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Hackers nab $500k as Enigma is compromised weeks before its ICO

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Re: Hackers nab $500k as Enigma is compromised weeks before its ICO

#52

Another ICO, another scam. I am not sure I feel bad for people who are gullible enough to send their hard earned money to these "companies". They have one PDF whitepaper and a generic Wordpress template website with some buzzwords, based in Cayman islands or some other tax haven for money laundering. And expecting to get rich from that.

Have any of these not been scams?

Re: Hackers nab $500k as Enigma is compromised weeks before its ICO

#53
post #28

Another ICO, another scam. I am not sure I feel bad for people who are gullible enough to send their hard earned money to these "companies". They have one PDF whitepaper and a generic Wordpress template website with some buzzwords, based in Cayman islands or some other tax haven for money laundering. And expecting to get rich from that.

I am unconvinced that hard earned money is 'invested' in those companies. The target demographic is not hard working class.

The target demographic is gullible, greedy software engineers who have a lot of disposable income but lack experience in conducting due diligence on speculative investments. Basically, Hacker News readers. Why do you think there are so many ICO related posts on this site? It's not accidental.

Re: Hackers nab $500k as Enigma is compromised weeks before its ICO

#55

As a Russian proverb goes, "a thief stolen a thief's hat"

That's an interesting concept but I can't find anything about it. I found this : http://kv-journal.su/content/vor-u-vora-ukral "the thief stole from the thief" I can't find anything hat related, though I wish I could

Te most used variant is : Вор у вора дубинку украл http://slovarick.ru/211/

However later is more popular what the grandparent wrote: Вор у вора шапку украл

Re: Hackers nab $500k as Enigma is compromised weeks before its ICO

#56
How to make money in ethereum, from high to low risk:

1. Dump the leftovers of your bi-weekly software engineering paycheck into buying ETH, BTC, or whichever altcoin is popular this week. It went up 5000% in the past, it's got to keep growing right?

2. Participate in an ICO and stock up on whatever platform token they're hawking. It's more profitable if you get in early due to some presale mechanism (hopefully here you aren't sending your hard-earned digital currency to a hacker's wallet). Sell these tokens about 4-5 days after the sale closes, before the hype dies down and the bagholders realize they're holding sand.

3. Even more profitable is kicking off your own ICO. Go through the checklist - fancy HTML5 theme that you can buy off of Themeforest and edit the HTML a bit for the landing page, create a Slack channel/Twitter account/subreddit, write a "whitepaper" that is easy enough for the shmucks you're targeting to understand, yet replete with enough pseudo-academic crypto jargon and irrelevant/unnecessary mathematical symbols to get the shmucks nodding their heads and pretending to understand how this particular algorithm/equation based on the "turing-complete ethereum blockchain" will "change the world" or "bank the unbanked" or, more importantly to them, appreciate 500x in value. Don't forget listing the members of your team and advisors, ideally with as much credential signalling as you can - "MIT," "Stanford," "Comp Sci Phd," "McKinsey," all work here, fake it till you make it and make sure you list Vitalik Buterin on your list of advisors just for that extra bit of technical legitimacy. Use centuries-old sales tactics to pitch your ICO - butter up your target audience's sense of superiority by emphasizing exclusivity - they're the only clever ones, they're the genius computer nerds who understand the 1000x potential of your algorithm, they're the ones that are breaking free of the shackles of regulated securities. Create a sense of urgency with a ticking timer on your landing page, a 24-hour window to buy your monopoly money, a subtle/not-so-subtle hint that the earlier you get in, the more you'll make.

4. You could always just put on your black hat and rob these extremely soft targets blind. The simpler the method, it seems, the better. Plus, there's absolutely no risk of ever being held accountable - that's the beauty of anonymous cryptocurrency!

Re: Hackers nab $500k as Enigma is compromised weeks before its ICO

#57

Another ICO, another scam. I am not sure I feel bad for people who are gullible enough to send their hard earned money to these "companies". They have one PDF whitepaper and a generic Wordpress template website with some buzzwords, based in Cayman islands or some other tax haven for money laundering. And expecting to get rich from that.

Have any of these not been scams?

This one (supposedly) wasn't a scam. They had a real offering coming, but someone wiped out $500k with some basic phishing after stealing an email account. Enigma (the platform) wasn't compromised; Enigma (the company) was.

Re: Hackers nab $500k as Enigma is compromised weeks before its ICO

#58

Another ICO, another scam. I am not sure I feel bad for people who are gullible enough to send their hard earned money to these "companies". They have one PDF whitepaper and a generic Wordpress template website with some buzzwords, based in Cayman islands or some other tax haven for money laundering. And expecting to get rich from that.

And mostly, they indeed get rich.

Re: Hackers nab $500k as Enigma is compromised weeks before its ICO

#60
post #6

This might as well be a scam created by the CEO himself. I mean, who in this 'crypto world' would be stupid enough to use the same, previously compromised, password on all his accounts? P.S. there was a story on reddit (can't find it now unfortunately) about how the attackers tried to deposit the money to Bittrex but luckily someone alerted them and the exchange froze the account. So there is still some hope that fun…

Why would he do that when he'd make more on the actual token sale?

The profit from the token sale goes into a foundation setup to oversee the project, not the founding team's pocket.
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