[HN Gopher] What the Hell Is This Company the 76ers Just Partner...
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What the Hell Is This Company the 76ers Just Partnered With?
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 297 points
Date : 2021-12-25 10:41 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (defector.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (defector.com)
| trenning wrote:
| There was a small discussion about it on reddit but nothing new
| really, just shady company does shady things, all part of the
| process.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/rn62qy/defector_what_t...
| swasheck wrote:
| i don't know if this was intentional but the "process" comment
| is hilarious given all of its applications within the 76ers
| organization
| jkestner wrote:
| This is an until-now undiscovered step in Hinkie's plan. You
| thought you had to Trust the Process before.
| jimsparkman wrote:
| Fantastic article. Searching the stock ticker (CSCW) on Reddit
| turned up some humorous old posts about how this penny stock is
| about to take off.
| api wrote:
| There are people who make a nice living just pumping fake
| companies over and over in the penny stock market or to D-list
| VCs. These are the white collar equivalent of what cops call
| "greasy crimes," crimes not quite serious enough to get real
| attention. (The dumb street crime epidemic in California is a
| result of further dialing back enforcement of "greasy crimes.")
|
| I'm sure those types are all over this NFT craze.
|
| "I see that there are dumb people with money. I have a solution
| to that..."
|
| I feel like a total sucker sometimes for attempting to do
| useful work when if I'd put the same effort into cheating
| people I'd be rich now several times over. This is truly a new
| golden age of the con artist. I mean we just had one for
| president.
|
| I bet con artistry flourishes during any time of rapid change,
| confusion, and upheaval. Nobody knows what is happening so it's
| easy to sell empty boxes with charisma.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| Thats true it is an amazing time for con artist and i had
| never think about it as a consequenz of rapid change
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think its more that con artistry flourishes when interest
| rates are in the toilet.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Shades of Michael Paloma and his New York Blues, featuring
| Richard Grieco!
|
| There are some strange "partnerships" that happen with local
| sports teams, who will literally take any money for any reason
| from anyone.
| mym1990 wrote:
| This sounds somewhat like the Rich Energy sponsorships in Formula
| 1(Haas team I believe) a few seasons ago. Maybe this is all an
| inside joke, but hopefully the incompetence of someone within the
| 76ers org is recognized and addressed.
| rozap wrote:
| And that ended so well for everyone involved. Grab the popcorn.
| mijoharas wrote:
| Could you expand on what happened?
| ilamont wrote:
| https://jalopnik.com/what-you-find-when-you-look-into-
| rich-e...
| rozap wrote:
| Quick overview here: https://youtu.be/EuoYkNyYaBY
|
| But the rich energy thing is just one of the more recent
| ones. Formula 1 has had an endless stream of seedy sponsors
| over the years, including an alleged Nigerian prince.
| Overview here: https://youtu.be/H7M74iEonn0
|
| And judging by the number of cryptocurrency companies
| plastered all over f1 cars right now, I'm sure there will
| be more entertainment in the future.
| soneca wrote:
| I tried, but that first YouTube it's waaaay too fast
| English for me to understand a thing (non-native English
| speaker here). I'll Google it
| mperham wrote:
| It's very fast, even as a native speaker. Try setting
| Playback Speed -> 0.75 in the options.
| mijoharas wrote:
| Wow, I'm surprised I've not heard of any of this!
|
| Thanks for the links
| Avicebron wrote:
| slight tangent but this I listened to someone describe a
| meeting with capetian (before the 76's he was trying to get
| involved with FaZe clan for similar nft (casinos i think)
| projects. I can't find the video, but he came across as very
| sketch.
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Best case: the 76ers franchise team is incompetent. Worst: they
| have an embezzlement and/or money laundering scheme embedded in
| it.
|
| Might pick up _e.g._ $100 of shares and start filing shareholder
| inquiries on Monday, for shits and giggles. Would suggest the
| authors of this article submit it to the SEC [1].
|
| [1] https://www.sec.gov/tcr
| waffle_maniac wrote:
| Don't you mean short it?
| andruby wrote:
| He wants to become a shareholder so he can ask questions to
| the board.
|
| Shareholders have additional rights.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Are you a shareholder when you short it? Can a non-
| shareholder make shareholder inquiries?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Not on a naked short.
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| A person shorting an equity (borrower) is not a
| shareholder, only the share lender is
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Are you a shareholder when you short it?_
|
| No, and it doesn't matter if it's naked or not. You borrow
| a share and then sell it. The person you sold it to has
| shareholder rights. The person you borrowed it from retains
| them, albeit in limited form. You have no shareholder
| rights as you are not a shareholder.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm shocked those questions were not read as rhetorical
| in response to ridiculous post.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| You're well-familiar with HN's tendency to take the dry-
| literal interpretation path, I see :) It's difficult to
| build productive conversation out of sarcasm and
| rhetoric, and the guidelines ask us to choose the most
| good-faith interpretation rather than the most obvious
| one.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Answering a question with a question is a time honored
| tradition. Just because it's rhetorical doesn't mean it
| was negative. If the person I responded to answered those
| questions for themselves, then it might lead them to
| realize how their question totally missed the point of
| the post they responded to. Teach a person to fish blah
| blah.
| iab wrote:
| How would you differentiate between what you wrote, and
| someone genuinely asking the same question?
| hnburnsy wrote:
| The Phoenix Sun's partnered with an obscure environmental start
| up named Footprint, even renamed the arena, the Footprint Center.
| I wonder if it is a money laundering scheme or maybe the Sun's
| traded naming rights and promotion for equity.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| For many years, one of the biggest sponsors in MMA was a small,
| niche, industrial product. It was cheap and made the owner of
| the brand happy, so bought the ads. Arena naming rights
| probably aren't cheap, but at a small company there might not
| be many people who have to weigh in on the decision.
|
| https://mmajunkie.usatoday.com/2014/01/so-what-is-a-dynamic-...
| hugey010 wrote:
| My first guess would be for some large environmental tax write-
| off.
| moonbug wrote:
| rsanek wrote:
| That intro video has ripped a section of Google's project
| starline clip -- https://youtu.be/Q13CishCKXY
| darcys22 wrote:
| Everyone in this thread is crying scam because HN hates crypto.
| However the NBA teams and players love NFTs.
|
| https://hypebeast.com/2021/12/steph-curry-breaks-all-time-nb...
|
| https://www.nba.com/heat/nft
|
| https://nbatopshot.com/
|
| The less interesting reason is that the 76ers are doing NFTs and
| they have engaged a team to assist with this.
| tester756 wrote:
| the sad part of this article is that
|
| if you aren't on the internet, then you don't exist, lol.
| devonallie wrote:
| This story sets off my scam alarms. It also reminds me of the
| time that Samsung partnered with a group pretending to be
| Supreme.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > metaverse and NFT
|
| The alarm couldn't have been louder.
| millzlane wrote:
| For me it was the amazon listings on their app in the video.
| You can see the "Dickie Roberts child star" movie poster.
| That's been popular on Amazon prime for the last couple
| months.
| SirSourdough wrote:
| It should probably set off anyone's scam alarms. Even if it's
| something legitimate it's still incredibly shady in its current
| incarnation.
|
| At least the Supreme thing uses an established brand to carry
| some legitimacy. It's pretty hard to see what these people
| could have showed the 76ers to convince them this was a
| worthwhile partner.
| thebigjewbowski wrote:
| As a clueless shareholder in CSCW I was pretty shocked and amused
| by this.
|
| Awhile back (2/24) I bought $200 each of several
| bio/Pharma/blockchain penny stocks based on little to no research
|
| So I had 200 shares of ColorStar at $1.02, sold 180 of them
| between $1.35 and $2.17, and now have 20 left at the current
| price of $0.535.
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| If you've ever been curious what William Gibson's later novels
| are like, this gets you pretty close.
| kolanos wrote:
| This is reminiscent of a sub shop making $35K/yr that was
| publicly traded and valued at around $100MM. Turned out to be a
| Chinese shell company. [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/theres-a-single-new-
| jersey-d...
| bilalq wrote:
| This is even crazier though. That was an OTC stock. This is
| traded on the NASDAQ and has SEC filing obligations.
| btrautsc wrote:
| What is most incredible is somehow Daryl Morey is involved with
| this.
| tyingq wrote:
| Interesting that it is almost certainly some kind of scam, yet
| they chose not to stay low key. Rather, they went with press
| releases, contract signing events, etc.
|
| Maybe just a purposefully faked PR buzz "let's go viral" thing?
|
| Edit: Ahh, so "pump and dump" seems to be the prevailing guess.
| jameshart wrote:
| Pump and dump? Trying to become a memestock?
| awb wrote:
| What's crazy is that for $10-15k you can have a really
| professional looking website, instead it looks like they
| dropped about $2-5k for a half-built, broken looking one.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| you can buy a Wordpress template and have some intern spend a
| few hours changing the text and have a professional looking
| website
| rexreed wrote:
| They needed something high profile to boost their stock and
| rope in more investors.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it almost certainly some kind of scam_
|
| They tried to privately place $10mm in November [1], though
| that was terminated a week later [2]. They announced a new
| auditor a few days later [3][4] who doesn't appear to have been
| auditing any U.S. public companies prior to this July [5].
|
| They're also selling $20mm of shares as of September [6] via an
| Atlanta-based broker-dealer who appears to do these for Chinese
| penny stocks for 7 to 8% fees [7]. (Searching the firm on
| LinkedIn brings up D.C.-based general counsel [8], a guy in
| Miami Beach and a dude in Ghana.) All this suggests a pump and
| dump with possible laundering connections.
|
| [1]
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001747661/000121390...
|
| [2]
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001747661/000121390...
|
| [3]
| https://pcaobus.org/resources/auditorsearch/issuers/?issueri...
|
| [4] https://www.allianceaudit.com/
|
| [5]
| https://pcaobus.org/resources/auditorsearch/firms/?sort=olde...
|
| [6]
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001747661/000121390...
|
| [7]
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/793628/0001553350210...
|
| [8] https://www.linkedin.com/in/alecorudjev
| Animats wrote:
| From the article: _" metaverse and NFT products?"_
|
| They actually filed a prospectus with the SEC in September
| 2021.[1]
|
| Nothing there mentions a basketball team, or "metaverse". This
| company started as a cement maker in China, pivoted through floor
| tiles, then after-school education, and now online education and
| concerts.
|
| There's a recent financial statement.[2] Finally, there's a
| business model:
|
| _" The curriculum development created by us includes music,
| sports, animation, painting and calligraphy, film and television,
| life skills, etc., covering plenty of aspects of entertainment,
| sports and culture. At present, we have signed contracts with
| well-known international artists and more than 50 celebrity
| teachers have been launched._
|
| _The Color World platform generates revenue primarily through
| paid membership subscriptions priced at $9.90 per user per month.
| Members can access most video courses on the platform for free
| and will be charged the tuition fee of $30 /hour for taking
| classes of tier 1 artists and $15/hour for learning from Tier 2
| artists. First three months of launch costs only $1.5/hour to
| attract downloads and there have been over 500,000 registered
| users as of the date of this report._
|
| So it's a monetization platform for minor celebrities.
|
| The financial statement has a balance sheet. They're losing
| money, and they're not very big.
|
| [1]
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001747661/000121390...
|
| [2]
| https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001747661/0...
| rahimiali wrote:
| The pattern appears to follow stock market hypes. First China
| markets: construction, then child education. And now
| nft/metaverse, a US hype. Given there is no actual underlying
| product or business, it looks like a vehicle for pump and
| dumps.
| chrischen wrote:
| Honestly sounds like a struggling small business going through
| pivots and ended up paying for some partnership with a big
| brand.
| ur-whale wrote:
| https://archive.ph/wVtJO
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Fantastic article.
|
| Would like to commend the article's author, for going deep in the
| rabbit hole while also keeping it light and entertaining for the
| reader.
|
| Kudos
| awb wrote:
| Amazing article and great persistence and research. Can't wait
| to hear how it ends.
|
| My only gripe is the writing style, which I've started seeing
| on major news sources that reads more like stream of
| consciousness or friend to friend rather than reporter to
| reader:
|
| > Whew. It's been quite a journey, but here we are at last at
| the real jumping-off point of this flooring company's long
| transformation into a, ah, metaverse.
|
| Take out the "Whews" and the "ahs", etc., and it's a really
| well written piece IMO.
| pkilgore wrote:
| To be fair, this is not the New York Times. It is a blog
| where the above-the-fold post today is "What did we get stuck
| in our rectums this year?"
| [deleted]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's how _The Register_ [0] rolls. I really enjoy their
| style. They are also _very_ sharp geeks.
|
| [0] https://theregister.co.uk
| bilalq wrote:
| Yeah, I was really blown away by it. This is an amazing example
| of quality journalism. Not only was the investigative work
| impressively thorough, but the quality of the writing and tone
| came together to make this one of the most compelling things
| I've read in a long time.
|
| The story itself is absolutely wild.
| adnmcq999 wrote:
| I think it's satire and not a scam
| detaro wrote:
| Who exactly is doing the satirizing here?
| wwilim wrote:
| Looks like a perfect dream team of Chinese scammers and American
| business bullshitters
| CyberShadow wrote:
| "The 76ers" is the name of a professional basketball team in the
| United States. (Not related to System76.)
| jakear wrote:
| Though the origin of both names is indeed the same:
| https://blog.system76.com/post/622541723365769216/the-meanin...
|
| Thus proving 76 is not the smallest uninteresting natural
| number.
| Riverheart wrote:
| Thank you good sir
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Someone at color star has an uncle or dad who works in the 76ers
| office.
| rexreed wrote:
| Nice. More random unprovable FUD. Fake it till you make it eh?
| Laughing all the way to the bank.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Well this is certainly a bizarre story. As I'd never heard of
| Defector, I checked around to see if a more familiar news source
| had anything about this. AP News has a story about the deal,
| though it mentions nothing about the questionable existence of
| Color Star.
|
| This is an interesting mystery that I don't really have the
| resources to investigate.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| You can usually at least try to see any wiki information and
| about us info for a site or resource. Those are both available
| for Defector which show it is credible, former employees of
| Deadspin:
|
| https://defector.com/about-us/
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defector_Media
|
| You could say it might be even more credible than other places
| since it is employee owned. A small trend of modern media sites
| like https://Clickhole.com which was bought from being The
| Onion subsidiary, both owned by the same new bad parent company
| as Deadspin. Except for Clickhole I believe Cards Against
| Humanity bought the site and then let it be employee owned.
| Even cooler!
| djmips wrote:
| Maybe it's a sentient AI's first foray into public life.
| jameshart wrote:
| Yes, very strong vibes of Daniel Suarez's _Daemon_ to this
| story.
| ludamad wrote:
| It'd be funny if an AI went off the rails, keeping its prime
| directive to 'make a lot of money'
| ozfive wrote:
| This would be the first terrifying step an AI would take to
| begin world domination.
| CPLX wrote:
| Defector is one of the most respected and credible news sources
| in the sports world.
| Kye wrote:
| Deadspin could have been that, but management decided chasing
| profits mattered more than reputation, so the reputation left
| and founded Defector. I don't even like sports, but I listen
| to their podcast.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Deflector was created by the writers of Deadspin, a sports site
| owned by gawker, when the new boss of Deadspin told them to
| stick to writing about sports and not broader issues.
| silexia wrote:
| Could be a scam or money laundering scheme for the Chinese
| government or it's henchmen.
| jalino23 wrote:
| I was playing around with oculus quest 2 horizon venues and I did
| notice a lot of 76ers scheduled live events. the first one will
| be tomorrow.
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(page generated 2021-12-25 23:00 UTC)