participation, but right-wing articles surrounding such instances will act as if these occurrences are an ideological goal of the pro-trans left. This runs off of the assumption that a majority of trans people and "the left" are specifically pushing for muscular males (who merely "identify" as women, and nothing more) to dominate female sports. When, in reality, we really had nothing to do with these occurrences, and the majority of trans people would even likely agree with the sentiments expressed in this post. Additionally, accepting the gender identities of trans people is something you can do irregardless of your opinion on the sports issue.
• Over-exaggeration of the problem. The issue is often sensationalized to the extent of coming off as a call to action, to stop the trans activists and their SJW bullies from ruining female sports! They're coming after your daughter's lacrosse team! In reality, out of the hundreds of thousands (perhaps even more) of sports competitions that exist in the United States and throughout the world, an incredibly small percentage of them are actually ruined by trans participants. You hear the stories of the 6'5'' trans woman with the broad frame winning a weightlifting competition, but not of the hundreds of more average-sized trans-female athletes turning out more mediocre performances. This isn't to say that the niche cases don't present a problem that indeed needs to be fixed, but presenting the problem as more prevalent than it actually is acts as a rhetorical strategy meant to provoke anger as well as a more dramatic response. Buying into this rhetorical strategy, especially if you're is already somewhat ignorant to the issue to begin with, will make it much easier to convince you of accepting drastic solutions to the problems. Ie. "ONLY XX CHROMOSOMES ALLOWED IN FEMALE SPORTS", instead of any of the three more measured approaches suggested above. The provoked response of anger is also meant to turn people off of accepting trans rights in general.
• Infuriatingly, I've noticed that right-wing rhetoric usually doesn't even mention pre-pubescent transitioners at all. Like, these people are fine with acknowledging the existence of puberty blockers when they're trying to make them illegal, but they refuse to talk about them in regards to the sports issue. There have been cases where conservative jurisdictions have banned the participation of all transgender students in girl's sports, period. Meaning a transgender girl who never went through male puberty at all, and has pre-pubescent hormone levels as a result of puberty blockers, could be banned from participating in girl's sports, while in reality said trans girl could possibly even be at a disadvantage compared to the cis girls, as a result of not even having started puberty yet. Nonsensical. And liberal allies are at fault of this too, I've noticed. I've seen countless reddit threads where left-leaning people voice their take on the trans sports issue without mentioning the existence of pre-pubescent transitioners. It's honestly ridiculous.
• The sports issue is also used as an excuse to say derogatory things about trans women that would be less justifiable in other instances.

I'll use Joe Rogan as an example of this last thing:

She calls herself a woman but... I tend to disagree. And, uh, she, um... she used to be a man but now she has had, she's a transgender which is (the) official term that means you've gone through it, right? And she wants to be able to fight women in MMA. I say no f***ing way.
I say if you had a dick at one point in time, you also have all the bone structure that comes with having a dick. You have bigger hands, you have bigger shoulder joints. You're a f***ing man. That's a man, OK? You can't have... that's... I don't care if you don't have a dick any more...
If you want to be a woman in the bedroom and you know you want to play house and all of that other s*** and you feel like you have, your body is really a woman's body trapped inside a man's frame and so you got a operation, that's all good in the hood. But you can't fight chicks. Get the f*** out of here. You're out of your mind. You need to fight men, you know? Period. You need to fight men your size because you're a man. You're a man without a dick.
I'm not trying to discriminate against women in any way, shape, or form and I'm a big supporter of women's fighting. I loved watching that Ronda Rousey/Liz Carmouche fight. But those are actual women. Those are actual women. And as strong as Ronda Rousey looks, she's still looks to me like a pretty girl. She's a beautiful girl who happens to be strong. She's a girl! [Fallon Fox] is not a girl, OK? This is a [transgender] woman. It's a totally different specification.

Calling a trans woman a "man", and equating transitioning to merely removal of the dick, and equating trans women's experiences as women as "playing house" and "being a woman in the bedroom". These things are obviously pretty transphobic, and if Rogan had said these things about just any random trans woman his statements would have likely been more widely seen in that light. But when it's someone having an unfair advantage in sports, and the audience is supposed to be angry with you, it's much more socially acceptable thing to say such things. But the problem is, when you say these kinds of things about one trans woman, you're essentially saying those derogatory things about all trans women by extension. It's the equivalent of using an article about a black home invader who murdered a family as an excuse to use a racial slur.
Now, I'm not saying that Rogan necessarily did this on purpose, in fact I'm more inclined to believe that it was done moreso due to ignorance rather than having an actual ideological agenda. But since then, many right wing ideologues who do have an ideological agenda have used this issue as an excuse to voice their opinions on trans people while appearing to be less bigoted. Ie. "I'm not trying to be a bigot or anything and I accept people's rights to live their lives as they see fit, but we NEED to keep men out of women's sports", as a sly way to call trans women "men".
Additionally, doing this allows them to slip in untrue statements about the biology of trans women. I mean, first of all in regards to the statement "You have bigger hands, you have bigger shoulder joints", obviously even in regards to post-pubescent transitioners, not every trans woman is going to have bigger hands and shoulder joints than every cis woman (My hands are actually smaller than my aunt's!). It's just that people who go through male puberty on average tend to have bigger hands and shoulder joints compared to people who go through female puberty. But over-exaggerating the breadth of sexual dimorphism, as if males and females are entirely different species to each-other, helps to paint the idea of transitioning in a more nonsensical light.
I hope this thread has presented this issue in a better light for anyone reading it. Let me know if you have any thoughts/criticisms of my stances or the ways I went about this issue.

Google Play set to ban binary options

Google Play recently came out with new updates and policies for April 2018 spanning over a number of topics including hate speech, child endangerment, user produced content, fantasy sports apps, and app metadata. Additionally, included in the April memo was a short note concerning “a new policy on Binary Options”, in which Google play states the following:
“We do not allow apps that provide users with the ability to trade binary options.”
Last summer, after coming under intensive scrutiny from financial ombudsman across the globe, including ASIC of Australia and Canada’s several regional regulators, Google acted against a number of financial-related apps providing either unlicensed services, or apps that were known to promote dishonest behavior. Most of that “action” included removing numerous Binary Options trading apps linked to unlicensed and unregulated “offshore” firms. However, there was never a blanket ban against those types of apps. Regulated brokers providing Binary Options trading could remain on Google Play until now.
Apple, however, passed a complete ban on Binary Options apps at around the same time in its App Store. Last month, after increased pressure from various regulators Google AdWords issued a ban on all Binary Options associated ads, as part of a new controlled financial products procedure. Additionally, Google banned all crypto and ICO ads, and in June 2018 it will demand prior advertiser certification for running ads pertaining to other types of financial trading products including Contracts for Difference (CFDs) and spot forex. It comes as no surprise that Google Play is now taking similar action by instituting a blanket ban on Binary apps.

Is the end of binary options?

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that Binary Options trading – even when regulated – will not be able to make a comeback. Leading European regulator ESMA is additionally preparing a Binary Options ban. This comes as it is in the midst of enacting new laws governing leveraged and online trading. The new regulations are scheduled to come into effect across the EU later this year.
The new Google Play binary options policy for April 2018 can be seen here.

Contact us today

If you have fallen victim to a cryptocurrency scam, send a complaint to at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and we will do our very best to get into contact with you as soon as we can to initiate your funds recovery process.

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, which can be spent, saved, or invested, and it can be stolen too. Trading with Bitcoins was considered to be risky, but the current trends show that it has become a big hit the binary options sector. This decentralized currency is not regulated by any Government, or by any central authority.
What determines the price of Bitcoins?
Bitcoin's price is determined according to the supply and demand ratio. Price increases when the demand increases, the rates plummet downwards when the demand falls. Bitcoins in circulation are limited, and new ones are created at a very slow rate. Since it does not have enough cash reserve to move the market price, its price can be extremely volatile.
Bitcoin trading is popular because of -

• Low inflation risk - Inflation is the biggest issue for traders, because all the currencies lose some of their purchasing power when the reserve banks keep printing more currency. With Bitcoin minting system being limited to just 21 million Bitcoins, it hardly gets impacted with inflation.
• Low collapse risk - Currencies fluctuations depend on government trade policies, which at times cause hyperinflation, and even lead to the collapse of currency. Bitcoin is a virtual universal currency, which is not regulated by any government.
• Simple, safe and cheap - The Bitcoin payments take place between peer-to-peer without any intermediary, which is why it is simple and cheap.
• Easy to carry - Bitcoins worth million dollars can be carried in your pocket, in a memory stick. This cannot be done with gold or cash.
• Untraceable - Issuance of Bitcoin is not regulated by any government, so the risk of seizure is nil.

Binary options Bitcoin trading platform
bitcoin binary options are getting familiar with popularity of these Bitcoins, and its constant fluctuating values. Therefore they are using this opportunity to offer traders with the latest volatile crypto-currency as an additional payment method. Bitcoin brokers providing crypto-currency as trading option include -

• One touch option - Bitcoin trading can be done with AnyOption or one-touch option. For example the current popular currency pair is BTC/USD.
• SetOption - The latest option available for asset trading is BITCOIN/USD.

Bitcoin brokers provide a simple trading online platform. All you have to do is visit their website, enter your details, and create an account. You can start with demo account to understand the market action.
The trading screen is simple.

• Pick the price direction (UP/DOWN)
• Select the timeframe

Is Bitcoin trading secure?
Bitcoin network is possibly the world's vast spread computing project. The most common weakness here is the user errors. Bitcoin wallet files can get lost, stolen, or deleted accidentally just like any other files in the digital form.
However, users can use sound security strategies to protect their cash. Alternatively, you could choose the service providers who offer high-level security, as well as insurance against loss or theft.
We provide latest information on Bitcoin brokers and online trading platforms on our website. Please visit our website to check out the broker reviews in order to make the right choices.

FCA Targets More Forex & Binary Brokers

The FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) finally got around to updating its list of unregulated online trading brokers. This list includes both forex and binary options unregulated brokers. Despite the fact, these brokers supposedly offer numerous services they are located in financial havens such as Seychelles, the Marshall Islands or Vanuatu and provide little to no information as to who they really are, and which parent company operates them. So, without further ado let’s introduce these fraudulent companies

SolidCFD

Owned by LOK Marketing Ltd, this forex broker is supposedly located in Vanuatu, a tax haven for any illicit business. Apparently, SolidCFD appears to be forging a path for current forex brokers and others that would like to set up shop in the country, whose major exports are frozen fish and distinct floating edifices. However, upon further inspection, the SolidCFD has two other offices registered on their website.
The first is under the name MGNC Marketing Ltd. and it is located in Cyprus. A quick google search tells us all that we need to know. MGNC Marketing LTD (Solid CFD) cold-calls potential investors and offers them unauthorized or prohibited financial services. An additional address is attributed to an area in West London. However, upon further review, there is no real company located there. Unsurprisingly no company is registered in the UK under SolidCFD, LOK marketing or MGNC Marketing, which implies that the broker has no physical presence in the United Kingdom.
Furthermore, there is a whole list of negative reviews pertaining to SolidCFD. This includes clients being unable to withdraw their funds, aggressive salesmen and not being able to log back into an account once a withdrawal request is made.

StratX Markets

Registered in the Marshal Islands, the company supposedly has an office in North London. However, the address that is provided is used by a company that enables other companies to register their business under their address. This obviously implies that StratX has no workers at its given address.
Just by merely glancing at a few of the reviews tells you that StratX Markets is operated by a bunch of con-artists. In fact what is more alarming, a number of former clients are claiming that StratX personnel are operating a fraudulent fund recovery company called Linrow Clarion Solvency that claims they can recover money that was lost to illegitimate brokers like Stratx Markets.

Options Stars Global

Last but not least this “broker” is registered in Samoa, but apparently has some sort of a branch in Cyprus that is regulated by CySEC. That is patently false.
Additionally, although the website has a U.K. phone number none of their of operations occur in the country. Not only Are there plenty of negative reviews about them, there is a dedicated Facebook page against them
Users of the website report an inability to withdraw funds, threatening salesmen, and pushy brokers who tempt traders into depositing more cash into their accounts. The company has done so badly they even have a Facebook page against them.

Take Action

If you have fallen victim to a cryptocurrency scam, send a complaint to at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and we will do our very best to get into contact with you as soon as we can to initiate your funds recovery process.

The Art of a Binary Options Scam

Binary options, fraudulent “trading products” that are designed to part prospective investors from their money are very different from real options. In essence, they are simply a bet that the price of a particular asset will rise in a given time frame. If you win the gamble, the company is supposed to pay a fixed payout, within the 70%-95% range. If you lose, however, you not only lose the “payout” but the initial investment as well.
If this was merely the case this would fall under the category of gambling, something that millions upon millions of individuals do recreationally. However, that is primarily not the case. With almost all binary options brokers you are “trading” against the broker and not the market. The broker wants you to lose, or else the company would not make a profit. Even if the broker pays out your winnings he can easily govern your profit with payout conditions. This means that even if you have a winning formula, the company will just decrease the payout, ensuring you ultimately lose in the long term.

There is more to the scam

That, unfortunately, is not where it ends. Numerous “brokers” are notorious for spreading fictitious stories about their clientele making gigantic profits with trading robots. Almost all of them manipulate their price curves to prevent you from winning. What’s worse is even if you do win, many of them refuse to pay out, and ultimately drop off the face of the earth (with your money).
Now clients are left in with a major dilemma. To whom do they turn? To the police? To regulators? The answer to these questions is that it depends. Most of these binary options brokers are not regulated and are located offshore, allowing them to do what they want. Often in their terms and conditions, they concoct various rules that ensure they keep your money once they have it. When it comes to regulators such as ASIC or the FCA they are relatively useless as they cannot shut down the actual binary options websites and to make it even worse search engines such as Google allow these websites to appear in their search content.

Shouldn’t the banks put a stop to this?

Yes, they should. However, the banks, which should be the number one line of defense against these scams either do not know the extent of the problem or are turning a blind eye to their nefarious activities. Additionally, in order to process credit card, debit card payments most of the binary options brokers have registered a small company in an E.U. country.

Recovery scams

Unfortunately, fraud encourages more fraud. Various individuals targeted U.S. citizens who were swindled by the now-defunct brokerage, Banc de Binary, and a few other binary options companies that were being sued by the SEC or the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). They impersonated SEC officials as part of an advanced-fee fraud scheme in which they deceived victims into forwarding them money. Approximately 95 individuals were targeted by this despicable scheme and 25 of them sent 235 thousand dollars in total to these swindlers.
What to Do if You Have Been Scammed
If you have fallen victim to a cryptocurrency scam, send a complaint to at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and we will do our very best to get into contact with you as soon as we can to initiate your funds recovery process.

Forex Trading – Is It Legitimate?

Forex (Foreign Exchange) is not a scam and certainly can be a credible and legitimate way of making money. However, whenever there are large sums of money involved, the shadier elements of society are never lagging. There are plenty of nefarious brokers that target novices, experienced traders and everyone else in between.
Forex scams are unfortunately common. At Broker Complaint Registry we have seen many forex, binary options and CFD scams emerge. Here are a couple of things to look out for whether you are an experienced trader or a complete novice.

Regulated Forex Broker?

The very first step to take to avoid becoming a victim of a Forex scam is to make sure you open an account with a regulated broker. There are many dominions that regulate Forex trading including the FCA in the UK, ASIC in Australia, and the CFTC and the NFA in the United States. Do not solely rely what is on the broker’s website. Check them out online and make sure they are regulated. It is simple to place a regulation on a website so use the resources available to you such as https://register.fca.org.uk/. Be sure to call the forex broker and find out who they are and what they do. Do not get pressured into opening an account unless you are 100% at ease.
However, merely checking to see whether the broker is regulated is not enough. There are numerous regulatory agencies such as CySEC that do not apply strict enough oversight and fail to implement harsh penalties for any brokers that violate their rules.

Guaranteed ROI

Any broker that guarantees a return on investment (ROI) is a surefire scam. For example, a “broker” may be approached to invest your money with an organization that will trade on your behalf and promise yearly or monthly returns for as long as you keep investing with them. Many of these con artists promise 40-50 % of your invested capital guaranteed PER MONTH. These “returns” are absolutely unsustainable and almost always involve other investors continuing to add money to the pot. This is called a Ponzi scheme. Remember Bernie Madoff anyone?
Forex trading is risky and while there are plenty of individuals who can consistently earn money trading, no one will say it is a guarantee.

Fund Withdrawal

If the forex broker or account manager tries to prevent you from withdrawing your funds or your return on investment, then you know that it is a forex scam. There is absolutely no reason that it should take anymore than a few business days for your money to be returned. Even some regulated brokers have refused to allow their clientele to withdraw. Take OTCapital as an example. They are regulated by ASIC, but Broker Complaint Registry has dealt with numerous individuals that have been unable to withdraw their funds.
What to Do if You Have Been Scammed
If you have fallen victim to a cryptocurrency scam, send a complaint to at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and we will do our very best to get into contact with you as soon as we can to initiate your funds recovery process.