In December, Brokerdealer.com covered the emerging bitcoin market and in January, MarketMuse profiled the Winklevoss twins’ plans to launch a bitcoin ETF. The bitcoin market is still emerging and was on track to be a booming business but the market now is taking a step back. In fact, UK International Business Times is saying that the bitcoin market is dying off, now with the supposed bitcoin scam occurring in Hong Kong, the bitcoin market seems to be even more hopeless.

Hong Kong-based bitcoin exchange MyCoin has allegedly shut its doors and stolen HKD 3 billion ($386.9 million) in the process.

The South China Morning Post reported Monday that 30 MyCoin clients approached a local lawmaker with complaints that the company had fled with funds from up to 3,000 investors.

The reports coming out of Hong Kong would seem to indicate that there may have been a Ponzi scheme at play.

“No one seems to know who is behind this,” a woman surnamed Lau, who said she lost HKD 1.3 million, told the paper. “Everyone says they, too, are victims … but we were told by those at higher tiers [of the scheme] that we can get our money back if we find more new clients.”

One warning sign of a pending collapse could have been that when the company changed its trading rules to bar people from exchanging all of their bitcoins unless they solicited new investors for the firm.

As bitcoin-focused site CoinDesk reasons, the incident may lead to new regulations for the cryptocurrency industry in Hong Kong, “which has so far operated with little scrutiny.”

According to the SCMP, MyCoin had hosted events at luxury hotels and a roadshow in Macau in 2014.

MyCoin did not immediately return a request for comment.

For the entire article from CNBC, click here.

The post Bitcoin Market Could Be Too Good To Be True appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

Brokerdealer.com provides below extract courtesy of NY Times and reporter Amy Cortese.

Fundrise co-founders Daniel Miller (l) and David Miller. Photo courtesy of Vannessa Vick for the NY Times

Fundrise, a website that aims to draw in a broad range of investors to finance commercial real estate deals, has raised more than $31 million in its first round of funding from a group of prominent technology, real estate and other backers.

Fundrise, based in Washington, is a pioneer in real estate crowdfunding, allowing individuals to directly invest with as little as $100 in hotels, apartment buildings and other development projects. Until recently, even small-scale real estate projects typically had been the exclusive domain of wealthy investors and private equity firms.

The company was founded by two brothers, Benjamin and Daniel Miller, in August 2012, shortly after the JOBS Act legalized crowdfunding, although they began working on the concept as early as 2010.

The financing round was led by Renren, a large social networking company based in China. It is also being backed by several real estate firms and individuals including executives of Silverstein Properties, the owner and developer of the World Trade Center; Rising Realty Partners, a Los Angeles developer; the Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group; Scott Plank, a real estate developer and former Under Armour executive; and Richard Boyle, former chief of Loopnet, an online commercial real estate listing service. The Collaborative Fund, an investment fund, also participated in the round.

For the full story from the New York Times DealBook, please click here.

The post Crowdfunding Site “Fundrise” Raises 1st Round of Financing; Chinese Real Estate Moguls Join Tech Execs In Venture appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.