[HN Gopher] Cryptoland [video]
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       Cryptoland [video]
        
       Author : eisa01
       Score  : 95 points
       Date   : 2022-01-09 20:33 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (peertube.social)
 (TXT) w3m dump (peertube.social)
        
       | trhway wrote:
       | a shark shaped island and a "Vladimir Club" in the center! Looks
       | like an opening of a Hawaiian themed Snatch. Vladimir dressed in
       | lei will come personally to break your legs.
       | 
       | If to expand the target audience beyond the crypto toward all the
       | youngish and hip - well it looks like the Metaverse that FB wants
       | to put the world into, no real island required.
        
       | noasaservice wrote:
       | Eww. And I thought a climate destroying ponzi grift was bad
       | enough... And then there's this tirefire?
       | 
       | Hopefully a hurricane will sweep 6mo in and wipe this out.
        
         | cinntaile wrote:
         | Regardless of what you think about crypto, wishing people to
         | lose their homes and potentially lives is morally questionable
         | don't you think?
        
           | riffic wrote:
           | wishes aren't magic. There's a difference, morally, between
           | doing someone harm and a desire for someone to be harmed.
        
             | cinntaile wrote:
             | How is the moral difference between wishing and doing
             | relevant? It doesn't help determine if wishing something
             | bad can be morally questionable, which was my claim that
             | you disagree(?) with.
        
       | walrus01 wrote:
       | this reminds me of the crypto/seasteading bros who tried to buy a
       | cruise ship
       | 
       | https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voya...
       | 
       | https://futurism.com/the-byte/bitcoin-cruise-ship
       | 
       | cryptoland, more like grift-o-land
        
       | mirekrusin wrote:
       | This is a joke, right?
        
       | woodruffw wrote:
       | Weird sub-communities and ballpits (timestamp 5:05) are not a
       | famously good combination.
        
         | Nextgrid wrote:
         | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/dashcon ?
        
       | slg wrote:
       | Here[1] is an article with more details. One worrying detail is
       | that whoever runs the Cryptoland Twitter account "joking" about
       | the age of consent being the age of "mental maturity". It is
       | always interesting what laws these people prioritize changing.
       | 
       | [1] - https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3n38x/cryptocurrency-
       | invest...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | Hamuko wrote:
         | The official response to the age of consent thing was that they
         | didn't know what "age of consent" means:
         | https://twitter.com/cryptoland/status/1480231356848349192
         | 
         | They've also sent a C&D to someone:
         | https://twitter.com/cryptoland/status/1480236809531838464
        
           | slg wrote:
           | That excuse makes no sense. There is no "age allowed" to
           | enter "any other place, like a restaurant, a resort or an
           | amusement park". Those places all let in babies and I assume
           | Cryptoland would too. Also how does that explain the winking
           | emoticon?
        
         | TigeriusKirk wrote:
         | You'd assume they'd be subject to the laws of whatever country
         | that island is in. One thing you can be certain of is that no
         | country is ceding any territory for them to form their own
         | nation.
        
           | jsheard wrote:
           | The island they are eyeing is Nananu-i-cake in Fiji:
           | https://www.privateislandsonline.com/south-
           | pacific/fiji/nana...
           | 
           | It's at least a real island that's really for sale, but
           | Cryptolands renders present it as being freestanding in the
           | ocean rather than right next to the mainland as it is in
           | reality
        
       | rzzzt wrote:
       | Crypto crypto crypto! Say it enough times and it loses all
       | meaning.
        
         | justinator wrote:
         | ZOMBO!
        
       | dqpb wrote:
       | I can no longer tell what is real and what is satire.
        
       | amyjess wrote:
       | The Cryptoland Twitter account also endorsed pedophilic grooming:
       | https://twitter.com/widesauce/status/1478816782966136832
       | 
       | Transcript:
       | 
       | > Q: what will the age of consent be in Cryptoland?
       | 
       | > A: Mental maturity should be more than enough! :)
       | 
       | Cryptoland is either tasteless performance art or a disaster
       | waiting to happen.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | eisa01 wrote:
       | Featured in FT Alphaville today. Is this real? Feels like FYRE
       | 2.0
       | 
       | https://www.ft.com/content/c79ea41b-41c0-4900-90ee-6e6347449...
       | 
       | https://cryptoland.is/
        
         | cinntaile wrote:
         | They have a quote by Carlos Matos, from BitConnect fame. "We
         | are changing the world as we know it."
         | 
         | lol
         | 
         | Probably fake.
        
           | arcticbull wrote:
           | Matos found out they mentioned him in the video. He tweeted
           | his displeasure. Trying to find it...
        
           | walrus01 wrote:
           | for something fake clearly _somebody, somewhere_ put a lot of
           | time into doing the 3D modeling and animation. seems like a
           | bit too much effort for satire.
        
         | jacoblambda wrote:
         | That's because it basically is. I'm pretty involved in the
         | cryptocurrency space and I haven't found a single person
         | outside of the memecoin get rich types (see "Shiba Army") that
         | thinks this is a good idea or seriously viable in any real way.
         | 
         | Honestly I can do nothing but hope that the craze around
         | cryptocurrency dies down so that these types go back to other
         | get rich quick schemes and leave the actual researchers,
         | engineers, and developers to their work.
        
           | jmspring wrote:
           | They eventually removed the request, but there was a group
           | that wanted to create a blockchain utopia (smartcity) north
           | of Reno, Nevada.
           | 
           | https://www.rgj.com/story/news/politics/2021/10/07/blockchai.
           | ..
        
       | cblconfederate wrote:
       | why was it removed?
        
         | mwattsun wrote:
         | It was marked as unlisted, then Molly White (@molly0xFFF) got
         | ahold of it and started making fun of it. That's how I found
         | out about it. Now Cryptoland is threatening Molly with legal
         | action
         | 
         | https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1479974074986209286
         | 
         | Edit: She has another site that is very cool: "Web3 is going
         | just great" consisting of a daily update of the latest rugpulls
         | and other frauds
         | 
         | https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
        
           | KennyBlanken wrote:
           | Her response to that is gold.
           | 
           | > "cease and decease"
           | 
           | > I have removed all the false information
        
           | cblconfederate wrote:
           | I thought it was a prank?
           | 
           | And that c&d looks faked
        
             | mwattsun wrote:
             | It feels like that way to me but it's hard to tell these
             | days. Possibly a good example of Poe's law
        
           | riffic wrote:
           | "cease and decease". omg, what a bunch of hacks
           | 
           | https://twitter.com/cryptoland/status/1480236809531838464
        
       | sundarurfriend wrote:
       | > Mirror of the Cryptoland presentation that its creators seem to
       | be trying to wipe from the Internet for some reason.
       | 
       | "for some reason" I wonder why! I'd love to see the comments they
       | got on YouTube.
       | 
       | This seems such a ridiculously obvious "let's cash in on the gold
       | rush" attempt, and Poe's law started hitting me hard when it came
       | to the animated sections. But of course it's the crypto space, so
       | of course it's a real thing!
        
       | tomerv wrote:
       | The full cartoon video is still on the official channel:
       | https://youtu.be/jf3ajS5me78
        
       | buildbuildbuild wrote:
       | 319 ETH per acre. ($1mil USD today)
       | 
       | I'm struggling to find a way to constructively criticize. Project
       | aside, the video is not at all professional to a western
       | audience. (watch all of it, I dare you)
       | 
       | It's stylistically tone-deaf for their target market, grift
       | notwithstanding. Who decided that real estate investors need a
       | cartoon? At least Fyre's promo content felt "cool."
        
         | repomies69 wrote:
         | Why not try your luck, some crypto ppl who have gotten recently
         | rich might buy such shit.
        
         | tcgv wrote:
         | I watched all of it. The video quality is subpar indeed, and
         | they claim it took one year to complete. Their "vision" is
         | biased towards people that value "to party" and "to ostentate".
         | It seems like a crypto funded thematic beach resort venture,
         | possibly led by a team without real experience in the
         | hospitality industry.
        
         | Speednet wrote:
         | I don't think I'd be so gentle. It is one of the most cringe-
         | worthy things I've seen in quite some time. Makes the crypto
         | space seem like it's entirely inhabited by morons and fools.
        
           | nvr219 wrote:
           | Where's the lie
        
           | walrus01 wrote:
           | if your industry segment is populated with a theoretical 5 to
           | 10% of vociferous morons and fools, it tends to paint
           | everyone else with the same brush.
        
             | micromacrofoot wrote:
             | 5-10% is very generous
        
         | perihelions wrote:
         | It could be deliberate. An unprofessional pitch shrinks the
         | buyer pool, but by repelling scam-savvy people it
         | *concentrates* that pool with vulnerable people, increasing the
         | conversion rate. This is useful if the scammers need to devote
         | a lot of individualized attention on each target.
         | 
         | HN had threads discussing this concept (in the context of 419
         | scams, I think); I don't remember how to find them. Those have
         | enormous attrition rate between the initial contact, and the
         | "walk into a bank and wire your life savings" step.
         | 
         | edit: They discussed a Microsoft researcher's article about
         | scam emails (thanks, walrus01):
         | 
         | https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...
         | ( _" Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They are From Nigeria?"_)
         | [2012]
         | 
         | https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20nigerian%20scammers&type...
        
           | walrus01 wrote:
           | I think you may be referring to the following:
           | 
           | https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-
           | do-...
           | 
           | https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/82814/secretly-smart-
           | rea...
           | 
           | by immediately weeding out the skeptical, they can focus
           | their direct person-hours of communication back and forth
           | labor setting up the scam on the most vulnerable and
           | guillible.
        
             | perihelions wrote:
             | That's the one. The Cormac Herley / Microsoft article
             | inspired lots of threads,
             | 
             | https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20nigerian%20scammers&typ
             | e...
        
       | pm90 wrote:
       | Unfortunately a lot of people are gonna get scammed. This has
       | happened so many times... I'm a bit surprised financial
       | regulators aren't cracking down on it just yet.
       | 
       | At this point there's not much to do but
        
         | rg111 wrote:
         | > I'm a bit surprised financial regulators aren't cracking down
         | on it just yet
         | 
         | Financial regulators are government agencies supervised the
         | government i.e. the lawmakers.
         | 
         | As Tesla, and big banks have thrown millions and billions into
         | crypto, don't you think that they will do everything in their
         | power to keep this hype alive?
        
       | b1n wrote:
       | I'm about half way through this, and I honestly can't tell
       | whether it's satire or not. If real, this could be the "The Room"
       | [1] of pitches. Just waiting for it to turn into a Lord of the
       | Flies type situation.
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Room
        
       | gfd wrote:
       | What's with crypto and tropical escapes?
       | 
       | FTX moved their headquarters to the Bahamas and now they are
       | trying to build it into a crypto-hub too:
       | https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sdjcH7KAxgB328RAb/...
        
       | simlevesque wrote:
       | "Proof of work gym"
        
         | dymk wrote:
         | This legitimately clever joke buried in the middle of a
         | horrendous video makes it even funnier
        
       | notfed wrote:
       | Looks like a great place to host the next Fyre festival.
        
       | ConanRus wrote:
        
       | riffic wrote:
       | Nice to see PeerTube out in the wild.
       | 
       | PeerTube is a software application that implements the
       | interoperable social networking standard, ActivityPub:
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube
       | 
       | What this means is if you have an account anywhere on this
       | network, say a Mastodon account, you can interact with the video
       | directly. It's a system that works a lot like how email addresses
       | work (that is, a _federated_ social web).
       | 
       | last note: The Fediverse, as a whole, doesn't want to be
       | associated with the _web3_ space. Pretty much because it is a
       | system that works, and web3 is just a space for schmucks.
        
         | paulgb wrote:
         | It would be a fun irony if web3 _does_ succeed in pushing
         | society beyond the centralization of web2, but only because it
         | pushes people to use the federated systems we already have to
         | overcome censorship when making fun of web3 stuff.
        
         | rsynnott wrote:
         | > The Fediverse, as a whole, doesn't want to be associated with
         | the web3 space
         | 
         | The funny thing is, ActivityPub is vaguely under the banner of
         | the Semantic Web. Which, at one time, was sometimes called,
         | semi-jokingly... Web 3.0.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | bawolff wrote:
       | Wtf did i just watch.
       | 
       | This has got to be someone trolling, right?
       | 
       | If you didn't watch the whole thing, make sure to at least watch
       | the animated section.
        
         | mirekrusin wrote:
         | I don't know what's happening, people are paying tons of money
         | for hashes of jpegs, honestly can't tell it's 50/50 from my
         | pov.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | yawaworht1978 wrote:
       | For a good laugh on this matter, I recommend reading this.
       | 
       | https://blog.mollywhite.net/cryptoland-thread/
       | 
       | The level of incompetency and ironical jokes is overwhelming.
        
       | pcwalton wrote:
       | Ironically given the benefits that the cryptocurrency ecosystem
       | supposedly brings to artists, this promotional material contains
       | stolen IP from at least one independent artist [1]. Cryptoland's
       | response was to block the victim [2].
       | 
       | [1]: https://twitter.com/kamilabianchi/status/1478764832967086083
       | 
       | [2]: https://twitter.com/kamilabianchi/status/1479852849932734477
        
         | arcticbull wrote:
         | They also sent a cease and desist to one of the folks making
         | fun of them on twitter - for making fun of them, on twitter.
         | [1]
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://twitter.com/molly0xfff/status/1479974074986209286?s=...
        
           | KennyBlanken wrote:
           | Her responses are gold.
           | 
           | > Dear legal team, I have removed all the false statements.
           | 
           | > "cease and decease"
        
           | perihelions wrote:
           | That's a very effective way to inspire people to make fun of
           | you, on Twitter.
        
             | arcticbull wrote:
             | Certainly a good example of the Streisand effect. [1]
             | 
             | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
        
         | Hamuko wrote:
         | Surprised they didn't just mint an NFT out of the song to prove
         | ownership (or something).
        
         | katmannthree wrote:
         | After browsing OpenSea one may reasonably come to the
         | conclusion that for every competent artist selling NFTs of
         | their art, there are approximately 40,000 low-effort mspaint
         | primates.
        
           | pcwalton wrote:
           | Or just straight-up stolen art. For every one artist selling
           | NFTs of their own art, there are easily five NFTs sold by
           | fraudsters misrepresenting themselves to have to right to do
           | so.
        
             | marginalia_nu wrote:
             | Wasn't this the literally exact thing NFTs was supposed to
             | prevent?
        
               | RF_Savage wrote:
               | Yet nothing in NFT's prevent it. Even if every artist
               | minted everything they ever post as an NFT it would not
               | prevent it.
               | 
               | At most there would be a "first to file" authenthicity
               | mechanism in the NFT storefronts like OpenSea.
        
               | lottin wrote:
               | No, NFTs serve no purpose. As far as use-cases go, they
               | have none.
        
           | jsheard wrote:
           | It's impressive how quickly the NFT space has abandoned any
           | semblance of selling unique artwork, and converged on ten
           | thousand variants of "randomly generated animal pictures"
           | with half of them being monkeys because they're cargo-culting
           | Bored Ape Yacht Club. Ironically in trying to create "digital
           | scarcity" they've lowered the bar to entry so far that their
           | "scarce" assets are buried under an endless avalanche of
           | nearly indistinguishable "scarce" assets. Market price is the
           | only thing that would set them apart, but even that's
           | meaningless due to the prevalence of wash trading.
        
             | Traster wrote:
             | Is it impressive? I would've thought this is exactly what
             | we expected. Actual artists are off making stuff they can
             | sell, and 99.99% of them don't know what an NFT is.
             | Meanwhile there's a whole community of teenagers on the
             | internet who don't make anything but _do_ know about NFTs.
             | 
             | If you run the numbers on "artists who know/care about
             | NFTs" vs "Idiots on the internet gullible enough to buy
             | into anythin" I think 10,000:1 is _generous_.
        
       | zoneone wrote:
       | Why would you want to live in a theme-park on a remote jungle
       | island in a volatile jurisdiction with a bunch of assholes?
        
         | pavlov wrote:
         | Isn't that the exact promise of El Salvador's Bitcoin City,
         | except for the island part.
        
         | runarberg wrote:
         | I'm guessing they are trying to appeal to speculators who are
         | gambling that the value of the property will increase. The
         | business model might resemble a pyramid shape.
        
         | habeebtc wrote:
         | Some people cannot conceive of the thing falling apart and
         | everyone dying of hunger and thirst.
         | 
         | It is rather less tropical but Put In Bay fits the bill much
         | better.
        
           | netflixandkill wrote:
           | The best place to get STDs in the great lakes.
        
       | goodpoint wrote:
       | Poe's law really applies here. I cannot believe this is not a
       | parody.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | TigeriusKirk wrote:
       | Wow. This is amazing. Worth preserving for the ages, seriously.
       | 
       | A crypto-island scheme has been a thing since the very early days
       | of bitcoin. None of them ever get anywhere, of course.
       | 
       | Now that I think about it, there was some sort of bitcoiner
       | ranch/compound/village/utopia in some place like Chile or
       | Argentina. I think it actually did get off the ground, but I
       | don't remember hearing any more about it. I'll have to rabbit
       | hole that soon.
       | 
       | EDIT- It was in Chile, and it fell apart long ago.
       | https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v21n...
        
       | Eighth wrote:
       | Hi gang. There was an older version of this video that was
       | released first. This newer version has a lot of changes that give
       | a bit of an insight into how they want to present themselves.
       | 
       | Here's a twitter thread detailing the changes:
       | https://twitter.com/jpainio/status/1479863994387161093
       | 
       | The raw side-by-side video is here:
       | https://peertube.social/w/wpDMyuGRYu9ax6Xz3q9Hdi
        
       | elilev wrote:
       | This looks dumb af
        
       | oleg_antonyan wrote:
       | Poe's law in action: after watching this I cannot tell if this is
       | 2nd order trolling or real thing
        
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       (page generated 2022-01-09 23:01 UTC)