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Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams
- mitchbob 5y agoArchived: https://archive.ph/3wlkM https://archive.ph/3wlkM
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- TimPC 5y ago
- simondotau 5y agoSick of people calling everything in crypto a Ponzi scheme. Some crypto projects are pump and dump schemes, while others are pyramid schemes. Others are just standard issue fraud. Others are just middlemen skimming of the top. Stop glossing over the diversity in the industry. https://twitter.com/patdennis/status/1518637225789042688 https://twitter.com/patdennis/status/1518637225789042688
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoYou (or the tweet’s author) seem to be very well versed in the fine art of distinguishing different sorts of poop.
- simondotau 5y agoI would never call crypto poop. Poop can be combined with water and light to nourish plants which create food, something real and useful for humans.
- m3kw9 5y agoThat’s just insulting to ponzi!
- Nextgrid 5y agoCrypto has exactly one non-scam use-case: a way to transfer value that's more resilient to government interference. Can be used for crime, grey areas or in the very rare case where there's no other financial infrastructure to transfer value. Cryptocurrencies make various trade-offs around efficiency, energy use, user experience, etc to operate in such a hostile environment, therefore they should really be used as a last resort if there's nothing else that can achieve your objective. For most people living in the developed world and for whom government interference isn't a problem, there is no need to use cryptocurrencies. Anything else that's crypto/blockchain based but not a cryptocurrency for the purpose of transferring value is a scam - whether to scam the users (pump & dump, rug pull, etc) or to scam clueless investors who are happy to dump money into anything that uses a blockchain even though a database would be a better solution.
- 6sup6 5y agoAfter what the Canadian government managed to do with truckers crypto funds, I think it is more important than ever for people to understand what type of crypto to hold.
- colesantiago 5y agoMPesa, Paytm, Worldremit, etc. All worldwide. No need for a blockchain. Ever.
- risyachka 5y agoYou obviously are not from a third world country. It is incredibly hard and often impossible to transfer money across borders from third world countries. Or even to store them reliably. So yes, there is a huge case for blockchain
- colesantiago 5y agoSo you can't transfer money across borders using MPesa and WorldRemit even though they have been there for 15 years?
- 5y ago
- tromp 5y agoTechnology purist version: Is it a token on top of another blockchain? Yes -> scam. No -> Is it anything other than pure PoW? Yes -> scam. No -> Does it have a ICO/premine/instamine? Yes -> scam. No -> Do miners get less than 100% of block subsidy? Yes -> scam. No -> Is the source code mostly cloned from another project? Yes -> scam. No -> Is majority of supply emitted in first few years? Yes -> scammy. No -> Do creators have any expected financial gain? Yes -> scammy. No -> Maybe not a scam.
- rvz 5y agoSo essentially this [0] isn't totally a scam then? Ever since many Bitcoin clones and source derived projects with no other changes other a renaming, re-branding, block-size and tweaks and also now especially with Ethereum-based tokens that have proliferated, so did the scams. Nano seems to qualify as 'not a scam'. [0] http://nano.org http://nano.org
- SkyMarshal 5y agoDo the creators and bag holders hijack every possible thread and discussion to shill their coin all over social media? Yes -> scam. No -> Maybe not a scam.
- tzumby 5y agoI think I shared this on HN before, but highly recommend this podcast: https://cryptocriticscorner.com/ https://cryptocriticscorner.com/ It covers Worldcom all the way up to the recent Terra
- vivab0rg 5y agoI've been in crypto for 8 years. Still it's one of my favorite podcasts.
- headsoup 5y agoAlso, bitfinex'ed on Twitter (and previously Medium)
- RichardHeart 5y agoOne of the more ironic xposers, was a guy named "waronrugs" Who then went on to make a coin and rug everyone. https://twitter.com/Rekt_Tekashi/status/1394871896148172803?s=20& https://twitter.com/Rekt_Tekashi/status/1394871896148172803?...
- iamben 5y agoLove Coffeezilla. Found his channel after someone posted his Tether exposé on HN a while back - subscribed and have been watching ever since. He's genuinely entertaining, smart and fair. Very much recommended if you haven't seen any of his videos.
- photochemsyn 5y agoI'd like to see someone like this really try to explain the global non-crypto currency system as it exists today in similar detail. This after all was one of the touted reasons for crypto - it would allow people around the world to hold wealth in a stable currency that wouldn't be subject to market crashes and currency devaluations. There are so many interesting questions that remain undiscussed - such as, to what extent does petrodollar recycling matter any more in terms of the value of the $USD relative to the euro and other currencies, such as Chinese and Japanese? If investing in crypto is a scam, why isn't investing in these other currencies also a scam? It would be nice to see some real in-depth compare and contrast writeups accessible to people who aren't professional currency traders etc.
- aww_dang 5y agoDon't hold your breath waiting for The New Yorker to publish it. Expect something more along the lines of, "Central Banking: Why all detractors are conspiracy theorists, by Paul Krugman"
- michael1999 5y agoYou can’t store wealth stably in inanimate things. Wealth is always social in nature. Currencies are claims on the future production of people who want them. Their future desires and capacities defines the value.
- effingwewt 5y agoGold. Other precious/rare metals. Property. You are speaking of collectibles, not wealth/currency.
- shanusmagnus 5y agoGold's value is other people's belief in it being worth something, so they will trade other things for it. Same with other rare metals. Property has something close to intrinsic value in that it provides shelter, but the value of property is only realizable if the social context allows it to be realized -- your claim to a house is only as good as the government's willingness to recognize that claim, and to protect it for you when it is challenged by others. Point is, the devastating attacks people think they're lobbing at bitcoin when they say that it's not 'backed' by anything are neither devastating, nor unique to bitcoin: unless you're talking about a commodity that people are consuming directly, nothing is backed by anything other than socially held belief. That's all money is, when you unwind it all the way. The important question is what is the relevant society, and what beliefs do they hold?
- sremani 5y agoCoffeezilla will hate this, but he is Tai Lopez of Scam-busting ;)
- Apocryphon 5y agoHow so?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- colesantiago 5y agoCoffeezilla is right. ALL crypto is 100% scams. There is no 99%. In fact 100% of the time, they have no use case at all and they are even worse than the current system. Crypto has totally failed time and time again to prove itself. We now need to come to terms with this failed experiment and call it all off and make them all illegal, where it rightfully should reside in. I lament to think of the time wasted of many engineers building this distributed casino and ruining people's lives, these engineers in this 'web3' space should instead direct their time towards solutions to make the world a better place.
- terafo 5y ago> `“I try not to be too negative about crypto,” he told me. “I think about how we can shape it into something better—more like the future that the people making it say they want. In that way, we’re on the same side.”` Have you read the article?
- mechanical_bear 5y agoThis is the problem with the internet, it’s so hard to tell satire from actual cranks.
- awsrocks 5y ago
- ratsmack 5y agoThe whole "proof of work" concept regarding crypto is a sham. Normally, the expenditure of energy produces tangible products or services. In the case of crypto currency, massive amounts of heat is wasted to produce a number with questionable "value". I just can't wrap my head around this.
- danieldevries 5y agoI've followed Coffeezilla for a while. I was doing an AI course from another youtuber named Siraj Raval in 2019. The course ended up being totally amateur and full of empty promises. Mr Zilla did a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jmBE4yPrOs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jmBE4yPrOs 'AI Guru makes $238,800 with misleading paid course. doesn't credit developers. | Siraj Raval FGF' Then Zilla started exclusively focusing on crypto/NFT scams. The first few were interesting. Now... its a quite tedious, "the blockchain never lies...look they pulled the rug..." yawn I hope he goes back to covering other interesting topics again.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Fargoan 5y agoAgreed. It was a much more interesting channel when it was about scams in general. I suppose bsc shitcoins and what not are just easier to make videos about and it gets the views
- gk1 5y agoBefore this he had a long streak of exposing business gurus selling online courses.
- 1337biz 5y agoI guess crypto videos get him more views. Most of the videos are super boring, like yeah who would have thought that some shady YouTuber promoting a token on Binance Smart Chain would turn out to be a scam.
- danieldevries 5y agoYep. Ironically I felt he turned into the very thing he was uncovering. Towards the end of 2021 he made this promise to donate X dollars to a charity if he reached a million subs. It came across as pretty disingenuous.
- yifanl 5y agoCoffeezilla himself is invested in crypto, so this type of content is now very much in his wheelhouse. After all, being a youtuber is all about monetizing your hobbies.
- can16358p 5y agoGood for crypto. I'm a crypto enthusiast and I think crypto has a great future and work in the field. However because of many scammy projects the whole crypto ecosystem now has a bad name. I'd love to see more and more scams being exposed for healthy adoption with less manipulation and real investment to projects that have the potential to change things instead of 400000% APYs.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Feriti 5y agoSo what are real use cases in your opinion? Something which really need crypto/Blockchain and is really trustworthy? Something which doesn't break the trust Anker of a Blockchain by having any dependency outside of a Blockchain.
- abxytg 5y ago"Something which doesn't break the trust Anker of a Blockchain by having any dependency outside of a Blockchain." Only the critics look for this type of weird ideological purity. the rest of us just want somewhere to use the value we create.
- Feriti 5y agoI'm totally lost on your statement. So you try to use this tech for tech sake? Independent if there is already an existing solution? A project is trying to add Blockchain technology into a project I'm working with. Just that the Blockchain is owned by some company and that company was publicly asking people I don't know if they are able and motivated to operate a node for them. This for example sounds way more complex than just creating a company which has the purpose of being the trust Anker, implemented with technology like CA, contracts etc.
- arcticbull 5y ago> Only the critics look for this type of weird ideological purity. the rest of us just want somewhere to use the value we create. Yeah it's called the entire existing global financial network. You're creating things that have no value. Sorry, it's tough to hear, but you've been building baloney. Just building isn't good enough.
- johnebgd 5y agoBlockchain has two proven use cases: 1.) Speculative investment assets. 2.) Moving value outside of a financial system. Unregulated stable coins have proven to be as stable as the titanic was unsinkable. Number 1 is really a problem because of Number 2. Number 2 is a fancy way to describe a primary use case being money laundering. Of course though there are some instances where that’s helpful like backing a foreign government you agree with. Unfortunately, it also means countries like North Korea can use it to evade sanctions. Blockchain is largely a solution in search of a problem with speculators throwing money into stuff they don’t understand. I’m a reformed blockchain enthusiast.
- syzygyhack 5y ago> Unregulated stable coins have proven to be as stable as the titanic was unsinkable. When in the last five years have you had difficulty cashing out USDT, USDC, or DAI at dollar value?
- polygamous_bat 5y agoBecause past performance is _always_ indicative of future performance, am I right? > When in the last five years have you had difficulty cashing out USDT, USDC, or DAI at dollar value? You could have said the exact same thing about Terra/UST right until sometimes last week. It works until it doesn't.
- tomrod 5y agoTypically, past performance is indicative of future behavior. This is why statistical modeling in social sciences works somewhat okay. But there are extrapolation regions or shorter memory missing prior events that cause behavior to deviate from status quo expectation.
- polygamous_bat 5y agoYes, you could say that sometimes past performance can indicate future behavior, but it doesn't hold for crypto the same reason it doesn't hold for perpetual motion machines.
- TimPC 5y agoI think the one university that closed in Illinois due to a ransom attack made possible by Crypto will in the long run prove to be more valuable to society than all of crypto. If only we had some way of preserving all the things crypto destroys.
- dubswithus 5y agoWas ransomware really not a thing before Bitcoin?
- TimPC 5y agoIt was far rarer because it was much more difficult to collect payments.
- randomhodler84 5y agoIt was rarer because we had less computers and less interconnectness. Major incidents are caused by supply chain compromise, or very targeted attacks, all of which gets worse as the population grows. Taking payments over the internet has been fairly easy for decades. If not, do you really think we would be where we are today. I get you like to blame cryptocurrency on crime, but it is but a component, of which other components are just as critical and yet we cannot have a modern digital society without them.
- TimPC 5y agoTaking regulated payments subject to financial law as a Russian hacker group is quite difficult. Bitcoin is used in nearly all ransomware attacks precisely because it is unregulated. The idea that they’d just take PayPal without Bitcoin is laughable.
- polygamous_bat 5y agoIt may have, but crypto allowed it to become truly scalable. Before, you had to coordinate with each of your victims about how to receive the ransom while trying to evade the authorities. Now you can just take over a random machine, paint a Bitcoin address on the screen, and voila, you're done.
- benreesman 5y agoHN hasn’t been this rabidly, vocally mad at something since levels.fyi outed FAANG comp. Ads? Evil, useless, fuck those people making 10x me. Recommender systems? Evil, creepy, fuck those people making all that money. You can short this shit. You can short Google stock. You can short Bitcoin. So if it’s all one big phony ads tracking machine learning Ponzi scheme scam? Don’t bitch and moan to the choir, profit from it! Repeating the same arguments ad nauseum on here takes calories you could be using grind leetcode and get that leet job. ducks
- _vertigo 5y agoShorting something propped up by insane levels of hype is a recipe for massive losses. As they say, the market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Shorting things you disagree with morally is also a terrible idea, unless you also think they are bad business. I disagree with a lot of “money printing” tech on moral grounds, if I shorted those I’d be bankrupt.
- benreesman 5y agoSure, and for most people the right amount of short to be is just not long. My broader point is that HN is pretty selective on which “useless” or “evil” things it will utterly lose its shit over and it seems to be, roughly, things where other hackers make a pile except YC portfolio companies.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bigbillheck 5y ago> Don’t bitch and moan to the choir, profit from it! I'm not going to throw away whatever little dignity I have left in order to try and profit off of anything relating to cryptocurrency.
- randomhodler84 5y agoThere is no dignity in watching your life savings evaporate from inflation caused by politicians and governments beyond your control. Inflation is the cruelest way to invalidate the fruit of the labor of a man’s life.
- paulpauper 5y agoAnd yet the livestream giveaway scams persist on YouTube. Scammers earning so much. At any moment you can find at least 10 videos running concurrently, each with money in the associated crypto addresses. The smart scammers are not doing NFT tomfoolery, they are doing fake Saylor and Musk giveaways instead and earning far more money much more consistently. While YouTube does nothing. Cofeezilla is not going to stop people from continuing to fall for these much more persistent scams. Its going to have to come from youtube.
- mrmuagi 5y agoAs long as there are stressed and/or gullible people, there is an avenue for these "smart scams". I distinctly remember getting junk spam physical mail as a kid, saying if you send back $60 dollars they will share the method to work from home / easy money scheme. It feeds on desperation and stress to hinder rational decision making skills. We also have things like the lottery where people buy in to the idea theres a infintismely small chance to actually win but the emotional side of the brain takes over and ignores it.
- jerriep 5y agoA couple of years ago I watched a lot of Coffeezille, Spencer Cornelia and some others who exposed online scams. Initially, I found it entertaining but over time I came to the conclusion that their videos aren't really protecting anyone. They themselves (Coffee, Spencer, etc) admit on some of their videos do basically nothing to protect anyone from scams. You can literally shove tons of evidence in someone's face that guru X is a scammer, and they still won't believe it. So, I have come to the conclusion that they (Coffee, Spencer, etc) are as much part of that whole ecosystem as the scammers themselves. They don't do this to protect anyone - if they wanted to they can simply go with their evidence to the authorities. They depend on these scammers to make videos from which they can make money. And that is all it is about to them in the end - about making money. If the scammers went away tomorrow they'd be out of a career as well.
- ea550ff70a 5y agoCoffee's videos are great. I am a crypto enthusiast but also recognize that for each semi decent project there are 1000 more that are straight up scams. We need more folks like Coffee exposing these people in order to help clean the space.
- andrius-b 5y agoI think his content used to be way better on his previuos channel CoffeBreak: https://youtube.com/c/CoffeeBreaks https://youtube.com/c/CoffeeBreaks
- lloydatkinson 5y agoImplying crypto isn’t a scam anyway. Is there a word for that?