[HN Gopher] Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanishe...
___________________________________________________________________
Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished (2019)
Author : mgh2
Score : 192 points
Date : 2021-05-15 15:49 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Pretty good chance that she didn't vanish but was killed,
| vanishing is a trick that is becoming exceedingly hard.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| Especially disappearing from people with money and power.
|
| > "I can't discuss that. It starts to get very very very scary,
| very very very fast." According to Bjercke, Dr Ruja never
| expected OneCoin to grow so big. People involved at the early
| stages have told him it was never supposed to be a billion-
| dollar scam. She tried to close it down, he says, but the dark
| forces wouldn't let her.
|
| Even if you think you are going to get something and profit,
| one big reason to stay away from scams and fraud is that there
| are big players in the area that are 1. already established, 2.
| willing to do much worse things than you to get their way, 3.
| don't want someone else stepping on their territory. The mafia
| doesn't let petty thieves steal in their areas. You simply
| become a pawn to their schemes; then forced to do things you
| never anticipated having to do.
|
| Also reminds me of the Inner Ring by CS Lewis [1]. Stay away
| from secret societies, fraud, corruption, and crime. There are
| some very bad people in the world with some very organized
| problems.
|
| It's a much simpler life to just be an honest, unknown, middle
| class person.
|
| [1] https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Excellent read, and spot-on, IMO. Thanks for the link.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| i am hating this fact. now each document is electronic
| validationed so cannot fake. no way for to leave and become new
| person. no way for to disappear. damn surveilance state.
| andix wrote:
| In some countries you can buy real identities with real
| passports, including a citizenship. Should be possible to do
| in Serbia or Bosnia. Maybe even in Bulgaria (EU).
|
| During the war in Yugoslavia a lot of records got lost and it
| is still common practice to reissue birth certificates based
| on some witness statements.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| true, and for these i am many glad. by end of my life time,
| though, it is maybe not longer be possibile. biometric
| identity making it so by some time.
| raunak wrote:
| At the end of the day, you can shuck all your
| responsibilities, buy land in some remote area of the
| world (Midwestern USA, Canadian Yukon?, South America),
| and live as a hunter-gatherer - there's nothing stopping
| you and after a certain point you'd be effectively
| isolated and identity-less
| macintux wrote:
| You'd have to find someplace without property tax at the
| least, I'd think.
| krisoft wrote:
| In what sense do you want to disappear? Do you want the
| option to abandon everyone you know and start a new life in a
| new place? You can totally do that. The state is not stopping
| you. If people from your former life report you missing and
| the police finds you, you can always say "i do not wish to be
| contacted by them" and if you are an adult they will leave
| you at that. Pretty extreme thing to do, but happens all the
| time.
|
| Do you want to get away with murder? Run away from debts and
| obligations? Why would we as society let you do that?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Not all countries provide adequate protection for those who
| wish to go no-contact with family. Sometimes you can hide
| from former friends and acquaintances, but family members
| are allowed to continue trying to obtrusively contact you
| or confront you in public, or can involve the police again
| and again. In countries where family relationships are
| considered especially sacrosanct, the police may began to
| hassle you as the supposed bad guy if you are avoiding
| contact with parents.
| folli wrote:
| That's actually a good point.
|
| However, it becomes much murkier from a moral standpoint if
| you consider a scenario where you try to hide from a
| corrupt state for e.g. digging up dirt on a high ranking
| official. Or due to political, racial, religious oppression
| etc.
| [deleted]
| ardit33 wrote:
| Could be. But also the Balkan mafia operates in another level
| when it comes to identities. There are stories, of eventually
| someone getting caught, and it is realized that the guy was
| wanted for 15+ years, by some (usually Western Europe) country,
| interpol and all, has changed their names 3 times and they live
| care free in another country.
|
| They completely change identities, new names, new passports,
| new looks, new citizenship. With enough money, it becomes just
| a routine thing. It is like they run a Tor network ring, but on
| personal identities.
|
| Often, they are found when they get in trouble with their old
| pals (usually unsettled scores), and not the police.
| blackearl wrote:
| They're never truly living carefree. Everywhere you go you'll
| always be looking over your shoulder, waiting for the day
| they get you.
| vbsteven wrote:
| Katatonia - Omerta is an amazing song about this.
| dmix wrote:
| Osama Bin Laden had an extremely long run, considering the CIA
| and NSA was after him at max agenda. Almost embarrassingly
| long.
|
| Ayman al-Zawahiri (the defacto "leader" of Al-queda today)
| could easily be in some back room hidden in Pakistan right now.
| He technically is not listed as dead either.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_al-Zawahiri
|
| Stranger things have happened in our world.
|
| It depends on how much these experts law enforcement people
| care too. A random IRS guy found the Silk Road guy, not some
| fancy investigation. The question is anyone in India, or where
| ever with corrupt police and military, are even looking hard
| for her.
|
| You probably need someone like the Americans, UK, or Russians
| (see Shamil Basayev
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamil_Basayev) IRL to really
| care at this level.
|
| Note: I haven't listened to the podcast or deeply into her,
| just my point of view on that subject.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Bin Laden is one thing. But what's the use of taking out the
| de facto leader of an org that will have no problem having a
| replacement immediately like Al-queda? It makes more sense
| when you're doing a full on or strong attack like right after
| 9/11 or for When ISIS was brought down a ton.
|
| --
|
| For the Silk Road. That's true. However the next two silk
| roads had the people arrested fairly quickly.
|
| -
|
| Note: I don't know much or anything about hiding out or
| disappearing.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The use of it is depleting the leadership chain of command
| and leave third and fourth stringers at the top at best. It
| won't actually eliminate them but it will reduce their
| effectiveness greatly.
|
| In Al Qaeda's case the futility comes more from the vacuum
| in their niche.
| dunmalg wrote:
| "living charismatic leader the enemy can't seem to catch"
| has much greater recruitment value than "dead leader
| martyred, but we'll keep fighting".
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Nope, it is not that hard, just cannot live the big life. I am
| not so sure if she was the real head of operation anyway, more
| like the publicly visible rep(bit like a nominee director).
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Cryptos have become more like a cult than actual tech. Don't get
| me wrong, some of them are legitimate but try pointing out their
| deficiencies in their communities and you'll get attacked from
| all angles. Most people involved in crypto aren't there for the
| tech, they only care about money they are making from it.
| blocked_again wrote:
| > Most people involved in crypto aren't there for the tech,
| they only care about money they are making from it.
|
| Most people involved in anything aren't there for the thing,
| they only care about money they are making from it.
|
| There. Fixed it for you.
| PMan74 wrote:
| Most people involved in tech aren't there for the tech, they
| only care about money they are making from it.
|
| (And there's no judgement in that, if you make a living selling
| fridge freezers it doesn't mean you have to care much about
| fridge freezers)
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| That assumes there is no harm in what they are doing. A lot
| of these cryptos are more like pyramid schemes. Selling
| freezers is one thing, but if you know the freezer has some
| major defects and you continue selling them telling everyone
| how great they are while misleading them about issues then it
| is more like a scam. Don't get me wrong, some cryptos have
| the potential to make a lot of people money but often the
| people making the money are the initial investors not the
| public.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > often the people making the money are the initial
| investors not the public
|
| What is wrong with this? Of course people who believed in
| cryptocurrencies since the beginning have seen greater
| returns compared to people who started investing now.
|
| Every investment disproportionally rewards early adopters.
| Stocks, even simple savings accounts.
| deckard1 wrote:
| I mean. Yes and no. Someone doing some CRUD apps at some car
| insurance firm just to put dinner on the table is completely
| fine.
|
| But then you have Theranos and WeWork and all of that late
| '90s dot-com crap. Most of those companies had nothing to do
| with tech, but still raked in lots of VC money hoping to
| sucker people into purchasing their worthless stock after
| their inflated IPOs.
|
| Of course, it has to be mentioned that the line between fraud
| and value gets incredibly fuzzy in tech. So much tech is
| "solutionized" into products that solve problems that are
| nonsense to begin with. Everyone believes they need cloud-
| this, or managed K8S, or auto-scaling whatever. The whole
| industry looks like a fraud at times. Especially enterprise
| marketing and sales. IBM, Oracle, and others have made a
| racket on this. And yes they have actual products with actual
| features, what they are _selling_ are dreams and fairy tales.
| Look closely at crypto and you 'll see the same cottage
| industry around it today. I mean, what is NFT other than
| credit default swaps (CDS) for the art market? It's
| abstracted ownership ("ownership" with a _huge_ asterisk next
| to it). You even have initial coin offerings (ICO). Every
| thing from the dot-com and 2008 financial engineering crisis
| have all been replicated in crypto.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Dot-com bubble was real companies with inflated valuations
| from speculators and experimental business models that
| weren't all solvent.
|
| Theranos was trying to make and sell a real product but the
| product didn't work so they lied and cheated to cover that
| up because they had nothing else to offer.
|
| Every business is dreams and fairytales because extra
| sizzle gets more customers
|
| It's different from cryptocurrencies which are pure scam
| plays from the start.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| At least within my bubble, the people I know who spend the most
| time trading cryptocurrencies hold no illusions that
| cryptocurrency and utility tokens are actually useful. They
| approach it like a game: Try to spot the next big hype cycle
| before everyone else, then try to exit the trade before the
| hype dies out and the price retreats.
|
| It's like trading stocks, but without any fundamentals or
| underlying value to interfere with the "to the moon" narrative.
| andrepd wrote:
| There _are_ definitely fundamentals, there 's no point
| pretending that there are not. But at this point it's now
| buried under mountains of hype, and has balooned to many
| times its reasonable price (again, reasonable in terms of
| fundamentals/utility, not speculation).
| narrator wrote:
| You know how you create a cryptocurrency that immediately rivals
| Bitcoin with no effort? You fork Bitcoin and give it a cute
| mascot. Dogecoin has a $65 billion marketcap and was made in
| about two hours as a JOKE. It's totally open source, so there's
| nothing even illegal about it:
|
| https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1393271686384914432/phot...
|
| I remember seeing Ethereum starting up and they had a demo where
| you could make your own cryptocurrency in about a page of code. I
| thought this shit is never going to work. I WAS SO WRONG.
|
| I am sure this cryptoqueen scammer put a ridiculous amount of
| effort into her scam when these people who actually made absurd
| amounts of money legally in altcoins did far less work.
| agumonkey wrote:
| a few semi pro traders i've seen made one for the lulz (with
| absurd names like karencoin) and the price rocketed (illiquid
| asset) which made them withdraw their trade from the market
| because they assumed it was a sign of dumb level bubble hit
| narrator wrote:
| How about Losercoin? Two self-described broke losers in rural
| China created it and put their life savings into providing it
| with liquidity. It now has a 53 million dollar market cap.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Isn't all this altcoin "market cap" stuff fake cap
| generated by bots that thinly trade new coins until a
| sucker buys them out?
| KETpXDDzR wrote:
| AWS and until recently Azure have Blockchain-as-a-service. The
| real winner of a gold rush are the people selling pickaxes.
|
| https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/blockchain-servic...
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain
| dehrmann wrote:
| With cryptocurrencies, the pickaxes are GPUs and ASICs. I
| doubt this is a serious revenue generator for AWS because of
| how few things actually need and use blockchains. It's mostly
| there so consultants can sell blockchain solutions to
| companies desperate for a blockchain strategy.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Out of whatever cases may exist for what you're describing
| (re: desperation, etc.), do they almost always involve
| someone getting conned?
| 55555 wrote:
| > The real winner of a gold rush are the people selling
| pickaxes.
|
| No I'm pretty sure the people who hoarded gold (coins) have
| made more money from blockchain than IBM and AWS.
| xondono wrote:
| Nvidia is getting nice profits, and with way less risk than
| those "investing" in crypto
| aplummer wrote:
| You'd think so, but Pickaxe coins like the graph have
| significantly less gains than dog meme coins. I actually
| think a sure sign of when a coin won't go mega is when it
| tries to do something practical, since then its obvious its
| not that great a practical utility after all (as almost
| nothing is on a blockchain, except gambling).
| arambhashura wrote:
| Microsoft is apparently shutting down its blockchain service,
| though: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/azure/blockchain/service/mi...
| dleslie wrote:
| Dogecoin may as well be called Eloncoin, now; the value tracks
| his tweets about it.
|
| A practically-infinite cap and always-easy mining? It's
| designed to rapidly deflate in value. _That's the joke_. And
| yet it bubbles.
| eloff wrote:
| Those properties mean it could actually work as a currency,
| unlike bitcoin.
|
| It also can handle higher transaction volume with cheaper
| fees.
|
| I don't think it'd be a good currency, but it's funny to
| compare it with bitcoin which was marketed as such but is
| totally a failure for that use case.
| aplummer wrote:
| ELON already exists, 630m market cap right now...
|
| https://www.dextools.io/app/uniswap/pair-
| explorer/0x7b736449...
| spinny wrote:
| He just realized that he can, so he does it.
|
| Probably got on the market before the BTC/Tesla announcement
| and then pumped it, then thew DOGE in the for the memes and
| then Tesla announces that BTC consumes too much energy and
| that are looking out for a greener alternative. ETH is
| switching to PoS. At this point, he is probably slowly
| filling bags of ETH and gonna pump as soon as PoW on ETH
| ends. Expect a series of excited twits from Elon then
| dleslie wrote:
| I expect the same, incidentally.
|
| As soon as Tesla stated that btc was bad for the
| environment it was clear they'd be leaping on eth in the
| future.
| gh55 wrote:
| Just so you know, Dogecoin's blockchain is trivial to attack;
| its ledger can be altered at such low cost it is unlikely
| several such attacks aren't already underway. Upon publushing
| of new "longest chains" it will no longer be possible to
| determine which doge chain is valid, putting all balances in
| danger until the Proof of Work mechanism is replaced - which
| will only work briefly before the same problem recurs, due to
| the nature of how blockchains are secured. This will
| demonstrate why Bitcoin and Ethereum are valuable. More info:
| https://www.intuitecon.com/post/why-dogecoin-is-going-to-zer...
| paulpauper wrote:
| fraud is profitable because it makes exaggerated claims. that
| is why people do it.
|
| legit projects are expensive and have high rate of failure
|
| doge is just one success out of probably thousands of others
| that tried similar concepts. Doge was able to gain a loyal
| following and community early on.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| She's not a programmer. As far as I know OneCoin never even had
| a blockchain, it was just a regular ponzi scheme they sold as
| cryptocurrency. Not the first time this happened and it won't
| be the last, sadly. I actually have a distant relative who
| bought into another such scam.
| bennysomething wrote:
| It didn't have a block chain. There's a great BBc iPlayer
| podcast about it, crypto queen. Worth a listen. Apologies if
| this has already been mentioned.
| djrogers wrote:
| That detail is in the article, which is about the making of
| the podcast...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think the difference is likelihood of success.
|
| If you and I did what you'd describe it would almost certainly
| not succeed. A high effort fraud has a much higher likelihood
| of returns.
| puranjay wrote:
| "Hey hey heyyyy"
| RichardHeart wrote:
| Here's how you solve scams: 1. More law enforcement (Doesn't work
| in countries that can't even enforce laws against murder so well.
| Only works after the fact, and the money is nearly never
| recovered.)
|
| 2. Yell as loudly as you can for people to stop getting scammed.
| (They thing you're wrong, and you have no marketing budget to get
| your voice heard. It takes 10 units of energy to disprove
| bullshit and only 1 unit of energy to generate it. It's harder to
| convince people they've been scammed. This is also known as the
| curse of the duped.
|
| 3. Actively advertise superior investments with longer time
| horizons so that they don't have the money sitting in their hands
| to so easily be scammed out of. You can even generate a marketing
| budget to get eyes away from the scams onto the good things. (You
| will be yelled at by everyone that doesn't like what you built.
| Especially if its successful.)
| dmix wrote:
| > I tested this explanation on my mother, the family technophobe,
| and she told me I'd failed to make it clear enough and should
| start again. So don't worry too much if you don't follow it
| either
|
| It makes you wonder if the BBC author should have tried to
| explain what crypto was at such detail at all in the first place.
|
| The 3 long technical paragraphs disrupt the narrative.
|
| Just give some witty one or two lines for the luddites. I doubt
| they care about public internet databases anyway.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Not knowing this little bit of what a cryptocurrency is allowed
| Onecoin to be such a large scam.
| Marciplan wrote:
| This podcast had such insane production quality --- but also a
| sincerely huge lack of journalism. So. Many. Holes. In every
| thing they "report".
| 55555 wrote:
| lol kthx Dr. Ruja
| raunak wrote:
| Examples of said holes? Out of curiosity
| woodpanel wrote:
| Interesting how on a per-capita base, Germany where I live, seems
| to be the most gullibe society. I think it is not a coincidence
| that Ruga lived and worked in Germany prior to OC most of her
| life.
|
| I was almost sucked into OC. Some non-tech friend in his mid-
| thirties approached me about it, he had already invested all his
| savings (~20kEUR and another 10kEUR from his mother).
|
| He gave me OC's prep-talk and got me interested, so as an
| overpaid programmer within minutes I've concluded: Why not buy
| the biggest package or even more?
|
| Hooked as I was, every piece of due dilligence I've tried to
| apply made the whole thing appear as a scam quickly. I've phoned
| with the BaFin (our financial authority) multiple times it took
| about a year afterwards for a very timid response against OC (in
| hindsight their lack of action in this case mirrors their lack of
| competence in the wirecard scam).
|
| For me there are two major culprits:
|
| 1. OC leadership, especially Ruga
|
| I think what makes OC so sinister is how they specifically
| targeted groups of people with low technical knowledge and who
| feel (and are) financially unskilled / underpriviledged. Once
| they've had to flee one country they've moved to another nation,
| again looking for underprivliged non-technical people.
|
| The OC footsoldier's that I've met all came from Germany's lower
| classes (I guess most marketers are victims as well).
|
| In Britain they've targeted mostly muslims. They went to India,
| China and so forth.
|
| 2. Financial Authorities
|
| A scam that targeted small time investors (entry package was
| 500EUR; who often don't even know the name of their financial
| authority or what it does) highlights the importance of taking
| action for a BaFin: A fair society cannot treat predation of poor
| people differently that that of rich people. Swifter action
| whould have prevented a lot of the levels that pyramid eventually
| built up.
|
| 500EURs or 5.000EURs in damage apparently isn't much for the
| BaFin to do a lot (AFAIK none of the footsoldies I've met faced
| any criminal charges). But for the victims it often amounts to
| 100% of savings or even debt they took on, not even to mention
| ruined friendships, self-doubt, guilt etc. Ruga and the BaFin
| broke already broken people.
|
| PS: I think Tim Tayshun's article
| (https://news.bitcoin.com/beware-definitive-onecoin-ponzi/) must
| have saved a lot of people from this!
| alisonkisk wrote:
| There are similar scams in many countries. It's not a German
| culture thing.
| woodpanel wrote:
| I'm not saiying it's a German thing. Just that on the
| statistics mentioned in the article, my country seemed to be
| one of the more gullible ones.
|
| I might also add: Wirecard as well as IOTA did most wreckage
| in Germany. Partly because their founders are German
| speaking. Partly because authorities are inept.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Quote: "...says there are similarities between OneCoin and
| messianic millennium cults, where people believe they are part of
| something big that is going to change the world - and no matter
| what the evidence, once they've signed up, it's very hard for
| them to admit they are wrong."
|
| Yeah, I can say the same about Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim and any
| other major religion in this world. Ever talked with any of these
| bigots? You want to run for the hills.
| daenz wrote:
| Reading this made me realize that even though Bitcoin is
| legitimate, Satoshi was pretty wise to conceal their identity
| before it gained any traction.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Satoshi could still be a small team from a high level Govt
| agency. Or something else. Might not be one or a few civilians
| at all.
| botwriter wrote:
| Didn't one of her associates turn up dead in Cambodia this week?
|
| https://www.khmer440.com/chat_forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=720...
| handmodel wrote:
| This was such a good podcast as long as you are ok with a bit of
| the journalists inserting their research process into things.
|
| They went to Uganda where OneCoin was big. They had created a MLM
| type system there where they got the local priests to give
| sermons on why it was good. They interviewed people who sold
| their livestock - even though they didn't own a computer or cell
| phone so had no idea what it was - for a few hundred dollars to
| invest.
|
| It was also highly marketed in the Arab world where it was
| marketed specifically towards people who can't invest in
| companies that have interest on loans.
|
| Truly a wild scheme.
| Animats wrote:
| If they'd actually implemented a blockchain, they would have been
| in the clear. No worse than many altcoins.
| andix wrote:
| As soon as they would have turned the system on, people
| would've been able to sell One Coin. And it would've got a real
| price, determined by the market. Not some fake price, set by
| the company.
| cookguyruffles wrote:
| Artificial pricing is still possible in the blockchain world,
| it's just called staking over there
| kolinko wrote:
| What? Staking has nothing to do with a price
| woah wrote:
| If they'd actually implemented a blockchain that did what they
| said it did, it wouldn't have been a scam. As it is, this has
| about as much to do with cryptocurrency as most Nigerian
| princes have to do with the African nobility
| nicklecompte wrote:
| Quite a contrast in reactions between the guy who made millions
| of dollars from the OneCoin scam and bought a big fancy house:
|
| > After Dr Ruja's non-appearance in Lisbon, a point came when
| Igor Alberts, like Jen McAdam, asked to see evidence of the
| blockchain. He didn't get it, and in December 2017 he quit.
|
| > I ask if he felt guilty, for having sold so many people a coin
| that didn't exist, and for having made so much money in the
| process.
|
| > "I felt responsibility. Not guilt," he replies. "You can never
| be blamed for believing in something. I had no clue that it could
| be false. I didn't even know what is a blockchain... What doubt
| can I have?"
|
| Versus the woman who lost a lot of money and convinced her
| friends/family to also throw away their money:
|
| > By contrast, Jen McAdam says she bears a heavy burden of guilt.
| I ask her how much she earned from selling OneCoin and she says
| it was EUR3,000 - EUR1,800 of which she received in cash, and
| which she used to buy more OneCoin.
|
| The line about "you can never be blamed for believing in
| something" is of course self-evidently ridiculous and not
| something Mr. Roberts would pretend to believe in any other
| context. But "I'm not a bad person, I was a hapless victim like
| everyone else" has a compelling logic when you're profiting from
| a bad system.
| danmaz74 wrote:
| As the article says, Igor Alberts was already an established
| multi level marketer making a lot of money with other products
| when he started with OneCoin. Considering the nature of MLM,
| I'm not at all surprised about him being rather impervious to
| feelings of guilt.
| jollybean wrote:
| Cryptos are MLM's.
|
| If you made a really solid crypto today, that was designed to
| remain solid and relatively flat, it wouldn't be popular -
| because the whole attraction is the 'easy money' euphoria.
|
| No euphoria, no attention.
|
| It's why a 'really good Bitcoin' - which tried to price at $1
| USD today, and remain at that real valuation and avoid
| devaluation, would be hard pressed to exist - it wouldn't
| take hold. Or rather - that kind of financial instrument
| would have to be sold to banks, not small change MLM people,
| and banks are really conservative. It may happen at some
| point.
| gh55 wrote:
| Tether, the 6th largest cryptocurrency has a market cap of
| ~$160B, seems pretty "popular" to me.
|
| USDC TUSD and BUSD are further popular examples.
|
| Cryptocurrencies are not MLMs, you would do yourself a huge
| favour by learning what they are.
|
| In brief, Bitcoin is a scarce asset, and Ethereum is the
| credit required to run trustless logical conditions
| relating to a transaction, and also securing assets
| involved in those conditions.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| The vast majority of the Tether market cap is fake money
| (not actually backed by USD). It will collapse if enough
| people try to cash out.
| wnevets wrote:
| Elon wouldn't be tweeting about it that's for damn sure.
| dleslie wrote:
| It certainly is a bizarre argument. With absolution of guilt
| for wrongly held beliefs, one could engage in deplorable
| actions without a tinge of later guilt.
|
| We all have a responsibility to question our beliefs, and what
| harm our actions cause.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"We all have a responsibility to question our beliefs, and
| what harm our actions cause."
|
| Can you point me to any source that spells it in legal terms
| in relation to general public (not specific cases like food
| inspector)? Like some written law.
|
| Also if existed think of what would such law would to to
| politicians unless they're specifically exempt.
| dleslie wrote:
| Laws are not always rules for ethical behaviour, let alone
| the authoritative rules for ethical behaviour.
| marnett wrote:
| Yes we do have that responsibility and obligation. Reading
| his fallacious defense had me immediately thinking of the
| essay "The Ethics of Belief"[0].
|
| [0] http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/Clifford_ethics.pdf
| ivanhoe wrote:
| Perhaps she's just a more socially skillful, so she offered a
| better sounding excuse? That guy has a douche written all over
| his face, but that doesn't mean others involved are any
| better...
| t8e56vd4ih wrote:
| you should check the footage of her on YouTube promoting her coin
| purely for entertainment. it's utterly ridiculous. she's a
| personified red flag.
| vmception wrote:
| I had a European girlfriend at the time, (I'm an American and we
| were both in America) her sister was exposed to onecoin and was
| her sisters sole exposure to blockchain ideology.
|
| So I asked her to forward the marketing materials to me, and oh
| my god, it is not possible to discern the problems wrong with it
| without formal education in both computer science like linked
| lists and initial exposure to real blockchains.
|
| Its doesn't matter that the first question to ask was "ok where
| is the block explorer and what consensus model does it use"
| because nobody exposed to onecoin _first_ would ask that
|
| The other thing, which I find much funnier, is that they become
| not fraudulent just by launching a token on an existing
| blockchain or deploying their own, and that's all they had to do
| but didn't.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > that they become not fraudulent just by launching a token on
| an existing blockchain or deploying their own, and that's all
| they had to do but didn't
|
| I submit that that would not be enough to make it not
| fraudulent.
|
| > ok where is the block explorer and what consensus model does
| it use" because nobody exposed to onecoin first would ask that
|
| Doesn't matter. What matters is who's shilling and how
| effective they are. Like Elon and Bitcoin.
| vmception wrote:
| > I submit that that would not be enough to make it not
| fraudulent.
|
| It would still be a rip-off for purchasers, but it would have
| reduced their legal liability to nothing in the various
| countries involved. Then they could just squirm around
| securities laws based on how they marketed it, like everyone
| else.
| spuz wrote:
| Did you convince your girlfriend's sister that it was a scam?
| vmception wrote:
| She didnt put money into it. But she was just as excited
| about blockchain ideology as I was and I would just be the
| second prophet she was exposed to. It is impossible to
| discern the difference when religious-like ideology has
| already occupied that register in your brain.
| lph wrote:
| > I am sure this cryptoqueen scammer put a ridiculous amount of
| effort into her scam when these people who actually made absurd
| amounts of money legally in altcoins did far less work.
|
| Right?! All they had to do is fork an open-source
| cryptocurrency, and they couldn't even do that. It's hilarious.
| With the hype empire OneCoin controlled, it's quite possible
| that it could have astro-turfed its way to a bubble like those
| of bitcoin or dogecoin.
| ivantopalov wrote:
| I wish people would stop associating this fraud with the
| cryptocurrency phenomenon. This had nothing to do with crypto. It
| was an ordinary ponzi scheme, they just added "coin" to the end
| of their product's name because at that time cryptocurrencies
| were already very popular.
| II2II wrote:
| As an outsider, cryptocurrencies appear to be an ideal
| environment for fraud: most of the talk is around investing in
| it, its value is highly speculative, and it has relatively
| little uptake for its stated purpose. Even when a give
| cryptocurrency is legitimate, something that is difficult to
| discern through all of the noise, the instability in its value
| makes it a target for fraud.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Sounds a lot like Bitconnect.
| daenz wrote:
| >It was a cryptocurrency company, and it had been running for a
| while - but it didn't have a blockchain. "So we need you to build
| a blockchain," he went on.
|
| I have seen this first hand, on a much smaller scale, at a
| startup that was riding the blockchain hype with investors. It is
| really incredible and eye-opening to me what you can accomplish
| with hype and trust, with absolutely nothing backing it. It makes
| you realize that it doesn't matter if what you build is cool or
| innovative, if you can't get people to trust you, it won't
| succeed.
| lottin wrote:
| One thing I've noticed about the crypto crowd is many of them
| seem to genuinely struggle to differentiate a scam from a
| legitimate business. Some are obviously scammers, but others it
| seems they don't really know what they're doing... they think
| they're running a business.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| Most of them would struggle to understand how the shit works
| as well.
| 46756e wrote:
| This is very true for crypto. The amount of people hyped on it
| without understanding much about it seems crazy high to me.
|
| Granted, I recently graduated college, so I may be bias from
| experience. I just have seen a giant amount of finance frat
| bros that pour money into Bitcoin cause "banks are like the
| horse and buggy".
| Nasrudith wrote:
| They are an especially pathological manifestation of Buzzword
| Zombies who shamble around brainlessly suggesting use of
| their golden hammer in all contexts.
|
| Actual finance graduated though? What the fuck were they
| doing in class all of those years to even think of the two as
| comparable?! For one let me know when I can get a mortgage or
| auto loan from bitcoin itself.
| hanniabu wrote:
| The amount of people that discredit it without understanding
| is also crazy high. Just because scams exist doesn't mean
| there aren't real projects and use cases.
| saagarjha wrote:
| ...which are?
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| Name one.
|
| Crypto is one huge scam and pyramid. Period.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| So far, the only valid use case I've seen is buying or
| selling things on the grey/black market.
| ccortes wrote:
| USDC
| tootie wrote:
| Theranos springs to mind. When you can dazzle enough rich
| people with FOMO over technologies they don't understand, it
| can be pretty easy.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The only difference between selling bullshit and selling
| quality is that quality will get you more positive word-of-
| mouth advertising per sale. If you're selling bullshit, you
| need to either actively suppress the word-of-mouth, drown it
| out with marketing spend, or offer a cut of future profits (or
| something that looks like a cut of future profits) to buyers.
| varsketiz wrote:
| What about recurring customers? Clearly this is not the only
| difference.
| amelius wrote:
| I think this is because "cool startup" works as a signal for
| speculation. It doesn't matter that there is no value backing
| it, investors have this unwritten agreement that cool sounding
| projects get investments and with money behind the project, it
| automatically becomes more valuable.
| tudorw wrote:
| Let's not knock it, vast swathes of internet were built with
| hype money, if something is really novel, it takes a leap of
| faith to invest.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Not really. Government grants, paying telecom customers, ad
| buyers, porn buyers.
| [deleted]
| imiric wrote:
| Con artistry is an old profession, this is just the modern take
| on it.
|
| It's the Theranos approach. With a charismatic and strong
| character as founder you can build hype and get investments
| without even having a product. Being on friendly terms with
| investors also helps to establish trust.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Theranos desperately tried to build a product. They failed
| and lied about it. The plan wasn't to profit from the fake
| stuff and exit.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Here is something which struck me as obvious yet would get
| furiously disputed: if you care about the charisma of a
| company head, or any other superficial aspect like City of
| London fashion etiquette you are being an idiot and are
| asking to get scammed by privileging what you expect to see
| above talent. It is what they do that is the important part.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Some discussion from earlier:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21618346
| klaudius wrote:
| I was at one of their scam seminars. There was some sociopath
| lying for an hour straight and trying to get people to purchase
| some package for mining Onecoin. It was ridiculous. I was invited
| by a (former) friend who tried to recruit me and make some money
| exploiting me.
| henvic wrote:
| Once the Bitcoin & cryptocurrency proof-of-work fraud dies off,
| we're going to hear a lot of stories like this.
|
| https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/
| RivieraKid wrote:
| You're the author of this article? I really enjoyed it. One
| thing I'm not sure I agree is that fiat is an unsustainable
| shitcoin. Economics and monetary policy is a complex topic,
| some very smart and knowledgable people have a different view.
| neom wrote:
| Relatively good mini doc about this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64xcgvEJ3Ys
|
| tbh I've spent waaay more time than I'd care to admit diving deep
| into onecoin over the past few years. It's really really really
| wild the more you dig. Happy to answer any questions.
| hatmatrix wrote:
| What's wilder than already covered in these docs and podcasts
| neom wrote:
| I'm not sure what you've consumed so that's somewhat
| difficult to answer, but the part I found the most
| interesting is all the "dealshaker" stuff that happened
| after, and I think might still be going on.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I think there is more that is not being disclosed. It seems hard
| to believe someone could be so public and just vanish like that
| after having stolen so much.
| zmix wrote:
| LOL, I never heard about OneCoin!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-15 23:00 UTC)