anyone heard of IBS.FINANCE ?

Exodi

As someone who takes a keen interest in this sort of thing, I can tell you that from just the words "AI trading bot" that this is almost certainly a scam - it is an incredibly common one I've seen many times.

Regarding the 'Guardian' endorsement I would put good money that you visited a fake website pretending to be the Guardian promoting this fantastic AI trading bot (as you commonly see with fake BBC website articles where 'Martin Lewis' tells everyone to drop their life savings on some random cryptocurrency).

Except the fact it is a AI trading bot (which screams scam), for the more technical reasons why I believe this is a scam:

1. From looking at the domain, it looks like it was purchased and created on namecheap.com, a common prolifilator of scam websites
2. The owner is using a service to hide their identity
3. The website has only been registered for around a year

Regarding how these scams make money, I believe it usually falls into two main methods:

1. Outright scam - you deposit your money in and never see it again. The website is eventually shut down but the money is long gone.
2. Subtle scam - the website acts as you'd expect, using a third party trading platform that gives them a small commission with every trade passed on to be executed (commonly called Payment for Order Flow or PFOF for short). If an unscrupulous website wanted to maximize this small commission they get for passing on orders, what better way than encouraging use of a 'trading bot' which might execute hundreds of trades in a short span of time on behalf of customers? In this way, while it makes no difference to them whether the trades are good or not, they'd probably hope that their customers investments do go up, as it encourages the customer to stay with them longer, feeding the commission machine.

However in all of this - the reality is - if a company managed to stumble upon an algorithm that consistently generated profit, they'd quickly accumulate infinite wealth, purchase every material possession on Earth and declare themselves a mortal god (that is assuming they didn't take any of the multi-billion offers from every major financial institution banging on their door on the way). What they wouldn't do is sell it for a small monthly subscription on some shady website that no-ones heard of.

Edit: also 'IBS' Finance lol, really?

wmb194

According to the OP's link, IBS = Innovative Blockchain Solutions. I mean, if this doesn't scream 'scam' what does?

Exodi

wmb194 said:

According to the OP's link, IBS = Innovative Blockchain Solutions. I mean, if this doesn't scream 'scam' what does?

Haha I didn't even notice that!

So we have an AI Crypto Trading Bot - the fabled full house of modern day financial scams!

jimjames

Exodi said:

Regarding the 'Guardian' endorsement I would put good money that you visited a fake website pretending to be the Guardian promoting this fantastic AI trading bot (as you commonly see with fake BBC website articles where 'Martin Lewis' tells everyone to drop their life savings on some random cryptocurrency).

As per my previous post I strongly believe it would have been an advert on the Guardian site, nothing to do with the Guardian themselves. I've seen ones there as below that are clearly scams, they obviously have no filter in place with their advert provider

 

Malthusian

jimjames said:

As per my previous post I strongly believe it would have been an advert on the Guardian site, nothing to do with the Guardian themselves. I've seen ones there as below that are clearly scams, they obviously have no filter in place with their advert provider 

Well, there's a filter of sorts. The filter is "have they paid us money [even if it's stolen from scam victims]".
Based on your picture we can assume the OP was actually correct and the scam was promoted by the Guardian on their website. If a financial adviser linked to scams on their website and took commission in exchange, third party ad server or not, this "wasn't us guv" defence wouldn't last five seconds.
I love how the Grauniad has the gall to put up a begging ad asking you for donations in exchange for turning the scam ads off.

Albermarle

I love how the Grauniad has the gall to put up a begging ad asking you for donations in exchange for turning the scam ads off

Scam ads aside, they really have no choice as a free to access site, but to have adverts and beg for donations.
Alternative to access similar sites is having to pay e.g. DT and the Times.

Exodi

Malthusian said:

jimjames said:

As per my previous post I strongly believe it would have been an advert on the Guardian site, nothing to do with the Guardian themselves. I've seen ones there as below that are clearly scams, they obviously have no filter in place with their advert provider 

Well, there's a filter of sorts. The filter is "have they paid us money [even if it's stolen from scam victims]".
Based on your picture we can assume the OP was actually correct and the scam was promoted by the Guardian on their website. If a financial adviser linked to scams on their website and took commission in exchange, third party ad server or not, this "wasn't us guv" defence wouldn't last five seconds.
I love how the Grauniad has the gall to put up a begging ad asking you for donations in exchange for turning the scam ads off.

It's not like websites displaying Google Ads are hand-picking which ads are shown or not. Commonly it'll be the highest bidder, and unsurprisingly scammers are willing to pay a lot to get their ad in front of as many potential victims as possible in the few months the scam is running.

As an example of this, there's a big YouTuber I sometimes watch called 'CoffeeZilla' who's whole channel is dedicated to researching and exposing crypto scams.

In a funny spin, because his videos will be generally categorised as 'crypto' and 'finance', it is extremely common that the ads being displayed during his videos are for crypto scams. He has no control over this, they are simply willing to pay the more than other financial institutions to display their ads. He actually makes jokes about it because he said they couldn't have hit a worse audience (one that takes interest in researching crypto scams).

So to go back to the Guardian, I really don't think it's fair to necessary blame the Guardian for the ads as they have no control over them (Google should probably vet adverts better, but that's asking Google not to take peoples money which won't happen anytime soon). If your suggestion would be that the Guardian shouldn't run ads at all, then obviously they would need to find another way to monetize their content as their journalists don't work for free.

As to compare to a FA, I don't think it's fair because:

1) they are likely charging customers so already have found a way to monetise their service.
2) FA's and particularly IFA's probably wouldn't run ads as a matter of principle. Even if the ads weren't a scam, I'm not sure it would go down well if an 'independent' adviser had ads for Hargreave Lansdown (for example) on their website - e.g. being paid a small commission by HL for directing traffic there.

jaypers

It’s always good to check/query, and these forums are invaluable but just by the fact that this question is being asked is a worrying state of affairs. There are so many scams around and the problem continues to grow. Many of them are very convincing but in my eyes this is fairly obviously something to steer clear of. Why would anyone put money anywhere where there was even a shadow of uncertainly? If you’re asking the question, that uncertainly is clearly there.

If it looks too good to be true, it likely is too good to be true.
Trust your gut and if you have doubts, stop.
Check FCA register.
Never trust unsolicited emails, texts, calls.
Any sign of pressure tactics is always a major red flag.

This list can go on. Only odd thing here is why it was in a mainstream publication.

adindas

Short term trading, high frequency trading is a zero sum game. So the more players with advance capability in the game, the lower their chance to win.

If there were such a clever AI trading robot, why they wanted to advertise it, sell it which result more players with matching capability in the game reducing their chance to win ? Why not keep it quiet and use it by themselves. Alternatively if they are not so clever and could easily be beaten by human why bother using them ?

I am not saying this robot is using ponzi pyramid scheme but many of this sort of AI trading robots are using ponzi pyramid scam. They will let you win a small amount of money initially to gain trust and impression. After you win and then they will ask you for more money and/or ask you to recruit your friends, relatives, family members to get involved in the ponzi scheme to pay you and earlier subscribers. At some point when there is no more people are interested in, the scheme will collapse and then that is where you will not be able to get the rest of your money back as there will not be enough money available in the system to pay all of subscribers.