42 ms·

I watched a friend of mine pump a shitcoin on Binance by buying billboards

436 points by mathgenius 4y ago

anewpersonality 4y ago
- rvz 4y ago
  There you go. No different to pumping and dumping SPAC stocks and FOMOing in after the pump and losing on the dump.
- prvit 4y ago
  Indeed, this is downright hilarious. And in the end, there were no victims. Nobody lost anything, all the investors got to keep their DOCKs.
  - advisedwang 4y ago
    > there were no victims. Nobody lost anything, all the investors got to keep their DOCKs. That so absurd, is it a parody I'm missing? The scammer started with USD, bought DOCK cheap and sold high, and ended with more USD. Big winner. The scamees started with USD, bought DOCK high and either kept their (now worthless) DOCK or sold it at a big loss. Unless one day DOCK does turn out to be the next BTC, they're huge losers here.
    - prvit 4y ago
      There's no scam. The fundamentals of DOCK didn't change at all, temporary fluctuations in the value of the token aren't realized losses.
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      Yes it is sarcasm. I hope anyway.
    - svnt 4y ago
      It’s the same argument the amoral equities players will give you, just translated to DOCK.
epups 4y ago
Looking at the video this guy paid $30k for (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc7ugkT2N9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc7ugkT2N9E), it got 40,000 views. Assuming these numbers are completely legit - hard when you are literally hiring a scammer -, the person pumping the shitcoin paid almost 1 USD per viewer. I wonder what the ROI for this was.
- paulgb 4y ago
  $30k to promote the video and they can't record an audio track that doesn't clip? I opened this for two seconds and it sounds like nails on a chalkboard.
  - VoodooJuJu 4y ago
    I wonder if it's kind of like "Nigerian prince" scammers who intentionally use bad English in their emails. The idea is the class of people who are impervious to their scams are filtered out by these typos. By filtering people at the start of the scam "pipeline", it saves the scammer time. Maybe the bad audio is here is serving as a sort of filter as well.
    - prvit 4y ago
      There's also the very real fact that most of those scammers can barely speak English, so they don't really have any other option. Even if they source a well written starting email, the facade will fall apart immediately once they have to write something by themselves.
    - brazzy 4y ago
      Where would be the pipeline, though? The pump&dumper doesn't spend time working on individual buyers here, do they?
    - dkarl 4y ago
      Plus you're targeting people who are not polished and accomplished themselves with the pitch that they can make money at a rate that very few other people are achieving. If the video looks polished and professional it'll be easier for them to realize that they're the mark, they're the ones getting scammed. A poorly produced but heavily promoted video primes them to think that someone like them can make a huge score doing something that conventionally successful and savvy people are overlooking.
the_biot 4y ago
From TFA: "If some random guy did all of this with < $200k... To what extent could you manipulate a larger coin if you had billions?" https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/nouriel-roubini-elon-musk-bitcoin-tweets-sec-investigate-market-manipulation-2021-2-1030074013 https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/nouriel-...
- dexterdog 4y ago
  Totally. They're all shitcoins if the con-man has enough to bait with.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    "Every coin's a shitcoin if you throw enough shit at the coin."
- chrisco255 4y ago
  To what extent could you manipulate every financial market if you had trillions? That's called central banking.
  - MarkMarine 4y ago
    You don’t need trillions, Jim Cramer is a joke now but he used to do this with his hedge fund, and bragged about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/lg0ial/jim_cramer_explains_how_he_manipulated_the_market/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/lg0ial/jim_cramer_e...
  - fny 4y ago
    Equating shitcoin pumping to central banking is hilariously absurd. While I do agree that central banking has gone too far, central bankers--at least in developed countries--are not on some blatant mission to rob people of money for their own enrichment. Sure corruption might happen on the fringes, but it's not the primary intent. Pump and dumps are pump and dumps. The primary mission is to fuck others over.
TheGigaChad 4y ago
gonzo41 4y ago
Interesting choice of friends. All bitcoin (and crypto) is a zero sum game. I don't see the value outside of the sunk cost the energy on mining.
- usrusr 4y ago
  I think it's safe to assume that the person posting is "bragging for a friend"
- deweller 4y ago
  Crypto is not a zero-sum game. You may not see it, but there is value in decentralized digital currency.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    ... such as? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
    - galangalalgol 4y ago
      The idea was that it would be immune to nation states playing fiscal games, but the digital currencies seem to be following the stock markets behavior more closely than things like gold, which seems to imply that isn't the case? Anonymous currencies for purchasing things that are illegal in the jurisdiction of the seller and/or buyer certainly have a value, but more as a service than a currency, so I wouldn't expect to make money sitting on coins. Instead I'd expect the payoff to be for buying them from the illegal sellers to sell to the illegal buyers. Essentially, being a launderer with possibly lower risk and less effort than in the past.
      - malermeister 4y ago
        I'm not sure that enabling illegal things is a positive value though. Sure, there might be some things that are banned for dumb reasons (cannabis comes to mind), but if you enable any and all commerce, you end up also enabling stuff like assassinations and child abuse. Imo a currency that makes those possible has negative value. Regarding the "fiscal games" by nation states part - in democratic societies those "games" are policy decisions, voted for by the people. I find trying to circumvent the will of the people as expressed in a democratic vote morally questionable, and think that enabling antidemocratic behavior, too, is negative value. (Not to mention that it doesn't work anyways, as you noted).
doix 4y ago
I always wondered about those crypto ads for shit coins. I was walking through Dubai airport back in November/December last year and I saw "Floki Inu" on pretty much every screen, they looked like this [0]. I assumed it was some pump and dump and wondered who was behind it and how they had enough money to buy all those ads. Turns out it's not that expensive and the returns look like they are worth it... [0] https://imgur.com/dWcGNZ9 https://imgur.com/dWcGNZ9
- wodenokoto 4y ago
  They are still advertising in Dubai. They’ve moved on to “kiba inu” from apparently selling shiba inu last year.
- mcintyre1994 4y ago
  That Floki one was all over the London underground last year as well. They used the tagline "Missed Doge? Get Floki", which is about as bad as the other one I kept seeing, something like "When you see crypto on the underground, it's time to buy" by some exchange. Anyway the Floki one got banned: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/02/watchdog-bans-floki-inu-cryptocurrency-campaign-on-london-tube-elon-musk https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/02/watchdog-... And yes, Floki Inu is named after Elon Musk's dog...
  - carrja99 4y ago
    Geez the obsession with Elon. There's about a hundred Elon + Doge themed shitcoins. ElonShibe, Elon Mars, etc.
  - qff 4y ago
    Interesting! These were on a bunch of busses in Copenhagen as well. The ads were so low effort, I've never seen anything like it. They looked almost like they were made in MS Paint, and then they seemed to have used Google Translate to translate the phrase "Missed Bitcoin? Buy Floki". They used the wrong Danish word for "miss" meaning "I missed my mom" rather than the one meaning "I missed the bus". The ad still kind of worked, but it definitely would have made more sense if they'd used the intended word.
ausbah 4y ago
reading through reply tweets of pro-crypto ppl, it's amazing how some parts of the "crypto community" view shameless grifting and scams as a valid hustle for money
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  I think integrity in business has been steadily devalued by various crises and scandals (Enron, 2008, Worldcom) to the point that it sometimes seems quaint to even expect it anymore. Something similar seems to have happened with sponsored content - both influencers and celebrities have few qualms about using their name to sell the most questionable shit. Maybe it was always like this, but I don't recall there being so many celebrity ads when I was a teenager.
  - the_biot 4y ago
    This, so much. There are a few Youtube channels I used to follow, that over time degraded into shameless shilling for completely irrelevant (to the channel) crap, and sometimes outright infomercials. I've tried engaging with the channel owners on this, and they literally don't understand what you're talking about. These people started out passionately showing stuff they do in their garage, and now don't understand the concept of NOT doing everything 100% for the money. Shilling, scamming, it's all the new normal to these people.
    - ElevenLathe 4y ago
      More likely they now face a choice between shilling for shady VPN companies while doing fun stuff in their garage or doing less fun stuff in their garage while they work a real job to support it. Easy choice, IMO.
  - svnt 4y ago
    You were probably a teenager during Youtube’s (and every other online video service’s) extensive loss-leading period where they didn’t show ads. It’s a standard practice for VC viral growth. It really was a golden age for online video.
- 4y ago
0xbadc0de5 4y ago
I realize comparisons to Tulip Mania [1] aren't necessarily apt, but listening to the home improvement contractor I hired explain his crypto strategy certainly did leave me with that "peak bubble" vibe [2]. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_bulb_market_bubble.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_bulb_market... [2] https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/04/15/211503/index.htm https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archiv...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- phabricator 4y ago
  Tulip mania is the go-to comment for every post about crypto on HN, you don't need the link. Shocked no one called this a Ponzi scheme yet.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    TFA isn't describing a Ponzi scheme because (as far as we know) the person doing the machinations doesn't run the scheme (underlying "coin") and doesn't use new investors' money to pay off existing ones. It's just a pump and dump (buy while something is cheap, hype it up to make the price go up, then sell at the top).
    - phabricator 4y ago
      I know, still surprised no one has called it that
  - efficax 4y ago
    tulip mania and ponzi schemes come up for a good reason
    - johnnymorgan 4y ago
      ..and those reason are what exactly in relation to the solve of the Byzantium Generals problem? USD is still the goto choice for ponzi and scams in general, does that invalidate it's utility?
throwawayfffff 4y ago
I see USA as a big casino (with few expections)
- fny 4y ago
  It's not a casino for those who own the games.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Well it is. It is their casino.
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
almost everyone in crypto is a grifter. from the VCs, to the guy making this ad to the guy posting on twitter about it.
- olalonde 4y ago
  Not everyone though, e.g. Bitcoin maximalists. Even within the Ethereum community, there are many who are anti shitcoins, anti shit tokens, etc.
  - twiceaday 4y ago
    "I don't shill btc and attack everything else including fiat so that my net worth goes to the moon, no sir, I do it for other, non-profit-seeking motives. Getting wildly rich will just be an unfortunate byproduct of me following my moral code and various philosophies I recently adopted."
- etaioinshrdlu 4y ago
  The difference between a grift and a real coin seems to be kind of small. If you keep on developing and pushing the coin/project forever, it's not considered a grift. It's only a grift once you stop it.
- yomkippur 4y ago
werdnapk 4y ago
Pump and dumps are illegal.
- jaimehrubiks 4y ago
  This. Some people don't seem to understand. Which could be explained by the lack of enforcement, not sure. How many of them have been prosecuted? Maybe only a few biggest players that didn't hide themselves
- the_biot 4y ago
  Pump and dumps of securities are illegal. I can only assume the SEC doesn't consider cryptocurrencies securities, or Elon Musk wouldn't have gotten away with his utterly blatant bitcoin pump and dump. He did it in public on twitter, using a pubicly listed company's money. Do what he did with a stock, and you're toast.
  - ChrisLomont 4y ago
    There is still good old fraud, which is what the Feds indicted John McAfee over for pump and dump of crypto. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/feds-indict-john-mcafee-for-cryptocurrency-pump-and-dump-fraud/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/feds-indict-john...
olalonde 4y ago
Did it work though? Was the scheme actually profitable in the end? Color me skeptical...
SilverBirch 4y ago
What I really don't understand about this shitcoins is the scale of it. When I read this story I basically thought "ok, but you're going to spend a load of money pumping but there's no way there's liquidity for you to actually perform your dump". But if you look up DOCK today you'll see its market cap is $14m and it's daily traded volume is $1.5m. I would get it that you could move some of these coins using a few bill boards and some sponsored ad reads if they were tiny volume traded, but the implication of this is that millions of dollars are moving back and forth every day on a coin that has absolutely nothing going for it. Who is doing that? There can't possibly be retail moving in and out of this stuff. Really I kind of assume this all has to be wash trading right?
- rglullis 4y ago
  Wash trading and bots.
- sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
  I don't know.... What do you need to have a daily traded volume of $1m? Lets find examples. E.g. 1 - you need e.g. 1k people trading $1k Is that unrealistic? I don't know. The world is a very big place with a lot of stupid people. But wait! all of these morons use stupid leverage. Many of these platforms give you 100x. Yes, really. Here's a few more ways that you can get $1m daily: e.g. 2 - 1k people putting up $10 with 100x leverage e.g. 3 - 100 people putting up $100 with 100x leverage Neither of these look unrealistic to me.
  - dwild 4y ago
    > - 100 people putting up $100 with 100x leverage You just made me realize how much cash trading platform probably are making using leverage. That explain why they were so quick to add theses coins. I'm curious to know how they manage the risk though.
    - sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
      Hmmmm do fees scale with leverage? I don't know if that's true... My understanding is that leverage is profitable to trading platforms, not because the fees are bigger, but because bigger leverage is "more fun" and so people trade more. I don't know, you might be right.
seydor 4y ago
This story is BS, its an 100% pump for 15 minutes in both graphs for what seems to be a tiny amount of money. His friend probably spent way more for those billboards. This is much easier to do with sending a message to one of those discord "pump groups". Go to any altcoin in binance that has some, but not a lot of daily volume, and you will see the same patterns multiple times a day
- devoutsalsa 4y ago
  Is there something about the Binance Smart Chain and/or BNB Chain that makes it ideal for launching a shitcoin?
- atourgates 4y ago
  I was trying to figure this aspect out. Looking at the release date of the Video (July 7, 2021) - it looks like the Dock went from about $0.06 to about $0.09. About a 33% increase. If you held $1M in the coin, you'd get a ~$300k return. I could easily see those billboards eating up a big chunk of that. Is it possible that someone made some money here? Yes. Did anyone get rich quick overnight off this particular pump & dump? Probably not.
  - dmix 4y ago
    > Did anyone get rich quick overnight off this particular pump & dump? Probably not. Most importantly it was also very risky. No way it was a sure thing the return would be higher than the investment.
  - svnt 4y ago
    Great business for the arms dealers though: the billboard companies and Youtube shills. “Holding a bunch of shitcoin? Desperate to get in on the game that billionaires play? Pay us to help you!” If you wanted to spend $200k to prove to yourself that you missed the boat, this is a good way to do it.
  - enlyth 4y ago
    There is no way you'd be able to cash out $1.3M if most of the liquidity is simply not there, the price would crater immediately. You'd have to sell to yourself.
labrador 4y ago
Somehow I missed Crackle TV's 'Startup' (2016). I just finished the first season. The show so far has been spot in in illustrating the crypto world we live in today. I'm wondering if this show didn't help fuel the run up in crypto prices in 2017.
anotherhue 4y ago
Crypto: "Speedrunning financial regulation" (quote stolen)
throwawayy99 4y ago
Another example of a crypto pump scam that I've been watching the last few months is luckyblock.com / LBLOCK. These guys (finixio.com) have extracted upwards of 10M USD from the project, all the while making outlandish promises of riches to the "hodlers" but ultimately never making good on them. Like the DOCK example it's all about high profile shill marketing.
walrus01 4y ago
the good 'ol pump and dump will be familiar to anyone who has ever studied small cap canadian mining/oil/gas stocks. this is just a little bit more obvious and blatant.
yomkippur 4y ago
Really sad to see people on the other side of this being duped into buying into a pump and dump. I can't fathom how some people think making money like this won't come with karmic consequences. Money is life. Taking peoples money like this can't be good.
retcon 4y ago
That's nothing I watched Oracle pump Oracle 6 all down route 101. Edit: see the shareholder suits that followed. Customers were also buying bits and a promise ^h^h support and getting their assets frozen.

436 points by mathgenius 4y ago

rvz 4y ago
There you go. No different to pumping and dumping SPAC stocks and FOMOing in after the pump and losing on the dump.
prvit 4y ago
Indeed, this is downright hilarious. And in the end, there were no victims. Nobody lost anything, all the investors got to keep their DOCKs.
- advisedwang 4y ago
  > there were no victims. Nobody lost anything, all the investors got to keep their DOCKs. That so absurd, is it a parody I'm missing? The scammer started with USD, bought DOCK cheap and sold high, and ended with more USD. Big winner. The scamees started with USD, bought DOCK high and either kept their (now worthless) DOCK or sold it at a big loss. Unless one day DOCK does turn out to be the next BTC, they're huge losers here.
  - prvit 4y ago
    There's no scam. The fundamentals of DOCK didn't change at all, temporary fluctuations in the value of the token aren't realized losses.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Yes it is sarcasm. I hope anyway.
  - svnt 4y ago
    It’s the same argument the amoral equities players will give you, just translated to DOCK.

Looking at the video this guy paid $30k for (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc7ugkT2N9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc7ugkT2N9E), it got 40,000 views. Assuming these numbers are completely legit - hard when you are literally hiring a scammer -, the person pumping the shitcoin paid almost 1 USD per viewer. I wonder what the ROI for this was.

paulgb 4y ago
$30k to promote the video and they can't record an audio track that doesn't clip? I opened this for two seconds and it sounds like nails on a chalkboard.
- VoodooJuJu 4y ago
  I wonder if it's kind of like "Nigerian prince" scammers who intentionally use bad English in their emails. The idea is the class of people who are impervious to their scams are filtered out by these typos. By filtering people at the start of the scam "pipeline", it saves the scammer time. Maybe the bad audio is here is serving as a sort of filter as well.
  - prvit 4y ago
    There's also the very real fact that most of those scammers can barely speak English, so they don't really have any other option. Even if they source a well written starting email, the facade will fall apart immediately once they have to write something by themselves.
  - brazzy 4y ago
    Where would be the pipeline, though? The pump&dumper doesn't spend time working on individual buyers here, do they?
  - dkarl 4y ago
    Plus you're targeting people who are not polished and accomplished themselves with the pitch that they can make money at a rate that very few other people are achieving. If the video looks polished and professional it'll be easier for them to realize that they're the mark, they're the ones getting scammed. A poorly produced but heavily promoted video primes them to think that someone like them can make a huge score doing something that conventionally successful and savvy people are overlooking.

the_biot 4y ago

From TFA: "If some random guy did all of this with < $200k... To what extent could you manipulate a larger coin if you had billions?" https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/nouriel-roubini-elon-musk-bitcoin-tweets-sec-investigate-market-manipulation-2021-2-1030074013 https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/nouriel-...

dexterdog 4y ago
Totally. They're all shitcoins if the con-man has enough to bait with.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  "Every coin's a shitcoin if you throw enough shit at the coin."
chrisco255 4y ago
To what extent could you manipulate every financial market if you had trillions? That's called central banking.
- MarkMarine 4y ago
  You don’t need trillions, Jim Cramer is a joke now but he used to do this with his hedge fund, and bragged about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/lg0ial/jim_cramer_explains_how_he_manipulated_the_market/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/lg0ial/jim_cramer_e...
- fny 4y ago
  Equating shitcoin pumping to central banking is hilariously absurd. While I do agree that central banking has gone too far, central bankers--at least in developed countries--are not on some blatant mission to rob people of money for their own enrichment. Sure corruption might happen on the fringes, but it's not the primary intent. Pump and dumps are pump and dumps. The primary mission is to fuck others over.

TheGigaChad 4y ago

gonzo41 4y ago

Interesting choice of friends. All bitcoin (and crypto) is a zero sum game. I don't see the value outside of the sunk cost the energy on mining.

usrusr 4y ago
I think it's safe to assume that the person posting is "bragging for a friend"
deweller 4y ago
Crypto is not a zero-sum game. You may not see it, but there is value in decentralized digital currency.
- malermeister 4y ago
  ... such as? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
  - galangalalgol 4y ago
    The idea was that it would be immune to nation states playing fiscal games, but the digital currencies seem to be following the stock markets behavior more closely than things like gold, which seems to imply that isn't the case? Anonymous currencies for purchasing things that are illegal in the jurisdiction of the seller and/or buyer certainly have a value, but more as a service than a currency, so I wouldn't expect to make money sitting on coins. Instead I'd expect the payoff to be for buying them from the illegal sellers to sell to the illegal buyers. Essentially, being a launderer with possibly lower risk and less effort than in the past.
    - malermeister 4y ago
      I'm not sure that enabling illegal things is a positive value though. Sure, there might be some things that are banned for dumb reasons (cannabis comes to mind), but if you enable any and all commerce, you end up also enabling stuff like assassinations and child abuse. Imo a currency that makes those possible has negative value. Regarding the "fiscal games" by nation states part - in democratic societies those "games" are policy decisions, voted for by the people. I find trying to circumvent the will of the people as expressed in a democratic vote morally questionable, and think that enabling antidemocratic behavior, too, is negative value. (Not to mention that it doesn't work anyways, as you noted).

doix 4y ago

I always wondered about those crypto ads for shit coins. I was walking through Dubai airport back in November/December last year and I saw "Floki Inu" on pretty much every screen, they looked like this [0]. I assumed it was some pump and dump and wondered who was behind it and how they had enough money to buy all those ads. Turns out it's not that expensive and the returns look like they are worth it... [0] https://imgur.com/dWcGNZ9 https://imgur.com/dWcGNZ9

wodenokoto 4y ago
They are still advertising in Dubai. They’ve moved on to “kiba inu” from apparently selling shiba inu last year.
mcintyre1994 4y ago
That Floki one was all over the London underground last year as well. They used the tagline "Missed Doge? Get Floki", which is about as bad as the other one I kept seeing, something like "When you see crypto on the underground, it's time to buy" by some exchange. Anyway the Floki one got banned: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/02/watchdog-bans-floki-inu-cryptocurrency-campaign-on-london-tube-elon-musk https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/02/watchdog-... And yes, Floki Inu is named after Elon Musk's dog...
- carrja99 4y ago
  Geez the obsession with Elon. There's about a hundred Elon + Doge themed shitcoins. ElonShibe, Elon Mars, etc.
- qff 4y ago
  Interesting! These were on a bunch of busses in Copenhagen as well. The ads were so low effort, I've never seen anything like it. They looked almost like they were made in MS Paint, and then they seemed to have used Google Translate to translate the phrase "Missed Bitcoin? Buy Floki". They used the wrong Danish word for "miss" meaning "I missed my mom" rather than the one meaning "I missed the bus". The ad still kind of worked, but it definitely would have made more sense if they'd used the intended word.

ausbah 4y ago

reading through reply tweets of pro-crypto ppl, it's amazing how some parts of the "crypto community" view shameless grifting and scams as a valid hustle for money

AlexandrB 4y ago
I think integrity in business has been steadily devalued by various crises and scandals (Enron, 2008, Worldcom) to the point that it sometimes seems quaint to even expect it anymore. Something similar seems to have happened with sponsored content - both influencers and celebrities have few qualms about using their name to sell the most questionable shit. Maybe it was always like this, but I don't recall there being so many celebrity ads when I was a teenager.
- the_biot 4y ago
  This, so much. There are a few Youtube channels I used to follow, that over time degraded into shameless shilling for completely irrelevant (to the channel) crap, and sometimes outright infomercials. I've tried engaging with the channel owners on this, and they literally don't understand what you're talking about. These people started out passionately showing stuff they do in their garage, and now don't understand the concept of NOT doing everything 100% for the money. Shilling, scamming, it's all the new normal to these people.
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    More likely they now face a choice between shilling for shady VPN companies while doing fun stuff in their garage or doing less fun stuff in their garage while they work a real job to support it. Easy choice, IMO.
- svnt 4y ago
  You were probably a teenager during Youtube’s (and every other online video service’s) extensive loss-leading period where they didn’t show ads. It’s a standard practice for VC viral growth. It really was a golden age for online video.
4y ago

0xbadc0de5 4y ago

I realize comparisons to Tulip Mania [1] aren't necessarily apt, but listening to the home improvement contractor I hired explain his crypto strategy certainly did leave me with that "peak bubble" vibe [2]. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_bulb_market_bubble.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_bulb_market... [2] https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/04/15/211503/index.htm https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archiv...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
phabricator 4y ago
Tulip mania is the go-to comment for every post about crypto on HN, you don't need the link. Shocked no one called this a Ponzi scheme yet.
- sofixa 4y ago
  TFA isn't describing a Ponzi scheme because (as far as we know) the person doing the machinations doesn't run the scheme (underlying "coin") and doesn't use new investors' money to pay off existing ones. It's just a pump and dump (buy while something is cheap, hype it up to make the price go up, then sell at the top).
  - phabricator 4y ago
    I know, still surprised no one has called it that
- efficax 4y ago
  tulip mania and ponzi schemes come up for a good reason
  - johnnymorgan 4y ago
    ..and those reason are what exactly in relation to the solve of the Byzantium Generals problem? USD is still the goto choice for ponzi and scams in general, does that invalidate it's utility?

throwawayfffff 4y ago

I see USA as a big casino (with few expections)

fny 4y ago
It's not a casino for those who own the games.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Well it is. It is their casino.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

almost everyone in crypto is a grifter. from the VCs, to the guy making this ad to the guy posting on twitter about it.

olalonde 4y ago
Not everyone though, e.g. Bitcoin maximalists. Even within the Ethereum community, there are many who are anti shitcoins, anti shit tokens, etc.
- twiceaday 4y ago
  "I don't shill btc and attack everything else including fiat so that my net worth goes to the moon, no sir, I do it for other, non-profit-seeking motives. Getting wildly rich will just be an unfortunate byproduct of me following my moral code and various philosophies I recently adopted."
etaioinshrdlu 4y ago
The difference between a grift and a real coin seems to be kind of small. If you keep on developing and pushing the coin/project forever, it's not considered a grift. It's only a grift once you stop it.
yomkippur 4y ago

werdnapk 4y ago

Pump and dumps are illegal.

jaimehrubiks 4y ago
This. Some people don't seem to understand. Which could be explained by the lack of enforcement, not sure. How many of them have been prosecuted? Maybe only a few biggest players that didn't hide themselves
the_biot 4y ago
Pump and dumps of securities are illegal. I can only assume the SEC doesn't consider cryptocurrencies securities, or Elon Musk wouldn't have gotten away with his utterly blatant bitcoin pump and dump. He did it in public on twitter, using a pubicly listed company's money. Do what he did with a stock, and you're toast.
- ChrisLomont 4y ago
  There is still good old fraud, which is what the Feds indicted John McAfee over for pump and dump of crypto. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/feds-indict-john-mcafee-for-cryptocurrency-pump-and-dump-fraud/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/feds-indict-john...

olalonde 4y ago

Did it work though? Was the scheme actually profitable in the end? Color me skeptical...

SilverBirch 4y ago

What I really don't understand about this shitcoins is the scale of it. When I read this story I basically thought "ok, but you're going to spend a load of money pumping but there's no way there's liquidity for you to actually perform your dump". But if you look up DOCK today you'll see its market cap is $14m and it's daily traded volume is $1.5m. I would get it that you could move some of these coins using a few bill boards and some sponsored ad reads if they were tiny volume traded, but the implication of this is that millions of dollars are moving back and forth every day on a coin that has absolutely nothing going for it. Who is doing that? There can't possibly be retail moving in and out of this stuff. Really I kind of assume this all has to be wash trading right?

rglullis 4y ago
Wash trading and bots.
sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
I don't know.... What do you need to have a daily traded volume of $1m? Lets find examples. E.g. 1 - you need e.g. 1k people trading $1k Is that unrealistic? I don't know. The world is a very big place with a lot of stupid people. But wait! all of these morons use stupid leverage. Many of these platforms give you 100x. Yes, really. Here's a few more ways that you can get $1m daily: e.g. 2 - 1k people putting up $10 with 100x leverage e.g. 3 - 100 people putting up $100 with 100x leverage Neither of these look unrealistic to me.
- dwild 4y ago
  > - 100 people putting up $100 with 100x leverage You just made me realize how much cash trading platform probably are making using leverage. That explain why they were so quick to add theses coins. I'm curious to know how they manage the risk though.
  - sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
    Hmmmm do fees scale with leverage? I don't know if that's true... My understanding is that leverage is profitable to trading platforms, not because the fees are bigger, but because bigger leverage is "more fun" and so people trade more. I don't know, you might be right.

seydor 4y ago

This story is BS, its an 100% pump for 15 minutes in both graphs for what seems to be a tiny amount of money. His friend probably spent way more for those billboards. This is much easier to do with sending a message to one of those discord "pump groups". Go to any altcoin in binance that has some, but not a lot of daily volume, and you will see the same patterns multiple times a day

devoutsalsa 4y ago
Is there something about the Binance Smart Chain and/or BNB Chain that makes it ideal for launching a shitcoin?
atourgates 4y ago
I was trying to figure this aspect out. Looking at the release date of the Video (July 7, 2021) - it looks like the Dock went from about $0.06 to about $0.09. About a 33% increase. If you held $1M in the coin, you'd get a ~$300k return. I could easily see those billboards eating up a big chunk of that. Is it possible that someone made some money here? Yes. Did anyone get rich quick overnight off this particular pump & dump? Probably not.
- dmix 4y ago
  > Did anyone get rich quick overnight off this particular pump & dump? Probably not. Most importantly it was also very risky. No way it was a sure thing the return would be higher than the investment.
- svnt 4y ago
  Great business for the arms dealers though: the billboard companies and Youtube shills. “Holding a bunch of shitcoin? Desperate to get in on the game that billionaires play? Pay us to help you!” If you wanted to spend $200k to prove to yourself that you missed the boat, this is a good way to do it.
- enlyth 4y ago
  There is no way you'd be able to cash out $1.3M if most of the liquidity is simply not there, the price would crater immediately. You'd have to sell to yourself.

labrador 4y ago

Somehow I missed Crackle TV's 'Startup' (2016). I just finished the first season. The show so far has been spot in in illustrating the crypto world we live in today. I'm wondering if this show didn't help fuel the run up in crypto prices in 2017.

anotherhue 4y ago

Crypto: "Speedrunning financial regulation" (quote stolen)

throwawayy99 4y ago

Another example of a crypto pump scam that I've been watching the last few months is luckyblock.com / LBLOCK. These guys (finixio.com) have extracted upwards of 10M USD from the project, all the while making outlandish promises of riches to the "hodlers" but ultimately never making good on them. Like the DOCK example it's all about high profile shill marketing.

walrus01 4y ago

the good 'ol pump and dump will be familiar to anyone who has ever studied small cap canadian mining/oil/gas stocks. this is just a little bit more obvious and blatant.

yomkippur 4y ago

Really sad to see people on the other side of this being duped into buying into a pump and dump. I can't fathom how some people think making money like this won't come with karmic consequences. Money is life. Taking peoples money like this can't be good.

retcon 4y ago

That's nothing I watched Oracle pump Oracle 6 all down route 101. Edit: see the shareholder suits that followed. Customers were also buying bits and a promise ^h^h support and getting their assets frozen.