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Oh yes they can thrive .. for quite a while .. remember Jordan Belfort? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Belfort https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_B

• patrickaljord 9y ago
  If the scam is very well executed, it will thrives for a bit longer even with laws against scams, as your link shows. However, once publicly exposed, the scammer's bad reputation will ensure no one will trust doing business with him again in his field, much more so than any anti-scamming laws that punished him with those 22 months in jail.
  • askmike 9y ago
    > the scammer's bad reputation will ensure no one will trust doing business with him again in his field That doesn't like a problem for people who can fill a ~20 million ICO in half an hour, do they need to work (=be trusted) ever again?
    • patrickaljord 9y ago
      They don't, but if it happens with a few ICOs people won't trust ICOs anymore and these kinds of scams won't repeat much. Anyway, has there been any verified ICO scams yet? Seems to me like it's not much different from startups promising BS/bad ideas to gullible VCs who end up losing millions. In this case, ICOs are selling these ideas to the little guy through crowd funding which is different but the little guy usually invest a few bucks in these ICOs so if the ICO fails to delivers it's not as big a deal unless one invests his/her life's saving in said ICO but then that's a pretty risky idea one needs to take responsibility for.