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A crypto founder faked his death. We found him alive at his dad's house
- data_ders 1y agoI hope he gets the help and relief he needs. In someways a brain with a penchant for software causes more trouble during mental health crises than one who doesn’t. Especially if they’re into crypto.
- pc86 1y agoSoftware engineers are just normal people. Our brains are not "special." This (objectively incorrect) mental model of software devs is very harmful if you want to actually understand things going on around you.
- xvector 1y agoNah. I assume you have friends inside and outside of software? Software people are just different from the normal person. Way different. I couldn't put my two friend groups together. Are they "special?" Maybe, maybe not.
- watwut 1y agoNo, we are not different then normal people.
- pavel_lishin 1y agoI have software friends and non-software friends. There is no particular correlation. This is some weird flavor of biological essentialism going on here.
- MyOutfitIsVague 1y agoPeople are attracted to things based on their personality traits. The average software engineer is not the same as the average person, because the average person is not attracted to software engineering. In my observations, the average software engineer is more likely to be persnickety, caught up in small details, and obsessive than the average person. We're more likely to split hairs than most people would care to, and proper labeling and categorization is much more important to us than average person. It's not that software engineers are somehow magical or special, it's that there is a selection bias to become a software engineer. It's extra not special, because the same thing happens for virtually any specialized field. There are famous stereotypes about the personalities of psychologists, for instance.
- pavel_lishin 1y ago> In my observations, the average software engineer is more likely to be persnickety, caught up in small details, and obsessive than the average person. We're more likely to split hairs than most people would care to, and proper labeling and categorization is much more important to us than average person. It sounds like a fancy way of saying that people on the spectrum are more likely to become software engineers than some other arbitrary person.
- MyOutfitIsVague 1y agoIt had occurred to me, but I didn't want to say it that way because I'm not a psychological professional and it seems out of my area of expertise to make that assumption based on my passive observations.
- jackcosgrove 1y ago[flagged]
- internet_rand0 1y ago[flagged]
- neonbrain 1y agolol, crypto is literally priced in fiat
- pc86 1y agoWhen I studied political science and economics in college we had a lot of really intriguing discussions around the rise of fiat currency, its pros and cons, its effect on global trade, etc. Some really well thought out opinions on both sides, from "nothing is real, who cares what this piece of paper means" to people who thought it was all a "globalist" scam and that we should be giving the grocer tiny pieces of gold in exchange for bread. This was before bitcoin existed. Post-BTC it seems like anyone who uses the term "fiat" to describe currency in any non-academic setting is about to launch into some nonsensical "bitcoin fixes this" tirade, they think everything is some jewish space laser pyramid scheme, and you wonder if they have a sovereign citizen paper license plate on their car. "Fiat is a pyramid scheme" is a dog whistle except the person blowing it doesn't know.
- soared 1y agoHow do these scammers generate such big market caps for their coins? Offloading $1.4MM is a huge sum of money, more than 99.9% of people in the world would ever see at once.
- jandrese 1y agoWash trades mostly, then it is just a matter of finding some suckers to bite before you pull the rug. $1.4M is a lot to you or me, but in the world of big money it is pocket change.
- rtkwe 1y agoHow do wash trades work in a liquidity pool derived coin? Seems like the only way to boost the coin value is to put more 'real' coins into the LP and dump before someone else does after the pump attracts more suckers.
- jandrese 1y agoYou do need to put cash in, sometimes quite a bit--so when you see that someone ran away with $1.4M be skeptical because at least some of the money they stole was their own.
- danielvf 1y agoMarket cap doesn't equal what people have purchased. See this classic from 2015: https://medium.com/signal-v-noise/press-release-basecamp-valuation-tops-100-billion-after-bold-vc-investment-c221d8f86ad7 https://medium.com/signal-v-noise/press-release-basecamp-val...
- rambambram 1y agoI remember this one! Already 10 years ago, wow.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoIn order to determine the valuation of companies, Bhatnagar typically applies the following formula: [(Twitter followers x Facebook fans) + (# of employees x 1000)] x (total likes + daily page views) + (monthly burn rate x Google’s stock price)-squared and then doubles if it they’re mobile first or if the CEO has run a business into the ground before. Beautiful.
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- ConfusedDog 1y agoI remember being called to a dinner which was paid for (figures). A couple well-dressed but fashionable guys tried to sell a crypto that ask you play a mobile game or something to earn coins which can be converted into real crypto? or something like that. There were a couple people at the dinner I know being constantly fallen into this kind of traps, including MLM, despite their success in their businesses. Well, the dinner was good at least and I found them kind of entertaining in a mentally-ill way.
- tw04 1y agoLet me guess, Axie Infinity? It is indeed MLM at its worst, because in this case you don't even walk away with any useless (but at least tangible) goods.
- GaryNumanVevo 1y agoAxie Infinity nearly drove my old coworker insane. He was convinced that it was the best economic uplift for people in the Philippines in decades. He had hired a team of 20 Filipinos to "farm" axies for him, paying pennies a day. Needless to say when Axie got hacked in 2022, he quickly stopped posting about it in the work slack.
- aurareturn 1y agoreal crypto Oxymoron right here.
- rdtsc 1y ago> “You can see the PTSD in my eyes, right?” he said before telling this reporter to leave. He was dead, with an obituary even and now back to being alive. Why the PTSD?! He should be rejoicing! /s But I wonder, is faking your death on social media a crime? If he still paid taxes I guess he might be legally out of the woods, just based on the faking part, not related to the scamming thing.
- ceejayoz 1y ago> But I wonder, is faking your death on social media a crime? If it's for financial benefit, it's criminal fraud.
- rtkwe 1y agoThe memorial coin certainly seems like it would qualify if he benefited from it at all. My guess is he did and I'm a bit disappointed they don't seem to have looked much into that aspect nor mentioned asking him about it.
- rdtsc 1y agoAgree, that would make sense. I can see if he was just some artist and doing it as performance art or to make some commentary a topic, he could defend it as such. But with cryptocurrency involved it looks like fraud.
- eskatonic 1y agoHow... how did he think this was going to turn out? You fake your death, then run to mommy & daddy's house, and hope no one finds you? And just keep the cash?
- jansan 1y agoNot every crime is planned to the last detail. We had a guy in our village who tried to rob a bank and got arrested by the bank's employees.
- MyOutfitIsVague 1y agoThere's not planning a crime to the last detail, then there's faking your death without even thinking about how you're going to keep people from finding out that you're not dead.
- skrebbel 1y agoCriminals, by and large, are stupid. They don't think it through. They just do stuff. Most people who worry about silly little details such as "consequences" don't go into crime.
- fooker 1y agoCriminals that are caught are stupid. Survivorship bias because you can only observe the ones that are caught. I'm sure plenty of criminals have successfully faked their deaths.
- bryanrasmussen 1y agoLots of criminals that are smart get caught, because even smart people fuck up sometime. When some smart guy fucks up at his e-commerce site probably there just has to be a code rollback and maybe a talking to, if a smart criminal fucks up it's probably the cops come calling.
- 1y ago
- languagehacker 1y agoSome good content for people who want to go down the Crypto Scammer rabbit hole: Exit Scam (https://www.exitscam.show/ https://www.exitscam.show/) -- Crypto exchange founders rip off their customers so much that it has an actual name, as infamous a grift as the The Money Box or The Big Store. This podcast explores a QuadrigaCX and its founder's likely faked death, digging into a few other crypto scams for parallel examples. Number Go Up by Zeke Faux (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/711959/number-go-up-by-zeke-faux/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/711959/number-go-up...) -- this book, which reads as a cross between investigative reporting and New Journalism, tracks Sam Bankman-Fried's rise and fall, discusses the NFT grift, and explores the weird, wild world of stablecoins. Turtles all the way down on this stuff.
- gip 1y agoI believe in crypto, I think it will even protect people online when done right. And not everything is scam, there are good projects. That being said the behavior of people and organizations in crypto is poor and will slow adoption. I still regularly see major crypto ecosystems rug pull their own developers. They simply can’t help themselves.
- nathanappere 1y agoWhat are the good projects?
- tromp 1y agoThe ones that * don't financially benefit their creators * are not a copy-paste of an existing coin with some trivial changes
- rapind 1y ago> And not everything is scam, there are good projects. I don't disagree, but at this point it has to be like 90% of crypto products are scams, and that number is still increasing. They're simply running out of people to scam. The 18-40 year old male demo can only lose so much on crypto and sports betting before they run out of money and credit. It's a giant ponzi that's losing it's legs. I'm sure it doesn't help that everything else is so expensive (housing), making these hail mary gambas more attractive, but the money will dry up regardless.
- gip 1y agoWe need to stop telling people they will make money with crypto. It is akin telling people they will make money with PostgreSQL. In both cases, if they build a great business, they may become successful and make some money. But looking at crypto through the lens of becoming rich quick is flowed.
- rapind 1y agoMost investment in crypto is just gambling. It's all FOMO and snake oil. There are some stocks for which I'd say the same though (TSLA).
- mjd 1y ago“I've been doxxed.” Pathetic.
- glitchc 1y agoYet another crypto-bro attempting to dodge taxes. When will they learn?
- oefrha 1y agoI had a look at the community feed thingy on the right-hand side of https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zerebro/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zerebro/, oh boy, never have I seen such a high concentration of scammers scamming each other in broad daylight. You'll find real gems like "Amazon" (shown as "Amazon" with Amazon logo, with the handle @nk1dfpb3fmjp conveniently hidden) announcing "the next era of digital transactions with the Amazon Token (AMZ), a blockchain-based asset designed to revolutionize e-commerce". Highly amusing, 10/10.
- Etheryte 1y agoI don't know what I expected, but I sure was not ready for my eyes to bleed this much at this hour: > CoinMarketCap is dropping diamonds, fam! This airdrop is rugproof, ready to pump. Stack free bags!
- MyOutfitIsVague 1y agoYou missed the URL for that one: > $ZEREBRO penispillreviews.com And yeah, that looks like an actual crypto website. This is bizarre. It's like they're rolling with the "we're totally a scam" angle.
- bryanrasmussen 1y agoI remember when I was working at this place making concrete walls our foreman was talking about getting into a MLM scheme, he said he knew it was MLM but because he was getting in early he would be one of the big earners. So some suckers will fall harder if they know you're a scam, my theory.
- infinitifall 1y agoYou must be new to crypto. This is standard operating procedure. These scammers are everywhere and they're hard to miss. It's common to have fake or hacked youtube channels - often with hundreds of thousands of subscribers - branded as official channels, featuring deepfake videos and livestreams from tech ceos announcing these scam coins. There are fake comments under tech videos and fake accounts on twitter discussing scam coins.
- jakupovic 1y ago[flagged]
- willvarfar 1y agoIs there any 'legit' use of BTC that isn't scammers fleecing speculators or government grift?
- jakupovic 1y ago[flagged]
- deepfriedbits 1y agoYou've cracked the case. The illuminati at Hacker News huddle once daily and decide whether to release damaging news about crypto in the hopes of suppressing the price of BTC.
- jakupovic 1y ago[flagged]
- ungreased0675 1y agoWhat caused the journalists at the SF Standard to pursue this particular story? This guy isn’t notable in any way, just another crypto bro as far as I can tell?
- kordlessagain 1y agoI'd be willing to bet that a) his parents aren't going anywhere and b) they will be glad he left, finally.
- fallinditch 1y agoJeffy's story is a cautionary tale for our times - apparently thus: young talented programmer makes something that hits the zeitgeist but quickly unravels as the lure of riches of corrupts. Zerebro was building an AI agent framework (+ the obligatory coin) and also released AI-generated music. The music is lowest common denominator AI pop with cringe lyrics [1] but at one point achieved a respectable ~40k monthly listeners on Spotify. Jeffy hit the crypto podcast scene (see his Blocmates interview [2]) and comes across as quite earnest, but there was a lot of hype too, for sure. One thing that these thread comments are maybe overlooking is that Jeffy may have been genuinely frightened of being harmed, like kidnapped. Hence the fake death. Crypto kidnappings are more prevalent in Europe, so maybe they're going to take off in the USA now too ... [1] https://youtu.be/5JTgWQq0who?feature=shared https://youtu.be/5JTgWQq0who?feature=shared [2] https://youtu.be/A-_cd7Ze8mE?feature=shared https://youtu.be/A-_cd7Ze8mE?feature=shared The lyrics to the music video betray a very shallow copycat misogyny.
- rolandthomas 1y ago[dead]