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How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

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Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#131

Post by fractionalhare »

jevgeni wrote: post #130
fractionalhare wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're talking about is not frontrunning, it's purchasing order flow for market making. Frontrunning is an illegal activity with a specific definition. Purchasing order flow is not illegal. While we're at it, quant firms occupy a family of trading strategies which are a superset of HFT; not all quants are market making, trading intraday or pursuing low latency strategies. With all due respect, please stop perpet…

So what if one of those non-market making firms buys order flow?

That's not really a thing, but even if it was, it would still not be frontrunning. Order flow is purchased for the specific purpose of making a market with the wider bid-ask spread acceptable to retail investors. They tend to place market orders and don't particularly care if their trade is off by a cent or two.

You can quibble with the academic arguments on whether or not this facilitates liquidity and price discovery (and therefore helps retail investors). Or you can just place a limit order and move on. Either way, nothing illegal or nefarious is happening. Just because they're purchasing order flow and executing your trade doesn't mean the national best bid and offer (NBBO) is being violated.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#132

Post by samatman »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #101
strken wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech people are pretty smart, on average. It's a somewhat demanding professional career. There's a hell of a lot of difference between "smart" and "infallible".

Smart, tech people, and average are all terms that need context. There are a lot of dumb programmers out there. There are a lot of really smart ones.

If you're defining "dumb" as "below average" then no, there really aren't.

If you're defining "dumb" as "below average for a programmer" then yeah that's... about half of us, turns out.

Programming isn't physics, but it is a profession that starts around +1 SD. Below that you're gonna wash out.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#133

Post by shaklee3 »

samatman wrote: post #129
coldtea wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On top of that, there was no guarantee that electric cars would ever be embraced, especially by Americans, who traditionally, love ICE muscle cars. Generous subsidies for electrics in the US and other countries helped with that. Like generous government money funnelled through NASA contracts helped Space X repeat what NASA did in the late 60s/early 70s, slightly improved, 40 years later...

Yeah, just look at all the other profitable companies in the space which did it too! Can't turn around without bumping into an electric car / reusable rocket company these days.

SpaceX is not profitable.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#134

Post by solresol »

Isn't there a bigger Ponzi scheme in tech? The one where you sell a product at a screaming loss, double your revenue each year (without ever showing a profit), and then each year raise capital at double the previous year's valuation to fund the ever-growing loss-making sales. It's just the suckers in that scheme are the investors...

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#135

Post by conductr »

louwrentius wrote: post #72

I expected an article about Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency but I was disappointed in that regard. Cool article though.

TBH I knew when I bought BTC at ~$10 that tech people were the first adopters and if it broke out from the tech crowd it would be like being near the top of the pyramid. It's precisely why I bought.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#136

Post by nmfisher »

herval wrote: post #122
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #89

I would argue that the ponzi scheme is much broader than what is described here. 1) Try to start an online business. It doesn't really matter what you're doing or if it succeeds as long as it's marketable to people aspiring to create an online business 2) Make a big fuss about the launch on all social platforms (Twitter, HN, PH, IH, your blog, etc) and hope someone with a big audience signal boosts you or you get luc…

How is that a Ponzi Scheme? Self-promoting and narrative-building to make it sound easy, but if you’re building something that someone will pay you money for, you’re literally just building a business...?

Slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it's a ponzi scheme when they start selling courses on "how to become an entrepreneur".

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#137

Post by ZephyrBlu »

herval wrote: post #122
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #89

I would argue that the ponzi scheme is much broader than what is described here. 1) Try to start an online business. It doesn't really matter what you're doing or if it succeeds as long as it's marketable to people aspiring to create an online business 2) Make a big fuss about the launch on all social platforms (Twitter, HN, PH, IH, your blog, etc) and hope someone with a big audience signal boosts you or you get luc…

How is that a Ponzi Scheme? Self-promoting and narrative-building to make it sound easy, but if you’re building something that someone will pay you money for, you’re literally just building a business...?

Yes, you are. As the article says, you are actually making money and gaining followers.

It's not a ponzi scheme in the literal sense, but these businesses are built off the back of other people who believe they can do what you're doing supporting you (In the article this is by paying for your course).

Some of them will go on to create their own successful businesses (And perpetuate the cycle), but most will most likely fail.

There was a post on Indie Hackers not long ago about a guy who said he lost thousands of dollars trying to build a business. I'm sure there are many more people who got into similar situations.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#138

Post by remarkEon »

solotronics wrote: post #65
coldtea wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does one break out when everyone's taking glamorous selfies in Thailand but I'm working in a dingy apartment trying to build the next big app? Isn't the idea of building the "next big app" itself based on the same kind of get-rich-quick mindset those schemes are exploiting? Only except for the "nomad lifestyle" or "selling courses", etc, it's supposed to happen by coding in a dingy apartment. But it's equally u…

I write software because I have always liked computers and always spent all my free time figuring out coding, linux, networking, and hacking in general. I don't expect to become the next Zuckerberg and I think that's the equivalent of telling kids they can make it in professional sports. I'm just content making a comfortable living building systems for someone else. I think I could have made roughly as good of a livi…

I probably should’ve become a fisherman then.

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#139

Post by [deleted] »

nish1500 wrote: post #31
friedman23 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If someone makes a killing, it's because someone lost it Not true, companies can create value, that value is reflected in the stock price. The economy is not zero sum. Did all the people that got rich off of apple, google, microsoft, nvidia, etc get rich because someone else lost money?

Exactly! Which is why my comment talks about 'Trading' not 'Investing'. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/12/difference-inves...

[deleted]

Re: How to Run a Ponzi Scheme for Tech People

#140

Post by sebmellen »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #121
sebmellen wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in a city with a large homeless population, I think it would be interesting for you to go and talk with them. I live in San Diego, and I've talked to hundreds of homeless people while doing volunteer work and photography. You would not believe how many people, though they may be mentally ill, are smart, honest, good people, who just got fucked by the system. They're out here scrounging for food and gettin…

West coast cities homelessness problems are indicative of nothing more than the specific economic and political realities in those cities. It is folly to extrapolate that to larger macroeconomic conditions. While some specific cities may have their heads up their butts with regard to public policy resulting in more visible homeless the living conditions of the "almost homeless" and working poor have very much improve…

That's just not true. Please don't spread this kind of misinformation. Many cities and states bus their homeless into California. Drug addiction, homelessness, and mental illness are all huge problems throughout the US (though also in Europe, et al.).

The downfall of the middle class is the downfall of everyone except the super-rich. Some kind of Portugal drug model / New Deal-type infrastructure plan would be necessary to fix this problem, which is present all across the US. Why do you think Donald Trump got elected? It wasn't bigots in the Midwest — it was impoverishment.

See:

— https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/us/homeless-busing-seattl...

— https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

— https://www.mintpressnews.com/500-homeless-mental-patients-w...

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