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Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

bbc.co.uk

41–50 of 166 posts

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

#42
post #17

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.

It was 2017 (or 2018, I am not sure) when I stumbled over a similar scam, albeit at smaller scale. They sold Swedish government backed crypto currency, back when the Swedish government thought about it. Website looked legit, so I registered and had nice call. Didn't buy anything in the end because it was just fishy. Saw the Facebook ads for a couple of months after that. Police said they investigated, but could find any entity behind the ad and closed the investigation. About 30 minutes on Google turned up a British registered company behind it, and that in fact it was a scam. So I am not surprised she got away with it, police seems to be pretty helpless when it come to scams like that and cybercrime in general.

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

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real GDP per capita in 1950 was around the $2k mark, and things like cars and televisions were still out of the reach of the average person, never mind those on minimum wage. You have to be incredibly stupid, or more likely trolling, to believe that generation - which was an inch shorter than ours due to poorer nutrition and had an average lifespan a decade shorter - enjoyed four times our average wealth. A lot of th…

U.S. GDP per capita in 1950 was $9573, according to a web search. In 1953 or so my parents rented their first house as newlyweds. For $10 per month. Minimum wage was 75 cents/hour. My parents definitely had a used car... So 14 hours labor at minimum wage, paid the rent...compare that to today.

In 1953 IBM launched one of the first commercial computers, which your parents definitely didn't have in their home on account of it costing $15k per month to rent access to. Rent has gone up relative to everything else because the housing supply hasn't grown fast enough, but the average person today has gadgets and treatments which were unfeasible in 1953

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

#45
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?

Ah, you mean the Tron strategy.

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

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's even more than that. You are legally required to accept the national currency for the settlement of debts. If you are a US entity and we have a contract where I owe you 1 btc, you must accept the equivalent amount of dollars as settlement of the debt. You are allowed to accept payments in different currencies, or even barter, but you can't require them.

That's not entirely true. It's perfectly legal to specify contractual terms of payment, including what form it must take.

It's only when the form of payment isn't specified, that dollars must accepted, by default.

If our contract was specifically for 1 BTC, it's legal to demand 1 BTC, and to otherwise sue for breach of contract.

After all, how else would a contract for currency exchange be enforced?

If you owed me 1 btc because I paid you 1.02 btc in dollars (2% transaction fee), it would make no sense to allow you to simply repay me with the equivalent of 1 btc in dollars, and consider that to be a settled debt.

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

#49
Only she was heading to a very public event in Portugal - a bitcoin evangelist. A history of good education and fully understood bitcoin ( but like Jimmy Hoffa ) She is being defined as if she had 3 million bitcoin in her handbag at the time of her kidnapping and murder.

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

#50
post #17

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.

What kind of people? Just gullible or something more specific?
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