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He's a temporarily embarrassed billionaire, he just needs some funds to access his rightful fortune. You don't even have to believe him - you'd just have to be

He's a temporarily embarrassed billionaire, he just needs some funds to access his rightful fortune. You don't even have to believe him - you'd just have to believe (or see viable risk/reward) that he has a shot at a successful legal attack.

nullc 5y ago
Exactly. Wright claims to own around $50 billion dollars worth of cryptocurrency which he cannot access. Let's say he manages to convince you that he has 1% chance of success at obtaining these funds-- something you could believe even if you know he's a fraud, you just have to have a low opinion of the courts and misunderstand how Bitcoin works (which many people do, see this discussion!). If offers you a 10% stake in his victory, what would you pay for that? Well under the 1% assumption you might be willing to pay $25 million dollars (half the expected value). The buyers error is just in flawed reasoning about the odds of success, but people are notoriously bad at reasoning about fringe events and a lot of people don't understand Bitcoin. For Wright, the fact that his effort cannot be successful is actually a very good property: It means that he can safely sell more than 100% of his fictional fortune: He doesn't have to worry that he'll win and then have to pay out >100%. Instead, he'll lose and tell his investors "Sorry, gave it our best shot but you always knew this was a risky deal!". In that case his income from the scheme is only limited by how many suckers he can bring in... 100 people paying 25m for a '10%' stake would yield a 2.5 billion dollar windfall. And if you don't think there are at least 100 suckers out there with 25 million to blow you haven't been paying attention to all the defi/ico/nft noise the last couple years. Right now we know of one major self-claimed billionaire that Wright is exploiting, but there may be many others-- particularly in Asia where language barriers make it much easier for Wright to isolate victims from discrediting information.

nullc 5y ago

Exactly. Wright claims to own around $50 billion dollars worth of cryptocurrency which he cannot access. Let's say he manages to convince you that he has 1% chance of success at obtaining these funds-- something you could believe even if you know he's a fraud, you just have to have a low opinion of the courts and misunderstand how Bitcoin works (which many people do, see this discussion!). If offers you a 10% stake in his victory, what would you pay for that? Well under the 1% assumption you might be willing to pay $25 million dollars (half the expected value). The buyers error is just in flawed reasoning about the odds of success, but people are notoriously bad at reasoning about fringe events and a lot of people don't understand Bitcoin. For Wright, the fact that his effort cannot be successful is actually a very good property: It means that he can safely sell more than 100% of his fictional fortune: He doesn't have to worry that he'll win and then have to pay out >100%. Instead, he'll lose and tell his investors "Sorry, gave it our best shot but you always knew this was a risky deal!". In that case his income from the scheme is only limited by how many suckers he can bring in... 100 people paying 25m for a '10%' stake would yield a 2.5 billion dollar windfall. And if you don't think there are at least 100 suckers out there with 25 million to blow you haven't been paying attention to all the defi/ico/nft noise the last couple years. Right now we know of one major self-claimed billionaire that Wright is exploiting, but there may be many others-- particularly in Asia where language barriers make it much easier for Wright to isolate victims from discrediting information.