101–110 of 411 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember YC stating that they will "forfeit" (probably not the right legal term) their shares in companies that turn out to do unethical things. Now, let's see if they stick to their principles.
“Forfeiting” shares in a company that has raised a couple million and funding and lost $42M in user funds seems like a bit of an empty gesture from YC
The whole idea was to become a middleman to a ponzi scheme and charge a performance fee. They described what they are doing in their documentation, but the core ethical problem here is that the only users that would use their service are those incapable of understanding how UST/Terra worked, because anyone capable of understanding would just deposit funds directly and get higher APR for the same risk! Extremely preda…
The name "StableGains" sounded exactly like "SafeMoon", a heavily advertised pump-and-dump shitcoin that, unsurprisingly, was not safe, and did not go to the moon. Free money with no risk sure sounds appealing though, just don't think too hard about it.
https://i.imgur.com/qz4EeQS.jpg - This is (was?) their ads "15% interest. No surprises."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I remember YC stating that they will "forfeit" their shares in companies that turn out to do unethical things. Shares in a company are typically "forfeit" when the company you invested in goes bust. While its a nice virtue signalling headline - giving up something worth 0 (only not worth a large negative number as shares are limited in liability) is not at all noble.
Sure, but if I remember correctly they said that they would give the shares back for free or something. So even if the unethical company didn't go bust but exited, they wouldn't get any cash.
Remembering the early days of bitcoin, and Pirateat40's Bitcoin Savings and Trust ponzi (BTCST) from 2012. That also had a pile of feeder ponzis hanging off the side. They'd claim to be completely uncorrelated with BTCST, but just put their coins into BTCST. Crypto has now gone beyond replaying old scams from the history of finance, and is now just replaying old scams from the history of crypto. But now they're VC-fu…
I like the name “Feeder Ponzi” though! Has a sort of legit-not-legit sound to it.
The last few weeks (months, really) has highlighted an incredible lack of discernment in the VC-verse wrt the thing we call web3. Now. I have no experience doing what YC does and don’t claim to, but the jig here was so transparent that the smallest drop of “street smart” should’ve been enough to set off some alarms. We’re approaching a point where being passed over for “culture fit” is a compliment. Hopefully the emb…
I remember YC stating that they will "forfeit" (probably not the right legal term) their shares in companies that turn out to do unethical things. Now, let's see if they stick to their principles.
The name "StableGains" sounded exactly like "SafeMoon", a heavily advertised pump-and-dump shitcoin that, unsurprisingly, was not safe, and did not go to the moon. Free money with no risk sure sounds appealing though, just don't think too hard about it.
How many people get duped into thinking there's such a thing as "unlimited gain" and "rewards without risks"
Like what, people are just going to give you money without you doing anything?
It would be largely beneficial to everyone, if we were to provide some basic economic/financial/"how money works" lessons to everyone through the use of schools and public education..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were funds that did due diligence and built out models of the Luna/Terra/Anchor ecosystem and realized it was unstable. You can talk to the people who built their models and they have lots of fun things to say about the ordeal.
That raises an interesting ethical problem, really; should there be a duty to report this sort of thing, or is "scheme X is fundamentally flawed/a scam and investors will lose everything" legitimate proprietary information? As I understand it, various analysts were pretty sure at the time that Madoff's scheme was a Ponzi, but in general they didn't tell anyone (in fairness, one attempted to and had trouble getting li…
They’re just one of several shiny fintech apps/websites running the same scam, a modern two-and-twenty on a ponzi — but with really nice UI. Alice (alice.co / @alice_finance) is another prominent one that may have lost customer funds, which was also using the Anchor protocol. It’s unclear how much they lost, but it’s interesting that Do Kwon’s name is still an actual logo listed on their home page. And Vertex Protoco…
I publicly called out LUNA/UST on Twitter a few times a few months before the collapse [0] [1]. Just stating this so it's clear that I don't have any interest defending them. That being said, calling these platforms "ponzis" isn't correct, the most you can say is that they were front ends for a ponzi. It would be like setting up a front-end to receive investments, and then depositing the money with Madoff. I'm not sa…
So, it’s neither legitimate nor a Ponzi. Cool, what is it then?