[HN Gopher] Musk, Tesla, SpaceX Are Sued for Alleged Dogecoin Py...
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       Musk, Tesla, SpaceX Are Sued for Alleged Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme
        
       Author : jc_811
       Score  : 65 points
       Date   : 2022-06-16 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
        
       | mountainriver wrote:
       | Only in America
       | 
       | "I lost money because of dumb investments, I'm going to sue"
        
         | kevingadd wrote:
         | Investor protections are not unique to the United States, and
         | investments are heavily regulated because of how easy it is for
         | regular laymen to get duped
        
       | bko wrote:
       | > Johnson is seeking to represent a class of people who have lost
       | money trading in Dogecoin since April 2019. He is asking for $86
       | billion in damages, plus triple damages of $172 billion, as well
       | as an order blocking Musk and the companies from promoting
       | Dogecoin, and declaring that Dogecoin trading constitutes
       | gambling under US and New York law.
       | 
       | I am not a lawyer, but don't you have to prove that you actually
       | incurred those damages? Was this dude long $100 billion on Doge?
        
         | cududa wrote:
         | "Seeking to represent a class" - he can bring the case as a
         | class action lawsuit but a) needs to get others to join his
         | class then b) if the judge accepts it, other defendants can
         | jockey for being the one representing the case. Different
         | lawyers will make different arguments why they should get the
         | case then the judge chooses which plaintiff and lawyers get the
         | class action.
         | 
         | So that's what "seeking to represent a class" means. He's not
         | seeking that amount for himself, but rather to distribute to
         | everyone who bought dogs based on Musk's tweeting
        
         | jjtheblunt wrote:
         | Johnson's greed and entitlement ($172 billion?) are remarkable.
        
       | IYasha wrote:
       | I hoped the title would continue like "for making autopilot
       | disable itself one second before car crash".
       | 
       | So "they" waited some time to deliver a massive blow to crypto
       | market - bitcoin hits last year minimum, other cryptos are
       | shaking, now dogecoin is going to suffer. Looks pretty deliberate
       | to me...
        
       | gitfan86 wrote:
       | Ironically, Elon is one of the few famous business people that
       | regularly points out that all money is worthless, and that the
       | real economy is goods and services not entries in a database.
        
         | sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
         | Ironically, or shall we say dishonestly, he follows up on that
         | by manipulating the market for his benefit.
        
         | phatfish wrote:
         | Exactly the sort of thing I would expect the (paper?) richest
         | person in the world to say. Obviously money is worthless to you
         | when you have more than you could ever need.
        
       | tromp wrote:
       | > "Defendants falsely and deceptively claim that Dogecoin is a
       | legitimate investment when it has no value at all," Johnson said
       | in his complaint,
       | 
       | What makes a cryptocurrency a "legitimate investment" ? It
       | clearly is a risky and highly speculative investment, but it's
       | not clear to me what separates legitimate ones from illegitimate
       | ones. Johnson's claim that Dogecoin has no value at all seems
       | rather bogus, as it still trades at well over 1 cent per coin (we
       | can agree it has no "inherent value").
        
         | kayamon wrote:
         | I suppose it depends if there's someone manipulating it. A coin
         | like Bitcoin is immune to internal manipulation -- there's one
         | Bitcoin mined every ten minutes, and no one can change that, no
         | matter how much money they have.
         | 
         | Satoshi proved that a blockchain is only secure if it's the
         | blockchain with the longest accumulated proof-of-work record.
         | Dogecoin's blockchain is shorter, and they can't win a race
         | where the other players are already ahead. Miners will
         | generally only mine the blockchain with the most value, thus
         | the market for one mining the leading crypto squeezes out the
         | market for mining all the others. Miners must vote with their
         | electricity as to which blockchain to support. No other
         | blockchain can ever maintain its stability as long as Bitcoin
         | exists.
         | 
         | The game theory that backs Bitcoin also proves that all other
         | cryptocurrencies cannot work in the long term.
        
           | IYasha wrote:
           | >> A coin like Bitcoin is immune to internal manipulation
           | 
           | Even if NSA..I mean, "Satoshi" was to do something with his
           | 1.1M BTC?
        
             | randomhodler84 wrote:
             | Why would spending some old coinbase tx's from a decade+
             | ago have any impact on core parameters of the protocol?
             | Whomever is spending coins has no impact on coin emission.
             | I highly doubt they could even bribe the Protocol
             | maintainers.
        
           | Schroedingersat wrote:
           | > Satoshi proved that a blockchain is only secure if it's the
           | blockchain with the longest accumulated proof-of-work record.
           | 
           | This statement is correct, but you appear to be fundamentally
           | misunderstanding it. The category being considered is that of
           | blockchains making incompatible claims about the same truth.
           | 
           | Events on the dogecoin blockchain are making no claims about
           | the bitcoin blockchain and vice versa, so this statement is
           | irrelevant. Similarly it is irrelevant between any two
           | distinct tokens even if they originate as forks of another
           | token. You could download the BTC blockchain, take it to a
           | distant planet and transact with it using only local compute
           | just fine. It's just that -- were you to re-establish contact
           | with earth -- omicron-persei-eight-BTC and earth-BTC would
           | now be different tokens. So long as some subset of the
           | population agreed to use the former it would be a valid token
           | and earthlings could transact on your blockchain with their
           | wallets (at the balance they had when you left), it just
           | wouldn't be earth-BTC
        
             | kayamon wrote:
             | As long as communication can occur between the two
             | populations (FTL will present its own problems in years to
             | come), they will trade using the best money available and
             | will not mine the lesser blockchain.
             | 
             | All non-leading blockchains will ultimately fail.
             | 
             | Tick tock next block.
        
           | tromp wrote:
           | > Dogecoin's blockchain is shorter
           | 
           | Not only is blockchain length immaterial to its relevancy,
           | but Dogecoin's chain is in fact longer, as its block interval
           | is only 1 minute, so it is asymptotically 10 times longer
           | than Bitcoin.
           | 
           | > there's one Bitcoin mined every ten minutes
           | 
           | You mean one block (containing an subsidy starting at 50
           | Bitcoin that's halved every 4 years).
           | 
           | > Miners will generally only mine the blockchain with the
           | most value
           | 
           | Wrong; SHA256 miners will mine the most profitable SHA256
           | chain, such as Bitcoin. Scrypt miners have totally different
           | ASICs and will mine the most profitable scrypt chain.
           | 
           | > No other blockchain can ever maintain its stability as long
           | as Bitcoin exists. The game theory that backs Bitcoin also
           | proves that all other cryptocurrencies cannot work in the
           | long term.
           | 
           | The theory behind Bitcoin long term security is rather shaky
           | in fact, requiring a constant backlog of high-fee paying
           | transactions once its block subsidy becomes insignificant.
           | Chains with a tail emission face no such issues.
        
         | horsawlarway wrote:
         | I'd say when the original creator of the "currency" defines it
         | as a joke, and the coin is configured so that ~14.5 million new
         | coins are minted every day... It's safe to consider it
         | illegitimate as an investment.
         | 
         | At a minimum, it certainly can't be considered a valid value
         | store, since the amount of currency in circulation inflates at
         | an incredible pace, and without regard to the current value.
        
           | tromp wrote:
           | I strongly disagree. First of all, whether it's 14.5 coins
           | per day or 14,500 or 14.5M or 14.5B doesn't matter at all,
           | since it's just arbitrary scaling (just like how each bitcoin
           | is really 100B satoshi). Secondly, a fixed block subsidy is
           | an entirely reasonable emission schedule, with yearly supply
           | inflation going down at a steady rate, taking 2 decades to
           | drop down to 5% (better than fiat this year), and taking 5
           | decades to be the 2% that fiat aims for.
           | 
           | In fact, there's one serious cryptocurrency that chose
           | exactly such an emission, averaging one coin per second
           | forever. It's the only coin that doesn't have the current
           | generation hog the majority of (soft [1]) total supply...
           | 
           | [1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-
           | total-su...
        
             | randomhodler84 wrote:
             | 100M sats per BTC my dude
        
             | joshjdr wrote:
             | This comment looks like a lawsuit waiting to happen!
        
           | Schroedingersat wrote:
           | No argument that it isn't a scam, but you appear to
           | fundamentally misunderstand the concept of exponential
           | growth.
           | 
           | Adding a linear amount to a pool induces an exponentially
           | decaying inflation rate which becomes negligible after a
           | decade or two.
           | 
           | As such, dogecoin is the same fomo/'store of
           | value'/deflationary scam as all the other coins, just skewed
           | a little less towards the first suckers to join the ponzi
           | scheme
        
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       (page generated 2022-06-16 23:02 UTC)