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Terraform Labs Caught Moving $4.8M Through Shell Company
- rpadovani 4y agoI was confused, so I checked: this is not related in any way to the Infrastructure as Code tool.
- JustSomePackets 4y agoI was also confused, thank you for checking and posting.
- Fargoan 4y agoHow were you confused? Did you not read the article?
- kube-system 4y ago1. The article does not mention that this is unaffiliated with Hashicorp. 2. > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- cercatrova 4y agoWhy read the article when you can go to the comments to find a correction? I very rarely if ever read the article these days as usually commentors here have much more pertinent and correct information.
- digianarchist 4y agoI believe this is the name of the parent company behind the Luna cryptocurrency.
- paulgb 4y agoYes. Hashicorp is the company behind Terraform, Terraform Labs is the company behind Luna. The way you can tell them apart is that Hashicorp Terraform stabilizes at the state you configure it to, whereas Terraform Labs stabilizes at zero.
- holiveros 4y agoHahahaha, spilled my coffee over this :P
- orangepurple 4y agoThe title reads like some sort of experimental tech incubator within Hashicorp's Terraform team is shadily transferring millions. Hashicorp should sue for trademark dilution.
- LeifCarrotson 4y agoThey chose a single English word as their trademark, there are dozens of others already using very similar marks: https://uspto.report/Search/terraform https://uspto.report/Search/terraform They shouldn't be surprised if someone else also uses the same word. I'm a big fan of Yiotro Games and his naming system for Antiyoy/Bleentoro/Achikaps/Shproty: Come up with a series of letters that are easy to read, pronounce, and remember, and which are not already words when naming a project. This results in no trouble with trademarks or domain names, gives easy SEO, and isn't that hard.
- kube-system 4y agoTrademarks are industry specific, you specify what products/services you'll be using it for when you register. Because, for example, consumers aren't confused by an airline named "Delta" and a plumbing manufacturer called "Delta". Hashicorp's registration has a pretty decent lock on various descriptions of computer software.
- orangepurple 4y agoI got a good laugh out of Hashicorp's trademark registration. Cutlery??? Musical Instruments??? Fire-extinguishing apparatus??? Was someone drunk when filing? As part of their trademark documentation they took screenshots of Google search results and API docs (LOL) https://uspto.report/TM/88470183 https://uspto.report/TM/88470183 Primary US Classes 021: Electrical Apparatus, Machines and Supplies 023: Cutlery, Machinery, Tools and Parts Thereof 026: Measuring and Scientific Appliances 036: Musical Instruments and Supplies 038: Prints and Publications Primary International Class 009 - Primary Class (Electrical and scientific apparatus) Scientific, nautical, surveying, electric, photographic, cinematographic, optical, weighing, measuring, signaling, checking (supervision), lifesaving and teaching apparatus and instruments; apparatus for recording, transmission or reproduction of sound or images; magnetic data carriers, recording discs; automatic vending machines and mechanisms for coin operated apparatus; cash registers, calculating machines, data processing equipment and computers; fire-extinguishing apparatus. The same goes for their T logo trademark: https://uspto.report/TM/88470285 https://uspto.report/TM/88470285 All of Hashicorp: https://uspto.report/company/Hashicorp-Inc https://uspto.report/company/Hashicorp-Inc
- _57jb 4y agoSame here, I almost fell out of my chair.
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- bhouston 4y agoTerraform Labs was behind Terra USD stable coin which collapsed recently. It is run by South Korean crypto-entrepreneur Do Kwon. It would be interesting to see if Do Know emerges from this ultra rich as I suspect he was able to redirect some of his earnings (or should I call them winnings) out of the Terra USD stable coin and into other holdings.
- strikelaserclaw 4y agoI mean, this guy is shady yes, but the people who bought into a financial instrument without really understanding it made their bed.
- criddell 4y agoThat sounds like victim blaming. Most people couldn't tell you how a 401k works or even how a mutual fund works. It's why regulations are so important and it's why things like NFTs will probably soon be regulated as securities.
- DANK_YACHT 4y agoFinancial instruments are incredibly complex. It's very dangerous to engage with them unless you fully understand what you're getting yourself into. Other people have a huge incentive to exploit any weakness in the financial asset, even in regulated industries. For instance, BlackRock bought credit default swaps in a Spanish company, and then paid that company to default on its debt, thus making a profit at the expense of the counter party. Regulation isn't going to magically make complicated financial instruments safe. People should be aware that they're dangerous and to stay away.
- 55555 4y agoThat is incredibly shady.
- itsoktocry 4y ago>For instance, BlackRock bought credit default swaps in a Spanish company, and then paid that company to default on its debt, thus making a profit at the expense of the counter party. Do you have a source for this? I feel like some details are lacking.
- TheGigaChad 4y ago
- bdcravens 4y agoI wonder if Hashicorp has gotten any blowback from confused Luna holders. Our company gets calls all the time from people thinking we are UPS or Fedex and wondering where their package is (we audit UPS/Fedex invoices)
- kube-system 4y agoLike most of the commenters here, it also confused me, so I'd imagine it confuses a lot of people. I also once worked at a company that had a name similar to a video game. Two seconds of looking at our website would have make it obvious that we were not related, but we got a lot of calls about it anyway. We got a laugh out of it when it happened.
- whizzter 4y agoIt might be fun for those kind of scenarios but as soon as money is involved you get more and more crazy people involved that can't distinguish things (esp in a scam rich environment as "crypto"-currencies).
- bdcravens 4y agoWe had one person actually come to our office wanting to find their package. We're a small company (in terms of headcount), and don't have a glamorous office. Not sure how anyone would mistake our location for Fedex, but nevertheless this person did. I was the only one here, and there was a serious language barrier. Took several times for me to explain to him he needed to call Fedex, and that his package wasn't hiding in our office somewhere.
- caboteria 4y agoMy daughter occasionally works for a small gift shop in Dedham, MA called "Nest". She's gotten calls from people wanting tech support for Nest thermostats.
- ericbarrett 4y ago
- WinstonSmith84 4y agoSo, these guys were controlling tens of billions worth of dollars and as all failed they end up laundering 4.8M? It's either beyond desperation or maybe it's not what the author thinks it is.
- altairprime 4y agoIt could be not the only transaction, just the first one to get caught. It could be the first of many transactions, and was caught. The disparity in size between a virtual cryptocoin’s “value in USD” market assessment, and the actual dollar amount of a single financial transaction performed by that coin’s operator, provides no significant information here for estimating the total scope in USD of illicit behaviors by Terraform Labs.
- m00dy 4y agoThe market cap of Terra is about billions. It doesn't necessary mean the actual value they are controlling.
- upupandup 4y agoThe actual order books are magnitude less than the stated market cap. For instance, somebody who is a billionaire on paper with mostly crypto holdings, cannot cash out most of its wealth. When prices drop, the order books run into liquidity issues. It tells me on thing though, that most people have shunned crypto and that most of the noise we see is people holding crypto spamming to get somebody to take the otherside of their trade so they can liquidate their holdings...ironically to fiat which was the pinnacle of their narrative.
- abacadaba 4y agothey were able to sell 3 billion in btc and it got soaked up without the price dropping too much other than btc or maybe eth ya might be an issue though
- sushid 4y agoIt's because they didn't sell it directly on the market. They were sold to funds that would lock up the Lunas for 2 years and so on. The Lunas were also sold at a discount (relative to the market price back then).
- anm89 4y agoI really hope Do Kwon ends up in prison for life.
- smt88 4y agoIt seems to be the opposite. Major investors and exchanges are trying to legitimize him by supporting the Terra relaunch. It is absolutely amazing how crypto companies and enthusiasts can get scammed by someone and then go right back to trusting them, literally less than a month later. https://decrypt.co/101405/crypto-exchanges-including-binance-ftx-to-support-terra-2-0-relaunch https://decrypt.co/101405/crypto-exchanges-including-binance...
- pvarangot 4y agoIt's not trusting them as much as setting legal precedent so that they also don't end up in jail if there's a bank run on their tokens/chains.
- staticassertion 4y agoIf you're massively invested in crypto you need to pour a lot of money into legitimizing it and putting out fires wherever possible. Imagine you're running a scam on the street - let's imagine a dozen people playing "guess the card" (and cheating). Someone comes up and goes "woah, I saw that guy cheating, hey everyone this whole thing is a scam" - now you have two options, disavow that one guy and say "well the other card games are legit", or prop that scammer up and say "no no, that's just how the cards are played, it's a very complex system". The latter is appealing since it admits no fault in the system. If people generally see these card games as having a high potential for being a scam, you want to avoid that scrutiny even at a very high cost.
- georgeecollins 4y agoWhen people's beliefs are refuted they often double down on them. It's a phenomena that people have studied. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails
- naikrovek 4y agoall these high-quality individuals keep emerging out of the realm of cryptocurrency. I mean this is proof that these things are 100% above board! no bad actors here!
- baremetal 4y agoHe Kwon'ed some folks.