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Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#11

Post by bitL »

LouisSayers wrote: post #8

Steals billions of dollars then catches a RyanAir flight?! RyanAir has to be the most budget airline I’ve ever been on...

She got hold of a "big passport"; to me that implies some mafia/secret service was involved and she likely wanted to blend in with her new identity.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#12

Post by Nasrudith »

tshanmu wrote: post #6
mindfulplay wrote: post #2

Bitcoin is no different. It's just a scam on a much longer timescale.

Faith is the only difference between scam and valuable. USD/CAD is also just paper blessed by a central bank..

Government currencies have a concrete function - if you are legally required to pay taxes in it that gives it a very concrete value of being needed to operate legitimately in a country. That makes it very different from just faith even taking the most cynical possible view of governments - even if a complete collapse in faith would undermine it greatly.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#14

Post by ryanlol »

>Another tip he gives us is to find out where she has been on her yacht. We should try to get the tracker off it, he says, and he doesn't appear to be joking. I explain that this is probably beyond my abilities (apart from being illegal)

Uh, why would this be illegal? Is flightaware illegal? Or the yacht tracking sites?

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#15

Post by bsaul »

Nasrudith wrote: post #12
tshanmu wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faith is the only difference between scam and valuable. USD/CAD is also just paper blessed by a central bank..

Government currencies have a concrete function - if you are legally required to pay taxes in it that gives it a very concrete value of being needed to operate legitimately in a country. That makes it very different from just faith even taking the most cynical possible view of governments - even if a complete collapse in faith would undermine it greatly.

That and the government is paying all its employees salaries with that money, and it accepts paiements with that currency too.

It’s what all the crypto currency people completely misunderstand whenever they’re bringing the « every currency is a matter of trust ».

Indeed, ultimately paper is just paper, but the guarantees and legal bindings behind that paper are what makes it easier to grant « trust » and thus value.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#17

Post by Kovah »

I can remember OneCoin back in the day. And I also remember that when visiting their website, my first though was "this must be a gigantic scam!" It was kinda obvious. Unbelievable that people fell for this. But like with all pyramid schemes or similar scams, they target a very specific sort of people.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#18

Post by fergie »

Great podcast. It fizzles out a bit in the end, but still well worth a listen.

FWIW the podcast ends up being more of a critique of MLM schemes in general rather than Ruja Ignatova herself (although she is certainly a crook).

The last episode is also interesting as it highlights the motivations of the whistleblowers- these people are mostly speaking out against OneCoin because they are promoting competing sh*tcoin schemes rather than because of any objection in principle to the idea of marketing rubbish to vulnerable people.

See also "The strange religion of cryptocurrency", where the same journalist talks about OneCoin (and money in general) as a religion. Very interesting. https://audioboom.com/posts/7386285-the-strange-religion-of-...

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#19

Post by fergie »

growt wrote: post #9

Why, with all that money, didn't they simply buy a Blockchain? It's not hard, fork bitcoin, build something on Ethereum. Or did it simply not matter for the pyramid scheme? If in the end they had a crappy Blockchain and the investors would have gotten their coins, would they've been guilty of anything?

They did. This is part of the story.
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