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The FBI created a coin to investigate crypto pump-and-dump schemes
- Elizabeth0147 2y ago[dead]
- nunobrito 2y ago[flagged]
- LiquidSky 2y agoHeh, yeah, I was thinking "so did the NSA".
- TrapLord_Rhodo 2y agoIs this a thing?... I never thought about it before... but after reading the "The Shadow Factory" I totally understand they could do that... It's halvings are correlated to right before a presidential elections which seems suspicious. But why? Is it a giant honeypot that got out of hand?
- cut3 2y agoDigital transactions being easier to track than physical ones is my guess. Everything I buy with crypto is attached to my wallet. No one knows what I bought with cash or traded items for.
- nunobrito 2y agoIt was quite convenient in those days to convince drug dealers to adopt bitcoin exactly because of that. Eventually all the smart ones moved to monero where privacy between transactions is beyond doubt. Trivia: 1) Guess which crypto is now being delisted from all major exchanges? 2) Now guess which crypto the US gov is actively purchasing/supporting?
- j-bos 2y agoFor fun try googling the Japanese translations of "nakamoto" and "satoshi".
- wizzwizz4 2y agoThey look like names to me. What are you referring to?
- j-bos 2y agoHuh, I guess google really isn't what it used to be. Nakamoto can be translated s central: https://www.bing.com/search?q=nakamoto+etymology&pq=nakamoto+etymology https://www.bing.com/search?q=nakamoto+etymology&pq=nakamoto... and Satoshi can be translated as intellingence: https://www.bing.com/search?q=satoshi+etymology&pq=satoshi+etymology https://www.bing.com/search?q=satoshi+etymology&pq=satoshi+e...
- TrapLord_Rhodo 2y agonow try ""moto" and "satoshi"
- shortrounddev2 2y ago[flagged]
- piva00 2y agoWho do you propose should investigate?
- uoaei 2y agoProbably the Secret Service. They investigate wire fraud among other things.
- infecto 2y agoI always got the impression that the FBI was more aligned with securities fraud which I think is probably the closest aligned here.
- datavirtue 2y agoIt's all number of rampant fraud.
- dragontamer 2y agoIf it's a currency, then the Secret Service should investigate. If it's a security, then FBI should investigate. -------- These crypto coins feel more like a security to me, so my bet is FBI. In either case, fraud is rampant and there needs to be more crackdowns. So I don't care who investigates really. There just need to be more of them.
- Jerrrrrrry 2y agothe point of the ecosystem is blurring lines to the point of exhaustion, exploiting the juxtaposition between the latency of the bureaucracy and its jurisdictional dick-swinging and the relatively near-instant pay out of "legally-gray" fraud.
- 2y ago
- ucarion 2y agoI think this is the website for the FBI's sting? https://nexfundai.com/ https://nexfundai.com/ I find it interesting that they made up both "NexFundAI" and "NextFundAI" (with a t) with some sort of made-up relationship between the two.
- jackcosgrove 2y agoThe stock photos of robots with glowing fingertips pointing at charts projected onto a glass screen are :chefs_kiss:
- Lockal 2y agoAlso page-source looks ai-generated. Each tag is annotated, as if <title> is not self-explanatory enough.
- red-iron-pine 2y agothe whole thing looks low-effort, mostly AI generated. still worked though. guess there is a market for that, too.
- petesergeant 2y ago> With every transaction supply shrinks by burning a percentage of reflections to the burn wallet … Reflections get distributed to loyal holders with each transaction. “Now the first thing to say is that this is definitely not Pyramid Selling, ok?” https://youtu.be/KCQtKOm_pcw?feature=shared https://youtu.be/KCQtKOm_pcw?feature=shared
- Fauntleroy 2y agoI don't know if it was present when you linked this, but there's a huge banner on the site confirming this as of now.
- VagabundoP 2y agoWhere can I buy this coin?
- loeg 2y agoThere is a nice Levine column on the same topic today: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-10/crypto-market-makers-made-some-markets https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-10/crypto...
- wslh 2y agohttps://archive.is/2024.10.10-162504/https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-10/crypto-market-makers-made-some-markets https://archive.is/2024.10.10-162504/https://www.bloomberg.c...
- chirau 2y agoHow do you generate these links? Whenever I try, it says the URL is currently live or something like that.
- bagels 2y agoThere are two url inputs, use the other one.
- woleium 2y agoi use this as a bookmark javascript:location.href='https://archive.is/?run=1&url=%27+encodeURIComponent(document.location) https://archive.is/?run=1&url=%27+encodeURIComponent(documen...
- bagels 2y agoI made a chrome extension that rewrites NY times and a few others with the archive url.
- HPsquared 2y agoI do kind of like the idea of joining AI and cryptocurrencies though. AI workloads could be an actually useful piece of "work" that there can be "proof" of. EDIT: maybe I had assumed too much about the technical feasibility...
- Cheer2171 2y ago[flagged]
- ben_w 2y agoTo the extent that you could have an P!=NP type thing going on where an AI does a lot of work to reach an easy-to-verify solution, you're likely to have some combination of: 1. The answers have a value uncorrelated with the price: either the problems are stupid (just like BTC's are) or they're so much more valuable than the mere mining reward that you'd do it anyway, with very little "correctly priced". 2. If the problems are completely arbitrary you get all the stupid spin-off coins just like we saw with cryptocurrency; and if they're not completely arbitrary then you vary between having lots of new problems and hardly any in exactly the same way that gold mines were suddenly found and then got mined out back when the gold standard was a thing, and IIRC that's one of the reasons against the gold standard.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago> The answers have a value uncorrelated with the price: either the problems are stupid (just like BTC's are) or they're so much more valuable than the mere mining reward that you'd do it anyway, with very little "correctly priced". Why can't you solve the high value problems by having the person who wants their problem solved bid to have the miners solve their problem instead of someone else's? Then the mining reward includes the bid and stays high as long as people are willing to pay to have their problems solved. Transaction fees are near-zero because the miners are paid by the bidders, and the amount of hardware you need to do a 51% attack goes way up because mining is more profitable this way so there is more competition.
- WJW 2y agoThe main problem is that an AI training workload eventually ends, or (if inference is also included) at most generates more work proportional to the rate of user queries. If you have 10 times as many workers, you are done in 1/10th of the time. Crypto on the other hand generates as more and more work as more miners join the network, so that the overall time taken remains constant. This is an essential part of the system, to prevent improvements in technology devaluing all previously mined crypto. The two have a fundamental incompatibility.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 2y agoThis is such a gray line after reading this and the Levine article. Here, they are blatantly fraudulent. They trade between themselves, using fake generated wallets. But what about Jump Capital? They have a crypto division that also does market making. The difference here is there are given a large chunk of tokens to market make with, as they please. Doing arbitrage through MEV (Which is just a collusion agreement between the mevbot and the miners), Buying at low points and dumping at high points. At what point does convulusion and complexity create enough of a "Market Maker" vs. Trading with yourself. trading off the same signals is collusion on "Signal sharing". Creating MEV bots that take advantage of arb opportunities in the pool is insider trading. Having significant equity in the company, but no financial interest or obligation to disclose dumps?
- davidmr 2y ago> But what about Jump Capital? They have a crypto division that also does market making. The difference here is there are given a large chunk of tokens to market make with, as they please. It may be a little early to make that comparison. Jump is still being investigated for its crypto shenanigans.
- mattmaroon 2y agoI realize I’ll be in the minority here saying this but: Isn’t all crypto a pump and dump scheme? It has no intrinsic return, it only makes you money if someone buys it from you at a higher price than you paid for it. It’s still barely used as money. Any actual utility imagined for cryptocurrency has yet to materialize in any significant quantity despite nearly a decade of tech bros telling me it’s coming any day. I’d bet less than 0.1% of good and services are actually bought with it. (Optimistic estimates are 0.2%). So it’s clearly not primarily used as currency. You can’t eat it and it doesn’t pay a dividend. It’s just people pumping and dumping and other people hoping to time their purchases and sales along with the pump and dumpers.
- gwbas1c 2y agoYou're not in the minority. It's just that, until recently, the groupthink would downvote / flag comments like yours.
- nyolfen 2y agoit gives ordinary people the ability to discipline their central bank and preserve their own personal holdings. there are other uses but this is the one i care about. > I’d bet less than 0.1% of good and services are actually bought with it. (Optimistic estimates are 0.2%). this also applies to nearly every 'normal' currency
- lottin 2y agoSorry, but you're delusional. Central banks are held accountable through a system of checks and balances and the rule of law.
- declan_roberts 2y agolol how do I get a job at the FBI doing this kind of stuff. I love it!
- xmprt 2y agoStart off by getting a job not at the FBI doing this kind of stuff.
- benmmurphy 2y agoHow is this not entrapment? Wouldn’t it be better for the FBI to investigate crypto scammers using their own coin than to create a coin for the purpose of scamming? I feel like law enforcement always uses the option which produces easy prosecutions rather than the more difficult option that involves complex investigations that has more risk but more likely to produce long term good.
- cyanydeez 2y agoBy not pumping and dumping?
- daniel_iversen 2y agoCame here to ask the same. I guess it's entrapment when law enforcement induces a person to commit a crime they otherwise wouldn't have.. so maybe it depends on how hard and well they marketed it? :) It's such a fine line - both legally maybe (IANAL) but certainly morally I feel.
- JackYoustra 2y agolaw enforcement has limited resources, and must try to catch the most criminals and dissuade the most crime given said resources. It's especially bad in tax these days, there are tens of thousands of people with incomes over a million dollars that the US doesn't have the capacity to go after.
- vlovich123 2y agoThat’s the IRS not the FBI.
- benmmurphy 2y agoIt is a complex situation. The worst case scenario from these entrapment operations is the FBI incentives people into a committing a crime they would otherwise not have committed. The end result is more crime, but maybe it kind of nets out because FBI has 100% success and victims are made whole but then you have the sunk cost of this FBI work. The more optimal case is the FBI nabs people who would have otherwise committed another crime and this is a more efficient way of dealing with these people than investigating real crimes. My concern is the FBI doesn’t actually try and determine which is the best allocation of resources but just presses the button that makes the FBI look best. Investigating real crimes is a lot more difficult than investigating these ‘sting’ crimes so if investigating ‘sting’ crimes was less efficient then it might be incorrectly priotized.
- guywithahat 2y agoThe FBI really shouldn’t be creating fake securities for people to buy. I don’t think any of the fake companies they make (including the secure phone one) should be allowed. It’s a bad use of taxpayer funds and it’s not how government should be arresting people
- the_gorilla 2y agoThis is apparently a controversial opinion but I don't think the government should be allowed to break the law. And no cheating by writing a law that laws don't apply to you.
- ceejayoz 2y agoSo, emergency vehicles should do the speed limit and wait for red lights?
- jjulius 2y agoThe post you're responding to says that they shouldn't break the law. Emergency vehicles are allowed, by written law, to exceed the speed limit and move through red lights. Here's one, for instance... https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_820.300 https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_820.300
- creato 2y agoIt also says: > And no cheating by writing a law that laws don't apply to you.
- jjulius 2y agoI mean, there's a difference between writing an exemption just so you can do a thing without getting in trouble, and writing an exemption that is so obviously for the benefit and health of society/community writ large. I can't think of a crappier example to have used to have tried to make the point they're making.
- staplung 2y agoPlease tell me they called it HooverCoin. Such entrapment. Very problem. Wow.
- FactKnower69 2y ago>Liu Zhou, a “market maker” working with MyTrade MM, allegedly told promoters of NexFundAI that MyTrade MM was better than its competitors because they “control the pump and dump” allowing them to “do inside trading easily.” hilarious, but running an operation of this scale to only charge 18 people? this is like squishing a few individual ants, then going on a victory lap bragging to national media about what a canny and clever exterminator you are. great job cleaning up 0.0001% of the market 10 years late!
- j0hnyl 2y agoThe thing about crypto pump and dump schemes is that usually the folks issuing the tokens are the ones doing the pumping and dumping.