7 ms·

News flash: you were social engineered into buying ETH in the first place.

by keithalewis 5y ago

buttocks 5y ago
If a scammer scams you out of a scam, do you come out ahead?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- keithalewis 5y ago
  It worked for PT Barnum.
randomhodler84 5y ago
Eth is a premine scam sure, but the dude has $130M Of it, so I don’t think he is crying over that part
- MPSimmons 5y ago
  How much purchasing power does that afford? If he wanted to buy an island, pay for it to have infrastructure added, and then also hire security and business payroll, could he actually exchange the Eth to the applicable currencies? I know the numbers line up, but is that amount of liquidity in the system?
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Good question. Mostly yes, but it would take some coordination. At $100M you would want to split trade across exchanges and probably some defi too, but yeah, you could. Eth has about $10M/-2% on major exchanges. Not that you would need to convert to fiat. If you ran your own island, just pay for goods and labor in Bitcoin or Ether directly.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    > could he actually exchange the Eth to the applicable currencies? I know the numbers line up, but is that amount of liquidity in the system? Yes, Coinbase, Binance and other big exchanges offer OTC trading where you can trade pretty large amounts without impacting the market at large.
    - Qub3d 5y ago
      Counter-point: there is currently another submission on HN suggesting that crypto "off-ramps" are really problematic and difficult at the moment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30322296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30322296
      - capableweb 5y ago
        Breaking news: "off-ramps" to centralized currencies is centralized. It's not difficult if the source of your cryptocurrencies is legitimate, while difficult if you have a hard time explaining how it's legitimate. I think the system works as intended.
        Qub3d 5y ago
        I'm confused then, are you in support of cryptocurrency? Because what you're describing (the "system") sounds an awful lot like reinventing banks from first principles but much less efficiently. If that is how it's intended to function then why are we bothering with this at all? And aside from KYC issues, another recently posted article pointed out that when a single individual tried to unload around a 1500 BTC (%0.03 of the coins in circulation at the time) it caused a liquidity crisis that crashed the market by 20%.[1] In this case the individual in the Twitter thread has an amount of ETH of that magnitude. Basically because crypto is performing the job of a speculative asset it results in the liquidity issues that you would see in things like company stock. [1]: https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html?m=1 https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html?m=1 (see footnote 11. The gist is that this sale put enough pressure on the order books that a lot of leverage positions cascaded into selling as well causing the flash crash)
- hanniabu 5y ago
  Given your username and how salty you are, I'm going to assume you invested in Bitconnect and lost everything b/c you didn't do your own research.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Haha nice one! the world is not anymore the way it used to be, mm mm NO NO No! Bitconeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeect wooo bitconnect! We are coming and we are coming in waves. We are starting and to actually go all over the world. We all built the entire world. Me? Im just out there fiat mining, stacking sats…
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't cross into personal attack. We ban accounts that do that, and we've had to warn you about this kind of thing before. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
selestify 5y ago
Low-quality comment.
- bitcharmer 5y ago
  I'd say GP's comment contributes more to the discussion than yours.
  - selestify 5y ago
    Debatable. GP basically ignores all the interesting parts of the article being posted in order to simply say the usual spiel about how much HN hates crypto. The relevance to the original article is close to nil. I'm calling them out for that -- perhaps in a way that's too terse, but at least I'm not completely derailing the conversation like they're doing. But thank you for prompting a longer response from me.
throwaway8174 5y ago
I paid off all my student loan debt and bought a house last summer because I got scammed into buying ETH about 2 years ago. Thanks for your insight though.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  That just means that you were part of the scam. Hell; somebody approvingly reading this comment might be the bagholder of the future, shooting himself after all of his savings have evaporated into some ETH tycoon's pocket who dumped before the market locked up.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    Now that the bag holders include major investment houses... Well, if it's possible for a scam to have a successful "exit," that's what happened. They used their funny money to tap in to the real funny money. If all cryptocurrencies went to 0 tomorrow I wouldn't be surprised at all if some part of the "real" financial infrastructure got caught and there had to be bailouts, which we've learned is what happens when the wrong people lose a bet. There's too much money in the system now for it to all be from mom-and-pop marks. That's just not a viable explanation at these market capitalizations. That's not to say that average people aren't going to find out that they're long crypto - but it'd be in the way they found out they were long real estate.
  - throwaway8174 5y ago
- Grim-444 5y ago
  As a thought experiment, replace crypto in this situation for beanie babies. You managed to buy a bunch of beanie babies before a beanie baby craze started, and sold them at exorbitant prices to other people coming in that were convinced that beanie baby prices would only keep skyrocketing. You took their money, and now I guess as long as they're the bag holders still holding beanie babies when it all falls apart and they become worthless, and not you, it's all good. As long as you managed to make a profit and get out in time it wasn't a scam.
suikadayo 5y ago
If that’s the case, I’ve seen way more of that “social engineering” in the Bitcoin community. At least there are uses for ETH
dang 5y ago
Please don't post this sort of generic flamebait to HN. It leads to repetitive, predictable, and ultimately nasty threads. And of all the classic flamewar topics this one is probably the most predictable—just what this site is not supposed to be for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this one: "Avoid [...] generic tangents."

News flash: you were social engineered into buying ETH in the first place.

buttocks 5y ago

If a scammer scams you out of a scam, do you come out ahead?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
keithalewis 5y ago
It worked for PT Barnum.

randomhodler84 5y ago

Eth is a premine scam sure, but the dude has $130M Of it, so I don’t think he is crying over that part

MPSimmons 5y ago
How much purchasing power does that afford? If he wanted to buy an island, pay for it to have infrastructure added, and then also hire security and business payroll, could he actually exchange the Eth to the applicable currencies? I know the numbers line up, but is that amount of liquidity in the system?
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Good question. Mostly yes, but it would take some coordination. At $100M you would want to split trade across exchanges and probably some defi too, but yeah, you could. Eth has about $10M/-2% on major exchanges. Not that you would need to convert to fiat. If you ran your own island, just pay for goods and labor in Bitcoin or Ether directly.
- capableweb 5y ago
  > could he actually exchange the Eth to the applicable currencies? I know the numbers line up, but is that amount of liquidity in the system? Yes, Coinbase, Binance and other big exchanges offer OTC trading where you can trade pretty large amounts without impacting the market at large.
  - Qub3d 5y ago
    Counter-point: there is currently another submission on HN suggesting that crypto "off-ramps" are really problematic and difficult at the moment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30322296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30322296
    - capableweb 5y ago
      Breaking news: "off-ramps" to centralized currencies is centralized. It's not difficult if the source of your cryptocurrencies is legitimate, while difficult if you have a hard time explaining how it's legitimate. I think the system works as intended.
      - Qub3d 5y ago
        I'm confused then, are you in support of cryptocurrency? Because what you're describing (the "system") sounds an awful lot like reinventing banks from first principles but much less efficiently. If that is how it's intended to function then why are we bothering with this at all? And aside from KYC issues, another recently posted article pointed out that when a single individual tried to unload around a 1500 BTC (%0.03 of the coins in circulation at the time) it caused a liquidity crisis that crashed the market by 20%.[1] In this case the individual in the Twitter thread has an amount of ETH of that magnitude. Basically because crypto is performing the job of a speculative asset it results in the liquidity issues that you would see in things like company stock. [1]: https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html?m=1 https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html?m=1 (see footnote 11. The gist is that this sale put enough pressure on the order books that a lot of leverage positions cascaded into selling as well causing the flash crash)
hanniabu 5y ago
Given your username and how salty you are, I'm going to assume you invested in Bitconnect and lost everything b/c you didn't do your own research.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Haha nice one! the world is not anymore the way it used to be, mm mm NO NO No! Bitconeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeect wooo bitconnect! We are coming and we are coming in waves. We are starting and to actually go all over the world. We all built the entire world. Me? Im just out there fiat mining, stacking sats…
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't cross into personal attack. We ban accounts that do that, and we've had to warn you about this kind of thing before. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

selestify 5y ago

Low-quality comment.

bitcharmer 5y ago
I'd say GP's comment contributes more to the discussion than yours.
- selestify 5y ago
  Debatable. GP basically ignores all the interesting parts of the article being posted in order to simply say the usual spiel about how much HN hates crypto. The relevance to the original article is close to nil. I'm calling them out for that -- perhaps in a way that's too terse, but at least I'm not completely derailing the conversation like they're doing. But thank you for prompting a longer response from me.

throwaway8174 5y ago

I paid off all my student loan debt and bought a house last summer because I got scammed into buying ETH about 2 years ago. Thanks for your insight though.

pessimizer 5y ago
That just means that you were part of the scam. Hell; somebody approvingly reading this comment might be the bagholder of the future, shooting himself after all of his savings have evaporated into some ETH tycoon's pocket who dumped before the market locked up.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  Now that the bag holders include major investment houses... Well, if it's possible for a scam to have a successful "exit," that's what happened. They used their funny money to tap in to the real funny money. If all cryptocurrencies went to 0 tomorrow I wouldn't be surprised at all if some part of the "real" financial infrastructure got caught and there had to be bailouts, which we've learned is what happens when the wrong people lose a bet. There's too much money in the system now for it to all be from mom-and-pop marks. That's just not a viable explanation at these market capitalizations. That's not to say that average people aren't going to find out that they're long crypto - but it'd be in the way they found out they were long real estate.
- throwaway8174 5y ago
Grim-444 5y ago
As a thought experiment, replace crypto in this situation for beanie babies. You managed to buy a bunch of beanie babies before a beanie baby craze started, and sold them at exorbitant prices to other people coming in that were convinced that beanie baby prices would only keep skyrocketing. You took their money, and now I guess as long as they're the bag holders still holding beanie babies when it all falls apart and they become worthless, and not you, it's all good. As long as you managed to make a profit and get out in time it wasn't a scam.

suikadayo 5y ago

If that’s the case, I’ve seen way more of that “social engineering” in the Bitcoin community. At least there are uses for ETH

dang 5y ago

Please don't post this sort of generic flamebait to HN. It leads to repetitive, predictable, and ultimately nasty threads. And of all the classic flamewar topics this one is probably the most predictable—just what this site is not supposed to be for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this one: "Avoid [...] generic tangents."