Comment by germanier | Hacker News Reader

Comment by germanier | Hacker News Reader

The title and article body claim that they hold a bank license but as far as I can see[0] they only have a license as a financial service provider (FDI) for investment brokering (Anlagevermittlung) and proprietary trading (Eigengeschäft). In particular they are not regulated as a bank with capital requirements (CRR-Kreditinstitut) and can't do their own lending business (Kreditgeschäft).

On their website[1] they make no claim of being a bank. The text only speaks about being a "regulated financial institution" and the footer states "unbank" and "no bank". Their terms of use[2] clearly state that they are only a credit broker, don't loan themselves, and are not party of the loan contract. This is not banking and I'm not sure why Reuters uses that word so much. They don't even mention once that this company is not the lender and heavily imply they are.

[0]: in the database of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority: https://portal.mvp.bafin.de/database/InstInfo/institutDetail...

[1]: https://www.bitbond.com/about_us

[2]: https://www.bitbond.com/terms_of_use

So much for accuracy of Reuters. What else do they get wrong when they can't even tell when something is a bank or not?

Sad thing is these kinds of articles get translated and end up in hundreds of papers all over the world all as fact.

What is also funny is when you have an obvious spelling mishtake in a Reuters article and for that spelling mistake to be copied and pasted into many, many places.

In this way you can tell which newspapers actually have people reading what they publish and which ones can't be bothered.

I always assumed everything in reuters was written by bots.

If you've ever read an article about something you know really well (company you work for, someone you personally know well, topic you are an expert in), I think you'll find that in most news articles there are exaggerations/questionable numbers printed all the time.

And then the Gell-Mann Amnesia kicks in!

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

Indeed. Thanks for the info.

As far as I know, Reuters isn't big on aiding pump-and-dump schemes but this sure looks like it.

If you look at their reviews they seem quite bad https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.bitbond.com

however I don't think they have a stock/coin/token to pump or dump.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com