Hi all,
Hope you are staying safe out there. Thought I should put a few things out there for discussion in a new context: what do you all think of the idea that it looks like Agora is currently pulling an exit scam? I know it's a large and previously trusted marketplace that seemed to run a tight ship, but let's look at the following things:
- Deposits and withdrawls not working for 4+ days with no explanation from staff (see many posts on here for evidence).
- The only indication on their site is a banner on the main page saying "We are aware of the payment issues, working on the solution." This is nonspecific and does not mention that deposits and withdraws are both 100% broken. The wallet (deposit and withdraw page) is still loading fine and bears no indication of malfunction, encouraging users who don't read external resources to send or receive their coins (indeed, several people on here are still doing so). This is reminiscent of Sheep "working" on their issues and allowing some 1+ BTC withdraws to pull a little more money from existing users.
- The forum went down at the same time as the payment issues began and has not resurfaced since. No communication from the staff on this issue anywhere whatsoever. Perhaps intentional, to stop people from discussing the payment issues?
- Agora recently made a post on here claiming withdrawls would be back within the day well over a day ago. Not only this, they did not PGP sign their post, unlike previous communications, formatted it differently, and did not cross-post it to Pastebin (as far as I can see). Furthermore, reports from users indicate staff appear to be unable to decrypt PGP messages sent to support. This is perhaps to provide deniability in case they decide to reopen and rethink this scam? Hard to say but it is inconsistent with their operations in the past. They claim in their message security is their #1 priority and fail to do the most basic step, PGP signing their public communications.
- There has been 0 communication from the staff despite community requests for answers to questions related to the above. The only communications from the staff appear to be repeating exactly what is on their banner online.
- Some vendors have expressed concern and attempted to contact the staff with no success, as far as I can see on here and the r/AgMarketplace subreddit.
It is also worth noting that the reason so many people trust Agora is that it was initially promoted by BitcoinFog. If Agora continues to experience issues with no explanation, I would be leery of the intentions of the BitcoinFog people making such an endorsement (and in the first place their endorsement of a drug marketplace makes them a generally unsuitable financial tumbler, which in theory masks your money with legitimate money).
DO NOT DEPOSIT COINS INTO AGORA UNTIL THIS IS RESOLVED AND EVERYONE ON HERE IS REPAID IN FULL.
There is nothing conclusive here, but we need to be on guard all the time and I think the sooner we bring out and flesh out this possibility and force the Agora staff to respond the less damage is possible.
Edit: I added some new info in the comments below, including potentially suspicious wording of Agora's last reddit announcement. On the other hand, one piece of evidence that seems to point in the opposite direction is the disabling of new registration (still currently going on). This may point to some internal conflict.
Why the fuck does someone new make a post every hour repeating the same info. There is not one single piece of original information in this article and all you are trying to do is incite more panic by the community. If this is an exit scam why do people still have all the money they had in their wallets before the deposit/withdrawal shit happened? Why is blockchain still showing peoples transactions heading to their wallet? Why is one of the alleged agora market wallets still full of BTCs and not emptied out already if this was a scam? Why warn people ON THE ACTUAL FUCKING WEBSITE, that they are having withdrawal/deposit issues so they don't try and move more money to the site (and you mentioned sheep, but 0 people have proved they can withdraw yet so it is not the same as of now) ?
See, I can make valid points too as to why it is not a scam. Now I am not saying that something isn't going on, because It very well could be. But unless you have any new information on the subject, stop repeating what everyone has already said and be patient like the rest of us.