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Trader Buys $36M of Copper and Gets Painted Rocks Instead
- haltingproblem 6y agoCould putting it on the blockchain helps prevent the theft? Discuss.
- BruiseLee 6y agoOnly if the chain in the blockchain is made from copper.
- missedthecue 6y agoDon't really see how. It was physical product that was stolen in the night, not a digital product that was stolen/duplicated. It's analogous to how your bitcoin is safe on a secure network until someone forces you at gunpoint to hand over your private key.
- snarf21 6y agoCorrolary: Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems. /regular expressions/blockchain/g
- jfim 6y agoYou're missing a s there: s@/regular expressions/blockchain/g@s&@
- rPlayer6554 6y agoI think he should have flown the product in a plane rather than shipped them. That way he would have the power of the cloud to help him verify the transaction.
- haltingproblem 6y agoCopper as a Service - CaaS!
- rPlayer6554 6y agoRock-solid reliability!
- dexen 6y ago>Could having a full trace ability for inputs and outputs of mining, smelting, and transport prevent surrepetitious theft? Yes, if indirectly: with well documented chain of custody, we would be able to find the thief. This works as a natural deterrent. Even better, if the copper block were serialized, we would be able to provide relevant information to other copper processors & vendors to avoid that particular batch of stolen goods.
- haltingproblem 6y agoA well documented chain of custody would not need blockchain. Blockchain is not the solution if it requires the solution to work.
- Lazare 6y agoAbsolutely not. At the moment, he has some containers full of rocks with paper work that says "copper". Put it on the blockchain, and you'd have some containers full of rocks with paper work on the blockchain that says "copper". That's not really any worse, but it's sure not better... What would help is better physical security and a really thorough chain of custody. Unfortunately, those are hard; that's the solution the trader tried to use and got burned. And blockchains aren't going to be any help here. Cryptographically verifiable claims that your container is meant to contain copper don't help if someone took an angle grinder to the lock and swapped it for rocks, and a chain of cryptographically verifiable claims showing it was meant to contain copper at every step of it's journey don't tell you where the thieves struck. Or in shorter form: You can't put copper on the blockchain; all you can do is put peper work on the blockchain, which is vastly less useful.
- junon 6y agoI appreciate this comment, I do, but I would sincerely hope GP was cracking a joke. I really hope.
- jfengel 6y agoA blockchain could, I suppose, do something to guarantee the identity of the individuals, so you can track them down if something goes wrong. But they already seem to have that much, in that TFA says that over a dozen people have been arrested. As much as I'm sure the trader would rather have had the supplies, the next best thing is to ensure that they don't get to do that a second time. Stupid criminals might be worse for the economy than smart ones. Smart ones are limited in the damage they can cause by restricting themselves to harms that don't also harm them. Stupid ones can do any damage at all, with no limits.
- stormqloud 6y agoNobody but a fool does that kind of business deal without verifications. There are companies you can pay to inspect, verify and insure the product at source.
- hourislate 6y agoYou must not have read the article. From the article It appears that copper was initially loaded into the first shipment of containers, before being surveyed by an inspection company. Seals used to prevent fraud were then affixed to the containers. The product was real and loaded into shipping containers. After it was inspected and sealed the fraudsters switched out the cargo as it left the port. There was even Insurance fraud with some group providing fake Insurance coverage (one real policy with the rest being forgeries) for the seller. These firms aren't fools, they do this everyday and understand what to do, shit happens.
- JaakkoP 6y agoThey did do an inspection and sealed the containers right after. The "swap" to painted rocks happened only after the inspection. Supposedly, they also had an insurance until it turned out 6 out of 7 of their insurance contracts were forged. To me this screams like an inside job. How is it possible that the thieves can get into the ships at night, spend hours hauling copper and paving stones and nobody notices.
- bellyfullofbac 6y agoI would guess it would be easier to load up the bogey container with rocks, and since the authorities are in it, get a copy of the seal affixed to the bogey container (the article even mentions fake seals). The article also mentions shipment. Does it mean the containers were already on the ships, or just on its way on the back of a truck? It would be "easy" for the truck full of copper in a sealed container to leave a place, and a different truck to show up at the port with a container with a label that says "Copper for Mercuria, destination Qinqdao" and a "good" seal. Or if it's all at the port, just pay off the crane operator to load up your bogey onto the ship, and load up the real stuff onto your truck.
- 3327 6y agoThe old Turkish bait and switch! Cha-cha-cha-chachinnnGG!!!!
- rasz 6y ago30 tons per container, $9K per ton, up to $270K per container. They could pay someone to sail with those containers, or pay a lawyer to make sure they have real insurance.
- tsjq 6y agoAll those would be tagged under "cost center" and cut down by precious bean-counter MBAs
- vdddv 6y ago"bean-counter MBAs" holders: Tim Cook — CEO, Apple Satya Nadella — CEO, Microsoft Sundar Pichai — CEO, Google & Alphabet Katrina Lake — founder & CEO, Stitch Fix Stacy Brown-Philpot — CEO, TaskRabbit Jeremy Stoppelman — cofounder & CEO, Yelp Tony Xu — cofounder & CEO, DoorDash Jack Ma — cofounder & CEO, Alibaba Susan Wojcicki — CEO, YouTube
- bitcharmer 6y agoEven silly me as the CEO couldn't derail behemoths like Google or Apple with their inertia and their insane stashes of cash and assets. The people you listed are not geniuses. People who built them from scratch are. But those people were not MBA's: - Apple - Wozniak, Jobs - Google - Page, Brin - Microsoft - Gates, Allen HN's sentiment against MBAs is pretty justified. It's typically some non-MBA ingenuity that kick-starts those uber-succefull companies, not the bean counters.
- dzhiurgis 6y agoApple and MS had bad CEO moments so your inertia theory is just a theory...
- okareaman 6y agoShoulda converted into 3.60B American pennies
- quantified 6y agoAt least you can spend them, but they’re worth less that $0.01 due to being mostly zinc these days.
- okareaman 6y agoI looked it up before making my little joke. Did you know there are companies selling pre-1980 copper pennies in case the penny is eliminated and it becomes allowable to melt them down for copper? (98% or so) They are worth over a penny. It's a weird sort of futures contract.
- quantified 6y agoI forgot the year of change-over but yes. They sound different and they age differently. I collected coins as a kid, I liked their heft in my (smaller) fingers. I’ve thought about hoarding older ones for copper but... insufficiently motivated, I’ll let someone in greater need do it.
- Klwohu 6y agoThis seems like a fake story with a moral message: Don't invest in metals and things, look how it turned out for this guy who's clearly richer and more intelligent than you are.
- killingtime74 6y agoNow he’s poorer and lies intelligent
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 1cvmask 6y agoThis was a classic inside job with the inspections company in on it as well. The Swiss citizen trader of Mercuria was complicit as well as SGS (inspections company). Mercuria is now going after SGS as well. Can’t wait for the Netflix thriller.