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Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

practicalsecurity.substack.com

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Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#71

Post by slavboj »

pants2 wrote: post #44
georgeecollins wrote: post #22

One thing I feel like I have learned from Reddit/ TikTok is the average person is terrible with money. Some VCs argue we should lower the bar to investing to democrative it. I am all for democracy, but maybe we would be better served if the average person didn't try to be a tycoon.

As it turns out, the accredited investor rule (>$1M liquid assets) isn't to filter for savvy investors, it's to make sure you can still land on your feet after your investment disappears.

Professionals holding a Series 7 etc count as accredited investors, even if they live in a cardboard box.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#72

Post by yieldcrv »

lolinder wrote: post #70
yieldcrv wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes and its really great that exchanges have been disintermediated by liquidity pooling systems. a lot of these extortionate practices were because projects use to need exchanges for any liquidity, so exchanges gatekept that. and now thats not necessary. anybody can spin up a permanent liquidity pool within 1 second. regardless, purchasers should be more discerning as the technology provides the necessary transparenc…

> If you dont, this isnt really the thread for generalized crypto sentiment This isn't generalized crypto sentiment. I actually find the rehashed arguments about crypto on HN rather exhausting and don't tend to participate much. What this is is a thread about crypto scams, in particular a crypto scam that preys on dishonest people by taking advantage of their dishonesty. You provided a great illustration of a similar…

Yeah the market made better options of attracting liquidity than the centralized exchanges, and thats mostly how its been resolved

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#73

Post by Terr_ »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #54
Terr_ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is the dishonesty and obfuscation. The problem is that no culture/philosophy has (yet?) even found a clean line. Ex: How different must the fixed menu picture of the "Burger and Fries combo"--designed to manipulate me into feeling hunger--be from the real food before it's fraud? If I tell you "pink elephants", I have created text that placed an idea into your mind against your will, but is that an offense?

If it's not a picture of food cooked by a worker at the company, in the regular kitchen, with the normal ingredients then surely it's fraud (lying to get money)? Market capitalism needs truth and transparency to have any chance of optimising delivery of goods/services. These should be preeminent goals of Western Capitalism.

It's not an exact picture of the not-yet-existing burger you will receive anyway, why not say that's fraud too?

The line is subjective.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#74

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Terr_ wrote: post #73
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's not a picture of food cooked by a worker at the company, in the regular kitchen, with the normal ingredients then surely it's fraud (lying to get money)? Market capitalism needs truth and transparency to have any chance of optimising delivery of goods/services. These should be preeminent goals of Western Capitalism.

It's not an exact picture of the not-yet-existing burger you will receive anyway, why not say that's fraud too? The line is subjective.

Fraud requires purposeful deception. It doesn't need to be 'the not-yet-existing burger', it just needs not to be designed to deceive you.

I'm not arguing the line isn't subjective.

But, if it's not made with the same ingredients, or for example isn't actually food (as with many marketing images for food), then it's deceptive. I hope you agree?

If it wasn't even made in the restaurant you're in, then I'd agree that is more of a blurred line - if it was made with the same equipment, to the same standards, by the same company, that's reasonable.

I think my point still stands that truth is essential if the mechanism of market forces is to be at all effective.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#75

Post by throwaheyy »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #42
pizzalife wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most 401ks will just default to a target date fund, which is usually a total market stock ETF + bonds. That will certainly perform better than most actively managed pension funds.

But worse than the defined benefit pensions that 401k's were leveraged to replace.

Defined benefit pensions are unsustainable Ponzi schemes though. Attempting to guarantee market returns is silly.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#76

Post by paulryanrogers »

throwaheyy wrote: post #75
paulryanrogers wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But worse than the defined benefit pensions that 401k's were leveraged to replace.

Defined benefit pensions are unsustainable Ponzi schemes though. Attempting to guarantee market returns is silly.

Yeah, I wish we'd at least have tried scaling the benefits based on company's ability to pay. Or if they were guaranteed yet more realistic.

Ultimately maybe only something market-based is realistic. Yet if we must do that then I'd prefer gov workers be forced to use the same system. Also 401Ks being born out of a carve out for executives feels like an awkward fit for regular employees. Perhaps a unified system not tied to employment could be the best of both worlds.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#77

Post by kiba »

atlex2 wrote: post #51
paulpauper wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah a fake livestream of Elon Musk or Mike Saylor still makes hundreds of thousands of dollars/day undetected and untraced, no FBI involvement or arrests at all, still going strong to this day. Why waste time with this crap.

Why does google video search still allow scam users to show up as ‘SpaceX’ on YouTube? Doesn’t YouTube have a unique username system??

I assume a lack of manpower and lack of concerted attention to specific scams.

Another option is a Kafkaesque reporting mechanism in which a scammer took down their own videos before they could be reviewed by moderators. This is rarer but possible.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#78

Post by smeej »

yieldcrv wrote: post #38
smeej wrote: post #23

This is...not realistic on any level. I've been professionally investigating cryptocurrency scams/thefts/fraud since 2017. This is at least twice as convoluted a process as is necessary to separate people from millions and millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies if the site stays up for a week. People don't bother spinning up stuff like this when the easy stuff works just fine.

As a counterpoint it is very realistic. If you ever launch a token and run your own telegram channel, all sorts of specialists come out the woodwork with extremely convoluted schemes The sad thing is that the legitimate ones look just like the illegitimate ones My first top exchange listing was through a DM I’ve done partnerships with no name exchanges that turned out fine, also initiated over unsolicited DM been sca…

TFA isn't talking about a scam targeting creators of tokens. This is a scam targeting random people by text message who don't know enough about the crypto space to know what USDT is, but would somehow research and figure out how to jump through hoop after hoop to try to steal someone else's money.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#79

Post by echoangle »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #74
Terr_ wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an exact picture of the not-yet-existing burger you will receive anyway, why not say that's fraud too? The line is subjective.

Fraud requires purposeful deception. It doesn't need to be 'the not-yet-existing burger', it just needs not to be designed to deceive you. I'm not arguing the line isn't subjective. But, if it's not made with the same ingredients, or for example isn't actually food (as with many marketing images for food), then it's deceptive. I hope you agree? If it wasn't even made in the restaurant you're in, then I'd agree that i…

I’ll bite and say I don’t agree with

> But, if it's not made with the same ingredients, or for example isn't actually food (as with many marketing images for food), then it's deceptive. I hope you agree?

The point of the image is to give a preview what you’re about to get. It doesn’t have to be the real thing. If I sell screws online and only have CAD drawings and 3D renders of them, is that deceptive? As long as the product is properly described by the image, it doesn’t matter where it comes from. You could also sell burgers with hand-drawn preview images of them if you wanted to.

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