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People have always loved to gamble. But why are scams, rug pulls, pyramid schemes and outright Ponzis so wildly popular when relatively legitimate gambling lik

People have always loved to gamble. But why are scams, rug pulls, pyramid schemes and outright Ponzis so wildly popular when relatively legitimate gambling like blackjack and roulette are available? Why do people flock to skeezy finance when they can easily play less exploitative games where the house takes just 1% to 5%? Maybe it's because deep down they know it's fraud, they know it will collapse, they know the people on the bottom will get wiped out, and they think they'll get out before the collapse. On some level, the thrill is being in on the grift. I think W. C. Fields said, "You can't cheat an honest man. Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump."

dist-epoch 2y ago
> But why are scams, rug pulls, pyramid schemes and outright Ponzis so wildly popular when relatively legitimate gambling like blackjack and roulette are available? You are mathematically guaranteed to lose your money playing roulette. Nobody ever got rich playing it unless they cheated somehow. But you have a small chance of winning buying a meme-coin/stock/option.
- itishappy 2y ago
  I think this is a gross misunderstanding of probability. > You are mathematically guaranteed to lose your money playing roulette. You can win roulette, people do all the time. > But you have a small chance of winning buying a meme-coin/stock/option. Right, but you also have a small chance at winning roulette. Love to see the math here, but I'm betting your roulette statement still applies: > Nobody ever got rich playing it unless they cheated somehow. Put differently, of course there are winners in roulette, even if it's often the house. I'd bet "the house" applies to crypto too.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    The House for coins is usually the coin creators who grant themselves a hefty chunk of the coin during initialization then often sell off rapidly when the coin gets any traction. It's even more popular with Eth shitcoins where they can drain the real coins other people have put in out of the swap contract in exchange for their. It's so common there's new derivatives of the phrase "rug pull" that have existed for years in the space talk about the projects that turn out to be hollow money boxes for the creators to pillage. A new wrinkle is project will claim that initial coin grants are locked but just not put that functionality in the contracts that define the code so the creators can still just rug the coin.
- panarky 2y ago
  > You are mathematically guaranteed to lose your money playing roulette. The high-stakes tables in Vegas casinos typically have straight-up bet limits around $5,000 to $10,000. Some tables in Macau have limits of $50,000. If you put $50,000 on your favorite number in Macau, you could win $1,750,000 plus your original $50,000 back. You are not mathematically guaranteed to lose money on a roulette bet.
tim333 2y ago
Everyone loses over time playing blackjack. Most people win over time buying bitcoin.

dist-epoch 2y ago

> But why are scams, rug pulls, pyramid schemes and outright Ponzis so wildly popular when relatively legitimate gambling like blackjack and roulette are available? You are mathematically guaranteed to lose your money playing roulette. Nobody ever got rich playing it unless they cheated somehow. But you have a small chance of winning buying a meme-coin/stock/option.

itishappy 2y ago
I think this is a gross misunderstanding of probability. > You are mathematically guaranteed to lose your money playing roulette. You can win roulette, people do all the time. > But you have a small chance of winning buying a meme-coin/stock/option. Right, but you also have a small chance at winning roulette. Love to see the math here, but I'm betting your roulette statement still applies: > Nobody ever got rich playing it unless they cheated somehow. Put differently, of course there are winners in roulette, even if it's often the house. I'd bet "the house" applies to crypto too.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  The House for coins is usually the coin creators who grant themselves a hefty chunk of the coin during initialization then often sell off rapidly when the coin gets any traction. It's even more popular with Eth shitcoins where they can drain the real coins other people have put in out of the swap contract in exchange for their. It's so common there's new derivatives of the phrase "rug pull" that have existed for years in the space talk about the projects that turn out to be hollow money boxes for the creators to pillage. A new wrinkle is project will claim that initial coin grants are locked but just not put that functionality in the contracts that define the code so the creators can still just rug the coin.
panarky 2y ago
> You are mathematically guaranteed to lose your money playing roulette. The high-stakes tables in Vegas casinos typically have straight-up bet limits around $5,000 to $10,000. Some tables in Macau have limits of $50,000. If you put $50,000 on your favorite number in Macau, you could win $1,750,000 plus your original $50,000 back. You are not mathematically guaranteed to lose money on a roulette bet.

tim333 2y ago

Everyone loses over time playing blackjack. Most people win over time buying bitcoin.