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Merged Bitcoin - Part 3

psionl0 said:
So what? Only people who think they can make great riches with minimal effort are susceptible to scams. More sensible people have nothing to fear from scammers.
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I'm willing to agree with this if you include the caveat that a sensible person would avoid the crypto market as the obvious den of vipers it is.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
I'm willing to agree with this if you include the caveat that a sensible person would avoid the crypto market as the obvious den of vipers it is.
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That depends on what you mean by "crypto market".

If you buy cryptos there is always the risk (in this wild west) that a charlatan might take your money without giving you what you paid for. And if anybody offers you the opportunity to invest in their "high profit no risk" crypto venture then NEVER click on their link.

OTOH if you stick to an established crypto exchange then you can be reasonably confident that you will get what you paid for (do your homework!) and cryptos are not a scam - just a gamble.
 
psionl0 said:
OTOH if you stick to an established crypto exchange then you can be reasonably confident that you will get what you paid for (do your homework!) and cryptos are not a scam - just a gamble.
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Just ignoring the fact that Mt. Gox was widely regarded as reputable right up to the moment they revealed that hackers had been draining the accounts and anyone with value was getting a surprise haircut.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Just ignoring the fact that Mt. Gox was widely regarded as reputable right up to the moment they revealed that hackers had been draining the accounts and anyone with value was getting a surprise haircut.
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Ah yes. Mt Gox. I believe that there have been other exchange failures in the past too (and wasn't "tether" involved in some shenanigans?). I guess that's why I said "reasonably confident" rather than "absolutely guaranteed".

Still, the odds of an exchange failing at the precise moment that you use it to buy cryptos isn't all that high (but I wouldn't let the exchange hold my coins).

Any more trips you want to take down memory lane? Maybe you would like to rehash tales of people who lost their wallets or had them hacked.
 
For me it's not so much that I think crypto transactions are uniquely susceptible to fraud and scams, but they do seem uniquely bereft of recourse.
 
gnome said:
For me it's not so much that I think crypto transactions are uniquely susceptible to fraud and scams, but they do seem uniquely bereft of recourse.
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That can be a good thing or a bad thing.

How often does somebody pay for something via credit card or PayPal then complains and has the transaction reversed? It will often take a court case to get the reversal reversed back again.

OTOH if you send your hard earned fiat overseas then the odds are that nobody will see that money again anyway.
 
I find it amusing that crypto has this reputation for being crazy unstable when I've been hodling BTC and ETH for literally months, and they're now worth almost exactly what I paid for them.
 
arthwollipot said:
I find it amusing that crypto has this reputation for being crazy unstable when I've been hodling BTC and ETH for literally months, and they're now worth almost exactly what I paid for them.
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Bitcoin is trading exactly average price of last 12 months.
Imagine the cries of anguish if this is permanent.
Like most major currencies.
I think the average of last 10 years is more likely however.
 
I will never buy crypto. I would have, but then they forked Ethereum after someone followed the law and transferred funds from the DAO as agreed by law.

The wrong people won
 
The hits keep on coming:

Crypto.com suspends withdrawals after ‘unauthorized activity’

Crypto.com said Monday that it stopped all deposits and withdrawals while it investigates “unauthorized activity” on some accounts.

The crypto wallet provider and trading platform said in a Twitter post that the measure was temporary to allow it to improve security and it would resume activity once the update was complete. The company added that all funds are safe.

...

Crypto influencer and podcast host Ben Baller said in a tweet Monday that about 4.28 ether, which equates to roughly $14,000, had been “stolen out of nowhere” from his account, a move that would have required a hacker to bypass two-factor authentication security measures.

Baller later alleged that as of mid-morning in London, a wallet belonging to Crypto.com had lost approximately 5,000 ether, which equates to roughly $16.3 million.
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https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-01-17/crypto-com-suspends-withdrawals-unauthorized-activity
 
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/01/17/crypto-scam-facebook-messenger/

"As we gathered evidence, we watched live in group conversations as money was lured out of the pockets of unsuspecting victims. At the same time, we attempted to contact several of the new arrivals into the scam in order to try to warn them. The scammers promised that their funds would be invested in a special app named “MetaEx” or “MetaEXC” before being returned. However, the money was never going to be sent back, as it was all part of the scam."
 
ponderingturtle said:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/01/17/crypto-scam-facebook-messenger/

"As we gathered evidence, we watched live in group conversations as money was lured out of the pockets of unsuspecting victims. At the same time, we attempted to contact several of the new arrivals into the scam in order to try to warn them. The scammers promised that their funds would be invested in a special app named “MetaEx” or “MetaEXC” before being returned. However, the money was never going to be sent back, as it was all part of the scam."
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Breaking News!!!! Don't give money to people you don't know. This public service announcement has been brought to you by literally everyone with an ounce of common sense.

Outstanding learning experience for those that didn't know that if you just willingly give your money to people, they might not give it back.

Next up on our news hour. Yellow snow, don't eat it.
 
While cryptos by themselves are just a mean to send money from A to B, they have several features which make it favorite for scammers.
- you can get rich relatively fast, so some people want to "invest in crypto"
- it's complex and not easy to understand
- it's in the media all the time, easy to utilize some current buzzwords
- and mainly: the recipient of transaction is unknown, and the transaction cannot be refunded

While the transactions are anonymous, they are also public, and there are some attempts to track the stolen money. And in western countries, the exchanges have to check and validate identities of the buyers .. but so far it's not so successful, there are clearly ways to launder your gains.

On the other hand, the phone scams are usually quite sad. Those victims sometimes go through so much effort to lose their money, that they would send cash in a box, if there wasn't for crypto. And similar scams are also common with supermarket gift certificates and other forms of money transfer.

And exchange frauds are less common now, when exchanges are more and more regulated.
 
I'm just mad that nobody has made a Crypto coin called Tulip yet. I mean really when the universe gives you this much of a softball setup....
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
So long as there are rubes wanting to get rich quick and unscrupulous scammers that are indifferent to the negative externalities (both environment and financial) they are creating, there will never be an end.
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Wait what?

Who are the "unscrupulous scammers" here? The buyers? The sellers? The miners? The hodlers? Those actually using the crypto as a currency? The . . . .
 
psionl0 said:
Wait what?

Who are the "unscrupulous scammers" here? The buyers? The sellers? The miners? The hodlers? Those actually using the crypto as a currency? The . . . .
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That's true, the honest to god speculators aren't as predatory. They're still hoping to get rich while ignoring the massive negative externalities of crypto, most notably the environmental ones, but they aren't overtly criminal like those running outright scams.
 
One of the scammers is Steve Bannon, who has an anti-whale type of lock code built into $FJB, but their version lets the initial investors pick and choose which wallets to lock.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/01/steve-bannon-boris-epshteyn-fjb-crypto/

Obviously, a guy who was convicted of running a fraudulent scheme that took in millions of dollars to "build the wall" on the Mexican border shouldn't be allowed to start his own goddamn currency.
 
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